Re: Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes!
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: New Tax Plan May Bring Shift In Burden Poor Could Pay A Bigger Share The Republicans are definitely on to something here. The federal tax system is progressive, even counting Social Security. Highly progressive without Social Security. What is the argument for a progressive tax system? How does one even begin to contrive an argument for progressive taxes without first arguing that the rich get more and the working classes less than they deserve -- i.,e, that our economic system is exploitative. Can you hear the Democrats making this argument in public? I can't. It's hard to talk about redistribution without talking about exploitation. Ellen Frank
RE: Re: Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes!
Taxes should be based on ability to pay, aside from the payroll tax, which is a contribution towards insurance benefits. The alternative is taxes NOT based on the ability to pay. Try defending that one. mbs How does one even begin to contrive an argument for progressive taxes without first arguing that the rich get more and the working classes less than they deserve -- i.,e, that our economic system is exploitative. Can you hear the Democrats making this argument in public? I can't. It's hard to talk about redistribution without talking about exploitation. Ellen Frank
Re: Re: Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes!
On Thursday, December 19, 2002 at 05:56:40 (-0500) Ellen Frank writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: New Tax Plan May Bring Shift In Burden Poor Could Pay A Bigger Share The Republicans are definitely on to something here. The federal tax system is progressive, even counting Social Security. Highly progressive without Social Security. What is the argument for a progressive tax system? How does one even begin to contrive an argument for progressive taxes without first arguing that the rich get more and the working classes less than they deserve -- i.,e, that our economic system is exploitative. Can you hear the Democrats making this argument in public? I can't. It's hard to talk about redistribution without talking about exploitation. I like talking about rocks and necessaries, decencies, and luxuries. Point out that if you had a load of rocks to carry up a mountain, and there were three people, say a small boy, a 115 pound woman, and a 265 pound linebacker, it would be wrong to force the boy to carry as much as the woman, and the woman as much as the linebacker. Each should carry what they can bear: in this case the boy might carry 10 pounds, the woman 50 and the man 150. Nassau Sr.'s categories added to this make you aware that there are gradations in goods and services that people buy. Some are things that people must buy --- necessaries. Decencies are things people should have. Luxuries are things it would be nice to have. We must to ensure that everyone has enough to buy necessaries, hence we give more of a break to the poor. We should ensure everyone has enough to buy decencies. And, if enough is left over, same for luxuries. Fair is fair, after all. Bill
Re: Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes!
Marx' argument is ambiguous, but Ellen' seems to presuppose two thinhgs that are not so: (1) that exploitation is a matter of not getting what you deserve, and (2) that the only argument for progressive taxation is based on desert. As to (2), a more standard economic argument for progressive taxation refers to what economists called declining marginal returns, in English, the fact that the more you have, the less every additional increment means to you. For a lawyer who makes $150K, another dollar means very little; to a janitor who makes $15K, it means a lot. So regardless of whether the lawyer doesn't deserve his loot, it makes sense to tax him at a higher rate than the janitor. As to (1), exploitation is surely a matter of wrongful taking-advantage-of, but that does not necessarily mean that you get what you deserve if you are not wrongly taken advantage if. You might reject the notion of desert altogether, as utilitarians do. Yoy might, like Marx, reject the boader notion of justice or rights altogether. In those case you'd needsome other basis for saying that the advantage-taking was wrong. Marx's basis seems to be that certain arrangement that allow some to take advantage of others unnecessaily restrict the freedom of those taken-advantage-of. Btw, the desert idea plays two ways in the exploitation context. Libertarians and many ordinary conservativces think progressive taxation is exploitative because it takes from the rich what they rich deserve and gives to the poor what they don't deserve. jks --- Max B. Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Taxes should be based on ability to pay, aside from the payroll tax, which is a contribution towards insurance benefits. The alternative is taxes NOT based on the ability to pay. Try defending that one. mbs How does one even begin to contrive an argument for progressive taxes without first arguing that the rich get more and the working classes less than they deserve -- i.,e, that our economic system is exploitative. Can you hear the Democrats making this argument in public? I can't. It's hard to talk about redistribution without talking about exploitation. Ellen Frank __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: Re: Re: Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes!
But shouldn't living standards be determined by what people contribute? And shouldn't people who contribute more get more? Rather than being penalized for their hard work and success? Look, my students are mostly liberal-democrats in their political sympathies and mostly middle to lower-middle class in socio-economic status. And when I ask them to do a debate on progressive taxation they cannot defend it. The anti-side always wins, hands down. The idea that people who are more able to pay should pay is connected to the idea that those more able to pay have more than they should have anyway. And this is not an idea Americans have an easy time articulating or even formulating. What is a luxury but what everybody covets? And why should those who do get some have to give anything up to others? Ellen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Taxes should be based on ability to pay, aside from the payroll tax, which is a contribution towards insurance benefits. The alternative is taxes NOT based on the ability to pay. Try defending that one. mbs I like talking about rocks and necessaries, decencies, and luxuries. Point out that if you had a load of rocks to carry up a mountain, and there were three people, say a small boy, a 115 pound woman, and a 265 pound linebacker, it would be wrong to force the boy to carry as much as the woman, and the woman as much as the linebacker. Each should carry what they can bear: in this case the boy might carry 10 pounds, the woman 50 and the man 150. Nassau Sr.'s categories added to this make you aware that there are gradations in goods and services that people buy. Some are things that people must buy --- necessaries. Decencies are things people should have. Luxuries are things it would be nice to have. We must to ensure that everyone has enough to buy necessaries, hence we give more of a break to the poor. We should ensure everyone has enough to buy decencies. And, if enough is left over, same for luxuries. Fair is fair, after all. Bill
Black capital driving democratic change in S. Africa
African National Congress national executive member Joel Netshitenzhe: If you define them in class terms, those drivers of change from within the black community would have been the working class, the middle strata, the professionals and the emergent or aspirant black capitalist class... So yes there is a class analysis in the approach of the ANC. But what we need to add is that a class analysis does necessarily mean that the ANC stands for a working class struggle for the attainment of socialism. The ANC is a national liberation movement, it's not fighting for socialism. [In other words, a classic case of how national capital can subvert class conflict to further it's own aims against those of global capital.] http://www.dispatch.co.za/2002/12/19/southafrica/DBLACK.HTM
Re: Re: Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes!
On Thursday, December 19, 2002 at 09:32:34 (-0500) Ellen Frank writes: But shouldn't living standards be determined by what people contribute? And shouldn't people who contribute more get more? Rather than being penalized for their hard work and success? So you are saying Ken Lay deserves what he gets and the janitors that clean his office deserve what they get, even if the janitors work hard and don't succeed? How much of Ken Lay's success is due to structural factors that favor the dishonest and greedy, that promote those born with a silver spoon in their mouth? What percentage of the successful actually had to work their way up from the bottom? Are you saying nurses deserve what they get, and doctors, who have the political power to lobby to reduce competition and thus enhance their success by artificial means, also deserve what they get? Does Bill Gates deserve to have more money than a million people (or more) at the bottom combined because he happened to roll the dice and get a lucky break? How much of success is due to factors other than hard work? I think if you look into it, there are many other things --- among them dishonesty, greed, ruthlessness, and privilege --- which contribute greatly to success. If your students can't argue their way out of a paper bag, you need to help them. Leaving simplistic formulations that equate hard work with success is foolish. You have to get behind these very extreme abstractions and do the hard work of examining actual cases of success and failure. A very different picture emerges out of this effort than the one that makes a moral giant of Ken Lay and a runt of his janitors. Bill
Re: Re: Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay MoreTaxes!
Ellen Frank wrote: The Republicans are definitely on to something here. The federal tax system is progressive, even counting Social Security. Highly progressive without Social Security. What is the argument for a progressive tax system? How does one even begin to contrive an argument for progressive taxes without first arguing that the rich get more and the working classes less than they deserve -- i.,e, that our economic system is exploitative. Can you hear the Democrats making this argument in public? I can't. It's hard to talk about redistribution without talking about exploitation. http://www.ctj.org/html/quotes.htm The Father of Modern Capitalist Thought on Progressive Taxation The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state [As Henry Home (Lord Kames) has written, a goal of taxation should be to] 'remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich.' Adam Smith -- AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS (1776)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush Administration On The Poor:Pay More Taxes!
Ellen Frank wrote: But shouldn't living standards be determined by what people contribute? And shouldn't people who contribute more get more? Rather than being penalized for their hard work and success? Are you channelling your students, or your own inner thoughts here? I'm guessing the former, because I can't believe you think there's much relation between contribution and reward, or hard work and success. I'll bet lots of your students work their butts off, and come from families that do too. And what do they have to show for it? Though I suppose there's a psychological angle here - they're ambitious, want to join the upper ranks, and think that they'll be able to someday by virtue of their hard work, since virtue is rewarded. But it isn't. Most people die in the same income quintile they were born into, or very close to it. Doug
Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes!
Bill -- I haven't participated in pen-l in quite a while, so maybe, not knowing who I am, you misread my intent. (maybe this is why I stopped participating in pen-l!). I am playing devil's advocate here. My students are not dumb and I am a very good teacher, BUT.. The ideology of capitalism runs much deeper in the US public than the anti-capitalist ideology (I think Marx had something to say about this). Certainly I don't believe Ken Lay deserves his $100m or that the janitor deserves his $6.50/hr. (In fact I wrote a column for Dollars and Sense a couple of months back defending the progressive tax and using precisely that example). And my students don't believe it either. But how do you say that in US political discourse? Once you say it you imply the system is unjust, that there are social classes. Even very progressive Democrats get tongue-tied when these sorts of issues come up. What people deserve is exactly the issue the right wing will raise -- the rich deserve their luxuries and the poor have no right to take what others have earned fairly (I guess they'll want to leave Ken Lay out if it). How do supporters of a progressive tax respond unless they are willing to say the existing distribution of income is fundamentally unjust? Ellen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thursday, December 19, 2002 at 09:32:34 (-0500) Ellen Frank writes: But shouldn't living standards be determined by what people contribute? And shouldn't people who contribute more get more? Rather than being penalized for their hard work and success? So you are saying Ken Lay deserves what he gets and the janitors that clean his office deserve what they get, even if the janitors work hard and don't succeed? How much of Ken Lay's success is due to structural factors that favor the dishonest and greedy, that promote those born with a silver spoon in their mouth? What percentage of the successful actually had to work their way up from the bottom? Are you saying nurses deserve what they get, and doctors, who have the political power to lobby to reduce competition and thus enhance their success by artificial means, also deserve what they get? Does Bill Gates deserve to have more money than a million people (or more) at the bottom combined because he happened to roll the dice and get a lucky break? How much of success is due to factors other than hard work? I think if you look into it, there are many other things --- among them dishonesty, greed, ruthlessness, and privilege --- which contribute greatly to success. If your students can't argue their way out of a paper bag, you need to help them. Leaving simplistic formulations that equate hard work with success is foolish. You have to get behind these very extreme abstractions and do the hard work of examining actual cases of success and failure. A very different picture emerges out of this effort than the one that makes a moral giant of Ken Lay and a runt of his janitors. Bill
Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes
Actually I'm trying to write copy for the Heritage foundation and finally make some real money! The I might make it too someday element is pretty weak with my students. As I say, they tend to be left-liberal, but not politically engaged and lack confidence in their views. There's another psychological element. Once I said something to a neighbor of mine -- a day care provider married to a carpenter who really struggled to keep a foothold in the middle-class -- about people having too much money -- something like that, I can't recall exactly what was said. But I do recall her reaction. She was surprised that I would express such a view. She said that she often felt that way, but never said so because she assumed that others would then see her as envious. She said that she always worried that she was, in fact, just envious. All that stuff about not fomenting class conflict and class envy really impacts people. Ellen Doug wrote: Are you channelling your students, or your own inner thoughts here? I'm guessing the former, because I can't believe you think there's much relation between contribution and reward, or hard work and success. I'll bet lots of your students work their butts off, and come from families that do too. And what do they have to show for it? Though I suppose there's a psychological angle here - they're ambitious, want to join the upper ranks, and think that they'll be able to someday by virtue of their hard work, since virtue is rewarded. But it isn't. Most people die in the same income quintile they were born into, or very close to it. Doug
Re: Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes!
On Thursday, December 19, 2002 at 10:44:24 (-0500) Ellen Frank writes: Bill -- I haven't participated in pen-l in quite a while, so maybe, not knowing who I am, you misread my intent. (maybe this is why I stopped participating in pen-l!). I am playing devil's advocate here. ... I realize this. ... My students are not dumb and I am a very good teacher, BUT.. The ideology of capitalism runs much deeper in the US public than the anti-capitalist ideology (I think Marx had something to say about this). I don't think your students are dumb, and I doubt you are a poor teacher. However, if they can't make the argument, as I said, you've got to work harder to figure out the answer, which I assume is what you are trying to do with your posts here. I think your questions are very pertinent, and it's very helpful to have them brought up and defended (devil-wise). Doug's quote of Smith I think is very useful: it makes you realize that wealth is the result of a contract --- you are given the option of using the protection of the state in return for a taxation scheme it devises. If you don't agree to that, you have no obligation to buy a business and rent the labor of others for profit --- you have the option of renting yourself to someone else. Of course, this social arrangement sucks. It forces people to be either masters or slaves, both of which degrade our humanity, but under those conditions, meaning you accept the fact that there are masters and slaves (classes, if you prefer), the system of progressive taxation is totally justifiable on simple contractual grounds. I think the point I made earlier supports this: if you go through the effort of bringing out the details hiding behind the abstractions, you can easily come to the conclusion that the rich benefit tremendously from the state and the state has every right to ask for support in return. The hard part is to show how much the rich benefit. This requires real digging, both evidentially and psychologically, as we have been brainwashed since youth that the rich got their riches from the sweat of their brow, their persistence, their intelligence and humanity, their patience, conservatism, maturity, steely nerves, and kindred heroic qualities. Simply looking into the form of a corporation --- nothing more than a creation of government, a legal fiction --- and how it confers tremendous advantages on the owners would be a good starting point; and Adam Smith had some cautious words to say about such combinations, as did many other conservative figures in the early years of the U.S. (see, for example, Charles Sellers book *The Market Revolution*). I think the effort to make the argument is well worth it and I hope you stick with it and share your results. Bill
Mass arrests of Muslims in LA
BBC News World Edition Thursday, 19 December, 2002, 11:37 GMT Mass arrests of Muslims in LA Families protested against the detention of relatives US immigration officials in Southern California have detained hundreds of Iranians and other Muslim men who turned up to register under residence laws brought in as part of the anti-terror drive. Reports say between 500 and 700 men were arrested in and around Los Angeles after they complied with an order to register by 16 December. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is refusing to say how many people were arrested but said detainees were being held for suspected visa violations and other offences. The arrests sparked angry protests in Los Angeles by thousands of Iranian-Americans waving banners which read What's next? Concentration camps? and Free our fathers, brothers, husbands and sons. Official radio in Iran also reported the arrests and the protests, which it said were mounted by families of the detainees who converged on Los Angeles. Deadline Under the new US immigration rules, all male immigrants aged 16 and over from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria had to register with authorities by Monday unless they had been naturalised as citizens. Immigrants from other mainly Muslim states have been set later deadlines for registration. Community groups said men had been arrested in Los Angeles and nearby Orange County as well as San Diego. California is home to about 600,000 Iranians who have been living in exile since the 1979 Islamic revolution. One of the Iranian-American demonstrators in Los Angeles, Ali Bozorgmehr, told the French news agency AFP that his community was being targeted unjustly. All Iranians that live in America are hard-working people... They love this country and all... are against terrorism, he said. 'Shocking' Ramona Ripston, executive director of the Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the arrests were reminiscent of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. I think it is shocking what is happening, she said. We are getting a lot of telephone calls from people. We are hearing that people went down wanting to co-operate and then they were detained. Islamic community leaders said many detainees had been living, working and paying taxes in the US for up to a decade and had families there. Terrorists most likely wouldn't come to the INS to register, said Sabiha Khan of the Southern California chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. She said the detainees were being treated as criminals, and that really goes against American ideals of fairness, and justice and democracy. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2589317.stm -- Yoshie * Calendar of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html * Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/
Christian economics [was Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush AdministrationOn The Poor: Pay More Taxes!]
My litmus test for "Christian economists" is the jubilee. Peter Ian Murray wrote: - Original Message - From: "andie nachgeborenen" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 7:03 PM Subject: [PEN-L:33205] Re: Re: Re: Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes! Nay, it's more complex than that. In the US, one would have to wade through all the books and magazine articles espousing "Christian economics"; yes such a beast does exist along the lines of Islamic economics etc. Check out the nearest large Christian bookstore near you.I'm not joking. Does it call for driving the moneylenders out of the temple, giving all that you have the poor and following Him, while (of course) rendering under Caesar what is Caesar's? jks = If only it were as simple as that: http://www.acton.org/publicat/m_and_m/2001_fall/pdf/MM-v4n2-Woehrling.pd f http://freebooks.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/2236_47e.htm Ian
Contribution
On Thursday, December 19, 2002 at 09:32:34 (-0500) Ellen Frank writes:But shouldn't living standards be determined bywhat people contribute? And shouldn't people whocontribute more get more? Rather than being penalized for their hard work and success? So you are saying Ken Lay deserves what he gets and the janitors thatclean his office deserve what they get, even if the janitors "workhard" and don't "succeed"? Why can't one believe that remuneration _should_ be related to contribution without believing that the existing distribution of wealth and income reflects the operation of this principle? Isn't that in part the moral charge of the labor theory of value, or of the point behind it, that capitalists as suchin fact contributre nothing, and that all value is due to the contribution of labor? One may well think so, and think as well that Ken Lay does not reciprocate, and contributes nothing.We;ve had this discussion in the context of socialism, where I and a few others have heldout for the proposition that even without class exploitation, there are good reasons to tie rumeration to contribution, because it is individually exploitative to expect others to support you if you dot reciprocate.This need not be a matter of desert, or desert alone. One might think it provides bad incentives by encouraging parasitism and laziness. jksDo you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
Christian Economics
I've been recently reading the New Testiment as part of a project on modern welfare theories. For what it is worth, the Acts of the Appostles (in the NT) reports that early Christian communities (in the decades after the Christ was sent to the cross) were communal. Further, members were expected to share with this Christian community _all_ their possessions. According to Acts one husband and wife shared only part of what they owned and they were struck dead (apparently by God). This implicit 100% tax rate (on rich and poor) gave no slack to anyone. These communities also had explicit welfare programs for the poor and needy, particularly for widows. Lacking cost-benefit analysis, and notions of perverse incentives, these early Christians believed this was the right thing to do. Eric Nilsson Lapsed Unitarian .
Christian Economics, 2
Acts 4:32 to 4:35 -- The whole body of believers was united in heart and soul. Not a man of them claimed any of his possessions as his own, but everything was held in common, while the apostles fore witness with great power to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. They were all held in high esteem; for they had never a needy person among them, because all who had property in land or houses sold it, brought the proceeds of the sale, and laid the money at the feet of the apostles; it was then distributed to any who stood in need. The leader of the pack mentioned above was none other than the apostle Peter, the rock on which the new Christian church was to be built. This communial economic system (which depended, of course, on the external economic systems of the Holy Land, Roman slavery, petty production, etc) was therefore not created by some outsider to the Christian discourse. Eric .
Re: Re: Re: Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes!
- Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ctj.org/html/quotes.htm The Father of Modern Capitalist Thought on Progressive Taxation The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state [As Henry Home (Lord Kames) has written, a goal of taxation should be to] 'remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich.' Adam Smith There is no visible reason why anyone is more or less entitled to the earnings of inherited personal capacities than to those of inherited property in any other form; and similarly, as to capacity resulting from impersonal social processes and accidents...[page 151] The simple and obvious remedy for inequality, insofar as it is unjust and is practically remediable, is not planning by a central authority, but progressive taxation, particularly of inheritances, with the use of the proceeds to provide services for the poorer people. [362] The whole problem of inequality and injustice is rooted in the two factors of natural endowment and the participation of individuals in a total accumulated social inheritance, and this is mental or spiritual or 'cultural', as well as 'material'. [382] Existing capacities to render service, including ownership of wealth, are in turn the result of the working of the economic process in the past. If we pursue our ethical inquiry backward through the process, we shall find that the same principles work cumulatively, but also that two new ones come into play. The amount and kind of economic power possessed by any person 'now' depends largely on the amount and kind he possessed 'last year'. [9] The two new principles which come in when considering longer periods of time are inheritance and uncertainty. In an economic order based on the private family, the ownership of wealth by individuals is not dependent alone on the economic role played by them in the past, but largely on the accident or brute fact of inheritance. It is not easy to see how any ethical significance can be attached to the receipt of income from inherited wealth (or training, social position, etc.) on grounds of 'equal freedom' or any sort of personal desert...From an ethical point of view it would be more significant to analyze income into three sources of free choice or effort, inheritance, and luck. And the greatest of these is luck! [9-10] from Frank Knight's Freedom and Reform, Harper Brothers, 1947.
How Much Housing Credit Is Too Much?
New from the Financial Markets Center Flow of Funds Review Analysis: Q3 2002 As battered investors moved their funds out of stocks and into deposits, banks assumed the dominant role in a massive run-up of mortgage debt that has helped maintain economic growth. But if interest rates rise or housing prices correct, the price of this build-up could be steep for households, small businesses, institutional investors and others. Is residential real estate following the same path Nasdaq traced in the late '90s? And, if so, what should the Fed be doing about it? Get the details in Jane D'Arista's quarterly review of the Fed's financial statistics. http://www.fmcenter.org/pdf/flow12-02nocov.pdf
blogspeech
Free Speech -- Virtually Legal Constraints on Web Journals Surprise Many 'Bloggers' By Jennifer Balderama Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, December 19, 2002; Page E01 12.19.2002 Late last year, John Stanforth posted to his personal Web site a reminiscence about software he had developed for internal use by a former employer. It was a minor project, he said, one he never thought would warrant any secrecy. So he was bewildered when, about two months later, he received a cease-and-desist letter in an e-mail from his old company. It said that by mentioning the project, he had violated the nondisclosure agreement he signed when he joined the firm in June 1997. Stanforth conferred with his lawyers, who told him that as far as they could tell, he hadn't compromised any trade secrets. But he removed the references to the project and the company because he didn't want to contend with the headache of potential litigation. The company never took further action. The exchange, though, gave Stanforth, vice president of strategy at venture development firm JSL Dragonfly Ltd., a new appreciation for the hazards of publishing on the Web, particularly when it comes to the workplace. Every time I read someone's Web log I wonder how many of these companies know what their employees are talking about, Stanforth said. Web logs, or blogs, are online journals usually consisting of dated entries, or posts, arranged in reverse chronological order. Some are work-related, with topics such as software development, sports or the news media. Others simply chronicle life -- the glory of landing a job, the sorrow of losing a parent, the thrill of teaching a child to spell. Stanforth publishes his thoughts on technology, along with his pseudo-random musings. In the past couple of years, hundreds of thousands of people have been drawn to this burgeoning realm of digital publishing. Free Web-based software has made it so easy to publish a blog that even the code-phobic can thrive in a world once dominated by HTML wizards. All newcomers have to do is choose a tool, select a Web page template, write a few words and click a button. But since many bloggers have no background in publishing, they often come to the medium unaware of the rules that apply, and complaints are becoming more common. Many people publish as if they were untouchable, assuming that because what they write appears in a virtual world, it won't come back to burn them in the real world. Many overlook the fact that their rants can potentially reach millions of people when posted on the Internet. The same law that relates to publishing in the offline world, generally speaking, applies to material posted publicly on a Web log, legal and human resources experts said. Posting information or opinions on the Internet is not much different from publishing in a newspaper, and if the information is defamatory, compromises trade secrets, or violates copyright or trademark regulations, the publisher could face legal claims and monetary damages. Authors generally are obligated to publish as facts only what they believe to be true. But stating opinions can be tricky, especially when those views relate to workplace issues, said Bret Fausett, a Los Angeles-based lawyer. Fausett keeps a Web log that chronicles the goings-on at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit organization in charge of managing the system of Internet addresses. It's one thing for people to use their personal Web sites to write reviews of, say, the hit TV show The Sopranos, he said. As long as you don't work for HBO, that's great. But it's another thing to say, 'Our server crashed today, and the idiot IT person at our company couldn't get the thing running.' Evan Williams, co-founder of Pyra Labs, the San Francisco company behind the Blogger.com publishing software, said the people at Pyra do not monitor content, though they do investigate complaints. If something is clearly illegal, we will remove it. But that's pretty rare, Williams wrote in response to an e-mail query. More common, Williams said, is that an employee/blogger will contact us (in a panic) when he or she has gotten in trouble for blogging and needs to know how to take something down before they get sued. Experts on Web publishing warned that anyone digging for details about a person or company via Google or other search engines can unearth reams of archived Web log material. The most flippant of remarks published two years ago could broadcast something a company doesn't want competitors or potential clients to know. Even with supposedly anonymous Web logs, clues can tip off readers to people's identities, whether it's jargon the writers use, references to conversations between cubicle-mates or stories about personal experiences. The Internet creates a veil of separation between you and other people, said Gregory Alan Rutchik, managing partner at the Arts and Technology Group, a San Francisco firm
poor pay more
Tonak and Shaikh's work on the social wage might offer some guidelines on how one could theoretically go about evaluating who gets what from the government, but a full accounting would be all but impossible. We all believe that the military does more to protect the assets of the rich, but quantification would be difficult. Even so, I think that the idea of trying to quantify the benefit side alongside the tax side might be interesting. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes!
- Original Message - From: Ellen Frank [EMAIL PROTECTED] What people deserve is exactly the issue the right wing will raise -- the rich deserve their luxuries and the poor have no right to take what others have earned fairly (I guess they'll want to leave Ken Lay out if it). How do supporters of a progressive tax respond unless they are willing to say the existing distribution of income is fundamentally unjust? Ellen == Dismantling the right's use of desert arguments will need to encroach in a big way upon the failings and strengths of the self-ownership thesis we've inherited from Martin Luther and John Locke. This is extremely difficult territory to navigate when explaining social causation and the sources of selfhood in terms citizens can easily digest. The quotes I posted from Frank Knight show how a secular Calvinist and darling of the right can provide a toehold when the policy wonking begins in earnest. Demonstrating that the libertarian approach to responsibility and causation can no longer carry the explanatory and justificatory burden many on the right simply assume to be valid has been taken up quite a bit lately by political philosophers in the journals Philosophy and Public Affairs and Ethics and are well worth checking out. Ian
RE: Christian Economics, 2
Title: RE: [PEN-L:33235] Christian Economics, 2 the Mormons also started as with a very communistic/egalitarian bent. In fact, it seems that a major reason why Mormon representatives in the US Senate and House oppose welfare-state programs is that the Mormon church already provides many such benefits to its members. Similarly, the early Christian communities excluded non-Christians, didn't they? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 10:32 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:33235] Christian Economics, 2 Acts 4:32 to 4:35 -- The whole body of believers was united in heart and soul. Not a man of them claimed any of his possessions as his own, but everything was held in common, while the apostles fore witness with great power to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. They were all held in high esteem; for they had never a needy person among them, because all who had property in land or houses sold it, brought the proceeds of the sale, and laid the money at the feet of the apostles; it was then distributed to any who stood in need. The leader of the pack mentioned above was none other than the apostle Peter, the rock on which the new Christian church was to be built. This communial economic system (which depended, of course, on the external economic systems of the Holy Land, Roman slavery, petty production, etc) was therefore not created by some outsider to the Christian discourse. Eric .
taxation question
Title: taxation question [was RE: [PEN-L:33226] Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes!] Ellen Frank wrote: But shouldn't living standards be determined by what people contribute? And shouldn't people who contribute more get more? Rather than being penalized for their hard work and success? Doug asks: Are you channelling your students, or your own inner thoughts here? I'm guessing the former, because I can't believe you think there's much relation between contribution and reward, or hard work and success. from what Ellen has said before, it's the former. I'll bet lots of your students work their butts off, and come from families that do too. And what do they have to show for it? Though I suppose there's a psychological angle here - they're ambitious, want to join the upper ranks, and think that they'll be able to someday by virtue of their hard work, since virtue is rewarded. But it isn't. Most people die in the same income quintile they were born into, or very close to it. another thing: my students are post-adolescents who are still rebelling against -- or definng themselves as different from -- their parents. This encourages a very individualistic perspective (at least in the US during the last century or so, where individualism reigns), rejecting notions of community and standards of justice, while rejecting the alleged paternalism of the government. That they tend to do so in the same way as all of their peers indicates a contradiction in their world-view. in a separate message, Ellen writes: What people deserve is exactly the issue the right wing will raise -- the rich deserve their luxuries and the poor have no right to take what others have earned fairly (I guess they'll want to leave Ken Lay out if it). How do supporters of a progressive tax respond unless they are willing to say the existing distribution of income is fundamentally unjust? how about the fact that those with lots of wealth benefit most from the government's activities, which mostly involve the protection of established property rights? Jim
Re: Re: Bush Administration On The Poor: Pay More Taxes!
Even the neoclassical view is that markets reward not effort or even productivity in a physical sense, but the "value" of the marginal product--that is, contributions or skills which are scarce in view of demand. This is an efficiency argument at best, not an equity argument. But then throw in luck, connections, discrimination, power that results from your place at the bottom or top of the hierarchy, and it's not too difficult to argue that the reward inequalities stemming from the system need to be sanded down... Peter Ian Murray wrote: - Original Message - From: "Ellen Frank" [EMAIL PROTECTED] What people deserve is exactly the issue the right wing will raise -- the rich deserve their luxuries and the poor have no right to take what others have earned fairly (I guess they'll want to leave Ken Lay out if it). How do supporters of a progressive tax respond unless they are willing to say the existing distribution of income is fundamentally unjust? Ellen == Dismantling the right's use of desert arguments will need to encroach in a big way upon the failings and strengths of the self-ownership thesis we've inherited from Martin Luther and John Locke. This is extremely difficult territory to navigate when explaining social causation and the sources of selfhood in terms citizens can easily digest. The quotes I posted from Frank Knight show how a "secular Calvinist" and darling of the right can provide a toehold when the policy wonking begins in earnest. Demonstrating that the libertarian approach to responsibility and causation can no longer carry the explanatory and justificatory burden many on the right simply assume to be valid has been taken up quite a bit lately by political philosophers in the journals Philosophy and Public Affairs and Ethics and are well worth checking out. Ian
Re: Christian Economics
- Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 10:11 AM Subject: [PEN-L:33234] Christian Economics I've been recently reading the New Testiment as part of a project on modern welfare theories. For what it is worth, the Acts of the Appostles (in the NT) reports that early Christian communities (in the decades after the Christ was sent to the cross) were communal. Further, members were expected to share with this Christian community _all_ their possessions. According to Acts one husband and wife shared only part of what they owned and they were struck dead (apparently by God). This implicit 100% tax rate (on rich and poor) gave no slack to anyone. These communities also had explicit welfare programs for the poor and needy, particularly for widows. Lacking cost-benefit analysis, and notions of perverse incentives, these early Christians believed this was the right thing to do. Eric Nilsson Lapsed Unitarian . === According to Richard Horsley and John Hanson, this was in response to the prevalence of social banditry. Am I leading a rebellion, said Jesus, that you have come out as against a bandit with swords and clubs to capture me? [Mark 14: 48] Ian
Re: Mass arrests of Muslims in LA
The question is which nationality, race, group, or religion is next. Mohammad Maljoo From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:33230] Mass arrests of Muslims in LA Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 12:17:45 -0500 BBC News World Edition Thursday, 19 December, 2002, 11:37 GMT Mass arrests of Muslims in LA Families protested against the detention of relatives US immigration officials in Southern California have detained hundreds of Iranians and other Muslim men who turned up to register under residence laws brought in as part of the anti-terror drive. Reports say between 500 and 700 men were arrested in and around Los Angeles after they complied with an order to register by 16 December. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is refusing to say how many people were arrested but said detainees were being held for suspected visa violations and other offences. The arrests sparked angry protests in Los Angeles by thousands of Iranian-Americans waving banners which read What's next? Concentration camps? and Free our fathers, brothers, husbands and sons. Official radio in Iran also reported the arrests and the protests, which it said were mounted by families of the detainees who converged on Los Angeles. Deadline Under the new US immigration rules, all male immigrants aged 16 and over from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria had to register with authorities by Monday unless they had been naturalised as citizens. Immigrants from other mainly Muslim states have been set later deadlines for registration. Community groups said men had been arrested in Los Angeles and nearby Orange County as well as San Diego. California is home to about 600,000 Iranians who have been living in exile since the 1979 Islamic revolution. One of the Iranian-American demonstrators in Los Angeles, Ali Bozorgmehr, told the French news agency AFP that his community was being targeted unjustly. All Iranians that live in America are hard-working people... They love this country and all... are against terrorism, he said. 'Shocking' Ramona Ripston, executive director of the Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the arrests were reminiscent of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. I think it is shocking what is happening, she said. We are getting a lot of telephone calls from people. We are hearing that people went down wanting to co-operate and then they were detained. Islamic community leaders said many detainees had been living, working and paying taxes in the US for up to a decade and had families there. Terrorists most likely wouldn't come to the INS to register, said Sabiha Khan of the Southern California chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. She said the detainees were being treated as criminals, and that really goes against American ideals of fairness, and justice and democracy. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2589317.stm -- Yoshie * Calendar of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html * Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/ _ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Hundreds of Muslim Men Detained: CAIR Debates the Dept. of Justice
* December 18, 2002 on Democracy NOW! Story: HUNDREDS OF MUSLIM MEN FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY HAVE BEEN DETAINED AS THEY REGISTER WITH IMMIGRATION AUTHORITIES UNDER NEW GOVERNMENT ORDERS: THE COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS DEBATES THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE INS officials have detained hundreds of men from Muslim countries who showed up at immigration offices to be registered under new government orders. As part of the USA Patriot Act, Congress told the Justice Department to develop a system to track the comings and goings of foreign visitors. The National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, or NSEERS, was launched on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. The program requires all men over 16 years old, from 18 countries, to be registered, digitally photographed and fingerprinted. UPI reports this is so investigators can determine whether the men fit the profile of suspected terrorists. The deadline for people from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Sudan, was Monday. The New York Times reports lines began to form before dawn on Monday at the Los Angeles headquarters of the INS, as hundreds of immigrants accompanied by anxious relatives and immigration lawyers showed up for registration. Similar scenes played out across the country. INS officials have handcuffed and detained hundreds of people who showed up to be fingerprinted over the past week. In Los Angeles on Friday, officials actually ran out of plastic handcuffs as they herded men into the basement lockup of the federal building, according to the Times. The men had expired student or work visas, or couldn't provide adequate documentation of their immigration status. The situation is worse for those who fail to report: they face criminal charges and immediate expulsion from the country. In San Diego yesterday, one day after the deadline, radio station KFMB reported fifty men had been arrested for failing to register. One immigration lawyer who used to work for the State Department told The New York Times the program compares with the roundups of Germans during World War I and the internment of the Japanese during World War II. The roundup is expected to intensify. By January 10, men from the following countries must report to immigration officials: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and the only non-Muslim country on the list: North Korea. And on Monday, the Justice Department announced that men from Armenia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia must also report. They have until Feb. 21. But Armenians have already been taken off the list. Guests: Jason Erb, director of Governmental Affairs for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Jorge Martinez, spokesperson for Department of Justice. Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America. May Shallah Kheder, Iraqi-American immigration attorney in Virginia. [Listen to the story at http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/demnow/dn20021218.rastart=29:39.6.] Related links: Council on American-Islamic Relations [@ http://www.cair-net.org/] Armenian National Committee of America [@ http://www.anca.org/] http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20021218.html * -- Yoshie * Calendar of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html * Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/
Re: How Much Housing Credit Is Too Much?
The one factoid that struck me was: Since early 2001, outstanding residential mortgage debt has ballooned from an amount equal to 49.0 percent of GDP to a level ($6.2 trillion) equaling 59.0 percent of GDP. On Thu, Dec 19, 2002 at 02:41:34PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: New from the Financial Markets Center Flow of Funds Review Analysis: Q3 2002 As battered investors moved their funds out of stocks and into deposits, banks assumed the dominant role in a massive run-up of mortgage debt that has helped maintain economic growth. But if interest rates rise or housing prices correct, the price of this build-up could be steep for households, small businesses, institutional investors and others. Is residential real estate following the same path Nasdaq traced in the late '90s? And, if so, what should the Fed be doing about it? Get the details in Jane D'Arista's quarterly review of the Fed's financial statistics. http://www.fmcenter.org/pdf/flow12-02nocov.pdf -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Re: How Much Housing Credit Is Too Much?
Title: RE: [PEN-L:33247] Re: How Much Housing Credit Is Too Much? The one factoid that struck me was: Since early 2001, outstanding residential mortgage debt has ballooned from an amount equal to 49.0 percent of GDP to a level ($6.2 trillion) equaling 59.0 percent of GDP. but how much have mortgage payments risen as a percentage of personal disposable income? after all, interest rates have fallen and refinancing is the big trend these days. Still, the US economy is in deep yoghurt if a popping of the housing bubble implies that house prices fall drastically relative to mortgage debt (producing negative home equity for some) and/or deflation means that incomes fall relative to mortgage and other interest payments. Jim
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Court Orders Halt to Venezuela Oil Strike
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 13:05:41 -0800 Subject: [VSG List] Court Orders Halt to Venezuela Oil Strike Mailing-List: list [EMAIL PROTECTED]; contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] Court Orders Halt to Venezuela Oil Strike http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storyu=/ap/20021219/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_strike_184 1 hour, 29 minutes ago By ANDREW SELSKY, Associated Press Writer CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela's Supreme Court ordered a temporary halt to an oil industry strike while it considers the legality of the work stoppage, which entered its 18th day Thursday. A general strike by organized labor and business to oust President Hugo Chavez has stopped oil exports from Venezuela - a key supplier to the United States - and sent global prices above $30 a barrel. The Supreme Court said it was considering a motion filed by an executive with the state-owned oil monopoly asking the justices to declare the strike illegal. The court said it will hear arguments on the motion within four days. In the meantime, it ordered striking oil employees and executives to resume work. Felix Rodriguez, director of production at Petroleos de Venezuela SA, filed the motion Tuesday, arguing that the work stoppage - which has drastically cut oil exports from the world's fifth-largest oil producer - threatened national security. There was no immediate reaction from dissident executives at the oil company, which employs 40,000 people. But a spokesman for striking workers, Alfredo Gomez, told Dow Jones Newswires they will ignore the court order. It's not safe for us to return to work and the constitution allows us to protest, Gomez said. Leaders of the general strike have cited a clause in Venezuela's constitution allowing citizens not to recognize a government they consider undemocratic. Oil production was down to 370,000 barrels per day - compared to 3 million barrels before the strike. Some oil executives fired by Chavez claim production is just 200,000 barrels per day. Venezuelan and foreign tankers are idle, refineries are closed or operating at minimum levels and crews and dock workers are refusing to handle oil and non-oil cargos. The government is still trying to unload the tanker Pilin Leon - named after a former Miss World (news - web sites) - which anchored off the western city of Maracaibo in protest. The ship carries 280,000 barrels of gasoline, roughly a day's supply for the nation. Chavez, who vows to stay in office, has branded striking oil workers as traitors sabotaging Venezuela's oil-based economy and issued a decree allowing the temporary seizure of private vehicles to ensure deliveries of food and gas. We must always be alert, ready to defend our revolution, Chavez told thousands of supporters late Wednesday at a Caracas arena. He said the strikers have aligned themselves with treason. Chavez, who commandeered some private truck fleets on Dec. 8 to deliver gas, expanded on that order with a decree allowing civilian and military officials to temporarily seize any vehicle that delivers gas, oil or food - including trucks, boats and aircraft - to end strike-caused shortages. Chavez ordered inspections of businesses to determine if any were hoarding goods such as milk, rice or medicine. Those doing so could be fined. His decree, dated Tuesday and published late Wednesday, cited threats to national security caused by shortages of essential goods. Carlos Fernandez, president of the Fedecamaras business association, said the decree won't be your ticket, Mr. Chavez, to become owner of our property. Soldiers guarded gas stations to keep them open, but 70 percent of gasoline stations in the Caracas area were empty, said Angelina Martino, president of the Association of Gasoline Retailers. Hours-long lines formed at service stations. I have been at this station for an hour. Of course everyone is annoyed, said Claudio Cedeno, a 52-year-old truck driver. I am annoyed because they (the strikers) are creating unnecessary chaos. Strike leaders claim they are providing enough basic goods to meet the population's needs even as they demand that stores, banks and businesses close and supporters block highways to stop transport. Venezuela's private hospitals and clinics announced they would suspend all but emergency services for an hour a day to support the strike. Opposition leaders called the strike Dec. 2 to demand that Chavez call a nonbinding referendum on his rule. They then increased their demand to early elections - Venezuela's constitution allows only a recall vote halfway into Chavez's six-year term, which is next August. Chavez, elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2000, insists that the opposition abide by Venezuela's democratic constitution. -- Yoshie * Calendar of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html * Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu
Re: RE: Re: How Much Housing Credit Is Too Much?
We should ask Doug H., who is now on the radio. Even that number is cloudy since people refinance their houses to borrow for other purposes. So, it is difficult to get a fix on mortgage debt as a separate category, except in the sense that you mentioned -- if prices fall and people walk away from their negative equity. On Thu, Dec 19, 2002 at 02:02:56PM -0800, Devine, James wrote: but how much have mortgage payments risen as a percentage of personal disposable income? after all, interest rates have fallen and refinancing is the big trend these days. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: RE: Re: How Much Housing Credit Is Too Much?
H'hold Mortgage Debt as Pct. of Disposable Personal Income: Q3 2002: 74.2% 2001: 72.8% 2000: 68.8% 1999: 68.4% 1998: 65.4% 1997: 64.0% SOURCE: Flow of Funds Q3 2002 Mortgage debt-service burden for Q4 2001-Q3 2002 ties the burden recorded in Q4 1990-Q3 1991 as the highest ever for four consecutive quarters, according to the Fed (http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/housedebt/default.htm). While the burden increases, despite refis and low real rates: H'hold Net Worth as Pct. of Disposable Personal Income: Q3 2002: 486% 2001: 556% 2000: 589% 1999: 639% 1998: 588% 1997: 567% SOURCE: Flow of Funds Q3 2002 And, as Jane points out, only inflated res. r.e. prices have cushioned h'holds against deeper absolute and relative (to income) losses in net worth. Tom Schlesinger
Re: taxation question
in a separate message, Ellen writes: What people deserve is exactly the issue the right wing will raise -- the rich deserve their luxuries and the poor have no right to take what others have earned fairly (I guess they'll want to leave Ken Lay out if it). Well, the question of how the rich earn is thorny enough. Does the CEO of Sun really work 100 times or 500 times harder than I do? Moreover, do the children, grandchildren, etc. of these same earners deserve to walk into the privileges they get? Is Henry Ford V, 1000 times harder working than I am? How do supporters of a progressive tax respond unless they are willing to say the existing distribution of income is fundamentally unjust? why not say that? It is unjust. how about the fact that those with lots of wealth benefit most from the government's activities, which mostly involve the protection of established property rights? Yeah, not to mention the fact that they hire those politicians in the first place. Joanna
Re: Re: Mass arrests of Muslims in LA
At 09:07 PM 12/19/2002 +, you wrote: The question is which nationality, race, group, or religion is next. Mohammad Maljoo The roundup is expected to intensify. By January 10, men from the following countries must report to immigration officials: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and the only non-Muslim country on the list: North Korea. Joanna
Re: How Much Housing Credit Is Too Much?
Michael wrote: We should ask Doug H., who is now on the radio. Even that number is cloudy since people refinance their houses to borrow for other purposes. This is an important point. How did they refinance? How much equity did they take out to pay other debts? Were they able to pay other debt with that equity or did they use the equity they took out to spend more? That the monthly mortgage payments went down doesn't mean that the overall monthly debt payments went down. It is not only the interest rate but also the principal of the debt that determines the payments. To sum up, did the overspent/overworked American change his/her attitute recently? I have doubts!.. Anyway. I agree with Michael that there is a lot of cloudiness going on here. Best, Sabri
ACLU Calls Immigrant Registration Program Pretext for Mass Detentions
ACLU Calls Immigrant Registration Program Pretext for Mass Detentions December 19, 2002 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE WASHINGTON - In a development that confirms the American Civil Liberties Union's initial fears about a controversial immigrant fingerprinting and registration program, the Immigration and Naturalization Service is apparently using the program as a pretext for the mass detention of hundreds of Middle Eastern and Muslim men and boys. Given the evidence, there is no alarmism in saying this is a round-up, said Lucas Guttentag, Director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project. Attorney General Ashcroft is using the immigrant registration program to lock up people who already have provided extensive information as part of their green card applications, he said. Therefore the purpose is clearly not to get information but rather to selectively arrest, detain and deport Middle Eastern and Muslim men in the United States. According to media reports covering growing protests against the detentions, up to 700 Middle Eastern and Muslim men and boys were arrested in Southern California by federal immigration authorities after they voluntarily complied with a new program that mandates the fingerprinting and registration of all male visitors 16 years and older from certain Middle Eastern countries. It remains unclear how many others have been detained across the country, but reportedly a full one-quarter of all those who complied with the program were arrested in Los Angeles. The men detained are all from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and the Sudan, the five countries whose visitors to the United States were required to register with the INS by December 16. In most cases, it is apparent that the INS arrested men who were simply waiting for approval of their green card applications, or those with minor visa problems caused by incompetence in the agency itself, which has been plagued by an inept bureaucracy for years. In but one example, the San Diego Union Tribune reported on July 27, 2002 that the agency recently failed to process more than 200,000 change of address forms and then unceremoniously dumped them in the largest underground records facility in the world - an abandoned mine near Kansas City - putting hundreds of thousands at risk of wrongful arrest and deportation for failing to report a change of address. The ACLU also questioned the effectiveness of the program, given the enormous outlay of resources necessary to engage in detentions on this scale. The INS is wasting an incredible amount of government resources in rounding up these men and boys, said Dalia Hashad, the ACLU's Arab, Muslim and South Asian Advocate. It seems unlikely that a hardened terrorist is going to voluntarily register with the government, she added. What is more likely is that law-abiding people who were planning to register will now be afraid to come in because of the arrests, and the INS will use that as an excuse to deport them. By January 10, 2003, citizens of 13 additional countries - Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen - must also submit to registration, a move that could push the detentions into the tens of thousands, the ACLU said. http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=11503c=206 -- Yoshie * Calendar of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html * Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: How Much Housing Credit Is Too Much?
The WSJ has been having pieces about the incentives sellers of high end houses are having to give. One of the best indicators of an impending bubble burst would be the length of time required for sell a house. During the high bubble in San Francsico, houses would sell at a premium as soon as they were listed. I don't think anything like that is happening now. So even if prices are holding, you can have considerable weakness in the market. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FEDECAMARAS Defy Supreme Court Order to Reopen the Oil Industry
Agence France Presse December 20, 2002 Friday 10:30 PM Eastern Time SECTION: International News LENGTH: 586 words HEADLINE: Venezuela heads to new confrontation as strikers defy order to resume work DATELINE: CARACAS, Dec 19 BODY: Venezuela headed toward new confrontation as government opponents rejected a Supreme Court order to reopen the oil industry crippled by a general strike that headed to its 19th day Friday. The oil strike remains active and will not stop, Carlos Fernandez, head of the Fedecamaras business group and one of the top strike leaders, after the court issued the ruling Thursday. The Supreme Court ordered that government decrees to reopen idled oil production and distribution facilities be enforced. But strike organizers insisted they will defy the ruling. We the oil workers are willing, if that is necessary, to spend Christmas and New Year's Day in front of our factories, said Juan Fernandez, spokesman for the strikers at the Petroleos de Venezuela state oil company. The protest has severely affected crude output and shipments from Venezuela, the fifth largest oil exporter. This has caused serious concern in the United States, which is closely watching the strike and potential impact of events on its preparations for a possible conflict in Iraq. The tense stand-off between the government and its opponents has triggered fears of violence Ali Rodriguez, who heads Petroleos de Venezuela said earlier crude production was down to one third of its normal level, while the firm's striking managers said output had dropped to 200,000 barrels a day. Venezuela usually produces around 2.8 million barrels a day, of which it exports 2.5 million barrels Many gasoline stations across Venezuela remained closed and motorists waited for hours outside the few stations that remained open. About 70 percent of service stations in Caracas and 60 percent nationwide shut down after running out of fuel, according to Juan Vaquero, who heads the Fenegas association of gasoline station owners. But Chavez has again insisted he would not give in to the right-wing opposition and has called on the country to back him. Chavez has deployed troops to keep oil trucks moving. Military forces also boarded oil tankers, but many crews have refused to resume work. The government insists it can ride out the crisis. The population is almost 24 million, and we have 15 billion dollars in reserves, which is enough to resist as long as it takes to get out of the crisis, said Interior and Justice Minister Diosdado Cabello. Miguel Perez Abad, who heads the Fedeindustria employers group, estimated the strike had cost Venezuela five billion dollars so far. Strike leaders planned to stage another megamarch in Caracas Friday, following several massive protests in the capital. Suggestions the protesters could head to the Miraflores presidential palace triggered fears of clashes with Chavez supporters and security forces. The interior minister has said demonstrators would not be allowed near the palace. During a similar march on April 11, shots were fired at protesters and government supporters, leaving 19 people dead and hundreds wounded. A few hours later Chavez was ousted, but loyal forces returned him to power after 47 hours. -- Yoshie * Calendar of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html * Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/
new Archibishop of Canterbury criticises market state
Rowan Williams, new Archbishop of Canterbury: So the problem of the market state looks rather like this. By pushing politics towards a consumerist model, with the state as the guarantor of 'purchasing power', it raises short-term expectations. By raising short-term expectations, it invites instability, reactive administration, rule by opinion poll and pressure. To facilitate some of its goals and to avoid chaos, government inevitably relies more on centralised managerial authority. So there will be a dangerous tension between excessive government and the paralysis that can result from trying to respond adequately to consumer demand. To put it in another way, government and culture drift apart: government abandons the attempt to give shape to society. Dimbleby lecture 19 Dec 2002 http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/021219.html#top He appears to have read some of Philip Bobbit, Clinton's National Security Council director of intelligence. The lecture is a show piece talk to the BBC and related media dignitaries. Williams, personally mild but intellectually aggressive radical new head of the Church of England, is obviously using it as a platform soon after taking up his post. It was interesting that it was on his website within an hour but much more difficult to track down on the BBC. Williams is young enough and radical enough, that during his leadership of the Cof E it will finally get disestablished, in England as it is in his homeland, Wales. This would be a progressive liberal move. Although the lecture has some annoying patronising features, it is ideologically important, because it provides a strong authoritative criticism from within the religious communities, of the trend to a consensus state built around appeasing voters as consumers, and avoiding anatagonising capital. Williams is also explicitly very aware of how this links into the world-wide scenario undermining the sovereignty of the nation state. He is watching closely, and can be expected to take a stand criticising intervention in Iraq. He is a liberal but he is signalling a more socially coherent critique of the atomised civil society, which Marx criticised, and which has become even more systematically atomised. Largely directed against the managerial tendencies of New Labour and New Democrats, Williams shades his lecture enough to be able to keep in dialogue if necessary with people like Tony Blair, who would have no difficulty putting an amiable gloss on the lecture, as an allegedly sincere Christian himself. So this lecture suggests that at least one focus of opposition to the powerful trends of late capitalism, domestically and internationally, not incompatible with a marxist analysis, since Williams represents the aspirations of an old society towards social coherence and social capital. The lecture is somewhat hard work, but is crafted also for people with no theoretical religious faith. Worth a click. Chris Burford
Who Armed Iraq? (Die Tageszeitung + Democracy NOW!)
* December 18, 2002 on Democracy NOW! NEWS HEADLINES Story: TOP SECRET IRAQ WEAPONS REPORT SAYS THE U.S. GOVERNMENT CORPORATIONS HELPED TO ILLEGALLY ARM IRAQ WE TALK WITH THE GERMAN REPORTER WHO OBTAINED LEAKED PORTIONS OF THE UNEDITED REPORT THAT NAMES HEWLETT PACKARD, DUPONT AND BECHTEL 20 OTHER U.S. COMPANIES AS WELL AS LOS ALAMOS AND LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORIES AND THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY A German newspaper has obtained portions of Iraq's top secret weapons report that reveals at least 24 U.S. corporations as well as four agencies of the U.S. government illegally helped Iraq build its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs. Some of the corporations include Hewlett Packard, DuPont, Honeywell, Rockwell, Tectronics, Bechtel, International Computer Systems, Unisys, Sperry and TI Coating. The Berlin-based paper Die Tageszeitung also reports the U.S. Department of Energy delivered essential non-fissile parts for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program in the 1980s. The Departments of Agriculture, Commerce and Defense also provided assistance. According to the paper, only one country had more business ties to Iraq than the U.S. That was Germany. As many as 80 German companies are also listed in Iraq's report. And the paper reported that some German companies continued to do business with Iraq until last year. The list of companies who worked with Iraq was supposed to be top secret. Iraq produced only two identical copies of its 12,000-page report for international review. One went to the International Atomic Energy Agency and one went to the United Nations. The Bush Administration quickly took control of the UN version, and made unedited copies for the other permanent members of the Security Council, Britain, France, Russia and China. The U.S. then made edited copies, which deleted all reference to nuclear weapons production and all mentions of international corporations. This was the report that the world was supposed to see. But the German paper obtained several hundred pages of unedited text and began publishing articles based on the leaked documents yesterday. We're joined right now from Geneva by Andreas Zumach, the journalist who broke the story for Die Tageszeitung. Guest: Andreas Zumach, Geneva-based UN correspondent with the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung who obtained an unedited copy of Iraq's 12,000 page report to the United Nations. The report reveals how German and U.S. corporations helped build Iraq's weapons program. [Listen to the story at http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/demnow/dn20021218.rastart=9:21.8.] * * Copyright 2002 Contrapress media GmbH Vervielfaeltigung nur mit Genehmigung des taz-Verlags taz, die tageszeitung December 19, 2002 SECTION: Pg. 3 LENGTH: 435 words HEADLINE: Bluehende Geschaefte BYLINE: ANDREAS ZUMACH HIGHLIGHT: In saemtlichen Ruestungsbereichen haben Firmen aus den fuenf staendigen Ratslaendern Irak unterstuetzt BODY: von ANDREAS ZUMACH Die umfangreichen Informationen ueber die Zulieferungen und die Unterstuetzung auslaendischer Firmen, Laboratorien und Regierungen fuer die Aufruestung Iraks seit Mitte der Siebzigerjahre in dem Bericht Bagdads an den UNO-Sicherheitsrat sollen nach dem Willen seiner fuenf staendigen Mitglieder unter Verschluss bleiben. Selbst den zehn nichtstaendigen Mitgliedern des Rates - zu denen ab 1. Januar auch Deutschland gehoeren wird - wurden die beschaffungsrelevanten Teile des Berichts vorenthalten. Mit dieser Entscheidung wollen die USA, Russland, China, Frankreich und Grossbritannien ihre massgebliche, zum Teil bis heute fortdauernde Verantwortung fuer die Aufruestung Iraks weiterhin geheim halten. Deshalb veroeffentlicht die taz heute die Namen der Firmen aus den fuenf staendigen Ratsstaaten, die im irakischen Ruestungsbericht aufgefuehrt sind, sowie die von Firmen aus einigen der zahlreichen anderen Staaten, aus denen sich Parlamentarier und Journalisten in den letzten zwei Tagen mit der Bitte um die entsprechenden Informationen bei der taz gemeldet haben. Auslaendische Unternehmen haben zu dem atomaren Ruestungsprogramm Iraks unter anderem Bauteile, zum Beispiel fuer eine Urananreicherungsanlage, geliefert. Darueber hinaus Zuender, Elektronik und Spaltmaterial. Auch erhielt Bagdad Know-how und Maschinen, um bestimmte Spezialteile fuer das A-Waffen-Programm im eigenen Lande zu produzieren. Des Weiteren wurden irakische Atomtechniker im Ausland geschult. Bei der auslaendischen Foerderung der irakischen C- und B-Waffen-Programme ging es in erster Linie um die Lieferung von Grundsubstanzen sowie um Hilfe bei der Errichtung von Produktionsanlagen im Irak. Das irakische Raketenprogrogramm erhielt - nach der urspruenglichen Lieferung von Scud-Raketen aus der inzwischen untergegangenen Sowjetunion - Unterstuetzung von westlichen wie oestlichen Firmen fuer die Reichweitenverlaengerung der Scud-Raketen, fuer
Re: Brian Czech's response to Louis Proyect's critique
I thank Louis Proyect for his critique of my book, Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train. Having been a co-member of at least 2 listservers, I know Proyect has outstanding insight pertaining to macroeconomics and political economy. In fact, Ill go so far as agreeing with his current critique until the last few paragraphs. Two things happen at that point, however, that compel me to respond: 1) He turns his critique from Shoveling Fuel to the Carrying Capacity Network, which I have nothing to do with, and; 2) His critique essentially ends with Part 1 of Shoveling Fuel! For people on these lists, Part 2 on the steady state revolution (especially the class structure thereof) is probably of greater interest than Part 1. Im not sure how or why this happened. I do think I have irked various economists and activists by twisting Marxs famous expropriation pronouncement to reflect the class structure of the steady state revolution (www.steadystate.org). However, the reality I perceive is this: The American constitutional, capitalist democracy is in like Flynn. Surely it will fall one day, as all have, but not before major ecological havoc dooms whatever form of political economy comes in its wake. I searched for a social movement to save the planet that could function in American democracy, capitalistic as it currently is, socialistic as it may evolve, and that is what Part 2 is all about. I hope more of you read it without drawing premature conclusions about the adequacy of the steady state revolution class structure to effect real change in consumerism. A common critique of skimmers (and I dont mean Proyect, who had no comments at all about Part 2) has been that, by identifying the upper 1 percentile as the liquidating class and setting them up for castigation by the steady state class, I have set the bar way too high. What they have invariably missed is the section on trickle-down consumption, not to mention the powerful political rationale for beginning the steady state revolution with an extremely skewed consumer class structure. You can get a better idea of what Im talking about by reading sample chapter 6, available at the website. Brian Czech, Arlington, VA
Nafta woes
NY Times, Dec. 19, 2002 Nafta to Open Foodgates, Engulfing Rural Mexico By GINGER THOMPSON IRAPUATO, Mexico, Dec. 15 A decade of hemispheric economic upheaval finally turned Eugenio Guerrero's life upside down last Saturday. That morning, he tried to auction off the pig farm that has supported his family and some 50 others for two generations. It's true, read a flier that announced the sale. We are closing and auctioning everything. From now on Mr. Guerrero, 41, will dedicate himself to selling paint. The changes he has been forced to confront are being felt all over Mexico as the country struggles to keep its balance, one foot in poverty, the other seeking a toehold in prosperity through the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mr. Guerrero said he had barely been able to keep afloat since the treaty began abolishing trade barriers between Mexico, the United States and Canada nearly 10 years ago. Credit ran dry after a national economic crisis devastated banks in 1995. The Mexican government ended most agricultural subsidies, sending his costs through the roof. Pork prices plunged as cheaper imports from the United States flooded Mexican markets. Now, Mr. Guerrero's last defense is being dismantled. Under Nafta, on Jan. 1 tariffs on almost all agricultural imports from the United States will end. The looming deadline has consumed the attention of a nation where a quarter of the population lives in rural areas, and produced warnings about the possibility of unrest and increased migration across the Mexican countryside and into the United States, as millions of peasants are forced to abandon their tiny fields. In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers and their supporters have blocked highways and border crossings. They have temporarily shut down gas and electricity installations, and even burst into Congress on horseback. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/19/international/americas/19NAFT.html -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
