A jobless recovery??
LA TIMES/December 9, 2001/OPINION/THE ECONOMY The Perils of a Jobless Recovery By DAVID FRIEDMAN As the Dow Jones industrial average peaked above 10,000 last week despite news of worsening consumer confidence and continuing job losses, the United States appears increasingly likely to return to the divisive politics of the 1990s' jobless recovery. Then, extremely low interest rates drove money into stocks and brought about a largely paper economic recovery. Beyond Wall Street, jobs and wages stagnated. One result was a negative politics that even rejected a popular president fresh from a decisive military victory with the slogan, It's the economy, stupid! The early 1990s proved to be a reality check for a highly touted, supposedly miraculous economic model: leveraged buyouts, which had enabled small companies to swallow big ones. After the savings and loan collapse in the late 1980s and a stock-market crash in 1987, the economy went into reverse. By 1991, nearly 2 million Americans had lost their jobs. Hamstrung by budget battles, a chronic deficit and war in the Persian Gulf, Washington was unable to produce confidence-building economic policies. The government's primary response was to cut interest rates. Cheap credit helped stem the 1990-91 recession. By early 1992, output began to rise again. Yet, confounding the hopes of leaders who insisted the country's economy was much stronger than popularly perceived, the national mood continued to sour. Consumer confidence fell to near-record lows. The problem was that the early 1990s recovery was initially founded on the transfer of assets from savings accounts, bonds and similar investments into the stock market. Stock prices soared, with the Dow Jones average appreciating by more than 20% during 1991-92 alone. But while this increase was good news for investors, paradoxically, it restrained job and wage growth normally associated with economic recovery. Investors had little incentive to reward companies that boosted employment, because disappointing jobs data helped assure that the Federal Reserve would not raise interest rates. At the same time, corporate managers were under enormous pressure to show dramatic improvements to justify their companies' higher stock values. They responded by cutting wages and laying off regular employees in favor of temporary, outside help. Procurement managers dramatically increased their reliance on cheaper overseas producers. From a balance-sheet perspective, once moribund U.S. corporations suddenly seemed to realize enormous productivity and profit gains, all of which fed investors' optimism. But the cost of these achievements was lackluster job growth, continued displacement of manufacturing overseas and stagnant wages. To the shock of many Americans, what was good for Wall Street was manifestly bad for the rest of the economy. A substantial, class-based gap emerged between Wall Street and Main Street. Although U.S. domestic output grew by about 2% a year in the early 1990s, jobs remained scarce. Unemployment continued to rise, to more than 7% by spring 1992. Indeed, post-recession job growth during this period was among the slowest ever recorded. Worse still, corporate employment and procurement strategies so effectively restrained wages that most Americans' real incomes did not rise until the latter half of the decade. Recession had given way to a joyless, troubled economy. Historically, most Americans care little if a relatively few become fabulously wealthy as long as everyone else's fortunes also improve. Politically significant discontent can arise, however, when a comparative handful are perceived to be winning big at the expense of the general public. That's exactly the perception fostered by the 1990s' jobless recovery. Largely forgotten now in the wake of the recent boom, the period was marked by severe political discord over virtually every tax, trade and other important economic policy. Southern California exploded with civil unrest spurred in large measure by economic concerns. The media was filled with gloomy accounts of America's supposedly irreversible decline. Despite the nation's newfound sense of unity in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a jobless recovery along the lines of the one that followed the last recession could reignite a class-based, divisive politics. There is evidence that such a recovery is in the works. Low interest rates are pushing investors toward the stock market, and many share prices have become overvalued. Under such circumstances, companies have little reason to hire workers, increase domestic production or boost wages. Last Friday's jobless data seemed to bear this out: The government reported that U.S. firms shed jobs more rapidly than at any time in the last 20 years. A protracted period of paper profits mixed with sluggish employment may well ensue. As a result, there are several areas in which
RE:UK Financial Services Authority
Chris Burford writes:With acknowledgements to Mark's list and to Michael Keaney, this extract from the FT shows the extent to which the regulation of finance capital may not be totally unwelcome to finance capital itself. This is standard, unsurprising. Just as for the financial fraction of capital, the capitalist class as a whole benefits from the existence of regulation -- for example, in the form of a state which enforces and protects their property rights in society's resources, along with all sorts of things that are hoped to keep the system stable. That is, they have collective interests, which sometimes go against what's good for individual capitalists (free riders). (My father used to work for a company -- the Audit Bureau of Circulations -- that played the cop role for the U.S. newspaper biz, keeping the newspapers from lying about their circulations in order to boost advertising rates (a destructive activity for the group as a whole, and thus for the individuals within it). There's a whole sector of the economy dedicated to industry self-regulation, an activity that receives almost no attention from the economics profession. The capitalist state is really just a form of self-regulation for the society as a whole.) Similarly, collective regulation can be at the expense of outsiders, as when the working class can only get positive results from the capitalist state by striking, demonstrating, etc. Jim Devine _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
RE:Re: Re: Re: Re: Afghanistan class
Rakesh writes: Jim tried to discuss this with me offlist. I see no reason to do so. My point remains that Jim seems to have singled out al Qaeda as the clerical fascists and has thus been operating in accordance with the propaganda machine. a basic assumption for all of pen-l should be that any interpretation of my writings -- or imputations into my thought -- done by Rakesh should be treated as _prima facie_ a distortion. Therefore I will not reply to the above or anything else he writes. Nor should anyone else. JD _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
RE:Re: RE:Re: Re: Re: Re: Afghanistan class
Rakesh writes:There is an easy way to solve this, Jim. Just send the post in which you refer to both al Qaeda and its opponent the House of Sa'ud as fascists. I said that it seems that you have singled out al Qaeda. You could easily disprove me. I see no reason to prove my political purity to someone who misrepresents my opionions. Please go away. JD _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
RE:Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Afghanistan class
I wrote: the US southern slave-owners didn't fight for their independence in order to tighten control over their slaves. Rather, they did so to _defend_ their control over slaves. It's quite possible for oppressors to be reactionary. Rakesh writes: Jim, this is a weird analogy. It's enough that 9/11 is Pearl Harbor and al Qaeda Imperial Japan. [I never made that specific weird analogy, BTW, and do not see it as relevant in any way.] Does the royal family have to become the slavocracy? If you read carefully, in context, you'll note that I did NOT say the Saudi royal family was a slavocracy, though they do own slaves (or owned them recently) if I remember correctly. Rather, I was making what's called an analogy, or a simile: the Saudi royal family is in some ways _like_ any oppressive and exploitative class, even though it differs from other such classes in other ways. It doesn't necessarily do things in order to exploit, dominate, oppress _more_. (That, BTW, is typical of capitalism, which as Marx pointed out, is aggressive in its expansionism and even undermines its own _status quo_.) Rather it may do things in order defend its current status and its current degrees of exploitation, domination, and oppression. BTW, to reject analogies is to reject theory, since theory is nothing but a form of analogy, a re-creation in one's mind of empirical reality. It's possible that they did it also to buy off ObL. (The German richies thought they could buy off Hitler, after all, so he'd become reasonable like Mussolini.) RB:buy him off to do what? perhaps the private capitalist class in Sa'udi Arabia is not as worried about popular discontent as the royal family forcing their way onto the boards of private company? i am just guessing, so are you. is the hitler analogy getting us anywhere especially if there is resistance among private businessmen to the priviliges of the House of Sa'ud which is multiplying as a result of polygamy and thus has to encroach on private business in order to enjoy their luxurious lifestyles? Hitler analogies are always over-used, since that guy and his despotism were truly _sui generis_. However, a lot of evidence suggests that the German capitalists did try to buy him off, while capitalist elites often try to buy off populist, socialist, fascist, etc. leaders. They often succeed. BTW, _you_ were the one who brought up Hitler, specifically with reference to German elite's efforts to buy him off. I would guess that the Saudi elite would simply try to buy off ObL in order to deal with the discontent about US bases on Saudi land and their own hypocritical application of Islam. That's one reason, I've read, that the Saudi school system has been increasing dominated by the type of Islamic fundamentalism with which ObL is aligned. hitchens is always talking about facing new realities, but the whole discourse is overburdened with anachronistic analogies. I have yet to read anything penetrating by Hitchens or you about the nature of the conflicts within Saudi Arabia. I was NOT defending Hitchens. I also did not write _anything_ (nor did I intend to write anything) about conflicts within Saudi Arabia until what I wrote above. I am NOT the one to expect penetrating analysis of Saudi affairs from, since I am NOT an expert on that field. The fact that I don't write about Saudi affairs should NOT be used to lambaste me. I also don't write about soccer. I hope that this is the end of this thread. Please stop misrepresenting my opinions. JD _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
RE:Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Afghanistan class
RB writes:when i was off the list jim made comments that make his position much more complex than i thought. i was going on the comments that were in my in box. so jim if have misunderstood you, i apologize. i guess the use of the word fascism is inflammatory...which of course as jim says doesn't mean we should not use it when justified even in a loose sense. apology accepted. Now, please don't do it again. JD _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
another multiple choice test
What group of people is the pollster describing in the following quote? People want nothing short of revenge, blood, more of it, one ... pollster explained. And under these conditions, the ones who give them blood are the ones they will give their support. A. U.S. citizens, referring to their support for Bush's war on Afghanistan. B. Israelis, referring to their support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. C. Many fundamentalist Moslems, referring to their support for Osama bin Laden. D. Many Palestinians, referring to their support for Hamas. E. all of the above. F. none of the above. Jim Devine _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
1929 stock market
in SLATE MAGAZINE (http://slate.msn.com/?id=2059181entry=2059356), I found the following discussion of the 1929 stock market crash (refering to a book by Maury Klein, _Rainbow's End_, a history of the crash of 1929). Nell Minow: I just got my regular list of new research papers issued by the National Bureau of Economic Research and was intrigued by one of the newest titles, one so exciting that even practitioners of the aptly named dismal science felt it deserved an exclamation point: The Stock Market Crash of 1929: Irving Fisher Was Right! (http://minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr294.pdf) Irving Fisher was an economist who said in September of 1929, Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau, landing him forever in the lists of people with famously bad judgment, like the guy at Decca who rejected the Beatles because guitar music was on the way out and Thomas Watson for his comment that there was a world market for only five computers. Fisher did say there would be no crash, and then there was, but then so did John Maynard Keynes, and his reputation is still pretty good. The authors of the NBER study, Ellen R. McGrattan and Edward C. Prescott, looked at the stock prices in 1929 and concluded that the stock market did not crash because the market was overvalued. In fact, they say the evidence they found strongly suggests that stocks were undervalued, even at their 1929 peakone more exhibit for the prosecution from the extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. If Fisher's heirs held on to whatever was in his portfolio, they've done pretty well, but that requires a longer investment horizon than most people are willing to undertake. This is not as silly as it sounds. The fact is that in 1929, the profit rate had attained its cyclical peak (before a very steep cyclical decline). High earnings allow high stock market valuation. The problem was that the profit rate -- and thus the stock market -- rested on a house of cards. The US and world economies were extremely unstable. There probably was a stock market bubble going on, too. But even if there wasn't, the stock market was going to fall as earnings plummeted in the recession. Jim Devine _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
RE:RE: project for Pen-l
I wrote (a day or more ago) There's a difference between proposing an alternative theory and getting into the standard academic and/or sectarian approach of my Theory is better than yours. Eric writes in response: I think the my theory is better than yours can be productive, particularly if my theory really is better. but you seemed to be saying that one of the problems with a Shaikh-type theory of absolute advantage was that it claimed to be better... what's wrong with rebutting the mainstream? Nothing, of course, unless the rebutting that is taking place is not relevant to current mainstream theory. what if your target is not to convince the professional economists as much as to (1) teach students an alternative view and/or (2) develop an alternative view (which might be in its infancy) that can grow and replace the current orthodox theory? what's wrong with absolute advantage? It is wrong in most cases. I'm not sure it makes any sense in a floating exchange rate regime. It also might out of necessity presume a one-factor input (labor) model of production. This one input model is needed to clearly determine the country with the absolute advantage. (1) No-one said that the theory is right in all cases. (Are there _any_ economic theories that are right in all cases?) Shaikh's point, as I understand it, is that if exchange rates do not adjust instantly, then there is a period in which absolute advantage applies. (The same works if the exchange rate is determined by such things as assets markets rather than by commodity flows, especially when exchange rates reflect non-fundamentals, as you note in a different message.) That period of absolute advantage has the effect of changing the situation to the advantage of the country with the higher labor productivity. Path dependence kicks in, so that the final equilibrium achieved would differ from the equilibrium posited under the assumption of instant adjustment of exchange rates to reflect fundamentals (purchasing power parity). The issue in the Shaikh story, as I understand it, is not whether exchange rates are floating. Rather, it's whether they instantly snap to their long-term equilibrium levels corresponding to real fundamentals. Now, it's quite correct to note that the Ricardo/Shaikh story of autarchy being replaced by trade is a total myth. But it does say something about what happens on the margin as trade barriers are taken down. (2) The fact that the multi-factor model cannot represent absolute advantage is a strike against that model. But I'm not convinced it can't be done. Why don't trade models use production functions with technological shifters? That is, in a Cobb-Douglas story, q =AKL with exponents on K and L, why can't A differ between countries? Is there some sort of methodological imperative against such models? Jim Devine _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
RE:Free trade is...
the weapon of the victor. Bismarck comment: I hope that pen-l's critique of free trade would also involve a critique of Hamilton/List nationalism, so we can avoid quoting such horrors as Bismark. -- Jim Devine _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
RE:Re: Re: RE:Re: what's the point?
I'm sorry about these problems. For reasons I can't figure out, I can receive messages on my home PC, but can't send. So I go on-line, to that web to send e-mails, unless I'm at my work PC. -- JD Date:Sat, 1 Dec 2001 23:19:26 -0600 From:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: Subject: [PEN-L:20248] Re: Re: RE:Re: what's the point? I don't know why but every post from Jim Devine, or response from Jim, spills over such that I can't read it on my e-mail. Can Jim correct this? (ps. there are several others on pen-l who have this problem though, since I have not been saving their collections on other issues, I have not had this problem. I have had to delete several posts from my email collection on trade because of this problem. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba. _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
RE:Re: RE:Re: RE: project for Pen-l
Peter writes:I realize that the non-compensation angle [i.e., that the global gains from trade correspond to losses by many and the latter are never given the compensation that they could to make up for those losses] is one that can be pursued. It has the advantage of gaining sympathy from the more humane wing of mainstream econ. I think it concedes too much, however, and politically it is not too convincing. We are essentially saying, according to this argument, that economic growth should be slowed because we haven't succeeded in compensating the losers from growth-enhancing policies. I wrote: a thought: one way of thinking of Marx's theory of exploitation is as a theory of non-compensation, i.e., the non-payment of workers in compensation for their losses when capitalist relations of production (not just markets) change, even those that compensation could _in theory_ be paid. This fits with Marx's view that capitalism does raise the total ability of humanity to produce. he replies: Right, Jim. I think you've just rediscovered social democracy ;) social democracy has some of its basis in Marx, just as one can find bases for stalinism in Marx. There are a variety of different visions based on Marx, all presenting partial (i.e., incomplete) interpretations of his ideas. (It's sort of like the story of the blind elephants examining the philosopher.) BTW, a better mainstream interpretation of Marxian exploitation is in terms of pecuniary externalities: the monopolization of the means of production by the capitalists (backed by the coercive state) and the divorce of the proletariat from the means of subsistence and production gives the individual capitalist the ability to benefit from pecuniary externalities to gain profits at the expense of workers. Unfortunately, the mainstream economists seem to totally reject their own concept (and/or treat it as totally normative). Jim Devine _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
Afghan women NPR
Michael Rubin writes: Furthermore, Kabul was always more progressive and cosmopolitan than the rest of Afghanistan. For example, the Feminist Majority's Stop Gender Apartheid campaign still reports that women cannot leave their house unless accompanied by a close male relative. However, women in every city I visited walked around in pairs. Recently, I heard Sylvia Pujoli (sp?) on US National Public Radio reporting on the Afghan meetings in Bonn, where women were participating. I found it interesting that she referred to Gender Apartheid in a news story, not an editorial. Now I have no doubt that the Talibums treated women as bad as the Saudis or the Northern Alliance (US allies) do, if not worse (though I found little to disagree with in Rubin's article, based on a discussion I had with a reporter who's been to Afghanistan). But the question is why NPR would be editorializing in this way. Two reasons spring to mind: (1) it's a feminist way of endorsing the Bush Killer Kowboy state's attack on Afghanistan; and (2) it's an effort to leverage the Bush administration's official opposition to patriarchy in order to generalize the critique to other countries, e.g. Saudia Arabia. The latter is progressive, but it's a real problem in that it's mixed up with the former. Jim Devine _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
what's the point?
Peter Dorman asks: But then what's the point, Jim? That neoclassicals have a better handle on stuff than Ricardo did? I'm sure you don't mean this, but I don't know what you do mean. The point depends on one's purpose: if one is simply doing theoretical and/or empirical research in trade theory, I agree that Ricardo should be dumped. On the other hand, if one has to present a simple trade theory to undergraduate students, who are totally opposed to anything that smacks of theory or abstraction (especially the biz majors), I see nothing wrong with starting with Ricardo, presenting such stuff as the role of migration dynamic comparative advantage. BTW, one can use Ricardo to discuss Shaikh. Jim Devine _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
absolute advantage the race to the bottom.
Peter Dorman writes: Absolute advantage matters enormously, because that's the basis for the race to the bottom argument. In a comparative advantage world, such a race is impossible. Eric Nilsson writes: ... I partly agree with you. If the race to the bottom strategy can work, then what of those in on left who favor absolute advantage? I am totally confused by this. No-one advocates the race to the bottom as a strategy. Rather, it's a theory about how the world's labor markets (and environmental standards) are tending to be harmonized downward due to the mobility of capital, lobbying for deregulation, the power of the IMF World Bank, etc. No-one on the left favors absolute advantage as a policy or a strategy. Rather, it refers to a theory employed to understand predict how international trade. ... [absolute advantage] might work for particular industries (to the potential harm of other domestic industries). Shaikh argues that one of his points is that the domestic theory of competition -- one capital beats others in a battle of productivity, etc. -- applies internationally. Jim Devine _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
RE:Re: what's the point?
Peter writes:An alternative approach would be to think about the general concepts we would like our students to take with them (i.e. a useful and mostly correct theory of trade) and then spend too much time trying to figure out a way to bring these concepts down to the introductory level, using case studies, games and simulations, etc. That's how I do it... I'd like to see how you do it. what book do you use? -- JD _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
RE:Re: RE: project for Pen-l
Peter writes:I realize that the non-compensation angle [i.e., that the global gains from trade correspond to losses by many and the latter are never given the compensation that they could to make up for those losses] is one that can be pursued. It has the advantage of gaining sympathy from the more humane wing of mainstream econ. I think it concedes too much, however, and politically it is not too convincing. We are essentially saying, according to this argument, that economic growth should be slowed because we haven't succeeded in compensating the losers from growth-enhancing policies. a thought: one way of thinking of Marx's theory of exploitation is as a theory of non-compensation, i.e., the non-payment of workers in compensation for their losses when capitalist relations of production (not just markets) change, even those that compensation could _in theory_ be paid. This fits with Marx's view that capitalism does raise the total ability of humanity to produce. -- JD _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
the great game
the followig may be of interest... L.A. TIMES/COMMENTARY/November 28, 2001 Russia Checkmated Its New Best Friend By ERIC S. MARGOLIS, Eric S. Margolis is a foreign affairs columnist for Canadian and Pakistani newspapers and author of War at the Top of the World--The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet (Routledge, 2000) Many Americans, grown cynical of government pronouncements, have been asking whether the real war goal of the United States in Afghanistan is to gain access to Central Asia's oil and gas. The answer: no and yes. The U.S. attacked Afghanistan to exact revenge for the Sept. 11 attacks. But it must have quickly occurred to former oilmen George Bush and Dick Cheney that retribution against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden offered a golden opportunity to expand American geopolitical influence into South and Central Asia, scene of the world's latest gold rush--the Caspian Basin. The world has ample oil today. But, according to CIA estimates, when China and India reach South Korea's current level of per capita energy use--within 30 years--their combined oil demand will be 120-million barrels daily. Today, total global consumption is 60million to 70million barrels daily. In short, the major powers will be locked in fierce competition for scarce oil, with the Gulf and Central Asia the focus of this rivalry. Central Asia's oil and gas producers are landlocked. Their energy wealth must be exported through long pipelines. He who controls energy, controls the globe. Russia, the world's second-largest oil exporter, wants Central Asian resources to be transported across its territory. Iran, also an oil producer, wants the energy pipelines to debouch at its ports, the shortest route. But America's powerful Israel lobby has blocked Washington's efforts to deal with Iran. Pakistan and the U.S. have long sought to build pipelines running due south from Termez, Uzbekistan, to Kabul, Afghanistan, then down to Pakistan's Arabian Sea ports, Karachi and Gwadar. Oilmen call this route the new Silk Road, after the fabled path used to export China's riches. This route, however, would require a stable, pro-Western Afghanistan. Since 1989, Iran has strived to keep Afghanistan in disorder, thus preventing Pakistan from building its long-sought Termez-Karachi pipeline. When Pakistan ditched its ally, the Taliban, in September, and sided with the U.S., Islamabad and Washington fully expected to implant a pro-American regime in Kabul and open the way for the Pakistani-American pipeline. But, while the Bush administration was busy tearing apart Afghanistan to find Bin Laden, it failed to notice that the Russians were taking over half the country. The Russians achieved this victory through their proxy--the Northern Alliance. Moscow, which has sustained the alliance since 1990, rearmed it after Sept. 11 with new tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, helicopters and trucks. To the fury of Washington and Islamabad, in a coup de main the Russians rushed the Northern Alliance into Kabul, in direct contravention of Bush's dictates. The alliance is now Afghanistan's dominant force and, heedless of multi-party political talks in Germany going on this week, styles itself as the new lawful government, a claim fully backed by Moscow. The Russians have regained influence over Afghanistan, avenged their defeat by the U.S. in the 1980s war and neatly checkmated the Bush administration, which, for all its high-tech military power, understands little about Afghanistan. The U.S. ouster of the Taliban regime also means Pakistan has lost its former influence over Afghanistan and is now cut off from Central Asia's resources. So long as the alliance holds power, the U.S. is equally denied access to the much-coveted Caspian Basin. Russia has regained control of the best potential pipeline routes. The new Silk Road is destined to become a Russian energy superhighway. By charging like an enraged bull into the South Asian china shop, the U.S. handed a stunning geopolitical victory to the Russians and severely damaged its own great power ambitions. Moscow is now free to continue plans to dominate South and Central Asia in concert with its strategic allies, India and Iran. The Bush administration does not appear to understand its enormous blunder and keeps insisting that the Russians are now our friends. The president should understand that where geopolitics and oil are concerned, there are no friends, only competitors and enemies. Jim Devine _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
RE:Re: A project for Pen-L
this is a worthy project. However, it's important at each step to always distinguish free trade _in theory_ and free trade in practice. For example, in theory it refers to Ricardian stuff about comparative advantage, or more generally the the benefits of buying and selling vs. autarchy. But in practice, it refers to easy mobility of capital investment, deregulation, etc. I can imagine that some would favor FT in theory, but not as actually practiced. -- Jim Devine _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
Chomsky in the news
from Microsoft's SLATE on-line newsmagazine: Chomsky Speak By Inigo Thomas Posted Tuesday, November 27, 2001, at 3:25 PM PT In Pakistan to promote the view that the United States sponsors terrorism, Professor Noam Chomsky told an audience of 1,500 people that the 1998 bombing of a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory (wrongly believed by the CIA to be an al-Qaida chemical weapons plant) may have resulted in the deaths of several thousand people. (Other reports say that one or maybe two people died at the factory after it was hit by U.S. cruise missiles.) This instance of U.S. terrorism, Chomsky says, is an indication of what will happen in Afghanistan. Coalition forces [meaning American and British forces together with their proxy, the Northern Alliance] are making plans to further destroy the hunger-stricken country. The consequences of their crimes will never be known and they are quite confident about that. And that is the enormous outcome of the crime of the powerful Chomsky is famous for his analysis of U.S. government actions and the language used by officials to blind the citizenry from the truth, yet in this speech the MIT professor comes close to adopting the language of distortion he abhors. Chomsky implies that the Afghan famine is a result of U.S. and British military action, although an Afghan farmer might say that a lack of rain in recent years as well as the Taliban regime were more directly responsible for the dearth. Moroever, and contrary to what Chomsky says, the United States and its allies are not planning to further destroy Afghanistan, although they do hope to destroy the Taliban, whose willful destruction of their own country has created a humanitarian calamity. Finally, what truth is there in Chomsky's remark that the consequences of their crimes will never be known and they are quite confident about that? The implication is that the Americans and the British are getting away with murder in Afghanistan, but if th! e consequences of previous American actions have been revealed, and Chomsky offers some examples in the very same speech, why is he so sure that the consequences of these so-called crimes will remain a mystery? What's so special about Afghanistan? Of course, you could also be led to believe that no crimes have taken place in Afghanistan, in which case there will be different consequences. comments? Jim Devine _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
Max tells the truth
[was: RE:[PEN-L:19912] RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Doug tells thetruth..] Max Sawicki writes: Now let us all bow our heads in a moment of silence over the impending demise of several thousand fascist, anti-semitic, misogynist terrorists. (One suspects they are not down with the GBLTGTS [] thing either.) the Taliban can't be anti-semitic, since they are semites themselves. I would call them anti-Jewish bigots, though they are also anti-Christian and anti-Buddhist, to name a few antis. They _are_ fascist, if one uses the word loosely. The Taliban clearly consists of a bunch of bad guys. But I've never seen actual proof that the person they allegedly harbor -- Osama bin Laden -- or his alleged organization -- al Qaeda -- did the dirty deed. Nor is capital punishment (in the form of a US war and strategic bombing) justified for harboring alleged criminals. And as for the Taliban's admittedly disgusting policies, if it was good for the world for the US to indiscriminately attack countries that fail to pass the moral muster, why hasn't the US bombed civilians in Burma? in Saudi Arabia? and who made the US the world cop, judge, jury, and executioner? or is the word vigilante? Max complains that people on pen-l are selective pacifists, criticizing the US but not other countries when they commit atrocities like the war against Afghanistan. Well, I for one don't pay taxes to the Taliban. Nor does it speak in my name. So I have a _responsibility_ to criticize the US elite. Further, those people on pen-l who aren't US citizens find themselves increasingly under the US thumb, since the US government is clearly struggling to make itself into the world state. So they're in the same position that I'm in. _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
RE:Re: Alienation
Frankly, it would be good for the left itself -- and for academics themselves -- if people would try to be plain- and clear-spoken. I try to follow Orwell's principles (elucidated in his politics of the English language) as much as I can, though I can't resist words like elucidated. The point is to prevent form from warping content. -- Jim Devine Date:Sun, 25 Nov 2001 11:25:03 -0600 From:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: Subject: [PEN-L:19886] Re: Alienation? Tim Bousquet wrote: --- Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [clip] the Hobbesian realm manifests itself -even in a post-Westphalian sense. Yep, that'll convince the boys down at the tavern... I'll whip that sucker out at half-time and we'll have world peace by the end of the third quarter. Tim, you would not sneer at a production line worker in an ammunition plant for being a poor marksman; nor would you sneer at the engineer who designed the rifle for not being in the front lines firing it. But that is what you are doing in this [non-]critique of Ian. From some of Ian's posts I gather that he has done important work in organizing and agitating for the Seattle Movement -- but frankly it would be as silly for him to use the same language on this list as it would be for the engineer to say, the hell with it, let's use the old weapons and I'm off to the front. Pen-L is an engineering lab, not the local tavern. Carrol _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
RE:Re: Doug tells the truth, etc.
Christian writes:To be unemployed is to be within capital's orbit (ie it's a distinction that applies to populations constructed statistically by nation-states and super-national bodies.) Robinson is saying that being outside of that orbit is far worse than being in it. That is, even unemployment within the orbit of capital is better than whatever states of work life are available in other modes of production, given the encroachment of capital on those worlds. (As I recall, she is referring to Latin American development during the Cold War.) I searched for JR's famous quote once (it's in her ECONOMIC PHILOSOPHY or ECONOMIC HERESIES). It specifically refered to Southeast Asia. -- Jim Devine _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
a new kind of blow-back
November 23, 2001/Los Angeles TIMES from http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-112301opium.story Opium Poppies Take Root Once Again in Afghanistan By RONE TEMPEST, Times Staff Writer KARIZ, Afghanistan -- No one could be more delighted about the departure of the Taliban regime than the opium poppy growers here in eastern Afghanistan. In July 2000, the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, issued an edict banning poppy cultivation across Afghanistan, then the world's largest producer of the flower pod used to make heroin. For years, the Taliban had used taxes on drugs to finance its military. That all changed, however, with Omar's eight-line message. According to a recent report by the U.N. Drug Control Program, the decree brought raw opium production in Afghanistan to a virtual halt, dropping from 3,276 tons to only 185 tons in just one year. But now that the local Taliban has retreated to the mountains, there is an eagerness among farmers here in the irrigated lowlands south of Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province. On Wednesday, farmer Ahmed Shah and his neighbors were busy fertilizing and tilling their small plots of land, preparing to plant poppy seeds that will be harvested next April, processed into heroin in neighboring Pakistan and delivered to overseas markets. I can make 10 times more with poppy than I can with wheat, Shah said as two teenage boys turned the soil nearby. The farmers of eastern Afghanistan are fully aware of the epidemic they feed with their beautiful flowers. They see the hollow-eyed addicts in the bazaars of Peshawar when they travel to Pakistan. We know we are creating addicts, Shah said. The only reason we are doing this is because we are poor. If I could find another job, I would stop growing poppies. Samsul Haq, deputy director of the Nangarhar Drug Control and Coordination Office, estimates that before the Taliban edict, 85% of the Jalalabad agricultural economy was driven by opium production. This is a great opportunity for poppy growers, Haq said. The Taliban is gone. There is confusion about what kind of new order is coming in. The farmers are free to plant poppies. Haq said that unless poppy production is checked by massive foreign aid to provide the farmers with an alternative, Afghanistan is almost certain to return to its dubious distinction as the world's top supplier by next summer. The farmers in Kariz, a mud-walled village of 600 families where everyone grows poppies, see opium as the fastest, surest way out of the wrenching poverty brought on by more than two decades of war and turmoil. On one side of the farmland lies an irrigation canal built under a 1950s Soviet foreign aid program. In the distance are two twisted and broken high-tension towers that date to a time when this area had electricity. Everywhere are signs of war: carcasses of downed Soviet aircraft and armored personnel carriers; a military base pocked with huge craters from more recent U.S. bombing attacks; desiccated groves of olive and orange trees abandoned more than a decade ago during the moujahedeen fight with the Soviet-backed government. Haji Saifuddin, a 60-year-old farmer, has been growing poppies for more than 20 years on several plots he owns near Kariz. He alternates poppy planting with cotton, maize and wheat. When the Russians returned to their homeland, Saifuddin said, referring to the 1989 Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, I was a refugee in Pakistan. I started growing poppies when I got back. He said it costs him about $100 for fertilizer and seed for each jerib (about half an acre) of poppies he cultivates. Saifuddin said his return on each jerib is about $5,000, a small fortune here. The Kariz villagers, Persian-speaking members of the Afghan Arab tribe that claims to be descended from Arab traders who traveled and settled here centuries ago, live modestly in compounds with courtyards planted with mulberry and date trees. But a few miles away along another farm road are massive homes that jut up above high, gated walls with sentry towers on each corner. Haq said these mansions are occupied by opium traders, Afghanistan's drug barons. Some were built in the style of modern, Western architecture. One was made from the traditional adobe but many times grander, appearing on the horizon like a giant sand castle complete with turrets. The Taliban ban on poppy cultivation--instituted four years after the repressive regime came to power--had an instant, devastating effect on the local farmers. Nangarhar province is the second-biggest producer of opium poppies in Afghanistan, topped only by Helmand province west of the Taliban spiritual center, Kandahar. I took an advance on opium before the ban, Saifuddin said. I was forced to sell 12 jeribs of land to pay it back. Another farmer, Abdul Shakoor, 70, said he lost $6,500 because of the ban. Because of the decree, the Taliban lost much of its support
Rabbini and ObL
who is Rabbini? -- Jim Devine There are few Einsteins today. Maybe they all flunk the Graduate Record Exam or get poor grades. -- Temple Grandin, _Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports From My Life with Autism_. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Karl Carlile Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2001 7:33 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:19678] Rabbini and OBL Ossam Bin Laden entered Afghanistan in response to an invitation by Rabbini --not the Taliban. Karl Carlile Be free to visit the web site of the Communist Global Group at http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/ _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
fading Sandinista colors
Ken Hanly wrote: I wonder what Louis P. thinks of all this? Gar Lipow writes: speculation Labor's Flag, the Worker's Flag is not so very red as you might think! Labor's Flag, the people's Flag proudly waves the palest pink! end speculation despite Ortega's shift to the right, there was a report on US National Public Radio that he was being lambasted by his opponents as being the same as Osama bin Laden. They publicly interpreted his political shift as simply a ruse. Also, people -- including an American, who had some kind of official connection that I didn't get -- were quoted as saying that if Ortega became President, US aid would be cut off and maybe the civil war would re-start. Ironically, it probably doesn't pay to change your politics in this way... -- Jim Devine - Sent using MailStart.com ( http://MailStart.Com/welcome.html ) The FREE way to access your mailbox via any web browser, anywhere!
the rate of profit
Fred writes: Jim, thanks for your comments on my comments. no problem! Which recent issue of the SCB has estimates of the rate of profit? it's the September 2001 issue, at: http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/ARTICLES/2001/09september/0901ror.pdf On other issues, is there much anti-war sentiment in LA? Not much here yet, but dissatisfaction with how the war is going seems to be increasing. My total concern with my son's issues (he's got a dose of autism) and the fight with (i.e., lawsuit against) the public schools that are failing him has kept me out of political circles, so I don't know. I hope you are well. thanks. you too. Jim Devine _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
Fred's comments
[for some reason, though I can receive e-mail, I can't get MS Outlook to send mail under Windows XP on my new PC. I can't even get Eudora to run. So I'm using an on-line mail service.] Fred B. Moseley [EMAIL PROTECTED]writes: ... This is the answer to your [Chris'] puzzle of several weeks ago - that Marx predicted high interest rates at the peak of an expansion, but now we have low interest rates. The answer, as you say, is expansionary monetary policy, which was non-existent in Marx's day, but is widely used today. Actually, in volume III of CAPITAL, Marx sketches the path of interest rates in the business cycle. Even without expansionary monetary policy, interest rates fall after the business-cycle peak and the scramble for cash crisis, because there's a fall in the demand for loanable money-capital as capital accumulation slows. Expansionary monetary policy may make the crisis less acute, not by reviving business investment (that requires a revival of the rate of profit), but rather by lowering the interest burden of existing debts. lower interest rates also encourage asset inflation. Without the Fed's repeated cuts this year, there would have likely been asset deflation in housing and the stock market would have fallen much more than it did. This helps balance sheets just as falling debt burden does, so that that economy's fall is slowed. This mechanism is flaky, unpredictable, but seems to work for awhile. But expansionary monetary policy cannot solve the fundamental problem of insufficient profitability (too low rate of profit). That requires the liquidation of large amounts of capital, through bankruptcies, write-offs, etc., as you have emphasized in other recent posts. right. However, it is possible that _fiscal_ policy can help capitalists realize a higher rate of profit, by raising capacity utilization rates. ... Marx's theory seems very much to be supported by what is going on in the world economy today. yup. in a different message, Fred writes: But who else [besides Marxists] recognizes the centrality of the rate of profit in the behavior of the macroeconomy? Who else even has the rate of profit as a variable in their theory? I hope there are some such neo-Keynesians that I have overlooked. the orthodox economists' blindspot about the rate of profit is amazing. Some see it as technologically-determined, as the marginal product of capital [goods] determined by the [fallacious] aggregate production function. Others calculate it -- see a recent issue of the US Commerce Department's SURVEY OF CURRENT BUSINESS -- but largely ignore its role in the economy, in affecting the rate of accumulation.[*] Old-fashioned Keynesians talk about the marginal efficiency of capital (or of investment), which seems a cousin of the rate of profit, but then they overemphasize the subjective expectations side of the concept, unmooring it from the objective world of the rate of profit. The old Cambridge-Keynesians (Robinson, et al) did emphasize the rate of profit, though not exactly in a Marxian way. [*] One exception here is Herman I. Liebling (1980. U.S. Corporate Profitability and Capital Formation: Are Rates of Return Sufficient? New York: Pergammon.) He argues that the rate of profit was low during the late 1970s and needed to raised pronto. It's sort of an explicit class-struggle-minded endorsement of Reaganism, using academic language. in international solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
Cold War II
It's amazing how quickly the US and the world has shifted gears, to re-enter a Cold War-type mode. While I can understand how the public's horror, disgust, fear, and the like spur the shift, the political elite has opportunistically used the mood to push their own agendas. These have gelled into a single thrust: * military Keynesianism seems to be making a come-back, with fiscal stimulus now being okay -- even to the hard-core balance-the-budget Democrats -- if its spent on weaponry, security, and (anthrax-related) public health. Military spending promises trickle-down effects (counteracting the slowdown cum recession) while responding to powerful interest groups and not shaking up the distribution of wealth, power, and income. The Democrats -- led by people like Senator (actually, Vice President) Joseph Lieberman -- are grabbing for the baton dropped by the late Henry Scoop Jackson, once called the Senator from Boeing and known for his warfare state/welfare state combination (in that order). * but the Republicans are taking advantage of the war's encouragement of right-wing politics to push their own version of Keynesianism based on pampering the rich and corporations. Democrats wish that there would be tax cuts to help the poor and working people, but seem to lack the clout. Given the weakness of organized labor and other leftist groups, this seems inevitable. * in the meantime (which is quite a mean time, BTW), the fears of a Arab terrorist under every bed seem to be imitating the commie under every bed fears of the 1950s. Of course, this phenomenon has been moderated by the political elite in order to (1) facilitate anti-terrorist alliances in the Middle East and (2) avoid the McCarthyite phenomenon, in which Senator McCarthy used Truman's anti-communist fear-mongering against Truman. The last thing desired is for the fears to get out of control, shaking up the political elite. (It's interesting that neither the FBI nor the CIA is being lambasted for allowing 911 to happen because of faulty intelligence. There's no shake-up at the top.) * but this is a time when all of the right-wing instincts are allowed to stink, when worst case scenarios are presented as fact and unsupported conspiracy theories are publically stated, even by public officials. Vague threats are described and allowed to scare the populace, though effort is made to keep elite control. But yesterday, I heard an interview on US National Public Radio of a rural postal worker: he indicated that not only were his customers scared, but so was he. (At the end of the work-day, he had to shower before he could hug his daughter immediately.) This is despite the fact that the anthrax problem is relatively small in the scheme of things and there's no conceivable reason why any terrorist would target rural Kentucky. * the fear has allowed the move toward weakening civil liberties, as seen in legislation recently passed by the House of Representatives. In general, I'd say that the new era is (1) a lot like the Cold War but shorter (so far), with fewer outrages (so far); but (2) made worse in distributional terms by the weakness of leftish forces such as organized labor. _ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com
Guardian Unlimited
It was mildly exciting to hear a story yesterday on US National Public Radio about _me_, or at least about people like me. The story is about how more and more people in the US are going on-line to check out the Guardian Unlimited site (and others, like the Canadian Broadcasting site) to get a different perspective on the news than the one that we in the US get through the official media. The piece ended by saying that just as the Gulf War pushed cable news to its prominence, the war against terrorism might do the same for the web. -- Jim Devine
love that Blair!
Okay, let's stop trashing poor old Tony. Here's a different perspective. -- Jim Devine From: Slate Magazine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 05:53:38 -0700 SLATE POLITICS Wed., Oct. 23, 2001 foreigners: The Peculiar Phenomenon of Tony Blair By Anne Applebaum Twice last week I found myself on the telephone, talking to friends about Tony Blair. One of them was calling from London. She had been made so claustrophobic by the overwhelming opposition to Blair [!!!], and to Blair's conduct of the war on terrorismin the left-wing press, among her left-wing acquaintancesthat she wanted more perspective. She asked how Blair's performance in the weeks since Sept. 11 looked to outsiders. Was British policy admired abroad? Was it mocked? The other telephone call came from a Washingtonian. He had rung to talk about other things, but he was also irresistibly drawn to the subject of the British prime minister. Blair is marvelous, said my other friend, who is about as conservative as anyone I know. He continued on in that mode for several minutes: We thought he was a phony, we thought he was a pompous version of Clinton, we thought he was a boreand now we think he's a great statesman. These views are worth repeating, because the contrast between them so beautifully reflects some of the ideological havoc that Tony Blair has wrought over the past few weeks. Suddenly, American conservatives love Tony Blair, because they think he's fighting for their cause: terrific was the word Bill Kristol used [ http://go.msn.com/nl/71146.asp ], deploying no other adjectives. Suddenly, a large chunk of the British left hates Tony Blair, both because they think he's fighting for the American conservatives' cause, and because they think he will lose. All this war on terror is doing is spreading terror, wrote [http://go.msn.com/nl/71147.asp] one Guardian columnist. Another called [http://go.msn.com/nl/71148.asp] the war the slaughter of the world's poorest by the world's richest. More Labor politicians defect to the anti-war opposition every day [http://go.msn.com/nl/71149.asp] and not just the usual cranks, either. Yet listen carefully to what Blair is sayingand to what he has said in the pastand it rapidly becomes clear that neither group has assessed the man correctly. While it is perfectly true that Tony Blair is supporting the American conservatives' cause, he isn't supporting it for the reasons that they support itor even for reasons of which they would necessarily approve. For the most part, the American right and indeed the American center are charmed by Blair's support for America because they think it derives from Britain's loyalty to America. They believe Blair speaks of standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States because of his deep faith in the hallowed Anglo-American special relationship. The British left, on the other hand, think Blair is simply on an ego trip, that he hopes some of the superpower magic will rub off on him and on Britain if he hangs around George Bush long enough. As the leader of the Little Satan (alongside the American Great Satan, in the immortal phrasing of Iranian fundamentalists) he adds to his own luster and glory. Yet the roots of the old special relationshipthe idea that Britain was playing Greece to America's Rome, that an old power was helping educate a new power in the ways of the worldactually have very little to do with Blair's attitude to the United States today. He isn't particularly interested in vague notions of Anglo-Saxon superiority either or in some sort of community of English-speaking nations. I don't even think he's supporting us because he likes us, necessarily. And while there is clearly a touch of egotism about his fiery speeches, I'm not convinced that Blair is doing this for himself either or even for Britain. Patriotism was never his strong point. As he has himself said many times, what motivates Blair is something different: His semi-mystical, near-religious, and rather ill-defined belief in the overriding importance of international cooperation. If we all work together we can eliminate poverty. If we all work together we can bring international peace. If we all work together we can make the world safe for democracyor something along those lines. In an interview last spring, he told me [http://go.msn.com/nl/71150.asp] of his distaste for the every-nation-for-itself school of foreign policy. There used to be an idea that you just looked after your own national interest, he said, but I also think that there is a moral dimension to it. He specifically mentioned British interventions in Sierra Leone and Kosovo as examples of situations in which national interest was subordinate to the higher, more moral, cause of international cooperation. Since Sept. 11, he's repeated these beliefs. There is a coming together, he said [http://go.msn.com/nl/71151.asp] in a recent speech to his party: The power of community is
Re: Re: Re: People vs. Property in Chico
Gene writes: Isn't the problem widening the highway, not which side it is widened on? Why widen it, except to sell cars and gasoline and to disperse houses and big box stores over wider and wider areas? No more highways. According to our libertarian brethren and sistern, as I understand their perspective, highways and other public goods shouldn't be provided by the government, but by the private sector, with no government subsidies. So that means: no more highways. (The recently-built private toll roads in Orange County, CA don't look like they're profitable it turns out, despite the subsidies.) - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: RE: Re: Re: CA energy crisis -- one solution
no, it's the flouride they put in our hot-tubs, that has polluted and sapped our precious bodily fluids. It's worse than you all think. They would send radio signals thru the receivers in your fillings and you would vote to re-privatize. If they hadn't picked up Valis he would be here to tell you. And if there was any hint that the state was going to buy out the power company, I believe the CIA would start funding paramilitary groups hiding out in the moutains. and believe me, such groups already exist (and I doubt that the CIA would have scruples about helping neo-Nazis, since they've never had them before). -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: Barter makes comeback in Argentina
the New York TIMES writes:Bartering, that precapitalist form of commerce popular in Indian villages in Latin America even long after the Spanish conquest, is making a far-reaching comeback in Argentina as an improbable safety net for a forlorn middle class not accustomed to the hardships that are a way of life elsewhere in the region. it's interesting that in two of the places where the Neoliberal Crusade has taken its most virulent forms (the former Soviet Union, Argentina), barter has come back. In the former, neoliberalism was applied in a punitive way by the triumphant US. In the latter, the domestic reaction against hyperinflation meshed well with imperial neoliberalism, producing the hair-brained scheme of locking the Argentine currency to the US$. In both places the hegemony of the monetary cranks ironically led to the disappearance of money. - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
the free market at work
from SLATE:The LA [TIMES] lead notes that pharmaceutical companies have greater economic incentive to produce drugs that millions of outpatients take rather than drugs used exclusively in hospitals. Therefore, hospitals are being forced to ration certain drugs. While there have been no reported deaths as a result of drug shortages, hospitals say that running out of some drugs endangers patients. The government currently doesn't force pharmaceutical companies to continue manufacturing drugs, nor does it require that companies warn hospitals when they plan to discontinue a certain drug, except in rare circumstances. Frustrated doctors want the government to better regulate the companies' policies. praise the lord and pass the Prozac... - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
property rights
[was: Re: [PEN-L:11249] Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: CA energy crisis -- one solution] Should we maintain the freedom to own property and dispose of it as we will? Yep. I don't think this is a good way to summarize the Amurrican ideology. After all, the war on drugs trumps property rights: some police agencies have taken private property away and then sold it to finance their operations, whether or not the defendant was convicted. The key is the word we: it's the rich and powerful who don't have their private property rights trampled on. They are the we who make these decisions. - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: Re: CA energy crisis -- one solution
And if there was any hint that the state was going to buy out the power company, I believe the CIA would start funding paramilitary groups hiding out in the moutains. and believe me, such groups already exist (and I doubt that the CIA would have scruples about helping neo-Nazis, since they've never had them before). -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: Women better with stocks
Men believe they're better stock traders than women. Men expect a better return on their investment than do women who trade stocks. Men are more likely than women to think they're smarter about stocks than other people. Well, guys are wrong, wrong and wrong, say two economists who have studied the performance of 3 million stock transactions made by men and women through a major discount brokerage firm over a six-year period. This seems to parallel the common notion that women are less skilled drivers than men -- but that in practice men are worse drivers because they are more reckless, impolite, etc. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
CA energy crisis -- one solution
[the author gave me permission to send this to pen-l. It's from SWEAT MAGAZINE. http://www.sweatmag.org.] Seize the Plants: The First Step to Solving the California Energy Crisis By Stephen F. Diamond* April 16, 2001 No one should be surprised by Pacific Gas Electric Corporations decision to seek the protection of a federal bankruptcy court for its beleaguered utility arm. It was inevitable in the face of the half-hearted effort by the California legislature and Governor to find a way out of the crisis. But PGE took this drastic and unnecessary step to protect the narrow interests of its management and Wall Street at the expense of its creditors, its employees and millions of Californias working families and businesses. Now Sacramento has lost most of what little influence it had over the situation. Unless something is done, PGE management will have at least four months to prepare a plan to reorganize the utility. What can be done? There is a way out. Governor Davis could regain the high ground in this drama by exercising Californias police power to seize the California assets of PGE and the other power producers. They could then be reorganized in a number of ways, but one possibility would be to place them in a new Public Trust Company. The Trust Company could be managed by the key stakeholders in this drama, including consumers, employees and the State. The police power is reserved to every state by the U.S. Constitutions tenth amendment and allows the state to take almost any action when necessary to promote public health, safety, welfare, or morals. It specifically enables a state to impair the use of private property where, in the words of famed legal scholar Ernst Freund, the free exercise [of that property] is believed to be detrimental to public interests. In fact, one recent federal court decision in California reaffirmed that a states police power trumps the near-absolute powers of a federal bankruptcy court. As one federal judge put it, the bankruptcy courts were not created as a haven for criminals. We should have seen it coming Way back in the late summer of last year, PGE made its intentions very clear. It told Wall Street that it had hired one of the countrys toughest bankruptcy law firms, New York City-based Weil, Gotshal and Manges. Known to many in corporate finance circles as Well Get You and Mangle You, Weil, Gotshal helped PGE design a poison pill to frustrate any unwelcome effort by outsiders to take over the troubled corporation. PGE then put a ring fence around its highly profitable out of state assets to protect them from possible tampering once the utility was placed in bankruptcy. PGE used those same unregulated out of state assets to beef up its balance sheet, offering them up as security for a billion-dollar loan from General Electric Capital and Lehman Brothers. The corporation took the proceeds of that loan and paid off all of its creditors at its parent level and gave its shareholders yet another dividend, on top of some three billion dollars of previous dividends doled out in the form of a share repurchase program. Not a penny of the new financing went to its wholly owned and deeply troubled utility subsidiary. Of course, PGE only owns those vital out of state assets because of a multi-year effort to siphon off the profits it made through its regulated California utility at the above market rates it was allowed to charge. Those rates had been artificially raised by the California Public Utilities Commission well above the cost of producing energy to help pay back PGE for the drastic mistakes it made in building white elephant-like nuclear power plants like Diablo Canyon. Savvy players on Wall Street knew what these moves meant: PGE wanted to get out of the regulated utility business altogether and would do anything it could to expand and then protect its new businesses, including abandoning its regulated utility arm to bankruptcy once its usefulness had ended. One major hedge fund manager told me he had hired a team of utility industry experts in the fall to profit from the situation. His team thought bankruptcy inevitable for months. By shorting PGE stock, i.e. betting its price would drop rather than go up, such a fund could profit hugely from a correct call. Unlike many investors, who think of utility stocks as reliable widows and orphans investments, these privately supported financial players are no doubt celebrating their call. Gray Grumbles and Grouses But Blows It Governor Gray Davis made a tepid effort to hold back the flood but Presidential hopefuls have a way of trying to be all things to all people. And in this situation everyone has to choose a side and fight like there is no tomorrow to protect it thus the early move by PGE to get Weil, Gotshal on their team. Davis wavered back and forth on rate increases, for example, but that only gave PGE the time and motivation to prepare its ultimate step. Davis
Re: Re: the enemy's statistics
Ali wrote: let me say quickly if anyone wants to fight for reliable data they are fighting for a lost cause. i have seen statiticianswho could not calculate growth rates and i am in it so this is a foirst hand report if you know what i mean supposedly, years ago a herd of Harvard economists flew into some African country to do a policy evaluation. Part of this was to produce economic forecasts, based on the paltry and incomplete data that the country had. Years later, one of the economists (who didn't really know much about the country in question, since it wasn't his specialty) looked at the national income and product accounts of the country and was surprised: his group's forecasts had turned out to be totally accurate! It turned out that the country's central bank had used the forecasts to represent reality, since it was the best data available. Is this story true? - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: RE: Re: Re: brad de long textbook
Colin writes: We need an evolving collection of freeware books, chapters, exercises, problem sets, handouts, examples, interactive tutorials, and whatnot -- enough so that you could put on a decent intro course without making students buy anything. Then let publishers turn their efforts to innovative and useful things that might actually be worth buying. I put all hand-outs, problem sets, etc., for my intro macro and intermediate macro courses on my web-site. They're free for the taking, though not to make a profit. (It's not very radical stuff, but it's heterodox.) My URL is http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: Question on Marx
Carrol quotes Marx: Why is labor represented by the value of its product and labor-time by the magnitude of that value? and says: Marx seems to have felt that the originating difference between his own work and that of classical political economy was that he aimed at answering this question while political economy failed even to raise it. Yet in most of what I read on Marx by Marxists this question is seldom cited. Was Marx wrong to think it so important, or is it important only in respect to the general social criticism by Marx to which it gave rise rather than as a question of intrinsic and continuing interest. And is a short general answer to Marx's question possible or is it only answered by the totality of his work in political economy? There used to be a lot of discussion of this quote in teh British journal CAPITAL CLASS, by authors such as Himmelweit (sp?) and Mohun. Unfortunately, I dont remember what they said. My off-the-cuff interpretation of the quote is that Marx saw labor under capitalism as alienated. Rather than labor being planned collectively (and democratically) by the association of producers, labor produces commodities, which are alien creatures independent of the workers wills. Labor thus has value within capitalism. Workers contribute value as individuals, though they have no control over that value. In my interpretation (which was clarified immensely by Charlie Andrews book, FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY), value represent a workers contribution to the societal factory. (Strictly speaking, its a group of workers collective contribution because workers typically dont contribute as individuals.) Exchange value refers to the ability of a commodity to command a certain number of (abstract) labor-hours. In volume I, Marx assumed that value and exchange-value were equal. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: Re: Sweatshops and featherbeds
Does the L.A. times Normally capitalize words other than Proper nouns in the Middle of a sentence? A Sweatshop Is Better Than Nothing in headlines, yes. I think it's conventional in the US. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Exporting rubbish
David Shemano writes: I think we are discussing something fundamental, and inherently interesting to me. What you are both saying, if I may paraphrase, is that human interaction based upon voluntary exchange is not ennobling. (Let us leave aside, for the moment, inequality, and just focus on the act of voluntary exchange itself). I'm not sure we can leave aside inequality. Not only does inequality of resource ownership imply that voluntary exchange (markets) benefits some much more than it benefits the vast majority, but the last 25+ years teach us that as the role of markets increases in society, inequality increases too, as those with wealth advantages use their wealth to accumulate further advantages. In other, in the best of all possible words, people would provide for each other needs without expecting anything in return, etc. Is this not what has motivated utopians for centuries? All we need is love? utopians point to other mechanisms for collective decision-making besides letting the rich rule via the use of dollar votes in the markets for goods, services, and politicians. Democracy springs to mind. In democracy, people work together as a _community_, while making decisions about what the community should do in a democratic way (rather than the one-dollar/one-vote approach of markets). Voluntary exchange encourages total individualization, destroying communities and democracy (and the values that are necessary to prevent voluntary exchange from becoming a mess of fraud and extortion and then a Hobbesian war of each against all). BTW, you might enjoy reading utopians: for the top-down socialist vision, look at Bellamy's LOOKING FORWARD; for the socialism-from-below ideal, see William Morris' NEWS FROM NOWHERE. Morris' story is not based on the kinds of motives that you suggest. It's not love but creativity and community that drive his utopia. Now, I think you and the other list members assume the ickiness of voluntary exchange, but it is ultimately an assumption, an emotion, impervious to reason [just as is the belief in the niceness of exchange?]. It is why you are Lefties and why I am not. We could debate empirical information of capitalism v. socialism for eternity, but doesn't it come down to the fact that you are utopians and in your utopia people help each other without expecting anything in return? Marx had a useful approach in his CAPITAL (volume I). He assumed that all exchange was equal (i.e., that commodities exchanged at value). In modern terms, all exchanges are voluntary and commodities exchange according to opportunity costs. He doesn't treat exchange as icky. Rather, he treats it as a moral standard (for argument's sake, at least) against which bourgeois society should be measured. That is, he judges it according to its own standards. He finds that capitalism doesn't live up to its own moral standard. Marx points to the fundamental social inequalities that we call class which imply that workers _voluntarily_ exchange their labor-power with the capitalists, who then are able exploit them. Because workers lack direct access to the means of production and subsistence, they have little choice (as long as they act as individuals) to do more labor than is necessary to pay for the hiring of their labor-power. In one of Marx's summaries, he says that surplus-value (profits, interest, and rent) is the price that workers pay for not being starved by the capitalists. BTW, on the question of Nozick: he seems to use the standard Lockean meaning for redistribution. Locke assumed that any property we own is _ours_ and ours alone, so that if the state takes some of it away as taxes and gives it to someone else, that's redistribution. This ignores the redistribution that takes place within a free-market capitalist system, i.e., the redistribution from workers to capitalists (capitalist exploitation). Of course, wherever there are external costs or benefits, redistribution occurs within the market system, whether the state is involved or not. -- Jim Devine David Shemano - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: Re: Re: RE: It's a Jungle In Here
Michael Perelman writes: Marta's note about disability and poverty makes me think about David's question about the economy. Tim's Chico Examiner just published a wonderful article about a young man [who] died. He was a physical disaster. Doctors recommended that his parents just let him die, time and time again. Yet he lived -- not long enough -- and he made quite contribution here in town. Economically, it did cost a lot to give him the care to keep alive, but he made a wonderful contribution to the town. I didn't know him well -- just enough to chat with him from time to time when he wheeled by, but he was always friendly and cheerful. Marx's point was that you cannot measure such things by cost benefit analysis. My son's mild autism (Asperger's syndrome) has convinced me of the validity of Gardner's multiple intelligences. Though he (my son) is disabled in terms of social skills and handling emotions, he is highly abled in terms of creativity and abstract intelligence. His more detailed psych tests are like a comb, really high in some dimensions, very low in others. In the somewhat sickly sweet cliche of those who deal with special children, he's not disabled but differently abled. Our society tends to rank everyone along a single scale, things like IQ, but ultimately how much money one makes as income. (The use of IQ is justified by pointing to how well it allegedly predicts income.) But that kind of thing would doom people like my son, since he sure doesn't look like an economic winner. If we're lucky and learn how to work around his disabilities and encourage his abilities, he might turn out like Einstein (in Star Wars terminology, going with the force) or Bill Gates (the dark side of the force). The former wasn't very good at generating income for himself and would thus be judged a failure by our society. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
rewards
[was: Re: [PEN-L:10808] Re: Re: Exporting rubbish] Justin writes: I don't think that it's realistic to expect people to generally act productively without the promise of material reward... isn't there a whole literature (led by someone named Frei?) about how materially rewarding people for doing things tends to discourage people from doing them simply because it's inherently pleasant? -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: Re: Low productivity in the Global South
I wrote: Actually, it doesn't make PK look stopid. Not only did he say that he understands that sweatshop conditions are horrible but he's got an out: the problem is that there aren't _enough_ sweatshops. We should have free flow of capital all over the world, which would mean that the competition of sweatshops for labor would bid wages upward. Etc. Yoshie writes: Does even PK honestly think that, with free flow of capital, there would be competition of sweatshops for labor, as opposed to unemployed workers landless peasants competing with one another for a shot at sweated labor? I don't know what PK thinks on this issue. I thought it was clear that I was extrapolating from what I thought his viewpoint was. As I understand it, he favors markets everywhere, with the wise technocratically-governed state dealing with the (perceived to be relatively minor) market failures. For example, he would probably favor using a progressive income tax to deal with the pesky inequalities that always seem to arise with the growth of markets. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Czech issues.
{was: Re: [PEN-L:10717] Re: A reply to Thomas Friedman]
Yoshie writes: There's the problem of contradictory social interests in each nation
state, however. There are Czechs, and there are Czechs. I think the Czech reformers
of
the Prague Spring -- I mean its political intellectual leaders -- represented one
social
interest, the Soviets represented another.
there are also Slovaks, of course, as shown by the split in 1993 or so. I'd also say
that
the Czech reformers were different from the Czech working class, though it makes sense
for
these two groups to unite for democracy.
* THE REVOLT OF THE INTELLECTUALS: THE PRAGUE SPRING AND THE POLITICS OF REFORM
COMMUNISM
Jerome Karabel
ABSTRACT
Frequently conceptualized as a struggle between reformist
intellectuals and Communist Party bureaucrats, the Prague Spring of 1968 was, this
paper
argues, essentially a conflict between competing Party elites. Reformist intellectuals
were, to be sure, at the forefront of this struggle, but they were typically Communist
Party members as loyal to their vision of the Marxist project as their
principle adversaries: the relatively poor educated occupants, often of working-class
origin, of the top rungs of the Communist Party apparatus. *
I don't think of 1989 as a fundamentally socialist project, but the first four
sentences above appear sound.
I think that in 1968, the division in the Czechoslovak ruling party and between
Czechoslovakia and the USSR implied a possibility that the working class could win a
little more than mere bourgeois democracy, counteracting the thrust of the
anti-levelers
of Prague. Of course, in reaction, the latter might have finked out, allying with
Moscow.
..
The Action Program drawn up by new party intellectuals (who came into power after
Alexander Dubcek got rid of the old guard) during the Prague Spring embodied the
economic
reforms envisioned above.
Some of these reforms made a little sense, since Soviet-style agriculture didn't work
well
(except, I'm told, in Bulgaria). Maybe Dubcek could have played India's game, pitting
the
superpowers against each other to get help. But of course the US really didn't care
when
the Prague Spring was smashed.
-- Jim Devine
-
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Re: Re: Re: Sweatshops and Krugman
Does this mean that the PK watch is returning after a long hiatus? no way. I have to work. -- Jim Devine. - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sweatshops
I asked:aren't there some fundamentalists -- present company excluded, of course -- who want to speed up the end of life on earth, so we can join Jesus? John Henry says: Probably, there are all sorts of people who believe all sorts of things. I'm not familiar with any group in particular that believes this. I certainly don't. BTW, I should say that I have nothing against Christians _per se_. The folks from the CATHOLIC WORKER (Dorothy Day's group) are pretty radical, even though they're pretty fundie (at least from my non-Christian viewpoint).-- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: Dalton Camp..again...
Of course, no one ever said Juarez was Acapulco, for God's sake, and while the people who work in the new economic order for the American branch plants live in shacks, get their water off a truck and are routinely exploited and abused, they have jobs, don't they? that's capitalism. Institute primitive accumulation -- also known as the "commercialization of agriculture -- which takes away workers' direct access to the means of production and subsistence, and then they are likely to thank their lucky stars they have jobs, even if those jobs are killing them and their children. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Quebec demonstrations
from SLATE: The NY [TIMES] ... [quotes an]anonymous Bush official who commented, "We expected this. You can't have a trade summit these days without tear gas; it would be like having a cheeseburger without cheese." - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
technology assessment
[was: Re: [PEN-L:10508] Re: Re Arsenic] Peter Dorman writes: cost projections based on existing technologies vastly overstate the actual ex post costs, due to inevitable technical innovation. but don't new technologies have their own costs? -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: Re Arsenic
Interesting responses to the arsenic issue. Especially coming from an economics list. Economics, of whatever flavor or wing, is in large part about allocation of finite "scarce" resources. Shouldn't we look at the arsenic issue in that regard? Especially here. I'd say that the main concern of this is list with _artificial_ scarcity of resources, jobs, public services, consumer goods, and the like due to the power of those who benefit from maintaining that artificial scarcity. For example, since rich folks are able to afford more than enough arsenic-free water for their own consumption, and because they really don't care about anyone else's welfare, they have pushed for cut-backs in all but the absolutely necessary public services that the non-rich get, including clean water, so that they can get Dubya-type tax cuts for themselves and subsidies for their businesses (the ability to exploit public lands, etc.) They have more political power than working people do at this point, so they've largely succeeded, even under the nominally "Democratic" administration that just left office in the US. This may be short-sighted on their part (since people might get a little angry with this treatment), but it wouldn't be the first time that a powerful group had sunk its own boat. In other words, I doubt that there are more than 2-3 people in the world who wound deny that having zero arsenic in water is a good thing this issue (and those elided) were addressed in the article that was posted from Rachel's on-line environmental magazine. I don't see why we need to dwell on them, unless you can point to an error in that article. It seemed more empirically grounded than the piece by Sowell, which wallowed in standard laissez-faire boilerplate. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: Re: Re: The case for reparations
Michael Perelman writes: I suspect that captalism is a zero sum game. If the capitalists had to make restitution to everybody from whom they profited -- Black slaves, native Americans, victims of imperialism, etc., they would have a bill many times greater than their wealth. Saith Ian: So what's m-c-m' then, an illusion? 2nd law of thermodynamics aside, of course. I'm not sure M - C - M' is a strike against the zero-sum game interpretation of capital. After all, as Marx wrote, the exploitation of workers (M' M) comes from unpaid labor, which has got to cost the workers something. So M -C - M' might be interpreted as a redistribution, not the creation of something new. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2001: The Federal Reserve reports a rebound in manufacturing, especially in autos, boosted total production of the nation's industrial sector to a 0.4 percent seasonally adjusted rise in March. But the burst of factory output could not make up for a very bleak January and February. As a result, the industrial sector -- including manufacturing, mining, and utilities -- registered a 4.7 percent annualized rate of decline for the first quarter. It was the largest quarterly drop since the first quarter of 1991, when the economy was in the last phase of the 1990-91 recession (Daily Labor Report, page D-22). nonetheless, the Fed cut rates in a seemingly panicked way. Is it possible that they're freaking out about international events? or rising saving by consumers? or what? -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
joke du jour
"This theoretical potential [of the neoclassical "new political economy"] is not fully realized, in the sense that to date research has not led to the emergence of robust testable predictions, say, something comparable in scientific status to the life-cycle theory of savings or the Hecksher-Ohlin theory of international trade." -- Gilles Saint-Paul, in a review of two "new political economy" books, in THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE, December 2000. - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Naomic Klein on FTAA meeting in Quebec
Ken asks: Does anyone know which civil society represenatives have been invited to the [FTAA] meeting? is there some sort of official "civil society," which has representatives? how can I join? what is the membership fee? - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: models
Fred Guy writes: ... The tendency on the list seems to be to blame the IMF/WTO/USA for forcing markets open and requiring one-size-fits-all neo-liberal policies. Which is true as far as it goes, but why has national resistance crumbled almost everywhere? Obviously, for a disease to infect a body, the strength of the immune system is part of the process. Let me suggest ... that changes in the organization of production (roughly speaking, flexible network production as opposed to vertically integrated mass production) worsen the bargaining position of those in the lower 70% of the income distribution vis a vis capital. For instance, it used to be that multi-national manufacturing companies had more to gain than to lose by cooperating with import substitution policies: the mass production model was amenable to establishing dwarf clones of the parent firm (whether by direct operation, partnership, selling turnkey factories, or licensing technology, depending on the national model in question) in protected markets, and the protected markets were ... protected. So a national government could make a deal with capital that sheltered the country from world markets. I'm not convinced. The Fordist production techniques that prevailed before the neoliberal or Post-Fordist era involved large economies of scale. Though the companies benefited from protection (and it seems to be true that international direct investment used to be mostly behind tariff and non-tariff barriers), this meant that they suffered from relatively high costs, because of the limited markets behind the barriers. In some ways, the new flexible technology of the neoliberal era fits with these barriers _better_, because economies of scale aren't as important. ISI doesn't fit with today's production methods (an elaborate international division of labor, technological, supply and marketing partnerships between firms, and so on), however, and as far as capital is concerned that deal is off. If I may anticipate one obvious response, the new production model is about more than simply outsourcing for cheap labor (though that's part of it); if that were the only change, the national option would still be on offer I would guess that the fall of the ISI model had a lot to do with the the internal limits of that model, e.g., the inability to take advantage of economies of scale and the encouragement of X inefficiency by limits on competition, and also the governments' usual unwillingness to complete the model by widening internal markets via land reform and the like. The popular discontent that motivated bourgeois governments to engage in such populist policies also faded, at least in its ability to shake up the incumbent political class. In the case of state-planned export-led capitalism (S. Korea, etc.), there's another problem, which might be seen in the world-wide overcapacity seen in steel. If each country has to have a steel mill (or whatever) as a matter of national pride and as part of the economic development strategy, it seems almost inevitable that excess capacity would result. Given the internal weaknesses of the ISI model, the debt crisis of the 1980s -- specifically, the encouragement of debt-financed development by our friends at the World Bank and then the high interest rates of the Volcker years -- pried open the ISI model. The IMF/World Bank people leveraged third world debt into the power to impose their model of free market export-oriented development, privatization, deregulation, etc. This, of course, undermined what was left of the effectiveness of the old ISI model, so the neoliberal model has taken off, even if it left most of the people with only crumbs. Something similar can be seen with the state-guided export-led capitalist countries. As for returning to ISI (which seems to be what Louis is in favor of), that seems unlikely given the way that the new model has been locked in. It was much easier to gain national autonomy 50 or 70 years ago than it is today, since each country is so much more dependent on the world system, being a mere cog in the global machine. Of course it will be tried... -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: What is going on?
Brad DeLong wrote: And I do not understand the appeal of the BJP... ravi replies: why not? isnt it the same as a lot of the appeal of the republican party here? religious fundamentalism, nationalism, etc? yeah, why not? if Thomas Friedman and his ilk want to knock down all the "Olive Trees" (traditional ways of life) with their "Lexus" (capitalist globalization) with no compensation for costs incurred, why shouldn't people defend their trees? traditionalism isn't my cup of tea, but it's understandable. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What is going on?
Brad, Argentina's success was largely a result of favorable terms of trade rather than any structural advance. Sort of like the success of Brunei or Kuwait. that makes sense to me. Just as with the former Confederacy after the US Civil War, when the relative price of the key export commodity plummeted, the economy stagnated. (In the CSA's case it was cotton, while for Argentina it was "chilled beef.") Unlike the Confederacy, Argentina tried to protect its standard of living via import-substitution. After all, it had worked so well for the USA... -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: Re: A late response to Michael's original invitation [was What is going on?]
Michael Perelman writes: Lou is absolutely correct about my narrow horizons. I have spent a week or so in Cuba, under the tutelage of Jim Devine... hey, I was under _your_ tutelage... In reality, we were both on an urban planning tour in 1970 (run by the late New York GUARDIAN). It's pretty good, though you really can't learn much in only a week or so. Just like I couldn't learn much with just a few days in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala or a few months in Mexico. It's good to broaden our horizons, but I find "broaden your horizons" to be a poor substitute for substantive criticism. - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
theory practice
On another list, someone had an apt thought about the issue of whether or not we should discuss theory on pen-l, by implication including issues of how socialism can and should be organized as a socio-econonomic system: At best, theory and practice are distinct but not separate. Perhaps you are making an inappropriately sharp dichotomy: especially for practice. Practice needs theory; theory has come about historically because of a practical need for it. Would you drive with your eyes shut? I'm leaving it anonymous, because I didn't ask for permission to forward these thoughts. (BTW, contrary to Brad's misrepresentation, there are many socialists -- including some on pen-l -- who think it's worthwhile to look before leaping, to think about what socialism might look like.) -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Lenin and Rosa L.
I wrote: The Russian revolution was well-nigh inevitable. Lenin and the Bolsheviks stepped in and tried to make it a good thing for workers and peasants. The imperialist powers invaded and encouraged the civil war (which would have happened anyway), so Lenin _et al_ had little choice but to embrace more top-down "solutions." (They were roundly denouced for this by bourgeois thinkers, as if the bourgeoisie didn't rule in a top-down way as a matter of course.) The transition to Stalinism (which might have happened when Lenin still had power) came when virtue was made of necessity -- and then when nationalism was embraced. Seth writes: Check out the critique of Lenin's theory by Rosa L., certainly no bourgeois thinker ... Or am I misreading your words on Lenin and the Russian Revolution? I wasn't saying that _all_ critics of Lenin and the B's were bourgeois (or that all criticisms were wrong). I also understand that Luxembourg later moderated her critique at the same time she defended the Russian revolution, though I don't have the history at my finger-tips. I think that Rosa's critique is reasonable in the abstract, and indeed fit with the actual realization of historical tendencies after 1918 or so (just as with Trotsky's early critique of "substitutionism"). However, my point was that given the concrete historical situation, it's hard to imagine much in the way of democratic practice by the Bolsheviks. It wasn't just the B's practice that encouraged the rise of authoritarianism: it was also the objective conditions. Much as I understand the anarchists' protests against their suppression, they didn't offer an alternative that would deal with the civil war and the imperialist invasions (along with Russia's poverty and the deep division between peasants and workers). It was a bad situation. If I had actually participated, maybe I could have recommended ways of getting around the objective obstacles to allow the deepening of democracy and the prevention of the rise of Stalinism. But I wasn't there. Michael Pugliese writes: Maybe the MIA archive online has the pamphlet that Univ. of Michigan Press gave the title, "Leninism or Marxism," ... ed. by Bertram Wolfe by Red Rosa. The title was chosen in order to enlist Rosa L. in the Cold War against the USSR. If I remember correctly, Wolfe was one of those "god that failed" guys, so the job came naturally to him. But Luxembourg showed nothing but contempt toward such people. (I'm wondering when the neoliberal revolution will create a "god that failed" generation. It's quite a religious movement, with a lot of political power, and they're producing a world-wide disaster. Some of the more enlightened folks -- e.g., those who don't reflexively use GDP numbers as a measure of economic success -- might realize what they've wrought.) - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
growth inequality
Michael Perelman writes: Rapid growth [of real GDP?] seems to be associated, in most cases, with deteriorating conditions for the lowest quintile, differentiation within the less impoverished classes, and wild accumulations for the top -- sort of like our own "new economy" until the late 1990s. Right, for the US at least. In what I call a "labor abundant economy" (for lack of a better term), as in the 1920s or the 1990s, rapid real GDP growth mostly accrues to the already rich-and-powerful: in the US, weak worker organization and the quick mobility of capital prevented rising wages relative to productivity, at the same time that new needs were created that undermined the meaning of conventionally-calculated "real wages." In poorer countries, real wages are kept from rising by the commercialization of agriculture, which provides a big supply of labor-power to keep wages down, and by the fear of capital flight to even poorer countries. In the late 1990s, however, the US market economy actually grew fast enough that bottlenecks were encountered in labor-power markets, so that real wages started rising steeply. (This can occur because the US isn't totally immersed in the world economy; capital isn't totally mobile. Other countries are less lucky.) But given the rise in what neoliberals call "labor market flexibility," it's quite likely that any slowdown will quickly reverse the surge of real wages. The current [April 23, 2001] issue of BUSINESS WEEK has an article (p. 42-3) titled "Back on the Edge" about how "The economy may not be officially in recession, but lower-rung workers are already feeling the pain." "The risk is that America's many social ills could return with a vengeance. Inner-city poverty ..." They point to the "hypersensitivity of U.S. wages," meaning that most people's wages will fall steeply in a recession. ...Simon Kuznets said that inequality would increase, but only temporarily. Data suggest that Kuznets was right: inequality rose during the US industrial revolution and then declined. But a lot of the equalization occured due to such events as the Great Depression and World War II. Further, as Doug Henwood has said, we're beyond Kuznets, since inequality has been increasing since the 1970s. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Market Socialism
I wrote: "let's you and him fight!" -- is this an effort to divide and conquer (what's left of) the left? quoth Brad, in his wisdom: No. It's an attempt to *think* about the future. If you want to make not thinking about the future a virtue, go ahead... Michael, is the above calculated to spark a flame-war? Speaking of not thinking, if Brad had done any of that, he'd have noticed that I'm one of the people who argues that one should look before leaping, think about possible socialisms... BTW, I'm not convinced that the Second International and other socialist forces did no thinking about how socialism would be organized before 1917. One of the biggest-selling books on the left during the late 19th century was Edward Bellamy's LOOKING BACKWARD, a utopian novel. He wasn't a Marxist (since he saw class antagonism as an evil) but his vision could be assimilated by top-down socialists of various stripes, including both Stalinists and mainstream social democrats. In many ways, his technocratic/patriotic model of the industrial army represents a statement of the positive ideals of Stalinism. (It's sort of the "dual" of the Arrow-Debreu-Walras model of general equilibrium, but instead as a totally planned economy. In the end, both are equally silly, though.) On the other hand, there were socialist responses to Bellamy, such as William Morris' NEWS FROM NOWHERE. This was embraced by many outside the social-democratic mainstream. In the end, however, I can't blame a lack of thinking or Bellamy-type thinking for the rise of Stalinism. It's more a matter of actual history, not the history of ideas. The Russian revolution was well-nigh inevitable. Lenin and the Bolsheviks stepped in and tried to make it a good thing for workers and peasants. The imperialist powers invaded and encouraged the civil war (which would have happened anyway), so Lenin _et al_ had little choice but to embrace more top-down "solutions." (They were roundly denouced for this by bourgeois thinkers, as if the bourgeoisie didn't rule in a top-down way as a matter of course.) The transition to Stalinism (which might have happened when Lenin still had power) came when virtue was made of necessity -- and then when nationalism was embraced. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: Re: Re: What is going on?
Brad DeLong wrote: Rates of growth of GDP per capita, India: 1950-19801.1% per year 1980-19903.3% per year 1990-20004.2% per year At the pace of the last decade, India's real productivity is doubling every seventeen years (compared to a doubling time of 65 years before 1980). Doug writes: Any evidence on how this growth has been distributed? Are the bottom 20-40% any better off, or is it mainly captured by a thin urban middle class and the IT sector? also, to what extent did the rise of income get siphoned off to other countries (e.g., Swiss banks, stockholders of TNCs)? - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
commonplaces
Brad wrote: The observation that the post-1918 Bolshevik Party had no clue what kind of society it should be building--and that that was a big source of trouble--is not red-baiting. It's a commonplace. I wonder: since when is refering to something as a "commonplace" an argument? (Usually, that's a suggestion that something is banal, etc.) It's commonplace for orthodox economists to think that the Walras-Arrow-Debreu model says something about the real world. It's commonplace for those who believe the hegemonic policy vision (the "Washington consensus") to believe that the world would be a better place if it were forced to fit in the W-A-D model. It was commonplace among European peasants to assume that the world was flat before Columbus sailed to invade the Americas. It's only reasonable to defend an idea as "commonplace" if we're talking about a field in which there's a professional and scientific consensus, as with physics. There's nothing like that in economics or political economy or history. BTW, Mike Yates wasn't referring to the "commonplace" that "that the post-1918 Bolshevik Party had no clue what kind of society it should be building--and that that was a big source of trouble." Rather, he was referring to Brad's leap from the Bolshevik's alledged cluelessness to the rise of Stalin. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: Re: What is going on?
Brad DeLong wrote: Rates of growth of GDP per capita, India: 1950-19801.1% per year 1980-19903.3% per year 1990-20004.2% per year to sum up in a different way than Ken does, a utilitarian type might see "economic growth" as a good thing if the per capital benefit as measured by market prices + the per capital benefit as missed by market prices exceeds: the per capita cost as measured by market prices + the per capita cost as missed by market prices. to blithely refer to GDP per capita (and to stop there) is to only refer to the parts of this inequality that are measured by market prices. This might be the result in some quasi-religious faith that the Invisible Hand always does a good job. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: Re: Re: What is going on?
Mike Yates writes: Brad DeLong quotes some dubious growth statistics about India and everyone goes bonkers. Why does anyone pay attention to him? I think it's good to debate the mainstream economists, if nothing but to keep our wits sharp. It's better than intra-left flames. However, it usually turns out to be very easy to poke holes in Brad's formulations and statistics. It's amazing that he is the best that UC-Berkeley has to offer. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Knowing the Present Re: Market Socialism [ was
Carrol writes:Discussions of the nature of socialism socialism are absurd if conducted from the p[erspectuive of being a motive for strugle -- that is, from the perspective of being seen as humanity's reward for struggle. But we cannot understand the present except by looking backward from the future. right, we shouldn't see discussions of socialism's anatomy as being descriptions of what will (or can) be obtained via struggle. However, it someone like Alec Nove or John Roemer argues that the only kind of socialism that's "feasible" is something that looks a lot like capitalism, why shouldn't we argue that something better is feasible? unless one is totally "into facts" (a total empiricist), why is it wrong to think about future possibilities? It's best to at least _try_ to look before leaping, as long as we remember that our "looks" are necessarily provisional and incomplete and (most importantly) abstract. ...But unlike all earler social systems capitalism contains the elements of its own necessary dissolution -- that is, capitalism can only be understood when looked back on from the future. It is absurd and destructive to write recipes for the cook shops of the future, but to understand the present we must see that capitalism _necessarily_ leads to either socialism or barbarianism, that capitalism except insofar as it is the womb of socialism is endlessly destructive. Hence our _general_ conception of socialism is an integral part of our understanding of capitalism. right. As far as I can tell, in his CAPITAL Marx saw two major elements of socialism as developing in the "womb" of capitalism. One was the huge joint-stock corporation (a small-scale centrally-planned economy) and the other was worker cooperatives. I see nothing wrong with speculating about how these two elements can coexist and actually prosper as an alternative to capitalism, as long as we remember that it's speculation. I guess the current discussion of possible socialisms is going to die, since (1) as Michael Perelman makes clear, we don't want to rehash an old debate about so-called "market socialism"; and (2) these days, the debate about "market socialism" vs. planning schemes of various sorts (Albert/Hahnel, Pat (no relation) Devine, David Laibman, etc.) is the only simple way to organize a serious discussion. But we shouldn't rule out discussions of how socialism can and should be organized as _a matter of principle_ as Louis would have it. Otherwise, we're into cheer-leading for Kemal Ataturk, Juan Peron, and other bourgeois leaders. We have to ask how the people -- workers and other oppressed groups -- can rule, rather than always choosing amongst bourgeois elites. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Macedonia Kosovo
FAIR-L
Fairness Accuracy in Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and news reports
MEDIA ADVISORY:
Macedonia War Gets the Kosovo Treatment-- In Reverse
April 13, 2001
At the outset of NATO's Kosovo bombing campaign in 1999, FAIR urged
journalists not to oversimplify the conflict. At the time, U.S. coverage
took a propagandistic tone-- blaming a long-standing, multi-faceted
conflict almost entirely on the Serbs, or even solely on one man, Slobodan
Milosevic. FAIR pointed to the region's complex history of ethnic
confrontation, including the chronic turmoil of the 1980s, when it was the
Albanian majority, then enjoying broad political autonomy, that was accused
of discrimination and abuses aimed at driving out the Slavic minority.
In the jingoistic atmosphere of the NATO war against Yugoslavia, much of the
media portrayed the conflict as little more than a racial pogrom
orchestrated by the Serbs for the simple purpose of satisfying their own
consuming hatreds. The fact that Serbian atrocities were taking place in the
context of a full-scale armed Albanian guerrilla insurgency was often
strangely missing.
Now an almost identical ethnic clash has erupted in neighboring Macedonia,
but the press's coverage is almost a reverse mirror image of its Kosovo
reporting. In each case, reporters and pundits have deferred to U.S.
officials' view of the situation: While the war in Kosovo was blamed on the
Serbian authorities (rather than the Albanian guerrillas), blame for today's
clashes in Macedonia is placed mostly on the shoulders of the Albanian
insurgents rather than the pro-NATO government. Whereas in Kosovo, Serbian
repression and human rights abuses were the main focus of attention, today
Macedonia's repression of Albanians is being downplayed.
In October 1997, when the Kosovo Liberation Army first began shooting at
Serbian police and civilian officials, New York Times editorialists
(10/23/97) blamed the Serbs. They wrote that the disturbances proved "the
adage that those who make peaceful revolutions impossible make violent ones
inevitable." Since 1989, the editorial explained, Albanians had been
peacefully campaigning for a restoration of Kosovo's political autonomy, but
"recently some Albanians, frustrated that politics is getting them nowhere,
have turned to attacks" on the Serbian government.
The editorial condemned the Serbs' response as "indiscriminate repression"--
though by that point, very early in the conflict, Serbia's heavy-handed
police maneuvers had caused few civilian deaths-- and called on Washington
to "increase the pressure on Belgrade" to carry out reforms and allow
international monitors. No pressure or demands on the Albanian militants
were urged.
Contrast that with a recent Times editorial (3/13/01) on the sudden wave of
Albanian guerrilla attacks in Macedonia. Far from accusing the Macedonian
government of provoking Albanians' anger, the editorialists declared that
"the West must make clear to this militant [Albanian] fringe that they will
not be allowed to set off another Balkan war Macedonia itself must
summon the political and military strength needed to blunt this
challenge Responsible Albanian political leaders in Kosovo must now be
equally forthright in isolating the armed militants If they cannot do so
effectively, NATO may have to increase its military pressure on the
guerrillas."
Yet just like the Kosovars, the Albanians of Macedonia have taken up arms
after disillusionment with years of what they see as fruitless political
dialogue amid constant Slavic police brutality. Kim Mehmeti, a prominent
Albanian-language journalist and director of an NGO promoting inter-ethnic
cooperation in Skopje, explained this disillusionment in a recent commentary
for the Institute for War Peace Reporting ("Futile Dialogue Exposed,"
3/21/01). He wrote that the rebellion is "forcing the country to look itself
in the mirror and to realize that inter-ethnic talks over the past 10 years
have taken place against a backdrop of police repression of the Albanian
community."
Macedonian abuses against ethnic Albanians have garnered little attention in
the U.S. This is in marked contrast to neighboring Kosovo, where Serbian
brutality was virtually the only aspect of the province's political
situation that caught the U.S. media's interest. Yet while Kosovo may have
featured more frequent nationalist flare-ups than Macedonia-- accompanied by
more frequent police repression-- human rights organizations and activists
like Mehmeti have documented a long and persistent record of ethnic abuses
by the Macedonian authorities since the republic's founding in 1991 that
have been all but ignored in the U.S.
For example, in 1992 a group of Albanian intellectuals sought to reopen the
Albanian-language teachers' college that had been closed since a 1986
crackdown. After two years with no response from the Macedonian government,
they
Re: Re: Re: Re: Market Socialism
Brad writes: And *not* discussing how to organize the future leads to... Stalin. so was a lack of prior discussion the basis of the bloodiness of the revolution from above that's being foisted on the world by the "Washington Consensus" (the US Treasury, the IMF, the World Bank)? I'd rather have a *lot* of squabbling myself... "let's you and him fight!" -- is this an effort to divide and conquer (what's left of) the left? -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: Re: Knowing the Present Re: Market
I wrote: But we shouldn't rule out discussions of how socialism can and should be organized as _a matter of principle_ as Louis would have it. Otherwise, we're into cheer-leading for Kemal Ataturk, Juan Peron, and other bourgeois leaders. We have to ask how the people -- workers and other oppressed groups -- can rule, rather than always choosing amongst bourgeois elites. Louis writes: This is a gross distortion of my views. I am not a cheer-leader. Because I don't know what your views are exactly concerning Ataturk Peron, the only part of the above that refers to your views is the bit about "rul[ing] out discussions discussions of how socialism can and should be organized as _a matter of principle_" As should be seen from my sentence construction, I see cheerleading for bourgeois leaders more as a _logical extension_ of a general mind-set that often includes the refusal to seriously the ways that socialist democracy can and should be organized. (The old Stalinists, for example, rejected any discussion of socialist democracy because they couldn't deal with any kind of criticism of their Leader.) As far as I know, you (Louis) do not take the this logical step, to mere cheer-leading. I favor development on a national scale free of imperialist interference. To reduce the governments of Lazaro Cardenas, Peron, Nasser and Kemal to "bourgeois elites" is simplistic. I didn't mention Cardenas. Also, Ataturk and Peron are very different from each other. It's hard to lump them in the same category. And I did not _reduce_ them to being mere bourgeois elites. They were indeed bourgeois elites, but there was more to them. I'm afraid I don't see the struggle against imperialism as an excuse for Ataturk or Peron. I do see the struggle for national autonomy against a dominant imperial power -- and the imperialist system -- as a good thing, in general, but when dependent capitalist classes and their leaders fight for autonomy, they almost always do so in a way that profits them, at the expense of workers, peasants, national minorities, etc. By undermining the most fundamental force in the fight against imperialism (workers, peasants, etc.), the bourgeois nationalist elites in the end do a poor job at their appointed task. In other words, ignoring the bourgeois dimensions of the nationalism of Peron, Ataturk, and Cardenas is simplistic. Socialists must solidarize with all efforts to use the wealth of a developing country for the common good, even if it is not according to the socialist abc's. Different classes define "the common good" differently. That's why Marxists talk about "class interests" instead of "the common good." And Ataturk had a different definition of the "common good" than most socialists committed to democracy, as Armenians will tell you. Even if you don't believe in the genocide against the Armenians, "young Turk" ethnic nationalism was not pretty. (And why didn't Turkey stay out of World War I rather than choosing sides between the two main imperialist camps?) In such countries, the job of socialists is to mobilize the masses to defend anti-imperialist gains until they can be persuaded in their majority to fight for socialism. So in the 1920s, it was the job of the Chinese Communists to back the KMT and Chiang Kai-Shek, who were strong nationalists? BTW, I was _not_ talking about what the role of socialists in dependent countries should be. In no way can I preach to them about what they should do. Nor should you, Louis. It's their decision. Rather, as residents of the richest most powerful country in the imperialist system, we must learn to be able support anti-imperialist struggles without covering up their flaws. Nationalist regimes in the third world are *not* the enemies of the people, unless they use nationalism as a demagogic way to oppose social change. see above. BTW, I think the phrase "enemies of the people" is excessively emotive. I would say instead that in the long run, they're enemies of socialism and true democracy --and enemies of the working classes. In the short run, however, bourgeois nationalists can be okay from a working-class point of view, since they often respond to pressure from the working class (as Peron did, with his welfare statism). But we should remember that the source of Peron's "good side" was the working class base, not his personal character or his allies in the middle and upper classes. (He seems to have been quite an opportunist, though I'm no expert on Argentine history.) In this hemisphere and in Africa an example of this kind of nationalism would be Duvalier's and Mobutu's use of "negritude" themes. If we can't tell the difference between someone like Duvalier and Aristide on one hand, or Mobutu and Lumumba on the other, then we need a refresher course in history and politics. Of course I can tell the difference, though when you talk about Aristide telling us _what year_ you're referring to helps us decide which
US depression?
from an ultra-conservative (but increasingly mainstream, since the mainstream went rightward) mag: WEEKLY STANDARD/Feature April 16/April 23, 2001/Vol 6, Number 30 Recession or Depression? The worst-case scenario . . . and how we might avoid it. By John H. Makin Economists are very shy about mentioning the word depression. If they do mention it, they "hasten to add" that it is "contained," as in Japan, or that it "can't happen here," as in the United States. I have used these words myself. But history offers no such consolation. There have been two instances in the past century in which a stock market collapse followed an investment-led boomin the United States after 1929 and in Japan after 1990. Both times, depression resulted. Yes, Japan is in a depression, complete with rapidly falling prices, zero interest rates that are not low enough to stimulate spending, public works expenditures on counterproductive projects, and paralyzed policymakers at the Finance Ministry and the central bank. The nightmare of a vicious circle of falling prices, employment, and output has settled over Japan like an invisible cloud of poison gas. Why, precisely, do we think that can't happen here? Consider what makes a depression. It starts with a period of euphoria about the outlook for the economy and the future earnings of new companies. The euphoria finally becomes unsustainable, and the stock prices of the new companies collapse. Large wealth losses replace large expected wealth gains. Consumption growth slows, then turns negative, and stock prices of more companies fall because weaker demand erases those companies' pricing power and, with it, their prospective profits. Demand falls further, and deflation sets in. In a depression, the central bank discovers (to its horror) that stock prices, not interest rates, are in the saddle. The decline in stocks becomes the major transmission mechanism running from financial markets to the real economy. That is because, after a bubble, earnings fall faster than any central bank can, or will, cut interest rates, and when earnings or, more ominously, expected earnings fall faster than interest rates, then stock prices plummet. Sound familiar? Earnings expectations for Nasdaq companies have already fallen by more than 75 percent in many cases. By May, most observers expect the Federal Reserve will have cut interest rates by 2 percentage points, from 6.5 to 4.5 percent, or by about 30 percent. That would be a large move by historical standards, but not enough to stabilize equity prices. So the Fed is left looking powerless, cutting interest rates aggressively, but failing to stabilize equity prices. To be sure, the American economy still looks robust. Wall Street, as the politicians like to say, is not Main Street. But that political cliché is not very reassuring in light of economic history. The linkage between financial markets and the real economy is a basic and enduring theme of macroeconomics. The bursting of an equity market bubble can readily lead to a prolonged collapse of the real economy. A powerful negative shock to the financial sector, like the collapse of a stock market bubble, sets in motion a deceptively straightforward set of events that seems, somehow, to leave policymakers caught like deer in the headlights. Leading up to the bubble, a virtual prosperity mania sets in, with households contemplating undreamed-of wealth, firms bidding for and stockpiling precious skilled labor, and governments marveling atand promptly spendingtax revenues that far exceed their most optimistic expectations. The end comes, as it has during the past year in the United States, when extraordinary events like expected, unfailing growth of 25 to 30 percent per annum have come to be seen as ordinary. That perception makes investors view as unremarkable the purchase of equities at prices 200 times current earnings, or at more than 10 times the normal price-earnings multiple. Such pricing cannot be sustained. The most recent and spectacular example of the insanity that accompanies equity market bubbles is the experience of Yahoo!, a company whose primary source of revenues is online advertising. Not only have Yahoo!'s profits failed to grow, they have collapsedvirtually to zero in 2001 with a hoped-for rebound to $60 million in 2002down sharply from earnings of nearly $300 million in 2000. Since Yahoo!'s share price surged because of an expected perpetual acceleration of earnings growth, the reality of a sharp deceleration in earnings growth has brought the stock from a high of about $240 per share early in 2000 to $17 on March 9, the first anniversary of the 5000-level peak of the Nasdaq. The Nasdaq itself, with its collection of dot-com and technology stocks, fell by 60 percent, from 5000 to 2000, from its March 2000 peak to March 2001, and has declined another 15 percent in the past month. The Yahoo! swoon alone wiped out nearly $80 billion
Re: US depression?
I forgot to mention Makin's policy recommendation: even bigger tax cuts than Bush pushes. I guess that makes sense, but they don't have to be as regressive as the Shrub ones. from an ultra-conservative (but increasingly mainstream, since the mainstream went rightward) mag: WEEKLY STANDARD/Feature April 16/April 23, 2001/Vol 6, Number 30 Recession or Depression? The worst-case scenario . . . and how we might avoid it. By John H. Makin - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: Re: Re: Market Socialism [ was Burawoy]
Louis writes:Since the art of politics is knowing what has to be done *next*, our efforts should be focused on the immediate class struggle and not blueprints for a socialist society. That is in fact what Marx said. I thought we got beyond quoting Marx as if doing so settled questions. In any event, since the revolution isn't going to happen *next*, it's quite possible to think about how socialism can should be organized while _at the same time_, thinking about the immediate class struggle. (Why can't we think about two separate topics at the same time?) It's useful to avoid merely "thinking with one's blood" or some other kind of spontaneity and to try to figure out where we should be going. [BTW, I remember seeing a comment on Louis' Marxism web-page in which he looked favorably on utopian thinking as long as it didn't go too far, reifying the utopian schemes.] In fact, I think that Lenin did a lot of thinking about how socialism should be organized, in his STATE AND REVOLUTION. I'm sure this attitude was shared by other Bolsheviks, especially as they found that power was in their hands. - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Market Socialism [ was
Louis writes: I don't think such talk [about how socialism is to be run] among people like us does very much good. It is much better to figure out how to deal with immediate questions such as deregulation, the stock market, IMF austerity, etc. At least on questions such as these, we can exchange useful information. Again, I don't see why these two topics (how socialism should be organized immediate issues, tactics, and strategies) are mutually exclusive. If you're not interested in the first topic, you don't have to read what pen-l people have to say. (You could filter your messages so that all messages with subject lines including the word "socialism" are automatical sent to the trash can.) But just because you're not interested in a topic doesn't mean that pen-l can't discuss it. As far as I can tell, the only person who has that kind of say is Michael Perelman. BTW, what type of people _should_ be discussing issues of how socialism should be run? Don't you think a bunch of professional economists and economically-literate folks could add something? - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
over-investment
This afternoon, on US National Public Radio, there was an interesting story about the process of over-investment in movie screens in the US. The movie theater chains were all competing to introduce multiplexes into the many local markets. They introduced such innovations as drink holders and stacked seating so that no-one could block anyone's view, threatening to drive established theaters out of business. Many of the latter were in turn forced to invest in similar improvements (in fear of going under). In the end, there are many too many movie screens available (given the market) and the rate of profit fell. I'm interpolating on the latter, since NPR didn't provide statistics, but such large chains as Loewe's Cineplex have declared bankruptcy. It looks as if one third of the screens in the US will have to be shut down -- a major shake-out -- to allow the achievement of normal profits. Anyway, this seems like a classic example of a Marxian story of over-accumulation on a microeconomic (industry) level. I'm sure that the desperate movie chains, now that they've fouled their own nest, will try to get their employees to suffer the cost. Or they'll continue the trend toward importing popcorn from Indonesia (or at least that's the way it tastes) or follow Yahoo! into the porn trade. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Argentina
any thoughts on the possibility that Argentina will end the submission of its currency to the US dollar and will instead hook it to a basket of the US$ and the Euro?? It sounds a little bit like bimetallism: "we will not be crucified on a cross of dollars!" -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: over-investment
I wrote:This afternoon, on US National Public Radio, there was an interesting story about the process of over-investment in movie screens in the US. The movie theater chains were all competing to introduce multiplexes into the many local markets. They introduced such innovations as drink holders and stacked seating so that no-one could block anyone's view, threatening to drive established theaters out of business. Louis writes: Keep in mind that the profits of the movie industry come almost exclusively from concession rather than ticket sales. that doesn't change anything: the competitive capitalist investment process inevitably produces crises. The companies have to provide attractive theaters, movies that people want to see, etc., if they want people to spend money at the concession stands (where they paid captive audience monopoly prices). -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Quotes of the day
I don't know. Please tell. BTW, there's an interesting old quote from Daniel Bell (the famous sociologist) in which he likens the receipt of corporate profits to the collection of taxes. (However, I think the conditions that led him to that conclusion -- those of the early 1960s in the US -- have gone away.) [Who said this?] "In providing for its own future through the device of retained earnings, the corporation serves the social function of ensuring a rate of capital accumulation adequate to permit capitalism to continue to deliver the goods. "Corporations may in fact control the rate of saving, but, on the other hand, we may - like it or not - have reached such a level of social disintegration that even outcomes crucial to the future of our society have got beyond social control, and are influenced, if not completely determined, by the results of haphazard aggregation!" - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
bad news/good news
the bad news: the UCLA guys predict a "mild" recession in the US during the next year or so. the good news: it won't hit Southern California that hard. (As if we need more!) -- Jim Devine Thursday, April 5, 2001 | L.A. TIMES. S. California Foreseen Escaping U.S. Recession By STUART SILVERSTEIN, Times Staff Writer A long-term economic shift that has begun spurring more saving and fewer big-ticket purchases is almost certain to tip the national economy into recession soon, but Southern California largely will be spared, UCLA forecasters said Wednesday. Economists with the UCLA Anderson Business Forecast, in their closely watched quarterly report, foresee a 90% chance of a brief, mild U.S. recession later this year or early next year. They predicted the Bay Area also will succumb to recession, but said the state overall, mostly because of Southern California's relative stability, probably will suffer only a slowdown. The UCLA forecast group recently has been one of the gloomiest prognosticators of the U.S. and California economies. Even though this year started off better in some respects than UCLA analysts forecast in their last official report in December, their updated outlook for the rest of 2001 and 2002 is slightly more downbeat than before. What's more, there is a significant new theme in the latest forecast: an assessment that the national economy is shifting into a long-term pattern of slower growth. Edward E. Leamer, director of the UCLA forecast group, said he recently has come to regard the current U.S. slowdown as an episode in a profound economic transition. He said the new pattern will be characterized by lower corporate spending on information technology and software, along with less capital from overseas investors. Leamer said the technology spending boom from 1996 through last year was driven by an "Internet rush" mentality, highlighted by companies scrambling to establish corporate Web sites. Now that the Internet blitz is over, he said, businesses will invest in new technology more conservatively. Likewise, consumers will start spending less on cars and other costly consumer goods and instead will devote more money to savings, Leamer predicted. He said that a weak stock market will probably spur consumers to put aside more money for their retirement instead of counting on rising share prices to do the work. The current national slowdown and anticipated recession, Leamer said, "isn't just a time-out period. . . . We're in the midst of a transition in our economic lifestyles." All told, the UCLA forecasters predict the nation's key gauge of economic growth--gross domestic product--will be up only 0.7% this year and 1.3% next year. During the four previous years, GDP growth, after discounting the effect of inflation, averaged 4.5%. Leamer predicted that after the economy completes its current transition in a few years, growth rates will pick up only moderately, hovering around 3% to 4%. UCLA forecasters said the pattern of slower growth and weaker technology spending will hit the Bay Area hard, largely because of the region's heavy concentration of computer and software companies. In addition, the area's torrid residential and commercial real estate markets are seen as cooling off, producing damaging ripple effects through the region's economy. The UCLA forecasters predict Southern California will slow down too, particularly if Hollywood is shut down by strikes this year. Even so, the slowdown in Southern California is expected to be much less dramatic than in the Bay Area, helping the state economy continue expanding, albeit slowly. UCLA's forecast calls for California's nonfarm job total, probably the most widely watched measure of the state's economic performance, to grow 2.4% this year and 1.6% next year. That is down from a growth pace of 3.8% in 2000, the highest percentage increase in 12 years. California's unemployment rate, which averaged 4.9% last year, is projected to rise to 5% this year and to move up to 5.7% in 2002. Still, UCLA is forecasting that 2002 will be the first year in more than a decade that the state's jobless rate is lower than the nation's. The school's analysts are calling for the U.S. unemployment rate to climb from 4% last year to 4.8% this year and to rise to 6.1% in 2002. The UCLA analysts said there would be a silver lining to the state's emerging slowdown: It will curb demand for electricity, helping the state get through a power crunch expected to last at least the next couple of years. Over the longer term, the forecast downplayed the effect of the power squeeze, saying it would reduce the state's economic output by less than 3% annually--provided solutions eventually are found to the energy crisis. "California has always been an expensive place to do business, yet businesses still come," wrote Christopher F.
Re: Re: Re: Adios to the T-Bill?
I wrote:So what? I'm sure that capitalism can adapt to not having a T-bill market. Asks Doug: It can adapt, but happily? Where else you going to park your cash balances in a riskless instrument? What will the Fed use for open market operations? Where will central banks keep their reserve dollars? What are you going to use as your riskless interest rate in a CAPM formula? how about the interest rate on money? - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Adios to the T-Bill?
I wrote:So what? I'm sure that capitalism can adapt to not having a T-bill market. Asked Doug: It can adapt, but happily? Where else you going to park your cash balances in a riskless instrument? What will the Fed use for open market operations? Where will central banks keep their reserve dollars? What are you going to use as your riskless interest rate in a CAPM formula? answered yours truly:how about the interest rate on money? asks Doug: Like what, commercial paper? Fed funds? These aren't purely riskless assets, unlike T-bills. Even the bluest-chip bank or corporation lacks taxing power and nuclear weapons. I was being somewhat flippant (and unclear). I literally meant money, i.e., currency, which has a (nominal) interest rate of zero. To be totally serious, I'd guess we'd have to say that the existence of the government debt subsidizes the financial sector in the ways that Doug suggested. Getting rid of the government debt would end this subsidy. The financiers would be more on their own. (Sink or swim, guys!) Of course, these subsidies seem pretty minor in the scheme of things. - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Moldova returns to communism
Moldova returns to communism April 4, 2001 CHISINAU, Moldova -- Moldova has become the first former Soviet state to elect a communist as its leader. The eastern European nation's parliament elected Communist Party leader Vladimir Voronin as the new president on Wednesday. wouldn't "Moldova elects Communist government" be a more accurate headline? Also, the story suggests that the Communists who were elected are politically very different from the ones who ruled before 1989. I would guess that they are like what we used to call "social democrats." -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Adios to the T-Bill?
I wrote: I don't understand why the whole issue of the T-Bills disappearing is worth being serious about. Doug writes: Well, they've been the keystone or foundation of the credit market for decades, so it's hard to say what life will be like without them. I guess we should look back to the 19th century and the early 20th century, back before the T-bill market became so developed and T-bills themselves became so liquid. How did the US financial markets work then? BTW, Colin distinguishes between my phrase -- that the government's debt subsidizes the private financial system --and his own -- i.e., that the debt structures the private financial system. In practice, does the latter mean that getting rid of the T-bill market would destabilize private finance? -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
social democratic machines
[was: Re: [PEN-L:9912] Re: Jon Corzine: Nation Magazine contributor] Yoshie writes: No party machine = no career open to talent = no money for left-wing politics of any stripe = difficult social reproduction of left-wingers. On the other hand, social democratic electoral politics has reached its dead end in the Old World as well. Nathan writes: The last comment sums up my ongoing point - which is that social democracy and even Eurocommunism in Europe - is little different in character from large chunks of the Democratic Party machinery - for good and yes mostly for bad. To my way of thinking, social democracy represents an institutional compromise under capitalism that results from working-class insurgencies. (Similar phenomena arise from other movements, such as the gay-rights, feminist, environmentalist, etc. upsurges.) That is, social democracy -- and some parts of the US Democratic Party establishment -- indirectly reflect the power of working people in the past, and to some extent express the interests of working-class movement. Unfortunately, these interests are expressed in a distorted way: instead of working to widen and deepening the working class movement, they tend toward tactics and strategies that strengthen the careers of the leaders (or even deepen their bank accounts). In the long run, this distortion of working-class interests undermines the class base of the social democratic leaders. Adding in the constant capitalist efforts to undermine the social-democratic compromise, eventually social democracy morphs into something else, as with Blair's "New Labor" Party. The "New Deal" Democrats in the US similarly became the Clinton-Gore-Lieberman DLCniks, aiming to compete with the GOPsters for the white suburban vote and more importantly, the campaign dollars. Thus, I don't think it's a mistake to put too much emphasis on the party machine. The machine should be a means to an end, not an end in itself. - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: US banker to run Russian TV station...
At 05:20 PM 4/3/01 -0500, you wrote: Controversial US banker to run Russia's NTV channel MOSCOW, April 3 (AFP) - Controversial US banker Boris Jordan was named head of the independent NTV channel Tuesday, a spokesman for state-dominated gas giant Gazprom, which took over control of the television station, said. What's next? Replace the ruple with the dollar? Make Russia the 51st state? Argentina and especially Panama have done the former. The latter won't happen, because that would make the US responsible. Maybe that's what should be done, since the US -- through its IMF proxies, et al -- did help create the mess in Russia. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: Re: World War III did not start this morning
I don't get the title of this thread. It's not like the US and China are inches away from a "hot" war the way the US and the USSR were for decades. And even then, there were lots of similar incidents between them that didn't start the nukes flying... - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Marx's law of value
[was: Re: [PEN-L:9858] Re: Transformation problem [was US Consumer Confidence...]
Andrew Hagen wrote: In the paper linked to above, Foley argues that the Labor Theory
of
Value can serve a similar function in political economics as Newtonian mechanics does
in
physics. (p. 23)
I haven't read that one, but as you present it, it sounds dubious. But if he means that
such Newtonian abstractions as "hey let's think of bodies moving in a _vacuum_!" are
similar to Marx's insights (the use of abstraction to understand capitalist society),
then
Foley's right.
There is also a discussion of whether Foley's theory is a mere redescription or more.
Although Foley means to base his concepts on Marx, I don't see how Marx could have ever
conceived of the big picture that Foley argues so well. Thus, I'd assert that Foley's
theory is original.
So what if it's original? is there something wrong with originality? I doubt that Marx
himself wanted anyone to stop thinking and just follow his word mindlessly. He clearly
rejected dogmatism ("je ne suis pas un Marxiste"). Further, there are a lot of loose
threads in his argument (e.g., crisis theory), because he never finished writing any of
his books. So originality should be praised rather than indicating that Marx was
somehow
flawed. It's silly to get all one's ideas from a single thinker anyway. It would be
like
the scholastic followers of Aristotle who simply codified and debated his observations
rather than examining the world.
The Foley solution is open to some criticism. The New Palgrave entry on
"Transformation
Problem," written by E.K. Hunt and Mark Glick, for example, has a few criticisms of
Foley's theory as presented in 1982,developed simultaneously by Dumenil...
of course there are criticisms! And there are criticisms of your point of view, too.
(and
mine!) But without indicating what they are, we can't decide if they're valid or not.
BTW, Glick has published an article (with Hans Ehrbar) in the Dumenil-Foley tradition.
I wrote:In addition to using Ricardo's phrase "labor theory of value" to discuss
Marx's
non-Ricardian "law of value," this is a misinterpretation.
Marx's version of the LTV is better called the "law of value," I admit. It retains
the
same grounding premise of Ricardo, though, that from labor springs value.
What premises are these? "from labor springs value" is not enough, among other things
because you didn't define "value," which has different meaning for Ricardo and Marx.
Ricardo's vision is a labor theory of _price_, in which what are now called "unit labor
costs" determine the relative prices of products (98 percent of the time). Marx's
theory,
strictly speaking, is a labor theory of societal wealth -- and of property income under
capitalism -- and not a theory of prices at all. (Prices are part of the theory of the
distribution of wealth, not of its production.)
It's true that Marx has a much more complex notion of value than this. In reality,
according to Marx, prices don't reflect value, except in society as a whole.
right!
Initially, in volume 1, Marx treated values and prices alike. Then, in what became
volume
3, he wished to show that value and price did not proportionally reflect one another,
except at the general societal level.
right.
This fed into his complaint that something was awry in capitalism.
This last point doesn't seem to follow. (I'm sure there's someone out there who agrees
with Marx's law of value while thinking capitalism is wonderful.) Marx's moral
critique of
capitalism, BTW, doesn't seem to spring from the "law of value," but instead from his
own
experience with the world, his empirical investigations, and the experiences of the
growing (at the time) working-class movements.
However, the law of value, with its emphasis on labor as opposed to mere exchange _did_
tell Marx that he should look at the "hidden domain" of production under capitalism,
the
despotism of capitalists over workers in the labor process.
Prices seemed ordinary and real, though unstable. But according to Marx they were
only a
thin veil that concealed a morally revolting hidden reality.
I wouldn't say they're a _thin_ veil, since in practice, people act on the basis of
prices, not values. The alienation of capitalist commodity-producing society is real,
not
simply a matter of "false consciousness."
Marx's point is generally accepted by economists, even neoclassical ones. You can't
just
look at empirical reality if you want to understand it, so you have to look at it in a
theoretical way. Neoclassicals do this and come up with dubious concepts like the
Cobb-Douglas production function and Walras-Arrow-Debreu general equilibrium as
descriptions of the hidden reality behind empirical appearances. Marx came up with
other
results... One difference is that the neoclassicals are inveterate idealists, who tend
to
see empirical reality as an imperfect version of their models, whereas Marx tried to
abstract out the
in the news
from the news summary of SLATE, Microsoft's on-line magazine: The [Wall Street JOURNAL] reports that Europe's hoof-and-mouth and mad-cow troubles have invigorated America's horsemeat market. Europeans have apparently always had a taste for filly mignon, most of which comes from the U.S., and now horsemeat prices are booming. The Journal reports on one horse auction where animals were bought for slaughter at prices sometimes 50% higher than just six months ago. And where the bidding is so fierce that even horses intended for sale as working animals or pets for children went to the abattoir instead. Ok, so President Bush isn't supporting the Kyoto protocols, nor limits on carbon dioxide emissions, or negotiating with North Korea. He is, however, reports the WSJ, planning to launch an extended campaign to "revitalize baseball as the national pastime." The effort will include stops at major league and minor league and Little League games and a series of T-ball contests at the White House involving eight year olds and Cabinet members. - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: RE: Re: A Fair Deal?
Martin wrote: I get some of this from a book I picked up on the remainder table called Ticky Dick and the Pink Lady. It is about the 1948 Nixon Douglas campaign. The book could have used an edit,a lot of repetitive material. But also a lot of fascinating information. A lot of the scum that played major roles in the Nixon white house and the Repub Party in general got started in this campaign. I forget the author ... it's Greg Mitchell - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
the Kaiser
[was: Re: [PEN-L:9662] Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges] Louis says: Luxemburg argued that the rising standard of living and democratic openings were largely connected to the rise of imperialism which allowed the class struggle to be co-opted in countries like England and Germany. While the Kaiser was instituting the first social security system in modern times, he was at the same time turning the territory now called Namibia into a concentration camp, which served as a model for Hitler's camps years later. two notes: (1) it's important to remember that at the same time the Kaiser stole the Social Democratic program -- and adapted it to his purposes -- he also banned the Social Democratic Party. Though this is hardly as bad as what he did in Namibia, it indicates that a simple "the Social Democrats were bought off" story is exactly that -- too simple. The Kaiser -- or rather, Bismarck, who was acting as the Kaiser's Dick Cheney -- used not only the carrot but the stick. (2) What the Kaiser did to Namibia was not the same as what Hitler did. The former involved looting, robbing, enslaving, to attain wealth by any means necessary (i.e., killing lots of people who were assumed to be "inferior"). The latter involved a true social psychosis, seeing certian paraiah groups -- Jews, gays, the mentally retarded, etc. -- as being so horrible that they needed to be totally and utterly exterminated. Forced labor and looting were more side-effects, efforts to deal with the labor shortage (due to the war), etc. - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
GOP vs. GOP
from SLATE: Picking up on Paul Gigot's column in Friday's Wall Street Journal, the NY [TIMES] front reports that all is not well between President Bush and Senator John McCain. A blustery McCain pushed campaign finance onto the Senate floor, disrupting the President's preferred agenda. More recently, McCain has attached his publicly magnanimous persona to Democrat-friendly causes such as stiffer gun control, a more modest tax cut package, and HMO-reform. While few aides to either man will talk openly of the rift, the off-the-record hisses from both sides convey palpable animosity. A Senate Republican seethes at McCain for forgetting who won the primary, while a congressional aide snipes back that for all its talk of bipartisanship, the Bush Administration reacts "like a cat dropped on a hot griddle," to any whiff of co-operation with Democrats. Because the Democrats are so wimpy [e.g., shrinking away when charged of engaging in "class struggle" rhetoric in criticizing the BushBaby administration's efforts to continue and deepen the Reagan-, BigBush-, and Clinton-era trends toward greater greater class inequality], the main conflict within the US government seems to be amongst the GOPsters. It sure seems like Brad would like to punish Nader, perhaps by enshrining the fundamentally undemocratic "two party duopoly" more deeply in the legal system, if not in the constitution, while castigating the Naderites as traitors to the Democratic Party "cause." But without such outside forces on the left, the Democrats will _never_ gain a backbone. It was the Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas who noted that FDR carried out the Socialist program "on a stretcher." But without the Socialists, the Communists, and other insurgent forces, the New Deal would have dwelt on National Recovery Administration-type corporatist "solutions" to the Depression and would have held back from more progressive reforms such as Social Security. It's only when the establishment is scared that they actually move to the left. Even wooden Al Gore -- that stalwart of the neoliberal Democratic Leadership Council -- tried to act like a populist in response to the Nader challenge (e.g., the fact that relatively poorly endowed people were actually willing pay money to see Nader speak). If Brad gets his seeming wish, i.e., that the undemocratic duopoly is cemented in place, that would simply encourage extra-legal expressions of discontent. The alternative -- working within the Democratic or Republican parties -- seems increasingly silly, in that those parties have sold their souls for a mess of campaign contributions, converging toward making Pohl Kornbluth's old sci-fi novel, THE SPACE MERCHANTS an accurate picture of reality. (In that book, Senators _officially_ represent corporations, while legal matters are appealed all the way up to the Chamber of Commerce.) -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Bushbaby the economy (world and US)
Andrew wrote [in a message originally titled "[PEN-L:9466] Re: Re: Re: Demicans or Repugnocrats (was: ergonomics, etc."]: A healthy US economy would benefit the world's poor. Assuming that by "healthy," you mean "like during the period 1992 to 2000," this benefit is only by increasing the demand for non-US countries' exports, the benefits of which mostly went to rich folks there -- and in the rich countries, where the owners of the multinationals are. (The benefit of jobs in _maquiladoras_ and the like was to a large extent cancelled out by the commercialization of agriculture, which took jobs away.) Even then, this benefit was at the expense of greater US debt to the rest of the world, a process that can't continue forever. A Gore Administration would been far more deft in its handling of the current economic crisis. They would have brought in people with actual civil service experience, for example. Fiscal policy is a good concrete example. Reduced taxation on middle and lower income people would have greatly helped the US economy. you think? the Gore folks seemed much more concerned with "paying down the [government] debt" than with helping the U.S. economy. You have to remember that the Democrats are currently the party of "fiscal sanity" (more than balanced budgets). They did propose some tax cuts, ones that are more progressive than Bush's. But some sort of tax cut the _size_ of the Bush one seems necessary. Wynn Godley and Randy Wray -- two left-liberal "post Keynesian" economists -- are cited in the current issue of BUSINESS WEEK as saying we need a tax cut three times as large as Bush's, to counteract the stagnationary effects of the government surplus (fiscal drag). Maybe this is a bit high, but it makes Gore's proposals look paltry. In any event, the Gore people are the type who worship Alan Greenspan and the soil he walks on (and that which he leaves behind). They'd be the first to rush to "let Alan do it," allowing a recession that hurts working class people the most. What Greenspan wants is a recession that raises unemployment without hurting profits and banks, what's called a "growth recession" or a "soft landing." Instead, the Bush administration is planning to lower taxation on upper income people. Even this stimulus plan is in jeopardy of not passing Congress at all. Additionally, a budget that paid down a large amount of debt this year would have made it possible for Greenspan to significantly lower interest rates this is backward. If AG keep rates low, then the government debt would be less of a problem. It's important to remember that the _real_ burden of the government's debt concerns the interest payments on it, which take money away from spending or tax cuts. A second example is trade policy. Instead of forgetting about the WTO, the Gore Administration would have been more amenable to a new round of talks aimed at setting global labor, health, and environmental standards. This could have conceivably wiped out child labor worldwide. you think? on what basis? faith? My experience with politics is that the Gore people (who care most about campaign contributions and poll numbers) wouldn't do this unless put under a lot of political pressure. Remember that Gore's politics are in many ways to the right of Clinton. It would also have fostered a lot of economic growth, because more nations would have willingly joined the WTO regime. The focus on international finance might even have led to a successor concord to Bretton Woods. This is even more wishful thinking. By "economic growth," do you mean growth of "real" GDP? That measure misses most of the costs of NAFTA and WTO-type programs. I do believe that lots of countries' rulers want to join NAFTA-type arrangements with the US, but that's because it's not them, but the working classes, that suffers the costs. Third, a Gore Administration would have been much less hawkish. It didn't sound that way in the debates during the campaign. Bush sounded more "isolationist," which is a different kind of hawkishness. It wasn't Bush who wanted to spend, spend, spend, on "defense." And in fact, his administration has started a policy review before jumping in with both feet the way Gore wanted to do. You've got to remember that in the debates, Gore tried to act tough on defense, tough in using capital punishment, tough in the war on drugs... (another imitation John F. Kennedy!) In my view, the Bush Administration is going to propose some type of skirmish-war to bolster the US economy. sort of like Clinton, Gore's mentor? It sure looks as if Bushbaby wants to get the US troops out of Bosnia and even Kosova/o, while not putting any into Macedonia. That's different from Gore. Also, "Plan Colombia," the US intervention into Colombia and its environs as part of the misbegotten "war on drugs" is a Clinton/Gore project. It's also the project most likely to get the US into "another Vietnam." (Of course, the _real_
Hoover vs. Roosevelt
[let's avoid the use of the hated N-word, the name of Brad's scape-goat.] I wrote: It was the Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas who noted that FDR carried out the Socialist program "on a stretcher." But without the Socialists, the Communists, and other insurgent forces, the New Deal would have dwelt on National Recovery Administration-type corporatist "solutions" to the Depression and would have held back from more progressive reforms such as Social Security... quoth Brad:And if third parties had split the anti-Republican vote in 1932 in the same proportion as LaFollette split the anti-Republican vote in 1924, the 1932 vote total would have been Roosevelt--38.4%; Third Party--22%; Hoover--39.6%. A highly likely electoral vote victory for Herbert Hoover, and no New Deal at all. This proves my hypothesis that Brad just doesn't get it, i.e., the point of my argument, which involves "thinking outside the two-party duopoly box" (if I may adapt a cliche'). I don't know of any theory of politics which allows the kind of mathematics that Brad applies here, especially since the Progressives of La Follette were quite different from the dissident forces of the 1930s. More importantly, the FDR who ran in 1932 was not the FDR who founded the "New Deal coalition." The former FDR was a man who ran on a balance-the-budget program (like Hoover), who believed that what was needed was optimistic spirit (like Hoover, who went around telling people the worst was over until people started laughing at him) and NRA-type friendly fascism. In these terms, it wouldn't have mattered _that much_ if Hoover had been re-elected. The FDR of 1936 and for about 4 years thereafter was _a product of_ the protests and rebellions of everyday people and political activists (and the growing popular alienation from the Democratic Party) and also of the fact that his policies of 1933-36 just didn't work (at least given the political balance of power). I see FDR more as a dependent variable than an independent one in this mix. Unlike Brad, I don't dwell on voting -- a mere tactic -- and try to think strategically, in terms of trying to change the balance of power rather than learning to love it. My experience and reading of history indicates that there are two main types of political forces shaping the character of our fearless leaders: (1) the power of money and organized capital, encouraging people like FDR to return to their patrician roots (often using accusations such as that he was a "class traitor," a common phrase among the rich during the late 1930s); (2) the power of the people, organized and/or militant at the grassroots, pushing someone like FDR -- not to mention all of Congress -- to think about reforming the system in order to change it. (Other types of forces are possible, such as the entrenched power of the Federal bureaucracy, but are not relevant to most US history.) I think it's quite possible that _Hoover_ would have been similarly transformed -- or that there would have been revolution in the streets. Of course, we can't do such counter-factual hypothetical history, which is why I objected to Brad's mathematical gymnastics above. In the long run, FDR turned against the New Deal coalition to become "Dr. Win-the-War." I think that was a worthy cause (more than IBM and GM did, it seems), but it ended the move to the left, opening it so Democratic leaders since Harry Truman could rely on the coalition for support while simultaneously undermining it. Of course, that's the game which Clinton and Gore perfected. Even where it is today the Democratic Party is committed to environmental protection, to workplace safety, to a more progressive tax system, and to no new Cold Wars; the Republican Party is committed to pollution, to employers' rights, to a more regressive tax system, and to confrontation with Russia and China. Words, words, words. The Democrats are _officially_ committed to a lot of things, but they don't do anything about it unless they feel what Jesse Jackson called "street heat." Only if you think that these issues don't matter can you be proud of a vote for Nader in 2000. I don't feel proud of _any_ vote, except sometimes at the local level. It's just a tactic, a pretty weak one at that, one that shows how weak an individual can be in politics. Capitalists know this: instead of sticking with mere voting, they vote with their dollars (in lobbying, campaign bribes, etc.) 365 days a year, every year, not just one year in four. And if you don't think that these issues matter, I don't know what you are doing here... who elected you the Dictator of pen-l, deciding who should or should not be on the list? I know I'm one of those folks who argues against the expulsion of _anyone_ from pen-l. I guess maybe I believe in free speech more that the self-styled "Democrats." -- Jim Devine - This message was sent
Re: Re: Re: Stop it! [was Re: ergonomics, etc.]
Brad, that 3 percent of the vote was enough to sink the Gore campaign is a sad commentary on what the Democrats had to offer. With regard to voting for Nader at no cost to Gore, Nader voters in California certainly had no effect and knew it before hand. right! It's like those Democrats who diss Dubya for "talking down" the economy in order to justify the tax breaks for his friends. If he has that kind of power, that says that the US economy is basically unstable, ready for a severe recession anyway. So it's the economy that's to blame, not his hated speech. If a straw breaks a camel's back, there's something fundamentally wrong with the camel. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Re: Re: Bushbaby the economy (world and US)
Nevertheless, we can't stop globalization. We can only soften its impact. Who's in favor of stopping globalization? Not I. Rather, I want democratic globalization from below, not the current kind of capitalist globalization imposed from above. The traditional economies are everywhere in decline. why are they in decline? There's no hint in the above formulation, which implies that it's somehow a "natural" event. It's not because people hate them (though it's clear that they have a down-side, like the worst kinds of patriarchy and ethnocentrism. People cling to them, since they provide order, security, and meaning to their lives. Rather, it's that they have no place in the brave new world where each individual is nothing but a commodity. Better that some people have jobs. Of course it's better to have more jobs than less. But capitalist doesn't just create jobs, it destroys them, along with all of the security associated with "traditional" economies. ... The repressive nature of maquiladoras is revolting. That can improve over time, however, as factory conditions in the US have. again, this suggests that somehow it's natural that things get better. Or maybe it's Brad's angels that do so. But the capitalists resist any improvement. If wages get too high relative to productivity in Mexico, they'll start moving to some other country. The only way this can be dealt with is politically. Amartya Sen would argue that the world's poor countries have a right to attempt development on their own terms. I think his book "Development as Freedom" is wrong on a lot of points, but who are we to withhold development capital from poor countries? you contradict yourself: the capital "offered" to these countries is not on the same terms as what the poor of the world want. If anything, it fits the needs of the ruling classes of their countries, who will try to ensure that the poor don't benefit. gotta go... Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
Fwd: Bushonics Speakers Unite
Forwarded Message: Bushonics speakers - strike back! We're mad as hell and we won't be misunderestimated anymore! - - - - - - - - - - - - By Tom McNichol March 19, 2001 Salon.com The day Lisa Shaw's son Tyler came home from school with tears streaming down his cheeks, the 34-year-old Crawford, Texas, homemaker, knew things had gone too far. "All of Tyler's varying and sundry friends was making fun of the way he talked," Shaw says. "I am not a revengeful person, but I couldn't let this behaviorism slip into acceptability. This is not the way America is about." Shaw and her son are two of a surprising number of Americans who speak a form of nonstandard English that linguists have dubbed "Bushonics," in honor of the dialect's most famous speaker, President George W. Bush. The most striking features of Bushonics -- tangled syntax, mispronunciations, run-on sentences, misplaced modifiers and a wanton disregard for subject-verb agreement -- are generally considered to be "bad" or "ungrammatical" by linguists and society at large. But that attitude may be changing. Bushonics speakers, emboldened by the Bush presidency, are beginning to make their voices heard. Lisa Shaw has formed a support group for local speakers of the dialect and is demanding that her son's school offer "a full-blown up apologism." And a growing number of linguists argue that Bushonics isn't a collection of language "mistakes" but rather a well-formed linguistic system, with its own lexical, phonological and syntactic patterns. "These people are greatly misunderestimated," says University of Texas linguistics professor James Bundy, himself a Bushonics speaker. "They're not lacking in intelligence facilities by any stretch of the mind. They just have a differing way of speechifying." It's difficult to say just how many Bushonics speakers there are in America, although professor Bundy claims "their numbers are legionary." Many who speak the dialect are ashamed to utter it in public and will only open up to a group of fellow speakers. One known hotbed of Bushonics is Crawford, the tiny central Texas town near the president's 1,600-acre ranch. Other centers are said to include Austin and Midland, Texas, New Haven, Conn., and Kennebunkport, Maine. Bushonics is widely spoken in corporate boardrooms, and has long been considered a kind of secret language among members of the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon. Bushonics speakers have ascended to top jobs at places like the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Health and Human Services. By far the greatest concentration of Bushonics speakers is found in the U.S. military. Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig is only the most well-known Bushonics speaker to serve with distinction in America's armed forces. Among the military's top brass, the dialect is considered to be the unofficial language of the Pentagon. Former President George H.W. Bush spoke a somewhat diluted form of the dialect that bears his family's name, which may have influenced his choice for vice president, Dan Quayle, who spoke an Indiana strain of Bushonics. The impressive list of people who speak the dialect is a frequent topic at Lisa Shaw's weekly gathering of Bushonics speakers. That so many members of their linguistic community have risen to positions of power comes as a comfort to the group, and a source of inspiration. "We feel a good deal less aloneness, my guess is you would want to call it," Shaw says. "It just goes to show the living proof that expectations rise above that which is expected." Some linguists still contend, however, that the term "Bushonics" is being used as a crutch to excuse poor grammar and sloppy logic. "I'm sorry, but these people simply don't know how to talk properly," says Thomas Gayle, a speech professor at Stanford University. Professor Gayle was raised by Bushonic parents, and says he occasionally catches himself lapsing into the dialect. "When it happens, it can be very misconcerting," Gayle says. "I understand Bushonics. I was one. But under full analyzation, it's really just an excuse to stay stupider." It's talk like that that angers many Bushonics speakers, who say they're routinely the victims of prejudice. "The attacks on Bushonics demonstrate a lack of compassion and amount to little more than hate speech," says a prominent Bushonics leader who spoke on the condition that his quote be "cleaned up." Increasingly, members of the Bushonics community are fighting back. Lisa Shaw's Crawford-based group is pressing the local school board to institute bilingual classes, and to eliminate the study of English grammar altogether. "It's an orientation of being fairness-based," Shaw says. A Bushonics group in New England has embarked on an ambitious project to translate key historical documents into the dialect, beginning with the Bill of Rights. (For instance, the Second Amendment
