Response in this colour, Keith. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson To: RE-DESIGNING WORK,INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION ; Ed Weick Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 2:26 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW: [TriumphOfContent] When Zombies Win (Paul Krugman - The NY Times)
Ed,
Yes, I can understand Krugman's concern about the poor and the big divide
that has been opening up. But this doesn't necessarily lead to clarity and
objectivity. The fact of the matter is that America is nowhere near the
democratically-flexible country that Krugman (and Obama) imagine it to be.
America is now fast joining the elitish world that England, Germany, France are
already in where particular streams of well-connected young people (from
particular schools and universities) join the world of government (both on the
civil service side and politics), big business and banking. As they get older,
more experienced and, in some cases highly influential, the more adroit of them
move rather freely between these different power blocs as necessity arises.
Well, yes, it's an argument Chris Hedges makes in one of his recent books.
But in the US, the leadership elite still has to be very careful about keeping
the mob in check, as the Tea Partiers and various renegade groups demonstrate.
The difference between the US and the European powers you mention is that the
US has a (much?) higher propensity for turmoil. We may think people that march
about with placards and guns on their backs decrying "goddam gumint" are funny,
but in the US they are taken very seriously, as are are Sarah Palin and Fox
News.
The attempt at a sub-prime housing market was the last gasp of an economic
system that has any pretence of being able to stimulate prosperity for all. The
vast chain of consumer goods of the last 300 years has now ended. It's
"Consolidation Era" now -- for those who have the wealth and the know-how to
guard it. For three or four decades past, the mass populations of the European
countries (and more recently white America) have responded (unconsciously) to
this new and growing situation by restricting family size significantly to less
than replacement levels. And, to restrict to themselves whatever level of
welfare that is available from their governments, electorates are all bodily
going right-wing in order to stop immigration.
Not sure of what to make of the sub-prime mortgage. IMHO it was not about
prosperity for all. Everything I've read suggests it was a carefully worked
scam. The investment banks knew that people couldn't meet their mortgage
payments. What they were interested in was to package secure and unsecure
mortgages into securities, get them rated as good investments, and market them
to gullible investors including banks. The result was a huge bailout program.
What I feel Krugman has argued is not that more money should have been pumped
into the US economy, but that it was pumped into the wrong things. It might
have made a real difference if the money had gone directly to sectors and
selected industries that could have made a real difference to the unemployment
rate and hence into increased consumer spending. But that doesn't seem to be
the American way.
I don't think that declining birth rates in the US (and Canada) have very
much to do with the end of "the vast chain of consumer goods of the last 300
years". It has much more to do with the fact that women have now become an
integral part of the educated labour force, and while they still want kids,
they also want jobs and upward mobility in those jobs. It may even be that
being part of the work force is more important to many of them than being a mom
to bratty kids.
There are huge tectonic plate movements going on in the consumerist world of
the West but Krugman and his ilk can't open their eyes wide enough to see them,
still thinking the clock can be set back to the sort of "rational"
governmentally-planned, Keynesian world of the immediate post-WWII period.
Huge tectonic plates perhaps. As for Krugman and his ilk, I don't agree.
Krugman probably sleeps with his eyes wide open.
Keith
At 18:13 20/12/2010 -0500, you wrote:
Not sure of what this is about, but Obama does look more and more like a
failed President. While he has been successful in implementing measures like a
half-baked health care initiative and an extension of umenployment insurance,
he's given up a lot of ground to accomplish anything. He has, for example, had
to extend the tax cut for the rich despite the growing US fiscal deficit and
continuing economic problems. Where is the "Yes we can!" President of a couple
of years ago?
Krugman is an advocate of strong government action and control. What he
sees is a President and government that's hemmed in by right-wing "market knows
best" views and a corporate sector that increasingly seems to thrive on
bubbles. He sees an increasingly divided economy in which the rich are getting
richer and the poor are becoming far too numerous. I can understand his
concern.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Keith Hudson
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 4:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW: [TriumphOfContent] When Zombies Win (Paul
Krugman - The NY Times)
Free market fundamentalists don't dominate the scene.Paul Krugman is
totally wrong. It is banker corporatists. Together with state corporatists,
they pretty went dominate the whole scene. They don't do anything much that's
essential. They don't make anything. They should be the oil that lubricate the
larger economic machine. Instead, they've become by far the largest single
economic sector in the country, and the government can do little to control
them. And much the same applies to the UK.
Who's the zombie?
Keith
At 12:25 20/12/2010 -0800, you wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steven Brant
Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2010 11:32 PM
To: Steven Brant
Subject: [TriumphOfContent] When Zombies Win (Paul Krugman - The NY
Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/opinion/20krugman.html
OP-ED COLUMNIST
When Zombies Win
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: December 19, 2010
When historians look back at 2008-10, what will puzzle them most, I
believe, is the strange triumph of failed ideas. Free-market fundamentalists
have been wrong about everything yet they now dominate the political scene more
thoroughly than ever.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Paul Krugman
Go to Columnist Page »
Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal
Readers' Comments
Share your thoughts.
a.. Post a Comment »
How did that happen? How, after runaway banks brought the economy to
its knees, did we end up with Ron Paul, who says I dont think we need
regulators,about to take over a key House panel overseeing the Fed? How, after
the experiences of the Clinton and Bush administrations the first raised taxes
and presided over spectacular job growth; the second cut taxes and presided
over anemic growth even before the crisis did we end up with bipartisan
agreement on even more tax cuts?
The answer from the right is that the economic failures of the Obama
administration show that big-government policies dont work. But the response
should be, what big-government policies?
For the fact is that the Obama stimulus which itself was almost 40
percent tax cuts was far too cautious to turn the economy around. And thats not
20-20 hindsight: many economists, myself included, warned from the beginning
that the plan was grossly inadequate. Put it this way: A policy under which
government employment actually fell, under which government spending on goods
and services grew more slowly than during the Bush years, hardly constitutes a
test of Keynesian economics.
Now, maybe it wasnt possible for President Obama to get more in the
face of Congressional skepticism about government. But even if thats true, it
only demonstrates the continuing hold of a failed doctrine over our politics.
Its also worth pointing out that everything the right said about why
Obamanomics would fail was wrong. For two years weve been warned that
government borrowing would send interest rates sky-high; in fact, rates have
fluctuated with optimism or pessimism about recovery, but stayed consistently
low by historical standards. For two years weve been warned that inflation,
even hyperinflation, was just around the corner; instead, disinflation has
continued, with core inflation which excludes volatile food and energy prices
now at a half-century low.
The free-market fundamentalists have been as wrong about events abroad
as they have about events in America and suffered equally few consequences.
Ireland, declaredGeorge Osborne in 2006, stands as a shining example of the art
of the possible in long-term economic policymaking.Whoops. But Mr. Osborne is
now Britains top economic official.
And in his new position, hes setting out to emulate the austerity
policies Ireland implemented after its bubble burst. After all, conservatives
on both sides of the Atlantic spent much of the past year hailing Irish
austerity as a resounding success. The Irish approach worked in 1987-89 and its
working now, declared Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute last June. Whoops,
again.
But such failures dont seem to matter. To borrow the title of a recent
book by the Australian economist John Quiggin on doctrines that the crisis
should have killed but didnt, were still perhaps more than ever ruled by zombie
economics.Why?
Part of the answer, surely, is that people who should have been trying
to slay zombie ideas have tried to compromise with them instead. And this is
especially, though not only, true of the president.
People tend to forget that Ronald Reagan often gave ground on policy
substance most notably, he ended up enacting multiple tax increases. But he
never wavered on ideas, never backed down from the position that his ideology
was right and his opponents were wrong.
President Obama, by contrast, has consistently tried to reach across
the aisle by lending cover to right-wing myths. He has praised Reagan for
restoring American dynamism (when was the last time you heard a Republican
praising F.D.R.?), adopted G.O.P. rhetoric about the need for the government to
tighten its belt even in the face of recession, offered symbolic freezes on
spending and federal wages.
None of this stopped the right from denouncing him as a socialist. But
it helped empower bad ideas, in ways that can do quite immediate harm. Right
now Mr. Obama is hailing the tax-cut deal as a boost to the economy but
Republicans are already talking about spending cuts that would offset any
positive effects from the deal. And how effectively can he oppose these
demands, when he himself has embraced the rhetoric of belt-tightening?
Yes, politics is the art of the possible. We all understand the need to
deal with ones political enemies. But its one thing to make deals to advance
your goals; its another to open the door to zombie ideas. When you do that, the
zombies end up eating your brain and quite possibly your economy too.
!DSPAM:2676,4d0f0695308681540513237!
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