Louis Proyect wrote: > ... With the left so weak, there is even less incentive for Obama > to move boldly. If he has any motivation to create a kind of new New Deal, > it will be from a policy wonk perspective. In other words, the kind of thing > you get from the U. of Chicago economists he relies on.
Yes, U of Chicago, but it's good to remember that these are not the hard-core U of Chicago (Friedmanite) types. It's more of a matter of "we need to nudge people" to get the right thing done (within the context set by the current market set-up) than the Friedmanite "just let the market go free." > The screwy thing is > that from the long term needs of the capitalist system, it is imperative to > address infrastructure, environment, education, etc. but the state is too > much a captive of ideological accretions and institutional inertia. What the US needs -- from a long-term capitalist perspective -- is social democracy. I've seen social democracy; social democrats have been (and are) friends of mine. But Obama is no social democrat. What made social democracy relatively good managers of capitalism was their backbone -- the labor movement (or possibly other movements) -- which implicitly and sometimes explicitly threatened the capitalists with worse. > When I > had a house guest from Uganda in November who had exactly the same ethnic > background as Obama, he dismissed Obama with one word: Brezhnev. if we're lucky, he's Gorbachev, who opened the door to more serious change. It worked out poorly in the end, but there were some chances... -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
