Agreed on all accounts.
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 3:56 PM To: Keith Hudson; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Professional Ethics (of economists) Keith, I wasn't referring to the 19th Century or medieval times, but to what has happened since WWII, especially to America, where there has been a growing gap between the income of the very rich and the rest of the population. Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, two political scientists, write about this in "Winner Take All Politics" as does journalist Chris Hedges in "Death of the Liberal Class". A table in Hacker and Pierson (published 2010) shows a very large increase in the income share of the wealthiest 1% of the American population. Its share of total income moved from about 8% to about 16% between 1975 and 2000. Similar surges have taken place in Canada and the UK, though they were not nearly as large as the US surges. Income shares of the wealthiest in Germany, France and Japan have generally remained static or have fallen a little. Several factors would account for the very rich getting very much richer. One would be the growth of the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) sector, in which a great deal of money has been made. Another would be the rising control of politicians by the very wealthy. For example, in the US there is currently no limit in the amount individuals or corporations can contribute to political campaigns, a thing that could mean the conversion of democratic representatives into corporate lobbyists: Obama currently wants to raise the inequitably low taxes of the wealthiest American individuals and corporations, but there's no way the Republicans will let him. Yet another factor is the demise of unions, a very strong force in the maintenance of the middle class in the 1950s to 70s, but now virtually hardly on the scene at all. And of course the fact that a significant proportion of production for the US market has been moved abroad is not helpful in providing ordinary Americans with jobs and a living. I'm not arguing that super-rich Americans aren't good people, and I know that people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and others have done some very good things with their money. Nevertheless the situation of the US and probably Canada too is one of hollowing out, with the wealthy getting wealthier, the middle class fading and the poor sinking into ever deeper poverty. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]> To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION <mailto:[email protected]> ; Ed Weick <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 10:55 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Professional Ethics (of economists) Ed, But the relative gap between the rich and the poor (in the advanced countries) is nowhere near the relative gap between the rich and the poor a century ago. J.P. Morgan was as rich as Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and several more combined. So was Carnegie, so was Rockefeller. In modern day terms each of them was probably a trillionaire. Going back further, Morgan and Co were not as rich in relative terms to the poor as the great landowners of the Middle Ages. Henry VIII (with 49 palaces) and about a dozen more owned half of England. It's true that there has been a recent surge in the gap, but come the double dip the rich are more than likely going to take a relatively larger bashing, too. The gap has only become really outrageous since the credit surge of the last 30 years. It's more than likely that the present gap will be greatly reduced to the long-term historical trend once the present currency catastrophe finally sorts itself out. All in all, the main difference today is a perceptual one. We know a great deal more about the rich than ever before, nor do we have scruples about being envious these days. Previously it was considered a sin to be envious in order to keep us in our place. Today, probably proportionately more money is being left by the rich to foundations and charities -- hundreds of them in recent decades -- than to families. Most of the medical innovations of the last 50 years have been due to research paid for by private foundations, not government-backed science. Just the Rockefeller Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute alone have probably produced as many new therapies than all US government research spending. Think of the Gate's and Buffet's present and future contributions to medical research and future eradication of some diseases such as malaria all round the world. Meanwhile we in the advanced countries devote less than 1% of our GDPs to the Third World. Keith At 14:11 21/09/2011, you wrote: Economics could still be considered a "moral science", given the prominance of concepts like "growth" in economic analysis. Where it fails as a moral science is in not having much to say on the morality of things like the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, leaving that to politicians and other social sciences. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Sandwichman <mailto:[email protected]> To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 10:05 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Professional Ethics (of economists) Either that or you're both obsessed with bedbugs... But, hey, to bring this discussion back to where it started, I just want to mention that "economics" sprung from "moral sciences": "The emergence of economics as a separate subject (or Tripos, in Cambridge terminology) created intense debate over its relationship with the existing organization of teaching through the 'Moral Sciences' Tripos. John Neville Keynes, the father of John Maynard Keynes, faced considerable mental and emotional anxiety in his attempt to reconcile economic science with ethics and religion." (Martin Daunton, "Welfare, Taxation and Social Justice") On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 6:37 PM, Ray Harrell <[email protected]> wrote: I should start reading from the top. I come in after teaching a class until nine and find that Ed commented on bedbugs first. Either he's an artist or I'm an economist. REH From: [email protected] [ mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 3:18 PM To: [email protected]; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Professional Ethics (of economists) Rat farming? How about bedbugs? They're making a comeback. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Spencer" <[email protected] > To: < [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 2:30 PM Subject: [Futurework] Re: Professional Ethics (of economists) > > Last night, I commented on Tom's reference: > >>> http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/2011/09/professional-ethics.html >> >> Over the past 30 years, the economics discipline has been >> systematically subverted....Many of the most prominent economists >> in America are now paid to testify in Congress, to serve on boards >> of directors, testify in antitrust cases and regulatory >> proceedings, and to give speeches to the companies and industries >> they study and write about with supposed objectivity. This is not >> a marginal activity; it is now an industry, run by a half dozen >> large companies. >> >> I didn't know that. Why does that remind me somehow of the privatized >> prison industry? > > Saw this on Slash/dot: > > How Bug Bounties Are Like Rat Farming 104 > > Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 20, @11:00AM > from the first-we-hypothesize-a-problem dept. > > Gunkerty Jeb writes "In a keynote speech at the United Security > Summit, Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, drew parallels > between the increasingly popular (and successful) practice of > software vendors offering bug bounties and a new industry > springing up in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the population > has recently found itself beset with a growing rat problem. In > order to help mitigate their rodent problem, officials in > Johannesburg began offering a small monetary rewards for each dead > rat turned in. It was wildly successful, and it didn't take long > for fresh batch of entrepreneurs to pop up and exploit the > situation. Of course, I'm talking about rat farming. Evidently, > business minded individuals have taken to breeding rats, only to > kill them and turn them in for rewards. Obviously, rat farming is > somewhat unscrupulous, but security researchers are doing the same > thing: breeding bugs in the lab, then leading them to the > slaughter for a nice payday. And it's a good thing." > > Which probably isn't a totally new thing [1] but a reminder about how > that works with prisons, weapon systems and (allegedly) economists. > > The way it works out for (software-) bug hunting -- the relevance for > Slash-dotters -- seems to be free of the malignancy/fraudulence of rat > farming: > > http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/how-bug-bounties-are-rat-farming-092011 > > as one commenter there (somewhat intemperately) observes. > > So the question is: how do you structure privatization of prisons, > corporatized for-fee economics consulting or any such activity so that > it works like bug-hunting and not like rat-farming? Do we need to > somehow extract or sequester such activities completely from > capitalist incentives? > > > - Mike > > > [1] The Paris rat-catcher of circa 1689 in Stephenson's _Quicksilver_ > was already (and quite entertainingly) into rat farming. > > -- > Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. > /V\ > [email protected] /( )\ > http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ <http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A 0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0> ^^-^^ > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Sandwichman _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2012/08/
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