Re: Mark Jones Was Right
. The problem of global warming and climate change has been brought dramatically to us here due to the wild-fires last summer that cost hundreds of homes. This summer is forcast to be similarly hot and dry. We are on water rationing year round in an area of irrigation-dependent agriculture. We can water lawns once a week which means that they dry up and turn brown. We have decided to replace all of our lawn with a Japanese type garden with all plants that do not need watering. I.e. drought resistant xeroscaping. But in the midst of this, our development-based city council is approving a new golf course and 1,200 houses in an area that already can't supply itself with adequate water. Why, because we want to have development to support population growth to reduce taxes and So what I am saying is that in order to improve the lives of most of the people on this planet, we have to reverse the population trend. This can not be done obviously by killing off two-thirds of the population as some on this list suggest, but rather by doing the things that promote smaller families -- educating women in developing countries and supplying birth control information (something the Bush administration has cut UN and international funding for), providing pension schemes so that people aren't required to have large families to support them in the old age, providing paying jobs so that child labour is not required to maintain family income, etc. (These are all things that the IMF and the American Treasury have opposed.) We know what causes birthrates to fall. We just have to do those things and overcome the fundamentalist ideologies that pervade the US administration, and the patriarchal regimes in some of the developing world. This does not mean, however, that we can ignore policies to reduce profligate resource use and, in particular, reduce oil consumption. The most obvious first necessary step is some form of carbon tax to raise North American prices, at least to European levels. Somehow, we must get the US to tie into Kyoto. We must look both to conservation and alternative, renewable, energy sources. We must look at regulations that reduce factory farming in favour of more organic and natural agricultural (with BSE, Avian Flu-Virus, pig and cattle induced water poisoning , that ain't rocket science either). Such policies may give us enough time to bring down the population to sustainable levels without the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. But be assured, if we don't, drought, plague, starvation and war will do it for us. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Mark Jones Was Right
Yes, Jim, although if as some are suggesting we shift from oil to coal, the problem will get worse, not better. Furthermore, it does nothing to solve the population pressure on other resources, in particular water. Paul Devine, James wrote: it may be good luck if the scare-mongers are correct that we're going to run out of oil soon, since that would limit the burning of hydrocarbons and moderate the tendency toward global warmng. -- Jim D.
Re: Mark Jones Was Right
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Comment There are not too many people on earth and one has to examine the source of their thinking. When challenged to define the carrying capacity of the earth, what we end up talking about is economics and not the physical mass of the earth and its metabolic processes. How many people can the earth carry - what ever that means? Since I disagree totally with this, there is not much point in carrying on the debate. But as Max has said, it is ideas like this that explains why the left has never made much headway in North America. Paul Phillips
Re: Mark Jones Was Right
Doug Henwood wrote: I'm confused. Are you saying that the left would be more popular if we said there are too many people, and the too many of us consume too much? Doug No, what I said , or at least what I meant to say, was that this belief that all the problems are caused by property relations and that there are not real (ecological) constraints on population growth and resource utilization has become a barrier to communicating with workers and the general population. I have done a lot of worker education with unions and with labour studies programs most of my working life (which I began as research director of a major labour federation in Canada) and the quickest way I found to alienate the workers you were working with was to tell them that they are the problem with their overconsumption and demands for a higher standard of living. What was effective was to start with the problems, pollution, unemployment, debt, poverty, global warming and show that these were problems and that they originated in the working of the system. But if I told them that the only solution was revolution or even radical change in the system, they would laugh me out of the room and not invite me back. However, if I could show that more modest and incremental changes were not only possible but would begin to control the power of capital, they were interested. And then we could discuss what they could do. I was always carefull as possible to back up my critique with the best science (and not 'bourgeois' science) that I could find, mainly from 'radical' scientists. This turned the workers and my labour studies students on. And a few became strong activists. A century ago in British Columbia the left/labour/socialist camp was rent asunder by the insistance by the Socialist Party on the 'impossibilist' doctrine. Nothing could be improved without the overthrow of the system and they actively fought participation in the parliamentary electoral system. The reform labour people took a different view and fought for reforms through the legislative process and were surprisingly successful in achieving such things as the 8 hour day and safety regulations in the mines. These were the founding members of the social democratic parties in BC and Canada which, despite their weaknesses and failures, have definitely improved the welfare of Canadian workers and Canadians generally -- medicare, old age pensions, unemployment insurance, labour law, etc all originated with a social democratic labour party. None of this is revolutionary, but it is IMHO, it is progress. What I was objecting to is the modern day 'impossibilists' and their denial of ecological constraints on population and resource utilization and their 'blame the victim' of modern day workers for overconsumption. In any case, I don't think there is enough common ground for a constructive debate on this issue and since I am heading to Slovenia for a month tomorrow (I will be leaving the list until mid-May) so this is my last post on this 'dead-end' thread. Paul
[Fwd: New Economics Student Journal At the New SchooL]
I am forwarding a couple of messages Fred Lee circulated on his post keynesian list that I thought would be equally of interest to those on pen-l. Paul Phillips --- Forwarded message follows --- Subject:New Economics Student Journal At the New SchooL Date sent: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 14:36:08 -0500 From: "Lee, Frederic" To: Dear Colleagues, A New heterodox journal from the graduate students at the New School. Fred Lee *** NEW SCHOOL ECONOMIC REVIEW The graduate students of the Economics department at the New School have launched a brand new online journal titled the New School Economic Review. The NSER will be open to scholars, practitioners, and students primarily to publish opinion-based political economy. Our objective is to provide a forum for critical voices from all perspectives in economics. Possible topics for submissions include reflections on the state of economics as a discipline, comments on current world political and social affairs, or good old fashioned economic analysis. The first issue has no single theme so that we can accept a diverse set of submissions. Here are the details: The submission deadline is April 30th. Papers should be 3 to 10 pages long. We will publish by Mid-May. The website is now live at the following address: www.newschool.edu/gf/nser. Submission guidelines are posted on the site. Please also take a look and make any comments, inquiries, ideas for essays to submit, questions, accusations, tirades, or aspersions to the editorial board. For now, think about what you'd like to write... because you all have to write! We look forward to hearing from each of you. The Editors, NSER --- End of forwarded message ---
[Fwd: corporate felons]
I am forwarding a couple of messages Fred Lee circulated on his post keynesian list that I thought would be equally of interest to those on pen-l. Paul Phillips Original Message --- Forwarded message follows --- Subject:corporate felons Date sent: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 12:52:48 -0500 From: "Lee, Frederic" To: Dear Colleagues, Fred Schiff would like info on corporate felons--see his request below. If you have any info for him, please e-mail it to him. His e-mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED]. Fred Lee I'm [Fred Schiff] doing a series of half-hour news and public affairs shows. My journalism students are producing radio, television and online stories. My part is to do an interview segment where I try to add the depth and context that is usually missing in the commercial news media. Is there anyone on the heterodox listserv who can help us with a story we are trying to concerning the pattern or extent of indictments of upper management of American corporations? Any who may have collected an inventory or chronological timeline listing of these indictments from the past four years. We're especially interested in opinions and interpretation of the class-wide nature of corporate felons, particularly within the so-called "inner circle" of leading banks and the Business Roundtable. Thanks, Fred --- End of forwarded message ---
Re: Will more violence provoke an extension of the US occupation?
Was this written by the Kerry election campaign team? :-P Paul Phillips Joel Wendland wrote: Statement of the Political Bureau: About Recent Events snip It is quite clear that these developments do not serve, in any way, the country s stability, and will not help to resolve any of its numerous problems, but rather will lead to further deterioration of conditions on all levels: political, security and social. If this course of events is persistently maintained, the people will then find themselves in a vortex of violence and violations of the law with unpredictable consequences and an extremely negative impact on the current main objective of Iraqi people: to take control of power from the occupation forces on 30 June. We condemn violence and terror in all forms and shades leading to bloodshed of innocent people as well as destruction of national assets. At the same time we call upon everybody to maintain peace, exercise self-restraint and handle issues wisely and prudently. Law must be respected as the arbiter in all spheres of life. Furthermore, the discourse of democratic dialogue must be adopted as civilised effective means for resolving existing problems and settling differences and conflicting opinions, rather than extremism, bigotry and pressures to impose unjust diktat. snip Political Bureau of the Central Committee Iraqi Communist Party Baghdad 7-4-2004 http://www.iraqcp.org _ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
Re: unsubscribing...
Michael, Perhaps you could post all the standard commands for unsubbing, or postponing mail, and for resubbing etc. since many of us will be wanting to postpone or unsub due to summer and conference travel, etc. and given our state of academic dementia, our memories of how to do that are somewhat diminished :-[ Paul Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba joanna bujes wrote: Unsubcribing for a week while in NYC. Michael? Can you please do that? I don't know how. Thanks, Joanna
Commendante Fidel
Just finished watching the two hour documentary on CBC Newsworld by Oliver Stone on El Commendante, Fidel Castro, which I understand was commissioned by HBO but censored in the United States because it was not critical of Castro. (It has been subtitled, Lunch with Fidel). Actually, it was very interesting and brought out a lot of the humour in Castro, as well as his criticism of the Soviet Union. But what was perhaps the most offensive to the US censors was his obvious veneration by the majority of the people of Cuba. Bush could only wish that he could walk about the streets among the common people like Castro without fear of assassination. Plus, I expect Bush can only wish he would be elected with the support of the majority of the population as Castro obviously has (I have been several times to Cuba and talked with a number of people including a group of cultural people that we brought to Canada. Interestingly, the young people in the groups told jokes about Castro while the older ones complained that they were too young to know what a hell it was like before Castro. But that is another question. In general, almost all the people I have talked to revere and admire Fidel even as they criticize him.) This raises another interesting contradiction. Colin Powell criticized Russia because Putin did not debate with his opponents before the recent presidential election. According to Powell, it was not a democratic election even if Putin got 70 percent of the vote. Now this comes from the administration of Bush who not only lost the election (until awarded it on a technicality by his friends on the Supreme Court) but, in the process, refused to debate with his only true opposition in the election campaign, Ralph Nader. I think it is at least arguable, that the US is the least democratic of all the so called western democracies. I think Canada will be adopting proportional representation or some variant of it in the next 5 or 10 years leaving only the US and to a lesser extent Britain with the undemocratic 'first past the post system'. (At least the Bristish system allows for 3rd party representation.) Ah well, Wave the flag and shout democracy. Just leave the rest of the world alone. Paul Phillips
Re: Another classroom exercise
While Michael is undoubtedly right, university administrations reward those who do research and slight teaching. But that is no excuse for teachers to neglect their moral responsibility to teach properly and to serve their students. I think Jim was once a student of mine and I hope he never felt that I neglected the students for easier paths to money and promotion. And, if he wants to help his students, he can refer them to my text "Inside Capitalism" where I have almost all of his key words in the index, or at least discussed.;-) Paul Phillips MICHAEL YATES wrote: While Zizek's behavior is reprehensible, especially given that his teaching duties are almost certainly minimal, it is not uncommon that when teachers get burned out, they start to take short cuts. These are often indirectly encouraged by the administration which cuts funding for teaching, takes on too many students for the faculty, rewards easy teachers who give high grades, etc. Teachers start to give micky mouse tests, reduce readings, cut short their classes, take days off, etc.Avoiding students is a common enough short cut. Of course, a basic problem is that tenure often enough has little to do with teaching well. Disdain for the undergraduates is an occupational disease. Michael Yates - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2004 3:48 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Another classroomexercise I visited Jim Craven's classes (huge classes, and he has toteach a lot of them to make ends meet) last December. Thestudents were curious and asked me goodquestions. Michael Yates A couple of years ago when Iwas on the phone with Jim a lot discussing Blackfoot and related issues, Ioften caught him in the tail-end of a conversation with a student in hisoffice. Although I never mentioned it to him, I was always impressed withthe obvious rapport he had with the student and the individual attention heseemed to be giving. Compare that with Zizek who confided to Lingua Francaabout putting up a schedule of meetings with non-existent students on hisoffice door. Since he didn't want to waste his time engaging with ordinarystudents, he faked being all booked up. Honestly I can't understand whyanybody who has invested in the time and energy to get tenure would behavein this fashion. For me the high point of the week is meeting some youngperson from Marxmail in person who wants to discuss politics. Or evenexchanging email. Louis Proyect Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: human capital again
I think some of the confusion in this thread relates to the fact that 'capital' has two meanings in the economics context. One meaning of capital is 'stored up dead labour utilized to enhance the productivity of living labour'; the second, 'a social relation'. Human capital in the form of education conforms to the first meaning but, obviously, has a very different social relation than physical capital owned by the capitalist. As a university professor, I am still 'wage labour' and still a member of the working class (and there is no sense in making the destinction between blue and white collar here), but I receive at least part of my increased productivity from my 'investment' in education in the form of higher wages. If the employer can appropriate or expropriate that investment (by taping my lectures, printing my textbooks and teaching materials without paying a royalty, forcing me to put my course on the internet or on disc, etc.) then I may not receive any return to my investment and my wages will tend to fall to those of basic labour. Normally, the capital investment can't be expropriated from the worker and thus the social relationship between capital (investment in education/training) and labour is markedly different than it is between physical capital and labour. Likewise for the distribution of the increased productivity of labour. Paul P Devine, James wrote: recently, the NY TIMES had an article about how much organizational capital (the social capital inside the organization a.k.a. corporate culture) could be recorded in PCs and thus used and remembered more easily. This, they said, was how the PC helped productivity. Jim D.
Re: human capital again
michael perelman wrote Paul, you are certainly familiar with the sheepskin effect -- that what people earn with their human capital reflects much more their credentials than their actual knowledge. A substantial literature within conventional economics confirms this commonsense idea. I have never said that human capital explains or accounts for much, never mind all, of income differentials. Even the major champions of human capital theory don't make that kind of claim. Mincer's well known study, for instance, finds that education explains only 7 % of income differentials (30% if you include years of work experience as human capital, which I don't). Nonetheless, the concept of human capital is very useful in explaining how labour markets work and are structured. Richard Freeman's work on college graduates labour markets stands out as does Piore's, Gordon, Edwards and Reich's, et al. work on segmented labour markets. What Freeman's work points out is also the importance of the sheepskin in granting monopoly power to the graduate -- that is, there is an interaction between human capital acquisition and power in the labour market I do not deny that education is important, but human capital theory seems to reinforce the notion that market forces work without power relations. A back hoe owned by Halliburton you surely more valuable in terms of the market than one I would own. As I said above, you can not necessarily separate human capital theory from power. Nor, as E. O. Wright has shown, can you separate the effects of human capital from class. i.e. the higher the class, the greater the returns to education. As I indicated in my previous post, it is important to separate out the productivity increasing effect of investment in human capital from the social relation of capital as a way of expropriating surplus value. Paul P
Re: human capital again
Michael, I have read of 'cultural capital' and 'political captital' which seems to be equivalent of that obscene capitalist construction called, I think, 'good will' which corporations can claim as wealth when they sell out. But that is not investment in any sense in that it does not involve investment of (labour) resources in creating something of productive ( and productive is the operative word) value. Human capital is something quite different. Humans invest in buying knowledge, produced by labour, which increases their productivity at a later date. In that sense, human capital is a form of 'dead labour' equivalent to physical capital. None of these others are 'real' investment in 'dead labour' and hence, are not capital in the sense we use the term. Paul Phillips Michael Perelman wrote: 112-3: They refer to a plethora of capitals -- human capital, cultural capital, and even self-command capital.. Baron, James N. and Michael T. Hannan. 1994. The Impact of Economics on Contemporary Sociology. Journal of Economic Literature, 32: 3 (September): pp. 111-46. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: human capital again
Michael, The fact that human capital is tracked by class is not really rellevant. Does one tract physical capital by class? Does a backhoe owned by a working class person have less value than the backhoe owned by GW Bush? Only because of the social status heaped upon BW Bush by his birth/pedigree/wealth. But that is a false valuation. The backhoe in the hands of a qualified worker is worth much more than a backhoe in the hands of an incompetent GWB. So much the same with human capital. I came from a working-class family who had the goals of educating all their children to escape from being working class, not because they were anti-working class (they were all radical socialists, union activists, political activists) but because they saw that the only way we were to escape being wage-slaves was to become educated (i.e. accumulate human capital) that would not only alow us an element of independence, but also to get "a return to our investment" in education. George Bush did not get a return to education (human capital) but to the power of priviledge -- i.e. to a monopoly of power. What you are in effect saying is that GWB got where he did because he worked harder (i.e. his return was greater than those who had equal human capital.) This, I would suggest is crap. Paul Michael Perelman wrote: Paul, I don't think that "human capital" is a particularly useful concept. In the US, student are tracked according to class -- although it is not official. Even in the absence of tracking, poor students go to poor schools. So a GW Bush can go and get a Harvard MBA as evidence of human capital. Are humans capital or does the concept make capital human? I understand how I can accept a reduced income to go to med. school get a higher income, much as a capitalist invests in capital, but there are so many factors involved. Also, much learning does not come from labor. Students usually learn more from their fellow students than from professors. Rant finished. On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 09:37:50PM -0800, paul phillips wrote: Michael, I have read of 'cultural capital' and 'political captital' which seems to be equivalent of that obscene capitalist construction called, I think, 'good will' which corporations can claim as wealth when they sell out. But that is not investment in any sense in that it does not involve investment of (labour) resources in creating something of productive ( and productive is the operative word) value. Human capital is something quite different. Humans invest in buying knowledge, produced by labour, which increases their productivity at a later date. In that sense, human capital is a form of 'dead labour' equivalent to physical capital. None of these others are 'real' investment in 'dead labour' and hence, are not capital in the sense we use the term. Paul Phillips -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: 'human capital
I, too, am no great fan of Becker (indeed the concept of human capital did not originate with Becker but with Theodore Schultz) but the concept of 'human capital' is indeed very useful even within a Marxian theoretical framework, as the quote by Tom indicates. Indeed, although he doesn't use the term, human capital is referred to by Smith as one of the 5 (and the only one that has empirical justification) causes of compensating differentials within the classical framework. Moreover, it is very useful in conceptionalizing intermediate class formations on the basis of 'ownership' of (human) capital combined with the attempts by professions to monopolize (and act as a monopoly) to restrict supply of human capital and hence extract monopoly profits from 'restricted ownership.' To my mind, there is no contradiction with the LTV . Indeed, it gives it more explanatory power. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tom Walker wrote: I would like to draw your attention to the discussion on pages 32 to 35 of the 1821 pamphlet, "The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties" (described by Engels as "the most advanced outpost of a whole group of writings of the 1820s..."). The author constructs a "rude guess" as to how far the "exactions of capital" extend. He does so by subtracting, from the incomes of several classes of people, the average annual wages of a common labourer. Income above that standard he reckons as being interest on capital, "for even the high wages of mechanics and other artizans, inasmuch as it exceeds this, is interest of capital; capital expended in their apprenticeship, in indentures, premium, food, or clothing, or loss of time." If you follow the entire analysis, it should be clear that not all of this 'human capital' would be 'productive'. In fact, without singling out Bishops, Barristers or Persons educating youths in Universities and Chief Schools, a large quantity of it may be presumed to be fictitious capital, corresponding to the relatively large proportions of fictitious capital in general that is analyzed previously in the pamphlet.
Re: Corporations/Side Issue
Just to supplement Jim's comments, in Mondragon wages were set at comparable outside market wages and then profits at the end of the year were allocated to individual members savings funds which would be paid out on retirement. The purpose was to build up funds for investment in expanding the coops without having to rely on the commercial money market or banking system. All employees were required to become members except for specialists brought in for short term projects (e.g. an engineer hired to design a new product or process.) Wage differentials were regulated with a maximum differential of 3 to 1 although last I heard, they were considering raising this to 6 to 1 because of the difficulty they were having in attracting professionals as members as the co-ops moved more and more into high tech areas and into research and development. In the case of Yugoslavia, wages were set by the workers councils, usually at levels suggested by the managers. With the 1974 constitutional changes that introduced contractual self-management and the 1976 Law on Associated Labour, the financing of investment was abandoned by the state and the independent banks and was transfered to the enterprises from retained earnings and borrowings from their captive banks. This led to what became known as the 'Yugoslav disease' because the workers would distribute all the earnings in the form of wages leaving nothing for reinvestment. The enterprises would then borrow from their captive banks which basically printed the money with the resulting inflation that really was a major factor in the collapse of the system. This was, of course, illegal under Yugoslav law but by then the state authority was so dispersed and self-management so intrenched that little was done to curb it. Horvat claims, and I think he is right, that the real mistake was to abolish the state investment funds. It was during the time of the state investment funds (the period of market socialism) that the rate of economic growth and wage growth was at its highest. Nevertheless, the self-management system of setting wages did result in the most egalitarian distribution of wages in Europe, both in the capitalist and communist worlds. Paul P Devine, James wrote: Mike B. writes: I'm wondering about these pressures to cut costs which Chomsky refers to. Don't they lead to the big, nice co:operative having to try to find cheaper sources of material via low wage, usually dictatorial political states? FWIW, David Schweikert's "market socialist" utopia of worker-managed co-operatives has two major institutions that are aimed at preventing the co-ops' profit-maximization from turning into this kind of thing: 1) a minimum wage, so that profit-max doesn't involve co-ops competing via a race to the bottom among themselves. [I think there must also be some rule about not hiring non-co-op members to do work. But I don't remember it.} 2) a special tariff on imports from countries that don't live up to labor standards. In this case, the revenues collected by making these imports more expensive to domestic consumers are supposed to be returned to the country whose imports are taxed as a lump sum (development aid). Jim Devine Paul Phillips, Senior Scholar, Department of Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Government aid for US mortgages
Robert Manning wrote: snip The investment risk of peaking US housing market prices (buttressed by historically low debt service levels) is globalized through the sale of these mortgage-backed securities in international markets such as London and Japan. Hence, low interest rates fuel higher home values which contribute to the consumer borrowing cycle via higher home equity loans which are deductible from Federal income taxes. Doesn't this kind of sound like a Ponzi scheme? Paul P
Corporations/Side Issue
Mike B wrote I agree, it would be much better, if workers ran and managed the the firms in which they exploited themselves for surplus value. Honestly though, hasn't the history of creating such entities, like say Mondragon or the Amana Colony or the kibbutz movement and all the utopian socialist movements of the past-- co:operatives included--proven that they always morph into the undemocratic, totalitarian corporate structures which we see ruling us today? In other words, hasn't wage-labour always resulted in the developement of capitalist social relations? Sincerely, Mike B) What evidence is there that Mondragon has morphed into an undemocratic, totalitarian corporate structure? Last I heard it was still going strong and expanding without any change in its co-operative structure. Check out the Mondragon website. On the theory of 'market socialism' more up to date than Vanek and the others mentioned is Bruno Jossa and Gaetano Cuomo, The Economic Theory of Socialism and the Labour-Managed Firm. (EdwardElgar, 1997). I also like Branko Horvat's The Political Economy of Socialism (Sharpe, 1982). On Mondragon, a recent book by Greg MacLeod, From Mondragon to America: Experiments in Community Economic Development (University College of Cape Breton Press, 1997) is an interesting interpretation written by an activist in co-operative community economic development in the Maritimes. (I met Greg in Mondragon where I was doing some research on worker co-ops and he was leading a group of Canadian students studying the Mondragon and its derivative, the Valencia, model.) For a depressing and entertaining history, origins and abuse of corporations which addresses most of the issues in the main thread see the new 3 hour documentary The Corporation that has won a number of awards at film festivals (including Sundance I believe). Mike Moore, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky and Elaine Barnard are featured in the film as well as Milton Friedman and Michael Walker of Canada's ultra-rightwing Fraser Institute. The film was made by a Canadian and has been in general release as a feature film for the past few months. It is particularly interesting in view of the discussion on this thread because it analyzes the corporation as an individual suffering from all the medical symptons of a psychotic personality. By the way, corporations are legally individuals in Canada and thereby their right to free speech is protected by the Charter of Rights in Canada's Constitution. This status was used by the big tobacco companies when they appealed against a law restricting what they could put on their tobacco packaging. If I remember correctly, the tobacco corporations won. So David Shemano is definitely wrong when he says that a corporation does not speak as an individual. Paul Phillips Senior Scholar, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: sorry about that...
Hey, some of us would like the recipe for Chai too! Paul joanna bujes wrote: Chai message was obviously meant to go to ravi. J.
[Fwd: [Fwd: Dr Seuss]]
Enjoy For the 100th anniversity of Dr. Seuss The Whos down in Whoville liked people a lot, But the Grinch in the White House most certainly did not. He didn't arrive there by the will of the Whos, But stole the election that he really did lose. Vowed to "rule from the middle," then installed his regime. (Did this really happen, or is it just a bad dream?) He didn't listen to voters, just his friends he was pleasin' Now, please don't ask why, who knows what's the reason. It could be his heart wasn't working just right. It could be, perhaps, that he wasn't too bright. But I think that the most likely reason of all, Is that both brain and heart were two sizes too small. In times of great turmoil, this was bad news, To have a government that ignores its Whos. But the Whos shrugged their shoulders, went on with their work, Their duties as citizens so casually did shirk. They shopped at the mall and watched their T.V. They drove a gas guzzling big S.U.V., Oblivious to what was going on in D.C., Ignoring the threats to democracy. They read the same papers that ran the same leads, Reporting what only served corporate needs. (For the policies affecting the lives of all nations Were made by the giant U.S. Corporations.) Big business grew fatter, fed by its own greed, And by people who shopped for the things they didn't need. But amidst all the apathy came signs of unrest, The Whos came to see we were fouling our nest. And the people who cared for the ideals of this nation Began to discuss and exchange information: The things they couldn't read, in the corporate-owned news, Of FTAA meetings and CIA coups, Of drilling for oil and restricting rights. They published some books, created Websites, Began to write letters, and use their e-mail (Though Homeland Security might send them to jail!) What began as a whisper soon grew to a roar, These things going on they could no longer ignore. They started to rise up and reach out to all Let their voices be heard, they rose to the call, To vote, to petition, to gather, dissent, To question the policies of the "President." As greed gained in power and power knew no shame The Whos came together, sang "Not in our name!" One by one from their sleep and their slumber they woke The old and the young, all kinds of folk, The black, brown and white, the gay, bi- and straight, All united to sing, "Feed our hope, not our hate! Stop stockpiling weapons and aiming for war! Stop feeding the rich, start feeding the poor! Stop storming the deserts to fuel SUV's! Stop telling us lies on the mainstream T.V.'s! Stop treating our children as a market to sack! Stop feeding them Barney, Barbie and Big Mac! Stop trying to addict them to lifelong consuming, In a time when severe global warming is looming! Stop sanctions that are killing the kids in Iraq! Start dealing with ours that are strung out on crack!" A mighty sound started to rise and to grow, "The old way of thinking simply must go! Enough of God versus Allah, Muslim vs. Jew With what lies ahead, it simply won't do. No American dream that cares only for wealth Ignoring the need for community health. The rivers and forests are demanding their pay, If we're to survive, we must walk a new way. No more excessive and mindless consumption Let's sharpen our minds and garner our gumption. For the ideas are simple, but the practice is hard, And not to be won by a poem on a card. It needs the ideas and the acts of each Who, So let's get together and plan what to do!" And so they all gathered from all 'round the Earth And from it all came a miraculous birth. The hearts and the minds of the Whos they did grow, Three sizes to fit what they felt and they know. While the Grinches they shrank from their hate and their greed, Bearing the weight of their every foul deed. From that day onward the standard of wealth, Was whatever fed the Whos spiritual health. They gathered together to revel and feast, And thanked all who worked to conquer their beast. For although our story pits Grinches 'gainst Whos, The true battle lies in what we daily choose. For inside each Grinch is a tiny small Who, And inside each Who is a tiny Grinch too. One thrives on love and one thrives on greed. Who will win out? It depends who you feed! Author: Unknown Paul Phillips
Re: the poverty of pundits
Jim, any idea who this Brooks is? Paul Devine, James wrote: I wonder if Paul Krugman is embarrassed to appear on the same op-ed page as this fellow: March 2, 2004/New York TIMES More Than Money By DAVID BROOKS
Re: Estanblished Trade Unions Left Politics, was Re: He does have a point
I think it is perhaps a little dangerous to generalize from US experience as it it were the standard of what goes on elsewhere. Though many Canadian unions have become established defenders of the status quo (mostly Canadian branches of so-called 'international' -- i.e. US dominated and controlled unions) many Canadian unions have been bulwarks of the left. In the past we can look to such unions as the west coast fishermen, woodworkers and longshoremen, at the EU, the MMSWU and, more recently at the CAW which has supported the new socialist initiative. Also, historically, the public sector unions in Canada have strongly supported progressive causes -- for instance the postal workers who pioneered maternity leave, etc. etc. What I find on this list is that we have a membership that is obsessively concerned with 'naval gazing', looking only at what goes on on the US without much concern either with historical analysis or with comparative analysis. I would suggest many would be well rewarded by reading, and digesting, Geoff Hodgson's engaging book How Economics Forgot History -- or how I might phrase it, how Economics forgot institutions. Paul Phillips, Senior Scholar, Department of Economics, University of Manitoba. Hypothesis: Trade Unions are actively left in their politics ONLY during their early stages, when the chief issue is establishing the right to exist. Once that right is established, they rapidly cease to be an element in left politics. At the present time, with only scattered exceptions, one will not, in the u.s., find social activists _and_ trade union leadership in the same social/political locations. In most instances of radical activists inside the trade-union movement you are more apt to meet those activists in organizations separate from the trade union itself.
Re: He does have a point
Frankly, I don't think this is the case. I have quit the NDP on several occasions and stopped supporting them materially when they voted for world crimes against Yugoslavia. I just could not be associated with a party that supported killing and bombing my friends that I had worked with for years. That they were misinformed and mislead by the media and the government of the day is no excuse. The NDP fell victim to the same misinformation as the Democrats in the US fell to Bush's lies about WMD and the New Labour Party did to Blair's lies (may the decent labour party veterens rest in peace). They were stupid, but not duplicit. The NDP at the provincial level, however, despite their hesitation and capitulation to 'neo-liberal' doctrines, have been enormously progressive relative to so called liberal and conservative (democratic and republican) regimes. I lived in Manitoba for 34 some odd years, the majority of which (thank goodness) were under NDP governments. I have since moved to B.C. which has a liberal/conservative government. The quality of life is definitely inferior. Hell, the quality of life for us relatively well-off retirees, is also declining as the government makes cutbacks to medicare in favour of the 'for profit' medicare providers. The most interesting (?) example is the Premier of Alberta who has declared that medicare is unestainable at the same time as he declared a 3 billion surplus from oil revenues. The Manitoba NDP government, despite all the criticistm, mine included, was clearly superior to its predecessor The question I have for pen-l-ers is, when and if, public revulsion for capitalist exess will result in any political resonse? I would recommend that anyone interested in such things take in the movie The Corporation Marvin Gandall wrote: Notwithstanding the above, I wouldn't describe myself as a political cynic counselling others not to vote. I regularly vote for the social-democratic NDP in Canada. But I think it's worth pointing out, for the purposes of your debate, that I don't do so because I think the party, in the unlikely event it should take power at the national level, will govern much differently than the Liberals or Conservatives. The NDP 's history of governing at the provincial level in the West and in Ontario shows this to not be the case.
Re: More on Beware Generals Bearing a Grudge
Hey Jim, I played polo for twenty years and I am not now, nor was I ever, an aristocrat nor were any of those that I played with. On the other hand, my string of ponies never exceeded three, the minimum needed to play a full game. Paul Devine, James wrote: Patton MacArthur were both from the most aristocratic families. I understand that they both had their own strings of polo ponies and both played polo, a very aristocratic sport. Jim Devine
Re: Stephen Roach on worship
Roach falls prey to the fallacies that hobble almost all neoclassical economists -- he ignores (a) the static nature of trade/welfare/growth theory, (b) externalities (e.g., the pollution costs of long-distance transport, the lack of environmental protection, worker health and working conditions regulation) (c) the inequalities of economic/political power both between countries and, within countries, between workers and the state/capital (e.g. the suppression of Chinese and Mexican unions, etc.) and (d) the total disregard for the failure of traditional trade theory to include reasonable assumptions rather than utopian ones (such as pure competition, no economies of scale, symetrical and perfect knowledge, yada, yada, yada.) Besides, as a Canadian resident in B.C. where the forest industry is the most important export industry, protectionism by the US has been a dominant force for years now with the soft-wood lumber duties and, more recently, the ban on beef and other meat shipments to the US. As a former Prairie-ite, I am equally enraged by the duties put on our grain exports because of the alleged subsidy involved in the handling of grain by the Canadian Wheat Board -- an allegation that has been made and dismissed by international investigatory bodies 19 or 20 times over the past ten or so years -- but still implemented by the Bush regime. In short, protectionism has always been there to rescue the profits of capital or agribusiness -- Roach is merely concerned because now it might, because of the political pressures of an election year, actually be used to rescue the wages and employment of the working class. Nothing could be more anathama to a neoclassical economist. Paul Phillips Eubulides wrote: [at least he's confessed] http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/latest-digest.html#anchor0 Global: Offshoring Backlash Stephen Roach (New York) It's economics versus politics. The free-trade theory of globalization embraces the cross-border transfer of jobs. Political systems do not - especially as election cycles heat up. That heat is now being turned up in Washington, as incumbent politicians in both parties come face to face with the angst of America's jobless recovery. Jobs could well be the hot button in Campaign 2004. And offshoring - the transfer of high-wage US jobs to the low-wage developing world - could quite conceivably be the most contentious aspect of this debate and one of greatest risk factors for ever-complacent financial markets. Like most economists, I worship at the high altar of free-market competition and the trade liberalization that drives it. But that doesn't mean putting a positive spin on the painful dislocations that trade competition can spawn. Unfortunately, that was the mistake made recently by the Bush administration's chief economist, Gregory Mankiw, in his dismissive assessment of white-collar job losses due to offshoring. Like most economic theories, the optimal outcomes cited by Mankiw pertain to that ever-elusive long run. Over that timeframe, the basic conclusion of the theory of free trade is inarguable: International competition lowers costs and prices, thereby boosting the purchasing power and standard of living of consumers around the world. The practical problem in this case - as it is with most theories - is the concept of the long run. Sure, over a long enough timeframe, things will eventually work out according to this theoretical script. But the key word here is eventually - the stumbling block in presuming that academic theories map neatly into the shorter time horizons of financial markets and politics. Lord Keynes put it best in his 1923 Tract on Monetary Reform, cautioning, In the long run, we're all dead. History, of course, tells us that a lot can happen between now and that ever-elusive long run. That's precisely the risk in the great offshoring debate, in my view. As always, context defines the issues of contention. And in this case, the context is America's jobless recovery - an unprecedented hiring shortfall in the first 26 months of this recovery that has left private nonfarm payrolls fully 8 million workers below the path of the typical hiring upturn. This is where the offshoring debate enters the equation. One of the pillars of trade theory is that wealthy industrial economies like America' s can be broken down into two basic segments of activity - tradables and nontradables. International competition has long been confined to the tradable goods, or manufacturing sector. By contrast, the nontradables sector was largely shielded from tough competitive pressures, thereby providing shelter to the 80% of America's private sector workforce that toil in services. Consequently, as competitive pressures drove down prices in tradable goods, the bulk of the economy and its workforce benefited from the resulting expansion of purchasing power. Advanced, knowledge-based economies thrive on this distinction between
Re: The economy - a new era?
Jim Stanford in his book Paper Boom discusses this issue at great length including a lot of empirical data demonstrating the superior economic and 'political' position of large firms vs small business. Small business tends to gravitate to a demagogic, right-wing populist position, often tinged with racisim because of competition from immigrants who 'self-exploit' in easy to enter sectors such as ethnic restaurants, mom-and-pop stores, truck farming and personal services. Paul Phillips Doug Henwood wrote: Julio Huato wrote: Why would concentration be more propitious for progressive politics? I can think of several reasons. Less competition means less pressure on wages (though this would be partly offset by higher prices in noncompetitive markets). Large firms are easier to organize, regulate, and supervise. The big bourgeoisie is often more socially tolerant than their smaller comrades. Small business in general is often a font of reactionary social attitudes - in the U.S., they're much more anti-regulation, anti-union, anti-green, and are more likely to support the right wing of the Rep party. snip Doug
US blocks UN proposal to combat obesity]]
This seems to have been censored out by the major media. Paul Phillips Just another bit of evidence that what's good for big business is good for the rest of us, eh? WSWS : News Analysis : Medicine Health US blocks UN proposal to combat obesity By Barry Mason 9 February 2004 Back to screen version | Send this link by email | Email the author Obesity is one of the major causes of non-communicable disease. Worldwide there are around 300 million obese people with another 750 million considered overweightapproximately one sixth of the worlds population. In May 2002 the World Health Organisation was mandated to prepare a report on the virtual epidemic of obesity that is concerning health workers around the world. The report is to be presented to the Word Health Assembly meeting in May 2004, and a draft version, WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, was published last November. Independent international experts on diet and physical activity contributed to the report, which concluded that a profound shift in the balance of the major causes of death and disease is underway in most countries. Globally, the burden of non-communicable diseases has rapidly increased. It points out that for the year 2001 non-communicable disease accounted for 60 percent of the 56 million deaths worldwide and 47 percent of the global burden of disease. It insisted that, apart from tobacco consumption, high levels of cholesterol in the blood, low intake of fruit and vegetables, being overweight (and) physical inactivity are among the leading factors in the increase in non-communicable diseases. For all countries, current evidence suggests that the underlying determinants of non-communicable diseases are largely the same. These include increased consumption of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt; reduced levels of physical activity ... Of particular concern are the increasingly unhealthy diets and reduced physical activity of children and adolescents. The report advocates a global strategy to improve diet, calling for initiatives to be undertaken by the food industry to modify the fat, sugar and salt content of processed foods and to review many current marketing practices ... [so as to] accelerate health gains worldwide. It calls for a cut in the intake of fats in general and to shift towards unsaturated fat, a cut in the consumption of salt and of refined sugars as additives and the encouragement of consumption of healthy alternatives such as fruit, vegetables, legumes, whole grains and nuts. It calls on food manufacturers to limit the levels of saturated fats and trans-fatty acids, sugar and salt in existing products and to follow responsible marketing practices that support the strategy, particularly with regard to the promotion and marketing of foods high in saturated fats, sugar or salt, especially to young children. The report, when finally agreed will be advisory only, making recommendations to the giant food manufacturers and calling for them to carry out initiatives. It will have no power to impose any of its conclusions on these mighty corporations. But the food industry is not prepared to allow even a whiff of criticism to be aired against its activities. As soon as the draft report was published, the Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA), which represents corporations such as Birds Eye, Coca-Cola, Del Monte and Heinz, lobbied the Bush administration to act on their behalf and attack its findings. A letter was dispatched to the United Nations from William Steiger, a special assistant in the US Department of Health and Human Services, raising the US governments objections. The letter called into question the whole scientific basis of the WHO report. It denied the role of manufacturers in creating the demand for unhealthy foods, especially by targeting food advertising at children, and took exception to the singling out of particular foods such as those containing high levels of fat, salt and sugar. Steiger wrote that the US government, promotes the view that all foods can be part of a healthy and balanced diet, and supports personal responsibility to choose a diet conducive to individual energy balance, weight control and health. He criticised the WHO report for not stressing the responsibility of the every individual to balance his or her diet for themselves. A GMA spokesman commented, One of the things we didnt see in the document was a recognition that it ultimately comes down to what individuals choose to do. You cant solve the problem by government fiat. Consumer groups all over the world have denounced the efforts of the US government to undermine the WHO document. The cynical attempt of the food manufacturers to mislead consumers had already been highlighted in a report submitted last year to the WHO consultation on diet and health. A report from the International
The Euro's woes -- think of poor Canada
Ideology has taken us from champ to chump ByJIM STANFORD Monday, February 2, 2004 - Page A13 E-mail this Article Print this Article Advertisement The evidence is mounting that Canada's economy has quickly faded from being champ of the industrialized world, to become one of its chumps. For six years straight, beginning in 1997, we matched or exceeded growth rates in the U.S., and we led the G8 over that period. Today, in contrast, we're growing at a fraction of the pace of the U.S., Britain, and even Japan. Last year's bizarre string of economic accidents gets some of the blame: SARS, blackouts, forest fires. But the latest GDP numbers prove we were still stuck in the mud long after these temporary troubles had passed. Remember, the U.S. economy had its own troubles last year, yet bounced back impressively. What explains our fall from economic grace, despite our much-vaunted "fundamentals" (like balanced budgets and low inflation)? Sadly, our problem is rooted more deeply than the fleeting misfortunes of 2003. We're suffering once again from a demonstrated tendency by Canadian policy-makers to show more commitment to their own doctrinaire rules than to the concrete well-being of Canadians. Far from protecting us from downturn, our strong "fundamentals" -- and more precisely, the rigid policy rules which protect them -- are actually making things worse. Let's start with the Bank of Canada, which enforces our most famous economic rule: keeping core inflation between 1 and 3 per cent, come hell or high water. Following this rule, the bank concluded two years ago that Canada's economy risked severe overheating (despite 7.5-per-cent unemployment), and boosted interest rates five times in 12 months. This opened a huge gap between Canadian and U.S. interest rates, and sent the loonie soaring. Strangely, Alan Greenspan kept cutting U.S. rates; he wanted to ensure growth got back on the fast track, and he doesn't worry about any one-dimensional policy rules. The Bank of Canada stuck to its guns for a few fateful months, ensuring our stagnation persisted long after the last SARS patient was sent home. By the time it started wiping egg from its face last fall, the damage was done. Today our interest rates are still two-and-a-half times U.S. levels. But financiers know U.S. rates will rise, where ours (courtesy of a self-inflicted slowdown) can only fall. I and a few hundred other economists have warned for months that, one way or another, the loonie will come down: either the easy way (through pro-active rate cuts), or the hard way (through economic slowdown and reactive rate cuts). The Bank could have prevented the whole senseless episode by cutting rates sooner and deeper. But this would have required it to look beyond its myopic policy rule. An even more perverse rule is guiding fiscal policy. The new conventional wisdom in Canadian
Re: Perelman on Brenner
Sabri, Of course, no individual is indispensable and employers can downsize and increase the intensity of work for support staff or can, in many cases replace white collar workers with capital (e.g. replacing telephone receptionists with voice mail or touchtone routing) but the point that I was making is that labour cost is not a function of output. In the case of say a retail clothing store you need at least one clerk whether that clerk sells 50 shirts in a day or 10. The store will also require a bookkeeper and stock reorder clerk, again whether it sells 50 shirts or 10. Thus, if sales are down and profits fall, the easiest possible way to restore profits is to cut the wages of the clerical staff (or perhaps cut hours which reduces wages though not necessarily wage rates.) One way to reduce labour wages for this kind of labour is to outsource offshore -- e.g. software writing to India, telemarketing to Jamaica, etc. Paul Sabri Oncu wrote: Paul: However, white collar (non-productive) workers are a fixed cost. Squeezing their wages reduces fixed cost and hence can improve profits. Being an ex-whitecollar worker, I am not so sure about this Paul. As a saying goes in the business world, "no body is indispensable". At least, this is what I experienced when I was there. Why was I a "fixed cost" to the establishment I worked at? As the COO of a company who wanted to keep me, when I resigned and conditioned my stay for a substantial raise, once said: "You will do what you gotta do!" I don't think there are many in India or in Turkey or in the US, for that matter, who know certain things as well as I do, but I left and they lived happily ever after! Best, Sabri
Re: sending large articles to pen-l
Michael, But on the other hand, if you or others just send a url, many of us just delete the message and never follow it up. I for one never follow up a url -- it is too time consuming and sometimes proves fruitless. If this list were to become just a list of urls, I would probably log off. It is much easier to just delete any article that I am not interested in. Paul Phillips Michael Perelman wrote: Please try not to send large articles to the list -- like I did yesterday. It is better just to send the url. Large articles cause several problems. They fill up mailboxes for people with limited space. They take up a lot of space on Hans' server. People outside of the US with expensive dial up connections may have to pay a lot to download -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: important article
According to today's Globe and Mail, Kerry is not only leading the Democratic pack, but also has surged ahead of Dubya in the opinion polls. While the latter gives us non-Americans some glimmer of hope or ridding the international political scene of that hideous creature, I don't know enough about Kerry to make any judgement about whether he would be a good choice relative to others in the field. I know he voted against the first gulf war and for the Iraq invasion. Was that because he was taken in by the Administration's lies about WMD or is he also an imperialist? What of his domestic policies stance? Can any of you down there give us furriners an objective evaluation of him? Northern minds want to know. Paul Phillips
Re: Perelman on Brenner
Sabri, The problem is that it is somewhat more complicated than that. For one thing, in goods production almost all labour intensive production has gone offshore so that in what is left of manufacturing is capital intensive and production wages are a small part of cost. In that case, squeezing wages won't help restore profits significantly. However, white collar (non-productive) workers are a fixed cost. Squeezing their wages reduces fixed cost and hence can improve profits. However, that is not the real story. That is the shift in labour from high wage to low wage (largely service) work where wages are a large part of 'variable' cost. I suggest you go to the EPI website and look at their snapshot on the destruction of high paying jobs and the growth of low-wage jobs. In all but two states in the US the average wage of expanding industries was hugely lower than the average wage of declining employment industries -- by 20 to 40 per cent lower. In the 'growth' industries, lowering wages is a major source of improved profits. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Sabri Oncu wrote: Jim: This means that profit booms are most likely to be based on increased indebtedness. This is how I see it, too. The profit rate increases are not so much as a result of wage squeezes anymore. That is a thing of the past. As Michael keeps saying, and I agree, we are now in the age of high fixed costs and low marginal costs. As someone I knew many years ago, whose name I don't recall now, once said, this "reserve army" is not "the reserve army of labor" anymore. It is the reserve army of permanently unemployables. Best, Sabri
Re: immigration
of Columbia University, these workers are often agents of change when they return, even if they are unskilled, because they bring back new attitudes, financial resources and knowledge. But simply requiring workers to return home is not enough. Attractive incentives must be provided as well, and those in the Bush plan are inadequate. Devesh Kapur, a professor of government at Harvard, who with his colleagues has done comprehensive research in the field, suggests that one possibility is to have the United States retain part of the wages paid to new legal migrant workers in an investment account that is given back to the workers only when they return to their home countries. Forced returning home is problematic. What of the children? Do they come for a couple of years and then go back. What happens to their education. Are they forced to stay at home so that the income taxed by the migrant workers is used to subsidize American workers and education system while the Mexican kids and dependents get only a fraction of what the exploited workers can save. As for the power of businesses over their recruits in the Bush plan, Mr. Kapur says that employees should be required to work for their sponsoring company for only a limited time, and then be allowed to look for other jobs. For all its benefits, however, greater labor mobility is no panacea in itself. In the United States, for example, a Bush-style immigration program would work best, in my view, in tandem with a reasonable increase in the minimum wage. As for sending nations, Mr. Rosenzweig points out that returning money in the form of remittances is most productive when the economy can adequately channel them to useful investment and social programs. Without a strong increase in the minimum wage, such a program would be devastating for the low income earner in America. Moreover, some older policies work at cross purposes. Mr. Kapur notes that one reason so many Mexicans flee to the United States is that the North American Free Trade Agreement subjected them to low-price American agricultural competition that is subsidized by the government. More labor mobility, then, is an exciting potential source of growth for all, but it will work only in conjunction with proper safeguards and fair and productive social policies. No, it is an exciting source of profits for corporations and for low cost services for the middle income. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Concept of efficiency
Ken, The neoclassical concept of efficiency is defined as the relationship between scarce Factor inputs and outputs of goods and services Economic efficiency is defined in cost terms. i.e. the lowest cost for producing the level of output that is demanded at that cost.. (See for instance the Harper Collins Dictionary of Economics). However, even this concept is narrower since it is restricted to single markets and excludes externalities. Prolonging the life of poor people, in this concept, is not 'efficient' if the poor are unable to pay for medicine, etc. However, if pay-per-use deters poor people from seeking health treatment such that they become more sick and either infect other people or become unable to work to support their families or eventually fall upon the charity of ngos or the state, the cost to society will be much greater than if the service had been provided in the first place free of charge. (By the way, a study in Saskatchewan when the Conservatives introduced user fees found that the cost went up and the 'technical efficiency' of health insurance went down even though the economic efficiency, in the eyes of neoclassical economists, went up.) Nevertheless, such subsequent social costs do not normally enter into the calculus of economic efficiency by most economists -- although the really good neoclassical type economists do consider such. See for instance, Mishan's Costs of Economic Growth. The other contradiction to this narrow neoclassical approach is that prescriptions are not at the discretion of the sick but rather at the discretion of their doctors -- or what some refer to as 'supply determined demand'. In such cases, the concept of efficiency always breaks down, as Stiglitz and others have demonstrated. Paul Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba k hanly wrote: Below is a paragraph from an economists post to another list concerning the introduction of various user charges in Iraq including for presecriptions as well as use of emergency services. From an efficiency point of view, pay per service is felt to be superior to payment through, say, income taxes, and then free at point of use: the resources cost something to provide, but if users can draw on them 'for free', then they will not face the same incentives to ration the use of expensive resources. From an equity point of view, this can be very regressive: the poor and otherwise socially disadvantaged may be more likely to fall ill or suffer from chronic illness. The author notes that the charges may increase the degree of inequity. But what exactly is meant by efficiency here. If efficient means optimum allocation of scarce resources to satisfy medical needs on the basis of need alone it doesnt seem efficient at all. User charges will only deter those who have scarce dollars others will continue to use the resources when they dont need them and that doesnt seem efficient. For the poorest they may not seek needed medical help at all and that is surely not efficient in using scarce resources to meed medical needs on the basis of need. So what sense of efficiency is meant in thuis context. Of course the author puts for free at point of use in scare quotes. Of course it is not free but is paid for from taxes or the like. Even from some nebulous economic view of efficiency it doesnt seem clear to me why this would be less efficient. In terms of results medical systems primarily funded through tax dollars rather than user pay cost less and produce at least as good results as systems such as the US where user pay is used more. Cheers, Ken Hanly
Re: Concept of efficiency
Ken, That is correct for Pareto efficiency but it must be pointed out that there is a different (infinite set) of Pareto efficient points corresponding to each and every (infinite set) of income/wealth distributions. That is, income/wealth distribution is a given and is 'outside the realm of economics' as it pertains to economic efficiency. Paul k hanly wrote: How does this concept of efficiency relate to pareto efficiency that is the view that a situation is efficient when no one can be made better off without someone else being made worse off, at least something like that! In terms of Pareto efficiency certainly if the poor could not pay for medicine or no one was willing to pay for it then it would not be Pareto efficient to purchase medicine for them. THe definition is hardly value neutral, efficiency would favor the rich's realization of their utility whereas in most cases realisation of the utiliity of the poor would be inefficient and the term is always used as if inefficiency is a prima facie bad.. In particular it would be inefficient should the rich not wish to provide them with money. I guess the moral though would be that generous charity would increase efficiency whereas taxation that took from some against their will to pay for the needs of the poor would be inefficient! Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "paul phillips" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2004 1:48 PM Subject: Re: Concept of efficiency Ken, The neoclassical concept of efficiency is defined as "the relationship between scarce Factor inputs and outputs of goods and services" Economic efficiency is defined in cost terms. i.e. the lowest cost for producing the level of output that is demanded at that cost.. (See for instance the Harper Collins Dictionary of Economics). However, even this concept is narrower since it is restricted to single markets and excludes externalities. Prolonging the life of poor people, in this concept, is not 'efficient' if the poor are unable to pay for medicine, etc.
Re: A shameless plug
Since several other members of Pen-l have recently plugged their books -- and quite rightfully so, I have just today begun to read Doug's newest which I got (after explicit hints) for Christmas -- I thought I might mention my recent book which came out this fall though it is directed primarily at a Canadian audience. It is: Paul Phillips, _Inside Capitalism: An Introduction to Political Economy_ (Halifax: Fernwood, 2003) 215 pp. It is primarily directed at the introductory textbook market for labour or union studies programs thought it is also used at intro and intermediate political economy theory courses. Chapter headints are: Introduction: Political Economy and Contemporary Canadian Capitalism Ch 1: Political Economy and Economics: The Issues Ch 2: Institutions of Production and Exchange Ch 3: Production Theory Ch 4: The Labour Process Ch 5: The Labour Market: Part One Ch 6: The Labour Market: Part Two Ch 7: Investment: Closing the Circle Ch 8: Growth and Crisis Ch 9: Aggregate Economics: Smoothing the Flow Ch 10: The International Sector and Globalism Ch 11: There is An Alternative -- Democracy If I were to describe my approach it would be Marxian informed, radical institutionalism/post Keynesianism/Kalecki-ism but, perhaps, with some neoclassical/classical leavening (for what that is worth). In any case, it is available in Canada through Amazon.ca. I don't know if it is available through Amazon.com in the US. The price is, if I remember correctly, something like $28 Cdn or around 22 USD. For what it is worth, That's all Folks! Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Fidel Castro on unequal exchange
joanna bujes wrote: Mike Ballard quoted What we found in examining diaries, letters, autobiographies, pediatric and pedagogical literature back to antiquity was that good parenting appears to be something only historically achieved, and that the further one goes back into the past the more likely one would be to find children killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized and sexually abused by adults. Indeed, it soon appeared likely that a good mother, one who was reasonably devoted to her child and more or less able to empathize with and fulfill its needs, was nowhere to be found prior to modern times. It seemed to me that childhood was one long nightmare from which we have only gradually and only recently begun to awaken. LLOYD deMAUSE Psychohistory and Psychotherapy, Foundations of Psychohistory 1992 I don't believe this, Joanna Neither do I. My research into aboriginal society prior to the European invasion reveals a society which was very caring of their children and one very intolerant of sexual abuse of children. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Query
Also, didn't someone in Freeman and Card, "Small Differences that Matter" make the point that the higher tuition in the US relative to in Canada was one of the factors explaining the greater increase in income differentials in the US and also a reason for the lower percentage of the young getting post-secondary education in the US? The other large body of evidence comes from the growth literature of the 1960s and 1970s and the social rate of return to education in some cases as high as 15% (in addition to a private rate of return of around 10% if my memory serves me correctly) thus making it a very good investment for government If the private rate of return is 10%, with a marginal rate of income tax of 35%, the rate of return to the government on private expenditure is already 3.5% independent of sales and indirect taxes or of social return. Also, Denison's (or was it Fabricant's) studies showed that productivity growth largely due to increases in 'human capital' was the major source of economic growth in the US. Dorethy Walters studies for the Economic Council of Canada reported similar results. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Michael Perelman wrote: I have made the point. I think lots of people have. Now you have students working 20+ hours and trying to get an education. I see high numbers dropping out due to stress -- They try to rush through to get it over with and cannot maintain the pace. The quality of education suffers as our neoclassical friends would say, human capital deteriorates. On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 01:36:07PM -0800, Eugene Coyle wrote: A friend passed along this query from a European correspondent: Do you know anybody critical of the US system of tuition fees who argues from an economic point of view: i.e. who refers to higher education as public good? We need to be backed up by critics from abroad. Otherwise benchmark with the US will lead to adopting your system. Any thoughts? Gene Coyle -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Estimating the surplus\Doug's question\Fred's comments
Fred B. Moseley wrote: Hi Doug, you are right that the appropriate unit of analysis is the world economy, and that surplus-value produced by e.g. Chinese workers is appropriated by US capitalists. But since this surplus-value is appropriated by US capitalists, it is mostly included in the estimates of profits in the US NIPAs. But this international aspect does mean that the estimates of the ratio of unproductive labor to productive labor in the US are overestimated. Comradely, Fred I think there has also been a tendency to forget and neglect the expropriation of surplus from independent commodity production that has occured in the past that has been a major factor in profits, including in the 'golden age of capitalism'. Perhaps the most important sector was agriculture where surplus in production was expropriated through monopoly power (agribusiness the railways, banks) and shows up as profits of agribusiness, railways, banks, food processors, etc. The depressed state of primary agricutlture (fisheries, independent forestry operators) has meant that there has been precious little surplus to expropriate through the monopolized price mechanism. I would suggest that this may also be a factor in the failure of the profit rate to recover to the levels of the golden age. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Amy Chua: World on Fire
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: * World On Fire by Amy Chua snip She's overreaching somewhat when she says, early on, markets and democracy were among the causes of both the Rwandan and Yugoslavian genocides. And while Serbian hatred of the Croats was fanned by Croatian economic dominance, the Bosnians they butchered were as poor as they were. Chua makes these caveats herself in the relevant chapters, but they dilute some of the grand claims she lays out in her introduction. If this is the level of analysis and knowledge displayed in the rest of the book, then I wouldn't waste my time reading the book. It suggests a profound ignorance of Balkan history and the politico-economic basis of the ethnic divisions that resulted and which were fanned, not by democracy and markets, but by outside intervention from Germany, the US and the Catholic Church. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Estimating the surplus\Doug's question
Devine, James wrote: Hi, Fred. you write: spite of the loss of workers' power and stagnant real wages - because the ratio of unproductive to productive labor has continued to increase. A big question: _why_ does the ratio of unproductive to productive labor increase over time? if this ratio is squeezing profits, it seems that profit-seeking capitalists would make an effort to lower it. or is there some sort of technological or social imperative that pushes capitalists to increase the ratio anyway? or is it a matter of it being good for capitalists as individuals to raise the ratio even though it's bad for capital as a whole? why the ratio rises is important. For example, if we posit that demand-side stagnation has been the rule of late, that would push up the ratio (for a few years, at least) in that unproductive labor is typically overhead labor, while productive labor is laid off. However, this explanation doesn't fit the waves of "downsizing" (thinning out of management, etc.) that hit US business during the 1990s. (see below) Jim, I tried to offer one suggestion in my post a few days ago. In the 1970s, corporations attempted to restore the profit level through price increases (leading to a price-wage spiral) which was cut off by the recession of the 1980s. Since that time, we have been in a period of demand constraint. As a result, increasing productivity has been met by downsizing and wage restraint resulting in stagnant wages which leads, as you point out, to an underconsumption undertow. Major corporations respond to this demand constraint by increasing promotion, marketing and advertising thereby increasing the ratio of unproductive to productive labour. But given globalisation and Asian competition, firms can't raise prices to match the increased cost of unproductive labour. They respond by trying to cut managers, etc. In the 1990s, they were aided by technological change in white collar work (i.e. computerization) which reduced the relative demand for/employment of unproductive labour. (My figures for Canada indicate a significant decline in the employment of certain types of secretarial and clerical labour in the early 1990s.) But given the deflationary effect of global competition using low-wage 3rd world labour, 1st world corporations are unable to raise prices to restore (realized) profitability. Thus, the profit recovery in the 1990s was only partial in the light of continuing need to increase unproductive selling/marketing expenditures despite the rise in productive worker productivity. To the extent that the growth in non-productive worker productivity is on a declining projectory, there is little to give hope for a new long-term, profit-based expansion based on technological change, at least in North America and Europe where the ratio of productive to unproductive labour is already so low. I think my read on this is similar to Fred's. If not, I would be glad to hear, and if so, why? Paul Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Productive/Unproductive Labour
For what it is worth, I think there is some useful information gained by making the distinction between productive and unproductive labour (as defined by Jim) even though it is impossible to measure the distinction with any degree of accuracy. I did some calculations for the postwar period up to the 1980s looking at the rate of profit (conventionally defined a la Doug) and the ratio of production workers to white collar workers in Canada. My hypothesis was that the rising productivity and capital accumulation in production initially produced high levels of profits but as capacity rose (with demand constraints) and pressures on raw material and energy prices rose, there was a tendency of firms to increase their 'unproductive staffs and expenditures' (e.g. advertising) in order to increase (or at worst maintain) market shares in order, in turn, to attempt to maintain profits. At the same time, wages of productive workers were rising such that the increased productivity of productive workers was unable to offset the rising cost of unproductive workers such that realized profits fell. In the subsequent period, the rise of productivity of unproductive workers due to computer technology and the subsequent stabilization/fall in some forms of unproductive labour (and wage stagnation?) while productivity of productive workers has risen faster than (stagnant) wages has allowed profits to rise, at least until the more recent recession. The conventional data, using white collar employees as a proxy for unproductive labour, is consistent with the hypothesis through the time period I looked at. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Productive/Unproductive Labour
Carrol Cox wrote: The distinction between productive/unproductive (and perhaps reproductive) labor then can't either be accepted or rejected on the basis of economic statistics. ? This was not the point I was trying to make -- indeed the opposite. What I was saying is that the theoretical/philosophical distinction between productive and unproductive labour is a useful tool in understanding recent economic trends. The fact that the empirical data seems to support Marx's distinction is, however, welcome. Paul Phillips
Re: US: manufacturing
Eubulides wrote: In the past two decades, manufacturing productivity grew at double the ace of overall productivity growth. . . . This increase in productivity has enabled the economy to grow faster without inflation and has been passed through to workers in the form of higher [inflation-adjusted] wages, says a report published by the Manufacturing Institute, an arm of the NAM. I read a recent report on Canada that said its upsurge in productivity was almost entirely the result of a shutdown (and job export) of labour intensive, low productivity firms rather than any improvement in average productivity. i.e. the average productivity rose because of the elimination of low productivity firms while higher productivity firms had relatively stagnant productivity. To what extent is this true of the US? Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Karl Marx on the role of public debt and taxation in primitive accumulation - an insufficiently noticed passage
I wrote a fairly substantial paper on the role of public finance in primitive accumulation with respect to Canada and the finance of the First World War. First, Marx is quite explicit on the role of war finance in spurring primitive accumulation via debt finance and subsequent non-progressive taxation. For example, in Canada the war was financed by printing money causing rapid inflation and profit inflation which profits were used to buy government bonds which paid handsome interest financed by indirect (sales) taxation. Thus, a transfer from the general public to the wealth holders which served to consolidate monopoly capitalism. My paper documented and quantified the process. Unfortunately, the journals I submitted the article to turned it down, largely from the readers comments, because they did not understand (or accept) the concept of 'primitive accumulation'. Ah well. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Jurriaan Bendien wrote: How do we think in the present context, of the "system of national debts", the "modern system of taxation", and the "international credit system", "which often conceals one of the sources of primitive accumulation in this or that people."
Re: Karl Marx on the role of public debt and taxation in primitive accumulation - an insufficiently noticed passage
Jurriaan, Do you want me to e-mail you a copy? (as a Word Perfect attachment) Paul Jurriaan Bendien wrote: That is pretty amazing. I supposein America ithas to be sexy, yet civilised,and use the right words. In the USA, I have noticed you always have to keep it verysimple, especiallyif you are talking about anything bigger than an individual, because otherwise they just do not understand it. This is one factor which explainswhy the US Government gets away with crimeand mass murder, mostAmericans do not understand it, it is too difficult for them, all they can think of issex and Jesus Christ andstuff like that, even the American Presidents are like that. I think most American do not feel any social responsibility for corporate crime and government crime, it's not their problem as far as they are concerned. But I would quite like to read your paper anyhow. Actually,I did not write this bit: do we think in the present context, of the "system of national debts", the "modern system of taxation", and the "international credit system", "which often conceals one of the sources of primitive accumulation in this or that people." Chris Burford wrote that. I just posted the bit from Marx's Capital, it seemed relevant since the Christian genocide-for-profit thingis happening again. I have often had this fantasy of being a scholar againand writing more stuff, but I remember how academics and public servantsripped me off, and basically, when I visit a university, I do not like the smell, and I feel relieved when I am out of there again. I am more an extra-mural type really. Jurriaan
Re: cronysm? What cronyism?
This is a joke, no? Paul Phillips Eubulides wrote: washingtonpost.com No 'Cronyism' in Iraq By Steven Kelman Thursday, November 6, 2003; Page A33 There has been a series of allegations and innuendos recently to the effect that government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan are being awarded in an atmosphere redolent with the stench of political favoritism and cronyism, to use the description in a report put out by the Center for Public Integrity on campaign contributions by companies doing work in those two countries. One would be hard-pressed to discover anyone with a working knowledge of how federal contracts are awarded -- whether a career civil servant working on procurement or an independent academic expert -- who doesn't regard these allegations as being somewhere between highly improbable and utterly absurd. The premise of the accusations is completely contrary to the way government contracting works, both in theory and in practice. Most contract award decisions are made by career civil servants, with no involvement by political appointees or elected officials. In some agencies, the source selection official (final decision-maker) on large contracts may be a political appointee, but such decisions are preceded by such a torrent of evaluation and other backup material prepared by career civil servants that it would be difficult to change a decision from the one indicated by the career employees' evaluation. Having served as a senior procurement policymaker in the Clinton administration, I found these charges (for which no direct evidence has been provided) implausible. To assure myself I wasn't being naive, I asked two colleagues, each with 25 years-plus experience as career civil servants in contracting (and both now out of government), whether they ever ran into situations where a political appointee tried to get work awarded to a political supporter or crony. Never did any senior official put pressure on me to give a contract to a particular firm, answered one. The other said: This did happen to me once in the early '70s. The net effect, as could be expected, was that this 'friend' lost any chance of winning fair and square. In other words, the system recoiled and prevented this firm from even being considered. Certainly government sometimes makes poor contracting decisions, but they're generally because of sloppiness or other human failings, not political interference. Many people are also under the impression that contractors take the government to the cleaners. In fact, government keeps a watchful eye on contractor profits -- and government work has low profit margins compared with the commercial work the same companies perform. Look at the annual reports of information technology companies with extensive government and nongovernment business, such as EDS Corp. or Computer Sciences Corp. You will see that margins for their government customers are regularly below those for commercial ones. As for the much-maligned Halliburton, a few days ago the company disclosed, as part of its third-quarter earnings report, operating income from its Iraq contracts of $34 million on revenue of $900 million -- a return on sales of 3.7 percent, hardly the stuff of plunder. It is legitimate to ask why these contractors gave money to political campaigns if not to influence contract awards. First, of course, companies have interests in numerous political battles whose outcomes are determined by elected officials, battles involving tax, trade and regulatory and economic policy -- and having nothing to do with contract awards. Even if General Electric (the largest contributor on the Center for Public Integrity's list) had no government contracts -- and in fact, government work is only a small fraction of GE's business -- it would have ample reason to influence congressional or presidential decisions. Second, though campaign contributions have no effect on decisions about who gets a contract, decisions about whether to appropriate money to one project as opposed to another are made by elected officials and influenced by political appointees, and these can affect the prospects of companies that already hold contracts or are well-positioned to win them, in areas that the appropriations fund. So contractors working for the U.S. Education Department's direct-loan program for college students indeed lobby against the program's being eliminated, and contractors working on the Joint Strike Fighter lobby to seek more funds for that plane. The whiff of scandal manufactured around contracting for Iraq obviously has been part of the political battle against the administration's policies there (by the way, I count myself as rather unsympathetic to these policies). But this political campaign has created extensive collateral damage. It undermines public trust in public institutions, for reasons that have no basis in fact. It insults the career civil servants who run our procurement system. Perhaps most tragically
Social Democrats Win in Saskatchewan
This was entirely unexpected as the ultraright was widely expected to win. (The 'Saskatchewan' party was a kind of amalgam of the discredited -- due to corruption -- Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance Party which in Canada is known as the Canadian Republican Party -- an alliance of Christian fundamentalism with far right, pro-American integration, neoliberals and corporate capital.) The NDP is hardly radical but, at its core, remains reformist and seems to be in the process of recusitation and leaning to the left -- perhaps, more important, it is gaining support from young people and giving hope to the environmental movement. Coming, as I do, from Manitoba with a second NDP andministration, I realize how much better life is under the social democrats, as conservative as they may be, as it is under the neoliberals as I am now in British Columbia. (In Conservative/neoliberal country, being old becomes a crime. It is disgusting.) Small victories, but sweet nevertheless. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba NDP majority in Saskatchewan Last Updated Thu, 06 Nov 2003 0:24:15 REGINA - Saskatchewan voters have returned NDP Premier Lorne Calvert to power in an election thriller, giving the government a fourth straight term. "They said it couldn't be donewe did it!" said a jubilant Calvert. The New Democrats won 30 of the 58 seats in the legislature. The Saskatchewan Party won 28, while the Liberals were shut out. Lorne Calvert Thirteen cabinet ministers were re-elected, as well as leader Calvert. The NDP went up about seven per cent in the popular vote. The NDP showed early gains by taking key rural seats from the Saskatchewan Party, credited to a concentrated late-campaign push. "The momentum changed, the momentum came to New Democrats, the momentum is now with Saskatchewan," said Calvert. People say they want change and have entrusted our party to lead that change, said the premier. "We will build a better Saskatchewan for Saskatchewan families. That is our pledge," he said. Calvert campaigned on a promise not to sell Crown corporations, boost health care, continue a series of small tax cuts and reduce student loan debt. Elwin Hermanson The Saskatchewan Party made inroads with urban voters by taking three seats in Saskatoon. The Saskatchewan Party had advocated corporate tax cuts, a review of Crown corporations and a work-for-welfare program. Saskatchewan Party leader Elwin Hermanson won his own riding of Rosetown-Elrose, with two-thirds of the popular vote. "Obviously we're disappointed," said Hermanson. "Let's remember, friends, that the Saskatchewan Party is still a young party," he said "we don't need to hang our head." Campaign workers, supporters, and voters can feel proud, he said. Calling it a "beachead," Hermanson commented on the party's success in winning four urban seats, and especially noted its three victories in Saskatoon. "We have been a good opposition in the past and we intend to be even a better opposition in the future." He also commented on the collapse of the Liberal party, saying it was obvious that Liberal support moved to the NDP and not the Saskatchewan Party. The Liberal party was shut out of the legislature, including leader David Karwacki. "This is not the result we were hoping for," said Karwacki. Karwacki, who had said he would not take part in a negative campaign, thanked Liberals for running a campaign "with dignity." Voter turnout was 70 per cent, up eight per cent from the record low turnout in 1999. Written by CBC News Online staff
election results
I didn't give the actual results. Here they are from the Globe and Mail which headlined its article something like "NDP squeeze by in Saskatchewan" If Bush had anything like this support ... Paul Phillips Economics, University of Manitoba (BA, MA, University of Saskatchewan!) Party Votes % of vote Leading Elected Total New Democratic Party (Saskatchewan) 189742 44.6% 0 30 30 Saskatchewan Party 167348 39.3% 0 28 28 Saskatchewan Liberal Association 60256 14.2% 0 0 0 Western Independence Party 2781 0.7% 0 0 0 New Green Alliance 2504 0.6% 0 0 0 Independent (Saskatchewan) 1988 0.5% 0 0 0 Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan 666 0.2% 0 0
Re: The concept of methodological individualism
For an in-depth critique of neoclassic (and other) streams of thought from
an institutionalist position, see Geof frey Hodgson's, "How Economics Forgot
History."
Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba
Mario Jos de Lima wrote:
I agree to your points of view. An interesting aspect to be considered on
the british institutionalists, in contrast of the United States source
(Williamson, North, etc.), is its critical to the neoclassic thought and
effort to construct a dialogue with Marx.
- Original Message -
From: "Devine, James" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 2:22 PM
Subject: Re: The concept of methodological individualism
alas, I haven't read it. (He did have a very useful article in the JOURNAL
OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE, vol. 36, no. 1, 1998.) I do think that
institutionalist economics is important and has a lot to add. Also, I
interpret Marx as being an institutionalist. However, unlike some
institutionalists, he saw capitalism itself as an institution, i.e., an
organization that both was created by people (though not exactly as they
pleased) and creates people's ideologies, preferences, etc.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
-Original Message-
From: Mario Jos de Lima [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 7:42 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The concept of methodological individualism
Dear Devine / what you think about - Geoffrey Hodgson - Economics and
Institutions - a manifesto for a modern institutional economics?
- Original Message -
From: "Devine, James" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 1:06 PM
Subject: Re: The concept of methodological individualism
alternatively, we could define "methodological
individualism" relative to
Levins Lewontin's description of the dialectical methodology:
(1) they see the different heterogeneous parts as determining the
character of the whole ("parts make whole").
(2) they also see a feed-back from the whole, which determines the
character of the parts ("whole makes parts").
Methodological individualism involves a willful ignorance
of the second
"moment," i.e., the way in which (say) the societal structure shapes,
limits, and actually determines our consciousness, tastes,
etc. (Given this
partial view, "All social phenomena can be explained in terms
of individual
persons and their states without reference to social facts or
states." )
btw, the interaction between (1) and (2) could (in theory)
form some sort
of static equilibrium, but for LL it's a dynamic process.
For those who enjoy methodological individualism, I
recommend Gandolfi,
Gandolfi, and Barash's ECONOMICS AS AN EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE, where
Becker-style methodological individualism is married to the
selfish gene.
Jim
-Original Message-
From: andie nachgeborenen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Sun 11/2/2003 7:48 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc:
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The concept of corruption
There are at least two distinct senses of the term
"methodological individualism":
(1) All social phenomena can be explained in terms of
individual persons and their states without reference
to social facts or states (the nonreductive sense),
and
(2) All social phenomena can be explained _only_ in
terms of individual persons and their states without
reference to social facts or states (the reductive
sense), i.e., there are no explanatory social facts or
properties.
The first view is probabaly false and probaly
incoherent because the mental states of individuals
are social states at least in part. But it's a
harmless view if it is taken to say there is also
social analysis. The second view is not only false and
meaningless, but pernicious, and incompatible with
historical materialism.
I wrote a paper on this a decade ago, Metaphysical
Individualism and Functional Explanation, Phil Science
(1993).
jks
--- Eubulides [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
- Original Message -
From: "joanna bujes" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 5:31 PM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The concept of corruption
Corruption is defined as "the abuse of public
power for private gain."
snip
The definition seems pretty good to me. What
Sharon and the Future of Israel
An earlier version of this article appears on www.swans.com. Paul Phillips Economics, University of Manitoba For Jews the Real Worry should be Sharon not Arafat by John Ryan The recently released text of the Geneva Accord seems about as good a deal as could be worked out for a Two-State Solution, unless its already too late for any such venture. Till now almost everything that had been put forward was an agreement to go on trying to agree - which led to disillusionment and nothing of lasting substance. The new proposal has dealt with all the difficult points - and both the Israeli and Palestinian participants have agreed to it. If Clinton appears at the official signing in Geneva in early November, as was reported, the proposal may not be so easy to dismiss. Secret negotiations, held mainly in Geneva and with the help of Swiss diplomats, have proceeded for more than two years between Israeli and Palestinian delegations, consisting largely of left-wing former and current politicians (including former cabinet ministers from both sides), retired Israeli military officers, writers, and academics. Contrary to the prevailing Israeli lament that there is no one to talk to, significant break-through negotiations have brought about a 50-page agreement on all major issues. Revelations of the highlights of the accord on October 12, 2003 brought forth mixed reactions -- from cautious optimism to outright fury. The Palestinian Authority appears to support the initiative, while Hamas and Islamic Jihad are expected to reject it. Although an early poll in Israel shows about 40 per cent support, the Sharon government has vigorously denounced it. Sharon has simply proclaimed that no agreement is possible if Arafat is involved, saying, This man is the greatest obstacle to peace. Therefore, Israel has committed to removing him from the political arena. Why this fixation on Arafat as an insurmountable problem? Arafat is a dithering old fool - corrupt and nave - filled with his own sense of self-importance. Hes now almost totally ineffectual, in extremely poor health, and may soon be off the scene from natural causes. Meantime, its astonishing that for Israel and most Jews in general, the major concern is about Arafat, to the exclusion of almost all other possibilities, including this new accord. From my perspective as a longtime observer of the Israel/Palestine saga, the real cause of worry for Israeli people, and all diaspora Jews, should be Sharon and his regime. For one thing, for what its worth, Arafat has apparently blessed the initiative. On the other hand, Sharon is apoplectic about it, calling it high treason, and Barak dismisses it as delusional. A Knesset member and leader of an Israeli political party has written to Israels attorney general demanding that the Israeli participants should be charged with treason and sentenced to death. Since Eichmann is the only person ever executed by Israel, does this demand for a death penalty indicate that for some Israelis even an unofficial peace proposal is comparable to the crimes of Eichmann? How is it that the Israeli government is so touchy about the prospect of a peace proposal? But, as Uri Avnery said, Thats no wonder, considering that there is no greater danger to Sharon and his grand design than the danger of peace. The Sharon government wouldnt dream of a One-State Solution nor would it agree to a realistic and viable Two-State Solution; so what are the alternatives for them? The first appears to be just a continuation of the status quo, i.e., continue with the repressive military occupation of the Occupied Territories. However, in a matter of less than ten years the Palestinians will outnumber the Jewish population. So if Israel continues as a democracy, it will cease to be a Jewish state since Jews will be in a minority. Alternatively, Israel or a Jewish state could survive as a non-democracy by militarily dominating a steadily enlarging Arab majority, deprived of civic rights, thereby becoming an apartheid regime. The second alternative: at an opportune time, Israel would conduct massive violent ethnic cleansing with tanks and troops in which the entire Palestinian population (about 3 million or more) would be driven out of biblical Greater Israel up to the Jordan River. Lacking an opportune time, a simple escalation of the present policy could starve the Palestinians of land, food, and a livelihood, leaving them no option but to go into exile, in the millions. However, both these approaches are actually war crimes under the Geneva Conventions. Nevertheless, either way, for Sharon this would be the completion of his grand design. But where would this leave Israel, and the Jewish diaspora? Taking over the Palestinian territories and incorporating them officially into the Israeli state would be an illegal land grab, in violation of international law (aside from
Re: In defence of Krugman and against Alexander Cockburn: choice oftargets
Yea , I smoked a pipe for many yeares and enjoyed it -- until I became a victim of ashma and quit smoking. Now I find smoke of any sort a terrible hazard. More so for my wife for whom smoke of any sort triggers heart fibrilations that are potentially fatal. I think the tobacco companies deserve legal defence just as homocial murderers. No more, no less. But on the more important question of Krugman versus Stiglitz. To me there is no contest. Though I appreciate and forward Krugman's odd commentary, I tend to agree with his criticism is just neoclassic orthodoxy in critique of neoliberal ideology. It is just nice to see the mainstream agree will the few of us that critique the economic world from the real left. On the other hand, I think Stiglitz is a different 'kettle of fish'. First, as others have observed, he is not in the same game of personal aggrandizement. Second, along with his fellow nobel award winner (Akerlof) his economics is not orthodox and accepts both institutional frameworks and non-neoclassical frameworks -- e.g. assymetrical information, etc. -- . The beauty of Stiglitz's critique is that it allowed us to deveolop a non-orthodox analysis that we could present, not only to our students, but also to the general public. Without ideological baggage. In Solidarity, Paul Phillips. Louis Proyect wrote: Carl, I smoked a pipe for several decades before quitting -- and I would be afraid to add up how many thousands of dollars (not covered by insurance) I have spent on repairing (partly) the damage it did to my teeth. Right now, I've got a large gap in the front of my mouth (upper) which has cost me so far %3000 (for the implants) and will cost another thousand or two for the crowns on the implants. And it will cost me about $5000 to get the teeth below filled in. Trying to add it up in my head right now, I must have clsoe to $20,000 dental work in my mouth, counting only repair of the damage done by holding a pipe between my teeth. Carrol Mark Jones was a pipe smoker. Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Participatory Economics
Justin wrote: The second is that, even if AH had such an alternative, their proposal does not strike me as desirable because it would involve far too much of an imposition on people's time, both in terms of involvement in planning, and in terms of micromanaging their working activity -- I mean here the "balanced job complexes," which strike me as both nightmareish and impractical. In addition, the proposal is undesirable because it does not respect the privacy of people's choices -- it improperly politicizes all preferences. jks This sums up one of my major concerns with parecon and relates back to my experience with Socialist Self-Management in Yugoslavia. Under the 1974 constitution and the 1976 law on associated labour, participatory mechanism were legislated for production and social consumption. They did work and public opinion polling of the workers in Slovenia indicated that workers prefered the social, self-management sector. However, they objected to the detailed participatory bodies as wasting too much of their time and as being inefficient. In a number of enterprises, workers voted to get rid of participatory bodies simply because they were inefficient in terms of their own labour time and their desire for family and leisure time. It should be noted that at that time, if I remember the figures correctly, 1/6 of the adult population was involved as delegates to various participatory bodies and there was a certain resentment against the time demands. Further, the effect of this was that many people just didn't participate and it allowed members of the League of Communists to control the delegate elections and set up a form of party control within the state that the legislation was designed to "wither away" in favour of participatory mechanisms of parecon. This raises a second concern that I have with the concept -- though I am basing it upon my reading of their earlier work, Looking Forwards, and to a talk Albert gave in Winnipeg several years ago that I attended. The idea that all jobs can be broken into parts that can be equitably meted out, and that workers actually want that to happen, is I think a falacy. But that is another matter entirely. Like Justin, I am a fan of market socialism (which Louis objects to) for developed economies but here I would break with late Yugoslav practice/theory to incorporate post Keynesian insights. Macroeconomic policy/planning can not be participatory at the local/individual level (it was a disaster in Yugoslavia). There are social consumption (and investment) decisions that must be made at the macro level through some form of delegative representative mechanism backed by appropriate technical expertise. Within this policy framework there is ample scope to develop participatory mechanisms that do not undermine economic (in the larger context of the word economic) efficiency and stifle individual initiative. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: moore critique
My god, if this is the best that Moore's critics can come up with -- particularly when compared with the howlers that Bush and Blair came up with on WMD, Saddam's ties to El Quaida, etc. The whole Bush/Blair compaign was (deliberate) lying through the teeth. Compared to the reporting of CNN and 'imbedded tame journalists', Moore is a paragon of accuracy. I was much more disturbed by Moore's apparent undocumented conclusion about the guilt of the Black journalist/activist (whose name escapes me at the moment) which has always seemed problematic to me on the basis of the evidence presented. Paul Phillips Dan Scanlan wrote: These are from the nitpickers (they help keep lice from spreading) at http://www.spinsanity.org/
Fragile
Ah, the vaunted efficiency of capitalism. Paul Date sent: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 22:18:52 -0400 Send reply to: PEN-L list [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Kenneth Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L] Fragile To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Man o man... Wild scenes inside the gold mine. Thank god for car batteries. I never would have been able to find out anything. (Must keep supply of batteries in house... Must keep supply of batteries in house... Must keep supply of batteries in house...) Seriously, though, this system is as fragile as butterfly wings. Rich beyond belief... and helplessly weak. People were fine, milling around, commenting on never having seen so many stars... but the authorities were absolutely useless. If the mobile phone networks didn't survive, and we didn't have the ability to pool information... it would have been incredibly lonely out there. Ken. -- Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything. -- Henri Poincare --- End of forwarded message ---
Re: Fragile
Ah, the vaunted efficiency of capitalism. Paul P Quoting Kenneth Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I am still trying to figure out what happened. TV is out. Radio is repeating same stuff. CNN site didn't work, last I tried it. CBC.ca is repeating CBC Radio. Anyone outside the zone of collapse with better data? I wrote: but the authorities were absolutely useless. The height of the stupidity, in this region of the collapse, was when some clown named Bruce Campbell (representing Ontario's Independent Market Operators) held a 10 second press conference and said that it may take a couple days -- and then didn't say where it would take a couple days, why it would take a couple days, or what the hell he was talking about. Avril Benoit, on CBC Radio 1, almost gasped when she heard this from a reporter. As did I. Because there was nothing else to explain the blackout or the reason for it taking a couple days. No gas stations, no stores, no bank machines. Should one travel? Should one store water? Aside from being fired as communications stooge for the IMO, I also support any effort by the Campbell Clan to summarily execute him at the next highland games. Ken. -- Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad. -- Diogenes the Cynic (perhaps aptly so-called) - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
Re: Back to slavery
Date sent: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 19:19:50 -0700 Send reply to: PEN-L list [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: David S. Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Re: [PEN-L] Back to slavery To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] snip This stuff isn't radical. It was developed by Coase, who's very much part of the Chicago school of laissez-faire economics. I guess I am asking a much more naive question. Why is this an issue at all to anybody? I mean, is there anybody who disputes that transaction costs matter? I am a commercial lawyer, and commercial lawyers only exist because of transaction costs, so the existence of transaction costs is pretty obvious to me. Is there somebody out there who denies this, or used to deny this, other than for some cetis paribus mind game? David Shemano There are two deeper issues involved here. As Coase pointed out in his 1937 article, if transaction costs are significant, markets are not efficient and therefore must (economically) be replaced by non- market allocation mechanisms -- what he was argueing for in the article was for the autocratic, managerial planning form of decision making. But a more fundamental issue relates to the Coase theorum itself - - that if there are NO Transaction Costs, the distribution of property rights does not matter for the efficiency (pareto optimality) of the market solution. However, if there ARE transaction costs, then the distribution of property rights becomes very important to the efficiency of the result. This is quite easy to demonstrate with realistic examples. What this does raise the vital question of the distribution of property rights to the efficiency of the non-regulated market, something that is not dealt with by nc economics and is avoided like the plague by those economists who reject government intervention in markets precisely to make them efficient. Paul Phillips
Confessions of a Recovering Economist
Subject:[PEF-info] (Fwd) Confessions of a Recovering Economist Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date sent: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 15:40:09 -0500 Dear Pen-l-ers, I thought this might bring a chuckle to some on pen-l. From the past president of the Progressive Economics Forum in Canada and Economist for the Canadian Auto Workers. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba --- Forwarded message follows --- Subject:Confessions of a Recovering Economist Confessions of a Recovering Economist Good evening. My name is Jim. And I am an economist. It is seventeen days since I last uttered the phrase supply and demand. But the demon still lurks, untamed, within me. I know it's wrong that my particular profession hogs so much attention, and is granted so much undeserved credibility. I know it's wrong to pretend you can forecast complex economic outcomes with three-decimal accuracy. I know it's wrong to reduce the whole of the human endeavour to the endless pursuit of material prosperity. Yet still I yearn for economics. I hunger for the prestige that comes with being the only social science to regularly make The National. I savour the smug power of belonging to that exclusive sect of financial mystics who understand the magical circuits of money and commodities. So let's face it. I'm an economist. I'll always be an economist. The best I can do is recognize my affliction. Name the hunger that haunts me. Reflect on how to control it, how to keep it at bay. Learn to avoid the events and issues that fan the internal flame. Every other addiction has a Twelve Step program, laced with tough love and blunt self-honesty. Why not a Twelve Step program for economists? God knows, they've done enough damage with their arrogant, drunken prescriptions. Here's how each and every economist can face up to their inner demons, and make their own small contribution to setting things right. Step 1: Admit you have a problem. Like they say at the AA meetings, this is half the solution. Where economists are concerned, however, it's easier said than done. Getting a substance abuser to face the facts of their addition is nothing compared to convincing an economist that they're hooked on elegant but useless mathematical models, and authoritative but destructive policy advice. Where economists are concerned, we're talking denial with a capital 'D.' Step 2: Accept that all your efforts to explain the world have failed. The 'market' is the holiest symbol in all of economics. It's magically automatic and efficient. And supply always equals demand. The whole profession of mainstream, 'neoclassical' economics is dedicated to the study of markets and how they can be perfected. The problem, however, is that in real life these idealized 'markets' don't explain much at all. Powerful non-market forces determine most of what happens in the economy -things like tradition, demographics, class, gender and race, geography, and institutions. Indeed, what we call the 'market' is itself a complex, historically constructed social institution - not some autonomous, inanimate forum. Power and position are at least as important to economics, as supply and demand. Step 3: Turn to your friends in other disciplines for help. Economists get pretty snobby about the usefulness of other disciplines. After all, when's the last time you saw the chief sociologist for the Royal Bank interviewed on TV? Five years ago the Canadian Economics Association even decided to hold its annual conferences completely separate from the giant congress of other social science disciplines. This intellectual separatism harms the pursuit of knowledge, and exaggerates the predisposition of economists to a blinkered mode of thinking. A recovering economist can confess - even in public - that they might have something to learn from other disciplines. Turn to your friends, those who haven't been hypnotized by supply and demand graphs, for help in understanding the world and how it works. Step 4: Make a list of the situations where you are most likely to act like an economist, and avoid those situations. Recovering alcoholics know they must avoid bars. Recovering economists must similarly avoid any meeting or social gathering where they may be asked to give authoritative views on where the economy is going, explain elegant but counter-intuitive doctrines (like why free trade is always good for everyone, everywhere), or provide personal financial advice. Even if you mean well, the damage to both yourself and to your audience could be incalculable. Step 5: Acknowledge that an expanding GDP will only feed your habit. The growth rate of Gross Domestic Product is the stuff of newspaper headlines and international comparisons. Yes, it's true that having more material wealth opens the possibility of using that wealth
(Fwd) Re: Bush Tax Cuts
I sent this reply to a student who asked questions (see below) about my comment in class this morning about the Bush proposed tax cuts. If I have got it wrong and anybody wants to provide alternatives, please do so. Paul --- Forwarded message follows --- From: Paul Phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date sent: Wed, 8 Jan 2003 14:27:15 -0600 Subject:Re: Bush Tax Cuts Adam I haven't read the detail on the proposed Bush tax cuts which go beyond just the elimination of taxes on dividends so I can't comment on the rest of his package. However, on that specific point, the issue is this. 98 (+or- a couple of percent)% of all corporate investment is financed from retained earnings, not from sale of stock. Therefore, if firms increase their dividend payouts to attract buyers of their shares (i.e. to bid up share prices) then they will have less undistributed profits to invest in new capacity. If that is the case, then firms will be induced to reduce investment. Similarly, if lenders shift from buying municipal bonds to buying dividend-paying shares thereby increasing the cost of municipal borrowing, then municipalities will either reduce infrastructure investment or increase local taxes to compensate which will have a negative effect. As to the effect on the distribution of this tax break I have at home for the US but it is highly skewed to the top income group. In Canada where wealth is a little less skewed than in the US the figures are (1996) Per cent of population with incomes greater than $150,000 per year = 1.0% Per cent of dividends going to those with incomes $150,000 = 40.4 %. So, in Canada, the top 1% of the income earners would get 40% of the tax cut. Extrapolating that down to say the top 10% of the population, I would guess that the top 10% would get something like 60-70% or more of the tax cut. The low income don't own shares (the bottom 20% in Canada and the US have negative wealth -- i.e. owe more in debts than they have in assets of any type) and hence will get none of the tax cut. Many of the middle income will hold their assets in the form of RRSPs or their equivalent in the US (forget what they are called) and hence now do not pay anything in taxes on dividends which go back into the RRSP. Taxes will be paid on these dividends when they are paid out in income as pensions and will continue to do so, as I understand it, even after the Bush tax cuts. So, at least with regards to the dividend tax cuts, Bush's claim would seem invalid. I will try to check this out with some of my American colleagues and report back to you. Paul Phillips On 8 Jan 03, at 13:21, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mr. Phillips, I'm discussing the Bush economic plan with a fellow at work, but I can't quite remember, in full, your point on the erosion of retained earnings as a result of increased dividends paid to shareholders. Additionally, I'm not quite clear on the effects of Bush's plan on income distribution. He claims that this plan will put an extra $1100 USD a year into the pockets of the average American family, while promising tax cuts for 92 million Americans. What does he mean by this? Who will be receiving tax cuts, how may they affect aggregate demand and employment? Will the increased child tax credit and job search grant have any effect on consumption? Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Adam Hendrickson - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ --- End of forwarded message ---
Re: RE: Re: employment (apologies: long)
. Perhaps it should again be revised to 16+ to account for school leaving laws and behaviour. This would considerably affect the *measured* unemployment rate. Another example, the quality of unemployment was much worse in the 1930s when we had no unemployment insurance and mostly single earning families than it is today with unemployment insurance (no matter how inadequate) and where the majority of families are two earner families and the family sizes are so much smaller. And so on. It seems to me that these are the issues that those of us who are labour economists should be aware of and use in order to qualitize the statistics. But there is no single figure that can encapsulate all these institutional factors and we, as economists, should automatically dismiss any figure that purports to do so. Paul Phillips
Re: Re: Re: walkout
On 2 Oct 02, at 6:26, Bill Lear wrote: I've had some experience with this sort of technology, to use a poor term (it has more to do with organization of work). The problem with this explanation is that it assumes remote links do not degrade the efficiency of the job. Direct and spontaneous face-to-face human contact is the very best way to exchange information known to the universe. Put it through a video feed or conference call, and a lot gets lost. I had some experience with this a couple of months ago. A colleague from Europe needed an visa for an Asian country that his travel agent had forgotten to apply for. He was about to leave in about two weeks and had to send his passport back to Europe to have the visa added. He sent it back via UPS which promised two day delivery. The visa was added and sent back via UPS. On arriving in Winnipeg on a Thursday, it was intercepted by Canada Customs (not surprisingly) who phoned me (it was sent to my address) to make sure it was legitimate. I explained the situation to the customs clerk who notified UPS that it could be picked up and delivered. Friday, it didn't arrive and my friend was flying out the next thursday. I went to contact the local office of UPS to see where it was (computer tracing). However, there is no local office, only a 1- 800 number for a tel-centre located somewhere in Atlantic Canada who didn't have a clue about what happened to -- but promised to look into it and call me back -- which they never did. I called again the following day. Still no news and, more importantly, no way they could check where it was in Winnipeg because they had no contact with the local operation. It didn't arrive on Monday. I called again. No information. It didn't arrive on Tues -- still couldn't help. It arrived finally Wednesday -- 5 days to get across Winnipeg from the airport -- a 20 minute drive. And at no time could the distant call centre trace what happened to it because they had no contact with the local people. Nor was there any way I could because they do not have a local office -- all long distance monitoring. Needless to say, I will never use UPS again -- but the real villain of the piece was the attempt to control and monitor routing and delivery by long-distance computer/call centre operations. Just imagine what could happen if the whole west coast longshore operations were subject to such problems. Paul Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Re: U.S. Eliminated From B-Ball World Championships
The Yugo team is just made up, as far as I know, of Serbs and Montenegrins who constitute the current Yugoslavia -- soon to be renamed as Serbia and Montenegro when the new constitution is adopted. The Croats and Slovenes have separate teams. However, it should be pointed out that one of the star players on the Slovenian soccer team in the World Cup was a Serb. In the regional qualifying rounds there were separate Yugo, Croatian and Slovenian teams. Paul On 6 Sep 02, at 10:01, Michael Perelman wrote: Maybe Paul can tell us how Yugo. plays as a team, rather than as separate Serbs, Croats, Until recently, the US could not even field Blacks and Whites together. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Labour Text
I have just finished a draft of a 1st level labour economics text for use in my own course here at the U of Manitoba and also for the Masters in Personnel Management course I teach at the University of Ljubljana. The title of the book is _Labour Economics and the Labour Market: Alternative Approaches_. A table of contents and the first chapter are available on my web page: http://www.umanitoba.ca/colleges/uc/faculty/phillips.html If anyone is interested, I would welcome any feedback (particularly on my diagrammatic representation of the relationship between the models -- see the links in the text). The text does not have a chapter on the radical model for which I plead the Egyptian Mummy excuse -- strapped for time. Paul Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: liberalism
It is interesting to look at the Jugoslav experience with representative vs direct democracy to show some light on this question. Direct democracy was just not feasible at the commune, republic or national level so the delegate system was used with elections conducted using constitutencies from work communities, local communities and political communities (at the local and republic level, there were three houses, at the national level two). Furthermore, more than one delegate was elected for each office so that individuals could specialize. i.e. when issues of education were to be discussed, the delegate who had a special interest in education would attend; when health was discussed, a different delegate might represent the community. Obviously, this was an attempt to get as close to direct democracy as possible at these levels. In the last stage of socialist self-management, at the enterprise level, the firms were broken up into BOALs (Basic Organizations of Associated Labour) approximating the departmental organization where the works council represented direct democracy. Support staff (e.g. clerical workers) formed work communities which were organized like the BOALS but negotiated with the BOALS to sell their collective administrative services to them. They also were organized with works councils. Social service agencies (schools, health organizations, etc.) had works councils composed both of workers and consumers to practice direct democracy. Unfortunately, the system had a surfeit of democracy and the workers, in many cases, petitioned to do away with the Boals and work communities in favour of enterprise works councils based on the delegate system. The direct democracy system just proved too onerous and ineffective a system of management. In fact, it was so cumbersome that it allowed the communist party, which had no official capacity, to gain control of the of both the political and the management system. In short, the scope for direct democracy in a complex industrial society is, I suggest, more limited than some on this list would suggest. Paul Phillips, Economics University of Manitoba On 31 Jul 02, at 16:32, Justin Schwartz wrote: I have already responded noless dogmatically. I see no reason why representative govt is incompatible with public ownership of productive assets, workers' control of production, or even central planning. I can't even see the argument that it is not. Why the associated producers cannot elect representatives to administer the public property is hard grasp. Please explain, those who think this is a serious point. Btw, theargument for represenattive ratherthan direct democarcy is that with a large state that has a lot to administer, and a big population, and a lot of rather technical rules and regulations to made and enforced, it is utterly impracticable to carry this out in a ny other way than a representative one. If the worry is that the representatives will become a special class arrogating privileges to themselves in an unjustified manner, that is a problem. The solution is of course elections--democracy's natural term limits. jks _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
Re: Re: potlatches
Not an anthropologist Jim, but I have been working on a paper on property rights and redistribution among Canadian aboriginals. Here is the definition of potlatch from the New Canadian Encyclopedia. Paul Potlatch, a highly regulated event historically common to most Northwest Coast native groups (see NATIVE PEOPLE, NORTHWEST COAST). The potlatch, from the Chinook word Patshatl, validated status, rank and established claims to names, powers and privileges. Wealth in the form of utilitarian goods such as blankets, carved cedar boxes, food and fish or canoes, and prestige items such as slaves and COPPERS were accumulated to be bestowed on others or even destroyed with great ceremony. Potlatches were held to celebrate initiation, to mourn the dead, or to mark the investiture of chiefs in a continuing series of often competitive exchanges between CLANS, lineages and rival groups. Louis, Re slavery: it was considered universal in the coastal north west though my understanding is that it was less prevalent among the more peaceful Salish in the south and more or less non-existent among the plateau and interior indians (interior Salish, Kutenai and the Algonquian and Athapaskan speaking peoples and the inland Tlingit). It was largely a product of war though the slaves became part of the household of the 'owner' and as I understand it, many were eventually absorbed into the tribe. And they did have a class structure with an aristocracy and commoner class which was kin and moitie (clan) based. Paul On 10 Jul 02, at 13:14, Louis Proyect wrote: Is there an anthropologist in the house? if so, please correct me if I am wrong about the nature of the potlatch. A lot of beer has flowed through my brain since Frosh anthro. JD The potlatch has generated a lot of debate in Marxist anthropological circles. Some see it as an incipient form of capitalism, while others (rightly, I believe) see it as typical tributary form. The other thing to keep in mind is that the Northwest Indians had moved further in the direction of class society than any other North American Indian society. They built large villages, kept slaves and made war. Eleanor Leacock compared their social structure to feudal Japan. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: RE: Re: Re: Poultry Ban in Russia
Jim, The problem has arisen in Canada as a result of declining fish stocks. Apparently, it is not a problem of flushing pills down the drain but with so many women taking birth control pills, the concentration of hormones in waste water (sewage) that is not neutralized by waste water treatment has been affecting (preventing) the reproduction of fish. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba On 22 Mar 02, at 9:30, Devine, James wrote: don't we also have to worry about hormones in the food. (I've heard that it's now a no-no to flush medical pills down the toilet, since (among other things) estrogen is accumulating in the water supply. If this rumor is wrong, please inform.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: RE: Origins of 'Dutch Disease'
On 25 Feb 02, at 7:46, Devine, James wrote: Rob Schaap forwards the following web-page on the dutch disease. And, I was right, it wasn't oil but natural gas. http://www.aims.ca/Publications/gift/remittance.html here's the text, without graphs: Looking the Gift Horse in the Mouth: The Impact of Federal Transfers on Atlantic Canada by Fred McMahon AIMS Senior Policy Analyst I would humbly suggest that this analysis has very little to do with the 'Dutch disease' but is rather an attempt to use a kind of 'flavour of the month' economic fad to attempt to discredit region development policies in support of neo-liberal economic orthodoxy. I actually wrote two books on the subject, the last published in the early 1980s and have reviewed a number of studies that deal with this topic since, but whatever the pros and cons of Canadian regional development policies have been, I can not see for the life of me what relation they have to the Dutch disease. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: on the necessity of god, goddess, gods, goddesses, or a combinati on of the above
On 22 Feb 02, at 8:23, Devine, James wrote: [*]Economic theory suggests that we shouldn't be concerned only with the existence of god but also its stability and uniqueness. As is the god of 2002 the same as the one of 1999? Just as the real GDP of 2002 isn't strictly speaking comparable to that of 1999, perhaps there are index-number problems... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Actually, neoclassical general equilibrium economists have proved that God exists. The tatonnement auctioneer! All knowing, capable of millions of decisions instantaniously, does not need to be paid to exist, and able to determine the future in perpetuity. Sounds like God to me. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: The rate of profit and recession
Fred, Jim and Charles, In the late 90's we kept hearing from CEOs, primarily in the US, that the reason inflation was contained was as a result of increasing competition from offshore companies, in part because of 'globalization' of production and increased overinvestment (increasing excess productive capacity) in countries like China, in part because of the rising value of the USD. Thus the rising wages could only be justified by increased productivity which we now realize was not nearly as great as was reported at the time. Thus, the inability to realize the increased costs (realization as per Charles) would lead to falling profits would it not. What then is the root cause of the falling profits? Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba On 28 Jan 02, at 12:41, Charles Brown wrote: Fred: The rate of profit declined from 1997 to 2000, and during this time the US economy was booming and there was no realization problem. This decline in the rate of profit is what caused the decline in investment spending, which in turn caused the recession. Since the recession began, there has been a realization problem, which has further reduced the rate of profit. But this further decline in the rate of profit due to realization problems was an effect of the recession, not a cause. Charles, does this make sense to you? ^ CB: It makes sense to me, but how do you know it wasn't a realization problem that caused the profit decline ? I would have to hear from Jim D. on the factual issues, as I believe his article looked at those data with a number of statistical or reporting devices that I can't immediately transfer to your question. The other issue would be , does your theory of fall in the rate of profit as the immediate trigger imply a certain reformist program ? What is it ? Part of the value of a socalled underconsumptionist thesis is that it implies putting consuming power in the hands of the mass of consumers. I can't think of a reform that would be preferred to that.
Re: Re: The eyes-glazing-over-factor strikes again
On 25 Jan 02, at 12:22, Doug Henwood wrote: MEGO is an acronym that cynical mainstream journalists and editors in the U.S. use to dismiss a story - my eyes glaze over. As is often the case, I suspect senior network news executives are projecting their own anxieties about fomenting class conflict onto their audiences. Handled right (i.e., limiting explanations of degree-day derivatives or offshore partnership arrangements), the ENE story doesn't have to be boring at all. Doug Indeed, for those of us fortunate to be able to listen to CBC last Sunday morning, Doug was very entertaining in commenting on ENE. Nicely done. Paul Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: FW: Today's Papers: A Blow to the Peace Process
Jim writes, The world is going to hell in a handbasket... The retribution for the US elite's hubris is likely to come back to kill some of its subjects (i.e., us), as with 911. I had lunch with an ambassador from an east Asian country last year and during our conversation, he made the comment: You can always tell when the American economy is in trouble. The bombs start falling. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: A project for Pen-L
I, for one, would like to see more on this. Perhaps Scott could break his reply up into a number of shorter pieces dealing with each of these market failure arguments. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba On 28 Nov 01, at 15:32, Robert Scott Gassler wrote: My lecture arguments against free trade and globalization are based on a thorough market failure argument, where that term includes monopoly power, ownership externalities, maldistribution of income, macroeconomic instability, etc. This places the environmental and labor objections to globalization in context and ties in well with standard lectures. I can send more if you are interested. Scott Gassler Professor of Economics Vesalius College of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel Belgium At 22:41 27/11/01 -0600, you wrote: Michael, (and others) have been lamenting the failure of Pen-l to look at the current economic problems etc. I have a practical (?) suggestion. I teach a course called Canadian Economic Problems and also am frequently called upon to lecture on free trade and its implications, etc. What I do not have is a comprehensive critique of so-called free trade, all the agreements etc. What I would like to see is pen-l put together a comprehensive critique of 'free trade' (sic) that we could use in classes, public protests, media, etc. with all the appropriate academic references to studies, reports, etc. I know of a number of studies (such as the excellent one by CEPR) on globalism and (the failure of) growth. But I don't know them all. Nor do I know of all of the studies on NAFTA and job destruction such as the one by EPI/CCPA. What I would like to see is a series of reports, not overly long, by interested pen-l members of the evils of 'free trade' and its effects. Something that we could put together and download (or get students to download) that would give a comprehensive theoretical and empirical critique of the 'free trade conspiracy' with all the appropriate footnotes/URLs to relevant studies/reports/websites. I am not suggesting whole articles. Indeed that would make the project useless -- but rather short 500-1000 word summaries of a group of empirical and/or theoretical literature. Is this a feasible project? Or is it academic wishthinking? I do think we need to give our young people in the trenches some theoretical and practical evidence to maintain their resolve, never mind our own. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Re: RE:Re: A project for Pen-l
Michael, I have already started a file to contain all responses to my suggestion. If we get a substantial response, I will try to make a digest or summary or something that we can post or put in the pen- l archives at csf. Paul On 28 Nov 01, at 8:31, Michael Perelman wrote: So far, we have gotten one direct submission offer [based on lecture notes] and a series of broad suggestions about books and other sources. Could somebody volunteer [Paul?] to collate the suggestions and we could continue to send in sources. Once they accumulate, maybe Paul and/or some others could work them up. I am sure that Patrick must have a lot to send in from S. Africa. What about the cases [following Jim D.'s note] like Metalclad, where Mexico was expected to accept a toxic waste dump, and California being sued for MTBE? What about Kate Bronfenbrenner's study of NAFTA being used to squash unionization drives? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
What to do with Bin Laden....
Fwd: Subject:What to do with Bin Laden What to do with Bin Laden The problem is what do you do with him even once he's found? Kill him - he becomes a martyr... Don't kill him - he's a hero to the extremists Solution: Capture him alive, convict him of his crimes, sentence him to his punishment. What punishment you ask? Why a full blown sex change of course! And then send him back to his home of Afghanistan to live out the rest of his life as a woman under the Taliban government Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba --- End of forwarded message --- --- End of forwarded message ---
Dollarization
I don't remember if anyone referred to this study, but if not here is the abstract that I just came across. Paul Phillips Economics, University of Manitoba NBER WORKING PAPER BIBLIOGRAPHIC ENTRY Dollarization and Economic Performance: An Empirical Investigation Sebastian Edwards NBER Working Paper No. W8274 Issued in May 2001 Abstract - In this paper I investigate the historical record of countries that have lived under a 'dollarized' monetary system. As it turns out, this is a very small group of counties, most of which have operated under very special circumstances, and for which there are very limited data. The results reported in this paper suggests that, when compared to other countries, the dollarized nations have: (a) have had significantly lower inflation; (b) grown at a significantly lower rate; (c) have had a similar fiscal record; (d) have not been spared from major current account reversals. Additionally, my analysis of Panama's case suggests that external shocks result in greater costs - in terms of lower investment and growth - in dollarized than in non-dollarized countries.
South Korea
For up to date statistics on S. Korea go to http://www.nso.go.kr/stat/other/e-speed.pdf note that in the last few month inflation is rising (2.3% in 2000; 4.2% in 2001), leading indicators are trending down as is industrial production, Unemployment in January was 4.6% (4.1 per cent seasonaly adjusted) and trending up, disposable family income in 2000 was 494.2 thousand won compared with 610.4 thousand won in 1997. Paul Phillips
Re: Re: Re: farewell to academe
I think Brad is wrong here. The rise in tuition fees in the US (relative to those in Canada) has been credited with restricting the supply of graduates thereby increasing the college/non-college differential in the US. For reasons we all teach in labour economics courses, tuition fees discriminate against those who come from lower income families. Over 30 years ago I wrote a paper calling for zero fees and an income based surtax for people who have taken a university degree such that there is a tax on the college based income differential sufficient to pay the public cost (net of the social gain). Thus, a graduate of a business school who makes a very high income would pay a much higher tuition fee than a poor philosophy graduate. However, no one has seen fit to follow my suggestion that I am aware of. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba On 5 Mar 01, at 9:30, Brad DeLong wrote: I believe *very* strongly that in a good society education--as much education as people want--should be free. But free higher education is not an equality-promoting measure. I cannot look at the doubling of in-state undergraduate tuition and fees for U.C. Berkeley to its current $4200 a year as a very bad thing. The average college-high school wage premium these days is $7.50 an hour, after all. Public subsidies for higher education are regressive. I think that the public should subsidize higher education: I think the social benefits from mass secondary and mass higher education are enormous. But don't imagine that you are fighting for equality or for social justice when you demand that in-state fees for Berkeley undergrads be cut and that a little bit more of the wages of the guy at the 7-11 go to fund the Berkeley undergrad's education. The sickest--absolutely the sickest--meeting ever was when then Berkeley Provost Carol Christ opined that Berkeley had an obligation to keep the in-state tuition of students at all its professional schools, including its Business and Law Schools, very low. Income-contingent loans, yes. But a straight $15,000 a year subsidy for students at Haas and Boalt? Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: takings
Do any of the legal beagles on this list know whether there is something equivalent to or similar to 'takings' law in Canada? Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba On 2 Mar 01, at 9:05, Michael Perelman wrote: Thank you very much, both Nathan and Justin, for giving me some insight into the murky world of law. Justin Schwartz wrote: THe recent EPA decision did not involve a takings clause challenge. The issues were whether the EPA had the authority to enforce the Clean Air Act, and what the authority was, whether it was permitted to take account of costs in writing its regs. The taking clause issue involved in the landuse case is when a regulation is a taking that requires compensation. Currently the law of regulatory takings, under Lucas v SC Coastal Commn, is that if a reg deprives all the property of any economically viable use, it is a taking. The question now posed is whether a reg that deprives less than all of the property of all of its value is a taking. That was not posed in the EPA case. If the law of takings is expanded, there will be challenges to clean air and other regulation. --jks I was merely thinking about the recent decision upholding the clean air act, while the court is considering undermining land use planning on the basis of the takings clause. On Thu, Mar 01, 2001 at 04:41:49PM -0500, Charles Brown wrote: Are you thinking of some specific court decisions that held this way ? [EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/01/01 04:30PM I have a question for some of illegal minds on the list. Why is land use planning a taking while a clean air law that would forbid the creation of new business be legal? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Globalization, the prequel
Michael, This analysis could equally be applied to the Canadian case where the pathetic Chretien sucks up to Bush while the independist PQ implements a soft social democratic social program and the racist right-wing Alliance attacks gays and lesbians, women, abortion and champions the barbaric death penalty. Ugh! Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba On 28 Feb 01, at 18:17, Keaney Michael wrote: The latter point was the substance of one of Nestor's mailings at around the time we were discussing Argentina's economic history and current prospects. Recently on the Marxism list there was an involved discussion of Scottish nationalism, which is not a clear cut case if the divisions among leftists on the subject are anything to go by. In fact the discussion on the Marxism list echoed that being conducted in the pages of New Left Review between Tom Nairn and J.G.A. Pocock. Apart from the difficulty of conceiving of "Scotland" as a weak, peripheral nation (especially difficult given some of the more fanciful claims of romantic nationalists who possess eternal victimhood vis a vis "the English") there is the effect of greater Scottish autonomy upon the rest of the UK. The Pocock line, echoed by many on the left (especially the English left), is that Scottish nationalism/separatism will breed only reactionary English nationalism and should thus be avoided. This ignores the fact that reactionary English nationalism was the hallmark of Thatcherism and led to the rebirth of Scottish nationalism as a progressive movement. The current state of the British Conservative Party highlights the sorry legacy of Mrs T. Wiped out in Scotland as an electoral force, it is now dominated by an agenda set largely by Conrad Black/Robert Conquest, which means very little to people outside of the home counties of England. It also ignores the positive spillovers that might accrue to an English left able to point to the gains achieved by progressive-led Scottish autonomy (at the moment, better representation of local interests, the scrapping of fees for undergraduate higher education, and now the promise of free long term care for the elderly). Part of the problem of conceiving of "Scotland", as a part of Britain, as weak and peripheral is the legacy of the British empire. As with events in the South Atlantic in 1982, this still plays an important role (Thatcher certainly made Britain grate again). But Blair's craven apologism for the NATO Yugoslavia adventure and the recent Baghdad bombing ought to highlight just how absolutely dependent upon US support the British regime really is. Weak and peripheral is exactly how a grand strategist and foreign policy sage like Zbigniew Brzezinski sees Britain (in The Grand Chessboard), and he's not wrong (for once). Blair/Cook/Robertson's energetic support for US imperialism, together with Gordon Brown's constant lauding of US economic success, serves to demonstrate the utterly abject position of Britain in any assessment of world power. British delusions are served by reference to the history of empire and its institutional hangover (the Commonwealth, itself wrecked by Thatcher and her attitude towards sanctions against South Africa), together with the permanent seat on the UN Security Council (an anachronism if ever there was). In order to retain that seat Britain must ask how high whenever the US says "jump!" What a blow to misplaced pride it would be were that seat to become the property of the European Union (and occupied in rotation by EU member countries) or, even worse, Germany alone. It's bad enough having the French there, for gawd's sake. This dependency culture has existed for long enough, as when LBJ threatened to pull the plug on Harold Wilson when the latter wanted to pursue a policy of scaling back British military commitments in the 1960s. The UK could simply not afford these. But withdrawal from East of Suez (as the policy was called) would send a negative signal regarding Britain's position on the Vietnam war. Just to make sure it didn't happen, LBJ agreed to continue supporting Britain's balance of payments deficit (see Clive Ponting, "Breach of Promise"). So it's not just certain British folks who need to get their heads screwed on straight when assessing the true extent of UK power and influence. As no less a "realist" than Samuel Huntington argues, globalisation is going to unsettle a lot of vested interests. He argues that the most likely response of this latest phase of capitalist development is a reversion to older certainties based on ethnic and religious grounds. Without an active, grounded left to offer a viable pathway, there will be no shortage of Pat Buchanans, Pat Robertsons and tough-lovin' compassionate conservatives to provide plausible diagnoses of our collective plight and present nasty, reactionary prescriptions
Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Critique of mathematical economics
On 7 Feb 01, at 8:44, Jim Devine wrote: I believe Debreu doesn't care enough about reality to deal with such issues. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Jim, Didn't I hear somewhere that Debreu when he accepted his Nobel (sic) he said that he developed GE theory just to prove it was impossible in reality? Does anyone else remember hearing or seeing this? Paul Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Re: IMF, WORLD BANK CRY UNCLE ON MOZAMBICAN CASHEW, SUGAR
On 31 Jan 01, at 9:53, Brad DeLong wrote: OK, now that the IMF and the World Bank have admitted that they were wrong, will Krugman admit that he was wrong? -b Robert Naiman Senior Policy Analyst Center for Economic and Policy Research I always thought that successful industrial policies were built on *subsidizing* exports. I've yet to understand why the hell *taxing* Mozambique's exports is going to make anyone (except the owners of cashew processing plants) better off... Brad DeLong No Brad, When it comes to the case of the export of unprocessed raw products, taxing exports is not only the most successful, but also the only route to development. Historical examples abound in Canada. Early in this century Ontario and Quebec taxed or banned the export of raw logs to pulp and paper mills in the US. As a result, mills were built in Ontario and Quebec. (American producers had excess capacity in the US so would not otherwise build plants in Canada.) Of course, pulp and paper requires electrical energy which resulted in the building of hydroelectricity systems which produced surplus for Ontario Hydro and the private systems in Quebec (later nationalized in the 1960s) which provided cheap hydro for manufacturing etc. etc. BC has used similar policies for raw logs and also for unprocessed fish. In the face of excess processing capacity in importing countries, the only economically efficient route to developing processing industries in raw material exporting countries is export taxes or bans. Your economics is only relevant to the developed, importing countries. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
(Fwd) Final Call for Papers-Society For Socialist Studie
Some on the list might be interested in contributing or attending. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba --- Forwarded message follows --- Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: "June Madeley" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Final Call for Papers-Society For Socialist Studies Annual Conference Date sent: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 21:55:24 -0500 Universite Laval Congress 2001, 27-30th May 2001, Quebec City Call for Papers The Programme Committee in Toronto has received a large number of session proposals (see the list below). We invite you to contact the respective coordinators if you want to present a paper or serve as a discussant. Moreover, if you have a paper for presentation but cannot find a session for it, please contact: Programme Office, Society for Socialist Studies c/o Dr. Roxana Ng, Department of Adult Education OISE/UT, 252 Bloor Street West Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6 Fax: 416-926-4749. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.oise.utoronto.ca/~sss/sessioncall.html When submitting paper proposals, please use the following sequence: Session title Session coordinator Your own name Your insitutional/organisational affiliation, if applicable Full mailing address Fax Phone E-mail Abstract of your paper (100 maximum words please) We encourage you to submit by email. Please complete the information, as outlined above, by 1 February 2001. You should have received by now the Humanities Social Sciences Federation's information package for the 2001 Congress. If you do not have it, contact our national office or check the Federation's website at www.hssfc.ca. The annual Congress can only succeed if all participants formally register. The Society for Socialist Studies executive has approved a proposal making registration for the Congress itself and for the Socialist Studies sessions mandatory for all speakers. In cases of financial difficulty, an application can be made to have these costs reimbursed by the Society from the Stanley Ryerson Travel Fund; please contact the national office in that case. Proposals may be submitted to the following sessions: GREEN SOCIALISM, ALTERNATIVE ECOLOGY, AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE Coordinator: Dennis Bartels 260 Adelaide St. East, Box 22 Toronto, ON M5A 1N1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] What theoretical and practical challenges do socialist forces face in wrestling with problems of ecological change, both local and global? This session will address issues and problems of trade unions and green work; media and environmental issues; Cuba and alternative development models, and their lessons for alternative approaches to ecology; and social democracy and its relation to socialist ecology. In addition to smaller and medium-scale issues of socialism and ecology, this session will raise the problem of socialist strategies in response to global climate change. What are the dimensions of climate change, and how must socialist strategy differ from market-led and simple regulatory responses to the social and material causes of a changing climate? BRINGING TOGETHER LEFT GREENS: WHAT ARE THE PROSPECTS FOR A POSTMODERN ECOSOCIALISM? (with Environmental Studies Assocation of Canada) Coordinator: Regina Cochrane Department of Women's Studies Glendon College, York University 2275 Bayview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario Canada, M4N 3M6. Fax: 416 486 6851; Telephone (Res): 416 482 9617 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Given the limitations in Marx's nineteenth-century vision of industrial society, ecosocialist theorists like Luke, Gare, and others have proposed revising Marxism in an ecologically relevant direction by integrating into it aspects of postmodern theory. Socialist ecofeminist Merchant is increas- ingly incorporating a postmodern perspective into her work as well. Yet left-green critics of postmodernism and postmodern environmentalists tend to find such syntheses highly contradictory. Is postmodern ecosocialism a viable and useful project? Or can the environmental shortcomings of (orthodox) Marxism be better addressed by looking to other Marxist (e.g. Frankfurt School, critical realism) or socialist (e.g. Castoriadis, social anarchism) traditions or to postmodernism itself? RETHINKING NATIONALISM, SOVEREIGNTY, IMPERIALISM AND GLOBALIZATION Coordinators: Jocelyne Couture and Kai Nielsen Dpartement de philosophie Universit du Qubec Montral CP, Centre-Ville, Montral H3C 3P8 Telephone: 514 987 3000, Poste 4388 Telecopieur: 514 987 6721 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] What precisely is globalization? In its present form, it might be conceived as the global expansion of capitalism in the guise of neo-liberalism, or alternatively as a continuation of classical imperialism. This session proposes an analysis of current manifestations and expressions of globalization, as well as discussing the outlines of, and possibilities for, a democratic and socialist globalization as an alternative to "actually existing" capi
Re: Re: holy trinity/Yugoslavia in transition
Generally, I would agree with Barkley on his analysis though with a major caveat based on my knowledge of the transition process in Slovenia. The Slovenes eschewed both a rapid privatization process and shock therapy and at the same time maintained most of their welfare net -- pensions are coming down just now, 10 years after the transition process began and pay-as-you-go social security pensions are being replaced to some extent by private pensions. Privatization was only declared complete in 1997 but their still remains a number of large SOEs that have yet to be 'rehabilitated' and the two largest banks are still state owned. In any case, the vast number of the enterprises were bought out or acquired through vouchers resulting in majority or strong minority worker ownership with the majority of the remaining shares being held by state development or pension funds or by independent investment funds. (There was virtually NO FDI involved.) Plus, Slovenia adopted co- determination and a corporatist social contract which, along with strong unionization and universal collective bargaining, has led managers to lament that "nothing has changed." (See Phillips and Ferfila, "The Legacy of Socialist Self-Management: Worker Ownership and Worker Particpation in Management in Slovenia," _Socialist Studies Bulletin_, No. 61, July-September, 2000) I Know Barkley has read this so we don't disagree on this point. The major point I would make, however, is that shock therapy was not used. Still today 30 + per cent of prices remain controled and from the start, Slovenia controlled capital inflows and, in particular, virtually banned short-term capital movements. The process of liberalization of money, trade and capital markets has been very slow -- much to the chagrin of the IMF, the EU and the OECD mainly because by refusing to take their advice, the Slovenes have had a highly successful transition with gradually falling inflation, unemployment and rapidly rising incomes. In fact as I wrote in our last paper (unpublished) on Slovenian monetary and exchange rate policy since independence, I expect that as Slovenia adopts the IMF prescription under pressure from the EU, its macro-economic performance can also be expected to deteriorate. (Barkley also has a copy of this paper so he may like to comment.) To sum up, yes I think Serbia could privatize (gradually and through worker buyouts), maintain much of its social security (scandanavian welfare state apparatus) but not by adopting shock therapy. Rather, it needs an orderly process of deregulating prices and liberalizing trade and capital markets as the development of its internal markets and productive capacity occurs, as did the Slovenes. And Yugoslavia in general, both Serbia and Cerne Gora have a much longer way to go. The IMF route, I believe will be a disaster more like Ukraine than Poland. Paul Phillips Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: hires
I think perhaps you in the US may be a little paranoid on this issue. We have never had any problem with getting our heterodox graduates jobs though not perhaps at some of the "prestige" institutions such as Toronto or Queen's. Now it is true that hirings of young left academics is down across the country but that is largely because all hirings are way down due to neo-liberal cuts to education funding. In fact now that things are beginning to turn around a bit and we are hiring what we are finding is that we are having difficulty getting anyone of reasonable quality -- orthodox or heterodox -- in the fields we have open. We are in the third year of a search for a position in economic theory -- someone who can teach graduate level (orthodox) micro (or macro) theory whatever their own theoretical proclivities are. We interviewed a total of six over this period but only two, (one orthodox, one heterodox) were of sufficient quality to make an offer to. Unfortunately, both got better offers from other institutions leaving us still without anybody. By the way the more heterodox candidate was hired by a US state university at 50% more than we could offer. In short, we just don't get quality heterdox people with the needed qualifications. We did a few years ago, but the candidate gave his 'audition' paper for an position in an applied field on Marxian value theory (against the strong advice of all of his supporters in the department) which scuttled his chances among the non-departmental members of the hiring committee. This year we are trying to hire in both theory and political economy/history/institutional. So far, I don't know what sort of response we have had but I'm willing to bet that, at least for the theory position, the selection of candidates will be less than thrilling. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba On 17 Jan 01, at 12:43, Charles Brown wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 01/17/01 11:10AM I think that David is correct, that we do not to a good job of supporting each other. I don't think this problem is limited to economics. When I lost my job in philosophy, I didn't get much help from left philosophers; people responded, with a few honorable exceptions, "Bad luck, old chap," and kept away. There is a sort of ancient Greek attitude in academia that good luck is to be rewarded and bad luck punished. I'm an attorney now. --jks (( CB: Not that attorneys are any more comradely than academics in this regard.
Re: Re: 'Anti-globalization activists have their facts wrong.' Really?
On 15 Jan 01, at 9:46, Doug Henwood wrote: Could you offer some empirical evidence for this? Of the first world countries, the U.S. was the only one to see a sustained decline in real wages, a trend that reversed after 1995, though "globalization" hasn't been reversed, nor has capital become any less mobile. Not so Doug. Canada has also had a sustained decline in real wages for almost two decades up until the last couple of years. Paul Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Re: Re: Re: 'Anti-globalization activists have their facts wrong.' Really?
On 15 Jan 01, at 12:54, Doug Henwood wrote: Paul Phillips wrote: On 15 Jan 01, at 9:46, Doug Henwood wrote: Could you offer some empirical evidence for this? Of the first world countries, the U.S. was the only one to see a sustained decline in real wages, a trend that reversed after 1995, though "globalization" hasn't been reversed, nor has capital become any less mobile. Not so Doug. Canada has also had a sustained decline in real wages for almost two decades up until the last couple of years. Really? Here's what I get from International Financial Statistics (dividing the index for the nominal manufacturing wage by the CPI): 1970s +2.3% 1980s +0.2% 1990s +0.3% Compare the U.S. (again manufacturing, from BLS stats): 1970s +0.6% 1980s -0.9% 1990s -0.1% You have different info? Doug Doug, I think it is because you are using just manufacturing statistics. Also, women's earnings have been rising. It is men's wages that have been falling. It is particularly drastic for young men where wages have fallen by around 30 per cent since the seventies. Average Real Annual Earnings Men Women 1975 42,635 25,664 1980 42,586 27,405 1989 42,328 27,928 1997 42,626* 30,915 *still below the 1975 figure. Source: Stats Can, Earnings of Men and Women Median Earnings MenWomen 1989 $30,44117,207 1997 29,505 18,401 Family incomes after tax % change 1989$48,311 1997 45,605 -5.6 Income of families with children after govt transfers 5th decile 1989 51,383 1997 48,023 -6.5 % lowest decile 198915,563 1997 13,864-10.9% Paul
Canadian Election
In general, I agree with Ken's analysis. Where I would differ a little, it is on the gun control issue. While it may have played a role in the rural prairie and B.C. vote, it was not a significant issue in the urban centres. One may question the role it played even in the rural vote given that the Liberals took all the seats in the Yukon, the NWT and Nunavit (the northern territories where gun control was supposed to be a big issue.) The importance of the defeat of the Alliance is made all the more important because of the close connection between the leader, Stockwell Day, and the fundamentalist religious right. Behind the public platform were all sorts of indications that the Alliance were trying to devise ways to restrict women's right to choose and to turn back the clock on gay and lesbian rights. They also actively campaigned to strip away aboriginal treaty rights and one candidate here in Winnipeg in effect called for limits on Asian immigration (calling for an end to the, in her words, "Asian invasion.") Other candidates referred to Indians scalping him, etc. Day, in an earlier incarnation, was a teacher at a religious fundamental school in Alberta that taught creationism and opposed the teaching of evolution. Day is said to believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old and that humans cohabited the earth with dinosaurs. When one thinks that this man could be head of a government that must grapple with issues such as global warming, the fact that he is so ignorant of science and rejects scientific evidence in favour of the 'good book', it makes me shudder. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Re: oil and socialism
Jim, What of this as an argument. a. Capitalism, as a system, requires constant expansion -- "Accumulate, Accumulate, that is Moses and the Prophets" -- but this accumulation requires expansion of the system geographically particularly as overaccumulation takes place in the centre -- therefore, globalism. b. Expansion of the system (globalization of capitalism) requires increased trade and the movement of goods -- Canada, for instance, is approaching 40% of its GDP in Exports. All these exports require transportation. (Huge growth here particularly in long-distance truck transport.) All transportation at the moment requires fossile fuels. c. Therefore, the capitalist system (at least as it currently operates) is dependent on fossil fuels. But, unless it can come up with an alternative fuel, it can not continue to increase its geographic scope and thus can not continue as a system. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba On 17 Nov 00, at 7:29, Jim Devine wrote: actually-existing capitalism depends heavily on fossil fuels, but does capitalism in general? though capitalism is amazingly inflexible on issues of preserving class privilege and dictatorship, it is also amazingly flexible when it comes to adapting to disaster (like that of the 1930s). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Castro on US elections
On 15 Nov 00, at 12:48, Louis Proyect wrote: Furthermore, I would put forward the rather contrarian notion--at least on PEN-L--that there is more artistic and political freedom than anywhere else in Latin America or the Caribbeans. Since most Americans define political participation on the basis of going into an election booth every four years and pulling a lever for one or another candidate of the same party (Democrat-Republican), it takes a mental adjustment to think in other terms. I suspect that as the American economy continues to stagnate over the next decade or so, people will entertain all sorts of contrary notions on freedom and democracy. The sooner the better. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org I think Louis has a good point. Why do Americans like Brad define democracy as simply voting every two, four or six years to choose between two ideologically the same people/parties (particularly when only half of the population votes)? The American system, in fact, can hardly be considered democratic since candidates for the top office must effectively be millionaires or associates of millionaires in order to buy the vote and non-capitalist or reformist parties are not on the ballot or are denied any representation even if they get 15-30% of the popular vote. It is interesting, and perhaps revealing, the the US were so determined to destabilize, breakup and change the political system of the former Yugoslavia which had more elected officials per capita than perhaps any other country. If I remember correctly, during the 1980s around 60 % of the adult population were, or had been, elected to one or other office from workers and municipal councils on up. Nor was there any requirement that candidates be members or associates of the League of Communists (the was no Communist Party) and in fact a number of other parties existed. At the Republic level, there were three houses -- one elected from the communes (effectively constituencies), one from the enterprises, and one from the social-economic communities (associations.) There were two houses at the commune level and three at the national level each elected from different groups or bodies. Yet the US chose to destabilize it because "it wasn't democratic" -- i.e. it was too democratic to be (over)run by capital. Strange notions people like Brad have. Paul Phillips
Slovenian Elections
Thought the list might be interested in the results of another election (other than Bore and Gush). Slovenia just had its national elections and routed the right-wing. Liberals (former Communist Youth, now a small-l liberal party, party of the longest serving PM since independence, Drnovsek.) = 37 seats. United Front (former Communist Party, now socialist) = 12 seats Social Democrats (right-wing, anti-communist, party of the last PM of 4 or 5 months, Jansa) = 18 seats. Former Peoples (farmers) Party = 11 seats New Slovenia Party (former Christian Democrats, right-wing) = 10 seats. Slovenia National Party, Youth Party and Pensioners Party = 2 (each? not sure on this one). 2 seats for minorities. Likely coalition of Liberals and United Front with perhaps also some from peoples, pensioners and youth. Liberals plus UF have 49 of the 96 seats, a bare majority without any other coalition partners. The hard right have only 28 seats. Hence, probably a stable centre-left coalition government. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Re: Slovenian Elections
No, liberal in the American sense, not neo-liberal. They have reluctantly accepted the corporatist model of centralized incomes policy, support for co-determination and strong unions and collective bargaining. There are some neo-liberal elements in their program but, because they depend on the left for control of government, the left has been able to deflect or temper most of the attempts at more neo-liberal reforms. Paul Phillips On 6 Nov 00, at 11:40, Jim Devine wrote: At 01:36 PM 11/6/00 -0600, you wrote: Liberals (former Communist Youth, now a small-l liberal party, "small-l liberal" means "liberal" in the sense of how the word is used outside the US, i.e., laissez-faire? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: incomplete abstraction vs. empiricism
On 28 Oct 00, at 1:42, Rob Schaap wrote: Could even be that's the direction in which we're going ... I know quite a few people whose lives as employees are behind them. Now they're 'subcontractors' or 'small-business people'. Good news for a couple of 'em - but just like being an employee, only poorer and more insecure, for most ... the proletarianisation of the west might now be taking a new turn - as capitalists' drives to cut on-costs and retard unionism produce a capitalism which draws competitive and alienating veils between desperate workers. Rob raises an interesting question. If, due to subcontracting labour, wage labour becomes a minority of workers in developed "capitalist" countries, does that mean they are no longer capitalist? (Which is the implication of accepting Jim's position on slavery.) This is not an idle speculation. In Canada, wage labour was a *minority of the labour force* until after the 2nd WW. (Because of the large size of the agricultural sector primarily.) Does that mean that Canada was not capitalist before then? Indeed, early capital accumulation (I argue until after the 1st WW) was from unequal exchange between the commercial/transportation sector which used its monopoly power to extract surplus from the primary producer, not from appropropriated surplus value from waged workers. Therefore, I'm with Mat and Charles on this one, not Jim. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The question of Spain
On 25 Oct 00, at 8:41, Jim Devine wrote: Some old German guy once said that "capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt." The success of England's international violence helped its domestic violence bear fruit, in the form of promoting capitalist development. Gee, just replace England with the USA and that old German guy is just as on the mark today. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
(Fwd) From Milosevic to the Future - Stratfor
--- Forwarded message follows --- Date sent: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 11:26:28 -0700 To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Sid Shniad [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:From Milosevic to the Future - Stratfor Stratfor.com's Weekly Analysis - 09 October 2000 From Milosevic to the Future From the standpoint of cameras and Western journalists, the fall of Milosevic appears indistinguishable from other velvet and near- velvet revolutions that have toppled dictators from Prague to Manila. A righteous outpouring of people into the streets, a ham- handed, venal government capitulates and a new day is born. But it is never as simple as breathless broadcasts might paint it. To understand the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, it is important to understand the manner in which he fell. The truth in Yugoslavia lies somewhere between the grand aesthetic of the public drama and the more mundane details of deal making. Indeed, the latter is frequently more defining than the former. And many disappointed expectations are rooted in details overlooked by revolution's glamour. The roots of Milosevic's demise can be traced to the frustration of the American and British governments, enmeshed in the realities of peacekeeping in Kosovo, with no hope of conclusion. NATO was trapped in a quagmire without exit. In Belgrade, the opposition failed, divided, and were discredited as agents of NATO, all against a backdrop of Serb victimization. Everyday Serbs were convinced of two things: They had not committed atrocities, and they themselves were the targets of an unjust bombing campaign. Milosevic was the great beneficiary. He might have been a swine, but he was Serbia's swine. Incompetent on many fronts, he at least defended the national interest. In this context, the opposition had as much chance of winning as Quisling had of carrying Norway in World War II. The United States reacted with a new strategy. Described in "Toppling Milosevic: The Carrot Instead of the Stick," the new strategy consisted of splitting Milosevic from his followers. Cracks opened but were contained when Milosevic called for elections. But before the election it became clear Milosevic had nearly trapped himself, as recounted in "Checkmate in Yugoslavia,". Milosevic's Cabinet, his cronies and the army and police held the key to the drama. Milosevic had to be isolated from those levers of power before the crowds could storm parliament. Thousands could have been killed, as they were in Romania with the fall of Ceaucescu. Milosevic might cling to power. It was imperative the leadership split from Milosevic and accommodate Kostunica. Public displays of police suddenly embracing demonstrators probably had less to do with the passions of the moment than with fevered deals being made between Kostunica and former Milosevic followers. These deals brought both the peace and the revolution. The deals also created a revolution with a complex genesis and an uncertain future. Milosevic is certainly gone. The temptation among many, including his closest followers, is to blame everything on him. The head of the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague has made it clear Milosevic should be tried for war crimes, but Kostunica has made it clear he does not want to see prosecution proceed. As president, he might be able to stomach Milosevic's trial, but many of the people he and the United States had to deal with over the past few months are also subject to indictment and trial. They would not have been as cooperative had Kostunica and likely the United States not made guarantees about their legal status. Given the example of former President Augusto Pinochet of Chile, it seems probable that any world-wise operators asked for promises. As important as the status of charges against Milosevic followers, is the issue of Serbian territorial claims, particularly in Kosovo. Kostunica was an adamant supporter of Serbian claims in Kosovo. What did the United States promise Kostunica? Indeed, how long can Kostunica survive without some movement on Kosovo? And what will Albanians do about the new darling of the West? Kostunica himself remains an enigma. The West would like to turn him into another Vaclav Havel. He is not a communist, but he is not a liberal either. He is a nationalist who, like the rest of Serbia, has viewed the West with suspicion. He has also created a coalition of diverse elements, including former Milosevic supporters who hope to retain their influence, if not their position. It is reasonable to say Kostunica is a snapshot of Serbia today: tired of Milosevic, deeply suspicious and resentful of the West, nationalistic to the very bone. Kostunica is formally democratic, but he understands the complex personalism and clannishness that comprise Balkan culture. No Havel, Kostunica is a hardline nationalist who has come to power partly by accommodating his public enemies. The fall of Milosevic gives
Re: Re: Milosevic out?
On 6 Oct 00, at 12:12, Louis Proyect wrote: was elected without any "massive" voter fraud according to an op-ed piece in the NY Times this week written by a Woodrow Wilson scholar. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ Louis, Can you post this op-ed or give us an address where I can read it? Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
(Fwd) US savings rate drops to record low
Is this a sign? If so of what? Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba --- Forwarded message follows --- Date sent: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 14:05:38 -0400 From: "Henry C.K. Liu" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED], "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:US savings rate drops to record low US savings rate drops to record low By Peronet Despeignes in Washington FT September 29 2000 14:16GMT America's savings rate hit another record low in August, the Commerce department said on Friday. It said increases in personal spending outran the growth of after-tax income for the third straight month, reducing the savings rate. Personal incomes rose 0.4 per cent to an annual rate of $8,338bn in August, with after-tax incomes rising 0.3 per cent to $6,541bn. But spending rose a faster 0.6 per cent to $6,818bn, so the savings rate fell to a new record low of -0.4 per cent of after-tax incomes. In other words, consumers spent all of the increase in their after-tax incomes - and more - by either borrowing, selling off investments or depleting savings. The figures are adjusted for seasonal fluctuations, but not for inflation. --- End of forwarded message ---
Re: Re: Re: Re: The US buys democracy for Yugoslavia.
On 25 Sep 00, at 11:21, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am not surprised, but I am disappointed, to find Louis falling in with the defense of the Milosovic regime, even to comparing it with the Sandinistas, whose mistakes were at least part of a policy of promoting a government policy intendedto promote the welfare of ordinary Nicaraguans, rather than, as with Milosovic and his cronies, a nationalist and chauvinist Greater Serbia. Louis hangs his defense on the idea that M has preserved state property, but this degenerated version of the Trotskyist degenerated worker state argument won't wash, if it ever did. I have to agree with Louis. Justin does not seem to be informed about what really went on in Yugoslavia before or since the NATO intervention. I would suggest he do a little research before coming up with such clangers. He might try reading Michael Chossuvdovsky's _The Globalization of Poverty_ and Scott Gordon's _INAD: Images of War in Kosovo and Yugoslavia_ to get the background facts correct rather than repeating NATO propaganda. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba, American Studies, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Re: debating yugoslavia
On 25 Sep 00, at 8:56, Perelman, Michael wrote: The subject of Yugoslavia is so contentious, that I suspect that we will not get very far here. I don't disagree, but I do think it is important that we don't spread misinformation on the list or let misinformation be left uncontested so that others on the list take such as fact. By the way, (speaking of misinformation) the author of INAT is Scot Taylor (not Gordon as I think I originally posted.) Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
Re: Re: [Fwd: [sixties-l] more on 'Steal This Movie']
Not a great deal Jim, particularly since all the major movie distribution chains in Canada are owned by the US (as well as the majority of TV stations) and they have always refused to show Canadian made films in the theatres because they don't attract big audiences because they aren't shown in the US or promoted. The only way to get Canadian made movies to be shown in Canada or anywhere else is to make them for American distribution companies as American films, filmed in Canada. It is a lot cheaper to make films in Canada not only because of tax breaks, something that the US of course never uses, but mainly because labour costs (wages) and other filming costs (sets, etc.) are much cheaper. In Manitoba, for instance, one of the attraction is that we have managed to save part of our historic 'turn of the century' architecture which is difficult to find elsewhere. Also, for some reason, we have produced a disproportionate number of 'world class' animation artists that prefer to stay and work in Canada than move to Hollywood where the living costs are so much higher. The high American $ is a major factor in all these considerations. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba On 6 Sep 00, at 11:10, Jim Devine wrote: what do pen-l's Canadian comrades think of this article? "Steal this Movie" -- From: Michael Everett [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: qu re lit re theory of socialist international economics
Gernot, I don't have comparable figures available so I can't give you a quantitative response to your question. However, during the last decade or so (before the breakup) since the decentralization of economic authority, the tax for the "Fund for the Faster Development of the Lesser Developed Republics and Autonomous Provinces" (which I think was the full name of the transfer fund) was the only tax paid by the republics to the central government. (The other main source of income for the federal government was tariffs.) The purpose of the transfer was to finance capital investment (unlike Canada's which is to finance the provision of comparable levels of public services) though, in fact, the federal Yugo government had no control over how these funds were used. This was one of the complaints of Slovenia and Croatia that much of the money was used for conspicuous public consumption (with a nationalist purpose) rather than capital investment. This is where the contradiction in trade came in. Without some sort of national plan for trade (managed trade) between the republics, there were no incentives/indicators of where and what kind of investment should take place and the lesser developed regions simply couldn't absorb the capital available to them in economically viable industries. This was independent of the labour quality problems in these regions. What I am suggesting, I guess, is that any theory of international trade/finance with regards to a socialist bloc would have to involve international planning of managed trade -- much as do the multinational corps do now -- though on the basis of democratic negotiations between the countries. A model for that might be the Canada-US Autopact. Just a few ideas. Paul Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba On 14 Aug 00, at 9:20, g kohler wrote: Paul, thanks, this is a very interesting case which helps. Concerning transfers between the republics of former Yugoslavia, how do those compare with transfers from richer to poorer provinces in Canada? Were they of comparable magnitude (in relative terms) or significantly more? Gernot Kohler
