Re: Re: Krugman Re: phantom profits
On Friday, February 1, 2002 at 15:51:54 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes: Eugene Coyle wrote: Krugman's remarks would have been useful to the public two or three years ago. Now it is just newspaper filler. Not in the context of politics today. He's the sharpest critic of Bush on the NYT's op-ed page - a mostly dull and conventional venue that nonetheless has enormous influence on other journalists and opinion leaders - and one of the sharpest in the mainstream. Compare his stuff to the diluted critiques that Bob Herbert, the supposed house liberal, has been emitting. I have to agree with Doug. As much as I dislike Krugman's free market liberal pose, and often horrendously shallow thinking, he's one of the best in the mainstream. Bill
Re: Re: The eyes-glazing-over-factor strikes again
On Friday, January 25, 2002 at 09:43:32 (-0800) Ian Murray writes: - Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 === Ok that's twice in 10 minutes on the ENE. What's it stand for? ENron Energy? Bill
Re: Re: reform and rev
On Thursday, January 17, 2002 at 20:30:29 (-0800) Rakesh Bhandari writes: ... I think govts have in fact already found that running deficits the size that would be needed to achieve full employment would only yield retrenchment in private investment; govts thus find that limiting deficits and containing the run up in debt are important to maintaining private investment--that is, fiscal prudence gives confidence that taxes and interest rates will remain under control over the projected future and the state will thus not bite into profits the prospects for which are not strong. I don't think this scenario really applies in a downturn. In an upswing, when the private engine of accumulation is ticking along, perhaps. The limits of the mixed economy have in fact already been reached, including now in Japan. This could be, or not. Difficult to tell, isn't it? I do emphatically agree on the importance of the theory of fictitious capital as you are developing it here. In particular, I agree that the way out of recessions ultimately depends upon the slaughter of capital values, not higher prices and strong consumption in the first instance. James Galbraith and Tom Ferguson have a paper looking wage structure and government policy that seems to come to a different conclusion: The American Wage Structure: 1920-1947, Research in Economic History, Volume 19, pages 205-257 (Stamford Connecticut, 1999), Alexander J. Field, ed. They look at unemployment, the exchange rate, strikes, and other variables and conclude that policy makers after World War II managed to avoid the worst macroeconomic mistakes of the earlier period. Encouraged by the post-war strike wave, the spread of Keynes' views, the beginning of the Cold War and later the war in Korea, they maintained high levels of aggregate demand and employment nearly consistently for 25 years, if rarely attaining 'full employment'. I think policy has a strong and potentially positive role to play in quick recovery from and prevention of major recessions. Bill
Re: Re: the profitrate recession
On Tuesday, January 15, 2002 at 14:15:22 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes: Michael Perelman wrote: I don't consider myself a social democrat, but I agree with Jim -- if I understand him correctly. SD is good for the capitalists. So why do they generally oppose social democracy? Don't they understand their own interests? And, we can't just ignore the power of the population, can we? I would say SD is tolerated by capitalists (after often long and bitter struggle with popular groups) most especially when elites can purchase the D part and cut out much of the S part. Bill
NPR blurb on Swedish taxes
Just at 8:30 CST this morning, I heard (I think) Bob Edwards on NPR blurt out something about Swedish tax rates that smelled rather unsavory. He claimed that several Swedish executives (I think he cited three examples) had to paid over 100% taxes on their wages. This sounds outrageous, of course, because as we all know, Sweden is a tax-and-spend hell-hole, and this just goes to show you that limited government is best, and the market should allocate income, blah blah blah. What was fishy of course was that there was no mention of whether perhaps these executives had to pay this money this year because of lower payments in previous years, or because of some accounting trick, or perhaps most likely because they had income other than wage income that was not taxed at a high rate. Does anyone know more about this story who could shed some light on the details? Bill
Re: state power theory of money
On Wednesday, January 9, 2002 at 20:03:44 (-0800) Steve Diamond writes: David Friedman, the anarcho-capitalist son of Milton, has a piece arguing for private money. ... This is the same idiot who in his book *Hidden Order* argues that Americans give gifts in non-cash form because of a hostility to money which he claims is typical of our society. (p. 331) Bill
The Supremes side with business again
I glanced at the papers in the grocery store this morning and all newspapers I saw featured the latest unanimous pro-business decision by the Supreme Court. The ruling in *Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. v. Williams*, apparently holds that work is not a major life activity ... of central importance, and that when applying the Americans with Disabilities Act, one must look at disabilities that substantially limit one's ability to do such things as washing one's face, or brushing one's teeth. As they point out in the third paragraph of their opinion, major life activities refers to those activities that are of central importance to daily life. One would think that laboring under the control of others, for extended periods during the most productive hours of the day, would be of the *utmost* central importance to one's life. But apparently the Court believes that labor for others is simply some sort of gift from a benevolent Father, and that when such labor causes injury that prevents someone from further working, the benevolent Father has every right simply to withdraw the gift. In passing they note that a lower District Court rejected respondents arguments that gardening, doing housework, and playing with children are major life activities. One wonders what is left of a person after having these activities and others removed from major life activities. This one needs to be filed under Events which Show how Business Controls the World. Bill
Re: The Supremes side with business again
On Wednesday, January 9, 2002 at 09:49:13 (-0600) William S. Lear writes: ... BTW, the decision can be found at: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=USnavby=casevol=000invol=00-1089 Incidentally, the reason work is not central to one's life is given near the end of the decision: Because of the conceptual difficulties inherent in the argument that working could be a major life activity, we have been hesitant to hold as much, and we need not decide this difficult question today. Bill
Re: Re: PEN-L digest 23
On Sunday, January 6, 2002 at 10:45:44 (-0500) Hari Kumar writes: ... 2) POTENTIAL AMELIORATING EFFECTS OF SOCIETAL REDISTRIBUTION: Even the author of this BMJ commentary notes the Danish social care system etc; will tend to even out differences: Osler et al present the results of an analysis of mortality in a small area in Copenhagen, Denmark (p 13), and they use the type of multilevel data that we need to disentangle the effects of income on mortality at the aggregate level from those at the individual level. They find no association between income inequality and mortality after adjustment for individual income and suggest that the Danish welfare state evens out differences in the effect on mortality of income inequality between areas. This is hardly surprising, and does not invalidate the general argument. What it also suggests is that the statistical power of the observational study needs to be much larger given the diminished effect size. Credit to the author of the commentary, however (despite what his agenda might or might not be - I have no idea) for this type of statement does refute those wishing to use such selective data to further cut welfare states/health care provisions/ etc.. Doesn't it also point to a major flaw in these studies? If they recognize that the social services even out disparities, should they not control for it explicitly? So, should they not estimate the level of aid given, and then simply add that to income? So, if aid to the poor is quite adequate, their effective incomes are higher, and inequality is less. This would then tend to show that the greater the maldistribution of wealth, the poorer the social outcomes. Some very good comments, Hari. Thanks. Bill
Re: Income and population health
On Saturday, January 5, 2002 at 09:07:47 (+) Chris Burford writes: http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/324/7328/1 Overall these papers reinforce the idea that the evidence for a correlation between income inequality and the health of the population is slowly dissipating. There is very little confirmation of such a relation outside the United States. Within the United States it has still to be convincingly demonstrated that it is not due to curvilinear individual level relationships and confounding. ... Most importantly, perhaps, the powerful impact of individual income on mortality has been rediscovered and still demands the urgent attention of policymakers and politicians around the world. Has anyone looked at this stuff with a critical eye? So, what they are saying is that within the US, income inequality *is* positively correlated with poor social outcomes (perhaps spuriously), but this does not seem to be true elsewhere? A positive correlation within the US and not elsewhere makes some sense, as many other societies have vastly superior social support systems --- as I mentioned in a previous post, even the much poorer men of Kerala India tend to have a better chance of reaching advanced ages than African American men. Bill
Re: BLS Daily Report
On Wednesday, January 2, 2002 at 09:10:51 (-0500) Richardson_D writes: BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2001: Mass layoff events totaled 2,699 in November resulting in job losses for 293,074 workers while 350 of those events were directly or indirectly related to the September 11 terrorist attacks, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total number of layoff events and the total number of persons affected were the highest for any November on record since the data series began in 1995. After the September 11 attacks, BLS added a new classification -- non-natural disaster -- for use in the quarterly reporting of extended mass layoffs. Those events involved nearly 104,000 workers between September 15 through November 11, BLS reports (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). How exactly do they determine that a layoff was directly or indirectly related to the 9/11 and not directly related to the employer's need for an excuse? Bill
Tom Frank on Social Security in 01/2002 Harper's
For those who haven't seen it, Thomas Frank has a very good piece on plans to destroy --- er save --- social security (The Trillion Dollar Hustle: Hello Wall Street, Goodbye Social Security) in the January 2002 issue of Harper's Magazine. In it, he makes the following claim: ... when the mortality rates are broken down by socioeconomic factors, it becomes clear that, in fact, African Americans live about as long as the average for their socioeconomic level. Middle-class blacks have nearly the same life expectancy as middle-class whites; poor blacks have nearly the same life expectancy as poor whites. The tragedy of black America is largely a tragedy of poverty: so many African Americans die young because so many African Americans are poor. (37) As I recall from the last statistical abstract I looked at, about 36 percent of African American children under the age of 6 live in poverty, versus about 11% of white children, so I entirely agree with his claim that many more African Americans are poor than whites. There is something missing, I think, from the above, though. In his book *Development as Freedom*, Amartya Sen gives evidence that, even after adjusting for differences in costs of living, Black American males in certain U.S. cities have a lower chance of reaching, say, 60 years of age, than do men who live in Bangladesh. Comparing the mortality rates of all African American men to men living in other countries, Sen writes: Even in terms of the connection between mortality and income ..., it is remarkable that the extent of deprivation for particular groups in very rich countries can be comparable to that in the so-called third world. For example, in the United States, African Americans as a group have no higher --- indeed have a lower --- chance of reaching advanced ages than do people born in immensely poorer economies of China or the Indian state of Kerala (or in Sri Lanka, Jamaica, or Costa Rica). (21) The reasons for the discrepancies ... include social arrangements and community relations such as medical coverage, public health care, school education, law and order, prevalence of violence and so on. (22-23) Comparing mortality rates of African American men in Harlem to men in Bangladesh, he writes: ... for example, Bangladeshi men have a better chance of living to ages beyond forty years than African American men from the Harlem district of the prosperous city of New York. All this in spite of the fact that African Americans in the United States are very many times richer than the people of comparison groups in the third world. (23-24) As Sen observes, it is not only poverty which leads to increased mortality rates, but the failure of social services which can support the poor. This can also be seen in comparison of European to American unemployment rates. The latter can be maintained at relatively higher levels because of the much more generous welfare provisions available to the unemployed. With its meager and deteriorating support for the unemployed, the US (according to Sen) would find it intolerable to maintain such high unemployment rates. In any case, Frank's article is very good --- well written and properly indignant at the looming disaster of the privatization of social security. Incidentally, Frank also clearly articulates a very important tactic used by the right: ... the right's belief that it can persuade the public that government is bad by giving us spectacularly bad government. Just as Republicans in the Reagan era ran up towering federal deficits in order to discredit deficit spending, just as congressmen of the Gingrich era let government services grind to a halt in order to show just how irresponsible congressmen could be, just as Republicans of our own day have taken to electing cretins to positions of great public authority in order to discredit the very notion of public authority, so the present Social Security commission uses the possibility that politicians might try to do away with Social Security as a justification for doing away with Social Security. (36) To which one might add that the Democrats have largely been complicit in the above-mentioned crimes. Bill
Re: Re: textiles
On Friday, December 28, 2001 at 20:35:07 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes: Part of the question seems to be how do you organize in the absence of international solidarity? In short, how do you make Cambodian wages move up instead of US wages moving down? Wouldn't the center of gravity of a competitive international wage be close to China? The intellectually easy, but practically hard strategy -- within the bounds of capitalism -- would be to find ways to create high wage jobs in the US, but in doing that say by building high tech textile equipment would still destroy jobs in the 3rd world. Without getting into rancorous exchanges, what would a progressive strategy be. Of course, socialism would be desirable, but Wouldn't the foundation of this be full employment policies, say, as proposed by Jamie Galbraith? Bill
Re: Re: textiles
On Saturday, December 29, 2001 at 10:57:55 (-0800) Rakesh Bhandari writes: Bill L writes: Wouldn't the foundation of this be full employment policies, say, as proposed by Jamie Galbraith? But what if the available full employment policy is the export of unemployment? ... Most distasteful --- I was thinking of full employment globe-wide. Any unemployment should be seen as a failure of the private market --- leaving employable adults unemployed is inefficient, after all (disregarding the noxious notion of frictional unemployment). As long as we are going to have markets uber alles, we should hold them accountable for failures, and so we should be pushing them toward full employment everywhere. A generous welfare state under capitalism is a moral imperative, but so is providing stable work, at reasonable wages and reasonable hours, for those who want to work. Transfer payments, though very necessary, only paper over the problem --- the problem is free market inefficiency and waste of human capital. Not that free markets are my ideal economic system, mind you, given the unmistakable whiff of slavery they exude. Bill
Re: Re: Enron's Success Story
On Wednesday, December 26, 2001 at 16:02:18 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes: Is it ever possible to the disprove market efficiency to the satisfaction of a conservative economist? I think this is too narrow a battle field. Market efficiency can be defined in any number of ways, short-term, long-term, etc. The questions that we need to be asking are different ones, I think. Amartya Sen has raised important shortcomings in mainstream economic thinking by distinguishing between cumulative outcomes and comprehensive outcomes. The former are measured by things like GDP, income levels, etc. --- the usual macroeconomic indicators. Sen proposes that we pay attention to the process used to achieve these outcomes, and measure them as well --- hence he recommends comprehensive outcomes be used to measure both end and means. This leads him to view economic development as the development of freedom, rather than mere wealth --- a return to Aristotelian conceptions of the good life in which wealth is merely a means to other things. Bill
Re: Argentina, the California electricity crisis, and markets everywhere
On Thursday, December 20, 2001 at 11:36:50 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes: I don't think it's an accident that market failures are sprouting up everywhere. Michael Keaney was telling us about the British railway system. We have the CA electricity crisis, Argentina, Enron, etc. I think we should distinguish between collapse and failure. Markets fail all the time, but when the cost is not borne only by the consumers and general population, but actually rocks the house of ownership, it's a collapse. Market failures lead not only to such collapses, but to the everyday patterns of economic injustice we all are a part of. Markets just don't work, except under special conditions, which are fairly rare. I tried to make this argument in my Natural Instability of Markets book, which went mostly unread. I read it --- and all of it at that:-). Bill
Re: Tom Frank on Enron
On Tuesday, December 18, 2001 at 14:32:40 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes: Salon.com http://www.salon.com/tech/col/leon/2001/11/09/enron/index.html Or, if one prefers to bypass the first page of advertising: http://www.salon.com/tech/col/leon/2001/11/09/enron/index?x Bill
Re: growing inequality
On Saturday, December 15, 2001 at 07:46:56 (-0800) Devine, James writes: from the Arts section [!] of the NY TIMES: December 15, 2001 Grounded by an Income Gap By ALEXANDER STILLE For 30 years the gap between the richest Americans and everyone else has been growing so much that the level of inequality is higher than in any other industrialized nation. What no one can quite figure out, though, is why, or even whether anything should be done about it. One of the reasons, unmentioned in the article, for increasing inequality is rather transparent: the assault by organized capital upon workers, both directly and via the political system. Why there has been increasing inequality in this country has been one of the big puzzles in our field and has absorbed a lot of intellectual effort, said Martin Feldstein, a professor of economics at Harvard University and the chairman of President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers. But if you ask me whether we should worry about the fact that some people on Wall Street and basketball players are making a lot of money, I say no. As a representative of an administration that supported the illegal destruction of unions, among other nefarious doings, it is hardly surprising that Feldstein doesn't much care about the issue. Stille could have asked James Galbraith his opinion, or could have read his book, *Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay*, published in 1998. Inequality, writes Galbraith, is transforming the United States into something that more closely resembles an authoritarian quasi democracy, with an overclass, an underclass, and a hidden politics driven by money (4). Though this has essentially been true from the beginning of this country, the distillation of vengeance on behalf of the wealthy has quickened over the past 30 years, particularly as the darker shades of the underclass have been targeted for social removal through a phony drug war, and particularly as politics --- and crucially political discourse --- has increasingly become an arena in which only the ultra-elite of the country can participate. With inequality growing through- out the industrialized world, Mr. Feldstein, like many economists, has come to see inequality as a basic feature of the new high-tech economic scene, the natural consequence of an economy that has begun to reward talent, skills, education and entrepreneurial risk with increasing efficiency. What a load: inequality has been a basic feature of state-administered and protected free markets for centuries. The new economy is nothing new at all, and rewards typically go to those with the social power that they inherit. There is no doubt that market forces have spoken in favor of more inequality, said Richard Freeman, a professor of economics at Harvard. Just look at the figures. Most of the incredible wealth generated during the 1990's boom went to the richest of the rich. Forty-seven percent of the total real income gain between 1983 and 1998 accrued to the top 1 percent of income recipients, 42 percent went to the next 19 percent, and 12 percent accrued to the bottom 80 percent, writes Edward Wolff, an economics professor at New York University in a new edition of his book Top Heavy (New Press), about growing economic inequality. It might be too much to add that the wealthy have spoken in favor of more inequality, whereas the American public for the most part recognizes the unfairness of government policies which reward the rich and punish the poor, and generally favors policies which lessen inequality. One might also point out tax law changes, lax enforcement of SEC rules, huge government giveaways and bailouts to the wealthy, etc. One glaring omission here: income for the wealthy is typically reward for gambling/investing, called capital gains, not wage labor. Wage labor --- labor gains --- is taxed far more heavily at both the state and federal level than are capital gains. In the 90's only the people at the very top and very bottom made any real improvement. Wages for full- time male workers, for example, have grown only 1.3 percent since 1989. The richest 10 percent of American households, economists point out, have 34.5 percent more financial wealth than the average family. These changes have persisted through Democratic and Republican administrations and began at the same time in Britain, even before Margaret Thatcher's market-oriented policies, Mr. Wolff said, indicating that they are not simply the product of economic policy but reflect deep structural changes in the economy. The leading hypotheses are technological advances, increases in trade and imports, growing immigration and declining union membership. Galbraith points out: The idea that rising inequality serves a deeper purpose emerges from the economics profession, which has produced a kind of instant wisdom on the subject --- a set of views, usually presented as orthodox, but in fact established in great haste
Re: Re: growing inequality
On Monday, December 17, 2001 at 10:01:31 (-0800) Devine, James writes: In general, I agree with the sentiments of Bill and F.G. But it should be noted that once you get beyond the start of Jamie Galbraith's book, it's incredibly hard to read. Even professional economists have a hard time (including yours truly). It's not a good source of political ammunition. Hmm, I've read most of it and did not find it too difficult. Perhaps not being a professional economist makes it easier:-). What did you find hard to read? Bill
Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
On Tuesday, December 11, 2001 at 18:04:18 (-0500) Max Sawicky writes: The Gov would have to organize a competitive bidding system, evaluate contract proposals, monitor contract compliance, enforce contracts, and have substitutes (possibly itself) in the event of non-performance. It ain't like ordering pizza. Taxing is definitely easier. Why have bidding? Why not just set up a public company that hires staff to run things. The board would be publicly accountable. If the Gov is renting capital and paying managers what they could earn in alternative employment, the extent of remaining surplus that it has 'nationalized' is in some doubt. In the pharmaceuticals case, it would might own patents and collect rents they earn. But where would it get the patents? What's really in question is the ownership of the research, not the manufacturing. The latter lends itself to contracting, with above caveats, whereas the production of patents is an excellent candidate for public ownership, as Dean Baker has written. -- mbs Perhaps simply owning the intellectual property of the company and having companies freely use it to produce things (with strings, of course) would be the best. No need for contracts, competitive bids. The government says, ok we've developed this cool new drug, whoever wants to produce it and sell it for X cents a pill (or less) may do so. But what happens when private capital says no thanks, we won't play unless you pay us handsome profits? This is where a public company (really, industry) would come in handy. Bill
Stupid profit rate question
How does one calculate the profit rate for a given unit cost? I'm assuming it is: 100% * ((profit - unit cost) / unit cost) Is this correct? So, if something has a unit cost of 2 cents, and sells for 1 dollar, the profit rate is: 100% * ((100 - 2) / 2) or, in this case, 4,900%?? Bill
Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
On Monday, December 10, 2001 at 16:03:05 (-0800) Devine, James writes: How does one calculate the profit rate for a given unit cost? I'm assuming it is: 100% * ((profit - unit cost) / unit cost) Is this correct? If you replace profit with price per unit, that's more like a profit margin. Yes, stupid typo for a stupid question. The formula should be: 100% * ((price per unit - unit cost) / unit cost) a profit _rate_ would measure total profit [(price - unit cost) times the number of units sold] as a percentage of capital invested. OK, so profit margin is, as above: 100% * ((price per unit - unit cost) / unit cost) and profit rate is: 100% * ((price per unit - unit cost) * units sold) / invested capital ? So, if I sell 100 widgets that cost 2 cents to make at 1 dollar a piece, and if I had to spend ten thousand dollars to set up the plant to do the work, the profit rate would be: 100% * ((1.00 - .02) * 100) / 1 or .98 percent, while the profit margin would be (again), 4,900%? Bill
Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
On Monday, December 10, 2001 at 16:15:35 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes: Jim is right. What is the cost per unit? Does it include the depreciation of durable plant and equipment? If so, the invested value of the durable plant and equipment would be in the denominator. Because economists and accountants have no realistic way of putting a value on durable equipment, profit ratios are often questionable. So, using profit ratios (profit *rate*, or profit *margin*) is not a good way to view how competitive a market is? Bill
Re: Re: Stupid profit rate question
On Monday, December 10, 2001 at 17:31:20 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes: Bill, turnover rates are an important factor. If a supermarket sells a loaf of bread each day. The bread costs $1 and it sells for $1.01. But it makes $3.65 per year on the bread. I guess I should say that what I'm interested in is a measure of which markets are good candidates for public investment. It seems that if you have high profit *margins*, low unit costs, and high capital investment costs (as with drugs), the public would win big-time --- of course in more ways than one --- by paying the investment costs. I'm just wondering with which markets we should start our program of public ownership. Bill
St. Luke the Commie?
And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. ---Acts 4:32-35, St. Luke (?) Bill
Re: Physics and economics
On Monday, December 3, 2001 at 22:04:33 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes: For 2 centuries, economists have attempted to emulate physics as a justification for their individualistic model of the world, following Atom Smith. This article says that solid state physicists are pushing a different fundamental view of the world based on complex processes. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/04/science/physical/04SQUA.html The author makes the link between physics and economics explicit: [Laws of relativity] may have emerged from the roiling of the vacuum of space, much as supply-and-demand and other laws of economics emerge from the bustle of the marketplace. Paul Krugman authored a pathetic little book on this topic in 1996 called *The Self-Organizing Economy*, which has direct intellectual roots in the Hayek programme. Though actually late to the scene, this didn't stop Krugman from producing profoundly ignorant statements about society. Here he is expatiating on the causes of racial segregation in Los Angeles: [Los Angeles] is a patchwork of areas of very distinct character, ranging from Koreatown to Hollywood, Watts to Beverly Hills What is so striking about this differentiation is that it is so independent of physical geography: there are no rivers to set boundaries, no big downtown to define a gradient of accessibility. The strong organization of space within metro Los Angeles is clearly something that has emerged, not because of any inherent qualities of different sites, but rather through self-reinforcing processes: Koreans move to Koreatown to be with Koreans, beautiful people move to Beverly Hills to be with other beautiful people. (p. 4) Hmm... a long history of racist laws, rules, and behavior has nothing to do with this? Just how is the absence of physical impediments evidence of self-organizing behavior? What is the use of focusing on these impediments while ignoring human-made ones? Do poor Blacks in Watts move there to be with other poor Blacks? Has Krugman never heard of the practice of blockbusting? What if we were to write this of South Africa of the not-too-distant past: Capetown is a patchwork, beautiful whites living together in self-organized bliss, and blacks living together, somewhere, ..., else? Why is there is no entry for racism in the index? Why does Krugman display such confidence while uttering such foolish pronouncements? And why does Krugman ignore the relatively sage words of Schelling, on whom Krugman relies for inspiration for this idiotic model? Schelling writes: Some segregation results from the practices of organizations. Some is deliberately organized. Schelling gives implicit, though ambiguous, affirmation of the importance of macrostructural effects: At least two *main* processes of segregation are outside this analysis. One is organized action---legal or illegal, coercive or merely exclusionary, subtle or flagrant, open or covert, kindly or malicious, moralistic or pragmatic. The other is the process, largely but not entirely economic, by which the poor get separated from the rich Evidently color is correlated with income, and income with residence; so even if residential choices were color-blind and unconstrained by organized discrimination, whites and blacks would not be randomly distributed among residences. (I believe this is from Schelling's *Micromotives and Macrobehavior*, p. 137) Here, incidentally, is Krugman's justification for decorating economic ideas with technical baubles: ...it seems to me that an economic idea flourishes best if it is expressed in a rather technical way, even if the technical difficulty is largely spurious. After all, a teacher wants something to do at the blackboard, and a clever student wants something on which to demonstrate his or her cleverness. If a deep idea is conveyed with simple examples and elegant parables, rather than with hard math, it tends to get ignored. (16) Of course, this has the helpful effect of tending to focus one on the *math* and not the assumptions, nor, most importantly, on the politics. As Doug Henwood rightly observed, most social analysis in America is powered by caricature rather than fact (LBO #72, April 1996). One glaring problem with Krugman's adoption of self-organizing principles to describe social activity is that *anything* can be described as self-organizing. The same degrees of order that Krugman espies in today's (US) economy can certainly be seen in South Korea, Stalinist Russia, and peasant societies. In short, Krugman's caricature is to ignore the wide variety of explicit and implicit rules both in law and in the practices of politics (through the mechanism of the state) which create the necessary social structures for accumulation and order. Bill
Re: Re: Physics and economics
On Tuesday, December 4, 2001 at 13:53:16 (-0800) Sabri Oncu writes: Ali writes: FOR THE SUBJECT MATTER, OF ECONOMICS THE FUTURE DETERMINES THE PRESENT (people plans determine what they do now)? FOR PHYSICS THE PRESENT DETERMINES THE FUTURE (where the particle is at present determi,es where it is going to be in the future? it's only _expectations_ of the future that determine the present and those expectations are based on past events (including those of a minute ago). JD By the way, although in physics, expectations of the future do not play any role in where a particle is going to be, the path it has taken to get where it is now may play some role. There is a huge class of materials called materials with memory: for example, polymers. That is, even in physics, the past may be important. But then, present is just a construction: what we know as the present is just the leading edge of the past. Bill
A little rant about NPR propaganda on unemployment
I was listening to NPR this morning and they had a brief report on unemployment benefits paid by states. They had an economist from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) on to describe the basic facts. Well, NPR had a few quotes from the EPI guy to lay out the basic problem: unemployment insurance in almost all states is woefully inadequate to sustain people through times of unemployment, and very unequal from state to state (it's especially bad in California, which ranks *last* among all states, AND is a very expensive place to live). BUT, and here's a key technique in a well-functioning propaganda system: when it came to describing WHY this might be so, they essentially silenced the EPI economist, and turned to one from the business-friendly think-tank, the Brookings Institution, who basically said this was because states want workers to look really hard to find work. In other words, a non-explanation of the problem that somehow seems to imply that it is the lazy workers who need to be prodded by scanty benefits to find their next job. No mention of the demand by BUSINESS that their employees be forced to depend on nobody but BUSINESS for their welfare. That helps to make workers SUBSERVIENT TO BUSINESS NEEDS. No mention of this very important relationship was allowed to be heard. This of course is quite typical with any number of topics: each topic is treated *sui generis* and the common thread linking many of our social problems --- the ineluctable GREED of BUSINESS --- is never mentioned, and this makes it appear to people that instead of having ONE basic problem, we have countless pain-in-the-ass problems that have no common thread, thus making EVEN THINKING ABOUT A SOLUTION difficult or impossible, and so people just TURN OFF and remain disgusted --- at what they are not exactly sure. The EPI report on unemployment, if you're interested, is at: http://www.epinet.org/Issuebriefs/ib169.html Apologies for the gratuitous ALL CAPS, but as one who has recently found himself out of work, I felt I deserved the luxury. Bill
Re: A project for Pen-L
On Tuesday, November 27, 2001 at 22:41:10 (-0600) [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 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. I posted an article to the PKT list on November 10, 1998, which may be a decent starting point for some of this. I am appending the text below my signature, and the hypertext version of the article can be found at http://csf.colorado.edu/forums/pkt/nov98/0101.html. I also noticed a book that looked interesting on the Harper's Magazine web site: *The Selling of Free Trade: Washington and the Subversion of American Democracy* by John R. MacArthur. No idea if it is actually useful or not. Bill Re: Comparative Advantage * Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ] * Next message: William S. Lear: Re: A Better Money System? * Previous message: Joe Morgen: Re: A Better Money System? * In reply to: John M. Legge: Re: S=I, a new twist--Comparative Advantage Tue, 10 Nov 1998 03:30:46 -0600 (CST) William S. Lear ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) On Mon, November 9, 1998 at 14:11:15 (+1100) John M. Legge writes: Even honest neoclassicals must recall that Ricardo assumed immobile capital ... Experience, however, shows that the fancied or real insecurity of capital, when not under the immediate control of its owner, together with the natural disinclination which every man has to quit the country of his birth and connections, and intrust himself, with all his habits fixed, to a strange government and new laws, check the emigration of capital. These feelings, which I should be sorry to see weakened, induce most men of property to be satisfied with a low rate of profits in their own country, rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations. ---David Ricardo, *The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation*, Chapter VII, On Foreign Trade (Everyman's Library, 1992, p. 83). ... (either land or money that had to be closely watched in the absence of an IMF to act as debt collector) and the HOS model also assumes immobile capital and labour. Doesn't Ricardo also assume immobile labor? Though he does say that perfectly free commerce distributes labour most effectively and most economically (ibid, p. 81), he is really speaking about movement of specialization, not workers. He goes on to say that should wages rise, due to an increase of capital and population ... it would not follow that capital and population would necessarily move (ibid, pp. 81-2). In his book *Money and Empire* (Blackwell, 1974) Marcello De Cecco notes that Ricardo's model (and Smith's) is a static one that not only assumes a homogenous world of producers --- the civilised world (Ricardo, ibid, p. 81) --- but ignores increasing returns to scale, great inventions, the differences in levels of development that have permitted colonisation, the huge migrations of Europeans to the new continents, the massive exports of investment capital to the new countries (De Cecco, p. 6). M. Pani\'c elaborates upon this in a survey of The Doctrine of Free Trade: Internationalism or Disguised Mercantilism?, Chapter 7 in his book *National Management of the International Economy* (St. Martin's Press, 1988). He adds that the doctrine of comparative advantage assumed that the economies liberalising their trade are in *fundamental equilibrium*, enjoying *full employment*; and that trade liberalisation will do nothing to alter this position (p. 123, original emphasis). Pani\'c echoes De Cecco's observation about the assumption of homogenous producers, noting that belief in the existence of an *international harmony
Re: Chomsky in the news
On Wednesday, November 28, 2001 at 15:33:47 (+) [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: from Microsoft's SLATE on-line newsmagazine: Chomsky Speak By Inigo Thomas ... comments? Aside from being sloppy and poorly written, it claims Chomsky implies that the Afghan famine is a result of U.S. and British military action and that he ignores the lack of rain, etc. But nowhere in the quoted remark of Chomsky does he say anything about the cause of the famine. Furthermore, from my reading of previous remarks of Chomsky on this, he makes no such implication. Widespread severe hunger (perhaps truly a famine, perhaps not) in Afghanistan was clear prior to the US assault. However, the hunger was being addressed by the international aid organizations, the efforts of which were halted due to the US attack. Aid organizations condemned the US bombing, noting the effects on the relief efforts; they also roundly condemned the so-called humanitarian aid dropped from the sky as this would tend to identify relief efforts with those raining down the bombs and would make future relief much more difficult. As to plans to further destroy the hunger-stricken country, it is hard to make out from the given quote exactly what is meant by this, though Thomas seems to know somehow that this is not true, though he provides no supporting evidence for this claim. I am curious myself about the deaths due to the bombing of the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant. One would reasonably count direct and indirect deaths due to this, e.g., those who died as a result of a lack of medications, but I have not seen Chomsky's source for this claim. As to the final remark about the crimes being hidden, what Chomsky clearly means is not that they will literally be unknown to anyone --- clearly false and too blatantly stupid a notion to reasonably impute to Chomsky --- but that they will be largely unknown to most Americans, particularly those who tend to influence policy. Finally, one might also question the claim that the Taliban has engaged in a willful destruction of their own country, which as far as I know is not true. Repressive religious fundamentalist fanatics, yes; but from what I have read elsewhere, they brought a measure of order to the constant warfare and real destruction that was continuing prior to their ascent to power. Bill
Re: Re: If Economics isn't Science, What is it?
On Monday, November 26, 2001 at 16:37:52 (-0800) Devine, James writes: Bill, what I'm saying is that the Scottish synthesis of capitalism and egalitarianism -- in which Smith favors small businesses and hates the idea of class distinctions -- doesn't work. It's like Locke's view that we're all equal, but some of us are more equal than others (i.e., own property, are more rational, accumulate endlessly, etc.) Oh I agree entirely, but this is a much more reasonable place to start a discussion than that which is usually marked as the point of departure. Smith made a moral case for capitalism which has been perverted into free markets uber alles. I think public control of firms with increasing returns to scale would be a good place to start, and let Smith's vision play out among restaurateurs and car repair shops. Bill
Re: Re: Screening: _People and the Land_ (Thursday, Nov. 29)
On Tuesday, November 27, 2001 at 18:51:58 (-0500) Yoshie Furuhashi writes: ... Didn't count the zeros in the quoted passage before pasting it. Blame it on _Washington Report on the Middle East Affairs_! Here's the correct ( more recent) figures: The report is absolutely bloodcurdling, the direct link to which (PDF format) is: http://www.nlg.org/NLG_MidEastReport.pdf Another article worth reading is A Gaza Diary by New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, in the October 2001 Harper's Magazine. Here is a very chilling excerpt: Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered --- death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo --- but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport. This is from the entry Sunday afternoon, June 17, the dunes (page 7 in the online version). The Israeli soldiers enticed the children to their deaths by spewing obscene racist invective through loudspeakers mounted on their jeeps as they sat behind electric fences. The entire article can be seen online at: http://www.harpers.org/online/gaza_diary Bill
Re: Re: If Economics isn't Science, What is it?
On Monday, November 26, 2001 at 15:37:20 (-0800) Devine, James writes: Mat writes: I think the Scottish enlightenment reference [by D. McCloskey] is just an idea of basically benign market organization, capitalism with a human face, Adam Smith but with heavy emphasis on the moral sentiments. In my recent POLITICS SOCIETY article, I write about this a bit. The Scottish capitalism with a human face (capitalism with a vibrant Toqueville-type civil society) conflicts with the unlimited accumulation of capital. Haven't seen the article, but I did happen to read through Smith's *Moral Sentiments* and found a few worthwhile thoughts: The fortunate and the proud wonder at the insolence of human wretchedness, that it should dare to present itself before them, and with the loathsome aspect of its misery presume to disturb the serenity of their happiness. ---Adam Smith, *The Theory of Moral Sentiments*, I.iii.2.2 This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of corruption of our moral sentiments. ---Adam Smith, *The Theory of Moral Sentiments*, I.iii.3.1 Bill
Re: Socialism Now
On Sunday, November 18, 2001 at 15:23:43 (+0800) Greg Schofield writes: ... The fact is that socialism does not have to wait, that historically it has already come of age but in a guise we didn't expect, the struggle for its Proletarian future should be taking place in the here and now. The stopper in the bottle, the only thing holding back the historical forces for this struggle is ironically the left itself. Sorry, but I find this a bit facile. There is a tremendous entrenched power that knows very well how to wage class warfare and it has been doing so quite effectively. To say that nothing is needed, save the left get out of its own way, ignores the immense work to be done to convince, for example, the vast majority of Americans, that socialism does not mean Soviet-style rule. Bill
Re: Teaching political economy
On Friday, November 9, 2001 at 18:30:30 (-) H.K. Radice writes: ... So I am looking for ideas for reading materials which do not assume any knowledge of economics, and indeed might be acceptable to politics students who often find economics scary (those equations and graphs!!). ... Have you seen Yanis Varoufakis, *Foundations of Economics: A Beginner's Companion* (Routledge, 1998)? Also, why not throw in some readings on human inference, such as that from Robin Hogarth, Peter Gilovich, Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Richard Nisbett, Jean Lave, Barbara Rogoff, Peeter Tulviste, Richard Thaler, etc.? Thomas Ferguson has a rich set of references to such work in his paper Business Leadership and Discrimination: An Alternative Econometric Test, in *Industrial and Corporate Change*, Volume 8, Number 4, 1999, pp. 777-798; see especially his recommendations on pages 793-795. Bill
Re: BLS Daily Report
On Friday, November 2, 2001 at 14:39:57 (-0500) Richardson_D writes: ... The U.S. auto industry recorded its best month in history, using the lure of no-interest loans to boost sales 24.4 percent, but risking future damage to the companies' bottom line. None of the Detroit-area Big Three auto makers has quantified the fiscal burdens of the unprecedented financing deals, but industry analysts say the no-interest loans cost the companies about $2,500 for the median-priced $24,000 vehicle. ... So, the vaunted efficiency of free markets produces a unit cost of over 10 percent for a loan? Or am I wrong and should I assume that the $2,500 is pure opportunity cost? I'd be curious to know the difference (numeric) between the two figures, if available. Bill
Re: Re: failing firms must be promptly liquidated
On Wednesday, October 31, 2001 at 17:35:00 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes: Chris, the economy will be stronger after liquidation -- if it survives the shock -- but it will mean mass unemployment and a further concentration of economic ownership. ... liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. ---Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, advising Herbert Hoover in 1930 Bill
Re: chomsky
On Thursday, October 25, 2001 at 13:22:33 (-0700) Rakesh Bhandari writes: i want to be clear that my characterization of the chomsky criticism launched by hitchens-georgia rondas-andrew hagen-leo casey as misguided, cynical and perverse in no way implies that i think chomsky is above crititism. *i don't think wm lear on pen-l was effective in rebutting the charge that chomsky had misanalyzed what the costs were and who had borne them in the Marshall plan. wm lear relied on marcello dececco to defend chomsky; it seems to differ from the more defensible account in anthony tuo-kofi gadzey's political economy of power. For the record, I believe I actually relied upon Eric Helleiner, not De Cecco. Bill
Re: workers bailed out
On Tuesday, September 25, 2001 at 07:13:06 (-0700) manuel resende writes: Los Angeles Times: AFTER THE ATTACK Airline Won't Give Workers Severance By LISA GIRION and NANCY CLEELAND, TIMES STAFF WRITERS American Airlines said Monday that it is invoking an emergency clause in its union contracts that will allow it to forgo paying severance to the 20,000 workers it plans to let go. Union leaders said they will fight the decision, including the possibility of legal action. Full article http://www.latimes.com/business/la-76652sep25.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dbusiness Wasn't it American Airlines that had about $1 billion in cash on hand just last week? Bill
Re: query
On Monday, September 24, 2001 at 13:04:13 (-0700) Jim Devine writes: Can someone name some good English-language newspapers produced outside the US? (General newspapers, not business ones: for example, the Guardian Unlimited is pretty good, in terms of having a non-US perspective.) I download news story from www.Avantgo.com and I am looking for new sources. As someone pointed out, the Independent http://www.independent.co.uk is quite good, and carries the regular dispatches of the indispensable Robert Fisk. See the page http://msanews.mynet.net/Scholars/Fisk for some good links to his stories and a fine interview, The Art of Journalism: An Interview in the Progressive. Bill
Airline bailout
Has anyone analyzed the impending bailout of the airlines in the wake of the massive firings? Bill
Re: Support Cong. Lee
On Saturday, September 15, 2001 at 02:32:13 (-0700) Steve Diamond writes: Congressperson Barbara Lee (D.Oak) was the lone Congressperson to resist the drumbeat to war and vote against the hasty Congressional resolution granting the President wide powers to conduct a war in the Mid East. You can thank and encourage Cong. Lee via email at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Actually, Lee is from California, born in El Paso, Masters in Social Work from Berkeley, '75 (for further info: http://www.house.gov/lee, though it is not very up-to-date). Bill
Re: The market made me do it
On Saturday, August 18, 2001 at 11:54:00 (-0700) Michael Perelman writes: I think that the term market-driven is very interesting. In a market society, responsibility is dispersed. When a Pinochet rounds people up to execute, you can follow up a chain of command. When somebody dies because of welfare reform, people are necessarily not out to do evil. They may be following their ideology of the market or believing that they are creating a society that is more in conformity with market conditions. The story that Tom reported, as well as the people who died in the Pinto, or even the people who die from air pollution or global warming do so because of the complex network of decisions made by a narrow group people. This narrowness is a major difference between socialism and capitalism. What is astounding is that the current ideology has managed to equate markets with virtue. I think this is a bit inconsistent. Narrow decision-making under markets should allow you to more easily track responsibility. We are, after all, talking about numerous small-scale totalitarian social groupings in which decision-making comes from the top down. What precludes the tracking of responsibility is not the institutional form, but the secrecy under which decisions are made. Bill
Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?
On Thursday, August 16, 2001 at 16:59:36 (-0400) J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. writes: Well, I certainly do not wish to get into this appalling numbers game. But, since I started this with that forward, I guess I'll add a comment. The main one I would note is that the really big numbers one sees in places like Le Livre Noir de Communisme come from the famine deaths, especially those in the USSR in the early 1920s and 1930s, along with those in the GLF in China, which alone amount to around 30 million by most recent accounts (give or take several million). ... This from Noam Chomsky, adding as usual sound observations: Writing in the early 1980s, Sen observed that India had suffered no such famine. He attributed the India-China difference to India's political system of adversarial journalism and opposition, while in contrast, China's totalitarian regime suffered from misinformation that undercut a serious response, and there was little political pressure from opposition groups and an informed public (Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, _Hunger and Public Action_, 1989; they estimate deaths at 16.5 to 29.5 million). The example stands as a dramatic criminal indictment of totalitarian Communism, exactly as Ryan writes. But before closing the book on the indictment we might want to turn to the other half of Sen's India-China comparison, which somehow never seems to surface despite the emphasis Sen placed on it. He observes that India and China had similarities that were quite striking when development planning began 50 years ago, including death rates. But there is little doubt that as far as morbidity, mortality and longevity are concerned, China has a large and decisive lead over India (in education and other social indicators as well). He estimates the excess of mortality in India over China to be close to 4 million a year: India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame, 1958-1961 (Dreze and Sen). In both cases, the outcomes have to do with the ideological predispositions of the political systems: for China, relatively equitable distribution of medical resources, including rural health services, and public distribution of food, all lacking in India. This was before 1979, when the downward trend in mortality [in China] has been at least halted, and possibly reversed, thanks to the market reforms instituted that year. Overcoming amnesia, suppose we now apply the methodology of the _Black Book_ and its reviewers to the full story, not just the doctrinally acceptable half. We therefore conclude that in India the democratic capitalist experiment since 1947 has caused more deaths than in the entire history of the colossal, wholly failed...experiment of Communism everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, tens of millions more since, in India alone. Bill
Re: Re: The Vulnerable Planet (was Re: suburbia)
On Thursday, June 28, 2001 at 19:41:21 (-0700) Michael Perelman writes: Mark, please refrain from telling us what you think Doug thinks. Especially when it is so far from the mark as to become crude and ugly pastiche. Bill
Re: Re: economics as religion
On Monday, June 11, 2001 at 15:01:56 (-0700) Tim Bousquet writes: I'ver been working on an article for sometime about the religion of the market. Thomas Frank, of Babbler Magazine, sort of beat me to the punch with his One Market Under God, but there's still a lot to be said. Ken Lay is example #1, I think: a right-wing Christian who goes around endowing chairs at Universities that promote free market ideology and such. Using Thomas Ferguson's Investment Theory yields very interesting results in this regard. If you examine industrial structure and its relationship to political ideology, large cleavages emerge (inter alia) between labor-intensive and capital-intensive industries. Capital-intensive industries have an inherent advantage in the political arena because they can tolerate discussion about economic fairness much more readily than do labor-intensive firms. Once political discussion has shifted to economic issues, the political faction backed by labor-intensive firms will be wiped out. The typical strategy is to divert the discussion by slinging mud and frightening people by resorting to a variety of outrageous fantasy, with religion playing its well-understood, well-funded and very central role here. Bill
Re: Re: query
On Thursday, May 31, 2001 at 14:40:37 (+0100) Max Sawicky writes: There's a brand new Congressional Budget Office report w/tons of stuff on the income part. It can be downloaded at www.cbo.gov: Historical Effective Tax Rates: 1979-1997. If that's not current enough for you, go to Census or the EPI web site. I was not able to find anything more fine-grained than the top 5%. If you find something that shows better definition, let us know. Bill
Re: Re: query
On Thursday, May 31, 2001 at 15:13:22 (+0100) Max Sawicky writes: Try Appendix G of the CBO report. Better, thanks. But where do we see the juicy bits about how the top 1% is broken down? Bill
Re: Re: query
On Thursday, May 31, 2001 at 15:13:22 (+0100) Max Sawicky writes: Try Appendix G of the CBO report. One final ignorant question. When they say effective income tax rates, is it correct to assume that income does not include capital gains? The definition under the heading The Nature of the Analysis (p. xvi) is a bit ambiguous, as it includes all cash income, and I'm not sure if cap. gains are income. Also (ok two questions), if I'm very rich and have a very good tax lawyer, I assume that I can shield portions of my income from being seen as income by the taxman. How common is this occurrence? Note to Jim Devine: see the Cautionary Note at the top of p. xvii where it says As a result, it may be difficult for readers to determine their own placement within the reported distributions. Bill
Re: Re: query
On Thursday, May 31, 2001 at 15:37:21 (+0100) Max Sawicky writes: broken down how? Er, well, where does a person making $10 million per year fit in? What is her tax rate? How does my favorite sports star rate? Etc. I'd like the analysis to not stop at edge of the petit bourgeois. Bill
Re: Re: pen-l malaise
On Monday, May 14, 2001 at 19:40:00 (-0700) Brad DeLong writes: I don't think that we need to bicker about the IMF. It is a tool of the oppressors and does terrible harm. Now, now. If there were no IMF--if there were no one willing and able to loan Argentina $40 billion to try to get it through its current episode of capital flight and foreign investor panic--how, exactly, would the people of Argentina be better off? Every serious attempt to answer this question I've heard involves somehow automagically reconstituting the functions of the IMF--a kinder, gentler IMF--with no plausible story of how the institution to carry out these functions is to be created. Why not do it internally? Why do the people of Argentina need external entities to lend them $40 billion? The availability of IMF loans gives countries facing financial crises a *few* more options: Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes created it for a reason, after all. They were not dumb. No, they were not dumb, but they were tools of the oppressors, you know. Bill
Taxes, Qui Bono?
Suppose Mr. Boss pays $1 million in taxes, much of which goes to support infrastructure projects, such as transportation systems, health care, etc. Since much of what he pays taxes for really is a way to socialize costs he would otherwise have to pay out in wages, this is in some respects a very good deal for Mr. Boss. So, there are sort of two multipliers here that we need to consider: 1) Mr. Boss has underlings, each of which would have to be paid the socialized cost; 2) Were the costs not socialized in the first place, the amount Mr. Boss would have to pay each underling would be much higher due to the lost economies of scale. Questions: 1) Are these reasonable multipliers and/or is this the right term to use? 2) Has anyone written about this in accessible form? Anyone written about this with good empirical data? 3) What other things am I missing here? 4) Any good studies on the effective tax rate of the very wealthy? I think Doug has touched on the difficulties of measuring this, but wondered, say, what some crude numbers might be. Related to this, where can I find figures which show what percentage of income is derived from labor, what derived from wealth (e.g., capital gains), versus total income for a person? 5) Any other categories of subsidization that come to mind aside from transportation, education, health care? What are the differences in the wealth effect to the rich across these categories? 6) Last one: suppose Jane Highly Skilled Worker gets a nice fat paycheck and invests her money wisely, so that 30% of her total income is in the form of returns to capital (better term for this, more inclusive?). Suppose that we do the same analysis for Jane as we do for Mr. Boss. By what amount would her returns be reduced were she not paying for the usual set of social services for workers that are making money for her? I know the real answer is: We would not *have* a society if we didn't support these systems socially, but I'm just wondering if you can sort of cross off one system at a time and measure its effect on returns in some way? Bill
Re: Re: Blinder on CA energy emergency
On Friday, May 11, 2001 at 13:52:35 (-0700) Michael Perelman writes: Davis is lucky to get such profound advise. No doubt the same kind of advice as when he pontificated that there are too many policy decisions in the realm of politics and too few in the realm of technocracy. [Is Government Too Political?, *Foreign Affairs*, Nov/Dec '97] Bill
Re: query: Texas
On Wednesday, May 9, 2001 at 12:18:33 (-0700) Jim Devine writes: does anyone know if Texas is one of those states that must balance its government's budget? I've answered Jim offline, but yes: Texas Constitution, Article 3, Section 49-j, http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/txconst/sections/cn000300-49-j00.html. The entire Texas Constitution can be found at: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/txconst/toc.html Bill
Re: Re: brad de long textbook
On Wednesday, May 2, 2001 at 21:20:47 (-0700) Brad DeLong writes: Is there something specific about software that makes the open-source management problem particularly easy? Or can we look forward to the development of similar collective freeware intellectual efforts in other areas as well? Software techniques and modern software language features allow you to decompose problems fairly readily. This decoupling of various parts allows you to work in common on describing what is to be done by designing the interfaces and then to work in smaller groups on how to implement the needed functionality described in the various interfaces. This, coupled with software that is designed to allow developers to share code and to work concurrently on the same body of code (this software is usually known as source code control software, a popular example is CVS), makes it relatively easy to do. An example is the writing of a stopwatch program. You might discuss what the interface would be like: you need to start it, stop it, get the elapsed time, etc. So, you'd need three functions to implement this, and given a bit more info (what the internal data type looks like and a bit more description), the three functions could be coded by three developers in three separate source code files that resided on the same central machine but were shared via the internet through a version control system. There are some aspects of this type of work that are difficult, though: the communication medium is very inefficient compared to face-to-face interchange. Imagine Crick and Watson sitting on opposite coasts and trying to work out ideas via e-mail. It can be quite difficult without face-to-face communication, but you can compensate by being careful in what you write and learning others' assumptions, styles, etc. I might also add that software is written in very highly constrained languages, so perhaps writing natural language texts would be more difficult, but perhaps not. Bill
Re: Re: CIA Nazi's update
On Friday, April 27, 2001 at 13:50:02 (-0700) michael pugliese writes: Best three sources on all this. Christopher Simpson, Russ Bellant from South End Press, Martin A. Lee, The Beast Reawakens, from Little Brown, 2000. Can't remember the title of the Simpson, published in early 90's, out of print here ... *The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century*, Grove Press, 1993. Great stuff. Available in paperback (Common Courage Press, 1995) from Amazon and others ... Bill
Re: CIA bibliography
On Friday, April 27, 2001 at 14:28:40 (-0700) Michael Pugliese writes: ... P.S. Another Chistopher Simpson (?) has good material on psychological warfare and US Cold War policy. Published by Oxford Univ. Press. You may be thinking of *Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare 1945-1960* (Oxford, 1994). This is still available in paperback. Bill
Re: Re: Exporting rubbish
... Second, of course you are utopian and I am practical -- why dispute it? You, and other utopians, want to remake man. You assume perfection is possible. ... Part of a real dialog with others is accurately reflecting their beliefs: these statements above are false. We want to remake social relations. Human nature is the product of millions of years of evolution; behavior is a product of both innate capacities and the environment broadly construed. It is the latter we seek to change. Instead of wage slavery, we believe a different way of organizing society is possible. Perfection of man is neither possible nor is its pursuit desirable. Finally, most of us are eminently practical. We believe, for example, that externalities should be considered when evaluating how efficient something is. Most practical economists studiously ignore the topic. We also believe that efficiency is merely one of many elements that one should use to evaluate whether particular social relations are desirable, though efficiency in itself is a good thing when it is properly measured. Bill
Re: Re: Sweatshops and Krugman
On Tuesday, April 24, 2001 at 21:48:05 (-0700) Peter Dorman writes: IÂ’ve let the sweatshop discussion go by for lack of time, but, since this issue has been something of a preoccupation of mine for a long time, I feel I should say something. The pro-sweatshop argument hasnÂ’t changed in almost 200 years, since the first debates over factory conditions in England. Yes, the wages and working conditions are appalling, we are told, but any intervention would only make matters worse. Wages are low because that is all employers can afford to pay, given the pressures of competition. As bad as the jobs are, they must be better than the alternatives, because workers willingly take them. ItÂ’s too bad the children have to work, but their families need the money, and it keeps them out of greater mischief. Ultimately, the only solution is to let the free market grow as rapidly as possible: this will lead to more factory employment, a rise in the demand for labor relative to the supply, and further improvements in productivity, which are the only lasting basis for an improvement in wages. Do I have that right? It seems to me that the counterarguments were, and are, stronger. Here are four: Very well put. Here's a bit more on the topic from Noam Chomsky: ... So what about the tactic of pressuring corporations to provide decent wages and working conditions, in the face of the fact that they might pull up and go somewhere else -- a question, incidentally, which arises right where you and I live, not just for third-world investment? There are several criteria that should operate. First, we should follow the lead of the people who are the victims. If they tell us they'd prefer not to have efforts in the rich countries to ensure that they won't be locked into factories where they will be burned to death, or work for a pittance until they are exhausted and thrown out in favor of younger workers who will be treated the same way, then that's a good reason to refrain. Have you heard such pleas from third world workers? I haven't; rather the opposite. They are struggling hard to gain minimal benefits, and calling on us to help them. Another criterion is that we should not accord the private tyrannies the right to play off one group of suffering people against another -- in the case you mention, the right to find some place where they won't have to live up to minimally decent standards. That raises a whole host of questions that are exactly those that activists concerned with these issues work on: international solidarity, for one thing. It's also the reason why the US labor movement did not oppose NAFTA, but rather called for a different version which would overcome such problems (e.g., on the model of the compensatory funding and other projects employed by the EU before the poorer countries were brought in). And that's only the beginning. Why should the private tyrannies have the right to decide anything? To exist? In the short term, those are not the operative questions, but attitudes towards them may well influence the way short-term tactical choices are made -- among the more oppressed victims too. Bill
Re: Re: The case for reparations
On Wednesday, April 18, 2001 at 21:45:12 (-0700) Michael Perelman writes: I suspect that captalism is a zero sum game. ... Hmm, I don't agree. As Ian points out, M-C-M' is still the name of the game. It's who grabs the lion's share of M' that is the problem. I might say that it closely resembles a zero sum game, but over time we have seen a general rise in the wealth of the public here (US), as capitalism has spread and deepened, though of course it has not spread nearly far enough. This is also not to say that others have benefitted equally by any stretch --- many Nicaraguans might raise a reasonable complaint, to name but one such group. At the same time that technology (comprising of course, human cooperation and knowledge) advances (channeled often within narrow and harmful bounds), the legal and economic structures which capture the benefits of this change as well (usually by radically violating free market principles, incidentally) adapting to new profit conditions and ensuring the continuing disparity of wealth and power. Bill
Re: Re: The case for reparations
On Thursday, April 19, 2001 at 07:44:25 (-0700) Michael Perelman writes: Bill, I thought that Ian was just being humerous. Yes, the M' exceeds M, but these equations just give a capitalist vision of reality. Say that I buy a slave for $1 and make a good that I sell for $5. But if I had to go back an repay the slave for the unpaid labor, I might have to pay $10. Well, I suppose it all depends on what one is trying to conserve in the zero-sum game: wealth, energy, time? If we consider only wealth, perhaps also limit ourselves to the US during the post-slavery period, I think wealth has broadly increased, and I don't see exploitation increasing at the same time (though perhaps I'm wrong about this). Aside from pure monetary/material wealth, people are also much better educated as Doug points out, political and civil rights have increased also ... To me, zero-sum means that in order for wealth of one person to increase, that of another must decrease (Pareto inefficient), but we clearly violate that, even (I think) when we look more broadly. Bill
Re: Talking Points on the FTAA?
On Tuesday, April 17, 2001 at 01:14:05 (-0400) Yoshie Furuhashi writes: Has any of you written an article, given a talk, organized a teach-in, etc. on the FTAA (Free Trade Area of Americas)? If you have an article, could you post it here or send it to me offlist? I got invited to be on a panel discussion on the FTAA. What do you think should be my talking points? ... One should be that this is not really about "free trade", but, like NAFTA, is mainly concerned with investor rights. Chomsky has written a fair amount on this topic. Bill
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: Re: religion
On Thursday, March 30, 2000 at 09:36:30 (-0800) Jim Devine writes: Non-religious folks have this kind of emotional security due to upbringing, training, faith in the socialist tradition, etc. Either way, there seems to be an "irrational" component, an element of _faith_. Waitaminnit. What about simple empathy? I am non-religious and wasn't "raised" or "trained" to be socially aware, nor do I have faith in the socialist tradition. I feel that much of my support comes from a very simply gut-level reaction to injustice. God, do I get sick and angry when I think of people getting screwed unfairly. I think I was basically always this way --- imperfectly to be sure --- from the time I was a little kid. Not that I'm a saint or anything, but I don't feel that I have "faith" to back my feelings. I certainly can't give you a logical/empirical foundation for them, either. I think you miss the fact that an "unexplained" component need not (should not, I think) necessarily be labeled either "rational" or "irrational". Maybe it is one of those wonderful things that are built into us that we have to be abused enough to learn to ignore, but which we nevertheless may never be able to fully explain... Bill
Re: Re: Kosova/o
On Thursday, March 16, 2000 at 23:14:23 (-0500) Yoshie Furuhashi writes: Bill: In the above cases, those subject to the speech have no costless way to avoid it. I feel that the freedom to avoid the speech must also be present to grant protection to the speaker. You see, you are not defending the freedom of racist speech _absolutely_. You are right, I should not have been as careless to adopt the broad premises of the entire debate. I do, however, in most adult public venues, support 100% freedom for racist speech, which is what I thought was of interest. I am loathe to curtail speech in all but the narrowest of circumstances. Education of children, for instance, is more important than the freedom of speech of racist teachers. when children in question are basically a captive audience. When pressed, defenders of "free" speech always make some qualifications. The only interesting point to debate is how many and, more importantly, what kind of qualifications to make. Fine, there is no such thing as "free speech". But, why bother to call it such, then? We all know that there are qualifications to this. Bill
Re: Re: Kosova/o
On Thursday, March 16, 2000 at 18:37:13 (-0500) Yoshie Furuhashi writes:
Bill wrote:
On Thursday, March 16, 2000 at 14:32:47 (-0600) Carrol Cox writes:
Perhaps it can't be
done, but I am willing to argue that so far as possible in all left
forums (marxist or non-marxist) it should be made as embarassing
as possible for anyone to speak up *in principle* for the freedom
of racist speech.
I'm 100% in favor *in principle* for the freedom of racist speech.
Are you sure that you are "100% in favor *in principle* for the freedom of
racist speech"? Kindergarten teachers shouldn't be fired even if they
called kids "niggers," "pickaninnies," "towel heads," "wetbacks," and so
on? What about laws against racial sexual harassment at work and in
school? Are you against them?
In the above cases, those subject to the speech have no costless way
to avoid it. I feel that the freedom to avoid the speech must also be
present to grant protection to the speaker. If it is a captive
audience for whom the cost of flight and/or defense is non-zero, then
there is a reciprocal cost imposed upon the speaker. Children in
school have both high costs of flight and defense; for a heterosexual
adult white male at a law firm who was subject to sexual harassment,
the cost of flight and defense could probably be considered to be
less, and so the limits on speech less stringent, though making a
special case for each persons cost of flight is difficult, so I'd
support using the lowest common denominator in each particular
situation.
But, then comes the question: who is to decide what is "racist" or
"sexist" (etc.) speech? Is discussing the Bell Curve as a credible
theory grounds for firing a high school teacher, a college professor?
What about someone who says "blacks are lazy", or "blacks are gifted
athletes because of their genes", or "homosexual men have more
psychological problems than heterosexual men" or "lesbians are
aggressive and ugly"?
Should the CIA be allowed to plant stories, some of which lies, a few of
them true stories exaggerated for political purposes?
The CIA shouldn't be allowed to exist, period, so I don't accept your
premise. However, government officials in general are free to tell
lies, yes. A-priori prohibition of lying is not a good idea.
Should teachers of biology be allowed to teach creationism as scientific
truth? Should kids be taught that only abstinence is the correct approach
to matters sexual? Right now they are in America, but I think that they
should not be in a socialist republic of a possible future.
Again, only if the cost of flight is zero.
At OSU, those of us who heckled Albright Co. were criticized by defenders
of the "principle" of "free" speech for not allowing them to "speak" to the
people! You are not one of them, are you? So, you are only against
certain state restrictions of certain kinds of speech, not an absolute
defender of "free" speech, anywhere, any time, at any cost.
This is an interesting case, one on which I've changed my mind about.
I used to think that you should just allow the person to speak their
lies, but I'm not so sure...
I see it as an exercise of free speech to heckle, just as much as it
is free speech to tell lies about US foreign policy. In this case,
shouting at someone who is perfectly capable of leaving and speaking
elsewhere is probably fine with me. Best, though, I think would be a
principle of "open forum/mutual respect", where both sides were able
to debate, but the problem, of course, is that here one side was not
at all interested in having their ideas subject to scrutiny.
Bill
Re: Re: capitalist versus socialist progress
On Wednesday, February 23, 2000 at 15:32:07 (-0800) Brad De Long writes: On Monday, February 14, 2000 at 12:50:11 (-0800) Brad De Long writes: CB: The U.S. imperialists carried out a war circa 1950 and still occupy the Southern part of the country. The U.S. still has 30,000 troops and nuclear weapons there. I thought that Bruce Cumings's claim that South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee started the 1950-1953 Korean War had collapsed when the flow of Cold War-era documents out of Moscow began? Brad, just a small favor: could you find us a quote directly from Cumings's work where he claims "Syngman Rhee started the 1950-1953 Korean War"? I thought that he was much more circumspect than that. Hmmm... How about "The possibility that the South opened the fighting on Ongjin, with an eye to seizing Haeju, cannot be discounted..." _Korea: The Unknown War_, p. 74? So what you are saying is that Cumings did not say what you said he did. Thank you for clearing that up. Bill
Re: Re: capitalist versus socialist progress
On Monday, February 14, 2000 at 12:50:11 (-0800) Brad De Long writes: CB: The U.S. imperialists carried out a war circa 1950 and still occupy the Southern part of the country. The U.S. still has 30,000 troops and nuclear weapons there. I thought that Bruce Cumings's claim that South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee started the 1950-1953 Korean War had collapsed when the flow of Cold War-era documents out of Moscow began? Brad, just a small favor: could you find us a quote directly from Cumings's work where he claims "Syngman Rhee started the 1950-1953 Korean War"? I thought that he was much more circumspect than that. Bill
Re: Re: reparations
On Friday, February 11, 2000 at 22:04:32 (-0800) Sam Pawlett writes: Doug Henwood wrote: But it is entirely within the Marxian tradition to say that capitalism has brought with it certain social benefits. A certain tradition within Marxism. Its not capitalism that brought the benefits but people struggling for public health, social security etc. I'm finding this entire discussion rather amusing for a few reasons: first, there is apparently this bizarre quasi-religious need to identify certain claims or views as reliable or not simply because they are or are not "Marxist", or because they were or were not uttered by Marx himself. Second, this rather pathetic belief that Capitalism is Evil, and not a highly complex intertwined mix of variegated Good and Bad. Our system of capitalism here in the US has commodified most of everything in social life, the commodification of which, in many cases, has had poor, or disastrous consequences (social policy is essentially commodified, law in general has been greatly transformed in this direction, health care is largely a privatized commodity, transportation is highly atomized in most places, living spaces and broader social living areas are essentially bunkerized prisons instead of communal in nature, etc.). Sam's Manichean view that only "anti-capitalist elements ... within capitalism ... bring about social benefits" simply does not square with the facts. I happen to think slavery is a bad idea, but slavery was not destroyed in this society by "anti-capitalist elements". The Civil Rights movement was not driven by "anti-capitalist elements". Or health care system is not a product of such foes of the system, and as flawed and unfair as it is, it has brought great strides in understanding of how diseases work, how the human body breaks down, how to better treat injury, disease, and disability. The Internet --- again, flawed though it is --- was not built by "anti-capitalist elements". Human beings working within an unjust social system are still capable of great creativity and can, despite the fetters, produce things of great human value. The benefits of such exertions are often acquired through transaction (not to forget crucial concomitant externality benefits) but that does not make them any less real. Bill
Re: Re: reparations
On Saturday, February 12, 2000 at 11:04:31 (-0600) Carrol Cox writes: "William S. Lear" wrote: Second, this rather pathetic belief that Capitalism is Evil, and not a highly complex intertwined mix of variegated Good and Bad. The first point judges the second. The view that capitalism is a mixture of Good and Bad is as pathetic, and for the same reasons (its moralism and metaphysical arrogance) as the view that capitalism is Evil. Capitalism is destructive of the lives and happiness of those it exploits, and the survival of the species may depend on its destruction. But throwing around moral absolutes is, as Bill's post says, pathetic. Yes, you irony impaired dolt, that's what the capital letters are for. Bill
Re: Why Decry the Wealth Gap?
On Monday, January 24, 2000 at 13:26:56 (-1000) Stephen E Philion writes: And what of the poorest Americans' loss of ground compared to the richest, as reported by the Fed? The apostles of equality consider the rising inequality kindling for social unrest. But while that would be true if most workers on the bottom rungs were trapped there for generations, America isn't a caste society, and studies that track individuals' incomes over time show that Americans have a remarkable ability to propel themselves upward. A 17-year study of lifetime earnings by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that only 5 percent of people in the economy's lowest 20 percent failed to move to a higher income group. In a similar study by the Treasury Department covering 1979 to 1988, 86 percent of Americans in the bottom fifth of income earners improved their status. Inequality is not inequity. Artificial efforts to try to curb wealth gaps invariably do more harm than good. Heavier taxation might narrow the division between rich and poor, but it would be a hollow triumph if it stifled the economy. What Americans ought to care most about is maintaining our growth, not the red herring of gaps in income and wealth. W. Michael Cox, chief economist of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Richard Alm are co-authors of "Myths of Rich and Poor." Hmm, the 1960s were an era of unmatched growth and relative equality, if I'm not mistaken. And, what exactly are "artificial efforts to try to curb wealth gaps", and how do they differ from the artificial efforts to impose the cost of operating our system for the benefit of the few on the weakest in our society? I think they need to take a look at Horwitz's *Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860*, among other things. Didn't someone on the sane side of the fence recently put out a report that debunked this sort of nonsense? I'd like to see a point-by-point rebuttal to this, sent certified mail, to the authors. Let's draft it here and let Max send it off on his finest letterhead. Bill
Re: Re: question on the pen-l project
On Saturday, January 22, 2000 at 20:32:32 (-0500) Rod Hay writes: Maybe, but I don't know how? Anyone do this in HTML? There are a fair number of ways to do this. What we need is a central repository for the outline and a check in/out process to allow multiple people to check out the file, edit it, and check it back in. I could probably have a basic version of something like this up on my website in a few days. Bill
[PEN-L:12970] Re: Dogmatism (was Re: Know Your Yids (sic) c.)
On Tuesday, October 26, 1999 at 21:40:27 (-0400) Yoshie Furuhashi writes: Jim D. wrote: We should also note that any kind of dogmatism -- including Marxist dogmatism -- represents a "widely corrupting" force. The problem is that the definition of dogmatism is basically subjective, as most people use the term. When someone holds forth what we think of as a wrong or incorrect position, we say, "he's dogmatic." When someone's view agrees with ours (even if it is expressed with a sense of certitude even worded in a way that may be off-putting to others), we say, "right on, brother!" And noone notices his or her own 'dogmatism.' We only notice 'other people's dogmatism.' I don't entirely agree. I don't think it is "basically subjective", though I do think it can be. Rush Limbaugh is clearly dogmatic on numerous topics, holding on to ideas in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Those who believe the earth revolves about the sun are clearly not dogmatic, as there is overwhelming evidence that this is so. Bill
[PEN-L:12950] Re: BLS Daily Report
On Tuesday, October 26, 1999 at 12:11:05 (-0400) Richardson_D writes: ... For most Americans, college remains affordable, according to a graph in USA Today (page 1A). More than half of the students who were attending a 4-year institution during 1999 to 2000 paid less than $4,000 in tuition and fees. Almost three-quarters pay tuition of less than $8,000. The percentages given show 51 percent pay under $4,000; 21 percent, $4,000 to $7,999; 6 percent, $8,000 to $11,999; 8 percent, $12,000 to $15,999; and 7 percent, $20,000 and over in tuition and fees. Source of the data is The College Board. Is there information available as to the increases in tuition at various levels over, say, the past 20 years? Bill
[PEN-L:12594] Re: Re: The Brenner Thesis: part one,historical
On Tuesday, October 12, 1999 at 06:23:51 (-0700) Brad De Long writes: [Jim Blaut writes:] ... Allowing for exceptions, the great mass of people in "the poorer regions of the world" are not enjoying any development. ... Well let's pick five countries from the poorer regions of the world at random... Zambia... India... Botswana... Egypt... Cuba... ... GDP per Capita (1987 US $) ... Looks like (from GDP per capita measures) that development has taken place in Egypt, Botswana, and India: three out of five... ... Under Five Mortality Rate (per thousand) ... Looks like development has taken place in four out of five... ... United Nations Human Development Index ... Looks like development has taken place in at least four out of five (albeit little development in Zambia). ... Absolutely none of this contradicts Jim's assertion. Bill
[PEN-L:12540] Re: Wilson
On Monday, October 11, 1999 at 13:15:10 (-0400) Louis Proyect writes: Did Cockburn write about that? I don't remember. In any case, it sounds like this draws on research by Arline Geronimus, who should get the credit for it, since she's gotten mostly grief from moralists left and right. She also argues that it makes sense for poor black women who want kids to do so by multiple fathers, since the risk of a father being killed or jailed is so high, and since multiple fathers expand the network of "fictive kin," who are an essential support network to such a despised and embattled population. I wrote up her work in LBO a few years ago, and it drew more hostile responses than anything I've done except my critique of Seymour Melman. It's amazing how many progressive-seeming people are scandalized by Geronimus' work. Doug It probably was in LBO, now that I think about it. I did a Nexis search on Cockburn plus related words like pregnancy and welfare, but could find nothing that made this point. I could swear that Cockburn did write about this. He drew on the work of some woman, whose name I forget (some sort of anthropologist??), and he did give her credit. I can't remember if this was in Counterpunch, The Nation (I think so), or in his book *The Golden Age Is In Us*. Or, maybe it was indeed LBO... Incidentally, Melman came to speak at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, where I worked in the early 90s. He wanted to urge us to try to convert the lab into a civilian research center. Seemed like a nice fellow, but also seemed incredibly naive. Bill
[PEN-L:12097] Who coined the phrase knowledge worker?
Does anyone here know who coined the phrase "knowledge worker"? The Atlantic Monthly says the phrase is Peter Drucker's "own coinage". Can anyone confirm/deny this? Bill
[PEN-L:11700] Re: Re: more on col'ism
On Saturday, September 25, 1999 at 17:24:32 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote: Capitalism = private ownership of the means of production as the predominant pattern in a society. What about the reinvestment-of-surplus part and the imperative to grow? Don't these two follow from the definition? Doesn't a battle of each against all force this? Bill
[PEN-L:11327] Peter Drucker on the information revolution
Peter Drucker has an article in the latest Atlantic Monthly (October 1999) entitled "Beyond the Information Revolution". It has the usual unsubstantiated grandiose claims, selective anecdotal arguments, and ebullient puffery for markets. Has anyone read this who would care to comment? Bill
[PEN-L:11296] Re: Re: [Fwd: How US Trained Butchers of Timor]
On Sunday, September 19, 1999 at 17:40:33 (-0700) Brad De Long writes: Note the part about Larry Summers therein. Deborah Sklar ... cites a blueprint called The East Asian Miracle, written by US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, in which he urges governments to 'insulate' themselves from 'pluralist pressures' and to suppress trade unions. This, she says, became a primary Kopassus role during the years of training by the United States. I presume that this was the East Asia study Larry commissioned while at the World Bank and that came out in book from as _The East Asian Miracle_ (Washington: World Bank: 1994?). If so, this is a really weird reading of what seemed to me a pretty good book by Nancy Birdsall and company... Where's Lou Proyect with the necessary quote from the book? Bill
[PEN-L:11185] Re: Re: Capitalist development
On Thursday, September 16, 1999 at 13:21:18 (PDT) Rod Hay writes: The question is why did the Europeans burst out of their continent from the 15th century on, and why were they able to conquer everyone in their path. In a nutshell, if I remember Blaut correctly, they luckily stumbled upon America where they plundered with the aid of genocidal policies and germ warfare (against which the Native Americans had no defense), enriching themselves and laying the groundwork for a colossal Western Imperium. Bill
[PEN-L:10696] Re: segmented labor markets - query
On Wednesday, September 8, 1999 at 11:10:23 (-0400) Ellen Frank writes: Dear Pen-lers, I have a query for those of you familiar with mainstream labor economics. Is the notion of segmented labor markets accepted by/employed by mainstream labor economists at all? Also, do you know of any (relatively short) articles, suitable for a general audience, explaining the concept and its significance? Can't remember the exact contents, but Jamie Galbraith had a short article touching on this somewhere. It might be available through the PKT site. Let me know offline if you'd like it and I'll try to find it if you can't. Bill
[PEN-L:10668] Re: Re: Making the news in E. Timor
On Tuesday, September 7, 1999 at 10:00:38 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes: Michael Perelman wrote: How do these people coordinate their signals? Do they check with the State department? Yes. That's how elite journalists work. ... Much of it done, Brit Hume style, over tennis with the Commander-in-Chief. Bill
[PEN-L:10667] Re: Timor
On Tuesday, September 7, 1999 at 06:55:07 (-0700) Jim Devine writes: Can someone tell me why the Indonesians (with power) _want_ East Timor? The most I've heard is that Indonesia has a large number of islands and if you let one area go, they rest might follow (the domino theory). But since East Timor is a recent acquisition, you'd think the powers that be in Indonesia could say "it's a special case." Aside from that, I remember there being a decent amount of oil in the Timor Gap (ocean between Australia and E. Timor). Bill
[PEN-L:10629] Re: Re: Question on graven images
On Friday, September 3, 1999 at 16:12:29 (-0400) Charles Brown writes: I'll give it a try. The voice that makes the statement in Exodus is reserving worship for itself. The passage means don't worship any graven images, etc. The voice is not from God, because God doesn't really exist. It is the voice of a priest .Moses is the one who brought the Ten Commandments of which this is one. So, Moses ,the priest behind the purported words of God, is telling them only do what I say, and don't listen to those other priests who might tell you to make a Golden Calf and worship it (which would be the way they controlled them instead or competed for control). Moses was establishing a monopoly on the worship of his followers. Charles, none of this follows from what Chomsky wrote. Chomsky is not questioning the assumptions, but the logic. He does not question whether God exists, nor whether the words are those of God or not. He is not talking about "those other priests", but "all the priests", including those of the Christian faith. Again, the specific part that needs explaining is this: They are told not to make "graven images" (which means statues, pictures, etc.) -- that is, they are taught that all the priests, ministers, teachers, and other authority figures are liars and hypocrites. ... And again, this is how I phrased the original question: I'm curious how the injunction not to create "graven images" ... ... means that "all the priests, ministers, teachers, and other authority figures are liars and hypocrites." Are priests, ministers, teachers and other authority figures shown to be liars because they themselves make use of or are forms of graven images?? Am I missing something obvious here Bill
[PEN-L:10613] Re: Re: more musings...
On Thursday, September 2, 1999 at 20:22:17 (-0500) Paul Phillips writes: ... Can You give me one example where the degredation of workers has led to any sort of workers' revolt. Hasn't all the labour movement (at least in a positive and permanent form) emerged out of expansion of the economy and the leadership of a labour elite. Not sure there is any "permanent" labor movement, but I see the Depression as at least accompanying some very positive change for labor and for society as a whole. I don't think we can give easy formulas for labor gains (or, to put it differently, social losses versus private gains). Even during expansions, if elite groups see roughly eye-to-eye on a good deal of economic issues, workers groups will largely be attacked and will suffer concomitant damages. When cleavages emerge in elite groups over some fundamental issues, as I think obviously happened during the Depression, openings emerge for labor and other groups. Again, not trying to give a counter-formula, as I don't think there is one, just disagreeing with your last sentence. Bill
[PEN-L:10614] Question on graven images
Chomsky has a short commentary on the Kansas School Board decision to deprecate Darwin at http://www.zmag.org/chomdarwin.htm. He says something that intrigues me in this paragraph: It's also worth noting the hypocrisy. The same newspaper stories showed pictures of the Ten Commandments posted on walls of classrooms (a version of them, at least). Apart from the obvious questions of establishing a particular choice of religious doctrine within the public school system, have a look at what children are to be taught to believe -- on the (admittedly weak) assumption that anyone is expected to take the words seriously. Thus the self-designated chief of the gods orders them not to worship any of the other gods before him: in this polytheistic system, he is top dog. They are told not to make "graven images" (which means statues, pictures, etc.) -- that is, they are taught that all the priests, ministers, teachers, and other authority figures are liars and hypocrites. There's more -- all familiar in the 17th and 18th century, now to be driven from the mind by the autocrats who hope to gain control of the cultural system and demolish the threat of independent thought and rational analysis and discussion. I'm curious how the injunction not to create "graven images" (graven simply means carved or engraved) means that "all the priests, ministers, teachers, and other authority figures are liars and hypocrites." Incidentally, the bible verse about graven images is: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. ---Exodus 20:4 Bill
[PEN-L:10592] Re: Re:
On Thursday, September 2, 1999 at 13:32:02 (-0400) Ricardo Duchesne writes: Isn't there a way to get rid of this irritating re re re? If not, could people here do it manually as I think it devalues the whole list. thanks, ricardo If you have the ability to filter your mail through an external program, I can send along a C++ program I wrote to do this (easily convertible to Perl). I wrote this because I too was annoyed and found that neither the list software could do this, nor was it reasonable to think that people would do this with any consistency. Bill
[PEN-L:10417] Re: Re: Ideology/consciousness and material/social
On Friday, August 27, 1999 at 18:02:28 (-0700) Ajit Sinha writes: Rod Hay wrote: "The will has no meaning in isolation. Therefore it does not exist" The heart has no meaning in isolation from a body. Therefore it does not exist. The part has no meaning in isolation from the whole. Therefore it does not exist. There is something wrong with this logic, Ajit. Rod, why don't you quote what people write rather than make up your own quotations? When did I say "will has no meaning in isolation. Therefore it does not exist"? Let me try to explain a simple argument for the nth time. Husband has no existence without a wife, and vise versa. Neither the husband nor the wife has any existence outside of the relationship of marriage. Sons have no existence outside of the relationship of father or/and mother, and vise versa. Yes, this is quite true, as the Puritan's pointed out using their Ramist logic. See Edmund S. Morgan, *The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England* (Harper Row, 1944 [1966]). However, the question still remains: are there such things as individuals? You merely define what a subject is (husband, son, pastor, congregation, etc.) pointing out they cannot exist in isolation, which is true but uninteresting and begs the original question. I feel that the creative use of language (for one thing) shows that no matter what the social relation, a person retains a measure of indeterminate behavior. Despite being "incited and inclined" to behave in a certain way as a subject, people often do not. This is to me the very essence of an individual. To say there are "no individuals, only subjects" seems to me to contradict this, simply by assertion I must note. To be a subject, in my view, does not mean one cannot also be an individual (I think this is the very essence of my objection to the preceding quote of yours). To be a subject is to play a particular role, the parameters of which change over time. If the roles change, somebody has got to act, at some point, outside the bounds of these roles, enlarging them or contracting them at some point. This again is evidence of individuality, to my mind. Additionally, even within the roles we are assigned, we might also remind ourselves of problems of commensurability that we have learned studying economics (honestly). To you, to be a husband may mean something totally different to me. If the roles we play are similar, though not identical, this again points to individuality. Bill
[PEN-L:10408] Re: Re: Ideology/consciousness and material/social
On Thursday, August 26, 1999 at 11:57:52 (-0700) Ajit Sinha writes: Who gave us language, Bill?... Nobody. Language grows within us as we are exposed to a language community. ... If you are saying that human beings have capacity to have language as part of their biological being, who is denying that? I thought you said there were "only subjects"... Bill
[PEN-L:10369] FWD: Re: Baker on IP
I posted this to LBO but got no response. Can others here perhaps help out? Bill --- start of forwarded message --- On Tuesday, August 17, 1999 at 11:28:24 (-0400) Doug Henwood posts: ... In These Times - August 22, 1999 THE REAL DRUG CRISIS by Dean Baker ... The most basic principle in economic theory is that goods should sell at their marginal cost of production (including a normal profit). In the case of patented drugs, prescriptions that are produced for as little as $1 each can sell for hundreds of dollars as a result of patent protection. The rationale for this gap is that the firm has to be able to recover its research costs, which are often quite significant. I've always wondered how one stipulates "normal profit". Is it some percentage of cost? However, at the point the drug is being produced, the research costs are history. According to economic theory, it is inefficient to try to roll these costs into the price of the drugs. ... I don't understand how appealing to "economic theory" is supposed to convince us that this is somehow "inefficient". I would like to know *why* this is so. Anybody have a good answer? The rest of this article was damned good. Baker is a fine debunker of myths. Bill --- end of forwarded message ---
[PEN-L:10387] Re: normal profits, etc.
Thanks to all who so thoughtfully replied to this. I'm going to digest this a bit more and possibly ask some more questions. For now, let me restate what I understand. It seems correct to me to think of "normal" profits as being endogenously determined (I think I missed this obvious and necessary step). Each entrepreneur/investor will have some level of profit/return below which s/he will not choose to engage in entrepreneurial/investment activity. This level depends on many things, including but not limited to the amount of return available elsewhere (either via investment, or perhaps even wage labor), i.e., upon the various interest and wage rates that obtain at any time. Normal profit is also firm-specific, as each firm has a different mix of entrepreneurs and investors/owners. Of course, nobody really knows how low profit might fall in a particular firm before people bail out, as only the individuals involved *can* (but perhaps do not) know this in advance. So, it seems that whatever profit exists can merely by stipulation be called "normal" profit. If profit were to fall and people did not exit, they could always say that their expectations elsewhere also fell and thus normal profit again is preserved as what presently existed. I'm still at a loss as to one thing: I've been under the impression that under competitive conditions (meaning, to NC economists, price competition) *all* profit was reduced to zero. But, if I remember correctly, Max or maybe Jim D. disputed this (this was some time ago). Now that I think about it, in a perfectly competitive market, all other entrepreneurial activities would have zero profit, so exit could not be made in that direction. However, exit still could be (and in fact would have to be) made to wage labor, could it not? If so, could this (the wage rate) be a sort of lower-bound or "proper" point of normal profit? I'm assuming all non-wage-labor income would also fall to zero (since zero profit means a no-growth economy; of course, zero profit means *no* capitalist economy, period...). Now, in closing, wasn't it NC economics which used to blame labor for unemployment because, it was claimed, people needed to simply accept lower money wages? In order to achieve NC nirvana --- competitive markets --- couldn't one also make the claim that *any* profit, hence deviation from NC nirvana, was therefore the unwillingness of entrepreneurs to make their living by labor, that is, to accept the zero-profit rate of alternative means of living? Thanks again to all... Bill
[PEN-L:10347] Re: Re: Ideology/consciousness and material/social
On Tuesday, August 24, 1999 at 14:20:52 (-0500) Carrol Cox writes: "William S. Lear" wrote: On Tuesday, August 24, 1999 at 13:29:42 (-0700) Ajit Sinha writes: ... There are no "individuals" Rod, only subjects. ... Ajit, you are usually a bit more careful than this. Who gave us language? Who gave us the capacity for thought? If you have indeed answered "Descartes' Question", we'd love to hear about it, but I don't think your approach will quite do... I'm not sure what Descartes has to do with it. ... He posed the question of how humans use language creatively, something not explained by experience or any sort of "subjectivity". Therefore, to say we are "only subjects" is just plain wrong (as is saying the opposite). Try the mind experiment of stripping away every social relation you have ever had. What would be left? You seem to assume that the answer is "nothing", which again is quite wrong. Try stripping away our innate capacities. You'd be left with a random wadd of protoplasm. Bill
[PEN-L:10334] Re: Re: Ideology/consciousness and material/social
On Tuesday, August 24, 1999 at 13:29:42 (-0700) Ajit Sinha writes: ... There are no "individuals" Rod, only subjects. ... Ajit, you are usually a bit more careful than this. Who gave us language? Who gave us the capacity for thought? If you have indeed answered "Descartes' Question", we'd love to hear about it, but I don't think your approach will quite do... Bill
[PEN-L:10052] Re: Re: Campus Area Gentrification
On Saturday, August 14, 1999 at 18:14:58 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes: Michael Perelman wrote: ... I think that we have to look at the homogenization of our world in terms of the same companies selling the same stuff everywhere. Bourdieu has a nice argument in his book On Television about how competition doesn't encourage diversity, it encourages sameness. ... Another part of the story, perhaps boring compared to the cultural aspects, is the strictly economic fact that the market, through its built-in bias, produces commodities with positive externalities that are over-priced and those with negative externalities that are under-priced, helping to reinforce the atomization of society. Anything you buy will have gone through this filter. So, the cheaper and more abundant goods are ones that ultimately piss on others. Another way of looking at this is that any utility to be had from a product should ultimately result in cash in the pocket of the capitalist. Any product which leaks utility upon others is considered wasteful and is deprecated. When will we learn? Bill
[PEN-L:9904] Re: Re: TINAF Special on Washington Nazi Demo --
On Tuesday, August 10, 1999 at 16:35:18 (-0400) Charles Brown writes: I believe your conclusion below is that we should do nothing about fascistic racist groups, no? Is this the line that the best way to respond to such groups is to ignore them ? Charles, Jim clearly believes we should do something, not ignore them. Reread the post, it's crystal clear. Bill
[PEN-L:9794] Re: Re: Hayek on Keynes
On Monday, August 2, 1999 at 13:31:44 (-0700) Jim Devine writes: At 12:08 PM 8/2/99 -0500, you wrote: On Monday, August 2, 1999 at 09:37:10 (-0700) Jim Devine writes: ... There's a certain truth about what Hayek says, concerning the government having to standardize its programs, which smothers diversity. .. I don't buy this. Standardization need not smother diversity. Standardization is one form of constraint upon action. Constraint upon action can be a help to diversity, not a hindrance. For example, consider the 12 tones of the Western musical scale. Were there 62,347 such tones instead of 12, I doubt Mozart would have done much with 62,335 of them. so you are saying that there are benefits to standardization? I agree. So why do you say that Hayek's view that efforts by government to "standardize its programs, which smothers diversity" contain "a certain truth"? What diversity is being smothered? Is it smothering the cacophony of 62,335 useless tones or is it smothering something more important? Bill
[PEN-L:9505] You commuter programmer
I have had my honor besmirched. Why, I'm nothing but a commuter programmer! I thought I'd share Henry's last smooches sent to me. Others should share theirs. Good riddance to the pompous blowhard. Bill --- start of forwarded message --- William S. (sick) Lear: Typical US perfidy. Attack those behind their backs, after they have left. Your evil is glaring. You commuter programmer. "William S. Lear" wrote: On 07/21/99 Henry C. "See no evil but thine" K. Liu writes: I resign. May productive discourse return to PEN-L. Bill --- end of forwarded message ---
[PEN-L:9501] Re: Re: last warning
On 07/21/99 Henry C. "See no evil but thine" K. Liu writes: I resign. May productive discourse return to PEN-L. Bill
[PEN-L:9555] Re: Re: My Ideologies
On Thursday, July 22, 1999 at 18:58:47 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes: ... But it's in no small part relentless U.S. opposition to even the mildest reformism in the "Third World" that has helped make revolutionary movements more brutal than you or I would like. Who knows how the Cuban revolution would have turned out had the U.S. not tried to smother it in its crib? Who knows what would have happened elsewhere in Latin America the Caribbean if the Cubans had been allowed to go their way? What would have happened in Nicaragua if Reagan hadn't unleashed the contras? What would have happened in the USSR had the "West" not been hostile for 75 years? What would have.? Not to mention the fact that the USSR was never the enemy. The enemy has always been the US population, which had to be terrified of a monstrous enemy, so they would support a repressive state and wouldn't get crazy ideas about organizing the state to serve the ends of democracy rather than those of the plutocrats who pull the strings. We never have had a problem with the most bloodthirsty of governments, and the USSR was pleasantly serviceable for scare purposes. Frank Kofsky, (among many, many others) shows this in brilliant detail in his wonderful *Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948*. And really, isn't the proper counter-counter-factual not "Who knows how the Cuban revolution would have turned out had the U.S. not tried to smother it in its crib?", but "Who knows how the Cuban revolution would have turned out had the U.S. aided, as it had every moral obligation to do, in the overthrow of the monstrous dictatorship that had strangled Cuban democracy with U.S. help?" Bill
