query on cashews
I don't think it's worth my time forwarding the articles on Mozambican cashews to Krugman, since he's already staked his reputation on the cashew question in the NY TIMES and is unlikely to back down. But we have someone who's a pretty orthodox economist on pen-l. Brad, what do you think of the articles that Yoshie forwarded to us about cashews vis-a-vis Krugman's case? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine "From the east side of Chicago/ to the down side of L.A. There's no place that he gods/ We don't bow down to him and pray. Yeah we follow him to the slaughter / We go through the fire and ash. Cause he's the doll inside our dollars / Our Lord and Savior Jesus Cash (chorus): Ah we blow him up -- inflated / and we let him down -- depressed We play with him forever -- he's our doll / and we love him best." -- Terry Allen.
Re: query on cashews
I don't think it's worth my time forwarding the articles on Mozambican cashews to Krugman, since he's already staked his reputation on the cashew question in the NY TIMES and is unlikely to back down. But we have someone who's a pretty orthodox economist on pen-l. Brad, what do you think of the articles... Let me look... Not here. I block-deleted a big chunk of unread mail last weekend, and it must have been in there... Could you please send 'em again?
youth crime enforcement bias
from today's SLATE Magazine: The NYT off-lead, by the paper's national crime reporter, Fox Butterfield, a story nobody else fronts, is that a new comprehensive study purports to show that black and Hispanic teenagers are treated more severely than their white counterparts in the juvenile justice system. Findings include: "Among young people who have not been sent to a juvenile prison before, blacks are more than six times as likely as whites to be sentenced by juvenile courts to prison." And: "Similarly, white youths charged with violent offenses are incarcerated for an average of 193 days after trial, but blacks are incarcerated an average of 254 days and Hispanics are incarcerated an average of 305 days." The story says that although in the past, when studies have found racial disparities in say, the number of inmates, critics have said the cause was simply that minorities commit a disproportionate amount of crime, this study is different in that it finds disparities at each stage of the juvenile justice process. This would be important and disturbing news, which is why it's important journalism to run down some issues the story seems to leave untethered. For instance, as regards that trans-racial comparison among people who have not been sent to juvenile prison before, has it been adjusted for equal numbers of prior convictions and for equal seriousness of the crime? If not, then it may be the prior number of blown chances and the gravity of the crimes that are pushing the offender into prison for the first time, not his/her race. A similar point can be made about violent offenses--they come in degrees of gravity and if one group's offenses cluster around one degree of gravity and another's cluster around another, then the difference in jail time served may be an artifact not of race but of the type of violent crime committed. Even the study's claim that "minority youths are more likely than their white counterparts to be arrested" needs more exegesis than the Times gives it here. If somebody isn't arrested, how do we know he's in any relevant sense a "counterpart" of the person who is? Maybe he's law-abiding, in which case his not being arrested isn't prejudice, it's justice. I'm no expert on these statistical issues, but I'd like to here from someone who is. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
bounced from jim devine
this bounced because Jim used a bad word in his subject line (v*cation) Today's Paul Krugman column in the NY TIMES (at http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/krugman/042600krug.html) is on the proposal to break up Microsoft into two near-monopolies. Anti-trust is not my field and I'm excessively busy, so I'll let others comment on it. Besides it's pretty non-committal, lacking the usual degree of Krugman arrogance. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Keynes the radical
G'day Michael, Whilst I am wholly aware of JMK's insistence that a fight between the bourgeoisie and the great unwashed would find him firmly on the side of the former, I still think there's room for a generous reading of all this. It seems, for instance, wholly consistent with the writings of, say, the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, to claim that a person of 'independent means' (ie one not tied to a boss and the draining work day the latter extracts) would develop all kinds of personal qualities that simply don't have the chance to fulfill themselves in a being lashed forever to the yoke. I think, for instance, Habermas's recounting of the significance of French salons and British tea houses (the 'bourgeois public sphere') is important stuff. There, the nascent bourgeoisie articulated and substantiated the great (bourgeois) revolutionary age. Humanity was redefined, and human culture enriched. From where I sit (poor historically contingent thing that I am) progress was made - and in giant leaps. That JMK and FAK implicitly persisted in some sort of racist classism, whereby it is not life experience that fashions the human, but the 'nobility' of the parental loins, does not altogether undo the point, I think. Marx would have agreed, I reckon, and then politely asked (if he could manage to control his unpredictable temper) 'what if all humans enjoyed the positive freedom to fulfill their potential? Would we not then have a world even richer in all you value?'. It would have been hard for the worthy gents to demur, I submit. Which is not to say they wouldn't have - just that even their formidable reasoning (for which they were justly lauded) might not have been up to covering this instance of narrow and unreflective bigotry. They might even have been moved to admit, if sufficiently in their crystal cups, that their being was determining their consciousness ... Cheers, Rob. Hayek, F. A. 1952. "Review of Harrod's Life of J. M. Keynes." Journal of Modern History, 24: 2 (June). 197: Keynes "had not long before coined the phrase of the "euthanasia of the rentier," and in a deliberate to draw him out I k the next opportunity to stress in conversation the importance which the man of independent means had had in the English political tradition. Far from contradicting me, this made Keynes launch out into a long eulogy of the role played by the propertied class in which be gave many illustrations of their indispensability the preservation of a decent civilization." -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Economists endorse China-WTO
Here is a partial list of the 149 economists who have endorsed the legislation to give China Permanent Normal Trading Relations. This is a big question that is easy to ask. What's wrong with this list? I'd like some ad hominem, if anybody's got some. The Nobel laureates who signed the letter are Kenneth J. Arrow and William F. Sharpe of Stanford University, Milton Friedman of the Hoover Institution at Stanford, Robert C. Merton of Harvard, James Tobin of Yale, Solow, Franco Modigliani, and Paul A. Samuelson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Robert E. Lucas and Merton H. Miller of the University of Chicago, John C. Harsanyi of the University of California at Berkeley, Lawrence R. Klein, University of Pennsylvania, and Herbert A. Simon, Carnegie Mellon University. Roger Snodgrass Southwester Posts Santa Fe, NM http://www.e-terra.net [EMAIL PROTECTED] Roger Snodgrass Southwester Posts Santa Fe, NM http://www.e-terra.net [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Keynes the radical
Michael Perelman wrote: Hayek, F. A. 1952. "Review of Harrod's Life of J. M. Keynes." Journal of Modern History, 24: 2 (June). 197: Keynes "had not long before coined the phrase of the "euthanasia of the rentier," and in a deliberate to draw him out I k the next opportunity to stress in conversation the importance which the man of independent means had had in the English political tradition. Far from contradicting me, this made Keynes launch out into a long eulogy of the role played by the propertied class in which be gave many illustrations of their indispensability the preservation of a decent civilization." "We were not aware that civilisation was a thin and precarious crust erected by the personality and will of a very few, and only maintained by rules and conventions skilfully put across and guilefully preserved. We had no respect for traditional wisdom or the restraints of custom. We lacked reverence..." - JMK, "My Early Beliefs" "How can I accept a doctrine [Marxism] which sets up as its bible...an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement? Even if we need a religion how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the Red bookshops? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values." - JMK, CW IX, p. 258. Doug
Re: Re: Keynes the radical
On Wednesday, April 26, 2000 at 12:54:36 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes: Michael Perelman wrote: Hayek, F. A. 1952. "Review of Harrod's Life of J. M. Keynes." Journal of Modern History, 24: 2 (June). 197: Keynes "had not long before coined the phrase of the "euthanasia of the rentier," and in a deliberate to draw him out I k the next opportunity to stress in conversation the importance which the man of independent means had had in the English political tradition. Far from contradicting me, this made Keynes launch out into a long eulogy of the role played by the propertied class in which be gave many illustrations of their indispensability the preservation of a decent civilization." "We were not aware that civilisation was a thin and precarious crust erected by the personality and will of a very few, and only maintained by rules and conventions skilfully put across and guilefully preserved. We had no respect for traditional wisdom or the restraints of custom. We lacked reverence..." - JMK, "My Early Beliefs" "How can I accept a doctrine [Marxism] which sets up as its bible...an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement? Even if we need a religion how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the Red bookshops? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values." - JMK, CW IX, p. 258. Here there is one thing we shall be the last to deny: he who knows these "good men" only as enemies knows only *evil enemies*, and the same men who are held so sternly in check *inter pares* by custom, respect, usage, gratitude, and even more by mutual suspicion and jealousy, and who on the other hand in their relations with one another show themselves so resourceful in consideration, self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship --- once they go outside, where the strange, the *stranger* is found, they are not much better than uncaged beasts of prey. There they savor a freedom from all social constraints, they compensate themselves in the wilderness for the tension engendered by protracted confinement and enclosure within the peace of society, they go *back* to the innocent conscience of the beast of prey, as triumphant monsters who perhaps emerge from a disgusting procession of murder, arson, rape, and torture, exhilarated and undisturbed of soul, as if it were no more than a student's prank, convinced they have provided the poets with a lot more material for song and praise. One cannot fail to see at the bottom of all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid *blond beast* prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory; this hidden core needs to erupt from time to time, the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness: the Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings --- they all shared this need. ---Nietzsche, "On the Genealogy of Morals," First Essay, Section 11, in *On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo*, Walter Kaufman, ed., pp. 40-41. Bill
Re: query on cashews
From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] I don't think it's worth my time forwarding the articles on Mozambican cashews to Krugman, since he's already staked his reputation on the cashew question in the NY TIMES and is unlikely to back down. Joe Hanlon's the english-language guru on the topic, here in two posts dated mid 1997 and mid 1999: *** CAN MOZAMBIQUE MAKE THE WORLD BANK PAY FOR ITS MISTAKES? By Joseph Hanlon, Maputo, Mozambique Gemini News Service, September 29 1997 Cashew nut processors in Mozambique are demanding $15 million in compensation from the World Bank, in a ground- breaking attempt to force the World Bank to pay for its mistakes. The claim follows the release earlier this month (September) of a World Bank study which said that a policy the Bank imposed on Mozambique was totally wrong and should be "abandoned". More than 7000 people have been thrown out of work this year, and the newly privatised cashew industry virtually bankrupted. Kekobad Patel, head of the Mozambican Cashew Industry Association, warns that even if the policy is now reversed, most of the factories cannot be reopened without financial help. This will be a personal test for James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, and his efforts to make the bank less macho. The new study was carried out at his personal request after he visited Mozambique in February (this year) when he was met by objections to Bank policy on cashew from government, industry and trade unions. NOT JUST A SNACK To Mozambique, cashew nuts are not just nibbles that go with beer -- they are the country's second largest export. Tens of thousands of individual peasants cultivate cashew trees. But the cashew has a hard and acidic outer shell which must be hit with a hammer or cut with a saw to expose the kernel we eat. Mozambique developed a relatively sophisticated processing industry employing 9,000 people, mainly women, to take the kernels from the shells. At World Bank insistence, these state-owned factories were privatised in 1994-5. High bidders at US$ 9 million for the cashew factories were local businesses and not transnational corporations, as had been expected by the World Bank and many outside observers. But as soon as the local business people took over, the World Bank revealed a secret study which claimed the processing industry was so inefficient that the country lost money on every nut processed, and that peasants would earn a higher price for their cashews if raw nuts were exported. The Bank said that raw cashew nuts should be exported to India, where the kernels are removed from shells by families working at home in poor conditions. In particular, the shells contain an acid which damages the fingers of workers, which is why Mozambique has always used mechanical processing with large hammers or saws rather than Indian hand processing. Furthermore, India subsidises its industry. Mozambique had imposed an 20% export tax on unprocessed cashew nuts to compensate for Indian subsidies. Government and industry had already agreed a phased reduction down to 10% over five years, as the new owners repaired war damage and modernised their factories. But this was not enough for the World Bank, which demanded that the tax be removed over three years and exports of unprocessed nut be "liberalised". There was an outcry from the government, industry and trade unions, who demanded reconsideration. They said: 1) the study had been done without talking to people in the industry, and had fundamental flaws; 2) globalisation was forcing a lowering of standards of health and safety at work; 3) it was a myth that peasants would gain; and 4) buyers of the newly privatised factories had been cheated because they had an implicit (and in some cases explicit) promise that there would be protection until they got the industry back on its feet. CONDITIONALITY AND WORLD BANK REFUSAL TO TALK Despite the strong and detailed case put forward by the industry, the World Bank refused to discuss the subject. Instead, the Bank made it a test of strength. The 1995 World Bank "Country Assistance Strategy" made free export of cashew a "necessary condition" of its programme to Mozambique -- the only "necessary condition" linked to such a detailed policy point. The 1996 joint IMF-World Bank "Policy Framework Paper for Mozambique" also required the removal of the cashew export tax. According to the World Bank's "World Development Report 1997", Mozambique is the poorest and most aid dependent country in the world. This is because Mozambique was subject to a 12 year war waged by the old apartheid government in South Africa. This war killed 1 million people and did an estimated $30 billion in damage, which shattered the economy. As a result of this huge destruction, Mozambique is now receiving more than $500 mn per year in aid. But all of this aid is "conditional" on Mozambique having programmes with the IMF and World Bank. With no World Bank
Re: Re: Keynes the radical
Doug Henwood quoted Keynes as follows: "We were not aware that civilisation was a thin and precarious crust erected by the personality and will of a very few, and only maintained by rules and conventions skilfully put across and guilefully preserved. We had no respect for traditional wisdom or the restraints of custom. We lacked reverence..." - JMK, "My Early Beliefs" "How can I accept a doctrine [Marxism] which sets up as its bible...an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement? Even if we need a religion how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the Red bookshops? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values." - JMK, CW IX, p. 258. These passages point to the real basis of the difference between Keynes and Marx. As I've tried to show in previous posts, Keynes's view of the ideal republic was very close to Marx's (among other reasons, because it was rooted in a complex way in the same philosophic tradition). "The republic of my imagination," he once said, "lies on the extreme left of celestial space." Collected Writings (CW) IX, p. 309 He was not, however, much of a reader of Marx (and when he did read him, he did not read with good will). Marshall, in fact, was a much more astute reader of Marx than Keynes. Keynes had two central objections to what he took to be Marx's idea of how the ideal could be made actual. One was rooted in his "dialectical" view of interdependence. Where interdependence is dialectical, i.e. where relations are "internal", it will not be possible to reach reasonable conclusions about long run consequences including about the long run consequences of radical changes in existing arrangements. The only thing we can know for certain about the long-run is that in it we are all dead. This (from as early as a 1904 undergraduate essay on the topic) was one aspect of what he took to be the defensible in Burke's conservatism. Perhaps he was wrong about this. It may be possible rationally to justify "faith in the Big One". Many accounts of the ultimate crisis and its consequences read, however, like the Book of Revelation. On the other hand and as Doug's quotations show, he thought the working class was innately incapable of the kind of development required for life in the ideal republic. They were, therefore, incapable of playing the role of the "universal class". Also, this limitation made the republic of the imagination impracticable even in the very long run. Here it is Keynes who is being insufficiently dialectical. He ignores the possibility that developed capacities are the outcome of fetters present in existing social relations. Until the end of his life, he uncritically held that "chromosomes" were the main determinant of an individual's capacity for development to universality. As I also pointed out before, Marx (e.g. in the passage from The Holy Family) locates the capacity of the members of the working class to become the universal class in the developmental possibilities inherent in their location within the internal social relations that define capitalism. The inexorable operation of the law of value will, in the long run, both produce conditions of extreme alienation for the members of the working class and create in them the capacity to become the architects and makers of a new society from which the ultimate fetters to universal development have been removed. He nowhere explains, however, how the premise that "in the fully-formed proletariat the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically complete" is consistent with the conclusion that the fully-formed proletariat will also have developed the degree of rational self-consciousness required for it to play the role of the "universal class". Keynes, by the way, frequently points to Hayek's arguments as extreme examples of "Bedlamite economics", i.e. of the Ricardian vice. For instance, he says of Hayek's book *Prices and Production* that "The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read, with scarcely a sound proposition in it beginning with page 45, and yet it remains a book of some interest which is likely to leave its mark on the mind of the reader. It is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in Bedlam." (XII, p. 252) The debate as to whether a super calculating machine can solve the Bedlamite problem as well as individual calculating machines
Re: query on cashews
I have seen summaries of a Deloitte and Touche report supporting the Mozambique cashew-nut producers, described as saying: The new study was carried out by international consultants Deloitte Touche and the World Bank's previous policy "should be abandoned" [because]: 1) Indian subsidies to its industry "tilt the playing field" and make competition unfair. 2) Peasants did not gain anything from liberalised exports; extra profits were all earned by "traders" and those few farmers who were able to store nuts until the end of the processing season 3) "Improved management practices continue to contribute to factory efficiency" in the newly privatised Mozambican factories. 4) Mozambique can earn an extra $130 per tonne by processing its own cashew kernels--increasing total earnings from about $750 per tonne to $880 per tonne.. My first reaction is that something's wrong with the subsidy argument. If India *subsidizes* its cashew nut processing industry than Mozambique can capture part of that subsidy by letting Indian workers do the processing--the bigger the subsidy, the stronger the argument for exporting raw nuts. (Unless, of course, you think there is something special and important about the learning-by-doing generated in the cashew processing industry, which I don't). My second reaction is that, as Paul Krugman wrote, any claim out of Africa that "peasants did not gain anything from liberalized exports; extra profits were all held by the traders" should be viewed with great suspicion: it is a remnant of the old-fashioned belief-- criticized by Dumont a generation ago--that the countryside is a stagnant source of resources to be taxed and exploited to support urban development, that it is important to foreclose any options that rural producers and marketers have that would increase their bargaining power. Over the past generation such policies have been a disaster for rural Africa. Thus anyone making such an argument should have to answer two questions: Where does the extraordinary market power held by these traders come from? And why weren't they exercising it under the old trade regime? To argue that it is good to redistribute wealth from rural peasants to urban factory-owners by cutting off their ability to export raw nuts is one thing. To argue that cutting off the ability to export raw nuts does not harm peasants is something else entirely and is hard to credit. My third reaction is that management consultants--like Deloitte and Touche--always claim that the firm they are studying is about to experience enormous increases in managerial efficiency, and they are almost always wrong. And my fourth reaction is that Mozambique would probably be better off spending the money needed to realize that $130 a ton on schools and transportation. Vietnamese and Indian cashew-nut processors are willing and able to pay higher prices on the dock at Maputo than are domestic producers--that's why the domestic industry is crying for protection. And if your domestic industry can't match the costs of foreign producers, that's a powerful sign that this is not an industry into which a country should be pouring its resources. Brad DeLong
Re: Re: query on cashews
BUT IS IT TOO LATE? But is it all too late? The export tax was cut to 14% this year and more than half of Mozambican raw nuts were exported to India. Factories ran out of nuts and by mid-year began to shed staff. Most of the 14 factories are now closed; 7000 of the 9000 workers (most women) are now out of work. Cutting the export tax from 20% to 14%--from about $150 per tonne of cashews to $105 per tonne--caused more than half of Mozambican raw nuts to be exported to India? And caused 80% of the workers to be laid off?
Re: Keynes the radical (fwd)
I think, for instance, Habermas's recounting of the significance of French salons and British tea houses (the 'bourgeois public sphere') is important stuff. There, the nascent bourgeoisie articulated and substantiated the great (bourgeois) revolutionary age. Humanity was redefined, and human culture enriched. From where I sit (poor historically contingent thing that I am) progress was made - and in giant leaps. In so far as the "bourgeois public sphere" is concerned, I would not simply disregard Habermas's early work too (which was his doctoral thesis btw). It is a profound historical inquiry into the categories of early bourgeois culture and modernity. Very many social details and sociological sensitivity. In my view, the importance of the work rather comes from its critical encounter with Weber and Frankfurt School's collapsing of rationality to instrumental rationality or the rationality of capitalism. Implicit in Habermas's theory is the possibility of rationalities other than instrumental reason (means-ends). Accordingly, he historicizes this possibility (as a counter-narrative reading of history) in this work, and then later develops as "communicative rationality in his recent works. The problem with the work lies in its "bourgeois idealism". This critique came from Gramscian historians studying the public sphere within the framework of sub-altern studies (See Geoff Elley, Mary Ryan, etc).By idealizing the revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie in sociological terms, Habermas disregards the public spheres other than the bourgeois public sphere (working class, women, peasent, etc..).there is no dicussion of marginalized publics in his work. Their voices are unheard. Actually,Habermas has encountered these critics recently..This is another discussion though.. Mine Doyran SUNY/Albany
Re: youth crime enforcement bias (fwd)
1. Which study is SLATER magazine referring to? Who did the study? SLATE magazine is Microsoft's on-line magazine of opinion, edited by Michael Kinsley. Its line is similar to that of the NEW REPUBLIC, but more coherent. The article is from their daily news summary. 2. Minority people are likely to be more "arrested" because of the racist justice system that "racializes", so to speak, race. Race is already part of this racial system, so the argument that race has no importance in criminal issues obscures rather than challenges racism . When SLATER says race does not matter, but "the difference in jail time", it denies the ideology of racism which associates crime with race. It is more of a liberal trick SLATER is doing here! the author, Scott Shuger, was simply asking questions about these issues. I was hoping for answers to these questions rather than name-calling based on a partial reading. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
CHINA REPORTS BIG SURGE IN LABOR UNREST DURING 1999 - SF Chronicle
The San Francisco Chronicle Monday, April 24, 2000 CHINA REPORTS BIG SURGE IN LABOR UNREST DURING 1999 Disputes over unpaid pensions, wages, fraud By John Pomfret, Washington Post Beijing -- The number of labor disputes in China has skyrocketed -- to more than 120,000 in 1999 -- as workers in unprecedented numbers get laid off, are paid late or not at all and feel cheated by corrupt officials who sell state property for a pittance to friends, relatives and colleagues. Official Labor Ministry statistics passed to a Western diplomat and a recent article in the journal Legal Research showed 14 times more labor disputes -- from simple contractual disagreements to work stoppages and strikes -- last year than in 1992. The article and labor officials' willingness to speak about the issue marked a departure for the Communist Party, which has struggled to maintain stability in Chinese cities in the wrenching transformation from a planned economy to something akin to a market economy. The strains were highlighted in late February when tens of thousands of workers erupted in a violent protest at China's biggest nonferrous metal mine near the Bohai Sea in the northeast. Workers there burned cars, broke windows and kept police and the army at bay for several days as they protested what they said was an unfair and corrupt handling of the mine's bankruptcy. Chinese labor conditions have been the subject of increased international scrutiny in advance of a vote in the U.S. Congress on granting China permanent normal trade relations, a major stepping stone to its accession to the World Trade Organization. U.S. labor unions, led by the AFL-CIO, have argued that China's entry into the WTO would result in a deterioration of its already-limited labor rights. Chinese law does not provide for the right to strike and bans independent unions. The statistics show a jump from 8,150 labor disputes in 1992 to more than 120,000 last year, answering a question posed often by China scholars: Is the urban labor situation getting tenser, or is it simply that China's increasing openness allows for more information about a fixed number of disputes? This is significant. It shows things are getting more difficult, said Anita Chan, an expert on China's labor relations at Australian National University in Canberra. At the same time, the statistics also helped explain why the increased unrest has yet to translate into a movement challenging the Communist Party's monopoly on power or seeking to establish independent labor unions. While collective labor disputes, in which workers seek to bargain in a unit, are increasing rapidly, they still make up a minority of the overall disputes -- 7 percent in 1998, the last year available. And no evidence exists of workers uniting to strike at several businesses at the same time. Besides unrest over wages, labor disputes typically involve unpaid pensions to laid-off employees, poor working conditions and the sell-off of state enterprises that workers believe involved fraud by management. Andrew Walder, an expert on Chinese urban workers at Stanford University, said a key reason the unrest hasn't translated into a broader movement is that strikes remain scattered and workers are unwilling or unable to unite to pursue broader goals. There have been periodic press reports for most of the last 10 to 15 years or so that labor disputes are on the rise in China, he said. It makes a great deal of sense that they would be: Wage issues came to the forefront in the 1980s and increasing job insecurity and layoffs (became) a big issue in the 1990s. Should we get worked up about such reports? Probably not. Scattered strikes are politically meaningless. If and when a national or regional trade union is organized and survives openly for a while -- which is very unlikely -- we should then begin to read political significance into all this. Some researchers suggested that the 1999 figure for labor disputes, which represented a 29 percent increase over 1998, was limited by massive government subsidies. Last year during the 50th anniversary of China's Communist revolution, party officials were told to stress stability at all costs. Labor relations in 2000 will deteriorate as special subsidies fade out, the economic and labor reforms' intensify and more and more workers are laid off, said Tak Chuen, an expert on China's labor issues at Hong Kong Baptist University. Chuen said Chinese workers face a difficult situation because accession to the WTO will do nothing to improve their livelihood, at least in the short run, but failure to do so will not help either. The Legal Research article, written by retired scholar Shi Tanjing and published in November, called on the government to end its ban on strikes. The right to strike was removed from China's constitution in 1982.
Re: youth crime enforcement bias (fwd)
Jim Devine wrote: the author, Scott Shuger, was simply asking questions about these issues. I was hoping for answers to these questions rather than name-calling based on a partial reading. The Slate report must have been based on the following article, which Doug fwd to lbo. New York Times - April 26, 2000 Racial Disparities Are Pervasive in Justice System, Report Says By FOX BUTTERFIELD lack and Hispanic youths are treated more severely than white teenagers charged with comparable crimes at every step of the juvenile justice system, according to a comprehensive report released yesterday that was sponsored by the Justice Department and six of the nation's leading foundations. The report found that minority youths are more likely than their white counterparts to be arrested, held in jail, sent to juvenile or adult court for trial, convicted and given longer prison terms, leading to a situation in which the impact is magnified with each additional step into the juvenile justice system. In some cases, the disparities are stunning. Among young people who have not been sent to a juvenile prison before, blacks are more than six times as likely as whites to be sentenced by juvenile courts to prison. For those young people charged with a violent crime who have not been in juvenile prison previously, black teenagers are nine times more likely than whites to be sentenced to juvenile prison. For those charged with drug offenses, black youths are 48 times more likely than whites to be sentenced to juvenile prison. Similarly, white youths charged with violent offenses are incarcerated for an average of 193 days after trial, but blacks are incarcerated an average of 254 days and Hispanics are incarcerated an average of 305 days. "The implications of these disparities are very serious," said Mark Soler, the president of the Youth Law Center, a research and advocacy group in Washington who also is the leader of the coalition of civil rights and youth advocacy organizations that organized the research project. "These disparities accumulate, and they make it hard for members of the minority community to complete their education, get jobs and be good husbands and fathers," Mr. Soler said. The report, "And Justice for Some," does not address why such sharp racial imbalances exist. But Mr. Soler suggested that the cause lay not so much in overt discrimination as in "the stereotypes that the decision makers at each point of the system rely on." A judge looking at a young person, Mr. Soler said, may be influenced by the defendant's baggy jeans or the fact that he does not have a father. In the past, when studies have found racial disparities in the number of adult black or Hispanic prison inmates, critics have asserted that the cause was simply that members of minorities committed a disproportionate number of crimes. That may be true, Mr. Soler said, but it does not account for the extreme disparities found in the report, nor for disparities at each stage of the juvenile justice process. "When you look at this data, it is undeniable that race is a factor," Mr. Soler said. The report, the most thorough of its kind, is based on national and state data initially compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, a Justice Department agency; the Census Bureau and the National Center for Juvenile Justice, the research arm of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. The report was written by Eileen Poe-Yamagata and Michael A. Jones, senior researchers with the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, in San Francisco. An unusual feature of the report is that its costs were underwritten by the Justice Department and several leading foundations: the Ford Foundation; the MacArthur Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation; the Walter Johnson Foundation; the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which specializes in issues relating to young people; and the Center on Crime, Communities and Culture of George Soros's Open Society Institute. Hugh B. Price, the president of the National Urban League, said that "this report leaves no doubt that we are faced with a very serious national civil rights issue, virtually making our system juvenile injustice." Mr. Soler and the coalition that put the report together want Congress to give the Justice Department at least $100 million to reduce racial disparities and require states to spend a quarter of their federal juvenile justice grants on the issue. A spokesman for Representative Bill McCollum, the Florida Republican who is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime, said he would have no comment because he had not seen the report. Mr. McCollum sponsored a bill last year that would have increased the number of juveniles tried in adult court. Nationally, the report found that blacks under the age of 18 make up 15 percent of their age group, but 26 percent of those young people
Re: youth crime enforcement bias (fwd)
1. Which study is SLATER magazine referring to? Who did the study? SLATE magazine is Microsoft's on-line magazine of opinion, edited by Michael Kinsley. Its line is similar to that of the NEW REPUBLIC, but more coherent. The article is from their daily news summary. My question was *not* about SLATE magazine. it was about the "recent comprensive study" mentioned in Shuger's acticle. I asked what the findings of the study was to understand SLATE's criticism. in any case, Carrol has just clarified it. 2. Minority people are likely to be more "arrested" because of the racist justice system that "racializes", so to speak, race. Race is already part of this racial system, so the argument that race has no importance in criminal issues obscures rather than challenges racism . When SLATER says race does not matter, but "the difference in jail time", it denies the ideology of racism which associates crime with race. It is more of a liberal trick SLATER is doing here! the author, Scott Shuger, was simply asking questions about these issues. I was hoping for answers to these questions rather than name-calling based on a partial reading. first, i need to read the article (which was my original question) to understand what he was trying to say. i can not rely on a neo-liberal magazine like SLATE without reading what is referred to. second, i don't think i did a partial reading. I read what it was written in SLATE. if you don't "partially" read the article, you will see that the author's questions were still racially biased. Shuger's claim that race does not matter, but "differences in jail time" or "clustering of groups" is a denial of systematic racism par-exellence. Racism is the ideology of "race does not matter" (like "class does not matter"). Shuger assumes we are living in a racially neutral system, the system that exactly makes the same claim as Shuger does.. i don't see a big challange to the study he is criticizing here, but let me read the study first. Mine
Re: Re: Keynes the radical
Subject: Offer of Internship Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 13:16:23 +0200 From: "Christoph Erdmenger" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Offer of Internship Assistant in ICLEIs Eco-Procurement and Eco-Efficient Economy Programme The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) is seeking an intern for its Eco-Procurement Programme. The internship offers a wide range of activities, among them in particular editing of English texts for publications and web-sites. Relevant projects include the set-up of an Internet Info Shop on research projects on regional eco-efficient economy, the adaptation and translation of a German publication on green purchasing and the preparation of international EcoProcura® events. Furthermore ongoing activities for the EcoProcura® magazine and the European Municipal Green Purchasers Network will be in the scope of the internship. Please find further information at http://www.iclei.org/europe/ecoprocura. Internships at ICLEI are particularly interesting for all those who wish to later work in international organisations, local authorities and their associations, consultancies for local authorities and training institutions. Conditions The duration of the internship is 6 months and should begin between 1.5.00 and 1.6.00. A reimbursement of personal costs of 600/month is possible. Skills required Education:knowledge of environmental science, law, technology and/or economy e.g. through studies in a relevant field, such as law, political science, economics, administrative science, geography, etc., Editing skills in English language, Practical experience with political organisations, foreign countries and/or organisational tasks are welcomed, Organisational skills: communicative competence, ability to work in a self-organised way within a team, computing skills in MS Office and electronic communication Languages:very good English, preferably mother-tongue, as well as good command of German. Please apply before 10.05.00 in writing, including CV, motivation and photo. The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), European Secretariat, Eschholzstrasse 86, D-79115 Freiburg/ Germany Fax:+49-761 / 36 89 2-19 E-mail:iclei-europe@iclei- europe.org What is ICLEI? As a membership association, ICLEI is an international community of about 350 local authorities dedicated to achieving tangible improvements in the global environment. In Europe some 140 local authorities and 9 national municipal associations have joined ICLEI. ICLEI members are interested in and working towards measurable environmental performance. These members work together to develop new models and tools for addressing priority environmental problems and disseminate these results through ICLEI's networks and international campaigns. ICLEI serves as the international environmental agency for local government, offering research, technical assistance and training services to its member local authorities as well as to other local, regional, national and European authorities. The types of services provided by ICLEI on a contractual basis include: pilot and demonstration projects, research, development projects as well as studies, organisation of international conferences, seminars, workshops, study tours and exchanges, development assistance projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America, fee-for-service technical consulting in key management areas to individual local governments. Rob Schaap wrote: G'day Michael, Whilst I am wholly aware of JMK's insistence that a fight between the bourgeoisie and the great unwashed would find him firmly on the side of the former, I still think there's room for a generous reading of all this. It seems, for instance, wholly consistent with the writings of, say, the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, to claim that a person of 'independent means' (ie one not tied to a boss and the draining work day the latter extracts) would develop all kinds of personal qualities that simply don't have the chance to fulfill themselves in a being lashed forever to the yoke. I think, for instance, Habermas's recounting of the significance of French salons and British tea houses (the 'bourgeois public sphere') is important stuff. There, the nascent bourgeoisie articulated and substantiated the great (bourgeois) revolutionary age. Humanity was redefined, and human culture enriched. From where I sit (poor historically contingent thing that I am) progress was made - and in giant leaps. That JMK and FAK implicitly persisted in some sort of racist classism, whereby it is not life experience that fashions the human, but the 'nobility' of the parental loins, does not altogether undo the point, I think. Marx would have agreed, I reckon, and then politely asked (if he could manage to control his unpredictable temper) 'what if all humans enjoyed the positive freedom to fulfill their
[fla-left] [news] Poor in US more likely to face tax audits (fwd)
forwarded by Michael Hoover [Surprise, surprise, the government has found another way to treat poor people unfairly.] World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org Poor in US more likely to face tax audits By Shannon Jones 22 April 2000 New statistical evidence demonstrates that the net result of the so-called reform of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been a further shift in the tax burden from the wealthy to the working class and sections of the middle class. With the support of the Republican Congress and the Clinton administration the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act took effect in 1998. At the time proponents touted the measure in populist terms, declaring that it would end the harassment by federal tax collectors of workers and small businessmen. In fact the opposite has been the case. The results of a study conducted by researchers at Syracuse University reported in the April 16 edition of the New York Times show that for the first time ever the IRS audited a higher rate of returns of low-income people than those of the rich. In 1999 the IRS audited returns of 1.36 percent of people making less than $25,000. That compares to an audit rate of 1.15 percent for those making more than $100,000. This is a remarkable turnaround, considering that in the late 1980s the audit rate for the upper income taxpayers was more than 11 percent. Small, unincorporated businesses with less than $25,000 in annual sales were more likely to be audited than businesses with more than $100,000 in annual sales-a 2.7 percent audit rate for the small enterprises compared to a 2.4 percent rate for larger firms. At the same time only 1 in 66 corporations was audited in 1999, the lowest rate in 86 years. In the increasingly unlikely event they are caught, wealthy tax evaders face little prospect of being penalized or having their assets seized. In fact, levies, fines and seizures have fallen dramatically. The number of levies of bank accounts and other assets carried out by the IRS to collect past due taxes dropped 86 percent over the past two years. Seizures of property have fallen 98 percent during the same period. Corporations have interpreted the shift in IRS policy as a green light to avoid paying taxes. According to recently released figures, total taxes paid by US corporations fell by 2 percent last year, despite record profits. The indulgent attitude shown by the IRS toward the wealthy has led to a proliferation of tax avoidance schemes by US corporations. According to a report published in the April 14 edition of USA Today, large investment houses and banks are marketing shady tax plans to businesses: "This industry has boomed because promoters are selling these deals for contingency fees, which means there are no up-front costs to the companies. If the transactions go through, some promoters get as much as a 50 percent cut of the tax savings-if the companies get away with it. And many executives are taking the risk because the odds that the IRS will challenge a deal are slim." In one example cited by USA Today, Compaq Computer Corp. bought 10 million shares of Royal Dutch Petroleum and sold them a few hours later for a loss of $1.9 million. However after taking a credit for paying $3.4 million in taxes to the Netherlands the company came out $1.5 million ahead on the deal. As a result of such dodges there has been a widening of the gap between profits reported by companies to their stockholders and the amounts reported to the IRS. In 1999 the difference came to $122 billion. That figure represented twice the gap that existed in 1995. The go-soft approach shown by the IRS toward corporate tax cheats is in marked contrast to its increasingly tough attitude toward the poor. The Clinton administration and Congress have mandated that the IRS take a harder line against so-called abuse of the earned income credit, a deduction available to lower paid workers. Bowing to claims by the Republican right that many poor people were illegally claiming the earned income credit, Clinton proposed the IRS increase audits of low-income families to fight the alleged fraud. According to the Times, "the IRS is scrutinizing the earned income credit with such wariness that it is sometimes denying the credit to people who are legitimately owed it on nothing more than suspicion, according to several low-income taxpayer clinics run by law schools." Few poor people have the resources, the Times noted, to fight the IRS and often give up when they are unjustly denied the credit. These cases are then added to the list of alleged instances of fraud and used by the extreme right to justify further cuts in aid to the poor. Meanwhile the IRS has reduced the number of face to face audits it conducts of wealthy tax payers. These audits require highly trained investigators able to spot complex tax dodges. The number of
Re: Re: query on cashews
Does Krugman have "a profound knowledge of the actual facts of industry and trade" in Mozambique and of "the relation of individual men to them"? Doesn't he assume, as he does in his "analysis" of Japan, that "rational" choice theory is not only applicable but universally applicable? "Ambitious men and women with large egos" usually have very weak egos. Their "ambition" and "large egos" are in fact signs of clinical narcissism. This blinds them to obvious facts including the fact of their own ignorance. Ted Winslow -- Ted WinslowE-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Division of Social Science VOICE: (416) 736-5054 York UniversityFAX: (416) 736-5615 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario CANADA M3J 1P3
Re: Re: Re: query on cashews
Ted Winslow wrote: Ambitious men and women with large egos" usually have very weak egos. Their "ambition" and "large egos" are in fact signs of clinical narcissism. This blinds them to obvious facts including the fact of their own ignorance. Ted Winslow -- Ted Winslow E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Division of Social Science VOICE: (416) 736-5054 York University FAX: (416) 736-5615 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario CANADA M3J 1P3 And, as James Galbraith wrote in "How Economists Got It Wrong" article that we talked about several months ago, modern economics ..."seems to be mainly about itself." Add a winner-take-all economic structure even among economists where one becomes a op. ed columnist at the New York Times, mix with the cult of celebrity, and you have the makings of an intellectual, if not a clinical definition, of narcissism. Joel Blau
on the anti-globalization movement (fwd)
From Alan Sceptor: The debates on the Fair Trade list over China and Global Exchange reflect an even deeper debate over the anti-globalization movement: should it be anti-capitalist or liberal reformist? The following article attempts to dissect and articulate this debate from an anti-capitalist perspective. It is based on an earlier article which appeared in the Feb. 2000 issue of From the Left, the newsletter of the Marxist Section of the American Sociological Association. As long as credits are retained, there are no restrictions on the article's reproduction or redistribution. UNDERSTANDING THE BATTLES OF SEATTLE AND WASHINGTON By Dick Platkin and Chuck O'Connell* In November 1999, when the "Battle of Seattle" grabbed headlines around the world, it also excited grizzled activists from the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements. They had renewed hopes that politically energized students and workers would form new left-wing movements. Several months have now passed, and it is time to carefully examine the anti-globalization movement which organized most of the anti-WTO events in Seattle and anti-IMF and World Bank actions in Washington, D.C. The profound contradictions of this movement are reflected by the basic facts. Tens of thousands of demonstrators, with sophisticated messages and media outreach, drawn from dozens of countries, appeared at hundreds of venues within a period of several days. On one hand, anti-globalization forces roused tens of thousands of students and workers into political activism over questions of economic justice, and many may eventually develop into revolutionary anti-capitalist activists. On the other hand, as carefully documented by University of Ottawa economics professor, Michael Chossudovsky, in Seattle and Beyond: Disarming the New World Order (posted on the Internet, November 25, 1999, at www.emperors-clothes.com) the leadership of much of the anti-WTO movement is not only discreetly linked to the WTO, but enjoys political and financial connections to well-funded corporate, AFL-CIO, and foundation-based organizations emphasizing "Fair Trade." This is a slogan whose humane appearance and demands for corporate responsibility cloaks calls for protectionism, patriotism, and the production and exchange of consumer goods for profit (i.e, capitalism). The anti-globalization movement, not surprisingly, presents arguments which are questionable and politically suspect. A careful look at them reveals the movement's class outlook and shows why as demonstrated by Chossudovsky it has received careful nurturing from ruling class think tanks, corporate-funded foundations, and management- oriented unions, such as the Steelworkers (USWA). FAIR TRADE ARGUMENT 1: STUDENTS AND WORKERS SHOULD OPPOSE THE WTO BECAUSE IT WILL DRAG DOWN THE STELLAR CONDITIONS OF WORKERS IN THE UNITED STATES. As articulated by such labor leaders as USWA President George Becker at anti-WTO rallies in Seattle and Washington, this argument is amazingly unpersuasive. The sad truth is that workers in all other industrialized countries fear being dragged down to the second-rate working conditions of the American companies with whom Becker is allied. If he looked around, he would see that tens of millions of US workers are paid the minimum wage or even below, and hundreds of thousands have been forced to accept the compulsory sub-minimum wages of the workfare program. Only 11 percent of the U.S. working class are represented by unions, and most of these unions are lead by pro-management officers and staff. Over 40 million U.S. workers do not have health insurance, and most of the rest are stuck with mediocre HMO's. US workers have no guaranteed vacation, and those who do get vacations usually get two weeks, unlike Germany's six weeks and France's five weeks. American workers also have no paid maternity or paternity leave, and must endure a legal 40-hour workweek unchanged since 1939, while reality is much worse. According to Harvard economist Juliet Schore, the U.S. workweek has been rising continuously over the past two decades, while that of Europeans has been declining, along with their additional holidays and vacations. The result is that, on average, Americans now work approximately two months more per year than Europeans. Moreover, while anti-globalization/Fair Trade leaders in Seattle and Washington criticized sweatshops and other deplorable working conditions in Third World countries, especially China, they conveniently skimmed over their increasing prevalence in the United States. For example, Seattle's Boeing company, whose union leadership has vigorously denounced China's use of prison labor, contracts out work to the Washington State prison system without any protests from Boeing's union leadership! The effect of this strategy is to draw unionized U.S.
[Fwd: on the anti-globalization movement (fwd)]
ops,his last name is Spector.. Spector is a wsn fellow who forwarded article.. From Alan Sceptor: The debates on the Fair Trade list over China and Global Exchange reflect an even deeper debate over the anti-globalization movement: should it be anti-capitalist or liberal reformist? The following article attempts to dissect and articulate this debate from an anti-capitalist perspective. It is based on an earlier article which appeared in the Feb. 2000 issue of From the Left, the newsletter of the Marxist Section of the American Sociological Association. As long as credits are retained, there are no restrictions on the article's reproduction or redistribution. UNDERSTANDING THE BATTLES OF SEATTLE AND WASHINGTON By Dick Platkin and Chuck O'Connell* In November 1999, when the "Battle of Seattle" grabbed headlines around the world, it also excited grizzled activists from the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements. They had renewed hopes that politically energized students and workers would form new left-wing movements. Several months have now passed, and it is time to carefully examine the anti-globalization movement which organized most of the anti-WTO events in Seattle and anti-IMF and World Bank actions in Washington, D.C. The profound contradictions of this movement are reflected by the basic facts. Tens of thousands of demonstrators, with sophisticated messages and media outreach, drawn from dozens of countries, appeared at hundreds of venues within a period of several days. On one hand, anti-globalization forces roused tens of thousands of students and workers into political activism over questions of economic justice, and many may eventually develop into revolutionary anti-capitalist activists. On the other hand, as carefully documented by University of Ottawa economics professor, Michael Chossudovsky, in Seattle and Beyond: Disarming the New World Order (posted on the Internet, November 25, 1999, at www.emperors-clothes.com) the leadership of much of the anti-WTO movement is not only discreetly linked to the WTO, but enjoys political and financial connections to well-funded corporate, AFL-CIO, and foundation-based organizations emphasizing "Fair Trade." This is a slogan whose humane appearance and demands for corporate responsibility cloaks calls for protectionism, patriotism, and the production and exchange of consumer goods for profit (i.e, capitalism). The anti-globalization movement, not surprisingly, presents arguments which are questionable and politically suspect. A careful look at them reveals the movement's class outlook and shows why as demonstrated by Chossudovsky it has received careful nurturing from ruling class think tanks, corporate-funded foundations, and management- oriented unions, such as the Steelworkers (USWA). FAIR TRADE ARGUMENT 1: STUDENTS AND WORKERS SHOULD OPPOSE THE WTO BECAUSE IT WILL DRAG DOWN THE STELLAR CONDITIONS OF WORKERS IN THE UNITED STATES. As articulated by such labor leaders as USWA President George Becker at anti-WTO rallies in Seattle and Washington, this argument is amazingly unpersuasive. The sad truth is that workers in all other industrialized countries fear being dragged down to the second-rate working conditions of the American companies with whom Becker is allied. If he looked around, he would see that tens of millions of US workers are paid the minimum wage or even below, and hundreds of thousands have been forced to accept the compulsory sub-minimum wages of the workfare program. Only 11 percent of the U.S. working class are represented by unions, and most of these unions are lead by pro-management officers and staff. Over 40 million U.S. workers do not have health insurance, and most of the rest are stuck with mediocre HMO's. US workers have no guaranteed vacation, and those who do get vacations usually get two weeks, unlike Germany's six weeks and France's five weeks. American workers also have no paid maternity or paternity leave, and must endure a legal 40-hour workweek unchanged since 1939, while reality is much worse. According to Harvard economist Juliet Schore, the U.S. workweek has been rising continuously over the past two decades, while that of Europeans has been declining, along with their additional holidays and vacations. The result is that, on average, Americans now work approximately two months more per year than Europeans. Moreover, while anti-globalization/Fair Trade leaders in Seattle and Washington criticized sweatshops and other deplorable working conditions in Third World countries, especially China, they conveniently skimmed over their increasing prevalence in the United States. For example, Seattle's Boeing company, whose union leadership has vigorously denounced China's use of prison labor, contracts out work to the Washington State prison system without any protests from
RE: [fla-left] [news] Poor in US more likely to face tax audits (fwd)
Poor in US more likely to face tax audits By Shannon Jones 22 April 2000 Another side of this issue is that the General Accounting Office did a report to follow up on the infamous Roth hearings that ventilated citizen tales of IRS abuses. GAO found that none of the anti-IRS charges held water. GAO was prevented from releasing the report, purportedly on the grounds of citizen confidentiality. A copy leaked out anyway and it turns out there was little or no confidentiality issue -- any personal stuff was blacked out and there wasn't much of it. mbs
Re: Keynes the radical
Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/26/00 12:54PM "How can I accept a doctrine [Marxism] which sets up as its bible...an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement? Even if we need a religion how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the Red bookshops? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values." - JMK, CW IX, p. 258. ( CB: Is that "turbid" or "turgid" ?
Re: Re: Krugman attacks the EPI! (fwd)
So, how is this liberal model, closer to the fact of the last seventy years in capitalist countries more democratic than the models used in socialist countries ? "Technocracy " is bureaucracy. Galbraith endorsed technocracy, no ? The private corporations have technocrats/bureaucrats too, yet they claim liberal capitalism means some kind of anti-bureaucratic democracy. CB Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/24/00 02:45PM At 02:30 PM 4/24/00 -0400, you wrote: i did *not* mean by "originality" "creativity" or "cleverness". I meant that Krugman "repeats" his free market dogma... the "unoriginality" he rediscovered before he became a pundit! I think that it's unfair to dub PK a practitioner of "free market dogma," since he's a technocratic type. It's okay to deviate from the free market, in this view, if the experts say it's okay. (Of course, he and the rest of the Big Name School elite determine who the "experts" are. It's a lot like the bureaucratic variant of political correctness, where the elite determines what's naught and what's nice.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
