Re: Re: did the Germans pay off Lenin?

Louis is correct that this seems far afield for this list. On Thu, Feb 15, 2001 at 04:54:27PM -0500, Louis Proyect wrote: > >Does anyone know more about this claim? It appears to be a > >fairly serious charge that would strike at the heart of > >Leninism. > > > >Andrew Hagen > >[EMAIL PROTECTE

frontiers of privatization

City Colleges teachers fear their jobs could go private By J. Linn Allen Tribune Higher Education Writer February 15, 2001 Trail-blazing moves by the City Colleges of Chicago that could lead to privatizing a broad swath of t

IRS picks on the poor

February 16, 2001 Single-Page Format Rate of All I.R.S. Audits Falls; Poor Face Intense Scrutiny By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON Audits of tax returns by the Internal Revenue Service, already at a record low in 1999, fell almost 50 percent last y

Re: pardon me!

On Thu, 15 Feb 2001 10:07:07 -0800, Jim Devine wrote: > [...] he says the absolutely worst pardon in recent U.S. >history -- even worse that President Ford's pardon of Richard "Tricky Dick" >Nixon -- was the pardon by President Bush (the father) of himself, [...] Bush the Elder didn't pardon hi

Re: Re: Re: Re: new growth theory

We are in agreement. I only said that the zero marginal costs was the major difference between the two approaches. On Thu, Feb 15, 2001 at 10:33:06PM -0800, Christian Gregory wrote: > Sure, but how is this cost of information different than the cost of > training an employee how to use a complex

Re: Re: Re: new growth theory

Sure, but how is this cost of information different than the cost of training an employee how to use a complex machine? It costs time and money to do so, but once you do, the info can be used over and over at no cost to run the machine . Would this also not just be a variation on the Solow model

Re: Re: new growth theory

The difference is that once the marginal cost is spent, the information can be used over and over. A machine cannot do the same thing. On Thu, Feb 15, 2001 at 05:32:02PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I've never understood, given a certain set of assumptions, why endogenous growth >theory wa

Re: did the Germans pay off Lenin?

Thanks to Louis Proyect and others for the replies. It's all too true that much of what we hear about Lenin is mere propaganda, that Lenin sacrificed a great deal for the cause, and that we don't truly know whether Lenin took the money, or if it could have made any difference at all. Richard Pipes

UFE on the wealth tax

UNITED FOR A FAIR ECONOMY ACTION ALERT ** Please excuse cross postings** PLEASE FORWARD** February 15, 2001 Oppose the Bush Tax Giveaways to the Rich Dear Member of United for a Fair Economy: *UFE was on the front page o

Re: Social Capital

Barkley Rosser says to Mat: >But, if my recommending you to be published >occurs in response to your having previously recommended >that I be published, then this may be the payoff of a social >reciprocity relation, certainly a cashing in of social capital in >the Bourdieu sense, if not in the Lo

Re: Re: Re: social cattle stock overvalued?

Ken Hanly wrote: > > The physical > examination would reveal a building fitted with ovens etc and other > equipment to make steel. Trucks would be driving off with completed products > etc. > Surely the only reason anyone makes anything is to use it, but since they are carrying the steel away

Re: Re: social cattle stock overvalued?

On the basis of the physical examination of a steel plant you cannot determine whether something is a steelplant a playground or a theatre. I can and I imagine most other people could do. Why do you think it would be a problem without a social/historical investigation ? The physical examination wo

RE: RE: The Trouble with Democrats (cont'd)

Some responses to Mat . . . (I've gotten some new info since I wrote that suggests things may not be as bad as I was led to believe . . . I'll keep you posted.) . . . rubin tells us that 'deficits cause high interest rates' -- interest rates jacked up in the early eighties in response to restrict

Commodifying communism

Welcome to StalinWorld You won't believe how bad it is (or even that it exists. But it does, comrades, it really does) By Robert Chalmers 15 February 2001 Tasteless?" Mr Malinauskas stared out towards the electric fe

RE: The Trouble with Democrats (cont'd)

right on to much of what max says. i responded when the applebaum plan was posted here by Dave BLS but silence was all. i wrote a letter to the nyt as soon as i saw rubin's spiel in last sunday's paper, but who knows how you get them to print something. 'fiscal discipline' 'paying down the debt'

Re: Re: social cattle stock overvalued?

Jim Devine wrote: >(BTW, our friend Colander defines "social capital" as "the habitual >ways of doing things that guides people in how they approach >production," a weird definition.) Sounds more like one of the many definitions of ideology. In the words of a certain Slovenian whose name caus

Re: social cattle stock overvalued?

so it looks to me as if the phrase "social capital" embodies a contradiction. The social cohesion and trust implied by the first word is undermined by the commodification and proletarianization implied by the second. Old Karlos and Fred had something to say about this in their Manifesto. (BTW

Re: Re: Re: new growth theory

At 03:42 PM 2/15/01 -0500, you wrote: > The best critique I have seen is >Heinz Kurz and Neri Salvadori, "Theories of 'Endogenous >Growth' in Historical Perspective," in _Contemporary >Economic Issues: Economic Behaviour and Design, vol. 4, >IEA Conference Volume No. 124, Proceedings of the >

The Trouble with Democrats (cont'd)

There have been some very interesting looking threads that I regret missing, but I've been too absorbed in my own policy machinations. For the same reason I'm going to have to sign off until the smoke clears and try to figure out ways of changing my life. But I can't resist the opportunity to ann

Re: RE: Re: Re: social cattle stock overvalued?

Mat, Cattle herds in traditional societies are not "capital." But, one can see elements of capital in them, and the concept of capital certainly did historically derive from them. Capital continues to evolve. We have not seen its end, for better or for worse. Barkley Rosser -Orig

facts about US income and inequality

(from Portside, a CofC mailing list) Shocking FACTS about U.S. income & wealth inequality Tue, 13 Feb 2001 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] After 8 years of a genuinely sociopathic "New Democrat" as President of the United States the appalling inequality of income and wealth that was exacerbated under

Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Social Capital

Hmmm and peccatum in Latin means sinIs there a connection :) Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 4:55 PM Subject: [PEN-L:8116] Re: RE: Re: RE: Social Capital > Spea

RE: Re: Re: social cattle stock overvalued?

For some reason I didn't get Carrol's post, I only have it at the end of Barkley's, so I don't know if everything he said is included. But, Barkley, are you condoning the formalist anthropological view that we can understand pre-capitalist societies using the categories of capitalist economies? I

privatising pensions in Canada

This may be of interest to some on Pen-L.. Cheers, Ken Hanly From: CCPA To: Friends and Members From: Bruce Campbell, Executive Director PENSIONS UNDER ATTACK: WHAT'S BEHIND THE PUSH TO PRIVATIZE PUBLIC PENSIONS (A CCPA-Lorimer co-publication) Released Feb 14, 2000 By Monica Townson W

Re: new growth theory

I've never understood, given a certain set of assumptions, why endogenous growth theory was more satisfactory than neoclassical theory. In the textbooks I've read, the difference comes down to the role of technology (NCt doesn't really explain why this is the limit of growth, or where it comes

Re: Re: social cattle stock overvalued?

Carrol, Well, the fact is that Marx redefined the concept of "capital," to mean an exploitative social relation in a market context. That is his definition, that competes with a bunch of others. If one wishes to say that Marx's definitions of words are the only ones that are right or that s

Re: Marx on social capital

Mat, But, I think that it is different from natural capital. Natural capital is something that is there, but that can be depleted by use. It is not created by labor inputs. "Social capital" (in the Putnam sense) is however created by labor inputs, joining and contributing to organizations,

Re: did the Germans pay off Lenin?

Andrew Hagen writes > >Does anyone know more about this claim? It appears to be a >fairly serious charge that would strike at the heart of >Leninism. > Naaah, Lenin would have been too busy eating babies to be concerned with the payments from the German government/Jewish bankers/the Masons.

Re: did the Germans pay off Lenin?

>Does anyone know more about this claim? It appears to be a >fairly serious charge that would strike at the heart of >Leninism. > >Andrew Hagen >[EMAIL PROTECTED] This notion of Lenin getting paid off is consistent with the portrait drawn by people like Pipes, Volgokov et al. It is an unflatter

Re: did the Germans pay off Lenin?

This accusation has been running a round ever since "the sealed train." Personally, I would believe Pipes on the time of day if it were attested to by three independent witnesses under oath, and I checked it on the atomic clock at the NIS myself, but not otherwise. I am also no admirer of "Len

BLS Daily Report

> BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2001: > > RELEASED TODAY: "U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes -- January 2001" > indicates that the U.S. Import Price Index decreased 0.4 percent in > January. The decline followed a 0.8 percent decrease in the previous > month and was largely attrib

did the Germans pay off Lenin?

In a letter to the editor of the 21 March 1997 TLS (Times Literary Supplement), Harvard historian Richard Pipes asserts that Lenin accepted banknotes from the Germans, apparently as a payoff to ending Russian involvement in World War I. Pipes's letter refutes another writer who claimed that t

Re: social cattle stock overvalued?

Thus, for example, if wage-labor disappeared, that is, if the workers' connection radically changed, capital would no longer exist. The opposite, naturally, is also true: Marx declares it a 'tautology' that 'there can no longer be wage-labor when there is no longer any capital.' Max Hirsch is clea

Marx on social capital

"Every individual capital forms, however, but an individualized fraction, a fraction endowed with individual life, as it were, of the aggregate social capital, just as every individual capitalist is but an individual element of the capitalist class. The movement of the social capital consists of

Re: social cattle stock overvalued?

Mat, I was not declaring that cattle herders were all capitalists. But, it is an historical fact that our modern word "capital" indeed derives from such an origin, as do those other words I mentioned. I also fully agree that capitalism can break down "social capital" in a traditional s

RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Social Capital

although i participate in pen-l, i am also on another email list of which i am the only member. at first i didn't feel that comfortable with it, but the conversation is generally congenial and flaming has been kept to a minimum (although i can get snippy at times). at one time i considered subbin

Re: Re: new growth theory

The best critique I have seen is Heinz Kurz and Neri Salvadori, "Theories of 'Endogenous Growth' in Historical Perspective," in _Contemporary Economic Issues: Economic Behaviour and Design, vol. 4, IEA Conference Volume No. 124, Proceedings of the Eleventh World Congress of the International

Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Social Capital

Well, of course, as regards the Ik, ceteris was not paribus, apparently, whatever the accuracy of Trumbull's accounts. In the original version I read, in fact the reported breakdown of social relations occurred endogenously as a response to a severe famine that led to the allegedly ultra-se

Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Social Capital

Jim, Actually in his most recent book Putnam devotes some time to responding to some of the original critics of his article called "Bowling Alone" that came out in 1995 and caused a stir and led to him blathering with the Clintons at Camp David before he started blathering with the Bush speec

RE: new growth theory

well i think colander's definition is not very good. it would be endogenous, and that would be different than Solow, right? what is good about "new" growth theory is not new. it is in Adam Smith (capital accumulation leads to technical change and technical change leads to capital accumulation, an

social cattle stock overvalued?

But I am not arguing that social cohesion doesn't matter. Far from it. In my paper on the Maasai, I argue that capitalism and related developments (commoditization of milk, monetization, privatization, etc.) led to the breakdown of the social institutions that mediated sustainable use of common re

Re: new growth theory

I have never been able to figure out why Romer's work has made such a buzz. The only thing different between his an Solow's is that he emphasizes that the supposed key source of growth has no marginal cost. Whereas Solow's idea of growth would be technology embodied in machines, Romer's is inform

new growth theory

I've never been impressed by the so-called "new" growth theory, a version of neoclassical (Solow) growth theory pushed by David Romer and others. Moses Abramowitz -- a leader of "old" growth theory -- had a article in CHALLENGE awhile back in which he argued that there's nothing really new abo

Social Capital

>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/15/01 01:49PM >>> At 01:30 PM 2/15/01 -0500, you wrote: >With regard to Putnam, who likes bowling leagues, >bridge clubs, choral societies, and the like, I once heard him >give a talk in which he declared that there is a better than 90% >correlation between the level of

Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Social Capital

At 01:30 PM 2/15/01 -0500, you wrote: >With regard to Putnam, who likes bowling leagues, >bridge clubs, choral societies, and the like, I once heard him >give a talk in which he declared that there is a better than 90% >correlation between the level of memberships in choral societies >in the 1870s

Re: pardon me!

Jim, Oh, but this is juicier. Some of the tabloids are claiming that Bill and Denise Rich got it on. This of course affects discussion of the Susan MacDougal pardon as well, although that one has not stirred up nearly the firestorm the Rich one has. Barkley Rosser -Original Message

Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Social Capital

Mat, OK, I'll play. Let us posit two ("primitive") societies with no physical capital stock and no market capitalism as we know it. However, let one have strong interpersonal relations, established reciprocity channels, and lots of interpersonal trust. Let the other be the Ik of Uganda, a

Re: Re: Deregulation: part 1

Michael Perelman wrote: >Kahn referred to airplanes as marginal costs with wings. When I interviewed him about 10 years ago he refused to believe: 1) that the airfares subindex of the CPI had increased twice as fast as the overall CPI in the years after dereg (because of quality declines, not

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Deregulation: part 1

Louis Proyect wrote: >Yergin views Breyer, Kahn and George Stigler as key figures in the >deregulation revolution of the early 1970s. He quotes Kahn from "The >Economics of Regulation" as saying that "the only economic function of >price is to influence behavior--to elicit supply and to regulate

pardon me!

For those who don't live in the US, you'll be surprised to discover that Bill & Hillary Clinton are still in trouble. This time, in addition to the alleged theft of furniture and the like from White House, Bill is accused of pardoning the billionaire fugitive from the law, Marc Rich (and his p

Re: Re: Re: Critique of mathematical economics (extended after ...

In a message dated 2/15/2001 7:37:29 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: A great number of economists, sociologists, and political scientists are attempting to do something approximating what you suggest.  I presume you are aware of the world-system school represented by Immanuel

Re: Deregulation: part 1

Kahn referred to airplanes as marginal costs with wings. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Social Capital

Formalist anthropologists like Schneider often note this derivation in arguing that cattle are 'wealth' in pastoralist communities like the Maasai. However, the only term in Maasai language that could be legitimately (and even then only roughly) translated as 'wealthy person,' *olkarsis*, indicate

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Deregulation: part 1

>Yes, Breyer worked for Kennedy on the airline de-reg bill. Then he wrote a >very weak book. Basically his book was, as I've remarked before, a dumbed-down >version of Alfred Kahn's book on regulation. The latter being a pretty >straight neo-classical exercise. I. e. not worth much. A poor pl

Re: Re: Critique of mathematical economics (extended after conclusion : ))

At 01:29 AM 2/14/01 EST, John Landon wrote: As we isolate an 'economy', even if we succeeded in the fundamentals of an analysis we would still have to look at its interaction with a host of other factors, including the option to invalidate the model by non-deterministic deciding to deequilibr

Re: new frontiers in advertising

At 07:24 PM 2/13/01 -0800, Jim Devine wrote: >My wife joined Earthlink, an Internet service provider that seems to be >owned by Sprint, a long-distance phone company. So far, so good, while it's >definitely better than Compuserve (which is horrible, especially since it >used to be very good be

Deregulation: part 1

I wrote: I am currently trying to get hold of a copy. Should arrive by next week, so, unless someone else steals the punchline I should be able to tell you. === Not much chance of that with the ever-alert Louis P. back on the case... Michael K.