[PEN-L:1391] "Fields on Wheels Conference"
Ken, You should know that it is the very superior efficiency of the Canadian single desk system of the wheat board that completely discredits the neo-cons (and Charles Mueler on the PKT net) and which requires these economists, (including my colleagues) to rail against the marketing system -- simply because it works, and works well and more efficiently that the private enterprise system. I used to teach the seminars in ag ec on the marketing boards because there was no one in the ag ec department at the U of M who knew enough about them to teach it -- and they wouldn't learn because the marketing boards produced superior results to open markets and since that was contrary to neoclassical ideology, it must necessarily be wrong. The wheat board has had its failings, though moderate ones I would argue, but on the whole it has been a great benefit to the Canadian farmer for over half a century. That is the essense of the beef of the American farmers. They can't have a wheat board because the cappos won't let them. As to Jims complaints about Indian exports -- sorry Jim, but I can't support an interpretation of aboriginal rights that serves a small (and I would argue, questionable) economic interest at the expense of the rest of rural society. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba.
[PEN-L:1390] Re: Re: Suctional unemployment
I wrote: >>please describe one example of a case of so-called suctional unemployment that does not fit this "special case."<< Tom replies: >1. See below. The guy in the story was fired for refusing to work overtime. >He's NOT the example, he's the exception to the rule. The example is all the >folks who didn't get fired because they did the overtime even though they >didn't really want to. Probably a lot of folks who wouldn't even have gotten >fired but didn't want to take any chances. And other folks who put in the >overtime to "help out" their work mates who were also putting in overtime to >keep up with work in an understaffed work place. why didn't you say that "suctional unemployment" referred to involuntary overtime? Now everything is clear. >>There's no need to send it to me or pen-l. Simple give us a quick summary >>of what you mean. >It's a brief history of the lump-of-labour fallacy. The fallacy turns out to >be a riddle. The original fallacy was the wages-fund doctrine of the >bourgeois political economists -- the doctrine that there was only a fixed >amount of wages and that any efforts by unions to raise wages were futile >because they could only either take wages away from other workers or price >themselves out of the market. that's the "wages fund" theory -- that there exists a lump of money (or real goods & services) that workers distribute amongst themselves. I don't get why it's lump of _labor_. The wages fund doctrine showed up in the Cobb-Douglas production function, where labor share of income is assumed to be constant. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
[PEN-L:1388] Re: The Importance of Economic Education (fwd)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Translated this says: In the new supposedly post-ideological stage of >capitalist culture, attaining a degree in economics serves as one of the approved hazing processes. One suffers the trials of learning difficult deductive theoretical constructs and shows ones mathematical skills while paying no attention to the real world. If one passes, then one is certified as a member of the fraternity of academic slaves qualified to serve the capitalist bosses, and then you can be a speaker at a conference on "Fields on Wheels" promoting deregulation. Cheers, Ken Hanly > > November 30, 1998 > > Economy > > Economics, Once a > Perplexing Subject, > Is Enjoying a Bull Run at > Universities > > By TRISTAN MABRY > Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL > > NEW YORK -- The dismal science is in > vogue again on campus. > > After years of trailing history, English and > biology as the top undergraduate major, > economics is enjoying a surge in > popularity with college students, especially > at the nation's most elite institutions. > > Economics, once considered one of the > more difficult subjects for undergraduates > to grasp, is the top major at Harvard, > Princeton, Columbia, Stanford and the > Universities of Pennsylvania and Chicago; > second at Brown, Yale and the University > of California at Berkeley; and third at > Cornell and Dartmouth. > > Demand for an economics degree at > public universities and at second-tier > colleges is growing too, but at a slower > pace. At most of those colleges, business > management is far more popular than > economics. So while the number of > bachelor's degrees in economics awarded > to students at the top schools is rising, the > number of economics degrees awarded > overall remains below the peak reached in > 1990. > > At Columbia University in New York, "the > popularity of economics has been rising > for the last 10 years," said Richard > Clarida, chairman of Columbia's > economics department. This past fall, 398 > students signed up to take introductory > economics, making it the biggest class on > campus. > > Reasons Behind Trend > > Why so much interest in a discipline that > has been known to induce bouts of nausea > in befuddled undergraduates? According > to academics, interest in economics as a > major has traditionally risen and fallen > with the health of the finance industry, the > major employer of economics graduates. > And with a booming stock market leaving > investment bankers, stock pickers and > securities analysts among the highest paid > professionals in the nation, some college > students are hoping to use economics as > an entry to Wall Street. Also, because the > top colleges don't consider business a > suitable discipline for undergraduates, > students interested in the subject often turn > to economics as a substitute. > > But the swelling ranks of economics > majors also reflects more subtle trends, > including a sharp reduction in the age at > which economics is first introduced to > students, stronger mathematical skills > among college freshmen and heightened > interest among all Americans in economic > ideas and their impact on everything from > wage rates to the price of an airline ticket. > > "Increasingly, economic issues are > presented to citizens as an important > determinant of how their life is going to > play out," said Professor Michael K. > Salemi, chairman of the economics > department at the University of North > Carolina at Chapel Hill and chairman of > the American Economic Association > Committee on Economic Education. > > Recalling President Clinton's 1992 > campaign mantra, "It's the economy > stupid," Prof. Salemi noted that practically > everything these days, even elections, are > driven by economic events. > > So much so, that even students "interested > in public policy are more likely to study > economics than political science" these > days, said Merton Peck, deputy chairman > of the economics department at Yale > University. > > An Early Start > > In some states, children as young as five > years old are being taught economic > concepts and ideas, according to the > National Council on Economic Education, > which provides economic training to > 120,000 grade-school teachers each year. > By the time these students reach college, > the subject is easier to grasp than it was > for students of earlier generations. > > "The present generation is less intimidated > by mathematics and quantitative analysis," > said Prof. Peck, adding that at Yale, "well > over 80% of entering freshman have had > calculus in high school." > > Economics also is viewed by more > students as a ticket to the nation's top > business and law schools. Admissions > offic
[PEN-L:1387] "Fields on Wheels Conference"
THe following material is excerpted from an article by Allan Dawson in the Manitoba Co-operator Nov. 26, p.7. The deregulation craze is alive and well and is being pushed within the academic community here as is evident from this conference "Fields on Wheels". (Begin article) "There weren't many farmers in the audience, and those that were there didn't seem to like it, but the theme of last week's third annual "FIelds on Wheels" conference was that Canada's grain handling system was in a mess and the only way out was further deregulation.( COMMENT: In sofar as the system is in a mess it is partly because of deregulation that has led to wholesale abandonment of rail lines by the two main railroads.) A lone voice from the Canadian Wheat Board cited figures suggesting the Canadian system works better than the U.S., but it was met with little support and even accusation of fudging the numbers. Barry Prentice, director of the University of Manitoba's Transport Institute, which sponsored the conference, said the lineup of speakers reflected the consensus that deregulation is the only way to go. (COMMENT: Lets have none of those naysayers among us.) Farmers saw it differently. "I really can't believe a lot of things I'm hearing today," said Ron GLeim, a farmer from Chaplin Sask., and director of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities. Kane-area farmer Bill Toews said the meeting was far from objective. "The issues were driven more by ideology than pragmatism," (COMMENT. Poor Neanderthal farmer hasn't heard about the end of ideology.) "A good part of it was theoretical economics without any attention to what's really going on." (COMMENT. That's the beauty of the neo-classical approach).. "If you were not part of the grain industry and you came to this forum, your perception would be that our industry is going to hell in a hand basket and it has been doing so for how many years," said Tami Reynolds, the (wheat) board's head of corporate policy. According to Reynolds, not only does Canada have the lowest rail freight rates for grain in the world, but the system is just as efficient as the United States, promoted throughout the meeting as the model to adopt She added that in Canada, wheat board grains spend the least time in port waiting for a vessel--an average of 2.6 at the West Coast-- versus 3.3 days for non-board and almost a week for non-administered (generally special crops). Meantime American farmers are complaining about their system, she said. (COMMENT: Of course all farmers complain about their system. This is universal!) "The service is worse and we're paying more for it," she quoted the Montana wheat and barley commission as saying in a submission to the Surface Transportation BOard in March. later in an interview Prentice said Reynolds' comparisons were unfair because they are made within a regulated system.(COMMENT: Huh! I guess Reynolds' comparisons that purport to show the superiority of deregulation can't be any good either since he is at the University of Manitoba or perhaps he is saying that only the US speakers could make fair comparisons since they are from a deregulated environment. Or maybe he just doesn't make sense, a common failure of academics. Of course it could be the journalist!) Cheers, Ken Hanly
[PEN-L:1383] Re: Response: The New Boss
James Michael Craven wrote: > > Response: > > 1. Harley Frank was not smuggling cigarettes or running a Casino or > whatever; he is a farmer. But activities such as cigarette smuggling > and casinos, very injurious to Indigenous Cultures--are often seen as > the last resort as a result of the continual abridgments and > arrogance of the non-Indigenous systems and practices; > Response: But my point is that if Frank is allowed to export without a permit without challenge by the Wheat Board then this would leave the way open for a commercial arrangement with large corporations such as Cargill. Producers of many different backgrounds fought for Wheat Pools and for single desk selling and they will fight to keep it as well. The wheat board may be wrong but I can see why they took the action they did. Since they hurt a member of the Blackfoot nation you seem blind to this. Waywayseecapo is 14 miles west of me. There are two Dakota Sioux reserves to the south and west of me, and a Cree reserve to the east. There is not one single peep I have heard from them complaining about the wheat board. Around here, at least, it is non-aboriginal farmers near the border who want to take advantage of temporary price differentials and export grain without licences. I know of no native in Manitoba (or Saskatchewan) who is in jail because he (no shes have tried this as far as I know) violated the export regulations. > 2. Extraterritoriality is exactly what is going on when the Canadian > Government arrogates laws and divisions and practices on Indigenous > Nations (A Nation does not make treaties with its own citizens nor > with even groups of its own citizens only with > sovereign--alien--Nations. Indigenous Peoples in the US and Canada > were never asked if they wanted to be "citizens"--they were > summarily declared as such in the US and in Canada, they were > offered bribes and inducements to de-status or de-Indianize; > Until land claims are settled most if not all border crossings will be in the alien's (Canada's) territory and Canadian law will apply without there being any extraterritoriality. Are you saying you do not want to be a US citizen and have the right to vote etc.? How does becoming a citizen de-status or de-Indianize? Anyway it is impossible to de-Indianize the Inuit. One of my sons has dual citizenship, US and Canadian, since he was born in the US. Does this warp his identity? I was on the Manitoba Law Reform Commission. Native groups pointed out that aboriginals living on reserves did not get to serve on juries. Prospective jury members are picked at random from municipal lists. Reserves are not municipalities and so band member lists were not part of the selection process. Ergo, no reserve aboriginals were ever on juries. When we recommended band lists be part of the process I can't recall any native coming to us and saying: Stick you jury service up you alien ass or a more bureaucratic version of the same thought. I guess they are all sell-outs, Canadianized and polite. > 3. We are talking about the survival of a Whole People--historically > recognized as a Whole People--almost extinct; to trivialize this with > ugly racist references/pseudo analogies to preserving cannabilism in New > Zealand is extremely offensive and demeans you. To suggest that > Indian Rights necessary for their survival is to set precedent that > may be used by non-Indians, and use that as a pretext to deny > National Self-determination, is to trivialize and de-Indianize > Indians and Indian Nations and their right to survival; > I have no idea what the WHOLE PEOPLE means. There are many Indian nations. Do you mean the Blackfoot nation? The Kickapoo are the WHOLE PEOPLE according to my friend Paul Voorhis. There are Kickapoo and non-Kickapoo. Being offensive is part of my nature and my identity. Don't ask me to kill myself, not in the physical sense of course. My point is that the fact a practice is part of an aboriginal culture does not mean that it is wrong for the "alien" conqueror to forbid it. Why is it so necessary to Blackfoot culture that Frank be able to sell his wheat in the US without a permit? A culture that will not survive because it has to get a permit to export wheat must be a fragile culture indeed. > 4. It is through assimilation and integration--not its opposite--that > Indians have sufffered the greatest threats to survival and National > existence. Those who would exterminate Indians, rarely openly > declared that as their "intention"; they often define extermination > in physical existence terms only, they often will assert that they > are all for Indians surviving as along as they integrate and no > longer remain Indians--only stated intentions are not the issue, > rather, clearly foreseeable and inexorable effects of given policies > and practices are the issue; Response:> You use the word
[PEN-L:1389] Re: Re: re McDonalds
Valis, Valis, Valis. I thought your insights were infallible. Or at least didn't know wrong things. They eat red meat in Salt Lake City. Montpelier is the only capital [sic] without a McDonalds. Though I'm told there is one nearby. Gene Coyle >Gene Coyle quizzes: > >> Extra credit quiz: What is the only state capit[a]l in the USA >> without a McDonalds? > >An exception of this sort would have to be determined by local ideology >rather than any marketing factor(s). On this basis: Salt Lake City. > > > Nostravalis
[PEN-L:1385] Enlightenment Insight, part two
Immanuel Kant, "Physical Geography", Volume 8 of "Gesammelte Schriften": The inhabitant of the temperate parts of the world, above all the central part, has a more beautiful body, works harder, is more jocular, more controlled in his passions, more intelligent than any other race of people in the world. That is why at all points in time these peoples have educated the others and controlled them with weapons. The Romans, Greeks, the ancient Nordic peoples, Genghis Khan, the Turks, Tamurlaine, the Europeans after Columbus's discoveries, they have all amazed the southern lands with their arts and weapons. (cited in Eze's "Race and the Enlightenment," p. 64) Janet Abu-Lughod, "Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350", pp 323-324: In the past, before western scholars had sufficient information about China's achievements in science and technology, it was commonly argued that Europe's eventual triumph in the world arena was the result of her unique scientific and technological inventiveness. and, conversely, that Orientals, although perhaps "clever,". had never been able to sustain a scientific revolution. The voluminous investigations of Needham have more than corrected this error. We now have much fuller documentation on Chinese contributions to medicine and physiology, physics, and mathematics, as well as their more practical applications in technology. According to Sivin, Needham did not go far enough; he stopped short of admitting that, by Sung times, China had had a true scientific "revolution," a position strongly argued by Chinese scholars. Whether or not the term "scientific revolution" is justified, there can be no doubt that in late medieval times the level of Chinese technical competence far exceeded the Middle East, which, in turn, had outstripped Europe for many centuries. Space permits only a few examples here: paper and printing, iron and weaponry (including guns, cannons, and bombs), shipbuilding and navigational techniques, as well as two primary manufactured exports, silk and porcelain. According to Tsien: "Paper was invented in China before the Christian era, adopted for at the beginning of the 1st century A.D., and manufactured with new and fresh fibres from the early 2nd century...Woodblock printing was first employed...around 700 A.D. and moveable type in middle of the 11th century." Some time in the ninth century, the Arabs learned the process of paper making from the Chinese and later transmitted that precious knowledge to "westerners." Braudel (1973: 295) suggests that the European paper mills appeared in twelfth-century Spain but the Italians did not begin to produce paper until the fourteenth century; Cipolla , basing his remarks on a 1953 article Irigoin, however, claims that by the second half of the thirteenth century the court in Byzantium no longer bought its paper from Arabs but from Italy. But in any case, China's edge was significant. Even more impressive than paper manufacture were Chinese advances in siderurgv. which were several hundred years in advance Europe's. From at least the eighth century onward, coal was being mined in northern China and used in furnaces that produced high-quality iron and even steel "either by means of the co-fusion of pig iron and wrought iron, or by direct decarbonization in a cold oxidizing blast." Hartwell's (1967) estimates of the scale of iron production are truly staggering. By his calculations, the tonnage of coal burned annually in the eleventh century for iron production alone in northern China was "roughly equivalent to 70 percent of the total amount of coal annually used by all metal workers in Great Britain at the beginning of the eighteenth century" By the end of the eleventh century the Sung were minting iron coins and making many metal products as well. According to Hartwell: "7,000 workers were engaged in actually mining the ore and fuel, and operating the furnaces, forges, and refining hearths...[while] others were engaged in transporting the raw materials from the mines to the iron works.The scale of production at individual establishments was unprecedented, and probably was not equalled anywhere in the world until the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century." If we add to the workers engaged in direct ore extraction and processing those workers who fabricated tools and weaponry, there can be no doubt as to the high level of China's industrial development. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:1384] Re: Re: Re: The New Boss
I'm with James Craven that Native's right to travel and trade across the Canada-US border must be defended. Sometimes there are explicit treaties on this; in other cases this right, like other national rights, they have not yet been recognized by the government, but they should still be unconditionally defended. (I also look forward to "a world without borders" - for everyone, but that is a slightly different issue...) On the other hand, I agree with Ken Hanley on defending the Wheat Board as a means of defending farmers against capitalist market irrationality and the Cargill-type monopolists of the world. Unfortunately, some farmers in Canada and in the U.S. mistakenly think the Wheat Board is the problem, just as some workers think the union is the problem. It does not help when the leadership is bad, but a bad union is still better than no union, and the point is to make it a good union. Also many Natives are farmers and many farmers are Native. Actually, what motivated me to write this was just picking up a fascinating book by Sarah Carter, _Lost Harvests_, which looks at how Indians in the prairies in Canada DID begin to farm (or tried to, but were defeated by the Indian Act., etc.). I don't know how, concetetely, this particular clash of rights should be resolved, but I think Ken agreed the Wheat Board should exempt such Native trade, which seems right. It is not likely to injure the larger interests of farmers. A phrase from Raymond Williams come to mind, quoted by David Harvey in his recent book: "The defence and advancement of certain particular interests, properly brought together, are in fact the general interest." I completely agree with Jim that Canadian nationalism has no place here. And IMHO the attack on the Wheat Board is not the result of the FTA or NAFTA but, primarily, Canadian capitalist interests. But I also think that saying "the Canadian Government is more often an out-and-out whore of US imperialism" is doubly wrong. Canada is itself imperialist, and this gets lost when terms like whore are used. I assume it is a derogatory reference here, which I also think wrongs whores. Bill Burgess
[PEN-L:1376] Re: query -- WSJ article
Jim Devine wrote: >does anyone on pen-l pay for access to the Wall Street JOURNAL? If so, it >would useful if you were to post the recent article about the rising >popularity of the Economics major to pen-l. It's interesting ideology. I do, but that would excite Don Roper's copyright reflex, no? Doug
[PEN-L:1374] Re: The Honor of the Anglo-Saxons
Oh brother. If Brad is going to get picky like this then I'll get picky with him too (you're not the only victim, Louis, :-)). Carolus Magnus, aka Charlemagne, aka Karl der Grosse, did not "genocidally" wipe out the Saxons when he conquered and Christianized them. Nonsense. I note that there are several current Lander in Germany that for very good reasons regarding the majority of the ancestries of the current inhabitants bear "Saxony" in their name, e.g. Niedersachsen (home of the current Chancellor) and Sachsen Anhalt, which does not exhaust the list of such. It is well known that a lot of people in Hamburg look a lot more like a lot of people in Southeast England than they do like people in Bavaria or Brandenburg. As for the Prussians, this is a messy business. There is certainly some truth in Adenauer's wisecrack. But the Prussians are almost certainly a mixture of Germanic and Slavic. The Teutonic Knights did invade and conquer and settle eastwards, fathering the later Junkers. In fact Adenauer is implicitly wrong about a basic element of all this. When conquest occurs and groups mix, it is usually the conqueror who is the male and the conquered who is the female. The Prussian is more likely to have a Slavic grandmother and a Saxon or Thuringian grandfather than the other way around. We have seen this in many other cases, the Spanish father and the Indian mother in Mexico, the Anglo-Saxon father and the Celtic mother in England after the former invaded (this is why Celtic remnant words in English such as "crock" have to do with household activities), or, an old favorite of mine, the Gaelic father and the Pictish mother in Scotland in the ninth century. In many of these cases the might-have-been alternative "native" father was killed off by the invading conqueror and the victorious males got "the spoils". Such has been much of human history, I'm afraid. Barkley Rosser On Tue, 8 Dec 1998 12:26:31 -0800 Brad De Long <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>Somehow, I miss that that part (save for a passing remark on the ugliness > >>and wickedness of certain groups). All I could find is an entire passage > >>devoted to a discussion whether the blackness of the skin is caused by bile > >>(secretion of the liver) or some other liquid found in the person's veins. > >> > >>regards, > >>Wojtek > > > >Wojtek, you really should spend some time studying this period. I could > >have cited a passage from Kant, Hegel, Herder, or any of a number of others > >who make the point that the Anglo-Saxon race is superior... > > As a card-carrying Anglo-Saxon (with a little Gallo-Romano-Frank mixed in, > and some Irish, and some Norse, some Brito-Celt, and then there was the > "servant girl" from Barbados whom the eighteenth-century sea captain > married and brought back to Maine) let me point out that Prussians like > Kant, Hegel, and Herder were *not* Anglo-Saxon: The Angles and Saxons who > didn't wind up in England were wiped out by Charles le Magne in his > genocidal conquest of Old Saxony. The Prussians were not even Allemanni, > Frank, Lombard, or Goth. They were, in the opinion of Konrad Adenauer (who > is supposed to have said that a Prussian is a Pole who has forgotten who > his grandfather was) at least, most likely to be Slavs... > > > Brad DeLong > -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1373] Re: Re: Enlightenment insight
Louis, I'm not disagreeing with your basic argument about all this. Just being picky, :-). That said, I would like to clarify on all this stuff about the "Enlightenment", perhaps following up on Jim Devine's arguments. I think that there were useful and "progressive" aspects of the Enlightenment with regard to the development of scientific thought and reasoning, aspects that we should not abjure or denounce except when they are misused in an arbitrary or oppressive manner, as they often have been. Part of the problem is precisely that the "Enlightenment" philosophers in their better efforts were not inventing the wheel or something essentially new. There was (and is) nothing intrinsically "European" about what is involved in rational or scientific thought and many other people around the world engaged in such thought and behavior for a long time. Of course the "Enlightenment" crowd was aware of some earlier efforts in these directions, notably by the Greeks who became the poster boy role models for the Enlightenment crowd (check out the "classical" influences in Jeffersonian architecture). But we know that many other people made scientific advances and "thought deep thoughts" (to quote the Wizard of Oz), including the Arabs and the Chinese, among numerous others. It was sheer Eurocentric effrontery to assign to themselves this "noble" goal of "civilizing" the rest of the world. Barkley Rosser On Tue, 08 Dec 1998 15:30:20 -0500 Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Barkley Rosser wrote: > > >Louis, > > Really now. Are we to believe that 18th century > >northern Europeans were the first or the only people on > >earth to think much more highly of themselves than of > >others outside their group? Come off it. Just to name a > >few other examples I would note that the Jews styled > >themselves as "God's Chosen People", quite a few Native > >American Indian tribes have names for themselves that mean > >"human being" which says what about non-tribal members? and > >then of course we have the well-known propensity of the > >Chinese to view all outsiders as "barbarians", just like > >the ancient Greeks, although I might be inclined to be more > >sympathetic with the Chinese on that one than with some of > >these other well-known prejudices. > > A lot of people have had to overcome their own group's > >prejudices against The Other. > > As a matter of fact I just finished reviewing Thomas Patterson's "Inventing > Western Civilization" for Science and Society and he makes something of the > same point. The Incas, who he has studied for most of his career as an > anthropologist, believed that only they were truly human. Interestingly > enough, in his book on the Incas, he leaves no room for romantic > interpretations and identifies much more closely with the subordinate > peoples who paid tribute to them. > > That being said, the problem we are facing is Eurocentrism, which has left > its mark on Marxism. This interests me, not an academic discussion as such. > When the Sandinistas went out to the Atlantic Coast and put up huge > billboards saying, "The Atlantic Coast: A giant awakens!", this alienated > Miskitus who had no inkling that they were asleep. This ideological failure > was rooted in social Darwinism, which in turn was rooted in Enlightenment > racism. Nicaraguan Marxism's failure to address Miskitu concerns led to > fighting on a second front that bled the country militarily and > economically. It is this sort of problem that concerns me, not how to fight > prejudice in general. > > > > > > Louis Proyect > > (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html) > -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1339] Re: McDonalds question
Tom Kruse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The frist McDonalds in Cochabamba, Bolivia is to open on Friday. We > are preparing a protest of sorts. I am writing for help in putting > together info. I have the piece by Liza Featherstonein LBO 86, a > couple of list posts, but nothing else. > > I would greatly appreciate ANY critical infomration on McDs, > especially profitability, business and labor practices. Here's something I wrote in the last few weeks about one of McD's main pattie suppliers (OSI) taking over a New Zealand company. It's got a lot about McD's in it, and also has some useful Web references. The Mcspotlight one is particularly useful - it has lots of stuff about the UK "Mclibel" case, including the full judgment, plus up to date information (http://www.enviroweb.org/mcspotlight-na). Bill Rosenberg OSI subsidiary, Leges, of the U.S.A. taking remainder of Glovers Food An associate company of the giant OSI Group, Leges Corporation Inc of the U.S.A., which already owns 45% of Glovers Food Processors Ltd, has approval to acquire up to 100%. It will acquire the 45% shareholding of retiring Glovers' founder, Mr M. Glover, "over the course of the next three years". The price is stated to be "$659,699 for 30%". The company manufactures, process and distributes beef, poultry and fish products. The major shareholders in Leges, with 45% each, are Gerald A Kolschowsky and Sheldon Lavin, with the remaining 10% owned by OSI Industries Inc. According to the OIC, they "have been involved in similar businesses in the United States and elsewhere in the world for much of their working life. They are currently major shareholders in a large multi-national food company." Since their involvement in Glovers, "shareholders have reinvested the profits back into the Company". OSI is "one of the largest privately held meat-processing corporations in the world" according to its own Web site, http://www.osigroup.com. It was founded by the Kolschowsky family. More controversially, it is "McDonald's biggest burger supplier" in the world according to Meat Marketing & Technology, October 1997, "Bulletin From the Burger Battles" (http://www.mtgplace.com/magazines/M_c871.asp). OSI describes its own history as follows on its Web site: "Otto Kolschowsky immigrated from Germany in 1907 and opened a family meat market located in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1909. The business prospered and in 1917 had expanded to include the wholesale meat trade and moved to Maywood, Illinois. In 1928, the growing business took the name Otto & Sons. By 1955, the operation had established its reputation as a quality meat business and was chosen to supply fresh ground beef patties for a national food chain. Following years of extensive research and development on high volume patting-forming machines and liquid nitrogen freezing tunnels, Otto & Sons began supplying frozen ground beef patties. In 1973, a plant was opened in West Chicago, Illinois to handle the high volume operations. Otto & Sons became OSI Industries, Inc. in 1975 followed by another high volume operation opening in West Jordan, Utah in 1977 to further supply the western United States. OSI moved into its corporate headquarters in 1982 based in Aurora, Illinois. Today we are one of the largest privately held meat-processing corporations in the world. In addition to the pure ground beef patties that are our primary product, we also produce circular sliced bacon, chicken nuggets, chicken patties, formed pork steaks, breakfast beefsteaks, julienne ham and turkey, pork sausage patties, and fillet of fish portions." (http://www.osigroup.com/osiind/osi.htm) Gerald Kolschowsky gave $200 to Republican Representative Jim Nussle in both 1995 and 1996 (http://www.com/hpi/fedind/0ia02040.html). Meat Marketing & Technology, quotes a "key industry consultant and fast-food insider" saying that "McDonald's biggest burger supplier, Aurora, Illinois-based OSI Industries, is rumoured to be up for sale. OSI supplies more than 60 percent of Mickey D's hamburgers worldwide, with plants in more than 30 countries. Keystone Foods and Golden State Foods, both key domestic McDonald's hamburger suppliers, may also be on the block. Why? These suppliers are so squeezed on costs that there's little room for growth and only minimal profit margin left. 'The stakes are so high now that only companies with deep, deep pockets can afford to gamble with fast-food accounts,' the insider says. Of course, the ongoing E. coli problem doesn't make the odds any shorter, but the ultimate solution, this consultant contends, is precooked patties. He says the fast-food chains are badgering their suppliers to develop prototypes, but a rush to market precooked burgers seems to be about as imminent as a revival of McLean DeLuxe. 'Because of the way they're getting hammered, [the suppliers] are adamant about not investing their own capital to make pr
[PEN-L:1371] BLS Daily Report
This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. --_=_NextPart_000_01BE22EF.29718D30 BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1998: Workforce reduction announcements in the first 11 months of 1998 are outpacing 1997's total, according to the latest figures from the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The September-November period was particularly fierce, with the announcement of 216,000 job = cuts, including 51,642 in November. "The dramatic job-cutting spree has = turned 1998 into the second 'worst' year of the decade=85" the Challenger = report said. A separate report issued December 5 by BLS showed that despite = these job cuts, the unemployment rate actually fell by 0.1 percentage point = to 4.4 percent in November. A BLS survey of business establishments found = that the economy created a net of 267,000 new jobs in November (Daily Labor = Report, page A-7; The Wall Street Journal, page A2)=20 __Multinational corporations are doing most of the cutting, while = hiring by small and midsized companies helped lower the November unemployment = rate to 4.4 percent - just shy of a 28 year low - from 4.6 percent in October = (The New York Times, in a Bloomberg News article, page C13). While the U.S. economy continues to create thousands of new jobs every month, nearly three-quarters of those jobs do not pay a wage rate on = which a family can live, according to a study by a Massachusetts community = education and research group, the National Priorities Project. Using BLS and = state employment agency data, the NPP report analyzes new job creation on a state-by-state basis. It concludes that the bulk of the jobs with the highest growth are in low-wage occupations. Nationwide 46 percent of = the jobs projected by state employment agencies to grow the most between = 1994 and the year 2005 pay less than $16,000 a year, or less than half of = what NPP defines as a livable wage, the study shows. The four jobs with the highest projected growth rates nationally are cashiers, janitors, = retail sales people and waiters/waitresses (Daily Labor Report, page A-10). Federal employees in the Washington-Baltimore area will receive a 3.68 percent pay raise, starting in January, under an executive order signed = by President Clinton. In keeping with federal pay practices since 1994, Clinton's order gives white-collar government employees nationwide a = 3.1 percent increase and provides a separate adjustment called "locality = pay" that varies by metropolitan area. The pay boost will amount to $2,105 = for the average white-collar federal employee in the area, bringing the = annual average salary up to $59,307 (The Washington Post, "The Federal Page", = page A19). Included with the article is a list of civil service pay = increases city-by-city. =20 Life without overtime is both a blessing and a curse, says Louis = Uchitelle, writing an "Economic View" column in the Sunday New York Times = (December 6, page 4, Business Section). In it he says "Overtime for the nation's = 18.6 million manufacturing workers has fallen to 4.5 hours a week on average = over the last 3 months, from 4.9 hours in January. The 8 percent drop in so = few months is unusually sharp, the Labor Department says." Uchitelle points = out that in some cases, manufacturing workers income has more than doubled because employers have piled work on their existing workers to avoid = hiring more people. The national average retail price for regular unleaded gasoline dropped = this week to 95.4 cents a gallon, the Energy Department said today (Reuters = in The New York Times, page C4). Home values rose 5 percent in the third quarter, compared with last = year's third quarter, as low unemployment and low mortgage rates put more = Americans in a position to buy homes (The Wall Street Journal, page A4). Manufacturing and construction industry executives are bracing for a downturn in business activity through January, according to the most = recent monthly survey by Dun & Bradstreet Corp. (The Wall Street Journal, page A14). If bargain-basement prices haven't been enough to reassure consumers = that inflation is in check, take a look at the indexes that track commodity prices in general, advises The Wall Street Journal (page C1). The = message is the same: Basic materials prices, already low for much of the year, = have headed lower still. And that's another sign of low inflation. The = Bridge Commodity Research Bureau index of spot commodity prices which is made = up of the prices of 17 commodities yesterday settled at a 21-year low. The = other widely followed commodities index, the Goldman Sachs index of commodity = spot prices, settled at its lowest level since November 1972 Friday, though Goldman officials note the index then didn't include crude-oil prices. --_=_NextPart_000_01BE22EF.29718D30 b3NvZnQgTWFpbC5Ob3RlADEIAQWAAwAOzgc
[PEN-L:1382] Re: query -- WSJ article
At 11:49 AM 12/8/98 -0800, you wrote: >does anyone on pen-l pay for access to the Wall Street JOURNAL? If so, it >would useful if you were to post the recent article about the rising >popularity of the Economics major to pen-l. It's interesting ideology. > >thanks ahead of time. > >Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & >http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html = ** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. ** = Economy Economics, Once a Perplexing Subject, Is Enjoying a Bull Run at Universities By TRISTAN MABRY Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, 11/30/98 NEW YORK -- The dismal science is in vogue again on campus. After years of trailing history, English and biology as the top undergraduate major, economics is enjoying a surge in popularity with college students, especially at the nation's most elite institutions. Economics, once considered one of the more difficult subjects for undergraduates to grasp, is the top major at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford and the Universities of Pennsylvania and Chicago; second at Brown, Yale and the University of California at Berkeley; and third at Cornell and Dartmouth. Demand for an economics degree at public universities and at second-tier colleges is growing too, but at a slower pace. At most of those colleges, business management is far more popular than economics. So while the number of bachelor's degrees in economics awarded to students at the top schools is rising, the number of economics degrees awarded overall remains below the peak reached in 1990. At Columbia University in New York, "the popularity of economics has been rising for the last 10 years," said Richard Clarida, chairman of Columbia's economics department. This past fall, 398 students signed up to take introductory economics, making it the biggest class on campus. Reasons Behind Trend Why so much interest in a discipline that has been known to induce bouts of nausea in befuddled undergraduates? According to academics, interest in economics as a major has traditionally risen and fallen with the health of the finance industry, the major employer of economics graduates. And with a booming stock market leaving investment bankers, stock pickers and securities analysts among the highest paid professionals in the nation, some college students are hoping to use economics as an entry to Wall Street. Also, because the top colleges don't consider business a suitable discipline for undergraduates, students interested in the subject often turn to economics as a substitute. But the swelling ranks of economics majors also reflects more subtle trends, including a sharp reduction in the age at which economics is first introduced to students, stronger mathematical skills among college freshmen and heightened interest among all Americans in economic ideas and their impact on everything from wage rates to the price of an airline ticket. "Increasingly, economic issues are presented to citizens as an important determinant of how their life is going to play out," said Professor Michael K. Salemi, chairman of the economics department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and chairman of the American Economic Association Committee on Economic Education. Recalling President Clinton's 1992 campaign mantra, "It's the economy stupid," Prof. Salemi noted that practically everything these days, even elections, are driven by economic events. So much so, that even students "interested in public policy are more likely to study economics than political science" these days, said Merton Peck, deputy chairman of the economics department at Yale University. An Early Start In some states, children as young as five years old are being taught economic concepts and ideas, according to the National Council on Economic Education, which provides economic training to 120,000 grade-school teachers each year. By the time these students reach college, the subject is easier to grasp than it was for students of earlier generations. "The present generation is less intimidated by mathematics and quantitative analysis," said Prof. Peck, adding that at Yale, "well over 80% of entering freshman have had calculus in high school." Economics also is viewed by more students as a ticket to the nation's top business and law schools. Admissions officers say the students are right. "The best people are more frequently taking economics as their major than they were a decade or so ago," said Richard A. Silverman, executive director of admissions at the Yale School of Management. "It shows they have the intellectual fire in the belly to perform well in an MBA
[PEN-L:1369] Re: RE: Re: Social Security
At 01:58 PM 12/8/98 -0500, Max wrote: > *If* the trust >fund bonds are redeemed with general revenue, there >is no long-run overuse of the payroll tax. I think >there is little likelihood of any other outcome, >as long as the institution of the trust fund is >maintained and respected. > I'm troubled by this statement. Right now, the budget surplus that Congress wants to spend on tax cuts is, in fact the social security surplus, is it not? And isn't the $1.5b projected ten-year surplus also the SS surplus? What bothers me is that this money, which is collected through a regressive tax, will be spent on something. The left should have a voice in what that something is. Cato recently proposed putting the SS surpluses in some big extra-governmental money fund, to keep our (the public's) hands off of it, until a better solution (like financing a flat tax) could be found. I understand, and sympathize with, the desire not to rock boats or waken sleeping dogs. But there is the immediate, short and medium-term question of why wage-earners are financing a big chunk of non-SS government spending, when the spending isn't going to programs that will directly benefit them. Saying that the regressiveness of the current system will be cancelled out in 22 years doesn't quite cut it for me. Ellen Frank
[PEN-L:1381] The Importance of Economic Education (fwd)
Forwarded message: Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 21:55:36 -0800 From: michael perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The Importance of Economic Education Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-UID: 1565 November 30, 1998 Economy Economics, Once a Perplexing Subject, Is Enjoying a Bull Run at Universities By TRISTAN MABRY Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL NEW YORK -- The dismal science is in vogue again on campus. After years of trailing history, English and biology as the top undergraduate major, economics is enjoying a surge in popularity with college students, especially at the nation's most elite institutions. Economics, once considered one of the more difficult subjects for undergraduates to grasp, is the top major at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford and the Universities of Pennsylvania and Chicago; second at Brown, Yale and the University of California at Berkeley; and third at Cornell and Dartmouth. Demand for an economics degree at public universities and at second-tier colleges is growing too, but at a slower pace. At most of those colleges, business management is far more popular than economics. So while the number of bachelor's degrees in economics awarded to students at the top schools is rising, the number of economics degrees awarded overall remains below the peak reached in 1990. At Columbia University in New York, "the popularity of economics has been rising for the last 10 years," said Richard Clarida, chairman of Columbia's economics department. This past fall, 398 students signed up to take introductory economics, making it the biggest class on campus. Reasons Behind Trend Why so much interest in a discipline that has been known to induce bouts of nausea in befuddled undergraduates? According to academics, interest in economics as a major has traditionally risen and fallen with the health of the finance industry, the major employer of economics graduates. And with a booming stock market leaving investment bankers, stock pickers and securities analysts among the highest paid professionals in the nation, some college students are hoping to use economics as an entry to Wall Street. Also, because the top colleges don't consider business a suitable discipline for undergraduates, students interested in the subject often turn to economics as a substitute. But the swelling ranks of economics majors also reflects more subtle trends, including a sharp reduction in the age at which economics is first introduced to students, stronger mathematical skills among college freshmen and heightened interest among all Americans in economic ideas and their impact on everything from wage rates to the price of an airline ticket. "Increasingly, economic issues are presented to citizens as an important determinant of how their life is going to play out," said Professor Michael K. Salemi, chairman of the economics department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and chairman of the American Economic Association Committee on Economic Education. Recalling President Clinton's 1992 campaign mantra, "It's the economy stupid," Prof. Salemi noted that practically everything these days, even elections, are driven by economic events. So much so, that even students "interested in public policy are more likely to study economics than political science" these days, said Merton Peck, deputy chairman of the economics department at Yale University. An Early Start In some states, children as young as five years old are being taught economic concepts and ideas, according to the National Council on Economic Education, which provides economic training to 120,000 grade-school teachers each year. By the time these students reach college, the subject is easier to grasp than it was for students of earlier generations. "The present generation is less intimidated by mathematics and quantitative analysis," said Prof. Peck, adding that at Yale, "well over 80% of entering freshman have had calculus in high school." Economics also is viewed by more students as a ticket to the nation's top business and law schools. Admissions officers say the students are right. "The best people are more frequently taking economics as their major than they were a decade or so ago," said Richard A. Silverman, executive director of admissions at the Yale School of Management. "It shows they have the intellectual fire in the belly to perform well in an MBA program." Many law schools feel the same way. "Of all the majors, economics ranks in the top four or five consistently year after year for both applicants and offers made," said Edward Tom, director of admissions at the University
[PEN-L:1368] Re: The Honor of the Anglo-Saxons
>As a card-carrying Anglo-Saxon (with a little Gallo-Romano-Frank mixed in, >and some Irish, and some Norse, some Brito-Celt, and then there was the >"servant girl" from Barbados whom the eighteenth-century sea captain >married and brought back to Maine) let me point out that Prussians like >Kant, Hegel, and Herder were *not* Anglo-Saxon: The Angles and Saxons who >didn't wind up in England were wiped out by Charles le Magne in his >genocidal conquest of Old Saxony. The Prussians were not even Allemanni, >Frank, Lombard, or Goth. They were, in the opinion of Konrad Adenauer (who >is supposed to have said that a Prussian is a Pole who has forgotten who >his grandfather was) at least, most likely to be Slavs... > > >Brad DeLong I would refer you to Ronald Horsman's excellent "Race and Manifest Destiny" which explores the alleged affinities between Anglo-Saxon racialism and the Germanic tribes. You have to understand that this was deeply rooted in 18th century culture. It all goes back to Tacitus, who argued that the Anglo-Saxons were racially related to the "healthy" Germanic tribes and beat back the decadent Normans. Sir Walter Scott was a treasure-chest of this sort of nonsense, as Horsman points out, "Ivanhoe" in particular. Thomas Jefferson believed in this garbage and wrote reams about how the new republic fulfilled the promise of Anglo-Saxon civilization, which in turn was the product of Germanic tribes. The "democracy" of the infant American republic was supposed to be an expression of this heroic race's destiny. It had very little to do with modern ideas of justice and much more to do with the sort of poison that Hitler believed in. When Ward Churchill spoke at the Brecht Forum a couple of months ago, he stated that the USA should be seen as having many of the characteristics of a victorious Third Reich. Hitler lost his war to impose German racial and economic domination, but the US's drive for Manifest Destiny both internally and externally has been one of the great "success" stories in history. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:1367] Re: Re: Enlightenment insight
Barkley Rosser wrote: >Louis, > Really now. Are we to believe that 18th century >northern Europeans were the first or the only people on >earth to think much more highly of themselves than of >others outside their group? Come off it. Just to name a >few other examples I would note that the Jews styled >themselves as "God's Chosen People", quite a few Native >American Indian tribes have names for themselves that mean >"human being" which says what about non-tribal members? and >then of course we have the well-known propensity of the >Chinese to view all outsiders as "barbarians", just like >the ancient Greeks, although I might be inclined to be more >sympathetic with the Chinese on that one than with some of >these other well-known prejudices. > A lot of people have had to overcome their own group's >prejudices against The Other. As a matter of fact I just finished reviewing Thomas Patterson's "Inventing Western Civilization" for Science and Society and he makes something of the same point. The Incas, who he has studied for most of his career as an anthropologist, believed that only they were truly human. Interestingly enough, in his book on the Incas, he leaves no room for romantic interpretations and identifies much more closely with the subordinate peoples who paid tribute to them. That being said, the problem we are facing is Eurocentrism, which has left its mark on Marxism. This interests me, not an academic discussion as such. When the Sandinistas went out to the Atlantic Coast and put up huge billboards saying, "The Atlantic Coast: A giant awakens!", this alienated Miskitus who had no inkling that they were asleep. This ideological failure was rooted in social Darwinism, which in turn was rooted in Enlightenment racism. Nicaraguan Marxism's failure to address Miskitu concerns led to fighting on a second front that bled the country militarily and economically. It is this sort of problem that concerns me, not how to fight prejudice in general. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:1372] Re: Re: The New Boss
James Michael Craven wrote: The Wheat Board is no angel, though I doubt it has any genocidal intension in prosecuting Frank, even though requiring an export permit may alter traditional modes of activity somewhat. My understanding is that one can get an export permit from the Board. I am not sure how that works but I imagine Frank would not get directly paid then but it would go through the board and he would be reimbursed in the same way as other sellers through several payments -as noted in the article I sent. One possibility is to have an exception for this type of trading. The wheat board is probably concerned that if it allows this type of trading it will provide a loophole that will be exploited by large multinational grain interests such as Cargill. Natives and non-native commercial ventures have often had many negative side effects. The linkage between natives and white fur trading companies certainly was not environmentally friendly in terms of hunted animal populations. The linkage between Mohawks and US cigarette retailers bypassed the high taxes on cigs in Canada and no doubt gave employment to many Mohawks, as do the gambling casinos, but as you know these activities can interfere with traditional native culture as well and often result in factional violence on reserves. The situation is complicated. While the board was overzealous in this instance the general policy of requiring a permit is surely necessary for the system to work. The operation of the board requires solidarity among all producers. The board is a large corporation and as such it has moved away from the grass roots. Recent changes to the law however require board members to be elected by the producers whose grain they are selling, rather than appointed by the government. Sure as hell Cargill is not that democratic. Just a couple of further points: The wheat board is recognised as part of the NAFTA agreement. This is one of the things that riles US farmers and causes them to bring charges all the bloody time. It is almost harassment. They claim that pricing of the Wheat Board is not transparent. True. Why not ask Cargill to reveal their pricing? I assume the Jay Treaty is between tribes and the US government. Canada was not a party. Do you believe in extraterritoriality of US law. THe US does of course. It says US branch plants in Canada cannot trade with Cuba! We have a Canada Health Act that guarantees all citizens universal health care. Damn, the US doesn't recognize it! By the way what is the situation re health care for aboriginal citizens in the US? DOes the government guarantee it? There are obvious conflicts between laws that apply to citizens in general and customs of aboriginal nations within the borders of the same country. It is not clear that the aboriginal customs should always prevail or do so by right. Was New Zealand acting genocidally with respect to the Maoris when they outlawed cannibalism? Cannabilism is part and parcel of Maoris culture and when understood within that culture is by no means entirely negative in its significance but related to spiritualiity and ritual rather than just everyday meat and potatoes. Or consider fishing rights. While traditional rights to fish for sustenance may not harm fish stocks, if tribes claim they have an inalienable right to fish for trade trouble can arise. Again,I am not saying that natives may not have claims of this sort as well, but they have to be worked out through negotiation.The same is true of land claims. Canada has not a very good record on this I know but there has been some progress. THere is a good book on fisheries by DOugherty called the GREAT LAKES FISHERY I believe. Environmentalists (usually white) paint themselves as the friendss of the fish ( and unlimited ducks of course) when it is really a struggle between two interest groups, sport fishing as against native commercial fishing. In the case of the Great Lakes Fishery the vast majority of the fish are no longer there as a result of nature but of human intervention and the issue is basically how to allocate the resource in a fair way and not deplete stocks. Cheers, Ken Hanly P.S. I am an inveterate Enlightenment Person. Up with totalising Reason. Down with Post-modernism! Thanks to Josh Mason for his post on unions and pension funds. There are union funds in Canada that are invested in various projects. Unions have come to the rescue of companies that would otherwise close, as for example the steel mill in Sault Ste. Marie Ontario. I do not know whether pension funds were used for these purposes, probably not. Quebec labor has extensive funds that it invests. > > Response (Jim Craven) > > Let me provide another view for consideration--the case of Harley > Frank, a Kainai Blackfoot. Among the Pikuni (Blackfoot) People there > are three main "Tribes": Siksika (Blackfoot), Kainai
[PEN-L:1364] Re: Enlightenment insight
Louis, Really now. Are we to believe that 18th century northern Europeans were the first or the only people on earth to think much more highly of themselves than of others outside their group? Come off it. Just to name a few other examples I would note that the Jews styled themselves as "God's Chosen People", quite a few Native American Indian tribes have names for themselves that mean "human being" which says what about non-tribal members? and then of course we have the well-known propensity of the Chinese to view all outsiders as "barbarians", just like the ancient Greeks, although I might be inclined to be more sympathetic with the Chinese on that one than with some of these other well-known prejudices. A lot of people have had to overcome their own group's prejudices against The Other. BTW, of course I am aware that the racism and suprematism of the 18th century Europeans had more severe consequences for others than did similar prejudices by other groups, given the economic and military power coming into their hands from that period forward. Barkley Rosser On Mon, 07 Dec 1998 17:54:52 -0500 Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From 12/7/98 article in the NY Times: > > Mr. Sokal has been attacked as a "left conservative" because he is trying > to stake out a territory free from the political claims of culture. That > would be the territory of reasoned argument, objective fact and > Enlightenment insight, where even debates like these might take place. > > *** > > Entry on race in Diderot's Encyclopédie > > NÈGRE > > Man who inhabits different parts of the earth, from the Tropic of Cancer to > the Tropic of Capricorn. Africa has no other inhabitants but the blacks. > Not only the color, but also the facial traits distinguish them from other > men: large and flat noses, thick lips, and wool instead of hair. They > appear to constitute a new species of mankind. > > If one moves further away from the Equator toward the Antarctic, the black > skin becomes lighter, but the ugliness remains: one finds there this same > wicked people that inhabits the African Meridian. If one goes east, the > features soften and become more regular, but the skin color remains black > as inside Africa. After these [eastern peoples], one encounters a greatly > tanned people, distinguishable from others by their narrow and obliquely > positioned long eyes. If we pass through this vast part of the world which > appears to be separate from Europe, from Africa and Asia, one finds--if > several travelers are to be believed--a different human variety. There is > absolutely no white person: the land is peopled by red nations tanned in a > thousand ways... > > Many physicians have researched the causes of the blackness of the negro. > The major opinions that the physicians hold on this matter can be reduced > to two: one attributes the cause to bile, the other to some fluid contained > in the veins of the mucous membrane. Malpighi, Ruysch, Littré, Santorini, > Heifter, and Albinus have done intriguing researches on the skin of the > negroes. The first opinion on the blackness of the negro is entirely > supported by proofs in a work entitled Dissertation sur la cause physique > de la couleur des nègres, etc. by M. Barrere (Paris, 1741). The following > is how he deduced his hypothesis: when, after a long maceration of the > black skin in water, the outer skin is removed and attentively examined, > one finds that it is black, very thin, and transparent when held up to > daylight. That is how I saw it in America, and it has been remarked upon as > well by the anatomists of our time, such as M. Winslow... > > It needs to be further observed, however, that if the outer skin of the > negro is transparent, the color becomes pronounced in the under-skin, which > is reddish-brown, bordering on the dark. But since the skin of the black, > like that of the white, is made up of veins, it must necessarily contain > some juice. The results of the examination of this juice are at present in > question. However, one can say with some basis that the juice is analogous > to the bile, an opinion supported by observation. (1) On the cadavers of > the Negroes whom I had the opportunity to dissect in Cayenne, the bile is > always as dark as ink; and (2) it is always more or less black in > proportion to the skin color of the negro; (3) the blood is blackish-red, > again according to the grade of blackness of the negro's skin; (4) it is > certain that the bile re-enters the chyle in the blood, and flows with it > through all parts of the body... > > The vessels of the mucous body, following the observations of Malpighi: the > skin and the cuticle of the negroes are white; the blackness comes only > from the mucous or the reticular membrane which is between the epidermis > and the skin. Ruysch's injections have partly confirmed this discovery, and > brought them to light. The outer skin of the negro i
[PEN-L:1380] Re: Re: query -- WSJ article
>Jim Devine wrote: > >>does anyone on pen-l pay for access to the Wall Street JOURNAL? If so, it >>would useful if you were to post the recent article about the rising >>popularity of the Economics major to pen-l. It's interesting ideology. > >I do, but that would excite Don Roper's copyright reflex, no? > >Doug Surely posting *one* article out of thousands falls within fair use, no? Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:1379] Re: Re: The Honor of the Anglo-Saxons
Re: [PEN-L:1368] Re: The Honor of the Anglo-Saxons >Anglo-Saxons were racially related to the "healthy" Germanic tribes and >beat back the decadent Normans. Sir Walter Scott was a treasure-chest of >this sort of nonsense, as Horsman points out, "Ivanhoe" in particular. >Thomas Jefferson believed in this garbage and wrote reams about how the new >republic fulfilled the promise of Anglo-Saxon civilization, which in turn >was the product of Germanic tribes. The "democracy" of the infant American >republic was supposed to be an expression of this heroic race's destiny... Hige sceal ye heardra,  heorte ye cenre, Mod sceal ye mare,  ye ure mægen lytlaeth! Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:1378] Baloney!: US DEFINES SELF-DETERMINATION FOR INDIGENOUS P
--- Forwarded Message Follows --- From: "Boyle, Francis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To:[EMAIL PROTECTED], "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Baloney!: US DEFINES SELF-DETERMINATION FOR INDIGENOUS --_=_NextPart_001_01BE21F8.853D6130 It is not for the USG to define self-determination for Indigenous Peoples or anyone else for that matter. Public International Law has already done this. Francis A. Boyle Professor of International Law Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, Ill. 61820 Phone: 217-333-7954 Fax: 217-244-1478 [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email may contain confidential and privileged material for the sole use of the intended recipient. Any review or distribution by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient please delete all copies. > -- > Reply To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Monday, December 07, 1998 9:37 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: US DEFINES SELF-DETERMINATION FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AS: > SUB-NATIONALS > > AGAIN THE USDEL DID NOT PREPARE A HARDCOPY STATEMENT, WE WILL BE > TRANSCRIBING A TAPE ASAP TO DELIVER TO YOU > Dedication to Solidarity >< Calling for World Action > >>> NetWarriors <<< >http://hookele.com/netwarriors >Peace without Truth is Genocide > Una Paz sin la Verdad es Genocidio > La paix sans la verite est Genocide > >><<< > Subscribe to WarriorNET > A discussion listserve dedicated to > Indigenous Solidarity > >SUBSCRIBE? Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED], >no subject in the header and in the body write: >subscribe warriornet your email addresss James Craven Dept. of Economics,Clark College 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663 [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Tel: (360) 992-2283 Fax: 992-2863 -- "The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards Indians; their land and property shall never be taken from them without their consent." (Northwest Ordinance, 1787, Ratified by Congress 1789) "To speak of atrocious crimes in mild language is treason to virtue." (Edmund Burke) *My Employer has no association with My Private and Protected Opinion*
[PEN-L:1377] AGENDA CHANGES!
--- Forwarded Message Follows --- From: "Boyle, Francis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To:[EMAIL PROTECTED], "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: AGENDA CHANGES! Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 05:16:37 -0600 Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear Indigenous Friends: It is not for the governments to "define" Indigenous Peoples. You must define Yourselves. Francis A. Boyle Professor of International Law Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 217-333-7954(voice) 217-244-1478(fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -- > Reply To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Saturday, January 02, 1904 5:13 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: AGENDA CHANGES! > > The agenda has been changed and today the governments move to define: > > Indigenous Peoples > > > > > > Dedication to Solidarity >< Calling for World Action > >>> NetWarriors <<< >http://hookele.com/netwarriors >Peace without Truth is Genocide > Una Paz sin la Verdad es Genocidio > La paix sans la verite est Genocide > >><<< > Subscribe to WarriorNET > A discussion listserve dedicated to > Indigenous Solidarity > >SUBSCRIBE? Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED], >no subject in the header and in the body write: >subscribe warriornet your email addresss James Craven Dept. of Economics,Clark College 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663 [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Tel: (360) 992-2283 Fax: 992-2863 -- "The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards Indians; their land and property shall never be taken from them without their consent." (Northwest Ordinance, 1787, Ratified by Congress 1789) "To speak of atrocious crimes in mild language is treason to virtue." (Edmund Burke) *My Employer has no association with My Private and Protected Opinion*
[PEN-L:1375] Response: The New Boss
Response: 1. Harley Frank was not smuggling cigarettes or running a Casino or whatever; he is a farmer. But activities such as cigarette smuggling and casinos, very injurious to Indigenous Cultures--are often seen as the last resort as a result of the continual abridgments and arrogance of the non-Indigenous systems and practices; 2. Extraterritoriality is exactly what is going on when the Canadian Government arrogates laws and divisions and practices on Indigenous Nations (A Nation does not make treaties with its own citizens nor with even groups of its own citizens only with sovereign--alien--Nations. Indigenous Peoples in the US and Canada were never asked if they wanted to be "citizens"--they were summarily declared as such in the US and in Canada, they were offered bribes and inducements to de-status or de-Indianize; 3. We are talking about the survival of a Whole People--historically recognized as a Whole People--almost extinct; to trivialize this with ugly racist references/pseudo analogies to preserving cannabilism in New Zealand is extremely offensive and demeans you. To suggest that Indian Rights necessary for their survival is to set precedent that may be used by non-Indians, and use that as a pretext to deny National Self-determination, is to trivialize and de-Indianize Indians and Indian Nations and their right to survival; 4. It is through assimilation and integration--not its opposite--that Indians have sufffered the greatest threats to survival and National existence. Those who would exterminate Indians, rarely openly declared that as their "intention"; they often define extermination in physical existence terms only, they often will assert that they are all for Indians surviving as along as they integrate and no longer remain Indians--only stated intentions are not the issue, rather, clearly foreseeable and inexorable effects of given policies and practices are the issue; 5. If I come to your house, put a gun to your head, drive you out and destroy all records and names that could reveal your original occupancy, can I sell your house and can the buyer retain it once the true story of acquisition has been told--under bourgeois law? Can I return a portion of your house under the condition that you occupy a portion of it solely and only under my conditions and limits--under bourgeois law? Can I divide your family into different sections of the house and forbid to to freely associate with or assist another part of your family in another part of the house? 6. Blackfoot and other Nations existed on both sides of what is now the US-Canadian border before there was a US or Canada. Obviously the Jay Treaty, guaranteeing free mobility across the line is meaningless if accepted and recognized by the US alone. Since the Canadian Government is more often and out-and-out whore of US imperialism, why the sudden selectivity and surge of phony "nationalism"--when it comes to Indians? In any case, can the Government of Poland dictate who is or is not a Canadian, where Canadians may go and to whom Canadians may sell? Indigenous Nations regard control by the Canadian Government to be like control of Canadians by the Polish Government or the government of some other Nation. In fact, so many of the bourgeois nationalists in Canada who are incensed about the penetration and control of US Multinationals in Canada as projections and instruments of US Imperial power ought to understand how Indians feel about the Canadian Government--Maybe its Karma Time for Canada. 7. Whole groups of animals have never had anything to fear from Aboriginal hunting and fishing practices--only from the high-tech and blood-lusts of the non-Aboriginals. If anyone is arguing about the parity of animals with Indians in terms of conern for survival, well I can only say that is just more of the usual. All forms of life feed on other forms of life and Aboriginal hunting and fishing practices have never led to the threat of extinction of any species--rather the opposite as many species survived as a result of the holistic wisdom embodied in Aboriginal hunting/fishing practices. Jim Craven On 8 Dec 98 at 15:21, Ken Hanly wrote: > James Michael Craven wrote: > The Wheat Board is no angel, though I doubt it has any genocidal intension in > prosecuting Frank, even though requiring an export permit may alter traditional >modes of > activity somewhat. My understanding is that one can get an export permit from the >Board. > I am not sure how that works but I imagine Frank would not get directly paid then >but it > would go through the board and he would be reimbursed in the same way as other >sellers > through several payments -as noted in the article I sent. > One possibility is to have an exception for this type of trading. The wheat board > is probably concerned that if it allows this type of trading it will provide a >loophole > that will be exploited by larg
[PEN-L:1358] Re: Enlightenment insight
Duchesne wrote: > >For the sake of consistency you might have added Marx to the list. No, you are quite wrong. No matter how many mistakes that Marx and Engels made under the impact of bourgeois ideology, the only escape from the ills facing humanity is socialism. Marx and Engels were primarily about promoting a vision of socialism based on scientific and material foundations, as opposed to their utopian predecessors. Since I am not sure that you are seriously interested in discussing these issues, or simply launching one of your bimonthly hissy fits, I will let you have the next word so as to clarify your intentions. Duchesne: Whenever I elaborate a point pen-l remains silent. The point is that only Marx gets the benefit of your rationalizations. Just give me any of those "racist" passsages from Kant, Hegel, or Herder and I will do the same. All of them said unfortunate things. But to judge the enlightenment on that criteria alone would be irrational in the extreme. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:1362] RE: Re: Social Security
> > What I would be on the look out for in initiatives to "preserve" and > "affirm" the program would be calls -- in the name of "fairness" and "true > insurance principles" -- for more closely tying benefit entitlements to > lifetime contributions. What this means in practice is a ratcheting up of It is not ususually put in such terms. I think that's because the goal is to obscure the insurance dimension. What we have heard is subjecting benefits to an "affluence test" to reduce costs. This would make the program more progressive, but it could also jeopardize political support for the program and increase pressure for opt-out options. Where you stand on this depends on the extent to which one associates current political strength of the program with its redistributive effect. If you think more redistribution means more support, you would favor uncapping the payroll tax and means-testing benefits in some combination. If you think it means less, you would go in the other direction. My bias is to let the sleeping dog of redistribution lie in the present situation, which means foregoing both the affluence test or making the payroll tax less regressive. > . . . > This is what the Liberals in Canada did to Unemployment Insurance (now, > Orwellian "Employment Insurance"). The really nifty thing about > this kind of swindle is that it generates a huge operating surplus that can be used in the interim to "pay down the debt" or "reduce taxes" (that is, to > reduce the progressivity of taxes). Changes in distributive effect are independent of the program's operating surplus/deficit. As things stand, the actuarial imbalance reflects a shortage of payroll tax revenues. *If* the trust fund bonds are redeemed with general revenue, there is no long-run overuse of the payroll tax. I think there is little likelihood of any other outcome, as long as the institution of the trust fund is maintained and respected. > If, on January 21, 1981, Ronald Reagan had proclaimed a plan to > immediately abolish progressive income taxation and replace it with a poll tax, he wouldn't have gotten anywhere. Go slowly and call the poll tax "true > insurance principals" and you can boil the poor working frogs to > a soupy pulp. Ribbit. Max
[PEN-L:1386] Re: Re: Enlightenment insight
I wrote: >> But, Louis, isn't it very much in the Enlightenment tradition that stuff like Diderot's racist rant should never be exempt from rational criticism (i.e., reasoned argument, reference to objective fact, etc.)<< Colin writes: >You're missing the point if you call it a rant. The quoted material has all the trappings of reason and science, down to the hypotheses and tests.< I think it was Louis who used the word "rant" and I just followed. More importantly, I am quite familiar with the long tradition of using "trappings fo reason and science, down to the hypotheses and tests" to cloak total nonsense, including racism. THE BELL CURVE by Murray & Herrnstein is a classic example of this phenomenon. The thing is that if the Enlightenment folks are consistent -- and they often are not, being better in theory than in practice -- they can see through that rhetoric. We should be able to see through the rhetoric, too, noting that the "trappings" of science do not make something scientific. >> The Enlightenment was clearly culture-bound (just like the pre-Enlightenment and the anti-Enlightenment). It was Eurocentric, imperialist, etc., etc. What makes the Enlightenment different is that it claims that application of the scientific method (logic, reference to fact, etc.) will allow _progress_ beyond culture-bound nonsense.<< >"Claims" is the right word. The key move is precisely the false claim that Enlightenment thought contains or potentially contains all truth about everything. But this claim is important because it lets people screen out any other intellectual tradition.< That's why I used that word. You'll notice that the rest of my missive did not present an uncritical vision of the Enlightenment. (I don't know if it's part of the Enlightenment to think that one's though contains or potentially contains all truth about everything. I think rather that the Enlightenment thinkers see their logical-empirical methods as _superior_ to other methods, including faith-based reasoning.) BTW, what other intellectual traditions are you referring to? those that reject logic and empirical research? Are you advocating a non- or anti-Enlightenment tradition? Your criticism of what I wrote seems very much in the Enlightenment tradition, since you're criticizing my logic and empirical references. >> And we see that Diderot-type nonsense has indeed faded away, so that today it would "embarrass a Ku Klux Klansman" (or woman).<< >No, it has not faded away. All that has happened is that one particular scientific vocabulary has been exchanged for another. "Culture" has become the substitute for biology, and highly-educated people will solemnly discourse, with all of Diderot's apparent judicious use of evidence and theory and the weighing of argument, about how culture makes people ontologically different and divides them into rational and non-rational.< Perhaps I took what Louis said about Diderot-type rhetoric as embarrassing KKK members too seriously. To be more accurate, _a lot_ of the D-type nonsense has faded away. I am quite aware of the fact that there are a lot of people who think of "others" as having "inferior culture." However, there has been _some_ progress, since these folks make gigantic efforts to avoid being seen as racist. Even Herrnstein and Murray make these efforts. It's clearly not enough progress, but it's some. I've also noticed that people like H & M or the culture-snobs (to use a moderate term for them) almost always cook their results to "prove" their preceonceived conclusions. They are thus very subject to the Englightenment tradition's modes of critiqe. H & M, for example, were shredded in both SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN and the JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE. Those who live by Enlightenment rhetoric can die by the Enlightenment's swords. >> Of course, against the positivist view (one version of the Enlightenment tradition) and along the lines of Marx, the dropping of racist language from the mainstream resulted mostly because people fought against racism. It wasn't the application of the scientific method that did it. However, I would bet that scientifically-minded thinkers were less likely to accept racist stereotypes than were those who rejected scientific thinking in favor of faith-based thinking.<< >I wonder. This accepts the caricature of faith-based thinking as utterly rigid and without imagination. It's a big subject, but surely you could argue that religious thought has also been a powerful opponent of efforts to divide people into ontologically separate categories.< I respect those religious folks -- especially the Quakers -- who opposed racism and other efforts to divide people into ontologially separate categories. But as far as I know it wasn't part of any religious tradition to oppose racism and the like until the modern era. (It's true that in many cases the Roman Catholics eschewed racial categories and tried to convert the world to their faith. But they saw no
[PEN-L:1360] Re: Re: Enlightenment insight
>Duchesne: >Whenever I elaborate a point pen-l remains silent. This time will be no exception. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:1359] BLS Daily Report
This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. --_=_NextPart_000_01BE22D9.C4718520 BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1998: Defying many analysts' expectations, the nation's job market was vibrant in November, as the unemployment rate edged down to 4.4 percent and firms added 267,000 new jobs, seasonally adjusted, BLS reports. The growth in new jobs reverses 2 months of decelerating gains. The services, construction, and retail sectors saw large jumps in payroll gains, that decidedly offset losses in the manufacturing industry. But President Clinton cautions against complacency, indicating that layoffs at the Boeing Co. caused by the decline of aircraft orders from Asia demonstrates the effect of international instability on the U.S. economy (Daily Labor Report, page AA-1, D-1). Text of BLS Commissioner Abraham's statement on the November employment report on page E-1, Daily Labor Report. __The nation's unemployment rate fell to 4.4 percent last month, as stronger-than-expected hiring by builders, retailers, restaurants and other service providers more than offset layoffs by manufacturers (The Washington Post, December 5, page 1). __In the midst of a fresh wave of corporate downsizing announcements, the Government has reported that more Americans are working than ever and that the overall economy continued to create jobs at a robust clip. While corporate giants from Boeing to Johnson & Johnson are planning to lay off tens of thousands of employees because of various business difficulties, American employers expanded their payrolls by an estimated 267,000 workers in November. "However many jobs were lost in November, even more were created," said Thomas Nardone, who is in charge of the employment numbers at BLS (The New York Times, December 5, page 1). __Forecasters insisted a few months ago that economic growth was slowing, but statistics tell a different story. Not counting agriculture, employers added a surprisingly large 267,000 people to their payrolls last month, suggesting growth is still the trend despite declines in manufacturing employment, headline-making layoff announcements, and financial turmoil overseas (The Wall Street Journal, page A2). Plant closings, layoffs, and forced early retirements are rising sharply again as evidenced by the cutbacks announced recently at Bankers Trust, Boeing, and Johnson & Johnson. But the outcries and conflict that characterized the waves of downsizing in the 1980's and early 1990's are largely gone. Rather than protest, unions are more likely to help laid-off members make the transition to other jobs. And corporate executives no longer call attention to downsizing as healthy for profits and stock prices. Many of the 16 million people under 65 who have to buy their own health insurance are facing increases of 40 percent or more this fall, creating a dynamic that appears likely to send prices of health insurance even higher. Self-employed, unemployed, working for small employers who do not offer health insurance, or retired early, often because of poor health, these people are a step away from joining the nation's 43.3 million uninsured, too young for Medicare, the Federal insurance for the elderly, not poor enough for Medicaid. Premiums are also rising for many of the 160 million Americans covered by employers' group policies, with increases in the next year projected at 8 percent to 20 percent (The New York Times, December 5, page A7). A Council of Economic Advisors report credits the expanded Earned Income Tax Credit and the increase in the minimum wage with bringing millions of workers out of poverty. The Administration says the tax break has increased the number of single women with children in the workforce, from 73.7 percent in 1992, to 84.2 percent in 1997 (Daily Labor Report, page A-6). New orders for manufactured goods decreased by 1.6 percent in October to a seasonally adjusted $335.1 billion, the Census Bureau announces (Daily Labor Report, page D-17). "It's a great time to be looking for a job," says John Challenger, president of the Chicago outplacement firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. "So many people who you are competing against areÂ…looking to take the time off. No one likes to look for a job when you have lights to put up and presents to buy." He also said this is a good time of the year because many job seekers believe no one is hiring until the beginning of the year. But layoffs are up, with an estimated 522,967 job cuts through October, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas (The Washington Post, December 6, page H4). --_=_NextPart_000_01BE22D9.C4718520 b3NvZnQgTWFpbC5Ob3RlADEIAQWAAwAOzgcMAAgADQAiAAkAAgAjAQEggAMADgAAAM4HDAAI AA0AJQALAAIAKAEBCYABACEAAABCRTgzNTFDQTg1OEVEMjExODg4RTAwQzA0RjhDNzgzMQAmBwEE gAEAEQAAAEJMUyBEYWlseSBSZXBvcnQAkAUBDYAEAAICAAIAAQOQBgDcDQAAHEAAOQCw 7VJY2SK+AR4AcAABAAA
[PEN-L:1355] Re: Enlightenment insight
For the sake of consistency you might have added Marx to the list. > Wojtek, you really should spend some time studying this period. I could > have cited a passage from Kant, Hegel, Herder, or any of a number of others > who make the point that the Anglo-Saxon race is superior to blacks, Indians > and Asians. I just finished Ronald Horsman's "Race and Manifest Destiny," > which proceeds along the same lines. These Enlightenment thinkers were all > a bunch of racist fucks, to get down to brass tacks. They thought that > Europe had the right to "civilize" a bunch of dirty, smelly, ignorant > savages. Jefferson's writings are filled with this trash. > > I think the Enlightment tradition that so many Marxists cling to is a bunch > of hogwash. I reject the notion of a revolutionary bourgeoisie as well. > There was no bourgeois revolution in France, nor in the US. One of the > purposes of the research I have been conducting on the American Indian for > the past year or so is to debunk these myths. I am convinced that George > Comninel's book on the French Revolution, which applies the "revisionist" > critique from a Marxist perspective applies to the US as well. I just > picked up Edward Countrymen's book on 1776, which apparently questions the > standard line that Jefferson and company were interested in revolution, no > matter how they use this word rhetorically. > > There is nothing "enlightened" about Anglo-American imperialism and its > seeds were planted in the late 18th century. If Marxism continues to cling > to this myth--and it is most pronounced in Stalinist circles (Hobsbawm, > Aptheker, Lefevbre)--, it will continue to tail the ruling class. The only > enlightenment that means anything is socialism. The only way to bring it > about is through proletarian revolution. > > Louis Proyect > > (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html) > >
[PEN-L:1357] Re: Enlightenment insight
Duchesne wrote: > >For the sake of consistency you might have added Marx to the list. No, you are quite wrong. No matter how many mistakes that Marx and Engels made under the impact of bourgeois ideology, the only escape from the ills facing humanity is socialism. Marx and Engels were primarily about promoting a vision of socialism based on scientific and material foundations, as opposed to their utopian predecessors. Since I am not sure that you are seriously interested in discussing these issues, or simply launching one of your bimonthly hissy fits, I will let you have the next word so as to clarify your intentions. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:1356] Re: Re: Social Security
At 08:09 AM 12/8/98 -0800, you wrote: With Ellen Frank's permission all Pen-l'ers should >copy her short explanation and distribute it through every imaginable means. > > Permission Granted -- Ellen Frank
[PEN-L:1366] The Honor of the Anglo-Saxons
>>Somehow, I miss that that part (save for a passing remark on the ugliness >>and wickedness of certain groups). All I could find is an entire passage >>devoted to a discussion whether the blackness of the skin is caused by bile >>(secretion of the liver) or some other liquid found in the person's veins. >> >>regards, >>Wojtek > >Wojtek, you really should spend some time studying this period. I could >have cited a passage from Kant, Hegel, Herder, or any of a number of others >who make the point that the Anglo-Saxon race is superior... As a card-carrying Anglo-Saxon (with a little Gallo-Romano-Frank mixed in, and some Irish, and some Norse, some Brito-Celt, and then there was the "servant girl" from Barbados whom the eighteenth-century sea captain married and brought back to Maine) let me point out that Prussians like Kant, Hegel, and Herder were *not* Anglo-Saxon: The Angles and Saxons who didn't wind up in England were wiped out by Charles le Magne in his genocidal conquest of Old Saxony. The Prussians were not even Allemanni, Frank, Lombard, or Goth. They were, in the opinion of Konrad Adenauer (who is supposed to have said that a Prussian is a Pole who has forgotten who his grandfather was) at least, most likely to be Slavs... Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:1365] Re: Enlightenment insight
Thanks to Louis for posting this amazing stuff. A few notes on Jim's reply: > But, Louis, isn't it very much in the Enlightenment tradition that stuff > like Diderot's racist rant should never be exempt from rational criticism > (i.e., reasoned argument, reference to objective fact, etc.) You're missing the point if you call it a rant. The quoted material has all the trappings of reason and science, down to the hypotheses and tests. > The Enlightenment was clearly culture-bound (just like the > pre-Enlightenment and the anti-Enlightenment). It was Eurocentric, > imperialist, etc., etc. What makes the Enlightenment different is that it > claims that application of the scientific method (logic, reference to fact, > etc.) will allow _progress_ beyond culture-bound nonsense. "Claims" is the right word. The key move is precisely the false claim that Enlightenment thought contains or potentially contains all truth about everything. But this claim is important because it lets people screen out any other intellectual tradition. > And we see that > Diderot-type nonsense has indeed faded away, so that today it would > "embarrass a Ku Klux Klansman" (or woman). No, it has not faded away. All that has happened is that one particular scientific vocabulary has been exchanged for another. "Culture" has become the substitute for biology, and highly-educated people will solemnly discourse, with all of Diderot's apparent judicious use of evidence and theory and the weighing of argument, about how culture makes people ontologically different and divides them into rational and non-rational. > Of course, against the positivist view (one version of the Enlightenment > tradition) and along the lines of Marx, the dropping of racist language > from the mainstream resulted mostly because people fought against racism. > It wasn't the application of the scientific method that did it. However, I > would bet that scientifically-minded thinkers were less likely to accept > racist stereotypes than were those who rejected scientific thinking in > favor of faith-based thinking. I wonder. This accepts the caricature of faith-based thinking as utterly rigid and without imagination. It's a big subject, but surely you could argue that religious thought has also been a powerful opponent of efforts to divide people into ontologically separate categories. Your argument also has to deal with the fact that the modern idea of "race" is a creation of Enlightenment thought. > Much of the Enlightenment tradition has been sucked up into the ideology of > capitalism and the dominant power structure (including racism and sexism). > But we should remember that Karl Marx was in the broad Enlightenment > tradition, learning from the Enlightenment at the same time he criticized > it. I would say that he _extended_ that tradition, by arguing that > "objective, scientific ideas" can be biased and rendered ideological by the > societal structure in which they are constructed, when that structure is > taken for granted. He also suggested that the realization of Enlightenment > ideals could only be achieved via struggle by the working class and other > oppressed groups. To critique the Enlightenment is not to minimize the achievements of Enlightenment thinkers least of all Marx. It is to urge that they be read critically. > Marx himself suffered from various ethnic biases, including against Jews, > his own ethnic group. This doesn't mean that we should reject his views, > ripping them out by the roots and tossing them in the trash can of history. > I've always argued that his system of thought is made more coherent and > thus stronger if one drops such ethnic stereotypes. I think that can also > be said about the Enlightenment tradition. This dropping is strictly > speaking very much within the Enlightenment tradition. The critique needs to go farther than just "dropping" the stereotype. It needs to ask why the stereotype is there. Best, Colin
Re: [PEN-L:1335] Enlightenment insight
For me, the scandal in this article was its implicit assumption that giving credence to "hard" scientific research means favoring the right over the left. According to the article Louis quotes, to be on the right means recognizing the harsh limitations that "nature" places on feasible social change, whereas the left is committed to an airy idealism based on the faith that "nature" can be overcome. From this it is deduced that Sokal is indeed something of a conservative. I despise this argument both because it is wrong and because it is right. It is wrong because the strongest elements of the left have always sought to ground their projects in careful observation and analysis of the real world. They contested the conservative reading of "nature" by challenging it on the grounds of reason and evidence. Unfortunately, it is also partly right because large parts of the academic left have now given up the intellectual struggle within science (broadly understood to include aspects of economics), and have retreated to the last-ditch defensive position that *no* narrative, however grounded in reason and evidence, has greater merit than any other. In other words, we will forfeit the game of rational analysis and then say, who cares about that dumb game anyway? The damage caused by this nihilistic perspective is both internal and external. Externally, it offers justifications for articles like the one in the NYT that identify the left with irrationalism. Internally, it draws those who adhere to it away from contestation with the real world, intellectually and politically. Peter Dorman Louis Proyect wrote: > > >From 12/7/98 article in the NY Times: > > Mr. Sokal has been attacked as a "left conservative" because he is trying > to stake out a territory free from the political claims of culture. That > would be the territory of reasoned argument, objective fact and > Enlightenment insight, where even debates like these might take place. > snip
[PEN-L:1363] Re: Social Security
Max Sawicky wrote, >Changes in distributive effect are independent of >the program's operating surplus/deficit. Yes, if you're only looking at the program and not considering the use of the revenues to finance general govt. operations. >fund bonds are redeemed with general revenue, there >is no long-run overuse of the payroll tax. Again, agreed. But in the long-run we're all dead, too. Maybe when it comes time to redeem the bonds, the even more reactionary govt. of 2021 will tighten eligibility requirements -- how 'bout a physical fitness means test: if the old applicants pass it they don't need the money, if they fail it would be a waste to give it to them. The argument for running an Employment Insurance surplus was at first to build up a reserve against future increases in unemployment. But now the actuary says there's no need for more reserves, the Liberal government doesn't want to give up it's revenue cow and argues that it is appropriate to continue to run a surplus to fund other priorities -- like increased tax subsidies for commercial sports franchises. With an official unemployment rate of 8% and a $20 billion reserve in the EI account, the government wants to keep running $10 billion annual surpluses while over 60% of the officially unemployed are disentitled from EI benefits. Nice racket. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1353] Re: Re: Re: Enlightenment insight
>Somehow, I miss that that part (save for a passing remark on the ugliness >and wickedness of ceratin groups). All I could find is an entire passage >devoted to a discussion whether the blackness of the skin is caused by bile >(secretion of the liver) or some other liquid found in the person's veins. > >regards, >Wojtek Wojtek, you really should spend some time studying this period. I could have cited a passage from Kant, Hegel, Herder, or any of a number of others who make the point that the Anglo-Saxon race is superior to blacks, Indians and Asians. I just finished Ronald Horsman's "Race and Manifest Destiny," which proceeds along the same lines. These Enlightenment thinkers were all a bunch of racist fucks, to get down to brass tacks. They thought that Europe had the right to "civilize" a bunch of dirty, smelly, ignorant savages. Jefferson's writings are filled with this trash. I think the Enlightment tradition that so many Marxists cling to is a bunch of hogwash. I reject the notion of a revolutionary bourgeoisie as well. There was no bourgeois revolution in France, nor in the US. One of the purposes of the research I have been conducting on the American Indian for the past year or so is to debunk these myths. I am convinced that George Comninel's book on the French Revolution, which applies the "revisionist" critique from a Marxist perspective applies to the US as well. I just picked up Edward Countrymen's book on 1776, which apparently questions the standard line that Jefferson and company were interested in revolution, no matter how they use this word rhetorically. There is nothing "enlightened" about Anglo-American imperialism and its seeds were planted in the late 18th century. If Marxism continues to cling to this myth--and it is most pronounced in Stalinist circles (Hobsbawm, Aptheker, Lefevbre)--, it will continue to tail the ruling class. The only enlightenment that means anything is socialism. The only way to bring it about is through proletarian revolution. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:1370] query -- WSJ article
does anyone on pen-l pay for access to the Wall Street JOURNAL? If so, it would useful if you were to post the recent article about the rising popularity of the Economics major to pen-l. It's interesting ideology. thanks ahead of time. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
[PEN-L:1350] Re: Re: Enlightenment insight
At 10:02 AM 12/8/98 -0500, Lou wrote: > >Are you out of your mind? The passage referred to the wickedness of the negro. Somehow, I miss that that part (save for a passing remark on the ugliness and wickedness of ceratin groups). All I could find is an entire passage devoted to a discussion whether the blackness of the skin is caused by bile (secretion of the liver) or some other liquid found in the person's veins. regards, Wojtek
[PEN-L:1349] RE: re Social Security
> >If Clinton was so vital to the Republican > >cause, they wouldn't be about to impeach him. > > I thought they wanted to "put that behind them" as quickly as possible. That was last week. mbs
[PEN-L:1361] Re: The New Boss
Response (Jim Craven) Let me provide another view for consideration--the case of Harley Frank, a Kainai Blackfoot. Among the Pikuni (Blackfoot) People there are three main "Tribes": Siksika (Blackfoot), Kainai (Blood) and Peigan (Pikuni). The Siksika and Kainai Reserves are in Alberta and the Peigan Reservation is at Browning, Montana just across the U.S. Canadian Border. The Reserves/Reservations are almost geographically continguous and the Pikuni People have lived in this region before there was a United States of America or Canada certainly before any existing border--a whole People and Nation is divided by this border. Harly Frank, a Kainai Blackfoot farmer and former Tribal chairman brought his wheat across the border to sell and distribute ONLY to his People of another Tribe of the Nation--Peigan Blackfoot. For this he was charged with violation of the wheat export control act. Canada refuses to recognize the Jay Treaty of 1794 guaranteeing Indians the absolute right to freely migrate unmolested across the US and Canadian borders--the US supposedly recognizes the Treaty. Harly Frank was put on trial in Alberta, harassed, almost bankrupted dealing with the Canadian Federal government and the case remains in abeyance as a result of massive protests and, as a result of new twists and turns in the case. There is overwhelming evidence that when it came to abducting Indian children for adoption and forced placement in Boarding/Residential Schools or chasing fugitives, the Canadian-US Border was no obstacle. But when it comes to unification and free and natural association and trading between Tribes of a whole and Sovereign Nation, then the Canadian-US border and the wheat export control act are strictly enforced--even after NAFTA. Further, this division and interference with imperative associations between Peoples of different Tribes of a whole Nation is a deliberate and inevitable instrument of genocide; it facilitates the more rapid and more extensive destruction/extermination/extinction of a whole People as a People by threatening and interferring with traditional bonds that are imperative to maintain to maintain the survival of a People. The Canadian Wheat Board and the Canadian Government clearly moved against Harly Frank out of fear of precedent that could be used by non-Indian farmers thus also attempting to de-Indianize Harley Frank and breat Status Rights of Indians to break any and all Status recognition or protections or Tribal/Nation--"Group"--Rights. So there is another side to all of this and a very ugly and genocidal side to the Wheat Board and the Canadian Government. We don't need the Canadian Government or the US Government to selectively, arbitrarily and capriciously "define" our Status and Status Rights or indeed degree of Sovereignty--International Law and History have already done that. Jim Craven On 8 Dec 98 at 8:33, Ken Hanly wrote: This is from the Western Producer a farm newspaper published in Regina Sask. It is written by Robert Rampton from their Winnipeg (Manitoba) bureau. NOTE:The Wheat Board is the single desk seller of all of some grains such as wheat. The Board is a favorite target of many US prairie farmers who accuse it of dumping. They have had the board audited under the terms of NAFTA many times, always with negative results. This hasn't convinced them otherwise. Yesterday entry points were blocked by farmers in North Dakota and Montana. The real problem is world prices for wheat and some other grains. Market prices have fallen below the costs of production. This is true both for US and Canadian farmers. Ask any economist for the U of Saskatchewan whether the board gets a premium price for the farmer's grain and they will claim it does. You will get a different answer from some U of California economists. There is conflict in Canada about the role of the board. Some farmers have gone to jail for exporting without proper permits. Of course these farmers blather on about freedom to sell where they wish all to the great glee of industry giants such as Cargill. Anyway don't get the idea that I don't support the board or that it is a bad thing even though this post may not show it in an entirely positive light. Australia, I believe, has a simiilar system for marketing grain, or some types of grain. Cheers, Ken Hanly "The pleas of a Manitoba farm group for higher initial payments for hard red spring wheat may not compute. Keystone Agricultural Producers wants the Canadian Wheat Board to narrow the 38 to 58 dollars per tonne spread between initial prices and the October pool return outlook. "Its the farmer's own money, its increased cash flow," explained Don Dewar, president of KAP. He said the wheat board should recommend an increased payment to the federal government so farmers get some extra money by Christmas, while they wait for a larger aid package
[PEN-L:1346] RE: Re re Social Security
> . . . >Today's Washington Post has an article satatng that the clinton > administration has drawn up five Social Security reform plans all of which > call for some > form of sotck market investment. The man who led the Repubican charge to > abolish welfare is now leadiing their charge to dismantle Social > Securtity. This is a little overheated. It can be shown that every privatization plan entails higher taxes and/or lower benefits. So the "charge," such as it is, remains quite cautious. That's why the GOP is whining that Clinton has to go first with a plan. One of the five plans is the Ball plan, which is limited to the trust fund owning some stock and otherwise preserves the system. I am not enamoured of this option, but it affirms the basic validity of the program. It's really a fiscal policy move, not a structural reform of the program. The Clintonoids breadth of consideration of plans is another way of being less committed to anything in particular, which helps to keep the GOP edgy. If Clinton was so vital to the Republican cause, they wouldn't be about to impeach him. Clinton is as bad as anyone says, so the potential damage he can do is well-taken. But there's still a lot of water to go over the dam before we reach a point where the Administration puts its weight behind a specific privatization plan involving individual accounts. MBS
[PEN-L:1345] Re: Enlightenment insight
>Au contraire. The bottom line of all racist claims is a connection between >skin color and moral/intellectual worth of a person. The cited passage is >remarkable free of such assertions. It attempts to explain the observable >variations among humans in purely physiological terms, by referring to the >presence or absence of certain substances in the human skin. Those >explanations may be false from a modern science's point of view, but the do >not make any explicit or implicit claims about moral/intellectual worth >associated with skin color. > >Please note that unlike the explanations cited by Diderot's, the claims >connecting skin color to moral/intellectual worth are non-scientific. That >is, their truth function cannot be decided by empirical evidence. They are >value judgments, ideological expressions if you will. > >Regards, > >Wojtek Are you out of your mind? The passage referred to the wickedness of the negro. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:1344] Re re Social Security
This week's People's Weekly World has an article by Greg Godwin titled "Every retiree a millionaire?" In the article he states "...that in 1993 over 38% of Social Security beneficiaries were not retired workers. ...Of the 42 million social Security beneficiaries that year, nearly four million were disabled workers, five million were widows and widowers, and 3.5 million were children..." Toward the end of the article he cites Los Angles Times reporters Robert Rosenblatt and Jonathan Peterson who reported that "President Clinton will use his state of the Union address in January to kick off a campaign to privatize a portion of SSI revenue..." Today's Washington Post has an article satatng that the clinton administration has drawn up five Social Security reform plans all of which call for some form of sotck market investment. The man who led the Repubican charge to abolish welfare is now leadiing their charge to dismantle Social Securtity. Frank
[PEN-L:1343] Re: Enlightenment insight
At 05:54 PM 12/7/98 -0500, Louis Proyect wrote, having cited Diderot: >Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze. Alongside Diderot's rant are included others by >Kant, Hegel, Hume, Jefferson and others less well known. It is all stuff >guaranteed to embarrass a Ku Klux Klansman. Au contraire. The bottom line of all racist claims is a connection between skin color and moral/intellectual worth of a person. The cited passage is remarkable free of such assertions. It attempts to explain the observable variations among humans in purely physiological terms, by referring to the presence or absence of certain substances in the human skin. Those explanations may be false from a modern science's point of view, but the do not make any explicit or implicit claims about moral/intellectual worth associated with skin color. Please note that unlike the explanations cited by Diderot's, the claims connecting skin color to moral/intellectual worth are non-scientific. That is, their truth function cannot be decided by empirical evidence. They are value judgments, ideological expressions if you will. Regards, Wojtek
[PEN-L:1354] Re: Social Security
Max Sawicky wrote, >So the "charge," such as it is, remains quite >cautious. That's why the GOP is whining that >Clinton has to go first with a plan. > >One of the five plans is the Ball plan, which is >limited to the trust fund owning some stock and >otherwise preserves the system. I am not >enamoured of this option, but it affirms the >basic validity of the program. It's really a >fiscal policy move, not a structural reform >of the program. Wolf in sheep's clothing? Thin edge of the wedge? Death by a thousand cuts? What I would be on the look out for in initiatives to "preserve" and "affirm" the program would be calls -- in the name of "fairness" and "true insurance principles" -- for more closely tying benefit entitlements to lifetime contributions. What this means in practice is a ratcheting up of the regressiveness of the payroll tax funding structure: higher rates at the bottom of the scale to obtain full funding and a lower contributions ceiling to let rich folks ease out of the onerously expensive program earlier. This is what the Liberals in Canada did to Unemployment Insurance (now, Orwellian "Employment Insurance"). The really nifty thing about this kind of swindle is that it generates a huge operating surplus that can be used in the interim to "pay down the debt" or "reduce taxes" (that is, to reduce the progressivity of taxes). If, on January 21, 1981, Ronald Reagan had proclaimed a plan to immediately abolish progressive income taxation and replace it with a poll tax, he wouldn't have gotten anywhere. Go slowly and call the poll tax "true insurance principals" and you can boil the poor working frogs to a soupy pulp. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1352] Re: Clinton and impeachment {was: Social Security}
Max writes: >If Clinton was so vital to the Republican >cause, they wouldn't be about to impeach him. I wouldn't say that Bill "little head" Clinton is vital to the GOPsters. But he does help their program (though not necessarily their individual careers) a lot, by taking over their initiatives as his own, with relatively minor changes (e.g., Welfare Reform). (BTW, I see no reason to put "Reform" in quotes here. There's nothing about the word that suggests that it's always a good thing.) Further, it's important to realize that the GOPsters (like the Demoncrats) are not a unified force. As a political scientist pointed out to me, the Hyde-bound House Judiciary Committee is filled with ideologues. Those representatives who emphasize getting special benefits for their districts strive to get on other committees. Thus, the Judiciary Committee's agenda can differ greatly from that of other Republicans, such as the incoming Speaker, Rep. Livingstone, who clearly would like to kill the whole matter. Efforts to harass Clinton and his administration -- which started in 1992 and culminated in the current impeachment hearings -- have also played an important role in ensuring that Bill and his Merry Men have been pliable, responding warmly to a whole host of GOPster iniatives and appointing corporate type to the Supreme Court. Now it's true that Clinton was already pretty opportunistic and in most ways indistinguishable from George Bush, his GOP predecessor (except that some argue that the latter was more willing to stick to his stated principles). But in the general GOP perspective, Clinton can never be pliable enough. The campaign against Clinton is a lot like Reagan's against Nicaragua: every time the Sandinistas made a concession, the Reaganauts would add new demands and new punishments. By keeping up constant pressure, the GOP can ensure that Bill stays in their pocket as much as possible (given his need to maintain support from his base constituencies, bring in the big campaign contribution bucks, and to keep focus groups happy). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
[PEN-L:1342] The New Boss
This is from the Western Producer a farm newspaper published in Regina Sask. It is written by Robert Rampton from their Winnipeg (Manitoba) bureau. NOTE:The Wheat Board is the single desk seller of all of some grains such as wheat. The Board is a favorite target of many US prairie farmers who accuse it of dumping. They have had the board audited under the terms of NAFTA many times, always with negative results. This hasn't convinced them otherwise. Yesterday entry points were blocked by farmers in North Dakota and Montana. The real problem is world prices for wheat and some other grains. Market prices have fallen below the costs of production. This is true both for US and Canadian farmers. Ask any economist for the U of Saskatchewan whether the board gets a premium price for the farmer's grain and they will claim it does. You will get a different answer from some U of California economists. There is conflict in Canada about the role of the board. Some farmers have gone to jail for exporting without proper permits. Of course these farmers blather on about freedom to sell where they wish all to the great glee of industry giants such as Cargill. Anyway don't get the idea that I don't support the board or that it is a bad thing even though this post may not show it in an entirely positive light. Australia, I believe, has a simiilar system for marketing grain, or some types of grain. Cheers, Ken Hanly "The pleas of a Manitoba farm group for higher initial payments for hard red spring wheat may not compute. Keystone Agricultural Producers wants the Canadian Wheat Board to narrow the 38 to 58 dollars per tonne spread between initial prices and the October pool return outlook. "Its the farmer's own money, its increased cash flow," explained Don Dewar, president of KAP. He said the wheat board should recommend an increased payment to the federal government so farmers get some extra money by Christmas, while they wait for a larger aid package from the federal government. But a wheat board spokesperson said decisions on increases to initial payments are in the hands of a computer model. Deanna Allen said "a pure running of the numbers," determines whether and when the wheat board asks the federal government to approve an increase. Once a month when wheat board officials prepare the pool return outlook, they plug factors into the computer model including the percentage of crop sold, expected future values, world production figures and foreign exchange rates. The computer model determines when an increase in initial payments would not put the pool at unnecessary risk." p 15 November 26, 1998
[PEN-L:1348] re Social Security
Max Sawicky wrote, >If Clinton was so vital to the Republican >cause, they wouldn't be about to impeach him. I thought they wanted to "put that behind them" as quickly as possible. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1347] Re: Social Security
Frank Durgin wrote, >Toward the end of the article he cites Los Angles Times reporters >Robert Rosenblatt and Jonathan Peterson who reported that "President >Clinton will use his state of the Union address in January to kick off a >campaign to privatize a portion of SSI revenue..." This is a battle the left can't afford to doze through, not just because of what's at stake but because Clinton and the Wall Street mob should be so vulnerable on this blatant cash-grab and because it's such a great opportunity for popular education about how economics really works. A modest suggestion, for starters: with Ellen Frank's permission all Pen-l'ers should copy her short explanation and distribute it through every imaginable means. > > Ellen Frank > > >Each year, American workers pay more into the Social Security (SS) system >than retirees take out. The difference, now about $90b per year, is >"saved" in the Social Security Trust Fund. Today the trust fund has around >$800b. By 2021, it will have nearly four trillion dollars. In that year, >taxes that workers pay into SS won't fully cover payouts to retirees. The >Social Security Administration (SSA) plans to cover the shortfall by >gradually spending down the trust fund. Depending on whose estimates you >believe, the $4 trillion will run out 10, 20 or 30 years later (sometime >after 2032). Supposedly to make the money we're saving grow faster and >last longer, conservatives propose investing some of our SS taxes in the >stock market. But this proposal rest on a very flawed understanding of how >SS works. > >For one thing, the $800b put away for the future retirees is already gone, >spent; the $4 trillion to be saved between now and 2021 will be spent as >well, gone as soon as it comes in, in all likelihood. Nor is there >anything wrong in this. Many people, when thinking about the SS trust >fund, imagine some great heap of money, stacked high in a vault somewhere, >piling up, year after year. Then, in 2021, SSA officials open the vault, >dust off the cobwebs and begin doling out the stash. But there is no pile >of money, there never was and there never will be. > >Why not? Where has the money gone? The federal government spent it, used >it to cover deficits in the rest of its operations, and replaced the cash >with IOU's (bonds). When payroll taxes fall short of SS payments in 20 >year or so, officials at the SSA will redeem the IOU's, converting one type >of paper (bonds) into another (cash). Would the situation be any >different if the trust fund were invested on Wall Street? Not at all. >Wall Street would have spent the money, as well, loaning it out to currency >speculators or telecom mergers. All money gets spent. >The only question is how it's spent. > >When future retirees spend their future benefits, they'll be buying goods >and services produced by future workers. How far the benefits go, how well >we live, will depend ultimately on how well future workers can provide for >us. All the trust funds in the world can't change this. If the workers of >2021 and beyond are uneducated and ill-fed, they'll have little to offer >the aged, regardless of the stocks or bonds we put aside. If the >environment is ravaged, the air unbreathable, the climate hostile to >health, the aged will languish, regardless of the money we've saved. We >can not, in fact, save money against the future. Money doesn't feed or >cloth us or heal our wounds. Those tasks inevitably fall to the younger >generation and will require their energy, their labor, their commitment. >In 2021 we will have only two things to fall back on: the real assets we >construct today for future use -- buildings, parks, transportation systems >- and our children. > >What then to do with the billions of dollars flowing into the trust funds >-- more than $100 billion per year, paid by wage-earners and ear-marked for >their future? Spend them! Every last dollar! Not on stocks or bonds or >tax cuts, but on real stuff that we need. Imagine what we could do. $100b >to train doctors! $100b to build schools, housing, parks, to clean the >environment, to feed our children! Our money. Spent on our behalf, for >our future. Imagine that. > > > > > > Ellen Frank Each year, American workers pay more into the Social Security (SS) system than retirees take out. The difference, now about $90b per year, is "saved" in the Social Security Trust Fund. Today the trust fund has around $800b. By 2021, it will have nearly four trillion dollars. In that year, taxes that workers pay into SS won't fully cover payouts to retirees. The Social Security Administration (SSA) plans to cover the shortfall by gradually spending down the trust fund. Depending on whose estimates you believe, the $4 trillion will run out 10, 20 or 30 years later (sometime after 2032). Supposedly to make the money we're saving grow faster and la
