Neoliberalism is based on unconditional domination of labor by capital ("socialism for rich,
feudalism for labor"). American scholar and cultural critic
Henry Giroux alleges
neoliberalism holds that market forces should organize every facet of society, including economic
and social life, and promotes a
social darwinist ethic which elevates self-interest over social needs.A new class of workers, facing acute socio-economic insecurity, emerged under neoliberalism.
It is called 'precariat'.
The imposition of neoliberalism in the United States arose from a the political counterrevolution
led by financial oligarchy in the 1970s. It was their reaction of two the falling rate of
profitability in manufacturing industry and emergence of strong competitors both in Europe and Asia,
competitors which no longer were hampered by WWII decimation of industrial potential and in some way
even manage to benefit from reconstruction getting newer better factories then in the USA.
Neoliberalism doesn't shrink government but instead convert it into a national security state,
which provides little governmental oversight over large business and multinationals, but toughly
control the lower classes, the smacks -- including mass incarceration those at the bottom. With the
inmates along with illegal immigrants slowly becoming an important source of low-wage labor
for some US corporations.
Neoliberal policies led to the situation in the US economy in which 30% of workers earn low wages
(less than two-thirds the median wage for full-time workers), and 35% of the labor force is
underemployed; only 40% of the working-age population in the U.S. is adequately employed. The Center
for Economic Policy Research's (CEPR) Dean Baker (2006) argued that the driving force behind rising
inequality in the U.S. has been a series of deliberate, neoliberal policy choices including
anti-inflationary bias, anti-unionism, and profiteering in the health industry
It can not be hidden. Redistribution of wealth up is all the neoliberalism is about.
Simplifying, neoliberalism can be defined as socialism for rich and feudalism for poor.
So forms of brutal exploitation when people work 12 hours a day (as contractors now,
for whom labor
laws do not apply) or when even bathroom breaks are regulated now are more common.
Amazon, Uber and several other companies have shown that neoliberal model can be as brutal as
plantation slavery.
In a way, we returned
to the brutality of the beginning of XX century on a new level characterized by much higher level
of instability of employment. This is not disputed even for neoliberal stooges in economic departments of
major universities ;-)
As interesting question arise: "What form the backlash might take, if any ?"
I think it is an observable fact that the US neoliberal elite is now is discredited: defeat of
Hillary Clinton and ability to Trump to win nomination from Republican Party and then national
elections signify the level of discreditation of the neoliberal elite. Success of Sunders in
Democratic Party primaries and the fact that DNC needed to resort to dirty tricks to derail his
candidacy signifies the same (even taking into account his betrayal of his voters).
If this does not suggest the crisis of neoliberal governance, I do not know what is. The crisis
created conditions
for increased social protest which at this stage used voters booth to say "f*ck you" to
neoliberal elite. In 2016 that led to election of Trump, but it was Sanders who captures
social protest voters only to be derailed by machinations of DNC and Clinton clan. At the same
time, the efficiency with which Occupy Wall Street movement was neutered means
that the national security state is still pretty effective in suppressing of dissent, so open
violence probably will be suppressed brutally and efficiently. "Color revolution" methods of
social protest are not effective in the USA sitution, as the key factor that allow "color
revolutionaries" to challenge existing government. It is easy and not so risky to do when you
understand that the USA and its three letter agencies, embassies and NGOs stand behind and
might allow you to emigrate, if you cause fail. No so other significant power such as China or
Russia can stand behind the protesters against neoliberalism in the USA. Neoliberals controls all
braches of power. And internationally they are way too strong to allow Russia or China to interfere
in the US election the way the USA interfered into Russian presidential election.
Atomization of workforce and establishment of national security state after 9/11 so far prevented
large organized collective actions (recent riots were not organized, and with the current technical
capabilities of the three letter agencies any organization is difficult or impossible). I think that
conversion of the state into national security state was the key factor that saved a couple of the
most notorious neoliberals from being hanged on the electrical posts in 2008 although I remember
slogan "Jump suckers" on the corner of Wall Street.
But neoliberal attacks on organized labor started much earlier with Ronald Reagan and then
continued under all subsequent presidents with bill Clinton doing the bulk of this dirty job. his
calculation in creating "New labor" (read neoliberal stooges of Wall Street masked as Democratic
Party) was right and for a couple of elections voters allow Democrats to betray them after the
elections. But eventually that changes. Vichy left, represented by "Clintonized" Democratic Party
got a crushing defeat in 2016 Presidential elections. Does not mean that Trump is better or less
neoliberal, but it does suggest that working class does not trust Democratic Party any longer.
2008 was the time of the crush of neoliberal ideology, much like Prague string signified the
crush of Communist ideology. but while there was some level of harassment, individual beatings of banksters in 2008 were non-existent.
And in zombie stage (with discredited ideology) neoliberal managed to continue and even
counterattack in some countries. Brazil and Argentina fall into neoliberal hands just recently.
Neoliberal actually managed to learn Trotskyites methods of subversion of government and playing
on population disconnect in case of economic difficulties as well if not better as Trotskyites
themselves.
It takes a lot of courage for an addict to recover and stay clean. And it is sadly not news that drug addiction and high levels
of prescription drug use are signs that something is deeply broken in our society. There are always some people afflicted with deep
personal pain but our system is doing a very good job of generating unnecessary pain and desperation.
Mady Ohlman was 22 on the evening some years ago when she stood in a friend's bathroom looking down at the sink.
"I had set up a bunch of needles filled with heroin because I wanted to just do them back-to-back-to-back," Ohlman recalled. She
doesn't remember how many she injected before collapsing, or how long she lay drugged-out on the floor.
"But I remember being pissed because I could still get up, you know?"
She wanted to be dead, she said, glancing down, a wisp of straight brown hair slipping from behind an ear across her thin face.
At that point, said Ohlman, she'd been addicted to opioids -- controlled by the drugs -- for more than three years.
"And doing all these things you don't want to do that are horrible -- you know, selling my body, stealing from my mom, sleeping
in my car," Ohlman said. "How could I not be suicidal?"
For this young woman, whose weight had dropped to about 90 pounds, who was shooting heroin just to avoid feeling violently ill,
suicide seemed a painless way out.
"You realize getting clean would be a lot of work," Ohlman said, her voice rising. "And you realize dying would be a lot less
painful. You also feel like you'll be doing everyone else a favor if you die."
Ohlman, who has now been sober for more than four years, said many drug users hit the same point, when the disease and the pursuit
of illegal drugs crushes their will to live. Ohlman is among at least
40 percent of active
drug users who wrestle with depression, anxiety or another mental health issue that increases the risk of suicide.
Measuring Suicide Among Patients Addicted To Opioids
Massachusetts, where Ohlman lives, began formally
recognizing
in May 2017 that some opioid overdose deaths are suicides. The state confirmed only about 2 percent of all overdose deaths as suicides,
but Dr. Monica Bhare l, head of the
Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said it's difficult to determine a person's true intent.
"For one thing, medical examiners use different criteria for whether suicide was involved or not," Bharel said, and the "tremendous
amount of stigma surrounding both overdose deaths and suicide sometimes makes it extremely challenging to piece everything together
and figure out unintentional and intentional."
Research on drug addiction and suicide suggests much higher numbers.
"[Based on the literature that's available], it looks like it's anywhere between 25 and 45 percent of deaths by overdose that
may be actual suicides," said
Dr. Maria Oquendo
, immediate past president of the American Psychiatric Association.
Oquendo pointed to one study of overdoses
from prescription opioids that found nearly 54 percent were unintentional. The rest were either suicide attempts or undetermined.
Several large studies show an increased risk of suicide among drug users addicted to opioids, especially women. In
a study of about 5 million veterans, women were eight
times as likely as others to be at risk for suicide, while men faced a twofold risk.
The opioid epidemic is occurring at the same time suicides have
hit a 30-year high , but Oquendo said few doctors
look for a connection.
"They are not monitoring it," said Oquendo, who chairs the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. "They are
probably not assessing it in the kinds of depths they would need to prevent some of the deaths."
That's starting to change. A few hospitals in Boston, for example, aim to ask every patient admitted about substance use, as well
as about whether they've considered hurting themselves.
"No one has answered the chicken and egg [problem]," said
Dr. Kiame Mahaniah , a family physician who runs the
Lynn Community Health Center in Lynn, Mass. Is it that patients "have mental health issues that lead to addiction, or did a life
of addiction then trigger mental health problems?"
With so little data to go on, "it's so important to provide treatment that covers all those bases," Mahaniah said.
'Deaths Of Despair'
When doctors do look deeper into the reasons patients addicted to opioids become suicidal, some economists predict they'll find
deep reservoirs of depression and pain.
In a seminal paper published in 2015, Princeton economists
Angus Deaton and
Anne Case tracked falling marriage rates,
the loss of stable middle-class jobs and rising rates of self-reported pain. The authors say opioid overdoses, suicides and diseases
related to alcoholism are all often "deaths of despair."
"We think of opioids as something that's thrown petrol on the flames and made things infinitely worse," Deaton said, "but the
underlying deep malaise would be there even without the opioids."
Many economists agree on remedies for that deep malaise. Harvard economics professor
David Cutle r said solutions include a good education, a steady
job that pays a decent wage, secure housing, food and health care.
"And also thinking about a sense of purpose in life," Cutler said. "That is, even if one is doing well financially, is there a
sense that one is contributing in a meaningful way?"
Tackling Despair In The Addiction Community
"I know firsthand the sense of hopelessness that people can feel in the throes of addiction," said
Michael Botticelli , executive director of the Grayken Center
for Addiction at Boston Medical Center; he is in recovery for an addiction to alcohol.
Botticelli said recovery programs must help patients come out of isolation and create or recreate bonds with family and friends.
"The vast majority of people I know who are in recovery often talk about this profound sense of re-establishing -- and sometimes
establishing for the first time -- a connection to a much larger community," Botticelli said.
Ohlman said she isn't sure why her attempted suicide, with multiple injections of heroin, didn't work.
"I just got really lucky," Ohlman said. "I don't know how."
A big part of her recovery strategy involves building a supportive community, she said.
"Meetings; 12-step; sponsorship and networking; being involved with people doing what I'm doing," said Ohlman, ticking through
a list of her priorities.
There's a fatal overdose at least once a week within her Cape Cod community, she said. Some are accidental, others not. Ohlman
said she's convinced that telling her story, of losing and then finding hope, will help bring those numbers down.
Against
the overall political pall cast by the Trump administration, there are hopeful signs. Despite
the problems I have with the DSA's failure to make a clean break with the Democratic Party, my
spirits remain lifted by their rapid growth. I also take heart in the ability of filmmakers to
produce outstanding critiques of our social system in defiance of the commercial diktats of
Hollywood. Finally, there is a bounty of radical historiography that through the examination of
our past sheds light on our present malaise.
The New Historians of Capitalism (NHC) are just one indication of this trend. Within this
school, Walter Johnson, Edward Baptist and Sven Beckert have all written about slavery and
capitalism from the perspective of how the "peculiar institution" has shaped American society
to this day. Despite their focus on the 19 th century, all are sure to "only
connect" as E.M. Forster once put it. In an article for the Boston Review titled " To Remake the
World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice ", Walter Johnson put it this way:
The Movement for Black Lives proposal, "A Vision for Black Lives," insists on a
relationship between the history of slavery and contemporary struggles for social justice. At
the heart of the proposal is a call for "reparations for the historic and continuing harms of
colonialism and slavery." Indeed, the ambient as well as the activist discussion of justice
in the United States today is inseparable from the history of slavery.
While not a school in the same exact way as the NHC, the historians grouped around the
Labor and Working Class History
Association (LAWCHA) website have set themselves to the task of promoting "public and
scholarly awareness of labor and working-class history through research, writing, and
organizing." Among its members is Chad Pearson, whose "
Reform or Repression: Organizing America's Anti-Union Movement " helps us understand the
threat posed by Janus today even if the period covered in the book is over a century ago.
Pearson's LAWCHA colleague Mark A. Lause, a civil war era historian just like the NHC'ers,
has just come out with a new book titled " The Great Cowboy Strike:
Bullets, Ballots, & Class Conflicts in the American West " that should be of keen
interest to CounterPunch readers. Since American society is guided by notions of "rugged
individualism" embodied in the old West, it is high time for that mythology to be put to rest.
Reading Lause's magisterial account will leave you with only one conclusion: Billy the Kid had
more in common with Occupy Wall Street than he did with faux cowboys like Ronald Reagan
chopping wood and George W. Bush clearing bush in their respective ranches. In fact, he was
more likely to put a bullet in their counterparts way back then.
Pat Garrett, the lawman who killed Billy the Kid and who was characterized as a hero in most
Hollywood movies, mostly functioned as a hired gun for the big cattle ranchers who considered
small-time rustlers like Billy as the class enemy.
Like Billy, most cowboys were super-exploited. In many ways, working for a rancher was not
much different than doing stoop labor for a big farmer. Riding 12 to 16 hours a day in the
saddle at low pay -- often in the Texas panhandle's bitter cold–was not what you'd see in
most cowboy movies, especially those made by John Ford who romanticized their life.
In the 1880s, there was a series of cowboy strikes that were never dramatized by John Ford,
Howard Hawks, William Wellman or any other Hollywood director. In 1883, a virtual General
Strike swept across the Texas panhandle that one newspaper described as the natural outcome of
cowboys having some knowledge of the "immense profits" some bosses were making. Wasn't it to be
expected that they would "ask for fair wages for what was the hardest of hard work"?
As he does throughout his book, Lause digs deep into the historical archives and discovers
that one of the leaders was a forty-year-old Pueblo Indian from the Taos Agency named Juan
Antonio Gomez. The cowboys had no union but according to the Commissioner of Labor, they were
well organized and prepared for the strike by building a strike fund in advance. As we have seen recently from the West Virginia
teachers strike, there is no substitute for militancy and organization. Strike headquarters was
in Jesse Jenkins's saloon in Tascosa. Jenkins was sympathetic to the Greenback movement in
Texas that eventually led to the formation of a party committed to a farmer-labor alliance that
challenged the two-party system. As has generally been the case with militant labor struggles,
the bourgeois press regarded the cowboys in much the same way that the West Virginia press
viewed the teachers. The Las Vegas Gazette harrumphed that the strikers were "using unlawful
means to compel their employers to grant their request" and added that the strikes "always
result in evil and no good".
Unlike most recent strikes, the cowboys were not easy to push around. One newspaper reported
that the bosses "imported a lot of men from the east, but the cowboys surrounded the newcomers
and will not allow them to work". Of course, it also helped that, according to the Fort Collins
Courier, the strikers were "armed with Winchester rifles and six-shooters and the lives of all
who attempt to work for less than the amount demanded, are in great danger".
Another strike wave took place between 1884 and 1886. This time the cattle bosses were
better prepared. They brought in Pat Garrett to head up the strike-breaking machinery. He was
implicitly also the agent of the "Redeemer" Democrats, those politicians that supported
terrorism to break the back of Reconstruction. He led a raid on the house of strike leader Tom
Harris that led to the arrest of two strike leaders but not Harris. He and another cowboy
striker came to the jailhouse later that night and broke them out.
Get the idea? This is material for a "revisionist" movie that could shake Hollywood and the
mainstream film critics to their foundations. In fact, one was once made along these lines --
the vastly underrated 1978 "Heaven's Gate" by Michael Cimino that was widely viewed as Marxist
propaganda. The N.Y. Times's Vincent Canby was beside himself:
The point of "Heaven's Gate" is that the rich will murder for the earth they don't
inherit, but since this is not enough to carry three hours and 45 minutes of screentime,
"Heaven's Gate" keeps wandering off to look at scenery, to imitate bad art (my favorite shot
in the film is Miss Huppert reenacting "September Morn") or to give us footnotes (not of the
first freshness) to history, as when we are shown an early baseball game. There's so much
mandolin music in the movie you might suspect that there's a musical gondolier anchored just
off-screen, which, as it turns out, is not far from the truth.
"Heaven's Gate" is something quite rare in movies these days – an unqualified
disaster.
A passage on the Johnson County War, upon which "Heaven's Gate" was based (as well as
"Shane"), can be found in chapter 8 of "The Great Cowboy Strike". This was essentially an armed
struggle between wealthy ranchers and those trying to scratch out a living in Wyoming between
1889 to 1893 that Lause aptly describes as illustrating "the connections between cowboy
discontent, range wars, and political insurgency."
This go-round the bosses' enforcer was Sheriff Frank Canton (played by Sam Waterston in
"Heaven's Gate"), another cold-blooded killer like Pat Garrett. Anybody who defied the big
ranchers was immediately dubbed a "rustler" and met the same fate as a cowboy named Jim Averill
and his companion Ellen Watson who dared to defend their homestead against Johnson County's
elite. Canton led his thugs into a raid on their cabin and strung them up on a short rope, as
Lause put it.
For the final assault on the cowboys and the small homesteaders, a small army of men from
Texas was recruited. An attack party was launched on April 5 th , 1890 against Nate
Champion's Kaycee Ranch (played by Christopher Walken in "Heaven's Gate"). Surrounded by a much
larger force, Champion was fearless. Lause writes, "To the unwanted admiration of those closing
in on the cabin, the door flew open and Champion stormed out, a Winchester rifle in his left
hand and a large pistol in the other. Even those who riddled him with bullets expressed their
admiration for a man who had died 'game'".
If you want to mix solid class-oriented history with stirring tales of cowboy rebels, check
out "The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots, & Class Conflicts in the American West". It
is a reminder that once upon a time in America the Red States were really Red.
It has nothing to do with marxism. I think "cultural marxism" is used in the same context.
It's basically just a label used by right-wingers to describe all the identity politics
etc that faux lefties like the neoliberal democrats engage in to distract their voters from
looking at actual leftist economic policies. So instead of trying to narrow the gaps between
economic classes it's focuses on giving all identities, cultures and subcultures equal
worth.
If that makes sense.. My vocabulary kind of lacked the words I was looking for to try to
give a good description just now.. (English being my 2nd language an all)
On February 21, the New York Times published a notice calling on college students
to describe and document any sexual encounter "that may not be viewed as sexual assault but
which constitutes something murkier than a bad date." The notice incldues a submission form
where students can accuse individuals of having engaged in something the Times calls
"gray-zone sex." The Times asks its young tipsters to include names, email addresses,
phone numbers and colleges, plus text message records and photographs documenting the
encounters.
The Times ' announcement, written by gender editor Jessica Bennett and Daniel
Jones, reads in its entirety:
As stories of sexual misconduct continue to dominate the news, a debate has erupted over a
particular kind of encounter, one that may not be viewed as sexual assault but which
constitutes something murkier than a bad date.
We've seen it play out on a public stage, from the Aziz Ansari incident to The
NewYorker's "Cat Person" story. So-called "gray-zone sex" has prompted
impassioned conversations about -- and personal reflection on -- what constitutes consent and
how we signal our desire or apprehension in the moment. This debate is especially vibrant on
college campuses, where for years students and administrators have grappled with the
issue.
We want to hear how you handle consent for sexual intimacy in relationships and
encounters. Do you have a particular experience you find yourself thinking back to? What was
said, texted or hinted at, through words or physical cues, that moved the encounter forward
-- or stopped it? How did it make you feel at the time, and how do you think about it
now?
The February 21 solicitation links to an article Bennett wrote on December 16, 2017 titled,
"When Saying 'Yes' Is Easier Than Saying 'No,'" which sheds further light on what the
Times means when it asks "what constitutes consent?" The two articles together show
the provocative and witch-hunting character of the Times ' efforts to compile a
database of sexual harassment allegations on college campuses across the country.
"For years," Bennett begins in the December article, "my female friends and I have spoken,
with knowing nods, about a sexual interaction we call 'the place of no return.' It's a kind of
sexual nuance that most women instinctively understand: the situation you thought you wanted,
or maybe you actually never wanted, but somehow here you are and it's happening and you
desperately want out, but you know that at this point exiting the situation would be more
difficult than simply lying there and waiting for it to be over. In other words, saying yes
when we really mean no."
Bennett provides two examples, one from her personal life and another from a short story
published late last year in the New Yorker titled "Cat person." In both cases, the
woman is interested in the man, they court one another, and they both agree to have sex. In the
New Yorker story, which is also linked in the February 21 announcement, the
protagonist is physically unsatisfied by her partner, who she complains is "heavy" and "bad in
bed." Later, the protagonist tells all her friends a version of this encounter, "though," the
author explains, "not quite the true one."
Bennett says "there are other names for this kind of sex: gray-zone sex, in reference to
that murky gray area of consent; begrudgingly consensual sex, because, you know, you don't
really want to do it but it's probably easier to just get it over with; lukewarm sex, because
you're kind of 'meh' about it; and, of course, bad sex, where the 'bad' refers not to the
perceived pleasure of it, but to the way you feel in the aftermath Sometimes 'yes' means 'no,'
simply because it is easier to go through with it than explain our way out of a situation."
"Consent" is a legal term that marks the line between noncriminal and criminal conduct. Sex
without consent can, and should, lead to the filing of a complaint followed by the initiation
of a criminal investigation, prosecution and, if a jury is persuaded by the evidence,
conviction. It is a basic legal tenet that the accused cannot be punished by the state for acts
that are not proscribed by law, and in the American system, conduct that falls in a "gray zone"
by its very nature does not meet the threshold for conviction: guilt "beyond a reasonable
doubt."
But the Times 's call for young people to submit reports of "gray-zone sex" is
aimed at creating a parallel system, outside the framework of the law, in which the accused
have no right to privacy or to due process. As law professor Catharine MacKinnon wrote in a
Times column on February 4, "#MeToo has done what the law could not."
Playing the role of prosecutors in the court of public opinion, the gender editor and her
cohorts at the New York Times are creating a massive database that it can dig through
to ruin the careers and lives of students and professors based on unproved accusations of
sexual conduct that, in any event, is not illegal.
The aim of this reactionary campaign is both political and pecuniary.
First, the Times hopes to create a political and cultural climate in which a broad
array of consensual conduct is deemed punishable, even if it does not violate any legal
statute.
The Times 's appeal for accusations comes after a number of spreadsheets have
surfaced where students and faculty can anonymously submit accusations of harassment or "creepy
behavior" on the part of male collegues or teachers. The submissions will involve a massive
invasion of privacy. Individuals, without their knowledge or consent, may be placed in a
situation where their most intimate behavior is being secretly documented and forwarded to the
New York Times . Texts and even photographs will be examined and leered over by the
gender editor and her colleagues. It is not difficult to imagine the abuses of privacy that
will flow from the Times 's efforts to procure salacious material.
There are countless legal issues involved. There are many states that outlaw the
transmission of sexually explicit and lewd material over the Internet. Will the individuals who
foolishly transmit the material requested by the Times be opening themselves up to
prosecution? If the Times 's editors discover that one or another submission describes
sexual behavior that occurred between minors, will they inform the police that they have
evidence of a violation of age-of-consent laws?
If the Times receives a submission that describes a consensual sexual encounter
between a student and an older faculty member or administrator, will it decide that it must
inform the institution of a possible violation of institutional regulations? And what happens
if and when prosecutors, having initiated investigations into "gray-zone sex," obtain
supboenas, demanding that the Times turn over its files? Who can doubt that the
Times will comply with court orders, regardless of the consequences for those who are
caught up in the escalating witch hunt?
Second, the call for "gray-zone sex" stories is a shameless effort to make money. In early
February, the Times announced a 46 percent increase in digital subscriptions over the
past year, and its stock price has increased 40 percent since October, the month it published
the allegations against Harvey Weinstein. Reuters wrote, "Subscriptions in the quarter also got
a boost from the newspaper's coverage of Harvey Weinstein's sexual harassment story, helping
the company post the highest-ever annual subscription revenue of $1 billion." It was also in
October 2017 that the Times announced the position of "gender editor," at which point
Bennett declared that gender "needs to exist throughout every section of the paper."
However, the newspaper has had trouble attracting younger readers who are more likely to
turn to social media and independent websites for news. In 2017, the Times launched
its own Discover section on Snapchat "with the aim of capturing younger demographics,"
Business Insider wrote. The Times 's campaign to broaden the #MeToo campaign
to include "gray-zone sex" stories, with a focus on college campuses, is a part of its filthy
business strategy.
(propublica.org)As the world's dominant technology firm, payrolls at International Business Machines swelled
to nearly a quarter-million U.S. white-collar workers in the 1980s. Its profits helped
underwrite a broad agenda of racial equality, equal pay for women and an unbeatable offer of
great wages and something close to lifetime employment, all in return for unswerving loyalty.
But when high tech suddenly started shifting and companies went global, IBM faced the changing
landscape with a distinction most of its fiercest competitors didn't have: a large
number of experienced and aging U.S. employees .
The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning
document, would "correct seniority mix." It slashed IBM's U.S. workforce by as much as
three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger,
less-experienced and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas. ProPublica
estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American
employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those
years. In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked U.S. laws and regulations intended
to protect later-career workers from age discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of
internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information provided
via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.
Don't worry about republicans ..democrats are ruining themselves all alone .every time the
deplorables see something like this they will double down on anything but a Dem.
Regardless of one's view on blacks or whites this is a major Stupid for a politician.
Chuck Schumer votes against South Carolina federal judge nominee because he's
white
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer rejected President Donald Trump's nominee for a
long-vacant South Carolina federal judgeship not because of his qualifications but because of
his race.
The decision drew the quick ire of South Carolina's two U.S. senators and U.S. Rep. Trey
Gowdy, R-Spartanburg, a former federal prosecutor.
Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a Senate floor speech Wednesday he would not support
Greenville attorney Marvin Quattlebaum for a vacancy on the U.S. District Court in South
Carolina
Voting for Quattlebaum, he said, would result in having a white man replace two
African-American nominees from the state put forth by former President Barack Obama.
Schumer said he would not be a part of the Trump administration's pattern of nominating
white men.
"The nomination of Marvin Quattlebaum speaks to the overall lack of diversity in President
Trump's selections for the federal judiciary," Schumer said.
"It's long past time that the judiciary starts looking a lot more like the America it
represents," he continued. "Having a diversity of views and experience on the federal bench
is necessary for the equal administration of justice."
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the Senate's sole black Republican, pushed back on
Schumer's rationale and urged other Senate Democrats to instead address diversity issues by
starting with their offices.
"Perhaps Senate Democrats should be more worried about the lack of diversity on their own
staffs than attacking an extremely well-qualified judicial nominee from the great state of
South Carolina," Scott tweeted Thursday morning.
"... The globalists envision the earth as a plantation with oligarchs (stateless corporate monopolists) as planters, former national governments as overseers and the people of earth as niggers. ..."
what is the vision, what is the historic goal our elites offer to inspire and enlist our
people?
The globalists envision the earth as a plantation with oligarchs (stateless corporate
monopolists) as planters, former national governments as overseers and the people of earth as
niggers.
"... The two factions differ by motive. Businessmen act out of material self-interest. They want to hire people from abroad at much lower wages and benefits than most people here would accept. And they want to sell in untapped markets. Radicals, by contrast, act out of emotional self-interest. They crave total multiculturalism in one nation. ..."
"... Where these camps converge is the belief that national identity is outdated and must be replaced by an elaborate system of global coordination. A nation ought to have no right to define itself in terms of race, language or collective memory. In the world of information technology, in fact, business and radicalism now mean almost the same thing. America, in this view, has an obligation to accommodate the crush of people from abroad wanting in. We cannot discriminate. We shouldn't even ask about their motives . America is a global sanctuary, a coast-to-coast UN General Assembly. ..."
"... Mass immigration is a global way of saying "diversity." And that refers not to a diversity of opinion , but to a diversity of demography holding identical opinions. Some have likened this to a cultural equivalent of Marxism, hence the common term "cultural Marxism." Whatever one's preferred term, it is now the coin of the realm in the world of big business. ..."
Why are corporations, especially those that provide
information technology, promoting
radical politics? It's a question one increasingly hears these days. And it's a necessary
question. For it is a fact: The corporation as an institution, partly out of
self-interest and partly out of conviction, is allying itself with the hard Left. And the
consequences could be devastating for our nation.
Now when I speak of "radicalism," I'm not referring to the tradition of businessmen using
the State to achieve and maintain market advantage.
Monopoly in this country is a more than a century-old tradition, and it is
anything but radical. Nor am I referring to the more recent tradition of corporations
paying radical accusers a "diversity
tax" in hopes of shooing them away. That's capitulation, not commitment. No, what I'm referring
to is the arms-length alliance between corporations and far-Left activists to subvert deeply
ingrained human loyalties, especially those related to national identity. Most corporate
executives today see America's future as post -national, not national.
The two factions differ by motive. Businessmen act out of
material self-interest. They want to
hire people from abroad at much lower wages and benefits than most people here would
accept. And they want to sell in untapped markets. Radicals, by contrast, act out of
emotional self-interest. They crave total multiculturalism in one nation.
Where these camps converge is the belief that national identity is outdated and must be
replaced by an elaborate system of global coordination. A nation ought to have no right to
define itself in terms of race, language or collective memory. In the world of information
technology, in fact, business and radicalism now mean almost the same thing. America, in this
view, has an obligation
to accommodate the crush of people from abroad wanting in. We cannot
discriminate. We shouldn't even
ask about their motives . America is a global sanctuary, a
coast-to-coast UN General Assembly.
Mass immigration is a global way of saying "diversity." And that refers not to a
diversity of opinion , but to a diversity of demography holding identical opinions. Some
have likened this to a cultural equivalent of Marxism, hence the common term "cultural
Marxism." Whatever one's preferred term, it is now the coin of the realm in the world of
big business.
AirBnB, like Uber et al, is a company that built its fortunes by operating outside the laws
that constrained its more conventional competition why should we be surprised that
immigration law doesn't matter one whit to them?
Mind you, they haven't given up on class struggle.
Really? Have you seen any class struggle recently that would be detrimental to the top
class? Marxists are the tools of neoliberal capitalist world order. They are perfectly happy
with the system as long as it gives them a chance to join the top class.
"While the influence of the Frankfurt School of Marxism can't be ignored here, I find it
vastly overstated. The crucial game-changers have been black authors, for the most part
home-grown Americans. "
Reading Horowitz is like reading gatestone institute articles. They can be very
convincing, but the always miss the target because Jews are seeped in willful blindness. It
starts with the dual passports and allegiances. How in any sane world should dual citizen
neocons be allowed to steer foreign policy? But then it continues with the never ending
kvetching about "anti-semitism" which is used to stifle any discussion that becomes
uncomfortable for them, like how the October Revolution was little more than a jewish coup
d'etat and a succeeding genocide of millions of Christians. Why should the US be forced to
pay $3b on Oct. 1 of every fiscal year to Israel? What about the murder of the Czar by a gang
of Ashkenazi? Or the Liberty or the King David Hotel? What about 70 years of Palestinian
genocide? What about their bullying and extortion of governments and individuals to prevent
BDS?
I could go on and on, but the point I am making is that Jews know this, but outwardly they
are ignorant, at least when writing for the benefit of stupid goyim. Among themselves the
truth is often alluded to in public, and that is why reading the Jewish press is so
important. Eventually they will try to prevent goyim from accessing it, probably by claiming
its all a lie just as with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
This jewish facade of plausible deniability has to be maintained at all costs, and this is
why we always hear how jews are so persecuted, why every city is forced to have a holocaust
museum and why every few years another holocaust or nazi-genocide movie comes out. It is all
about jews maintaining this Potemkin lie and pretending its true.
Which brings me to one of their biggest lies: That Jews are semitic, that they are white
and that they are not white, all simultaneously. If every component of US culture was forced
to track the number jews receiving benefit alongside the number of "whites" and other races,
then the country would really learn what true racism and patriarchy is. That is why this is
just another part of the massive jew lie that they all pretend not to see.
Ay, PF, awesome, rad! I like it, here in the wee hours, for some reason I couldn't sleep, but
you know, I'm a old f*rt and I don't do skype, just like I don't FB, but maybe tomorrow I'll
see a granddaughter or two, and they do all that stuff. Don't worry about a slow start,
opening nights can be like that and then Boom!
I have always considered Capitalism and Communism as false oppositions to each other. People
in power use whichever of the two is useful for a particular situation, place and time to
attain certain long term aims. The future of the world is moving towards Corporate Communism
where the worst of capitalism and communism are blended to rule over and exploit the masses.
This explains why many Western crony companies had invested in the the Soviet Union in it's
earlier days of , they could never had got a more slave labour population. The same with
China recently. Crony Capitalism and Communism seem to go well together just like how big
corporations and big governments go well together. This also explains why big corporations
still hire their workforce from Western Universities which are hot beds of leftist
propaganda. On one level, it never makes any sense. But when you see the bigger picture, it
makes sense.
Besides, the false left vs right paradigm keeps the common man on the streets busy infighting
and wasting their time without realizing the big schemes being played over them.
Cultural Marxism (probably) emerged much later then economic Marxism of Karl Marx. It was
a solution to a pressing problem of why Western populations were resistant to Communism. The
problem was narrowed down to traditional Western civilization, the White race and to some
extent traditional Christianity. Cultural Marxism is a 'slow boil the frog' method unlike the
shock method unleashed on Russia and China. It also uses the tactic of communists and
communism infusing in every part of a country's institutions like blood capillaries around
muscles.
A "Chomsky" amass of evidencies, a drunk display of conclusions. This is what should be
called the bend of intellectuals, what an agenda, it hangs out on all sides. Sully,
irrelevant, cheatacious in it's intend. And yet, "let's fall for it"?
While the influence of the Frankfurt School of Marxism can't be ignored here, I find it
vastly overstated. The crucial game-changers have been black authors, for the most part
home-grown Americans. Urtexts include Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, James
Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, Malcolm X's Autobiography and Richard Hamilton & Stokely
Carmichael's Black Power. Over the next several years, as the Black Panthers turned up the
heat, Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice, Bobby Seale's Seize the Time and Huey Newton's
Revolutionary Suicide became must-reads. Recent additions to the canon have been Derrick
Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well, Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, and Cornel
West' s Race Matters.,
Arguably, none of the above books by black authors would have become influential had it
not been for the intellectual framework created in the postwar period by the Frankfurt School
"study," The Authoritarian Personality :
Paul Gottfried writes:
You should read my last three books, all of which stress that The Authoritarian Personality
profoundly affected American political thinking. It was essential to the postwar
reconstruction of German "civic culture' and the work was deeply admired by SM Lipset, the
sponsors of Commentary, and scads of Cold War liberals. It was not necessarily viewed as
the post-Marxist leftist source of moral corruption that I suggest it was in The Strange
Death of Marxism. What made The Authoritarian Personality particularly insidious is that it
was widely seen as a blueprint for non-totalitarian democracy both here and in Europe; and
leaders in government and in universities read the book in that way. The fact that Adorno
and Horkheimer (who later backed away from the implications of the work he had co-edited)
were at the time Soviet sympathizers did not dampen the enthusiasm of the anti-Stalinist
secularist intellectuals who tried to defend the study. Although the Jewish identity of the
Frankfurt School may not have been the only factor leading to their anti-Christian,
anti-fascist pseudo-science, denying its influence on the formation of Frankfort School
ideas is simply silly.
Christopher Lash's True and Only Heaven includes a long section detailing the mainstream
liberal support for The Authoritarian Personality in the 1950s and 1960s. Lipset, Hook,
Daniel Bell, Arthur Schlesinger, Richard Hofstadter and the members of American Jewish
Committe, who sponsored Adorno and Commentary magazine, were among the anti-Communist
liberals who admired TAP and who thought that it had relevance for our country. Although
you and I may be to the right of these celebrants, it would be hard to argue that no
anti-Communist had any use for Adorno's ideas.
America, that shining city upon a hill (Matthew 5:14), has forsaken its own blood and soil
(Luke 14.26, Matthew 19:27-30), and fully implemented the International Jew's globalist
vision (Matthew 28:19) of Communist Freaqualism (Acts 4:32, Galatians 3:28), including
acceptance of rapefugees (Matthew 25:35-36), placing blacks in leadership (Acts 13:1),
condemning normal male behavior (Mark 9:47), and promoting male castration (Matthew 19.11-12)
in favor of a androgynous utopia (Matthew 22:30).
John Gray once noted that liberal humanist values are a "hollowed-out version of a
theistic myth," but as I've shown from the Christian Holy Book , they're actually
Judeo-Christianity on sterioids.
"The liberal belief in the free and sacred nature of each individual is a direct legacy
of the traditional Christian belief in the free and eternal souls. Without recourse to
eternal souls and a Creator God, it becomes embarrassingly difficult for liberals to
explain what is so special about individual Sapiens The idea that all humans are equal is a
revamped version of the monotheist conviction that all souls are equal before God." p.
231
Yuval Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Harper Collins, 2015)
Again, I'll point out that liberal humanist Freakqualism is not a "direct legacy" of
Christianity, but an intensification.
I was born in Europe. Except for a few years in the 1960s, I have lived all my life in
Europe. I have never come across anybody in Europe "rejecting their identity". Quite the
contrary indeed! European national identities are alive and well, and thriving in the
European Union. The article itself is the usual VDare anti-EU propaganda and the article
linked to (by Pat Buchanan) doesn't support the author's argument. I don't really see why
Americans are getting so steamed up about Marxism. Nobody has taken Marxism seriously since
the collapse of the communist dictatorships 25 years ago. And, of course, I'm always amused
at the way the people who shout "America First" keep telling us Europeans how to run our
countries!
Mr. Horowitz makes good points, but many of us here have made similar observations along the
same path to understanding the world around us. Corporations have a whatever-it-takes ethos,
and if they can make money by hanging on to eternal verities, they'll hang on to them, and if
they can calculate that dumping eternal verities will serve them, they'll do that. Happy
Thanksgiving Day all, and thanks to Ron for hosting this site, and many good commenters for
illuminating our America a bit..
Companies do what is politically expedient because the people who govern them make a
rational choice to decide to the bottom line – or any short-term definition thereof
– as opposed to standing up to the mob.
Period. End of story.
Imagine you are a minimum wage employee in the neighborhood laundromat and you're 16 and
naive and you notice the kindly owner/manager pays protection money to the mob. In all other
facets he is a kindly man, a good person, a good manager, a good businessperson. You wonder
why he doesn't call the police, make a report to the FBI, call on politicians, or stand up to
the mob himself.
Of course he can do any of those things. He chooses not to.
GENERAL PSYOPS:
PSYOPS control U.S. Citizens who have nothing to lose; yet, U.S. Citizens deeply
believe they have everything to lose when the only "objects" they truly own in
this world is debt.
Look Around - Which Class were you birthed?
Which Class shall you and your family of relatives die?
Labor - Lower Class - Working Class - Get Paycheck / Job Class
Lower Lower Class - Retail / wholesale workers / laborers
Lower Middle Class - engineers, computer workers, doctors
Lower Upper Class - C-Level Managerial workers, sports celebrities,
High-Net-Worth workers, etc.
Trading - Middle Class - Business Class - Get a Deal Class
Lower Middle Class - Owns business in an industry
Middle Middle Class - Operates 1 or more business in an industry
Upper Middle Class - Operates 1 or more businesses in 1 or more industries
Leisure - Upper Class - Investor Class - Let's Go Have Fun! Class
Lower Upper Class - New Billionaires.
Middle Upper Class - Multi-Billionaires invested in or own vast businesses in 1
or more vast industries
Upper Upper Class - Kings / Queens, Owners of Vast Tracts of Land on The Planet,
Wealthy Post-Empire Families,
Goals of Working Class: Job, House and Car - loans, credit, debt for basics:
food, shelter, clothing, transportation.
Goals of Trading Class expansion of business.
Goals of Leisure Class Enjoy Human Life. "Let's take the personal jets out for
a spin today. Meet you at [Insert place on planet]."
Middle Classes (Business) and Upper Classes (Leisure) give "Vacations" and
Time Off to Lower Labor Classes.
Working Classes do not have the money to associate, travel, and dine with the
Trading Class (Middle).
Trading Classes do not have the money to Empire Trot with the Leisure Classes.
Income has co-relation neither to wealth, power, nor prestige. The vast
majority of wealthy have little or zero income.
Common in debt U.S. Citizens stand back gawking at the great
great-great-great-great-grand children of the Middle Class and Upper Class
Families who have re-bequeathed and re-inherited family wealth through the
centuries enjoying a life of leisure that for each generation the Common U.S.
Citizens have never moved up in family wealth. General PSYOPS.
SIMPLE PSYOPS:
2005, prior to O elections all U.S. governments were directed by federal law to
disclose their health insurance payments, fees, etc. to the U.S. Federal
Government. U.S. governments Employees were also given a copy stating exactly how
much the State, County, Town, City is paying for the employee. O is elected. Look
at the amount spent. Nationalized Health Insurance. Simple PSYOPS.
SOPHISTICATED PSYOPS:
Key: Any criticism moving this Political Operative Donna Brazille around is
considered racist.
PBS and NBC, ABC, SeeBS (CBS), etc. studios featured Donna Brazille doing the
political-talk show circuit.
Donna Brazille, Editor of Atlanta newspaper was shown, based on after show
retakes, cameo's, script tweeking, etc., to be clear minded, fair, and
articulate.
Donna Brazille had a Social Debt and Final Payment Due.
The Clintons collected Final Payment during the Presidential Elections from
Donna Brazille who made payment by smuggling U.S. Presidential Debate Questions
to The Clintons.
PSYOPS is interesting and work especially well with a small group of wealthy
who can hire and pay for PSYOPS either in the immediate term or longer term as
with Donna Brazille.
Marketing is PSYOPS all day.
United States President Trump is Not:
an ex-bureaucrat
an ex-lawyer
An ex-government employee
Not Poor <- Very Important as Big Cash is involved.
United States President Trump has a marked distain for both Factions of the
State Political Party – republicans and democrats – and wonder if any other U.S.
Citizens have the same feelings and thoughts.
Trump came forward as an American United States Citizen.
Democrats gave all the Benefits the Labor Unions fought for during the 1930's
and 1940's to Illegal Aliens.
Republicans gave all the industry and jobs to foreign countries and imported
pre-trained foreigners into American Jobs.
When Trump threatened to watch every polling station in the United States, if
he had to, to make sure no voter fraud, at least during the one and only election
he participated, State Political Party faction's democrats and republicans
laughed.
The State Political Party Factions colluded to Stop Trump while running the
usual rigged fake fraudulent election.
The usual United States Media Channels using the United States National
Emergency Broadcast System entrusted to individual caretaker / quasi-owners to
manage and maintain premises, power level, and towers, began the usual selling
broadcast time to the highest bidder. The usual war over the airwaves time and
again. The Hearts and Minds Meme is the warring struggle between republicans and
democrats to control United States Media Channels broadcasts before, during, and
after a United States Election. The usual.
24/7 PSYOPS using the owners of ABC, BBC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, The New York
Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, Reuters,
U.K. Guardian, Associated Press, etc. broadcast State Party PSYOPS obfuscating
Trump is winning, announced No Path to 270, and broadcast Common Citizens
Protesting.
The Clintons had the White Females and the new meme: People of Color.
United States Media Channels using the United States National Emergency
Broadcast System (EBS) showed White males violently protesting TRUMP one day and
Black Males shown violently protesting TRUMP another day to PSYOPS Cobble Black
and White Males as kin, long shot, similar voters. Don't say it, show it,
persuasively.
Republicans all signed Pledges declaring in Media Channels they shall not vote
for Trump and encouraged everyone to do the same. Democrats against Trump is a
given. PSYOPS. Political PSYOPS.
After the election, United States President Trump asked to examine the voting
rolls. The State Political Party (r&d) denied the request threatening using
courts to tie up the matter and cause great usd expense through the Corrupt U.S.
Judicial. SOPHISTICATED PSYOPS.
The Entire United States is Corrupt.
1. The Lawyer Amended Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of
Independence - the originals of which are all now in the dustbin of history -
have successfully created these Criminal Enterprises according to the Founders:
the Corrupt House of Representatives,
the Corrupt U.S. Senate,
the Corrupt U.S. Judicial,
the Corrupt U.S. Military and its Corrupt 17 Intelligence Agencies,
the Corrupt U.S. Media (except for the 5 Independent newspapers that did support
U.S. President Trump),
the Corrupt For Sale Ivy League "there is a tailored study FOR SALE PROVING
[insert desire outcome here]. . . " Universities,
the Corrupt States, the Corrupt Counties, and the Corrupt Cities,
the Corrupt Republican Political Party, and
the Corrupt Democrat Political Party.
U.S. Political Government "Investigations" show the Perp Walk: Perjury after
Perjured Testimony in U.S. Supreme Courts, U.S. House of Representatives, Senate
Testimony. Fraud all. Only the most frightened horrified have cognitive
dissonance belief remaining in U.S. Federal Government(s).
Overthrowing Governments is not done by those who work, commoners posting on
internet websites, walking the streets with Pitchforks, Fire and Ropes,
Protesting, carrying Placards, placing Posters, and Marching with Banners; those
people in Life Long Debt Servitude (hovel&cart/house&car) usually come to gawk at
the result.
Overthrowing Governments is done by extremely wealthy for differing reasons as
in the Overthrowing the Government of Britain/ England / U.K. in the New World -
the Free World - during the late 1700's Early 1800's with Thomas Jefferson.
Thomas Jefferson knew Representative Government eventually becomes corrupt; a
New Lawyered Governed Tyranny is formed.
Lawyered Representative Government Corrupts; Absolute Lawyered Representative
Governments Corrupts Absolutely.
When Citizens are indebted to, fearful of, dependent on, lied to, [INSERT
YOURS HERE], with government guns pointed at U.S. Citizens and Surveillance by
their "elected" Representatives for each AOR using U.S. Militarized Collusive
State, County, and City First Responders Type Government Patrolling Enforcement,
a New Type of Governed Tyranny is formed (see 1 afore)
All U.S. Citizens are given a Legal Right and a Legal Duty.
When Lawyered Representative Governments do not do the will of the people
(hint: U.S.).
". . . it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government."
- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 2nd paragraph
The world is very different than ZH Heavy and MSM disclose.
Recent and periodic school shootings are the work of the two U.S. Political
Factions democrats and republicans PSYOPS in the U.S. Political Party System.
Disclosing the real story could be considered Top Secret National Intelligence
information especially with the fake social media account: Zhaupka.
"... Capitalist exploitation is based on a rigid hierarchy with its private prerogatives, which enables the oligarchs to demand their feudal privileges, their seigniorial sexual predations. ..."
"... Today, 93% of US private sector workers have no organized representation. Moreover, many of the 7% who are in unions are controlled and exploited by their corrupt union officials – in league with the bosses. ..."
"... The more egregious immorality exposes itself one time too often and is condemned, while the victims are temporality lionized for their courage to protest. The worst predators apologize, resign to their yachts and mansions and are replaced by new avatars with the same power and structures in place which had facilitated the abuse. Politicians rush to embrace the victims in a kind of political and media 'Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy' when one considers their own role as enablers of this dehumanization. ..."
"... The problem is not merely corrupt and perverted individual miscreants: It is the hierarchy of inequality which produces and reproduces an endless supply of vulnerable workers to exploit and abuse. ..."
"... Sexual abuse of an individual in the workplace is just part of a chain that begins with exploitation of workers in general and can only be stopped through collective worker organization. ..."
"... Can anyone say with a straight face that the US remains a nation of free and autonomous citizens? Servitude and moral degradation are the outcome of an atomized, impotent laboring class who may change one boss for another or one vulgar president for a moralizing hypocrite. We hope that the exposés will start something but without class conscious organizations we don't know what will arise. ..."
The public denunciation by thousands of women and a few men that they had been victims of
sexual abuse by their economic bosses raises fundamental issues about the social relations of
American capitalism.
The moral offenses are in essence economic and social crimes. Sexual abuse is only one
aspect of the social dynamics facilitating the increase in inequality and concentration of
wealth, which define the practices and values of the American political and economic
system.
Billionaires and mega-millionaires are themselves the products of intense exploitation of
tens of millions of isolated and unorganized wage and salaried workers. Capitalist exploitation
is based on a rigid hierarchy with its private prerogatives, which enables the oligarchs to
demand their feudal privileges, their seigniorial sexual predations.
US capitalism thrives on and requires unlimited power and the capacity to have the public
treasury pay for its untrammeled pillage of land, labor, transport systems and technological
development. Capitalist power, in the United States, has no counterpart; there are few if any
countervailing forces to provide any balance.
Today, 93% of US private sector workers have no organized representation. Moreover, many of
the 7% who are in unions are controlled and exploited by their corrupt union officials –
in league with the bosses.
This concentration of power produces the ever deepening inequalities between the world of
the billionaires and the millions of low-wage workers.
The much-celebrated technological innovations have been subsidized by the state and its
educational and research institutions. Although these are financed by the taxpayers, the
citizen-workers are marginalized by the technological changes, like robotics, that they
originally funded. High tech innovations flourish because they concentrate power, profits and
private privilege.
The hierarchical matrix of power and exploitation has led to the polarization of mortality
rates and moral codes. For the working poor, the absence of competent health care has led to
the massive use and abuse of prescription opioids and other addictive drugs. For the upper
class, it has led to the flagrant physical and psychological abuse of vulnerable employees,
especially, but not exclusively young working women. The prestigious bourgeois media blur the
class polarization by constant reference to what they term 'our shared traditional democratic
values.'
The pervasive and growing vulnerability of workers of both sexes coincides with the
incorporation of the latest technological innovations in production, distribution and
promotion. This includes electronic and digital advances, artificial intelligence, robotics and
extensive surveillance on workers, which incorporate high profits for the investors and long
hours of demeaning monotonous work for those who manufacture and transport the 'products'.
The proliferation of new technology has grown in direct relation with the abject debasement
of labor and the marginalization and trivialization of workers. Amazon and Walmart approach
trillions of dollars in revenue from mass consumption, even as the Chaplinesque speed-up of
robotized humans race to fill the overnight delivery orders. The entertainment industry amuses
the population across class lines with increasingly vulgar and violent offerings, while the
moguls of film entertain themselves with their young workers – who are depersonalized and
even raped.
The more egregious immorality exposes itself one time too often and is condemned, while the
victims are temporality lionized for their courage to protest. The worst predators apologize,
resign to their yachts and mansions and are replaced by new avatars with the same power and
structures in place which had facilitated the abuse. Politicians rush to embrace the victims in
a kind of political and media 'Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy' when one considers their own role
as enablers of this dehumanization.
The problem is not merely corrupt and perverted individual miscreants: It is the hierarchy
of inequality which produces and reproduces an endless supply of vulnerable workers to exploit
and abuse.
The most advanced forms of entertainment thrive in an environment of absolute impunity in
which the occasional exposé of abuse or corruption is hidden behind a monetary
settlement. The courage of an individual victim able to secure public attention is a step
forward, but will have greater significance if it is organized and linked to a massive
challenging of the power of the bourgeois entertainment industry and the system of high tech
exploitation. Sexual abuse of an individual in the workplace is just part of a chain that
begins with exploitation of workers in general and can only be stopped through collective
worker organization.
Can anyone say with a straight face that the US remains a nation of free and autonomous
citizens? Servitude and moral degradation are the outcome of an atomized, impotent laboring
class who may change one boss for another or one vulgar president for a moralizing hypocrite.
We hope that the exposés will start something but without class conscious organizations
we don't know what will arise.
"... The opioid epidemic, alcohol abuse and suicides are leading causes of death in the US. The rate of fatal drug overdoses rose by 137 percent from 2000 to 2014. In 2015 alone, more than 64,000 people died from drug overdoses, exceeding the number of US fatal casualties in the Vietnam War. The suicide rate rose by a staggering 24 percent between 1999 and 2014. ..."
"... These "deaths of despair" have disproportionately affected white Americans, including adults aged 25-59, those with limited education, and women. The sharpest increases have been in rural areas. ..."
"... As to why the rise in mortality has been greatest among white, middle-aged adults and some rural communities, the editorial points to possible factors, which all relate to class issues. They include "the collapse of industries and the local economies they supported, the erosion of social cohesion and greater social isolation, economic hardship, and distress among white workers over losing the security their parents once enjoyed." ..."
The cognitive dissonance is deafening. The FBI is a criminal organization. Trump and his
cohorts are here to stay. If you think you can change the direction of failing America, best
to organize a socialist party.
What is Mueller going to do about this?"
The opioid epidemic, alcohol abuse and suicides are leading causes of death in the US.
The rate of fatal drug overdoses rose by 137 percent from 2000 to 2014. In 2015 alone, more
than 64,000 people died from drug overdoses, exceeding the number of US fatal casualties in
the Vietnam War. The suicide rate rose by a staggering 24 percent between 1999 and
2014.
These "deaths of despair" have disproportionately affected white Americans, including
adults aged 25-59, those with limited education, and women. The sharpest increases have been
in rural areas.
As to why the rise in mortality has been greatest among white, middle-aged adults and
some rural communities, the editorial points to possible factors, which all relate to class
issues. They include "the collapse of industries and the local economies they supported, the
erosion of social cohesion and greater social isolation, economic hardship, and distress
among white workers over losing the security their parents once enjoyed."
"... Things "should" be made locally. There's no reason, especially with declining energy resources, that a toaster should be shipped from thousands of miles away by boat, plane, truck, rail. That's simply ridiculous, never mind causing a ton of extra pollution. We end up working at McDonald's or Target, but, yay, we just saved $5.00 on our toaster. ..."
"... I don't know how you know about the so-called safety net. I know because I had to use it while undergoing treatment for 2 types of stage 4 breast cancer the past 4 years. It is NOT what people think. It beats the already vulnerable into the ground -- -- this is not placating -- -- it is psychological breaking of human minds until they submit. The paperwork is like undergoing a tax audit -- - every 6 months. "Technicians" decide one's "benefits" which vary between "technicians". ..."
"... Food stamps can be $195 during one period and then $35 the next. The technicians/system takes no responsibility for the chaos and stress they bring into their victims' lives. It is literally crazy making. BTW: I am white, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, have a masters' degree, formerly owned my own business and while married lived within the top 10%. ..."
"... In addition, most of those on so-called social programs are children, the elderly, chronically ill, veterans. You are correct that the middle class is falling into poverty but you are not understanding what poverty actually looks like when the gov holds out its beneficial hand. It is nothing short of cruelty. ..."
Yes, but increasingly there is no "working class" in America due to outsourcing and automation.
I hear that Trump wants to reverse all of that and put children to work in forward-to-the-past factories (versus
back-to-the-future) and mines working 12 hours a day 7 days a week as part of his Make America Great Again initiative.
With all the deregulation, I can't wait to start smoking on airplanes again. Those were great times. Flying bombs with
fifty or more lit fuses in the form of a cigarette you can smoke. The good old days.
backwardsevolution , February 5, 2018 at 5:50 pm
Cold N. Holefield -- it's like Ross Perot said re NAFTA and globalization: "When the rest
of the world's wages go up to $6.00/hour and our's come down to $6.00/hour, globalization
will end." That's what's happening, isn't it? Our wages are being held down, due in large
part to low-skilled labor and H-1B's flooding into the country, and wages in Asia are rising.
I remember Ross Perot standing right beside Bill Clinton when he said this, and I also
remember the sly smile on Bill Clinton's face. He knew.
Our technology was handed to China on a silver platter by the greedy U.S. multinationals,
technology that was developed by Western universities and taxpayer dollars, technology that
would have taken decades for China to develop on their own.
Trump is trying desperately to bring some of these jobs back. That's why he handed them
huge corporate tax breaks and cut some regulations.
Things "should" be made locally. There's no reason, especially with declining energy
resources, that a toaster should be shipped from thousands of miles away by boat, plane,
truck, rail. That's simply ridiculous, never mind causing a ton of extra pollution. We end up
working at McDonald's or Target, but, yay, we just saved $5.00 on our toaster.
Trump is trying to cut back on immigration so that wages can increase, but the Left want
to save the whole world, doing themselves in in the process. He wants to bring people in with
skills the country can benefit from, but for that he's tarred and feathered.
P.S. I remember sitting behind a drunk on a long flight, and I saw him drop his cigarette.
It rolled past me like it knew where it was going, and I couldn't find it. I called the
stewardess, and she and I searched for a few anxious seconds until we found it. Yes, the good
old days.
I don't know how you know about the so-called safety net. I know because I had to use it
while undergoing treatment for 2 types of stage 4 breast cancer the past 4 years. It is NOT
what people think. It beats the already vulnerable into the ground -- -- this is not
placating -- -- it is psychological breaking of human minds until they submit. The paperwork
is like undergoing a tax audit -- - every 6 months. "Technicians" decide one's "benefits"
which vary between "technicians".
Food stamps can be $195 during one period and then $35 the
next. The technicians/system takes no responsibility for the chaos and stress they bring into
their victims' lives. It is literally crazy making. BTW: I am white, a member of Phi Beta
Kappa, have a masters' degree, formerly owned my own business and while married lived within
the top 10%.
In addition, most of those on so-called social programs are children, the
elderly, chronically ill, veterans. You are correct that the middle class is falling into
poverty but you are not understanding what poverty actually looks like when the gov holds out
its beneficial hand. It is nothing short of cruelty.
backwardsevolution , February 6, 2018 at 4:48 pm
Diana Lee -- I hope you are well now. It breaks my heart what you went through. No, I
cannot imagine.
I didn't mean the lower class were living "well" on food stamps and welfare. All I meant
was that it helped, and without it all hell would break loose. If you lived in the top 10% at
one point, then you would surely notice a difference, but for many who have been raised in
this environment, they don't notice at all. It becomes a way of life. And, yes, you are
right, it is cruelty. A loss of life.
Whole Foods' new inventory management system aimed at improving efficiency and cutting down on waste is taking a toll on employees,
who say the system's stringent procedures and graded "scorecards" have crushed morale and led to widespread food shortages, reports
Business Insider
.
The new system, called order-to-shelf, or OTS, "has a strict set of procedures for purchasing, displaying, and storing products
on store shelves and in back rooms. To make sure stores comply, Whole Foods relies on "scorecards" that evaluate everything from
the accuracy of signage to the proper recording of theft, or "shrink."
Some employees, who walk through stores with managers to ensure compliance, describe the system as onerous and stress-inducing
. Conversations with 27 current and recently departed Whole Foods workers, including cashiers and corporate employees -- some
of whom have been with the company for nearly two decades -- say the system is seen by many as punitive. - BI
Terrified employees report constant fear over losing their jobs over the OTS "scorecards," which anything below 89.9% can qualify
as a failing score - resulting in possible firings. Whole Foods employees around the country thought that was hilarious. One such
disaffected West Coast supervisor said "On my most recent time card, I clocked over 10 hours of overtime, sitting at a desk doing
OTS work," adding "Rather than focusing on guest service, I've had team members cleaning facial-care testers and facing the shelves,
so that everything looks perfect and untouched at all times."
Many Whole Foods employees at the corporate and store levels still don't understand how OTS works, employees said.
"OTS has confused so many smart, logical, and experienced individuals, the befuddlement is now a thing, a life all its own,"
an employee of a Chicago-area store said. "It's a collective confusion -- constantly changing, no clear answers to the questions
that never were, until now."
An employee of a North Carolina Whole Foods said: " No one really knows this business model, and those who are doing the scorecards
-- even regional leadership -- are not clear on practices and consequently are constantly providing the department leaders with
inaccurate directions. All this comes at a time when labor has been reduced to an unachievable level given the requirements of
the OTS model. "
From Amazon workers, delivery drivers and now Whole Foods workers, it sounds like the Beezer is a real tyrant to work for.
I'm surprised unions haven't been able to penetrate that organization. It is certainly big enough.
Wife is an ER MD. The physician leasing firm that employs her, which has the contract at the local hospital, recently got bought
out by a new group. Suddenly she has a new director who assigns quotas to everything, and grades every aspect of her performance.
It is quite stressful, and takes much of what little joy there was in her profession, and flushes it away. She is actively entertaining
head hunters' calls again.
Just finished a two-year project building a hospital's Information Security Program....everything heading toward performance
metrics measured against some horseshit ticketing system. Such systems only encourage throwing of horseshit over the fence, by
incapable amateurs, to the people who actually know how to think. This program was put in place by a CIO who was former Air Farce.
It now takes 5 fucking hours of bureaucratic horseshit to perform 1/2 hour of actual engineering/technical work. The next step
is to automate technical work from within the change control and IT automation systems.
Mark my words....just wait until the vulnerabilities in these change control, and Information Security Automation systems are
exploited. Wait for the flaws in the code used to automate creation of entire networks, sever farms, security policies, etc.
I don't want to be within 100 miles of anything modern when this all goes to shit.
"... Cooks at restaurants routinely work in similar heat with similar levels of exertion. I know, because I was a cook at multiple restaurants. ..."
"... The reason OSHA doesn't care is because working people in extreme heat is SOP for scores of industries that you may not even realize. ..."
"... In an earlier generation, that would be an excellent question. But since then, we've seen the distribution and adoption of the neoliberal memo that such things are always and everywhere bad. Nor would they be high on the current administration's to do list. ..."
"... Amazon doesn't employ the workers. It employs temp agencies who supply the workers. This is a standard procedure these days for high-turnover workplaces, because in the end no one is responsible for what happens to the workers. ..."
"... A service business that gives crappy service will not prosper. ..."
"... I spent 25 years in the grocery business with 20 of them in management. The expectations stated above were industry standards (except the minutiae of sales goals). Only in Whole Foods was this model ignored. When the industry wide profit margin of grocers is less the 3cents on the dollar you have to be a TIGHT operator to turn a profit or you are doomed. As a department manager my entire job depended on how I managed my P&L report on a quarterly basis .. if I was over on payroll hours I DAMN well better be cutting back on other areas such as shrink, supplies or payroll mix (high paid FT vs low paid PT) ..."
"... Thanks for bringing up the industry baseline! Bezos' intense exploitation of labor merits a spotlight, but what's happening off in the shadows in other corporations? I recall seeing Costco held up as a + example, but what about others? ..."
"... It seems to me that Amazon are a one trick company (albeit, a very good trick), and they are likely to get burned very badly if they extend their predatory model to high value brands.. ..."
"... "When the industry wide profit margin of grocers is less the 3cents on the dollar" This figure is complete nonsense. It means nothing. It's the "profit margin" after paying themselves rent, which is where the profits in grocery stores end up.. No one is in business for a 3% return. It does make good for PR though. ..."
"... Its not clear to me that OTS originated with Amazon. Amazon only completed the Whole Foods purchase around Labor Day in 2017. It usually takes more than a month or two to come up with an entire computer-based software system and roll it out company-wide. ..."
"... Corporate America is capable of coming up with bone-headed implementations of what could be good ideas without the need to get Amazon, Google, Facebook, or Apple to push them to it. Wells Fargo was able to come up with "Eight is Great" for new account generation even with the guidance of Warren Buffet instead of Jeff Bezos. ..."
"... At any rate, I won't be frequenting Whole Foods any longer as I find worker abuse nauseating. ..."
"... So much paperwork that there's no time to deliver the food, hence empty shelves. A situation instantly recognizable to anyone who ever lived in the USSR. ..."
"... You didn't hear it from me, but from a friend who was a cashier at a grocery store, a small way to fight back against self checkout is to be creative in naming your produce to get a 95% discount ..."
"... Wal-Mart can man-up with a new ad campaign – Our Employees Don't Cry, they get food stamps. ..."
"... "I'm amazed at how many people choose to simply ignore the fate of Amazon's employees in order to receive free shipping." ..."
"... (Suggesting that AMZ is a sh*t business.) ..."
"... fast forward 1-2 years ..."
"... fast forward 1-2 more years . ..."
"... Rinse. Repeat. Ad nauseum, ad infinitum . ..."
Posted on
February 2, 2018 by Yves Smith As we've said, Jeff Bezos
clearly hates people, except as appendages to bank accounts. All you need to do is observe how
he treats his workers.
In a scoop, Business Insider reports on how Amazon is creating massive turnover and
pointless misery at Whole Food by imposing a reign of terror impossible and
misguided productivity targets.
Anyone who has paid the slightest attention to Amazon will see its abuse of out of Whole
Foods workers as confirmation of an established pattern. And even more tellingly, despite Whole
Foods supposedly being a retail business that Bezos would understand, the unrealistic Whole
Foods metrics aren't making the shopping experience better.
As we'll discuss below, we'd already expressed doubts about how relevant Bezos' hyped Amazon
model would be to Whole Foods. Proof is surfacing even faster than we expected.
But first to Bezos' general pattern of employee mistreatment.
It's bad enough that Bezos engages in the worst sort of class warfare and treats warehouse
workers worse than the ASPCA would allow livery drivers to use horses. Not only do horses at
least get fed an adequate ration, while Amazon warehouse workers regularly earn less than a
local living wage, but even after pressure to end literal sweatshop conditions (no air
conditioning so inside temperatures could hit 100 degrees;
Amazon preferred to have ambulances at ready for the inevitable heatstroke victims rather than
pay to cool air ), Amazon warehouse workers are, thanks to intensive monitoring, pressed to
work at such a brutal pace that most can't handle it physically and quit by the six month mark.
For instance, from a 2017 Gizmodo story, Reminder:
Amazon Treats Its Employees Like Shit :
Amazon, like most tech companies, is skilled at getting stories about whatever bullshit it
decides to feed the press. Amazon would very much prefer to have reporters writing some
drivel about a discount code than reminding people that its tens of thousands of engineers
and warehouse workers are fucking miserable. How do I know they're miserable? Because (as the
testimony below demonstrates) they've told every writer who's bothered to ask for years.
Mind you, Amazon's institutionalized sadism isn't limited to its sweatshops. Amazon is also
cruel to its office workers. The New York Times story that Gizmodo selected, based on over 100
employee interviews, included:
Bo Olson lasted less than two years in a book marketing role and said that his enduring
image was watching people weep in the office, a sight other workers described as well. "You
walk out of a conference room and you'll see a grown man covering his face," he said. "Nearly
every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk."
While that paragraph was the most widely quoted from that story, some reporters reacted
strongly to other bits. For instance, from The
Verge :
Perhaps worst of all is Amazon's apparent approach when its employees need help. The Times
has uncovered several cases where workers who were sick, grieving, or otherwise encumbered by
the realities of life were pushed out of the company. A woman who had a miscarriage was told
to travel on a business trip the day after both her twins were stillborn. Another woman
recovering from breast cancer was given poor performance rankings and was warned that she was
in danger of losing her job.
I have yet to hear of anyone who has actually enjoyed working for Amazon. I know several
people who have worked on building out their data centers, and it's the same type of
experience – demanding, long hours, must be responsive to calls and emails 24×7.
Even people who are otherwise highly skilled, highly competent workers are treated as
disposable items. It's no surprise that they treat grocery workers the same.
According to
this Business Insider article the OTS inventory management system was something brought
in by whole foods management; not amazon. Employees are actually hoping amazon fixes the
issues created by OTS.
Things are definitely bad when workers are hoping things will get better with Bezos in
charge.
I can't remember where I read an article in which an amazon employee said people at the
company joked that amazon is where overachievers go to feel bad about themselves.
If working conditions are so bad at the warehouses (heatstrokes from lack of air
conditioning), then why hasn't the Department of Labor gone after them? Surely the DoL or
some local labor bureau most have gotten hundreds if not thousands of complaints?
Where are the unions? The Teamsters or UFCW should be all over this. Their complete
absence from the story is telling. When the first three conclusions to be drawn from this
story are:
1. That boss (and company culture) are awful
2. Why doesn't the government do something?
3. Maybe the workers can do a class action
then it's really not surprising that things are this bad.
Where are the unions? They've been systematic eradicated or are being led by
"pro-business" stooges. About the only union worth a damn and bucking the system is the
Nurses Union led by Rose Ann DeMoro. If you have the inclunation, take a look at labor during
the first Gilded Age (late 1800s early 1900s) to see what it took to get the modest reforms
of the New Deal enacted -- the very policies that are almost extinct now.
Efforts to get Amazon to change its labor practices have been unsuccessful thus far.
Randy Korgan, the business representative and director of the Teamsters Local 63, which
represents the Stater Brothers employees, told me that his office frequently gets calls
from Amazon employees wanting to organize. But organizing is difficult because there's so
much turnover at Amazon facilities and because people fear losing their jobs if they speak
up. Burgett, the Indiana Amazon worker, repeatedly tried to organize his facility, he told
me. The turnover was so high that it was difficult to get people to commit to a union
campaign. The temps at Amazon are too focused on getting a full-time job to join a union,
he said, and the full-time employees don't stick around long enough to join. He worked with
both the local SEIU and then the Teamsters to start an organizing drive, but could never
get any traction. He told me that whenever Amazon hears rumors of a union drive, the
company calls a special "all hands" meeting to explain why a union wouldn't be good for the
facility. (Lindsey said that Amazon has an open-door policy that encourages associates to
bring concerns directly to the management team. "We firmly believe this direct connection
is the most effective way to understand and respond to the needs of our workforce," she
wrote, in an email.)
This is a common anti-union trick among low-wage jobs these days -- intentionally abuse
your workers as much as possible to ensure the highest possible turnover (and even better,
turnover in the form of voluntary quits, which do not qualify for unemployment benefits or
impact the employer's UI tax). Workers who have zero investment in their jobs and who intend
to quit at the earliest possible opportunity are less likely to go through the trouble and
risk of supporting a union effort.
As a bonus, the high turnover results in many of the workers not ever becoming eligible
for benefits. Most common tax-advantaged benefit plans, like health insurance and 401(k), are
required to be offered to all employees with only a few limited exceptions. The permitted
exceptions differ depending on the benefit type, but usually include criteria like length of
service (often no more than 12 months or so) and in some cases, minimum work hours. The plan
will lose its tax-advantaged status if it excludes more employees than the law permits, which
can cost the employer back taxes and penalties. Firing employees for the purpose of
interfering with their ERISA-regulated benefits is illegal , but treating them so poorly
from day 1 that they are unlikely to last long enough to qualify for benefits is not.
From a policy perspective, we need to realize the instability created by high-turnover and
fissured work environments
and penalize it accordingly. A beneficial side effect of this is that it would likely
incentivize employers to train and promote low-level workers upwards; low-level jobs like
warehouse workers probably inherently have higher turnover than average, just because most
workers don't want to do that for the rest of their lives (and some are successful in finding
a way out), but when there's
a path for the janitor to become CTO you can reduce that turnover.
I found these just by Googling "OSHA amazon". Keep in mind, the low amounts of the fines
doesn't necessarily reflect the severity of the underlying issues–my understanding is
that OSHA has relatively weak abilities to fine violators in the first place.
Government regulation and enforcement? In an earlier generation, that would be an
excellent question. But since then, we've seen the distribution and adoption of the
neoliberal memo that such things are always and everywhere bad. Nor would they be high on the
current administration's to do list.
Amazon doesn't employ the workers. It employs temp agencies who supply the workers. This
is a standard procedure these days for high-turnover workplaces, because in the end no one is
responsible for what happens to the workers.
To quote: "the beatings will continue until morale improves"
A service business that gives crappy service will not prosper. There is a high touch rate
between customers and employees in this industry. Also, this is an industry with many options
and competition; unlike airlines for example. We shop at WF from time to time, partly due to
the experience being more pleasant. We have no issue moving (and no love of Amazon).
A service business that gives crappy service will not prosper.
if and only if there are preferable alternatives. If that business is cheaper, a monopoly, or if all other businesses deliver crappy service
too, then it may well prosper. Case in point: the telecommunications market in the USA.
This is an important reason why the notion that market competition will increase social
welfare isn't inherently true. It's long been understood that in concentrated markets
(oligopolies) the market actors might implicitly coordinate their prices without a price
increase. For example, Companies A, B, and C sell widgets; Company A announces a price
increase via press release; B and C follow with similar increases a week later.
But companies can also implicitly coordinate on the quality of goods. If Company A pursues
crapification, that can cover B and C for doing the same.
It's akin the the Greesham's Dyamic that Professor Black has written about extensively on
this blog and in other places in connection with finance creating a criminogenic environment.
Under the right circumstances, cheap bad quality can drive out good quality, leaving only
bad.
Indeed. A "market" focusing solely on profitability would consider human values an
inefficiency. It would remove them, along with what produced them, from the system, using
routine failure modes and effects analysis. (An interesting point for promoters of AI.)
California witnessed considerable consolidation in its grocery business ten years or so
ago. Similar, if somewhat less draconian conditions, resulted. I don't believe the "market"
will generate a different result this time.
In addition, there's the question of Jeff Bezos's purposes in buying WF. It would not be
to learn from another industry; I don't imagine Bezos values that concept. It would more
likely be to expand his own methodologies and priorities to another industry, one that gives
him access to a human activity outside the already extensive reach of his current
business.
WF may be an experiment, whose survival might not be dictated by immediate notional
profitability. Besides, the utility and profitability of the data flow from this experiment
might never be visible.
This is an important reason why the notion that market competition will increase social
welfare isn't inherently true. It's long been understood that in concentrated markets
(oligopolies) the market actors might implicitly coordinate their prices without a price
increase.
I agree, except that the situations you describe are not "market competition". Any
marketplace with fewer than about 7 truly independent competitors is not a competitive
market.
But as you say, when there are few participants there is a lot of implicit signaling and
coordination, which work to benefit the few participants at the expense of the general
welfare.
We have a lot of faux markets, and a lot of faux competition. This is not helped by the
prevalence of multiple "brands" owned by the same small number of large conglomerates. You
could shut down just 2 or 3 companies in each product line and the supermarket shelves would
lose 90% of their items. That ain't a competitive marketplace, even though the proliferation
of brands provides the illusion of freedom of choice.
We need a populist wave to take back our democracy.
Yes it's not textbook competition, but while textbook competition with many small players
may be good for the consumer, there is no evidence that it is good for the worker. In fact I
suspect it's bad for the worker as super competitive industries will nearly kill their
employees just to stay in business. I'd rather work for an oligopoly (but it all depends on
which one) as the freedom from relentless competition enables better working conditions in
theory (again does not always materialize).
I spent 25 years in the grocery business with 20 of them in management. The expectations
stated above were industry standards (except the minutiae of sales goals). Only in Whole
Foods was this model ignored. When the industry wide profit margin of grocers is less the 3cents on the dollar you have
to be a TIGHT operator to turn a profit or you are doomed. As a department manager my entire
job depended on how I managed my P&L report on a quarterly basis .. if I was over on
payroll hours I DAMN well better be cutting back on other areas such as shrink, supplies or
payroll mix (high paid FT vs low paid PT)
I guess the Whole Foods employees are learning this now.
Thanks for bringing up the industry baseline! Bezos' intense exploitation of labor merits
a spotlight, but what's happening off in the shadows in other corporations? I recall seeing
Costco held up as a + example, but what about others?
To me, it doesn't make sense to penny pinch if you're a quasi-monopolistic supplier due to
a special brand position. Whole Foods was associated with high quality goods, and was clearly
able to charge a substantial price premium. Changing its operations as described above
appears to reduce the justification for the price premium and destroy the company's unique
market position.
It is almost like McDonald's deciding that beef patties cost too much, and that it would
only serve chicken going forward.
It seems to me that in the grocery business (like many), you either make money by being
more efficient and cheaper than your competitors, or by having a unique selling point that
allows you charge a premium (high quality, great service, etc).
If you look at the car industry, when mass market brands have bought high value brands
(for example, Ford buying Jaguar), the sensible companies have been very cautious about
ensuring that the brand aura (and hence high profit margin per car) is not tarnished by
crudely cutting costs. Mercedes made that mistake in the 1980's with excessive cost cutting
and it took them more than a decade, and billions of DM in investment, to win back their
brand value when it became apparent that their cars were often less reliable than cheap Asian
compacts.
It seems to me that Amazon are a one trick company (albeit, a very good trick), and they
are likely to get burned very badly if they extend their predatory model to high value
brands..
In scale, WF is a hobby business for Bezos, little more than a personal tax deduction. If
it does not go as Bezos intends, it is not likely to have an effect on his primary
business.
"When the industry wide profit margin of grocers is less the 3cents on the dollar" This figure is complete nonsense. It means nothing. It's the "profit margin" after paying themselves rent, which is where the profits in
grocery stores end up.. No one is in business for a 3% return. It does make good for PR
though.
A 3% margin isn't the same thing as a 3% return. Maybe think about it this way, 26 turns
on a 3% margin (once every 2 weeks). Without compounding that's a 78% return on average
inventory level, before fixed and variable costs, interest expense and equity returns. You're
right nobody is in the business for a 3% return!
"A 3% margin isn't the same thing as a 3% return." I know this. But the way that figure is trotted out, relentlessly, is to leave the masses,
and employees, with the idea that they only 'make' 3%, which is nonsense. Whatever they
"make" is carefully chosen in accounting fairytale land.
The point about rents still stands. Most grocery stores/chains are REITs with captive
retailers. No one ever sees the REIT side of things. Rite Aid is well know for being the
captive retailer in this practice. Rite Aid doesn't 'make' any money (118M 'income' over 25
billion in sales = .004 Less that half a percent).. They 'make' the landlord LOTS of money.
Tax dodge or money laundering, which does it better fit the definition of?
Agreed. I think they trot out the 3% meme so nobody pushes them too hard on their
"providing a public good" nature.
And on rent and landlord's, I absolutely agree. Regrettably it seems most of us are making
our commercial landlords a lot of money (before we ever get to equity returns). So many small
business owner's would loose their minds if they thought about that thoroughly. And to answer
your last question, "I'll take Tax Dodge for $500, Alex"
The way I read it way back when was that that 3% markup is on fresh produce and what not.
So the turnover is necessarily high. So their return on invested capital might get as high as
3%/day, if they're lucky.
bob, can you direct me to an article and/or site which backs your claims. I would be most
interested to read it. Perhaps my information is incorrect, but multiple Google searches have
articles in which independent grocery business analysts confirm my number.
Its not clear to me that OTS originated with Amazon. Amazon only completed the Whole Foods
purchase around Labor Day in 2017. It usually takes more than a month or two to come up with
an entire computer-based software system and roll it out company-wide.
My guess is that Whole Foods was able to conceive of this all by themselves and since it
fits into the Amazon way of doing things, they didn't stop them.
Corporate America is capable of coming up with bone-headed implementations of what could
be good ideas without the need to get Amazon, Google, Facebook, or Apple to push them to it.
Wells Fargo was able to come up with "Eight is Great" for new account generation even with
the guidance of Warren Buffet instead of Jeff Bezos.
Does this 3% margin count the rent that is extracted from manufacturers for prime real
estate in the stores? ( End caps for example).
Slotting fees are rent extraction. Customers pay for this with higher prices for the items.
Oh please. I shop at two of the major branded grocery chains, and while the staff is
generally good and competent, they exhibit none of the hyper-awareness expected under
OTS.
If you run into an employee and ask them where certain items can be found, they'll usually
know and usually direct you to an aisle that has the item. But they will generally not know
the exact location in the aisle, shelf, blah blah.
And the stupidity of corporate management is beyond belief. Due to niche marketing, items
can be found in 3, 4 or even 5 different places. (My favorite is canned beans – organic
and other high-end brands in the specialty fancy food aisle, a bunch in the
Mexican/international/Spanish aisle, run of the mill murican brands and the same Goya brands
that are in the international aisle in the general canned vegetable aisle, sale displays at
the end of any random aisle. And dont even get me started on gluten-freeness).
At stop and shop they replaced the end of the checkout counters with a carousel for
bagging, meaning a) that checkers had to bag each item as they went, b) no more baggers c)
customers couldn't help bag stuff, and, my favorite, d) making it nearly impossible to use
reusable bags. Talking to workers about it is simultaneously hilarious and enraging. "They
said it was supposed to make it easier for us, but *shrug*". Everyone understands that it's
designed to fail, slow things to a crawl, and piss customers off so they'll use the
self-check line.
So spare us the tight-ship, low margin
Whole-Foods-and-Amazon-are-just-just-learning-how-intense-the-business-really-is-and-too-bad-for-those-whiney-workers
old school macho bullshit. Yes, it's not the most profitable industry in the world. But
amazon is a whole other level of abusive monitoring of workers everywhere it goes.
Makes me wonder what's happening at Washington Post. Quick search results are that Post
has been "revived." Note that Bezos stays out of editorial process, but is heavily involved
in tech ops.
I happened to stop by the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle, NYC yesterday for some produce
and something is definitely different there.
It was around 4 pm, the store was packed, and apparently management had people out there
with brooms and dustpans sweeping up what appeared to be clean floors. Between the crowds,
the sweeping employees, and the boxes of stock on the floor it was much harder to move in
there.
After navigating the aisles, I grabbed a bottle of cold beer for my subway ride home, and
then proceeded to the in-house ramen/draft beer spot. The employees there seemed absolutely
miserable and kept wandering away to talk in hushed voices about what was clearly some sort
of work problem in the store from what I could gather. To the employees' credit however, they
treated me with courtesy and respect even though their body language and demeanor screamed
misery.
Following my mediocre Ramen and yummy draft beers, I wandered back over to the beer aisle
to exchange my now warm subway subs for a cold bottle. I was shocked to find that the entire
cold reach-in beer shelves had been re-stocked while I was in the ramen bar. After several
moments of digging through freshly stocked warm beer I found a cold one, paid, and departed
Whole Foods.
Thanks for this article, as it ties together all the oddities I observed today. It is
really sad what happened to Whole Foods, particularly that location. I used to work on the
Time Warner Center maintenance staff and frequently interacted with employees in that
particular store and they used to be a jolly bunch.
At any rate, I won't be frequenting Whole Foods any longer as I find worker abuse
nauseating.
So much paperwork that there's no time to deliver the food, hence empty shelves.
A situation instantly recognizable to anyone who ever lived in the USSR.
Funny that. It was only a coupla months ago that a big story making the rounds was that
Walmart shelves ( http://theweek.com/articles/466144/why-walmarts-shelves-are-empty
) were constantly empty. I suppose you have to be a mega-corporation to make blunders like
this but still get away with it for a few months running.
Interesting you mention Wallmart. I live in central AZ and our local Wallmarts (3 ea) for several years had empty shelves,
few workers – and they did not know where anything was, the greeters were gone,
literally 1-2 actual cashiers – they were trying to force you to the
self-checkout. Recently the stores are almost like they used to be with more workers, greeters back,
still not enough cashiers though, and better stocking.
Has anyone else noticed this. It does seem to coincide with the Amazon purchase of WF.
Correlation is not causation and all that but it might be a reaction to some extent.
I'm probably one of the few people around here that shops at Walmart and yes they have
cleaned up their act although it depends on the store. I'd say the thing people don't get
about Walmart is that they are responsive to public opinion and customer gripes even if they
supposedly treat their employees like disposable parts, easily replaced (but then they have
lots of company in that department). For example a few years ago they took the clutter out of
the aisles and did away with the craft/sewing section–trying to be more like
Target -- and then reversed all those changes because their customers hated it.
Seems to me Bezos is taking on a much bigger challenge trying to reinvent brick and mortar
than he did by innovating mail order. Here's betting he's not up to it. Perhaps his top
honchos–meditating in their new waterfall equipped Seattle biosphere–will prove
me wrong.
You didn't hear it from me, but from a friend who was a cashier at a grocery store, a
small way to fight back against self checkout is to be creative in naming your produce to get
a 95% discount
Yeah, that one was 5 year old but I chose it because it gave a bit more info in it. There
are plenty more from last year. Just go to Google and punch in the search term Wal-Mart
shelves empty and see what come back, especially Google images. This means that this problem
is not a one-off but has been a running theme for at least a four year period. Amazing.
People who shop at Whole Foods want to look at employees with that NPR vegan faux-hippy
gaze. Not a lot of difference from the evangelical gaze, imo. Some sort of self hypnosis
involved? Now that gaze will be replaced with the look of a desperate near homeless employee
all Wal-Mart shoppers have grown accustomed to ignoring, Wal-Mart can man-up with a new ad
campaign – Our Employees Don't Cry, they get food stamps.
If I were a rich man I would give everyone of these people a T-shirt which says – I
am not a robot.
I wonder if Wal-Mart will discover increasing in-store staff, as well as an upgraded store
experience, will actually improve its competitive position versus online retailers. That's
pretty much what Best Buy has to do.
Is this just an Amazon/WF issue or something larger for grocer chains? I find myself
shopping at a Meijers (big Midwest chain) superstore whilst visiting my mother and noticed
the same kind of strangeness with not just employee morale (they are clearly miserable) but
stocking issues. Items that were ALWAYS available are no longer there. I needed pasta shells
the other day. They had none. How can a super grocer NOT have pasta shells. Larger than
normal sections of shelves are bare. Pallets haphazardly placed. Meijors used to be a
somewhat pleasant and orderly experience with happy workers now approaching a WalMart
experience.
Re the NPR vegan faux-hippy gaze, The WF near me in suburban Philadelphia, has a very
upscale clientele. Once, in the produce section, they had set up a booth where a Hispanic
woman would mix guacamole using just the ingredients the customers wished, without any
extraneous chatter on her part. Wow! Your guac would be mixed by an ACTUAL MEXICAN PERSON!
Just gotta be good, eh? Conservatives might say she was happy to have such a nice job. I
thought it was downright creepy, like those catalogues where people beam as they demonstrate
expensive vacuum cleaners. Yuk.
Our Soviet style master planners hard at work. At least the Soviets had 5 year plans that
they would abandon after 5 years. How many years of failure can we tolerate? What ever happened to profit?
Not a fan of Bezos, Amazon, or their practices, but strict planogram scorecarding is not
uncommon in grocery, auto parts and similar retail orgs. The only part of that section of the
article that strikes me as out of the ordinary is the employee's reaction to it.
The framing of the article suggests this is Amazon-ian behavior. Just pointing out that I
don't believe that's accurate because the practice is commonplace in the industry.
I've got more than a few friends who have worked in grocery stores recently, and while
they had many complaints, having to know last week's best selling item or this week's sales
goals weren't among them. Just sayin' .
Thank you for highlighting Amazon's continued abuse of its employees. I'm amazed at how
many people choose to simply ignore the fate of Amazon's employees in order to receive free
shipping. My favorite people are the type that by books on late stage capitalism and
plutocracy through their Amazon prime accounts.
"I'm amazed at how many people choose to simply ignore the fate of Amazon's
employees in order to receive free shipping."
Sad but true, Chuck. My daughter, who's a total Social Justice Warrior type (speaking as a
progessive, I'm proud of her for that) and her long-time boyfriend are proud Amazon
customers. They have Amazon technobuttons on the walls of the house they bought so that all
they have to do to re-order toilet paper and kitty litter is touch the device.
(Suggesting that AMZ is a sh*t business.) A day or two later, it's delivered, for
free, because they are Primes! Daughter's BF, who luuuuuvs him some tech, revels in this
because it's so futuristic. When I suggest going to the store to buy some -- it's quicker --
or simply thinking ahead and purchasing stuff before they run out, I get the eye-roll given
to Olds who old-splain oldways. They're Jellbylically concerned about the plight of abused
North Koreans and the like. When I mentioned why I was buying their Christmas book gifts via
Barnes & Noble rather than Amazon due to its mistreatment of workers, their ears glazed
over. I'll forward this post to her, but I doubt it will get read, since it wasn't on her
Fakebook feed.
I like the cut of your jib: " to Olds who old-splain oldways."
Grampa Simpson classic – One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere – like the time I caught the
ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to
Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my
belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those
days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Give me five bees for a quarter," you'd
say.
Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was
the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you
could get was those big yellow ones
Local co-ops are a great idea but (sorry for the but) in much of the country wholesale
food distribution has been decimated or wiped out over the years due to competition from
Wal-Mart, Target, Whole Foods, the legacy grocers or Sysco (on the restaurant side).
Geographically, few areas in the US are fortunate enough to have an independent and
thriving food/produce wholesale market which helps bring down price and bring up quality to
be competitive with the vertically integrated big boys.
Well, here's Slim from drought-stricken AZ. And I'm about to rain on that co-op
parade. When I lived in Pittsburgh, I worked at a food co-op that was the lone survivor after its
main competitor went under. And we got REAL busy. We also had a bit of a management problem. Ours was a drunk who often came to work
hungover. All the better way to abuse the rest of us. After a staff revolt (yes, I took part in it), he left and took a job as manager of the
regional co-op warehouse in Columbus, Ohio. Where he treated the warehouse gals as his harem
and got one of them pregnant.
To our utter and total amazement back in Pittsburgh, he took responsibility for his son
and tried to be the best father he could. I have no idea what happened with the drinking
problem.
The manager who succeeded him was even worse. He even called himself a martinet, and he
was. After less than a year of his BS, I bailed out of the co-op and got a sit-down job in an
office. Yeah, there was another lousy boss there, and I've talked about her on other
threads.
But there was further fun and merriment back at the co-op. I was still friendly with the
people who worked there, and guess what? Another staff revolt! They ran Mr. Martinet outta
there too! Go staff! Mr. Martinet went to a yuppie grocery store in North Carolina. From there, he went on to
become one of the original senior executives in Whole Foods.
Bummer about the food co-op, Slim. Some of us "in the movement" are trying to work out how
to provide accountability for guys like the drunk manager you mention, so that they don't end
up doing like he did, and just sliding around from one co-op to another. Open to
suggestions
Unfortunately, the co-op name doesn't necessarily imply that everything is groovy for the
workers. Hence, REI workers in Seattle trying to unionize, and why UFCW has had such success
in organizing every single food co-op in Minneapolis-St. Paul (and there are quite a few).
The history of consumer co-ops seems pretty clear – workers in them need union
representation just as much as workers in regular businesses.
For those who need examples, there is an excellent co-op in Ocean Beach, San Diego. Its
customer/members are devoutly loyal. By design, each is small and adapted to its local
culture and food ecosystem. Michael Pollan is a good resource for ideas on this topic and on
real food in general.
American businesses might prefer home runs, but singles and bunts are more common and
sustainable. Besides, co-ops are harder to buy up or put out of business in the manner
reputed to be practiced by, say, some retail coffee companies.
Except Jeff Bezos has sold the Ayn Rand way of life to the 'progressive' intelligensia who
would happily rant over John Galt if you gave them your ear and a glass of Bordeaux.
Not just at Amazon, but I'm seeing an anecdotal trend of "get people to quit within a year
or two of starting". Not just with ridiculous requests from above, but even with good ol'
passive-aggressiveness.
I can't remember if this article was tipped off to me by NC but here it is anyway: https://www.ft.com/content/356ea48c-e6cf-11e6-967b-c88452263daf
(paywall, or websearch for "how employers manage out unwanted staff")
Don't you all get it? First they took away their freedom to form unions with others. Now
they want to take away your freedom to form a union with you own bodies actions. This will crush the idea of sabotage and work slowdowns as an expression of labor
power.
Waste is inherent to selling fresh food. Trimmings, dry, damaged meats, fish, fruits,
vegetables, breads, prepared foods. That's especially true of anything organic and not
engineered to be harder, more colorful, durable and less tasty than their natural analogs.
Whole Paycheck's intended customers – really, most shoppers anywhere – do not
want to buy adulterated, processed versions of eggs, beakless turkeys, caged hens, and
drugged industrially raised cows and pigs.
Fresh food, especially organic, does not last as long as industrial bread, fruits and
vegetables or highly sugared packaged foods. It is the antithesis of such foods. The reason
chicken soup made the way it was c.1940 is tastier and nutritionally better than soup made
from a caged, medicated, neurotic fowl today is not great Grandma's recipe: it's the
chicken.
Local sourcing, environmentally safe, animal friendly methods of raising require a wider
supplier net. What Michael Pollan would call real food costs more. It should. But real food
and real people are ripe for the cruel "more efficient" methods of production, distribution
and sale that seem part of Jeff Bezos's DNA. Besides, what he really wants is probably the
data flow. WF is simply a way to get it.
Typical uber-"capitalist" idiocy -- seen this happen in a lot of different industries over
the years (esp techs):
CEO: "Our product sucks. We've grown too big, lost our innovative edge, we need to get
back to our roots!"
Toady: "Uh, tried that already, boss. No can do. Too much bureaucracy now."
CEO: "Shit! Any ideas?"
Toady: "Actually, yes! We can buy out and take over one of the smaller competitors that's
eating our lunch now, and steal their latest ideas and projects."
CEO: "Brilliant! Make it so!"
fast forward 1-2 years
CEO: "How's that takeover working out?"
Toady: "Well, it's taken a while, but we've fully integrated the company in with ours --
all of our corporate policies and procedures etc etc are in place there now."
CEO: "Excellent!"
fast forward 1-2 more years .
CEO: "Our product sucks! What happened to all those great ideas coming from that company
we took over?"
Toady: "Well, most everyone working there when we bought it out are gone now. The founders
and senior management cashed out the takeover premium and bailed immediately, and everybody
else got frustrated with our corporate style and policies and eventually quit. Our people
took over their projects, and promptly fucked them up beyond all belief. Instead of a cash
cow, we got a dead cow on our hands now."
CEO: "Shit! Any ideas?"
Toady: "Yeah. We can either spin it off to the public again or just shut the whole fucking
thing down and take a huge earnings write-off."
CEO: "Hmmm,..decisions, decisions . By the way, are there any other small competitors out
there that we can buy out to rejuvenate our stale product line, toady?
Amazon corporate sounds like a sweatshop. Their treatment of warehouse staff is nothing
short of an abomination.
But I can't help feeling that some of the employee comments at WholeFoods are less about bad
management and work conditions and more about Millenials and a lack of ability handle
criticism and work pressure. (The average age of a Whole Food employee at my store is easily
28yo.)
To call working on an inventory system "punitive". It's called business, and yes, it is
difficult and takes a lot of effort. Punitive, though. To use an inventory system. Sorry. Not
buying the whole story.
If it's common for people to actually cry at work, and to have nightmares, with massive
turnover, decreasing quality of service, product, and cleanliness blaming millennials is an
inadequate response. Apparently Amazon wants to run Whole Foods with inadequate staff, fails
to reward good good work, unfailingly punish not only poor work, but honest mistakes, and
makes no allowance within the system for reality. If you did animal training this way, you
would see the same results, I promise. The management "techniques" described will destroy any
company, or at least reduce productivity massively.
You are straw manning the post and the underlying article. The staff is grilled very
frequently and graded, and much of what they are graded on isn't relevant to customer
service. The shelves are supposed to be "leveled" all day, which is a ridiculous standard.
The testing and insane shelf appearance standards are not normal to the industry and minor
deviations are the basis for firing.
I have yet to met a single "Millennial" that fits that ridiculous stereotype – and I
know a lot of people in that age bracket even though I was born in 1970. The very few who
even seem to have tendencies in those directions seem more influenced by being from wealthy
families than by their year of birth and I can think of at least as many Boomers and Gen
X'ers that are like that too.
When I think of the high-school age or university age jobs the people I grew up with had
and compare them to the jobs I've seen my "Millennial" friends doing the younger people have
had it substantially worse over all.
A college friend of my mother went on to run the Secret Service detail for the White
House. Very demanding position, but one that Mom's friend was quite proud of.
Lordy, Yves, please put a warning sign on that video! It's still breakfast time here in
Seattle, and I clicked on it. No, it didn't offend my 'sensibilities.' But it encapsulated
all the frustration and anger and helplessness I feel against our system. As well as being a
powerful metaphor for 'late stage capitalism.'
Share your sentiments, Eclair. Having breakfast? The observations about employee abuse
also pair well with a video of a 10 minute bike ride through the homeless encampments along
the Santa Ana River near Angels Stadium and Disneyland in Anaheim: https://mobile.twitter.com/Dalrymple/status/953739188050059265
Whole Foods employees still outnumber these Amazon creatures checking up on them, I
presume. If the WF workers and others at Amazon are so universally tormented and humiliated,
shouldn't they be taking some kind of collective action?
Twice during WWII German officers tried to get rid of Hitler. I guess American workers
don't measure up to even that standard.
I suspect Jeff Bezos would view unions at WF or Amazon the way Reagan viewed unionized Air
Traffic Controllers. Or Wal-Mart, which has abandoned markets whose employment laws provide
for unions or simply too many protections for employees.
Bezos is extracting resources from his employees with the same thought and in the same
manner that early California hard rock miners used massive water hoses (monitors) to
liquidate mountains in search for a few gold nuggets. (h/t Gray Brechin)
Which is why I Q-U-I-T the food co-op job mentioned above. Did the same in that office
job, which was my second-to-last full-time job.
Have I ever had a good job? Yup. Working in a hot, dark, and greasy bike shop. Place
closed in 2000 and I still miss the camaraderie with my fellow mechanics -- and the pride of
accomplishment that came with fixing the customers' bikes.
When arguing with my boss about crap we were required to do, he finally got frustrated and
told me "Shit flows downhill", "DEAL WITH IT!". To which my response was "Yep, right onto the
customer!"
It made him so angry I was lucky I wasn't fired on the spot, though in hindsight it would
have been a blessing. Looks like nothing has changed 30 years later.
I think it's gotten worse as the whole retail industry specifically and perhaps most
industries gradually, have had the slowly MBA'd management reorganized, streamlined,
outsourced and efficiencied it into a monetized Hades.
I was lucky to work in a couple of well run, or at competently run, businesses. So I know
one can be profitable without brutalizing people. It's depressing to see what has
happened.
Wonder what would happen if a customer started handing out union brochures to Whole Foods
employees in one of their stores. What are they going to do? Kick you, a customer, out of the
store?
They probably would. It's private space. But it would make for good news stories. You
would need to actually shop in fact handing them out to all the cashiers when you are
checking out would be the best move, since you'd be out the store before management would
catch on.
As the articles in the Business Insider series explicitly point out, this hated new system
preceded the acquisition by Amazon.
Amazon is terrible. The way Whole Foods is now treating its workers is terrible. But
Amazon simply did not develop or implement the policies at Whole Foods that this article is
ascribing to it.
Good for your saboteurs! Amazon is trying to stop shrinkage but they'll lose more through
deliberately missed scans. Oh, and a freezer door left open or temperature mysteriously reset
would wreak even more havoc.
I was in a Whole Foods last night, where I shop a few times per month, here in central
California. Lots of unfamiliar faces working there. Produce section definitely looking worse
than usual -- empty shelves, low quality items. At checkout, the cashier was a young woman
I'd never seen before, who looked tired and dispirited. I asked how she was doing that
evening. Smirking wearily, she said, "Hangin' in there " (Which is about how I feel these
days, too.) When it came time to pay, it was the first time in my life that the
total at Whole Foods was less than I was expecting. Wow, I thought, I didn't think
Amazon changed the prices that much? After I got home and looked at the receipt, I realized
why -- she hadn't charged me for all the items! Bless her.
I don't believe Amazon and Whole Foods were ever a good match for each other, and with
unhappy employees and other problems, I expect this particular branch of WF to be gone in a
few years. And I really couldn't care less. There are other good places to shop.
This is a problem because, at 4.1 percent last month, U.S. unemployment is at the lowest
level since 2000 and companies from Dallas to Denver are struggling to find the right
workers. In some cases this is constraining growth, the Federal Reserve
reported last week.
Corporate America's search for an exact match is "the number-one problem with hiring in
our country," said Daniel Morgan, a recruiter in Birmingham, Alabama, who owns an Express
Employment Professionals franchise. "Most companies get caught up on precise experience to a
specific job," he said, adding: "Companies fail to see a person for their abilities and
transferable skills."
U.S. employers got used to abundant and cheap labor following the 2007-2009 recession.
Unemployment peaked at 10 percent in October 2009, and didn't return to the lows of the
previous business cycle until last year. Firms still remain reluctant to boost pay or train
employees with less-than-perfect credentials, though recruiters say that may have to change
amid a jobless rate that's set to dip further.
The way the article is cut off with the wage gains chart makes it seem that the article is
on the Dean Baker theme of "pay higher wages and they will come," in which he argues that
there is no shortage because you can hire workers away from your competitor, thereby merely
moving the deficit from one place to another without eliminating it and unintentionally
suggesting that there is actually is a shortage after all.
Immediately after that chart, however, the article segues into a pretty intelligent
discussion of employers learning to ascertain "how can your experience be used in my
application," making it unclear why the wage chart is even there.
The "lack of trained workers" complaint has long annoyed me, with its implication that it
is the public sector's responsibility to train workers for the private sector. Why? If a
company needs welders, why should that company not train its own welders?
J.Goodwin , January 29, 2018 11:39 am
Last week we were reviewing a job description we were preparing for a role in Canada. It
was basically a super senior description, they wanted everything, specific experience, higher
education, what amounts to a black belt project management certification but also accounting
and finance background.
At the bottom it says 5 years experience.
I almost fell off my chair. That's an indicator of the pay band they were trying to fill
at (let's say 3, and the description was written like a 10-15 years 6).
I tried to explain it to the person who wrote it and I said hey if we put this out there,
we will get no hits. There is no one with this experience who will take what you are
offering. I'm afraid we're going to end up with another home country expat instead. They're
often not up the same standard you could get with a local if you reasonably scoped the job
and gave a fair offer.
I think companies have forgotten how to compete for employees, and the recruiters are
completely out of touch. Or maybe they are aware of the conditions and HR just won't sign on
to fair value.
Mona Williams , January 29, 2018 1:09 pm
Before I retired 12 years ago, on-the-job training was much more common. Borders Books
(remember them?) trained me for a week with pay for just a temporary Christmas-season job.
Employers have gotten spoiled, and I hope they will figure this out. Some of the training
programs I hear about just make me sigh. Nobody can afford to be trained while not being
paid.
axt113 , January 29, 2018 1:26 pm
My Wife works as a junior recruiter, the problem she says is with the employers, they want
a particular set of traits, and if there is even a slight deviation they balk
She says that one recent employer she worked with wanted so many particulars for not
enough pay that even well experienced and well educated candidates she could find were either
unwilling to accept the offer, or were missing one or two traits that made them unacceptable
to the company.
rps , January 29, 2018 3:58 pm
This is exciting news for many of us who've been waiting for the pendulum to swing in
favor of potential employees after a decade of reading employers help wanted Santa wish list
criteria for a minimum wage job of 40+ hours. I'd argue the unemployment rate is not 4.1%;
rather, I know of many intelligent/educated/experienced versatile people who've been cut out
of the job market and/or chose not to work for breadcrumbs.
HR's 6 second resume review rule of potential candidates was a massive failure by
eliminating candidates whose skills, experience and critical thinking abilities could've
cultivated innovation across many disciplines. Instead companies looked for drone replacement
at slave wages. HR's narrow candidate searches often focused on resume typos or perceived
grammatical errors (highly unlikely HR recruiters have an English Ph.D), thus trashing the
resume. Perhaps, HR will be refitted with critical thinking people who see a candidate's
potential beyond the forgotten comma or period.
"... The central fact of US political economy, the source of our exceptionalism, is that lower-income whites vote for politicians who redistribute income upward and weaken the safety net because they think the welfare state is for nonwhites. ..."
"... And by voting against its own interests, the white working class isn't just making itself poorer, it's literally killing itself. ..."
"... With some slight variations, Krugman was essentially re-stating the thesis of my 2004 book, What's the Matter With Kansas?, in which I declared on the very first page that working people "getting their fundamental interests wrong" by voting for conservatives was "the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests". ..."
On New Year's Day, the economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman issued a series of
tweets in which he proclaimed as follows:
The central fact of US political economy, the source of our exceptionalism, is that lower-income whites vote for politicians
who redistribute income upward and weaken the safety net because they think the welfare state is for nonwhites.
and then, a few minutes later:
And by voting against its own interests, the white working class isn't just making itself poorer, it's literally killing itself.
Was I psyched to see this! With some slight variations, Krugman was essentially re-stating the thesis of my 2004 book, What's
the Matter With Kansas?, in which I declared on the very first page that working people "getting their fundamental interests wrong"
by voting for conservatives was "the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests".
... ... ...
Let me be more explicit. We have just come through an election in which underestimating working-class conservatism in northern
states proved catastrophic for Democrats. Did the pundits' repeated insistence that white working-class voters in the north were
reliable Democrats play any part in this underestimation? Did the message Krugman and his colleagues hammered home for years help
to distract their followers from the basic strategy of Trump_vs_deep_state?
I ask because getting that point wrong was kind of a big deal in 2016. It was a blunder from which it will take the Democratic
party years to recover. And we need to get to the bottom of it.
"... By Jon Rynn, the author of Manufacturing Green Prosperity: The power to rebuild the American Middle Class, and many other writings available at JonRynn.com . His twitter handle is @JonathanRynn. Originally published at Economic Reconstruction ..."
"... *This article is meant as a wide-ranging, 'high-altitude' look at Melman's work, not as an exhaustive survey. Please see SeymourMelman.com for more of Melman's work, as well as his many books and articles. ..."
"... perhaps the most glaring example being the Soviet Union ..."
"... Somehow he also got an audience with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as the Vietnam War heated up. Melman blamed McNamara, formerly head of Ford Motor Company, for rationalizing and systematizing the military industrial complex. After McNamara got through with it, the Department of Defense had turned into the headquarters of the military industrial complex, with the contractors as virtual divisions of the Pentagon. Melman was concerned that the military industrial complex was siphoning off much of the best and the brightest engineers and scientists, and that there was a surfeit of engineering talent available for civilian firms. "Where are the engineers?! Where are the engineers?!" Melman remembers McNamara screaming at him. It is a question we can continue to ask to this day. ..."
Yves here. Get a cup of coffee. This is a meaty and important
post.
While I agree overwhelmingly with the main points, I have a few quibbles. One is that Rynn
attributes the dollar's role as reserve currency to oil being denominated in dollars. As we've
discussed, the requirements of being a reserve currency is running persistent trade deficits so
that there is a lot of the reserve currency in foreign hands so it is tradable. The reason
foreigners are so happy to have the US run trade deficits is that pretty much everyone but us
runs mercantilist trade policies. The US is effectively exporting jobs to these countries. They
can have a higher savings rate and our exporting jobs alleviates the employment cost. What's
not to like from their perspective?
By Jon Rynn, the author of Manufacturing Green Prosperity: The power to rebuild the
American Middle Class, and many other writings available at JonRynn.com . His twitter handle is @JonathanRynn. Originally
published at Economic
Reconstruction
Seymour Melman was one of the most important political economists and peace activists of the
20th century. He would have been 100 years old on December 30, 2017 (he died in 2004),
therefore this is a good time to consider his legacy, and more importantly from his point of
view, to think about how his writings can help us achieve a more just world.
Melman always had a two-track intellectual focus, writing about both the military and the
economy. The two concepts were intertwined in his books about the deleterious economic effects
of military production, for instance, in 'Pentagon Capitalism', 'The Permanent War Economy',
and 'Profits without Production'. He sought to decrease military spending, not just because
American wars after World War II were unjust, but also because that spending constituted missed
opportunities to improve the public sphere of life, and even more fundamentally, because
military spending destroyed the core competence in manufacturing that Melman saw as the basis
of economic life.
This integration of peace activism and economics crystallized after the 1950s. In the 1950s,
Melman was involved with what became known as the 'ban the bomb' movement. There was a great
deal of concern at the time that nuclear war of any sort could lead to the destruction of most
if not all mankind, and it took quite a bit of activist effort to eventually lead to, for
instance, a ban on testing nuclear weapons overground. Melman and others, such as another
political economist born in 1917, Barry Commoner, argued that trying to survive a nuclear
strike in fallout shelters and the like was madness, and that the aftereffects of nuclear war
would make affected areas unlivable. Melman made the term 'overkill' popular, as a reference to
the idea that you only need a small number of nuclear weapons to wipe out your enemy, and any
more than that is a complete waste of money. Melman, and others such as Marcus Raskin, founder
of the Institute for Policy Studies, helped create a movement for global nuclear
disarmament.
At the same time that Melman was addressing the issue of nuclear war, academically Melman
was pursuing a production-centered understanding of the economy, as opposed to the
exchange-centered approach of mainstream economics that was then beginning to dominate
economics departments. As a professor of industrial engineering at Columbia University from
1948 on, his bread-and-butter expertise concerned how to increase productivity on the factory
floor. While he was best known for critiquing the military economy, his critiques were based on
his intimate knowledge of how things are produced.
Production and Worker Centered Economics
To understand his critique of the role of the military in the economy, therefore, it is
critical to understand his understanding of political economy. Much of his framework can be
summed up thus: the more decision-making power is given to factory workers, the better the
factory and the economy performs. In addition, the more the engineers and managers of
industrial firms are competent to organize production, the better the economy of the
country-as-a-whole performs. Military production and financial domination interfere with both
processes, and divert resources from the infrastructure, another critical part of the
production economy.
However, before we can understand why he came to these conclusions, we need to attempt an
even more fundamental question, which when answered will make the other hypotheses easier to
explore: how does an economy work? What creates economic growth? You may be thinking 'that's
what economic departments are there to explain', or, 'I took some economics courses, so I know
the answer to that question'. From Melman's perspective, mainstream economics cannot adequately
answer these questions. Actually, from my perspective as well, since I spent 20 years working
closely with Melman, and wrote a dissertation, book, and articles based on his world view.
The problem revolves around the concept of production. Usually, the concept of production
boils down to manufacturing, or 'industrial production', which also involves things like
construction and electricity generation. The epochal ideological problem, if you will, as far
as I have been able to figure it out, is this: for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the
spectacular increases in growth and standards of living that manufacturing and other industry
provided were glaringly obvious to most people, and in particular to intellectuals and urban
folk. Most people lived through big technological transformations, for instance, to an
electrical society or to one using trains, then cars, then planes . The role of manufacturing
and other industry was obvious -- maybe a little too obvious. Economics grew, not to explain
this technological explosion, but mainly to explain the market mechanisms that enveloped this
system of productive machinery.
It was into this industrial environment that people like Seymour Melman, Barry Commoner,
John Kenneth Galbraith, John Maynard Keynes, and other, what I would call,
'production-oriented' economists grew up. Indeed, Karl Marx and prewar Marxists also
experienced manufacturing transformations. What none of them developed, including Melman, was
an explicit argument or framework that manufacturing is the foundation of a wealthy economy. It
was obvious. For instance, Melman simply wrote in several books that 'In order to survive, a
society must produce'. True enough, but in the current society in which the urban population,
and professionals and intellectuals as a whole, have as much exposure to manufacturing as they
have to other exotic and remote ecosystems, this doesn't explain much. However, Melman's
writings offer a set of principles that can help us grasp the true nature of the political
economy.
Let's actually start all the way at the beginning. Humans dominate the planet because we
have hands and a brain that cooperatively are able to use tools to make other tools that then
make things that we want. This was always our advantage over other animals, and has allowed us
to create our own environments (houses and infrastructure in cities, for example), instead of
going along with whatever the ecosystem happened to provide.
I said that we make tools that are used to make other tools, not that we simply make tools.
The key to human success is ability to use a set of tools together, as a system, and to use one
set of tools to make another set. So for instance in the modern economy, there are tools called
machine tools that make all kinds of metal parts that are then used to make the machinery that
we see in factories, and more machine tools, and which eventually make the goods that we use
and the services that use those goods.
What we make depends critically, then, on what kinds of tools and machinery we use to make
them. The production machinery may be out of sight, but without it we won't have anything we
need. For instance, smart phones would not be possible without all kinds of very sophisticated
machinery that makes the small parts that go into the phone. And those machines were made using
other machines, in conjunction with workers. So let us explore a list of ten principles that we
may glean from Melman's writings.
Melman's Principles of Political Economy
The goods we use and their final price depend on what kind of tools/machinery are
available to make them. Advances in tool/machine making is basically what drives economic
growth -- you don't get electricity in your society because the market is set free, you get
electricity because the machinery is available to generate electricity, and the tools/machines
are available to make the machinery that generates the electricity. Melman was a world-leading
expert in the production of machine tools.
In order to put this machinery together, and to use the machinery in the best way
possible, engineers and managers have to have 'the competence to organize production', as Melman put it. This is the basic stuff of industrial engineering -- how do you design a
factory, or any other workplace, so that you get the most output with the least input. If you
do this better than other companies, then you can charge less for your product, and presumably
get a bigger market share and make more profit. If the country as a whole is doing is
organizing work competently, then it will do better than other countries, economically.
In order to maximize the usability of this critical production machinery, you need to
maximize the 'productivity of capital', that is, you need to keep the machinery running
(maximizing 'uptime'). If you have a car factory and the assembly line keeps breaking down, you
will get less output in a particular period of time, just as most people can't be productive
now if particular websites are 'down'. This 'uptime' is crucial to a well-functioning factory
and indeed an economy. One of the reasons that the Soviet Union collapsed, according to Melman's analysis, is that the Soviets were so focused on making military equipment that they
let their industrial machinery literally fall apart, and so they were experiencing a production
crisis when Gorbachev entered the scene and decided he needed to shake things up.
The more decision-making power you give workers on the shop floor, the better the
machinery will perform, that is, you will maximize the productivity of capital, because
well-trained and well-motivated workers will be able to prevent problems in the machinery from
happening in the first place, and will react quickly if problems arise (for instance, on the
famous Toyota assembly line, any worker can stop all production if they see a problem) . When
workers are 'dumbed-down' and have no say, machinery breaks down and the entire production
process -- the organization of work -- in not as efficient as it could be.
An economic 'virtuous cycle' emerges if you pay workers more, because competent managers
will compensate for higher wages by using more and better machinery, and by improving the way
work is organized, which will then lead to higher profits, which can lead to higher wages,
leading to better machinery/organization of work, and so on. Indeed, Melman even argued that if
you have strong unions, management will be forced to figure out more clever ways of organizing
work than just trying to decrease wages.
When wages go up faster than the price of the machinery that is being produced by
workers, then this 'virtuous cycle' is reinforced. Melman followed this ratio in various
countries starting in the 1950s. For instance, in his last published book 'After Capitalism' he
noted that the Japanese and Germans were increasing wages at a higher rate than the increase in
their machinery prices, and their machinery industries were world-leading and their workers
made more than their American counterparts. In America, on the other hand, machinery prices
were going up faster than wages. So cutting or stagnating wages reverses the 'virtuous cycle'
of increasing wages leading to better machinery and organization of work. This dynamic was one
of the themes of Melman's first book, 'Dynamic Factors in Industrial Productivity'.
A well-functioning management and concomitant organization of work is the basis of a
thriving middle class, particularly if unions are strong, that is, workers have decision-making
power in the firm. Basically, by generating more wealth, the society becomes richer, but if you
generate more wealth by at the same time increasing wages, you not only keep the virtuous cycle
of better productivity going, you obviously have a richer working class.
Management, instead of contributing to a country's economic wealth by competently
organizing production -- including giving workers more decision-making power -- usually instead
divert resources to their own 'administrative overhead', as Melman put it in his dissertation
in 1948. He continued to track this society-wide diversion of resources from production to
administration until his last book, and found that the ratio of administrative overhead to
production continued to increase (and was even worse in the Soviet Union).
Melman agreed with my hypothesis that in order to thrive, a manufacturing sector needs to
encompass a full suite of industries. A region's economy will thrive most if all the parts of
the manufacturing economy are present in some form. In other words, national manufacturing
specialization does not work. You can't be the best in making cars if someone else is making
the machine tools that you use to make the cars, or if your country isn't making its own steel.
There are relationships of positive reinforcement that occur among the various manufacturing
industries. The economy is an ecosystem (a concept Melman's mentor used and I developed further
in my writings), the important point being that you can't rip various parts of the regional
manufacturing ecosystem apart, sending them willy nilly to other countries, and expect the
surviving industries to thrive. This goes against the deification of David Ricardo and his
theory of comparative advantage in economics, which is used to justify globalization and many
trade treaties which have helped to devastate American manufacturing.
Tenth and finally for our purposes here, the United States has perhaps already reached a
'point of no return' where the managerial class has become so incompetent that the only way
they understand to increase profits is to decrease labor costs by moving factories overseas.
Not only does this rob the US of its production base, it decreases global growth by
discouraging the use of better machinery and organization of work inside the factory. The
virtuous cycle is broken. Part of the reason companies offshore factories is because they want
to break the power of unions. Melman stressed that management pursues greater power as much as
or more than they pursue greater profits -- and unions decrease managerial power. He called
this dynamic 'power extension', which he considered more important than simply the drive for
profits.
Consequences of Melman's Principles
If we apply these principles broadly, we can see that they collectively offer an alternative
to mainstream economics. In the worldview of most economists, growth magically appears if you
decrease government intervention. In the real world, economic growth appears if you create
better machinery, organize work better, and pay your workers more. In the mainstream economics
view, military production is just like anything else, in fact, any production or economic
activity is just as important as any other, whether it's providing for tourists, creating
machine tools, or making a tank. In the real world, there is a hierarchy of importance of
economic activity, and manufacturing, and in particular manufacturing machinery, is at the top
of that hierarchy. In the world of the economist, lower wages is equivalent to improving
machinery, as long as the short-term profit is the same; in the real world, cutting wages leads
to lower productivity which leads to a poorer country overall. In the view of economists,
machinery is viewed as a replacement for workers; as I hope these principles have illustrated,
machinery actually makes worker participation and decision-maker power more important, and in a
well-functioning economy, machinery innovation brings better wages and more jobs.
Since Melman was generally at least a decade or two ahead of his time, we may need to dwell
a bit on the following conundrum: in the economists' world, automation means less work, which
means less people are needed to work in an economy. In the real world, automation has been
going on since the start of the Industrial Revolution, but because of the actions of the
managerial class to outsource production and the attendant increase in inequality, in the last
few decades the standard of living of the working/middle class has stagnated or even
declined.
There has been quite a bit of discussion about automation and inequality recently. Bernie
Sanders made the problem of inequality the basis of an almost-successful run for the
Presidency, and Thomas Piketty wrote a very well reviewed book about inequality. On the other
hand, on the right (and neoliberal center), it has become an article of faith that automation
will wreak havoc on the concept of work as we have known it, and maybe a 'basic income' policy
will become necessary so that the hordes of unemployed at least can survive without work.
The problem with all of these ideas about automation, and in fact a problem with the
progressive agenda as a whole (not to mention the conservative one), is that they ignore
'production', or what I have described as Melman's principles of production (Melman would often
use the shorthand of 'they don't understand production' to dismiss someone's argument, a
problem I hope to alleviate here). If production is the central way that a society creates
wealth, and if that function is removed from an economy, then clearly you are going to have a
lot less wealth. If one quarter of the working population in the 1960s was in manufacturing and
one tenth is now, and the lost employment went into low-paying services while the income went
into finance, then no wonder there has been an increase in inequality. The part of the economy
that was producing material wealth, and that supported the backbone of the middle class, was
ripped out and thrown away. The society became poorer, and with it most of its people, except
the top 1%. (see
http://www.globalteachin.com/ for a further explanation)
The astute reader might remember his or her intellectual betters explaining that we are now
in a 'post-industrial' society -- a phrase that drove Melman crazy -- because most people work
in the service economy. Manufacturing has been 'solved', according to this line of thinking,
and is 'less advanced', so it naturally migrates to 'less advanced' countries like China --
ignoring the fact that more advanced countries like Germany and Japan have wealthier middle
classes than we do because they have much larger manufacturing sectors. But let's look at the
service economy a bit closer.
Services are what you do with goods that are manufactured, for the most part. For instance,
the retail and wholesale service sectors retail and wholesale goods. Marketers are generally
marketing goods. Airlines run a service based on the use of machinery (jets), and computers
are, well, machines. The health industry is very dependent on machinery and goods like drugs,
and the restaurant business can actually be considered a kind of manufacturing facility. The
real estate industry is based on the construction industry, which uses machinery and goods
produced in the manufacturing sector. Just about wherever you look, services mean using
goods.
If services are the act of using goods, then it should be clear that a big country can't pay
for most of its imported goods by exchanging them for services -- there simply aren't enough
exportable services to exchange for all the goods. Any other country besides the US would have
had a rude awakening of a decline in their currency had they had the level of trade deficits
the US has, that is, the amount of goods and services that are imported vs. the amount
exported. The US survives because other countries use the dollar as a medium of exchange and
need dollars to buy oil. But this state of affairs will not last forever.
Manufacturing has always contributed the bulk of productivity growth in an economy. In fact,
manufacturing productivity increases at about 3%, year after year, at least for the last 100
years. Technological improvements are made to machinery and the organization of work, year
after year. The same does not happen in services, generally, because services require human
intervention. Ah, but pundits will proclaim that artificial intelligence will replace much
human service work. The problem is that the statistics on productivity don't show it, that is,
the same amount of labor is still needed for the same amount of work, in almost all service
industries. But there is 'technological unemployment' as machines take over some jobs, as they
have been doing for almost two centuries, and often those people, unlike other decades, have
not been able to find new work. What went wrong?
The Rise and Decline of the Virtuous Cycle
This is what happened in the two decades certainly after World War II, when about the same
level of growth of automation (and mechanization) was occurring then as now: when a factory
could output more goods with the same work force (because the machinery was better or the
organization of work was improved), then the manager could offer the good for a lower price, or
he could offer a better product for the same price (common in the electronics industry). By
offering the good at a lower price or offering a better product at the same price, consumers
would want more, that is, demand would go up. In order to meet the higher demand, the manager
would actually hire more workers. In addition, some other workers would be employed in the
industries making the automation machinery. So when consumers have enough disposable income to
take advantage of advances in technology, automation actually leads to more employment, not
less. The history of industrial growth between the end of the Civil War and the 1960s are a
testament to this continually occurring (interrupted occasionally by terrible depressions).
This is the process Melman advances in his first book in the 1950s, "Dynamic Factors in
Industrial Productivity". This process breaks down when consumers are not being given their
fair share of the national income. That is, as more and more of the wealth of what is being
generated by the economy winds up with the very rich, there is less and less for the rest of
the society to spend on ever-increasing opportunities to buy stuff. Thus we have the phenomenon
of all kinds of ways for your self-respecting highly-paid professional to spend money,
including fancy goods, food, and housing, while the vast majority of the population is worried
about making it to the end of the month and can't take advantage of cheaper or better goods --
and therefore, automation now leads to less employment, instead of more employment.
John Maynard Keynes basically laid out this problem in the 1930s. I called Keynes
'production-centered' because his logic assumed that most economic activity occurred in
factories, as did most pre-WWII economists. But he also saw that warping income distribution
would lead to lower levels of production. That is, the economy produces a certain amount of
wealth, and it needs most people to have enough money in order to buy that produced wealth.
When much of that wealth winds up with the very rich, the very rich don't spend that wealth on
the produced wealth of the economy. Some goods go unbought, or what is the same thing, are
never produced in the first place, and therefore, less people are needed to produce that
wealth. Eventually, Keynes argued, the economy spins out of control and works its way into a
depression, like the Great Depression. Only the government can kick start the economy, by
supplying the demand that was sucked out by the very rich.
Although Melman did not explicitly use Keynes' formulations, he studied Keynes carefully and
Keynes' ideas inform Melman's ideas. Melman also was enamored about another theory as to causes
of depressions, one that has been mostly ignored, promulgated by the economist Leonard Ayres in
a tract called 'The chief cause of this and other depressions', written in 1935. Briefly, Ayres
argued that when the growth of consumer goods slows, then managers stop buying new factory
machinery. When they stop buying factory machinery, the factory machinery managers start laying
off factory machinery workers. When that happens, demand for all goods lessens because now less
people are employed, consumer goods managers lay off more workers, and the economy goes into a
death spiral. Since the 1960s the US economy has many fewer machinery jobs than it used to, the
US doesn't even have much of the demand from those job holders that it used to have, and the
economy becomes more brittle. But the effect Ayres writes about has a similar effect to the one
Keynes describes: there is not enough demand for all the goods people are employed to produce,
and the economy teeters toward depression.
As the rich get richer and the middle class and poor get poorer, the society-wide benefits
of productivity increase -- automation -- break down, and actually make things worse. In an
economy like the US that now imports much of its factory machinery, automation doesn't even
create many new jobs in the US, like it used to. However there is an additional problem that
Keynes could not have foreseen, that is, the decreasing competence of the American managerial
class to produce, partly because of the effects of military production. Military production
leads to a management that is not trained to produce for the civilian market, that is, it
doesn't know how to increase the quality of goods or decrease the price by improving machinery
or the organization of work, it only knows how to increase profits, often by making goods more
expensive and less reliable. Since profits are assured, much of the manufacturing sector
gravitate toward military production. The extreme case of this was the Soviet Union, whose
manufacturing prowess was almost completely destroyed by the time of its collapse.
So the problem, contra much of progressive thinking, is not simply the lack of demand or the
inequality of wealth (which leads to lack of demand). The problem in the US has gotten to the
point where supply is a problem, that is, American management doesn't know how to compete
globally. Whether the need is for industrial machinery, which mostly now comes from places like
Germany or Japan, or the demand is for mass produced consumer goods, where China currently
excels, the US is being squeezed from both the high and low quality sides, because management
has given up its historic function of organizing work and creating better machinery.
The Role of the Military Industrial Complex
For much of the 1960s and 1970s, Melman laid the most blame for the deterioration of
American manufacturing competence at the feet of the military industrial complex. His arguments
became an important part of the arsenal of progressive forces in their attempt to reign in the
military and the military industrial complex. The military did not harm the economy solely
through a creeping incompetence in the economy, however. The military also wasted a huge amount
of resources in their bloated budgets. Taking the cue from Eisenhower's famous 'Iron of Cross'
speech, in which he lamented all of the schools, roads, and other infrastructure that could be
built with the money spent on arms, Melman widely published charts and articles on the
equivalence between, say, the cost of a bomber and how many schools could be built instead.
Seconding John Kenneth Galbraith's concern about 'private opulence and public squalor', Melman
wrote the books 'Peace Race' and 'Our Depleted Society' in the first half of the 1960s in an
effort to alert the public to the fact that America had enduring social and infrastructural
problems that needed much more resources, while at the same time the monies were being wasted
on useless military equipment that was often making the US less secure. When Martin Luther King
and other civil rights leaders talked to LBJ about the problems of the cities, they brought
Melman with them to explain the spreading deterioration of urban public works.
Somehow he also got an audience with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as the Vietnam War
heated up. Melman blamed McNamara, formerly head of Ford Motor Company, for rationalizing and
systematizing the military industrial complex. After McNamara got through with it, the
Department of Defense had turned into the headquarters of the military industrial complex, with
the contractors as virtual divisions of the Pentagon. Melman was concerned that the military
industrial complex was siphoning off much of the best and the brightest engineers and
scientists, and that there was a surfeit of engineering talent available for civilian firms.
"Where are the engineers?! Where are the engineers?!" Melman remembers McNamara screaming at
him. It is a question we can continue to ask to this day.
The frustration and suffering caused by the Vietnam War buildup made a bad situation worse
for the economic fortunes of the country. Martin Luther King and other progressives were
furious that money was being taken from worthwhile domestic programs to fund the war. Melman
became deeply involved with anti-war activity along with other leading intellectuals such as
Noam Chomsky, with whom he began a long, productive friendship. As in the case of arguing for
nuclear disarmament, Melman's main public image was as an important peace activist.
This combination of concern for war and the preparation for war was complementary to his
economic thought. Indeed, the entire field of economics was formerly referred to as political
economy, because it was recognized that the state (government) was a vital actor, both good and
bad, in the economy. Thorstein Veblen founded the Journal of Political Economy (which now only
concentrates on economics), and Melman's mentor, the important industrial engineer Walter
Rautenstrauch, worked with Veblen (and also with Frederick Winslow Taylor). The economists and
sociologists that Melman encountered at Columbia and at CCNY in the 1930s and 1940s, such as
Robert Lynd and John Maurice Clark, were a more eclectic group of thinkers than would emerge in
the 1950s. Melman also worked with C. Wright Mills, whose 'Power Elite' were composed of
corporate, government, and military officials, and with Paul Goodman and non-mainstream
economists.
The Answer: More Democracy
The problem, in both economics and war, are similar: a group of elites attempt to exploit
the working people of a country, either by denying workers power over their paychecks and
working conditions, on the one hand, or by forcing them to be instruments of elite power
extension in the form of war, on the other. In both cases, the answer to Melman was clear: more
democracy.
In the case of war, democracy meant forcing the government, whether through protest or
voting, to stop an enterprise that the vast majority of people opposed. On the economic front,
the answer is to extend democracy to the level of the firm, that is workplace democracy, or a
bit more formally, employee-owned-and-operated firms. Workplace democracy is what would come
'After Capitalism', the title of his last published book.
Melman's interest in self-management was kindled in the 1930s, by the temporary success of
anarcho-syndicalists in Spain (before Franco brutally suppressed them) and by the example of
the kibbutz in what would become Israel. Melman was part of a radical Zionist group at CCNY,
and he briefly lived on a kibbutz. His second academic book in 1958, 'Decision-making and
productivity', concentrated on the Standard Motor Company in England, which gave an unusual
amount of work floor power to the union (he almost got fired from Columbia for the affront of
singing the praises of unions, until some eminent professors came to his defense). By the
1980s, he again focused on workplace democracy, exploring the Mondragon system of cooperatives
in the Basque region of Spain and the Emilia-Romagna cooperative system in Italy. In 'After
Capitalism', he devoted a great deal of space to the problem of constructing a democratic
alternative to the hierarchical, managerial structure of most firms.
His last Ph.D. student, in fact, wrote up a comparison of two shops at Ford, one in which
the workers were given a great deal of authority and training in the operation of machine
tools, and one in which they were only allowed to press an on and off button. His student found
that the shop with greater worker decision-making was much more productive, and this finding
can be found in numerous other studies.
Full-blown democracy within the firm is perhaps the ultimate manifestation of giving more
power to workers. Many of Melman's economic principles are encouraged when managers do not have
dictatorial control over the firm. The virtuous cycle, of salaries increasing more than the
prices of the produced goods, can be easily enforced, because employees will want to distribute
the income of the firm among themselves, not vacuum up most of it for the top managers and
absentee owners. Higher wages will lead to greater consumer spending in the economy as a whole,
leading to more employment and more spending. Administrative overhead will be minimized,
freeing up resources for innovation and rising wages. Employees will not allow their factories
(or service companies) to be shut down and moved abroad if they own the company (and can't sell
it, as in the Mondragon system). In no case did Melman find, in the 1980s and 1990s, that a
factory that had been closed had not been profitable. In other words, had (miraculously) all
factories been owned and operated by their workers at the start of the 1980s, no (or very few)
factories would have been shut down in the last 30 plus years, and we would have many millions
more factory jobs, a strong middle class, and my guess is, no Trump.
This last consideration was very important to Melman, although of course he did not see
Trump himself coming (who did?). Melman was very concerned, even by the 1990s, that we were
arriving at a 'Weimar moment', as he wrote about in 'The Demilitarized Society'. That is, like
1920s Germany, a large 'lumpenproletariat' appeared, to use Karl Marx's phrase, that is, a
large segment of the population who had been excised from the economy -- much of the
manufacturing working class -- and that such a group would naturally be open to the ramblings
of a demagogue -- like Trump.
By the 1980s, it was clear to Melman that the military industrial complex was not the only
major sector that was hurtling manufacturing over a cliff. In 'Profits without Production', he
linked the financial sector to the worsening situation of manufacturing. The early 1980s were
marked by disastrously high interest rates, which he worried would be the nail in the coffin of
American manufacturing exports, and he was right. About that time the Japanese came roaring
into the American market, the result of decades of American military industrial spending,
financial shenanigans, and the attempted destruction of the American working class. The
financial sector, like the military industrial complex, sucked resources out of the
manufacturing system, which was the source of the wealth, and gave nothing in return. Money
would make more money much more quickly (eventually, in nanoseconds) than building a factory
ever could. Global trade treaties, in conjunction with cheaper digital communications, would by
the 1990s lead to a rapidly sinking prognosis for manufacturing. Something had to be done, but
what?
Having witnessed Melman's attempts to start a manufacturing renaissance first hand, I can
say that 'we' (including scholars like Jonathan Feldman) tried a number of things. By the late
1980s, Melman had convinced the Speaker of the House, Jim Wright, to make what Melman called
'economic conversion' a top priority in the House. Economic conversion, as Melman conceived it,
would involve requiring every military factory to create a plan to convert that factory to some
useful civilian production. Then, if the military budget should be cut, factory workers would
not have to fear for their jobs, as they could pull out a plan to succeed in civilian markets.
This would also include training engineers and workers in civilian production techniques. Of
course, this was not something the Pentagon favored, since the great source of their power is
not the defense of the country, but the political machine for creating jobs known as the
military industrial complex. Consequently, the Representative from the defense contractor
Martin Marietta's home district, Newt Gingrich, plotted to and eventually was able to bring
down Jim Wright, torpedo economic conversion, and begin his march to right-wing Republican
domination of Congress in the 1990s.
Well, we thought, when the Soviet Union fell, since the main excuse for a large military
budget had disappeared, perhaps the American public would be open to arguments for a
well-deserved 'peace dividend', that is, the government could finally divert some of the money
the Pentagon was using to upgrade the infrastructure. We organized a 'National Town Meeting',
involving many cities and progressive politicians. But by this time, the Left as a whole had
undergone over 10 years of Reagan politics, and they didn't seem up to the challenge.
Melman also tried various ways of encouraging the unions to take a more innovative path,
that is, to work toward a reindustrialization of the US. But they, too, were doing their best
to survive the relentless assaults of offshoring and deindustrialization. Looking back on the
early 1990s, perhaps if the gravity of global warming had been clearer, it would have been
easier to formulate a framework that Melman and I evolved, but unfortunately only shortly
before he died. The formulation was the following: To rebuild the economy, rebuild
manufacturing, and to rebuild manufacturing, rebuild the infrastructure. With global warming
and all the other ecological catastrophes looming on the horizon -- warnings that Barry
Commoner and others had been broadcasting for a couple of decades -- it should be clear that
the entire infrastructure, transportation, water, energy, urban, and other systems, need to be
redesigned in order for global civilization to survive into the 22nd century (I have written a
book on this subject, " Manufacturing Green Prosperity ", and article in
an edited volume and a sample Federal budget, GreenNewDealPlan.com ).
The idea is that by spending trillions on constructing new infrastructure systems such as
high-speed rail and national wind systems, new transit systems and walkable neighborhoods, and
fixing old infrastructure, the government would supply the kind of long-term demand for
domestic manufacturing that would revive American manufacturing. This effort, in turn, could
make unemployment a thing of the past, and that kind of policy would negate the 'Weimar moment'
and bring with it enthusiastic support from the entire working class, white, African-American,
Latino, of whatever ethnicity or gender. Oh, and the oceans would not rise and wipe out all
coastal cities and turn the rest of the land into deserts.
In the 'Demilitarized Society', Melman warned that fear was not a sustainable motivation for
progressive activism. Eventually, fear turns to right-wing paranoia and the easy solution of
demagogues, a situation we more and more find ourselves in today. Instead, a concrete set of
solutions must be advanced at the same time that analysis and warnings are given.
I'm afraid that progressives are still toiling the fields of fear instead of constructing a
structure of solutions. Climate activists are warning us of frightening futures, but they have
not put forth solutions that fit the scope of the problem, such as spending trillions on
infrastructure. The Resistance to Trump and the Republicans is doing an excellent job of
rallying people to vote and protest, but they have not put forward a program, such as spending
trillions of infrastructure that would create tens of millions of jobs and rebuild
manufacturing, that would deal a death blow to the 1920s-style right-wing political revival.
Instead of simply decrying the greed and overreach of the large corporations, we should be
thinking about how to create an economic system in which employees own and operate their
enterprises (Brian D'Agostino has proposed ways to make workplace democracy society-wide in his
book 'The Middle Class Fights Back')
Melman would have urged us to understand the importance of production in the economy, of the
inner workings of manufacturing, factories and machinery, why workplace democracy leads to
greater prosperity, and how a middle class forms out of the virtuous cycle of increasing wages.
Using this understanding of the economy as a foundation, we can then propose solutions to our
biggest problems -- inequality, climate change, right-wing nationalism, militarism, and others
-- that can capture the imaginations of the world's peoples.
*This article is meant as a wide-ranging, 'high-altitude' look at Melman's work, not as
an exhaustive survey. Please see SeymourMelman.com for more of Melman's work, as well as his
many books and articles.
Ran across this a few days back – strikes me as a more fruitful line of argument for
political communication than MMT (very challenging to persuade with counterintuitive
arguments).
Thanks for this. As someone who worked for one of the few ongoing successful machine tool
manufacturers in this country as a field service engineer, I got the chance to work in
factories across the US and also got the chance to watch them shutdown throughout the
eighties and nineties. I also watched the progress of exactly what this article discusses,
bloated administrations and fewer workers, most relegated to button-pusher employment.
After 3 years of no raises at all while watching Management wages increase substantially,
I finally took heed to the writing on the wall and bailed out (luckily just in time for me)
for a better line of work within the M.I.C.
My preference would have been to stick with the factories, but unfortunately they no
longer exist at numbers that would have assured a decent working life (the Factory Service
Dept. of the company I worked for is now less than 25% of the size it was – most of it
off-loaded to low-wage distributorships and/or off-shored.
From the perspective of long-term society goodness, it was not the best decision, but from
my perspective of personal goodness – food on my table, affordable health insurance,
and a working furnace in the winter – it was my only choice of employment with decent
wages that this country offered someone with my skills.
As hedge fund managers like to say relative to the long haul, IBGYBG, but it's a crappy
philosophy to live by, especially considering that at the rate we're going, I might not be
gone.
JCC, Melman once announced to me that as far as he could tell, all machine tool companies
in the US were either foreign or foreign-owned -- although I think there were a few American
owned, like Haas. The machine tool industry is the 'canary in the coal mine', if that goes,
the rest of manufacturing competence is not far behind.
I think you and millions of others like you are making the rational decision to either get
out or not to get in in the first place, and now there is skills shortage. This will require
a strong industrial policy from the Federal government, in my opinion.
The company I worked for is still operating as an American owned company located in NY
State. It is still considered a premier Machine Tool Company (they build what are known as
Super Precision Machine Tools) and unlike many other smaller American Machine Tool Mfgs. it
actually bought some foreign companies as well as what was left of Bridgeport and one or two
others instead of being bought. There was a close call a few years ago, if I remember
correctly, when they were being courted by what I seem to recall was a foreign-owned Hedge
Fund.
I have my regrets and I still consider it to be a good company, but from a financial
standpoint, I'm also glad I left. My years there were a major wake-up call to what was
happening to Mfg., as well as large businesses in general, across the country during the late
80's through the 90's. I have a very negative attitude towards Accounting/Financial
Departments completely taking over the Management of business because of what I saw and
experienced. They've gutted the best parts of what these companies provide to their
respective communities and stake-holders, and the country.
Your article pointed out that particular problem as well as a few more of the more obvious
issues. Thanks for that. It needs wide distribution.
Having experienced all this as a manufacturer in the 70's and 80's Melman's concepts ring
true to me. I'd love to hear Michael Hudson comment on Melman's theories.
I've not encountered Melman before, and he seems like someone who I should read directly.
This site provides a real service.
However, I'll admit I just skimmed the article. My interest is history, not economics, and
the same dynamic occurs again and again and again throughout history. And there is even an
economics term that could be used for this, "the Dutch disease".
Basically, national economies over time will increasingly specialize in what is most
profitable at the moment. Other sectors will gradually be starved of capital since investment
will go to the most profitable sector, with less influence in the government, and in some
cases be plundered to provide capital for the profitable sector. This creates a cycle as
eventually even talented people who don't want to work in the specialized sectors will have
to.
The classic example of this is Hapsburg Spain. Castille in fact had a pretty diverse
economy in the 15th century, but increasingly specialized in producing soldiers and priests,
and this was widely noted in commentary at the time. Personally, having grown up in New York
City, I went into finance pretty much because it was either that or retail. New York City
actually had a diverse economy before I was born and for a little bit afterwards.
The same process occurred in early 20th century Britain, with finance being the main
specialized sector, but it was mild compared to Spain. The British wound down their empire
after mid-century. That is a key point. Empires will increasingly specialize in priests,
soldiers, and bureaucrats (financiers are are a sort of bureaucrat), finance by overt or
implied tribute, because that is what is most profitable at the center. The hollowing out of
Italian industry and agriculture was widely noted during the Roman Empire, even as people
flocked to Rome. And the only way to fix the damage caused to the center in this way is to
get rid of the empire.
IANAE. And I took macro 45 years ago, so I most likely have only the vaguest gauzy notion
of the following.
Keynes suggested that trade imbalances, which occur when A is able to produce goods more
efficiently than B will self correct as the currency of B will be devalued over time wrt the
currency of A.
When the currency of B is the global reserve currency (which, I believe, Keynes did not
address), this may result in a real constraint on this self-balancing, right? So, in this
sense, your statement:
And the only way to fix the damage caused to the center in this way is to get rid of the
empire.
might be rephrased as:
And the only way to fix the damage caused to the center in this way is to get rid of the
global reserve currency.
Actually Keynes addressed this very clearly. He knew that various policies can prevent
currencies from self regulating and so believed that supranational regulation was
required.
He argued for the IMF to be founded with the primary purpose of providing this regulation,
including the creation of a global trade currency called the Bancor
Here is a summary of the idea and why things fell apart -- leading to the IMF instead
becoming a capo for the creditor nations.
I would add that you can narrow down the causes of decline to two main sectors: the
military and finance. Basically, if manufacturing is the most important source of wealth --
or manufacturing and infrastructure more generally -- then the state will often divert the
surplus from manufacturing in order to become imperial, that is, they will take the surplus
and build a military establishment in order to further empire. This certainly happened in
Britain, and can be applied to France, Rome, etc., with perhaps the most glaring example
being the Soviet Union.
Finance also diverts resources from manufacturing, because the surplus from manufacturing
usually takes the form of money, and finance controls the money. But more importantly, the
finance sector can increase its economic power faster than manufacturing because money makes
more money much more quickly than factories can be built to create real wealth. We saw that
in Britain, and the US.
This was good except for this one glaring mishmash of a paragraph, which needs to be
either fixed or removed:
Somehow he also got an audience with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as the
Vietnam War heated up. Melman blamed McNamara, formerly head of Ford Motor Company, for
rationalizing and systematizing the military industrial complex. After McNamara got through
with it, the Department of Defense had turned into the headquarters of the military
industrial complex, with the contractors as virtual divisions of the Pentagon. Melman was
concerned that the military industrial complex was siphoning off much of the best and the
brightest engineers and scientists, and that there was a surfeit of engineering talent
available for civilian firms. "Where are the engineers?! Where are the engineers?!" Melman
remembers McNamara screaming at him. It is a question we can continue to ask to this
day.
Why was McNamara the one screaming about not having engineers, when the rest of the
paragraph says he was the engineering sink? To a lesser extent, why did Melman ("somehow" is
not satisfying) have an audience with McNamara, and was it during this audience that he
"blasted" McNamara?
I'm thinking Melman told McNamara that he (McNamara) had all the engineers, and McNamara
was denying it, but it's really hard to parse out and I don't even know why it's worth a
sitting duck paragraph in a humongous post anyway.
Point taken. I know it's unclear, and to the best of my recollection, Melman didn't know
how to respond either. I guess the point is, McNamara didn't know how to handle what Melman
was telling him. And also I have to admit I don't have the total context. Occassionally
Melman would be invited by the military to give a talk, because they figured he knew what he
was talking about and they actually wanted to know. I just thought it was an interesting
anecdote, but maybe it's a bit too confusing.
As a trained Industrial Engineer who worked in the midwest in the 90s , I can vouch for
the science behind productivity gains that come from more worker freedoms. As a untrained
economist, I can also confirm what I saw was the slow but steady destruction of rust belt and
it's middle class from globalization.
Finally, it is also evident that these same laid off workers voted for leaders who both
expanded the militiary industrial complex and globalization. Sad.
"... ' Anti-populism' is the simple ruling class formula for covering-up their real agenda, which is pro-militarist, pro-imperialist (globalization), pro-'rebels' (i.e. mercenary terrorists working for regime change), pro crisis makers and pro-financial swindlers. ..."
"... The economic origins of ' anti-populism' are rooted in the deep and repeated crises of capitalism and the need to deflect and discredit mass discontent and demoralize the popular classes in struggle. By demonizing ' populism', the elites seek to undermine the rising tide of anger over the elite-imposed wage cuts, the rise of low-paid temporary jobs and the massive increase in the reserve army of cheap immigrant labor to compete with displaced native workers. ..."
"... Demonization of independent popular movements ignores the fundamental programmatic differences and class politics of genuine populist struggles compared with the contemporary right-wing capitalist political scarecrows and clowns. ..."
"... The anti-populist ideologues label President Trump a 'populist' when his policies and proposals are the exact opposite. Trump champions the repeal of all pro-labor and work safety regulation, as well as the slashing of public health insurance programs while reducing corporate taxes for the ultra-elite. ..."
"... The media's ' anti-populists' ideologues denounce pro-business rightwing racists as ' populists' . In Italy, Finland, Holland, Austria, Germany and France anti-working class parties are called ' populist' for attacking immigrants instead of bankers and militarists. ..."
"... In other words, the key to understanding contemporary ' anti-populism' is to see its role in preempting and undermining the emergence of authentic populist movements while convincing middle class voters to continue to vote for crisis-prone, austerity-imposing neo-liberal regimes. ' Anti-populism' has become the opium (or OxyContin) of frightened middle class voters. ..."
Throughout the US and European corporate and state media, right and left, we are told that ' populism' has become
the overarching threat to democracy, freedom and . . . free markets. The media's ' anti-populism' campaign has been
used and abused by ruling elites and their academic and intellectual camp followers as the principal weapon to distract,
discredit and destroy the rising tide of mass discontent with ruling class-imposed austerity programs, the accelerating
concentration of wealth and the deepening inequalities.
We will begin by examining the conceptual manipulation of ' populism' and its multiple usages. Then we will turn
to the historic economic origins of populism and anti-populism. Finally, we will critically analyze the contemporary movements
and parties dubbed ' populist' by the ideologues of ' anti-populism' .
Conceptual Manipulation
In order to understand the current ideological manipulation accompanying ' anti-populism ' it is necessary to
examine the historical roots of populism as a popular movement.
Populism emerged during the 19 th and 20 th century as an ideology, movement and government in
opposition to autocracy, feudalism, capitalism, imperialism and socialism. In the United States, populist leaders led agrarian
struggles backed by millions of small farmers in opposition to bankers, railroad magnates and land speculators. Opposing
monopolistic practices of the 'robber barons', the populist movement supported broad-based commercial agriculture, access
to low interest farm credit and reduced transport costs.
In 19 th century Russia, the populists opposed the Tsar, the moneylenders and the burgeoning commercial
elites.
In early 20 th century India and China, populism took the form of nationalist agrarian movements seeking
to overthrow the imperial powers and their comprador collaborators.
In Latin America, from the 1930s onward, especially with the crises of export regimes, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia
and Peru, embraced a variety of populist, anti-imperialist governments. In Brazil, President Getulio Vargas's term (1951-1954)
was notable for the establishment of a national industrial program promoting the interests of urban industrial workers
despite banning independent working class trade unions and Marxist parties. In Argentina, President Juan Peron's first
terms (1946-1954) promoted large-scale working class organization, advanced social welfare programs and embraced nationalist
capitalist development.
In Bolivia, a worker-peasant revolution brought to power a nationalist party, the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement
(MNR), which nationalized the tin mines, expropriated the latifundios and promoted national development during its rule
from 1952-1964.
In Peru, under President Velasco Alvarado (1968-1975), the government expropriated the coastal sugar plantations
and US oil fields and copper mines while promoting worker and agricultural cooperatives.
In all cases, the populist governments in Latin America were based on a coalition of nationalist capitalists, urban
workers and the rural poor. In some notable cases, nationalist military officers brought populist governments to power.
What they had in common was their opposition to foreign capital and its local supporters and exporters ('compradores'),
bankers and their elite military collaborators. Populists promoted 'third way' politics by opposing imperialism on the
right, and socialism and communism on the left. The populists supported the redistribution of wealth but not the expropriation
of property. They sought to reconcile national capitalists and urban workers. They opposed class struggle but supported
state intervention in the economy and import-substitution as a development strategy.
Imperialist powers were the leading anti-populists of that period. They defended property privileges and condemned nationalism
as 'authoritarian' and undemocratic. They demonized the mass support for populism as 'a threat to Western Christian civilization'.
Not infrequently, the anti-populists ideologues would label the national-populists as 'fascists' . . . even as they won
numerous elections at different times and in a variety of countries.
The historical experience of populism, in theory and practice, has nothing to do with what today's ' anti-populists'
in the media are calling ' populism' . In reality, current anti-populism is still a continuation of anti-communism
, a political weapon to disarm working class and popular movements. It advances the class interest of the ruling class.
Both 'anti's' have been orchestrated by ruling class ideologues seeking to blur the real nature of their 'pro-capitalist'
privileged agenda and practice. Presenting your program as 'pro-capitalist', pro-inequalities, pro-tax evasion and pro-state
subsidies for the elite is more difficult to defend at the ballot box than to claim to be ' anti-populist' .
' Anti-populism' is the simple ruling class formula for covering-up their real agenda, which is pro-militarist,
pro-imperialist (globalization), pro-'rebels' (i.e. mercenary terrorists working for regime change), pro crisis makers
and pro-financial swindlers.
The economic origins of ' anti-populism' are rooted in the deep and repeated crises of capitalism and the
need to deflect and discredit mass discontent and demoralize the popular classes in struggle. By demonizing ' populism',
the elites seek to undermine the rising tide of anger over the elite-imposed wage cuts, the rise of low-paid temporary
jobs and the massive increase in the reserve army of cheap immigrant labor to compete with displaced native workers.
Historic 'anti-populism' has its roots in the inability of capitalism to secure popular consent via elections. It reflects
their anger and frustration at their failure to grow the economy, to conquer and exploit independent countries and to finance
growing fiscal deficits.
The Amalgamation of Historical Populism with the Contemporary Fabricated Populism
What the current anti-populists ideologues label ' populism' has little to do with the historical movements.
Unlike all of the past populist governments, which sought to nationalize strategic industries, none of the current movements
and parties, denounced as 'populist' by the media, are anti-imperialists. In fact, the current ' populists' attack
the lowest classes and defend the imperialist-allied capitalist elites. The so-called current ' populists' support
imperialist wars and bank swindlers, unlike the historical populists who were anti-war and anti-bankers.
Ruling class ideologues simplistically conflate a motley collection of rightwing capitalist parties and organizations
with the pro-welfare state, pro-worker and pro-farmer parties of the past in order to discredit and undermine the burgeoning
popular multi-class movements and regimes.
Demonization of independent popular movements ignores the fundamental programmatic differences and class politics
of genuine populist struggles compared with the contemporary right-wing capitalist political scarecrows and clowns.
One has only to compare the currently demonized ' populist' Donald Trump with the truly populist US President
Franklin Roosevelt, who promoted social welfare, unionization, labor rights, increased taxes on the rich, income redistribution,
and genuine health and workplace safety legislation within a multi-class coalition to see how absurd the current media
campaign has become.
The anti-populist ideologues label President Trump a 'populist' when his policies and proposals are the exact
opposite. Trump champions the repeal of all pro-labor and work safety regulation, as well as the slashing of public health
insurance programs while reducing corporate taxes for the ultra-elite.
The media's ' anti-populists' ideologues denounce pro-business rightwing racists as ' populists' . In Italy, Finland,
Holland, Austria, Germany and France anti-working class parties are called ' populist' for attacking immigrants instead
of bankers and militarists.
In other words, the key to understanding contemporary ' anti-populism' is to see its role in preempting and undermining
the emergence of authentic populist movements while convincing middle class voters to continue to vote for crisis-prone,
austerity-imposing neo-liberal regimes. ' Anti-populism' has become the opium (or OxyContin) of frightened middle class
voters.
The anti-populism of the ruling class serves to confuse the 'right' with the 'left'; to sidelight the latter and promote
the former; to amalgamate rightwing 'rallies' with working class strikes; and to conflate rightwing demagogues with popular
mass leaders.
Unfortunately, too many leftist academics and pundits are loudly chanting in the 'anti-populist' chorus. They have failed
to see themselves among the shock troops of the right. The left ideologues join the ruling class in condemning the corporate
populists in the name of 'anti-fascism'. Leftwing writers, claiming to 'combat the far-right enemies of the people'
, overlook the fact that they are 'fellow-travelling' with an anti-populist ruling class, which has imposed savage cuts
in living standards, spread imperial wars of aggression resulting in millions of desperate refugees- not immigrants
–and concentrated immense wealth.
The bankruptcy of today's ' anti-populist' left will leave them sitting in their coffee shops, scratching at
fleas, as the mass popular movements take to the streets!
"... It tells me that the bottom line is that Christmas has become a harder season for White families. We are worse off because of BOTH social and economic liberalism which has only benefited an elite few. The bottom half of the White population is now in total disarray – drug addiction, demoralization, divorce, suicide, abortion, atomization, stagnant wages, declining household income and investments – and this dysfunction is creeping up the social ladder. The worst thing we can do is step on the accelerator. ..."
As we move into 2018, I am swinging away from the Republicans. I don't support the Paul Ryan
"Better Way" agenda. I don't support neoliberal economics. I think we have been going in the
wrong direction since the 1970s and don't want to continue going down this road.
Opioid Deaths: As we all know, the opioid epidemic has become a national crisis and the White working class
has been hit the hardest by it. It is a "sea of despair" out there.
White Mortality: As the family crumbles, religion recedes in his life, and his job prospects dwindle, the
middle aged White working class man is turning to drugs, alcohol and suicide: The White suicide
rate has soared since 2000:
Median Household Income: The average household in the United States is poorer in 2017 than it was in 1997:
Real GDP: Since the late 1990s, real GDP and real median household income have parted
ways:
Productivity and Real Wages: Since the 1970s, the minimum wage has parted ways with
productivity gains in the US economy:
Stock Market: Since 2000, the stock market has soared, but 10% of Americans own 80% of
stocks. The top 1% owns 38% of stocks. In 2007, 3/4th of middle class households were invested
in the stock market, but now only 50% are investors. Overall, 52% of Americans now own stocks,
which is down from 65%. The average American has less than $1,000 in their combined checking
and savings accounts.
Do you know what this tells me?
It tells me that the bottom line is that Christmas has become a harder season for White
families. We are worse off because of BOTH social and economic liberalism which has only
benefited an elite few. The bottom half of the White population is now in total disarray
– drug addiction, demoralization, divorce, suicide, abortion, atomization, stagnant
wages, declining household income and investments – and this dysfunction is creeping up
the social ladder. The worst thing we can do is step on the accelerator.
Paul Ryan and his fellow conservatives look at this and conclude we need MORE freedom. We
need lower taxes, more free trade, more deregulation, weaker unions, more immigration and less
social safety net spending. He wants to follow up tax reform with entitlement reform in 2018. I
can't but see how this is going to make an already bad situation for the White working class
even worse.
I'm not rightwing in the sense that these people are. I think their policies are harmful to
the nation. I don't think they feel any sense of duty and obligation to the working class like
we do. They believe in liberal abstractions and make an Ayn Rand fetish out of freedom whereas
we feel a sense of solidarity with them grounded in race, ethnicity and culture which tempers
class division. We recoil at the evisceration of the social fabric whereas conservatives
celebrate this blind march toward plutocracy.
Do the wealthy need to own a greater share of the stock market? Do they need to own a
greater share of our national wealth? Do we need to loosen up morals and the labor market? Do
we need more White children growing up in financially stressed, broken homes on Christmas? Is
the greatest problem facing the nation spending on anti-poverty programs? Paul Ryan and the
True Cons think so.
Yeah, I don't think so. I also think it is a good thing right now that we aren't associated
with the mainstream Right. In the long run, I bet this will pay off for us. I predict this
platform they have been standing on for decades now, which they call the conservative base, is
going to implode on them. Donald Trump was only the first sign that Atlas is about to
shrug.
(Republished from Occidental Dissent by permission of author or representative)
"... With the election of 2016, symptoms of the long emergency seeped into the political system. Disinformation rules. There is no coherent consensus about what is happening and no coherent proposals to do anything about it. The two parties are mired in paralysis and dysfunction and the public's trust in them is at epic lows. Donald Trump is viewed as a sort of pirate president, a freebooting freak elected by accident, "a disrupter" of the status quo at best and at worst a dangerous incompetent playing with nuclear fire. A state of war exists between the White House, the permanent D.C. bureaucracy, and the traditional news media. Authentic leadership is otherwise AWOL. Institutions falter. The FBI and the CIA behave like enemies of the people. ..."
"... They chatter about electric driverless car fleets, home delivery drone services, and as-yet-undeveloped modes of energy production to replace problematic fossil fuels, while ignoring the self-evident resource and capital constraints now upon us and even the laws of physics -- especially entropy , the second law of thermodynamics. Their main mental block is their belief in infinite industrial growth on a finite planet, an idea so powerfully foolish that it obviates their standing as technocrats. ..."
"... The universities beget a class of what Nassim Taleb prankishly called "intellectuals-yet-idiots," hierophants trafficking in fads and falsehoods, conveyed in esoteric jargon larded with psychobabble in support of a therapeutic crypto-gnostic crusade bent on transforming human nature to fit the wished-for utopian template of a world where anything goes. In fact, they have only produced a new intellectual despotism worthy of Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot. ..."
"... Until fairly recently, the Democratic Party did not roll that way. It was right-wing Republicans who tried to ban books, censor pop music, and stifle free expression. If anything, Democrats strenuously defended the First Amendment, including the principle that unpopular and discomforting ideas had to be tolerated in order to protect all speech. Back in in 1977 the ACLU defended the right of neo-Nazis to march for their cause (National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43). ..."
"... This is the recipe for what we call identity politics, the main thrust of which these days, the quest for "social justice," is to present a suit against white male privilege and, shall we say, the horse it rode in on: western civ. A peculiar feature of the social justice agenda is the wish to erect strict boundaries around racial identities while erasing behavioral boundaries, sexual boundaries, and ethical boundaries. Since so much of this thought-monster is actually promulgated by white college professors and administrators, and white political activists, against people like themselves, the motives in this concerted campaign might appear puzzling to the casual observer. ..."
"... The evolving matrix of rackets that prompted the 2008 debacle has only grown more elaborate and craven as the old economy of stuff dies and is replaced by a financialized economy of swindles and frauds . Almost nothing in America's financial life is on the level anymore, from the mendacious "guidance" statements of the Federal Reserve, to the official economic statistics of the federal agencies, to the manipulation of all markets, to the shenanigans on the fiscal side, to the pervasive accounting fraud that underlies it all. Ironically, the systematic chiseling of the foundering middle class is most visible in the rackets that medicine and education have become -- two activities that were formerly dedicated to doing no harm and seeking the truth ! ..."
"... Um, forgotten by Kunstler is the fact that 1965 was also the year when the USA reopened its doors to low-skilled immigrants from the Third World – who very quickly became competitors with black Americans. And then the Boom ended, and corporate American, influenced by thinking such as that displayed in Lewis Powell's (in)famous 1971 memorandum, decided to claw back the gains made by the working and middle classes in the previous 3 decades. ..."
"... "Wow – is there ever negative!" ..."
"... You also misrepresent reality to your readers. No, the black underclass is not larger, more dysfunctional, and more alienated now than in the 1960's, when cities across the country burned and machine guns were stationed on the Capitol steps. The "racial divide" is not "starker now than ever"; that's just preposterous to anyone who was alive then. And nobody I've ever known felt "shame" over the "outcome of the civil rights campaign". I know nobody who seeks to "punish and humiliate" the 'privileged'. ..."
"... My impression is that what Kunstler is doing here is diagnosing the long crisis of a decadent liberal post-modernity, and his stance is not that of either of the warring sides within our divorced-from-reality political establishment, neither that of the 'right' or 'left.' Which is why, logically, he published it here. National Review would never have accepted this piece ..."
"... "Globalization has acted, meanwhile, as a great leveler. It destroyed what was left of the working class -- the lower-middle class -- which included a great many white Americans who used to be able to support a family with simple labor." ..."
"... Young black people are told by their elders how lucky they are to grow up today because things are much better than when grandpa was our age and we all know this history.\ ..."
"... It's clear that this part of the article was written from absolute ignorance of the actual black experience with no interest in even looking up some facts. Hell, Obama even gave a speech at Howard telling graduates how lucky they were to be young and black Today compared to even when he was their age in the 80's! ..."
"... E.g. Germany. Germany is anything but perfect and its recent government has screwed up with its immigration policies. But Germany has a high standard of living, an educated work force (including unions and skilled crafts-people), a more rational distribution of wealth and high quality universal health care that costs 47% less per capita than in the U.S. and with no intrinsic need to maraud around the planet wasting gobs of taxpayer money playing Global Cop. ..."
"... The larger subtext is that the U.S. house of cards was planned out and constructed as deliberately as the German model was. Only the objective was not to maximize the health and happiness of the citizenry, but to line the pockets of the parasitic Elites. (E.g., note that Mitch McConnell has been a government employee for 50 years but somehow acquired a net worth of over $10 Million.) ..."
On America's 'long emergency' of recession, globalization, and identity politics.
Can a people recover from an excursion into unreality? The USA's sojourn into an alternative universe of the mind accelerated
sharply after Wall Street nearly detonated the global financial system in 2008. That debacle was only one manifestation of an array
of accumulating threats to the postmodern order, which include the burdens of empire, onerous debt, population overshoot, fracturing
globalism, worries about energy, disruptive technologies, ecological havoc, and the specter of climate change.
A sense of gathering crisis, which I call the long emergency , persists. It is systemic and existential. It calls into
question our ability to carry on "normal" life much farther into this century, and all the anxiety that attends it is hard for the
public to process. It manifested itself first in finance because that was the most abstract and fragile of all the major activities
we depend on for daily life, and therefore the one most easily tampered with and shoved into criticality by a cadre of irresponsible
opportunists on Wall Street. Indeed, a lot of households were permanently wrecked after the so-called Great Financial Crisis of 2008,
despite official trumpet blasts heralding "recovery" and the dishonestly engineered pump-up of capital markets since then.
With the election of 2016, symptoms of the long emergency seeped into the political system. Disinformation rules. There is
no coherent consensus about what is happening and no coherent proposals to do anything about it. The two parties are mired in paralysis
and dysfunction and the public's trust in them is at epic lows. Donald Trump is viewed as a sort of pirate president, a freebooting
freak elected by accident, "a disrupter" of the status quo at best and at worst a dangerous incompetent playing with nuclear fire.
A state of war exists between the White House, the permanent D.C. bureaucracy, and the traditional news media. Authentic leadership
is otherwise AWOL. Institutions falter. The FBI and the CIA behave like enemies of the people.
Bad ideas flourish in this nutrient medium of unresolved crisis. Lately, they actually dominate the scene on every side. A species
of wishful thinking that resembles a primitive cargo cult grips the technocratic class, awaiting magical rescue remedies that promise
to extend the regime of Happy Motoring, consumerism, and suburbia that makes up the armature of "normal" life in the USA.
They chatter
about electric driverless car fleets, home delivery drone services, and as-yet-undeveloped modes of energy production to replace
problematic fossil fuels, while ignoring the self-evident resource and capital constraints now upon us and even the laws of physics
-- especially entropy , the second law of thermodynamics. Their main mental block is their belief in infinite industrial growth
on a finite planet, an idea so powerfully foolish that it obviates their standing as technocrats.
The non-technocratic cohort of the thinking class squanders its waking hours on a quixotic campaign to destroy the remnant of
an American common culture and, by extension, a reviled Western civilization they blame for the failure in our time to establish
a utopia on earth. By the logic of the day, "inclusion" and "diversity" are achieved by forbidding the transmission of ideas, shutting
down debate, and creating new racially segregated college dorms. Sexuality is declared to not be biologically determined, yet so-called
cis-gendered persons (whose gender identity corresponds with their sex as detected at birth) are vilified by dint of
not being "other-gendered" -- thereby thwarting the pursuit of happiness of persons self-identified as other-gendered. Casuistry
anyone?
The universities beget a class of what Nassim Taleb prankishly called "intellectuals-yet-idiots," hierophants trafficking in fads
and falsehoods, conveyed in esoteric jargon larded with psychobabble in support of a therapeutic crypto-gnostic crusade bent on transforming
human nature to fit the wished-for utopian template of a world where anything goes. In fact, they have only produced a new intellectual
despotism worthy of Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot.
In case you haven't been paying attention to the hijinks on campus -- the attacks on reason, fairness, and common decency, the
kangaroo courts, diversity tribunals, assaults on public speech and speakers themselves -- here is the key take-away: it's not about
ideas or ideologies anymore; it's purely about the pleasures of coercion, of pushing other people around. Coercion is fun and exciting!
In fact, it's intoxicating, and rewarded with brownie points and career advancement. It's rather perverse that this passion for tyranny
is suddenly so popular on the liberal left.
Until fairly recently, the Democratic Party did not roll that way. It was right-wing Republicans who tried to ban books, censor
pop music, and stifle free expression. If anything, Democrats strenuously defended the First Amendment, including the principle that
unpopular and discomforting ideas had to be tolerated in order to protect all speech. Back in in 1977 the ACLU defended the right
of neo-Nazis to march for their cause (National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43).
The new and false idea that something labeled "hate speech" -- labeled by whom? -- is equivalent to violence floated out of the
graduate schools on a toxic cloud of intellectual hysteria concocted in the laboratory of so-called "post-structuralist" philosophy,
where sundry body parts of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, and Gilles Deleuze were sewn onto a brain comprised of
one-third each Thomas Hobbes, Saul Alinsky, and Tupac Shakur to create a perfect Frankenstein monster of thought. It all boiled down
to the proposition that the will to power negated all other human drives and values, in particular the search for truth. Under this
scheme, all human relations were reduced to a dramatis personae of the oppressed and their oppressors, the former generally
"people of color" and women, all subjugated by whites, mostly males. Tactical moves in politics among these self-described "oppressed"
and "marginalized" are based on the credo that the ends justify the means (the Alinsky model).
This is the recipe for what we call identity politics, the main thrust of which these days, the quest for "social justice," is
to present a suit against white male privilege and, shall we say, the horse it rode in on: western civ. A peculiar feature of the
social justice agenda is the wish to erect strict boundaries around racial identities while erasing behavioral boundaries, sexual
boundaries, and ethical boundaries. Since so much of this thought-monster is actually promulgated by white college professors and
administrators, and white political activists, against people like themselves, the motives in this concerted campaign might appear
puzzling to the casual observer.
I would account for it as the psychological displacement among this political cohort of their shame, disappointment, and despair
over the outcome of the civil rights campaign that started in the 1960s and formed the core of progressive ideology. It did not bring
about the hoped-for utopia. The racial divide in America is starker now than ever, even after two terms of a black president. Today,
there is more grievance and resentment, and less hope for a better future, than when Martin Luther King made the case for progress
on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. The recent flash points of racial conflict -- Ferguson, the Dallas police ambush, the
Charleston church massacre, et cetera -- don't have to be rehearsed in detail here to make the point that there is a great deal of
ill feeling throughout the land, and quite a bit of acting out on both sides.
The black underclass is larger, more dysfunctional, and more alienated than it was in the 1960s. My theory, for what it's worth,
is that the civil rights legislation of 1964 and '65, which removed legal barriers to full participation in national life, induced
considerable anxiety among black citizens over the new disposition of things, for one reason or another. And that is exactly why
a black separatism movement arose as an alternative at the time, led initially by such charismatic figures as Malcolm X and Stokely
Carmichael. Some of that was arguably a product of the same youthful energy that drove the rest of the Sixties counterculture: adolescent
rebellion. But the residue of the "Black Power" movement is still present in the widespread ambivalence about making covenant with
a common culture, and it has only been exacerbated by a now long-running "multiculturalism and diversity" crusade that effectively
nullifies the concept of a national common culture.
What follows from these dynamics is the deflection of all ideas that don't feed a narrative of power relations between oppressors
and victims, with the self-identified victims ever more eager to exercise their power to coerce, punish, and humiliate their self-identified
oppressors, the "privileged," who condescend to be abused to a shockingly masochistic degree. Nobody stands up to this organized
ceremonial nonsense. The punishments are too severe, including the loss of livelihood, status, and reputation, especially in the
university. Once branded a "racist," you're done. And venturing to join the oft-called-for "honest conversation about race" is certain
to invite that fate.
Globalization has acted, meanwhile, as a great leveler. It destroyed what was left of the working class -- the lower-middle class
-- which included a great many white Americans who used to be able to support a family with simple labor. Hung out to dry economically,
this class of whites fell into many of the same behaviors as the poor blacks before them: absent fathers, out-of-wedlock births,
drug abuse. Then the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 wiped up the floor with the middle-middle class above them, foreclosing on their
homes and futures, and in their desperation many of these people became Trump voters -- though I doubt that Trump himself truly understood
how this all worked exactly. However, he did see that the white middle class had come to identify as yet another victim group, allowing
him to pose as their champion.
The evolving matrix of rackets that prompted the 2008 debacle has only grown more elaborate and craven as the old economy of
stuff dies and is replaced by a financialized economy of swindles and frauds . Almost nothing in America's financial life
is on the level anymore, from the mendacious "guidance" statements of the Federal Reserve, to the official economic statistics of
the federal agencies, to the manipulation of all markets, to the shenanigans on the fiscal side, to the pervasive accounting fraud
that underlies it all. Ironically, the systematic chiseling of the foundering middle class is most visible in the rackets that medicine
and education have become -- two activities that were formerly dedicated to doing no harm and seeking the truth !
Life in this milieu of immersive dishonesty drives citizens beyond cynicism to an even more desperate state of mind. The suffering
public ends up having no idea what is really going on, what is actually happening. The toolkit of the Enlightenment -- reason, empiricism
-- doesn't work very well in this socioeconomic hall of mirrors, so all that baggage is discarded for the idea that reality is just
a social construct, just whatever story you feel like telling about it. On the right, Karl Rove expressed this point of view some
years ago when he bragged, of the Bush II White House, that "we make our own reality." The left says nearly the same thing in the
post-structuralist malarkey of academia: "you make your own reality." In the end, both sides are left with a lot of bad feelings
and the belief that only raw power has meaning.
Erasing psychological boundaries is a dangerous thing. When the rackets finally come to grief -- as they must because their operations
don't add up -- and the reckoning with true price discovery commences at the macro scale, the American people will find themselves
in even more distress than they've endured so far. This will be the moment when either nobody has any money, or there is plenty of
worthless money for everyone. Either way, the functional bankruptcy of the nation will be complete, and nothing will work anymore,
including getting enough to eat. That is exactly the moment when Americans on all sides will beg someone to step up and push them
around to get their world working again. And even that may not avail.
James Howard Kunstler's many books include The Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking,
Technology, and the Fate of the Nation , and the World Made by Hand novel series. He blogs on Mondays and Fridays at
Kunstler.com .
I think I need to go listen to an old-fashioned Christmas song now.
The ability to be financially, or at least resource, sustaining is the goal of many I know since we share a lack of confidence
in any of our institutions. We can only hope that God might look down with compassion on us, but He's not in the practical plan
of how to feed and sustain ourselves when things play out to their inevitable end. Having come from a better time, we joke about
our dystopian preparations, self-conscious about our "overreaction," but preparing all the same.
Look at it this way: Germany had to be leveled and its citizens reduced to abject penury, before Volkswagen could become the world's
biggest car company, and autobahns built throughout the world. It will be darkest before the dawn, and hopefully, that light that
comes after, won't be the miniature sunrise of a nuclear conflagration.
An excellent summary and bleak reminder of what our so-called civilization has become. How do we extricate ourselves from this
strange death spiral?
I have long suspected that we humans are creatures of our own personal/group/tribal/national/global fables and mythologies. We
are compelled by our genes, marrow, and blood to tell ourselves stories of our purpose and who we are. It is time for new mythologies
and stories of "who we are". This bizarre hyper-techno all-for-profit world needs a new story.
"The black underclass is larger, more dysfunctional, and more alienated than it was in the 1960s. My theory, for what it's worth,
is that the civil rights legislation of 1964 and '65, which removed legal barriers to full participation in national life, induced
considerable anxiety among black citizens over the new disposition of things, for one reason or another."
Um, forgotten by Kunstler is the fact that 1965 was also the year when the USA reopened its doors to low-skilled immigrants
from the Third World – who very quickly became competitors with black Americans. And then the Boom ended, and corporate American,
influenced by thinking such as that displayed in Lewis Powell's (in)famous 1971 memorandum, decided to claw back the gains made
by the working and middle classes in the previous 3 decades.
Hey Jim, I know you love to blame Wall Street and the Republicans for the GFC. I remember back in '08 you were urging Democrats
to blame it all on Republicans to help Obama win. But I have news for you. It wasn't Wall Street that caused the GFC. The crisis
actually had its roots in the Clinton Administration's use of the Community Reinvestment Act to pressure banks to relax mortgage
underwriting standards. This was done at the behest of left wing activists who claimed (without evidence, of course) that the
standards discriminated against minorities. The result was an effective repeal of all underwriting standards and an explosion
of real estate speculation with borrowed money. Speculation with borrowed money never ends well.
I have to laugh, too, when you say that it's perverse that the passion for tyranny is popular on the left. Have you ever heard
of the French Revolution? How about the USSR? Communist China? North Korea? Et cetera.
Leftism is leftism. Call it Marxism, Communism, socialism, liberalism, progressivism, or what have you. The ideology is the
same. Only the tactics and methods change. Destroy the evil institutions of marriage, family, and religion, and Man's innate goodness
will shine forth, and the glorious Godless utopia will naturally result.
Of course, the father of lies is ultimately behind it all. "He was a liar and a murderer from the beginning."
When man turns his back on God, nothing good happens. That's the most fundamental problem in Western society today. Not to
say that there aren't other issues, but until we return to God, there's not much hope for improvement.
Hmm. I just wandered over here by accident. Being a construction contractor, I don't know enough about globalization, academia,
or finance to evaluate your assertions about those realms. But being in a biracial family, and having lived, worked, and worshiped
equally in white and black communities, I can evaluate your statements about social justice, race, and civil rights.
Long story short, you pick out fringe liberal ideas, misrepresent them as mainstream among liberals, and shoot them down. Casuistry,
anyone?
You also misrepresent reality to your readers. No, the black underclass is not larger, more dysfunctional, and more alienated
now than in the 1960's, when cities across the country burned and machine guns were stationed on the Capitol steps. The "racial
divide" is not "starker now than ever"; that's just preposterous to anyone who was alive then. And nobody I've ever known felt
"shame" over the "outcome of the civil rights campaign". I know nobody who seeks to "punish and humiliate" the 'privileged'.
I get that this column is a quick toss-off before the holiday, and that your strength is supposed to be in your presentation,
not your ideas. For me, it's a helpful way to rehearse debunking common tropes that I'll encounter elsewhere.
But, really, your readers deserve better, and so do the people you misrepresent. We need bad liberal ideas to be critiqued
while they're still on the fringe. But by calling fringe ideas mainstream, you discredit yourself, misinform your readers, and
contribute to stereotypes both of liberals and of conservatives. I'm looking for serious conservative critiques that help me take
a second look at familiar ideas. I won't be back.
I disagree, NoahK, that the whole is incohesive, and I also disagree that these are right-wing talking points.
The theme of this piece is the long crisis in the US, its nature and causes. At no point does this essay, despite it stream
of consciousness style, veer away from that theme. Hence it is cohesive.
As for the right wing charge, though it is true, to be sure, that Kunstler's position is in many respects classically conservative
-- he believes for example that there should be a national consensus on certain fundamentals, such as whether or not there are
two sexes (for the most part), or, instead, an infinite variety of sexes chosen day by day at whim -- you must have noticed that
he condemned both the voluntarism of Karl Rove AND the voluntarism of the post-structuralist crowd.
My impression is that what Kunstler is doing here is diagnosing the long crisis of a decadent liberal post-modernity, and his stance is not that of either
of the warring sides within our divorced-from-reality political establishment, neither that of the 'right' or 'left.' Which is
why, logically, he published it here. National Review would never have accepted this piece. QED.
This malaise is rooted in human consciousness that when reflecting on itself celebrating its capacity for apperception suffers
from the tension that such an inquiry, such an inward glance produces. In a word, the capacity for the human being to be aware
of his or herself as an intelligent being capable of reflecting on aspects of reality through the artful manipulation of symbols
engenders this tension, this angst.
Some will attempt to extinguish this inner tension through intoxication while others through the thrill of war, and it has
been played out since the dawn of man and well documented when the written word emerged.
The malaise which Mr. Kunstler addresses as the problem of our times is rooted in our existence from time immemorial. But the
problem is not only existential but ontological. It is rooted in our being as self-aware creatures. Thus no solution avails itself
as humanity in and of itself is the problem. Each side (both right and left) seeks its own anodyne whether through profligacy
or intolerance, and each side mans the barricades to clash experiencing the adrenaline rush that arises from the perpetual call
to arms.
"Globalization has acted, meanwhile, as a great leveler. It destroyed what was left of the working class -- the lower-middle class
-- which included a great many white Americans who used to be able to support a family with simple labor."
And to whom do we hand
the tab for this? Globalization is a word. It is a concept, a talking point. Globalization is oligarchy by another name. Unfortunately,
under-educated, deplorable, Americans; regardless of party affiliation/ideology have embraced. And the most ironic part?
Russia
and China (the eventual surviving oligarchies) will eventually have to duke it out to decide which superpower gets to make the
USA it's b*tch (excuse prison reference, but that's where we're headed folks).
And one more irony. Only in American, could Christianity,
which was grew from concepts like compassion, generosity, humility, and benevolence; be re-branded and 'weaponized' to further
greed, bigotry, misogyny, intolerance, and violence/war. Americans fiddled (over same sex marriage, abortion, who has to bake
wedding cakes, and who gets to use which public restroom), while the oligarchs burned the last resources (natural, financial,
and even legal).
"Today, there is more grievance and resentment, and less hope for a better future, than when Martin Luther King made the case
for progress on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963."
Spoken like a white guy who has zero contact with black people. I mean, even a little bit of research and familiarity would
give lie to the idea that blacks are more pessimistic about life today than in the 1960's.
Black millenials are the most optimistic group of Americans about the future. Anyone who has spent any significant time around
older black people will notice that you don't hear the rose colored memories of the past. Black people don't miss the 1980's,
much less the 1950's. Young black people are told by their elders how lucky they are to grow up today because things are much
better than when grandpa was our age and we all know this history.\
It's clear that this part of the article was written from absolute
ignorance of the actual black experience with no interest in even looking up some facts. Hell, Obama even gave a speech at Howard
telling graduates how lucky they were to be young and black Today compared to even when he was their age in the 80's!
Here is the direct quote;
"In my inaugural address, I remarked that just 60 years earlier, my father might not have been served in a D.C. restaurant
-- at least not certain of them. There were no black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Very few black judges. Shoot, as Larry Wilmore
pointed out last week, a lot of folks didn't even think blacks had the tools to be a quarterback. Today, former Bull Michael Jordan
isn't just the greatest basketball player of all time -- he owns the team. (Laughter.) When I was graduating, the main black hero
on TV was Mr. T. (Laughter.) Rap and hip hop were counterculture, underground. Now, Shonda Rhimes owns Thursday night, and Beyoncé
runs the world. (Laughter.) We're no longer only entertainers, we're producers, studio executives. No longer small business owners
-- we're CEOs, we're mayors, representatives, Presidents of the United States. (Applause.)
I am not saying gaps do not persist. Obviously, they do. Racism persists. Inequality persists. Don't worry -- I'm going to
get to that. But I wanted to start, Class of 2016, by opening your eyes to the moment that you are in. If you had to choose one
moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn't know ahead of time who you were going to be -- what nationality,
what gender, what race, whether you'd be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith you'd be born into -- you wouldn't choose 100
years ago. You wouldn't choose the fifties, or the sixties, or the seventies. You'd choose right now. If you had to choose a time
to be, in the words of Lorraine Hansberry, "young, gifted, and black" in America, you would choose right now. (Applause.)"
I love reading about how the Community Reinvestment Act was the catalyst of all that is wrong in the world. As someone in the
industry the issue was actually twofold. The Commodities Futures Modernization Act turned the mortgage securities market into
a casino with the underlying actual debt instruments multiplied through the use of additional debt instruments tied to the performance
but with no actual underlying value. These securities were then sold around the world essentially infecting the entire market.
In order that feed the beast, these NON GOVERNMENT loans had their underwriting standards lowered to rediculous levels. If you
run out of qualified customers, just lower the qualifications. Government loans such as FHA, VA, and USDA were avoided because
it was easier to qualify people with the new stuff. And get paid. The short version is all of the incentives that were in place
at the time, starting with the Futures Act, directly led to the actions that culminated in the Crash. So yes, it was the government,
just a different piece of legislation.
Kunstler itemizing the social and economic pathologies in the United States is not enough. Because there are other models that
demonstrate it didn't have to be this way.
E.g. Germany. Germany is anything but perfect and its recent government has screwed up with its immigration policies. But Germany
has a high standard of living, an educated work force (including unions and skilled crafts-people), a more rational distribution
of wealth and high quality universal health care that costs 47% less per capita than in the U.S. and with no intrinsic need to
maraud around the planet wasting gobs of taxpayer money playing Global Cop.
The larger subtext is that the U.S. house of cards was planned out and constructed as deliberately as the German model was.
Only the objective was not to maximize the health and happiness of the citizenry, but to line the pockets of the parasitic Elites.
(E.g., note that Mitch McConnell has been a government employee for 50 years but somehow acquired a net worth of over $10 Million.)
P.S. About the notionally high U.S. GDP. Factor out the TRILLIONS inexplicably hoovered up by the pathological health care
system, the metastasized and sanctified National Security State (with its Global Cop shenanigans) and the cronied-up Ponzi scheme
of electron-churn financialization ginned up by Goldman Sachs and the rest of the Banksters, and then see how much GDP that reflects
the actual wealth of the middle class is left over.
Right-Wing Dittoheads and Fox Watchers love to blame the Community Reinvestment Act. It allows them to blame both poor black people
AND the government. The truth is that many parties were to blame.
One of the things I love about this rag is that almost all of the comments are included.
You may be sure that similar commenting privilege doesn't exist most anywhere else.
Any disfavor regarding the supposed bleakness with the weak hearted souls aside, Mr K's broadside seems pretty spot on to me.
I think the author overlooks the fact that government over the past 30 to 40 years has been tilting the playing field ever more
towards the uppermost classes and against the middle class. The evisceration of the middle class is plain to see.
If the the common man had more money and security, lots of our current intrasocial conflicts would be far less intense.
Andrew Imlay: You provide a thoughtful corrective to one of Kunstler's more hyperbolic claims. And you should know that his jeremiad
doesn't represent usual fare at TAC. So do come back.
Whether or not every one of Kunstler's assertions can withstand a rigorous fact-check, he is a formidable rhetorician. A generous
serving of Weltschmerz is just what the season calls for.
America is stupefied from propaganda on steroids for, largely from the right wing, 25? years of Limbaugh, Fox, etc etc etc Clinton
hate x 10, "weapons of mass destruction", "they hate us because we are free", birtherism, death panels, Jade Helm, pedophile pizza, and more Clinton hate porn.
Americans have been taught to worship the wealthy regardless of how they got there. Americans have been taught they are "Exceptional" (better, smarter, more godly than every one else) in spite of outward appearances.
Americans are under educated and encouraged to make decisions based on emotion from constant barrage of extra loud advertising
from birth selling illusion.
Americans brain chemistry is most likely as messed up as the rest of their bodies from junk or molested food. Are they even
capable of normal thought?
Donald Trump has convinced at least a third of Americans that only he, Fox, Breitbart and one or two other sources are telling
the Truth, every one else is lying and that he is their friend.
Is it possible we are just plane doomed and there's no way out?
I loathe the cotton candy clown and his Quislings; however, I must admit, his presence as President of the United States has forced
everyone (left, right, religious, non-religious) to look behind the curtain. He has done more to dis-spell the idealism of both
liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, rich and poor, than any other elected official in history. The sheer amount
of mind-numbing absurdity resulting from a publicity stunt that got out of control ..I am 70 and I have seen a lot. This is beyond
anything I could ever imagine. America is not going to improve or even remain the same. It is in a 4 year march into worse, three
years to go.
Mr. Kuntzler has an honest and fairly accurate assessment of the situation. And as usual, the liberal audience that TAC is trying
so hard to reach, is tossing out their usual talking points whilst being in denial of the situation.
The Holy Bible teaches us that repentance is the first crucial step on the path towards salvation. Until the progressives,
from their alleged "elite" down the rank and file at Kos, HuffPo, whatever, take a good, long, hard look at the current national
dumpster fire and start claiming some responsibility, America has no chance of solving problems or fixing anything.
Kunstler must have had a good time writing this, and I had a good time reading it. Skewed perspective, wild overstatement, and
obsessive cherry-picking of the rare checkable facts are mixed with a little eye of newt and toe of frog and smothered in a oar
and roll of rhetoric that was thrilling to be immersed in. Good work!
aah, same old Kunstler, slightly retailored for the Trump years.
for those of you familiar with him, remember his "peak oil" mania from the late 00s and early 2010s? every blog post was about
it. every new year was going to be IT: the long emergency would start, people would be Mad Maxing over oil supplies cos prices
at the pump would be $10 a gallon or somesuch.
in this new rant, i did a control-F for "peak oil" and hey, not a mention. I guess even cranks like Kunstler know when to give
a tired horse a rest.
Kunstler once again waxes eloquent on the American body politic. Every word rings true, except when it doesn't. At times poetic,
at other times paranoid, Kunstler does us a great service by pointing a finger at the deepest pain points in America, any one
of which could be the geyser that brings on catastrophic failure.
However, as has been pointed out, he definitely does not hang out with black people. For example, the statement:
But the residue of the "Black Power" movement is still present in the widespread ambivalence about making covenant with a common
culture, and it has only been exacerbated by a now long-running "multiculturalism and diversity" crusade that effectively nullifies
the concept of a national common culture.
The notion of a 'national common culture' is interesting but pretty much a fantasy that never existed, save colonial times.
Yet Kunstler's voice is one that must be heard, even if he is mostly tuning in to the widespread radicalism on both ends of
the spectrum, albeit in relatively small numbers. Let's face it, people are in the streets marching, yelling, and hating and mass
murders keep happening, with the regularity of Old Faithful. And he makes a good point about academia loosing touch with reality
much of the time. He's spot on about the false expectations of what technology can do for the economy, which is inflated with
fiat currency and God knows how many charlatans and hucksters. And yes, the white working class is feeling increasingly like a
'victim group.'
While Kunstler may be more a poet than a lawyer, more songwriter than historian, my gut feeling is that America had better
take notice of him, as The American ship of state is being swept by a ferocious tide and the helmsman is high on Fentanyl (made
in China).
Re: The crisis actually had its roots in the Clinton Administration's use of the Community Reinvestment Act
Here we go again with this rotting zombie which rises from its grave no matter how many times it has been debunked by statisticians
and reputable economists (and no, not just those on the left– the ranks include Bruce Bartlett for example, a solid Reaganist).
To reiterate again : the CRA played no role in the mortgage boom and bust. Among other facts in the way of that hypothesis is
the fact that riskiest loans were being made by non-bank lenders (Countrywide) who were not covered by the CRA which only applied
to actual banks– and the banks did not really get into the game full tilt, lowering their lending standards, until late in the
game, c. 2005, in response to their loss of business to the non-bank lenders. Ditto for the GSEs, which did not lower their standards
until 2005 and even then relied on wall Street to vet the subprime loans they were buying.
To be sure, blaming Wall Street for everything is also wrong-headed, though wall Street certainly did some stupid, greedy and
shady things (No, I am not letting them off the hook!) But the cast of miscreants is numbered in the millions and it stretches
around the planet. Everyone (for example) who got into the get-rich-quick Ponzi scheme of house flipping, especially if they lied
about their income to do so. And everyone who took out a HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) and foolishly charged it up on a consumption
binge. And shall we talk about the mortgage brokers who coached people into lying, the loan officers who steered customers into
the riskiest (and highest earning) loans they could, the sellers who asked palace-prices for crackerbox hovels, the appraisers
who rubber-stamped such prices, the regulators who turned a blind eye to all the fraud and malfeasance, the ratings agencies who
handed out AAA ratings to securities full of junk, the politicians who rejoiced over the apparent "Bush Boom" well, I could continue,
but you get the picture.
"The Holy Bible teaches us that repentance is the first crucial step on the path towards salvation. Until the progressives, from
their alleged "elite" down the rank and file at Kos, HuffPo, whatever, take a good, long, hard look at the current national dumpster
fire and start claiming some responsibility, America has no chance of solving problems or fixing anything."
Pretty sure that calling other people to repent of their sin of disagreeing with you is not quite what the Holy Bible intended.
Yes, it can be used for that , but often the goal is to channel, and contain the thinking
from or to whatever, not degrade. Using modern neoliberal economics as an example. The older
19th and early 20th century mainstream political economy were deeper, more comprehensive, and
often better at explaining economics. It was also called political economy, and not just
economics for that reason.
There was a real financed campaign to narrow the focus on what we call economics today.
Part of that effort was to label people very narrowly as just economic beings, which is what
libertarianism is, and to label economic thought outside of it as socialism/communism, which
is Stalinism, which is the gulag, which is bad thought. The economists studying this were
just as intelligent, thoughtful, and incisive, but the idea, the worm of
people=money=economics created a thought stop, or an an un-acknowledgment of anything else,
the inability to even see anything else.
I sometimes think some are against the masses getting any higher education because one is
exposed to other ways of thinking, and believing. A student might never change their beliefs,
but the mind is expanded for considering the possibilities and at looking at where others are
coming from. Those mindworms are also more obvious, and less useful.
So you could be ninety year blockhead, but if you are willing to listen, to think on what
you are exposed to in college, your mind is expanded and strengthen. Which is perhaps the
main goal of a liberal arts education. Even a very hard college education will still have
some of the same effect.
"The economists studying this were just as intelligent, thoughtful, and incisive, but the
idea, the worm of people=money=economics created a thought stop, or an an un-acknowledgment
of anything else, the inability to even see anything else."
So would you say identity politics is the same thing in reverse? Intelligent people
looking at issues from every perspective but that of money and economics?
Yes, as it is used now. It can be very important, but what I have against identity
politics as it is done today is that it is the first and last answer to everything. Many
people can see, they just think one's identity is paramount. MLK said it best when he talked
about being judged for the content of their character rather than the color of their
skin.
Please keep in mind that the identity being used could anything. Your sex, gender,
orientation, age, class, religion, anything.
"... Any organisation that needs to restructure, cut wages, or make layoffs needs to know how the employees who are not affected will respond. This column presents a field experiment which revealed that the perception that employers are unfair – in this case, as a result of layoffs – reduces the performance of employees who have not been not directly affected. As part of the experiment, experienced HR managers were able to successfully anticipate the consequences of unfair employer behaviour on unaffected workers. ..."
Yves here. There has been much gnashing of teeth in the US about lackluster productivity
growth, with the citied culprits ranging from lack of fundamental breakthroughs to cheap
labor costs discouraging investment. Almost entirely absent from consideration is poor
management demotivating worker. This article helps fill that gap.
Any organisation that needs to restructure, cut wages, or make layoffs needs to know
how the employees who are not affected will respond. This column presents a field experiment
which revealed that the perception that employers are unfair – in this case, as a
result of layoffs – reduces the performance of employees who have not been not directly
affected. As part of the experiment, experienced HR managers were able to successfully
anticipate the consequences of unfair employer behaviour on unaffected workers.
Management matters for the success and profitability of companies. We know that simple
management practices – including the regular maintenance of machines, optimisation of
inventory, or recording types of quality problems – can improve the productivity of
companies substantially (Bloom et al. 2013). Many of these management practices relate to the
structure of an organisation, in particular its workflow and how it is controlled. But the
relationship between managers and workers is also important. This relationship is
characterised by both the wage paid to a worker as an incentive to work hard, but also by the
worker's perception that he or she is being treated fairly (Akerlof 1982).
If workers believe that their employer is acting unfairly towards them, this can greatly
reduce their performance at work. For example, Mas (2008) demonstrated that the conflict
between Caterpillar and its workforce in the 1990s led to lower production quality. It is not
clear, though, whether workers react to employer behaviour that they think is unfair only if
they are directly affected (for example, through wage cuts or reorganisation), or also if
they are not directly affected (their colleagues suffer, but they do not). This distinction
is important for any organisation that reorganises or lays off some of its workers.
Random Layoffs
In our new study, we set up a field experiment to measure how unaffected workers react to
unfair employer behaviour (Heinz et al. 2017). We rented a call centre and hired 195
employees to conduct a telephone survey in two shifts. Overall, our organisation was very
employee-friendly – we paid a generous hourly wage, offered flexible work times, a
pleasant work atmosphere, and full discretion to workers how to perform their job. We
measured individual performance precisely by the number of calls each worker made during a
shift.
We used three treatments to identify the effect of unfair employer behaviour on the
performance of unaffected workers:
To keep the remaining workers' prospects constant (in the only remaining shift), we made
explicit that there would be no future employment possibilities in our organisation. We also
paid the wage upon arrival for each shift. This meant that workers in the 'layoff' treatment
knew at the beginning of the second shift that the layoffs of their co-workers could not have
any consequences for them.
The Effect of Layoffs on Survivors
We found that the layoff announcement decreased the remaining workers' performance by 12%
(Figure 1). In the 'layoff' treatment, workers took a longer break at the beginning of the
second shift, and they left their workplace earlier than in the other treatments. The layoff
announcement also lowered the quality of workers' output.
In contrast, there was no significant difference in performance between our 'no-layoff'
and 'quasi-layoff' treatments. The reduction in staff size per se had no effect on
performance. Further robustness checks revealed that our treatment differences were not
driven by a change in beliefs about the importance of the job, or changes in perceptions of
the management's competence. Since our employees worked in single offices, and few of them
had social ties to employees from other treatments, we can largely rule out peer effects.
Figure 1 Difference in performance (number of calls made) between the first and second
shift in the 'no layoff', 'quasi-layoff' and 'layoff' treatment
Source : Heinz et al. (2017).
After the field experiment, we conducted surveys with our workers. Overall, workers in all
treatments were quite satisfied with their salary, the management's behaviour towards them,
and the atmosphere in the call centre. The remaining workers in the 'layoff' treatment,
however, were significantly less satisfied with management behaviour towards their colleagues
than the workers in the other treatments. We also asked workers from the 'layoff' treatment
which parts of the layoff announcement they considered anti-social. Their answers indicate
that they saw the layoffs per se, and the random selection of workers, as particularly
unfair.
To back up our interpretation of the data, we conducted a prediction experiment with 43
professional human resource managers from medium-sized and large companies in Germany (they
had, on average, eight years of professional experience). We explained our call centre
setting and our treatment variation to them, and then asked them to predict the change in
workplace performance between the first and second shifts.
The HR managers' predictions were remarkably accurate, in the aggregate. They predicted
that performance in the 'layoff' treatment would drop significantly between the first and
second shift, and that would drop only slightly in the other treatments. A large majority of
the HR managers mentioned fairness concerns as the main reason for the performance
reduction.
Maintaining Productivity During Layoffs
Our results imply that unfair behaviour towards workers can be costly for the employer,
even if the only workers who are directly affected have quit the firm. This is important for
any organisation that has to accommodate economic shocks by reducing labour costs.
To reduce or mitigate the costs of supposedly unfair acts, organisations could apply a
number of HR practices. They could use HR practices that avoid layoffs (for example using
natural fluctuation in the workforce). They could provide severance pay or outplacement
services. They might shift the blame to interim managers or business consultants. They could
also separate profitable and unprofitable business units, and downsize only the unprofitable
units. These practices may help employers to maintain a productive relationship with their
workforce.
Petras did not mention that it was Carter who started neoliberalization of the USA. The subsequent election of Reagan signified
the victory of neoliberalism in this country or "quite coup". The death of New Deal from this point was just a matter
of time. Labor relations drastically changes and war on union and atomization of workforce are a norm.
Welfare state still exists but only for corporation and MIC. Otherwise the New Deal society is almost completely dismanted.
It is true that "The ' New Deal' was, at best, a de facto ' historical compromise' between the capitalist class
and the labor unions, mediated by the Democratic Party elite. It was a temporary pact in which the unions secured legal recognition
while the capitalists retained their executive prerogatives." But the key factor in this compromise was the existence of the USSR as
a threat to the power of capitalists in the USA. when the USSR disappeared cannibalistic instincts of the US elite prevailed over caution.
Notable quotes:
"... The earlier welfare 'reforms' and the current anti-welfare legislation and austerity practices have been accompanied by a series of endless imperial wars, especially in the Middle East. ..."
"... In the 1940's through the 1960's, world and regional wars (Korea and Indo-China) were combined with significant welfare program – a form of ' social imperialism' , which 'buy off' the working class while expanding the empire. However, recent decades are characterized by multiple regional wars and the reduction or elimination of welfare programs – and a massive growth in poverty, domestic insecurity and poor health. ..."
"... modern welfare state' ..."
"... Labor unions were organized as working class strikes and progressive legislation facilitated trade union organization, elections, collective bargaining rights and a steady increase in union membership. Improved work conditions, rising wages, pension plans and benefits, employer or union-provided health care and protective legislation improved the standard of living for the working class and provided for 2 generations of upward mobility. ..."
"... Social Security legislation was approved along with workers' compensation and the forty-hour workweek. Jobs were created through federal programs (WPA, CCC, etc.). Protectionist legislation facilitated the growth of domestic markets for US manufacturers. Workplace shop steward councils organized 'on the spot' job action to protect safe working conditions. ..."
"... World War II led to full employment and increases in union membership, as well as legislation restricting workers' collective bargaining rights and enforcing wage freezes. Hundreds of thousands of Americans found jobs in the war economy but a huge number were also killed or wounded in the war. ..."
"... So-called ' right to work' ..."
"... Trade union officials signed pacts with capital: higher pay for the workers and greater control of the workplace for the bosses. Trade union officials joined management in repressing rank and file movements seeking to control technological changes by reducing hours (" thirty hours work for forty hours pay ..."
"... Trade union activists, community organizers for rent control and other grassroots movements lost both the capacity and the will to advance toward large-scale structural changes of US capitalism. Living standards improved for a few decades but the capitalist class consolidated strategic control over labor relations. While unionized workers' incomes, increased, inequalities, especially in the non-union sectors began to grow. With the end of the GI bill, veterans' access to high-quality subsidized education declined ..."
"... With the election of President Carter, social welfare in the US began its long decline. The next series of regional wars were accompanied by even greater attacks on welfare via the " Volker Plan " – freezing workers' wages as a means to combat inflation. ..."
"... Guns without butter' became the legislative policy of the Carter and Reagan Administrations. The welfare programs were based on politically fragile foundations. ..."
"... The anti-labor offensive from the ' Oval Office' intensified under President Reagan with his direct intervention firing tens of thousands of striking air controllers and arresting union leaders. Under Presidents Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and William Clinton cost of living adjustments failed to keep up with prices of vital goods and services. Health care inflation was astronomical. Financial deregulation led to the subordination of American industry to finance and the Wall Street banks. De-industrialization, capital flight and massive tax evasion reduced labor's share of national income. ..."
"... The capitalist class followed a trajectory of decline, recovery and ascendance. Moreover, during the earlier world depression, at the height of labor mobilization and organization, the capitalist class never faced any significant political threat over its control of the commanding heights of the economy ..."
"... Hand in bloody glove' with the US Empire, the American trade unions planted the seeds of their own destruction at home. The local capitalists in newly emerging independent nations established industries and supply chains in cooperation with US manufacturers. Attracted to these sources of low-wage, violently repressed workers, US capitalists subsequently relocated their factories overseas and turned their backs on labor at home. ..."
"... President 'Bill' Clinton ravaged Russia, Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia and liberated Wall Street. His regime gave birth to the prototype billionaire swindlers: Michael Milken and Bernard 'Bernie' Madoff. ..."
"... Clinton converted welfare into cheap labor 'workfare', exploiting the poorest and most vulnerable and condemning the next generations to grinding poverty. Under Clinton the prison population of mostly African Americans expanded and the breakup of families ravaged the urban communities. ..."
"... President Obama transferred 2 trillion dollars to the ten biggest bankers and swindlers on Wall Street, and another trillion to the Pentagon to pursue the Democrats version of foreign policy: from Bush's two overseas wars to Obama's seven. ..."
"... Obama was elected to two terms. His liberal Democratic Party supporters swooned over his peace and justice rhetoric while swallowing his militarist escalation into seven overseas wars as well as the foreclosure of two million American householders. Obama completely failed to honor his campaign promise to reduce wage inequality between black and white wage earners while he continued to moralize to black families about ' values' . ..."
"... Obama's war against Libya led to the killing and displacement of millions of black Libyans and workers from Sub-Saharan Africa. The smiling Nobel Peace Prize President created more desperate refugees than any previous US head of state – including millions of Africans flooding Europe. ..."
"... Forty-years of anti welfare legislation and pro-business regimes paved the golden road for the election of Donald Trump ..."
"... Trump and the Republicans are focusing on the tattered remnants of the social welfare system: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. The remains of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society -- are on the chopping block. ..."
"... The moribund (but well-paid) labor leadership has been notable by its absence in the ensuing collapse of the social welfare state. The liberal left Democrats embraced the platitudinous Obama/Clinton team as the 'Great Society's' gravediggers, while wailing at Trump's allies for shoving the corpse of welfare state into its grave. ..."
"... Over the past forty years the working class and the rump of what was once referred to as the ' labor movement' has contributed to the dismantling of the social welfare state, voting for ' strike-breaker' Reagan, ' workfare' Clinton, ' Wall Street crash' Bush, ' Wall Street savior' Obama and ' Trickle-down' Trump. ..."
"... Gone are the days when social welfare and profitable wars raised US living standards and transformed American trade unions into an appendage of the Democratic Party and a handmaiden of Empire. The Democratic Party rescued capitalism from its collapse in the Great Depression, incorporated labor into the war economy and the post- colonial global empire, and resurrected Wall Street from the 'Great Financial Meltdown' of the 21 st century. ..."
"... The war economy no longer fuels social welfare. The military-industrial complex has found new partners on Wall Street and among the globalized multi-national corporations. Profits rise while wages fall. Low paying compulsive labor (workfare) lopped off state transfers to the poor. Technology – IT, robotics, artificial intelligence and electronic gadgets – has created the most class polarized social system in history ..."
"... "The collaboration of liberals and unions in promoting endless wars opened the door to Trump's mirage of a stateless, tax-less, ruling class." ..."
"... Corporations [now] are welfare recipients and the bigger they are, the more handouts they suck up ..."
"... Corporations not only continuously seek monopolies (with the aid and sanction of the state) but they steadily fine tune the welfare state for their benefit. In fact, in reality, welfare for prols and peasants wouldn't exist if it didn't act as a money conduit and ultimate profit center for the big money grubbers. ..."
"... The article is dismal reading, and evidence of the failings of the "unregulated" society, where the anything goes as long as you are wealthy. ..."
"... Like the Pentagon. Americans still don't readily call this welfare, but they will eventually. Defense profiteers are unions in a sense, you're either in their club Or you're in the service industry that surrounds it. ..."
The American welfare state was created in 1935 and continued to develop through 1973. Since then, over a prolonged period, the
capitalist class has been steadily dismantling the entire welfare state.
Between the mid 1970's to the present (2017) labor laws, welfare rights and benefits and the construction of and subsidies for
affordable housing have been gutted. ' Workfare' (under President 'Bill' Clinton) ended welfare for the poor and displaced
workers. Meanwhile the shift to regressive taxation and the steadily declining real wages have increased corporate profits to an
astronomical degree.
What started as incremental reversals during the 1990's under Clinton has snowballed over the last two decades decimating welfare
legislation and institutions.
The earlier welfare 'reforms' and the current anti-welfare legislation and austerity practices have been accompanied by a
series of endless imperial wars, especially in the Middle East.
In the 1940's through the 1960's, world and regional wars (Korea and Indo-China) were combined with significant welfare program
– a form of ' social imperialism' , which 'buy off' the working class while expanding the empire. However, recent decades are characterized
by multiple regional wars and the reduction or elimination of welfare programs – and a massive growth in poverty, domestic insecurity
and poor health.
New Deals and Big Wars
The 1930's witnessed the advent of social legislation and action, which laid the foundations of what is called the ' modern
welfare state' .
Labor unions were organized as working class strikes and progressive legislation facilitated trade union organization, elections,
collective bargaining rights and a steady increase in union membership. Improved work conditions, rising wages, pension plans and
benefits, employer or union-provided health care and protective legislation improved the standard of living for the working class
and provided for 2 generations of upward mobility.
Social Security legislation was approved along with workers' compensation and the forty-hour workweek. Jobs were created through
federal programs (WPA, CCC, etc.). Protectionist legislation facilitated the growth of domestic markets for US manufacturers. Workplace
shop steward councils organized 'on the spot' job action to protect safe working conditions.
World War II led to full employment and increases in union membership, as well as legislation restricting workers' collective
bargaining rights and enforcing wage freezes. Hundreds of thousands of Americans found jobs in the war economy but a huge number
were also killed or wounded in the war.
The post-war period witnessed a contradictory process: wages and salaries increased while legislation curtailed union rights via
the Taft Hartley Act and the McCarthyist purge of leftwing trade union activists. So-called ' right to work' laws effectively
outlawed unionization mostly in southern states, which drove industries to relocate to the anti-union states.
Welfare reforms, in the form of the GI bill, provided educational opportunities for working class and rural veterans, while federal-subsidized
low interest mortgages encourage home-ownership, especially for veterans.
The New Deal created concrete improvements but did not consolidate labor influence at any level. Capitalists and management still
retained control over capital, the workplace and plant location of production.
Trade union officials signed pacts with capital: higher pay for the workers and greater control of the workplace for the bosses.
Trade union officials joined management in repressing rank and file movements seeking to control technological changes by reducing
hours (" thirty hours work for forty hours pay "). Dissident local unions were seized and gutted by the trade union bosses
– sometimes through violence.
Trade union activists, community organizers for rent control and other grassroots movements lost both the capacity and the
will to advance toward large-scale structural changes of US capitalism. Living standards improved for a few decades but the capitalist
class consolidated strategic control over labor relations. While unionized workers' incomes, increased, inequalities, especially
in the non-union sectors began to grow. With the end of the GI bill, veterans' access to high-quality subsidized education declined.
While a new wave of social welfare legislation and programs began in the 1960's and early 1970's it was no longer a result of
a mass trade union or workers' "class struggle". Moreover, trade union collaboration with the capitalist regional war policies led
to the killing and maiming of hundreds of thousands of workers in two wars – the Korean and Vietnamese wars.
Much of social legislation resulted from the civil and welfare rights movements. While specific programs were helpful, none of
them addressed structural racism and poverty.
The Last Wave of Social Welfarism
The 1960'a witnessed the greatest racial war in modern US history: Mass movements in the South and North rocked state and federal
governments, while advancing the cause of civil, social and political rights. Millions of black citizens, joined by white activists
and, in many cases, led by African American Viet Nam War veterans, confronted the state. At the same time, millions of students and
young workers, threatened by military conscription, challenged the military and social order.
Energized by mass movements, a new wave of social welfare legislation was launched by the federal government to pacify mass opposition
among blacks, students, community organizers and middle class Americans. Despite this mass popular movement, the union bosses at
the AFL-CIO openly supported the war, police repression and the military, or at best, were passive impotent spectators of the drama
unfolding in the nation's streets. Dissident union members and activists were the exception, as many had multiple identities to represent:
African American, Hispanic, draft resisters, etc.
Under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, Medicare, Medicaid, OSHA, the EPA and multiple poverty programs were implemented.
A national health program, expanding Medicare for all Americans, was introduced by President Nixon and sabotaged by the Kennedy Democrats
and the AFL-CIO. Overall, social and economic inequalities diminished during this period.
The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the American militarist empire. This coincided with the beginning of the end of social welfare
as we knew it – as the bill for militarism placed even greater demands on the public treasury.
With the election of President Carter, social welfare in the US began its long decline. The next series of regional wars were
accompanied by even greater attacks on welfare via the " Volker Plan " – freezing workers' wages as a means to combat inflation.
Guns without butter' became the legislative policy of the Carter and Reagan Administrations. The welfare programs were based
on politically fragile foundations.
The Debacle of Welfarism
Private sector trade union membership declined from a post-world war peak of 30% falling to 12% in the 1990's. Today it has sunk
to 7%. Capitalists embarked on a massive program of closing thousands of factories in the unionized North which were then relocated
to the non-unionized low wage southern states and then overseas to Mexico and Asia. Millions of stable jobs disappeared.
Following the election of 'Jimmy Carter', neither Democratic nor Republican Presidents felt any need to support labor organizations.
On the contrary, they facilitated contracts dictated by management, which reduced wages, job security, benefits and social welfare.
The anti-labor offensive from the ' Oval Office' intensified under President Reagan with his direct intervention
firing tens of thousands of striking air controllers and arresting union leaders. Under Presidents Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush
and William Clinton cost of living adjustments failed to keep up with prices of vital goods and services. Health care inflation was
astronomical. Financial deregulation led to the subordination of American industry to finance and the Wall Street banks. De-industrialization,
capital flight and massive tax evasion reduced labor's share of national income.
The capitalist class followed a trajectory of decline, recovery and ascendance. Moreover, during the earlier world depression,
at the height of labor mobilization and organization, the capitalist class never faced any significant political threat over its
control of the commanding heights of the economy.
The ' New Deal' was, at best, a de facto ' historical compromise' between the capitalist class and the labor
unions, mediated by the Democratic Party elite. It was a temporary pact in which the unions secured legal recognition while the capitalists
retained their executive prerogatives.
The Second World War secured the economic recovery for capital and subordinated labor through a federally mandated no strike
production agreement. There were a few notable exceptions: The coal miners' union organized strikes in strategic sectors and some
leftist leaders and organizers encouraged slow-downs, work to rule and other in-plant actions when employers ran roughshod with special
brutality over the workers. The recovery of capital was the prelude to a post-war offensive against independent labor-based political
organizations. The quality of labor organization declined even as the quantity of trade union membership increased.
Labor union officials consolidated internal control in collaboration with the capitalist elite. Capitalist class-labor official
collaboration was extended overseas with strategic consequences.
The post-war corporate alliance between the state and capital led to a global offensive – the replacement of European-Japanese
colonial control and exploitation by US business and bankers. Imperialism was later 're-branded' as ' globalization' . It
pried open markets, secured cheap docile labor and pillaged resources for US manufacturers and importers.
US labor unions played a major role by sabotaging militant unions abroad in cooperation with the US security apparatus: They worked
to coopt and bribe nationalist and leftist labor leaders and supported police-state regime repression and assassination of recalcitrant
militants.
' Hand in bloody glove' with the US Empire, the American trade unions planted the seeds of their own destruction at home.
The local capitalists in newly emerging independent nations established industries and supply chains in cooperation with US manufacturers.
Attracted to these sources of low-wage, violently repressed workers, US capitalists subsequently relocated their factories overseas
and turned their backs on labor at home.
Labor union officials had laid the groundwork for the demise of stable jobs and social benefits for American workers. Their collaboration
increased the rate of capitalist profit and overall power in the political system. Their complicity in the brutal purges of militants,
activists and leftist union members and leaders at home and abroad put an end to labor's capacity to sustain and expand the welfare
state.
Trade unions in the US did not use their collaboration with empire in its bloody regional wars to win social benefits for the
rank and file workers. The time of social-imperialism, where workers within the empire benefited from imperialism's pillage, was
over. Gains in social welfare henceforth could result only from mass struggles led by the urban poor, especially Afro-Americans,
community-based working poor and militant youth organizers.
The last significant social welfare reforms were implemented in the early 1970's – coinciding with the end of the Vietnam War
(and victory for the Vietnamese people) and ended with the absorption of the urban and anti-war movements into the Democratic Party.
Henceforward the US corporate state advanced through the overseas expansion of the multi-national corporations and via large-scale,
non-unionized production at home.
The technological changes of this period did not benefit labor. The belief, common in the 1950's, that science and technology
would increase leisure, decrease work and improve living standards for the working class, was shattered. Instead technological changes
displaced well-paid industrial labor while increasing the number of mind-numbing, poorly paid, and politically impotent jobs in the
so-called 'service sector' – a rapidly growing section of unorganized and vulnerable workers – especially including women and minorities.
Labor union membership declined precipitously. The demise of the USSR and China's turn to capitalism had a dual effect: It eliminated
collectivist (socialist) pressure for social welfare and opened their labor markets with cheap, disciplined workers for foreign manufacturers.
Labor as a political force disappeared on every count. The US Federal Reserve and President 'Bill' Clinton deregulated financial
capital leading to a frenzy of speculation. Congress wrote laws, which permitted overseas tax evasion – especially in Caribbean tax
havens. Regional free-trade agreements, like NAFTA, spurred the relocation of jobs abroad. De-industrialization accompanied the decline
of wages, living standards and social benefits for millions of American workers.
The New Abolitionists: Trillionaires
The New Deal, the Great Society, trade unions, and the anti-war and urban movements were in retreat and primed for abolition.
Wars without welfare (or guns without butter) replaced earlier 'social imperialism' with a huge growth of poverty and homelessness.
Domestic labor was now exploited to finance overseas wars not vice versa. The fruits of imperial plunder were not shared.
As the working and middle classes drifted downward, they were used up, abandoned and deceived on all sides – especially by the
Democratic Party. They elected militarists and demagogues as their new presidents.
President 'Bill' Clinton ravaged Russia, Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia and liberated Wall Street. His regime gave birth to the
prototype billionaire swindlers: Michael Milken and Bernard 'Bernie' Madoff.
Clinton converted welfare into cheap labor 'workfare', exploiting the poorest and most vulnerable and condemning the next
generations to grinding poverty. Under Clinton the prison population of mostly African Americans expanded and the breakup of families
ravaged the urban communities.
Provoked by an act of terrorism (9/11) President G.W. Bush Jr. launched the 'endless' wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and deepened
the police state (Patriot Act). Wages for American workers and profits for American capitalist moved in opposite directions.
The Great Financial Crash of 2008-2011 shook the paper economy to its roots and led to the greatest shakedown of any national
treasury in history directed by the First Black American President. Trillions of public wealth were funneled into the criminal banks
on Wall Street – which were ' just too big to fail .' Millions of American workers and homeowners, however, were '
just
too small to matter' .
The Age of Demagogues
President Obama transferred 2 trillion dollars to the ten biggest bankers and swindlers on Wall Street, and another trillion
to the Pentagon to pursue the Democrats version of foreign policy: from Bush's two overseas wars to Obama's seven.
Obama's electoral 'donor-owners' stashed away two trillion dollars in overseas tax havens and looked forward to global free trade
pacts – pushed by the eloquent African American President.
Obama was elected to two terms. His liberal Democratic Party supporters swooned over his peace and justice rhetoric while
swallowing his militarist escalation into seven overseas wars as well as the foreclosure of two million American householders. Obama
completely failed to honor his campaign promise to reduce wage inequality between black and white wage earners while he continued
to moralize to black families about ' values' .
Obama's war against Libya led to the killing and displacement of millions of black Libyans and workers from Sub-Saharan Africa.
The smiling Nobel Peace Prize President created more desperate refugees than any previous US head of state – including millions of
Africans flooding Europe.
'Obamacare' , his imitation of an earlier Republican governor's health plan, was formulated by the private corporate
health industry (private insurance, Big Pharma and the for-profit hospitals), to mandate enrollment and ensure triple digit profits
with double digit increases in premiums. By the 2016 Presidential elections, ' Obama-care' was opposed by a 45%-43% margin
of the American people. Obama's propagandists could not show any improvement of life expectancy or decrease in infant and maternal
mortality as a result of his 'health care reform'. Indeed the opposite occurred among the marginalized working class in the old 'rust
belt' and in the rural areas. This failure to show any significant health improvement for the masses of Americans is in stark contrast
to LBJ's Medicare program of the 1960's, which continues to receive massive popular support.
Forty-years of anti welfare legislation and pro-business regimes paved the golden road for the election of Donald Trump
Trump and the Republicans are focusing on the tattered remnants of the social welfare system: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.
The remains of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society -- are on the chopping block.
The moribund (but well-paid) labor leadership has been notable by its absence in the ensuing collapse of the social welfare
state. The liberal left Democrats embraced the platitudinous Obama/Clinton team as the 'Great Society's' gravediggers, while wailing
at Trump's allies for shoving the corpse of welfare state into its grave.
Conclusion
Over the past forty years the working class and the rump of what was once referred to as the ' labor movement' has contributed
to the dismantling of the social welfare state, voting for ' strike-breaker' Reagan, ' workfare' Clinton, ' Wall Street crash' Bush,
' Wall Street savior' Obama and ' Trickle-down' Trump.
Gone are the days when social welfare and profitable wars raised US living standards and transformed American trade unions
into an appendage of the Democratic Party and a handmaiden of Empire. The Democratic Party rescued capitalism from its collapse in
the Great Depression, incorporated labor into the war economy and the post- colonial global empire, and resurrected Wall Street from
the 'Great Financial Meltdown' of the 21 st century.
The war economy no longer fuels social welfare. The military-industrial complex has found new partners on Wall Street and
among the globalized multi-national corporations. Profits rise while wages fall. Low paying compulsive labor (workfare) lopped off
state transfers to the poor. Technology – IT, robotics, artificial intelligence and electronic gadgets – has created the most class
polarized social system in history. The first trillionaire and multi-billionaire tax evaders rose on the backs of a miserable
standing army of tens of millions of low-wage workers, stripped of rights and representation. State subsidies eliminate virtually
all risk to capital. The end of social welfare coerced labor (including young mother with children) to seek insecure low-income employment
while slashing education and health – cementing the feet of generations into poverty. Regional wars abroad have depleted the Treasury
and robbed the country of productive investment. Economic imperialism exports profits, reversing the historic relation of the past.
Labor is left without compass or direction; it flails in all directions and falls deeper in the web of deception and demagogy.
To escape from Reagan and the strike breakers, labor embraced the cheap-labor predator Clinton; black and white workers united to
elect Obama who expelled millions of immigrant workers, pursued 7 wars, abandoned black workers and enriched the already filthy rich.
Deception and demagogy of the labor-
If the welfare state in America was abolished, major American cities would burn to the ground. Anarchy would ensue, it would be
magnitudes bigger than anything that happened in Ferguson or Baltimore. It would likely be simultaneous.
I think that's one of the only situations where preppers would actually live out what they've been prepping for (except for
a natural disaster).
I've been thinking about this a little over the past few years after seeing the race riots. What exactly is the line between
our society being civilized and breaking out into chaos. It's probably a lot thinner than most people think.
I don't know who said it but someone long ago said something along the lines of, "Democracy can only work until the people
figure out they can vote for themselves generous benefits from the public treasury." We are definitely in this situation today.
I wonder how long it can last.
While I agree with Petras's intent (notwithstanding several exaggerations and unnecessary conflations with, for example, racism),
I don't agree so much with the method he proposes. I don't mind welfare and unions to a certain extent, but they are not going
to save us unless there is full employment and large corporations that can afford to pay an all-union workforce. That happened
during WW2, as only wartime demand and those pesky wage freezes solved the Depression, regardless of all the public works programs;
while the postwar era benefited from the US becoming the world's creditor, meaning that capital could expand while labor participation
did as well.
From then on, it is quite hard to achieve the same success after outsourcing and mechanization have happened all over the world.
Both of these phenomena not only create displaced workers, but also displaced industries, meaning that it makes more sense to
develop individual workfare (and even then, do it well, not the shoddy way it is done now) rather than giving away checks that
probably will not be cashed for entrepreneurial purposes, and rather than giving away money to corrupt unions who depend on trusts
to be able to pay for their benefits, while raising the cost of hiring that only encourages more outsourcing.
The amount of welfare given is not necessarily the main problem, the problem is doing it right for the people who truly need
it, and efficiently – that is, with the least amount of waste lost between the chain of distribution, which should reach intended
targets and not moochers.
Which inevitably means a sound tax system that targets unearned wealth and (to a lesser degree) foreign competition instead
of national production, coupled with strict, yet devolved and simple government processes that benefit both business and individuals
tired of bureaucracy, while keeping budgets balanced. Best of both worlds, and no military-industrial complex needed to drive
up demand.
The American welfare state was created in 1935 and continued to develop through 1973. Since then, over a prolonged period,
the capitalist class has been steadily dismantling the entire welfare state.
Wrong wrong wrong.
Corporations [now] are welfare recipients and the bigger they are, the more handouts they suck up, and welfare for
them started before 1935. In fact, it started in America before there was a USA. I do not have time to elaborate, but what were
the various companies such as the British East India Company and the Dutch West India Companies but state pampered, welfare based
entities? ~200 years ago, Herbert Spencer, if memory serves, pointed out that the British East India Company couldn't make a profit
even with all the special, government granted favors showered upon it.
Corporations not only continuously seek monopolies (with the aid and sanction of the state) but they steadily fine tune
the welfare state for their benefit. In fact, in reality, welfare for prols and peasants wouldn't exist if it didn't act as a
money conduit and ultimate profit center for the big money grubbers.
Well, the author kind of nails it. I remember from my childhood in the 50-60 ties in Scandinavia that the US was the ultimate
goal in welfare. The country where you could make a good living with your two hands, get you kids to UNI, have a house, a telly
ECT. It was not consumerism, it was the American dream, a chicken in every pot; we chewed imported American gum and dreamed.
In the 70-80 ties Scandinavia had a tremendous social and economic growth, EQUALLY distributed, an immense leap forward. In the
middle of the 80 ties we were equal to the US in standards of living.
Since we have not looked at the US, unless in pity, as we have seen the decline of the general income, social wealth fall way
behind our own.
The average US workers income has not increased since 90 figures adjusted for inflation. The Scandinavian workers income in the
same period has almost quadrupled. And so has our societies.
The article is dismal reading, and evidence of the failings of the "unregulated" society, where the anything goes as long
as you are wealthy.
Between the mid 1970's to the present (2017) labor laws, welfare rights and benefits and the construction of and subsidies
for affordable housing have been gutted. 'Workfare' (under President 'Bill' Clinton) ended welfare for the poor and displaced
workers. Meanwhile the shift to regressive taxation and the steadily declining real wages have increased corporate profits
to an astronomical degree.
What does Hollywood "elite" JAP and wannabe hack-stand-up-comic Sarah Silverman think about the class struggle and problems
facing destitute Americans? "Qu'ils mangent de la bagels!", source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake
Like the Pentagon. Americans still don't readily call this welfare, but they will eventually. Defense profiteers are unions
in a sense, you're either in their club Or you're in the service industry that surrounds it.
As other commenters have pointed out, it's Petras curious choice of words that sometimes don't make too much sense. We can probably
blame the maleable English language for that, but here it's too obvious. If you don't define a union, people might assume you're
only talking about a bunch of meat cutters at Safeway.
The welfare state is alive and well for corporate America. Unions are still here – but they are defined by access and secrecy,
you're either in the club or not.
The war on unions was successful first by co-option but mostly by the media. But what kind of analysis leaves out the role
of the media in the American transformation? The success is mind blowing.
America has barely literate (white) middle aged males trained to spout incoherent Calvinistic weirdness: unabased hatred for
the poor (or whoever they're told to hate) and a glorification of hedge fund managers as they get laid off, fired and foreclosed
on, with a side of opiates.
There is hardly anything more tragic then seeing a web filled with progressives (management consultants) dedicated to disempowering,
disabling and deligitimizing victims by claiming they are victims of biology, disease or a lack of an education rather than a
system that issues violence while portending (with the best media money can buy) that they claim the higher ground.
""Democracy can only work until the people figure out they can vote for themselves generous benefits from the public
treasury." We are definitely in this situation today."
Quite right: the 0.01% have worked it out & US democracy is a Theatre for the masses.
I don't know who said it but someone long ago said something along the lines of, "Democracy can only work until the people
figure out they can vote for themselves generous benefits from the public treasury."
Some French aristocrat put it as, once the gates to the treasury have been breached, they can only be closed again with gunpowder.
Anyone recognize the author?
The author doesn't get it. What we have now IS the welfare state in an intensely diverse society. We have more transfer spending
than ever before and Obamacare represents another huge entitlement.
Intellectuals continue to fantasize about the US becoming a Big Sweden, but Sweden has only been successful insofar as it has
been a modest nation-state populated by ethnic Swedes. Intense diversity in a huge country with only the remnants of federalism
results in massive non-consensual decision-making, fragmentation, increased inequality, and corruption.
The welfare state is alive and well for corporate America. Unions are still here – but they are defined by access and
secrecy, you're either in the club or not.
They are largely defined as Doctors, Lawyers, and University Professors who teach the first two. Of course they are not called
unions. Access is via credentialing and licensing. Good Day
Bernie Sanders, speaking on behalf of the MIC's welfare bird: "It is the airplane of the United States Air Force, Navy, and
of NATO."
Elizabeth Warren, referring to Mossad's Estes Rockets: "The Israeli military has the right to attack Palestinian hospitals
and schools in self defense"
Barack Obama, yukking it up with pop stars: "Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming."
It's not the agitprop that confuses the sheep, it's whose blowhole it's coming out of (labled D or R for convenience) that
gets them to bare their teeth and speak of poo.
What came first, the credentialing or the idea that it is a necessary part of education? It certainly isn't an accurate indication
of what people know or their general intelligence – although that myth has flourished. Good afternoon.
For an interesting projection of what might happen in total civilizational collapse, I recommend the Dies the Fire series of
novels by SM Stirling.
It has a science-fictiony setup in that all high-energy system (gunpowder, electricity, explosives, internal combustion, even
high-energy steam engines) suddenly stop working. But I think it does a good job of extrapolating what would happen if suddenly
the cities did not have food, water, power, etc.
Spoiler alert: It ain't pretty. Those who dream of a world without guns have not really thought it through.
It has been pointed out repeatedly that Sweden does very well relative to the USA. It has also been noted that people of Swedish
ancestry in the USA do pretty well also. In fact considerably better than Swedes in Sweden
This is a typical feature of neoliberalism in general, not just Republicans. Democratic Party is the same. And this is not just
despite. There is real class war against working class unleashed in the USA since 1980. and neoliberals are winning.
Neoliberals disdain for ordinary working Americans as opposed to investors, heirs, and business owners runs so deep that they
can't contain it.
Notable quotes:
"... "Their disdain for ordinary working Americans as opposed to investors, heirs, and business owners runs so deep that they can't contain it": Republicans Despise the Working Class, by Paul Krugman, NY Times : You can always count on Republicans to do two things: try to cut taxes for the rich and try to weaken the safety net for the poor and the middle class. ... ..."
"... PK would probably even tell you that some of his best friends are working class. As a show of his undying love, he even penned opinion pieces on their behalf, promoting the gift of China's ascension the WTO in 2000, saying how great it would be for labor...that was before the great sucking sound of jobs going to China... ..."
"... Britain's opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn warned Morgan Stanley that bankers are right to regard him as a threat because he wants to transform what he cast as a rigged economy that profits speculators at the expense of ordinary people. ..."
"... I have news for you Paul.... the wealthy have always treated labor as second class citizens... what else is new and why are you just now figuring this out? ..."
"... It's interesting that regardless of which party has been in power since the 1960's (e.g. since Johnson) neither have provided any gains in real income to labor's share of income. ..."
"... And regardless of which party has been in power since the 1970's median incomes have grown at a barely perceptible rate while GDP has continued to grow unabated at a very much greater rate... the gap (wedge) has continued to increase without a hitch. ..."
"... Lower prices of goods and services offered to just a small amount above costs of labor in operations and capital. If every business paid 100% of revenue to workers, the taxes owed in profit taxes will be zero. ..."
"... The bizzare result in a corporation pays no taxes for 10 to 15 years when the factory is new and it's productivity means the highest return on investment, until the factory is old and less competitive, and now the loss carry forward is zero so any profit is now taxed, at the time when the factory is old. ..."
"... The point of cutting the profit tax rate is to kill jobs. A profit tax of zero would promote a business trying to create a slave labor force so 100% of revenue is tax free to the owners. A zero profit tax rate means every single dollar paid to workers cuts shareholder income by 100% of those dollars. ..."
"... Maybe only half will end up homeless and hungry, but those will be the ones moving into their kids, or grandkids living rooms, eating their food. In exchange for a $500 tax cut for working class families, these families get to feed and house their grandparent or parent, assuming they were earning enough to move out of their parent's basement. ..."
"... he globalist Democrats despise the working class, but play nice each election cycle while they suck money out of union treasuries. ..."
"Their disdain for ordinary working Americans as opposed to investors, heirs, and business owners runs so deep that they can't contain
it":
Republicans
Despise the Working Class, by Paul Krugman, NY Times : You can always count on Republicans to do two things: try to cut taxes
for the rich and try to weaken the safety net for the poor and the middle class. ...
But ... something has been added to the mix. ...Republicans ... don't treat all Americans with a given income the same. Instead,
their bill ... hugely privileges owners, whether of businesses or of financial assets, over those who simply work for a living. ...
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has evaluated the Senate bill, which the final bill is expected to resemble. It finds that the
bill would
reduce taxes on business owners , on average, about three times as much as it would reduce taxes on those whose primary source
of income is wages or salaries. For highly paid workers, the gap would be even wider, as much as 10 to one. ...
If this sounds like bad policy, that's because it is. More than that, it opens the doors to an orgy of tax avoidance. ... We're
pitting hastily devised legislation, drafted without hearings over the course of just a few days, against the cleverest lawyers and
accountants money can buy. Which side do you think will win?
As a result, it's a good guess that the bill will increase the budget deficit far more than currently projected. ...
So why are they doing this? After all, the tax bill appears to be terrible politics as well as terrible policy. ... The ... public
overwhelmingly disapproves
of the current Republican plan.
But Republicans don't seem able to help themselves: Their disdain for ordinary working Americans as opposed to investors, heirs,
and business owners runs so deep that they can't contain it.
When I realized the extent to which G.O.P. tax plans were going to favor business owners over ordinary workers, I found myself
remembering what happened in 2012, when Eric Cantor -- then the House majority leader -- tried to celebrate Labor Day. He
put out a tweet for the occasion that
somehow failed to mention workers at all, instead praising those who have "built a business and earned their own success." ...
Cantor, a creature of the G.O.P. establishment if ever there was one, had so little respect for working Americans that he forgot
to include them in a Labor Day message.
And now that disdain has been translated into legislation, in the form of a bill that treats anyone who works for someone else
-- that is, the vast majority of Americans -- as a second-class citizen.
Fair play for the ever so many petty wage heads. Out there ! High achieving high dollar earning high altruism embodying.
Our
PK. What a guy ! "haut Liberal oblige " at its most glowing
Exploited citizens are indeed like oppressed citizens. Inferior class types
Hillary prefers earning her daily bread. By making humanist speeches to bankers and writing best selling alibi seasoned memoirs
for the bibliophilic public. Why oh why does Paul love her so ?
PK would probably even tell you that some of his best friends are working class. As a show of his undying love, he even
penned opinion pieces on their behalf, promoting the gift of China's ascension the WTO in 2000, saying how great it would be for
labor...that was before the great sucking sound of jobs going to China...
Republicans have no monopoly on selling out the working class...but workers have yet to figure out that there are more than
two candidates running for President.
Labor parties exist in the OECD. But they had a third way fantasy. Where we all dance together. Most have still not shaken off
this collaborationist pipe dream despite the fall of 2008. And the ten year doldrums since
British Labour leader Corbyn tells Morgan Stanley: 'We're a threat'
Guy Faulconbridge
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn warned Morgan Stanley that bankers are right to regard
him as a threat because he wants to transform what he cast as a rigged economy that profits speculators at the expense of ordinary
people.
I have news for you Paul.... the wealthy have always treated labor as second class citizens... what else is new and why are
you just now figuring this out?
It's interesting that regardless of which party has been in power since the 1960's (e.g. since Johnson) neither have provided
any gains in real income to labor's share of income.
And regardless of which party has been in power since the 1970's median incomes have grown at a barely perceptible rate
while GDP has continued to grow unabated at a very much greater rate... the gap (wedge) has continued to increase without a hitch.
So Paul, are you just no noticing this or are you under the impression that it's just the GOP wealthy that have disdain for
labor... since it would appear to me that it's the wealthy regardless of party identification -- though there are admittedly a
few notable exemptions.... but those are only after they have become among the globes richest persons.
That seems a grotesque misreading of the piece, which never claims this is new, just that it is even worse than before. Krugman
has also written extensively about these issues in the past (he lambasted the Bush administration for exactly the same issues).
I've been reading PK probably since before you could even read or perhaps since you graduated from Dick, Jane, Sally, & Spot.
I'm even a huge fan except:
I lambast him for not calling a spade a spade (which until just very recently he never did before), and
For intentionally misleading, even though the direction he misleads favors my own positions.
In this case he made a clear statement that in the context of his post is intended to mean the current GOP (as you also were
led to believe by your statement "worse then before", or perhaps "recent GOP" as you also believed by your statement "Bush administration...").
You are in fact the direct intent of my comment.. people who believe this GOP is any different than any other GOP. The only
difference in this one and any other is that the party has a bullet proof majority in both houses AND a complicit Executive to
do their bidding. That just makes it possible for the GOP to carry out its objectives... the objectives have never changed...
since Coolidge and Hoover at least.
Krugman's explicit statement inferring and implying this GOP is different is:
"But Republicans don't seem able to help themselves: Their disdain for ordinary working Americans as opposed to investors,
heirs, and business owners runs so deep that they can't contain it."
In fact this has been the case all along so why if its not new news does he even mention it? Moreover he neglects entirely
to say that it's not just the GOP that has disdain for labor but the entire wealth class, regardless of party. The Dems were persuaded
by organized labor to pay attention to labor's issues and preferences .. or else!
Even at that all actual evidence shows quite clearly that labor takes it in the shorts since the 1960's at least, and if you
go back to Coolidge and Hoover it was also in clear and obvious evidence at that time as well.
And yet, in all the time since, through all administrations and congress's labor keeps getting the shaft so it's not just the
GOP that caters to the wealth, but the Dems as well... and this shouldn't be a surprise (but I'm sure is) because the U.S. gov't
is actually run by and to the primarily benefit of the wealthy -- and it always has been in case you haven't much history under
your belt yet.
You took Krugman's statement as he intended people like you to take it in his post hook line and sinker.
(my uncle was high up in organized labor in western US in the 1950's through 1970's. I lived with he and my aunt for a summer
between college years. He said often and astutely based in his intimate political dealings with Democratic national and State
leaders, "The Democrats have nor more back-bone than what Organized Labor provides." The parties aren't really that much different
when it comes to the working class."
I was taken aback, and didn't believe him --- after all he was a labor leader --- but I watched over the ensuing decades and
sure 'nuff, he was dead on right then and nothing's changed.
To make a difference gov't control has to be taken from the wealthy and has to be shared equally with labor... it doesn't do
that nor has it ever done that. Ignore the rhetoric and look at the evidence over time... it's quite obvious and not even remotely
vague.
There is likely to be a lot more of that. When some guys get $10 million then others are going to be angry that they only got
$1 million. The donor class as a whole will be happy, but some of them will be very unhappy. They may even be willing to support
the "Repal the Trump tax cuts" movement and actively support democratic candidates.
True, but the Democrats do too. When I was active in the local Democratic party, the only concerns were for minorities and the
middle-class. The only time the Caucasian working class was mentioned was to put them down.
If only Democrats were explaining how corporations can cut their taxes: Hire more workers to increase labor cost tax dodging!
Pay workers higher wages to increase labor cost tax dodging. Provide more tax exempt benefits to increase labor cost tax dodges.
Pay workers to do more R&D which is expensed. Borrow at low interest rates to pay workers to build a huge costly factory that
will generate huge depreciation tax dodges plus interest cost tax dodges.
Lower prices of goods and services offered to just a small amount above costs of labor in operations and capital. If every
business paid 100% of revenue to workers, the taxes owed in profit taxes will be zero.
Krugman constantly fails to understand that the GOP, intentionally or not, works to kill jobs.
All businesses can dodge that "highest in the world" 35% corporate PROFITS tax by PAYING MORE TO WORKERS!
The biggest corporate business tax dodge in the US is labor costs.
Granted, the tax dodge of paying labor costs building a factory is spread out over decades, but if you build a billion dollar
factory, the revenue after paying workers to operate the plant will almost never come close to a billion dollars. Immediate expensing
of the billion dollar factory is likely to result in taxable losses of a billion dollars, that can be carried over to shelter
$50-100 million in "profit" as the capital cost of production is zero - the capital costs is fully depreciated if capital is expensed,
meaning the factory has a book value of zero.
The bizzare result in a corporation pays no taxes for 10 to 15 years when the factory is new and it's productivity means the
highest return on investment, until the factory is old and less competitive, and now the loss carry forward is zero so any profit
is now taxed, at the time when the factory is old.
Standard double declining balance depreciation spreads taxes out over the life of the factory, so taxes are flatter. Note that
selling the factory after taxes are owed merely triggers capital gains equal to the price because the capital book price is zero.
The point of cutting the profit tax rate is to kill jobs. A profit tax of zero would promote a business trying to create a
slave labor force so 100% of revenue is tax free to the owners. A zero profit tax rate means every single dollar paid to workers
cuts shareholder income by 100% of those dollars.
To create jobs by lowering profit tax rates, investors must suddenly say "No no don't give me so much in dividends and do not
increase the price of my shares by stock buyback! I HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY AND I WANT WORKERS TO GET MY MONEY"
To go a step further, the GOP will next call for killing jobs by ending or cutting SS and Medicare and Medicaid payments which
pay workers to feed, cloth, house, care for those getting those benefits.
Maybe only half will end up homeless and hungry, but those will be the ones moving into their kids, or grandkids living rooms,
eating their food. In exchange for a $500 tax cut for working class families, these families get to feed and house their grandparent
or parent, assuming they were earning enough to move out of their parent's basement.
Economies are zero sum.
One person's costs are another person's 100% income.
Cut costs, you cut income.
As I liberal, I say that, like Newt ordered "death" replace "estate", every mention of "costs" get replaced with "jobs".
On tax and spend, the GOP is focused on killing jobs. Cut taxes to kill jobs. Cut spending to kill jobs.
After all, I never knew any employee going into a corporate meeting on cost cutting expecting to hear of a big hiring program
or of company wide wage and benefit hikes, other than mandatory long vacations, at zero pay.
Neoliberalism as "Die-now economics." "Embodiment into lower class" or "the representation as a member the lower
class" if often fatal and upper mobility mobility is artificially limited (despite all MSM hype it is lower then in Europe). So just
being a member of lower class noticeably and negatively affects your life expectancy and other social metrics. Job insecurity
is the hazard reserved for lower and lower middle classes destructivly effect both physical and mental health. Too much stress
is not good for humans. Neoliberalism with its manta of competition uber alles and atomization of the workforce is a real killer.
also the fact that such article was published and the comments below is a clear sign that the days of neoliberalism are numbered.
It should go.
Notable quotes:
"... In our new book , we draw on an extensive body of scientific literature to assess the health effects of three decades of neoliberal policies. Focusing on the social determinants of health -- the conditions of life and work that make it relatively easy for some people to lead long and healthy lives, while it is all but impossible for others -- we show that there are four interconnected neoliberal epidemics: austerity, obesity, stress, and inequality. They are neoliberal because they are associated with or worsened by neoliberal policies. ..."
"... Neoliberalism operates through labor markets to undermine health not only by way of the financial consequences of unemployment, inadequate employment, or low wages, as important as these are, but also through chronic exposure to stress that 'gets under your skin' by way of multiple mechanisms. Quite simply, the effects of chronic insecurity wear people out over the life course in biologically measurable ways . ..."
"... Oh, and "beyond class" because for social beings embodiment involves "social production; social consumption; and social reproduction." In the most reductive definition of class -- the one I used in my crude 1% + 10% + 90% formulation -- class is determined by wage work (or not), hence is a part of production (of capital), not social consumption (eating, etc.) or social reproduction (children, families, household work ). So, even if class in our political economy is the driver, it's not everything. ..."
"... "Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. ..."
"... Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve." ..."
"... As opposed to being champions of "self-actualization/identity" and "absolute relativism", I always got the impression that they were both offering stark warnings about diving too deeply into the self, vis-a-vis, identity. As if, they both understood the terrifying world that it could/would create, devoid of common cause, community, and ultimately empathy. A world where "we" are not possible because we have all become "I". ..."
"... Wonks like Yglesias love to mock working class concerns as "economic anxiety," which is at once belittling (it's all about f-e-e-e-lings ..."
"... "we have measurable health outcomes from political choices" So True!!! ..."
In our new book
, we draw on an extensive body of scientific literature to assess the health effects of three decades of neoliberal policies.
Focusing on the social determinants
of health -- the conditions of life and work that make it relatively easy for some people to lead long and healthy lives,
while it is all but impossible for others -- we show that there are four interconnected neoliberal epidemics: austerity, obesity,
stress, and inequality. They are neoliberal because they are associated with or worsened by neoliberal policies. They are
epidemics because they are observable on such an international scale and have been transmitted so quickly across time and space
that if they were biological contagions they would be seen as of epidemic proportions.
(The Case-Deaton study provides an obvious fifth: Deaths of despair. There are doubtless others.)
Case in point for
one of the unluckier members of the 90%:
On the morning of 25 August 2014 a young New Jersey woman, Maria Fernandes, died from inhaling gasoline fumes as she slept
in her 13-year-old car. She often slept in the car while shuttling between her three, low-wage jobs in food service; she kept
a can of gasoline in the car because she often slept with the engine running, and was worried about running out of gasoline. Apparently,
the can accidentally tipped over and the vapours from spilled gasoline cost her life. Ms Fernandes was one of the more obvious
casualties of the zero-hours culture of stress and insecurity that pervades the contemporary labour market under neoliberalism.
And Schrecker and Bambra conclude:
Neoliberalism operates through labor markets to undermine health not only by way of the financial consequences of unemployment,
inadequate employment, or low wages, as important as these are, but also through chronic exposure to stress that 'gets under your
skin' by way of multiple mechanisms. Quite simply, the effects of chronic insecurity wear people out over the life course in
biologically measurable ways .
... ... ...
Oh, and "beyond class" because for social beings embodiment involves "social production; social consumption; and social reproduction."
In the most reductive definition of class -- the one I used in my crude 1% + 10% + 90% formulation -- class is determined by wage
work (or not), hence is a part of production (of capital), not social consumption (eating, etc.) or social reproduction (children,
families, household work ). So, even if class in our political economy is the driver, it's not everything.
L.S. reminiscent of Ernst Becker's, "The Structure of Evil" – "Escape from Evil"? (..not to indicate good vs. evil dichotomy)
A great amount of perspective must be agreed upon to achieve "change" intoned. Divide and conquer are complicit, as noted .otherwise
(and as indicated by U.S. economic history) change arrives only when all have lost all and can therefore agree begin again.
There is however, Naomi Klein perspective, "Shock Doctrine", whereby influence contributes to destabilization, plan in hand
leading to agenda driven ("neoliberal"=market fundamentalism) outcome, not at all spontaneous in nature:
"Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers,
whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It
maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.
Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services
should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions
that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility
and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive
and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve."
On Case-Deason: Sounds like home. I keep the scanner on(local news) ems and fire only since 2006(sheriff got a homeland security
grant). The incidence of suicide, overdose and "intoxication psychosis" are markedly increased in the last 10+ years out here
in the wilderness(5K folks in whole county, last I looked). Our local economy went into near depression after the late 90's farm
bill killed the peanut program then 911 meant no hunting season that year(and it's been noticeably less busy ever since) then
drought and the real estate crash(we had 30 some realtors at peak..old family land being sold off, mostly). So the local Bourgeoisie
have had less money to spend, which "trickles down" onto the rest of us.:less construction, less eating out even at the cheap
places, less buying of gas, and on and on means fewer employees are needed, thus fewer jobs. To boot, there is a habit among many
employers out here of not paying attention to labor laws(it is Texas ) the last minwage rise took 2 years to filter out here,
and one must scrutinize one's pay stub to ensure that the boss isn't getting squirrelly with overtime and witholding.
Geography plays into all this, too 100 miles to any largish city.
I'm not well versed in Foucault or Lacan but I've read some of both and in reading between the lines of their writing (the
phantom philosophy?) I saw a very different message than that often delivered by post-modern theorists.
As opposed to being champions of "self-actualization/identity" and "absolute relativism", I always got the impression that
they were both offering stark warnings about diving too deeply into the self, vis-a-vis, identity. As if, they both understood
the terrifying world that it could/would create, devoid of common cause, community, and ultimately empathy. A world where "we"
are not possible because we have all become "I".
Considering what both their philosophies claimed, if identity is a lie, and the subject is always generated relative to the
other, then how the hell can there be any security or well being in self-actualization? It is like trying to hit a target that
does not exist.
All potentially oppressive cultural categorizations are examples of this (black, latino, gay, trans, etc.). If the identity
is a moving target, both to the oppressor and the oppressed, then how can it ever be a singular source of political action? You
can't hit what isn't there. This is not to say that these groups (in whatever determined category) are not oppressed, just that
formulating political action based strictly on the identity (often as an essential category) is impossible because it does not
actually exist materially. It is an amalgamation of subjects who's subjectivity is always relative to some other whether ally
or oppressor. Only the manifestations of oppression on bodies (as brought up in Lambert's post) can be utilized as metrics for
political action.
I thought of a couple of other advantages of the "embodiment" paradigm:
Better Framing. Wonks like Yglesias love to mock working class concerns as "economic anxiety," which is
at once belittling (it's all about f-e-e-e-lings *) and disempowering (solutions are individual, like therapy or drugs).
Embodiment by contrast insists that neoliberalism (the neoliberal labor market (class warfare)) has real, material, physiological
effects that can be measured and tracked, as with any epidemic.
"... The U.S. has a retirement crisis on its hands, and with the far right controlling the executive branch and both houses of Congress, as well as dozens of state governments, things promise to grow immeasurably worse. ..."
"... It wasn't supposed to be this way. Past progressive presidents, notably Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, took important steps to make life more comfortable for aging Americans. FDR signed the Social Security Act of 1935 into law as part of his New Deal, and when LBJ passed Medicare in 1965, he established a universal health care program for those 65 and older. But the country has embraced a neoliberal economic model since the election of Ronald Reagan, and all too often, older Americans have been quick to vote for far-right Republicans antagonistic to the social safety net. ..."
"... Since then, Ryan has doubled down on his delusion that the banking sector can manage Social Security and Medicare more effectively than the federal government. Republican attacks on Medicare have become a growing concern: according to EBRI, only 38 percent of workers are confident the program will continue to provide the level of benefits it currently does. ..."
"... As 2017 winds down, Americans with health problems are still in the GOP's crosshairs -- this time because of so-called tax reform. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (both the House and Senate versions) includes provisions that would undermine Obamacare and cause higher health insurance premiums for older Americans. According to AARP, "Older adults ages 50-64 would be at particularly high risk under the proposal, facing average premium increases of up to $1,500 in 2019 as a result of the bill." ..."
"... Countless Americans who are unable to afford those steep premiums would lose their insurance. The CBO estimates that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would cause the number of uninsured under 65 to increase 4 million by 2019 and 13 million by 2027. The bill would also imperil Americans 65 and over by cutting $25 billion from Medicare . ..."
"... Analyzing W2 tax records in 2012, U.S. Census Bureau researchers Michael Gideon and Joshua Mitchell found that only 14 percent of private-sector employers in the U.S. were offering a 401(k) or similar retirement packages to their workers. That figure was thought to be closer to 40 percent, but Gideon and Mitchell discovered the actual number was considerably lower when smaller businesses were carefully analyzed, and that larger companies were more likely to offer 401(k) plans than smaller ones. ..."
"... Today, millions of Americans work in the gig economy who don't have full-time jobs or receive W2s, but instead receive 1099s for freelance work. ..."
"... The combination of stagnant wages and an increasingly high cost of living have been especially hellish for Americans who are trying to save for retirement. The United States' national minimum wage, a mere $7.25 per hour, doesn't begin to cover the cost of housing at a time when rents have soared nationwide. Never mind the astronomical prices in New York City, San Francisco or Washington, D.C. Median rents for one-bedroom apartments are as high as $1,010 per month in Atlanta, $960 per month in Baltimore, $860 per month in Jacksonville and $750 per month in Omaha, according to ApartmentList.com. ..."
"... yeah, Canada has a neoliberal infestation that is somewhere between the US and the UK. France has got one too, but it is less advanced. I'll enjoy my great healthcare, public transportation, and generous paid time off while I can. ..."
"... Europeans may scratch their heads, but they should recall their own histories and the long struggle to the universal benefits now enjoyed. Americans are far too complacent. This mildness is viewed by predators as weakness and the attacks will continue. ..."
"... Not sure if many of the readers here watch non-cable national broadcast news, but Pete Peterson and his foundation are as everpresent an advertiser as the pharma industry. Peterson is the strongest, best organized advocate for gutting social services, social security, and sending every last penny out of the tax-mule consumer's pocket toward wall street. The guy needs an equivalent counterpoint enemy. ..."
"... The social advantages that we still enjoy were fought in the streets, and on the "bricks" flowing with the participants blood. 8 hr. day; women's right to vote; ability and right for groups of laborers to organize; worker safety laws ..and so many others. There is no historical memory on how those rights were achieved. We are slowly slipping into an oligarchy greased by the idea that the physical possession of material things is all that matters. Sheeple, yes. ..."
"... Mmm, I think American voters get what they want in the end. They want their politicians because they believe the lies. 19% of Americans believe they are in the top 1% of wealth. A huge percentage of poor people believe they or their kids will (not can, but will) become wealthy. Most Americans can't find France on a map. ..."
"... I may have been gone for about thirty years, but that has only sharpened my insights into America. It's very hard to see just how flawed America is from the inside but when you step outside and have some perspective, it's frightening. ..."
"... Our government, beginning with Reagan, turned its back on promoting the general welfare. The wealthy soon learned that their best return on investment was the "purchase" of politicians willing to pass the legislation they put in their hands. Much of their investment included creating the right wing media apparatus. ..."
"... The Class War is real. It has been going on for 40 years, with the Conservative army facing virtually no resistance. Conservatives welcome Russia's help. Conservatives welcome barriers to people voting. Conservatives welcome a populace that believes lies that benefit them. Conservatives welcome the social and financial decline of the entire middle class and poor as long as it profits the rich financially, and by extension enhances their power politically. ..."
"... "Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day, but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery" Thomas Jefferson. Rights of British America, 1774 ME 1:193, Papers 1:125 ..."
"... yes, my problem with the post as well, completely ignores democrat complicity the part where someone with a 26k salary will pay 16k in insurance? No they won't, the system would collapse in that case which will be fine with me. ..."
"... As your quote appears to imply, it's not a problem that can be solved by voting which, let's not forget, is nothing more than expressing an opinion. I am not sticking around just to find out if economically-crushed, opiod-, entertainment-, social media-addled Americans are actually capable of rolling out tumbrils for trips to the guillotines in the city squares. I strongly suspect not. ..."
"... This is the country where, after the banks crushed the economy in 2008, caused tens of thousands to lose their jobs, and then got huge bailouts, the people couldn't even be bothered to take their money out of the big banks and put it elsewhere. Because, you know, convenience! Expressing an opinion, or mobilizing others to express an opinion, or educating or proselytizing others about what opinion to have, is about the limit of what they are willing, or know how to do. ..."
Yves here. I imagine many readers are acutely aware of the problems outlined in this article, if not beset by them already. By
any rational standard, I should move now to a much cheaper country that will have me. I know individuals who live most of the year
in third-world and near-third world countries, but they have very cheap ways of still having a toehold in the US and not (yet or
maybe ever) getting a long-term residence visa. Ecuador is very accommodating regarding retirement visas, and a Social Security level
income goes far there, but yours truly isn't retiring any time soon. And another barrier to an international move (which recall I
did once, so I have some appreciation for what it takes), is that one ought to check out possible destinations but if you are already
time and money and energy stressed, how do you muster the resources to do that at all, let alone properly?
Aside from the potential to greatly reduce fixed costs, a second impetus for me is Medicare. I know for most people, getting on
Medicare is a big plus. I have a very rare good, very old insurance policy. When you include the cost of drug plans, Medicare is
no cheaper than what I have now, and considerably narrows my network. Moreover, I expect it to be thoroughly crapified by ten years
from now (when I am 70), which argues for getting out of Dodge sooner rather than later.
And that's before you get to another wee problem Lambert points out that I would probably not be happy in a third world or high
end second world country. But the only bargain "world city" I know of is Montreal. I'm not sure it would represent enough of an all-in
cost saving to justify the hassle of an international move and the attendant tax compliance burdens .and that charitably assumes
I could even find a way to get permanent residence. Ugh.
By Alex Henderson, who has written for the L.A. Weekly, Billboard, Spin, Creem, the Pasadena Weekly and many other publications.
Follow him on Twitter @alexvhenderson. Originally published at
Alternet
Millions can no longer afford to retire, and may never be able when the GOP passes its tax bill.
The news is not good for millions of aging Baby Boomers and Gen Xers in the United States who are moving closer to retirement
age. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute's annual report on retirement preparedness for 2017, only 18 percent of
U.S.-based workers feel "very confident" about their
ability to retire comfortably ; Craig Copeland,
senior research associate for EBRI and the report's co-author, cited "debt, lack of a retirement plan at work, and low savings" as
"key factors" in workers' retirement-related anxiety. The Insured Retirement Institute finds a mere 23 percent of Baby Boomers and
24 percent of Gen Xers are confident that their savings will last in retirement. To make matters worse, more than 40 percent of Boomers
and over 30 percent of Gen Xers report having
no retirement savings whatsoever .
The U.S. has a
retirement crisis on its hands, and with the far right controlling the executive branch and both houses of Congress, as well
as dozens of state governments, things promise to grow immeasurably worse.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Past progressive presidents, notably Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, took
important steps to make life more comfortable for aging Americans. FDR signed the Social Security Act of 1935 into law as part of
his New Deal, and when LBJ passed Medicare in 1965, he established a universal health care program for those 65 and older. But the
country has embraced a neoliberal economic model since the election of Ronald Reagan, and all too often, older Americans have been
quick to vote for far-right Republicans antagonistic to the social safety net.
In the 2016 presidential election, 55 percent of voters 50 and older
cast their ballots for Donald Trump
against just 44 percent for Hillary Clinton. (This was especially true of older white voters; 90 percent of black voters 45 and older,
as well as 67 percent of Latino voters in the same age range voted Democratic.)
Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) economic proposals may have been wildly popular with millennials, but no demographic has a greater
incentive to vote progressive than Americans facing retirement. According to research conducted by the American Association of Retired
Persons, the three greatest concerns of Americans 50 and older are Social Security, health care costs and caregiving for loved ones
-- all areas that have been targeted by Republicans.
House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, a
devotee of social Darwinist Ayn Rand , has made no secret of his desire to
privatize
Social Security and replace traditional Medicare with a voucher program. Had George W. Bush had his way and turned Social Security
over to Wall Street, the economic crash of September 2008 might have left millions of senior citizens homeless.
Since then, Ryan has doubled down on his delusion that the banking sector can manage Social Security and Medicare more effectively
than the federal government. Republican attacks on Medicare have become a growing concern: according to EBRI, only 38 percent of
workers are confident the program will continue to provide the level of benefits it currently does.
The GOP's obsession with abolishing the Affordable Care Act is the most glaring example of its disdain for aging Americans. Yet
Obamacare has been a blessing for Boomers and Gen Xers who have preexisting conditions. The ACA's guaranteed issue plans make no
distinction between a 52-year-old American with diabetes, heart disease or asthma and a 52-year-old who has never had any of those
illnesses. And AARP notes that under the ACA, the uninsured rate for Americans 50 and older decreased from 15 percent in 2013 to
9 percent in 2016.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the replacement bills Donald Trump hoped to ram through Congress this year would
have resulted in staggering
premium hikes for Americans over 50. The CBO's analysis of the American Health Care Act, one of the earlier versions of Trumpcare,
showed that a 64-year-old American making $26,500 per year could have gone from paying $1,700 annually in premiums to just over $16,000.
The CBO also estimated that the GOP's American Health Care Act would have deprived
23 million Americans of health insurance by 2026.
As 2017 winds down, Americans with health problems are still in the GOP's crosshairs -- this time because of so-called tax
reform. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (both the House and Senate versions) includes provisions that would undermine Obamacare and cause
higher health insurance premiums for older Americans. According to AARP, "Older adults ages 50-64 would be at
particularly high risk under the proposal, facing average premium increases of up to $1,500 in 2019 as a result of the bill."
The CBO estimates that the bill will cause premiums to spike an average of 10 percent overall, with average premiums increasing
$890 per year for a 50-year-old, $1,100 per year for a 55-year-old, $1,350 per year for a 60-year-old and $1,490 per year for a 64-year-old.
Premium increases, according to the CBO, would vary from state to state; in Maine, average premiums for a 64-year-old would rise
as much as $1,750 per year.
Countless Americans who are unable to afford those steep premiums would lose their insurance. The CBO estimates that the Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act would cause the number of uninsured under 65 to increase 4 million by 2019 and 13 million by 2027. The bill would
also imperil Americans 65 and over by
cutting $25 billion from
Medicare .
As morally reprehensible as the GOP's tax legislation may be, it is merely an acceleration of the redistribution of wealth from
the bottom to the top that America has undergone since the mid-1970s. (President Richard Nixon may have been a paranoid right-winger
with authoritarian tendencies, but he expanded Medicare and supported universal health care.) Between the decline of labor unions,
age discrimination, stagnant wages, an ever-rising cost of living, low interest rates, and a shortage of retirement accounts, millions
of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers may never be able to retire.
Traditional
defined-benefit
pensions were once a mainstay of American labor, especially among unionized workers. But according to Pew Charitable Trusts,
only
13 percent of Baby Boomers still have them (among millennials, the number falls to 6 percent). In recent decades, 401(k) plans
have become much more prominent, yet a majority of American workers don't have them either.
Analyzing W2 tax records in 2012, U.S. Census Bureau researchers Michael Gideon and Joshua Mitchell found that only 14 percent
of private-sector employers in the U.S. were offering a 401(k) or similar retirement packages to their workers. That figure was thought
to be closer to 40 percent, but Gideon and Mitchell discovered the actual number was considerably lower when smaller businesses were
carefully analyzed, and that larger companies were more likely to offer 401(k) plans than smaller ones.
Today, millions of Americans work in the gig economy who don't have full-time jobs or receive W2s, but instead receive 1099s
for freelance work. Tax-deferred SEP-IRAs were once a great, low-risk way for freelancers to save for retirement without relying
exclusively on Social Security, but times have changed since the 1980s and '90s when interest rates were considerably higher for
certificates of deposit and savings accounts. According to Bankrate.com,
average rates for one-year
CDs dropped from 11.27 percent in 1984 to 8.1 percent in 1990 to 5.22 percent in 1995 to under 1 percent in 2010, where it currently
remains.
The combination of stagnant wages and an increasingly high cost of living have been especially hellish for Americans who are
trying to save for retirement. The United States' national minimum wage, a mere $7.25 per hour, doesn't begin to cover the cost of
housing at a time when rents have soared nationwide. Never mind the astronomical prices in New York City, San Francisco or Washington,
D.C. Median rents for one-bedroom apartments
are as high as $1,010 per month in Atlanta, $960 per month in Baltimore, $860 per month in Jacksonville and $750 per month in Omaha,
according to ApartmentList.com.
That so many older Americans are renting at all is ominous in its own right. FDR made home ownership a primary goal of the New
Deal, considering it a key component of a thriving middle class. But last year, the Urban Institute found that 19 million Americans
who previously owned a home are now renting, 31 percent between the ages of 36 and 45. Laurie Goodman, one of the study's authors,
contends the Great Recession has "permanently raised the number of renters," and that the explosion of foreclosures has hit Gen Xers
especially hard.
The severity of the U.S. retirement crisis is further addressed in journalist
Jessica Bruder's new book
"Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century," which follows Americans in their 50s, 60s and even 70s
living in RVs or vans , barely eking out a living doing
physically demanding, seasonal temp work from harvesting sugar beets to cleaning toilets at campgrounds. Several had high-paying
jobs before their lives were blown apart by the layoffs, foreclosures and corporate downsizing of the Great Recession. Bruder speaks
with former college professors and software professionals who now find themselves destitute, teetering on the brink of homelessness
and forced to do backbreaking work for next to nothing. Unlike the big banks, they never received a bailout.
These neo-nomads recall the transients of the 1930s, themselves victims of Wall Street's recklessness. But whereas FDR won in
a landslide in 1932 and aggressively pursued a program of progressive economic reforms, Republicans in Congress have set out to shred
what little remains of the social safety net, giving
huge tax breaks
to millionaires and billionaires . The older voters who swept Trump into office may have signed their own death warrants.
If aging Americans are going to be saved from this dystopian future, the U.S. will have to forge a new Great Society. Programs
like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will need to be strengthened, universal health care must become a reality and age discrimination
in the workplace will have to be punished as a civil rights violation like racial and gender-based discrimination. If not, millions
of Gen Xers and Boomers will spend their golden years scraping for pennies.
I certainly will never go back to the States for these and other reasons. I have a friend, also an American citizen, who travels
frequently back to California to visit his son. He is truly worried about getting sick or having an accident when he is there
since he knows it might bankrupt him. As he jokes, he would be happy to have another heart attack here in France since it's free!
For those of you who have traveled the world and talked to people, you probably know that most foreigners are perplexed by
America's attitude to health care and social services. The richest nation in the world thinks that health and social security
(in the larger sense of not being forced into the street) are not rights at all. Europeans scratch their heads at this.
The only solution is education and information, but they are appalling in America. America remains the most ignorant and worst
educated of the developed nations and is probably beaten by many developing nations. It is this ignorance and stupidity that gets
Americans to vote for the likes of Trump or any of the other rapacious millionaires they send to office every year.
A first step would be for Americans to insist that Congress eliminate its incredibly generous and life-long healthcare plans
for elected officials. They should have to do what the rest of Americans do. Of course, since about 95% of Congress are millionaires,
it might not be effective. But it's a start.
France has its share of problems, but boy do they pale next to the problems in America or even Canada. Life here is overall
quite pleasant and I have no desire to go back to N.A.
yeah, Canada has a neoliberal infestation that is somewhere between the US and the UK. France has got one too, but it is
less advanced. I'll enjoy my great healthcare, public transportation, and generous paid time off while I can.
The newest neoliberal effort in Canada was put forward by our
Minister of Finance (a millionaire) who is touting a bill that will get rid of defined benefit pension plans given to public
employees for so-called target benefit pension plans. The risk for target plans is taken by the recipient. Morneau's former firm
promotes target benefit pension plans and the change could benefit Morneau himself as he did not put his assets from his firm
in a blind trust. At the very least, he has a conflict of interest and should probably resign.
There is always an insidious group of wealthy people here who would like to re-make the world in their own image. I fear for
the future.
Europeans may scratch their heads, but they should recall their own histories and the long struggle to the universal benefits
now enjoyed. Americans are far too complacent. This mildness is viewed by predators as weakness and the attacks will continue.
We really should be able to turn this around, and have an obligation to ourselves and our 'nation state' , IF there were a
group of folks running on a fairness, one-for-all, all-for-one platform. That sure isn't the present two-sides-of-the-same-coin
Democraps and Republicrunts.
Not sure if many of the readers here watch non-cable national broadcast news, but Pete Peterson and his foundation are
as everpresent an advertiser as the pharma industry. Peterson is the strongest, best organized advocate for gutting social services,
social security, and sending every last penny out of the tax-mule consumer's pocket toward wall street. The guy needs an equivalent
counterpoint enemy.
Check it out, and be vigilant in dispelling his message and mission. Thanks for running this article.
Running away: the almost-haves run to another nation state, the uber-wealthy want to leave the earth, or live in their private
Idaho in the Rockies or on the Ocean. What's left for the least among us? Whatever we create? https://www.pgpf.org/
I think pathologically optimistic is a better term than complacent. Every time someone dumps on them, their response is usually
along the lines of "Don't worry, it'll get better," "Everything works itself out in the end," "maybe we'll win the lottery," my
personal favorite "things will get better, just give it time" (honestly it's been 40 years of this neoliberal bullcrap, how much
more time are we supposed to give it?), "this is just a phase" or "we can always bring it back later and better than ever." The
last one is most troubling because after 20 years of witnessing things in the public sphere disappearing, I've yet to see a single
thing return in any form at all.
I'm not sure where this annoying optimism came from but I sure wish it would go away.
The "optimism" comes from having a lack of historical memory. So many social protections that we have/had is seen as somehow
coming out of the ether benevolently given without any social struggles. The lack of historical education on this subject in particular
is appalling. Now, most would probably look for an "APP" on their "dumbphones" to solve the problem.
The social advantages that we still enjoy were fought in the streets, and on the "bricks" flowing with the participants
blood. 8 hr. day; women's right to vote; ability and right for groups of laborers to organize; worker safety laws ..and so many
others. There is no historical memory on how those rights were achieved. We are slowly slipping into an oligarchy greased by the
idea that the physical possession of material things is all that matters. Sheeple, yes.
WOW! You must have been outside the U.S. for a long time. Your comment seems to suggest we still have some kind of democracy
here. We don't get to pick which rapacious millionaires we get to vote for and it doesn't matter any way since whichever one we
pick from the sad offerings ends up with policies dictated from elsewhere.
Mmm, I think American voters get what they want in the end. They want their politicians because they believe the lies.
19% of Americans believe they are in the top 1% of wealth. A huge percentage of poor people believe they or their kids will (not
can, but will) become wealthy. Most Americans can't find France on a map.
So, yes, you DO get to pick your rapacious millionaire. You send the same scumbags back to Washington every year because it's
not him, it the other guys who are the problem. One third of Americans support Trump! Really, really support him. They think he
is Jesus, MacArthur and Adam Smith all rolled up into one.
I may have been gone for about thirty years, but that has only sharpened my insights into America. It's very hard to see
just how flawed America is from the inside but when you step outside and have some perspective, it's frightening.
The Democrat party isn't a reform party. Thinking it is so, is because of the "No Other Choice" meme. Not saying that the Republican
party works in my favor. They don't. Political reform goes deeper than reforming either main party. It means going to a European
plurality system (with its own downside). That way growing Third parties will be viable, if they have popular, as opposed to millionaire,
support. I don't see this happening, because of Citizens United, but if all you have is hope, then you have to go with that.
Had George W. Bush had his way and turned Social Security over to Wall Street, the economic crash of September 2008 might
have left millions of senior citizens homeless.
Substitute Bill Clinton for George Bush in that sentence and it works just as well. Neoliberalism is a bipartisan project.
And many of the potential and actual horrors described above arise from the price distortions of the US medical system with
Democratic acquiescence in said system making things worse. The above article reads like a DNC press release.
And finally while Washington politicians of both parties have been threatening Social Security for years that doesn't mean
its third rail status has been repealed. The populist tremors of the last election -- which have caused our elites to lose their
collective mind -- could be a mere prelude to what will happen in the event of a full scale assault on the safety net.
Substitute Obama's quest for a Grand Bargain as well.
Our government, beginning with Reagan, turned its back on promoting the general welfare. The wealthy soon learned that
their best return on investment was the "purchase" of politicians willing to pass the legislation they put in their hands. Much
of their investment included creating the right wing media apparatus.
The Class War is real. It has been going on for 40 years, with the Conservative army facing virtually no resistance. Conservatives
welcome Russia's help. Conservatives welcome barriers to people voting. Conservatives welcome a populace that believes lies that
benefit them. Conservatives welcome the social and financial decline of the entire middle class and poor as long as it profits
the rich financially, and by extension enhances their power politically.
If retirees flee our country that will certainly please the Conservatives as that will be fewer critics (enemies). Also less
need or demand for social programs.
"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day, but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished
period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing
[a people] to slavery" Thomas Jefferson. Rights of British America, 1774 ME 1:193, Papers 1:125
yes, my problem with the post as well, completely ignores democrat complicity the part where someone with a 26k salary
will pay 16k in insurance? No they won't, the system would collapse in that case which will be fine with me.
"President Richard Nixon may have been a paranoid right-winger with authoritarian tendencies, but he expanded Medicare and
supported universal health care."
"Gimme that old time Republican!"
One of the reasons I love NC is that most political economic analysis is often more harsh on the Democrats than the Repubs
so I am a bit dismayed how this article is way too easy on Team D. How many little (and not so little) knives in the back from
Clinton and Obama? Is a knife in the chest that much worse?
This entire thread is simply heartbreaking, Americans have had their money, their freedom, their privacy, their health, and
sometimes their very lives taken away from them by the State. But the heartbreaking part is that they feel they are powerless
to do anything at all about it so are just trying to leave.
But "People should not fear the government; the government should fear the people"
As your quote appears to imply, it's not a problem that can be solved by voting which, let's not forget, is nothing more
than expressing an opinion. I am not sticking around just to find out if economically-crushed, opiod-, entertainment-, social
media-addled Americans are actually capable of rolling out tumbrils for trips to the guillotines in the city squares. I strongly
suspect not.
This is the country where, after the banks crushed the economy in 2008, caused tens of thousands to lose their jobs, and
then got huge bailouts, the people couldn't even be bothered to take their money out of the big banks and put it elsewhere. Because,
you know, convenience! Expressing an opinion, or mobilizing others to express an opinion, or educating or proselytizing others
about what opinion to have, is about the limit of what they are willing, or know how to do.
Actually Marx's "labor theory of value" should be properly called the "theory of surplus value".
Notable quotes:
"... For Marx, value was socially-necessary labour time: David Harvey is good on this. From this perspective, exploitation and alienation are linked. Workers are exploited because they must work longer than necessary to get their consumption bundle. And they are alienated because this work is unsatisfying and a source of unfreedom. Now, I'll concede that many people hate the labour theory of value. One reason for this is that many discussions of it quickly become obscurantist – as if "value" is some mystical entity embodied in commodities. ..."
"... This, though, certainly was not Marx's intention. Quite the opposite. He intended his theory to be a demystification. He wanted to show how what looked like relations between things – the exchange of money for goods or labour-time – were in fact relations between people. And unequal ones at that. ..."
"... I suspect that some of the animosity to Marx's use of LTV arises because of a resistance to the inference that Marx drew from it – that workers are exploited. This issue, however, is independent of the validity of not of the LTV. For example, Roemer thinks workers are exploited without believing in the LTV, and Smith believed the LTV without arguing that workers were exploited. ..."
"... * He seems to be recovering now. The vet is also expected to make a full recovery eventually. ..."
"... Further understanding, which evolved after Marx, is that the LTV is just special case of the principle that what produces a surplus of usefulness is not labour per se, but the energy used in the transformation of a larger quantity of something into a smaller quantity of something else, and muscle power is just one way, even if it was the main one for a very long time, to obtain energy to transform a large quantity of less useful commodities into a smaller quantity of more useful commodities. ..."
"... And this follows into the impression that I have derived from various authors that our high standards of living depend not on the high "productivity" of labour, but on the high "productivity" of fossil fuels, which are the product of the fertility of land ..."
"... the complex process of differentiation in the economy (aka the division of labor) obscures the relationship between the creation of the surplus (work time above that necessary to reproduce consumption bundle) and its utilization by capitalists via investment. Investment is not possible without exploitation of workers, but that relationship is occluded by the mechanics of employment, markets, and property. ..."
"... My impression is that your bearded friend Karl does not use "alienation" in that sense at all, in an economic sense, but in a humanist sense: that by being separated from the means of production proletarians are alienated from the meaning of their work, from work as a human activity, as distinct from an economic activity ..."
"... Practically every "Dilbert" strip is about "alienation". This is my favourite ..."
"... Placing a high value on the frivolous and "useless" has always been the hallmark of those most able to decide the value of anything, because they have no use for economic use (so to speak), but rather social signaling. Broad social respect is an extremely expensive thing to buy with money alone. ..."
Lucius has been poorly recently, which has required some trips to the vet and therefore a bill of a size that only David Davis
could negotiate*. This has made me wonder: is there more to be said for the labour theory of
value than we like to think?
For a long time, I've not really cared about this theory one way or the other. This is partly because I've not bothered much with
questions of value; partly because, as John Roemer has shown, we don't
need (pdf)
a labour theory of value to suggest workers are exploited; and partly because the main Marxian charges against capitalism – for
example that it entails relationships of
domination – hold
true (or not!) independently of the theory.
As I approach retirement, however, I've begun to change my mind. I think of major expenses in terms of labour-time because they
mean I have to work longer. A trip to the vet is an extra fortnight of work; a good guitar an extra month, a car an extra year, and
so on.
When I consider my spending, I ask: what must I give up in order to get that? And the answer is my time and freedom. My labour-time
is the measure of value.
This is a reasonable basis for the claim that workers are exploited. To buy a bundle of goods and services, we must work a number
of hours a week. But taking all workers together, the hours we work are greater than the hours needed to produce those bundles because
we must also work to provide a profit for the capitalist. As Marx
put it:
We have seen that the labourer, during one portion of the labour-process, produces only the value of his labour-power, that
is, the value of his means of subsistence During the second period of the labour-process, that in which his labour is no longer
necessary labour, the workman, it is true, labours, expends labour-power; but his labour, being no longer necessary labour, he
creates no value for himself. He creates surplus-value which, for the capitalist, has all the charms of a creation out of nothing.
This portion of the working-day, I name surplus labour-time.
For Marx, value was socially-necessary labour time: David Harvey is
good on this. From this
perspective, exploitation and alienation are linked. Workers are exploited because they must work longer than necessary to get their
consumption bundle. And they are alienated because this work is unsatisfying and a source of unfreedom. Now, I'll concede that many
people hate the labour theory of value. One reason for this is that many discussions of it quickly become obscurantist – as if "value"
is some mystical entity embodied in commodities.
This, though, certainly was not Marx's intention. Quite the opposite. He intended his theory to be a demystification. He wanted
to show how what looked like relations between things – the exchange of money for goods or labour-time – were in fact relations between
people. And unequal ones at that.
What's more, the charge of obscurantism against Marx is an especially weak one when it comes from orthodox economics. Much of
this invokes unobservable concepts such as the natural rate of unemployment, marginal productivity, utility, the marginal product
of
capital and natural rate of interest – ideas which,
in the last two cases, might not even be theoretically coherent.
In fact, the LTV is reasonably successful by the standards of conventional economics: we have empirical evidence to suggest that
it does (pdf) a
decent (pdf) job of
explaining (pdf) relative prices – not that this was
how Marx intended it to be used.
You can of course, think of counter-examples to the theory. But so what? in the social sciences, no substantial theory is 100%
true.
I suspect that some of the animosity to Marx's use of LTV arises because of a resistance to the inference that Marx drew from
it – that workers are exploited. This issue, however, is independent of the validity of not of the LTV. For example, Roemer thinks
workers are exploited without believing in the LTV, and Smith believed the LTV without arguing that workers were exploited.
By the (low) standards of economic theories, perhaps the LTV
isn't so bad.
* He seems to be recovering now. The vet is also expected to make a full recovery eventually.
But the LTV says more than the output of the economy is divided between the workers and the (suppliers and) owners of capital
goods, doesn't it? I mean, mainstream econ says that too. And unless ownership of capital inputs to production is distributed
equally across society, then some people consume things that other's labour has produced, which means workers must produce more
than they consume. But again, that's basic mainstream stuff, not LVT. You end by saying you can believe in exploitation but not
LVT, and vice versa, but the main body of this blog seems to be connecting the two. I am confused.
Of course if you have the ability to vary your labour supply, and labour is how you earn your money, then you ask yourself
how much you need to work to purchase whatever. But again that's mainstream not LVT.
"Smith believed the LTV without arguing that workers were exploited."
The Marxian approach was interested in, as other commenters have said, in the specific capitalist case, where "capitalism"
for him means strictly "labour for hire" by workers alienated from the means of production by their ownership by capitalists.
But the labour theory of value, as understood by what Marx called "classicals", applies also to all labour, and he used it
in that sense.
My understanding of the classicals and the LTV is reduced to a minimum this:
By "value" we mean "surplus".
The "physiocrats" correctly identified "land" (mines, farms, the sea) as a producer of physical surplus: once corn seed
produces a whole corn cob. The quantity of physical output appears to be greater than the quantity of physical input, a phenomenon
that used to be called "fertility".
However the "classicals" recognized that there is surplus also when the quantity of output is physically smaller than the
quantity of input: a larger quantity of iron ore and coal gets turned into a much smaller quantity of metal called "spoon",
and that generates surplus too.
Since the surplus is not quantitative they called it a surplus of "ofelimity", of usefulness. A spoon is more useful than
the physically larger quantity of iron ore and coal used to make it, in most contexts.
So the question is what creates a surplus of ofelimity even if quantity shrinks drastically.
The classicals observed that while quantitative surplus may be spontaneous, as in apple trees just produce apples by themselves,
all cases involving a surplus of ofelimity involved the application of labour.
The LTV is simply that observation: that the whole chain of surpluses of ofelimity always goes back to the application
of labour, from the first people who chipped obsidian blocks into blades onwards.
As such the LTV is not really a "theory": it is a generic principle. It would be more properly a theory if there was some
kind of "law" that related the quantity of labour embedded in a commodity to the surplus of usefulness it seems to have. But
any such law cannot be universal, because usefulness is strictly context dependent. Sraffa wrote some preliminary booklet about
that :-).
Further understanding, which evolved after Marx, is that the LTV is just special case of the principle that what produces
a surplus of usefulness is not labour per se, but the energy used in the transformation of a larger quantity of something into
a smaller quantity of something else, and muscle power is just one way, even if it was the main one for a very long time, to obtain
energy to transform a large quantity of less useful commodities into a smaller quantity of more useful commodities.
And this follows into the impression that I have derived from various authors that our high standards of living depend
not on the high "productivity" of labour, but on the high "productivity" of fossil fuels, which are the product of the fertility
of land.
"value, in terms of risk among others, that the employers put in starting a new business?"
If the business produces a surplus, that is value added, than the surplus is the product of the energy/labour expended by all
participants
How it is accounted for is one issue, especially over multiple time periods, and how it is shared out is a social relationship.
As to risk, everybody in the business runs the risk of not getting paid at the end of the month, and the opportunity cost of
not doing something else, whichever labour they put in.
How risk and opportunity cost are accounted for, especially over multiple time periods, is another issue, and how they are
shared is another social relationship.
"the surplus is the product of the energy/labour expended by all participants"
I'll perhaps further diminish the reputation of my "contributions" this way: perhaps all social relationships of production
(at least among males) map closely onto (cursorial) group hunts.
"a very long winded way of saying that making stuff requires labour"
Well, that's obvious, but what the classicals thought of as the LTV was not entirely obvious: that "surplus" (rather than "stuff")
comes from the fertility of land and the transformation achieved with labour, and that nothing else is needed to achieve "surplus".
Because for example capital goods are themselves surplus from fertility or labour, again back to the first blades made from chipping
lumps of obsidian.
That's quite a bit more insightful, never mind also controversial, than "making stuff requires labour".
Love this post. But, being a fellow marxist, I can't help but to disagree with this bit: "And they are alienated because this
work is unsatisfying and a source of unfreedom." This is a colloquial use of alienation, and its not wrong.
But Marx is getting at something else: the complex process of differentiation in the economy (aka the division of labor)
obscures the relationship between the creation of the surplus (work time above that necessary to reproduce consumption bundle)
and its utilization by capitalists via investment. Investment is not possible without exploitation of workers, but that relationship
is occluded by the mechanics of employment, markets, and property.
That's the sense in which workers are alienated under capitalism. Socialism could still have boring work, but, in so far as
the investment function is brought under collective democratic control, workers would not be alienated in the special sense Marx
is using.
"Where else could stuff come from?" Well, assuming by "stuff" we mean objects of value, nowhere. But the reasons for which
we value them are not dependent upon their natural origins or the labor required for their production. I don't value a computer
because it's made of plastic and silicon and so forth, nor because of the labor required to produce it. It's useful because of
what it does, not what it is; it's sort of Kant's definition of art versus the general conception of tools.
As for the relationship between production functions and the LTV, that seems (at least prima facie) pretty straightforward.
If there is a high olefimity ascribed to the surplus provided by the product created by X, Y, then those production functions
will, themselves, be assigned greater value, i.e., be worthy of more labor-time to attain. E.g., even if I'm not very good at
fishing, if I really like the flavor of fish over other protein sources, I'll spend more time increasing my labor efficiency (be
a better fisherman).
"Everything ultimately derives from nature and the labour of humans. Where else could stuff come from? That's all there
is."
Then in theory the cost (not the price) of everything can be measured in terms of physical quantities of primary inputs and
of hours of work.
"What's controversial about it?"
What is controversial is that written like that you sound like a Marxist: the alternative approach is to say that *property*
creates surplus.
In the standard neoclassical approach "property" is the often forgotten "initial endowments" of the single representative agent.
Anyhow the "narrative" is: as Mr. Moneybags owns the iron mine and the coal mine and the smelter and the ingot roller and spoon
press, then he is entitled to the surplus because without his property it is impossible to make spoons. Labour on its own is worthless,
wastes away, while property is "valuable" capital.
"And how one gets from a production function (stuff is made from X, Y and Z) to LTV"
Production functions are just not very elaborate scams to pretend that property is the factor of production, rather then the
fertility of land and the energy of labour, and land does not exist (after JB Clark "disappeared" it) and labour is just an accessory.
Part of the scam is that "X, Y and Z" are denominated in money, not physical quantities.
As I wrote in another answer accounting for the output of land fertility and labour energy and how it is shared are the difficult
bits. Welcome to the institutional approach to the political economy. :-)
"the reasons for which we value them are not dependent upon their natural origins or the labor required for their production"
And here be dragons. Your old bearded acquaintance Karl has something to say about this :-).
"It's useful because of what it does, not what it is"
So cleaning floors which is very useful should have a high value, while Leonardo paintings, that are merely scarce, should
have a low value :-).
I though that most people reckoned that "value" depends on scarcity: so there is a scarcity of even not very good promoters
of torysm, so G Osborne is entitled to Ł600,000 a year to edit the "Evening Standard", but there is no scarcity of excellent cleaners,
so cleaners gets minimum wage if they are lucky.
counting hours of worked is not a measure of cost, it is a tally of hours worked. In mainstream econ, production functions
describe a physical production process (to make 1 unit of Y, you combine inputs like so) and are not not denominated in money.
e.g. You multiply L by w to get cost.
Economies are zero sum. GDP must be paid for, otherwise it won't be produced. The only source of money comes from labor costs,
the money paid to workers to work producing GDP. As conservatives note, all taxes fall on workers by directly taking their pay,
or by hiking the prices of what workers buy.
Taxes pay workers, e.g. teachers, and doctors with Medicare and Medicaid, weapons makers and warriors, or pay people to pay
workers, Social Security benefits and SNAP.
Capital has value because it is built by paying workers. It gets a cut to repay the payers of workers.
Monopoly rent seeking is unsustainable. If a monoplists takes more from workers than they pay workers, he eventually takes
so much money workers can no longer pay for GDP and it falls to zero as workers produce what they consume without buying from
the monopolist capital.
Tanstaafl
As Keynes put it:
"I feel sure that the demand for capital is strictly limited in the sense that it would not be difficult to increase the stock
of capital up to a point where its marginal efficiency had fallen to a very low figure. This would not mean that the use of capital
instruments would cost almost nothing, but only that the return from them would have to cover little more than their exhaustion
by wastage and obsolescence together with some margin to cover risk and the exercise of skill and judgment. In short, the aggregate
return from durable goods in the course of their life would, as in the case of short-lived goods, just cover their labour costs
of production plus an allowance for risk and the costs of skill and supervision.
"Now, though this state of affairs would be quite compatible with some measure of individualism, yet it would mean the euthanasia
of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity-value
of capital. Interest today rewards no genuine sacrifice, any more than does the rent of land. The owner of capital can obtain
interest because capital is scarce, just as the owner of land can obtain rent because land is scarce. But whilst there may be
intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of land, there are no intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of capital. An intrinsic reason for
such scarcity, in the sense of a genuine sacrifice which could only be called forth by the offer of a reward in the shape of interest,
would not exist, in the long run, except in the event of the individual propensity to consume proving to be of such a character
that net saving in conditions of full employment comes to an end before capital has become sufficiently abundant. But even so,
it will still be possible for communal saving through the agency of the State to be maintained at a level which will allow the
growth of capital up to the point where it ceases to be scarce."
Economies are zero sum. The value of goods and services must equal the labor costs in the long run. Tanstaaafl
"Socialism could still have boring work, but, in so far as the investment function is brought under collective democratic
control, workers would not be alienated in the special sense Marx is using."
My impression is that your bearded friend Karl does not use "alienation" in that sense at all, in an economic sense, but
in a humanist sense: that by being separated from the means of production proletarians are alienated from the meaning of their
work, from work as a human activity, as distinct from an economic activity.
Collective ownership does not change at all that kind of alienation: being a cog in the capitalist machinery is no less alienating
than being a cog in the collectivist machinery.
I think that our blogger when he talks about distributing control of the production process to workers is far closer to the
marxian ideal than a collectivist approach.
Practically every "Dilbert" strip is about "alienation". This is my favourite:
"counting hours of worked is not a measure of cost"
For a definition of "cost" that is made-up disregarding P Sraffa's work and in general the classics.
"multiply L by w to get cost."
As J Robinson and others pointed out that "w" depends on the distribution of income, on the interest rate, etc., so is an institutional
matter.
As I was saying, accounting for the surplus and how to share it is not so easily handwavable.
sorry, I meant for a money definition of cost that is not just counting inputs, but which is inputs multiplied by their prices.
nobody is hand waving. I think the mainstream view is that 'value' and 'surplus' are not meaningful terms, only prices and
profits and subjective value. A production function says nothing about prices, you have to explain them with other stuff, and
as you say, institutions and all manner of things could come in the play there.
You can say that that workers produce more in money terms than than they are paid, which is trivial (the wages paid by an employer
are less than its gross profits so long as there are non-zero returns to capital, interest on a loan or dividends or whatever)
and to my mind it's silly to define that as exploitation because it would apply in situations where the 'capitalist' is getting
a small return and workers rewarded handsomely by any standard. Better imo to define exploitation as when capitalists are earning
excess returns (and I'd fudge that by differentiating between workers' wages and salaries of top execs). Otherwise you lay yourself
open to "the only thing worse than being exploited by capitlists is not beingn exploited by capitalists" which is J Robinson too
I believe.
This is a genuine question: what you exposed above is related to or influenced by Steve Keen's ideas, yes? If so, I'd be interested
in reading about that in more detail.
I've always thought that defining value by scarcity was an absurd misdirection, in part because there is no reason that the
two should correlate at all. At any point in socioeconomic development beyond subsistence, value is to some extent socially defined,
not economically defined. Status ends up being the most "useful" resource, as we see among all those who've never had to worry
about their material conditions.
Placing a high value on the frivolous and "useless" has always been the hallmark of those most able to decide the value
of anything, because they have no use for economic use (so to speak), but rather social signaling. Broad social respect is an
extremely expensive thing to buy with money alone.
@Luis Enrique
Ah, but name for me a production process that doesn't take place over time. There's an infinite amount of time for all of us,
but for each of us only so much, and those who fail to value it die full of regret. Surely someone somewhere must have something
to say about this.
I don't know why I wrote the above. Surplus is also a mainstream term. See wages set by bargaing over a surplus. Presume it's
based on prices of outputs compared to inputs or if in model with real quantities not prices, then in subjective values.
Lukas production functions are defined over a period of time.
Ahem, I am trying to explain my understanding of Marx, who wrote both as economist and a philosopher, and a politial theorist.
Alienation, exploitation and inequality are technically distinct concepts, even if in the marxist (view (and that of every
business school, that are faithful to marxist political economy) capitalist control of the means of production leads to alienation
which leads to exploitation which leads to inequality. In the marxian political economy inequality can exist even with exploitation,
for example, and that makes it less objectionable.
"Surplus is also a mainstream term. See wages set by bargaing over a surplus."
Some Economists have not forgotten at least some terminology of political economy and some Departments of Business still have
surviving "history of economic thought" courses that some postgrads may still accidentally occasionally wander into and pick up
some terms from...
"are not meaningful terms, only prices and profits and subjective value."
But the mainstream focus on prices and profits etc. is the purest handwaving, because it begs the question...
"A production function says nothing about prices"
Ha! This is one of the best examples where mainstream theory handwaves furiously: mainstream production functions switch effortlessly
from "capital" as phusical quantities to aggregating "capital" by reckoning it in "numeraire". That is all about prices, and even
about future expected prices and future expected rates of discount. Therefore rational expectations, a grand feat of handwaving.
"defining value by scarcity was an absurd misdirection, in part because there is no reason that the two should correlate at
all."
Ahhhhhhh but this is a very political point and not quite agreeable because:
One of the conceits of "microfoundations" is to show that there are "laws" of Economics that are precise, so everybody get
exactly their just compensation, so for example demand-supply schedules are always presented, cleverly, as lines and static.
The view of political economists is that instead "everything" lies within boundaries of feasibility, which are dynamic, so
for example demand-supply schedules are ribbons that change over time and circumstances, and transactions happens not at uniquely
determined points of intersections, but in regions of feasibility, the precise point dependent on institutional arrangements.
So the LTV determines one boundary for "price" and desirability another boundary.
"exposed above is related to or influenced by Steve Keen's ideas"
Related and independently derived, but also a bit influenced. I had always suspected that the "classicals" used "labour" as
a synonym for "muscle power", but various later readings persuaded me that was indeed the case. Later post will have some hopefully
interesting detail. Then I looked into the literature and found that obviously this had been figured out before (centuries ago
in some cases, like B de Mandeville).
Blissex if you can come up with a better way of trying to describe total quantities of highly heterogeneous things (i.e. capital)
you have a Nobel awaiting. Everybody know that attempts to put a number on the real quantity of capital is always going to be
a rough and ready endeavour.
I don't see how working with prices and profits is 'handwaving'. What question does it beg? Much of economics is about trying
to explain these things. I would not say economics focuses on prices and profits because many economics models work with real
quantities that are high abstract and in theory are made commensurate using subjective value (utility) as the unit of account.
"... And, recent studies have shown, the longer you're out of work - especially if you're older and out of work - the harder it becomes to get a job offer. ..."
I thought this was an interesting article. Apologies if this has been posted on NC
already.
A stunning 33% of job seekers ages 55 and older are long-term unemployed, according to
the AARP Public Policy Institute. The average length of unemployment for the roughly 1.2
million people 55+ who are out of work: seven to nine months. "It's emotionally devastating
for them," said Carl Van Horn, director of Rutgers University's John J. Heldrich Center for
Workforce Development, at a Town Hall his center and the nonprofit WorkingNation held
earlier this year in New Brunswick, N.J.
... ... ...
The fight faced by the long-term unemployed
And, recent studies have shown, the longer you're out of work - especially if you're older and out of work - the harder
it becomes to get a job offer.
The job-finding rate declines by roughly 50% within eight months of unemployment, according to a 2016 paper by economists
Gregor Jarosch of Stanford University and Laura Pilossoph of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. "Unemployment duration
has a strongly negative effect on the likelihood of subsequent employment," wrote researchers from the University of
Maryland and the U.S. Census Bureau in another 2016 paper.
"Once upon a time, you could take that first job and it would lead to the next job and the job after that," said Town
Hall panelist John Colborn, chief operating officer at the nonprofit JEVS Human Services, of Philadelphia. "The notion of a
career ladder offered some hope of getting back into the labor market. The rungs of the ladder are getting harder and harder
to find and some of them are broken."
In inner cities, said Kimberly McClain, CEO of The Newark Alliance, "there's an extra layer beyond being older and out of
work. There are issues of race and poverty and being defined by your ZIP Code. There's an incredible sense of urgency."
... ... ...
Filling a work gap
If you are over 50, unemployed and have a work gap right now, the Town Hall speakers said, fill it by volunteering,
getting an internship, doing project work, job-shadowing someone in a field you want to be in or taking a class to re-skill.
These kind of things "make a candidate a lot more attractive," said Colborn. Be sure to note them in your cover letter and
résumé.
Town Hall panelist Amanda Mullan, senior vice president and chief human resources officer of the New Jersey Resources
Corp. (a utility company based in Wall, N.J.), said that when her company is interviewing someone who has been out of work
lately, "we will ask: 'What have you done during that time frame?' If we get 'Nuthin,' that shows something about the
individual, from a motivational perspective."
... ... ...
The relief of working again
Finally finding work when you're over 50 and unemployed for a stretch can be a relief for far more than financial
reasons.
"Once I landed my job, the thing I most looked forward to was the weekend," said Konopka. "Not to relax, but because I
didn't have to think about finding a job anymore. That's 24/7 in your head. You're always thinking on a Saturday: 'If I'm
not doing something to find a job, will there be a posting out there?'"
At 5:30 every morning, Tony Gwiazdowski rolls out of bed, brews a pot of coffee and carefully arranges his laptop, cell phone
and notepad like silverware across the kitchen table.
And then he waits.
Gwiazdowski, 57, has been waiting for 16 months. Since losing his job as a transportation sales manager in February 2009, he wakes
each morning to the sobering reminder that, yes, he is still unemployed. So he pushes aside the fatigue, throws on some clothes and
sends out another flurry of resumes and cheery cover letters.
But most days go by without a single phone call. And around sundown, when he hears his neighbors returning home from work, Gwiazdowski
-- the former mayor of Hillsborough -- can't help but allow himself one tiny sigh of resignation.
"You sit there and you wonder, 'What am I doing wrong?'" said Gwiazdowski, who finds companionship in his 2-year-old golden retriever,
Charlie, until his wife returns from work.
"The worst moment is at the end of the day when it's 4:30 and you did everything you could, and the phone hasn't rung, the e-mails
haven't come through."
Gwiazdowski is one of a growing number of chronically unemployed workers in New Jersey and across the country who are struggling
to get through what is becoming one long, jobless nightmare -- even as the rest of the economy has begun to show signs of recovery.
Nationwide, 46 percent of the unemployed -- 6.7 million Americans -- have been without work for at least half a year, by far the
highest percentage recorded since the U.S. Labor Department began tracking the data in 1948.
In New Jersey, nearly 40 percent of the 416,000 unemployed workers last year fit that profile, up from about 20 percent in previous
years, according to the department, which provides only annual breakdowns for individual states. Most of them were unemployed for
more than a year.
But the repercussions of chronic unemployment go beyond the loss of a paycheck or the realization that one might never find the
same kind of job again. For many, the sinking feeling of joblessness -- with no end in sight -- can take a psychological toll, experts
say.
Across the state, mental health crisis units saw a 20 percent increase in demand last year as more residents reported suffering
from unemployment-related stress, according to the New Jersey Association of Mental Health Agencies.
"The longer the unemployment continues, the more impact it will have on their personal lives and mental health," said Shauna Moses,
the association's associate executive director. "There's stress in the marriage, with the kids, other family members, with friends."
And while a few continue to cling to optimism, even the toughest admit there are moments of despair: Fear of never finding work,
envy of employed friends and embarassment at having to tell acquaintances that, nope, still no luck.
"When they say, 'Hi Mayor,' I don't tell a lot of people I'm out of work -- I say I'm semi-retired," said Gwiazdowski, who maxed
out on unemployment benefits several months ago.
"They might think, 'Gee, what's wrong with him? Why can't he get a job?' It's a long story and maybe people really don't care
and now they want to get away from you."
SECOND TIME AROUND
Lynn Kafalas has been there before, too. After losing her computer training job in 2000, the East Hanover resident took four agonizing
years to find new work -- by then, she had refashioned herself into a web designer.
That not-too-distant experience is why Kafalas, 52, who was laid off again eight months ago, grows uneasier with each passing
day. Already, some of her old demons have returned, like loneliness, self-doubt and, worst of all, insomnia. At night, her mind races
to dissect the latest interview: What went wrong? What else should she be doing? And why won't even Barnes & Noble hire her?
"It's like putting a stopper on my life -- I can't move on," said Kafalas, who has given up karate lessons, vacations and regular
outings with friends. "Everything is about the interviews."
And while most of her friends have been supportive, a few have hinted to her that she is doing something wrong, or not doing enough.
The remarks always hit Kafalas with a pang.
In a recent study, researchers at Rutgers University found that the chronically unemployed are prone to high levels of stress,
anxiety, depression, loneliness and even substance abuse, which take a toll on their self-esteem and personal relationships.
"They're the forgotten group," said Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers,
and a co-author of the report. "And the longer you are unemployed, the less likely you are to get a job."
Of the 900 unemployed workers first interviewed last August for the study, only one in 10 landed full-time work by March of this
year, and only half of those lucky few expressed satisfaction with their new jobs. Another one in 10 simply gave up searching.
Among those who were still unemployed, many struggled to make ends meet by borrowing from friends or family, turning to government
food stamps and forgoing health care, according to the study.
More than half said they avoided all social contact, while slightly less than half said they had lost touch with close friends.
Six in 10 said they had problems sleeping.
Kafalas says she deals with her chronic insomnia by hitting the gym for two hours almost every evening, lifting weights and pounding
the treadmill until she feels tired enough to fall asleep.
"Sometimes I forget what day it is. Is it Tuesday? And then I'll think of what TV show ran the night before," she said. "Waiting
is the toughest part."
AGE A FACTOR
Generally, the likelihood of long-term unemployment increases with age, experts say. A report by the National Employment Law Project
this month found that nearly half of those who were unemployed for six months or longer were at least 45 years old. Those between
16 and 24 made up just 14 percent.
Tell that to Adam Blank, 24, who has been living with his girlfriend and her parents at their Martinsville home since losing his
sales job at Best Buy a year and half ago.
Blank, who graduated from Rutgers with a major in communications, says he feels like a burden sometimes, especially since his
girlfriend, Tracy Rosen, 24, works full-time at a local nonprofit. He shows her family gratitude with small chores, like taking out
the garbage, washing dishes, sweeping floors and doing laundry.
Still, he often feels inadequate.
"All I'm doing on an almost daily basis is sitting around the house trying to keep myself from going stir-crazy," said Blank,
who dreams of starting a social media company.
When he is feeling particularly low, Blank said he turns to a tactic employed by prisoners of war in Vietnam: "They used to build
dream houses in their head to help keep their sanity. It's really just imagining a place I can call my own."
LESSONS LEARNED
Meanwhile, Gwiazdowski, ever the optimist, says unemployment has taught him a few things.
He has learned, for example, how to quickly assess an interviewer's age and play up or down his work experience accordingly --
he doesn't want to appear "threatening" to a potential employer who is younger. He has learned that by occasionally deleting and
reuploading his resume to job sites, his entry appears fresh.
"It's almost like a game," he said, laughing. "You are desperate, but you can't show it."
But there are days when he just can't find any humor in his predicament -- like when he finishes a great interview but receives
no offer, or when he hears a fellow job seeker finally found work and feels a slight twinge of jealousy.
"That's what I'm missing -- putting on that shirt and tie in the morning and going to work," he said.
The memory of getting dressed for work is still so vivid, Gwiazdowski says, that he has to believe another job is just around
the corner.
"You always have to hope that that morning when you get up, it's going to be the day," he said.
"Today is going to be the day that something is going to happen."
I collect from the state of iowa, was on tier I and when the gov't recessed without passing extension, iowa stopped paying
tier I claims that were already open, i was scheduled to be on tier I until july 15th, and its gone now, as a surprise, when i
tried to claim my week this week i was notified. SURPRISE, talk about stress.
This is terrible....just wait until RIF'd teachers hit the unemployment offices....but then, this is what NJ wanted...fired
teachers who are to blame for the worst recession our country has seen in 150 years...thanks GWB.....thanks Donald Rumsfeld......thanks
Dick Cheney....thanks Karl "Miss Piggy" Rove...and thank you Mr. Big Boy himself...Gov Krispy Kreame!
For readers who care about this nation's unemployed- Call your Senators to pass HR 4213, the "Extenders" bill. Unfortunately,
it does not add UI benefits weeks, however it DOES continue the emergency federal tiers of UI. If it does not pass this week many
of us are cut off at 26 wks. No tier 1, 2 -nothing.
The longer you are unemployed, the more you are effected by those factors.
Notable quotes:
"... The good news is that only a relatively small number of people are seriously affected by the stress of unemployment to the extent they need medical assistance. Most people don't get to the serious levels of stress, and much as they loathe being unemployed, they suffer few, and minor, ill effects. ..."
"... Worries about income, domestic problems, whatever, the list is as long as humanity. The result of stress is a strain on the nervous system, and these create the physical effects of the situation over time. The chemistry of stress is complex, but it can be rough on the hormonal system. ..."
"... Not at all surprisingly, people under stress experience strong emotions. It's a perfectly natural response to what can be quite intolerable emotional strains. It's fair to say that even normal situations are felt much more severely by people already under stress. Things that wouldn't normally even be issues become problems, and problems become serious problems. Relationships can suffer badly in these circumstances, and that, inevitably, produces further crises. Unfortunately for those affected, these are by now, at this stage, real crises. ..."
"... Some people are stubborn enough and tough enough mentally to control their emotions ruthlessly, and they do better under these conditions. Even that comes at a cost, and although under control, the stress remains a problem. ..."
"... One of the reasons anger management is now a growth industry is because of the growing need for assistance with severe stress over the last decade. This is a common situation, and help is available. ..."
"... Depression is universally hated by anyone who's ever had it. ..."
"... Very important: Do not, under any circumstances, try to use drugs or alcohol as a quick fix. They make it worse, over time, because they actually add stress. Some drugs can make things a lot worse, instantly, too, particularly the modern made-in-a-bathtub variety. They'll also destroy your liver, which doesn't help much, either. ..."
"... You don't have to live in a gym to get enough exercise for basic fitness. A few laps of the pool, a good walk, some basic aerobic exercises, you're talking about 30-45 minutes a day. It's not hard. ..."
It's almost impossible to describe the various psychological impacts, because there are so many. There are sometimes serious consequences,
including suicide, and, some would say worse, chronic depression.
There's not really a single cause and effect. It's a compound effect, and unemployment, by adding stress, affects people, often
badly.
The world doesn't need any more untrained psychologists, and we're not pretending to give medical advice. That's for professionals.
Everybody is different, and their problems are different. What we can do is give you an outline of the common problems, and what
you can do about them.
The good news is that only a relatively small number of people are seriously affected by the stress of unemployment to the extent
they need medical assistance. Most people don't get to the serious levels of stress, and much as they loathe being unemployed, they
suffer few, and minor, ill effects.
For others, there are a series of issues, and the big three are:
Stress
Anger, and other negative emotions
Depression
Stress
Stress is Stage One. It's a natural result of the situation. Worries about income, domestic problems, whatever, the list is as
long as humanity. The result of stress is a strain on the nervous system, and these create the physical effects of the situation
over time. The chemistry of stress is complex, but it can be rough on the hormonal system.
Over an extended period, the body's natural hormonal balances are affected, and this can lead to problems. These are actually
physical issues, but the effects are mental, and the first obvious effects are, naturally, emotional.
Anger, and other negative emotions
Not at all surprisingly, people under stress experience strong emotions. It's a perfectly natural response to what can be quite
intolerable emotional strains. It's fair to say that even normal situations are felt much more severely by people already under stress.
Things that wouldn't normally even be issues become problems, and problems become serious problems. Relationships can suffer badly in these circumstances, and that, inevitably, produces further crises. Unfortunately for those
affected, these are by now, at this stage, real crises.
If the actual situation was already bad, this mental state makes it a lot worse. Constant aggravation doesn't help people to keep
a sense of perspective. Clear thinking isn't easy when under constant stress.
Some people are stubborn enough and tough enough mentally to control their emotions ruthlessly, and they do better under these
conditions. Even that comes at a cost, and although under control, the stress remains a problem.
One of the reasons anger management is now a growth industry is because of the growing need for assistance with severe stress
over the last decade. This is a common situation, and help is available.
If you have reservations about seeking help, bear in mind it can't possibly be any worse than the problem.
Depression
Depression is universally hated by anyone who's ever had it. This is the next stage, and it's caused by hormonal imbalances which
affect serotonin. It's actually a physical problem, but it has mental effects which are sometimes devastating, and potentially life
threatening.
The common symptoms are:
Difficulty in focusing mentally, thoughts all over the place in no logical order
Fits of crying for no known reason
Illogical, or irrational patterns of thought and behavior
Sadness
Suicidal thinking
It's a disgusting experience. No level of obscenity could possibly describe it. Depression is misery on a level people wouldn't
conceive in a nightmare. At this stage the patient needs help, and getting it is actually relatively easy. It's convincing the person they need to do something about it that's difficult. Again, the mental state is working against the person. Even admitting there's a problem is hard for many people in this condition.
Generally speaking, a person who is trusted is the best person to tell anyone experiencing the onset of depression to seek help. Important: If you're experiencing any of those symptoms:
Get on the phone and make an appointment to see your doctor. It takes half an hour for a diagnosis, and you can be on your
way home with a cure in an hour. You don't have to suffer. The sooner you start to get yourself out of depression, the better.
Avoid any antidepressants with the so-called withdrawal side effects. They're not too popular with patients, and are under
some scrutiny. The normal antidepressants work well enough for most people.
Very important: Do not, under any circumstances, try to use drugs or alcohol as a quick fix. They make it worse, over time, because they actually add stress. Some drugs can make things a lot worse, instantly, too, particularly
the modern made-in-a-bathtub variety. They'll also destroy your liver, which doesn't help much, either.
Alcohol, in particular, makes depression much worse. Alcohol is a depressant, itself, and it's also a nasty chemical mix with
all those stress hormones.
If you've ever had alcohol problems, or seen someone with alcohol wrecking their lives, depression makes things about a million
times worse.
Just don't do it. Steer clear of any so-called stimulants, because they don't mix with antidepressants, either.
Unemployment and staying healthy
The above is what you need to know about the risks of unemployment to your health and mental well being.
These situations are avoidable.
Your best defense against the mental stresses and strains of unemployment, and their related problems is staying healthy.
We can promise you that is nothing less than the truth. The healthier you are, the better your defenses against stress, and the
more strength you have to cope with situations.
Basic health is actually pretty easy to achieve:
Diet
Eat real food, not junk, and make sure you're getting enough food. Your body can't work with resources it doesn't have. Good food
is a real asset, and you'll find you don't get tired as easily. You need the energy reserves.
Give yourself a good selection of food that you like, that's also worth eating.
The good news is that plain food is also reasonably cheap, and you can eat as much as you need. Basic meals are easy enough to
prepare, and as long as you're getting all the protein veg and minerals you need, you're pretty much covered.
You can also use a multivitamin cap, or broad spectrum supplements, to make sure you're getting all your trace elements. Also
make sure you're getting the benefits of your food by taking acidophilus or eating yogurt regularly.
Exercise
You don't have to live in a gym to get enough exercise for basic fitness. A few laps of the pool, a good walk, some basic aerobic
exercises, you're talking about 30-45 minutes a day. It's not hard.
Don't just sit and suffer
If anything's wrong, check it out when it starts, not six months later. Most medical conditions become serious when they're allowed
to get worse.
For unemployed people the added risk is also that they may prevent you getting that job, or going for interviews. If something's
causing you problems, get rid of it.
Nobody who's been through the blender of unemployment thinks it's fun.
Anyone who's really done it tough will tell you one thing:
Don't be a victim. Beat the problem, and you'll really appreciate the feeling.
"... According to Amazon's metrics, I was one of their most productive order pickers -- I was a machine, and my pace would accelerate throughout the course of a shift. What they didn't know was that I stayed fast because if I slowed down for even a minute, I'd collapse from boredom and exhaustion ..."
"... toiling in some remote corner of the warehouse, alone for 10 hours, with my every move being monitored by management on a computer screen. ..."
"... ISS could simply deactivate a worker's badge and they would suddenly be out of work. They treated us like beggars because we needed their jobs. Even worse, more than two years later, all I see is: Jeff Bezos is hiring. ..."
"... I have never felt more alone than when I was working there. I worked in isolation and lived under constant surveillance ..."
"... That was 2012 and Amazon's labor and business practices were only beginning to fall under scrutiny. ..."
"... I received $200 a week for the following six months and I haven't had any source of regular income since those benefits lapsed. I sold everything in my apartment and left Pennsylvania as fast as I could. I didn't know how to ask for help. I didn't even know that I qualified for food stamps. ..."
Nichole Gracely has a master's degree and was one of Amazon's best order pickers. Now, after
protesting the company, she's homeless.
I am homeless. My worst days now are better than my best days working at Amazon.
According to Amazon's metrics, I was one of their most productive order pickers -- I was a machine,
and my pace would accelerate throughout the course of a shift. What they didn't know was that
I stayed fast because if I slowed down for even a minute, I'd collapse from boredom and exhaustion.
During peak season, I trained incoming temps regularly. When that was over, I'd be an ordinary
order picker once again, toiling in some remote corner of the warehouse, alone for 10 hours,
with my every move being monitored by management on a computer screen.
Superb performance did not guarantee job security. ISS is the temp agency that provides warehouse
labor for Amazon and they are at the center of the SCOTUS case Integrity Staffing Solutions
vs. Busk. ISS could simply deactivate a worker's badge and they would suddenly be out of work.
They treated us like beggars because we needed their jobs. Even worse, more than two years later,
all I see is: Jeff Bezos is hiring.
I have never felt more alone than when I was working there. I worked in isolation and lived
under constant surveillance. Amazon could mandate overtime and I would have to comply with any
schedule change they deemed necessary, and if there was not any work, they would send us home
early without pay. I started to fall behind on my bills.
At some point, I lost all fear. I had already been through hell. I protested Amazon. The
gag order was lifted and I was free to speak. I spent my last days in a lovely apartment constructing
arguments on discussion boards, writing articles and talking to reporters. That was 2012 and
Amazon's labor and business practices were only beginning to fall under scrutiny. I walked away
from Amazon's warehouse and didn't have any other source of income lined up.
I cashed in on my excellent credit, took out cards, and used them to pay rent and buy food
because it would be six months before I could receive my first unemployment compensation check.
I received $200 a week for the following six months and I haven't had any source of regular
income since those benefits lapsed. I sold everything in my apartment and left Pennsylvania
as fast as I could. I didn't know how to ask for help. I didn't even know that I qualified for
food stamps.
I furthered my Amazon protest while homeless in Seattle. When the Hachette dispute flared
up I "flew a sign," street parlance for panhandling with a piece of cardboard: "I was an order
picker at amazon.com. Earned degrees. Been published. Now,
I'm homeless, writing and doing this. Anything helps."
I have made more money per word with my signs than I will probably ever earn writing, and
I make more money per hour than I will probably ever be paid for my work. People give me money
and offer well wishes and I walk away with a restored faith in humanity.
I flew my protest sign outside Whole Foods while Amazon corporate employees were on lunch
break, and they gawked. I went to my usual flying spots around Seattle and made more money per
hour protesting Amazon with my sign than I did while I worked with them. And that was in Seattle.
One woman asked, "What are you writing?" I told her about the descent from working poor to homeless,
income inequality, my personal experience. She mentioned Thomas Piketty's book, we chatted a
little, she handed me $10 and wished me luck. Another guy said, "Damn, that's a great story!
I'd read it," and handed me a few bucks.
"... Total 2015 gross passenger payments were 200% higher than 2014, but Uber corporate revenue improved 300% because Uber cut the driver share of passenger revenue from 83% to 77%. This was an effective $500 million wealth transfer from drivers to Uber's investors. ..."
"... Uber's P&L gains were wiped out by higher non-EBIDTAR expense. Thus the 300% Uber revenue growth did not result in any improvement in Uber profit margins. ..."
"... In 2016, Uber unilaterally imposed much larger cuts in driver compensation, costing drivers an additional $3 billion. [6] Prior to Uber's market entry, the take home pay of big-city cab drivers in the US was in the $12-17/hour range, and these earnings were possible only if drivers worked 65-75 hours a week. ..."
"... An independent study of the net earnings of Uber drivers (after accounting for the costs of the vehicles they had to provide) in Denver, Houston and Detroit in late 2015 (prior to Uber's big 2016 cuts) found that driver earnings had fallen to the $10-13/hour range. [7] Multiple recent news reports have documented how Uber drivers are increasing unable to support themselves from their reduced share of passenger payments. [8] ..."
"... Since mass driver defections would cause passenger volume growth to collapse completely, Uber was forced to reverse these cuts in 2017 and increased the driver share from 68% to 80%. This meant that Uber's corporate revenue, which had grown over 300% in 2015 and over 200% in 2016 will probably only grow by about 15% in 2017. ..."
"... Socialize the losses, privatize the gains, VC-ize the subsidies. ..."
"... The cold hard truth is that Uber is backed into a corner with severely limited abilities to tweak the numbers on either the supply or the demand side: cut driver compensation and they trigger driver churn (as has already been demonstrated), increase fare prices for riders and riders defect to cheaper alternatives. ..."
"... "Growth and Efficiency" are the sine qua non of Neoliberalism. Kalanick's "hype brilliance" was to con the market with "revenue growth" and signs ..."
Uber lost $2.5 billion in 2015, probably lost $4 billion in 2016, and is on track to lose $5
billion in 2017.
The top line on the table below shows is total passenger payments, which must be split
between Uber corporate and its drivers. Driver gross earnings are substantially higher than
actual take home pay, as gross earning must cover all the expenses drivers bear, including
fuel, vehicle ownership, insurance and maintenance.
Most of the "profit" data released by Uber over time and discussed in the press is not true
GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) profit comparable to the net income numbers
public companies publish but is EBIDTAR contribution. Companies have significant leeway as to
how they calculate EBIDTAR (although it would exclude interest, taxes, depreciation,
amortization) and the percentage of total costs excluded from EBIDTAR can vary significantly
from quarter to quarter, given the impact of one-time expenses such as legal settlements and
stock compensation. We only have true GAAP net profit results for 2014, 2015 and the 2nd/3rd
quarters of 2017, but have EBIDTAR contribution numbers for all other periods.
[5]
Uber had GAAP net income of negative $2.6 billion in 2015, and a negative profit margin of
132%. This is consistent with the negative $2.0 billion loss and (143%) margin for the year
ending September 2015 presented in part one of the NC Uber series over a year ago.
No GAAP profit results for 2016 have been disclosed, but actual losses likely exceed $4
billion given the EBIDTAR contribution of negative $3.2 billion. Uber's GAAP losses for the 2nd
and 3rd quarters of 2017 were over $2.5 billion, suggesting annual losses of roughly $5
billion.
While many Silicon Valley funded startups suffered large initial losses, none of them lost
anything remotely close to $2.6 billion in their sixth year of operation and then doubled their
losses to $5 billion in year eight. Reversing losses of this magnitude would require the
greatest corporate financial turnaround in history.
No evidence of significant efficiency/scale gains; 2015 and 2016 margin improvements
entirely explained by unilateral cuts in driver compensation, but losses soared when Uber had
to reverse these cuts in 2017.
Total 2015 gross passenger payments were 200% higher than 2014, but Uber corporate
revenue improved 300% because Uber cut the driver share of passenger revenue from 83% to 77%.
This was an effective $500 million wealth transfer from drivers to Uber's investors. These
driver compensation cuts improved Uber's EBIDTAR margin, but Uber's P&L gains were
wiped out by higher non-EBIDTAR expense. Thus the 300% Uber revenue growth did not result in
any improvement in Uber profit margins.
In 2016, Uber unilaterally imposed much larger cuts in driver compensation, costing
drivers an additional $3 billion.
[6] Prior to Uber's market entry, the take home pay of big-city cab drivers in the US was
in the $12-17/hour range, and these earnings were possible only if drivers worked 65-75 hours a
week.
An independent study of the net earnings of Uber drivers (after accounting for the costs
of the vehicles they had to provide) in Denver, Houston and Detroit in late 2015 (prior to
Uber's big 2016 cuts) found that driver earnings had fallen to the $10-13/hour range.
[7] Multiple recent news reports have documented how Uber drivers are increasing unable to
support themselves from their reduced share of passenger payments.
[8]
A business model where profit improvement is hugely dependent on wage cuts is unsustainable,
especially when take home wages fall to (or below) minimum wage levels. Uber's primary focus
has always been the rate of growth in gross passenger revenue, as this has been a major
justification for its $68 billion valuation. This growth rate came under enormous pressure in
2017 given Uber efforts to raise fares, major increases in driver turnover as wages fell,
[9] and the avalanche of adverse publicity it was facing.
Since mass driver defections would cause passenger volume growth to collapse completely,
Uber was forced to reverse these cuts in 2017 and increased the driver share from 68% to 80%.
This meant that Uber's corporate revenue, which had grown over 300% in 2015 and over 200% in
2016 will probably only grow by about 15% in 2017.
"Uber's business model can never produce sustainable profits"
Two words not in my vocabulary are "Never" and "Always", that is a pretty absolute
statement in an non-absolute environment. The same environment that has produced the "Silicon
Valley Growth Model", with 15x earnings companies like NVIDA, FB and Tesla (Average
earnings/stock price ratio in dot com bubble was 10x) will people pay ridiculous amounts of
money for a company with no underlying fundamentals you damn right they will! Please stop
with the I know all no body knows anything, especially the psychology and irrationality of
markets which are made up of irrational people/investors/traders.
My thoughts exactly. Seems the only possible recovery for the investors is a perfectly
engineered legendary pump and dump IPO scheme. Risky, but there's a lot of fools out there
and many who would also like to get on board early in the ride in fear of missing out on all
the money to be hoovered up from the greater fools. Count me out.
The author clearly distinguishes between GAAP profitability and valuations, which is after
all rather the point of the series. And he makes a more nuanced point than the half sentence
you have quoted without context or with an indication that you omitted a portion. Did you
miss the part about how Uber would have a strong incentive to share the evidence of a network
effect or other financial story that pointed the way to eventual profit? Otherwise (my words)
it is the classic sell at a loss, make it up with volume path to liquidation.
apples and oranges comparison, nvidia has lots and lots of patented tech that produces
revenue, facebook has a kajillion admittedly irrational users, but those users drive massive
ad sales (as just one example of how that company capitalizes itself) and tesla makes an
actual car, using technology that inspires it's buyers (the put your money where your mouth
is crowd and it can't be denied that tesla, whatever it's faults are, battery tech is not one
of them and that intellectual property is worth a lot, and tesla's investors are in on that
real business, profitable or otherwise)
Uber is an iphone app. They lose money and have no
path to profitability (unless it's the theory you espouse that people are unintelligent so
even unintelligent ideas work to fleece them). This article touches on one of the great
things about the time we now inhabit, uber drivers could bail en masse, there are two sides
to the low attachment employees who you can get rid of easily. The drivers can delete the
uber app as soon as another iphone app comes along that gets them a better return
For many air travelers, getting to and from the airport has long been part of the whole
miserable experience. Do they drive and park in some distant lot? Take mass transit or a
taxi? Deal with a rental car?
Ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft are quickly changing those calculations. That
has meant a bit less angst for travelers.
But that's not the case for airports. Travelers' changing habits, in fact, have begun to
shake the airports' financial underpinnings. The money they currently collect from
ride-hailing services do not compensate for the lower revenues from the other sources.
At the same time, some airports have had to add staff to oversee the operations of the
ride-hailing companies, the report said. And with more ride-hailing vehicles on the roads
outside terminals,
there's more congestion.
Socialize the losses, privatize the gains, VC-ize the subsidies.
The cold hard truth is that Uber is backed into a corner with severely limited abilities
to tweak the numbers on either the supply or the demand side: cut driver compensation and
they trigger driver churn (as has already been demonstrated), increase fare prices for riders
and riders defect to cheaper alternatives. The only question is how long can they keep the
show going before the lights go out, slick marketing and propaganda can only take you so far,
and one assumes the dumb money has a finite supply of patience and will at some point begin
asking the tough questions.
The irony is that Uber would have been a perfectly fine, very profitable mid-sized company
if Uber stuck with its initial model -- sticking to dense cities with limited parking,
limiting driver supply, and charging a premium price for door-to-door delivery, whether by
livery or a regular sedan. And then perhaps branching into robo-cars.
But somehow Uber/board/Travis got suckered into the siren call of self-driving cars,
triple-digit user growth, and being in the top 100 US cities and on every continent.
I've shared a similar sentiment in one of the previous posts about Uber. But operating
profitably in decent sized niche doesn't fit well with ambitions of global domination. For
Uber to be "right-sized", an admission of folly would have to be made, its managers and
investors would have to transcend the sunk cost fallacy in their strategic decision making,
and said investors would have to accept massive hits on their invested capital. The cold,
hard reality of being blindsided and kicked to the curb in the smartphone business forced
RIM/Blackberry to right-size, and they may yet have a profitable future as an enterprise
facing software and services company. Uber would benefit from that form of sober mindedness,
but I wouldn't hold my breath.
I know nothing about Softbank or its management, but I do know that the Japanese were the
dumb money rubes in the late '80's, overpaying for trophy real estate they lost billions
on.
Until informed otherwise, that's my default assumption
Softbank possibly looking to buy more Uber shares at a 30% discount is very odd. Uber had
a Series G funding round in June 2016 where a $3.5
billion investment from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund resulted in its current $68
billion valuation. Now apparently Softbank wants to lead a new $6 billion funding round to
buy the shares of Uber employees and early investors at a 30% discount from this last
"valuation". It's odd because Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund has pledged
$45 billion to SoftBank's Vision Fund , an amount which was supposed to come from the
proceeds of its pending Aramco IPO. If the Uber bid is linked to SoftBank's Vision Fund, or
KSA money, then its not clear why this investor might be looking to literally 'double down'
from $3.5 billion o $6 billion on a declining investment.
"Growth and Efficiency" are the sine qua non of Neoliberalism. Kalanick's "hype
brilliance" was to con the market with "revenue growth" and signs of efficiency, and
hopes of greater efficiency, and make most people just overlook the essential fact
that Uber is the most unprofitable company of all time!
What comprises "Uber Expenses"? 2014 – $1.06 billion; 2015 $3.33 billion; 2016 $9.65
billion; forecast 2017 $11.418 billion!!!!!! To me this is the big question – what are
they spending $10 billion per year on?
ALso – why did driver share go from 68% in 2016 to 80% in 2017? If you use 68% as in
2016, 2017 Uber revenue is $11.808 billion, which means a bit better than break-even EBITDA,
assuming Uber expenses are as stated $11.428 billion.
Perhaps not so bleak as the article presents, although I would not invest in this
thing.
I have the same question: What comprises over 11 billion dollars in expenses in 2017?
Could it be they are paying out dividends to the early investors? Which would mean they are
cannibalizing their own company for the sake of the VC! How long can this go on before
they'll need a new infusion of cash?
Oh article does answer your 2nd question. Read this paragraph:-
Since mass driver defections would cause passenger volume growth to collapse completely
, Uber was forced to reverse these cuts in 2017 and increased the driver share from 68% to
80%. This meant that Uber's corporate revenue, which had grown over 300% in 2015 and over
200% in 2016 will probably only grow by about 15% in 2017.
As for the 1st, read this line in the article:-
There are undoubtedly a number of things Uber could do to reduce losses at the margin,
but it is difficult to imagine it could suddenly find the $4-5 billion in profit
improvement needed merely to reach breakeven.
in addition to all the points listed in the article/comments, the absolute biggest flaw
with Uber is that Uber HQ conditioned its customers on (a) cheap fares and (b) that a car is
available within minutes (1-5 if in a big city).
Those two are not mutually compatible in the long-term.
Thus (a) "We cost less" and (b) "We're more convenient" -- aren't those also the
advantages that Walmart claims and feeds as a steady diet to its ever hungry consumers? Often
if not always, disruption may repose upon delusion.
When this Uber madness blows up, I wonder if people will finally begin to discuss the
brutal reality of Silicon Valley's so called "disruption".
It is heavily built in around the idea of economic exploitation. Uber drivers are often,
especially when the true costs to operate an Uber including the vehicle depreciation are
factored in, making not very much per hour driven, especially if they don't get the surge
money.
Instacart is another example. They are paying the deliver operators very little.
At a fundamental level, I think that the Silicon Valley "disruption" model only works for
markets (like software) where the marginal cost for production is de minimus and the
products can be protected by IP laws. Volume and market power really work in those cases. But
out here in meat-space, where actual material and labor are big inputs to each item sold, you
can never just sit back on your laurels and rake in the money. Somebody else will always be
able to come and and make an equivalent product. If they can do it more cheaply, you are in
trouble.
There aren't that many areas in goods and services where the marginal costs are very
low.
Software is actually quite unique in that regard, costing merely the bandwidth and
permanent storage space to store.
Let's see:
1. From the article, they cannot go public and have limited ways to raise more money. An
IPO with its more stringent disclosure requirements would expose them.
2. They tried lowering driver compensation and found that model unsustainable.
3. There are no benefits to expanding in terms of economies of scale.
From where I am standing, it looks like a lot of industries gave similar barriers. Silicon
Valley is not going to be able to disrupt those.
Tesla, another Silicon Valley company seems to be struggling to mass produce its Model 3
and deliver an electric car that breaks even, is reliable, while disrupting the industry in
the ways that Elon Musk attempted to hype up.
So that basically leaves services and manufacturing out for Silicon Valley disruption.
UBER has become a "too big to fail" startup because of all the different tentacles of
capital from various Tier 1 VCs and investment bankers.
VCs have admitted openly that UBER is a subsidized business, meaning it's product is sold
below market value, and the losses reflect that subsidization. The whole "2 sided platform"
argument is just marketecture to hustle more investors. It's a form of service "dumping" that
puts legacy businesses into bankruptcy. Back during the dotcom bubble one popular investment
banker (Paul Deninger) characterized this model as "Terrorist Competition", i.e. coffers full
of invested cash to commoditize the market and drive out competition.
UBER is an absolute disaster that has forked the startup model in Silicon Valley in order
to drive total dependence on venture capital by founders. And its current diversification
into "autonomous vehicles", food delivery, et al are simply more evidence that the company
will never be profitable due to its whacky "blitzscaling" approach of layering on new
"businesses" prior to achieving "fit" in its current one.
It's economic model has also metastasized into a form of startup cancer that is killing
Silicon Valley as a "technology" innovator. Now it's all cargo cult marketing BS tied to
"strategic capital".
UBER is the victory of venture capital and user subsidized startups over creativity by
real entrepreneurs.
It's shadow is long and that's why this company should be ..wait for it UNBUNDLED (the new
silicon valley word attached to that other BS religion called "disruption"). Call it a great
unbundling and you can break up this monster corp any way you want.
2. The elevator pitch for Uber: subsidize rides to attract customers, put the competition
out of business, and then enjoy an unregulated monopoly, all while exploiting economically
ignorant drivers–ahem–"partners."
3. But more than one can play that game, and
4. Cab and livery companies are finding ways to survive!
If subsidizing rides is counted as an expense, (not being an accountant, I would guess it
so), then whether the subsidy goes to the driver or the passenger, that would account for the
ballooning expenses, to answer my own question. Otherwise, the overhead for operating what
Uber describes as a tech company should be minimal: A billion should fund a decent
headquarters with staff, plus field offices in, say, 100 U.S. cities. However, their global
pretensions are probably burning cash like crazy. On top of that, I wonder what the exec
compensation is like?
After reading HH's initial series, I made a crude, back-of-the-envelope calculation that
Uber would run out of money sometime in the third fiscal quarter of 2018, but that was based
on assuming losses were stabilizing in the range of 3 billion a year. Not so, according to
the article. I think crunch time is rapidly approaching. If so, then SoftBank's tender offer
may look quite appetizing to VC firms and to any Uber employee able to cash in their options.
I think there is a way to make a re-envisioned Uber profitable, and with a more independent
board, they may be able to restructure the company to show a pathway to profitability before
the IPO. But time is running out.
A not insignificant question is the recruitment and retention of the front line
"partners." It would seem to me that at some point, Uber will run out of economically
ignorant drivers with good manners and nice cars. I would be very interested to know how many
drivers give up Uber and other ride-sharing gigs once the 1099's start flying at the
beginning of the year. One of the harsh realities of owning a business or being an contractor
is the humble fact that you get paid LAST!
We became instant Uber riders while spending holidays with relatives in San Diego. While
their model is indeed unique from a rider perspective, it was the driver pool that fascinates
me. These are not professional livery drivers, but rather freebooters of all stripes driving
for various reasons. The remuneration they receive cannot possibly generate much income after
expenses, never mind the problems associated with IRS filing as independent contractors.
One guy was just cruising listening to music; cooler to get paid for it than just sitting
home! A young lady was babbling and gesticulating non stop about nothing coherent and
appeared to be on some sort of stimulant. A foreign gentleman, very professional, drove for
extra money when not at his regular job. He was the only one who had actually bought a new
Prius for this gig, hoping to pay it off in two years.
This is indeed a brave new world. There was a period in Nicaragua just after the Contra
war ended when citizens emerged from their homes and hit the streets in large numbers,
desperately looking for income. Every car was a taxi and there was a bipedal mini Walmart at
every city intersection as individuals sold everything and anything in a sort of euphoric
optimism towards the future. Reality just hadn't caught up with them yet .
U6 underemployment rate rose +0.1% from 7.9% to 8.0%
Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment: Wages and
participation rates
Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now: rose +53,000 from 5.175 million to 5.238
million
Part time for economic reasons: rose +48,000 from 4.753 million to 4.801 million
Employment/population ratio ages 25-54: rose +0.2% from 78.8% to 79.0%
Average Weekly Earnings for Production and Nonsupervisory Personnel: rose +$.0.5 from a
downwardly revised $22.19 to $22.24, up +2.4% YoY. (Note: you may be reading different
information about wages elsewhere. They are citing average wages for all private workers. I
use wages for nonsupervisory personnel, to come closer to the situation for ordinary
workers.)
Holding Trump accountable on manufacturing and mining jobs
Trump specifically campaigned on bringing back manufacturing and mining jobs. Is he keeping
this promise?
Manufacturing jobs rose by +31,000 for an average of +15,000 a month vs. the last seven
years of Obama's presidency in which an average of 10,300 manufacturing jobs were added
each month.
Coal mining jobs fell -400 for an average of -15 a month vs. the last seven years of
Obama's presidency in which an average of -300 jobs were lost each month
September was revised upward by +20,000. October was revised downward by -17,000, for a
net change of +3,000.
likbez December 9, 2017 7:52 pm
There are now large categories of jobs, both part-time and full time, that can't provide
for living and are paying below or close to minimum wage (plantation economy jobs). it
looks like under neoliberalism this is the fastest growing category of jobs.
Examples are Uber and Lift jobs (which are as close to predatory scam as one can get) .
Many jobs in service industry, especially retail. See for example
"... What happened to the old "sysadmin" of just a few years ago? We've split what used to be the sysadmin into application teams, server teams, storage teams, and network teams. There were often at least a few people, the holders of knowledge, who knew how everything worked, and I mean everything. ..."
"... Now look at what we've done. Knowledge is so decentralized we must invent new roles to act as liaisons between all the IT groups. Architects now hold much of the high-level "how it works" knowledge, but without knowing how any one piece actually does work. In organizations with more than a few hundred IT staff and developers, it becomes nearly impossible for one person to do and know everything. This movement toward specializing in individual areas seems almost natural. That, however, does not provide a free ticket for people to turn a blind eye. ..."
"... Does your IT department function as a unit? Even 20-person IT shops have turf wars, so the answer is very likely, "no." As teams are split into more and more distinct operating units, grouping occurs. One IT budget gets split between all these groups. Often each group will have a manager who pitches his needs to upper management in hopes they will realize how important the team is. ..."
"... The "us vs. them" mentality manifests itself at all levels, and it's reinforced by management having to define each team's worth in the form of a budget. One strategy is to illustrate a doomsday scenario. If you paint a bleak enough picture, you may get more funding. Only if you are careful enough to illustrate the failings are due to lack of capital resources, not management or people. A manager of another group may explain that they are not receiving the correct level of service, so they need to duplicate the efforts of another group and just implement something themselves. On and on, the arguments continue. ..."
What happened to the old "sysadmin" of just a few years ago? We've split what used to be the sysadmin into application teams,
server teams, storage teams, and network teams. There were often at least a few people, the holders of knowledge, who knew how everything
worked, and I mean everything. Every application, every piece of network gear, and how every server was configured -- these
people could save a business in times of disaster.
Now look at what we've done. Knowledge is so decentralized we must invent new roles to act as liaisons between all the IT
groups. Architects now hold much of the high-level "how it works" knowledge, but without knowing how any one piece actually does
work. In organizations with more than a few hundred IT staff and developers, it becomes nearly impossible for one person to do and
know everything. This movement toward specializing in individual areas seems almost natural. That, however, does not provide a free
ticket for people to turn a blind eye.
Specialization
You know the story: Company installs new application, nobody understands it yet, so an expert is hired. Often, the person with
a certification in using the new application only really knows how to run that application. Perhaps they aren't interested in
learning anything else, because their skill is in high demand right now. And besides, everything else in the infrastructure is
run by people who specialize in those elements. Everything is taken care of.
Except, how do these teams communicate when changes need to take place? Are the storage administrators teaching the Windows
administrators about storage multipathing; or worse logging in and setting it up because it's faster for the storage gurus to
do it themselves? A fundamental level of knowledge is often lacking, which makes it very difficult for teams to brainstorm about
new ways evolve IT services. The business environment has made it OK for IT staffers to specialize and only learn one thing.
If you hire someone certified in the application, operating system, or network vendor you use, that is precisely what you get.
Certifications may be a nice filter to quickly identify who has direct knowledge in the area you're hiring for, but often they
indicate specialization or compensation for lack of experience.
Resource Competition
Does your IT department function as a unit? Even 20-person IT shops have turf wars, so the answer is very likely, "no."
As teams are split into more and more distinct operating units, grouping occurs. One IT budget gets split between all these groups.
Often each group will have a manager who pitches his needs to upper management in hopes they will realize how important the team
is.
The "us vs. them" mentality manifests itself at all levels, and it's reinforced by management having to define each team's
worth in the form of a budget. One strategy is to illustrate a doomsday scenario. If you paint a bleak enough picture, you may
get more funding. Only if you are careful enough to illustrate the failings are due to lack of capital resources, not management
or people. A manager of another group may explain that they are not receiving the correct level of service, so they need to duplicate
the efforts of another group and just implement something themselves. On and on, the arguments continue.
Most often, I've seen competition between server groups result in horribly inefficient uses of hardware. For example, what
happens in your organization when one team needs more server hardware? Assume that another team has five unused servers sitting
in a blade chassis. Does the answer change? No, it does not. Even in test environments, sharing doesn't often happen between IT
groups.
With virtualization, some aspects of resource competition get better and some remain the same. When first implemented, most
groups will be running their own type of virtualization for their platform. The next step, I've most often seen, is for test servers
to get virtualized. If a new group is formed to manage the virtualization infrastructure, virtual machines can be allocated to
various application and server teams from a central pool and everyone is now sharing. Or, they begin sharing and then demand their
own physical hardware to be isolated from others' resource hungry utilization. This is nonetheless a step in the right direction.
Auto migration and guaranteed resource policies can go a long way toward making shared infrastructure, even between competing
groups, a viable option.
Blamestorming
The most damaging side effect of splitting into too many distinct IT groups is the reinforcement of an "us versus them" mentality.
Aside from the notion that specialization creates a lack of knowledge, blamestorming is what this article is really about. When a project is delayed, it is all too easy to blame another group. The SAN people didn't allocate storage on time,
so another team was delayed. That is the timeline of the project, so all work halted until that hiccup was restored. Having someone
else to blame when things get delayed makes it all too easy to simply stop working for a while.
More related to the initial points at the beginning of this article, perhaps, is the blamestorm that happens after a system
outage.
Say an ERP system becomes unresponsive a few times throughout the day. The application team says it's just slowing down, and
they don't know why. The network team says everything is fine. The server team says the application is "blocking on IO," which
means it's a SAN issue. The SAN team say there is nothing wrong, and other applications on the same devices are fine. You've ran
through nearly every team, but without an answer still. The SAN people don't have access to the application servers to help diagnose
the problem. The server team doesn't even know how the application runs.
See the problem? Specialized teams are distinct and by nature adversarial. Specialized staffers often relegate
themselves into a niche knowing that as long as they continue working at large enough companies, "someone else" will take care
of all the other pieces.
I unfortunately don't have an answer to this problem. Maybe rotating employees between departments will help. They gain knowledge
and also get to know other people, which should lessen the propensity to view them as outsiders
And I feel like the Democrats get so distracted. They have been talking about sexual
harassment and stuff instead of the TAX BILL. It is so damn easy to get them to take their
eyes off the ball! and get played again and again. . . and TRAGIC given the consequences . .
.
It's the perfect "distraction". Allows them to engage in virtue-signaling and "fighting
for average Americans". It's all phony, they always "lose" in the end getting exactly what
they wanted in the first place, while not actually having to cast a vote for it.
It's all related, less safety net and more inequality means more desperation to take a
job, *ANY* job, means more women putting up with sexual harassment (and workplace bullying
and horrible and illegal workplace conditions etc.) as the price of a paycheck.
Horrible Toomey's re-election was a parallel to the Clinton/Trump fiasco. The Democrats
put up a corporate shill, Katie McGinty that no-one trusted.
"Former lobbyist Katie McGinty has spent three decades in politics getting rich off the
companies she regulated and subsidized. Now this master of the revolving-door wants
Pennsylvania voters to give her another perch in government: U.S. Senator." Washington
Examiner.
She was a Clintonite through and through, that everyone, much like $Hillary, could see
through.
To paraphrase the Beatles, you say you want a revolution but you don't really mean it. You
want more of the same because it makes you feel good to keep voting for your Senator or your
Congressman. The others are corrupt and evil, but your guys are good. If only the others were
like your guys. News flash: they are all your guys.
America is doomed. And so much the better. Despite all America has done for the world, it
has also been a brutal despot. America created consumerism, super-sizing and the Kardashians.
These are all unforgivable sins. America is probably the most persistently violent country in
the world both domestically and internationally. No other country has invaded or occupied so
much of the world, unless you count the known world in which case Macedonia wins.
This tax plan is what Americans want because they are pretty ignorant and stupid. They are
incapable of understanding basic math so they can't work out the details. They believe that
any tax cut is inherently good and all government is bad so that is also all that matters.
They honestly think they or their kids will one day be rich so they don't want to hurt rich
people. They also believe that millionaires got their money honestly and through hard work
because that is what they learned from their parents.
Just send a blank check to Goldman Sachs. Keep a bit to buy a gun which you can use to
either shoot up a McDonalds or blow your own brains out.
And some people still ask me why I left and don't want to come back. LOL
Macedonia of today is not the same are that conquered the world. They stole the name from
Greeks.
That being said, the US is ripe for a change. Every policy the current rulers enact seems
to make things better. However, I suspect a revolution would kill majority of the population
since it would disrupt the all important supply chains, so it does not seem viable.
However, a military takeover could be viable. If they are willing to wipe out the most
predatory portions of the ruling class, they could fix the healthcare system, install a
high-employment policy and take out the banks and even the military contractors. Which could
make them very popular.
Yeah, right. Have you seen our generals? They're just more of the same leeches we
have everywhere else in the 0.01%. Have you seen any of the other military dictatorships
around the world, like actually existing ones? They're all brilliantly corrupt and total
failures when it comes to running any sort of economy. Not to mention the total loss of civil
rights. Americans have this idiotic love of their military thanks to decades of effective
propaganda and think the rule of pampered generals would somehow be better than the right to
vote. Bleh.
This is a military dictatorship. The fourth and sixth amendments have been de facto
repealed. Trump cared about one thing and one thing only, namely to repeal the estate tax. He
is the ultimate con man and this was his biggest con. It is truly amazing how he accomplished
this. He has saved his family a billion $$$. He will now turn over governing to the generals
and Goldman Sachs. He may even retire. Truly amazing. One has to admire the sheer perversity
of it all. When will the American electorate get tired of being conned? The fact is they have
nothing but admiration for Trump. We live in a criminal culture, winner take all. America
loves its winners.
There is an old 2003 David Brooks column in which he mentions that
"The Democrats couldn't even persuade people to oppose the repeal of the estate tax, which
is explicitly for the mega-upper class. Al Gore, who ran a populist campaign, couldn't even
win the votes of white males who didn't go to college, whose incomes have stagnated over the
past decades and who were the explicit targets of his campaign. Why don't more Americans want
to distribute more wealth down to people like themselves?"
Then Brooks goes on to explain
"The most telling polling result from the 2000 election was from a Time magazine survey
that asked people if they are in the top 1 percent of earners. Nineteen percent of Americans
say they are in the richest 1 percent and a further 20 percent expect to be someday. So right
away you have 39 percent of Americans who thought that when Mr. Gore savaged a plan that
favored the top 1 percent, he was taking a direct shot at them."
The Republicans have conditioned people to believe government services (except for
defense/military) are run poorly and need to be "run like a business" for a profit.
The problem is that not all government services CAN be profitable (homeless care, mental
health care for the poor, EPA enforcement, OSHA enforcement). And when attempts are made to
privatize some government operations such as incarceration, the result is that the private
company tries to maximize profits by pushing for laws to incarcerate ever more people.
The history of the USA as viewed by outsiders, maybe 50 years hence, will be that of a
resource consuming nation that spent a vast fortune on military hardware and military
adventures when it had little to fear due to geography, a nation that touted an independent
press that was anything but, a nation that created a large media/entertainment industry which
helped to keep citizens in line, a nation that fostered an overly large (by 2 or 3 times per
Paul Whooley) parasitical financial industry that did not perform its prime capital
allocation task competently as it veered from bubble to bubble and a nation that managed to
spend great sums on medical care without covering all citizens.
But the USA does have a lot of guns and a lot of frustrated people.
Maybe Kevlar vests will be the fashion of the future?
The provision to do away with the estate tax, if not immediately, in the current versions
(House and Senate) is great news for the 1%, and bad for the rest of us.
And if more people are not against that (thanks for quoting the NYTImes article), it's the
failure of the rest of the media for not focusing more on it, but wasting time and energy on
fashion, sports, entertainment, etc.
he provision to do away with the estate tax . . . is great news for the 1%
I think it's even a little more extreme than that. The data is a few years old, but it is
only the top 0.6% who are affected by estate taxes in the United States. See the data at
these web sites:
The military adventures were largely in support of what Smedley Butler so accurately
called the Great "Racket" of Monroe Doctrine colonialism and rapacious extractive
"capitalism" aka "looting."
It took longer and costed the rich a bit more to buy up all the bits of government, but
the way they've done will likely be more compendious and lasting. Barring some "intervening
event(s)".
While Republicans show their true colors, im out there seeing a resurgence of civil
society. And im starting to reach Hard core Tea Party types. Jobs, Manufacturing, Actual
Policy.
On the topic of outsourcing, IMO it can be cheaper if done right. On paper it always seems like a great idea, but in practice
it's not always the best idea financially and/or getting the same or better result in comparison to keeping it in-house. I've worked
for companies where they have outsourced a particular department/function to companies where I am the one the job is outsourced to.
My observation has been the success of getting projects done (e.g.: programing) or facilitating a role (e.g.: sys admin) rely on a few
factors regardless of outsourcing or not.
Notable quotes:
"... On the topic of outsourcing, IMO it can be cheaper if done right. On paper it always seems like a great idea, but in practice it's not always the best idea financially and/or getting the same or better result in comparison to keeping it in-house. I've worked for companies where they have outsourced a particular department/function to companies where I am the one the job is outsourced to. My observation has been the success of getting projects done (e.g.: programing) or facilitating a role (e.g.: sys admin) rely on a few factors regardless of outsourcing or not. ..."
On the topic of outsourcing, IMO it can be cheaper if done right. On paper it always seems like a great idea, but in practice
it's not always the best idea financially and/or getting the same or better result in comparison to keeping it in-house. I've
worked for companies where they have outsourced a particular department/function to companies where I am the one the job is outsourced
to. My observation has been the success of getting projects done (e.g.: programing) or facilitating a role (e.g.: sys admin) rely
on a few factors regardless of outsourcing or not.
The first is a golden rule of sorts on doing anything:
Cheap
Quality
Fast
You can only pick two; NO exceptions. I've encountered so many upper management types that foolishly think they can get away
with having all three. In my experience 9/10 of the time it turns out a lack of quality bites them in the butt sometime down the
road when they assumed they somehow managed to achieve all three.
The second is communication. Mostly everyone in at least the US has experienced the pain of being subjected to some company's
outsourced customer service and/or tech support that can't effectively communicate with both parties on the same page of understanding
one another. I really shouldn't need to explain why communication, understanding one another is so important. Sadly this is something
I have to constantly explain to my current boss with events like today where my non-outsourced colleague rebooted a number of
production critical servers when he was asked to reboot just one secondary server.
Third is the employee's skill in doing the job. Again, another obvious one, but I've observed that it isn't always on the hiring
menu. Additionally I've seen some people that interview well, but couldn't create a "Hello World" HTML page for a web developer
position as an example. There's no point in hiring or keeping a hired individual to do a job that they lack the skill to do; even
if it's an entry-level position with training, that person should be willing to put for the effort to learn and take notes. I
accept that everyone has their own unique skills that can aide or hinder their ability to learn and be proficient with a particular
task. However, I firmly believe anyone can learn to do anything as long as they put their mind to it. I barely have any artistic
ability and my drawing skills are stick figures at best (XKCD is miles ahead of me); if I were to put forth the effort to learn
how to draw and paint, I could become a good artist. I taught an A+ technician certification class at a tech school a while back
and I had a retired Marine that served in the Vietnam War as one of my students. One could argue his best skill was killing and
blowing stuff up. He worked hard and learned to be a technician and passed CompTIA's certification test without a problem. That
leads me to the next point.
Lastly is attitude of the end employee doing the actual work. It boggles my mind how so many managers loose the plot when it
comes to employee morale and motivation. Productivity generally is improved when those two are improved and it usually doesn't
have to involve spending a bunch of money. The employee's attitude should be getting the work done correctly in a reasonable amount
of time. Demanding it is a poor approach. Poisoning an employee will result in poisoning the company in a small manner all the
way up to the failure of the company. Employees should be encouraged through actual morale improvements, positive motivation,
and incentives for doing more work at the same and/or better quality level.
Outsourcing or keeping things in house can be successful and possibly economical if approached correctly with the appropriate
support of upper management.
How dramatic? Isn't outsourcing done (like it or not) to reduce costs?
Outsourcing is done to reduce the projected costs that PHBs see. In reality, outsourcing can lead to increased costs and delays
due to time zone differences and language/cultural barriers.
I have seen it work reasonably well, but only when the extra effort and delays caused by the increased need for rework that
comes from complex software projects. If you are working with others on software, it is so much quicker to produce quality software
if the person who knows the business requirements is sitting right next to the person doing design and the person cutting code
and the person doing the testing, etc, etc.
If these people or groups are scattered around the world with different cultures and native languages, communication can suffer,
increasing misunderstanding and reducing the quality. I have personally seen this lead to massive increase in code defects in
a project that went from in house development to outsourced.
Also, time zone differences cause problems. I have noticed that the further west people live, the less likely they are to take
into account how far behind they are. Working with people who fail to realise that their Monday morning is the next day for someone
else, or that by the time they are halfway through Friday, others are already on their weekend is not only frustrating, it leads
to slow turn around of bug fixes, etc.
Yeah, I'm told outsourcing keeps costs down, but I am yet to see conclusive evidence of that in the real world. At least in
complex development. YMMV for support/call centre stuff.
This aritcle is two years old and not much happned during those two years. But still there is a chance that highly authomated factories
can make manufacturing in the USA again profitable. the problme is that they will be even more profible in East Asia;-)
The rise of technologies such as 3-D printing and advanced robotics means that the next few decades for Asia's economies will
not be as easy or promising as the previous five.
OWEN HARRIES, the first editor, together with Robert Tucker, of The National Interest, once reminded me that experts-economists,
strategists, business leaders and academics alike-tend to be relentless followers of intellectual fashion, and the learned, as Harold
Rosenberg famously put it, a "herd of independent minds." Nowhere is this observation more apparent than in the prediction that we
are already into the second decade of what will inevitably be an "Asian Century"-a widely held but rarely examined view that Asia's
continued economic rise will decisively shift global power from the Atlantic to the western Pacific Ocean.
No doubt the numbers appear quite compelling. In 1960, East Asia accounted for a mere 14 percent of global GDP; today that figure
is about 27 percent. If linear trends continue, the region could account for about 36 percent of global GDP by 2030 and over half
of all output by the middle of the century. As if symbolic of a handover of economic preeminence, China, which only accounted for
about 5 percent of global GDP in 1960, will likely surpass the United States as the largest economy in the world over the next decade.
If past record is an indicator of future performance, then the "Asian Century" prediction is close to a sure thing.
"This overly narrow hiring spec then leads to absurd, widespread complaint that companies can't find people with the right skills"
. In the IT job markets such postings are often called purple squirrels
Notable quotes:
"... In particular, there seems to be an extremely popular variant of the above where the starting proposition "God makes moral people rich" is improperly converted to "Rich people are more moral" which is then readily negated to "Poor people are immoral" and then expanded to "Poor people are immoral, thus they DESERVE to suffer for it". It's essentially the theological equivalent of dividing by zero ..."
"... That said, the ranks of the neoliberals are not small. They constitute what Jonathan Schell calls a "mass minority." I suspect the neoliberals have about the same level of popular support that the Nazis did at the time of their takeover of Germany in 1932, or the Bolsheviks had in Russia at the time of their takeover in 1917, which is about 20 or 25% of the total population. ..."
"... The ranks of the neoliberals are made to appear far greater than they really are because they have all but exclusive access to the nation's megaphone. The Tea Party can muster a handful of people to disrupt a town hall meeting and it gets coast to coast, primetime coverage. But let a million people protest against bank bailouts, and it is ignored. Thus, by manipulation of the media, the mass minority is made to appear to be much larger than it really is. ..."
Over the past three decades, large parts of our culture here in the US have internalized the lessons of the new Social Darwinism,
with a significant body of literature to explain and justify it. Many of us have internalized, without even realizing it,
the ideas of "dog eat dog", "every man for himself", "society should be structured like the animal kingdom, where the weak and
sick simply die because they cannot compete, and this is healthy", and "everything that happens to you is your own fault. There
is no such thing as circumstance that cannot be overcome, and certainly no birth lottery."
The levers pulled by politicians and the Fed put these things into practice, but even if we managed get different (better)
politicians or Fed chairmen, ones who weren't steeped in this culture and ideology, we'd still be left with the culture in the
population at large, and things like the "unemployed stigma" are likely to die very, very hard. Acceptance of the "just-world
phenomenon" here in the US runs deep.
perfect stranger:
"Religion is just as vulnerable to corporate capture as is the government or the academy."
This is rather rhetorical statement, and wrong one. One need to discern spiritual aspect of religion from the religion as a
tool.
Religion, as is structured, is complicit: in empoverishment, obedience, people's preconditioning, and legislative enabler in
the institutions such as Supreme – and non-supreme – Court(s). It is a form of PR of the ruling class for the governing class.
DownSouth:
perfect stranger,
Religion, just like human nature, is not that easy to put in a box.
For every example you can cite where religion "is complicit: in empoverishment, obedience, people's preconditioning, and legislative
enabler in the institution," I can point to an example of where religion engendered a liberating, emancipatory and revolutionary
spirit.
Examples:
•Early Christianity •Nominalism •Early Protestantism •Gandhi •Martin Luther King
Now granted, there don't seem to be any recent examples of this of any note, unless we consider Chris Hedges a religionist,
which I'm not sure we can do. Would it be appropriate to consider Hedges a religionist?
perfect stranger:
Yes, that maybe, just maybe be the case in early stages of forming new religion(s). In case of Christianity old rulers from
Rome were trying to save own head/throne and the S.P.Q.R. imperia by adopting new religion.
You use examples of Gandhi and MLK which is highly questionable both were fighters for independence and the second, civil rights.
In a word: not members of establishment just as I said there were (probably) seeing the religion as spiritual force not tool of
enslavement.
In particular, there seems to be an extremely popular variant of the above where the starting proposition "God makes moral
people rich" is improperly converted to "Rich people are more moral" which is then readily negated to "Poor people are immoral"
and then expanded to "Poor people are immoral, thus they DESERVE to suffer for it". It's essentially the theological equivalent
of dividing by zero
DownSouth:
Rex,
I agree.
Poll after poll after poll has shown that a majority of Americans, and a rather significant majority, reject the values, attitudes,
beliefs and opinions proselytized by the stealth religion we call "neoclassical economics."
That said, the ranks of the neoliberals are not small. They constitute what Jonathan Schell calls a "mass minority." I
suspect the neoliberals have about the same level of popular support that the Nazis did at the time of their takeover of Germany
in 1932, or the Bolsheviks had in Russia at the time of their takeover in 1917, which is about 20 or 25% of the total population.
The ranks of the neoliberals are made to appear far greater than they really are because they have all but exclusive access
to the nation's megaphone. The Tea Party can muster a handful of people to disrupt a town hall meeting and it gets coast to coast,
primetime coverage. But let a million people protest against bank bailouts, and it is ignored. Thus, by manipulation of the media,
the mass minority is made to appear to be much larger than it really is.
The politicians love this, because as they carry water for their pet corporations, they can point to the Tea Partiers and say:
"See what a huge upwelling of popular support I am responding to."
JTFaraday:
Well, if that's true, then the unemployed are employable but the mass mediated mentality would like them to believe they
are literally and inherently unemployable so that they underestimate and under-sell themselves.
This is as much to the benefit of those who would like to pick up "damaged goods" on the cheap as those who promote the unemployment
problem as one that inheres in prospective employees rather than one that is a byproduct of a bad job market lest someone be tempted
to think we should address it politically.
That's where I see this blame the unemployed finger pointing really getting traction these days.
attempter:
I apologize for the fact that I only read the first few paragraphs of this before quitting in disgust.
I just can no longer abide the notion that "labor" can ever be seen by human beings as a "cost" at all. We really need to refuse
to even tolerate that way of phrasing things. Workers create all wealth. Parasites have no right to exist. These are facts, and
we should refuse to let argument range beyond them.
The only purpose of civilization is to provide a better way of living and for all people. This includes the right and full
opportunity to work and manage for oneself and/or as a cooperative group. If civilization doesn't do that, we're better off without
it.
psychohistorian:
I am one of those long term unemployed.
I suppose my biggest employment claim would be as some sort of IT techie, with numerous supply chain systems and component
design, development, implementation, interfaces with other systems and ongoing support. CCNP certification and a history of techiedom
going back to WEYCOS.
I have a patent (6,209,954) in my name and 12+ years of beating my head against the wall in an industry that buys compliance
with the "there is no problem here, move on now" approach.
Hell, I was a junior woodchuck program administrator back in the early 70's working for the Office of the Governor of the state
of Washington on CETA PSE or Public Service Employment. The office of the Governor ran the PSE program for 32 of the 39 counties
in the state that were not big enough to run their own. I helped organize the project approval process in all those counties to
hire folk at ( if memory serves me max of $833/mo.) to fix and expand parks and provide social and other government services as
defined projects with end dates. If we didn't have the anti-public congress and other government leadership we have this could
be a current component in a rational labor policy but I digress.
I have experience in the construction trades mostly as carpenter but some electrical, plumbing, HVAC, etc. also.
So, of course there is some sort of character flaw that is keeping me and all those others from employment ..right. I may have
more of an excuse than others, have paid into SS for 45 years but still would work if it was available ..taking work away from
other who may need it more .why set up a society where we have to compete as such for mere existence???????
One more face to this rant. We need government by the people and for the people which we do not have now. Good, public focused,
not corporate focused government is bigger than any entities that exist under its jurisdiction and is kept updated by required
public participation in elections and potentially other things like military, peace corps, etc. in exchange for advanced education.
I say this as someone who has worked at various levels in both the public and private sectors there are ignorant and misguided
folks everywhere. At least with ongoing active participation there is a chance that government would, once constructed, be able
to evolve as needed within public focus .IMO.
Ishmael:
Some people would say I have been unemployed for 10 years. In 2000 after losing the last of my four CFO gigs for public companies
I found it necessary to start consulting. This has lead to two of my three biggest winning years. I am usually consulting on cutting
edge area of my profession and many times have large staffs reporting to me that I bring on board to get jobs done. For several
years I subcontacted to a large international consulting firm to clean up projects which went wrong. Let me give some insight
here.
First, most good positions have gate keepers who are professional recruiters. It is near impossible to get
by them and if you are unemployed they will hardly talk to you. One time talking to a recruiter at Korn Fery I was interviewing
for a job I have done several times in an industry I have worked in several times. She made a statement that I had never worked
at a well known company. I just about fell out of my chair laughing. At one time I was a senior level executive for the largest
consulting firm in the world and lived on three continents and worked with companies on six. In addition, I had held senior
positions for 2 fortune 500 firms and was the CFO for a company with $4.5 billion in revenue. I am well known at several PE
firms and the founder of one of the largest mentioned in a meeting that one of his great mistakes was not investing in a very
successful LBO (return of in excess of 20 multiple to investors in 18 months) I was the CFO for. In a word most recruiters
are incompetent.
Second, most CEO's any more are just insecure politicians. One time during an interview I had a CEO asked
me to talk about some accomplishments. I was not paying to much attention as I rattled off accomplishments and the CEO went
nuclear and started yelling at me that he did not know where I thought I was going with this job but the only position above
the CFO job was his and he was not going anywhere. I assured him I was only interested in the CFO position and not his, but
I knew the job was over. Twice feed back that I got from recruiters which they took at criticism was the "client said I seemed
very assured of myself."
Third, government, banking, business and the top MBA schools are based upon lying to move forward. I remember
a top human resource executive telling me right before Enron, MCI and Sarbanes Oxley that I needed to learn to be more flexible.
My response was that flexibility would get me an orange jump suit. Don't get me wrong, I have a wide grey zone, but it use
to be in business the looked for people who could identify problems early and resolve them. Now days I see far more of a demand
for people who can come up with PR spins to hide them. An attorney/treasurer consultant who partnered with me on a number of
consulting jobs told me some one called me "not very charming." He said he asked what that meant, and the person who said that
said, "Ish walks into a meeting and within 10 minutes he is asking about the 10,000 pound guerilla sitting in the room that
no one wants to talk about." CEO do not want any challenges in their organization.
Fourth, three above has lead to the hiring of very young and inexperienced people at senior levels. These
people are insecure and do not want more senior and experienced people above them and than has resulted in people older than
45 not finding positions.
Fifth, people are considered expendable and are fired for the lamest reasons anymore. A partner at one of
the larger and more prestigious recruiting firms one time told me, "If you have a good consulting business, just stick
with it. Our average placement does not last 18 months any more." Another well known recruiter in S. Cal. one time
commented to me, "Your average consulting gig runs longer than our average placement."
With all of that said, I have a hard time understanding such statements as "@attempter "Workers create all wealth. Parasites
have no right to exist." What does that mean? Every worker creates wealth. There is no difference in people. Sounds like communism
to me. I make a good living and my net worth has grown working for myself. I have never had a consulting gig terminated by the
client but I have terminated several. Usually, I am brought in to fix what several other people have failed at. I deliver basically
intellectual properties to companies. Does that mean I am not a worker. I do not usually lift anything heavy or move equipment
but I tell people what and where to do it so does that make me a parasite.
Those people who think everyone is equal and everyone deserves equal pay are fools or lazy. My rate is high, but what usually
starts as short term projects usually run 6 months or more because companies find I can do so much more than what most of their
staff can do and I am not a threat.
I would again like to have a senior challenging role at a decent size company but due to the reasons above will probably never
get one. However, you can never tell. I am currently consulting for a midsize very profitable company (grew 400% last year) where
I am twice the age of most people there, but everyone speaks to me with respect so you can never tell.
Lidia:
Ishmael, you're quite right. When I showed my Italian husband's resume to try and "network" in the US, my IT friends assumed
he was lying about his skills and work history.
Contemporaneously, in Italy it is impossible to get a job because of incentives to hire "youth". Age discrimination is
not illegal, so it's quite common to see ads that ask for a programmer under 30 with 5 years of experience in COBOL (the purple
squirrel).
Hosswire
Some good points about the foolishness of recruiters, but a great deal of that foolishness is forced by the clients themselves.
I used to be a recruiter myself, including at Korn Ferry in Southern California. I described the recruiting industry as "yet more
proof that God hates poor people" because my job was to ignore resumes from people seeking jobs and instead "source" aka "poach"
people who already had good jobs by dangling a higher salary in front of them. I didn't do it because I disparaged the unemployed,
or because I could not do the basic analysis to show that a candidate had analogous or transferrable skills to the opening.
I did it because the client, as Yves said, wanted people who were literally in the same job description already.
My theory is that the client wanted to have their ass covered in case the hire didn't work out, by being able to say that they
looked perfect "on paper." The lesson I learned for myself and my friends looking for jobs was simple, if morally dubious.
Basically, that if prospective employers are going to judge you based on a single piece of paper take full advantage of the fact
that you get to write that piece of paper yourself.
Ishmael:
Hosswire - I agree with your comment. There are poor recruiters like the one I sited but in general it is the clients fault.
Fear of failure. All hires have at least a 50% chance of going sideways on you. Most companies do not even have the ability to
look at a resume nor to interview. I did not mean to same nasty things about recruiters, and I even do it sometimes but mine.
I look at failure in a different light than most companies. You need to be continually experimenting and changing to survive
as a company and there will be some failures. The goal is to control the cost of failures while looking for the big pay off on
a winner.
Mannwich:
As a former recruiter and HR "professional" (I use that term very loosely for obvious reasons), I can honestly say that you
nailed it. Most big companies looking for mid to high level white collar "talent" will almost always take the perceived
safest route by hiring those who look the best ON PAPER and in a suit and lack any real interviewing skills to find the real stars.
What's almost comical is that companies almost always want to see the most linear resume possible because they want to see "job
stability" (e.g. a CYA document in case the person fails in that job) when in many cases nobody cares about the long range view
of the company anyway. My question was why should the candidate or employee care about the long range view if the employer clearly
doesn't?
Ishmael:
Manwhich another on point comment. Sometimes either interviewing for a job or consulting with a CEO it starts getting to the
absurd. I see all the time the requirement for stability in a persons background. Hello, where have they been the last 15 years.
In addition, the higher up you go the more likely you will be terminated sometime and that is especially true if you are hired
from outside the orgnanization. Companies want loyalty from an employee but offer none in return.
The average tenure for a CFO anymore is something around 18 months. I have been a first party participant (more than once)
where I went through an endless recruiting process for a company (lasting more than 6 months) they final hire some one and that
person is with the company for 3 months and then resigns (of course we all know it is through mutual agreement).
Ishmael:
Birch:
The real problem has become and maybe this is what you are referring to is the "Crony Capitalism." We have lost control of
our financial situation. Basically, PE is not the gods of the universe that everyone thinks they are. However, every bankers
secret wet dream is to become a private equity guy. Accordingly, bankers make ridiculous loans to PE because if you say no to
them then you can not play in their sand box any more. Since the govt will not let the banks go bankrupt like they should then
this charade continues inslaving everyone.
This country as well as many others has a large percentage of its assets tied up in over priced deals that the bankers/governments
will not let collapse while the blood sucking vampires suck the life out of the assets.
On the other hand, govt is not the answer. Govt is too large and accomplishes too little.
kevin de bruxelles:
The harsh reality is that, at least in the first few rounds, companies kick to the curb their weakest links and perceived
slackers. Therefore when it comes time to hire again, they are loath to go sloppy seconds on what they perceive to be
some other company's rejects. They would much rather hire someone who survived the layoffs working in a similar position in a
similar company. Of course the hiring company is going to have to pay for this privilege. Although not totally reliable, the fact
that someone survived the layoffs provides a form social proof for their workplace abilities.
On the macro level, labor has been under attack for thirty years by off shoring and third world immigration. It is no surprise
that since the working classes have been severely undermined that the middle classes would start to feel some pressure. By mass
immigration and off-shoring are strongly supported by both parties. Only when the pain gets strong enough will enough people rebel
and these two policies will be overturned. We still have a few years to go before this happens.
davver:
Let's say I run a factory. I produce cars and it requires very skilled work. Skilled welding, skilled machinists. Now I introduce
some robotic welders and an assembly line system. The plants productivity improves and the jobs actually get easier. They require
less skill, in fact I've simplified each task to something any idiot can do. Would wages go up or down? Are the workers really
contributing to that increase in productivity or is it the machines and methods I created?
Lets say you think laying off or cutting the wages of my existing workers is wrong. What happens when a new entrant into the
business employs a smaller workforce and lower wages, which they can do using the same technology? The new workers don't feel
like they were cut down in any way, they are just happy to have a job. Before they couldn't get a job at the old plant because
they lacked the skill, but now they can work in the new plant because the work is genuinely easier. Won't I go out of business?
Escariot:
I am 54 and have a ton of peers who are former white collar workers and professionals (project managers, architects, lighting
designers, wholesalers and sales reps for industrial and construction materials and equipment) now out of work going on three
years. Now I say out of work, I mean out of our trained and experienced fields.
We now work two or three gigs (waiting tables, mowing lawns, doing free lance, working in tourism, truck driving, moving company
and fedex ups workers) and work HARD, for much much less than we did, and we are seeing the few jobs that are coming back on line
going to younger workers. It is just the reality. And for most of us the descent has not been graceful, so our credit is a wreck,
which also breeds a whole other level of issues as now it is common for the credit record to be a deal breaker for employment,
housing, etc.
Strangely I don't sense a lot of anger or bitterness as much as humility. And gratitude for ANY work that comes our way. Health
insurance? Retirement accounts? not so much.
Mickey Marzick:
Yves and I have disagreed on how extensive the postwar "pact" between management and labor was in this country. But if you
drew a line from say, Trenton-Patterson, NJ to Cincinatti, OH to Minneapolis, MN, north and east of it where blue collar manufacturing
in steel, rubber, auto, machinery, etc., predominated, this "pact" may have existed but ONLY because physical plant and
production were concentrated there and workers could STOP production.
Outside of these heavy industrial pockets, unions were not always viewed favorably. As one moved into the rural hinterlands
surrounding them there was jealously and/or outright hostility. Elsewhere, especially in the South "unions" were the exception
not the rule. The differences between NE Ohio before 1975 – line from Youngstown to Toledo – and the rest of the state exemplified
this pattern. Even today, the NE counties of Ohio are traditional Democratic strongholds with the rest of the state largely Republican.
And I suspect this pattern existed elsewhere. But it is changing too
In any case, the demonization of the unemployed is just one notch above the vicious demonization of the poor that has
always existed in this country. It's a constant reminder for those still working that you could be next – cast out into
the darkness – because you "failed" or worse yet, SINNED. This internalization of the "inner cop" reinforces the dominant ideology
in two ways. First, it makes any resistance by individuals still employed less likely. Second, it pits those still working against
those who aren't, both of which work against the formation of any significant class consciousness amongst working people. The
"oppressed" very often internalize the value system of the oppressor.
As a nation of immigrants ETHNICITY may have more explanatory power than CLASS. For increasingly, it would appear that
the dominant ethnic group – suburban, white, European Americans – have thrown their lot in with corporate America. Scared of the
prospect of downward social mobility and constantly reminded of URBAN America – the other America – this group is trapped with
nowhere to else to go.
It's the divide and conquer strategy employed by ruling elites in this country since its founding [Federalist #10] with the
Know Nothings, blaming the Irish [NINA - no Irish need apply] and playing off each successive wave of immigrants against
the next. Only when the forces of production became concentrated in the urban industrial enclaves of the North was this
strategy less effective. And even then internal immigration by Blacks to the North in search of employment blunted the formation
of class consciousness among white ethnic industrial workers.
Wherever the postwar "pact of domination" between unions and management held sway, once physical plant was relocated elsewhere
[SOUTH] and eventually offshored, unemployment began to trend upwards. First it was the "rustbelt" now it's a nationwide
phenomenon. Needless to say, the "pact" between labor and management has been consigned to the dustbin of history.
White, suburban America has hitched its wagon to that of the corporate horse. Demonization of the unemployed coupled with demonization
of the poor only serve to terrorize this ethnic group into acquiescence. And as the workplace becomes a multicultural matrix this
ethnic group is constantly reminded of its perilous state. Until this increasingly atomized ethnic group breaks with corporate
America once and for all, it's unlikely that the most debilitating scourge of all working people – UNEMPLOYMENT – will be addressed.
Make no mistake about it, involuntary UNEMPLOYMENT/UNDEREMPLYEMT is a form of terrorism and its demonization is terrorism in
action. This "quiet violence" is psychological and the intimidation wrought by unemployment and/or the threat of it is intended
to dehumanize individuals subjected to it. Much like spousal abuse, the emotional and psychological effects are experienced way
before any physical violence. It's the inner cop that makes overt repression unnecessary. We terrorize ourselves into submission
without even knowing it because we accept it or come to tolerate it. So long as we accept "unemployment" as an inevitable consequence
of progress, as something unfortunate but inevitable, we will continue to travel down the road to serfdom where ARBEIT MACHT FREI!
FULL and GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT are the ultimate labor power.
Eric:
It's delicate since direct age discrimination is illegal, but when circumstances permit separating older workers they have
a very tough time getting back into the workforce in an era of high health care inflation. Older folks consume more health
care and if you are hiring from a huge surplus of available workers it isn't hard to steer around the more experienced. And nobody
gets younger, so when you don't get job A and go for job B 2 weeks later you, you're older still!
James:
Yves said- "This overly narrow hiring spec then leads to absurd, widespread complaint that companies can't find people
with the right skills"
In the IT job markets such postings are often called purple squirrels. The HR departments require the applicant to be expert
in a dozen programming languages. This is an excuse to hire a foreigner on a temp h1-b or other visa.
Most people aren't aware that this model dominates the sciences. Politicians scream we have a shortage of scientists, yet it
seems we only have a shortage of cheap easily exploitable labor. The economist recently pointed out the glut of scientists that
currently exists in the USA.
This understates the problem. The majority of PhD recipients wander through years of postdocs only to end up eventually changing
fields. My observation is that the top ten schools in biochem/chemistry/physics/ biology produce enough scientists to satisfy
the national demand.
The exemption from h1-b visa caps for academic institutions exacerbates the problem, providing academics with almost unlimited
access to labor.
The pharmaceutical sector has been decimated over the last ten years with tens of thousands of scientists/ factory workers
looking for re-training in a dwindling pool of jobs (most of which will deem you overqualified.)
I wonder how the demonization of the unemployed can be so strong even in the face of close to 10% unemployment/20% underemployment.
It's easy and tempting to demonize an abstract young buck or Cadillac-driving welfare queen, but when a family member
or a close friend loses a job, or your kids are stuck at your place because they can't find one, shouldn't that alter your perceptions?
Of course the tendency will be to blame it all on the government, but there has to be a limit to that in hard-hit places like
Ohio, Colorado, or Arizona. And yet, the dynamics aren't changing or even getting worse. Maybe Wisconsin marks a turning point,
I certainly hope it does
damien:
It's more than just stupid recruiting, this stigma. Having got out when the getting was good, years ago, I know
that any corporate functionary would be insane to hire me now. Socialization wears off, the deformation process reverses, and
the ritual and shibboleths become a joke. Even before I bailed I became a huge pain in the ass as economic exigency receded, every
bosses nightmare. I suffered fools less gladly and did the right thing out of sheer anarchic malice.
You really can't maintain corporate culture without existential fear – not just, "Uh oh, I'm gonna get fired,"
fear, but a visceral feeling that you do not exist without a job. In properly indoctrinated workers that feeling is divorced
from economic necessity. So anyone who's survived outside a while is bound to be suspect. That's a sign of economic security,
and security of any sort undermines social control.
youniquelikeme:
You hit the proverbial nail with that reply. (Although, sorry, doing the right thing should not be done out of malice) The real fit has to be in the corporate yes-man culture (malleable ass kisser) to be suited for any executive position
and beyond that it is the willingness to be manipulated and drained to be able to keep a job in lower echelon.
This is the new age of evolution in the work place. The class wars will make it more of an eventual revolution, but it is coming.
The unemployment rate (the actual one, not the Government one) globalization and off shore hiring are not sustainable for much
longer.
Something has to give, but it is more likely to snap then to come easily. People who are made to be repressed and down and
out eventually find the courage to fight back and by then, it is usually not with words.
down and out in Slicon Valley:
This is the response I got from a recruiter:
"I'm going to be overly honest with you. My firm doesn't allow me to submit any candidate who hasn't worked in 6-12
months or more. Recruiting brokers are probably all similar in that way . You are going to have to go through a connection/relationship
you have with a colleague, co-worker, past manager or friend to get your next job .that's my advice for you. Best of luck "
I'm 56 years old with MSEE. Gained 20+ years of experience at the best of the best (TRW, Nortel, Microsoft), have been issued
a patent. Where do I sign up to gain skills required to find a job now?
Litton Graft :
"Best of the Best?" I know you're down now, but looking back at these Gov'mint contractors you've enjoyed the best socialism
money can by.
Nortel/TRW bills/(ed) the Guvmint at 2x, 3x your salary, you can ride this for decades. At the same time the
Inc is attached to the Guvmint ATM localities/counties are giving them a red carpet of total freedom from taxation. Double subsidies.
I've worked many years at the big boy bandits, and there is no delusion in my mind that almost anyone, can do what I do and
get paid 100K+. I've never understood the mindset of some folks who work in the Wermacht Inc: "Well, someone has to do this work"
or worse "What we do, no one else can do" The reason no one else "can do it" is that they are not allowed to. So, we steal from
the poor to build fighter jets, write code or network an agency.
Hosswire:
I used to work as a recruiter and can tell you that I only parroted the things my clients told me. I wanted to
get you hired, because I was lazy and didn't want to have to talk to someone else next.
So what do you do? To place you that recruiter needs to see on a piece of paper that you are currently working? Maybe get an
email or phone call from someone who will vouch for your employment history. That should not be that hard to make happen.
Francois T :
The "bizarre way that companies now spec jobs" is essentially a coded way for mediocre managers to say without saying so explicitly
that "we can afford to be extremely picky, and by God, we shall do so no matter what, because we can!"
Of course, when comes the time to hire back because, oh disaster! business is picking up again, (I'm barely caricaturing here;
some managers become despondent when they realize that workers regain a bit of the higher ground; loss of power does that to lesser
beings) the same idiots who designed those "overly narrow hiring spec then leads to absurd, widespread complaint that companies
can't find people with the right skills" are thrown into a tailspin of despair and misery. Instead of figuring out something as
simple as "if demand is better, so will our business", they can't see anything else than the (eeeek!) cost of hiring workers.
Unable to break their mental corset of penny-pincher, they fail to realize that lack of qualified workers will prevent them to
execute well to begin with.
And guess what: qualified workers cost money, qualified workers urgently needed cost much more.
This managerial attitude must be another factor that explain why entrepreneurship and the formation of small businesses is
on the decline in the US (contrary to the confabulations of the US officialdumb and the chattering class) while rising in Europe
and India/China.
Kit:
If you are 55-60, worked as a professional (i.e., engineering say) and are now unemployed you are dead meat. Sorry to be blunt
but thats the way it is in the US today. Let me repeat that : Dead Meat.
I was terminated at age 59, found absolutely NOTHING even though my qualifications were outstanding. Fortunately, my company
had an old style pension plan which I was able to qualify for (at age 62 without reduced benefits). So for the next 2+ years my
wife and I survived on unemployment insurance, severance, accumulated vacation pay and odd jobs. Not nice – actually, a living
hell.
At age 62, I applied for my pension, early social security, sold our old house (at a good profit) just before the RE crash,
moved back to our home state. Then my wife qualified for social security also. Our total income is now well above the US median.
Today, someone looking at us would think we were the typical corporate retiree. We surely don't let on any differently but
the experience (to get to this point) almost killed us.
I sympathize very strongly with the millions caught in this unemployment death spiral. I wish I had an answer but I just don't.
We were very lucky to survive intact.
Ming:
Thank you Yves for your excellent post, and for bringing to light this crucial issue.
Thank you to all the bloggers, who add to the richness of the this discussion.
I wonder if you could comment on this Yves, and correct me if I am wrong I believe that the power of labor was sapped by the
massive available supply of global labor. The favorable economic policies enacted by China (both official and unofficial), and
trade negotiations between the US government and the Chinese government were critical to creating the massive supply of labor.
Thank you. No rush of course.
Nexus:
There are some odd comments and notions here that are used to support dogma and positions of prejudice. The world can be viewed
in a number of ways. Firstly from a highly individualised and personal perspective – that is what has happened to me and here
are my experiences. Or alternatively the world can be viewed from a broader societal perspective.
In the context of labour there has always been an unequal confrontation between those that control capital and those that offer
their labour, contrary to some of the views exposed here – Marx was a first and foremost a political economist. The political
economist seeks to understand the interplay of production, supply, the state and institutions like the media. Modern day economics
branched off from political economy and has little value in explaining the real world as the complexity of the world has been
reduced to a simplistic rationalistic model of human behaviour underpinned by other equally simplistic notions of 'supply and
demand', which are in turn represented by mathematical models, which in themselves are complex but merely represent what is a
simplistic view of the way the world operates. This dogmatic thinking has avoided the need to create an underpinning epistemology.
This in turn underpins the notion of free choice and individualism which in itself is an illusion as it ignores the operation
of the modern state and the exercise of power and influence within society.
It was stated in one of the comments that the use of capital (machines, robotics, CAD design, etc.) de-skills. This is hardly
the case as skills rise for those that remain and support highly automated/continuous production factories. This is symptomatic
of the owners of capital wanting to extract the maximum value for labour and this is done via the substitution of labour for capital
making the labour that remains to run factories highly productive thus eliminating low skill jobs that have been picked up via
services (people move into non productive low skilled occupations warehousing and retail distribution, fast food outlets,
etc). Of course the worker does not realise the additional value of his or her labour as this is expropriated for the shareholders
(including management as shareholders).
The issue of the US is that since the end of WW2 it is not the industrialists that have called the shots and made investments
it is the financial calculus of the investment banker (Finance Capital). Other comments have tried to ignore the existence of
the elites in society – I would suggest that you read C.W.Mills – The Power Elites as an analysis of how power is exercised
in the US – it is not through the will of the people.
For Finance capital investments are not made on the basis of value add, or contribution through product innovation and the
exchange of goods but on basis of the lowest cost inputs. Consequently, the 'elites' that make investment decisions, as
they control all forms of capital seek to gain access to the cheapest cost inputs. The reality is that the US worker (a
pool of 150m) is now part of a global labour pool of a couple of billion that now includes India and China. This means that the
elites, US transnational corporations for instance, can access both cheaper labour pools, relocate capital and avoid worker protection
(health and safety is not a concern). The strategies of moving factories via off-shoring (over 40,000 US factories closed or relocated)
and out-sourcing/in-sourcing labour is also a representations of this.
The consequence for the US is that the need for domestic labour has diminished and been substituted by cheap labour to
extract the arbitrage between US labour rates and those of Chinese and Indians. Ironically, in this context capital has
become too successful as the mode of consumption in the US shifted from workers that were notionally the people that created the
goods, earned wages and then purchased the goods they created to a new model where the worker was substituted by the consumer
underpinned by cheap debt and low cost imports – it is illustrative to note that real wages have not increased in the US since
the early 1970's while at the same time debt has steadily increased to underpin the illusion of wealth – the 'borrow today and
pay tomorrow' mode of capitalist operation. This model of operation is now broken. The labour force is now being demonized as
there is a now surplus of labour and a need to drive down labour rates through changes in legislation and austerity programs to
meet those of the emerging Chinese and Indian middle class so workers rights need to be broken. Once this is done a process of
in-source may take place as US labour costs will be on par with overseas labour pools.
It is ironic that during the Regan administration a number of strategic thinkers saw the threat from emerging economies and
the danger of Finance Capital and created 'Project Socrates' that would have sought to re-orientate the US economy from one that
was based on the rationale of Finance Capital to one that focused in productive innovation which entailed an alignment of capital
investment, research and training to product innovative goods. Of course this was ignored and the rest is history. The race to
the lowest input cost is ultimately self defeating as it is clear that the economy de-industrialises through labour and capital
changes and living standards collapse. The elites – bankers, US transnational corporations, media, industrial military complex
and the politicians don't care as they make money either way and this way you get other people overseas to work cheap for you.
S P:
Neoliberal orthodoxy treats unemployment as well as wage supression as a necessary means to fight "inflation." If there was
too much power in the hands of organized labor, inflationary pressures would spiral out of control as supply of goods cannot keep
up with demand.
It also treats the printing press as a necessary means to fight "deflation."
So our present scenario: widespread unemployment along with QE to infinity, food stamps for all, is exactly what you'd expect.
The problem with this orthodoxy is that it assumes unlimited growth on a planet with finite resources, particularly oil
and energy. Growth is not going to solve unemployment or wages, because we are bumping up against limits to growth.
There are only two solutions. One is tax the rich and capital gains, slow growth, and reinvest the surplus into jobs/skills
programs, mostly to maintain existing infrastructure or build new energy infrastructure. Even liberals like Krugman skirt around
this, because they aren't willing to accept that we have the reached the end of growth and we need radical redistribution
measures.
The other solution is genuine classical liberalism / libertarianism, along the lines of Austrian thought. Return to sound money,
and let the deflation naturally take care of the imbalances. Yes, it would be wrenching, but it would likely be wrenching for
everybody, making it fair in a universal sense.
Neither of these options is palatable to the elite classes, the financiers of Wall Street, or the leeches and bureaucrats of
D.C.
So this whole experiment called America will fail.
"... Imagine working at HP and having to listen to Carly Fiorina bulldoze you...she is like a blow-torch...here are 4 minutes of Carly and Ralph Nader (if you can take it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC4JDwoRHtk ..."
"... My husband has been a software architect for 30 years at the same company. Never before has he seen the sheer unadulterated panic in the executives. All indices are down and they are planning for the worst. Quality is being sacrificed for " just get some relatively functional piece of shit out the door we can sell". He is fighting because he has always produced a stellar product and refuses to have shit tied to his name ( 90% of competitor benchmarks fail against his projects). They can't afford to lay him off, but the first time in my life I see my husband want to quit... ..."
"... HP basically makes computer equipment (PCs, servers, Printers) and software. Part of the problem is that computer hardware has been commodized. Since PCs are cheap and frequent replacements are need, People just by the cheapest models, expecting to toss it in a couple of years and by a newer model (aka the Flat screen TV model). So there is no justification to use quality components. Same is become true with the Server market. Businesses have switched to virtualization and/or cloud systems. So instead of taking a boat load of time to rebuild a crashed server, the VM is just moved to another host. ..."
"... I hung an older sign next to the one saying Information Technology. Somehow MIS-Information Technology seemed appropriate.) ..."
"... Then I got to my first duty assignment. It was about five months after the first moon landing, and the aerospace industry was facing cuts in government aerospace spending. I picked up a copy of an engineering journal in the base library and found an article about job cuts. There was a cartoon with two janitors, buckets at their feet and mops in their hands, standing before a blackboard filled with equations. Once was saying to the other, pointing to one section, "you can see where he made his mistake right here...". It represented two engineers who had been reduced to menial labor after losing their jobs. ..."
"... So while I resent all the H1Bs coming into the US - I worked with several for the last four years of my IT career, and was not at all impressed - and despise the politicians who allow it, I know that it is not the first time American STEM grads have been put out of jobs en masse. In some ways that old saying applies: the more things change, the more they stay the same ..."
"... Just like Amazon, HP will supposedly make billions in profit analyzing things in the cloud that nobody looks at and has no use to the real economy, but it makes good fodder for Power Point presentations. I am amazed how much daily productivity goes into creating fancy charts for meetings that are meaningless to the actual business of the company. ..."
"... 'Computers' cost as much - if not more time than they save, at least in corporate settings. Used to be you'd work up 3 budget projections - expected, worst case and best case, you'd have a meeting, hash it out and decide in a week. Now you have endless alternatives, endless 'tweaking' and changes and decisions take forever, with outrageous amounts of time spent on endless 'analysis' and presentations. ..."
"... A recent lay off here turned out to be quite embarrassing for Parmalat there was nobody left that knew how to properly run the place they had to rehire many ex employees as consultants-at a costly premium ..."
"... HP is laying off 80,000 workers or almost a third of its workforce, converting its long-term human capital into short-term gains for rich shareholders at an alarming rate. The reason that product quality has declined is due to the planned obsolescence that spurs needless consumerism, which is necessary to prop up our debt-backed monetary system and the capitalist-owned economy that sits on top of it. ..."
"... The world is heading for massive deflation. Computers have hit the 14 nano-meter lithography zone, the cost to go from 14nm to say 5nm is very high, and the net benefit to computing power is very low, but lets say we go from 14nm to 5nm over the next 4 years. Going from 5nm to 1nm is not going to net a large boost in computing power and the cost to shrink things down and re-tool will be very high for such an insignificant gain in performance. ..."
"... Another classic "Let's rape all we can and bail with my golden parachute" corporate leaders setting themselves up. Pile on the string of non-IT CEOs that have been leading the company to ruin. To them it is nothing more than a contest of being even worse than their predecessor. Just look at the billions each has lost before their exit. Compaq, a cluster. Palm Pilot, a dead product they paid millions for and then buried. And many others. ..."
"... Let's not beat around the bush, they're outsourcing, firing Americans and hiring cheap labor elsewhere: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-15/hewlett-packard-to-cut-up-to-30-000-more-jobs-in-restructuring It's also shifting employees to low-cost areas, and hopes to have 60 percent of its workers located in cheaper countries by 2018, Nefkens said. ..."
"... Carly Fiorina: (LOL, leading a tech company with a degree in medieval history and philosophy) While at ATT she was groomed from the Affirmative Action plan. ..."
"... It is very straightforward. Replace 45,000 US workers with 100,000 offshore workers and you still save millions of USD ! Use the "savings" to buy back stock, then borrow more $$ at ZIRP to buy more stock back. ..."
"... If you look on a site like LinkedIN, it will always say 'We're hiring!'. YES, HP is hiring.....but not YOU, they want Ganesh Balasubramaniamawapbapalooboopawapbamboomtuttifrutti, so that they can work him as modern day slave labor for ultra cheap. We can thank idiot 'leaders' like Meg Pasty Faced Whitman and Bill 'Forced Vaccinations' Gates for lobbying Congress for decades, against the rights of American workers. ..."
"... An era of leadership in computer technology has died, and there is no grave marker, not even a funeral ceremony or eulogy ... Hewlett-Packard, COMPAQ, Digital Equipment Corp, UNIVAC, Sperry-Rand, Data General, Tektronix, ZILOG, Advanced Micro Devices, Sun Microsystems, etc, etc, etc. So much change in so short a time, leaves your mind dizzy. ..."
yeah thanks Carly ... HP made bullet-proof products that would last forever..... I still buy HP workstation notebooks, especially
now when I can get them for $100 on ebay .... I sold HP products in the 1990s .... we had HP laserjet IIs that companies would
run day & night .... virtually no maintenance ... when PCL5 came around then we had LJ IIIs .... and still companies would call
for LJ I's, .... 100 pounds of invincible Printing ! .
This kind of product has no place in the World of Planned-Obsolesence .... I'm currently running an 8510w, 8530w, 2530p, Dell
6420 quad i7, hp printers hp scanners, hp pavilion desktops, .... all for less than what a Laserjet II would have cost in 1994,
Total.
Not My Real Name
I still have my HP 15C scientific calculator I bought in 1983 to get me through college for my engineering degree. There is
nothing better than a hand held calculator that uses Reverse Polish Notation!
BigJim
HP used to make fantastic products. I remember getting their RPN calculators back in th 80's; built like tanks. Then they decided
to "add value" by removing more and more material from their consumer/"prosumer" products until they became unspeakably flimsy.
They stopped holding things together with proper fastenings and starting hot melting/gluing it together, so if it died you had
to cut it open to have any chance of fixing it.
I still have one of their Laserjet 4100 printers. I expect it to outlast anything they currently produce, and it must be going
on 16+ years old now.
Fuck you, HP. You started selling shit and now you're eating through your seed corn. I just wish the "leaders" who did this
to you had to pay some kind of penalty greater than getting $25M in a severance package.
Automatic Choke
+100. The path of HP is everything that is wrong about modern business models. I still have a 5MP laserjet (one of the first),
still works great. Also have a number of 42S calculators.....my day-to-day workhorse and several spares. I don't think the present
HP could even dream of making these products today.
nope-1004
How well will I profit, as a salesman, if I sell you something that works? How valuable are you, as a customer in my database,
if you never come back? Confucious say "Buy another one, and if you can't afford it, f'n finance it!" It's the growing trend.
Look at appliances. Nothing works anymore.
hey big brother.... if you are curious, there is a damn good android emulator of the HP42S available (Free42). really it is
so good that it made me relax about accumulating more spares. still not quite the same as a real calculator. (the 42S, by the
way, is the modernization/simplification of the classic HP41, the real hardcord very-programmable, reconfigurable, hackable unit
with all the plug-in-modules that came out in the early 80s.)
Miss Expectations
Imagine working at HP and having to listen to Carly Fiorina bulldoze you...she is like a blow-torch...here are 4 minutes
of Carly and Ralph Nader (if you can take it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC4JDwoRHtk
Miffed Microbiologist
My husband has been a software architect for 30 years at the same company. Never before has he seen the sheer unadulterated
panic in the executives. All indices are down and they are planning for the worst. Quality is being sacrificed for " just get
some relatively functional piece of shit out the door we can sell". He is fighting because he has always produced a stellar product
and refuses to have shit tied to his name ( 90% of competitor benchmarks fail against his projects). They can't afford to lay
him off, but the first time in my life I see my husband want to quit...
unplugged
I've been an engineer for 31 years - our managements's unspoken motto at the place I'm at (large company) is: "release it now,
we'll put in the quality later". I try to put in as much as possible before the product is shoved out the door without killing
myself doing it.
AGuy
Do they even make test equipment anymore?
HP test and measurement was spun off many years ago as Agilent. The electronics part of Agilent was spun off as keysight late
last year.
HP basically makes computer equipment (PCs, servers, Printers) and software. Part of the problem is that computer hardware
has been commodized. Since PCs are cheap and frequent replacements are need, People just by the cheapest models, expecting to
toss it in a couple of years and by a newer model (aka the Flat screen TV model). So there is no justification to use quality
components. Same is become true with the Server market. Businesses have switched to virtualization and/or cloud systems. So instead
of taking a boat load of time to rebuild a crashed server, the VM is just moved to another host.
HP has also adopted the Computer Associates business model (aka Borg). HP buys up new tech companies and sits on the tech and
never improves it. It decays and gets replaced with a system from a competitor. It also has a habit of buying outdated tech companies
that never generate the revenues HP thinks it will.
BullyBearish
When Carly was CEO of HP, she instituted a draconian "pay for performance" plan. She ended up leaving with over $146 Million
because she was smart enough not to specify "what type" of performance.
GeezerGeek
Regarding your statement "All those engineers choosing to pursue other opportunities", we need to realize that tech in general
has been very susceptible to the vagaries of government actions. Now the employment problems are due to things like globalization
and H1B programs. Some 50 years ago tech - meaning science and engineering - was hit hard as the US space program wound down.
Permit me this retrospective:
I graduated from a quite good school with a BS in Physics in 1968. My timing was not all that great, since that was when they
stopped granting draft deferments for graduate school. I joined the Air Force, but as an enlisted airman, not an officer. Following
basic training, I was sent to learn to operate PCAM operations. That's Punched Card Accounting Machines. Collators. Sorters. Interpreters.
Key punches. I was in a class with nine other enlistees. One had just gotten a Masters degree in something. Eight of us had a
BS in one thing or another, but all what would now be called STEM fields. The least educated only had an Associate degree. We
all enlisted simply to avoid being drafted into the Marines. (Not that there's anything wrong with the Marines, but all of us
proclaimed an allergy to energetic lead projectiles and acted accordingly. Going to Canada, as many did, pretty much ensured never
getting a job in STEM fields later in life.) So thanks to government action (fighting in VietNam, in this case) a significant
portion of educated Americans found themselves diverted from chosen career paths. (In my case, it worked out fine. I learned to
program, etc., and spent a total of over 40 years in what is now called IT. I think it was called EDP when I started the trek.
Somewhere along the line it became (where I worked) Management Information Systems. MIS. And finally the department became simply
Information Technology. I hung an older sign next to the one saying Information Technology. Somehow MIS-Information Technology
seemed appropriate.)
Then I got to my first duty assignment. It was about five months after the first moon landing, and the aerospace industry
was facing cuts in government aerospace spending. I picked up a copy of an engineering journal in the base library and found an
article about job cuts. There was a cartoon with two janitors, buckets at their feet and mops in their hands, standing before
a blackboard filled with equations. Once was saying to the other, pointing to one section, "you can see where he made his mistake
right here...". It represented two engineers who had been reduced to menial labor after losing their jobs.
So while I resent all the H1Bs coming into the US - I worked with several for the last four years of my IT career, and
was not at all impressed - and despise the politicians who allow it, I know that it is not the first time American STEM grads
have been put out of jobs en masse. In some ways that old saying applies: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
If you made it this far, thanks for your patience.
adr
Just like Amazon, HP will supposedly make billions in profit analyzing things in the cloud that nobody looks at and has
no use to the real economy, but it makes good fodder for Power Point presentations. I am amazed how much daily productivity goes
into creating fancy charts for meetings that are meaningless to the actual business of the company.
IT'S ALL BULLSHIT!!!!!
I designed more products in one year for the small company I work for than a $15 billion corporation did throughout their entire
design department employing hundreds of people. That is because 90% of their workday is spent preparing crap for meetings and
they never really get anything meaningful done.
It took me one week to design a product and send it out for production branded for the company I work for, but it took six
months to get the same type of product passed through the multi billion dollar corporation we license for. Because it had to pass
through layer after layer of bullshit and through every level of management before it could be signed off. Then a month later
somebody would change their mind in middle management and the product would need to be changed and go through the cycle all over
again.
Their own bag department made six bags last year, I designed 16. Funny how I out produce a department of six people whose only
job is to make bags, yet I only get paid the salary of one.
Maybe I'm just an imbecile for working hard.
Bear
You also have to add all the wasted time of employees having to sit through those presentations and the even more wasted time
on Ashley Madison
cynicalskeptic
'Computers' cost as much - if not more time than they save, at least in corporate settings. Used to be you'd work up 3
budget projections - expected, worst case and best case, you'd have a meeting, hash it out and decide in a week. Now you have
endless alternatives, endless 'tweaking' and changes and decisions take forever, with outrageous amounts of time spent on endless
'analysis' and presentations.
EVERY VP now has an 'Administrative Assistant' whose primary job is to develop PowerPoint presentations for the endless meetings
that take up time - without any decisions ever being made.
Computers stop people from thinking. In ages past when you used a slide rule you had to know the order of magnitude of the
end result. Now people make a mistake and come up with a ridiculous number and take it at face value because 'the computer' produced
it.
Any exec worht anythign knew what a given line in their department or the total should be +or a small amount. I can't count
the number of times budgets and analyses were WRONG because someone left off a few lines on a spreadsheet total.
Yes computer modeling for advanced tech and engineering is a help, CAD/CAM is great and many other applications in the tech/scientific
world are a great help but letting computers loose in corporate and finance has produced endless waste AND - worsde - thigns like
HFT (e.g. 'better' more effective ways to manipulate and cheat markets.
khnum
A recent lay off here turned out to be quite embarrassing for Parmalat there was nobody left that knew how to properly
run the place they had to rehire many ex employees as consultants-at a costly premium
Anopheles
Consultants don't come at that much of a premium becaue the company doesn't have to pay benefits, vacation, sick days, or payroll
taxes, etc. Plus it's really easy and cheap to get rid of consultants.
arrowrod
Obviously, you haven't worked as a consultant. You get paid by the hour. To clean up a mess. 100 hours a week are not uncommon.
(What?, is it possible to work 100 hours a week? Yes, it is, but only for about 3 months.)
RaceToTheBottom
HP Executives are trying hard to bring the company back to its roots: The ability to fit into one garage...
PrimalScream
ALL THAT Meg Whitman needs to do ... is to FIRE EVERYBODY !! Then have all the products made in China, process all the sales
orders in Hong Kong, and sub-contract the accounting and tax paperwork to India. Then HP can use all the profits for stock buybacks,
except of course for Meg's salary ... which will keep rising astronomically!
Herdee
That's where education gets you in America.The Government sold out America's manufacturing base to Communist China who holds
the debt of the USA.Who would ever guess that right-wing neo-cons(neo-nazis) running the government would sell out to communists
just to get the money for war? Very weird.
Really20
"Communist"? The Chinese government, like that of the US, never believed in worker ownership of businesses and never believed
that the commerical banking system (whether owned by the state, or private corporations which act like a state) should not control
money. Both countries believe in centralization of power among a few shareholders, who take the fruits of working people's labor
while contributing nothing of value themselves (money being but a token that represents a claim on real capital, not capital itself.)
Management and investors ought to be separate from each other; management should be chosen by workers by universal equal vote,
while a complementary investor board should be chosen by investors much as corporate boards are now. Both of these boards should
be legally independent but bound organizations; the management board should run the business while the investor board should negotiate
with the management board on the terms of equity issuance. No more buybacks, no more layoffs or early retirements, unless workers
as a whole see a need for it to maintain the company.
The purpose of investors is to serve the real economy, not the other way round; and in turn, the purpose of the real economy
is to serve humanity, not the other way around. Humans should stop being slaves to perpetual growth.
Really20
HP is laying off 80,000 workers or almost a third of its workforce, converting its long-term human capital into short-term
gains for rich shareholders at an alarming rate. The reason that product quality has declined is due to the planned obsolescence
that spurs needless consumerism, which is necessary to prop up our debt-backed monetary system and the capitalist-owned economy
that sits on top of it.
NoWayJose
HP - that company that sells computers and printers made in China and ink cartridges made in Thailand?
Dominus Ludificatio
Another company going down the drain because their focus is short term returns with crappy products.They will also bring down
any company they buy as well.
Barnaby
HP is microcosm of what Carly will do to the US: carve it like a pumpkin and leave the shell out to bake in the sun for a few
weeks. But she'll make sure and poison the seeds too! Don't want anything growing out of that pesky Palm division...
Dre4dwolf
The world is heading for massive deflation. Computers have hit the 14 nano-meter lithography zone, the cost to go from
14nm to say 5nm is very high, and the net benefit to computing power is very low, but lets say we go from 14nm to 5nm over the
next 4 years. Going from 5nm to 1nm is not going to net a large boost in computing power and the cost to shrink things down and
re-tool will be very high for such an insignificant gain in performance.
What does that mean
Computers (atleast non-quantum ones) have hit the point where about 80-90% of the potential for the current science has
been tap'd
This means that the consumer is not going to be put in the position where they will have to upgrade to faster systems for
atleast another 7-8 years.... (because the new computer wont be that much faster than their existing one).
If no one is upgrading the only IT sectors of the economy that stand to make any money are software companies (Microsoft,
Apple, and other small software developers), most software has not caught up with hardware yet.
We are obviously heading for massive deflation, consumer spending levels as a % are probably around where they were in
the late 70s - mid 80s, this is a very deflationary environment that is being compounded by a high debt burden (most of everyones
income is going to service their debts), that signals monetary tightening is going on... people simply don't have enough discretionary
income to spend on new toys.
All that to me screams SELL consumer electronics stocks because profits are GOING TO DECLINE , SALES ARE GOING TO DECLINE.
There is no way , no amount of buy backs will float the stocks of corporations like HP/Dell/IBM etc... it is inevitable that these
stocks will be worth 30% less over the next 5 - 8 years
But what do I know? maybe I am missing something.
In anycase a lot of pressure is being put on HP to do all it can at any cost to boost the stock valuations, because so much
of its stock is institution owned, they will strip the wallpaper off the walls and sell it to a recycling plant if it would give
them more money to boost stock valuations. That to me signals that most of the people pressuring the board of HP to boost the
stock, want them to gut the company as much as they can to boost it some trivial % points so that the majority of shares can be
dumped onto muppets.
To me it pretty much also signals something is terribly wrong at HP and no one is talking about it.
PoasterToaster
Other than die shrinks there really hasn't been a lot going on in the CPU world since Intel abandoned its Netburst architecture
and went back to its (Israeli created) Pentium 3 style pipeline. After that they gave up on increasing speed and resorted to selling
more cores. Now that wall has been hit, they have been selling "green" and "efficient" nonsense in place of increasing power.
x86 just needs to go, but a lot is invested in it not the least of which is that 1-2 punch of forced, contrived obsolesence
carried out in a joint operation with Microsoft. 15 years ago you could watch videos with no problem on your old machine using
Windows XP. Fast forward to now and their chief bragging point is still "multitasking" and the ability to process datastreams
like video. It's a joke.
The future is not in the current CPU paradigm of instructions per second; it will be in terms of variables per second. It will
be more along the lines of what GPU manufacturers are creating with their thousands of "engines" or "processing units" per chip,
rather than the 4, 6 or 12 core monsters that Intel is pushing. They have nearly given up on their roadmap to push out to 128
cores as it is. x86 just doesn't work with all that.
Dojidog
Another classic "Let's rape all we can and bail with my golden parachute" corporate leaders setting themselves up. Pile
on the string of non-IT CEOs that have been leading the company to ruin. To them it is nothing more than a contest of being even
worse than their predecessor. Just look at the billions each has lost before their exit. Compaq, a cluster. Palm Pilot, a dead
product they paid millions for and then buried. And many others.
Think the split is going to help? Think again. Rather than taking the opportunity to fix their problems, they have just duplicated
and perpetuated them into two separate entities.
HP is a company that is mired in a morass of unmanageable business processes and patchwork of antiquated applications all interconnected
to the point they are petrified to try and uncouple them.
Just look at their stock price since January. The insiders know. Want to fix HP? All it would take is a savvy IT based leader
with a boatload of common sense. What makes money at HP? Their printers and ink. Not thinking they can provide enterprise solutions
to others when they can't even get their own house in order.
Carly Fiorina: (LOL, leading a tech company with a degree in medieval history and philosophy) While at ATT she was groomed
from the Affirmative Action plan.
Alma Mater: Stanford University (B.A. in medieval history and philosophy); University of Maryland (MBA); Massachusetts Institute
of Technology
Patricia Russo: (Lucent) (Dedree in Political Science). Another lady elevated through the AA plan, Russo got her bachelor's
degree from Georgetown University in political science and history in 1973. She finished the advanced management program at Harvard
Business School in 1989
Both ladies steered their corporations to failure.
Clowns on Acid
It is very straightforward. Replace 45,000 US workers with 100,000 offshore workers and you still save millions of USD
! Use the "savings" to buy back stock, then borrow more $$ at ZIRP to buy more stock back.
You guys don't know nuthin'.
homiegot
HP: one of the worst places you could work. Souless.
Pancho de Villa
Ladies and Gentlemen! Integrity has left the Building!
space junk
I worked there for a while and it was total garbage. There are still some great folks around, but they are getting paid less
and less, and having to work longer hours for less pay while reporting to God knows who, often a foreigner with crappy engrish
skills, yes likely another 'diversity hire'. People with DEEP knowledge, decades and decades, have either gotten unfairly fired
or demoted, made to quit, or if they are lucky, taken some early retirement and GTFO (along with their expertise - whoopsie! who
knew? unintended consequences are a bitch aren't they? )....
If you look on a site like LinkedIN, it will always say 'We're hiring!'. YES, HP is hiring.....but not YOU, they want Ganesh
Balasubramaniamawapbapalooboopawapbamboomtuttifrutti, so that they can work him as modern day slave labor for ultra cheap. We
can thank idiot 'leaders' like Meg Pasty Faced Whitman and Bill 'Forced Vaccinations' Gates for lobbying Congress for decades,
against the rights of American workers.
Remember that Meg 'Pasty Faced' Whitman is the person who came up with the idea of a 'lights out' datacenter....that's right,
it's the concept of putting all of your computers in a building, in racks, in the dark, and maybe hiring an intern to come in
once a month and keep them going. This is what she actually believed. Along with her other statement to the HP workforce which
says basically that the future of HP is one of total automation.....TRANSLATION: If you are a smart admin, engineer, project manager,
architect, sw tester, etc.....we (HP management) think you are an IDIOT and can be replaced by a robot, a foreigner, or any other
cheap worker.
Race to the bottom is like they say a space ship approaching a black hole......after a while the laws of physics and common
sense, just don't apply anymore.
InnVestuhrr
An era of leadership in computer technology has died, and there is no grave marker, not even a funeral ceremony or eulogy
... Hewlett-Packard, COMPAQ, Digital Equipment Corp, UNIVAC, Sperry-Rand, Data General, Tektronix, ZILOG, Advanced Micro Devices,
Sun Microsystems, etc, etc, etc. So much change in so short a time, leaves your mind dizzy.
"... "In many ways the effect of the crash on embezzlement was more significant than on suicide. To the economist embezzlement is
the most interesting of crimes. Alone among the various forms of larceny it has a time parameter. Weeks, months or years may elapse
between the commission of the crime and its discovery. (This is a period, incidentally, when the embezzler has his gain and the man
who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.) ..."
"... At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in – or more precisely not in – the country's business
and banks. ..."
"... This inventory – it should perhaps be called the bezzle – amounts at any moment to many millions [trillions!] of dollars. It
also varies in size with the business cycle. ..."
"... In good times people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are always many
people who need more. Under these circumstances the rate of embezzlement grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle increases
rapidly. ..."
"... In depression all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be
dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is enormously improved. The
bezzle shrinks ..."
John Kenneth Galbraith, from "The Great Crash 1929":
"In many ways the effect of the crash on embezzlement was more significant than on suicide. To the economist embezzlement
is the most interesting of crimes. Alone among the various forms of larceny it has a time parameter. Weeks, months or years
may elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery. (This is a period, incidentally, when the embezzler has his
gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.)
At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in – or more precisely not in – the country's
business and banks.
This inventory – it should perhaps be called the bezzle – amounts at any moment to many millions [trillions!] of dollars.
It also varies in size with the business cycle.
In good times people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are always
many people who need more. Under these circumstances the rate of embezzlement grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and the
bezzle increases rapidly.
In depression all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed
to be dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is enormously
improved. The bezzle shrinks."
For nearly a half a century, from 1947 to 1996, real GDP and real Net Worth of Households and Non-profit Organizations (in
2009 dollars) both increased at a compound annual rate of a bit over 3.5%. GDP growth, in fact, was just a smidgen faster -- 0.016%
-- than growth of Net Household Worth.
From 1996 to 2015, GDP grew at a compound annual rate of 2.3% while Net Worth increased at the rate of 3.6%....
The real home price index extends from 1890. From 1890 to 1996, the index increased slightly faster than inflation so that
the index was 100 in 1890 and 113 in 1996. However from 1996 the index advanced to levels far beyond any previously experienced,
reaching a high above 194 in 2006. Previously the index high had been just above 130.
Though the index fell from 2006, the level in 2016 is above 161, a level only reached when the housing bubble had formed in
late 2003-early 2004.
The Shiller 10-year price-earnings ratio is currently 29.34, so the inverse or the earnings rate is 3.41%. The dividend yield
is 1.93. So an expected yearly return over the coming 10 years would be 3.41 + 1.93 or 5.34% provided the price-earnings ratio
stays the same and before investment costs.
Against the 5.34% yearly expected return on stock over the coming 10 years, the current 10-year Treasury bond yield is 2.32%.
The risk premium for stocks is 5.34 - 2.32 or 3.02%:
What the robot-productivity paradox is puzzles me, other than since 2005 for all the focus on the productivity of robots and
on robots replacing labor there has been a dramatic, broad-spread slowing in productivity growth.
However what the changing relationship between the growth of GDP and net worth since 1996 show, is that asset valuations have
been increasing relative to GDP. Valuations of stocks and homes are at sustained levels that are higher than at any time in the
last 120 years. Bear markets in stocks and home prices have still left asset valuations at historically high levels. I have no
idea why this should be.
The paradox is that productivity statistics can't tell us anything about the effects of robots on employment because both the
numerator and the denominator are distorted by the effects of colossal Ponzi bubbles.
John Kenneth Galbraith used to call it "the bezzle." It is "that increment to wealth that occurs during the magic interval
when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost
it." The current size of the gross national bezzle (GNB) is approximately $24 trillion.
Ponzilocks and the Twenty-Four Trillion Dollar Question
Twenty-three and a half trillion, actually. But what's a few hundred billion? Here today, gone tomorrow, as they say.
At the beginning of 2007, net worth of households and non-profit organizations exceeded its 1947-1996 historical average, relative
to GDP, by some $16 trillion. It took 24 months to wipe out eighty percent, or $13 trillion, of that colossal but ephemeral slush
fund. In mid-2016, net worth stood at a multiple of 4.83 times GDP, compared with the multiple of 4.72 on the eve of the Great
Unworthing.
When I look at the ragged end of the chart I posted yesterday, it screams "Ponzi!" "Ponzi!" "Ponz..."
To make a long story short, let's think of wealth as capital. The value of capital is determined by the present value of an
expected future income stream. The value of capital fluctuates with changing expectations but when the nominal value of capital
diverges persistently and significantly from net revenues, something's got to give. Either economic growth is going to suddenly
gush forth "like nobody has ever seen before" or net worth is going to have to come back down to earth.
Somewhere between 20 and 30 TRILLION dollars of net worth will evaporate within the span of perhaps two years.
When will that happen? Who knows? There is one notable regularity in the data, though -- the one that screams "Ponzi!"
When the net worth bubble stops going up...
...it goes down.
"... But the economy does not feel like one undergoing a technology-driven productivity boom. In the late 1990s, tech optimism was everywhere. At the same time, wages and productivity were rocketing upward. The situation now is completely different. The most recent jobs reports in America and Britain tell the tale. Employment is growing, month after month after month. But wage growth is abysmal. So is productivity growth: not surprising in economies where there are lots of people on the job working for low pay. ..."
"... Increasing labour costs by making the minimum wage a living wage would increase the incentives to boost productivity growth? No, the neoliberals and corporate Democrats would never go for it. They're trying to appeal to the business community and their campaign contributors wouldn't like it. ..."
People are worried about robots taking jobs. Driverless cars are around the corner. Restaurants and shops increasingly carry the
option to order by touchscreen. Google's clever algorithms provide instant translations that are remarkably good.
But the economy does not feel like one undergoing a technology-driven productivity boom. In the late 1990s, tech optimism
was everywhere. At the same time, wages and productivity were rocketing upward. The situation now is completely different. The most
recent jobs reports in America and Britain tell the tale. Employment is growing, month after month after month. But wage growth is
abysmal. So is productivity growth: not surprising in economies where there are lots of people on the job working for low pay.
The obvious conclusion, the one lots of people are drawing, is that the robot threat is totally overblown: the fantasy, perhaps,
of a bubble-mad Silicon Valley - or an effort to distract from workers' real problems, trade and excessive corporate power. Generally
speaking, the problem is not that we've got too much amazing new technology but too little.
This is not a strawman of my own invention. Robert Gordon makes this case. You can see Matt Yglesias make it here. Duncan Weldon,
for his part, writes:
We are debating a problem we don't have, rather than facing a real crisis that is the polar opposite. Productivity growth has
slowed to a crawl over the last 15 or so years, business investment has fallen and wage growth has been weak. If the robot revolution
truly was under way, we would see surging capital expenditure and soaring productivity. Right now, that would be a nice "problem"
to have. Instead we have the reality of weak growth and stagnant pay. The real and pressing concern when it comes to the jobs
market and automation is that the robots aren't taking our jobs fast enough.
And in a recent blog post Paul Krugman concluded:
I'd note, however, that it remains peculiar how we're simultaneously worrying that robots will take all our jobs and bemoaning
the stalling out of productivity growth. What is the story, really?
What is the story, indeed. Let me see if I can tell one. Last fall I published a book: "The Wealth of Humans". In it I set out
how rapid technological progress can coincide with lousy growth in pay and productivity. Start with this:
Low labour costs discourage investments in labour-saving technology, potentially reducing productivity growth.
Increasing labour costs by making the minimum wage a living wage would increase the incentives to boost productivity growth?
No, the neoliberals and corporate Democrats would never go for it. They're trying to appeal to the business community and their
campaign contributors wouldn't like it.
Capital-biased Technological Progress: An Example (Wonkish)
By Paul Krugman
Ever since I posted about robots and the distribution of income, * I've had queries from readers about what capital-biased
technological change – the kind of change that could make society richer but workers poorer – really means. And it occurred to
me that it might be useful to offer a simple conceptual example – the kind of thing easily turned into a numerical example as
well – to clarify the possibility. So here goes.
Imagine that there are only two ways to produce output. One is a labor-intensive method – say, armies of scribes equipped only
with quill pens. The other is a capital-intensive method – say, a handful of technicians maintaining vast server farms. (I'm thinking
in terms of office work, which is the dominant occupation in the modern economy).
We can represent these two techniques in terms of unit inputs – the amount of each factor of production required to produce
one unit of output. In the figure below I've assumed that initially the capital-intensive technique requires 0.2 units of labor
and 0.8 units of capital per unit of output, while the labor-intensive technique requires 0.8 units of labor and 0.2 units of
capital.
[Diagram]
The economy as a whole can make use of both techniques – in fact, it will have to unless it has either a very large amount
of capital per worker or a very small amount. No problem: we can just use a mix of the two techniques to achieve any input combination
along the blue line in the figure. For economists reading this, yes, that's the unit isoquant in this example; obviously if we
had a bunch more techniques it would start to look like the convex curve of textbooks, but I want to stay simple here.
What will the distribution of income be in this case? Assuming perfect competition (yes, I know, but let's deal with that case
for now), the real wage rate w and the cost of capital r – both measured in terms of output – have to be such that the cost of
producing one unit is 1 whichever technique you use. In this example, that means w=r=1. Graphically, by the way, w/r is equal
to minus the slope of the blue line.
Oh, and if you're worried, yes, workers and machines are both paid their marginal product.
But now suppose that technology improves – specifically, that production using the capital-intensive technique gets more efficient,
although the labor-intensive technique doesn't. Scribes with quill pens are the same as they ever were; server farms can do more
than ever before. In the figure, I've assumed that the unit inputs for the capital-intensive technique are cut in half. The red
line shows the economy's new choices.
So what happens? It's obvious from the figure that wages fall relative to the cost of capital; it's less obvious, maybe, but
nonetheless true that real wages must fall in absolute terms as well. In this specific example, technological progress reduces
the real wage by a third, to 0.667, while the cost of capital rises to 2.33.
OK, it's obvious how stylized and oversimplified all this is. But it does, I think, give you some sense of what it would mean
to have capital-biased technological progress, and how this could actually hurt workers.
Catherine Rampell and Nick Wingfield write about the growing evidence * for "reshoring" of manufacturing to the United States.
* They cite several reasons: rising wages in Asia; lower energy costs here; higher transportation costs. In a followup piece,
** however, Rampell cites another factor: robots.
"The most valuable part of each computer, a motherboard loaded with microprocessors and memory, is already largely made with
robots, according to my colleague Quentin Hardy. People do things like fitting in batteries and snapping on screens.
"As more robots are built, largely by other robots, 'assembly can be done here as well as anywhere else,' said Rob Enderle,
an analyst based in San Jose, California, who has been following the computer electronics industry for a quarter-century. 'That
will replace most of the workers, though you will need a few people to manage the robots.' "
Robots mean that labor costs don't matter much, so you might as well locate in advanced countries with large markets and good
infrastructure (which may soon not include us, but that's another issue). On the other hand, it's not good news for workers!
This is an old concern in economics; it's "capital-biased technological change," which tends to shift the distribution of income
away from workers to the owners of capital.
Twenty years ago, when I was writing about globalization and inequality, capital bias didn't look like a big issue; the major
changes in income distribution had been among workers (when you include hedge fund managers and CEOs among the workers), rather
than between labor and capital. So the academic literature focused almost exclusively on "skill bias", supposedly explaining the
rising college premium.
But the college premium hasn't risen for a while. What has happened, on the other hand, is a notable shift in income away from
labor:
[Graph]
If this is the wave of the future, it makes nonsense of just about all the conventional wisdom on reducing inequality. Better
education won't do much to reduce inequality if the big rewards simply go to those with the most assets. Creating an "opportunity
society," or whatever it is the likes of Paul Ryan etc. are selling this week, won't do much if the most important asset you can
have in life is, well, lots of assets inherited from your parents. And so on.
I think our eyes have been averted from the capital/labor dimension of inequality, for several reasons. It didn't seem crucial
back in the 1990s, and not enough people (me included!) have looked up to notice that things have changed. It has echoes of old-fashioned
Marxism - which shouldn't be a reason to ignore facts, but too often is. And it has really uncomfortable implications.
But I think we'd better start paying attention to those implications.
John Kenneth Galbraith, from "The Great Crash 1929":
"In many ways the effect of the crash on embezzlement was more significant than on suicide. To the economist embezzlement
is the most interesting of crimes. Alone among the various forms of larceny it has a time parameter. Weeks, months or years
may elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery. (This is a period, incidentally, when the embezzler has his
gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.)
At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in – or more precisely not in – the country's business
and banks.
This inventory – it should perhaps be called the bezzle – amounts at any moment to many millions [trillions!] of dollars.
It also varies in size with the business cycle.
In good times people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are always
many people who need more. Under these circumstances the rate of embezzlement grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and the
bezzle increases rapidly.
In depression all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye.
The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous.
Commercial morality is enormously improved. The bezzle shrinks."
For nearly a half a century, from 1947 to 1996, real GDP and real Net Worth of Households and Non-profit Organizations (in
2009 dollars) both increased at a compound annual rate of a bit over 3.5%. GDP growth, in fact, was just a smidgen faster -- 0.016%
-- than growth of Net Household Worth.
From 1996 to 2015, GDP grew at a compound annual rate of 2.3% while Net Worth increased at the rate of 3.6%....
The real home price index extends from 1890. From 1890 to 1996, the index increased slightly faster than inflation so that
the index was 100 in 1890 and 113 in 1996. However from 1996 the index advanced to levels far beyond any previously experienced,
reaching a high above 194 in 2006. Previously the index high had been just above 130.
Though the index fell from 2006, the level in 2016 is above 161, a level only reached when the housing bubble had formed in
late 2003-early 2004.
The Shiller 10-year price-earnings ratio is currently 29.34, so the inverse or the earnings rate is 3.41%. The dividend yield
is 1.93. So an expected yearly return over the coming 10 years would be 3.41 + 1.93 or 5.34% provided the price-earnings ratio
stays the same and before investment costs.
Against the 5.34% yearly expected return on stock over the coming 10 years, the current 10-year Treasury bond yield is 2.32%.
The risk premium for stocks is 5.34 - 2.32 or 3.02%:
What the robot-productivity paradox is puzzles me, other than since 2005 for all the focus on the productivity of robots and
on robots replacing labor there has been a dramatic, broad-spread slowing in productivity growth.
However what the changing relationship between the growth of GDP and net worth since 1996 show, is that asset valuations have
been increasing relative to GDP. Valuations of stocks and homes are at sustained levels that are higher than at any time in the
last 120 years. Bear markets in stocks and home prices have still left asset valuations at historically high levels. I have no
idea why this should be.
The paradox is that productivity statistics can't tell us anything about the effects of robots on employment because both the
numerator and the denominator are distorted by the effects of colossal Ponzi bubbles.
John Kenneth Galbraith used to call it "the bezzle." It is "that increment to wealth that occurs during the magic interval
when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost
it." The current size of the gross national bezzle (GNB) is approximately $24 trillion.
Ponzilocks and the Twenty-Four Trillion Dollar Question
Twenty-three and a half trillion, actually. But what's a few hundred billion? Here today, gone tomorrow, as they say.
At the beginning of 2007, net worth of households and non-profit organizations exceeded its 1947-1996 historical average, relative
to GDP, by some $16 trillion. It took 24 months to wipe out eighty percent, or $13 trillion, of that colossal but ephemeral slush
fund. In mid-2016, net worth stood at a multiple of 4.83 times GDP, compared with the multiple of 4.72 on the eve of the Great
Unworthing.
When I look at the ragged end of the chart I posted yesterday, it screams "Ponzi!" "Ponzi!" "Ponz..."
To make a long story short, let's think of wealth as capital. The value of capital is determined by the present value of an
expected future income stream. The value of capital fluctuates with changing expectations but when the nominal value of capital
diverges persistently and significantly from net revenues, something's got to give. Either economic growth is going to suddenly
gush forth "like nobody has ever seen before" or net worth is going to have to come back down to earth.
Somewhere between 20 and 30 TRILLION dollars of net worth will evaporate within the span of perhaps two years.
When will that happen? Who knows? There is one notable regularity in the data, though -- the one that screams "Ponzi!"
When the net worth bubble stops going up...
...it goes down.
"... By Bill Mitchell, Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Originally published at billy blog ..."
"... The overwhelming importance of having a job for happiness is evident throughout the analysis, and holds across all of the world's regions. ..."
"... The pattern of human concerns ..."
"... The pattern of human concerns ..."
"... Journal of Happiness Studies ..."
"... The results show the differences between having a job and being unemployed are "very large indeed" on the three well-being measures (life evaluation, positive and negative affective states). ..."
"... Psychological Bulletin ..."
"... 1. "unemployment tends to make people more emotionally unstable than they were previous to unemployment". ..."
"... 2. The unemployed experience feelings of "personal threat"; "fear"; "sense of proportion is shattered"; loss of "common sense of values"; "prestige lost in own eyes and as he imagines, in the eyes of his fellow men"; "feelings of inferiority"; loss of "self-confidence" and a general loss of "morale". ..."
"... in the light of the structure of our society where the job one holds is the prime indicator of status and prestige. ..."
"... Psychological Bulletin ..."
"... Related studies found that the "unemployed become so apathetic that they rarely read anything". Other activities, such as attending movies etc were seen as being motivated by the need to "kill time" – "a minimal indication of the increased desire for such attendance". ..."
"... In spite of hopeless attempts the unemployed continually look for work, often going back again and again to their last place of work. Other writers reiterate this point. ..."
"... The non-pecuniary effects of not having a job are significant in terms of lost status, social alienation, abandonment of daily structure etc, and that has not changed much over history. ..."
"... I think what is missing from this article is the term "identity." If you meet new people, often the conversation starts with what you do for a living. Your identity, in part, is what you do. You can call yourself a plumber, a writer, a banker, a consultant, a reporter but the point is this is part of your identity. When you lose your job long term, your identity here loses one of its main anchor points. ..."
"... This is a crucial point that UBI advocates often ignore. There is a deeply entrenched cultural bias towards associating our work status with our general status and prestige and feelings of these standings. ..."
"... When unemployed, the stress of worry about money may suppress the creative juices. Speaking from experience. People may well 'keep looking for jobs' because they know ultimately they need a job with steady income. The great experience of some freelancers notwithstanding, not all are cut out for it. ..."
"... When considering the world's population as a whole, people with a job evaluate the quality of their lives much more favorably than those who are unemployed. ..."
"... Data like that provided by Mitchell is important to demolishing the horrid "economic anxiety" frame much beloved by liberals, especially wonkish Democrats.* It's not (a) just feelings , to be solved by scented candles or training (the liberal version of rugged individualism) and (b) the effects are real and measurable. It's not surprising, when you think about it, that the working class is about work . ..."
Posted on
November 21, 2017 by Yves Smith Yves here. Reader
UserFriendly sent this post with the message, "I can confirm this." I can too. And before you
try to attribute our reactions to being Americans, note that the study very clearly points out
that its finding have been confirmed in "all of the world's regions".
By Bill Mitchell, Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment
and Equity at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Originally published at billy blog
Here is a summary of another interesting study I read last week (published March 30, 2017)
– Happiness at Work
– from academic researchers Jan‐Emmanuel De Neve and George Ward. It explores the
relationship between happiness and labour force status, including whether an individual is
employed or not and the types of jobs they are doing. The results reinforce a long literature,
which emphatically concludes that people are devastated when they lose their jobs and do not
adapt to unemployment as its duration increases. The unemployed are miserable and remain so
even as they become entrenched in long-term unemployment. Further, they do not seem to sense
(or exploit) a freedom to release some inner sense of creativity and purpose. The overwhelming
proportion continually seek work – and relate their social status and life happiness to
gaining a job, rather than living without a job on income support. The overwhelming conclusion
is that "work makes up such an important part of our lives" and that result is robust across
different countries and cultures. Being employed leads to much higher evaluations of the
quality of life relative to being unemployed. And, nothing much has changed in this regard over
the last 80 or so years. These results were well-known in the 1930s, for example. They have a
strong bearing on the debate between income guarantees versus employment guarantees. The UBI
proponents have produced no robust literature to refute these long-held findings.
While the 'Happiness Study' notes that "the relationship between happiness and employment is
a complex and dynamic interaction that runs in both directions" the authors are
unequivocal:
The overwhelming importance of having a job for happiness is evident throughout the
analysis, and holds across all of the world's regions. When considering the world's
population as a whole, people with a job evaluate the quality of their lives much more
favorably than those who are unemployed. The importance of having a job extends far beyond
the salary attached to it, with non-pecuniary aspects of employment such as social status,
social relations, daily structure, and goals all exerting a strong influence on people's
happiness.
And, the inverse:
The importance of employment for people's subjective wellbeing shines a spotlight on the
misery and unhappiness associated with being unemployed.
There is a burgeoning literature on 'happiness', which the authors aim to contribute to.
They define happiness as "subjective well-being", which is "measured along multiple
dimensions":
life evaluation (by way of the Cantril "ladder of life"), positive and negative affect to
measure respondents' experienced positive and negative wellbeing, as well as the more
domain-specific items of job satisfaction and employee engagement. We find that these diverse
measures of subjective wellbeing correlate strongly with each other
Cantril's 'Ladder of Life Scale' (or "Cantril Ladder") is used by polling organisations to
assess well-being. It was developed by social researcher Hadley Cantril (1965) and documented
in his book The pattern of human concerns .
You can learn more about the use of the 'Cantril Ladder' HERE
.
As we read, the "Cantril Self-Anchoring Scale consists of the following":
Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The
top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder
represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you
personally feel you stand at this time? (ladder-present) On which step do you think you
will stand about five years from now? (ladder-future)
[Reference: Cantril, H. (1965) The pattern of human concerns , New Brunswick,
Rutgers University Press.]
[Reference: Bjørnskov, C. (2010) 'How Comparable are the Gallup World Poll Life
Satisfaction Data?', Journal of Happiness Studies , 11 (1), 41-60.]
The Cantril scale is usually reported as values between 0 and 10.
The authors in the happiness study use poll data from 150 nations which they say "is
representative of 98% of the world's population". This survey data is available on a mostly
annual basis since 2006.
The following graph (Figure 1 from the Study) shows "the self-reported wellbeing of
individuals around the world according to whether or not they are employed."
The "bars measure the subjective wellbeing of individuals of working age" by employment
status .
The results show the differences between having a job and being unemployed are "very large
indeed" on the three well-being measures (life evaluation, positive and negative affective
states).
People employed "evaluate the quality of their lives around 0.6 points higher on average as
compared to the unemployed on a scale from 0 to 10."
The authors also conduct more sophisticated (and searching) statistical analysis
(multivariate regression) which control for a range of characteristics (gender, age, education,
marital status, composition of household) as well as to "account for the many political,
economic, and cultural differences between countries as well as year-to-year variation".
The conclusion they reach is simple:
the unemployed evaluate the overall state of their lives less highly on the Cantril ladder
and experience more negative emotions in their day-to-day lives as well as fewer positive
ones. These are among the most widely accepted and replicated findings in the science of
happiness Here, income is being held constant along with a number of other relevant
covariates, showing that these unemployment effects go well beyond the income loss associated
with losing one's job.
These results are not surprising. The earliest study of this sort of outcome was from the famous study published by Philip
Eisenberg and Paul Lazersfeld in 1938. [Reference: Eisenberg, P. and Lazarsfeld, P. (1938) 'The psychological effects of
unemployment', Psychological Bulletin , 35(6), 358-390.]
They explore four dimensions of unemployment:
I. The Effects of Unemployment on Personality.
II. Socio-Political Attitudes Affected by Unemployment.
III. Differing Attitudes Produced by Unemployment and Related Factors.
IV. The Effects of Unemployment on Children and Youth.
On the first dimension, they conclude that:
1. "unemployment tends to make people more emotionally unstable than they were previous to
unemployment".
2. The unemployed experience feelings of "personal threat"; "fear"; "sense of proportion is
shattered"; loss of "common sense of values"; "prestige lost in own eyes and as he imagines, in
the eyes of his fellow men"; "feelings of inferiority"; loss of "self-confidence" and a general
loss of "morale".
Devastation, in other words. They were not surprised because they note that:
in the light of the structure of our society where the job one holds is the prime
indicator of status and prestige.
This is a crucial point that UBI advocates often ignore. There is a deeply entrenched
cultural bias towards associating our work status with our general status and prestige and
feelings of these standings. That hasn't changed since Eisenberg and Lazersfeld wrote up the findings of their study in
1938.
It might change over time but that will take a long process of re-education and cultural
shift. Trying to dump a set of new cultural values that only a small minority might currently
hold to onto a society that clearly still values work is only going to create major social
tensions. Eisenberg and Lazarsfeld also considered an earlier 1937 study by Cantril who explored
whether "the unemployed tend to evolve more imaginative schemes than the employed".
[Reference: Cantril, H. (1934) 'The Social Psychology of Everyday Life', Psychological
Bulletin , 31, 297-330.]
The proposition was (is) that once unemployed, do people then explore new options that were
not possible while working, which deliver them with the satisfaction that they lose when they
become jobless. The specific question asked in the research was: "Have there been any changes of interests
and habits among the unemployed?" Related studies found that the "unemployed become so apathetic that they rarely read
anything". Other activities, such as attending movies etc were seen as being motivated by the
need to "kill time" – "a minimal indication of the increased desire for such
attendance".
On the third dimension, Eisenberg and Lazersfeld examine the questions – "Are there
unemployed who don't want to work? Is the relief situation likely to increase this number?",
which are still a central issue today – the bludger being subsidized by income
support.
They concluded that:
the number is few. In spite of hopeless attempts the unemployed continually look for work,
often going back again and again to their last place of work. Other writers reiterate this
point.
So for decades, researchers in this area, as opposed to bloggers who wax lyrical on their
own opinions, have known that the importance of work in our lives goes well beyond the income
we earn. The non-pecuniary effects of not having a job are significant in terms of lost status,
social alienation, abandonment of daily structure etc, and that has not changed much over
history. The happiness paper did explore "how short-lived is the misery associated with being out of
work" in the current cultural settings.
The proposition examined was that:
If the pain is only fleeting and people quickly get used to being unemployed, then we
might see joblessness as less of a key public policy priority in terms of happiness.
They conclude that:
a number of studies have demonstrated that people do not adapt much, if at all, to being
unemployed there is a large initial shock to becoming unemployed, and then as people stay
unemployed over time their levels of life satisfaction remain low . several studies have
shown that even once a person becomes re-employed, the prior experience of unemployment
leaves a mark on his or her happiness.
So there is no sudden or even medium-term realisation that being jobless endows the
individual with a new sense of freedom to become their creative selves, freed from the yoke of
work. To bloom into musicians, artists, or whatever.
The reality is that there is an on-going malaise – a deeply entrenched sense of
failure is overwhelming, which stifles happiness and creativity, even after the individual is
able to return to work.
This negativity, borne heavily by the individual, however, also impacts on society in
general.
The paper recognises that:
A further canonical finding in the literature on unemployment and subjective wellbeing is
that there are so-called "spillover" effects.
High levels of unemployment "increase fear and heighten the sense of job insecurity". Who
will lose their job next type questions?
The researchers found in their data that the higher is the unemployment rate the greater the
anxiety among those who remain employed.
Conclusion
The overwhelming conclusion is that "work makes up such an important part of our lives" and
that result is robust across different countries and cultures.
Being employed leads to much higher evaluations of the quality of life relative to being
unemployed.
The unemployed are miserable and remain so even as they become entrenched in long-term
unemployment. They do not seem to sense (or exploit) a freedom to release some inner sense of
creativity and purpose.
The overwhelming proportion continually seek work – and relate their social status and
life happiness to gaining a job, rather than living without a job on income support.
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) allows us to understand that it is the government that chooses
the unemployment rate – it is a political choice.
For currency-issuing governments it means their deficits are too low relative to the
spending and saving decisions of the non-government sector.
For Eurozone-type nations, it means that in surrendering their currencies and adopting a
foreign currency, they are unable to guarantee sufficient work in the face of negative shifts
in non-government spending. Again, a political choice.
The Job
Guarantee can be used as a vehicle to not only ensure their are sufficient jobs available
at all times but also to start a process of wiping out the worst jobs in the non-government
sector.
That can be done by using the JG wage to ensure low-paid private employers have to
restructure their workplaces and pay higher wages and achieve higher productivity in order to
attract labour from the Job Guarantee pool.
The Series So Far
This is a further part of a series I am writing as background to my next book with Joan
Muysken analysing the Future of Work . More instalments will come as the research
process unfolds.
The blogs in these series should be considered working notes rather than self-contained
topics. Ultimately, they will be edited into the final manuscript of my next book due in 2018.
The book will likely be published by Edward Elgar (UK).
Perhaps I'm utterly depressed but I haven't had a job job for over 5 years. Plenty of
work, however, more than I can handle and it requires priorisation. But I am deliberately not part of the organized herd. I stay away from big cities –
it's scary how managed the herd is in large groups – and I suppose that unemployment
for a herd animal is rather distressing as it is effectively being kicked out of the
herd.
Anyway my advice, worth what you pay for it but let he who has ears, etc. – is to go
local, very local, grow your own food, be part of a community, manage your own work, and
renounce the energy feast herd dynamics. "Unemployment", like "recession", is a mechanism of
control. Not very practical advice for most, I realize, trapped in the herd as they are in
car payments and mortgages, but perhaps aspirational?
I think what is missing from this article is the term "identity." If you meet new people,
often the conversation starts with what you do for a living. Your identity, in part, is what
you do. You can call yourself a plumber, a writer, a banker, a consultant, a reporter but the
point is this is part of your identity. When you lose your job long term, your identity here
loses one of its main anchor points.
Worse, there is a deliberate stigma attached with being long term unemployed. In that article
you have seen the word bludger being used. In parts of the US I have read of the shame of
'living off the county'. And yes, I have been there, seen that, and got the t-shirt. It's
going to be interesting as mechanization and computers turn large portions of the population
from workers to 'gig' workers. Expect mass demoralization.
yes the lives many of us have lived, no longer exist though we appear not notice, as we
"can" live in many of same "ways" ..rather well known psychologist defined some 40 years ago, best to "drop through
cracks"
Well, you also lose money, maybe you become homeless etc. as you have nowhere else to turn
(if there are kids involved to support it gets even scarier though there are some programs).
Or maybe you become dependent on another person(s) to support you which is of course
degrading as you know you must rely on them to live, whether it's a spouse or lover when you
want to work and bring in money, or mom and dads basement, or the kindest friend ever who
lets you sleep on their couch. I mean these are the things that really matter.
Privileged people whose main worry in unemployment would be losing identity, wow out of
touch much? Who cares about some identity for parties, but the ability to have a stable
decent life (gig work hardly counts) is what is needed.
I normally wouldn't comment like this, but you have brought up some extremely important
points about identity that I would like to address.
Recently I had the most intense mushroom experience of my entire life–so intense
that my identity had been completely stripped and I was left in a formless state, at the
level of seeing my bare, unvarnished animal neural circuitry in operation. Suddenly with a
flash of inspiration I realized that the identity of everyone, all of us, is inextricably
tied up in what we do and what we do for other people.
Following from that, I understood that if we passively rely on others for survival,
whether it be relying on friends, family, or government, then we do not have an identity or
reason for existing. And the inner self, the animal core of who we are, will realise this
lack of identity (even if the concious mind denies it), and will continually generate
feelings of profound depression and intense nihilism that will inevitably destroy us if the
root cause is not addressed.
Before this experience I was somewhat ambivalent about my politics, but immediately after
I knew that the political right was correct on everything important, from attitudes on sex to
economic philosophy. People need a core of cultural stability and hard work to grow and
become actualized. The alternative is rudderless dissatisfaction and envy that leads
nowhere.
On the topic of giving "out of kindnes and goodwill", giving without demanding anything in
return is a form of abuse, as it deprives those who receive our feel-good generosity the
motivation to form a coherent identity. If the parents of a basement-dweller were truly good
people, instead of supporting said dweller they'd drag her out by the ear and make her grow
food in the yard or some such. Likewise, those who have supported you without also giving
concrete demands and expecations in return have been unkind, and for your own good I hope
that you will immediately remove yourself from their support. On the other hand, if you have
been thoughtlessly giving because it warms the cockles of your heart, then stop it now. You
are ruining other people this way, and if your voting habits are informed by this kind of
malevolence I'd encourage you to change those as well.
Anyway the original poster is right about everything. Working and having a purpose in life
is an entirely different animal from making money and being "successful" in the
government-sponsored commercial economy. Society and government deliberately try to conflate
the two for various reasons, primarily graft of labor and genius, but that is only a
deliberate mis-framing that needlessly harms people when the mainstream economic system is in
catastrophic decline, as ours is today. You should try to clear up this misconception within
yourself as a way of getting better.
Well, I hope this message can give you a few different thoughts and help you find your way
out of the existential angst you're caught in. Don't wallow in helplessness. Think of
something useful to do, anything, whether it earns you money or not, and go out and start
doing it. You'll be surprised at how much better you feel about yourself in no time.
The problem is you said – I – had an extreme experience [burning bush], the
truth was reviled to – I – and I alone during this extreme chemically altered
state. Which by the way just happens to conform to a heap of environmental biases I
collected. This is why sound methodology demands peer review. disheveled some people think Mister Toads Wild ride at Disneyland on psychotropics is an
excellent adventure too.
I think your observation about the importance of work to identity is most perceptive. This
post makes too little distinction between work and a job and glosses over the place of work
in defining who we are to ourselves and to others. I recall the scene in the movie "About a
Boy" when the hero meets someone he cares about and she asks him what he does for a
living.
I believe there's another aspect of work -- related to identity -- missing in the analysis
of this post. Work can offer a sense of mission -- of acting as part of an effort toward a
larger goal no individual could achieve alone. However you may regard the value in putting
man on the moon there is no mistaking the sense of mission deeply felt by the engineers and
technicians working on the project. What jobs today can claim service to a mission someone
might value?
Agreed on your points. Wage slavery is nothing to aspire to. Self-determination within a
context of an interdependent community is a much better way to live. We do our thing in the city, however.
Finding that "interdependent community" is the hard part. My experience has been that this
endeavour is almost chance based; Serendipity if you will.
Here Down South, the churches still seem to have a stranglehold on small and mid scale social
organization. One of the big effects of 'churching' is the requirement that the individual
gave up personal critical thinking. Thus, the status quo is reinforced. One big happy 'Holy
Circlejerk.'
This is a crucial point that UBI advocates often ignore. There is a deeply entrenched
cultural bias towards associating our work status with our general status and prestige and
feelings of these standings.
That hasn't changed since Eisenberg and Lazersfeld wrote up the findings of their study
in 1938.
It might change over time but that will take a long process of re-education and cultural
shift. Trying to dump a set of new cultural values that only a small minority might
currently hold to onto a society that clearly still values work is only going to create
major social tensions.
I would agree about the entenched cultural norms, etc. But not the pessimism and timeline
for change. An individual can communicate a complex idea to millions in seconds, things move
fast these days.
For me, it seems that what we (we being UBI/radical change proponents) are lacking is a
compelling easily accessible story. Not just regarding UBI (as that is but one part of the
trully revolutionary transformations that must occur) but encompassing everything.
We have countless think pieces, bits of academic writing, books, etc that focus on
individual pieces and changes in isolation. But we've largely abandoned the all-encompassing
narrative, which at their heart is precisely what religion offers and why it can be so
seductive, successful, and resilient for so long.
The status quo has this type of story, it's not all that compelling but given the fact
that it is the status quo and has inertia and tradition on its side (along with the news
media, political, entertainment, etc) it doesn't have to be.
We need to abandon the single narrow issue activism that has become so prominent over the
years and get back to engaging with issues as unseparable and intimately interconnected.
Tinkering around the edges will do nothing, a new political religion is what is
required.
Sorry, I disagree vehemently. Deeply held cultural attitudes are very slow to change and
the study found that work being critical to happiness examined a large number of
societies.
Look at feminism. I was a half-generation after the time when women were starting to get a
shot at real jobs. IIRC, the first class that accepted women at Harvard Law School was in the
1950 and at Harvard Business School, 1965. And the number of first attendees was puny. The
1965 class at HBS had 10 8 women out of a graduating class of over 800; my class in 1981 had
only 11% women.
In the 1980s, you saw a shift from the belief that women could do what men could do to
promotion of the idea that women could/should be feminine as well as successful. This looked
like seriously mixed messages, in that IMHO the earlier tendency to de-emphasize gender roles
in the workplace looked like a positive development.
Women make less than 80% of what men do in the US. Even female doctors in the same
specialities make 80% of their male peers.
The Speenhamland in the UK had what amounted to an income guarantee from the 1790s to
1832. Most people didn't want to be on it and preferred to work. Two generations and being on
the support of local governments was still seen as carrying a stigma.
More generally, social animals have strongly ingrained tendencies to resent situations
they see as unfair. Having someone who is capable of working not work elicits resentment from
many, which is why most people don't want to be in that position. You aren't going to change
that.
And people need a sense of purpose. There are tons of cases of rich heirs falling into
drug addiction or alcoholism and despair because they have no sense of purpose in life. Work
provides that, even if it's mundane work to support a family. That is one of the great
dissservices the Democrats have done to the citizenry at large: sneering at ordinary work
when blue-collar men were the anchors of families and able to take pride in that.
Regarding the large number of societies, we often like to think we're more different than
we actually are focusing on a few glaringly obvious differences and generalizing from there.
Even going back a few hundred years when ideas travelled slower we were still (especially the
"west" though the "east" wasn't all that much more different either) quite similar. So I'm
less inclined to see the large number of societies as evidence.
Generally on societal changes and movements: The issue here is that the leadership has not
changed, they may soften some edges here or there (only to resharpen them again when we're
looking elsewhere) but their underlying ideologies are largely unchanged. A good mass of any
population will go along to survive, whether they agree or not (and we find increasing
evidence that many do not agree, though certainly that they do not agree on a single
alternative).
It may be impossible to implement such changes in who controls the levers of power in a
democratic fashion but it also may be immoral not implement such changes. Of course this is
also clearly a similar path to that walked by many a demonized (in most cases rightfully so)
dictator and despot. 'Tread carefully' are wise words to keep in mind.
Today we have a situation which reflects your example re: social animals and resentment of
unfairness: the elite (who falls into this category is of course debatable, some individuals
moreso than others). But they have intelligently, for their benefit, redirected that
resentment towards those that have little. Is there really any logical connection between not
engaging in wage labor (note: NOT equivalent to not working) and unfairness? Or is it a myth
crafted by those who currently benefit the most?
That resentment is also precisely why it is key that a Basic income be universal with no
means testing, everyone gets the same.
I think we should not extrapolate too much from the relatively small segment of the
population falling into the the inherited money category. Correlation is not causation and
all that.
It also seems that so often individuals jump to the hollywood crafted image of the
layabout stoner sitting on the couch giggling at cartoons (or something similarly negative)
when the concept of less wage labor is brought up. A reduction of wage labor does not equate
to lack of work being done, it simply means doing much of that work for different reasons and
rewards and incentives.
As I said in the Links thread today, we produce too much, we consume too much, we grow too
much. More wage labor overall as a requirement for survival is certainly not the solution to
any real problem that we face, its a massively inefficient use of resources and a massive
strain on the ecosystems.
I am really gobsmacked at the sense of entitlement on display here. Why are people
entitled to an income with no work? Being an adult means toil: cleaning up after yourself,
cleaning up after your kids if you have them, if you are subsistence farmer, tending your
crops and livestock, if you are a modern society denizen, paying your bills and your taxes on
time. The idea that people are entitled to a life of leisure is bollocks. Yet you promote
that.
Society means we have obligations to each other. That means work. In rejecting work you
reject society.
And the touting of "creativity" is a top 10% trope that Thomas Frank called out in Listen,
Liberal. It's a way of devaluing what the bottom 90% do.
My argument with the article is that, to me, it smacks of Taylorism. A follow-on study
would analyze how many hours a laborer must work before the acquired sense of purpose and
dignity and associated happiness began to decline. Would it be 30 hours a week of
backbreaking labor before dignity found itself eroded? 40? 50? 60? When does the worker
break? Just how far can we push the mule before it collapses?
The author alludes to this: "The overwhelming proportion relate their social status and
life happiness to gaining a job"
Work equals happiness. Got it.
But, as a former robotics instructor, and as one who watches the industry (and former
students), I see an automated future as damn near inevitable. Massive job displacement is
coming, life as a minimum wage burger flipper will cease, with no future employment prospects
short of government intervention (WPA and CCC for all, I say). I'm not a Luddite, obviously,
but there are going to be a lot of people, billions, worldwide, with no prospect of
employment. Saying, "You're lazy and entitled" is a bit presumptuous, Yves. Not everyone has
your ability, not everyone has my ability. When the burger flipping jobs are gone, where do
they go? When roombas mop the floors, where do the floor moppers go?
We could use a new Civilian Conservation Corps and and a Works Progress Administration.
There's lots of work that needs doing that isn't getting done by private corporations.
The outrage at non-work wealth and income would be more convincing if it were aimed also
at owners of capital. About 30% of national income is passive -- interest, rents, dividends.
Why are the owners of capital "entitled to an income with no work?" It's all about the
morality that underlies the returns to capital while sugaring over a devaluation of labor. As
a moral issue, everyone should share the returns on capital or we should tax away the
interest, rents, and dividends. If it's an economic issue, berating people for their beliefs
isn't a reason.
The overwhelming majority do work. The top 0.1% is almost entirely private equity managers
who are able to classify labor income as capital gains through the carried interest loophole.
Go look at the Forbes 400.
The 1% are mainly CEOs, plus elite professionals, like partners at top law and consulting
firms and specialty surgeons (heart, brain, oncology). The CEOs similarly should be seen as
getting labor income but have a lot of stock incentive pay (that is how they get seriously
rich) which again gets capital gains treatment.
You are mistaking clever taking advantage of the tax code for where the income actually
comes from. Even the kids of rich people are under pressure to act like entrepreneurs from
their families and peers. Look at Paris Hilton and Ivanka as examples. They both could have
sat back and enjoyed their inheritance, but both went and launched businesses. I'm not saying
the kids of the rich succeed, or would have succeed to the extent they do without parental
string-pulling, but the point is very few hand their fortune over to a money manager and go
sailing or play the cello.
What's your take on Rutger Bergman's ted talk? i think most jobs aren't real jobs at all,
like marketing and ceo's. why can't we do 20 hour work weeks so we don't have huge amounts of unemployment? Note, I was "unemployed" for years since "markets" decide not to fund science in the US.
Yay Germany At least I was fortunate enough to not be forced to work at Walmart or McDonalds
like the majority of people with absolutely no life choices. Ah the sweet coercion of
capitalism.
Your hopes for a UBI are undone by some of the real world observations I've made over many
years, with regard to how a guaranteed income increase, of any measure, for a whole
population of an area, affects prices. Shorter: income going up means prices are raised by
merchants to capture the new income.
Examples: A single industry town raises wages for all employees by 2% for the new calendar
year. Within the first 2 weeks of the new year, all stores and restaurants and service
providers in the town raise their prices by 2%. This happens every year there is a general
wage increase.
Example: Medicare part D passes and within 2 years, Pharma now having new captive
customers whose insurance will pay for drugs, raise prices higher and higher, even on generic
drugs.
A more recent example: ACA passes with no drug price ceilings. Again, as with the passage
of Medicare part D, Pharma raises drug prices to unheard of levels, even older and cheap but
life saving drugs, in the knowledge that a new, large group will have insurance that will pay
for the drugs – a new source of money.
Your assumption that any UBI would not be instantly captured by raised prices is naive, at
best. It's also naive to assume companies would continue to pay wages at the same level to
people still employed, instead of reducing wages and letting UBI fill in the rest. Some
corporations already underpay their workers, then encourage the workers to apply for food
stamps and other public supports to make up for the reduced wage.
The point of the paper is the importance of paid employment to a person's sense of well
being. I agree with the paper.
For the vast majority, a UBI would be income-neutral – it would have to be, to avoid
massive inflation. So people would receive a UBI, but pay more tax to compensate. The effect
on prices would be zero.
The advantage of a UBI is mostly felt at the lower end, where insecure/seasonal work does
now pay. At the moment, a person who went from farm labourer to Christmas work to summer
resort work in the UK would certainly be working hard, but also relentlessly hounded by the
DWP over universal credit. A UBI would make this sort of lifestyle possible.
Davidab,
Good for you, but your perspicacity is not scalable. People are social animals and your attitude toward "the herd", at least as expressed here,
is that of a predator, even if your taste doesn't run toward predation. Social solutions will necessarily be scalable or they won't be solutions for long.
> the organized herd a herd animal trapped in the herd
I don't think throwing 80% to 90% of the population into the "prey" bucket is especially
perspicacious politically (except, of course, for predators or parasites). I also don't think it's especially perspicacious morally. You write:
Not very practical advice for most, I realize, trapped in the herd as they are in car
payments and mortgages, but perhaps aspirational?
Let me translate that: "Trapped in the herd as many are to support spouses and children."
In other words, taking the cares of the world on themselves in order to care for others.
Unemployed stay at home dad here. My children are now old enough to no longer need a stay
at home dad. Things I have done: picked up two musical instruments and last year dug a
natural swimming pond by hand. Further, one would need to refute all the increased happiness
in retirement (NBER). Why social security but not UBI? I get being part of the precariat is
painful and this is a reality for most the unemployed no matter where you live in the world.
A UBI is unworkable because it will never be large enough to make people's lives
unprecarious. Having said that, I am almost positive if you gave every unemployed person 24 k
a year and health benefits, there would be a mass of non working happy creative folks.
UBI seems to me to encourage non-virtuous behavior – sloth, irresponsibility,
fecklessness, and spendthriftness. I like the Finnish model – unemployment insurance is
not limited – except if you refuse work provided by the local job center. Lots of work
is not being done all over America – we could guarantee honest work to all with some
imagination. Start with not spraying roundup and rather using human labor to control weeds
and invasive species.
I do agree that universal health insurance is necessary and sadly Obamacare is not
that.
The crux of this problem is the definition used for "non-virtuous behaviour."
A new CCC is a good place to start though. (Your Tax Dollars At Work! [For some definition of
tax dollars.])
As for BJ above, I would suppose that child rearing was his "employment" for years. good so
far, but his follow-up is untypical. The 'Empty Nester' mother is a well known meme.
Spendthriftness on 24K a year? Seriously? If we are disgorging unprofessional opinions, I will add my own: sloth and
irresponsibility are more signs of depression rather than freedom from having to work. In
fact, I believe (and I think much of the stuff here) supports the idea that people want to be
seen as useful in some way. Doesn't include me! :) .. unfortunately, I have the charmingly named "dependents" so there
you have it.
I lived 6 years as a grad student on 24k a year and would say it was easy. Only thing I
would have to had worried about was awful health insurance. A two household each with 24k
would be even easier, especially if you could do it in a low cost area. So I am not sure what
you mean by spendthrift. But again it will never happen, so we will be stuck with what we
have or most likely an even more sinister system. I guess I am advocating for a JG with
unlimited number of home makers per household.
except if you refuse work provided by the local job center
And who's to say that the local "job center" has work that would be appropriate for every
person's specific talents and interests? This is no better than saying that you should be
willing to go work for some minimum-wage retail job with unpredictable scheduling and other
forms of employer abuses after you lose a high-paying job requiring special talents. I have
to call bullshit on this model. I went through a two-year stretch if unemployment in no small
part because the vast majority of the available jobs for my skill set were associated with
the MIC, surveillance state or the parasitic FIRE sector. I was able to do this because I had
saved up enough FY money and had no debts or family to support.
I can also attest to the negative aspects of unemployment that the post describes. Its all
true and I can't really say that I'e recovered even now, 2.5 years after finding another
suitable job.
The job center in the neighbouring Sweden had the same function. Had is the important
word. My guess is that the last time someone lost their unemployment insurance payout due to
not accepting a job was in the early 1980s. Prior to that companies might, maybe, possibly
have considered hiring someone assigned to them – full employment forced companies to
accept what was offered. Companies did not like the situation and the situation has since
changed.
Now, when full employment is a thing of the past, the way to lose unemployment insurance
payouts is by not applying to enough jobs. An easily gamed system by people not wanting to
work: just apply to completely unsuitable positions and the number of applications will be
high. Many companies are therefore overwhelmed by applications and are therefore often forced
to hire more people in HR to filter out the unsuitable candidates.
People in HR tend not to know much about qualifications and or personalities for the job so
they tend to filter out too many. We're all familiar with the skills-shortage .
Next step of this is that the companies who do want to hire have to use recruitment agencies.
Basically outsourcing the HR to another company whose people are working on commission.
Recruiters sometimes know how to find 'talent', often they are the same kind of people with
the same skills and backgrounds as people working in HR.
To even get to the hiring manager a candidate has to go through two almost identical and
often meaningless interviews. Recruiter and then HR. Good for the GDP I suppose, not sure if
it is good for anything else.
But back on topic again, there is a second way of losing unemployment insurance payout:
Time. Once the period covered has passed there is no more payouts of insurance. After that it
it is time to live on savings, then sell all assets, and then once that is done finally go to
the welfare office and prove that savings are gone and all assets are sold and maybe welfare
might be paid out. People on welfare in Sweden are poor and the indignities they are being
put through are many. Forget about hobbies and forget about volunteering as the money for
either of those activities simply aren't available. Am I surprised by a report saying
unemployed in Sweden are unhappy? Nope.
meanwhile NYTimes testimonials Friday, show average family of 4 healthprofit costs
(tripled, due to trump demise ACA) to be $30,000. per year, with around $10,000. deductible
end of any semblance of affordable access, "murKa"
Where does a character like Bertie Wooster in "Jeeves" fit in your notions of virtuous
behavior? Would you consider him more virtuous working in the management of a firm,
controlling the lives and labor of others -- and humorously helped by his his brilliant
valet, Jeeves, getting him out of trouble?
For contrast -- in class and social status -- take a beer-soaked trailer trash gentleman
of leisure -- and for sake of argument blessed with less than average intelligence -- where
would you put him to work where you'd feel pleased with his product or his service? Would you
feel better about this fellow enjoying a six-pack after working 8 hours a day 5 days a week
virtuously digging and then filling a hole in the ground while carefully watched and goaded
by an overseer? [Actually -- how different is that from "using human labor to control weeds
and invasive species"? I take it you're a fan of chain-gangs and making the poor pick up
trash on the highways?]
What about some of our engineers and scientists virtuously serving the MIC? Is their
behavior virtuous because they're not guilty of sloth, irresponsibility [in executing their
work], fecklessness, and spendthriftness? On this last quality how do you feel about our
government who pay the salaries for all these jobs building better ways to kill and maim?
It is a design by David Pagan Butler. It is his plunge pool design, deepend is 14 by 8 by
7 deep. I used the dirt to make swales around some trees. Win win all around.
The answer is yes my spouse works. So I do have a schedule of waking up to make her lunch
everyday, meeting her at lunch to walk, and making dinner when she gets home, but we do all
those things on her days off so .
But again we would need to explain away, why people who are retired are happier? Just
because they think they payed into social security? Try explaining to someone on the SS dole
how the government spends money into existence and is not paid by taxes or that the
government never saved their tax money, so there are not entitled to this money.
I hated working for other people and doing what they wanted. I began to feel some
happiness when I had a half acre on which I could create my own projects. Things improved
even more when I could assure myself of some small guaranteed income by claiming Social
Security at age 62. To arise in the morning when I feel rested, with interesting projects
like gardens, fences, small buildings ahead and work at my own pace is the essence of delight
for me. I've been following your arguments against UBI for years and disagree vehemently.
I feel I would behave the same as you, if I had the chance. *But* no statements about
human beings are absolute, and because UBI would work for either of us does not mean it would
work for the majority. Nothing devised by man is perfect.
first you had to buy the half acre in a suitable location, then you had to work many years
to qualify for social security, the availability of which you paid for and feel you deserve.
You also have to buy stuff for fences gardens and small buildings. At most that rhymes with a
ubi but is significantly different in it's make up.
> when I had a half acre on which I could create my own projects
That is, when you acquired the half acre, which not everyone can do. It seems to
me there's a good deal of projecting going on with this thread from people who are, in
essence, statistical outliers. But Mitchell summarizes the literature:
So for decades, researchers in this area, as opposed to bloggers who wax lyrical on
their own opinions, have known that the importance of work in our lives goes well beyond
the income we earn.
If the solution that works for you is going to scale, that implies that millions more will
have to own land. If UBI depends on that, how does that happen? (Of course, in a
post-collapse scenario, the land might be taken , but that same scenario makes the
existence of institutions required to convey the UBI highly unlikely. )
Very glad to hear that Bill Mitchell is working on the "Future of Work" book, and to have
this post, and the links to the other segments. Thank you, Yves!
I don't agree with this statement. Never will. I'm the complete opposite. Give me more
leisure time and you'll find me painting, writing, playing instruments and doing things that
I enjoy. I recall back to when I was a student, I relished in the free time I got (believe me
University gave me a lot of free time) between lectures, meaning I could enjoy this time
pursuing creative activities. Sure I might be different than most people but I know countless
people who are the same.
My own opinion is that root problem lies in the pathology of the working mentality, that
'work' and having a 'job' is so engrained into our society and mindset that once you give
most people the time to enjoy other things, they simply can't. They don't know what to do
with themselves and they eventually become unhappy, watching daytime TV sat on the sofa.
I recall back to a conversation with my mother about my father, she said to me, 'I don't
know how your father is going to cope once he retires and has nothing to do' and it's that
very example of where work for so many people becomes so engrained in their mindset, that
they are almost scared of having 'nothing to do' as they say. It's a shame, it's this
systemic working mentality that has led to this mindset. I'm glad I'm the opposite of this
and proud by mother brought me up to be this way. Work, and job are not in my vocabulary. I
work to live, not live to work.
I agree with Andrew. I think this data on the negative effects says more about how being
employed fundamentally breaks the human psyche and turns them into chattel, incapable of
thinking for themselves and destroying their natural creativity. The more a human is molded
into a "good worker" the less they become a full fledged human being. The happiest people are
those that have never placed importance on work, that have always lived by the maxim "work to
live, not live to work". From my own experience every assertion in this article is the
opposite of reality. It is working that makes me apathethic, uncreative, and miserable. The
constant knowing that you're wasting your life, day after day, engaged in an activity merely
to build revenue streams for the rich, instead of doing things that help society or that
please you on a personal level, is what I find misery inducing.
I agree. If financial insecurity is removed from the equation -- free time can be used creatively
for self-actualization, whatever form that may take: cultivating the arts, hobbies, community
activities, worthy causes and projects. The ideology wafting from Mitchell's post smells to me like a rationale for wage slavery
(market driven living, neo-liberalism, etc.)
Besides how are people supposed to spend their time "exploring other opportunities" when
unemployed anyway? To collect unemployment which isn't exactly paying that much anyway, they
have to show they are applying to jobs. To go to the movies the example given costs money,
which one may tend to be short on when unemployed. They probably are looking for work
regardless (for the income). There may still be some free time. But they could go back to
school? Uh in case one just woke up from a rock they were under for 100 years, that costs
money, which one may tend to be short on when unemployed, plus there is no guarantee the new
career will pan out either, no guarantee someone is just chomping at the bit to hire a newly
trained 50 year old or something. I have always taken classes when unemployed, and paid for
it and it's not cheap.
Yes to use one's time wisely in unemployment in the existing system requires a kind of
deep psychological maturity that few have, a kind of Surrender To Fate, to the uncertainty of
whether one will have an income again or not (either that or a sugar daddy or a trust fund).
Because it's not easy to deal with that uncertainty. And uncertainty is the name of the game
in unemployment, that and not having an income may be the pain in it's entirety.
Sadly this breaking down into a "good worker" begins for most shortly after they begin
school. This type of education harms society in a myriad of ways including instilling a
dislike of learning, deference to authority (no matter how irrational and unjust), and a
destruction of a child's natural curiosity.
I don't buy your premise that people are "creative". The overwhelming majority do not have
creative projects they'd be pursuing if they had leisure and income. Go look at retirees,
ones that have just retired, are healthy, and have money.
You are really misconstruing what the studies have found and misapplied it to your
situation. Leisure time when you have a job or a role (being a student) is not at all the
same as having time when you are unemployed, with or without a social safety net.
Work: that can be me hiring someone to cut my yard, or another type of one-off thing
filled with precariousness.
Job: that less temporary work, but by no means permanent. Just a step up from the
precariousness of work.
Career: that is work in the same field over a long period of time and it is more likely
that someone will develop an identity through performing the work. Still precarious, but
maybe more fulfilling.
Sense of purpose: I was always under the impression that is something you have to give
yourself. If it can be taken away by someone what was the purpose?
one often has a role when unemployed: finding work. But it's not a very fulfilling one!
But if one is trying to find work, it's not exactly the absence of a role either even if it
still leaves significantly more free time than otherwise, maybe winning the lottery is the
absence of a role.
But then it's also not like we give people a UBI even for a few years (at any time in
adult life) to get an education. Only if they take out a student loan approaching the size of
a mortgage or have parents willing to pony up are they allowed that (to pay not just for the
education but to live because having a roof over one's head etc. is never free, a UBI via
debt it might be called).
> Give me more leisure time and you'll find me painting, writing, playing instruments
and doing things that I enjoy.
Nothing to breed resentment of "the creative class" here! Blowback from Speenhamland
brought on the workhouses, so be careful what you wish for.
UBI won't happen and JG has been tried (and failed).
The argument that JG would allow the public sector to hire more people is demeaning to
people already employed in the public sector and demonstrably false – people are hired
into the public sector without there being a JG. It is most certainly possible to be against
a JG while wanting more people working in the public sector.
The way forward is to have a government acting for people instead of for corporations.
Increase the amount of paid vacations, reduce the pension age and stop with the Soviet style
worship of work: While some people are apparently proud of their friends and relatives who
died while at work it is also possible to feel sad about that.
The JG was tried in Communist countries in Europe, Asia and Americas. The arguments then
and there were the same as here and now, made by the same type of social 'scientists'
(economists).
Would a JG be different here and now as the Republicans and Democrats are representing the
best interests of the people? Or are they representing the same kind of interests as the
Communist parties did?
Data, please. The USSR fell because it was spending on its military to keep up with the
US, a much larger economy. Countering your assertion we have this:
As long as people argue that "it's not fair" to fix the inequality issue and employ things
like debt jubilee or student loan forgiveness, or if we fix the ridiculous cost of health
care what will all those insurance agents do then we will wind up with the real kind of class
warfare, rather than the current punching from the top down, the punching will come from the
bottom, because the situation is not fair now, it's just TINA according to those who profit
from it. In my own life there is a balance of creativity and work, and I find work enables my
creativity by putting some pressure on my time, i.e., I get up earlier, I practice at 8:30 am
instead of sleeping til 10 and winding up with S.A..D., I go to bed rather than watch tv or
drink to excess.. in other words i have some kind of weird schedule, I have days off sort of
When I've been unemployed I feel the way s described in the article. I find the arguments in
favor of ubi tend to come from people who already have assets, or jobs, or family who they
take care of which is actually a job although uncommonly described as such. The only truth I
see in real life is that the unemployed I am intimately familiar with first are mentally
oppressed by the notion that to repair their situation will require they work every waking
hour at substandard wages for the rest of their life and that is a major barrier to getting
started, and that is a policy choice the gov't and elite classes purposefully made which
created the precariat and will be their undoing if they are unable to see this.
Interesting point. I read a science fiction story in which the protagonist arrives for
work at his full time job at 10:00 AM, and he's finished for the day at 4:00 PM. I can't
remember the name of the story or novel, unfortunately.
Agreed. And they already have it in places like Denmark. Why don't we talk about that? It
actually exists unlike utopian schemes for either total UBI or total work guarantee
(government job creation is not utopian, but imagining it will employ everyone is, and I
would like the UBI to be more widely tried, but in this country we are nowhere close). Funny
how utopia becomes more interesting to people than actual existing arrangements, even though
of course those could be improved on too.
The Danish work arrangement is less than a 40 hour week, and mothers especially often work
part-time but both sexes can. It's here in this country where work is either impossibly
grueling or you are not working. No other choice. In countries with more flexible work
arrangements more women actually work, but it's flexible and flexible for men who choose to
do the parenting as well. I'm not saying this should be for parents only of course.
My own situation is that I am unhappy in my well-paying job and would like nothing more
than to devote myself to other interests. I'm thirty years on in a relationship with someone
who grew up in bad financial circumstances and panics whenever I talk about leaving my job. I
tell her that we have 2 years of living expenses in the bank but I can't guarantee making the
same amount of money if I do leave my job. She has a job that she loves and is important and
pays barely 1/2 of my own income. So she worries about her future with me. She worries about
losing her home. I suppose that makes me the definition of a wage slave. And it makes for an
increasingly unhappy marriage. I admire those who have faced similar circumstances and found
a way through this. Sorry to vent, but this topic and the comments hit a nerve with me and
I'm still trying to figure this out.
Otis;
We are presently going through a period where that "two year cushion" has evaporated, for
various reasons. We are seeing our way through this, straight into penury and privation.
Take nothing for granted in todays' economy.
yes find the lower paying job that you like more first. If you just quit for nothing in
the hopes of finding one it might not happen. Of course unemployment also happens sometimes,
whether we want it or not.
The newer generations are worse when it comes to lifestyle. Those of that are older can at
least remember a time without cellphones internet streaming services leasing a new car every
2 years etc.
What about the young? My niece and her husband should be all set , his mom sunk money into
a home on the condition she moved into a mother in law apartment. So far so good right? 2
years in they are imploding even with the free child care she provides. Combined their
wireless bill a month is over $300. The sit on the couch side by side and stream netflix
shows to dueling iphones in front of a 65 inch tv that is not even turned on. Wearing
headphones in silence.
Both driving new vehicles , both have gym memberships they don't use . They buy lattes 3
or 4 times a day which is probably another 500 a month.
My uncle passed away recently and my niece asked if she was in the will. It was literally
her only communication on the subject. They are going under and could easily trim a few
thousand a month from the budget but simply won't. No one in the family is going to lift a
finger for them at this point they burned every possible bridge already. I have seen people
living in cars plenty lately but I think these will be the first I see to living in brand new
cars .
Somewhere along the line they got the impression that the american dream was a leased car
a starbucks in one hand and an iphone in the other .
Confront them with the concept of living within a paycheck and they react like a patient
hearing he has 3 months to live.
Yeah being poor, never mind growing up poor, just well and truly sucks and it can really
@@@@ you up. Gives people all sorts of issues. I'm rather like her, but I have had the joy of
multi-hour commutes to unexciting soul crushing work. Happy, happy, joy, joy! However don't
forget that with the current political economy things are likely to go bad in all sorts of
ways. This whole site is devoted to that. My suggestion is to keep the job unless you have
something lined up. Not being able to rent has it own stresses too. Take my word for it.
I may be engaging in semantics but I think conflating work and jobs makes this article a
bit of a mixed bag. I know plenty of people who are terribly unhappy in their jobs, but
nonetheless extract a sense of wellbeing from having a stable source of INCOME to pay their
bills (anecdotally speaking, acute stress from recent job losses is closely linked to
uncertainty about how bills are going to be paid, that's why those with a safety net of
accumulated savings report less stress than those without). Loss of status, social standing
and identity and the chronic stress borne from these become evident much later I.e. when the
unemployment is prolonged, accompanied of course by the still unresolved top-of-mind concern
of "how to pay the bills".
As such, acute stress for the recently unemployed is driven by financial/income
uncertainty (I.e. how am I going to pay the bills) whereas chronic stress from prolonged
unemployment brings into play the more identity driven aspects like loss of social standing
and status. For policy interventions to have any effects, policy makers would have to
delineate the primary drivers of stress (or lack of wellbeing as the author calls it) during
the various phases of the unemployment lifecycle. An Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) like
we have here in South Africa appears to address the early stages of unemployment, and the
accompanying acute stress, quite well by providing the income guarantee (for six months) that
cushions the shock of losing a job. What's still missing of course are interventions that
promote the quick return to employment for those on UIF, so maybe a middle of the road
solution between UBI and a jobs guarantee scheme is how policy makers should be framing this,
instead of the binary either/or we currently have.
Lots' of people think they're unhappy with their jobs. Let them sit unemployed for 9
months and ask them if they want that job back. The usual parade of anecdata is on display here in the comments. Mitchell's real data and
analysis in the article above still stand.
If you'd read through my comment, and not rushed through it with a view of dishing out a
flippant response, you'd have seen that nowhere do I question the validity of his data, I
merely question how the argument is presented in some areas (NC discourages unquestioning
deference to the views of experts no??). By the way, anecdotes do add to richer understanding
of a nuanced and layered topic (as this one is) so your dismissal of them in your haste to
invalidate people's observations is hardly helpful.
Yes people many not like their jobs but prefer the security of having them to not. Yes
even if the boss sexually harasses one (as we are seeing is very common). Yes even if there
is other workplace abuse. Yes even when it causes depression or PTSD (but if one stays with
such a job long term it ruins the self confidence that is one prerequisite to get another
job!). Yes even if one is in therapy because of job stress, sexual harassment or you name it.
The job allows the having health insurance, allows the therapy, allows the complaining about
the job in therapy to make it through another week.
When unemployed, the stress of worry about money may suppress the creative juices.
Speaking from experience. People may well 'keep looking for jobs' because they know ultimately they need a job with
steady income. The great experience of some freelancers notwithstanding, not all are cut out
for it.
I would love to see some more about happiness or its lack in retirement–referenced
by stay-at-home dad BJ , above.
I wonder, too, about the impact of *how* one loses one's job. Getting laid off vs fired vs
quitting vs involuntary retirement vs voluntary, etc feel very different. Speaking from
experience on that, too. I will search on these points and post anything of interest.
There are also other things that are degrading about the very process of being unemployed
not mentioned here. What about the constant rejection that it can entail? One is unemployed
and looking for work, one sends out resumes, many of them will never be answered, that's
rejection. Then if one is lucky they get interviews, many will never lead to jobs, yet more
rejection. Does the process of constant rejection itself have a negative effect on a human
being whether it's looking for jobs or dates or whatever? Isn't it learned helplessness to if
one keeps trying for something and keeps failing. Isn't that itself demoralizing entirely
independent of any doubtful innate demoralizing quality of leisure.
I am not so sure if I agree with this article. I think it really depends on whether or not
you have income to support yourself, hate or love your job, and the amount of outside
interests you have, among other things. Almost everyone I know who lives in the NYC area and
commutes into the city .doesn't like their job and finds the whole situation "soul-crushing".
Those that live in Manhattan proper are (feel) a bit better off. I for one stopped working
somewhat voluntarily last year. I write somewhat because I began to dislike my job so much
that it was interfering with my state of well being, however, if I had been allowed to work
remotely I probably would have stuck it out for another couple of years.
I am close enough to
62 that I can make do before SS kicks in although I have completely changed my lifestyle
– i.e. I've given up a materialistic lifestyle and live very frugally.
Additionally I
saved for many years once I decided to embark on this path. I do not find myself depressed at
all and the path this year has been very enriching and exciting (and scary) as I reflect on
what I want for the future. I'm pretty sure I will end up moving and buying a property so
that I can become as self sufficient as possible. Also, I probably will get a job down the
line – but if I can't get one because I am deemed too old that will be ok as well. The
biggest unknown for me is how much health insurance will cost in the future .
The article made clear that the studies included "unemployed but with income" from
government support. It is amazing the degree to which readers ignore that and want to make
the findings about "unemployed with no income".
That's because we Americans all have work=good=worthy=blessed by God while
workless=scum=worthless=accursed by God engraved into our collective soul. Our politics, our
beliefs, are just overlays to that.
Even when we agree that the whole situation just crushes people into paste, and for which
they have no defense regardless of how hard they work, how carefully they plan, or what they
do, that underlay makes use feel that this is their/our fault. Any suggestions that at least
some support can be decoupled from work, and that maybe work, and how much you earn, should
not determine their value, brings the atavistic fear of being the "undeserving poor,"
parasites and therefore reprobated scum.
So we don't hear what you are saying without extra effort because it's bypassing our
conscious thoughts.
Add my voice to those above who feel that forced labor is the bane of existence, not the
wellspring. All this study says to me is that refusing to employ someone in capitalist
society does not make them happy. It makes them outcasts.
So, I say yes to a JG, because anyone who wants work should be offered work. But at the
same time, a proper JG is not forced labor. And the only way to ensure that it is not forced
labor, is to decouple basic needs from wage slavery.
I am critical of those who distinguish between the job and the income. Of course the
income is critical to the dignity of the job. For many jobs, it is the primary source of that
dignity. The notion that all jobs should provide some intrinsic dignity unrelated to the
income, or that people whose dignity is primarily based on the income they earn rather than
the work they do are deluded, is to buy in to the propaganda of "passion" being a requirement
for your work and to really be blind to what is required to make a society function. Someone
has to change the diapers, and wipe the butts of old people. (yes, I've done both.) It
doesn't require passion and any sense of satisfaction is gone by about the second day. But if
you could make a middle class living doing it, there would be a lot fewer unhappy people in
the world.
It is well known that auto factory jobs were not perceived as good jobs until the UAW was
able to make them middle class jobs. The nature of the actual work itself hasn't changed all
that much over the years – mostly it is still very repetitive work that requires little
specialized training, even if the machine technology is much improved. Indeed, I would guess
that more intrinsic satisfaction came from bashing metal than pushing buttons on a CNC
machine, and so the jobs may even be less self-actualizing than they used to be.
The capitalist myth is that the private sector economy generates all the wealth and the
public sector is a claim on that wealth. Yet human development proves to us that this is not
true – a substantial portion of "human capital" is developed outside the paid economy,
government investment in R&D generates productivity growth, etc. And MMT demonstrates
that we do not require private sector savings to fund public investment.
We are still a ways from having the math to demonstrate that government investment in
caring and nurturing is always socially productive – first we need productivity numbers
that reflect more than just private sector "product." But I think we are moving in that
direction. Rather than prioritize a minimum wage JG of make-work, we should first simply pay
people good wages to raise their own children or look after their elderly and disabled
relatives. The MMT JG, as I understand it, would still require people to leave their kids
with others to look after them in order to perform some minimum wage task. That is just
dumb.
Maybe it's dumb, it's certainly dumb in a system like the U.S. where work is brutal and
often low paid and paid childcare is not well remunerated either. But caretakers also working
seems to work in countries with greater income equality, good job protections, flexible work
arrangements, and a decent amount of paid parental leave – yea Denmark, they think
their children should be raised by professionals, but also work-life balance is still pretty
good.
My take is that capitalism has made the benefits and malus of having a job so ingrained
into culture and so reinforced. Having a job is so closely linked to happiness because it
gives you the money needed to pursue it.
A job affords you the ability to pursue whatever goals you want within a capitalist
framework. "Everything" costs money and so having a job gives you the money to pay for those
costs and go on to fulfill your pursuit of happiness.
Analyzing whether people are happy or not under these conditions seem apparent that it is
going to lead to results heavily biased towards finding happiness through employment.
The unemployed are often living off someone else's income and feel like an undeserving
parasite. Adults are generally ingrained with the culture that they have to grow up and be
independent and be able to provide for a new family that they will start up. Becoming
unemployed is like being emasculated and infantile, the opposite of what is expected of
adults.
There's also that not having a job is increasingly being punished especially in the case
of America. American wages have stayed either largely static or have worsened, making being
unemployed that much more of a burden on family or friends. Unemployment has been demonized
by Reaganism and has become systematically punishable for the long term unemployed. If you
are unemployed for too long, you start losing government support. This compounds the frantic
rush to get out of unemployment once unemployed.
There is little luxury to enjoy while unemployed. Life while unemployed is a frustrating
and often disappointing hell of constant job applications and having many of them lead to
nothing. The people providing support often start to become less so over time and become more
convinced of laziness or some kind of lack of character or willpower or education or ability
or whatever. Any sense of systemic failure is transplanted into a sense of personal failure,
especially under neoliberalism.
I am not so sure about the case of Europe and otherwise. I am sure that the third world
often has little or no social safety nets so having work (in exploitative conditions in many
cases) is a must for survival.
Anyways, I wonder about the exact methodologies of these studies and I think they often
take the current feelings about unemployment and then attempt to extrapolate talking points
for UBI/JG from them. Yes, UBI wouldn't change culture overnight and it would take a very,
very long time for people to let down their guard and adjust if UBI is to be implemented in a
manner that would warrant trust. This article seems to understand the potential for that, but
decides against it being a significant factor due to the studies emphasizing the malus of
unemployment.
I wonder how different the results would be if there were studies that asked people how
they would feel if they were unemployed under a UBI system versus the current system. I know
a good number of young people (mostly under 30) who would love to drop out and just play
video games all day. Though the significance of such a drastic demographic shift would
probably lead to great political consequences. It would probably prove the anti-UBI crowd
right in that under a capitalist framework, the capitalists and the employed wouldn't
tolerate the unemployed and would seek to turn them into an underclass.
Personally I think a combination of UBI and JG should be pursued. JG would work better
within the current capitalist framework. I don't think it is without its pitfalls due to
similar possible issues (with the similar policy of full employment) either under
Keynesianism (e.g. Milton Friedman sees it as inefficient) or in the USSR (e.g. bullshit
jobs). There is the possibility of UBI having benefits (not having the unemployed be a burden
but a subsidized contributer to the economy) so I personally don't think it should be fully
disregarded until it is understood better. I would like it if there were better scientific
studies to expand upon the implications of UBI and better measure if it would work or not.
The upcoming studies testing an actual UBI system should help to end the debates once and for
all.
My $0.02:
I have a creative pursuit (no money) and a engineering/physical science technical career
(income!). I am proficient in and passionate about both. Over the last few years, the
technical career became tenuous due to consolidation of regional consulting firms (endemic to
this era)- wages flat to declining, higher work stress, less time off, conversation to
contact employment, etc.- which has resulted in two layoffs.
During the time of tenuous employment, my art took on a darker tone. During unemployment the
art stopped altogether.
I'm recently re-employed in a field that I'm not proficient. Both the peter principle and
imposter syndrome apply. My art has resumed, but the topics are singular about despair and
work, to the point that I feel like I'm constantly reworking the same one piece over and over
again. And the quality has plummeted too.
In some fields (e.g. engineering), being a wage slave is the only realistic option due to
the dominance of a small number of large firms. The big players crowd out independents and
free lancers, while pressuring their own employees through just-high-enough wages and
limiting time off. Engineering services is a relationship- based field, and the big boys (and
they are nearly all boys) have vastly bigger networks to draw work from than a small firm
unless that small firm has a big contact to feed them work (until they get gobbled up). The
big firms also have more areas of expertise which limits how useful a boutique firm is to a
client pool, except under very narrow circumstances. And if you are an introvert like most
engineering people, there's no way to compete with big firms and their marketing staff to
expand a network enough to compete.
In that way, consulting is a lot like art. To make a living at it you need either contacts or
a sponsor. Or an inheritance.
I would be interested to know what the definition of unemployment was for the purpose of
this study (I couldn't find it in the supplied links). If it's simply "people who don't have
a job," for example, then it would include the likes of the idle rich, retirees, wards of the
state, and so on. Binary statements like this one do make it sound like the broad definition
is the one in use:
When considering the world's population as a whole, people with a job evaluate the
quality of their lives much more favorably than those who are unemployed.
The conclusion seems at odds with results I've seen for some of those groups – for
example, I thought it was fairly well accepted that retirees who are supported by a
government plan that is sufficient for them to live on were generally at least as happy as
they had been during their working life.
If, on the other hand, the study uses a narrow definition (e.g. people who are of working
age, want a job or need one to support themselves financially, but can't find one) then the
conclusion seems a lot more reasonable. But that's a heavily loaded definition in economic
and cultural terms. In that case, the conclusion (people are happier if they have a job) only
holds true in the current prevailing model of society. It doesn't rule out the possibility of
structuring society or the economy differently in such a way that people can be non-working
and happy. The existence of one such population already (retirees) strongly suggests that
outcomes like this are possible. A UBI would be an example of just such a restructuring of
society, and therefore I don't think that this study and its result are necessarily a valid
argument against it.
Which makes a person happier -- being considered worthless by one's society or valuable?
How many studies do we need to answer that question? Apparently, a lot, because studies like
this one keep on going. The underlying assumption is that jobs make one valuable. So if you
don't have a job you're worthless. Now, who's happier on the whole, people with jobs or the
unemployed? That's surely good for a few more studies. Did you know that members of socially
devalued groups (minorities, non-heteros, and the like) have higher rates of dysfunction,
rather like the unemployed? Hmm, I wonder if there's maybe a similar principle at work. And
my solution is not to turn all the people of color white nor to change all the women to men
nor to "cure" gays. Well, maybe a few more conclusive studies of this kind will convince me
that we must all be the same, toeing the line for those whom it has pleased God to dictate
our values to us.
I am convinced that we shouldn't outlaw jobs, because I believe the tons of stories about
happy people in their jobs However, I also believe we shouldn't force everyone into jobs,
because I know tons of stories about happy people without jobs. You know, the stories that
the JG people explain away: parents caring for their children (JG -- "oh, we'll make that a
job!"), volunteers working on local planning issues (JG -- "oh, we'll make that a job, too.
In fact, we'll make everything worth doing a job. The important thing is to be able to force
people to work schedules and bosses, because otherwise, they'll all lie around doing nothing
and be miserable"), the retired (JG -- "that's not really the same, but they'd be better off
staying in a job"). And this is all before we get to those who can't really hold a job
because of disability or geography or other responsibilities.
I support the JG over the current situation, but as to what we should be working for, the
more I read the JG arguments, the more paternalistic and just plain narrow minded judgmental
they seem.
Data like that provided by Mitchell is important to demolishing the horrid "economic
anxiety" frame much beloved by liberals, especially wonkish Democrats.* It's not (a) just feelings , to be solved by scented candles or training (the liberal version of
rugged individualism) and (b) the effects are real and measurable. It's not surprising, when
you think about it, that the working class is about work .
* To put this another way, anybody who has really suffered the crawling
inwardness of anxiety, in the clinical sense, knows that it affects every aspect of one's
being. Anxiety is not something deplorables deploy as cover for less than creditable
motives.
"... Coercion of the worker can be quite simply introduced into this setup by allowing firms to pay a 'negative wage' if the bad outcome occurs. This is simply the more cost-effective flipside of paying a higher wage if the good outcome occurs. Negative wages describe a world in which workers can be 'punished' (i.e. a world with coercion). ..."
Labour coercion is arguably as old human civilisation. In the words of Acemoglu and Wolitzky
(2011), "the majority of labour transactions throughout much of history and a significant
fraction of such transactions in many developing countries today are coercive".
Indeed, labour coercion is at the heart of much of the literature on long run development
and institutional change (Domar 1970, Acemoglu et al. 2001, Engerman and Sokoloff 2002, Nunn
2008, Dell 2010, Naidu and Yuchtman 2013, Bobonis and Morrow 2014, Ashraf et al. 2017). Despite
this, rigorous empirical evidence on labour coercion is scarce and is mostly focused on
relating present-day outcomes to historical labour coercion.
The term 'labour coercion' is used quite broadly to describe the use of, or threat of, force
in convincing workers to accept labour contracts they otherwise would not.
However, labour coercion can take two quite distinct forms, and this important distinction
is often not well articulated. The distinction is best seen by imagining a standard
principal-agent framework. In broad terms, a firm (the principal) offers a labour contract to a
worker (the agent). If effort is not observable, it can only be inferred from the outcome,
which can be 'good' or 'bad' (e.g. high output or low output). The firm can incentivise its
workers to exert effort by offering them a higher wage if the good outcome materialises. The
difference in the wages the firm pays in the good and bad state needs to be sufficiently high
that workers exert effort (i.e. the 'incentive compatibility constraint' binds). The second
constraint on the contract is that workers may walk away from it if they can earn a higher
expected wage elsewhere. The expected wage (averaging over the effort-dependent outcome
probabilities) thus needs to exceed the worker's outside option (i.e. the 'participation
constraint' binds).
Coercion of the worker can be quite simply introduced into this setup by allowing firms to
pay a 'negative wage' if the bad outcome occurs. This is simply the more cost-effective
flipside of paying a higher wage if the good outcome occurs. Negative wages describe a world in
which workers can be 'punished' (i.e. a world with coercion). In this way, slavery, serfdom, or
indenture can be nested inside a standard economic framework and, indeed, there is a long
tradition in economics that does this (Chwe 1990). However, the participation constraint still
binds when there is coercion. Even in the extreme case of slavery, outside options were usually
not zero so long as slaves could run away and had a chance of evading capture. The interaction
of the two constraints implies that there is complementarity in coercive activities –
firms can punish workers more severely if they can also reduce their outside options.
In many modern-day labour markets, it may be entirely impossible for a firm to reduce a
worker's outside options and the complementarity between coercion that punishes workers and
coercion that reduces outside options can therefore safely be ignored. However, for countries
at the early stages of structural transformation – where workers' outside options are not
to work for a different firm or in a different sector, but to be self-employed in the informal
sector as a yeoman farmer or artisan (a state that describes most of modern economic history
and many developing countries today) 1 – coercion that reduces workers'
outside options was and still is critical.
This was recognised by early development economists, as attested, for example, by Arthur
Lewis' famous quote that "the fact that the wage level in the capitalist sector depends upon
earnings in the subsistence sector is of immense political importance, since its effect is that
capitalists have a direct interest in holding down the productivity of the subsistence workers.
Thus the owners of plantations, if they are influential in government, are often found engaged
in turning the peasants off their lands" (Lewis 1954).
"The Unseen Threat of Capital Mobility" [
The Boston Review ]. "Two new books link rising inequality to unseen forces: tax havens in
economist Gabriel Zucman's case, and overseas labor and environmental exploitation in historian
Erik Loomis's. The adverse consequences of the free movement of capital suffuse both
narratives. Loomis recognizes that the threat of offshored jobs and outsourced supply chains is
wielded to discipline the domestic workforce in the United States, and Zucman points out that
tax havens have effectively allowed the wealthy to choose their own tax system and regulatory
regime. They each question received wisdom and ideologically charged models in which
"globalization" is an inexorable force innocent of politics or power, which operates to either
universal benefit or at worst whose ill effects can be compensated. In fact, thanks to
globalization, the economic body -- what its ideological affiliates call 'The Market' -- is
able to transcend the national body politic, to the benefit of multinational corporations and
the wealthy individuals who own them."
"Why You're Not Getting a Raise" [ The Minskys ]. "A sure way to speed up wage growth again
is fiscal stimulus. Government spending lifts aggregate demand directly and effectively. If
enough spending is injected into the economy, it will create enough jobs to bring full
employment. The momentum and labor scarcity created by the stimulus will force wages up and
give workers and labor unions more bargaining power. A Job Guarantee Program , if ever implemented,
would effectively set a wage floor in the economy, since any person working at a lower wage
than the Job Guarantee offers will be given work in the public sector.:
"One of Arkansas' top politicians relies on unpaid workers from a local drug rehabilitation
center at his plastics company, which makes dock floats sold at Home Depot and Walmart" [
Review
News ]. "Hendren Plastics, owned by Arkansas State Senate Majority Leader Jim Hendren,
partners with a rehab program under scrutiny for making participants work grueling jobs for
free, under the threat of prison, according to interviews with former workers and a new
lawsuit." That reminds me of something
"What makes me tired when organising with middle class comrades" [
Guardian ].
"What I've observed over and over again is this inherent need for middle class people to
censor, control and mediate emotions. There's a deep fear of conflict, loosing status and
control. I've been told to be less angry on demos, less emotional at events and more serious.
Stop telling me how to feel. When you've had a life of teachers, social workers and probation
officers telling you how you should act, you don't need the same mediating middle class
behaviour in your collectives."
"... By Sophie Linden, an editorial assistant at AlterNet's office in Berkeley, CA. Originally published at Alternet ..."
"... HoneyBook's research is just one insight into wage gaps. As a largely deregulated economy with unparalleled growth, it is important to make visible the economic and social divides embedded in the independent workforce. We can start by debunking the claim that freelancing is a more equitable field to work in, and with it, the idea that any economy is without prejudice. ..."
"... I would also argue that so called 'regular' employment is trending towards a "freelance" structure. Job tenures are supposedly shrinking and often going away completely. Now, that salaryman window tribe dweller is often outside of that window, washing it on a piecework basis, with no safety line. The underlying rationale for the rise of the 'freelance' work structure is to first crapify the freelance 'experience,' with lower wages a must, and then, second, extend the 'neo-crapified' work rules into the previously "safe" 'regular' work world. ..."
"... Freelancers driving the price of their labor down to $5 per hour because they have to compete against all the other people who can't find steady work is not a feminist issue– its a class issue. And that is no less true if males make $2 more per hour because of sexual discrimination. The real enemy is the billionaire who owns the corporation, the politicians, and the enforcers that grind workers down into virtual servitude. ..."
"... When a fat pig movie director pushes you down on the "casting couch" there has always been the choice to reach for the Mace or the revolver in the purse. Submitting is prostitution, choice is rejecting greed for riches and fame and joining with others to throw the boot off your neck. ..."
"... When they turn 50, if they survive that long, they'll be replaced by younger cheaper labor. Nothing really changes, except the words we use to describe our sad condition and the lower and lower age at which we're discarded. ..."
"... Freelancing is much like entrepreneurship in that it has been way oversold to the public. Most people don't do well either as freelancers or as entrepreneurs and would likely be better off as normal employees. The emphasis on "alternative" work arrangements has taken public attention away from improving the lot of traditional employees and contributes to the devaluation of ordinary workers by suggesting that they are lazy or stupid because they didn't become freelancers or gigsters or entrepreneurs of some sort. ..."
Yves here. Holey moley. One
of the good things about working for fancy firms early in my professional life was I saw how
much they charged, even when the work was often pedestrian or even dubious. So I was never shy
about setting a healthy price for my time. But regardless, how could anyone bid under the
minimum wage?
The only time I could see that making any kind of sense would be if you were
breaking into a new area and would have reason to expect the client would give you a very
valuable reference, or better yet, referrals, if they liked what you did. But my experience has
always been that clients who go cheap never appreciate the work done for them.
By Sophie Linden, an editorial assistant at AlterNet's office in Berkeley, CA.
Originally published at
Alternet
Surround yourself with positivity, exploit all marketing outlets, choose a specialized skill
-- this is the repetitive wisdom passed on to every budding creative entrepreneur. Less often
do we hear advice like, "increase the price of an invoice," or "make it non-negotiable,"
especially as it relates to the gendered wages within self-employment.
The freelance market is arguably trending across industries, with some figureheads going so
far as to say " freelance is
feminist ," mainly because women make up a slight majority. Unfortunately, before feminists
get too heady on the issue, we need to look at whether the freelance market is any more
"freeing" to the women in it, or if it is liberating any of its entrepreneurial workforce.
Right now, it's just another deregulated economy in which workers are underpaid and largely
invisible.
A recent study published by HoneyBook gives some visibility to the subject, showing that
women in the "creative economy" are actually paid significantly less than their male
counterparts, sometimes taking in an average of $5 an hour .
There are many reasons for concern about this wage discrepancy. Not only because HoneyBook
found that 63% of men and
women believed they were earning equal pay, but also because of the growing workforce
within the world of freelance, where there are already 57.3 million
freelancers in the U.S .
Industry data from UpWork and the Freelance Labor Union suggests that freelancers will be
the majority by 2027, growing three times faster than the U.S. workforce overall, and
contributing over $1.4 trillion to the U.S. economy annually. While scenes of cramped coffee
shops may be an indicator of this burgeoning workforce, these numbers are still astounding.
Without sites like UpWork and HoneyBook, they would also be hard to track.
HoneyBook is the self-employed's business management tool, hosting clients similar to those
in the aforementioned study. Labeled under the guise of "creative entrepreneurs," they are
working professionals navigating gigs in industries like photography, graphic design and
writing. With its niche data, the site analyzed over 200,000 client invoices from October
2016-2017 to look at wage discrepancy, finding that on average women made 32% less than their male competitors
. This gap is even larger than the national average, where women earn 24% less than men
nationally , 76 cents to the dollar. Troubling news for the largest, opportunist workforce
around: that is, women in freelance.
In 2015, women made up 53% of the
freelance market . This slight dominance encouraged Sara Horowitz, founder of the Freelance
Labor Union, to preemptively call freelancing "feminist." Horowitz argued that the lifestyle of
a freelancer was more palatable to the roles women desired, whether that was co-careers or
gendered domestic labor. She also argued that freelance work allowed women to avoid male
privilege in the workplace, notably
the boys club at board meetings .
While some of Horowitz's arguments hold value, we can clearly see how freelance work is
still an unequal field, at least if pay is any measure of equality among genders. Women who do
enter the field already consider themselves to have
less bargaining power . Meanwhile, the majority of invoices in HoneyBook's study quoted a
non-negotiable price, meaning women are more likely to charge less for the job. Clearly, the
reasons for the gender pay gap are embedded and multi-layered. Nevertheless, the study shows
that freelance is not entirely the liberated, equal rights, equal pay landscape Horowitz claims
it to be.
Asked why they enter the market, freelancers often cite
the flexibility of the work in a number of terms: the ability to be their own boss, as well
as the ability to choose their projects and work location. In essence, men and women draw upon
idealistic dreams of escaping workplace power-dynamics to find economic independence in their
pajamas --
a depiction that has been repeatedly critiqued . Freelancers still enter a labor force that
has few
congressional protections and is arguably as successful
as the social networks you were economically born into. Essentially it is prey to the same
laissez-faire ideals that have manipulated structural inequity across generations of workers in
the U.S. It just imagines itself differently -- now under the guise of "creative"
entrepreneurship.
HoneyBook's research is just one insight into wage gaps. As a largely deregulated
economy with unparalleled growth, it is important to make visible the economic and social
divides embedded in the independent workforce. We can start by debunking the claim that
freelancing is a more equitable field to work in, and with it, the idea that any economy is
without prejudice.
I would also argue that so called 'regular' employment is trending towards a
"freelance" structure. Job tenures are supposedly shrinking and often going away completely.
Now, that salaryman window tribe dweller is often outside of that window, washing it on a
piecework basis, with no safety line.
The underlying rationale for the rise of the 'freelance' work structure is to first crapify
the freelance 'experience,' with lower wages a must, and then, second, extend the
'neo-crapified' work rules into the previously "safe" 'regular' work world.
The only rational response to managements' claim that "we can get someone to replace you
if you do not agree to our demands," is to simply walk away from the "golden opportunity."
Sooner or later, all exploitative systems fall apart due to their own internal
contradictions. It can be painful, but: No pain (economic micro-dislocation,) no gain
(guillotines in Town Square.)
On the feminism front, and please remember that this is an older man writing, I would find
any situation where the individual allows outside forces to define said individuals self
definition, as the opposite of "liberating." Except in rare cases, what else is 'freelancing'
but a "race to the bottom?" If one is to accept the 'freelancing' ethos as presently
presented, one may as well embrace the 'contemplative life' and accept fasting and privation
as a path to communion with the godhead.
Freelancers driving the price of their labor down to $5 per hour because they have to
compete against all the other people who can't find steady work is not a feminist
issue– its a class issue. And that is no less true if males make $2 more per hour
because of sexual discrimination. The real enemy is the billionaire who owns the corporation,
the politicians, and the enforcers that grind workers down into virtual servitude.
There is
always choice. There are always drugs to be transported and sold, money to be laundered, or
accounting fraud to be fabricated. There is always choice even if the consequences are
severe. It's long been known that the fastest (and only) way for a woman to become a movie
star is on her back.
When a fat pig movie director pushes you down on the "casting couch" there has always
been the choice to reach for the Mace or the revolver in the purse. Submitting is
prostitution, choice is rejecting greed for riches and fame and joining with others to throw
the boot off your neck.
There is no organization called the Freelance Labor Union. Horowitz's organization is
called the Freelancers Union and it is little more than a buyers club. It has yet to call a
strike or organize a picket line. Nor does it call out the companies that exploit
freelancers.
$583,283.25 – using the annuity formula from Stewart's 4th edition precalc book (it
is surely the same formula in all his books ) & taking that 5 bucks an hour TIMES 2080
hours of pay in a year (40*52) = amount to save every year, for 30 years, at 4% interest.
Now, realistically, whoever underpaid you just bought a few more trinkets for today's
mansion, jet, yacht or mistress but you could have saved that money!
When they turn 50, if they survive that long, they'll be replaced by younger cheaper
labor. Nothing really changes, except the words we use to describe our sad condition and the
lower and lower age at which we're discarded.
Freelancing is much like entrepreneurship in that it has been way oversold to the
public. Most people don't do well either as freelancers or as entrepreneurs and would likely
be better off as normal employees. The emphasis on "alternative" work arrangements has taken
public attention away from improving the lot of traditional employees and contributes to the
devaluation of ordinary workers by suggesting that they are lazy or stupid because they
didn't become freelancers or gigsters or entrepreneurs of some sort.
Many young people seem to have fallen into the trap of putting too much emphasis on work
flexibility over a steady paycheck. These kinds of alternative work arrangements might be fun
and cool when you are in your 20s but not so much after 30 and especially if you want to
start a family and need a steady and reliable source of income.
I was a free lance in publishing for about twenty-five years. The tell here is the mention
of pajamas: Are we still in the world of people who want to work in their pajamas? One thing
I learned right away is that you have to get up each morning, dress like an adult, schedule
the number of billable hours that you want to charge for, and send in invoices regularly. The
successful free lances, male and female, did so. The people who started work at three in the
afternoon, after cocoa with marshmallows all day, didn't succeed.
I suspect that hourly charges among free lances are falling: That is part of our friend
"right to work," which keeps wages down. It is also part of the massive amount of outsourcing
going on. In publishing, responsibilities that always were kept in house and should remain in
house are being outsourced.
I'll also note that one of the reasons that I became a free lance, besides knowing what I
could charge for my work, is that many offices are toxic environments socially and
politically. There is a lot of stress on conformity. There is no concern for original
thinking. Inventing the wheel is considered original.
And as someone who has worked in publishing for many years and knows many talented and
powerful women in publishing, I left my last job shortly after the head of the division
introduced the new editor in chief for books as a woman. That's right. The first words: M.K.
is a woman.
M.K. turned out to be a nonentity who exploited the organization for personal ends. She
was a great absentee manager! And I no longer had a desire to be around the endless re-runs
of resentments of fellow employees.
I can remember meeting freelancers in the 1980s and 1990s. The good ones were GOOD. As in,
they had waiting lists -- you had to book them a couple of months in advance. And they
charged accordingly.
These days, that seldom happens. Why? Because there are too many people who can't find
jobs, or they only get hired for part-time work, and they have to fill the rest of their
time. Such trends do not make for increasing hourly rates.
Arizona Slim: My dance card was always filled. But as you mention above, after age 50, I
kept thinking, Am I a daring American entrepreneur and sole proprietor, or am I just
terminally unemployed (and unemployable)?
OK, what's to stop women from charging higher rates? Lower self esteem? Are their lower
wages for each hour worked? Or, do they work fewer hours?
"they are working professionals navigating gigs in industries like photography, graphic
design and writing ." Clean, no lifting, paid to create gigs where you don't get your hands
dirty, or put your body in perilous exhausting situations.
If women want to earn money, learn to be a plumber. Yes, you will get a face full of shit
occasionally, will bleed, get burned and will earn $75 an hour, often in cash.
There's a shortage of linepersons to install power lines. Up on that lift bucket, 80 feet
in the air, leaning out and ratcheting in 10,000 volt live wires covered with a rubber shock
cloth, you can make astounding amounts of money. Why aren't more women up there? Companies go
out of their way to hire women.
No mention of the free labor slave pit called "internships." How many of us have gone
through that
voluntary servitude?
I have training in the trades and have worked as a bike mechanic. On the positive side,
there's a pride of workmanship that you do not get from office work or from freelancing while
sitting at a computer. And there's the camaraderie. I never experienced anything like it --
except in that hot, greasy, dirty bike shop.
On the negative side, you can get too old and broken down to do the work. OTOH, you can be
a sit-down freelancer until you die.
What stops women from negotiating male-equivalent wages varies. Timidity and poor
negotiating skills is part of it. As Yves said above, it helps immensely to have been exposed
to the billing practices of real winners in this game. And they are disproportionately men,
specifically, men who operate like real machers.
The biggest factor is IMO, information deficit. Professional class people throughout many
industries are idiots when it comes to freely discussing remuneration with their fellow wage
slaves. Everyone acts as though their compensation package were as private and faintly dirty
as .. another package.
It's idiotic. The vast majority of us would be better off if we blurted it out over lunch
ever few months. And walking away a few tifmes is key. It's good for you. Likewise, if you do
need to take a poorly paid gig some times, treat it as slightly less than full time. Keep
lining up others. Create the bare minimum of deliverables as swiftly as you can, and get out.
Those who underpay you do not deserve your maximum effort, and they're invariably shitty
references, so do not anguish over doing only the job they've paid for.
Just don't stiff or cheat anyone lower down the line if you take an underpaid gig. I
watched a guy do that recently on a contract job that put him into contact with me, an
under-remunerated grad student. He didn't cheat me, he cheated the agency I worked for of
some small use fee. Right in front of me. His consulting firm is not one I'll be looking to
work for any time soon.
Also, always write a late charge fee in your contract. 120 day "billing cycles" are
abusive garbage in the age of computers. After thirty days, the price goes up.
Women who let themselves get stiffed all the time are a real danger to the interests of
the guys in their line of work, not just themselves. I wish more guys could see that.
Fluffy: Yes. Know rates, and have a group of friendly free lances who will tell you what
they are being offered these days. And what hourly they will turn down.
Firing clients is a necessity. I learned that from a sole proprietor who I worked for in a
small typesetting / editorial / graphic design shop. The customer isn't always right. There
are psychic benefits to firing a bad customer. And word sort-a gets around that there are
people who / companies that you refuse to take work from.
I suspect it's utter mythology that women do not attempt to attain far better paying
manual labor jobs than they do.
Speaking of high voltage wires, I know a woman who was in the International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers Union (Brotherhood says it all!). She worked on large commercial
construction, such as the NUMI Plant (now Tesla). While she endured it through to her
retirement she had a horridly abusive (and life threatening on one occasion) go of it. Sexual
harassment (made worse by the fact that she had an hourglass figure), an actual physical
threat, knife included, while being locked in a room with someone she had already reported as
having harassed her, but was forced to work with him anyway; utter resentment of women on the
job; and stunning racism (the black males in that Brotherhood , did not fare much
better as to the racism) in the tolerant Bay Area.
As to plumbing, the bay area has current and frequent plumbing school ads on TV which
feature no women at all, and a real bro-bro atmosphere which all women who've been sexually
harassed are familiar with. At one point in my life, despite having a licensed profession, I
offered to apprentice to a plumber who just laughed at me (at the time, I was able to do
twenty chin-ups).
And, my experience (pre putting myself through college to attain a livable wage), trying
to get a job doing manual labor that actually paid a decent wage was utterly unsuccessful. I
did have a nursery job, and a very brief job at a thoroughbred stable (the owner was a horrid
human being so I quit). At both of those jobs, the only males were illegal immigrants from
Mexico, and the wages in both jobs were under regular minimum wage ag wages.
Further, to imply that 'sit' down jobs don't have their fair share of health damage, is
like saying that emotional abuse does not exist, and is not deadly when one's spirit is
killed in a situation where the other wields far more economic and social power.
Many, unfortunately too many woman included, still feel that a white or non-black male
will do a better job, no matter what that job is. For instance (and I don't know what it's
like now) I recollect while waitressing that only males were offered high end, far better
tipping, jobs in pricier restaurants. At the time, I never saw a female waitress in a high
end restaurant.
Portside article about NAFTA, unions, and Canadian unions: Here is a paragraph from the
underlying article at New York Magazine about the three sponsors:
On Wednesday, Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, and Kirsten Gillibrand
announced their agreement -- and introduced legislation to ban "right-to-work" laws
throughout the United States.
[NY Mag article is dated 20 Sept 2017]
The sooner we collectively kill off the feudal idea of "right to work," the better. Right
now, though, we're only what -- sixty, seventy–years too late?
Why didn't Democrats pass legislation in 2009 to eliminate it?
It was one of the few policies that I could think of what would actually, you know, help
the win elections. But then I realized the the purpose of the DNC isn't actually to win
elections, it's to raise money from Wall Street, Hollywood and Silcon Valley to pay for
consultants.
Why didn't Democrats pass legislation in 2009 to eliminate it?
Yeah, Captain Hope'N-Change failed to deliver labor any meaningful legislation during his
eight years in office.
Labor was essentially told "We put some friendly faces on the NLRB and in the judiciary.
Be thankful, and forget about card check or right to work preemption."
And it's a bad look anyway. With the basically insurmountable barriers to organizing under
the Wagner Act these days, a focus on making sure the money keeps flowing, much of it ending
up in the Ds campaign coffers. How about repealing Taft-Hartley?
Maybe unions would be better off with less bureaucracy and more member participation. Do
it like the Wobs: you come to the meeting, you pay your dues, you voice your opinion and you
vote.
The Closed Shop
Jurisdictional Strikes
Secondary Boycotts
Common Situs Picketing
A Ban on Right-to-Work
A Ban on presidential interventions in strikes
Supervisor's Unions
Employer Nuetrality
Hopefully this happens before I die. I would absolutely love to see the yacht and learjet
owning class in tears!
They not only write themselves they've already been written and burned into the brain.
True or not, there they are. So what are you risking?
The thing is the D-time is well past the point (no House, no Senate, no Pres, vanishing
amount of Govs, vanishing amount of State leges..) where saying "That's not true!!" can be
considered a winning strategy, even if you could show me what you've won by saying it.
How about "hell yeah that's how we feel, America rocked (when we had strong labor)". Stand
up to the bully for once, again whaddya got to lose now. I often wonder what Steve Gilliard
would say at this point, he always made sure that us white people realized that something was
better than nothing when you were looking at absolutely nothing at all . but things have sunk
so low would he still feel that what has become nothing more than an orderly, but continuous
retreat should be sustained? Or is it time to dig in and really declare full throated
opposition?
(like the rest of your post, just think the time to avoid things is past)
Henry Moon Pie: So? Let's repeal the Wagner Act and Taft-Hartley. And let's not pre-defeat
ourselves.
Just as Lambert keeps reminding us, Who would have though five years ago that the momentum
is now toward single-payer health insurance even if the current couple of bills don't pass?
For years, John Conyers carried on the fight almost single-handedly. And now we have
influential physicians stumping for single-payer.
"... Amid the global financial crisis of 2008, a new chapter in the history of neoliberal globalization emerged. Simple assumptions about markets as pure and neutral arbiters of economic transactions faced new challenges from beyond the pages of economic history and sociology. ..."
"... The apparent triumph of global capitalism came into temporary question, and with it, the reigning economic paradigm of neoliberalism. ..."
"... The specter of the Occupy movement in 1011, with its sweeping critique of corporate power, took root in ways not seen in the United States since the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. ..."
"... In response, proponents of neoliberalism heightened their demands for a market-governed society, further tax cuts, deregulation, trade liberalization, and more. From the GOP and Tea Party's politics of austerity arose a fresh defense of free market politics in the United States, as well as a rcinvigorated denial of class as a structuring force in US society. These social tensions persist even as neoliberalism, as an ideology and a model for institutional restructuring, exhibits remarkable resilience. ..."
"... From the early 1980s onward, it provided the basic policy framework for "structural adjustment" in the global south, for "rescuing" the welfare state in the global north, and as a vision for a global economy unbound from centrally planned markets, dying industries, or rent-seeking interest groups. ..."
"... One cornerstone of this paradigm that remains mostly unchallenged among political elites is the principal of "free trade." Broadly speaking, neoliberalism and free trade have provided the ideological framework for most reciprocal trade agreements since the early 1980s, when President Reagan initiated a wave of new trade policies in February 1982 during a speech to the Organization of American States (OAS). ..."
"... This formulaic discourse of free markets, free trade, and personal liberty - hallmark features of Reagan's popular rhetoric - also captured what would later be acknowledged as core principles of an incipient neoliberal ideology that promised a restoration of US economic hegemony (Mudge 2008). Domestically and internationally, neoliberal trade proposals were generally presented in tandem with calls for privatization, deregulation, and a reduction in the size of government spending as a share of GDP. ..."
"... Was it the fever pitch of a new' policy ideology acted out by government partisans and policy makers committed to its mantra? Or did the very economic actors benefitting from market liberalization act politically and concertedly to unleash it? And if so, did this coordinated corporate political campaign arise from a reorganized and newly emboldened economic class, or simply through ad hoc alignments created by shared organizational interests? Specifically, can we detect class political signatures on the wave of free trade policies, like the CBI, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), or the World Trade Organization (WTO), that erected the institutional framework of neoliberal globalization? 6 ..."
"... We believe that our approach, rooted in the "elite studies" and "power structure" research traditions, expands (and, in some areas, corrects) conventional explanations of neoliberal trade and globalization that emphasize market, institutional, and ideological factors, while neglecting to incorporate a concept of class political action ..."
Amid the global financial crisis of 2008, a new chapter in the history of neoliberal
globalization emerged. Simple assumptions about markets as pure and neutral arbiters of
economic transactions faced new challenges from beyond the pages of economic history and
sociology.
The apparent triumph of global capitalism came into temporary question, and with it, the
reigning economic paradigm of neoliberalism. From the left wing of US politics, a newly
invigorated discourse of class and income inequality began to challenge corporate power with
calls for greater accountability on Wall Street. The specter of the Occupy movement in
1011, with its sweeping critique of corporate power, took root in ways not seen in the United
States since the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle.
In response, proponents of neoliberalism heightened their demands for a market-governed
society, further tax cuts, deregulation, trade liberalization, and more. From the GOP and Tea
Party's politics of austerity arose a fresh defense of free market politics in the United
States, as well as a rcinvigorated denial of class as a structuring force in US society. These
social tensions persist even as neoliberalism, as an ideology and a model for institutional
restructuring, exhibits remarkable resilience.
Neoliberalism - which promises to efficiently generate wealth while disciplining states and
bureaucracies with market forces - took shape over the course of decades. As a kind of
governing philosophy, it has been offered, variously, as a remedy for economic stagnation,
bureaucratic bloat, corruption, inflation, and more (Bourdieu 1999; Mirowski and Plehwe 2009;
Mudge 2008). From the early 1980s onward, it provided the basic policy framework for
"structural adjustment" in the global south, for "rescuing" the welfare state in the global
north, and as a vision for a global economy unbound from centrally planned markets, dying
industries, or rent-seeking interest groups.
One cornerstone of this paradigm that remains mostly unchallenged among political elites
is the principal of "free trade." Broadly speaking, neoliberalism and free trade have provided
the ideological framework for most reciprocal trade agreements since the early 1980s, when
President Reagan initiated a wave of new trade policies in February 1982 during a speech to the
Organization of American States (OAS). There, Reagan unilaterally called for a Caribbean
Basin Initiative (CBI) that would "make use of the magic of the marketplace of the Americas, to
earn their own way toward self-sustaining growth" (quoted in Polanyi-Levitt 1985: 232)/
This formulaic discourse of free markets, free trade, and personal liberty - hallmark
features of Reagan's popular rhetoric - also captured what would later be acknowledged as core
principles of an incipient neoliberal ideology that promised a restoration of US economic
hegemony (Mudge 2008). Domestically and internationally, neoliberal trade proposals were
generally presented in tandem with calls for privatization, deregulation, and a reduction in
the size of government spending as a share of GDP. 5
Although a large and varied group of economists, policy wonks, and government leaders
supported the general principles of neoliberal globalization, the "market fever" of the 1980s
did not spread simply because certain individuals espoused free trade and domestic
deregulation. The fact that many of these noncorporate actors assume a central role in many
popular and academic accounts of this era does not reduce the many empirical problems with this
view.
In particular, the problem with this "triumphant" vision of neoliberal history is the manner
in which the very engines of capital behind the market mania - globalizing corporations appear
as liberated historical agents acting out their market freedoms, not as class political actors
foisting new institutional realities on the world. We contest this prevailing view and instead
ask who liberated, or in Blyth's (2001) terminology, "disembedded," these markets from national
social and political institutions?
Was it the fever pitch of a new' policy ideology acted out by government partisans and
policy makers committed to its mantra? Or did the very economic actors benefitting from market
liberalization act politically and concertedly to unleash it? And if so, did this coordinated
corporate political campaign arise from a reorganized and newly emboldened economic class, or
simply through ad hoc alignments created by shared organizational interests? Specifically, can
we detect class political signatures on the wave of free trade policies, like the CBI, the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), or the World Trade Organization (WTO), that
erected the institutional framework of neoliberal globalization? 6
The answer to these questions and, in particular, the role of class agency within these
macroeconomic shifts, is not simply a question of whether one likes Karl Marx or Adam Smith.
Notwithstanding the recent tendency to equate the mention of class with "class warfare," it is
our contention that removing class from accounts of recent economic history creates, at best, a
narrow and distorted perspective on this important era. The primary purpose of this book, then,
is to introduce and empirically validate a concept of class agency that deepens our
understanding of both the trade policy-making apparatus as well as the neoliberal globalization
"project" more generally.
We believe that our approach, rooted in the "elite studies" and "power structure"
research traditions, expands (and, in some areas, corrects) conventional explanations of
neoliberal trade and globalization that emphasize market, institutional, and ideological
factors, while neglecting to incorporate a concept of class political action .
Our general line of argument historicizes US trade policy and neoliberal globalization,
highlighting the active and at times contradictory processes that shape the state and class
relationships responsible for propelling institutions, like the WTO, into existence. Following
McMichael (2001: 207), we concur that globalization is best understood as a "historical project
rather than a culminating process." Treating neoliberal trade policies as part of a much larger
historical project - made and remade by collective actors - offers a more realistic and
empirically grounded framework for exploring the intersection of class and state actors in the
political articulation of globalization.
Whereas much of the literature on globalization assigns an important role to the economic
activity of multinational corporations, the force of their collective political agency in
pressuring states to ratify trade agreements and enact institutional reforms is mostly
attributed to narrow sectoral interests, like factor mobility', economies of scale, or various
industry-specific characteristics...
"... There is a big difference between shills for corporate capitalism and imperialism, like Corey Booker and Van Jones, and true radicals like Glen Ford and Ajamu Baraka. The corporate state carefully selects and promotes women, or people of color, to be masks for its cruelty and exploitation. ..."
"... The feminist movement is a perfect example of this. The old feminism, which I admire, the Andrea Dworkin kind of feminism, was about empowering oppressed women. This form of feminism did not try to justify prostitution as sex work. It knew that it is just as wrong to abuse a woman in a sweatshop as it is in the sex trade. The new form of feminism is an example of the poison of neoliberalism. It is about having a woman CEO or woman president, who will, like Hillary Clinton, serve the systems of oppression. It posits that prostitution is about choice. What woman, given a stable income and security, would choose to be raped for a living? Identity politics is anti-politics. ..."
DN: What about the impact that you've seen of identity politics in America?
CH: Well, identity politics defines the immaturity of the left. The corporate state embraced
identity politics. We saw where identity politics got us with Barack Obama, which is worse than
nowhere. He was, as Cornel West said, a black mascot for Wall Street, and now he is going
around to collect his fees for selling us out.
My favorite kind of anecdotal story about identity politics: Cornel West and I, along with
others, led a march of homeless people on the Democratic National Convention session in
Philadelphia. There was an event that night. It was packed with hundreds of people, mostly
angry Bernie Sanders supporters. I had been asked to come speak. And in the back room, there
was a group of younger activists, one who said, "We're not letting the white guy go first."
Then he got up and gave a speech about how everybody now had to vote for Hillary Clinton.
That's kind of where identity politics gets you. There is a big difference between shills
for corporate capitalism and imperialism, like Corey Booker and Van Jones, and true radicals
like Glen Ford and Ajamu Baraka. The corporate state carefully selects and promotes women, or
people of color, to be masks for its cruelty and exploitation.
It is extremely important, obviously, that those voices are heard, but not those voices that
have sold out to the power elite. The feminist movement is a perfect example of this. The
old feminism, which I admire, the Andrea Dworkin kind of feminism, was about empowering
oppressed women. This form of feminism did not try to justify prostitution as sex work. It knew
that it is just as wrong to abuse a woman in a sweatshop as it is in the sex trade. The new
form of feminism is an example of the poison of neoliberalism. It is about having a woman CEO
or woman president, who will, like Hillary Clinton, serve the systems of oppression. It posits
that prostitution is about choice. What woman, given a stable income and security, would choose
to be raped for a living? Identity politics is anti-politics.
@Issac Nothing could be more laughable than to suggest sixty years of deck-stacking against
middle and working class whites was a design that favored them over minorities. Hedges clearly
hates those elites, but appears to share the majority of their biases. re: working class whites
Brilliant documentary by Louis Theroux, first aired last Sunday on BBC2
"... the lives of people in the Western world have reached levels of unprecedented material well-being and there is a middle class who are not emiserated materially. ..."
"... So the surplus value ( profit ) which is socially produced by a community gets appropriated and its potential productive value is turned to the use and benefit of a very tiny percentage of the population who produce the wealth socially, rather than redistributed into the community according to the wishes of the community. ..."
The 2000s were an extraordinary period for finance in terms of prices, profits, and volume of
transactions, but also in terms of influence and arrogance. By the middle of the decade a vast bubble
had been inflated in the US and the UK, the bursting of which could not be reliably timed but whose
aftermath was likely to be devastating. Trivial as this point might seem in 2013, it was almost impossible
to convey it at the time to spe- cialists and students of finance, and even to activists and socialists.
Public perceptions were dominated by the so-called expert skills of the financial system in 'slicing
and dicing' risk, and by the putative wisdom of the 'Great Moderation' in inflation policy. Structural
crises were a thing of the past, or of the developing world, not of mature countries, where institutions
were strong and economists well trained. It seemed that finance had discovered the perpetuum mobile
of profit making.
By the middle of the first decade of the new century, it was also apparent that the processes
under way amounted to more than financial excess. The bubble reflected profound changes in the conduct
of non-financial enterprises, banks, and households. Alter years of financial ascendancy, the agents
of capitalist accumulation assigned to financial operations a weight that was historically unprecedented.
Finance was pivotal to profit making and to organizing everyday life, but also to determining economic
policy as a whole. Mature capitalism had become financialized.
This book was initially conceived in that context, and its aim was to analyse the ascendancy of
finance and the concomitant financialization of capitalism. By bringing to bear previous work on
money and finance, the intention was to develop a theoretical analysis of financialization with clear
Marxist characteristics. It was to be a book that would draw on Anglo-Saxon political economy and
Japanese Uno Marxism, while being familiar with mainstream theory of money and finance. It would
thus contribute to filling the hole still gaping in political economy in this field.
As is often the case with plans of this sort, reality intervened. In August 2007 the US money
market had a heart attack, and in August-September 2008 the global financial system had a near-death
experience. The bubble had indeed burst and a catastrophe was in the offing. The destructive influence
of finance on the rest of the economy had become evident, as had the role of the state in supporting
and promoting financialization. More than that, however, it soon became clear that this was a structural
crisis that would not go away quickly. The bursting of the bubble had ushered in a crisis of financialization
that cast fresh light on the historic transformation of mature capitalism during the preceding decades.
It became necessary to re-examine the underlying tendencies of financialization, focusing in particular
on the sources of financial profit. The book would have to be delayed.
And then in 2010-2012 the crisis took an even more dangerous turn. States had become perilously
exposed to debt because recession had reduced tax revenues, while rescuing finance had imposed fresh
costs on the exchequer. A bubble inflated by private capital had resulted in a crisis of public finance.
Rising state indebtedness created turmoil of extraordinary ferocity in the eurozone, bringing into
sharp relief the split between core and periphery, pushing several peripheral countries toward default,
and threatening a break-up of the monetary union. The spectre of a gigantic crisis hung over the
world economy. It became clear that financialization would have to be rethought still further in
view of its monetary dimension, particularly the precariousness of its domestic and international
monetary underpinnings.
The crisis was far from over at the time of writing this book. However, the temptation had to
be resisted to delay publication still further in the expectation that other important features of
financialization would emerge. It was time to submit to the public sphere the analysis of the structural
and historical content of financialization, even if that meant trying to hit a moving target. The
monetary and financial aspects of the transformation of capitalism during the last four decades have
been increasingly discussed by political economy, particularly its Marxist strain. This book has
a distinctive argument to make regarding financialization, including particularly the predatory and
expropriating character of financial profit and its implications for social stratification. Light
could thus be shed on the tendency to crisis that has characterized financialization since its inception.
The concept of "casino capitalism" which was put forward by Susan Strange in her 1983 book
is closely related to the concept of "financialization". So this is not new and not the first
attempt to analyze this aspect of neoliberalism. But the author managed to write a very interesting
and insightful book.
Again, the fact that financialization is at the core of neoliberalism (as the term "Casino Capitalism"
implies) is well established, but the details of how this mechanism works and how finance institutions
position themselves under neoliberalism as universal intermediaries of almost any economic and
even social activity: education (via student loans), pensions (via 401k Plans), heath (via heath
insurance), consumption (via credit cards), extracting rents from each of them is not well known
or understood.
This is the area in which this book provide some deep insights. Brief overview of the book from
the author can be found in his lecture on YouTube (Profiting Without Producing How Finance Exploits
Us All -- A lecture by Costas Lapavitsas ) and in his Guardian article "Finance's hold on our
everyday life must be broken ".
Converting the whole economy into one giant casino where you can bet on almost anything, commodities
prices, interests rate and even volatility of the market has profound social effects. And those
effects are different on large enterprises and small enterprises and population at large.
The author argues that "Financialization represents a historic and deep-seated transformation
of mature capitalism. Big businesses have become "financialised" as they have ample profits to
finance investment, rely less on banks for loans and play financial games with available funds.
Big banks, in turn, have become more distant from big businesses, turning to profits from trading
in open financial markets and from lending to households. Households have become "financialised"
too, as public provision in housing, education, health, pensions and other vital areas has been
partly replaced by private provision, access to which is mediated by the financial system. Not
surprisingly, households have accumulated a tremendous volume of financial assets and liabilities
over the past four decades. "
When like in casino sheer luck begins to determine more and more of what happens to financial
well-being of people due to their exposition to stock markets (hypertrophied under neoliberalism
into some incredible monster due to 401K plans participation) , and skill, effort, initiative,
determination and hard work count for less and less, then inevitably faith and confidence in the
social and political system quickly fades.
That's what happened with casino capitalism in the USA and that's why Trump was elected.
Paradoxically, as people more and more play in stock market (including with their 401K money)
then respect the system less and less. In a way neoliberalism brings with is 'casino capitalism"
mentality" its own demise. Frustration and anger become sharper and prone to be violently expressed
when the realm of inequality becomes too large and when the system seems to operate so very unequally
and biased toward the top 1% or, more correctly, the top 0.01%. While many people find themselves
without jobs and without any opportunity to earn a decent living. Thrown out of "economy for winners."
That's the problem Pope Francis "LAUDATO SI" was devoted to.
As author states "This book has a distinctive argument to make regarding financialization, including
particularly the predatory and expropriating character of financial profit and its implications
for social stratification. Light could thus be shed on the tendency to crisis that has characterized
financialization since its inception."
I discovered this book by chance. The title looked intriguing and I have seen very few books about
financialization, so I decided to read it. It was good enough to keep my interest, despite the
influence by the distorting lens of Marxist thought. It doesn't live up to its title of showing
how financial people profit without producing and exploit us all. (I make an exception for those
in government who do that.) Indeed, despite "exploit" in the subtitle, it appears in the book
only two other places, which likely helped hold my interest. Also, the writing was good.
The author makes a fundamental distinction between productive capital and financial capital.
Add '-ist' to each to denote the people. I think it's safe to say the book implicitly says:
1. The former are capital providers who also work in the productive business. The business
produces non-financial products, e.g. food, or services, e.g. transportation.
2. The latter provide the non-financial business capital but don't work in said business, like
outside stockholders, bondholders and lenders.
Lenders are mostly banks. The author is not critical of productive capital, but, as a Marxist,
he regards financial capitalists as expropriators who profit without producing. The fact that
many of these financial capitalists are individuals who worked productively for decades and are
now retired and depend on income from said capital for living expenses is conveniently omitted.
Marx's notions of money and exchange value are flawed. Firstly, money is the medium of _indirect_
exchange, which Marx didn't recognize and Lapavitsas's reference to Carl Menger didn't recognize.
Also, Austrians like Menger realize that indirect exchange increases with the division of labor.
Despite its huge significance, division of labor is an idea barely worth mention by Marx, and
then only negatively. Also, indirect exchange encompasses more than just "spot market" exchanges.
It includes X now for Y later, like in a forward or futures contract. It also includes both X
and Y being money and Y is indeterminate when X occurs. X and Y may even be in different currencies
and utilize a financial mediator.
Page 200 says, "the financial system is an intermediate entity that does not produce value."
Page 201 says the financial system's services include creation of credit money, safekeeping of
funds, money transfers, facilitating foreign exchange, mobilization of loanable capital, and turning
that into loans. "The financial, consequently, acts as the nerves and brains of the capitalist
economy." Extending his metaphor, what he considers the productive part of the economy must be
the bones, muscle, and other organs. If that isn't a bad analogy, it's an amazing contradiction
of Marxist thought unrecognized by the author. It implies that the nerves and brains of an animal's
body provide no value to the rest of the body.
Marxist thought cherry-picks who is a producer or worker. Those in roles readily visible to
making products or providing services, and roles easy to understand rank high. Roles less visible
and understandable like research and development, executive-level decision-making, marketing,
and especially financial people rank low and may even be considered expropriators. Union leaders
and organizers whose livelihood is extracted from union dues? Many government employees? While
the author gives a significant role to governments (states) and central banks in financialization,
Lapavitsas blames mostly financial capitalists. Governments and central banks are more like their
assistants. However, what people typically call "capitalist economies" are more properly called
"mixed economies" with extensive government control well beyond prevention and punishment for
coercion and fraud. So assigning all blame to capitalism is quite biased.
Interest is often not simply exploitation of labor. It is mainly a reward for savings and the
cost of borrowing. The author occasionally refers to savings with the perjorative term "hoarding."
Consider those retirees mentioned above again.
The author often attributes to surplus value predation and exploitation, as if all surplus
value does is put money in the financial capitalist's pocket and extracts from labor. Not so.
Surplus value, i.e. profit, is often the source of funds for growth, upgrades, and replacement
of old capital. The author himself acknowledges this when he writes about 'internal' financing,
along with graphs showing 'internal' financing over time averaging about 100% in the U.S. He does
not integrate these two things, which shows an incoherence in Marxist thought. Surplus value can
also be the reward from entrepreneurship.
About mortgages the author says: "In short, the money revenue of workers is transformed into
loanable capital at a stroke, allowing financial intermediaries to absorb parts of it as financial
profit by trading securities that are based on future wage payments. The path is thus opened for
financial institutions to bring to bear predatory practices reflecting the systematic difference
in power and outlook between financial institutions and workers" (p. 167).
My comments:
1. Loanable capital doesn't arise simply because a worker wants a mortgage. Unless the money
is newly created "out of thin air" by government-backed banks, loanable capital is the result
of somebody saving, the saver not spending the money on something else.
2. The worker's future wages are in fact a condition for obtaining the mortgage. Rather than
being exploited, the worker is given the opportunity to become a homeowner at the stroke of a
pen.
3. Regarding working people you know who have purchased a house with a mortgage, which may
include you, have they felt elated or exploited?
4. All or most working people living in many of the poorer countries of the world can't even
get a mortgage. There is not enough savings to offer loanable capital to support a mortgage market.
5. Granted, there have been victims of predatory practices by lenders, but lenders also become
victims if the borrower defaults on the mortgage. Also, such predatory practices by lenders is
a recent phenomena for a _part_ of the market for mortgages, hardly characteristic of the mortgage
market generally.
Chapter 9 is a pretty good description of the recent financial crisis. It also covers different
Marxist theories about how crises develop. All typically claim that capitalism is inherently unstable
due to 'contradictions' in production. Unlike free market advocates, they hardly ever cite government
intervention as a cause of instability. They don't distinguish between a capitalist economy and
mixed economy.
The final chapter, Controlling Finance, addresses what has been done and what the author wishes
can be done. It makes an interesting distinction between market-negating and market-conforming
regulation. I don't agree with the author's utopian visions about government ownership and/or
control of finance. Indeed, I found it puzzling to see after (1) his earlier saying elected politicians
are plain dishonest (p. 195), (2) describing how much states and central banks have aided financial
capitalists in recent decades with deregulation and bailouts, and (3) his saying "there are no
clear paths to regulatory change" (p. 324). By the way, a good way to avoid such utopian visions
is to compare East and West Germany, North and South Korea, and the USSR and the USA.
This reviewer is more concerned with trying to critique Marx than this book. Needless to say,
the second someone says surplus value = profit ( not to mention the muddle that surplus value
can come from entrepreneurship) you know there is something wrong...
Fenton: "The contradictions of money are fairly evident from this point."
A thing having more than one attribute does not make a "contradiction." I suggest you learn
some logic.
Fenton: "Difference between capitalist and mixed economy makes no sense."
I suppose the difference between voluntary and coerced, or non-political versus political,
makes no sense to you either.
Fenton: "For Marx, who lived in the 19th century, the idea of a "free market" made no sense
at all."
No wonder he was so confused and fabricated nonsense about it.
Fenton: "The USA practiced protectionism to build up its industrial capacity, the USSR directed
production from central committee."
The consequence of USSR's centrally-directed agricultural production was millions dying by
starvation. Ditto for China. Perhaps you should read the histories of countries that have implemented
Marxist ideas. While I don't approve of protectionism, it is paltry compared to millions dying
by starvation.
Fenton: "This review ... is laden with ideological positions."
People without an intimate knowledge of Marxism should probably refrain from commenting on
it like they know what they are talking about. First of all, Marx's theory of money does account
for "indirect" exchange: this is key to his entire dialectical edifice. Prices do not equal values,
they are merely representations of value (i.e., exchange value). But Marx's theory of money is
even more complex, and rests on a three-fold determination of money as 1.) measure of value, 2.)
means of circulation and exchange (your "indirect" means), and 3.) store of value. The contradictions
of money are fairly evident from this point. The Austrians assume the problematic position by
conflating the value of money with its price: it is what it is. Their wholesale acceptance of
Say's Law is troubling too, considering they accept money as "indirect" means of exchange. But
by failing to recognize money's other determinations, they basically treat it as direct exchange
in theorem.
Secondly, to claim that the division of labor is an afterthought for Marxist thought is asinine.
It is literally at the core of his entire Critique. Marx actually has a rosier interpretation
of it than Adam Smith (see book 3 Wealth of Nations). Marx's entire critique of political economy
(read: critique of economic science and practice) is that capitalists need to extract surplus
value from nominally free workers. How do they do this? Both absolutely, by extending duration
of work day, and relatively, buy increasing productivity (in practice, Marx acknowledges that
we can see a combination of both). This is not visible in the wage or in the act of exchange,
but in the relations of production and the dual character of the commodity "labor-power." But
the division of labor is actually the basis for new forms of "Co-operation" (perhaps the best
chapter in Capital Vol. I) and solidarity. It is dialectical. If you only see the negative in
Marx it is because you have an ideological predisposition to dislike his work, or you don't understand
how dialectics work--I would say it is probably both.
M-C-M' (circuit of expanded production); M-M' (fictitious capital arising from speculative
credit economy). You need to read about this on your own. Central to the entire argument in Capital.
I don't think you understand Marx's notion of "exploitation," which I have briefly summarized
above. It is not treating someone badly, it is not some morally repugnant slavery, per se. It
is a legal means of covering the ways in which surpluses are generated in capitalist society.
Workers make things but never receive the values they produce back as wages. There is a temporal
issue at play, but it is all highly predicated on how capitalists must work: they need to constantly
expand their capital (increase profits and invest those profits into expanding production, etc.,
accumulation for accumulation's sake). A capitalist pays a worker a certain wage, the worker works
as the capitalist wants him/her to, the worker produces something they don't have control over,
the capitalist receives (if the product can find a market) money back from that product that needs
to be more than the outlays in fixed capital (buildings, supplies, equipment) and variable capital
(labor) he originally spent to produce. This is exploitation. Mortgaging and other consumption-based
loans are basically a means of recouping surpluses that were paid to workers in wages. Marx clearly
does not buy into any these of material immiseration (Ricardo's Iron law of wages), nor does he
deny the productive capabilities of capitalist economies. He says workers can get paid more for
labor-power than the value of labor, it is in Capital. This is part of the entire business cycle
theory Marx develops.
Difference between capitalist and mixed economy makes no sense. It is a product of ridiculous
bifurcation of economic and political spheres prevalent in bourgeois (liberal) thought, hence
economic liberalism and political liberalism. Capitalist economies are characterized by the generalization
of the commodity, wage labor, and private (i.e., not collective, which a class of government bureaucrats
certainly aren't) ownership of the means of production (factories, tools, etc.). Marx and later
Marxist show exactly how something like a welfare state is untenable, the law of value prohibits
it. This goes back to your issue understanding what productive laborers are for Marx (btw, research
and development is part of productive labor). For Marx, who lived in the 19th century (read Karl
Polanyi's Great Transformation), the idea of a "free market" made no sense at all. The political
and economic forces were aligned, forcing peasants from their lands and into towns and factories
("On so-called Primitive Accumulation"). But why should we avoid utopian visions by comparing
"mixed economies" with "mixed economies"? Perhaps you should read the histories about the countries
you listed. The USA practiced protectionism to build up its industrial capacity, the USSR directed
production from central committee. South Korean had a capitalist dictator who controlled the entire
country and murdered anyone with communist sympathies, the North did roughly the same thing. Two
sides of the same coin. The real utopia is the "free market." It never has and never will exist
because there are too many factors that impinge upon it. If you want to see something approximating
a "free market" come down to Latin America. Even in "socialist" Ecuador things are more laissez-faire.
I have not read this book yet, but I plan to. This review shows an utter lack of understand,
however, for even the most basic points of Marxist critiques. It is laden with ideological positions
and insinuates a variety of banalities about Marxism and communism which don't hold true on close
scrutiny of Marx's work. Please educate yourself.
There is a critical response to your example of house ownership. Again that gets very complex
but, just a part of that response, to your 2nd point:
"2. The worker's future wages are in fact a condition for obtaining the mortgage. Rather than
being exploited, the worker is given the opportunity to become a homeowner at the stroke of a
pen."
This could be described as a bargain with the devil. The worker has to work extra to pay 3
times the current market value of the home due to the interest. The capitalist makes a good profit
out of that.
So what I think you miss here is a connection between capitalism criticised as a means of exploitation
and capitalism described as a working economic system with its own character and good and bad
points.
So what is being gotten at, amongst other points, in Marxist critiques of capitalism is that:
Capitalism is a very productive system
Its productivity has to do with the division of labour and refinements of productive activity
which is linked into supply and demand
But Marx's point, amongst others, was that this would lead to a polarisation into a class
of capitalists who became richer through appropriation of surplus value (including its redeployment
in further profit producing enterprises) and those "workers" who produce by transforming the
raw materials into actual goods and services who become or remain emiserated over time. The
rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
This last point 3 is quite possibly historically inaccurate in the sense that capitalism
is enormously productive and has produced increasing levels of material well being through
this increased production. Hence the lives of people in the Western world have reached
levels of unprecedented material well-being and there is a middle class who are not emiserated
materially.
But there is some sort of residual truth in that given the increasing levels of inequality
on the one hand and global impoverishment on the other. In respect of global impoverishment it
is credible to propose that the billions who live in poverty can't attain to the levels of affluence
in the West due to the ecological limits of capitalism - that the western lifestyle of the wealthy
is a phantasmorgoria to them. So its arguable that an alternative means that might be more socialist
might in fact be needed for that relief of impoverishment to happen. That proposal needs to be
moderated by the fact that there is a lot that can be done through refinements of production without
coming into conflict with those ecological limits. For instance cities could be made a lot more
liveable without increasing ecological damage.
So the main point that you miss (in an otherwise clear critical statement) is that a tiny percentage
of the global population own and control a huge percentage of the world's wealth.
In part this is done through the translation of the production of goods and services into financial
ie monetary equivalents which is distributed through private ownership and systems thereof into
further capitalist enterprise. That seems to me what the book is actually getting at.
So I would think that "exploitation" would need to be conceived of as some sort of taking of
an undeserved share of the productive potential of a social project ie the surplus value that
is produced (surplus to whatever is needed for production or reproduction) then that becomes exclusively
available to the capitalist entrepreneur who then reinvests it unlocking further profitability
and production. So its the productive potential for further deployment that is expropriated by
the capitalist entrepreneur.
This surplus value is produced by all those who work in the enterprise, in other words socially,
but then that is leveraged into further productive activity which in turn increases the financial
wealth of the capitalist. The entrepreneurial capitalist is also, initially, a participating worker,
eg an organiser, co-ordinator, innovator and even sometimes an inventor but once enough surplus
value is realised the system begins to work for him instead of his own activity being responsible
so he makes a transition himself. Eventually the entrepreneurial capitalist is virtually free
from the necessity of work.
So the surplus value ( profit ) which is socially produced by a community gets appropriated
and its potential productive value is turned to the use and benefit of a very tiny percentage
of the population who produce the wealth socially, rather than redistributed into the community
according to the wishes of the community.
Most of these comments of mine are, I know, just partial thoughts needing to be made more adequate
rather than completed. I am not a committed Marxist but neither am I in love with capitalism as
a system. In fact I wouldn't claim much authority here just a partial understanding at a preliminary
sort of level of something complex that I don't understand fully. The mixed modes that you talk
about seem to me part of a continuing search for ways of reconciling socialism and capitalism.
Hence my way of expressing this as what he or Marx is "trying to get at".
"... Billionaires in the commercial conglomerates, like Walmart, exploit workers by paying poverty wages and providing few, if any, benefits. Walmart earns $16 billion dollar a year in profits by paying its workers between $10 and $13 an hour and relying on state and federal assistance to provide services to the families of its impoverished workers through Medicaid and food stamps. ..."
"... Inequality is not a result of 'technology' and 'education'- contemporary euphemisms for the ruling class cult of superiority – as liberals and conservative economists and journalists like to claim. Inequalities are a result of low wages, based on big profits, financial swindles, multi-trillion dollar public handouts and multi-billion-dollar tax evasion. ..."
"... Workers pay disproportional taxes for education, health, social and public services and subsidies for billionaires ..."
"... First and foremost, billionaires and their political, legal and corporate associates dominate the political parties. They designate the leaders and key appointees, thus ensuring that budgets and policies will increase their profits, erode social benefits for the masses and weaken the political power of popular organizations ..."
"... As a result, wage and salary workers are less organized and less influential; they work longer and for less pay, suffer greater workplace insecurity and injuries – physical and mental – fall into decline and disability, drop out of the system, die earlier and poorer, and, in the process, provide unimaginable profits for the billionaire class ..."
"... The bulk of repatriated profits are directed to buy back stock to increase dividends for investors; they are not invested in the productive economy. Lower taxes and greater profits for conglomerates means more buy-outs and greater outflows to low wage countries. In real terms taxes are already less than half the headline rate and are a major factor heightening the concentration of income and power – both cause and effect. ..."
"... In other words, the capitalist class as a whole, globalist and domestic alike, pursues the same regressive policies, promoting inequalities while struggling over shares of the profits. One hundred and fifty million wage and salaried taxpayers are excluded from the political and social decisions that directly affect their income, employment, rates of taxation, and political representation. ..."
"... However, worker hostility and despair is directed against 'immigrants' and against the 'liberals' who have backed the import of cheap skilled and semi-skilled labor under the guise of 'freedom'. This 'politically correct' image of imported labor covers up a policy, which has served to lower wages, benefits and living standards for American workers, whether they are in technology, construction or production. ..."
"... The pro and anti-immigrant issue avoids the root cause for the economic exploitation and social degradation of the working class – the billionaire owners operating in alliance with the political elite. ..."
Billionaires in the commercial conglomerates, like Walmart, exploit workers by paying
poverty wages and providing few, if any, benefits. Walmart earns $16 billion dollar a year in
profits by paying its workers between $10 and $13 an hour and relying on state and federal
assistance to provide services to the families of its impoverished workers through Medicaid and
food stamps. Amazon plutocrat Jeff Bezos exploits workers by paying $12.50 an hour while he has
accumulated over $80 billion dollars in profits. UPS CEO David Albany takes $11 million a year
by exploiting workers at $11 an hour. Federal Express CEO, Fred Smith gets $16 million and pays
workers $11 an hour.
Inequality is not a result of 'technology' and 'education'- contemporary euphemisms for the
ruling class cult of superiority – as liberals and conservative economists and
journalists like to claim. Inequalities are a result of low wages, based on big profits,
financial swindles, multi-trillion dollar public handouts and multi-billion-dollar tax evasion.
The ruling class has mastered the 'technology' of exploiting the state, through its pillage of
the treasury, and the working class. Capitalist exploitation of low paid production workers
provides additional billions for the 'philanthropic' billionaire family foundations to polish
their public image – using another tax avoidance gimmick – self-glorifying
'donations'.
Workers pay disproportional taxes for education, health, social and public services and
subsidies for billionaires.
Billionaires in the arms industry and security/mercenary conglomerates receive over $700
billion dollars from the federal budget, while over 100 million US workers lack adequate health
care and their children are warehoused in deteriorating schools.
Workers and Bosses: Mortality Rates
Billionaires and multi-millionaires and their families enjoy longer and healthier lives than
their workers. They have no need for health insurance policies or public hospitals. CEO's live
on average ten years longer than a worker and enjoy twenty years more of healthy and pain-free
lives.
Private, exclusive clinics and top medical care include the most advanced treatment and safe
and proven medication which allow billionaires and their family members to live longer and
healthier lives. The quality of their medical care and the qualifications of their medical
providers present a stark contrast to the health care apartheid that characterizes the rest of
the United States.
Workers are treated and mistreated by the health system: They have inadequate and often
incompetent medical treatment, cursory examinations by inexperienced medical assistants and end
up victims of the widespread over-prescription of highly addictive narcotics and other
medications. Over-prescription of narcotics by incompetent 'providers' has significantly
contributed to the rise in premature deaths among workers, spiraling cases of opiate overdose,
disability due to addiction and descent into poverty and homelessness. These irresponsible
practices have made additional billions of dollars in profits for the insurance corporate
elite, who can cut their pensions and health care liabilities as injured, disabled and addicted
workers drop out of the system or die.
The shortened life expectancy for workers and their family members is celebrated on Wall
Street and in the financial press. Over 560,000 workers were killed by opioids between
1999-2015 contributing to the decline in life expectancy for working age wage and salary
earners and reduced pension liabilities for Wall Street and the Social Security
Administration.
Inequalities are cumulative, inter-generational and multi-sectorial.
Billionaire families, their children and grandchildren, inherit and invest billions. They
have privileged access to the most prestigious schools and medical facilities, and conveniently
fall in love to equally privileged, well-connected mates to join their fortunes and form even
greater financial empires. Their wealth buys favorable, even fawning, mass media coverage and
the services of the most influential lawyers and accountants to cover their swindles and tax
evasion.
Billionaires hire innovators and sweat shop MBA managers to devise more ways to slash wages,
increase productivity and ensure that inequalities widen even further. Billionaires do not have
to be the brightest or most innovative people: Such individuals can simply be bought or
imported on the 'free market' and discarded at will.
Billionaires have bought out or formed joint ventures with each other, creating interlocking
directorates. Banks, IT, factories, warehouses, food and appliance, pharmaceuticals and
hospitals are linked directly to political elites who slither through doors of rotating
appointments within the IMF, the World Bank, Treasury, Wall Street banks and prestigious law
firms.
Consequences of Inequalities
First and foremost, billionaires and their political, legal and corporate associates
dominate the political parties. They designate the leaders and key appointees, thus ensuring
that budgets and policies will increase their profits, erode social benefits for the masses and
weaken the political power of popular organizations .
Secondly, the burden of the economic crisis is shifted on to the workers who are fired and
later re-hired as part-time, contingent labor. Public bailouts, provided by the taxpayer, are
channeled to the billionaires under the doctrine that Wall Street banks are too big to fail and
workers are too weak to defend their wages, jobs and living standards.
Billionaires buy political elites, who appoint the World Bank and IMF officials tasked with
instituting policies to freeze or reduce wages, slash corporate and public health care
obligations and increase profits by privatizing public enterprises and facilitating corporate
relocation to low wage, low tax countries.
As a result, wage and salary workers are less organized and less influential; they work
longer and for less pay, suffer greater workplace insecurity and injuries – physical and
mental – fall into decline and disability, drop out of the system, die earlier and
poorer, and, in the process, provide unimaginable profits for the billionaire class . Even
their addiction and deaths provide opportunities for huge profit – as the Sackler Family,
manufacturers of Oxycontin, can attest.
The billionaires and their political acolytes argue that deeper regressive taxation would
increase investments and jobs. The data speaks otherwise. The bulk of repatriated profits
are directed to buy back stock to increase dividends for investors; they are not invested in
the productive economy. Lower taxes and greater profits for conglomerates means more buy-outs
and greater outflows to low wage countries. In real terms taxes are already less than half the
headline rate and are a major factor heightening the concentration of income and power –
both cause and effect.
Corporate elites, the billionaires in the Silicon Valley-Wall Street global complex are
relatively satisfied that their cherished inequalities are guaranteed and expanding under the
Demo-Republican Presidents- as the 'good times' roll on.
Away from the 'billionaire elite', the 'outsiders' – domestic capitalists –
clamor for greater public investment in infrastructure to expand the domestic economy, lower
taxes to increase profits, and state subsidies to increase the training of the labor force
while reducing funds for health care and public education. They are oblivious to the
contradiction.
In other words, the capitalist class as a whole, globalist and domestic alike, pursues the
same regressive policies, promoting inequalities while struggling over shares of the
profits. One hundred and fifty million wage and salaried taxpayers are excluded from the political
and social decisions that directly affect their income, employment, rates of taxation, and
political representation. They understand, or at least experience, how the class system works. Most workers know about
the injustice of the fake 'free trade' agreements and regressive tax regime, which weighs heavy
on the majority of wage and salary earners.
However, worker hostility and despair is directed against 'immigrants' and against the
'liberals' who have backed the import of cheap skilled and semi-skilled labor under the guise
of 'freedom'. This 'politically correct' image of imported labor covers up a policy, which has
served to lower wages, benefits and living standards for American workers, whether they are in
technology, construction or production. Rich conservatives, on the other hand, oppose
immigration under the guise of 'law and order' and to lower social expenditures – despite
that fact that they all use imported nannies, tutors, nurses, doctors and gardeners to service
their families. Their servants can always be deported when convenient.
The pro and anti-immigrant issue avoids the root cause for the economic exploitation and
social degradation of the working class – the billionaire owners operating in alliance
with the political elite.
In order to reverse the regressive tax practices and tax evasion, the low wage cycle and the
spiraling death rates resulting from narcotics and other preventable causes, which profit
insurance companies and pharmaceutical billionaires, class alliances need to be forged linking
workers, consumers, pensioners, students, the disabled, the foreclosed homeowners, evicted
tenants, debtors, the under-employed and immigrants as a unified political force.
Sooner said than done, but never tried! Everything and everyone is at stake: life, health
and happiness.
Ronald Reagan can be blamed for the excess of billionaires we now have. His lauding of the
entrepreneurial spirit and how we are all brave individual risk takers makes it seem you are
an envious chickensh$t if you advocate against unlimited assets.
But even Warren Buffet has come out for the estate tax saying something like now the
Forbes 400 now possesses total assets of 2.5 trillion in a 20 trillion economy when 40 years
ago they totaled in the millions. The legal rule against perpetuities generally used to limit
trusts to a lifetime of 100 years, now some states offer 1000 year trusts which will only
concretize an outlandishly high Gini coefficient(a measure of income inequality).
The rationale for lowering taxes and the untouchable rich is usually the trickle down theory
but, as one of these billionaires said, "How many pairs of pants can I buy?" It takes 274
years spending 10,000 a day to spend a billion dollars.
Better Henry Ford's virtuous circle than Ronald Reagan's entrepreneur.
Ban all billionaires. Bring back the union label. Otherwise .. what do we have to lose?
@Wally
"According to the US Internal Revenue Service, billionaire tax evasion amounts to $458
billion dollars in lost public revenues every year – almost a trillion dollars every
two years by this conservative estimate."
No, it's $458 billion that the government has not managed to steal.
https://www.ronpaul.com/taxes/
An income tax is the most degrading and totalitarian of all possible taxes. Its
implementation wrongly suggests that the government owns the lives and labor of the
citizens it is supposed to represent.
Tellingly, "a heavy progressive or graduated income tax" is Plank #2 of the Communist
Manifesto, which was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and first published in
1848.
To provide funding for the federal government, Ron Paul supports excise taxes,
non-protectionist tariffs, massive cuts in spending
"We could eliminate the income tax, replace it with nothing, and still fund the same
level of big government we had in the late 1990s. We don't need to "replace" the income tax
at all. I see a consumption tax as being a little better than the personal income tax, and
I would vote for the Fair-Tax if it came up in the House of Representatives, but it is not
my goal. We can do better."
https://youtu.be/qI5lC4Z_T80
No, it's $458 billion that the government has not managed to steal.
There was a time that I would have agreed with that, and technically still get the point,
but what it really means is that the government merely allows the corporations which they
favor, subsidize, and bail out to keep the chump change they've stolen from the workers,
besides that which the government steals from the workers and hands to the corporations.
Corporations and government work hand in hand to fleece the herd and most of the herd
apparently think it's just fine.
Never forget that thanks to government, corporations socialize risk while privatizing
profit. They are partners in gangsterism.
Private, exclusive clinics and top medical care include the most advanced treatment and
safe and proven medication which allow billionaires and their family members to live longer
and healthier lives.
Sorry, I don't buy the notion that billionaires have access to some super-healthcare that
the rest of us don't know about. In the real world rich people notoriously waste a lot of
money on quackery, like the current fad of receiving plasma transfusions from young people as
a phony "anti-aging" treatment.
More likely the kinds of men who become billionaires just enjoy better health and
longevity for genetic reasons. They tend to have higher IQ's, for example, and some
scientists think that IQ correlates with "system integrity" in their bodies which just make
higher IQ people more resilient. Look up the growing body of research on cognitive
epidemiology.
I'm disappointed there was no mention of the "Billionaires" use of social media. They've
always controlled the press of course: startin' wars, hatin' on those guys, gettin' the blood
up, jailin' the 'bad guys', preaching an empty delusion of social justice propaganda, payin'
Ken Burns to propagandize and put a new coat of paint on the industrial scale killing of
Vietnam. Probably just in time for more violence.
Let's face it, many of the workin' stiff will blow a hedge fund manager and kneel before
the so-called free market corpse of Sam Walton but most importantly they'll grab their guns
outa' patriotic fervor and social media will be right there with 'em. "I love Elon Musk!"
It's a great thing we're watched and datamined for our own good – information is how
billionaires became billionaires along with a lot of help from the Government they usually
encourage you to dislike. Keep posting!
Rich conservatives, on the other hand, oppose immigration under the guise of 'law and
order' and to lower social expenditures – despite that fact that they all use imported
nannies, tutors, nurses, doctors and gardeners to service their families. Their servants can
always be deported when convenient.
BZZZZ – wrong. Rich conservative support massive immigration so they can get cheap
labor while simutaneously virtue signaling. I thought you just got done sayiong they don't
pay for the costs of the working poor? The middle class is who is against immigratioin. They
bear the burden and pay the taxes that support it.
"... Nothing does more to damage to the interests of runaway Capital than restricting immigration labour supply and creating a more homogeneous politi that has a greater sense of ownership of the nation. ..."
"... Nothing solidifies neo-liberalism like mass migration. ..."
Nothing does more to damage to the interests of runaway Capital than restricting
immigration labour supply and creating a more homogeneous politi that has a greater sense of
ownership of the nation.
Nothing solidifies neo-liberalism like mass migration.
Brazil will never be Denmark. Icelanders young and old, mothers with their small children
were able to assemble and demand justice, they actually got it and a few of the bankers were
jailed because they were a highly cohesive, homogeneous community with a sense of ownership
of their nation. (For a little while anyway, mass pressure from the US and other governments
to do away with any unpleasant examples lead to appallingly early releases)
There is nothing else to discuss at this point. Tax rates and regulations can be changed
and will be changed back and forth.
If Chomsky wants to play pretend that it's 1968 that's his business, but if he has himself
fallen so deep into the very elitist narratives he professes to challenge and advocate
essentially open borders (A position even the likes of Sanders not too long ago were very
much aware was the greatest threat to reducing inequality and social democracy.) for
socialism, there is no hope.
Sadly Chomsky seems to relish the idea of ethnic cleansing of whites in opposition to
everything he claimed he stood for for decades. In doing so, for (((no apparent reason))), he
simply becomes another alt-right meme.
IT is probably one of the most "neoliberalized" industry (even in comparison with
finance). So atomization of labor and "plantation economy" is a norm in IT. It occurs on
rather high level of wages, but with influx of foreign programmers and IT specialists (in the past)
and mass outsourcing (now) this is changing. Completion for good job positions is fierce. Dog eats
dog competition, the dream of neoliberals. Entry level jobs are already paying $15 an hour, if not
less.
Programming is a relatively rare talent, much like ability to play violin. Even amateur level is
challenging. On high level (developing large complex programs in a team and still preserving your individuality
and productivity ) it is extremely rare. Most of "commercial" programmers are able to produce only a
mediocre code (which might be adequate). Only a few programmers can excel if complex software projects.
Sometimes even performing solo. There is also a pathological breed of "programmer junkie"
( graphomania happens in programming
too ) who are able sometimes to destroy something large projects singlehandedly. That often happens
with open source projects after the main developer lost interest and abandoned the project.
It's good to allow children the chance to try their hand at coding when they otherwise may not had
that opportunity, But in no way that means that all of them can became professional programmers. No
way. Again the top level of programmers required position of a unique talent, much like top musical
performer talent.
Also to get a decent entry position you iether need to be extremely talented or graduate from Ivy
League university. When applicants are abundant, resume from less prestigious universities are not even
considered. this is just easier for HR to filter applications this way.
Also under neoliberalism cheap labor via H1B visas flood the market and depresses wages. Many Silicon
companies were so to say "Russian speaking in late 90th after the collapse of the USSR. Not offshoring
is the dominant way to offload the development to cheaper labor.
Notable quotes:
"... As software mediates more of our lives, and the power of Silicon Valley grows, it's tempting to imagine that demand for developers is soaring. The media contributes to this impression by spotlighting the genuinely inspiring stories of those who have ascended the class ladder through code. You may have heard of Bit Source, a company in eastern Kentucky that retrains coalminers as coders. They've been featured by Wired , Forbes , FastCompany , The Guardian , NPR and NBC News , among others. ..."
"... A former coalminer who becomes a successful developer deserves our respect and admiration. But the data suggests that relatively few will be able to follow their example. Our educational system has long been producing more programmers than the labor market can absorb. ..."
"... More tellingly, wage levels in the tech industry have remained flat since the late 1990s. Adjusting for inflation, the average programmer earns about as much today as in 1998. If demand were soaring, you'd expect wages to rise sharply in response. Instead, salaries have stagnated. ..."
"... Tech executives have pursued this goal in a variety of ways. One is collusion – companies conspiring to prevent their employees from earning more by switching jobs. The prevalence of this practice in Silicon Valley triggered a justice department antitrust complaint in 2010, along with a class action suit that culminated in a $415m settlement . Another, more sophisticated method is importing large numbers of skilled guest workers from other countries through the H1-B visa program. These workers earn less than their American counterparts, and possess little bargaining power because they must remain employed to keep their status. ..."
"... Guest workers and wage-fixing are useful tools for restraining labor costs. But nothing would make programming cheaper than making millions more programmers. ..."
"... Silicon Valley has been unusually successful in persuading our political class and much of the general public that its interests coincide with the interests of humanity as a whole. But tech is an industry like any other. It prioritizes its bottom line, and invests heavily in making public policy serve it. The five largest tech firms now spend twice as much as Wall Street on lobbying Washington – nearly $50m in 2016. The biggest spender, Google, also goes to considerable lengths to cultivate policy wonks favorable to its interests – and to discipline the ones who aren't. ..."
"... Silicon Valley is not a uniquely benevolent force, nor a uniquely malevolent one. Rather, it's something more ordinary: a collection of capitalist firms committed to the pursuit of profit. And as every capitalist knows, markets are figments of politics. They are not naturally occurring phenomena, but elaborately crafted contraptions, sustained and structured by the state – which is why shaping public policy is so important. If tech works tirelessly to tilt markets in its favor, it's hardly alone. What distinguishes it is the amount of money it has at its disposal to do so. ..."
"... The problem isn't training. The problem is there aren't enough good jobs to be trained for ..."
"... Everyone should have the opportunity to learn how to code. Coding can be a rewarding, even pleasurable, experience, and it's useful for performing all sorts of tasks. More broadly, an understanding of how code works is critical for basic digital literacy – something that is swiftly becoming a requirement for informed citizenship in an increasingly technologized world. ..."
"... But coding is not magic. It is a technical skill, akin to carpentry. Learning to build software does not make you any more immune to the forces of American capitalism than learning to build a house. Whether a coder or a carpenter, capital will do what it can to lower your wages, and enlist public institutions towards that end. ..."
"... Exposing large portions of the school population to coding is not going to magically turn them into coders. It may increase their basic understanding but that is a long way from being a software engineer. ..."
"... All schools teach drama and most kids don't end up becoming actors. You need to give all kids access to coding in order for some can go on to make a career out of it. ..."
"... it's ridiculous because even out of a pool of computer science B.Sc. or M.Sc. grads - companies are only interested in the top 10%. Even the most mundane company with crappy IT jobs swears that they only hire "the best and the brightest." ..."
"... It's basically a con-job by the big Silicon Valley companies offshoring as many US jobs as they can, or "inshoring" via exploitation of the H1B visa ..."
"... Masters is the new Bachelors. ..."
"... I taught CS. Out of around 100 graduates I'd say maybe 5 were reasonable software engineers. The rest would be fine in tech support or other associated trades, but not writing software. Its not just a set of trainable skills, its a set of attitudes and ways of perceiving and understanding that just aren't that common. ..."
"... Yup, rings true. I've been in hi tech for over 40 years and seen the changes. I was in Silicon Valley for 10 years on a startup. India is taking over, my current US company now has a majority Indian executive and is moving work to India. US politicians push coding to drive down wages to Indian levels. ..."
This month, millions of children returned to school. This year, an unprecedented number of them
will learn to code.
Computer science courses for children have proliferated rapidly in the past few years. A 2016
Gallup
report found that 40% of American schools now offer coding classes – up from only 25% a few years
ago. New York, with the largest public school system in the country, has
pledged to offer computer science to all 1.1 million students by 2025. Los Angeles, with the
second largest,
plans to do the same by 2020. And Chicago, the fourth largest, has gone further,
promising to make computer science a high school graduation requirement by 2018.
The rationale for this rapid curricular renovation is economic. Teaching kids how to code will
help them land good jobs, the argument goes. In an era of flat and falling incomes, programming provides
a new path to the middle class – a skill so widely demanded that anyone who acquires it can command
a livable, even lucrative, wage.
This narrative pervades policymaking at every level, from school boards to the government. Yet
it rests on a fundamentally flawed premise. Contrary to public perception, the economy doesn't actually
need that many more programmers. As a result, teaching millions of kids to code won't make them all
middle-class. Rather, it will proletarianize the profession by flooding the market and forcing wages
down – and that's precisely the point.
At its root, the campaign for code education isn't about giving the next generation a shot at
earning the salary of a Facebook engineer. It's about ensuring those salaries no longer exist, by
creating a source of cheap labor for the tech industry.
As software mediates more of our lives, and the power of Silicon Valley grows, it's tempting to
imagine that demand for developers is soaring. The media contributes to this impression by spotlighting
the genuinely inspiring stories of those who have ascended the class ladder through code. You may
have heard of Bit Source, a company in eastern Kentucky that retrains coalminers as coders. They've
been featured by
Wired
,
Forbes ,
FastCompany ,
The Guardian ,
NPR and
NBC
News , among others.
A former coalminer who becomes a successful developer deserves our respect and admiration. But
the data suggests that relatively few will be able to follow their example. Our educational system
has long been producing more programmers than the labor market can absorb. A
study by the Economic Policy Institute found that the supply of American college graduates with
computer science degrees is 50% greater than the number hired into the tech industry each year. For
all the talk of a tech worker shortage, many qualified graduates simply can't find jobs.
More tellingly, wage levels in the tech industry have remained flat since the late 1990s. Adjusting
for inflation, the average programmer earns about as much today as in 1998. If demand were soaring,
you'd expect wages to rise sharply in response. Instead, salaries have stagnated.
Still, those salaries are stagnating at a fairly high level. The Department of Labor estimates
that the median annual wage for computer and information technology occupations is $82,860 – more
than twice the national average. And from the perspective of the people who own the tech industry,
this presents a problem. High wages threaten profits. To maximize profitability, one must always
be finding ways to pay workers less.
Tech executives have pursued this goal in a variety of ways. One is collusion – companies conspiring
to prevent their employees from earning more by switching jobs. The prevalence of this practice in
Silicon Valley triggered a justice department
antitrust complaint in 2010, along with a class action suit that culminated in a $415m
settlement . Another, more sophisticated method is importing
large numbers of skilled guest workers from other countries through the H1-B visa program. These
workers earn less than their
American counterparts, and possess little bargaining power because they must remain employed to keep
their status.
Guest workers and wage-fixing are useful tools for restraining labor costs. But nothing would
make programming cheaper than making millions more programmers. And where better to develop
this workforce than America's schools? It's no coincidence, then, that the campaign for code education
is being orchestrated by the tech industry itself. Its primary instrument is Code.org, a nonprofit
funded by Facebook, Microsoft, Google and
others . In 2016, the organization spent
nearly $20m on training teachers, developing curricula, and lobbying policymakers.
Silicon Valley has been unusually successful in persuading our political class and much of the
general public that its interests coincide with the interests of humanity as a whole. But tech is
an industry like any other. It prioritizes its bottom line, and invests heavily in making public
policy serve it. The five largest tech firms now
spend twice as much as Wall Street on lobbying Washington – nearly $50m in 2016. The biggest
spender, Google, also goes to considerable lengths to
cultivate policy wonks favorable to its interests – and to
discipline the ones who aren't.
Silicon Valley
is not a uniquely benevolent force, nor a uniquely malevolent one. Rather, it's something more ordinary:
a collection of capitalist firms committed to the pursuit of profit. And as every capitalist knows,
markets are figments of politics. They are not naturally occurring phenomena, but elaborately crafted
contraptions, sustained and structured by the state – which is why shaping public policy is so important.
If tech works tirelessly to tilt markets in its favor, it's hardly alone. What distinguishes it is
the amount of money it has at its disposal to do so.
Money isn't Silicon Valley's only advantage in its
crusade to remake American education, however. It also enjoys a favorable ideological climate.
Its basic message – that schools alone can fix big social problems – is one that politicians of both
parties have been repeating for years. The far-fetched premise of neoliberal school reform is that
education can mend our disintegrating social fabric. That if we teach students the right skills,
we can solve poverty, inequality and stagnation. The school becomes an engine of economic transformation,
catapulting young people from challenging circumstances into dignified, comfortable lives.
This argument is immensely pleasing to the technocratic mind. It suggests that our core economic
malfunction is technical – a simple asymmetry. You have workers on one side and good jobs
on the other, and all it takes is training to match them up. Indeed, every president since Bill Clinton
has talked about training American workers to fill the "skills gap". But gradually, one mainstream
economist after another has come to realize what most workers have known for years: the gap doesn't
exist. Even Larry Summers has
concluded it's a myth.
The problem isn't training. The problem is there aren't enough good jobs to be trained for
. The solution is to make bad jobs better, by raising the minimum wage and making it easier for workers
to form a union, and to create more good jobs by investing for growth. This involves forcing business
to put money into things that actually grow the productive economy rather than
shoveling profits out to shareholders. It also means increasing public investment, so that people
can make a decent living doing socially necessary work like decarbonizing our energy system and restoring
our decaying infrastructure.
Everyone should have the opportunity to learn how to code. Coding can be a rewarding, even pleasurable,
experience, and it's useful for performing all sorts of tasks. More broadly, an understanding of
how code works is critical for basic digital literacy – something that is swiftly becoming a requirement
for informed citizenship in an increasingly technologized world.
But coding is not magic. It is a technical skill, akin to carpentry. Learning to build software
does not make you any more immune to the forces of American capitalism than learning to build a house.
Whether a coder or a carpenter, capital will do what it can to lower your wages, and enlist public
institutions towards that end.
Silicon Valley has been extraordinarily adept at converting previously uncommodified portions
of our common life into sources of profit. Our schools may prove an easy conquest by comparison.
"Everyone should have the opportunity to learn how to code. " OK, and that's what's being done.
And that's what the article is bemoaning. What would be better: teach them how to change tires
or groom pets? Or pick fruit? Amazingly condescending article.
However, training lots of people to be coders won't automatically result in lots of people
who can actually write good code. Nor will it give managers/recruiters the necessary skills
to recognize which programmers are any good.
A valid rebuttal but could I offer another observation? Exposing large portions of the school
population to coding is not going to magically turn them into coders. It may increase their basic
understanding but that is a long way from being a software engineer.
Just as children join art, drama or biology classes so they do not automatically become artists,
actors or doctors. I would agree entirely that just being able to code is not going to guarantee
the sort of income that might be aspired to. As with all things, it takes commitment, perseverance
and dogged determination. I suppose ultimately it becomes the Gattaca argument.
Fair enough, but, his central argument, that an overabundance of coders will drive wages in that
sector down, is generally true, so in the future if you want your kids to go into a profession
that will earn them 80k+ then being a "coder" is not the route to take. When coding is - like
reading, writing, and arithmetic - just a basic skill, there's no guarantee having it will automatically
translate into getting a "good" job.
This article lumps everyone in computing into the 'coder' bin, without actually defining what
'coding' is. Yes there is a glut of people who can knock together a bit of HTML and
JavaScript, but that is not really programming as such.
There are huge shortages of skilled
developers however; people who can apply computer science and engineering in terms of
analysis and design of software. These are the real skills for which relatively few people
have a true aptitude.
The lack of really good skills is starting to show in some terrible
software implementation decisions, such as Slack for example; written as a web app running in
Electron (so that JavaScript code monkeys could knock it out quickly), but resulting in awful
performance. We will see more of this in the coming years...
My brother is a programmer, and in his experience these coding exams don't test anything but
whether or not you took (and remember) a very narrow range of problems introduce in the first
years of a computer science degree. The entire hiring process seems premised on a range of
ill-founded ideas about what skills are necessary for the job and how to assess them in
people. They haven't yet grasped that those kinds of exams mostly test test-taking ability,
rather than intelligence, creativity, diligence, communication ability, or anything else that
a job requires beside coughing up the right answer in a stressful, timed environment without
outside resources.
I'm an embedded software/firmware engineer. Every similar engineer I've ever met has had the same
background - starting in electronics and drifting into embedded software writing in C and assembler.
It's virtually impossible to do such software without an understanding of electronics. When it
goes wrong you may need to get the test equipment out to scope the hardware to see if it's a hardware
or software problem. Coming from a pure computing background just isn't going to get you a job
in this type of work.
All schools teach drama and most kids don't end up becoming actors. You need to give all kids
access to coding in order for some can go on to make a career out of it.
Coding salaries will inevitably fall over time, but such skills give workers the option, once
they discover that their income is no longer sustainable in the UK, of moving somewhere more affordable
and working remotely.
Completely agree. Coding is a necessary life skill for 21st century but there are levels to every
skill. From basic needs for an office job to advanced and specialised.
Lots of people can code but very few of us ever get to the point of creating something new that
has a loyal and enthusiastic user-base. Everyone should be able to code because it is or will
be the basis of being able to create almost anything in the future. If you want to make a game
in Unity, knowing how to code is really useful. If you want to work with large data-sets, you
can't rely on Excel and so you need to be able to code (in R?). The use of code is becoming so
pervasive that it is going to be like reading and writing.
All the science and engineering graduates I know can code but none of them have ever sold a
stand-alone software. The argument made above is like saying that teaching everyone to write will
drive down the wages of writers. Writing is useful for anyone and everyone but only a tiny fraction
of people who can write, actually write novels or even newspaper columns.
Immigrants have always a big advantage over locals, for any company, including tech companies:
the government makes sure that they will stay in their place and never complain about low salaries
or bad working conditions because, you know what? If the company sacks you, an immigrant may be
forced to leave the country where they live because their visa expires, which is never going to
happen with a local. Companies always have more leverage over immigrants. Given a choice between
more and less exploitable workers, companies will choose the most exploitable ones.
Which is something that Marx figured more than a century ago, and why he insisted that socialism
had to be international, which led to the founding of the First International Socialist. If worker's
fights didn't go across country boundaries, companies would just play people from one country
against the other. Unfortunately, at some point in time socialists forgot this very important
fact.
SO what's wrong with having lots of people able to code? The only argument you seem to have is
that it'll lower wages. So do you think that we should stop teaching writing skills so that journalists
can be paid more? And no one os going to "force" kids into high-level abstract coding practices
in kindergarten, fgs. But there is ample empirical proof that young children can learn basic principles.
In fact the younger that children are exposed to anything, the better they can enhance their skills
adn knowlege of it later in life, and computing concepts are no different.
You're completely missing the point. Kids are forced into the programming field (even STEM as
a more general term), before they evolve their abstract reasoning. For that matter, you're not
producing highly skilled people, but functional imbeciles and a decent labor that will eventually
lower the wages.
Conspiracy theory? So Google, FB and others paying hundreds of millions of dollars for forming
a cartel to lower the wages is not true? It sounds me that you're sounding more like a 1969 denier
that Guardian is. Tech companies are not financing those incentives because they have a good soul.
Their primary drive has always been money, otherwise they wouldn't sell your personal data to
earn money.
But hey, you can always sleep peacefully when your kid becomes a coder. When he is 50, everyone
will want to have a Cobol, Ada programmer with 25 years of experience when you can get 16 year
old kid from a high school for 1/10 of a price. Go back to sleep...
it's ridiculous because even out of a pool of computer science B.Sc. or M.Sc. grads - companies
are only interested in the top 10%. Even the most mundane company with crappy IT jobs swears that
they only hire "the best and the brightest."
It's basically a con-job by the big Silicon Valley companies offshoring as many US jobs as
they can, or "inshoring" via exploitation of the H1B visa - so they can say "see, we don't
have 'qualified' people in the US - maybe when these kids learn to program in a generation." As
if American students haven't been coding for decades -- and saw their salaries plummet as the
H1B visa and Indian offshore firms exploded......
Dude, stow the attitude. I've tested code from various entities, and seen every kind of crap peddled
as gold.
But I've also seen a little 5-foot giggly lady with two kids, grumble a bit and save a $100,000
product by rewriting another coder's man-month of work in a few days, without any flaws or cracks.
Almost nobody will ever know she did that. She's so far beyond my level it hurts.
And yes, the author knows nothing. He's genuinely crying wolf while knee-deep in amused wolves.
The last time I was in San Jose, years ago , the room was already full of people with Indian
surnames. If the problem was REALLY serious, a programmer from POLAND was called in.
If you think fighting for a violinist spot is hard, try fighting for it with every spare violinist
in the world . I am training my Indian replacement to do my job right now
. At least the public can appreciate a good violin. Can you appreciate
Duff's device ?
So by all means, don't teach local kids how to think in a straight line, just in case they
make a dent in the price of wages IN INDIA.... *sheesh*
That's the best possible summarisation of this extremely dumb article. Bravo.
For those who don't know how to think of coding, like the article author, here's a few analogies
:
A computer is a box that replays frozen thoughts, quickly. That is all.
Coding is just the art of explaining. Anyone who can explain something patiently and clearly,
can code. Anyone who can't, can't.
Making hardware is very much like growing produce while blind. Making software is very much
like cooking that produce while blind.
Imagine looking after a room full of young eager obedient children who only do exactly, *exactly*,
what you told them to do, but move around at the speed of light. Imagine having to try to keep
them from smashing into each other or decapitating themselves on the corners of tables, tripping
over toys and crashing into walls, etc, while you get them all to play games together.
The difference between a good coder and a bad coder is almost life and death. Imagine a broth
prepared with ingredients from a dozen co-ordinating geniuses and one idiot, that you'll mass
produce. The soup is always far worse for the idiot's additions. The more cooks you involve, the
more chance your mass produced broth will taste bad.
People who hire coders, typically can't tell a good coder from a bad coder.
No you do it in your own time. If you're not prepared to put in long days IT is not for you in
any case. It was ever thus, but more so now due to offshoring - rather than the rather obscure
forces you seem to believe are important.
Sorry, offworldguy, but you're losing this one really badly. I'm a professional software engineer
in my 60's and I know lots of non-professionals in my age range who write little programs,
scripts and apps for fun. I know this because they often contact me for help or advice.
So you've now been told by several people in this thread that ordinary people do code for fun
or recreation. The fact that you don't know any probably says more about your network of friends
and acquaintances than about the general population.
This is one of the daftest articles I've come across in a long while.
If it's possible that so many kids can be taught to code well enough so that wages come down,
then that proves that the only reason we've been paying so much for development costs is the scarcity
of people able to do it, not that it's intrinsically so hard that only a select few could anyway.
In which case, there is no ethical argument for keeping the pools of skilled workers to some select
group. Anyone able to do it should have an equal opportunity to do it.
What is the argument for not teaching coding (other than to artificially keep wages high)? Why
not stop teaching the three R's, in order to boost white-collar wages in general?
Computing is an ever-increasingly intrinsic part of life, and people need to understand it at
all levels. It is not just unfair, but tantamount to neglect, to fail to teach children all the
skills they may require to cope as adults.
Having said that, I suspect that in another generation or two a good many lower-level coding jobs
will be redundant anyway, with such code being automatically generated, and "coders" at this level
will be little more than technicians setting various parameters. Even so, understanding the basics
behind computing is a part of understanding the world they live in, and every child needs that.
Suggesting that teaching coding is some kind of conspiracy to force wages down is well, it makes
the moon-landing conspiracy looks sensible by comparison.
I think it is important to demystify advanced technology, I think that has importance in its own
right.Plus, schools should expose kids to things which may spark their interest. Not everyone
who does a science project goes on years later to get a PhD, but you'd think that it makes it
more likely. Same as giving a kid some music lessons. There is a big difference between serious
coding and the basic steps needed to automate a customer service team or a marketing program,
but the people who have some mastery over automation will have an advantage in many jobs. Advanced
machines are clearly going to be a huge part of our future. What should we do about it, if not
teach kids how to understand these tools?
This is like arguing that teaching kids to write is nothing more than a plot to flood the market
for journalists. Teaching first aid and CPR does not make everyone a doctor.
Coding is an essential skill for many jobs already: 50 years ago, who would have thought you needed
coders to make movies? Being a software engineer, a serious coder, is hard. IN fact, it takes
more than technical coding to be a software engineer: you can learn to code in a week. Software
Engineering is a four year degree, and even then you've just started a career. But depriving kids
of some basic insights may mean they won't have the basic skills needed in the future, even for
controlling their car and house. By all means, send you kids to a school that doesn't teach coding.
I won't.
Did you learn SNOBOL, or is Snowball a language I'm not familiar with? (Entirely possible, as
an American I never would have known Extended Mercury Autocode existed we're it not for a random
book acquisition at my home town library when I was a kid.)
The tide that is transforming technology jobs from "white collar professional" into "blue collar
industrial" is part of a larger global economic cycle.
Successful "growth" assets inevitably transmogrify into "value" and "income" assets as they
progress through the economic cycle. The nature of their work transforms also. No longer focused
on innovation; on disrupting old markets or forging new ones; their fundamental nature changes
as they mature into optimising, cost reducing, process oriented and most importantly of all --
dividend paying -- organisations.
First, the market invests. And then, .... it squeezes.
Immature companies must invest in their team; must inspire them to be innovative so that they
can take the creative risks required to create new things. This translates into high skills, high
wages and "white collar" social status.
Mature, optimising companies on the other hand must necessarily avoid risks and seek variance-minimising
predictability. They seek to control their human resources; to eliminate creativity; to to make
the work procedural, impersonal and soulless. This translates into low skills, low wages and "blue
collar" social status.
This is a fundamental part of the economic cycle; but it has been playing out on the global
stage which has had the effect of hiding some of its' effects.
Over the past decades, technology knowledge and skills have flooded away from "high cost" countries
and towards "best cost" countries at a historically significant rate. Possibly at the maximum
rate that global infrastructure and regional skills pools can support. Much of this necessarily
inhumane and brutal cost cutting and deskilling has therefore been hidden by the tide of outsourcing
and offshoring. It is hard to see the nature of the jobs change when the jobs themselves are changing
hands at the same time.
The ever tighter ratchet of dehumanising industrialisation; productivity and efficiency continues
apace, however, and as our global system matures and evens out, we see the seeds of what we have
sown sail home from over the sea.
Technology jobs in developed nations have been skewed towards "growth" activities since for
the past several decades most "value" and "income" activities have been carried out in developing
nations. Now, we may be seeing the early preparations for the diffusion of that skewed, uneven
and unsustainable imbalance.
The good news is that "Growth" activities are not going to disappear from the world. They just
may not be so geographically concentrated as they are today. Also, there is a significant and
attention-worthy argument that the re-balancing of skills will result in a more flexible and performant
global economy as organisations will better be able to shift a wider variety of work around the
world to regions where local conditions (regulation, subsidy, union activity etc...) are supportive.
For the individuals concerned it isn't going to be pretty. And of course it is just another
example of the race to the bottom that pits states and public sector purse-holders against one
another to win the grace and favour of globally mobile employers.
As a power play move it has a sort of inhumanly psychotic inevitability to it which is quite
awesome to observe.
I also find it ironic that the only way to tame the leviathan that is the global free-market
industrial system might actually be effective global governance and international cooperation
within a rules-based system.
Both "globalist" but not even slightly both the same thing.
not just coders, it put even IT Ops guys into this bin. Basically good old - so you are working
with computers sentence I used to hear a lot 10-15 years ago.
You can teach everyone how to code but it doesn't necessarily mean everyone will be able to work
as one. We all learn math but that doesn't mean we're all mathematicians. We all know how to write
but we're not all professional writers.
I have a graduate degree in CS and been to a coding bootcamp. Not everyone's brain is wired
to become a successful coder. There is a particular way how coders think. Quality of a product
will stand out based on these differences.
Very hyperbolic is to assume that the profit in those companies is done by decreasing wages. In
my company the profit is driven by ability to deliver products to the market. And that is limited
by number of top people (not just any coder) you can have.
You realise that the arts are massively oversupplied and that most artists earn very little, if
anything? Which is sort of like the situation the author is warning about. But hey, he knows nothing.
Congratulations, though, on writing one of the most pretentious posts I've ever read on CIF.
So you know kids, college age people and software developers who enjoy doing it in their leisure
time? Do you know any middle aged mothers, fathers, grandparents who enjoy it and are not
software developers?
Sorry, I don't see coding as a leisure pursuit that is going to take off
beyond a very narrow demographic and if it becomes apparent (as I believe it will) that there
is not going to be a huge increase in coding job opportunities then it will likely wither in schools
too, perhaps replaced by music lessons.
No, because software developer probably fail more often than they succeed. Building anything worthwhile
is an iterative process. And it's not just the compiler but the other devs, oyur designer, your
PM, all looking at your work.
It's not shallow or lazy. I also work at a tech company and it's pretty common to do that across
job fields. Even in HR marketing jobs, we hire students who can't point to an internship or other
kind of experience in college, not simply grades.
A lot of people do find it fun. I know many kids - high school and young college age - who code
in the leisure time because they find it pleasurable to make small apps and video games. I myself
enjoy it too. Your argument is like saying since you don't like to read books in your leisure
time, nobody else must.
The point is your analogy isn't a good one - people who learn to code can not only enjoy it
in their spare time just like music, but they can also use it to accomplish all kinds of basic
things. I have a friend who's a software developer who has used code to program his Roomba to
vacuum in a specific pattern and to play Candy Land with his daughter when they lost the spinner.
Creativity could be added to your list. Anyone can push a button but only a few can invent a new
one.
One company in the US (after it was taken over by a new owner) decided it was more profitable
to import button pushers from off-shore, they lost 7 million customers (gamers) and had to employ
more of the original American developers to maintain their high standard and profits.
So similar to 500k a year people going to university ( UK) now when it used to be 60k people a
year( 1980). There was never enough graduate jobs in 1980 so can't see where the sudden increase
in need for graduates has come from.
They aren't really crucial pieces of technology except for their popularity
It's early in the day for me, but this is the most ridiculous thing I've read so far, and I
suspect it will be high up on the list by the end of the day.
There's no technology that is "crucial" unless it's involved in food, shelter or warmth. The
rest has its "crucialness" decided by how widespread its use is, and in the case of those 3 languages,
the answer is "very".
You (or I) might not like that very much, but that's how it is.
My benchmark would be if the average new graduate in the discipline earns more or less than one
of the "professions", Law, medicine, Economics etc. The short answer is that they don't. Indeed,
in my experience of professions, many good senior SW developers, say in finance, are paid markedly
less than the marketing manager, CTO etc. who are often non-technical.
My benchmark is not "has a car, house etc." but what does 10, 15 20 years of experience in
the area generate as a relative income to another profession, like being a GP or a corporate solicitor
or a civil servant (which is usually the benchmark academics use for pay scaling). It is not to
denigrate, just to say that markets don't always clear to a point where the most skilled are the
highest paid.
I was also suggesting that even if you are not intending to work in the SW area, being able
to translate your imagination into a program that reflects your ideas is a nice life skill.
Your assumption has no basis in reality. In my experience, as soon as Clinton ramped up H1Bs,
my employer would invite 6 same college/degree/curriculum in for interviews, 5 citizen,
1 foreign student and default offer to foreign student without asking interviewers a single question
about the interview. Eventually, the skipped the farce of interviewing citizens all together.
That was in 1997, and it's only gotten worse. Wall St's been pretty blunt lately. Openly admits
replacing US workers for import labor, as it's the "easiest" way to "grow" the economy, even though
they know they are ousting citizens from their jobs to do so.
"People who get Masters and PhD's in computer science" Feed western universities money, for degree
programs that would otherwise not exist, due to lack of market demand. "someone has a Bachelor's
in CS" As citizens, having the same college/same curriculum/same grades, as foreign grad. But
as citizens, they have job market mobility, and therefore are shunned. "you can make something
real and significant on your own" If someone else is paying your rent, food and student loans
while you do so.
While true, it's not the coders' fault. The managers and execs above them have intentionally created
an environment where these things are secondary. What's primary is getting the stupid piece of
garbage out the door for Q profit outlook. Ship it amd patch it.
Do most people find it fun? I can code. I don't find it 'fun'. Thirty years ago as a young graduate
I might have found it slightly fun but the 'fun' wears off pretty quick.
In my estimation PHP is an utter abomination. Python is just a little better but still very bad.
Ruby is a little better but still not at all good.
Languages like PHP, Python and JS are popular for banging out prototypes and disposable junk,
but you greatly overestimate their importance. They aren't really crucial pieces of technology
except for their popularity and while they won't disappear they won't age well at all. Basically
they are big long-lived fads. Java is now over 20 years old and while Java 8 is not crucial, the
JVM itself actually is crucial. It might last another 20 years or more. Look for more projects
like Ceylon, Scala and Kotlin. We haven't found the next step forward yet, but it's getting more
interesting, especially around type systems.
A strong developer will be able to code well in a half dozen languages and have fairly decent
knowledge of a dozen others. For me it's been many years of: Z80, x86, C, C++, Java. Also know
some Perl, LISP, ANTLR, Scala, JS, SQL, Pascal, others...
This makes people like me with 35 years of experience shipping products on deadlines up and down
every stack (from device drivers and operating systems to programming languages, platforms and
frameworks to web, distributed computing, clusters, big data and ML) so much more valuable. Been
there, done that.
It's just not true. In SV there's this giant vacuum created by Apple, Google, FB, etc. Other good
companies struggle to fill positions. I know from being on the hiring side at times.
Plenty of people? I don't know of a single person outside of my work which is teaming with programmers.
Not a single friend, not my neighbours, not my wife or her extended family, not my parents. Plenty
of people might do it but most people don't.
Agreed: by gifted I did not meant innate. It's more of a mix of having the interest, the persistence,
the time, the opportunity and actually enjoying that kind of challenge.
While some of those
things are to a large extent innate personality traits, others are not and you don't need max
of all of them, you just need enough to drive you to explore that domain.
That said, somebody that goes into coding purelly for the money and does it for the money alone
is extremely unlikelly to become an exceptional coder.
I'm as senior as they get and have interviewed quite a lot of programmers for several positions,
including for Technical Lead (in fact, to replace me) and so far my experience leads me to believe
that people who don't have a knack for coding are much less likely to expose themselves to many
different languages and techniques, and also are less experimentalist, thus being far less likely
to have those moments of transcending merely being aware of the visible and obvious to discover
the concerns and concepts behind what one does. Without those moments that open the door to the
next Universe of concerns and implications, one cannot do state transitions such as Coder to Technical
Designer or Technical Designer to Technical Architect.
Sure, you can get the title and do the things from the books, but you will not get WHY are
those things supposed to work (and when they will not work) and thus cannot adjust to new conditions
effectively and will be like a sailor that can't sail away from sight of the coast since he can't
navigate.
All this gets reflected in many things that enhance productivity, from the early ability to
quickly piece together solutions for a new problem out of past solutions for different problems
to, later, conceiving software architecture designs fittted to the typical usage pattern in the
industry for which the software is going to be made.
From the way our IT department is going, needing millions of coders is not the future. It'll be
a minority of developers at the top, and an army of low wage monkeys at the bottom who can troubleshoot
from a script - until AI comes along that can code faster and more accurately.
Interesting piece that's fundamentally flawed. I'm a software engineer myself. There is a reason
a University education of a minimum of three years is the base line for a junior developer or
'coder'.
Software engineering isn't just writing code. I would say 80% of my time is spent designing
and structuring software before I even touch the code.
Explaining software engineering as a discipline at a high level to people who don't understand
it is simple.
Most of us who learn to drive learn a few basics about the mechanics of a car. We know that
brake pads need to be replaced, we know that fuel is pumped into an engine when we press the gas
pedal. Most of us know how to change a bulb if it blows.
The vast majority of us wouldn't be able to replace a head gasket or clutch though. Just knowing
the basics isn't enough to make you a mechanic.
Studying in school isn't enough to produce software engineers. Software engineering isn't just
writing code, it's cross discipline. We also need to understand the science behind the computer,
we need too understand logic, data structures, timings, how to manage memory, security, how databases
work etc.
A few years of learning at school isn't nearly enough, a degree isn't enough on its own due
to the dynamic and ever evolving nature of software engineering. Schools teach technology that
is out of date and typically don't explain the science very well.
This is why most companies don't want new developers, they want people with experience and
multiple skills.
Programming is becoming cool and people think that because of that it's easy to become a skilled
developer. It isn't. It takes time and effort and most kids give up.
French was on the national curriculum when I was at school. Most people including me can't
hold a conversation in French though.
Ultimately there is a SKILL shortage. And that's because skill takes a long time, successes
and failures to acquire. Most people just give up.
This article is akin to saying 'schools are teaching basic health to reduce the wages of Doctors'.
It didn't happen.
There is a difference. When you teach people music you teach a skill that can be used for a lifetimes
enjoyment. One might sit at a piano in later years and play. One is hardly likely to 'do a bit
of coding' in ones leisure time.
The other thing is how good are people going to get at coding and how long will they retain
the skill if not used? I tend to think maths is similar to coding and most adults have pretty
terrible maths skills not venturing far beyond arithmetic. Not many remember how to solve a quadratic
equation or even how to rearrange some algebra.
One more thing is we know that if we teach people music they will find a use for it, if only
in their leisure time. We don't know that coding will be in any way useful because we don't know
if there will be coding jobs in the future. AI might take over coding but we know that AI won't
take over playing piano for pleasure.
If we want to teach logical thinking then I think maths has always done this and we should
make sure people are better at maths.
Am I missing something here? Being able to code is a skill that is a useful addition to the skill
armoury of a youngster entering the work place. Much like reading, writing, maths... Not only
is it directly applicable and pervasive in our modern world, it is built upon logic.
The important point is that American schools are not ONLY teaching youngsters to code, and
producing one dimensional robots... instead coding makes up one part of their overall skill set.
Those who wish to develop their coding skills further certainly can choose to do so. Those who
specialise elsewhere are more than likely to have found the skills they learnt whilst coding useful
anyway.
I struggle to see how there is a hidden capitalist agenda here. I would argue learning the
basics of coding is simply becoming seen as an integral part of the school curriculum.
The word "coding" is shorthand for "computer programming" or "software development" and it masks
the depth and range of skills that might be required, depending on the application.
This subtlety is lost, I think, on politicians and perhaps the general public. Asserting that
teaching lots of people to code is a sneaky way to commodotise an industry might have some truth
to it, but remember that commodotisation (or "sharing and re-use" as developers might call it)
is nothing new. The creation of freely available and re-usable software components and APIs has
driven innovation, and has put much power in the hands of developers who would not otherwise have
the skill or time to tackle such projects.
There's nothing to fear from teaching more people to "code", just as there's nothing to fear
from teaching more people to "play music". These skills simply represent points on a continuum.
There's room for everyone, from the kid on a kazoo all the way to Coltrane at the Village Vanguard.
I taught CS. Out of around 100 graduates I'd say maybe 5 were reasonable software engineers.
The rest would be fine in tech support or other associated trades, but not writing software. Its
not just a set of trainable skills, its a set of attitudes and ways of perceiving and understanding
that just aren't that common.
I can't understand the rush to teach coding in schools. First of all I don't think we are going
to be a country of millions of coders and secondly if most people have the skills then coding
is hardly going to be a well paid job. Thirdly you can learn coding from scratch after school
like people of my generation did. You could argue that it is part of a well rounded education
but then it is as important for your career as learning Shakespeare, knowing what an oxbow lake
is or being able to do calculus: most jobs just won't need you to know.
While you roll on the floor laughing, these countries will slowly but surely get their act together.
That is how they work. There are top quality coders over there and they will soon promoted into
a position to organise the others.
You are probably too young to remember when people laughed at electronic products when they
were made in Japan then Taiwan. History will repeat it's self.
Yes it's ironic and no different here in the UK. Traditionally Labour was the party focused on
dividing the economic pie more fairly, Tories on growing it for the benefit of all. It's now completely
upside down with Tories paying lip service to the idea of pay rises but in reality supporting
this deflationary race to the bottom, hammering down salaries and so shrinking discretionary spending
power which forces price reductions to match and so more pressure on employers to cut costs ...
ad infinitum.
Labour now favour policies which would cause an expansion across the entire economy through pay
rises and dramatically increased investment with perhaps more tolerance of inflation to achieve
it.
Not surprising if they're working for a company that is cold-calling people - which should be
banned in my opinion. Call centres providing customer support are probably less abuse-heavy since
the customer is trying to get something done.
I taught myself to code in 1974. Fortran, COBOL were first. Over the years as a aerospace engineer
I coded in numerous languages ranging from PLM, Snowball, Basic, and more assembly languages than
I can recall, not to mention deep down in machine code on more architectures than most know even
existed. Bottom line is that coding is easy. It doesn't take a genius to code, just another way
of thinking. Consider all the bugs in the software available now. These "coders", not sufficiently
trained need adult supervision by engineers who know what they are doing for computer systems
that are important such as the electrical grid, nuclear weapons, and safety critical systems.
If you want to program toy apps then code away, if you want to do something important learn engineering
AND coding.
Laughable. It takes only an above-average IQ to code. Today's coders are akin to the auto mechanics
of the 1950s where practically every high school had auto shop instruction . . . nothing but a
source of cheap labor for doing routine implementations of software systems using powerful code
libraries built by REAL software engineers.
I disagree. Technology firms are just like other firms. Why then the collusion not to pay more
to workers coming from other companies? To believe that they are anything else is naive. The author
is correct. We need policies that actually grow the economy and not leaders who cave to what the
CEOs want like Bill Clinton did. He brought NAFTA at the behest of CEOs and all it ended up doing
was ripping apart the rust belt and ushering in Trump.
So the media always needs some bad guys to write about, and this month they seem to have it in
for the tech industry. The article is BS. I interview a lot of people to join a large tech company,
and I can guarantee you that we aren't trying to find cheaper labor, we're looking for the best
talent.
I know that lots of different jobs have been outsourced to low cost areas, but these days the
top companies are instead looking for the top talent globally.
I see this article as a hit piece against Silicon Valley, and it doesn't fly in the face of
the evidence.
This has got to be the most cynical and idiotic social interest piece I have ever read in the
Guardian. Once upon a time it was very helpful to learn carpentry and machining, but now, even
if you are learning those, you will get a big and indispensable headstart if you have some logic
and programming skills. The fact is, almost no matter what you do, you can apply logic and programming
skills to give you an edge. Even journalists.
Yup, rings true. I've been in hi tech for over 40 years and seen the changes. I was in Silicon
Valley for 10 years on a startup. India is taking over, my current US company now has a majority
Indian executive and is moving work to India. US politicians push coding to drive down wages to
Indian levels.
On the bright side I am old enough and established enough to quit tomorrow,
its someone else's problem, but I still despise those who have sold us out, like the Clintons,
the Bushes, the Googoids, the Zuckerboids.
Sure markets existed before governments, but capitalism didn't, can't in fact. It needs the organs
of state, the banking system, an education system, and an infrastructure.
Then teach them other things but not coding! Here in Australia every child of school age has to
learn coding. Now tell me that everyone of them will need it? Look beyond computers as coding
will soon be automated just like every other job.
If you have never coded then you will not appreciate how labour intensive it is. Coders effectively
use line editors to type in, line by line, the instructions. And syntax is critical; add a comma
when you meant a semicolon and the code doesn't work properly. Yeah, we use frameworks and libraries
of already written subroutines, but, in the end, it is all about manually typing in the code.
Which is an expensive way of doing things (hence the attractions of 'off-shoring' the coding
task to low cost economies in Asia).
And this is why teaching kids to code is a waste of time.
Already, AI based systems are addressing the task of interpreting high level design models
and simply generating the required application.
One of the first uses templates and a smart chatbot to enable non-tech business people to build
their websites. By describe in non-coding terms what they want, the chatbot is able to assemble
the necessary components and make the requisite template amendments to build a working website.
Much cheaper than hiring expensive coders to type it all in manually.
It's early days yet, but coding may well be one of the big losers to AI automation along with
all those back office clerical jobs.
Teaching kids how to think about design rather than how to code would be much more valuable.
Thick-skinned? Just because you might get a few error messages from the compiler? Call centre
workers have to put up with people telling them to fuck off eight hours a day.
Spot on. Society will never need more than 1% of its people to code. We will need far more garbage
men. There are only so many (relatively) good jobs to go around and its about competing to get
them.
I'm a professor (not of computer science) and yet, I try to give my students a basic understanding
of algorithms and logic, to spark an interest and encourage them towards programming. I have no
skin in the game, except that I've seen unemployment first-hand, and want them to avoid it. The
best chance most of them have is to learn to code.
Educating youth does not drive wages down. It drives our economy up. China, India, and other
countries are training youth in programming skills. Educating our youth means that they will
be able to compete globally.
This is the standard GOP stand that we don't need to educate our youth, but instead fantasize
about high-paying manufacturing jobs miraculously coming back.
Many jobs, including new manufacturing jobs have an element of coding because they are
automated. Other industries require coding skills to maintain web sites and keep computer
systems running. Learning coding skills opens these doors.
Coding teaches logic, an essential thought process. Learning to code, like learning anything,
increases the brains ability to adapt to new environments which is essential to our survival
as a species.
We must invest in educating our youth.
"Contrary to public perception, the economy doesn't actually need that many more
programmers." This really looks like a straw man introducing a red herring. A skill can be
extremely valuable for those who do not pursue it as a full time profession.
The economy doesn't actually need that many more typists, pianists, mathematicians,
athletes, dietitians. So, clearly, teaching typing, the piano, mathematics, physical
education, and nutrition is a nefarious plot to drive down salaries in those professions.
None of those skills could possibly enrich the lives or enhance the productivity of builders,
lawyers, public officials, teachers, parents, or store managers.
A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that the supply of American college
graduates with computer science degrees is 50% greater than the number hired into the tech
industry each year.
You're assuming that all those people are qualified to work in software because they have
a piece of paper that says so, but that's not a valid assumption. The quality of computer
science degree courses is generally poor, and most people aren't willing or able to teach
themselves. Universities are motivated to award degrees anyway because if they only awarded
degrees to students who are actually qualified then that would reflect very poorly on their
quality of teaching.
A skills shortage doesn't mean that everyone who claims to have a skill gets hired and
there are still some jobs left over that aren't being done. It means that employers are
forced to hire people who are incompetent in order to fill all their positions. Many people
who get jobs in programming can't really do it and do nothing but create work for everyone
else. That's why most of the software you use every day doesn't work properly. That's why
competent programmers' salaries are still high in spite of the apparently large number of
"qualified" people who aren't employed as programmers.
"... I've always treated neoliberalism as a political project carried out by the corporate capitalist class as they felt intensely threatened both politically and economically towards the end of the 1960s into the 1970s. They desperately wanted to launch a political project that would curb the power of labor. ..."
"... In many respects the project was a counterrevolutionary project. It would nip in the bud what, at that time, were revolutionary movements in much of the developing world ..."
"... So in that situation there was, in effect, a global threat to the power of the corporate capitalist class and therefore the question was, What to do?. The ruling class wasn't omniscient but they recognized that there were a number of fronts on which they had to struggle: the ideological front, the political front, and above all they had to struggle to curb the power of labor by whatever means possible. Out of this there emerged a political project which I would call neoliberalism. ..."
"... The ideological front amounted to following the advice of a guy named Lewis Powell . He wrote a memo saying that things had gone too far, that capital needed a collective project. The memo helped mobilize the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. ..."
"... Ideas were also important to the ideological front. The judgment at that time was that universities were impossible to organize because the student movement was too strong and the faculty too liberal-minded, so they set up all of these think tanks like the Manhattan Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Ohlin Foundation. These think tanks brought in the ideas of Freidrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and supply-side economics. ..."
"... This process took a long time. I think now we've reached a point where you don't need something like the Heritage Foundation anymore. Universities have pretty much been taken over by the neoliberal projects surrounding them. ..."
"... With respect to labor, the challenge was to make domestic labor competitive with global labor. One way was to open up immigration. In the 1960s, for example, Germans were importing Turkish labor, the French Maghrebian labor, the British colonial labor. But this created a great deal of dissatisfaction and unrest. ..."
"... Instead they chose the other way -- to take capital to where the low-wage labor forces were. But for globalization to work you had to reduce tariffs and empower finance capital, because finance capital is the most mobile form of capital. So finance capital and things like floating currencies became critical to curbing labor. ..."
"... At the same time, ideological projects to privatize and deregulate created unemployment. So, unemployment at home and offshoring taking the jobs abroad, and a third component: technological change , deindustrialization through automation and robotization. That was the strategy to squash labor. ..."
"... It was an ideological assault but also an economic assault. To me this is what neoliberalism was about: it was that political project ..."
"... I think they just intuitively said, We gotta crush labor, how do we do it? And they found that there was a legitimizing theory out there, which would support that. ..."
I've always treated neoliberalism as a political project carried out by the corporate
capitalist class as they felt intensely threatened both politically and economically towards
the end of the 1960s into the 1970s. They desperately wanted to launch a political project that
would curb the power of labor.
In many respects the project was a counterrevolutionary project. It would nip in the bud
what, at that time, were revolutionary movements in much of the developing world -- Mozambique,
Angola, China etc. -- but also a rising tide of communist
influences in countries like Italy and France and, to a lesser degree, the threat of a
revival of that in Spain.
Even in the United States, trade unions had produced a Democratic Congress that was quite
radical in its intent. In the early 1970s they, along with other social movements, forced a
slew of reforms and reformist initiatives which were anti-corporate: the
Environmental Protection Agency , the Occupational Safety and Health Administration,
consumer protections, and a whole set of things around empowering labor even more than it had
been empowered before.
So in that situation there was, in effect, a global threat to the power of the corporate
capitalist class and therefore the question was, What to do?. The ruling class wasn't omniscient
but they recognized that there were a number of fronts on which they had to struggle: the
ideological front, the political front, and above all they had to struggle to curb the power of
labor by whatever means possible. Out of this there emerged a political project which I would
call neoliberalism.
BSR Can you talk a
bit about the ideological and political fronts and the attacks on labor? DH The ideological front amounted to following the advice of a guy
named Lewis
Powell . He wrote a memo saying that things had gone too far, that capital needed a
collective project. The memo helped mobilize the Chamber of Commerce and the Business
Roundtable.
Ideas were also important to the ideological front. The judgment at that time was that
universities were impossible to organize because the student movement was too strong and the
faculty too liberal-minded, so they set up all of these think tanks like the Manhattan
Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Ohlin Foundation. These think tanks brought in the
ideas of Freidrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and supply-side economics.
The idea was to have these think tanks do serious research and some of them did -- for
instance, the National Bureau of Economic
Research was a privately funded institution that did extremely good and thorough research.
This research would then be published independently and it would influence the press and bit by
bit it would surround and infiltrate the universities.
This process took a long time. I think now we've reached a point where you don't need
something like the Heritage Foundation anymore. Universities have pretty much been taken over
by the neoliberal projects surrounding them.
With respect to labor, the challenge was to make domestic labor competitive with global
labor. One way was to open up immigration. In the 1960s, for example, Germans were importing
Turkish labor, the French Maghrebian labor, the British colonial labor. But this created a
great deal of dissatisfaction and unrest.
Instead they chose the other way -- to take capital to where the low-wage labor forces
were. But for globalization to work you had to reduce tariffs and
empower finance capital, because finance capital is the most mobile form of capital. So
finance capital and things like floating currencies became critical to curbing labor.
At the same time, ideological projects to privatize and deregulate created unemployment.
So, unemployment at home and offshoring taking the jobs abroad, and a third component:
technological change ,
deindustrialization through automation and robotization. That was the strategy to squash
labor.
It was an ideological assault but also an economic assault. To me this is what neoliberalism
was about: it was that political project, and I think the bourgeoisie or the corporate
capitalist class put it into motion bit by bit.
I don't think they started out by reading Hayek or anything, I think they just intuitively
said, We gotta crush labor, how do we do it? And they found that there was a legitimizing
theory out there, which would support that.
"... He's also a sort of maritime-technology historian. A tall, white-haired man in a baseball cap, shark t-shirt and boat shoes, Benjamin said he's spent the last 15 years "making vehicles wet." He has the U.S. armed forces to thank for making his autonomous work possible. The military sparked the field of marine autonomy decades ago, when it began demanding underwater robots for mine detection, ..."
"... In 2006, Benjamin launched his open-source software project. With it, a computer is able to take over a boat's navigation-and-control system. Anyone can write programs for it. The project is funded by the U.S. Office for Naval Research and Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit. Benjamin said there are dozens of types of vehicles using the software, which is called MOOS-IvP. ..."
Frank Marino, an engineer with Sea Machines Robotics, uses a remote control belt pack to control
a self-driving boat in Boston Harbor. (Bloomberg) -- Frank Marino sat in a repurposed U.S. Coast
Guard boat bobbing in Boston Harbor one morning late last month. He pointed the boat straight at
a buoy several hundred yards away, while his colleague Mohamed Saad Ibn Seddik used a laptop to set
the vehicle on a course that would run right into it. Then Ibn Seddik flipped the boat into autonomous
driving mode. They sat back as the vessel moved at a modest speed of six knots, smoothly veering
right to avoid the buoy, and then returned to its course.
In a slightly apologetic tone, Marino acknowledged the experience wasn't as harrowing as barreling
down a highway in an SUV that no one is steering. "It's not like a self-driving car, where the wheel
turns on its own," he said. Ibn Seddik tapped in directions to get the boat moving back the other
way at twice the speed. This time, the vessel kicked up a wake, and the turn felt sharper, even as
it gave the buoy the same wide berth as it had before. As far as thrills go, it'd have to do. Ibn
Seddik said going any faster would make everyone on board nauseous.
The two men work for Sea Machines Robotics Inc., a three-year old company developing computer
systems for work boats that can make them either remote-controllable or completely autonomous. In
May, the company spent $90,000 to buy the Coast Guard hand-me-down at a government auction. Employees
ripped out one of the four seats in the cabin to make room for a metal-encased computer they call
a "first-generation autonomy cabinet." They painted the hull bright yellow and added the words "Unmanned
Vehicle" in big, red letters. Cameras are positioned at the stern and bow, and a dome-like radar
system and a digital GPS unit relay additional information about the vehicle's surroundings. The
company named its new vessel Steadfast.
Autonomous maritime vehicles haven't drawn as much the attention as self-driving cars, but they're
hitting the waters with increased regularity. Huge shipping interests, such as Rolls-Royce Holdings
Plc, Tokyo-based fertilizer producer Nippon Yusen K.K. and BHP Billiton Ltd., the world's largest
mining company, have all recently announced plans to use driverless ships for large-scale ocean transport.
Boston has become a hub for marine technology startups focused on smaller vehicles, with a handful
of companies like Sea Machines building their own autonomous systems for boats, diving drones and
other robots that operate on or under the water.
As Marino and Ibn Seddik were steering Steadfast back to dock, another robot boat trainer, Michael
Benjamin, motored past them. Benjamin, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a
regular presence on the local waters. His program in marine autonomy, a joint effort by the school's
mechanical engineering and computer science departments, serves as something of a ballast for Boston's
burgeoning self-driving boat scene. Benjamin helps engineers find jobs at startups and runs an open-source
software project that's crucial to many autonomous marine vehicles.
He's also a sort of maritime-technology historian. A tall, white-haired man in a baseball
cap, shark t-shirt and boat shoes, Benjamin said he's spent the last 15 years "making vehicles wet."
He has the U.S. armed forces to thank for making his autonomous work possible. The military sparked
the field of marine autonomy decades ago, when it began demanding underwater robots for mine detection,
Benjamin explained from a chair on MIT's dock overlooking the Charles River. Eventually, self-driving
software worked its way into all kinds of boats.
These systems tended to chart a course based on a specific script, rather than sensing and responding
to their environments. But a major shift came about a decade ago, when manufacturers began allowing
customers to plug in their own autonomy systems, according to Benjamin. "Imagine where the PC revolution
would have gone if the only one who could write software on an IBM personal computer was IBM," he
said.
In 2006, Benjamin launched his open-source software project. With it, a computer is able to
take over a boat's navigation-and-control system. Anyone can write programs for it. The project is
funded by the U.S. Office for Naval Research and Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit. Benjamin
said there are dozens of types of vehicles using the software, which is called MOOS-IvP.
Startups using MOOS-IvP said it has created a kind of common vocabulary. "If we had a proprietary
system, we would have had to develop training and train new employees," said Ibn Seddik. "Fortunately
for us, Mike developed a course that serves exactly that purpose."
Teaching a boat to drive itself is easier than conditioning a car in some ways. They typically
don't have to deal with traffic, stoplights or roundabouts. But water is unique challenge. "The structure
of the road, with traffic lights, bounds your problem a little bit," said Benjamin. "The number of
unique possible situations that you can bump into is enormous." At the moment, underwater robots
represent a bigger chunk of the market than boats. Sales are expected to hit $4.6 billion in 2020,
more than double the amount from 2015, according to ABI Research. The biggest customer is the military.
Several startups hope to change that. Michael Johnson, Sea Machines' chief executive officer,
said the long-term potential for self-driving boats involves teams of autonomous vessels working
in concert. In many harbors, multiple tugs bring in large container ships, communicating either through
radio or by whistle. That could be replaced by software controlling all the boats as a single system,
Johnson said.
Sea Machines' first customer is Marine Spill Response Corp., a nonprofit group funded by oil companies.
The organization operates oil spill response teams that consist of a 210-foot ship paired with a
32-foot boat, which work together to drag a device collecting oil. Self-driving boats could help
because staffing the 32-foot boat in choppy waters or at night can be dangerous, but the theory needs
proper vetting, said Judith Roos, a vice president for MSRC. "It's too early to say, 'We're going
to go out and buy 20 widgets.'"
Another local startup, Autonomous Marine Systems Inc., has been sending boats about 10 miles out
to sea and leaving them there for weeks at a time. AMS's vehicles are designed to operate for long
stretches, gathering data in wind farms and oil fields. One vessel is a catamaran dubbed the Datamaran,
a name that first came from an employee's typo, said AMS CEO Ravi Paintal. The company also uses
Benjamin's software platform. Paintal said AMS's longest missions so far have been 20 days, give
or take. "They say when your boat can operate for 30 days out in the ocean environment, you'll be
in the running for a commercial contract," he said.
"... To emulate those capabilities on computers will probably require another 100 years or more. Selective functions can be imitated even now (manipulator that deals with blocks in a pyramid was created in 70th or early 80th I think, but capabilities of human "eye controlled arm" is still far, far beyond even wildest dreams of AI. ..."
"... Similarly human intellect is completely different from AI. At the current level the difference is probably 1000 times larger then the difference between a child with Down syndrome and a normal person. ..."
"... Human brain is actually a machine that creates languages for specific domain (or acquire them via learning) and then is able to operate in terms of those languages. Human child forced to grow up with animals, including wild animals, learns and is able to use "animal language." At least to a certain extent. Some of such children managed to survive in this environment. ..."
"... If you are bilingual, try Google translate on this post. You might be impressed by their recent progress in this field. It did improved considerably and now does not cause instant laugh. ..."
"... One interesting observation that I have is that automation is not always improve functioning of the organization. It can be quite opposite :-). Only the costs are cut, and even that is not always true. ..."
"... Of course the last 25 years (or so) were years of tremendous progress in computers and networking that changed the human civilization. And it is unclear whether we reached the limit of current capabilities or not in certain areas (in CPU speeds and die shrinking we probably did; I do not expect anything significant below 7 nanometers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nanometer ). ..."
"When combined with our brains, human fingers are amazingly fine manipulation devices."
Not only fingers. The whole human arm is an amazing device. Pure magic, if you ask me.
To emulate those capabilities on computers will probably require another 100 years or more.
Selective functions can be imitated even now (manipulator that deals with blocks in a pyramid
was created in 70th or early 80th I think, but capabilities of human "eye controlled arm" is still
far, far beyond even wildest dreams of AI.
Similarly human intellect is completely different from AI. At the current level the difference
is probably 1000 times larger then the difference between a child with Down syndrome and a normal
person.
Human brain is actually a machine that creates languages for specific domain (or acquire
them via learning) and then is able to operate in terms of those languages. Human child forced
to grow up with animals, including wild animals, learns and is able to use "animal language."
At least to a certain extent. Some of such children managed to survive in this environment.
Such cruel natural experiments have shown that the level of flexibility of human brain is something
really incredible. And IMHO can not be achieved by computers (although never say never).
Here we are talking about tasks that are 1 million times more complex task that playing GO
or chess, or driving a car on the street.
The limits of AI are clearly visible when we see the quality of translation from one language
to another. For more or less complex technical text it remains medium to low. As in "requires
human editing".
If you are bilingual, try Google translate on this post. You might be impressed by their
recent progress in this field. It did improved considerably and now does not cause instant laugh.
Same thing with the speech recognition. The progress is tremendous, especially the last three-five
years. But it is still far from perfect. Now, with a some training, programs like Dragon are quite
usable as dictation device on, say PC with 4 core 3GHz CPU with 16 GB of memory (especially if
you are native English speaker), but if you deal with special text or have strong accent, they
still leaves much to be desired (although your level of knowledge of the program, experience and
persistence can improve the results considerably.
One interesting observation that I have is that automation is not always improve functioning
of the organization. It can be quite opposite :-). Only the costs are cut, and even that is not
always true.
Of course the last 25 years (or so) were years of tremendous progress in computers and
networking that changed the human civilization. And it is unclear whether we reached the limit
of current capabilities or not in certain areas (in CPU speeds and die shrinking we probably did;
I do not expect anything significant below 7 nanometers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nanometer
).
"... Donald Trump used alt-right messaging to get into the White House, but he and his third-rate staff haven't the slightest clue of what gave rise to the deplorables in the first place and how to address the root despair of the western working class ..."
"... And all authorities suggest to exploit the despair with soundbites and posturing. Granted, this is a platitude, but how to obtain compelling soundbites and posturing? I think that the best technique is based on so-called wedge issues. ..."
"... A good wedge issue should raise passions on "both sides" but not so much in the "center", mostly clueless undecided voters. ..."
"... Calibrate your position so it is a good scrap of meat for your "base" while it drives the adversaries to conniptions, the conniptions provide talking points and together, drive the clueless in your direction. Wash, repeat. ..."
"Donald Trump used alt-right messaging to get into the White House, but he and his
third-rate staff haven't the slightest clue of what gave rise to the deplorables in the first
place and how to address the root despair of the western working class." VietnamVet
I do not know how highly rated the staff was, but it was sufficiently high. If the opponent
has fourth-rate staff, it would be wasteful to use anything better than third-rate. Figuring what
gave rise to the deplorable is a wasted effort, sociologist differ, and in politics the "root
causes" matter only a little.
And all authorities suggest to exploit the despair with soundbites and posturing. Granted,
this is a platitude, but how to obtain compelling soundbites and posturing? I think that the best
technique is based on so-called wedge issues.
A good wedge issue should raise passions on "both sides" but not so much in the "center",
mostly clueless undecided voters.
Calibrate your position so it is a good scrap of meat for your "base" while it drives the
adversaries to conniptions, the conniptions provide talking points and together, drive the clueless
in your direction. Wash, repeat.
(Never mind that if Thomas Frank is correct, and the Democrats are the party of the professional
classes, the Democrats cannot possibly be the party of "marginalized" people.) Being the sort of
person I am, my first thought was to ask myself what the heck Reid could mean by "tribe," and how
a "tribe" can act as a political entity.[1] Naturally, I looked to the Internet and did a cursory
search; and it turns out that, at least at the scholarly level, the very notion of "tribe" is both
contested and a product of colonialism.
David
Wiley, Department of Sociology and African Studies, Michigan State University, 2013
Tribe, a concept that has endeared itself to Western scholars, journalists, and the public
for a century, is primarily a means to reduce for readers the complexity of the non-Western societies
of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the American plains. It is no accident that the contemporary
uses of the term tribe were developed during the 19th-century rise of evolutionary and racist
theories to designate alien non-white peoples as inferior or less civilized and as having not
yet evolved from a simpler, primal state. The uses and definitions of 'tribe' in the sociological
and anthropological literature are varied and conflicting. Some authors appear to define tribe
as common language, others as common culture, some as ancestral lineages, and others as common
government or rulers. As anthropologist Michael Olen notes, "The term tribe has never satisfied
anthropologists, because of its many uses and connotations. Societies that are classified as tribal
seem to be very diverse in their organization, having little in common." Morton H. Fried and this
author contend that "the term is so ambiguous and confusing that it should be abandoned by social
scientists."
Even more striking is the invention of ethnic (labeled tribal) identities and their varied
and plastic salience across the African continent. In some cases, "tribal identifies" have been
invented in order to unite colonial and post-colonial clerical workers or other occupational and
social groups to serve the interests of the members even though they were not bound together by
language or lineage.
In the United States, where similar derogatory language of tribe has been used to characterize
and stereotype Native American or First Nations peoples, the identity has been reified in federal
legislation that requires "tribes," formerly under the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to accept that
formal tribal identification in order to access the hunting, fishing, farming, and casino rights
of reservations. Almost humorously, the Menominee peoples of Wisconsin decided to decline that
nomenclature because many members lived in Milwaukee and other non-reservation sites; however,
they then learned they must reverse that vote and re-declare themselves as "a tribe" in order
to regain their reservation rights.
So, from the 30,000 foot level, it seems unlikely that what scholars mean (or do not mean) by
"tribe" is the same as what Reid means, simply because there is no coherent meaning to be had.[2]
My second thought was to try to fit "tribe" into the framework of identity politics, where tribes
would be identities, or possibly bundles of allied[3] identities. Here's a handy chart showing the
various ways that identity can be conceptualized, from
Jessica A. Clarke*, "Identity and Form," California Law Review , 2015:
(Clarke gives definitions of ascriptive, elective, and formal identity --
for Adolph Reed on ascriptive identity, see here -- but I think the definitions are clear enough
for our purposes from the examples in the table.) However, if we look back to Reid's quote, we see
that she conflates ascriptive identity ("black or brown") with elective identity ("the sort of Pabst
Blue Ribbon voter, the kind of Coors Lite-drinking voter")[4], and also conflates both of those with
formal identity (if one's ethnicity be defined by one's own citizenship papers, or those of one's
parents, or a changed surname; one thinks of Asian cultures putting the family name last in American
culture, for example). So there is no coherence to be found here, either.
Let's return then to Reid's words, and look to her operational definition:
which party goes out and find more people who are like them
JANELLE MONÁE: Hi, sweetie. You know I love, love, love you. First: pronouns! I want to make
sure that I'm being respectful of how I'm referring to you. I know that the way we view ourselves
and how we want to be addressed can change depending on where we are in life.
AS: I love that you asked me! Thank you. I have felt at times that she/her pronouns weren't
entirely fitting, but I've never felt uncomfortable with them. It's more important for me to open
up that conversation around pronouns and how gender itself is a construct that doesn't make much
sense in our society.
JM: Got it. I remember seeing you for the first time in Colombiana, and then, like many people,
I was drawn to your character in The Hunger Games as Rue. I'm a huge sci-fi nerd, so just seeing
this little black girl in a dystopian world being a hero for an oppressed community, I was intrigued!
The way you embodied this character felt like you were mature enough to understand how important
she was to the movie but also how important the Rues all over the world are to our society.
AS: That's one of the best compliments that I've received! I remember we saw each other at
the Tyler, the Creator show; we took a picture with Solange. You were wearing a jacket that said
"black girl magic" on it, and I flipped out.
JM: Me, too! I was like, I am right between you and Solange, two people who are the epitome
of black girl magic! I saw you later on, and you had just shot Everything, Everything, which,
by the way, you are incredible in. The original story was written by a black woman [NicolaYoon],
and your director [Stella Meghie] is also a black woman. What was going through your mind as you
were considering the role?
AS: I kind of wrote it off initially because I figured it was one of those instances where
I was receiving a script for a YA romance project that was intended for a white actress. I thought
maybe they'd float the idea of casting it in a more diverse manner but that ultimately it wouldn't
end up going that direction, because that's happened to me a lot. Then I realized that this project
was based on a book written by a black woman and that the casting was intentionally diverse. I'd
never seen a story like this made for an interracial couple. I'm not someone who generally has
a pop or mainstream sensibility, but I see the incredible power of infiltrating these larger movies
that show a lot of people who we are and how diverse and beautiful our community is. I thought
it would be really powerful to see a black girl [lead] character like Maddy who is joyous and
creative and dimensional specifically marketed to teenagers and young adults. We don't always
get to see black women carrying that energy. That's one of the reasons why I respect and love
you so much!because I feel like you perpetuate such whimsy and joy!
JM: Aw! Well, whenever I see you doing your thing, I feel like we're from the same tribe
because I take a similar approach when I'm choosing projects. With the roles of Teresa in
Moonlight and Ms. Mary Jackson in Hidden Figures , they're two women of color
from totally different backgrounds and eras!from the hood to NASA, these black women were the
backbones of their communities. I thought it was so important to let the rest of the world know
that we're not monolithic. And with Hidden Figures in particular, I was so proud to be a part
of exposing that if it were not for these women, we would not have gone to space. That's American
history! Black history is part of American history, and it should be treated as such.
(Note in passing that I loathe the phrase "open up," which I define as "carefully engineered for
a celebrity by public relations professionals." ) Of course, both actors are -- and rightly --
proud of their work, but note the carefully calibrated ways they establish that they are (as
Joy Reid says) "like" each other. Oh, and do note the caption: "Miu Miu dress, price upon request."
Class snuck in there, didn't it? In fact, we might go so far as to formalize Reid's definition of
"tribe" as follows:
Tribes are people who are "like" each other when class is not taken into account
With that, let's take an alternative approach to conceptualizing tribes and tribalism, one that
incorporates class. From former Arab Spring
activist Iyad El-Baghdadi , I present the following charts, taken from
the Twittter . (I'll present each
chart, then comment briefly on it.) There are five:
Figure 1: Tribal Divisions
Comment: I'm taking El-Baghdadi's "ethnic affiliation," as a proxy for Reid's "tribe"; the verticality
is clearly the same.)
Figure 2: Class Divisions
Comment: El-Baghdadi's representation of class divisions is fine as a visual shorthand, but I
don't think it's an accurate representation. I picture the class structure of the United States not
as a "normal distribution" with a fat "middle class" (I don't even accept
"middle class" as a category) but as a power curve with a very few people at the head of the
curve (
the "1%," more like the 0.01% ), followed by a steep shoulder of
the 10% (white collar professionals, from Thomas Frank's Listen, Liberal ), and trailed
by a long tail of wage workers (and unwaged workers, as I suppose we might call the disemployed,
unpaid caregivers,
System D
people like loosie-selling Eric Garner, and so on). If you want to find who hasn't had a raise
in forty years, look to the long tail, which I would call l "working class," rather than "lower class."
Figure 3: Privilege Divisions
Comment: Taking once again El-Baghdadi's "ethnic affiliation," as a proxy for Reid's "tribe,"
and conceptualizing WASPs as a tribe, it's clear to me, if I look at my own history, that I'm
more likely ti have good luck than some other tribes. I'm more likely to have intergenerational
wealth in the form of a house, or even financial assets, more likely to be highly educated, more
likely to have the markers and locutions that enable me to interact successfully with bureaucratic
functionaries, etc. I didn't earn any of those advantages; I would have had to have chosen to be
born to different parents to avoid them. I think we can agree that if we were looking for an operational
definition of justice, this wouldn't be it.
Figure 4: Punching Sideways
Comment: Classically, we have owners following Gould's maxim by bringing in (mostly black) scabs
to break
the Homestead Strike in 1892, with a resulting "tribal" conflict -- although those scabs might
protest -- and rightly -- that (a) they were only trying to provide for their families and
(b) that the Jim Crow system
had denied them the "good jobs" that in justice would have given them (leaving aside the question
of who implemented Jim Crow, and for what material benefits). In modern times we have "tribes" (white,
black, Asian, at the least) battling on the field of "affirmative action" having weaponized their
ascriptive identities. Here again, representatives of some "tribes" would protest -- and
rightly -- that systems like "legacy admissions" give some "tribes" unjust advantage over others, but
the hidden assumption is one of resource constraint; given a pie of fixed size, if Tribe A is to
have more, Tribe B must have less. Note that programs like "tuition-free college" tend to eliminate
the resource constraint, but are "politically feasible" only if Tribes A and B solve their collective
action problem, which is unlikely to be done based on tribalism.
Figure 5: Punching Up
Comment: This diagram implies that the only "legitimate" form of seeking justice is vertical,
"punching up." This eliminates clear cases where justice is needed within and not between classes,
like auto collisions, for example, or the household division of labor. More centrally, the nice thing
about thinking vertically is that it eliminates obvious absurdities like "Justice for black people
means making the CEO of a major bank black (ignoring the injustices perpetrated using class-based
tools disproportionately against black people in, say, the foreclosure crisis, where
a generation's-worth of black household wealth was wiped out under America's first black President).
Or obvious absurdities where justice is conceived of as a woman, instead of a man, using the power
of office to kill thousands of black and brown people, many of them women, to further America's imperial
mission.
* * *
Concluding a discussion on politics and power that has barely begun -- and is of great importance
if you believe, as I do, that we're on the midst of and ongoing and highly volatile legitimacy crisis
that involves the break-up and/or realignment of both major parties -- it seems to me that El-Baghdadi
visual representation, which fits tribalism into a class-driven framework, is both analytically coherent
(as Reid's usage of "tribe" is not) and points to a way forward from our current political arrangements
(as Reid's strategy of bundling "punching sideways" tribes into parties while ignoring class does
not).
More to come .
"... Consumerism fills the social void. But far from curing the disease of isolation, it intensifies social comparison to the point at which, having consumed all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. Social media brings us together and drives us apart, allowing us precisely to quantify our social standing, and to see that other people have more friends and followers than we do. ..."
"... A recent survey in England suggests that one in four women between 16 and 24 have harmed themselves, and one in eight now suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Anxiety, depression, phobias or obsessive compulsive disorder affect 26% of women in this age group. This is what a public health crisis looks like. ..."
"... Opioids relieve both physical agony and the distress of separation. Perhaps this explains the link between social isolation and drug addiction. ..."
"... Children who experience emotional neglect, according to some findings, suffer worse mental health consequences than children suffering both emotional neglect and physical abuse: hideous as it is, violence involves attention and contact. Self-harm is often used as an attempt to alleviate distress: another indication that physical pain is not as bad as emotional pain. As the prison system knows only too well, one of the most effective forms of torture is solitary confinement. ..."
"... It's unsurprising that social isolation is strongly associated with depression, suicide, anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception of threat. It's more surprising to discover the range of physical illnesses it causes or exacerbates. Dementia, high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, lowered resistance to viruses, even accidents are more common among chronically lonely people. Loneliness has a comparable impact on physical health to smoking 15 cigarettes a day: it appears to raise the risk of early death by 26%. This is partly because it enhances production of the stress hormone cortisol, which suppresses the immune system. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is a project that explicitly aims, and has achieved, the undermining and elimination of social networks in favour of market competition ..."
"... In practice, loosening social and legal institutions has reduced social security (in the general sense rather than simply welfare payments) and encouraged the limitation of social interaction to money based activity ..."
"... All powerful institutions have a vested interest in keeping us atomized and individualistic. The gangs at the top don't want competition. They're afraid of us. In particular, they're afraid of men organising into gangs. That's where this very paper comes in ..."
"... The alienation genie was out of the bottle with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and mass migration to cities began and we abandoned living in village communities ..."
"... Neoliberalism expressly encourages 'atomisation'- it is all about reducing human interaction to markets. And so this is just one of the reasons that neoliberalism is such a bunk philosophy. ..."
"... My stab at an answer would first question the notion that we are engaging in anything. That presupposes we are making the choices. Those who set out the options are the ones that make the choices. We are being engaged by the grotesquely privileged and the pathologically greedy in an enterprise that profits them still further. It suits the 1% very well strategically, for obvious reasons, that the 99% don't swap too many ideas with each other. ..."
"... According to Robert Putnam, as societies become more ethnically diverse they lose social capital, contributing to the type of isolation and loneliness which George describes. Doesn't sound as evil as neoliberalism I suppose. ..."
"... multiculturalism is a direct result of Neoliberalism. The market rules and people are secondary. Everything must be done for business owners, and that everything means access to cheap labor. ..."
"... I'd have thought what he really wants to say is that loneliness as a phenomenon in modern Western society arises out of an intent on the part of our political and social elites to divide us all into competing against one another, as individuals and as members of groups, all the better to keep us under control and prevent us from working together to claim our fair share of resources. ..."
"... Has it occurred to you that the collapse in societal values has allowed 'neo-liberalism' to take hold? ..."
"... No. It has been the concentrated propaganda of the "free" press. Rupert Murdoch in particular, but many other well-funded organisations working in the background over 50 years. They are winning. ..."
"... We're fixated on a magical, abstract concept called "the economy". Everything must be done to help "the economy", even if this means adults working through their weekends, neglecting their children, neglecting their elderly parents, eating at their desks, getting diabetes, breaking down from stress, and giving up on a family life. ..."
"... You can make a reasonable case that 'Neoliberalism' expects that every interaction, including between individuals, can be reduced to a financial one. ..."
"... As can be seen from many of the posts, neo-liberalism depends on, and fosters, ignorance, an inability to see things from historical and different perspectives and social and intellectual disciplines. On a sociological level how other societies are arranged throws up interesting comparisons. Scandanavian countries, which have mostly avoided neo-liberalism by and large, are happier, healthier places to live. America and eastern countries arranged around neo-liberal, market driven individualism, are unhappy places, riven with mental and physical health problems and many more social problems of violence, crime and suicide. ..."
"... The people who fosted this this system onto us, are now either very old or dead. We're living in the shadow of their revolutionary transformation of our more equitable post-war society. Hayek, Friedman, Keith Joseph, Thatcher, Greenspan and tangentially but very influentially Ayn Rand. Although a remainder (I love the wit of the term 'Remoaner') , Brexit can be better understood in the context of the death-knell of neoliberalism. ..."
"... Criticism of his hypotheses on this thread (where articualted at all) focus on the existence of solitude and loneliness prior to neo liberalism, which seems to me to be to deliberately miss his point: this was formerly a minor phenomenon, yet is now writ on an incredible scale - and it is a social phenomenon particular to those western economies whose elites have most enthusiastically embraced neo liberalism. ..."
"... We all want is to: (and feel we have the right to) wear the best clothes, have the foreign holidays, own the latest tech and eat the finest foods. At the same time our rights have increased and awareness of our responsibilities have minimized. The execution of common sense and an awareness that everything that goes wrong will always be someone else fault. ..."
"... We are not all special snowflakes, princesses or worthy of special treatment, but we act like self absorbed, entitled individuals. Whether that's entitled to benefits, the front of the queue or bumped into first because its our birthday! ..."
"... Unhealthy social interaction, yes. You can never judge what is natural to humans based on contemporary Britain. Anthropologists repeatedly find that what we think natural is merely a social construct created by the system we are subject to. ..."
"... We are becoming fearful of each other and I believe the insecurity we feel plays a part in this. ..."
"... We have become so disconnected from ourselves and focused on battling to stay afloat. Having experienced periods of severe stress due to lack of money I couldn't even begin to think about how I felt, how happy I was, what I really wanted to do with my life. I just had to pay my landlord, pay the bills and try and put some food on my table so everything else was totally neglected. ..."
"... We need a radical change of political thinking to focus on quality of life rather than obsession with the size of our economy. High levels of immigration of people who don't really integrate into their local communities has fractured our country along with the widening gap between rich and poor. Governments only see people in terms of their "economic value" - hence mothers being driven out to work, children driven into daycare and the elderly driven into care homes. Britain is becoming a soulless place - even our great British comedy is on the decline. ..."
"... Quality of life is far more important than GDP I agree but it is also far more important than inequality. ..."
"... Thatcher was only responsible for "letting it go" in Britain in 1980, but actually it was already racing ahead around the world. ..."
"... Eric Fromm made similar arguments to Monbiot about the psychological impact of modern capitalism (Fear of Freedom and The Sane Society) - although the Freudian element is a tad outdated. However, for all the faults of modern society, I'd rather be unhappy now than in say, Victorian England. Similarly, life in the West is preferable to the obvious alternatives. ..."
"... Whilst it's very important to understand how neoliberalism, the ideology that dare not speak it's name, derailed the general progress in the developed world. It's also necessary to understand that the roots this problem go much further back. Not merely to the start of the industrial revolution, but way beyond that. It actually began with the first civilizations when our societies were taken over by powerful rulers, and they essentially started to farm the people they ruled like cattle. On the one hand they declared themselves protector of their people, whilst ruthlessly exploiting them for their own political gain. I use the livestock farming analogy, because that explains what is going on. ..."
"... Neo-liberalism allows psychopaths to flourish, and it has been argued by Robert Hare that they are disproportionately represented in the highest echelons of society. So people who lack empathy and emotional attachment are probably weilding a significant amount of influence over the way our economy and society is organised. Is it any wonder that they advocate an economic model which is most conducive to their success? Things like job security, rigged markets, unions, and higher taxes on the rich simply get in their way. ..."
"... . Data suggests that inequality has widened massively over the last 30 years ( https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/infographic-income-inequality-uk ) - as has social mobility ( https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/22/social-mobility-data-charts ). Homelessness has risen substantially since 1979. ..."
"... As a director and CEO of an organisation employing several hundred people I became aware that 40% of the staff lived alone and that the workplace was important to them not only for work but also for interacting with their colleagues socially . ..."
"... A thoughtful article. But the rich and powerful will ignore it; their doing very well out of neo liberalism thank you. Meanwhile many of those whose lives are affected by it don't want to know - they're happy with their bigger TV screen. Which of course is what the neoliberals want, 'keep the people happy and in the dark'. An old Roman tactic - when things weren't going too well for citizens and they were grumbling the leaders just extended the 'games'. Evidently it did the trick ..."
"... Sounds like the inevitable logical outcome of a society where the predator sociopathic and their scared prey are all that is allowed. This dynamic dualistic tautology, the slavish terrorised to sleep and bullying narcissistic individual, will always join together to protect their sick worldview by pathologising anything that will threaten their hegemony of power abuse: compassion, sensitivity, moral conscience, altruism and the immediate effects of the ruthless social effacement or punishment of the same ie human suffering. ..."
"... "Alienation, in all areas, has reached unprecedented heights; the social machinery for deluding consciousnesses in the interest of the ruling class has been perfected as never before. The media are loaded with upscale advertising identifying sophistication with speciousness. Television, in constant use, obliterates the concept under the image and permanently feeds a baseless credulity for events and history. Against the will of many students, school doesn't develop the highly cultivated critical capacities that a real sovereignty of the people would require. And so on. ..."
"... There's no question - neoliberalism has been wrenching society apart. It's not as if the prime movers of this ideology were unaware of the likely outcome viz. "there is no such thing as society" (Thatcher). Actually in retrospect the whole zeitgeist from the late 70s emphasised the atomised individual separated from the whole. Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" (1976) may have been influential in creating that climate. ..."
"... I would add that the basic concepts of the Neoliberal New world order are fundamentally Evil, from the control of world population through supporting of strife starvation and war to financial inducements of persons in positions of power. Let us not forget the training of our younger members of our society who have been induced to a slavish love of technology. ..."
"... The kind of personal freedom that you say goes hand in hand with capitalism is an illusion for the majority of people. It holds up the prospect of that kind of freedom, but only a minority get access to it. ..."
"... Problems in society are not solved by having a one hour a week class on "self esteem". In fact self-esteem and self-worth comes from the things you do. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is the bastard child of globalization which in effect is Americanization. The basic premise is the individual is totally reliant on the corporate world state aided by a process of fear inducing mechanisms, pharmacology is one of the tools. No community no creativity no free thinking. Poded sealed and cling filmed a quasi existence. ..."
"... Having grown up during the Thatcher years, I entirely agree that neoliberalism has divided society by promoting individual self-optimisation at the expensive of everyone else. ..."
"... There is no such thing as a free-market society. Your society of 'self-interest' is really a state supported oligarchy. If you really want to live in a society where there is literally no state and a more or less open market try Somalia or a Latin American city run by drug lords - but even then there are hierarchies, state involvement, militias. ..."
"... Furthermore, a society in which people are encouraged to be narrowly selfish is just plain uncivilized. Since when have sociopathy and barbarism been something to aspire to? ..."
"... Why don't we explore some of the benefits?.. Following the long list of some the diseases, loneliness can inflict on individuals, there must be a surge in demand for all sort of medications; anti-depressants must be topping the list. There is a host many other anti-stress treatments available of which Big Pharma must be carving the lion's share. Examine the micro-economic impact immediately following a split or divorce. There is an instant doubling on the demand for accommodation, instant doubling on the demand for electrical and household items among many other products and services. But the icing on the cake and what is really most critical for Neoliberalism must be this: With the morale barometer hitting the bottom, people will be less likely to think of a better future, and therefore, less likely to protest. In fact, there is nothing left worth protecting. ..."
"... Your freedom has been curtailed. Your rights are evaporating in front of your eyes. And Best of all, from the authorities' perspective, there is no relationship to defend and there is no family to protect. If you have a job, you want to keep, you must prove your worthiness every day to 'a company'. ..."
What greater indictment of a system could there be than an epidemic of mental
illness? Yet plagues of anxiety, stress, depression, social phobia, eating disorders,
self-harm and loneliness now strike people down all over the world. The latest,
catastrophic figures for children's mental health in England reflect a global
crisis.
There are plenty of secondary reasons for this distress, but it seems to
me that the underlying cause is everywhere the same: human beings, the ultrasocial
mammals, whose brains are wired to respond to other people, are being peeled
apart. Economic and technological change play a major role, but so does ideology.
Though our wellbeing is inextricably linked to the lives of others, everywhere
we are told that we will prosper through competitive self-interest and extreme
individualism.
In Britain, men who have spent their entire lives in quadrangles – at school,
at college, at the bar, in parliament – instruct us to stand on our own two
feet. The education system becomes more brutally competitive by the year. Employment
is a fight to the near-death with a multitude of other desperate people chasing
ever fewer jobs. The modern overseers of the poor ascribe individual blame to
economic circumstance. Endless competitions on television feed impossible aspirations
as real opportunities contract.
Consumerism fills the social void. But far from curing the disease of
isolation, it intensifies social comparison to the point at which, having consumed
all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. Social media brings us together and
drives us apart, allowing us precisely to quantify our social standing, and
to see that other people have more friends and followers than we do.
As Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett has brilliantly documented, girls and young women
routinely alter the photos they post to make themselves look smoother and slimmer.
Some phones, using their "beauty" settings, do it for you without asking; now
you can become your own thinspiration. Welcome to the post-Hobbesian dystopia:
a war of everyone against themselves.
Social media brings us together and drives us apart, allowing us precisely
to quantify our social standing
Is it any wonder, in these lonely inner worlds, in which touching has been
replaced by retouching, that young women are drowning in mental distress?
A recent survey in England suggests that one in four women between 16 and
24 have harmed themselves, and one in eight now suffer from post-traumatic stress
disorder. Anxiety, depression, phobias or obsessive compulsive disorder affect
26% of women in this age group. This is what a public health crisis looks like.
If social rupture is not treated as seriously as broken limbs, it is because
we cannot see it. But neuroscientists can. A series of fascinating papers suggest
that social pain and physical pain are processed by the same neural circuits.
This might explain why, in many languages, it is hard to describe the impact
of breaking social bonds without the words we use to denote physical pain and
injury. In both humans and other social mammals, social contact reduces physical
pain. This is why we hug our children when they hurt themselves: affection is
a powerful analgesic. Opioids relieve both physical agony and the distress
of separation. Perhaps this explains the link between social isolation and drug
addiction.
Experiments summarised in the journal Physiology & Behaviour last month suggest
that, given a choice of physical pain or isolation, social mammals will choose
the former. Capuchin monkeys starved of both food and contact for 22 hours will
rejoin their companions before eating. Children who experience emotional
neglect, according to some findings, suffer worse mental health consequences
than children suffering both emotional neglect and physical abuse: hideous as
it is, violence involves attention and contact. Self-harm is often used as an
attempt to alleviate distress: another indication that physical pain is not
as bad as emotional pain. As the prison system knows only too well, one of the
most effective forms of torture is solitary confinement.
It is not hard to see what the evolutionary reasons for social pain might
be. Survival among social mammals is greatly enhanced when they are strongly
bonded with the rest of the pack. It is the isolated and marginalised animals
that are most likely to be picked off by predators, or to starve. Just as physical
pain protects us from physical injury, emotional pain protects us from social
injury. It drives us to reconnect. But many people find this almost impossible.
It's unsurprising that social isolation is strongly associated with depression,
suicide, anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception of threat. It's more surprising
to discover the range of physical illnesses it causes or exacerbates. Dementia,
high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, lowered resistance to viruses,
even accidents are more common among chronically lonely people. Loneliness has
a comparable impact on physical health to smoking 15 cigarettes a day: it appears
to raise the risk of early death by 26%. This is partly because it enhances
production of the stress hormone cortisol, which suppresses the immune system.
Studies in both animals and humans suggest a reason for comfort eating: isolation
reduces impulse control, leading to obesity. As those at the bottom of the socioeconomic
ladder are the most likely to suffer from loneliness, might this provide one
of the explanations for the strong link between low economic status and obesity?
Anyone can see that something far more important than most of the issues
we fret about has gone wrong. So why are we engaging in this world-eating, self-consuming
frenzy of environmental destruction and social dislocation, if all it produces
is unbearable pain? Should this question not burn the lips of everyone in public
life?
There are some wonderful charities doing what they can to fight this tide,
some of which I am going to be working with as part of my loneliness project.
But for every person they reach, several others are swept past.
This does not require a policy response. It requires something much bigger:
the reappraisal of an entire worldview. Of all the fantasies human beings entertain,
the idea that we can go it alone is the most absurd and perhaps the most dangerous.
We stand together or we fall apart.
Well its a bit of a stretch blaming neoliberalism for creating loneliness.
Yet it seems to be the fashion today to imagine that the world we live in
is new...only created just years ago. And all the suffering that we see
now never existed before. Plagues of anxiety, stress, depression, social
phobia, eating disorders, self-harm and loneliness never happened in
the past, because everything was bright and shiny and world was good.
Regrettably history teaches us that suffering and deprivation have dogged
mankind for centuries, if not tens of thousands of years. That's what we
do; survive, persist...endure. Blaming 'neoliberalism' is a bit of cop-out.
It's the human condition man, just deal with it.
Some of the connections here are a bit tenuous, to say the least, including
the link to political ideology. Economic liberalism is usually accompanied
with social conservatism, and vice versa. Right wing ideologues are more
likely to emphasize the values of marriage and family stability, while left
wing ones are more likely to favor extremes of personal freedom and reject
those traditional structures that used to bind us together.
You're a little confused there in your connections between policies, intentions
and outcomes. Nevertheless, Neoliberalism is a project that explicitly
aims, and has achieved, the undermining and elimination of social networks
in favour of market competition.
In practice, loosening social and legal institutions has reduced
social security (in the general sense rather than simply welfare payments)
and encouraged the limitation of social interaction to money based activity.
That holds true when you're talking about demographics/voters.
Economic and social liberalism go hand in hand in the West. No matter
who's in power, the establishment pushes both but will do one or the other
covertly.
All powerful institutions have a vested interest in keeping us atomized
and individualistic. The gangs at the top don't want competition. They're
afraid of us. In particular, they're afraid of men organising into gangs.
That's where this very paper comes in.
The alienation genie was out of the bottle with the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution and mass migration to cities began and we abandoned
living in village communities. Over the ensuing approx 250 years we
abandoned geographically close relationships with extended families, especially
post WW2. Underlying economic structures both capitalist and marxist dissolved
relationships that we as communal primates evolved within. Then accelerate
this mess with (anti-) social media the last 20 years along with economic
instability and now dissolution of even the nuclear family (which couldn't
work in the first place, we never evolved to live with just two parents
looking after children) and here we have it: Mass mental illness. Solution?
None. Just form the best type of extended community both within and outside
of family, be engaged and generours with your community hope for the best.
Indeed, Industrialisation of our pre-prescribed lifestyle is a huge factor.
In particular, our food, it's low quality, it's 24 hour avaliability, it's
cardboard box ambivalence, has caused a myriad of health problems. Industrialisation
is about profit for those that own the 'production-line' & much less about
the needs of the recipient.
It's unsurprising that social isolation is strongly associated
with depression, suicide, anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception
of threat.
Yes, although there is some question of which order things go in. A supportive
social network is clearly helpful, but it's hardly a simple cause and effect.
Levels of different mental health problems appear to differ widely across
societies just in Europe, and it isn't particularly the case that more capitalist
countries have greater incidence than less capitalist ones.
You could just as well blame atheism. Since the rise of neo-liberalism
and drop in church attendance track each other pretty well, and since for
all their ills churches did provide a social support group, why not blame
that?
While attending a church is likely to alleviate loneliness, atheism doesn't
expressly encourage limiting social interactions and selfishness. And of
course, reduced church attendance isn't exactly the same as atheism.
Neoliberalism expressly encourages 'atomisation'- it is all about
reducing human interaction to markets. And so this is just one of the reasons
that neoliberalism is such a bunk philosophy.
So why are we engaging in this world-eating, self-consuming frenzy
of environmental destruction and social dislocation, if all it produces
is unbearable pain?
My stab at an answer would first question the notion that we
are engaging in anything. That presupposes we are making the
choices. Those who set out the options are the ones that make the choices.
We are being engaged by the grotesquely privileged and the pathologically
greedy in an enterprise that profits them still further. It suits the 1%
very well strategically, for obvious reasons, that the 99% don't swap too
many ideas with each other.
We as individuals are offered the 'choice' of consumption as an alternative
to the devastating ennui engendered by powerlessness. It's no choice at
all of course, because consumption merely enriches the 1% and exacerbates
our powerlessness. That was the whole point of my post.
The 'choice' to consume is never collectively exercised as you suggest.
Sadly. If it was, 'we' might be able to organise ourselves into doing something
about it.
According to Robert Putnam, as societies become more ethnically diverse
they lose social capital, contributing to the type of isolation and loneliness
which George describes. Doesn't sound as evil as neoliberalism I suppose.
Disagree. Im British but have had more foreign friends than British. The
UK middle class tend to be boring insular social status obsessed drones.other
nationalities have this too, but far less so
Well, yes, but multiculturalism is a direct result of Neoliberalism.
The market rules and people are secondary. Everything must be done for business
owners, and that everything means access to cheap labor.
Multiculturalism isn't the only thing destroying social cohesion, too.
It was being destroyed long before the recent surges of immigrants. It was
reported many times in the 1980's in communities made up of only one culture.
In many ways, it is being used as the obvious distraction from all the other
ways Fundamentalist Free Marketers wreck live for many.
This post perhaps ranges too widely to the point of being vague and general,
and leading Monbiot to make some huge mental leaps, linking loneliness to
a range of mental and physical problems without being able to explain, for
example, the link between loneliness and obesity and all the steps in-between
without risking derailment into a side issue.
I'd have thought what he really wants to say is that loneliness as
a phenomenon in modern Western society arises out of an intent on the part
of our political and social elites to divide us all into competing against
one another, as individuals and as members of groups, all the better to
keep us under control and prevent us from working together to claim our
fair share of resources.
Are you familiar with the term 'Laughter is the best medicine'? Well, it's
true. When you laugh, your brain releases endorphins, yeah? Your stress
hormones are reduced and the oxygen supply to your blood is increased, so...
I try to laugh several times a day just because... it makes you feel
good! Let's try that, eh? Ohohoo... Hahaha... Just, just... Hahahaha...
Come on, trust me.. you'll feel.. HahaHAhaha! O-o-o-o-a-hahahahaa... Share
No. It has been the concentrated propaganda of the "free" press. Rupert
Murdoch in particular, but many other well-funded organisations working
in the background over 50 years. They are winning.
We're fixated on a magical, abstract concept called "the economy".
Everything must be done to help "the economy", even if this means adults
working through their weekends, neglecting their children, neglecting their
elderly parents, eating at their desks, getting diabetes, breaking down
from stress, and giving up on a family life.
Impertinent managers ban their staff from office relationships, as company
policy, because the company is more important than its staff's wellbeing.
Companies hand out "free" phones that allow managers to harrass staff
for work out of hours, on the understanding that they will be sidelined
if thy don't respond.
And the wellbeing of "the economy" is of course far more important than
whether the British people actually want to merge into a European superstate.
What they want is irrelevant.
That nasty little scumbag George Osborne was the apotheosis of this ideology,
but he was abetted by journalists who report any rise in GDP as "good" -
no matter how it was obtained - and any "recession" to be the equivalent
of a major natural disaster.
If we go on this way, the people who suffer the most will be the rich,
because it will be them swinging from the lamp-posts, or cowering in gated
communities that they dare not leave (Venezuela, South Africa). Those riots
in London five years ago were a warning. History is littered with them.
You can make a reasonable case that 'Neoliberalism' expects that every
interaction, including between individuals, can be reduced to a financial
one. If this results in loneliness then that's certainly a downside
- but the upside is that billions have been lifted out of absolute poverty
worldwide by 'Neoliberalism'.
Mr Monbiot creates a compelling argument that we should end 'Neoliberalism'
but he is very vague about what should replace it other than a 'different
worldview'. Destruction is easy, but creation is far harder.
As a retired teacher it grieves me greatly to see the way our education
service has become obsessed by testing and assessment. Sadly the results
are used not so much to help children learn and develop, but rather as a
club to beat schools and teachers with. Pressurised schools produce pressurised
children. Compare and contrast with education in Finland where young people
are not formally assessed until they are 17 years old. We now assess toddlers
in nursery schools.
SATs in Primary schools had children concentrating on obscure grammatical
terms and usage which they will never ever use again. Pointless and counter-productive.
Gradgrind values driving out the joy of learning.
And promoting anxiety and mental health problems.
It is all the things you describe, Mr Monbiot, and then some. This dystopian
hell, when anything that did work is broken and all things that have never
worked are lined up for a little tinkering around the edges until the camouflage
is good enough to kid people it is something new. It isn't just neoliberal
madness that has created this, it is selfish human nature that has made
it possible, corporate fascism that has hammered it into shape. and an army
of mercenaries who prefer the take home pay to morality. Crime has always
paid especially when governments are the crooks exercising the law.
The value of life has long been forgotten as now the only thing that
matters is how much you can be screwed for either dead or alive. And yet
the Trumps, the Clintons, the Camerons, the Johnsons, the Merkels, the Mays,
the news media, the banks, the whole crooked lot of them, all seem to believe
there is something worth fighting for in what they have created, when painfully
there is not. We need revolution and we need it to be lead by those who
still believe all humanity must be humble, sincere, selfless and most of
all morally sincere. Freedom, justice, and equality for all, because the
alternative is nothing at all.
Ive long considered neo-liberalism as the cause of many of our problems,
particularly the rise in mental health problems, alienation and loneliness.
As can be seen from many of the posts, neo-liberalism depends on, and
fosters, ignorance, an inability to see things from historical and different
perspectives and social and intellectual disciplines. On a sociological
level how other societies are arranged throws up interesting comparisons. Scandanavian countries, which have mostly avoided neo-liberalism by and
large, are happier, healthier places to live. America and eastern countries
arranged around neo-liberal, market driven individualism, are unhappy places,
riven with mental and physical health problems and many more social problems
of violence, crime and suicide.
The worst thing is that the evidence shows it doesn't work. Not one of
the privatisations in this country have worked. All have been worse than
what they've replaced, all have cost more, depleted the treasury and led
to massive homelessness, increased mental health problems with the inevitable
financial and social costs, costs which are never acknowledged by its adherents.
Put crudely, the more " I'm alright, fuck you " attitude is fostered,
the worse societies are. Empires have crashed and burned under similar attitudes.
The people who fosted this this system onto us, are now either very old
or dead.
We're living in the shadow of their revolutionary transformation of our
more equitable post-war society. Hayek, Friedman, Keith Joseph, Thatcher,
Greenspan and tangentially but very influentially Ayn Rand.
Although a remainder (I love the wit of the term 'Remoaner') , Brexit can
be better understood in the context of the death-knell of neoliberalism.
I never understood how the collapse of world finance, resulted in a right
wing resurgence in the UK and the US. The Tea Party in the US made the absurd
claim that the failure of global finance was not due to markets being fallible,
but because free markets had not been enforced citing Fanny Mae and Freddie
Mac as their evidence and of Bill Clinton insisting on more poor and black
people being given mortgages.
I have a terrible sense that it will not go quietly, there will be massive
global upheavals as governments struggle deal with its collapse.
I have never really agreed with GM - but this article hits the nail on the
head.
I think there are a number of aspects to this:
The internet. The being in constant contact, our lives mapped and
our thoughts analysed - we can comment on anything (whether informed or
total drivel) and we've been fed the lie that our opinion is is right and
that it matters) Ive removed fscebook and twitter from my phone, i have
never been happier
Rolling 24 hour news. That is obsessed with the now, and consistently
squeezes very complex issues into bite sized simple dichotomies. Obsessed
with results and critical in turn of everyone who fails to feed the machine
The increasing slicing of work into tighter and slimmer specialisms,
with no holistic view of the whole, this forces a box ticking culture. "Ive
stamped my stamp, my work is done" this leads to a lack of ownership of
the whole. PIP assessments are an almost perfect example of this - a box
ticking exercise, designed by someone who'll never have to go through it,
with no flexibility to put the answers into a holistic context.
Our education system is designed to pass exams and not prepare for
the future or the world of work - the only important aspect being the compilation
of next years league tables and the schools standings. This culture is neither
healthy no helpful, as students are schooled on exam technique in order
to squeeze out the marks - without putting the knowledge into a meaningful
and understandable narrative.
Apologies for the long post - I normally limit myself to a trite insulting
comment :) but felt more was required in this instance.
Overall, I agree with your points. Monbiot here adopts a blunderbuss approach
(competitive self-interest and extreme individualism; "brutal" education,
employment social security; consumerism, social media and vanity). Criticism
of his hypotheses on this thread (where articualted at all) focus on the
existence of solitude and loneliness prior to neo liberalism, which seems
to me to be to deliberately miss his point: this was formerly a minor phenomenon,
yet is now writ on an incredible scale - and it is a social phenomenon particular
to those western economies whose elites have most enthusiastically embraced
neo liberalism. So, when Monbiot's rhetoric rises:
"So why are we engaging in this world-eating, self-consuming frenzy
of environmental destruction and social dislocation, if all it produces
is unbearable pain?"
the answer is, of course, 'western capitalist elites'.
We stand together or we fall apart.
Hackneyed and unoriginal but still true for all that.
the answer is, of course, 'western capitalist elites'.
because of the lies that are being sold.
We all want is to: (and feel we have the right to) wear the best clothes,
have the foreign holidays, own the latest tech and eat the finest foods.
At the same time our rights have increased and awareness of our responsibilities
have minimized. The execution of common sense and an awareness that everything
that goes wrong will always be someone else fault.
We are not all special snowflakes, princesses or worthy of special treatment,
but we act like self absorbed, entitled individuals. Whether that's entitled
to benefits, the front of the queue or bumped into first because its our
birthday!
I share Monbiots pain here. But rather than get a sense of perspective
- the answer is often "More public money and counseling"
George Monbiot has struck a nerve.
They are there every day in my small town local park: people, young and
old, gender and ethnically diverse, siting on benches for a couple of hours
at a time.
They have at least one thing in common.
They each sit alone, isolated in their own thoughts..
But many share another bond: they usually respond to dogs, unconditional
in their behaviour patterns towards humankind.
Trite as it may seem, this temporary thread of canine affection breaks the
taboo of strangers
passing by on the other side.
Conversations, sometimes stilted, sometimes deeper and more meaningful,
ensue as dog walkers become a brief daily healing force in a fractured world
of loneliness.
It's not much credit in the bank of sociability.
But it helps.
Trite as it may seem from the outside, their interaction with the myriad
pooches regularly walk
Unhealthy social interaction, yes. You can never judge what is natural to
humans based on contemporary Britain. Anthropologists repeatedly find that
what we think natural is merely a social construct created by the system
we are subject to.
If you don't work hard, you will be a loser, don't look out of the window
day dreaming you lazy slacker. Get productive, Mr Burns millions need you
to work like a machine or be replaced by one.
Good article. You´re absoluately right. And the deeper casue is this: separation
from God. If we don´t fight our way back to God, individually and collectively,
things are going to get a lot worse. With God, loneliness doesn´t exist.
I encourage anyone and everyone to start talking to Him today and invite
Him into your heart and watch what starts to happen.
Religion divides not brings people together. Only when you embrace all humanity
and ignore all gods will you find true happiness. The world and the people
in it are far more inspiring when you contemplate the lack of any gods.
The fact people do amazing things without needing the promise of heaven
or the threat of hell - that is truly moving.
I see what you're saying but I read 'love' instead of God. God is too religious
which separates and divides ("I'm this religion and my god is better than
yours" etc etc). I believe that George is right in many ways in that money
is very powerful on it's impact on our behavior (stress, lack etc) and
therefore our lives. We are becoming fearful of each other and I believe
the insecurity we feel plays a part in this.
We have become so disconnected
from ourselves and focused on battling to stay afloat. Having experienced
periods of severe stress due to lack of money I couldn't even begin to think
about how I felt, how happy I was, what I really wanted to do with my life.
I just had to pay my landlord, pay the bills and try and put some food on
my table so everything else was totally neglected.
When I moved house to
move in with family and wasn't expected to pay rent, though I offered, all
that dissatisfaction and undealt with stuff came spilling out and I realised
I'd had no time for any real safe care above the very basics and that was
not a good place to be. I put myself into therapy for a while and started
to look after myself and things started to change. I hope to never go back
to that kind of position but things are precarious financially and the field
I work in isn't well paid but it makes me very happy which I realise now
is more important.
Neo-liberalism has a lot to answer for in bringing misery to our lives and
accelerating the demise of the planet but I find it not guilty on this one. The current trends as to how people perceive themselves (what you've
got rather than who you are) and the increasing isolation in our cities
started way before the neo-liberals. It is getting worse though and on balance social media is making us more
connected but less social. Share
The way that the left keeps banging on about neoliberalism is half of what
makes them such a tough sell electorally. Just about nobody knows what neoliberalism
is, and literally nobody self identifies as a neoliberal. So all this moaning
and wailing about neoliberalism comes across as a self absorbed, abstract
and irrelevant. I expect there is the germ of an idea in there, but until
the left can find away to present that idea without the baffling layer of
jargon and over-analysis, they're going to remain at a disadvantage to the
easy populism of the right.
Interesting article. We have heard so much about the size of our economy
but less about our quality of life. The UK quality of life is way below
the size of our economy i.e. economy size 6th largest in the world but quality
of life 15th. If we were the 10th largest economy but were 10th for quality
of life we would be better off than we are now in real terms.
We need a
radical change of political thinking to focus on quality of life rather
than obsession with the size of our economy. High levels of immigration
of people who don't really integrate into their local communities has fractured
our country along with the widening gap between rich and poor. Governments
only see people in terms of their "economic value" - hence mothers being
driven out to work, children driven into daycare and the elderly driven
into care homes. Britain is becoming a soulless place - even our great British
comedy is on the decline.
Interesting. 'It is the isolated and marginalised animals that are most
likely to be picked off by predators....' so perhaps the species is developing
its own predators to fill a vacated niche.
(Not questioning the comparison to other mammals at all as I think it
is valid but you would have to consider the whole rather than cherry pick
bits)
Generation snowflake. "I'll do myself in if you take away my tablet and
mobile phone for half an hour".
They don't want to go out and meet people anymore. Nightclubs for instance,
are closing because the younger generation 'don't see the point' of going
out to meet people they would otherwise never meet, because they can meet
people on the internet. Leave them to it and the repercussions of it.....
Socialism is dying on its feet in the UK, hence the Tory's 17 point lead
at the mo. The lefties are clinging to whatever influence they have to sway
the masses instead of the ballot box. Good riddance to them.
17 point lead? Dying on it's feet? The neo-liberals are showing their disconnect
from reality. If anything, neo-liberalism is driving a people to the left
in search of a fairer and more equal society.
George Moniot's articles are better thought out, researched and written
than the vast majority of the usual clickbait opinion pieces found on the
Guardian these days. One of the last journalists, rather than liberal arts
blogger vying for attention.
Neoliberalism's rap sheet is long and dangerous but this toxic philosophy
will continue unabated because most people can't join the dots and work
out how detrimental it has proven to be for most of us.
It dangles a carrot in order to create certain economic illusions but
the simple fact is neoliberal societies become more unequal the longer they
persist.
Neoliberal economies allow people to build huge global businesses very quickly
and will continue to give the winners more but they also can guve everyone
else more too but just at a slower rate. Socialism on the other hand mires
everyone in stagnant poverty. Question is do you want to be absolutely or
relatively better off.
You have no idea. Do not confuse capitalism with neoliberalism. Neoliberalism
is a political ideology based on a mythical version of capitalism that doesn't
actually exist, but is a nice way to get the deluded to vote for something
that doesn't work in their interest at all.
And things will get worse as society falls apart due to globalisation, uberization,
lack of respect for authority, lacks of a fair tax and justice system, crime,
immorality, loss of trust of politicians and financial and corporate sectors,
uncontrolled immigration bringing with it insecurity and the risk of terrorism
and a dumbing down of society with increasing inequality. All this is in
a new book " The World at a Crossroads" which deals with the major issues
facing the planet.
What, like endless war, unaffordable property, monstrous university fees,
zero hours contracts and a food bank on every corner, and that's before
we even get to the explosion in mental distress.
There's nothing spurious or obscure about Neoliberalism. It is simply the
political ideology of the rich, which has been our uninterrupted governing
ideology since Reagan and Thatcher: Privatisation, deregulation, 'liberalisation'
of housing, labour, etc, trickledown / low-tax-on-the-rich economics, de-unionization.
You only don't see it if you don't want to see it.
I'm just thinking what is wonderful about societies that are big of social
unity. And conformity.
Those societies for example where you "belong" to your family. Where
teenage girls can be married off to elderly uncles to cement that belonging.
Or those societies where the belonging comes through religious centres.
Where the ostracism for "deviant" behaviour like being gay or for women
not submitting to their husbands can be brutal. And I'm not just talking
about muslims here.
Or those societies that are big on patriotism. Yep they are usually good
for mental health as the young men are given lessons in how to kill as many
other men as possible efficiently.
And then I have to think how our years of "neo-liberal" governments have
taken ideas of social liberalisation and enshrined them in law. It may be
coincidence but thirty years after Thatcher and Reagan we are far more tolerant
of homosexuality and willing to give it space to live, conversely we are
far less tolerant of racism and are willing to prosecute racist violence.
Feminists may still moan about equality but the position of women in society
has never been better, rape inside marriage has (finally) been outlawed,
sexual violence generally is no longer condoned except by a few, work opportunities
have been widened and the woman's role is no longer just home and family.
At least that is the case in "neo-liberal" societies, it isn't necessarily
the case in other societies.
So unless you think loneliness is some weird Stockholm Syndrome thing
where your sense of belonging comes from your acceptance of a stifling role
in a structured soiety, then I think blaming the heightened respect for
the individual that liberal societies have for loneliness is way off the
mark.
What strikes me about the cases you cite above, George, is not an over-respect
for the individual but another example of individuals being shoe-horned
into a structure. It strikes me it is not individualism but competition
that is causing the unhappiness. Competition to achieve an impossible ideal.
I fear George, that you are not approaching this with a properly open
mind dedicated to investigation. I think you have your conclusion and you
are going to bend the evidence to fit. That is wrong and I for one will
not support that. In recent weeks and months we have had the "woe, woe and
thrice woe" writings. Now we need to take a hard look at our findings. We
need to take out the biases resulting from greater awareness of mental health
and better and fuller diagnosis of mental health issues. We need to balance
the bias resulting from the fact we really only have hard data for modern
Western societies. And above all we need to scotch any bias resulting from
the political worldview of the researchers.
It sounded to me that he was telling us of farm labouring and factory fodder
stock that if we'd 'known our place' and kept to it ,all would be well because
in his ideal society there WILL be or end up having a hierarchy, its inevitable.
Wasn't all this started by someone who said, "There is no such thing as
Society"? The ultimate irony is that the ideology that championed the individual
and did so much to dismantle the industrial and social fabric of the Country
has resulted in a system which is almost totalitarian in its disregard for
its ideological consequences.
Thatcher said it in the sense that society is not abstract it is just other
people so when you say society needs to change then people need to change
as society is not some independent concept it is an aggregation of all us.
The left mis quote this all the time and either they don't get it or they
are doing on purpose.
No, Neoliberalism has been around since 1938.... Thatcher was only responsible
for "letting it go" in Britain in 1980, but actually it was already racing
ahead around the world.
Furthermore, it could easily be argued that the Beatles helped create
loneliness - what do you think all those girls were screaming for? And also
it could be argued that the Beatles were bringing in neoliberalism in the
1960s, via America thanks to Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis etc.. Share
Great article, although surely you could've extended the blame to capitalism
has a whole?
In what, then, consists the alienation of labor? First, in the fact
that labor is external to the worker, i.e., that it does not belong
to his nature, that therefore he does not realize himself in his work,
that he denies himself in it, that he does not feel at ease in it, but
rather unhappy, that he does not develop any free physical or mental
energy, but rather mortifies his flesh and ruins his spirit. The worker,
therefore, is only himself when he does not work, and in his work he
feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and
when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor, therefore, is
not voluntary, but forced--forced labor. It is not the gratification
of a need, but only a means to gratify needs outside itself. Its alien
nature shows itself clearly by the fact that work is shunned like the
plague as soon as no physical or other kind of coercion exists.
Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
We have created a society with both flaws and highlights- and we have unwittingly
allowed the economic system to extend into our lives in negative ways.
On of the things being modern brings is movement- we move away from communities,
breaking friendships and losing support networks, and the support networks
are the ones that allow us to cope with issues, problems and anxiety.
Isolation among the youth is disturbing, it is also un natural, perhaps
it is social media, or fear of parents, or the fall in extra school activities
or parents simply not having a network of friends because they have had
to move for work or housing.
There is some upsides, I talk and get support from different international
communities through the social media that can also be so harmful- I chat
on xbox games, exchange information on green building forums, arts forums,
share on youtube as well as be part of online communities that hold events
in the real world.
Increasingly we seem to need to document our lives on social media to somehow
prove we 'exist'. We seem far more narcissistic these days, which tends
to create a particular type of unhappiness, or at least desire that can
never be fulfilled. Maybe that's the secret of modern consumer-based capitalism.
To be happy today, it probably helps to be shallow, or avoid things like
Twitter and Facebook!
Eric Fromm made similar arguments to Monbiot about the psychological
impact of modern capitalism (Fear of Freedom and The Sane Society) - although
the Freudian element is a tad outdated. However, for all the faults of modern
society, I'd rather be unhappy now than in say, Victorian England. Similarly,
life in the West is preferable to the obvious alternatives.
Thanks George for commenting in such a public way on the unsayable: consume,
consume, consume seems to be the order of the day in our modern world and
the points you have highlighted should be part of public policy everywhere.
I'm old enough to remember when we had more time for each other; when
mothers could be full-time housewives; when evenings existed (evenings now
seem to be spent working or getting home from work). We are undoubtedly
more materialistic, which leads to more time spent working, although our
modern problems are probably not due to increasing materialism alone.
Regarding divorce and separation, I notice people in my wider circle
who are very open to affairs. They seem to lack the self-discipline to concentrate
on problems in their marriage and to give their full-time partner a high
level of devotion. Terrible problems come up in marriages but if you are
completely and unconditionally committed to your partner and your marriage
then you can get through the majority of them.
Aggressive self interest is turning in on itself. Unfortunately the powerful
who have realised their 'Will to Power' are corrupted by their own inflated
sense of self and thus blinded. Does this all predict a global violent revolution?
However, what is most interesting is how nearly all modern politicians
who peddle neoliberal doctrine or policy, refuse to use the name, or even
to openly state what ideology they are in fact following.
I suppose it is just a complete coincidence that the policy so many governments
are now following so closely follow known neoliberal doctrine. But of course
the clever and unpleasant strategy of those like yourself is to cry conspiracy
theory if this ideology, which dare not speak its name is mentioned.
Your style is tiresome. You make no specific supported criticisms again,
and again. You just make false assertions and engage in unpleasant ad homs
and attempted character assassination. You do not address the evidence for
what George Monbiot states at all.
An excellent article. One wonders exactly what one needs to say in order
to penetrate the reptilian skulls of those who run the system.
As an addition to Mr Monbiot's points, I would like to point out that
it is not only competitive self-interest and extreme individualism that
drives loneliness. Any system that has strict hierarchies and mechanisms
of social inclusion also drives it, because such systems inhibit strongly
spontaneous social interaction, in which people simply strike up conversation.
Thailand has such a system. Despite her promoting herself as the land of
smiles, I have found the people here to be deeply segregated and unfriendly.
I have lived here for 17 years. The last time I had a satisfactory face-to-face
conversation, one that went beyond saying hello to cashiers at checkout
counters or conducting official business, was in 1999. I have survived by
convincing myself that I have dialogues with my books; as I delve more deeply
into the texts, the authors say something different to me, to which I can
then respond in my mind.
Epidemics of mental illness are crushing the minds and bodies of
millions. It's time to ask where we are heading and why
I want to quote the sub headline, because "It's time to ask where we are
heading and why", is the important bit. George's excellent and scathing
evidence based criticism of the consequences of neoliberalism is on the
nail. However, we need to ask how we got to this stage. Despite it's name
neoliberalism doesn't really seem to contain any new ideas, and in some
way it's more about Thatcher's beloved return to Victorian values. Most
of what George Monbiot highlights encapsulatec Victorian thinking, the sort
of workhouse mentality.
Whilst it's very important to understand how neoliberalism, the ideology
that dare not speak it's name, derailed the general progress in the developed
world. It's also necessary to understand that the roots this problem go
much further back. Not merely to the start of the industrial revolution,
but way beyond that. It actually began with the first civilizations when
our societies were taken over by powerful rulers, and they essentially started
to farm the people they ruled like cattle. On the one hand they declared
themselves protector of their people, whilst ruthlessly exploiting them
for their own political gain. I use the livestock farming analogy, because
that explains what is going on.
To domesticate livestock, and to make them pliable and easy to work with
the farmer must make himself appear to these herd animals as if they are
their protector, the person who cares for them, nourishes and feeds them.
They become reliant on their apparent benefactor. Except of course this
is a deceitful relationship, because the farmer is just fattening them up
to be eaten.
For the powerful to exploit the rest of people in society for their own
benefit they had to learn how to conceal what they were really doing, and
to wrap it in justifications to bamboozle the people they were exploiting
for their own benefit. They did this by altering our language and inserting
ideas in our culture which justified their rule, and the positions of the
rest of us.
Before state religions, generally what was revered was the Earth, the
natural world. It was on a personal level, and not controlled by the powerful.
So the powerful needed to remove that personal meaningfulness from people's
lives, and said the only thing which was really meaningful, was the religion,
which of course they controlled and were usually the head of. Over generations
people were indoctrinated in a completely new way of thinking, and a language
manipulated so all people could see was the supposed divine right of kings
to rule. Through this language people were detached from what was personally
meaningful to them, and could only find meaningfulness by pleasing their
rulers, and being indoctrinated in their religion.
If you control the language people use, you can control how perceive
the world, and can express themselves.
By stripping language of meaningful terms which people can express themselves,
and filling it full of dubious concepts such as god, the right of kings
completely altered how people saw the world, how they thought. This is why
over the ages, and in different forms the powerful have always attempted
to have full control of our language through at first religion and their
proclamations, and then eventually by them controlling our education system
and the media.
The idea of language being used to control how people see the world,
and how they think is of course not my idea. George Orwell's Newspeak idea
explored in "1984" is very much about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
This control of language is well known throughout history. Often conquerors
would abolish languages of those they conquered. In the so called New World
the colonists eventually tried to control how indigenous people thought
by forcibly sending their children to boarding school, to be stripped of
their culture, their native language, and to be inculcated in the language
and ideas of their colonists. In Britain various attempts were made to banish
the Welsh language, the native language of the Britons, before the Anglo-Saxons
and the Normans took over.
However, what Orwell did not deal with properly is the origin of language
style. To Orwell, and to critics of neoliberalism, the problems can be traced
back to the rise of what they criticised. To a sort of mythical golden age.
Except all the roots of what is being criticised can be found in the period
before the invention of these doctrines. So you have to go right back to
the beginning, to understand how it all began.
Neoliberalism would never have been possible without this long control
of our language and ideas by the powerful. It prevents us thinking outside
the box, about what the problem really is, and how it all began.
All very well but you are talking about ruthlessness of western elites,
mostly British, not all.
It was not like that everywhere. Take Poland for example, and around
there..
New research is emerging - and I'd recommend reading of prof Frost from
St Andrew's Uni - that lower classes were actually treated with respect
by elites there, mainly land owners and aristocracy who more looked after
them and employed and cases of such ruthlessness as you describe were unknown
of.
So that 'truth' about attitudes to lower classes is not universal!
It's spouted by many on here as the root of all evil.
I'd be interested to see how many different definitions I get in
response...
The reason I call neoliberalism the ideology which dare not speak it's name
is that in public you will rarely hear it mentioned by it's proponents.
However, it was a very important part of Thatcherism, Blairism, and so on.
What is most definite is that these politicians and others are most definitely
following some doctrine. Their ideas about what we must do and how we must
do it are arbitrary, but they make it sound as if it's the only way to do
things.
However, as I hint, the main problem in dealing with neoliberalism is
that none of the proponents of this doctrine admit to what ideology they
are actually following. Yet very clearly around the world leaders in many
countries are clearly singing from the same hymn sheet because the policy
they implement is so similar. Something has definitely changed. All the
attempts to roll back welfare, benefits, and public services is most definitely
new, or they wouldn't be having to reverse policy of the past if nothing
had change. But as all these politicians implementing this policy all seem
to refuse to explain what doctrine they are following, it makes it difficult
to pin down what is happening. Yet we can most definitely say that there
is a clear doctrine at work, because why else would so many political leaders
around the world be trying to implement such similar policy.
Neo-liberalism doesn't really exist except in the minds of the far
left and perhaps a few academics.
Neoliberalism is a policy model of social studies and economics that
transfers control of economic factors to the private sector from the public
sector. ... Neoliberal policies aim for a laissez-faire approach to economic
development.
I believe the term 'Neo liberalism' was coined by those well known 'Lefties'The
Chicago School .
If you don't believe that any of the above has been happening ,it does beg
the question as to where you have been for the past decade.
The ironies of modern civilization - we have never been more 'connected'
to other people on global level and less 'connected' on personal level.
We have never had access to such a wide range of information and opinions,
but also for a long time been so divided into conflicting groups, reading
and accessing in fact only that which reinforces what we already think.
Sir Harry Burns, ex-Chief Medical Officer in Scotland talks very powerfully
about the impact of loneliness and isolation on physical and mental health
- here is a video of a recent talk by him -
http://www.befs.org.uk/calendar/48/164-BEFS-Annual-Lecture
These issues have been a long time coming, just think of the appeals of
the 60's to chill out and love everyone. Globalisation and neo-liberalism
has simply made society even more broken.
The way these problems have been ignored and made worse over the last few
decades make me think that the solution will only happen after a massive
catastrophe and society has to be rebuilt. Unless we make the same mistakes
again.
A shame really, you would think intelligence would be useful but it seems
not.
I would argue that it creates a bubble of existence for those who pursue
a path of "success" that instead turns to isolation . The amount of people
that I have met who have moved to London because to them it represents the
main location for everything . I get to see so many walking cliches of people
trying to fit in or stand out but also fitting in just the same .
The real disconnect that software is providing us with is truly staggering
. I have spoken to people from all over the World who seem to feel more
at home being alone and playing a game with strangers . The ones who are
most happy are those who seem to be living all aloe and the ones who try
and play while a girlfriend or family are present always seemed to be the
ones most agitated by them .
We are humans relying on simplistic algorithms that reduce us ,apps like
Tinder which turns us into a misogynist at the click of a button .
Facebook which highlights our connections with the other people and assumes
that everyone you know or have met is of the same relevance .
We also have Twitter which is the equivalent of screaming at a television
when you are drunk or angry .
We have Instagram where people revel in their own isolation and send
updates of it . All those products that are instantly updated and yet we
are ageing and always feeling like we are grouped together by simple algorithms
.
Television has been the main destroyer of social bonds since the 1950s and
yet it is only mentioned once and in relation to the number of competitions
on it, which completely misses the point. That's when I stopped taking this
article seriously.
I actually blame Marx for neoliberalism. He framed society purely in terms
economic, and persuaded that ideology is valuable in as much as it is actionable.
For a dialectician he was incredibly short sighted and superficial, not
realising he was creating a narrative inimical to personal expression and
simple thoughtfulness (although he was warned). To be fair, he can't have
appreciated how profoundly he would change the way we concieve societies.
Neoliberalism is simply the dark side of Marxism and subsumes the personal
just as comprehensively as communism.
We're picked apart by quantification and live as particulars, suffering
the ubiquitous consequences of connectivity alone . . .
Unless, of course, you get out there and meet great people!
Neo-liberalism allows psychopaths to flourish, and it has been argued by
Robert Hare that they are disproportionately represented in the highest
echelons of society. So people who lack empathy and emotional attachment
are probably weilding a significant amount of influence over the way our
economy and society is organised. Is it any wonder that they advocate an
economic model which is most conducive to their success? Things like job
security, rigged markets, unions, and higher taxes on the rich simply get
in their way.
That fine illustration by Andrzej Krauze up there is exactly what I see
whenever I walk into an upscale mall or any Temple of Consumerism.
You can hear the Temple calling out: "Feel bad, atomized individuals?
Have a hole inside? Feel lonely? That's all right: buy some shit you don't
need and I guarantee you'll feel better."
And then it says: "So you bought it and you felt better for five minutes,
and now you feel bad again? Well, that's not rocket science...you should
buy MORE shit you don't need! I mean, it's not rocket science, you should
have figured this out on your own."
And then it says: "Still feel bad and you have run out of money? Well,
that's okay, just get it on credit, or take out a loan, or mortgage your
house. I mean, it's not rocket science. Really, you should have figured
this out on your own already...I thought you were a modern, go-get-'em,
independent, initiative-seizing citizen of the world?"
And then it says: "Took out too many loans, can't pay the bills and
the repossession has begun? Honestly, that's not my problem. You're just
a bad little consumer, and a bad little liberal, and everything is your
own fault. You go sit in a dark corner now where you don't bother the other
shoppers. Honestly, you're just being a burden on other consumers now. I'm
not saying you should kill yourself, but I can't say that we would mind
either."
And that's how the worms turn at the Temples of Consumerism and Neoliberalism.
I kept my sanity by not becoming a spineless obedient middle class pleaser
of a sociopathic greedy tribe pretending neoliberalism is the future.
The result is a great clarity about the game, and an intact empathy for
all beings.
The middle class treated each conscious "outsider" like a lowlife,
and now they play the helpless victims of circumstances.
I know why I renounced to my privileges.
They sleepwalk into their self created disorder.
And yes, I am very angry at those who wasted decades with their social stupidity,
those who crawled back after a start of change into their petit bourgeois
niche.
I knew that each therapist has to take a stand and that the most choose
petty careers.
Do not expect much sanity from them for your disorientated kids.
Get insightful yourself and share your leftover love to them.
Try honesty and having guts...that might help both of you.
Alternatively, neo-liberalism has enabled us to afford to live alone (entire
families were forced to live together for economic reasons), and technology
enables us to work remotely, with no need for interaction with other people.
This may make some people feel lonely, but for many others its utopia.
Some of the things that characterise Globalisation and Neoliberalism are
open borders and free movement. How can that contribute to isolation? That
is more likely to be fostered by Protectionism.
And there aren't fewer jobs. Employment is at record highs here and in many
other countries. There are different jobs, not fewer, and to be sure there
are some demographics that have lost out. But overall there are not fewer
jobs. That falls for the old "lump of labour" fallacy.
The corrosive state of mass television indoctrination sums it up: Apprentice,
Big Brother, Dragon's Den. By degrees, the standard keeps lowering. It is
no longer unusual for a licence funded TV programme to consist of a group
of the mentally deranged competing to be the biggest asshole in the room.
Anomie is a by-product of cultural decline as much as economics.
Our whole culture is more stressful. Jobs are more precarious; employment
rights more stacked in favor of the employer; workforces are deunionised;
leisure time is on the decrease; rents are unaffordable; a house is no longer
a realistic expectation for millions of young people. Overall, citizens
are more socially immobile and working harder for poorer real wages than
they were in the late 70's.
Unfortunately, sexual abuse has always been a feature of human societies.
However there is no evidence to suggest it was any worse in the past. Then
sexual abuse largely took place in institutional settings were at least
it could be potentially addressed. Now much of it has migrated to the great
neoliberal experiment of the internet, where child exploitation is at endemic
levels and completely beyond the control of law enforcement agencies. There
are now more women and children being sexually trafficked than there were
slaves at the height of the slave trade. Moreover, we should not forget
that Jimmy Saville was abusing prolifically right into the noughties.
My parents were both born in 1948. They say it was great. They bought
a South London house for next to nothing and never had to worry about getting
a job. When they did get a job it was one with rights, a promise of a generous
pension, a humane workplace environment, lunch breaks and an ethos of public
service. My mum says that the way women are talked about now is worse.
Sounds fine to me. That's not to say everything was great: racism was
acceptable (though surely the vile views pumped out onto social media are
as bad or worse than anything that existed then), homosexuality was illegal
and capital punishment enforced until the 1960's. However, the fact that
these things were reformed showed society was moving in the right direction.
Now we are going backwards, back to 1930's levels or inequality and a reactionary,
small-minded political culture fueled by loneliness, rage and misery.
And there is little evidence to suggest that anyone has expanded their mind
with the internet. A lot of people use it to look at porn, post racist tirades
on Facebook, send rape threats, distributes sexual images of partners with
their permission, take endless photographs of themselves and whip up support
for demagogues. In my view it would much better if people went to a library
than lurked in corporate echo chambers pumping out the like of 'why dont
theese imagrantz go back home and all those lezbo fems can fuckk off too
ha ha megalolz ;). Seriously mind expanding stuff. Share
As a director and CEO of an organisation employing several hundred people
I became aware that 40% of the staff lived alone and that the workplace
was important to them not only for work but also for interacting with their
colleagues socially . This was encouraged and the organisation achieved
an excellent record in retaining staff at a time when recruitment was difficult.
Performance levels were also extremely high . I particulalry remember with
gratitude the solidarity of staff when one of our colleagues - a haemophiliac
- contracted aids through an infected blood transfusion and died bravely
but painfully - the staff all supported him in every way possible through
his ordeal and it was a privilege for me to work with such kind and caring
people .
Indeed. Those communities are often undervalued. However, the problem is,
as George says, lots of people are excluded from them.
They are also highly self-selecting (e.g. you need certain trains of
inclusivity, social adeptness, empathy, communication, education etc to
get the job that allows you to join that community).
Certainly I make it a priority in my life. I do create communities. I
do make an effort to stand by people who live like me. I can be a leader
there.
Sometimes I wish more people would be. It is a sustained, long-term effort.
Share
To add to this discussion, we might consider the strongest need and conflict
each of us experiences as a teenager, the need to be part of a tribe vs
the the conflict inherent in recognising one's uniqueness. In a child's
life from about 7 or 8 until adolescence, friends matter the most. Then
the young person realises his or her difference from everyone else and has
to grasp what this means.
Those of us who enjoyed a reasonably healthy upbringing will get through
the peer group / individuation stage with happiness possible either way
- alone or in friendship. Our parents and teachers will have fostered a
pride in our own talents and our choice of where to socialise will be flexible
and non-destructive.
Those of us who at some stage missed that kind of warmth and acceptance
in childhood can easily stagnate. Possibly this is the most awkward of personal
developmental leaps. The person neither knows nor feels comfortable with
themselves, all that faces them is an abyss.
Where creative purpose and strength of spirit are lacking, other humans
can instinctively sense it and some recoil from it, hardly knowing what
it's about. Vulnerabilities attendant on this state include relationships
holding out some kind of ersatz rescue, including those offered by superficial
therapists, religions, and drugs, legal and illegal.
Experience taught that apart from the work we might do with someone deeply
compassionate helping us where our parents failed, the natural world
is a reliable healer. A kind of self-acceptance and individuation is
possible away from human bustle. One effect of the seasons and of being
outdoors amongst other life forms is to challenge us physically, into present
time, where our senses start to work acutely and our observational skills
get honed, becoming more vibrant than they could at any educational establishment.
This is one reason we have to look after the Earth, whether it's in a
city context or a rural one. Our mental, emotional and physical health is
known to be directly affected by it.
A thoughtful article. But the rich and powerful will ignore it; their doing
very well out of neo liberalism thank you. Meanwhile many of those whose
lives are affected by it don't want to know - they're happy with their bigger
TV screen. Which of course is what the neoliberals want, 'keep the people
happy and in the dark'. An old Roman tactic - when things weren't
going too well for citizens and they were grumbling the leaders just
extended the 'games'. Evidently it did the trick
The rich and powerful can be just as lonely as you and me. However, some
of them will be lonely after having royally forked the rest of us over...and
that is another thing
- Fight Club
People need a tribe to feel purpose. We need conflict, it's essential for
our species... psychological health improved in New York after 9/11.
Totally agree with the last sentences. Human civilisation is a team effort.
Individual humans cant survive, our language evolved to aid cooperation.
Neo-liberalism is really only an Anglo-American project. Yet we are so
indoctrinated in it, It seems natural to us, but not to hardly any other
cultures.
As for those "secondary factors. Look to advertising and the loss of
real jobs forcing more of us to sell services dependent on fake needs. Share
It's importance for social cohesion -- yes inspite of the problems , can
not be overestimated .Don't let the rich drive it out , people who don't
understand ,or care what it's for .The poorer boroughs cannot afford it
.K&C have easily 1/2billion in Capital Reserves ,so yes they must continue
. Here I can assure you ,one often sees the old and lonely get a hug .If
drug gangs are hitting each other or their rich boy customers with violence
- that is a different matter . And yes of course if we don't do something
to help boys from ethnic minorities ,with education and housing -of course
it only becomes more expensive in the long run.
Boris Johnson has idiotically mouthed off about trying to mobilise people
to stand outside the Russian Embassy , as if one can mobilise youth by telling
them to tidy their bedroom .Because that's all it amounts to - because you
have to FEEL protest and dissent . Well here at Carnival - there it is ,protest
and dissent . Now listen to it . And of course it will be far easier than
getting any response from sticking your tongue out at the Putin monster --
He has his bombs , just as Kensington and Chelsea have their money.
(and anyway it's only another Boris diversion ,like building some fucking
stupid bridge ,instead of doing anything useful)
"Society" or at least organized society is the enemy of corporate power.
The idea of Neoliberal capitalism is to replace civil society with corporate
law and rule. The same was true of the less extreme forms of capitalism.
Society is the enemy of capital because it put restrictions on it and threatens
its power.
When society organizes itself and makes laws to protect society from
the harmful effects of capitalism, for example demands on testing drugs
to be sure they are safe, this is a big expense to Pfizer, there are many
examples - just now in the news banning sugary drinks. If so much as a small
group of parents forming a day care co-op decide to ban coca cola from their
group that is a loss of profit.
That is really what is going on, loneliness is a big part of human life,
everyone feels it sometimes, under Neoliberal capitalism it is simply more
exaggerated due to the out and out assault on society itself.
Well the prevailing Global Capitalist world view is still a combination
1. homocentric Cartesian Dualism i.e. seeing humans as most important and
sod all other living beings, and seeing humans as separate from all other
living beings and other humans and 2. Darwinian "survival of the fittest"
seeing everything as a competition and people as "winners and losers, weak
or strong with winners and the strong being most important". From these
2 combined views all kinds of "games" arise. The main one being the game
of "victim, rescuer, persecutor" (Transactional Analysis). The Guardian
engages in this most of the time and although I welcome the truth in this
article to some degree, surprisingly, as George is environmentally friendly,
it kinda still is talking as if humans are most important and as if those
in control (the winners) need to change their world view to save the victims.
I think the world view needs to zoom out to a perspective that recognises
that everything is interdependent and that the apparent winners and the
strong are as much victims of their limited world view as those who are
manifesting the effects of it more obviously.
Here in America, we have reached the point at which police routinely dispatch
the mentally ill, while complaining that "we don't have the time for this"
(N. Carolina). When a policeman refuses to kill a troubled citizen, he or
she can and will be fired from his job (West Virginia). This has become
not merely commonplace, but actually a part of the social function of the
work of the police -- to remove from society the burden of caring for the
mentally ill by killing them. In the state where I live, a state trooper
shot dead a mentally ill man who was not only unarmed, but sitting on the
toilet in his own home. The resulting "investigation" exculpated the trooper,
of course; in fact, young people are constantly told to look up to the police.
Sounds like the inevitable logical outcome of a society where the predator
sociopathic and their scared prey are all that is allowed.
This dynamic dualistic tautology, the slavish terrorised to sleep and bullying
narcissistic individual, will always join together to protect their sick
worldview by pathologising anything that will threaten their hegemony of
power abuse: compassion, sensitivity, moral conscience, altruism and the
immediate effects of the ruthless social effacement or punishment of the
same ie human suffering.
The impact of increasing alienation on individual mental health has been
known about and discussed for a long time.
When looking at a way forward, the following article is interesting:
"Alienation, in all areas, has reached unprecedented heights; the social
machinery for deluding consciousnesses in the interest of the ruling class
has been perfected as never before. The media are loaded with upscale advertising
identifying sophistication with speciousness. Television, in constant use,
obliterates the concept under the image and permanently feeds a baseless
credulity for events and history. Against the will of many students, school
doesn't develop the highly cultivated critical capacities that a real sovereignty
of the people would require. And so on.
The ordinary citizen thus lives
in an incredibly deceiving reality. Perhaps this explains the tremendous
and persistent gap between the burgeoning of motives to struggle, and the
paucity of actual combatants. The contrary would be a miracle. Thus the
considerable importance of what I call the struggle for representation:
at every moment, in every area, to expose the deception and bring to light,
in the simplicity of form which only real theoretical penetration makes
possible, the processes in which the false-appearances, real and imagined,
originate, and this way, to form the vigilant consciousness, placing our
image of reality back on its feet and reopening paths to action."
For the global epidemic of abusive, effacing homogenisation of human intellectual
exchange and violent hyper-sexualisation of all culture, I blame the US
Freudian PR guru Edward Bernays and his puritan forebears - alot.
Thanks for proving that Anomie is a far more sensible theory than Dialectical
Materialistic claptrap that was used back in the 80s to terrorize the millions
of serfs living under the Jack boot of Leninist Iron curtain.
There's no question - neoliberalism has been wrenching society apart.
It's not as if the prime movers of this ideology were unaware of the likely
outcome viz. "there is no such thing as society" (Thatcher). Actually in
retrospect the whole zeitgeist from the late 70s emphasised the atomised
individual separated from the whole. Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" (1976)
may have been influential in creating that climate.
Anyway, the wheel has turned thank goodness. We are becoming wiser and
understanding that "ecology" doesn't just refer to our relationship with
the natural world but also, closer to home, our relationship with each other.
The Communist manifesto makes the same complaint in 1848. The wheel has
not turned, it is still grinding down workers after 150 years. We are none
the wiser.
"The wheel is turning and you can't slow down,
You can't let go and you can't hold on,
You can't go back and you can't stand still,
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will."
R Hunter
What is loneliness? I love my own company and I love walking in nature and
listening to relaxation music off you tube and reading books from the library.
That is all free. When I fancied a change of scene, I volunteered at my
local art gallery.
Mental health issues are not all down to loneliness. Indeed, other people
can be a massive stress factor, whether it is a narcissistic parent, a bullying
spouse or sibling, or an unreasonable boss at work.
I'm on the internet far too much and often feel the need to detox from
it and get back to a more natural life, away from technology. The 24/7 news
culture and selfie obsessed society is a lot to blame for social disconnect.
The current economic climate is also to blame, if housing and job security
are a problem for individuals as money worries are a huge factor of stress.
The idea of not having any goal for the future can trigger depressive thoughts.
I have to say, I've been happier since I don't have such unrealistic
expectations of what 'success is'. I rarely get that foreign holiday or
new wardrobe of clothes and my mobile phone is archaic. The pressure that
society puts on us to have all these things- and get in debt for them is
not good. The obsession with economic growth at all costs is also stupid,
as the numbers don't necessarily mean better wealth, health or happiness.
Very fine article, as usual from George, until right at the end he says:
This does not require a policy response.
But it does. It requires abandonment of neoliberalism as the means used
to run the world. People talk about the dangers of man made computers usurping
their makers but mankind has, it seems, already allowed itself to become
enslaved. This has not been achieved by physical dependence upon machines
but by intellectual enslavement to an ideology.
A very good "Opinion" by George Monbiot one of the best I have seen on this
Guardian blog page.
I would add that the basic concepts of the Neoliberal New world order are
fundamentally Evil, from the control of world population through supporting
of strife starvation and war to financial inducements of persons in positions
of power. Let us not forget the training of our younger members of our society
who have been induced to a slavish love of technology. Many other areas
of human life are also under attack from the Neoliberal, even the very air
we breathe, and the earth we stand upon.
The Amish have understood for 300 years that technology could have a negative
effect on society and decided to limit its effects. I greatly admire their
approach. Neal Stephenson's recent novel Seveneves coined the term Amistics
for the practice of assessing and limiting the impact of tech. We need a
Minister for Amistics in the government. Wired magazine did two features
on the Amish use of telephones which are quite insightful.
If we go back to 1848, we also find Marx and Engels, in the Communist
Manifesto, complaining about the way that the first free-market capitalism
(the original liberalism) was destroying communities and families by forcing
workers to move to where the factories were being built, and by forcing
women and children into (very) low paid work. 150 years later, after many
generations of this, combined with the destruction of work in the North,
the result is widespread mental illness. But a few people are really rich
now, so that's all right, eh?
Social media is ersatz community. It's like eating grass: filling, but
not nourishing.
Young people are greatly harmed by not being able to see a clear path forward
in the world. For most people, our basic needs are a secure job, somewhere
secure and affordable to live, and a decent social environment in terms
of public services and facilities. Unfortunately, all these things are sliding
further out of reach for young people in the UK, and they know this. Many
already live with insecure housing where their family could have to move
at a month or two's notice.
Our whole economic system needs to be built around providing these basic
securities for people. Neoliberalism = insecure jobs, insecure housing and
poor public services, because these are the end result of its extreme free
market ideology.
I agree with this 100%. Social isolation makes us unhappy. We have a false
sense of what makes us unhappy - that success or wealth will enlighten or
liberate us. What makes us happy is social connection. Good friendships,
good relationships, being part of community that you contribute to. Go to
some of the poorest countries in the world and you may meet happy people
there, tell them about life in rich countries, and say that some people
there are unhappy. They won't believe you. We do need to change our worldview,
because misery is a real problem in many countries.
It is tempting to see the world before Thatcherism, which is what most English
writers mean when they talk about neo-liberalism, as an idyll, but it simply
wasn't.
The great difficulty with capitalism is that while it is in many ways
an amoral doctrine, it goes hand in hand with personal freedom. Socialism
is moral in its concern for the poorest, but then it places limits on personal
freedom and choice. That's the price people pay for the emphasis on community,
rather than the individual.
Close communities can be a bar on personal freedom and have little tolerance
for people who deviate from the norm. In doing that, they can entrench loneliness.
This happened, and to some extent is still happening, in the working
class communities which we typically describe as 'being destroyed by Thatcher'.
It's happening in close-knit Muslim communities now.
I'm not attempting to vindicate Thatcherism, I'm just saying there's
a pay-off with any model of society. George Monbiot's concerns are actually
part of a long tradition - Oliver Goldsmith's Deserted Village (1770) chimes
with his thinking, as does DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.
The kind of personal freedom that you say goes hand in hand with capitalism
is an illusion for the majority of people. It holds up the prospect of that
kind of freedom, but only a minority get access to it. For most, it is necessary
to submit yourself to a form of being yoked, in terms of the daily grind
which places limits on what you can then do, as the latter depends hugely
on money. The idea that most people are "free" to buy the house they want,
private education, etc., not to mention whether they can afford the many
other things they are told will make them happy, is a very bad joke. Hunter-gatherers
have more real freedom than we do. Share
According to Wiki: 'Neoliberalism refers primarily to the 20th century resurgence
of 19th century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism.
These include extensive economic liberalization policies such as privatization,
fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government
spending in order to enhance the role of the private sector in the economy.'
We grow into fear - the stress of exams and their certain meanings; the
lower wages, longer hours, and fewer rights at work; the certainty of debt
with ever greater mortgages; the terror of benefit cuts combined with rent
increases.
If we're forever afraid, we'll cling to whatever life raft presents.
It's a demeaning way to live, but it serves the Market better than having
a free, reasonably paid, secure workforce, broadly educated and properly
housed, with rights.
Insightful analysis... George quite rightly pinpoints the isolating effects of modern society
and technology and the impact on the quality of our relationships. The obvious question is how can we offset these trends and does the government
care enough to do anything about them?
It strikes me that one of the major problems is that [young] people have
been left to their own devices in terms of their consumption of messages
from Social and Mass online Media - analogous to leaving your kids in front
of a video in lieu of a parental care or a babysitter. In traditional society
- the messages provided by Society were filtered by family contact and real
peer interaction - and a clear picture of the limited value of the media
was propogated by teachers and clerics. Now young and older people alike
are left to make their own judgments and we cannot be surprised when they
extract negative messages around body image, wealth and social expectations
and social and sexual norms from these channels. It's inevitable that this
will create a boundary free landscape where insecurity, self-loathing and
ultimately mental illness will prosper.
I'm not a traditionalist in any way but there has to be a role for teachers
and parents in mediating these messages and presenting the context for analysing
what is being said in a healthy way. I think this kind of Personal Esteem
and Life Skills education should be part of the core curriculum in all schools.
Our continued focus on basic academic skills just does not prepare young
people for the real world of judgementalism, superficiality and cliques
and if anything dealing with these issues are core life skills.
We can't reverse the fact that media and modern society is changing but
we can prepare people for the impact which it can have on their lives.
A politician's answer.
X is a problem. Someone else, in your comment it will be teachers that have
to sort it out. Problems in society are not solved by having a one hour
a week class on "self esteem". In fact self-esteem and self-worth comes
from the things you do. Taking kids away from their academic/cultural studies
reduces this. This is a problem in society. What can society as a
whole do to solve it and what are YOU prepared to contribute.
Rather difficult to do when their parents are Thatchers children and buy
into the whole celebrity, you are what you own lifestyle too....and teachers
are far too busy filling out all the paperwork that shows they've met their
targets to find time to teach a person centred course on self-esteem to
a class of 30 teenagers.
I think we should just continue to be selfish and self-serving, sneering
and despising anyone less fortunate than ourselves, look up to and try to
emulate the shallow, vacuous lifestyle of the non-entity celebrity, consume
the Earth's natural resources whilst poisoning the planet and the people,
destroy any non-contributing indigenous peoples and finally set off all
our nuclear arsenals in a smug-faced global firework display to demonstrate
our high level of intelligence and humanity. Surely, that's what we all
want? Who cares? So let's just carry on with business as usual!
Neoliberalism is the bastard child of globalization which in effect is Americanization.
The basic premise is the individual is totally reliant on the corporate
world state aided by a process of fear inducing mechanisms, pharmacology
is one of the tools.
No community no creativity no free thinking. Poded sealed and cling filmed
a quasi existence.
Having grown up during the Thatcher years, I entirely agree that neoliberalism
has divided society by promoting individual self-optimisation at the expensive
of everyone else.
What's the solution? Well if neoliberalism is the root cause, we need
a systematic change, which is a problem considering there is no alternative
right now. We can however, get active in rebuilding communities and I am
encouraged by George Monbiot's work here.
My approach is to get out and join organizations working toward system
change. 350.org is a good example. Get involved.
we live in a narcissistic and ego driven world that dehumanises everyone.
we have an individual and collective crisis of the soul. it is our false
perception of ourselves that creates a disconnection from who we really
are that causes loneliness.
I agree. This article explains why it is a perfectly normal reaction to
the world we are currently living in. It goes as far as to suggest that
if you do not feel depressed at the state of our world there's something
wrong with you ;-) http://upliftconnect.com/mutiny-of-the-soul/
Surely there is a more straightforward possible explanation for increasing
incidence of "unhapiness"?
Quite simply, a century of gradually increasing general living standards
in the West have lifted the masses up Maslows higiene hierarchy of needs,
to where the masses now have largely only the unfulfilled self esteem needs
that used to be the preserve of a small, middle class minority (rather than
the unfulfilled survival, security and social needs of previous generations)
If so - this is good. This is progress. We just need to get them up another
rung to self fulfillment (the current concern of the flourishing upper middle
classes).
Maslow's hierarchy of needs was not about material goods. One could be poor
and still fulfill all his criteria and be fully realised. You have missed
the point entirely.
Error.... Who mentioned material goods? I think you have not so much "missed
the point" as "made your own one up" .
And while agreed that you could, in theory, be poor and meet all of your
needs (in fact the very point of the analysis is that money, of itself,
isn't what people "need") the reality of the structure of a western capitalist
society means that a certain level of affluence is almost certainly a prerequisite
for meeting most of those needs simply because food and shelter at the bottom
end and, say, education and training at the top end of self fulfillment
all have to be purchased. Share
Also note that just because a majority of people are now so far up the
hierarchy
does in no way negate an argument that corporations haven't also noticed
this and target advertising appropriately to exploit it (and maybe we need
to talk about that)
It just means that it's lazy thinking to presume we are in some way "sliding
backwards" socially, rather than needing to just keep pushing through this
adversity through to the summit.
I have to admit it does really stick in my craw a bit hearing millenials
moan about how they may never get to *own* a really *nice* house while their
grandparents are still alive who didn't even get the right to finish school
and had to share a bed with their siblings.
There is no such thing as a free-market society. Your society of 'self-interest'
is really a state supported oligarchy. If you really want to live in a society
where there is literally no state and a more or less open market try Somalia
or a Latin American city run by drug lords - but even then there are hierarchies,
state involvement, militias.
What you are arguing for is a system (for that is what it is) that demands
everyone compete with one another. It is not free, or liberal, or democratic,
or libertarian. It is designed to oppress, control, exploit and degrade
human beings. This kind of corporatism in which everyone is supposed to
serve the God of the market is, ironically, quite Stalinist. Furthermore,
a society in which people are encouraged to be narrowly selfish is just
plain uncivilized. Since when have sociopathy and barbarism been something
to aspire to?
George, you are right, of course. The burning question, however, is not
'Is our current social set-up making us ill' (it certainly is), but 'Is
there a healthier alternative?' What form of society would make us less
ill? Socialism and egalatarianism, wherever they are tried, tend to lead
to their own set of mental-illness-inducing problems, chiefly to do with
thwarted opportunity, inability to thrive, and constraints on individual
freedom. The sharing, caring society is no more the answer than the brutally
individualistic one. You may argue that what is needed is a balance between
the two, but that is broadly what we have already. It ain't perfect, but
it's a lot better than any of the alternatives.
We certainly do NOT at present have a balance between the two societies...Have
you not read the article? Corporations and big business have far too much
power and control over our lives and our Gov't. The gov't does not legislate
for a real living minimum wage and expects the taxpayer to fund corporations
low wage businesses. The Minimum wage and benefit payments are sucked in
to ever increasing basic living costs leaving nothing for the human soul
aside from more work to keep body and soul together, and all the while the
underlying message being pumped at us is that we are failures if we do not
have wealth and all the accoutrements that go with it....How does that create
a healthy society?
Neoliberalism. A simple word but it does a great deal of work for people
like Monbiot.
The simple statistical data on quality of life differences between generations
is absolutely nowhere to be found in this article, nor are self-reported
findings on whether people today are happier, just as happy or less happy
than people thirty years ago. In reality quality of life and happiness indices
have generally been increasing ever since they were introduced.
It's more difficult to know if things like suicide, depression and mental
illness are actually increasing or whether it's more to do with the fact
that the number of people who are prepared to report them is increasing:
at least some of the rise in their numbers will be down to greater awareness
of said mental illness, government campaigns and a decline in associated
social stigma.
Either way, what evidence there is here isn't even sufficient to establish
that we are going through some vast mental health crisis in the first place,
never mind that said crisis is inextricably bound up with 'neoliberalism'.
Furthermore, I'm inherently suspicious of articles that manage to connect
every modern ill to the author's own political bugbear, especially if they
cherry-pick statistical findings to support their point. I'd be just as,
if not more, suspicious if it was a conservative author trying to link the
same ills to the decline in Christianity or similar. In fact, this article
reminds me very much of the sweeping claims made by right-wingers about
the allegedly destructive effects of secularism/atheism/homosexuality/video
games/South Park/The Great British Bake Off/etc...
If you're an author and you have a pet theory, and upon researching an
article you believe you see a pattern in the evidence that points towards
further confirmation of that theory, then you should step back and think
about whether said pattern is just a bit too psychologically convenient
and ideologically simple to be true. This is why people like Steven Pinker
- properly rigorous, scientifically versed writer-researchers - do the work
they do in systematically sifting through the sociological and historical
data: because your mind is often actively trying to convince you to believe
that neoliberalism causes suicide and depression, or, if you're a similarly
intellectually lazy right-winger, homosexuality leads to gang violence and
the flooding of(bafflingly, overwhelmingly heterosexual) parts of America.
I see no sign that Monbiot is interested in testing his belief in his
central claim and as a result this article is essentially worthless except
as an example of a certain kind of political rhetoric.
social isolation is strongly associated with depression, suicide,
anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception of threat .... Dementia,
high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, lowered resistance to viruses,
even accidents are more common among chronically lonely people.
Loneliness has a comparable impact on physical health to smoking
15 cigarettes a day:
it appears to raise the risk of early death by 26%
Why don't we explore some of the benefits?.. Following the long
list of some the diseases, loneliness can inflict on individuals, there
must be a surge in demand for all sort of medications; anti-depressants
must be topping the list. There is a host many other anti-stress treatments
available of which Big Pharma must be carving the lion's share. Examine
the micro-economic impact immediately following a split or divorce. There
is an instant doubling on the demand for accommodation, instant doubling
on the demand for electrical and household items among many other products
and services. But the icing on the cake and what is really most critical
for Neoliberalism must be this: With the morale barometer hitting
the bottom, people will be less likely to think of a better future, and
therefore, less likely to protest. In fact, there is nothing left worth
protecting.
Your freedom has been curtailed. Your rights are evaporating in front
of your eyes. And Best of all, from the authorities' perspective, there
is no relationship to defend and there is no family to protect. If you have
a job, you want to keep, you must prove your worthiness every day to 'a
company'.
What's missing in each and every case above -- at least in the USA! -- is
countervailing power. 6% labor union density in private business is equivalent
to 20/10 blood pressure in the human body: it starves every other healthy
process.
It is not just labor market bargaining power that has gone missing, it
is not only the lost political muscle for the average person (equal campaign
financing, almost all the votes), it is also the lack of machinery to deal
with day-to-day outrages on a day-to-day basis (that's called lobbying).
Late dean of the Washington press corps David Broder told a young reporter
that when he came to DC fifty years ago (then), all the lobbyists were union.
Big pharma's biggest rip-offs, for profit school scams, all the stuff you
hear about for one day on the news but no action is ever taken -- that's
because there is no (LABOR UNION) mechanism to stay on top of all (or any)
of it (LOBBYISTS).
It is a chicken and egg problem. Before large scale automation and globalization,
unions "negotiated" themselves their power, which was based on employers
having much fewer other choices. Any union power that was ever legislated
was legislated as a *result* of union leverage, not to enable the latter
(and most of what was legislated amounts to limiting employer interference
with unions).
It is a basic feature of human individual and group relations that when
you are needed you will be treated well, and when you are not needed you
will be treated badly (or at best you will be ignored if that's less effort
overall). And by needed I mean needed as a specific individual or narrowly
described group.
What automation and globalization have done is created a glut of labor
- specifically an oversupply of most skill sets relative to all the work
that has to be done according to socially mediated decision processes (a
different set of work than what "everybody" would like to happen as long
as they don't have to pay for it, taking away from other necessary or desired
expenditure of money, effort, or other resources).
Maybe when the boomers age out and become physically too old to work,
the balance will tip again.
Same thing with the internet - it has been hailed as a democratizing force,
but instead it has mostly (though not wholly) amplified the existing power
differentials and motivation structures.
Anecdotally, a lot of companies and institutions are either restricting
internal internet access or disconnecting parts of their organizations from
the internet altogether, and disabling I/O channels like USB sticks, encrypting
disks, locking out "untrusted" boot methods, etc. The official narrative
is security and preventing leaks of confidential information, but the latter
is clearly also aimed in part at whistleblowers disclosing illegal or unethical
practices. Of course that a number of employees illegitimately "steal" data
for personal and not to uncover injustices doesn't really help.
Surely there is a huge difference between the labor market here and the
labor market in continental Europe -- though labor there faces the same
squeezing forces it faces here. Think of German auto assembly line workers
making $60 an hour counting benefits.
Think Teamster Union UPS drivers -- and pity the poor, lately hired (if
they are even hired) Amazon drivers -- maybe renting vans.
The Teamsters have the only example here of what is standard in continental
Europe: centralized bargaining (aka sector wide labor agreements): the Master
National Freight Agreement: wherein everybody doing the same job in the
same locale (entire nation for long distance truckers) works under one common
contract (in French Canada too).
Imagine centralized bargaining for airlines. A few years ago Northwest
squeezed a billion dollars in give backs out of its pilots -- next year
gave a billion dollars in bonuses to a thousand execs. Couldn't happen under
centralized bargaining -- wouldn't even give the company any competitive
advantage.
"What's missing in each and every case above -- at least in the USA! --
is countervailing power."
It was deliberately destroyed. Neoliberalism needs to "atomize" work
force to function properly and destroys any solidarity among workers. Unions
are anathema for neoliberalism, because they prevent isolation and suppression
of workers.
Amazon and Uber are good examples. Both should be prosecuted under RICO
act. Wall-Mart in nor far from them.
Rising fatalities from heart disease and stroke, diabetes, drug overdoses,
accidents and other conditions caused the lower life expectancy revealed
in a report by the National Center for Health Statistics .
== quote ==
Anne Case and Angus Deaton garnered national headlines in 2015 when they
reported that the death rate of midlife non-Hispanic white Americans had
risen steadily since 1999 in contrast with the death rates of blacks, Hispanics
and Europeans. Their new study extends the data by two years and shows that
whatever is driving the mortality spike is not easing up.
... ... ..
Offering what they call a tentative but "plausible" explanation, they
write that less-educated white Americans who struggle in the job market
in early adulthood are likely to experience a "cumulative disadvantage"
over time, with health and personal problems that often lead to drug overdoses,
alcohol-related liver disease and suicide.
== end of quote ==
Greed is toxic. As anger tends to accumulate, and then explode, at some
point neoliberals might be up to a huge surprise. Trump was the first swan.
"... Media have no mind of their own. Media act according to those who own it... In Syria, Assad(as ally of Russia and Iran) was seen as main enemy by the globalist elites. So, ANY FORCE that attacked Assad was useful. ..."
"... In Syria, Assad(as ally of Russia and Iran) was seen as main enemy by the globalist elites. So, ANY FORCE that attacked Assad was useful. In the US, White Patriots are seen as the main enemy to the globo agenda. So, Antifanissary is unleashed on them. And as the Power controls the police and courts, they are told to stand down while Antifa scum attack patriots. ..."
"... Antifa is like a paramilitary force used by the glob[alists]. Because it's not a state-run organization, it can get away with much. It's like ISIS and Alqaeda were useful to the US since they were informal networks and organizations. Thus, US could aid them covertly but have them do all the dirty work while pretending to keep its own hands clean. ..."
"... Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. ..."
"... Where is Victoria Newland with her cupcakes (and the US$ 5 billion) ? ..."
"... The ANTIFA reflect-implement the social and cultural values of the MEGA-CEOs. Rex Tillerson lead the charge to homo norm the Boy Scouts. This emboldened the homos The Charlottesville Antifa Riots were a direct consequence . ..."
"... The photo of the tattooed kid as representative of antifa is almost certainly a red herring, but just possibly he's an actual useful idiot handed a weapon and pepper spray and pushed out in front during confrontations ..."
"... Here we have these gay-ish, supposed thugs in black clothing and face masks, many carrying filled back packs and obvious weapons, with the police coddling them and playing their part as useful fools to the end by setting up the free speech demonstrators for a beating. ..."
Media have no mind of their own. Media act according to those who own it... In Syria, Assad(as ally of Russia and Iran) was seen as main enemy by the globalist
elites. So, ANY FORCE that attacked Assad was useful.
In the US, White Patriots are seen as the main enemy to the globo agenda. So,
Antifanissary is unleashed on them. And as the Power controls the police and courts, they are
told to stand down while Antifa scum attack patriots.
Antifa is like a paramilitary force used by the GLOB. Because it's not a state-run
organization, it can get away with much. It's like ISIS and Alqaeda were useful to the US
since they were informal
networks and organizations. Thus, US could aid them covertly but have them do all the dirty
work while pretending to keep its own hands clean.
Same with Antifa. It would be too ugly for the Glob to send police and US military to bash
white patriots. It would be state tyranny, and many officers and soldiers will refuse to
carry out such violence.
But if the Glob uses PC to infect young white minds and set them against their own race (like
in DJANGO UNCHAINED), then white Janissary will attack white patriots. And since it's not
part of state tyranny, the Glob can pretend that its hands are clean.
The only thing the Glob needs to do is tell the police to stand down and do nothing. While
cops and soldiers may not obey orders to attack white patriots, they will likely obey orders
to stand back and do nothing to protect white patriots. Just let Antifanissary attack and do
their thing.
And if whites fight back? The Glob that own the media say they are 'nazis' and have no
right to defend themselves. And cuck-roaches like Romney, McCain, Graham, Ryan, and Rubio
praise the Antifa for beating up white patriots.
There is and has never been such an animal as an "Honest left", period.
"Left" wouldn't be "Left" if it were to be honest, as it's total SOP is based in lies and
subtrafuge.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" qualified since 1973, airborne trained US Army vet, and prop jazz
musician. Contrast something like the Communist Manifesto, which is very clear about seizing
power and what will be done, with the oleaginous piffle put out by the CultMarx left. I might
not have liked Gus Hall, and he might have lied about the Soviet Union, but he was pretty
clear about what he intended to do if he gained power.
As CS Lewis wrote:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the
most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral
busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point
be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they
do so with the approval of their own conscience.
It's that sense that makes life intolerable today.
The media was doing this but are now furiously back-pedalling. Even Trevor Noah has an
anti-antifa piece, calling them "Vegan ISIS." In Europe antifa are literally a branch if the
state and cobtinue to recieve durect protection. Here they are too different, too much too
fast, and obvious enough that even normies could figure it out (insisting on wearing masks,
dressing all in black).
An American Capitalist Carnival Barker and Part-Time Peanut Vendor, Trolls the
Silver-Spoon-Fed Soros-Trust-Funded Privileged Class of ANTIFA's Spoiled Bolshevik Brats!
The present clash in the world is between globalism and nationalism.
Deep State is globalist, they still think the USA by military might can control the whole
world.
Already in 1946 there was the Bernard Baruch proposal for a world government, by the USA, of
course.
Nationalism of course runs contrary to world control.
Therefore nationalism must be portrayed as something evil, and of course our good media
battle evil.
" Indeed, the conflicts within the ruling class since the Nazi rampage in Charlottesville
have culminated in the strengthening of the grip of the military and financial elite over the
Trump administration. The first product of this restructuring was Trump's announcement of a
major escalation of the war in Afghanistan. "
Is it possible that Trump killed two birds with one stone: making Deep State believe they
won, at the same time safeguarding USA business interests in Afghanistan, lithium ?.
Antifa" originated in Germany such as the majority of destructive concepts and innovations
in the last two hundred years : Communism, Psychology, Heroin, the "Green" lunacy, and on and
on.
"Antifa" in Germany consists of insane radical marxist rabblerousers, violent
anti-violence lunatics.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" qualified since 1973 airborne trained US Army vet, and pro jazz
musician.
"Antifa" originated in Germany such as the majority of destructive concepts and
innovations in the last two hundred years : Communism, Psychology, Heroin, the "Green"
lunacy, and on and on.
"Antifa" in Germany consists of insane radical marxist rabblerousers, violent
anti-violence lunatics.
Precisely. Does nobody find it weird that
German Communist street thug culture from the
1930s – 1950s is being re-staged, in almost life-like form, in the U.S. in
2017?
It is all about
кто кого?
– who?
whom?
WHO are the people who are paid (yes, follow the money) to stage this bizarre, Goebbels
inspired theater to convince the booboisie that National Socialism (unseen since 1945) lurks
undead under every bed?
One cannot but admire the Hollywood-inspired chutzpah of these unseen producers. "If we
stage it with a few provocateurs and complicit cops, the media will eat it up."
The WHOM (and WHAT) is answered more easily. They want our brains, and with them our
ancient freedoms – freedom of political assembly, of speech and information, and the
bodyguard of those freedoms, our right to bear arms, already mostly emasculated.
Please join me in saying a big
THANK YOU
to Mr. Unz for bringing the rain of
diverse opinions to the parched intellectual landscape in the U.S. and worldwide.
The big difference between left and right is that the left pretend not to be the
right (pro natural selection) while right creates a entire culture that legitimate the the
morality of the stronger. Right tend to be more sincere but about what exactly?? That they
worship money, the rich and the cultural continuity of natural selection?? As well sex and
reproduction was conceptually separated and correctly namely for humans, the next stage is
this separation between cultural natural selection and necessary (but always parsimoniously)
selective processes that sustain the healthy biological continuity, in other repetitive
words, stop to be extremist and revolutionarily speaking, make real rationality a
cultural/existential priority.
New weimarian left is mostly right in moral aspects BUT natural selection never was
perfectionist in this aspects or better in human point of views. Left is about the right of
individuals above the rights of collectivities but individuals are totally dependent and even
bio-cultural representative of their collectivity.
And in the moment individuals has been atomized from their collectivity they also become
vulnerable. But it's just a proto interesting stuff because the big picture is that all this
partial philosophy has been directed only for whites and not to promote their existential
well being, (((period))).
Media have no mind of their own. Media act according to those who own it.
Name the ethnic group that owns the media, and everything falls into place.
In Syria, Assad(as ally of Russia and Iran) was seen as main enemy by the globalist
elites. So, ANY FORCE that attacked Assad was useful. In the US, White Patriots are seen as the main enemy to the globo agenda. So,
Antifanissary is unleashed on them. And as the Power controls the police and courts, they are
told to stand down while Antifa scum attack patriots.
Antifa is like a paramilitary force used by the glob[alists]. Because it's not a state-run
organization, it can get away with much. It's like ISIS and Alqaeda were useful to the US
since they were informal
networks and organizations. Thus, US could aid them covertly but have them do all the dirty
work while pretending to keep its own hands clean.
Same with Antifa. It would be too ugly for the Glob to send police and US military to bash
white patriots. It would be state tyranny, and many officers and soldiers will refuse to
carry out such violence.
But if the Glob uses PC to infect young white minds and set them against their own race (like
in DJANGO UNCHAINED), then white Janissary will attack white patriots. And since it's not
part of state tyranny, the Glob can pretend that its hands are clean.
The only thing the Glob needs to do is tell the police to stand down and do nothing. While
cops and soldiers may not obey orders to attack white patriots, they will likely obey orders
to stand back and do nothing to protect white patriots. Just let Antifanissary attack and do
their thing.
And if whites fight back? The Glob that own the media say they are 'nazis' and have no
right to defend themselves. And cuck-roaches like Romney, McCain, Graham, Ryan, and Rubio
praise the Antifa for beating up white patriots.
Blood is beginning to boil among the patriots.
There will be blood. Well expressed.
There has already been blood and many lives lost thanks to the agenda that you
present.
Patriots may well be outnumbered in the country their ancestors built. Our current leaders
as represented by your list are traitors to the historic American nation.
I am not as confident as you seem to be in the ability of the patriots to wage a
meaningful resistance to the current regime.
But anything could happen to change that equation. One true leader, a Trump with
conviction, integrity, and brains, could conceivably make a difference. But this has not yet
happened and I grow more pessimistic by the day.
Economic collapse, I believe, is the only hope for a meaningful resistance to emerge to
the current power structure in the United States. Only then can enough people wake up to the
reality that our empire is naked.
Contrast something like the Communist Manifesto, which is very clear about seizing power and
what will be done, with the oleaginous piffle put out by the CultMarx left. I might not have
liked Gus Hall, and he might have lied about the Soviet Union, but he was pretty clear about
what he intended to do if he gained power.
As CS Lewis wrote:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most
oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral
busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point
be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they
do so with the approval of their own conscience.
It's that sense that makes life intolerable today. I love the quote!
It is so true. The perverted evil done by the left, no matter how many people have to be
enslaved or murdered, is but a speedbump for the greater good of ushering in the new
utopia.
And like all true psychopaths, leftists have a very high opinion of their own moral
goodness and the rightness of their actions.
It is a serious mistake to underestimate how dangerous the left and leftists can be to
your health and prosperity.
Media have no mind of their own. Media act according to those who own it.
Name the ethnic group that owns the media, and everything falls into place.
In Syria, Assad(as ally of Russia and Iran) was seen as main enemy by the globalist
elites. So, ANY FORCE that attacked Assad was useful.
In the US, White Patriots are seen as the main enemy to the globo agenda. So,
Antifanissary is unleashed on them. And as the Power controls the police and courts, they are
told to stand down while Antifa scum attack patriots.
Antifa is like a paramilitary force used by the GLOB. Because it's not a state-run
organization, it can get away with much. It's like ISIS and Alqaeda were useful to the US
since they were informal
networks and organizations. Thus, US could aid them covertly but have them do all the dirty
work while pretending to keep its own hands clean.
Same with Antifa. It would be too ugly for the Glob to send police and US military to bash
white patriots. It would be state tyranny, and many officers and soldiers will refuse to
carry out such violence.
But if the Glob uses PC to infect young white minds and set them against their own race (like
in DJANGO UNCHAINED), then white Janissary will attack white patriots. And since it's not
part of state tyranny, the Glob can pretend that its hands are clean.
The only thing the Glob needs to do is tell the police to stand down and do nothing. While
cops and soldiers may not obey orders to attack white patriots, they will likely obey orders
to stand back and do nothing to protect white patriots. Just let Antifanissary attack and do
their thing.
And if whites fight back? The Glob that own the media say they are 'nazis' and have no
right to defend themselves. And cuck-roaches like Romney, McCain, Graham, Ryan, and Rubio
praise the Antifa for beating up white patriots.
Blood is beginning to boil among the patriots.
There will be blood. I feel for you bro, even the darling of the White-Awokenists from a
couple of years back doesn't seem to have your back I guess they believe in God after
all.
"Over the past week, the anarchist affiliation Antifa ("Anti-fascist") has received
widespread and favorable coverage in the establishment media."
Fake News. The NYT article clearly discussed how the extremist right and left, i.e. the
Coalition of the Fringe groups, oppose one another. It was not "favorable" coverage in that
the authors promoted the ideals of antifa; rather, they pointed out how it formed and why it
is controversial. The article offered facts. Whether one could view Antifa favorably or
unfavorably depends on the reader's perspective.
It is so true. The perverted evil done by the left, no matter how many people have to be
enslaved or murdered, is but a speedbump for the greater good of ushering in the new
utopia.
And like all true psychopaths, leftists have a very high opinion of their own moral
goodness and the rightness of their actions.
It is a serious mistake to underestimate how dangerous the left and leftists can be to
your health and prosperity. It is so true. The perverted evil done by the current Alt Right
and their past henchmen, no matter how many people have to be enslaved or murdered, is but a
speedbump for the greater good of ushering in the new utopia.
And like all true psychopaths, the Alt Right have a very high opinion of their own moral
goodness and the rightness of their actions.
It is a serious mistake to underestimate how dangerous the Alt Right and their acolytes
can be to your health and prosperity.
The ANTIFA reflect-implement the social and cultural values of the MEGA-CEOs. Rex Tillerson lead the charge to homo norm the Boy Scouts. This emboldened the homos The
Charlottesville Antifa Riots were a direct consequence .
I'm not opposed in the least for the return of the guillotine for the WHITE MALE MEGA CEOS
there may be no other way of stopping the Tranny Freak indoctrination of America's
Conservative White Christian Children in Kindergarden..
@JEC
The
Berkeley antifa in the photo looks like one of the Barbarians whom antiquity, shocked with
the deformity of their figure, had almost excluded from the human species.
The photo of the
tattooed kid as representative of antifa is almost certainly a red herring, but just possibly
he's an actual useful idiot handed a weapon and pepper spray and pushed out in front during
confrontations
along with some Mexicans in case someone gets hurt.
My guess is today's antifas wear masks for the same reason they as the leaderless leaders
of OWS wore Guy Fawkes masks, which possibly was then and is now not to conceal their
personal identification but rather their ethnicity.
It's all so ludicrous, this grinning mockery of America by the media and their antifa
confederates.
Here we have these gay-ish, supposed thugs in black clothing and face masks,
many carrying filled back packs and obvious weapons, with the police coddling them and playing
their part as useful fools to the end by setting up the free speech demonstrators for a
beating.
On top of it all the Republican leadership last I heard are still on their knees
before the cameras, wiping their chins off with an American flag.
After the shift toward more fair treatment of working class and lower middle class (the New Deal)
was over and neoliberalism prevailed, the policy of elite was to divide and conquer by trying to fan
ethnic, gender and other differences, and prevent recovery of the power of the unions and as such of
organized working class (and part of while collar workers). That naturally led to the rise of nationalist
movements in the USA.
Anarchism is a proven method of fragmentation of the working-class movement against neoliberal oligarchy.
While militant if does not represent real danger for neoliberal elite. As such it is a tool.
Antifa became handy because neoliberalism provoked far right movement and now neoliberal elite desperately
search for antidote for this phenomenal rise. This is divide and conquer strategy yet again. The level
of infiltration of Antifa by police and security services is open to review. Anarchism has a long history.
It has been hostile to the fundamental interests of the working class for all of that time. A few police
provocateurs can do serious damage, and there is no way of knowing exactly how many may be inside Antifa
demonstrations
A good question to Antifa members is "How would you call the merger of the military, finance, multinationals
and media, the neoliberal alliance which rules the USA?"
Rise of far right due to crisis of neoliberalism cannot be stopped by violence against its handful
of supporters. On the contrary it will stimulate creation of similar militant groups to oppose Antifa.
This is replay of events in Weimar republic, but what was tragedy now is more like farce.
Antifa actually helps to push elements fo the society that oppose neoliberal system to the right
and against the Democratic Party (DemoRats). DemoRat strategists expectations that mobilizing support
behind Antifa as the real fighting force against far right and the Trump Administration will disarm
those elements, branding them as pro-fascist. This is clear political coup of currently dominant neoliberal
wing of Democratic Party (Clinton wing). They want to amplify the division of the elements of the society
that oppose neoliberalism into two hostile to each other groups -- nationalist vs antifa, a la Shiite
vs. Sunni. And the core of antifa is middle-class youth, so there is generational element if this division
too.
The point is that Antifa does not actually aid the struggle against neoliberalism in the USA. But
they can catalyze the formation of militant wing in the far right. They also distract and disorient
young people who are looking for a way to oppose the Trump Administration. In fact they act as the fifth
column of neoliberals. After bill Clinton sold Democratic Party to Wall Street it can offer the working
class and lower middle class nothing. They can't even protect their remaining public sector unions like
teachers union because their campaign monies are coming from hedge fund managers who are salivating
over the hundreds of billions flowing into privatized education.
However, Antifa does indicate growth of opposition to neoliberal social system among the youth,
But they lack political education. Also it is unclear what will replace the neoliberalism as a social
system. Marxist idea of the "worker state" is now completely discredited. But shocks
that will undermine neoliberalism further are to be expected ("end of cheap oil" is one).
Notable quotes:
"... , the Post and NBC is politically sinister. ..."
"... The groups themselves are easily infiltrated by police provocateurs, who encourage violent acts for the desired end. ..."
"... Times, have sought to bury the basic class issues -- the fight against social inequality, war, and authoritarianism!through the promotion of a series of diversionary issues. ..."
"... Times has relentlessly promoted the anti-Russia campaign , seeking to channel mass opposition to Trump behind the demand for more aggressive measures against the government of Vladimir Putin. It has encouraged the conception that the United States is divided by immense racial divisions, promoting both the identity politics of the Democratic Party and providing respectful and even admiring coverage of what it calls "white nationalists." It has also prominently featured the Jacobin magazine, affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, which supports the Democratic Party. ..."
"... Times article, is among the most fervent advocates of the racialist politics of the Democrats. It received national attention in 2014 for its campaign for Affirmative Action, which was waged in alliance with the Democrats and sections of the corporate elite and military. ..."
"... They specialize in racial politics, which, along with BLM, accepts the narrative pushed primarily by the Democratic Party and the principal media mouthpieces (the "New York Times" comes to mind) of the ruling elite that race, not class, is the primary issue in American politics. ..."
"... Anarchism substitutes the individual for class action and, as Gabriel correctly states, lends itself to penetration by agents of the enemy class. In many ways anarchism embodies the philosophy of Margaret Thatcher: there is no such thing as society, just the individual. ..."
Over the past week, the anarchist affiliation Antifa ("Anti-fascist") has received widespread
and favorable coverage in the establishment media.
New York Times , the main newspaper voice for the Democratic Party, published a major
front-page feature article, "Antifa Grows as Left-Wing Faction Set to, Literally, Fight the Far
Right." The piece, written by Thomas Fuller, Alan Feuer, and Serge F. Kovaleski, showcased the
views of the movement with interviews of its members.
Times reports, "members of Antifa have shown no qualms about using their fists, sticks
or canisters of pepper spray to meet an array of right-wing antagonists whom they call a fascist
threat to American democracy."
Times states, believe "the ascendant new right in the country requires a physical response."
The quotes are all presented favorably, including one from a self-identified member of Antifa,
who argues that "physical confrontation" with Nazi groups is necessary, "because Nazis and white
supremacists are not around to talk."
Times article is not the only example. On August 20, NBC's "Meet the Press" carried
a segment featuring Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook and Lecturer
at Dartmouth.
Washington Post , owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. The column, "Who are the antifa?,"
published on August 17, was in effect a free advertisement, encouraging readers to support or
join the movement. One photo caption read, "Antifascists may seem like a novelty, but they've
been around for a very long time. Maybe we should start listening to them."
Times, the Post and NBC is politically sinister. The Times
has a policy of excluding any genuinely left-wing opinion, while "Meet the Press," the most widely-watched
Sunday news program, never interviews or features in its panel discussions anyone outside what
is considered acceptable by the political establishment.
Times , Post and other media outlets have collaborated with Google in the effort
to suppress genuine left-wing opposition, including the World Socialist Web Site and other
sites.
The groups themselves are easily infiltrated by police provocateurs, who encourage violent
acts for the desired end.
Times, have sought to bury the basic class issues -- the fight against social inequality,
war, and authoritarianism!through the promotion of a series of diversionary issues.
Times has relentlessly promoted the
anti-Russia
campaign , seeking to channel mass opposition to Trump behind the demand for more aggressive
measures against the government of Vladimir Putin. It has encouraged the conception that the United
States is divided by immense racial divisions, promoting both the identity politics of the Democratic
Party and providing respectful and even admiring
coverage
of what it calls "white nationalists." It has also prominently featured the Jacobin magazine,
affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, which supports the Democratic Party.
Times article, is among the most fervent advocates of the racialist politics of
the Democrats. It received national attention in 2014 for its campaign for Affirmative Action,
which was waged in alliance with the Democrats and sections of the corporate elite and military.
They specialize in racial politics, which, along with BLM, accepts the narrative pushed primarily
by the Democratic Party and the principal media mouthpieces (the "New York Times" comes to
mind) of the ruling elite that race, not class, is the primary issue in American politics.
How is this not a "racialist line", albeit the flip-side advanced by the fascistic elements. BAMN is consumed by race, and they have always been in orbit around the Democratic Party, usually
sucking up to the black nationalists and other "progressive" elements within that rotten bourgeois
party. The words "socialism", "working class", "capitalism" and "internationalism" are not
part of their vocabulary.
BAMN is the offspring, twice removed, of the Spartacist League, so
their rancid pseudo-left politics, and totally nationalist "radicalism" should come as no surprise
to anyone.
Do we live in a society divided into different classes? Are these classes opposed to each other?
What do you understand by the term "class struggle"?
Does this struggle, assuming that you
agree there is one, have a basis in the economic structure of society? Is it also reflected
in the political sphere? Is it incidental, one factor among many, or is it something more basic?
Is this class struggle, assuming, again, that it is a fact of social existence, reflected in
varying political coneptions, postions or programs?
Do political tendencies represent the interests
of different classes?
History is proof of the incorrectness of your opening two sentences.
Have you followed the Russian Revolution lectures and the week by week account of events a
century ago? I suspect not.
Anarchism substitutes the individual for class action and, as Gabriel correctly states, lends
itself to penetration by agents of the enemy class. In many ways anarchism embodies the philosophy
of Margaret Thatcher: there is no such thing as society, just the individual.
To create a new, higher, society free from the exploitation by an elite few of the overwhelming
majority of the worlds population requires the only necessary class in society becoming aware
of its historic role and carrying out that monumental task: world revolution.
Anarchists would be entirely opposed to a dictatorship of the working class; indeed an army
of anarchists in Ukraine known as 'The Black Army' fought the Red Army during the Russian Civil
War.
the purpose of identity politics is to avoid economic issues when they are more pressing
than at any time since ww ii. the brainwashing of americans against socialism has continued
for those born after 12/26/1991. as long as the alt-right is dominated by the brainwashed it
will fail.
It needs to stop calling itself conservative and right.
What the majority of the
electorate wants is bernie sanders, a wall, e-verify and the subsequent self-deportations,
more environmental regulations, the end of affirmative action, etc..
the purpose of identity politics is to avoid economic issues when they are
more pressing than at any time since ww ii. the brainwashing of americans against socialism
has continued for those born after 12/26/1991. as long as the alt-right is dominated by the
brainwashed it will fail. it needs to stop calling itself conservative and right. what the
majority of the electorate wants is bernie sanders, a wall, e-verify and the subsequent
self-deportations, more environmental regulations, the end of affirmative action, etc..
Yes,
identity politics are a distraction, it's the political equivalent of sugar, it gets you high
but eventually ruins you.
It also answers the question why is Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the bankers all of a
sudden are supporting identity politics? Because it's a counter to populism and economic
awareness.
This keeps people from noticing their politicians are all owned by wealthy special
interests who don't give a shit about the people and it fact plan to reduce most to serfs in
the name of profit. No one ever talks about why Wall Street gets a multitrillion dollar bail
out for what amounted to was a scam concocted by the bankers and real-estate moguls and bond
ratings agencies. Yet no one ever went to jail over this.
It distracts the young why they can't file for bankruptcy after graduating with a
worthless college degree that they paid $150k for.
So said Raghuram Rajan, the former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, during a keynote address
he gave at the Stigler Center's
conference on the political economy of finance that took place in June.
Rajan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, spoke about
the "concentrated and devastating" impact of technology and trade on blue-collar communities in
areas like the Midwest, the anger toward "totally discredited" elites following the 2008 financial
crisis, and the subsequent rise of populist nationalism, seen as a way to restore a sense of community
via exclusion.
In his talk, Rajan focused on three questions related to current populist discontent: 1. Why is
anger focused on trade? 2. Why now? 3. Why do so many voters turn to far-right nationalist movements?
"Pointing fingers at these communities and telling them they don't understand is not the right
answer," he warned. "In many ways, the kind of angst that we see in industrial countries today
is similar to the bleak times [of] the 1920s and 1930s. Most people in industrial countries used
to believe that their children would have a better future than their already pleasant present.
Today this is no longer true." ...
There's quite a bit more. I don't agree with everything he (Raghuram) says, but thought it might
provoke discussion.
The understanding of exploitation
Of wage earning production workers
Is a better base then the 18 th century liberal ideal of equality
Exploitation and oppression are obviously not the same
even if they make synergistic team mates oftener then not
So long as " them " are blatantly oppressed
It's easy to Forget you are exploited
Unlike oppression
Exploitation can be so stealthy
So not part of the common description of the surface of daily life
Calls for equality must include a careful answer to the question
" equal with who ? "
Unearned equality is not seen as fair to those who wanna believe they earned their status
Add in the obvious :
To be part of a successful movement aimed at Exclusion of some " thems " or other
Is narcotic
Just as fighting exclusion can be a narcotic too for " thems "
But fighting against exclusion coming from among a privileged rank among
The community of would be excluders
That is a bummer
A thankless act of sanctimony
Unless you spiritually join the " thems"
Now what have we got ?
Jim Crow thrived for decades it only ended
When black arms and hands in the field at noon ...by the tens of millions
were no longer necessary to Dixie
"Pointing fingers at these communities and telling them they don't understand is not the right
answer," he warned. "In many ways, the kind of angst that we see in industrial countries today
is similar to the bleak times [of] the 1920s and 1930s. Most people in industrial countries used
to believe that their children would have a better future than their already pleasant present.
Today this is no longer true." ...
I thought this sort of thinking was widely accepted only in 2016 we were told by the center
left that no it's not true.
"Rajan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, spoke
about the "concentrated and devastating" impact of technology and trade on blue-collar communities
in areas like the Midwest, the anger toward "totally discredited" elites following the 2008 financial
crisis, and the subsequent rise of populist nationalism, seen as a way to restore a sense of community
via exclusion."
Instead the center left is arguing that workers have nothing to complain about and besides
they're racist/sexist.
'"These communities have become disempowered partly for economic reasons but partly also because
decision-making has increasingly been centralized toward state governments, national governments,
and multilateral [agreements]," said Rajan. In the European Union, he noted, the concentration
of decision-making in Brussels has led to a lot of discontent.'
I'd suggest that this part is not true. Communities have become politically disempowered in
large part because they have become economically disempowered. A shrinking economy means a shrinking
tax base and less funds to do things locally. Even if the local government attempts to rebuild
by recruiting other employers, they end up in a race to the bottom with other communities in a
similar situation.
I'd also suggest that the largest part of the "discontent" in the EU is not because of any
"concentration of decision-making", but because local (and regional, and national) politicians
have used the EU as a convenient scapegoat for any required, but unpopular action.
Buchanan lost it. he does not understand what neoliberalism is about and that dooms all his
attempts to analyse the current political situation in the USA. Rephrasing Clinton, we can say:
This is the crisis of neoliberalism stupid...
And it was President Reagan who presided of neoliberal coup detat that install neoliberal
regime in the USA which promply started dismanteing the New Deal (althouth the process of
neoliberalization started in full force under Carter administration)
Decades ago, a debate over what kind of nation America is roiled the conservative
movement.
Neocons claimed America was an "ideological nation" a "creedal nation," dedicated to the
proposition that "all men are created equal."
Expropriating the biblical mandate, "Go forth and teach all nations!" they divinized
democracy and made the conversion of mankind to the democratic faith their mission here on
earth.
With his global crusade for democracy, George W. Bush bought into all this. Result: Ashes in
our mouths and a series of foreign policy disasters, beginning with Afghanistan and Iraq.
Behind the Trumpian slogan "America First" lay a conviction that, with the Cold War over and
the real ideological nation, the USSR, shattered into pieces along ethnic lines, it was time
for America to come home.
Contra the neocons, traditionalists argued that, while America was uniquely great, the
nation was united by faith, culture, language, history, heroes, holidays, mores, manners,
customs and traditions. A common feature of Americans, black and white, was pride in belonging
to a people that had achieved so much.
The insight attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville -- "America is great because she is good, and
if America ceases to be good, she will cease to be great" -- was a belief shared by almost
all.
What makes our future appear problematic is that what once united us now divides us. While
Presidents Wilson and Truman declared us to be a "Christian nation," Christianity has been
purged from our public life and sheds believers every decade. Atheism and agnosticism are
growing rapidly, especially among the young.
Traditional morality, grounded in Christianity, is being discarded. Half of all marriages
end in divorce. Four-in-10 children are born out of wedlock. Unrestricted abortion and same-sex
marriage -- once regarded as marks of decadence and decline -- are now seen as human rights and
the hallmarks of social progress.
Tens of millions of us do not speak English. Where most of our music used to be classic,
popular, country and western, and jazz, much of it now contains rutting lyrics that used to be
unprintable.
Where we used to have three national networks, we have three 24-hour cable news channels and
a thousand websites that reinforce our clashing beliefs on morality, culture, politics and
race.
... ... ...
To another slice of America, much of the celebrated social and moral "progress" of recent
decades induces a sense of nausea, summarized in the lament, "This isn't the country we grew up
in."
Hillary Clinton famously described this segment of America as a "basket of deplorables
racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic bigots," and altogether
"irredeemable."
So, what still unites us? What holds us together into the indefinite future? What makes us
one nation and one people? What do we offer mankind, as nations seem to recoil from what we are
becoming, and are instead eager to build their futures on the basis of ethnonationalism and
fundamentalist faith?
If advanced democracy has produced the disintegration of a nation that we see around us,
what is the compelling case for it?
A sixth of the way through the 21st century, what is there to make us believe this will be
the Second American Century?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The
Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."
With his global crusade for democracy, George W. Bush bought into all this.
The GWOT was never about exporting democracy. It has always been about war profiteering
and imperial hegemony.
We have a democratic facade but we do not have government by consent of the governed Pat.
Our political and financial institutions are absolutely corrupt. Imperial Washington is
determined to rule the Earth by force of arms. Legions of Maoists want to turn white people
into untouchables. It's over for our republic. Our Constitution is stone cold dead. The
empire itself is in steep decline.
After the collapse the U.S. will be just another big country in the Americas. Survivors of
the crash will have an opportunity to build something new.
This is a HUGE topic, hard to cover in a short article.
First, I echo Pat's sorrow at the negativity evidenced viz. our past.
However, the fact is that, much like the present, most of our history comprises lies covering
up huge crimes, mainly massive deception on the part of those in charge. Only in the past two
decades has any idea of the scale of decimation of the indigenous populations in North and
South America emerged. When I was a boy I was told there were only a couple of million of
Indians in America, whereas more recent estimations have it at 50 million plus. And Central
America had larger cities than any in Europe at the time with close to 200 million perhaps,
90% of whom died in a matter of decades, an appalling price to be paid for our arrival. That
most of this was due to lack of resistance to our imported microbes does not excuse that our
history fails to tell this. What an appalling and inhuman lack of respect and decency. We are
not as superior and tolerant as we pretend to be.
Similarly: the slavery story: Slavery is a nasty business, but life back then was
extremely hard, and furthermore blacks weren't the only ones in slavery – for a while
white slaves far outnumbered them. In the late 1800′s children were sent down to the
mines in England, many of them dying young. If you were an able-bodied male, even one as
young as 12, and out at night in the wrong place and time, a press gang was legally allowed
to knock you out and drag you into a life of service on the high seas.And if you tried to
escape, it was the noose for you. It is both hard for us and wrong to judge people in the
past based on our own more delicate sensibilities.
Indeed, it is thanks to their great work, sacrifice and yes, crimes, that we have
progressed to the point that we can look back at many of their practices with disapproval.
Unfortunately we seem unwilling to merge that with understanding, largely because of an
inadequate educational institutions and a sensation-driven public press.
In order for us to unite, we have to dig much deeper, reject the storm und drang of
outrageously polemic, Deep-State-managed press and many other institutions, and tap into our
fundamental humanity along with learning what the constitution is and why it is the way it
is. The attempt is to create a genuinely uplifted, and also flexible, society. But it can be
hijacked by determined powers and become a plutocracy, which is what has happened.
What will unite us, truly, is when we realise the degree to which all normal people, both
'left' and 'right', 'black' and 'white' have been and are being manipulated so that they
don't come together. We should unite to throw off the yoke of oppression placed and used by
the Elites who have infested and bloated all major social institutions, private and
public.
"No matter how much you earn, getting by is still a struggle for most people these days.
Seventy-eight percent of full-time workers said they live paycheck to paycheck, up from 75
percent last year, according to a recent report from CareerBuilder. Overall, 71 percent of
all U.S. workers said they're now in debt, up from 68 percent a year ago, CareerBuilder said.
While 46 percent said their debt is manageable, 56 percent said they were in over their
heads. About 56 percent also save $100 or less each month, according to CareerBuilder. The
job-hunting site polled over 2,000 hiring and human resource managers and more than 3,000
full-time employees between May and June.
Most financial experts recommend stashing at least a six-month cushion in an emergency
fund to cover anything from a dental bill to a car repair -- and more if you are the sole
breadwinner in your family or in business for yourself. While household income has grown over
the past decade, it has failed to keep up with the increased cost-of-living over the same
period."
Two things. First, the cost of medicine in the US is so fucking ridiculous that a dental
bill, for someone with insurance, is the same as the cost of car repair. And by that they
mean car repair for cars like BMWs, Fords, and the most crashable one – the Prius.
Don't buy the Prius.
Second, 3/4ths live from paycheck to paycheck. That means that you have to make over $100k
in the US to avoid living from paycheck to paycheck, and half of that goes to taxes and
various insurances, to pay for things like wars in the Middle East, thanks for Afghanistan,
Trumpo, the ever increasing cost of healthcare, (yes, it really does cost as much to repair
your teeth as it does to repair a BMW after the crash,) and complete indifference on Capitol
Hill to anything and everything that the people care about.
Economy? Name a single bill that
was passed. Healthcare? It's like the fucking Democrats and fucking Republicans are playing
the game of who can be most incompetent. But hey, Afghanistan's getting fucked again –
so that's something, right?
Sorry, just had to rant. I also see there's a new article up – I'll respond to it in
a bit!
Rejection of globalization by alt-right is very important. that's why make them economic nationalists.
And that's why they are hated neocon and those forces of neoliberalism which are behind Neocon/Neolib
Cultural Revolution -- promotion of LGBT, uni-gender bathrooms, transsexuals, etc, identity wedge in
politics demonstrated by Hillary, etc. (modeled on Mao's cultural revolution, which also what launched
when Mao started to lose his grip on political power).
In my experience with the alt-right, I encountered a surprisingly common narrative: Alt-right supporters
did not, for the most part, come from overtly racist families. Alt-right media platforms have actually
been pushing this meme aggressively in recent months. Far from defending the ideas and institutions
they inherited, the alt-right!which is overwhelmingly a movement of white millennials!forcefully
condemns their parents' generation. They do so because they do not believe their parents are racist
enough
In an inverse of the left-wing protest movements of the 1960s, the youthful alt-right bitterly
lambast the "boomers" for their lack of explicit ethnocentrism, their rejection of patriarchy, and
their failure to maintain America's old demographic characteristics and racial hierarchy. In the
alt-right's vision, even older conservatives are useless "cucks" who focus on tax policies and forcefully
deny that they are driven by racial animus.
... ... ...
To complicate matters further, many people in the alt-right were radicalized while in college. Not
only that, but the efforts to inoculate the next generation of America's social and economic leaders
against racism were, in some cases, a catalyst for racist radicalization. Although academic seminars
that explain the reality of white privilege may reduce feelings of prejudice among most young whites
exposed to them, they have the opposite effect on other young whites. At this point we do not know
what percentage of white college students react in such a way, but the number is high enough to warrant
additional study.
A final problem with contemporary discussions about racism is that they often remain rooted in
outdated stereotypes. Our popular culture tends to define the racist as a toothless illiterate Klansman
in rural Appalachia, or a bitter, angry urban skinhead reacting to limited social prospects. Thus,
when a white nationalist movement arises that exhibits neither of these characteristics, people are
taken by surprise.
It boggles my mind that the left, who were so effective at dominating the culture wars basically
from the late 60s, cannot see the type of counter-culture they are creating. Your point about
alt-righters opposing their parents drives this home.
People have been left to drift in a sea of postmodernism without an anchor for far too long
now, and they are grasping onto whatever seems sturdy. The alt-right, for its many faults, provides
something compelling and firm to grab.
The left's big failure when all the dust settles will be seen as its inability to provide a
coherent view of human nature and a positive, constructive, unifying message. They are now the
side against everything – against reason, against tradition, against truth, against shared institutions
and heritage and nationalism It's no wonder people are looking to be for something these days.
People are sick of being atomized into smaller and smaller units, fostered by the left's new and
now permanent quest to find new victim groups.
I'm disappointed to read an article at The American Conservative that fails to address the reality
behind these numbers. Liberal identity politics creates an inherently adversarial arena, wherein
white people are depicted as the enemy. That young whites should respond by gravitating toward
identity politics themselves in not surprising, and it's a bit offensive to attribute this trend
to the eternal mysteries of inexplicable "racist" hate.
The young can see through the fake dynamic being depicted in the mainstream media, and unless
The American Conservative wants to completely lose relevance, a light should be shone on the elephant
in the room. For young white kids, The Culture Wars often present an existential threat, as Colin
Flaherty shows in Don't Make the Black Kids Angry–endorsed and heralded as a troubling and important
work by Thomas Sowell.
From the 16 Points of the Alt-Right:
5. The Alt Right is openly and avowedly nationalist. It supports all nationalisms and the right
of all nations to exist, homogeneous and unadulterated by foreign invasion and immigration.
6. The Alt Right is anti-globalist. It opposes all groups who work for globalist ideals or globalist
objectives.
It is important to remember that nations are people, not geography. The current American Union,
enforced by imperial conquest, is a Multi-National empire. It has been held together by force
and more recently by common, though not equal, material prosperity.
With the imposition of Globalism's exotic perversions and eroding economic prospects the American
Union is heading for the same fate as all Multi-National empires before it.
Mysteriously absent from the scholarly discussion seems to be the pioneer of sociology, Ludwig
Gumplowicz. Incredibly so, as the same factors that led to the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire abound in contemporary America.
I have two teenage sons – we live in Canada – and they tell that, no matter what they say, who
they hang out with, what music they listen to, no matter how many times they demonstrate they
are not racist, they are repeatedly called racist. They are automatically guilty because they
are white. They are beaten over the head with this message in school and in the press and are
sick and tired of it.
What might also be considered is the cultural effect upon a generation which has now matured through
what the government calls "perpetual war," with the concomitant constant celebration of "warriors,"
hyper-patriotism as demanded of all public events such as shown in the fanaticism of baseball
players engaged in "National Anthem standouts," such as were popular a couple years ago in MLB,
the constant references in political campaigns to the "enemy," to include Russia as well now,
and the "stab in the back" legend created to accuse anyone opposed to more war and occupation
of "treason." We've "radicalized" our own youth, with Trump coming along with his links to Israel's
ultra militarist, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli "Right," and created a cultural condition
much like this:
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/04/conservative-revolutionaries-fascism/
Odd, you write "How did the youngest white Americans respond to the most racially polarizing election
in recent memory?" In reality it was less racially polarized than 2012, when 93 % of African Americans
and 71% of Hispanics voted for Obama while in 2016 88% of Blacks and 65% of Hispanics voted from
Hillary. So Trump won a higher percentage of African American votes and Hispanic votes than Mitt
Romney. In 2008 Obama won 95% of Blacks and 67% of Hispanics, in 2004 the numbers were 88 and
53 for Kerry so the three elections between 2004 and and 2016 were all more polarizing than the
2016 race.
Yes, you make many important points, Mr. Hawley, but that you feel the need to join the chorus
of those who see our president's reaction to Charlottesville as somehow inappropriate or even
itself racist–that is sad. I don't see what else you may be implying in your opening paragraphs,
since you move directly from the number of "likes" Obama's bromide received to this: "[Obama's
reaction] also offered a stark contrast to that of President Trump."
In spite of many liberals' frantic desire to read whatever they want into President Trump's
words, he very clearly condemned the neo-Nazis and the evil of Heather Heyer's murderer. That
he also condemned the violence coming from Antifa ranks does not lessen his condemnation
of that coming from the alt right side. Rather, condemning the rising illiberalism on both sides
of this growing conflict was both commendable and necessary.
Many Americans see these recent events in a context stretching back years. Myself, at fifty,
having watched especially the steady empowerment of a demagogic left on our campuses, I'm not
much surprised that a racist "white nationalist" movement should burst into flame at just this
point. The kindling is right there in the anti-white, misandrous virulence of our SJW left.
Sane conservatives have strongly condemned the new alt-right racism. The problem is that we
are not seeing anything similar from the left. Our left seems incapable of condemning, let alone
even seeing , its own racist excesses. Which are everywhere in its discourse, especially
in our humanities departments.
I would say that in the recent decades the American left has grown much more deeply invested
in identity politics than the right has ever been during my lifetime. In my view, our left has
grown more enamored of identity issues precisely because it has abandoned the bread and butter
issues that really matter to most Americans.
I have many left-liberal friends and regularly read the left press. Surveying the reactions
to Charlottesville and the rising conflict between alt-right extremists and a radicalized Antifa
left, I see nowhere a step toward acknowledging the obvious: our rabid identity politics is by
no means just a problem of the right.
Racial identity politics is a curse. Sadly, it seems we've been cursed by it well and and good.
The poison's reaching down to the bone. Unless both smart moderates and people on the left start
to recognize just how badly poisoned our left has been by this curse, no progress will be made.
Identity politics needs to be condemned on both sides of this growing national street brawl,
and it should start NOW.
But I'm afraid it's not going to happen. I see my friends on the left, and they're nowhere
near acknowledging the problem. And I'm sad to see our president's attempt to call out both sides
has gotten such negative reactions. I'm afraid this isn't going to end well.
Liberal identity politics creates an inherently adversarial arena, wherein white people are
depicted as the enemy. That young whites should respond by gravitating toward identity politics
themselves in not surprising
One of many good reasons for rejecting "identity" politics generally.
A white friend attended a Cal State graduate program for counseling a couple of years ago; he
left very bitter after all his classes told him that white men were the proximate cause of the
world's misery. Then a mutual Latina friend from church invited him to coffee and told him that
he was the white devil, the cause of her oppression. You can conclude how he felt.
The liberal universities' curricula has caused a storm of madness; they have unleashed their
own form of oppressive thought on a significant portion on American society:white men. There is
now an adverse reaction. Of course, even more opprobrium will be heaped upon on men who might
question the illogicality of feminism and the left. How can all of this end well if the humanity
of white men is denied in universities, public schools and universities?
The Alt Right simply believes that Western nations have a right to preserve their culture and
heritage. Every normal man in these United States agreed with that premise prior to the Marxist
takeover of our institutions in the 1960's. And you know it's true.
Maybe at the bottom of it is not racism as in they are the wrong colour, but about cultural traits
and patterns of behaviour that are stirring resentment. Plus maybe the inclusion towards more
social benefits not available before (Obamacare?).
The current rap music, as opposed to the initial one, that emphasized social injustice is such
that one feels emptying his own stomach like sharks do.
The macho culture that black gangs, latin american gangs manifest is a bit antagonistic to
white supremacists gangs and attitudes towards women. After all, vikings going raiding used to
have shield maidens joining, and Celtic culture is full of women warriors. Northern European culture,
harking back to pre-Christian times was more kinder to women than what women from southern Europe
(Greece, Rome) experienced (total ownership by husbands, the veil, etc., all imported from the
Middle East: but one must not judge too harshly, the book "Debt, the first 5000 years" could be
an eye opener of the root causes of such attitudes).
Also, the lack of respect for human life expressed in these cultures is not that palatable,
even for white supremacists (while one can point to Nazi Germany as an outlier – but there it
was the state that promoted such attitudes, while in Japan the foreigner that is persecuted and
ostracized could be the refugee from another village around Fukushima – see the Economist on that).
So I think there are many avenues to explore in identifying the rise in Alt right and white
supremacists in the U.S. But colour is definitely not it.
Come now. There were the same types around me years ago at school, work, society. They just did
not march around like Nazis in public, probably because the Greatest Generation would have kicked
their butts.
Now, with the miracle of modern technology, a few hundred of them can get together and raise
hell in one place. Plus they now get lots of encouraging internet press (and some discouraging).
This article says virtually nothing.
The author fails to define his terms, beginning with Alt-Right.
And he seems to operate from a dislike of Trump underneath it all. This dislike is common among
pundits, left and right, who consider themselves to be refined and cultured. So it was that the
NYT's early condemnation of Trump led with complaints about his bearing and manners – "vulgar"
was the word often used if memory serves.
This gets us nowhere. Many in the US are disturbed by the decline in their prospects with a decrease
in share of wages in the national income ongoing since the 1970's – before Reagan who is blamed
for it all. Add to that the 16 years of wars which have taken the lives of Trump supporters disproportionately
and you have a real basis for grievances.
Racism seems to be a side show as does AntiFa.
"The accusation of being racist because you are white is a misunderstanding of structural racism."
I agree, but I notice that Jews have the same misunderstanding when you mention structural
"Zionist Occupied Government" or "Jewish Privilege".
Perhaps because they are both conspiracy theories rooted in hatred and ignorance, which is
where we descend when the concept of a statistical distribution or empirical data become "controversial",
or "feelings" overtake "facts".
And progressives still refer to KKK when they seek an example of a white supremacist group. Amazing.
They are too lazy even to learn that the Klan lost its relevance long ago, and the most powerful
white supremacist organization of today consists of entirely different people, who are very far
from being illiterate.
***
Todd Pierce,
Israel's ultra militarist, Benjamin Netanyahu
I won't deny that Bibi is a controversial figure, but calling him an ultra militarist is quite
a bit of a stretch.
Elite sports. After reading this article and it's underlying thesis, it occurs to me that the
way sports have evolved in this country is very likely to be the experience that millennial whites
have had that fosters their "out group" belief systems. It is very common, using soccer as my
frame of reference, for wealthy suburban families to spend a fortune getting their children all
the best training and access to all the best clubs. Their children are usually the best players
in their community of origin and usually the top players all the way through the preadolescent
years only to find all of that money and prestige gone to waste once their kids get to around
sixteen at which point their children are invariably replaced on the roster by a recent immigrant -- mainly from Africa or south of our border and usually at a cut rate compared to the one they
are bleeding the suburban families with. I'm assuming this is becoming more common across all
sports as they move toward a pay to play corporate model. In soccer, the white kids are, seriously,
the paying customers who fill out the roster that supports the truly talented kids (from countries
who know how to develop soccer talent.)
The thing is when blacks begin to feel power and a secure place in America then their true colors
show-at least among many. Left unchecked they would become the biggest racists of all. You can
see that now. So what it comes down to are white people going to give away their country? Until
blacks become cooperative and productive things need to stay as they are. Sad maybe but that's
just the way it has to be.
There have always been fringe, rightwing groups in the US. Nothing new there. But the so-called
alt-right, comprised of Nazi wannabes and assorted peckerwoods, is truly the spawn of the looney
left, whose obsession with race has created the toxic environment we find ourselves in.
"... There seems to be an attempt by an elite cabal to destroy this country through division and vilification of the Founding Fathers. Shame!!! ..."
"... "The past is never dead. It's not even past." ..."
"... From this point of view ..."
"... All of the deaths and serious injuries were suffered by members of the leftist side and none by the white supremacists, even though they were much smaller in number. ..."
"... relative to this baseline ..."
"... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security ..."
He also raises the question of what can we do to make a positive difference in our lives?
And this may sound terribly mundane, but for those of you who have time and money for the fees:
get emergency training. IMHO, everyone should know how do to the Heimlich maneuver, but I only
know the idea of how to do it. Ditto with CPR, and that bothers me. If I had been at the scene
with all the horrible injuries, the only principles I know are "Don't move the injured since
they may have a spinal break and you could increase the damage to nerves" and "If they are
bleeding, put pressure on the wound". But is that OK if all you have is not clean cloth? I
assume yes if they are bleeding profusely, but still
I assume there must be what amounts to first responder training (as in what to do before the
medics get there). If readers can indicate what this type of training is usually called and
where to go to find it, please pipe up in comments.
Separately, I've kept out of the discussions of Charlottesville in comments. I'm perplexed
and disappointed on the fetishization of statues by both sides in this debate. I'm not enough
of an anthropologist to get to the bottom of it, but the desire of some Southerners to preserve
and elevate figures like Robert E. Lee isn't just about the Civil War. It has to do with the
fact that the South was late to industrialize and remained poor relative to the rest of the US
and is not part of the power structure at the Federal level (to my knowledge, there are no
tracks from Southern universities to important positions in the Acela corridor. That isn't to
say that people from the South don't get there, but it's not a well-greased path). And of
course, people from the rest of the country tend to forget that Southerners are regarded as
hicks and regularly treated as such in movies and on TV (remember My Cousin Vinny, for one of
many examples?). Having a Southern accent = minus 10 attributed IQ points outside the South,
with the possible exception being Texans. I had a Virginia client who used the "Southerns
aren't so sharp" prejudice brilliantly to their advantage in negotiations, but I am sure on
another level the perception still bothered them.
Mind you, I'm not defending the Southern position. If I were to believe family lore, I have
a Hungarian ancestor whose statue in Budapest was torn down by the Soviets. Do I care?
But my guess is that while for some Southerners, Civil War iconography is meant to
intimidate blacks, for many others, the storied Civil War generals are the only local boys held
up as having historical importance. LBJ and Jimmy Carter weren't seen as great presidents.
There must be important Southern scientists and inventors, but oddly I can't think of any,
which means they aren't generally depicted as such.
By contrast, it's easier to present the point of view of blacks and reformers: that losers
in war pretty much never get to have memorials, so that on its face, having so many images
touting loserdom is perverse, and not justified because it separately holds up aggressive
defenders of slavery as role models.
And I know I've probably touched on too many disparate threads in this short post, but the
other part about Charlottesville that has been mentioned, but cannot be said enough is that
this was a huge policing fail, and the passivity was no accident. As Lambert and others have
said, if you'd had black protestors show up similarly attired and armed, you can bet you'd have
seen mass head-breaking and arrests. The Charlottesville police knew this was coming and appear
not to have sought advice from police forces with lots of experience in crowd control
(Washington DC and New York City), nor did they get reinforcements (state troopers). It's one
thing if they had tried to cordon off or break up the two sides and lost control of the
situation. But there's no evidence they attempted to intervene.
In addition to watching the Lee Camp video, I strongly urge you to
read
the article from The Root
that goes with this photo (Lambert flagged it yesterday):
Perhaps most important, this fight over symbols is diverting energy from tackling the many
areas where African Americans have been promised equal protection under the law but don't get
it. Let's start with the War on Drugs, which Richard Nixon envisaged as a way to disenfranchise
blacks. Consider this comment from
Governing
(hat tip UserFriendly):
[Richmond's] Mayor Levar Stoney, who has rejected the idea of removing statues, spoke to
reporters Monday about the controversy after a groundbreaking ceremony for the American Civil
War Museum. He said he wanted the city to acknowledge "the complete truth" about its history
as the Confederate capital.
"At the end of the day, those statues are offensive to me, very offensive to me," said
Stoney, who is black. "But you know what I'm going to focus my time on? Destroying vestiges
of Jim Crow where they live in our city -- public housing, public education, you name it."
Here's a significant Southern figure who has statues to honor him, a self-made scientist
and inventor to whom today's kids and sandwich eaters owe so much: George Washington Carver.
http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ca-Ch/Carver-George-Washington.html
He was even a person of color, and born in Kansas, a violent battleground "border state" in
the "time of Troubles."
Yes, as a Southerner, I was hoping someone would mention Carver early on. But the larger
point is valid. IIRC the first Southerner to win a Nobel Prize, Medicine/Physiology, was Earl
Sutherland at Vanderbilt in about 1971.
There have been a few since, I think. The reasons are historical, well covered by C. Vann
Woodward (Johns Hopkins and Yale) in his Origins of the New South. Regarding E.O. Wilson, who
is mentioned below, yes, he is a great scientist who knows more about ants than any other
human being. And being of a certain age and a biologist-in-preparation when Sociobiology was
published in 1975, I was well aware of him from that beginning.
That book was a great synthetic triumph, until the last pages. Then came On Human Nature
and the unfortunate collaboration with Lumsden.
Still, Yves' friend is correct about the anti-Southern "feelings" directed at Wilson. He
was not alone. Even inconsequential scientists like yours truly felt it. I spent nearly 5
years at the best medical school in the United States in the late 1990s, a famous place in
sight of Fort McHenry.
Because I was from the South, more than one New England Yankee assumed that I had a Klan
hood in my closet, mostly because of how we do things "down there," the latter being a direct
quote.
You get used to it, but having a president from the South like Clinton LLC doesn't help,
much. As far as the statues go, my compatriots don't believe me when I tell them most of
these monuments appeared starting in the late-19th century, during the flourishing of the
"Moonlight and Magnolias" glorification of the "Lost Cause" that accompanied the hardening of
Jim Crow.
Just a bunch of Bourbons jerking working class chains, but damn, it worked well. And
continues to work with money largely from elsewhere.
Probably in the 1980's I had the task of demonstrating some expensive electronic equipment
at a Bell Labs facility in New Jersey.
The local sales engineer advised our visiting California group to be wary of Bell Labs
people with southern accents as they were teased by the northern Bell-Labs people about their
accents and education and the Southerners had reacted to this when dealing with outside
visitors/vendors..
As I remember, the advice was to be aware that a Bell-Labs Southerner might start with
some basic questions and progressively ask more and more difficult questions simply to back
the visitor into a corner.
Strange advice to receive, considering that at this time, Bell-Labs was one of the top
industrial research/development facilities in the world.
I did not observe this behavior at all, but still remember the caution.
And I think southerners aren't obsessed with the Civil War the way they used to be. When I
was a kid the local radio station would sign off with a lovely choral version of Dixie rather
than the national anthem. If Gone With the Wind played downtown the line would be around the
block. Numerous houses in my town have the columned portico meant to evoke the exterior set
for Tara.
Now increasingly cosmopolitan cities are more likely to feature blocky post modern
architecture and people are more into their smartphones than what happened at
Chancellorsville.
Black and white children can be seen walking home together from school and my town has had
a black mayor and the state currently a black (albeit Republican) senator. These days it
could be the north that is clinging to the past.
As for scientists: Charles Townes, Nobel prize winner, inventor of the laser, fellow
Carolinian.
I grew up in Columbia (a largely mixed demographic area – though often very sharply
racially divided), and while it is true that much of the veneer has changed, it is the
seething beneath that doesn't seem to have changed much since I left. This seems especially
true once you get a few miles outside of those more cosmopolitan cities.
On kids playing together – it has been one of my strangest experiences to go from
elementary school where everyone was friends and played together, regardless of race. And
then, after 3 months of summer, moving to middle school and the racial hell that ensued. But,
maybe things have changed for the better since when I lived there.
I've seen a small data point supporting your theory of the Civil War being less important
to most Southerners than it once was. When I first started visiting Alabama, every book store
had a pretty significant section devoted to Civil War books. Even thought there aren't
anywhere near as many bookstores these days, the few I've visited don't have proportionately
as much space devoted to the Civil War, and some just have it as part of the History
section.
Thanks Rick, especially for the perfect concluding summation, but also from the first-hand
account and historical contextualization of this persistent sort of niche bigotry. From
another continent it was hard to guess how prevalent that phenomenon still might still be,
although harder to imagine that it could have disappeared altogether. It constantly disgusts
me when the same sort of thing is extended to Americans at large by anglo/European bigots
insufferably assured that their tiny colonist cultures are "superior".
As a long-term/tedious polemicist against sociobiology -- mostly as casual normative
framework today, but the academic origins do matter too (see: [
http://www.theharrier.net/essays/kriminalaffe-sultan-at-the-dole-office-written-with-matthew-hyland/
]; (I'm the other one, not JB/The Harrier)) -- I'm aghast at the thought that any critic of
E.O. Wilson would stoop to invoking his geographical/cultural background, especially when
discussing the racist applications of the body of theory. Really, if they can't do better
than that they're missing huge swathes of the obvious, mimicking the worst of their opponents
and ultimately doing latter-day neo-socio-bio presumptions an unwarranted favour.
Also, complete agreement with you, Yves, about the way excessive concern with statues and
symbols generally can skew everything. Not that those things are meaningless, but the whole
present-day world also bears witness to the past in the form of raging injustice -- much but
not all of it involving the malign invention of "race" -- everywhere. Nohow is this a
"bipartisan"/"everyone calm down"-type statement: I side unequivocally with the "grassroots"
BLM, the direct-action anti-fascists and especially the IWW members, and would be delighted
never to see one of those monuments (or its anglo/Euro equivalents) again, but if it had to
be one or the other, I'd rather the statues were left standing while Lee, Sir Arthur 'Bomber'
Harris, Christopher Columbus and friends were made to spin in their graves by the abolition
of racist "criminal justice", housing and immigration policy and racialized top-down class
warfare/imperial admin in general, if the alternative is just to take the statues down while
leaving the policies in place and the Generals smirking in hell.
What about an alternative method to these history rewrites. Every time A legislative body
decides to remove one of these ancient tributes–instead of removing the offensive
statue–the erection of a new and at least equal in size monument that points out the
failure of the earlier tribute.
That is, the new monument would be larger, more noticeable, and will be to point out the
error of the earlier structure. In this way history is preserved–and a much more
educational site is created – pointing out the reasons for the new interpretation of
the site. Thus a site without a physical monument, for example, would be treated in the
following manner. Jefferson Davis Boulevard would become Former Jefferson Davis Bvd, or
Ex-Jefferson Boulvard or such. What do you think?
And add effigies of J. Edgar Hoover (let us debate whether he should appear "dressed" or
not), and Strom Thurmond, and Jesse Helms, and Al Sharpton, etc. to improve the contextual
mapping
Ah that brigs back a memory. I lived in Raleigh, NC when Jessie was in the Senate, and my
children went to a local Episcopal School.
The head of the Schools was Jessie Helms' daughter, and I was asked, and an outside of my
opinion in from of his daughter. My response is "He is very interesting," was acceptable.
Advice I was given when moving to the south was "Never say anything bad about one
Southerner to another. They are all related."
The animus then, and possibly now, was strong, so much so that my view was "War of
Independence, forgotten. Civil war, not at tall."
I was also told, by another Southern lady, that the difference between English Table
Manners and the US', was devised because the ladies never wanted to entertain the English in
the homes again after the War of Independence.
I'd also point out there is a significant difference between Spanish and English table
manners. In some cases under the English rules you can eat with your fingers (chicken on the
bone or unpeeled fruit, for example)t. Under the Spanish none I know of, its knives and forks
for everything.
There seemed to be a consensus a few years ago after that kid shot up the black church
that confederate flags would not be sold and that any debate about it was over. Looks like
that didn't take.
Point being that one part of the nation can't make another part of the nation erect
certain statues or not carry certain colored pieces of cloth.
I've always been a bit of an iconoclast, but maybe we should get out of symbolic thinking
and communication through pieces of political artwork and try communicating directly instead.
Battling over art and architecture seems wrongheaded. The fundamental message here should be
"What are the ideas we are debating?" not "These people over here are animals, what should we
do about it?"
But as Yves said, this event really went down because of a failure of the local police. It
was amateur hour over there.
And shame on the media for making this event into some kind of referendum on America. How
many people died in Chicago over the weekend? Baltimore? Nationwide? How is that any
different or less political in nature?
The problem is that the statues and flags represent a part of American history, whether
good or bad. I find it reprehensible that history must be rewritten, and the lessons learned
discarded. What's next? Book burning, the destruction of Monticello or the Jefferson
Monument?
There seems to be an attempt by an elite cabal to destroy this country through
division and vilification of the Founding Fathers. Shame!!!
Hitler was the leader of, and policy director, of a genocidal government. Southern Civil
War generals were not. They were leaders of armies, of men not policy makers of slavery.
And the policy they were leading those men to fight for was the "peculiar institution."
Forget Hitler. Are there statues of, say, Rommel in Germany? Yet he, too, a leader of an
army.
It's doubly ironic that all this furor over removal of statues of R. E. Lee, which seem to
be the ones the media likes to focus on, likely because Lee is the only Southern general that
bulk of the under-educated population can recognize, never mentions what the man himself said
about commemorating the war:
"I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those
nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the
feelings engendered." -- Robert E. Lee
What is really funny is that he was teaching the intro biology course at Harvard when I
was there. I didn't take it but one of my good friends did.
She said that she was a hick from California (actually she'd gone to a very good school)
but the point was she didn't know that Stephen Jay Gould was the "hot" professor at the time,
and that Wilson's "Sociobiology" view was considered to be retrograde, as unduly
deterministic. So she got into Wilson's course when most people were pulling strings to make
sure they got Gould, not him.
I saw her recently and asked about the Wilson course. She volunteered that another reason
she thought he got a bad rap at Harvard was that he was Southern.
I'm deeply envious of anyone having the chance to attend classes from either Wilson or
Gould. Both have their detractors (to put it mildly), but the are/were both wonderful
writers, I think I've read pretty much everything both of them have written.
The 'Darwin Wars' between the determinists and the Gouldites was my introduction to just
how deep epistemological divisions can be in science, even between those who essentially
agree on 99% of the data. Wilson, despite his association with Sociobiology, seems to have
kept a wary distance from the Dawkins disciples, quite wisely IMO.
I have the impression she very much liked the Wilson class. Had I been at all clued in, I
would have taken that class, but I oddly wasn't into star professors.
We may actually be talking about different E.O. Wilsons then -- entirely my mistake, and
nothing to do with 'greatness' or otherwise, but surely the one who invented sociobiology, or
at least coined the term, isn't still alive? Quite possibly another mistake on my part there
though.
E.O. Wilson, entomologist, author of "Sociobiology", "Biophilia", and co-author of "The
Theory of Island Biogeography", was born in 1929 and is still alive.
Its just past the 50th Anniversary here in Ireland of one of the most spectacular examples
of removing old outdated symbols,
the blowing up
of Nelsons Column in Dublin.
Despite its origin as an overtly Unionist attempt to mark
the Battle of the Nile, it was popular with Dubliners because you could climb to the top for
a good view.
In Ireland numerous monuments to Imperialism were removed over the years – some by
public authorities, some by way of gelignite planted at night. But most people still accept
the remains as part of history – there are still numerous 'Victoria Roads' around
Ireland, plenty of old post boxes with crowns on them, as well as huge monuments to the the
likes of the Duke of Wellington (who was Irish, although as O'Connell put it, 'just because
you are born in a stable doesn't make you a horse'.) Hardly anyone notices that the beautiful
arch in Stephens Green is a detailed monument to the Boer Wars and all that entailed.
I think monuments that give active offence should be removed, but in most cases its better
to accept that time changes and alters the meaning of all public symbols. Eventually, some
sort of equilibrium comes about and people accept with a shrug.
Not all people, including quite a few Irish– but of course they nurse their
grievances better than they nurse their drink albeit with a lot of good historical basis, and
with current hope of getting their own back, or at least some revenge. For some reason(s),
some subset of every polity just won't let bygones be bygone
Faulkner
had
much to say about the past. Will the Charlottesville events spark some resurgence on interest
in his works? His quote
"The past is never dead. It's not even past."
from Requiem
for a Nun seems to be at once forgotten or disavowed by many in this modern world.
When I went to South Africa, I was in a community of young ex-pats, from may parts of
Great Britain and its far flung parts.
One person was from Belfast, and one night after a few beers, and his round was next, he
looked at me and rattled off a series of "efforts" the English had tried in Ireland, most of
them bloody.
And accused in a strong Irish accent "You English!" Not wishing for a fight, especially
before his round I considered his litany on English misdeeds, and said "You're right!" He
looked utterly surprised, probably because he excreted a denial, and I wanted no fight, and
it was his round.
The I added, "and I personally did none of them." Which after a thought he considered
accurate, and bought his round.
We were friends for years, but time and distance have severed that bond.
The South captured and dominated the federal government for much of the antebellum period
thanks to special gimmicks like the 3/5ths rule. In many ways, Southern interests directed
federal power to advance their economy. The flood of free-thinking Germans and the election
of Lincoln shocked the South, leading to panic and, ultimately, a bitter resentment in
defeat. In this sense, the 1970's Southern strategy of harping on deficits while promoting
tax cuts was just part of a long counterattack against federal power. The entire Republican
policy edifice for a generation has been built around a segregationist backlash and you're
watching it all unravel – Obamacare, tax cuts, deficit-hawkery – even the war on
pot. Even Republican Secretaries of State have refused to cooperation with the voter
suppression commission. It's not a coincidence they can't get anything passed and impotent
rage erupts in the street.
I think you need to read up on the origins of the groups that worked to move the county to
the right. It was a very well funded, loosely coordinated corporate effort. The core group
came out of the John Birch Society, which is based in Belmont, Mass and had people like
William J. Buckley of Yale as prominent members. The Adolph Coors family out of Colorado were
also big players. Fred Koch, the father of the Koch Brothers, was a founding member of the
John Birch Society and a big early funder. The University of Chicago, and in particular
Milton Friedman, played a huge role in promoting neoliberal ideology.
As we flagged in a post yesterday, the reason the country moved to the right wasn't due
just to the Republicans. There were plenty of Democrats who were on board, starting in the
1970s.
And although I don't have data to support it, my perception is that Southerners have long
been underrepresented in high profile Administration positions, like Cabinet members and as
Supreme Court justices. I'd be curious as to whether any lawyers have a sense as to their
participation levels on the Federal bench.
Southern committee chairmen dominated Congress for decades last century. Of course, not
sure many people remember.
I do not think that Southern sense of victimhood is particularly special. More another
example of a more general phenomena, often seen in many times and places.
People are driven quite often by a sense of dignity or no dignity ( humiliation/rage).
That is the emotional force behind many different sorts of notions of glory.
I find it ironic that you are arguing the "identity" angle here, while I feel little
sympathy for it. During election discussions, I argued the emotional angles, and I felt that
you focused more on objective conditions. Today, I feel your approach was better.
Anyway, in the end it is about finding a way forward that is fair to everyone. As you
would probably agree, we have not seen much leadership from any group in that direction.
You're talking about the party funders – largely mining, fossil fuels, agribusiness
and banking/insurance/real estate (mostly interests dominant in the South). I'm talking about
the voters. They had real anger at the federal government over desegregation in the '70s and
the oligarchs channeled that into a deregulatory agenda which is now falling apart. Witness
Trump's pandering to regulate drug prices. He may be pushing deregulation but many popular
parts of his agenda were reregulatory in some aspect – like giving everybody great
health insurance – and he's reneging on them. In this sense, he's what Skowronek would
call a Jimmy Carter – a bridge figure in a disintegrating political order.
Second, the South maintained immense influence throughout the New Deal era and deep into
the '90s thanks to Democratic Party dominance in the region, seniority and the congressional
committee system. No other region could match the clout of the John Stennises or Earl Longs.
Of course, with the South flipping and the committee structure rearranged around fundraising
instead of seniority, all that changed.
But I look at the current Republicans in Congress and I recognize all the major leadership
positions as belonging to the segregationists, regardless of their geographic origin. They
nurse deep racial grievances. They speak Dixiecrat, sputtering about state sovereignty,
states rights and nullification (quite shrilly during the Obamacare debate). They block black
voting. They gerrymander. They race-bait (birtherism/Dred Scott-ism). They attack programs if
black people get it too (Obamacare). They like privatized police, prisons (slave labor) and
civil forfeiture. They love those gun rights (regulators/slave catchers). They all want to
pass laws legalizing private discrimination – which was a pet cause of the defeated
segregationists at the tale end of the '60s. This agenda's contradictions are going down in
flames.
I would also remind you that the Nuremberg laws were inspired by Southern
anti-miscegenation legislation. Nazis came to Southern law schools to study them (though they
weren't limited to the South). Fascism is the idea that private business should own and
operate the government for private profit. That's where the party funders and the street
racists come together.
Though the formal racist state institutions and ideology were never limited to the South,
they did reach their fullest, most overt expression here. You're talking about a group that
has supported the Articles of Confederation for going on two centuries after they fell apart.
It's what the Koch brothers hope to bring back by negating congressional commerce regulation
with a constitutional amendment.
Consider what props this up and you'll understand why their coalition is coming apart at
the seems. New energy sources are slowly eviscerating the petrodollar complex and the money
it pours into politics.
No, I've studied this in depth and you haven't. I have an entire chapter in ECONNED on
this, with extensive footnotes, from contemporaneous sources. All you have is your opinion
and on this it is incorrect.
The "free market" messaging was all about corporate and business interests. It had nothing
to do with narrowcasting on identity politics issues. That came later with the rise of Karl
Rove as a Republican party strategist.
And I'm sorry, Susan Collins just blocked Obamacare repeal and she's not a racist. I don't
like sweeping inaccurate generalizations. We care about accuracy of information and
argumentation. We make that explicit in our written site Policies. If you are not prepared to
comment in line with our Policies, your comments will not be approved.
As someone who used to be a group fitness instructor, I had to take both CPR (adult and
child) and First Aid training to retain my ability to teach. Both are generally available in
the US with the Red Cross (and others), and once you are certified, you can renew the
certificates every 1 or 2 years with a quick multiple choice test and demonstration of CPR
and AED techniques on the test dummy.
CPR standard practices have changed over the years, so it is important to keep up the
certifications if you want to be genuinely prepared to assist. The First Aid cert is mostly
common sense, but some of it seems counter-intuitive, until you know why it's done that way.
The most important thing to know is to make sure someone calls for EMTs/Ambulance if there's
any doubt about the severity of the injury/illness/unconsciousness of a victim. Don't
wait.
Also: I LOVE George Washington Carver. I did my first stand-up school presentation on his
amazing work with peanuts when I was in elementary school, and I've never forgotten what an
impressive person he was.
>The most important thing to know is to make sure someone calls for EMTs/Ambulance if
there's any doubt about the severity of the injury/illness/unconsciousness of a victim. Don't
wait.
Of course here in America you've probably kicked off a series of bills just starting at
$800 for said ambulance making the victim feel like a victim twice over.
As someone who teaches CPR/AED first aid, O2 administration, and lifeguarding for red
cross, yes call them as soon as there is anything serious. If the person is conscious they
can refuse care and not pay anything.
As basic first response; care for severe bleeding by applying constant pressure with gauze
(any cloth will do).
If someone is unconscious check for a pulse and breathing, if they have either they don't
need CPR. If they do need cpr two hands interlocking at the center of the chest push straight
down, hard, and fast (you might break ribs) to the beat of
Another One Bites the Dust
or
Stayin Alive
. Just keep going with that till EMS
comes.
That is basic community level training. 1. level up and I'd teach more about giving rescue
breaths but that should do in most cases.
I live in Canada, that horrible bastion of socialized medicine, and if you have to call
911 for an ambulance here, you will never, ever see a bill. No-one will. B/c there isn't
one.
Note to USA: socialized medicine, you can do this!
I view my limited First Aid Training as hopefully making me slightly less likely to be
totally useless in an emergency situation. I think I'm less likely to just freeze or flap my
arms in panic when confronted by a serious injury than I was before training.
The mainstream Republican have gotten the racist tag thrown at them so much that it
doesn't seem to carry much weight anymore. That this is giving truly virulent racist groups a
pass is a huge problem. Calling everyone a Nazi seems to be working in an unintended
fashion.
The Social Darwinian ideology is a very powerful one, and a natural one for the groups
vilified by identity politics to make. You are empowered because you were mean and took
things from other people, your empowered because you are the sociological group that acts and
thinks the right (Western) way. Your dominance is justified.
Of course given that same dominance, I can sympathize with folks who choose to push back
physically against the storm troopers. But as it stands today, both sides start dressing
themselves up in passive victimhood rather than as fallen warriors. Horst Wessel would be
turning in his grave.
It seems to me that the ideas of a meritocracy and racism, rather than the circumstances
they put in, to explain why some groups/individuals do great and others do not are very
similar. Yet, somehow the neoliberal democrats use the former for poor people especially
whites and the republicans use the latter for poor blacks. Although in the past few years
they have been blending the ideas together into a modern version of Social Darwinism.
That was a good piece, thank you. I think the author hit on the main issue which is that
people now make up their owns facts and often live in their own ideological worlds. It
started with talk radio and cable news but the Internet has made the situation much
worse.
How would the Civil Rights movement get ahead in today's climate? Would the murders of
Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner be declared false flag attacks orchestrated by George Soros
and the Deep State? How about the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, would that also be a
false flag attack?
It is not just the Right that engages in this sort of thinking but some people on the Left
too. How can you successfully promote reform when you cannot even get people to agree on
basic facts or to engage in rational debate? Perhaps the most dangerous outcome of this state
of affairs will be that the political and business elites will decide that the population is
too feral for democratic, constitutional governance and decide to increase the assault on
civil liberties. Many Americans, frightened by more incidents like Charlottesville, will
agree to go along with such a project.
Plus Livius, there is an incredible lack of trust in this country. I don't trust many
public figures nor do I trust that certain public servants will do the right thing. In an
emergency I do think that strangers will help a person in need, but if it isn't considered an
emergency good luck (see opiid crisis, the reactions of many that I thought to be decent
human beings has been ghastly).
I agree. I think the Internet has altered news for the worse. Real factual news is hard
work and expensive to produce. Opinion on the other hand is cheap and plentiful. And the more
outrageous the opinion, the more clicks. So now opinion is the news.
Politics has gone the same route. I worry about societal problems like opioid addiction, a
rise in alcoholism, and affordable healthcare. Dealing with these issues would require hard
work and hard choices. It is a lot easier to shout and insult. So now insults have displaced
policy.
There is no rational debate possible with people who believe that one human being
enslaving another is a right and just thing. There is also no rational debate possible with
people who believe in any form of racial superiority.
Tribalism is one thing, belief in racial superiority leads to dehumanization of others and
that ends in genocide, slavery, and host of other vile behaviors that decent people have
moved beyond. My support for free speech ends at dehumanizing others.
"There is no rational debate possible with people who believe that one human being
enslaving another is a right and just thing. "
Here's the 13th Amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted , shall exist within
the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
So there's no rational debate with anyone who swears alllegiance to the US Constitution;
and, it follows, no possibility of rational debate between such adherents.
Boy, you are really really reaching to claim that the point of the 13th Amendment you
quoted was to permit slavery. Think what one may about the punitive nature of our criminal
justice system (a completely different topic), this language was explicitly aimed at
permitting that system to continue. Not chattel slavery.
Well most of them go to work in highly authoritarian cultures called corporations so they
actually tolerate a great deal of authoritarianism for that paycheck.
But regardless their materialistic lives are merely their lives, or at any rate the number
of people that can actually share in much materialism is ever shrinking (yea I know they have
smart phones or some such horror but by and large). While rampant materialism may have been
at least a temptation to many baby boomers at one time, wages just haven't kept up. But with
no carrot there are always sticks, if not one's physical life or anything, everything else
one needs (needs not wants).
Thanks for the pointer to my article! Note that it is intended at as first cut look at
what happened, putting together the news stories of the first 24 hours to forms a coherent
picture of the event.
It got 10,000+ hits in the first day, which is a lot for us – without any mention in
a major website (the usual way a post goes viral). I assume that results from people who want
to know what happened, and are dissatisfied with the major media's coverage -- which has been,
imo, high school journalism level.
Two aspects are covered. First, the amazing -- even delusional -- statements by civilian and
police officials about the policing of the event. Let's hope we get some accountability for
the incompetent policing (e.g., not taking standard simple measures).
Second, how each side lies. "OUR side were innocent angels attacked by THOSE devils." That
such nonsense is taken seriously by the tribes of Left and Right is very Weimar. Large
numbers on both sides came armed and eager to fight, and they did fight.
The post linked to by Yves in The Root is typical. These are lies. Doesn't that bother
you?
Reform of America is impossible so long as we prefer lies to truth.
Good request! How is The Root article an example of "how each side lies. "OUR side were
innocent angels attacked by THOSE devils.'" The article is exactly about that theme: good vs.
evil, innocent vs. aggressors. Let's rewind the opening vignette:
"At first it was peaceful protest," Long said softly as he spoke. "Until someone pointed
a gun at my head. Then the same person pointed it at my foot and shot the ground." Long
said the only weapon he had was a can of spray paint that a white supremacist threw at him
earlier, so he took a lighter to the spray paint and turned it into a flame thrower. And a
photographer snapped the photo.
But inside every photograph is an untold story. If you look closely at Long's picture,
there's an elderly white man standing in between Long and his friend. The unknown man was
part of the counterprotests, too, but was afraid, and Long and his friends were trying to
protect him. Even though, Long says, those who were paid to protect the residents of
Charlottesville were doing just the opposite. "The cops were protecting the Nazis, instead
of the people who live in the city," Long said. "The cops basically just stood in their
line and looked at the chaos. The cops were not protecting the people of Charlottesville.
They were protecting the outsiders."
This makes two assertions. First, that the alt-Right were the aggressors, the Left the
victims. Videos and eyewitness accounts show otherwise. They show two sides, elements on both
of which show up armed to fight, and do fight. See
this in
yesterday's LAT
.
Second, it says that the police preferentially sided with the alt-Right. Not only is there
no evidence of that, the alt-right believe the police deliberately flushed them out of their
safe space in the park into the left's mob. See
Rob Sterling's detailed account
.
That does appear to be roughly what happened. The police cancelled the permit and forced
the alt-right protesters out of the park. That decision led the the widespread fighting
because the police had also not set up the standard transit routes for each group to their
designated protest area -- along streets both patrolled and blocked off from vehicular
traffic.
Now we can only guess at why the police did this. Panic, or incompetence, or a confused
chain of command with so many officials present? Only after intensive analysis of the
witnesses testimony and the videos (esp the Guard's video from the rooftop) can we say
more.
E. of the F. M. w. s., I feel like you can make a straightforward case that the Root
article presents a picture of how one side was "innocent" and was attacked by bad "others."
That isn't the same as saying that the first person testimony it provides is "lies." You can
argue that an overall narrative is misleading and partial, and that a particular first person
account plays into that misleading or partial narrative. But moving from this to calling the
account
itself
a lie is
also
an oversimplified narrative, of the sort that
you often zero in on for criticism. So I would suggest – given in particular that you
set as your objective to try to avoid slipping into mass-produced narratives that are
imperfectly grounded in evidence but easily propagated – that you choose your
characterizations with a little more precision.
It's extremely common for eyewitness testimony to reflect a narrative that one side was
the good guys and the others attacked them without provocation. This is true – on both
sides – even when subsequent evidence shows substantial asymmetry in how tensions
flared. It doesn't make those individual accounts baseless, or consciously lying (although of
course out and out lying does sometimes occur in eyewitness accounts). It
does
mean
that it can be quite difficult, in particular cases, to evaluate and synthesize eyewitness
testimony into a big picture account that is fair and accurate.
(A) "That isn't the same as saying that the first person testimony it provides is
"lies."
That's a valid point of wordsmithing. It would be a powerful rebuttal if
(1) I could point to no material factual error. But there is little or no evidence for the
Root's claim about police aiding the Right.
(2) I just said it was "a lie" and did not explain in what sense I meant that -- leaving
ambiguity in my description. But my sentence was explicit in its description:
Second, how each side lies. "OUR side were innocent angels attacked by THOSE devils."
That such nonsense is taken seriously by
(B) "It's extremely common for eyewitness testimony to reflect a narrative "
It's common for people to throw down hot butts and start forest fires. But it's a bad
thing. DItto for writing a one-sided article that throws kerosene on a burning conflict.
(C) "It doesn't make those individual accounts baseless, or consciously lying"
Here we have different perspectives. I understand what you are saying, and have no basis
to say you are wrong. But I see the situation differently.
* I believe the Founders were right about factionalism as one of the great dangers to the
Republic.
* I believe these Weimerica-like street battles between extremists, cheered by masses on Left
and Right, make us weak. They make rule by the 1% stronger.
* I believe our love for propaganda makes us weak.
(D) " It does mean that it can be quite difficult, in particular cases, to evaluate and
synthesize eyewitness testimony into a big picture account that is fair and accurate."
That is exactly the basis of my dislike for the Root article. It does not even try for
accuracy, just tribal cheering. It is just propaganda.
On (1), I think my explanation on this point still holds. The Root itself (i.e. the
article when it is not quoting Long) does not say the police was aiding the "Unite the Right"
people – only Long does. It's true that Long's statement, if propagated without
context, would spread the idea that the police was literally intervening on behalf of the
white nationalists. I argued in one of my responses to your comments that this is clearly
not
what Long meant. Long actually states clearly that the police did not get
involved. However, Long believed the police
should
have intervened against the white
nationalists, and in fact should not have even allowed them to march.
From this point of
view
, he says that the police "were protecting the Nazis."
This is the sort of way of talking that is very easy to imagine in a participant or a
bystander. For example, imagine if someone were mugged in broad daylight right in front of
the police. Since in this case, we all expect the police to intervene on behalf of the
victims, we might say the police were "obviously protecting the muggers." That doesn't mean
the police were actually helping to beat anyone up, and it's an imprecise form of speech. But
it's an understandable one.
(2) I'm willing to grant that you didn't say in what sense it was a lie and have since
clarified the matter. By a strict standard of the sort we mentioned above, what you said was
potentially misleading (i.e. it was easy to interpret it in another way). The same might be
said of Long's statement about the police protecting the Nazis. In neither case is it
impossible to understand, just a reason to try to be more careful.
(B) True, it would be better if eyewitnesses could strive to be very precise in how they
report what they see. In practice, eyewitnesses come from all walks of life and involve all
sorts of people. We are better off banking on their accounts being partial for the
foreseeable future. I think the onus for completeness and fairness is considerably greater on
journalists, analysts, and others whose putative role is to provide reliable summaries.
(C) I don't disagree with any of this, except that for "factionalism" I would say
"tribalism" – but maybe we mostly mean the same thing.
(D) I think it's fair to criticize news outlets that only provide eyewitness testimony
that fits with one particular frame. It doesn't mean that an outlet should never publish an
article centered around one person's account – but if it does, it should presumably
balance it elsewhere with other information giving a more complete picture.
(E) [not from your reply, but I was curious] As Yves says, the news has mentioned several
cases of serious injuries suffered by counterprotesters (not to mention the deaths), and if
there were serious injuries suffered by the "Unite the Right" side, I at least haven't run
into any reliable accounts of such. Do you know of any?
It passed fact checking by the New Yorker, which reported basically the same information.
And you would have had to have sources who saw that incident, which seems awfully unlikely
given how few there were in that photo (as in it seems to have taken place away from the main
crowds).
The other part is I disagree with the equivalence. The antifa types (and this occurred
with the Black Bloc in Occupy) weren't "our side" in that most of the people who came who
were against the white supremacist types aren't pro violence. By contrast, it appears that
the smaller group of "Unite the Right" types were heavily armed and they consciously and
deliberately used symbols of violence against black people and minorities from the very
outset.
So it would be possible for people in the anti-bigotry group to have marched and not seen
what the anitfa types were up to, while I don't think you can credibly say anyone on the
white supremacist side didn't see all of the intimidating weaponry and violent
encounters.
"It passed fact checking by the New Yorker" is indeed tempting, isn't it?!
However in addition to Fabius Maximus I've come across additional reports with first-person
accounts describing how both sides came prepared to do battle. At this point I'm of the
opinion that there was not one "bad side" and other "poor victim" side. I have come across
lots of info linking the Neo-Nazi side having connections to the Ukranian "revolutionaries"
(funded by CIA among others, thank you very much) and of left-side groups having links to
Soros-funded groups. It looks like the whole situation was a confrontation that was set up.
I'm not suggesting all participants were part of this, but nonetheless there is enough
evidence strewn around that at the minimum one should think twice before accepting
any
major media spin on the event.
Jason Goodman and Crowdsource the Truth on YouTube had lots of videos documenting the
neo-Nazi links to Ukrainian groups ("Blood and Soil"), flags in evidence, starting the night
before the "big event". IIRC Lee Stranahan had info documenting the links to Soros-controlled
organizations.
1. That violent antifa types were representative of most of the marchers on the left side.
You are implying that both sides were raring for a fight. The white supremacists were. Only a
minority of the marchers on the left were, and I further question how many would have
approved of their tactics. I know from Occupy that pretty much everyone were not at all happy
about Black Bloc tactics and regarded them as anarchist interlopers trying to take advantage
of Occupy without having the consent of Occupy (Occupy was big on super-democratic
processes). Black Lives Matter has consistently rejected violent tactics. I know Lee Camp
would reject the antifa types as being part of "our side" or representing his values.
More generally, left-wing protests, particularly anti-globalization protests, have
agitators show up who had nothing to do with the organizers of the protest. They are plants
to make the protestors look bad. Here, I am sure the antifa types were genuinely motivated.
But the bigger point is peaceful leftist marchers often have a violent minority show up that
does not represent the approach of the majority. Hence it is not correct at all to say that
they are representative of that side.
2. #1 above means it is possible for eyewitnesses on the left side not to have seen antifa
provocations and to be truthful in saying and believing that that the fights were instigated
by both sides.
3. The police THEMSELVES said the reason they didn't intervene was that the right wing
protestors were heavily armed! Who are you kidding here?
4. You are ignoring the message that the white supremacists were sending. They made heavy
and deliberate use of symbols of violence against blacks and minorities. The only thing that
was missing was KKK robes. They were visibly carrying guns and bludgeons. Bludgeons are
illegal in NYC because they are more effective in close combat than a gun. They were not
signaling an intent to have a peaceful rally. They were signaling an intent to have a fight
and the antifa types were all too happy to pick one.
And please explain the black schoolteacher who was nearly beaten to death? Pray tell how
does that fit your theory?
All of the deaths and serious injuries were suffered by members of the leftist side
and none by the white supremacists, even though they were much smaller in number.
That's
because the antifa types weren't using anything that would do more than bruise someone or
make them filthy. All I have read is that they threw cans, bottles with urine in them, and I
saw one account saying feces. So the implements used by each side were not remotely
equivalent, contrary to what you imply.
I'm not sure you understood my contention. I didn't say all left-wing side people were out
for a fight, but there is evidence that some were and yes these may have been infiltrators as
you suggest. Numerous protests are infiltrated by troublemakers.
The fact that one side may indeed have felt more pain than another doesn't affect the
point I'm making. What I'm suggesting is to pay attention to the entire "conflict" set up.
It's predictable. There's a degree of scripting. It serves many functions–to make
people insecure, feel convinced that others are out to get them (on either side), to feel
that conflict is inevitable, to want the police/military to take a more active role.
It's not that any of these points necessarily lack merit on their own (e.g., in some
situations law enforcement should play a constructive role), but rather that this is one tiny
event within a larger picture of social engineering that has been taking place over an
extended period of time (decades). Foment conflict artificially (e.g. CIA-funded
insurrections such as Ukraine and many countries in South/Central America and currently
Venezuela; create or increase a feeling of insecurity; get the people to give up rights in
order to have "security" and "protection"; increase military/law enforcement budgets and
sales to interested parties.
Focusing only on a single situation (xxx group was hurt "more" in yyy situation/event) can
lead one to overlook the larger societal pattern, by not recognizing that there was
manipulation occurring that affects both sides.
This is the first time I have had the software do this. I was replying to the editor of
Fabius Maximus' comment and it wound up misplaced. It might be that it didn't go through the
first time and what I did on the retry wound up relocating it.
As to the bigger issue, you are ignoring my contention that the two "sides" were equally
cohesive. If you go to a soccer game, and hooligans who favor your team beat up on fans of
the other side, are you responsible for their actions merely by virtue of having gone to the
game to cheer on your team? That seems to be the basis of your and the editor of FM's
comment. In fact, Black Lives Matter, which is opposed to violence, was represented there and
I am highly confident other marchers opposed to the white supremacists were unarmed and has
not interest in perpetrating or participating in violence.
By contrast, the organizers of Unite the Right called on the participants to come armed
and not only did they come "armed," they brought implements that are designed to maim and
kill. If their aims were defensive, to preserve their right to make a public statement,
pepper spray would have sufficed. How can you depict that as equivalent?
I didn't say anything at all about blaming one side or another. To the contrary, I
suggested it was more important to look at the overall pattern of such conflicts and the
overall societal impact (division! fear! giving up rights! agreeing to surveillance!
increased law enforcement/military power and spending!).
First, the assertion about the police favoring the Alt-Right appears baseless. Both sides
report -- supported by videos -- that the police watched everybody fighting. Where are the
accounts of the police intervening on just one side? The New Yorker fact checkers missed
that.
Second, let's rewind to see what I said -- The Root
article an example of "how
each side lies. 'OUR side were innocent angels attacked by THOSE devils.'" The Root's article
clearly paints that kind of incorrect picture due to its misrepresentations and omissions.
See my reply to Vatch above for details.
The Root article is at all times reporting the perspective of a single person, the
23-year-old Corey Long. Even when the article is not directly quoting Long, it is plainly
summarizing his testimony.
In my opinion, you overstated your case by terming the Root article "lies." As you know,
it's very common for eyewitness testimony to diverge dramatically. In the midst of big,
chaotic situations, each particular person sees only a part of what is going on. They can be
entirely sincere and the picture that they paint might still be a partial one.
Similarly, if you read what Long actually said, he agrees that the police "basically stood
in their line and looked at the chaos." Long felt that the police should have intervened
actively against "the Nazis," and
relative to this baseline
, interprets the police
of having favored the white nationalists. He makes this quite clear when he says that a
rapper was earlier not allowed to march and so why were white supremacists allowed to?
I don't see any evidence for Long lying in the article. When the article, near the end,
says "we are in a Trump presidency, this is the world we live in,"
this
is
editorializing – maybe something Long said at one point, maybe something the article
put in his mouth. But it still isn't distorted testimony about the events on the ground.
It might muddy the waters less if you stick to criticizing MSM accounts that are
straightforwardly presenting themselves as unbiased general accounts of what happened.
You have shifted the grounds of your argument. You made a sweeping attack against The
Roots article: "These are lies."
Despite Outis having patiently picked apart your argument, you in fact have not engaged
with him but are broken recording. Your "let's rewind" is effectively an admission that you
are not about to acknowledge what Outis described, that The Root article is a first person
account, and you have not provided one iota of evidence to suggest that Long misrepresented
what he saw. You are therefore unable to support your original claim and are thus trying to
shout Outis down.
This is a violation of our site's written Policies. We don't make exceptions for anyone.
You either need to engage with him in a good faith manner or stand down.
OK. I should not have said "lies" and just said the remaining text. Consider this an
apology.
I did not claim that the root misreported what he saw, but that the article misrepresented
what happened at the article. If anyone believed that is what I said, then I apologize for
that too.
It's been an interesting discussion. I'm don't believe anyone has engaged with what I said -- but everybody has their own perspective on these things.
Thank you for that. I was of two minds about posting the Lee Camp video because this
horrible affair has gotten people very upset, we only have pieces of what happened, and many
people are drawing inferences that go beyond the information. I think we all agree strongly
with one of your big points, that this was a massive failure on the part of the police.
The history of the neo-liberal revolution is starting to come clear.
James Buchanan first became motivated by the US Government insisting that segregation
between white and black children should end. He saw private schools as a way of maintaining
this segregation outside the control of Government.
He started in Virginia, near Charlottesville, where racism festered not far below the
surface and they still resented the Northern Government telling them what to do; removing the
freedom of the wealthy to do what they liked and taxing them to look after others.
The Government shouldn't have the power to end school segregation in Virginia.
The beginnings of neo-liberalism / economic liberalism.
It is ironic the new liberals should now be so aghast at the goings on in a region where
their own beliefs first started to take shape.
"Democracy in Chains" Nancy Maclean
How a right wing ideology was developed in the US to roll back the "New Deal" and give
economic freedom back to the wealthy to do pretty much as they pleased.
Our Brian C and Sluggeaux, a former state prosecutor, disagree. He disabled the airbag. An
airbag deploying 1. could have injured him and 2. would have made it impossible to drive the
car, as in exit. This is a strong tell that he planned to use the car as a weapon and was
primed to find an excuse.
Both the way he drove into the crowd (hands steady on the wheel and well positioned when
he started( and his impressive exit weren't consistent with road rage.
Perhaps his psychiatrist could answer your very specific question?
If you think this is evidence of a planned attack, you could be right.
But mentally unstable people are perfectly capable of a greater or lesser degree of
'planning' a murder – even if it means only a walk to the woodshed to pick up an
axe.
Arguably, only the 'crime passionel' is free from any prior decision – making.
So I still maintain my original point – that the question of culpability is complex
when the perpetrator is known to be mentally unstable, and, in this case, professionally
diagnosed.
As is the issue of motivation.
That means you cannot characterise his crime as a 'terror attack', as that assumes he was
fully compos mentis, using the car in the same way as, for example, the takfiri attack in
Cannes earlier this year.
Since this seems to be conjecture, what if the driver of the attack was not fully compos
mentis and he was used and manipulated by a group of disaffected radicals?
Why do white men seem to get the pass (with Dylan Roof, also) that they are mentally
unstable and therefore not guilty of acts of terror? Maybe if the jihadists had access to
psychological screening we would find that they are unstable, possibly due to decades of war
and economic privation.
You seem to be quibbling over irrelevancies here. How many members of many terrorist
groups might be diagnosed by the (questionable) standards of the brain babblers? We are all
"insane" according to one section or other. So maybe nobody is to "blame' for anything?
To claim he was not motivated by politics seems insane in itself, given his history of
interest in far right politics and racist ideologies.
There is a specific legal definition of insanity in murder cases, which is not
understanding the difference between right and wrong. The fact that he disabled the airbag to
facilitate a speedy exit and attempted to make one says he knew full well.
There is more here than merely a guy who was "disturbed".
Driving in reverse – totally straight for extended period under duress is quite a
feat. This guy was not an amateur. He was a Pro! Ask any of the posters here, if they can do
that – no one I have asked said they could.
The Cops management of the event was deliberate. This was a permitted event so the
authorities knew what the response would be, there should be no doubt about it. Yet they put
the two groups together on a narrow street.
The typical establishment mime is to say the cops made a mistake and the guy was crazy.
Always giving the benefit of the doubt to the committed narrative. Makes no sense.
New narrative play book to substitute for the dying Russia, Russia, Russia?
It is relevant whether he had occasion in the past to back up at speed. If so, he would
quickly learn how sensitive steering with the now rear wheels is. The trick is to brace one
arm on the door (or door-leg-arm) and make the finest of steering adjustments using the
braced fingers; start relative slow, establish direction, and then speed up. Young bodies
with coordination talent can easily do this.
so its is easy is your promote – at high speed on a narrow street with people
chasing you – any young guy can do that – nerves of steel for any amateur who is
emotionally diagnosed with ??? Baloney
it gets worse:
"the discovery of a craigslist ad posted last Monday, almost a full week before the
Charlottesville protests, is raising new questions over whether paid protesters were sourced
by a Los Angeles based "public relations firm specializing in innovative events" to serve as
agitators in counterprotests.
The ad was posted by a company called "Crowds on Demand" and offered $25 per hour to
"actors and photographers" to participate in events in the "Charlotte, NC area." While the ad
didn't explicitly define a role to be filled by its crowd of "actors and photographers" it
did ask applicants to comment on whether they were "ok with participating in peaceful
protests." Here is the text from the ad:
Actors and Photographers Wanted in Charlotte
Crowds on Demand, a Los Angeles-based Public Relations firm specializing in innovative
events, is looking for enthusiastic actors and photographers in the Charlotte, NC area to
participate in our events. Our events include everything from rallies to protests to
corporate PR stunts to celebrity scenes. The biggest qualification is enthusiasm, a "can-do"
spirit. Pay will vary by event but typically is $25+ per hour plus reimbursements for
gas/parking/Uber/public transit."
aside:
"New narrative play book to substitute for the dying Russia, Russia, Russia?"
This morning's NYTimes throws a curveball. This morning they report that a here-to-for
unknown "witness" to the "hacking" has been found. Someone from Ukraine. (Ignores technical
issues about the data download time-stamps and document meta-data).
" a fearful man who the Ukrainian police said turned himself in early this year, and has now
become a witness for the F.B.I."
Considering the amount of armament the nazi militia brought plus Charlottesville's
knowledge of caches of more weapons hidden – it's a miracle 3 souls were lost & not
dozens.
There was over 1,000 law enforcement members there.
I fear, as I'm sure others do as well, the odds of of dozens dead happening Somewhere USA
are high thanks to the ignorant facilitator in chief.
I for one am thankful police didn't get into the fray sooner. Police always make things
worse. Although I'm curious about reports saying they were waiting on orders to do so which
never happened. Waiting on orders from whom? Who decided to hold back our police state, which
so rarely happens?
And never ever underestimate the possibility of agents provocateurs being all or part of
this.
Isn't it funny how protests with armed citizens cause police to stay out of it.
According to an article in The Guardian, the armed militia members present (from NY and
PA) intended to help keep the protesters separated, asked the police for permission to
attend, and vociferously deny being Nazis in any way. Seems they are just garden variety
survivalists preparing for the day society collapses. That they seemed better armed than the
authorities is a different matter.
"The men in charge of the 32 militia members who came to Charlottesville from six states
to form a unit with the mission of "defending free speech" were Christian Yingling, the
commanding officer of the Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia
"We spoke to the Charlottesville police department beforehand and offered to come down
there and help with security," Yingling told the Guardian. "They said: 'We cannot invite
you in an official capacity, but you are welcome to attend,' and they gave us an escort
into the event," he added.
Yingling said he had been asked to bring a team to Charlottesville by a local militia,
the Virginia Minutemen Militia, to reinforce their numbers, and to be in charge on the
day.
But Yingling said the original request for a militia force to attend the event had come
from the organizers of the white nationalist rally, who wanted them to act as security.
The militiamen had said: "No, we will not come and defend just you," Yingling recalled.
"It's important for us to say we were there in a neutral stance."
If a major earthquake (or any disaster) hits, do you
have enough supplies for a minimum of 72 hours up to an entire month for all family
members, including pets?
know how to turn off the gas?
know how to safely turn off the power?
know how to apply first aid?
have enough water for all of your family and your pets?
have provisions for living outside your home for a length of time if the structure is
compromised?
It is important to know, if a major disaster occurs, the LAFD, paramedics, police WILL NOT
COME! They will be deployed FIRST to major incidents such as collapsed buildings. That is why
you constantly hear You MUST be prepared to take care of yourself. In the CERT course they
say "The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number of People." When you are trained, you are far
more equipped to deal with your circumstances without needing aid from outside sources.
CERT members are trained in basic disaster response skills such as fire safety, light
search and rescue, team organization and disaster medical operations. You will learn how to
prepare for emergencies, what supplies you should NOW have in your house, how much food, how
much water but most importantly, how to protect your family in an emergency!
How could you call the guys in "Deliverance" hicks? Especially the banjo player and the
dude pumping gas in overalls. The white collar guy with the glasses was no match for the
banjo player on the porch. He was befuddled and he fumbled like an amateur. I guess they
can't put up a statue of William Faulkner since not too many people have read his books.
Maybe a statue of Janis Joplin who was from Texas and maybe Buddy Holly. I think Buddy Holly
actually has a statue someplace. And Mississpi Muddy Waters too. And the guitar player to end
all guitar players, the famous Robert Johnson from Mississippi. I'm not sure if he has a
statue. He might! I'm not sure. But these could be southerners you could make statues of. How
about Ted Turner?? We'd have to think about that one. As long as he's alive he's his own
statue. That's the way a man should be.
No real southern hick would go to one of these race rallies -- it takes waaay to much
effort, they have to work the Wal-Mart shift, they're too overweight, and it gets in the way
of fishing. All those white guys are northerners, probably from the mid-west even.
That pic says it all. Jousting as a form of self-expressionary theater. Look at the laid
back lazy gestures by both actors. What truly amazes me is this -- if it hadn't been for a
mentally ill psycho behind the wheel of a car and a helicopter accident almost nobody would
have been seriously hurt. That really is incredible, given all the guns and presumably ammo.
I'm not sure if the armed individuals there just carried guns and no ammo but I doubt it. I
find that really really amazing -- and that photo captures the underlying energetic structure
of the whole phenomenon quite aptly.
This is a form of theater of the kind suggested by the great wacko himself -- Antonin
Artaud. Who was a French guy. I suspect it will stay that way (I could be wrong, but I don't
think so.) To grasp and grapple with the phenomenon at hand requires a conceptual vocabulary
that I have yet to see in the media coverage and "I was there" narratives.
All those guns cost money. Trips to the protest cost money.
Just like the false meme that Trump was elected by the working class. Nope. It was the
gated community suburban megachurch religious nuts who elected him. Affluent small town and
suburban nabobs
High-quality guns and good ammo cost serious money. This, in a nutshell, is why Yours
Truly had to give up the shooting sports. I could no longer afford the cost of
participation.
Leaving aside all other issues I always thought: Confederate memorials/statues commemorate
actual treason and people who tried to dismember the country. Solely for the purpose of
keeping other human beings as slaves. Thus zero sympathy from me to the "Heritage not Hate"
crowd.
I am, however, unsympathetic to "applies 21st century standards of PC virtue-signalling to
centuries-old figures" types, as they will inevitably be the authoritarian leftists that are
as distasteful to me as the Confederafluffers.
Pretty well impossible to deal with the imbeciles who immediately jump to "George
Washington owned slaves so 100% of everything about him must be rubbished." Unproductive on
every level and outright destructive on most of them.
Historically, those officers were taught that it was constitutional to secede from the
Union. Constitutional law classes at West Point taught constitutional secession so when many
of the southern states seceded those officers thought that these States were being denied
what was their constitutional right. They lost the war so they were wrong. Most of these
men's primary reason for fighting was for honor. Sadly, they were defending slavery as an
institution.
Not the US Constitution but from the Declaration "
But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under
absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to
provide new Guards for their future security
."
I think the Declaration of Independence seems more like a justification for slave revolts
than for the secessions of 1861. The slaves experienced absolute despotism.
Careful, Vatch.
Justifying one interpretation and denying the other smacks of bias.
My problem is it's just so damned difficult to find my own response to being a
hypothetical Southern farmer in 1860, without slaves, but facing a Northern pressure that
puts my family and living at risk. I'm a let's say..Virginian. Neighbors (State) over
strangers (Nation)? Practical over principle? What principle?
I guess my point is the Declaration of Independence isn't so much about economic models
(although THAT is there) as it is about the ideals of freedom from political domination.
And in that interpretation, both slave revolts and the War for Succession are totally
valid.
Well, the Northern states violated the Constitution when they (rightfully so) didn't
return fugitive slaves back to the South.
Article 4, Section 2: No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws
thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be
discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to
whom such Service or Labour may be due.
We have the fugitive slave law passed by congress, the dread scott decision passed by the
Supreme Court and a slew of other federal policies that (irony) the Northern states
nullified.
I wonder when we Americanized the word Labor?
So if the North was in violation of the Constitution, at what point do you have the right
to succeed? I don't know to be honest.
I think this is being far too kind. Most officers were from the landowning class, and the
rationale for the secession was very clearly to preserve slavery. Saint Lee was not a kind
master, he did little to stop the lynching and capturing or Northern freemen when his army
invaded the north, nor did he actively oppose the rise of the neo-confederate terror groups
during the postwar era.
I'd like to see a link or something that states (or even implies) that instructors at a
facility for training officers for the US Military would ever say that it was "constitutional
to secede" .sounds a bit treasonous to me ..
Re. statues: My first reaction is that it is easy to predict the mindset of someone quick
to defend Confederate symbolism. On the other hand it seems wrongfooted to spend energy
trying to expunge all of it from our public spaces. I nevertheless cannot help but find the
en masse demonstration in favor of the statue to be super predominantly white supremacist in
nature. I do not come to this uninformed. As a middle American born white male, I have been
privy in my life to the kinds of things white people say to other white people, who they
either assume are like them, or simply don't care. As a one-term military enlistee, I found a
similar saturation of racial bigotry in those ranks. It had already been abundantly clear to
me from my upbringing that those who tend toward the police force likewise harbor racial
animosity and wilful ignorance of the history that would inform the reasons behind some of
the superficial observations made by those who don't bother to get to know black or brown
people if they can avoid it.
In short, the military and police forces have a white supremacy problem, so
institutionalized, it would explain how it is that even minority officers engage in brutal
tactics against "their own". I hasten to add to your bit about Nixon's war on drugs the fact
that someone in the Reagan/Bush realm also knowingly created the crack epidemic in South
Central Los Angeles, something we now know is fact, thanks to the late Gary Webb. The culture
that grew out of that era is paradigm shifting.
So whenever we are tempted to say that law enforcement failed in such situations, we
should quickly reassess and remind ourselves of the proverbial "feature not a flaw". The
authoritarian impulse in America has its own dynamic, but even here in Berlin, where there
are plenty of ultra-right demonstrations, none of which exist without a counter demo that
includes an antifa presence, the police don't fail as demonstrably, but it's pretty clear
where their sympathies lie. The first such demo I attended was where I first heard the taunt
out of the ranks of the right: "Sie schützen uns! Sie schützen uns!" (They [the
police] 're protecting us! They're protecting us!") And they were in no way implying this
meant they needed protection from the counter demonstrators; it was a taunt that clearly
meant that the cops were on their side
One more thing: Trump has shown an ability to selectively and tactically tell truths
otherwise unspoken in the political sphere. His comment on Washington and Jefferson memorials
is totally legit. But it's couched in the rest of his rhetoric, which is utterly
bullsh**.
I fear that I may have to make issue with Yves's characterization of statues as fetishism.
Do statues contain an element of ancestor-worship? Maybe likely. Are most of them poorly
designed and thought out? Definitely. In any case in our culture, it is usually the leaders
that get the statues, not the engineers and scientists who actually got it all done. But
remember that they are actually symbols and people live by symbols and incorporate them into
their lives. The pert Manhatten woman who totes a Gucci handbag and the San Fransisco hipster
who takes pride in his artisanal cheese may look dissimilar but they are both using symbology
to establish their identities. To threaten people's symbols is to threaten their identity and
people will resist that to the hilt. That is why the resistance to the removal of those
statues.
I think that we are going to have to go back to the old stick-and-stones attitude. That is,
if you come to me and say that you see a statue in another state that causes bad feelings in
you and makes you feel angry or that you find it wrong that the candidate that you voted for
did not win, I would say build a bridge and get over it. But if you come to me and say that
people are trying to restrict your voting rights, the courts charge you constantly so that
that can fill their coffers with your fines, your churches are burnt and so on then brother,
that is something that is actually worth fighting against. This is real damage versus
emotional damage and I think may be the only workable way to go.
One last thing that came to mind. There were all sorts of rat-bag groups in Charlottesville
and I am wondering just where the hell they came from. But then a disturbing thought occurred
to me. Could it be that the identity politics that has been used for the past couple of
decades in America for political gain has led to the unintentional formation of these
sub-groupings? The politicians may have played it too clever by half in their angling for
power and this may be the result. Movements like this from the left and the right do not come
about spontaneously but must have a lineage somewhere. The only one that I recognize that has
a lineage is the KKK but they just look ridiculous.
What makes you think the sub-groupings are unintentional? It's a classic divide and
conquer strategy. Without it, after all, the great unwashed might have noticed that tea party
and occupy sympathizer had more in common with each other than with the establishment, and
started talking to each other instead of heaping ridicule on the other.
I know we're not big on smartphones around here, and it should be treated as a supplement
rather than a replacement for training, but there is a Resucitate! app that gives a guide to
assisting someone in a CPR, AED, or choking situation.
Josh Marshall, a historian by training, has a nice piece about this over at TPM. In brief,
the elevation of the generals from the South after the War of Northern Aggression was one of
the pacts that formed the post-reconstruction South. It whitewashed, hrm, their personal
treason and allowed the South to rewrite its history, exonerating its leadership. It gave the
planter class icons around which to form a revised culture, one that reconstituted slavery in
all but name. Jim Crow lasted a hundred years; the culture that built it survives its
demise.
Jim Crow kept a reconstituted planter class and its courtiers in power, It built on
earlier culture and characterized former slaves as an extravagant threat, sexually,
economically, politically. A variation on the British empire's divide and conquer. African
Americans became the focus of poor whites angst rather than the southern elite. That, too,
survives Jim Crow. It's part of the white supremacy that informs Trump.
The Charlottesville driver/killer, for example, is a minimum wage 20 year-old outcast,
rejected by the US Army, and apparently with untreated mental health problems. (Not that he
– or anyone similarly situated – would have had access to health care.) He's a
textbook example of one personality type for whom white supremacy and the victimhood and
promises of neonazism hold the most attraction.
Without a doubt the southern aristocracy fought the war over slavery but what doesn't get
mentioned as often is that the north, by and large, fought the war over union, not slavery.
As for "treason," this was not a term that got bandied about so much back when people were
closer to a Revolutionary War that was also called treason. Gore Vidal for one said that the
south had a right to secede and perhaps the US would have been better off if they had done
so. The premise of Vidal's book Lincoln was that Lincoln suffered under the great moral
weight of almost single handedly keeping the Union together at the cost of 500,000 lives.
Of course few southerners now (certainly speaking for myself!) think the south would have
been better off if they had won. An enduring south is the be the premise of an upcoming HBO
series by the Game of Thrones creators–a very bad idea, especially in light of recent
events.
He sounds a lot like Jared Lee Loughner, who was the killer of six people at
then-Representative Gabrielle Giffords' Congress on Your Corner event. The guy needed help,
didn't get it, and the rest, they say, is history.
Interesting graph that. Only comment is that that second blimp in the 1960s was only
marked down as the era of the civil rights movement. What should be noted is that it was also
the centennial of the civil war so you would expect more memorials to be dedicated then.
By propagating this word you are playing into the hands of the security establishment who
want to turn the tools of war against the American people. Terrorism is a tactic used by
smaller, less powerful groups to effect a response in what is generally a war.
By falling into the trap of misusing this word people are setting trap for themselves when
law enforcement is given blanket authority to violate civil liberties.
I agree. And it's good you post that and it bears repeating, perhaps ad naseum. I doubt
most people clamoring for equal inclusion in the terminology have given it any
consideration.
Terror is a violent political tactic conducted in full awareness and as part of the
terrorists arsenal to reach specific goals.
State-sponsored terror is the real scourge of our times. Where's the outrage? Or is the
killing of countless Brown people only 'racist' on US soil?
As Fields only known political affiliation was his registration as a Republican, we would
have the to logically designate that party a terrorist organisation, if he is categorised as
a terrorist.
While many would agree with that (Iraq) it is hardly practical, given the Democratic
Party's equal enthusiasm for state – sponsored terror (just look at who is supplying
arms to the numerous takfiris in Syria,or the destruction of Libya.)
So branding Fields a terrorist instead of a mentally disturbed killer opens up a real can
of worms.
Are we to also allege 'religious motivation' for the 'God/Satan – told – me
– to – kill' contingent too?
if you'd had black protestors show up similarly attired and armed, you can bet you'd
have seen mass head-breaking and arrests
If the question of fascism is at all relevant here, it's not in the mouthing of phrases
and the medieval accoutrements of the neo-fascists. It's in the inaction of the police.
Mcauliffe's recourse to saying the cops were outgunned to explain why the police didn't stop
the neo-fascists, his hesitation to say this was a profound screwup, is a replay of the
history of fascism in Germany and Italy. Tolerance and support from the cops were essential
in its success. Demonstrators should be going after Mcauliffe, not Robert E Lee. The next
move on the part of the neos, if they're smart, will be to see how much state support they
can get if they more tightly focus on the left. Support/tolerance on the part of the state
should be attacked in whatever form it takes, from Trump on down.
Agree. The inaction of the police, the "both sider-ism" of Trump and the Trumpertantrums
which normalizes white supremacist extremism on all of the right, and in its use by
libertarians and neoliberals to advance the cause of the rich because that's the way to
oppose the liberals, the left, and socialist antifa.
I can't pull a link right now but recommend the Vice documentary on Charlottesville. Bit
chilling.
And honestly, it's not just the excluded who are being radicalized, as the MRA phenomenon
shows, the openly superior attitudes of silicon valley tech bros, etc.
Yves, the point you make about the perceived lack of greased tracks from Southern
universities to the Acela corridor's hall's of power got me thinking about C. Wright Mills
and where else the power elite create leverage points
NOTE: This is a reprint of a journal article with the following citation:
Domhoff, G. William. 2006. "Mills's The Power Elite 50 Years Later." Contemporary Sociology
35:547-550.
Mills's career (and that of Sloane Coffin at Yale) certainly engendered a response of
"Never again" among the Ivy League and its patrons. The likes of Alfred McCoy at Wisconsin
and G. William Domhoff at UCSC were confined to the state ivies. Later nonconformist critics
of the establishment were lucky to be hired at mid-rank state schools. It was essential to
deprive them of formal inclusion among the nation's intellectual elite. Stanford, under its
longtime patron, arch-conservative Herbert Hoover was especially vigilant in excluding
nonconformists. UC San Diego spent a long time in purgatory for hiring Herbert Marcuse.
Among many other achievements, Mills made a mockery of the McCarthy era demand for
conformity and bland acceptance of the status quo.
It saddens me that the shrill media echo chamber (including that ridiculous Jacobin
article) has me -- a lifelong 'liberal' -- reading TAC.
I reject identity politics. I am an American citizen. But I have no political home. I had
hopes for the DSA, but now I see they were a proud part and parcel of the thuggery in
Charlottesville.
Yes, I have a very tight tinfoil hat but I smell the fire and brimstone of Soros,
provocations and color revolutions. "Heightening the differences" is I believe what this
violent street theater was intended to do.
Yes, they do have really good foreign policy analysis. Reality-based. But you have to wade
through quite a bit of Christian-values-under-attack and Culture War yaya to get there.
IMHO.
I only have Daniel bookmarked, and my browser takes me right to his exposes of the Peace
Prize President's support of the horrors in Yemen, the bipartisan war crime disaster which is
Syria, and the insanities of Trump's ignorant babbles. :)
The video of Fields attack broadcast on corporate media was mainly the one filmed by one
Brennan Gilmore.
The only description I found in an MSM report said he was a Charlotte resident, involved
in start – ups, and had been present with friends at the scene.
He had tweeted extensively, characterising the incident as a :terrorist attack ' by' Nazis
'.
He also claims that Nazis are running the White House.
Definitely not a' neutral' observer.
Now turns out he is a former State Dept employee, whose work smacks not a little of CIA
regime – changing.
This is definitely looking more and more like a psyops.
"This is definitely looking more and more like a psyops.
But what's the goal?"
I think the goals are clear. (Just look at the effects.)
What's less clear to me is what people/groups are orchestrating this. The
aftermath–creating division and opinion regarding even the facts of what
happened–is part of the goal. Look at this website and the data being generated by
commenters. Who defends themself? Who attacks? Who retreats? What is the nature of the
language used?
Quinn Michaels has analyzed that stirring things up in this way provides opportunities for
Smart AI to create more data regarding how individuals and groups respond emotionally, thus
further enabling future manipulation of society with even greater precision. Michaels'
extensive analysis of advanced bot networks is chilling. But even so he sees beneficial
opportunities. It's pretty intriguing, these games and deliberate disruption. His YouTube
discussions (many of which include extensive screenshots to document what he has observed)
are interesting stuff.
Thanks for the info – I can well believe that is a motive for some.
But I am focusing more on the political aims of what is looking more and more like an
orchestrated event.
Trump's condemnation of both 'sides' was greeted with predictable outrage from much of the
MSM.
Yet having watched an hour long video filmed by a non – partisan, who positioned
himself between the :warring parties, it is clear he is correct : the police were ordered to
stand down while both sides – one of which did not have a permit for a rally –
went at it hammer and tongs.
That casualties were greater for one 'side'(though I take such reports with a large dose
of salt given media disdain for facts, including' WMD: NYT) does not reduce culpability.
Interesting that Richard Spencer (the humanities graduate from an upper middle class
background who supposedly represents the grievances of much of the Deplorable class –
really?) was in Hungary months ago. Meeting with the 'far right' there. He sure gets
around.
With no visible means of support, I can only assume he's being bankrolled by some very shy
folk .
Hungary also happens to be run by Soros nemesis, Victor Orban.
A little digging might turn some 'unexpected' connections.
'Unexpected 'to those who are unfamiliar with events in the Ukraine that is.
Wilderness First Responder (WFR) training is great you get everything you would in the
above-mentioned Red Cross courses but with a wilderness overlay, the upshot being there is a
focus on helping injured people for a longer period of time than just waiting for an
ambulance. So longer term patient stabilization, splint making, assessment, etc. Strikes me
as useful in a situation where professional medical help is not going to be immediately
available for whatever reason. The Wilderness Medical Institute (WMI) runs courses all across
the country but there are other outfits that teach the course as well.
I have a unique perspective of sorts on this as I used to be "Robert E. Lee" on the Radio.
Other than being kidded about the name, I never, ever saw any push back or any negativity
from anyone. And my show was top-rated. Of course this was back in the 70's and things
change. But seems to me some of these people protesting over confederate statues are missing
the point and should read a book on the Civil war, which was mostly about oppression from the
Northern states and really not that much about slavery.
There are plenty of books that completely invalidate "the Civil war, which was mostly
about oppression from the Northern states and really not that much about slavery." Not that
any post here is going to change your mind.
What about the theory that the economic interests of the North in opposition to those of
the South motivated the Civil War? The North wanted to compel the South to sell its cotton to
Northern Mills at a lower price than the South could sell its cotton to English Mills. I
thought I read about that in a Post here at NakedCapitalism -- ? I have trouble believing the
Civil War was about slavery. If slavery were the driver then why did Lincoln wait until 1863
to make his emancipation proclamation? After the Civil War why did the North do so little to
help the slaves they emancipated and protect their freedom? It took 100 years and
considerable political and social pressure to compel the North to enforce even the most basic
civil rights in the South.
Every single version of the secession articles issued by the Southern states says they
were doing so to preserve their "peculiar institution." It's not about "belief." It's about
demonstrable facts. That the North didn't really give a [family blog] about the actual
slaves, and that anti-black racism was as bad north of the Mason-Dixon is irrelevant to this
discussion.
Likewise, the reason why none of the freed slaves got their "40 acres and a mule" is
available in any number of reliable historical sources, and just as has always been the case
is the result of a combination of rich people and politics.
Read some diaries by Northerners who fought in that war. Whether they liked it or not,
they knew the war was about ending slavery. An awful lot of them volunteered based on that
understanding (except the mobs in NYC that attacked an orphanage for black children). In his
memoirs Grant, writing much later in a time when the myth of "it was only about union" by
then had a firm hold, was clear about the role abolitionism played. Those in the South at the
time didn't pretend otherwise either.
Many of those fighting in the Civil War were motivated by their feelings about slavery.
However I am extremely skeptical that either a strong desire to abolish slavery or a
commitment to maintain the union motivated the Elite of the North to war with the South.
Their concern for the human condition didn't extend very far in time or space. Emancipated
slaves were left to suffer under Jim Crow. Northern Mills and factories operated in
conditions not greatly different than outright slavery.
Disclaimer: I am totally not a historian. Evidence *wholly* anecdotal, *wholly* oral and
simply a family story. My father had two great-uncles who died in Andersonville Prison, I
have seen the letters and the little carved Bibles send back to their family in Ohio/
Pennsylvania but not otherwise verified anything. The story in the family is that they went
for the substitute money, $100 (a whole lot of money back then). The draft was only for
landowners, ie voters, but they could and very often did pay to have non-landowners, such as
my greatuncles, take their duty for them. Irony: the family was awarded land, in
Michigan.
Yves, CERT or Community Emergency Response Training is what you might want to check out
for basic emergency training/preparedness. CERT operates on both a national and local level.
Out here in earthquake country the local chapter is pretty active.
Yves, here in NYC, I took a good basic first aid course at the American Red Cross (it
included CPR, dealing with burns, broken bones, seizures, etc.); someone upthread mentioned
the American Heart Association and their offerings look intriguing too. And NYC does indeed
have an active CERT chapter; which fields teams of trained volunteer first-responders for all
sorts of disasters. (I had looked into all this stuff just post-9/11; picked up a good manual
on disaster prep from the ARC and still carry their first-aid kit and a pair of construction
gloves in my backpack, just in case.)
I'm not sure what to make of the events in Charlottesville. They hold a dark foreboding I
can't decipher.
Lee Camp's portrayal of how fleetingly brief is our moment of life and consciousness and
his admonition to use that moment is what most moved me in his brief video.
While Red Cross and other organization offer courses, you might try to find a good edition
of the Boy Scout's First Aid Merit Badge booklet. It has probably been updated over the
years, but was a good read and taught me enough to help several injured people since earning
my Eagle rank. Not sure I could revive the dead, but I've kept a heart attack victim alive
until help arrived, as well as many bleeding people.
The South has long dominated key sectors of the US power structure, if not the ones where
Yves has spent her time/ drawn her acquaintances.
Just look at those who have had prominent roles in Congressional leadership and committee
chairmanships over the last century. What about Mitch McConnell? Jeff Sessions (before he
became AG)? Russell Long? Jamie Whitten? Herman Talmadge? George Smathers? Lindsay Graham?
John McCain (Mississippian by birth)? Strom Thurmond? Theodore Bilbo? Just to name a few.
Southerners are also over-represented in the military.
http://www.ozy.com/acumen/why-the-us-military-is-so-southern/72100
NB, as Yves has mentioned, the retired general and flag officers often end up running defense
contractors when they leave active duty– so Southern influence is also strong
there.
The South continues to dominate our political life and our military industrial complex.
Guilt tripping non Southerners about anti Southern prejudice continues to enforce such
dominance. While that prejudice certainly exists, it's no reason to give the white South a
pass, or the affirmative action program Trump wants to grant by re-orienting DoJ's Civil
Rights Division.
McCain was born in Panama, there was a birther issue with his candidacy. I see nothing in
his bio about MS, though he moved a great deal as a military brat.
The fact that southern pols attain such positions does not necessarily reflect dominance.
And while Yves's' characterization elides some issues, it has the virtue of pointing up the
obvious: there is prejudice toward white southerners and, like most prejudice, tends to
prevent us from seeing the region clearly.
Furthermore, McCain makes no bones about his Southern heritage. He has also, among other
things, defended the Confederate flag and spoken highly of his treasonous ancestors who
fought for the Confederacy (as noted in Salon link above).
Regarding your disputation of Southern dominance on Capitol Hill -- I worked at CBO and got
to see it first hand back in the 70s. With all due respect, your statement about the
prevalence of southern pols in high positions on the Hill not "necessarily" reflecting
dominance, is clueless. It may be a little different now but given the continued power of
Southern Republicans on the Hill I tend to doubt that.
Of course there's prejudice towards just about everyone who isn't in one's own group.
Unfortunately, that is the way humans are. The real issue is, has that group been victimized?
Not all that much in the case of white Southerners, who run a great deal of the country.
I would also say: the prejudice against Southerners actually works in many ways to their
advantage. Both in terms of outsiders underestimating them, and in terms of outsiders' being
clueless about how powerful the South really is.
Simply saying that Southerners dominate the America power structure doesn't make it the
case. Put that case together and I am interested. Calling me "clueless" looks to me like a
sign that you are either operating out of your own prejudice rather than solid fact or just
disputatious. I would gladly accept that Southerners are a disproportionate part of the power
structure; that they dominate? Pony up.
Out here in Seattle we seem to be more and more segregated. The city is basically cut in
half, with the north side of downtown/ship canal being primarily white and the south side of
downtown being the last vestige of minority home ownership in the city. Gentrification is
alive and well in the Pacific Northwest. We call it the "San Francisco-zation" of Seattle.
Everyone is being priced out and the City of Seattle Government seems perfectly ok with it.
Perhaps the era of the City-State is here?
Yes, policing fail. But there were some reasons for that. This "From a member of UVA
staff," which appeared on a trusted friend's FB page, which has a ring of authenticity:
'A few specifics that I learned from a very somber staff meeting with our Dean of
Libraries just now. Some of these details may have been available in news reports but they
were new to me. (1) Apparently on Friday night there was a 'very low level' request for
permission for a group of 20 people to read a speech at the Rotunda. This overture to the
University was then bait-and-switched to the march with torches that circled Central Grounds.
(2) During the white nationalists' intimidating march around Grounds, many UVA police
officers were actually located downtown, where they had been seconded to support
Charlottesville City police. (3) On Saturday, there were "several deliberate attempts to
spread police thin" through tactics such as fake bomb scares in parts of town away from the
main action. (4) By UVA policy, students and employees are prohibited from carrying firearms
on Grounds, but by state law, because this is a public property, people with no University
affiliation are allowed open carry without a permit and concealed carry with a permit. UVA
can make policy enforceable on its own students and employees but not on the general public
.
"I am sharing all of this because I think there were several specific, calculated tactics by
the white nationalists to leverage our laws and policies against us and to maximize the
terrorizing effect of their activities in Charlottesville over the weekend. I believe the
white nationalists are not done with us here in Charlottesville and I believe they will
target other universities, university towns, and communities with progressive political
reputations for similar attacks. I hope that forewarned is forearmed and that by
disseminating information about the white nationalists' tactics we can be better prepared in
the future.' (thanks to Gregory N Blevins)"
Nature. Skilled Labor. Community Bank credit creation. Shorting nature into a battery with
debt expertise always ends the same way, a black hole of symptoms chasing their own tail,
until all the financial and operational leverage is stranded.
An elevator eliminates the arbitrary clock in the compiler, allowing an increasing
diversity of events to time themselves.
"... This peace-keeping aspect of affirmative action understood, perhaps we ought to view those smart Asians unfairly rejected from Ivy League schools as sacrificial lambs. ..."
The argument is that admitting academically unqualified blacks to elite schools is, at core, a
policy to protect the racial peace and, as such, has nothing to do with racial justice, the putative
benefits of diversity or any other standard justification. It is this peace- keeping function that
explains why the entire establishment, from mega corporations to the military, endorses
constitutionally
iffy racial discrimination and why questioning diversity's benefits is the most grievous of all
PC sins. Stated in cost-benefit terms, denying a few hundred (even a few thousand) high-SAT scoring
Asians an Ivy League diploma and instead forcing them attend Penn State is a cheap price to pay for
social peace.
This argument rests on an indisputable reality that nearly all societies contain distinct ethnic
or religious groups who must be managed for the sake of collective peace. They typically lack the
ability to economically compete, may embrace values that contravene the dominant ethos, or otherwise
just refuse to assimilate. What makes management imperative is the possibility of violence either
at an individual level, for example, randomly stabbing total strangers, or on a larger scale, riots
and insurrections. Thus, in the grand scheme of modern America's potentially explosive race relations,
academically accomplished Asians, most of whom are politically quiescent, are expendable, collateral
damage in the battle to sustain a shaky status quo.
Examples of such to-be-managed groups abound. Recall our own tribulations with
violent Indian tribes
well into the 19 th century or what several European nations currently face with Muslims
or today's civil war in Burma
with the Karen People. Then there's Turkey's enduring conflict with the Kurds and long before the
threat of Islamic terrorism, there were Basque separatists (the
ETA ), and the
Irish Republican Army
. In the past 45 years, there have been more than 16,000 terror attacks in Western Europe according
to the
Global Terrorism Database . At a lower levels add the persistently criminal Gypsies who for 500
years have resisted all efforts to assimilate them. This listing is, of course, only a tiny sampling
of distinct indigestible violence-prone groups.
The repertoire of remedies, successful and failed, is also extensive. Our native-American problem
has, sad to say, been largely solved by the use of apartheid-like reservations and incapacitating
a once war-like people with drugs and alcohol. Elsewhere generous self-rule has done the trick, for
example, the Basques in Spain. A particularly effective traditional solution is to promote passivity
by encouraging religious acceptance of one's lowly state.
Now to the question at hand: what is to be done regarding American blacks, a group notable for
its penchant for violence whose economic advancement over the last half-century has largely stalled
despite tens of billions and countless government uplift programs.
To appreciate the value of affirmative action recall the urban riots of the 1960s. They have almost
been forgotten but their sheer number during that decade would shock those grown accustomed to today's
relative tranquility. A sampling
of cities with major riots includes Rochester, NY, New York City, Philadelphia, PA, Los Angeles,
CA, Cleveland, OH, Newark, NJ, Detroit, MI, Chicago, IL, Washington, DC and several smaller cities.
The damage from these riots! "uprisings" or "rebellions" according to some!was immense. For example,
the Detroit riot of 1967
lasted five days and quelling it required the intervention of the Michigan Army National Guard and
both the 82 nd and 101 st Airborne divisions. When it finally ended, the death
toll was 43, some 7200 were arrested and more than 2000 buildings destroyed. Alas, much of this devastation
remains visible today and should be a reminder of what could happen absent a policy of cooling out
black anger.
To correctly understand how racial preferences at elite colleges serves as a cost-effective solution
to potential domestic violence, recall the quip by comedian
Henny Youngman when asked
"How's your wife?" He responded with, "Compared to what?" This logic reflects a hard truth: when
confronting a sizable, potentially disruptive population unable or unwilling to assimilate, a perfect
solution is beyond reach. Choices are only among the lesser of evils and, to repeat, under current
conditions, race-driven affirmative action is conceivably the best of the worst. A hard-headed realist
would draw a parallel with how big city merchants survive by paying off the police, building and
food inspectors, and the Mafia. Racial preferences are just one more item on the cost-of-doing business
list–the Danegeld .
In effect, racial preferences in elite higher education (and beneficiaries includes students,
professors and the diversity-managing administrators) separates the
top 10% measured in cognitive ability from their more violent down market racial compatriots.
While this manufactured caste-like arrangement hardly guarantees racial peace (as the black-on-white
crime rate, demonstrates) but it pretty much dampens the possibility of more collective, well-organized
related upheavals, the types of disturbances that truly terrify the white establishment. Better to
have the handsomely paid Cornel West pontificating
about white racism at Princeton where he is a full professor than fulminating at some Ghetto street
corner. This status driven divide just reflects human nature. Why would a black Yalie on Wall Street
socialize with the bro's left behind in the Hood? This is the strategy of preventing a large-scale,
organized rebellion by decapitating its potential leadership. Violence is now just Chicago
or Baltimore-style gang-banger intra-racial mayhem or various lone-wolf criminal attacks on whites.
Co-optation is a staple in the political management repertoire. The Soviet Union adsorbed what
they called the "leading edge" into the Party (anyone exceptionally accomplished, from chess grandmasters
or world-class athletes) to widen the divide the dominant elite, i.e., the Party, and hoi polloi.
Election systems can be organized to guarantee a modicum of power to a handful of potential disruptors
and with this position comes ample material benefits (think Maxine Waters). Monarchies have similarly
managed potential strife by bestowing honors and titles on commoners. It is no accident that many
radicals are routinely accused of "selling out" by their former colleagues in arms. In most instances
the accusation is true, and this is by design.
To appreciate the advantages of the racial preferences in higher education consider Henny's "compared
to what"? part of his quip. Certainly what successfully worked for quelling potential Native American
violence, e.g., forced assimilation in "Indian Schools" or confinement in pathology-breeding reservations,
is now totally beyond the pale though, to be sure, some inner-cities dominated by public housing
are increasingly coming to resemble pathology-inducing Indian reservations. Even less feasible is
some legally mandated homeland of the types advocated by Black Muslims.
I haven't done the math but I would guess that the entire educational racial spoils system is
far more cost effective than creating a
garrison state or a DDR-like police state where thousands of black trouble-makers were quickly
incarcerated. Perhaps affirmative action in general should be viewed as akin to a nuisance tax, probably
less than 5% of our GDP.
To be sure, affirmative action at elite universities is only one of today's nostrums to quell
potential large scale race-related violence. Other tactics include guaranteeing blacks elected offices,
even if this requires turning a blind eye toward election fraud, and quickly surrendering to blacks
who demand
awards and honors on the basis of skin color. Perhaps a generous welfare system could be added
to this keep-the-peace list. Nevertheless, when all added up, the costs would be far lowers than
dealing with widespread 1960s style urban violence.
This peace-keeping aspect of affirmative action understood, perhaps we ought to view those
smart Asians unfairly rejected from Ivy League schools as sacrificial lambs. Now, given all
the billions that have been saved, maybe a totally free ride at lesser schools would be a small price
to pay for their dissatisfaction (and they would also be academic stars at such schools). Of course
this "Asian only" compensatory scholarship might be illegal under the color blind requirements of
1964 Civil Right Act, but fear not, devious admission officers will figure out a way around the law.
1) Asians will grow in power, and either force more fairness towards themselves, or return
to Asia.
2) WN idiots happy about Asians returning to Asia fail to see that Asians will return only when
they control enough of America to manage large parts of it from afar (like the tech industry).
3) 2-3 million top caliber white male Western Expats might just move to Asia, since they may like
Asian women more, and want to be free of SJW idiocy. This is all it takes to fill the alleged
gap Asia has in creativity, marketing, and sales expertise. Asia effectively decapitates the white
West by taking in their best young men and giving them a great life in Asia.
4) America becomes like Brazil with all economic value colonized by Asians and the white expats
in Asia with mixed-race children. White trashionalists left behind are swiftly exterminated by
blacks, and white women mix with the blacks. America becomes a Brazil minus the fun culture, good
weather, and attractive women.
@Carlton Meyer At first, I was surprised that they listened to him.
After a while, I realized that many negros are stupid enough to think that Hispanics and Asians
would like to be in some anti-white alliance with blacks as a senior partner. In reality, they
have an even lower opinion of blacks than whites do. US blacks have zero knowledge of the world
outside America, so this reality just doesn't register with them.
John Derbyshire has made similar arguments–racial preferences are the price for social peace.
But, as Steve Sailer has pointed out, we're running out of white and Asian children to buffer
black dysfunction and Asians are going to get less and less willing to be "sacrificial lambs"
for a black underclass that they did nothing to create and that they despise.
There are other ways to control the black underclass. You can force the talented ones to remain
in their community and provide what leadership they can. Black violence can be met with instant
retributive counter-violence. (Prior to the 1960s most race riots were white on black.) Whites
can enforce white norms on the black community, who will sort-of conform to them as best they
are able.
Finally, Rudyard Kipling had a commentary on Danegeld. It applies to paying off dysfunctional
domestic minorities just as much to invading enemies.
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!"
Could care less about your smart Asians The smart Asians are enthusiastivally voting Whitey
into a racial minority on Nov 3 2020 They don't belong on Native Born White American Living and
Breeding Space
Hell with those 'smart Asians'. They are among the biggest Proglob a-holes.
Asians have servile genes that seek approval from the power. They are status-freaks.
They make perfect collaborators with the Glob.
Under communism, they made the most conformist commies.
Under Japanese militarism, they made the most mindless military goons who did Nanking.
Under Khmer Rouge, they were biggest looney killers.
Under PC, they make such goody good PC dogs.
If the prevailing culture of US was patriotic and conservatives, Asians would try to conform
to that, and that wouldn't be so bad.
But since the prevailing culture is PC, these yellow dogs are among the biggest homomaniacal
PC tards.
Hell with them. Yellow dogs voted for Obama and Hillary in high numbers. They despise, hate,
and feel contempt for white masses and working class. They are servitors of the empire as Darrell
Hamamoto said. He's one of the few good guys.
Just look at that Francis Fukuyama, that slavish dog of Soros. He's so disgusting. And then,
you got that brown Asian tard Fareed Zakaria. What a vile lowlife. And that fat Jeer Heet who
ran from dirty browns shi ** ing all over the place outdoors to live with white people but bitches
about 'white supremacy'. Well, the fact that he ran from his own kind to live with whites must
mean his own choice prefers white folks. His immigration choice was 'white supremacism'. After
all, he could have moved to black Africa. Why didn't he?
PS. The best way of Affirmative Action is to limit it only to American Indians and Blacks of
slave ancestry. That's it.
Also, institutions should OPENLY ADMIT that they do indeed discriminate to better represent
the broader population. Fair or not, honesty is a virtue. What is most galling about AA is the
lies that says 'we are colorblind and meritocratic but ' No more buts. Yes, there is discrimination
but to represent larger population. Okay, just be honest.
Please stop trying to confuse Orientals with Indians and other subcontinentals. They are
quite distinct.
In their original countries they are, but in America they are almost identical in all ways
except appearance and diet.
Plus, since SE Asia has always had influence from both, there is a smooth continuum in the
US across all of these groups by the time the 2nd generation rolls around.
They don't belong on Native Born White American Living and Breeding Space
Three things wrong with this sentence.
1) I don't think you know that Native Americans (i.e. Siberians) were here first.
2) I will bet anything that all 128 of your GGGGG-GPs are not English settlers who were here in
1776. You are probably some 2nd gen Polack or something who still worries that WASPs look down
on you.
3) There is very high variance among whites, and white trashionalists are SOOOO far below the
quality threshold of any moderately successful white that they can't claim to speak for all whites.
White Trashionalists represent the waste matter that nature wants to purge (which is the process
that enables exceptional whites to emerge on the other end of the scale). That is why white women
are absolutely doing what nature wants, which is to cut off the White Trashionalists from reproduction.
If you care about the white race, you should be glad that white women want nothing to do with
you and allow you to complete you wastebasket role.
Obama was one of the beneficiaries of AA along with his wife and their kids. Did that prevent
Baltimore and Chicago and etc from blowing up?
In a way, AA and Civil Rights made black communities more volatile. When blacks were more stringently
segregated, even smart and sensible blacks lived among blacks and played some kind of 'role model'.
They ran businesses and kept in close contact with black folks.
It's like white communities in small towns used to be much better when the George Baileys stayed
in them or returned to them and ran things.
But as more and more George Bailies left for the big cities, small towns had fewer top notch
role models and leaders and enterprisers. Also, the filth of pop culture and youth degeneracy
via TV corrupted the dummies. And then, when globalism took away the industries, there were just
people on opioids. At least old timers grew up with family and church. The new generation grew
up on Idiocracy.
Anyway, AA will just taken more black talent from black community and mix them with whites,
Asians, and etc. Will some of these blacks use their power and privilege to incite black mobs
to violence? Some do go radical. But most will just get their goodies and forget the underclass
except in some symbolic way. It's like Obama didn't do crap as 'community organizer'. He just
stuck close to rich Jews in Hyde Park, and as president, he was serving globo-wars, Wall Street,
and homos.
When he finally threw a bone at the blacks in his second term, it lit cities on fire.
Did the black underclass change for the better because they saw Obama as president? No. If
anything, it just made them bolder as flashmobs. The way blacks saw it, a bunch of fa ** ogty
wussy white people voted for a black guy created by a black man sexually conquering a white woman.
They felt contempt for cucky whites, especially as rap culture and sports feature blacks as master
race lording over whites. To most underclass blacks, the only culture they know is sports and
rap and junk they see on TV. And they are told blacks are magical, sacred, badass, and cool. And
whites are either 'evil' if they have any pride or cucky-wucky wussy if they are PC.
The Murrayian Coming-Apart of whites took place already with blacks before. And more AA that
takes in smarter blacks will NOT make things better for black underclass. And MORE blacks in elite
colleges will just lead to MORE anger issues, esp as they cannot keep up with other students.
Even so, I can understand the logic of trying to win over black cream of crop. Maybe if they
are treated nice and feel 'included', they won't become rabble-rousers like Al Sharpton and act
more like Obama. Obama's race-baiting with Ferguson was bad but could have been worse with someone
like Sharpton.
The Power can try to control a people in two ways. Crush everyone OR give carrots to comprador
elites so that sticks can be used on masses. Clinton did this. He brought over black elites, and
they worked with him to lock up record number of Negroes to make cities safer. As Clinton was
surrounded by Negroes and was called 'first black president' by Toni Morrison, many blacks didn't
realize that he was really working to lock up lots of black thugs and restore order.
Smart overlords play divide-and-conquer by offering carrots to collaborator elites and using
sticks on masses.
British Imperialists did that. Gandhi would likely have collaborated with Brits if not for the
fact that he was called a 'wog' in South Africa and kicked off a train. Suddenly, he found himself
as ONE with the poor and powerless 'wogs' in the station. He was made equal with his own kind.
Consider Jews in the 30s and even during WWII. Many Western European Jews became rich and privileged
and felt special and put on airs. Many felt closer to gentile elites and felt contempt and disdain
for many 'dirty' and 'low' Eastern European Jews. If Hitler had been cleverer and offered carrots
to rich Jews, there's a good chance that many of them would have collaborated and worked with
the Power to suppress or control lower Jews, esp. of Eastern European background.
But Hitler didn't class-discriminate among Jews. He went after ALL of them. Richest Jew, poorest
Jew, it didn't matter. So, even many rich Jews were left destitute if not dead after WWII. And
this wakened them up. They once had so much, but they found themselves with NOTHING. And as they
made their way to Palestine with poor Eastern European Jewish survivors, they felt a strong sense
of ethnic identity. Oppression and Tragedy were the great equalizer. Having lost everything, they
found what it really means to be Jewish. WWII and Holocaust had a great traumatic equalizing effect
on Jews, something they never forgot since the war, which is why very rich Jews try to do much
for even poor Jews in Israel and which is why secular Jews feel a bond with funny-dressed Jewish
of religious sects.
For this reason, it would be great for white identity if the New Power were to attack ALL whites
and dispossess all of them. Suppose globalism went after not only Deplorables but Clintons, Bushes,
Kaineses, Kerrys, Kennedys, and etc. Suppose all of them were dispossessed and humiliated and
called 'honkers'. Then, like Gandhi at the train station, they would regain their white identity
and identify with white hoi polloi who've lost so much to globalism. They would become leaders
of white folks.
But as long as carrots are offered to the white elites, they go with Glob and dump on whites.
They join with the GLOB to use sticks on white folks like in Charlottesville where sticks were
literally used against patriots who were also demeaned as 'neo-nazis' when most of them weren't.
So, I'm wishing Ivy Leagues will have total NO WHITEY POLICY. It is when the whites elites
feel rejected and humiliated by the Glob that they will return to the masses.
Consider current Vietnam. Because Glob offers them bribes and goodies, these Viet-cuck elites
are selling their nation to the Glob and even allowing homo 'pride' parades.
White Genocide that attacks ALL whites will have a unifying effect on white elites and white
masses. It is when gentiles targeted ALL Jews that all Jews, rich and poor, felt as one.
But the Glob is sneaky. Instead of going for White Genocide that targets top, middle, and bottom,
it goes for White Democide while forgoing white aristocide. So, white elites or neo-aristocrats
are rewarded with lots of goodies IF they go along like the Romneys, Clintons, Kaines, Bidens,
and all those quisling weasels.
" Now to the question at hand: what is to be done regarding American blacks, a group notable
for its penchant for violence whose economic advancement over the last half-century has largely
stalled despite tens of billions and countless government uplift programs. "
I read an article, making a learned impression, that on average USA blacks have a lower IQ.
I do suppose that IQ has a cultural component, nevertheless, those in western cultures with a
lower IQ can be expected to have less economic success.
A black woman who did seem to understand all this was quoted in the article as that 'blacks should
be compensated for this lower IQ'.
One can discuss this morally endless, but even if the principle was accepted, how is it executed,
and where is the end ?
For example, people with less than average length are also less successful, are we going to compensate
them too ?
"economic advancement over the last half-century has largely stalled despite tens of billions
and countless government uplift programs"
It only stalled when the Great Society and the uplift programs started. According to The Bell
Curve there was basically an instant collapse when LBJ started to wreaking his havoc. Go back
to pre-1964 norms and no late-60s riots.
We have sacrificed smart white students for three generations to keep the hebraic component
around 30% at our highest-ranked colleges and universities, and no one (except the jewish Ron
Unz himself) made so much as a peep. And as he copiously documented, whites have suffered far
more discrimination than asians have. The difference is, whites are more brainwashed into accepting
it.
@War for Blair Mountain "They don't belong on Native Born White American Living and Breeding
Space "
Your statement would be perfectly correct if it read, "White people of European origin don't
belong on Native American Living and Breeding Space "
Yet there they are, in immense, pullulating numbers. And now they have the gall to complain
that other people – some of whom resemble the few surviving Native Americans far more closely
than Whites do – are coming to "their" continent.
Honestly, what is the world coming to when you spend centuries and millions of bullets, bottles
of whisky and plague-ridden blankets getting rid of tens of millions of people so you can steal
their land – and then more people like you come along and want to settle peaceably alongside you?
That's downright un-American.
Maybe you'd be more comfortable if the Asian immigrants behaved more like the European settlers
– with fire, sword, malnutrition and pestilence.
@Diversity Heretic The Kipling quote is stirring and thought-provoking (like most Kipling
quotes). But it is not entirely correct.
Consider the kings of France in the 10th century, who were confronted by the apparently insoluble
problem of periodic attacks by bands of vicious, warlike, and apparently irresistible Vikings.
One king had the bright idea of buying the Northmen off by granting them a very large piece of
land in the West of France – right where the invading ships used to start up the Seine towards
Paris.
The Northmen settled there, became known as Normans, and held Normandy for the rest of the
Middle Ages – in the process absolutely preventing any further attacks eastward towards Paris.
The dukes of Normandy held it as a fief from the king, and thus did homage to him as his feudal
subordinates.
They did conquer England, Sicily, and a few other places subsequently – but the key fact is
that they left the tiny, feeble kingdom of France alone.
Ratioal cost benefit arguments could be applied much more widely to the benefit of America
and other First World countries. If otherwise illegal drugs were legalised, whether to be prescribed
by doctors or not, it would save enormous amounts of money on law enforcement and, subject to
what I proffer next, incarceration.
What is the downside? The advocates of Prohibition weren't wrong about the connection of alcohol
and lower productivity. That was then. If, say, 10 per cent of the population were now disqualified
from the workforce what would it matter. The potential STEM wizards amongst them (not many) would
mostly be nurtured so that it was only the underclass which life in a daze. And a law which made
it an offence, effectively one for which the penalty was to be locked up or otherwise deprived
of freedom to be a nuisance, to render oneself unfit to perform the expected duties of citizenship
would have collateral benefits in locking up the right underclass males.
@Bro Methylene "Orientals," east Asians, or just Asians in American parlance are indeed quite
different from south Asians, called "Asians" in the UK,. These are quite different groups.
But the groups of east and south Asians include widely differing peoples. A Korean doesn't
have much in common with a Malay, nor a Pathan with a Tamil. Probably not much more than either
has in common with the other group or with white Americans.
That they "all look alike" to use does not really mean the do, it just means we aren't used
to them.
Was recently watching an interesting Chinese movie and had enormous difficulty keeping the
characters straight, because they did indeed all look alike to me. I wonder if Chinese people
in China have similar trouble watching old American movies.
@Carlton Meyer yeah and hispanics are natural conservatives. dont be a cuck once that slant
is here long enough he will tumble to the game and get on the anti white bandwagon. and sure asians
will eventually out jew the jews just what we need another overlord, only this one a huge percentage
or world pop. .
You know weisberg youre not fooling anyone here peddle that cuck crap elsewhere affirmative
action leads to nothing but more affirmative action at this point everyone but white males gets
it, and you my jew friend know this so selling it to sucker cucks as the cost of doing business
is just more jew shenanigans. There is a much better solution to the problem peoples deport them
back where they belong israel africa asia central america.
This is all about nothing now. The only thing White people have to learn anymore is controlled
breathing, good position, taking up trigger slack, letting the round go at exactly the right moment
– one round, one hit.
When your child tosses a tantrum and tears up his bedroom, and you tell him his mean-spirited,
selfish cousins caused it and then you reward him with a trip to Disneyland and extra allowance:
then you guarantee more and worse tantrums.
That is what America and America's Liberals, the Elites, have done with blacks and violence.
A very interesting post. Really a unique perspective – who cares if it's not fair, if it is
necessary to keep the peace?
I do however disagree with one of your points. " whose economic advancement over the last half-century
has largely stalled despite tens of billions and countless government uplift programs."
I think you have missed the main event. Over the last half-century the elites of this nation
have waged ruthless economic warfare AGAINST poor blacks in this country, to an extent that far
dwarfs the benefits of affirmative action (for a typically small number of already privileged
blacks).
Up through the 1960′s, blacks were starting to do not so bad. Yes they were in a lot of menial
jobs, but many of these were unionized and the pay was pretty good. I mean, if nobody else wants
to sweep your floors, and the only guy willing to do it i s black, well, he can ask for a decent
deal.
Then our elites fired black workers en masse, replacing them with Mexican immigrants and outsourcing
to low-wage countries. Blacks have had their legs cut off with a chainsaw, and the benefits of
affirmative action (which nowadays mostly go to Mexicans etc.!) little more than a bandaid.
And before we are too hard on blacks, let me note that whites are also being swept up in the
poverty of neoliberal globalization, and they too are starting to show social pathology.
Because in terms of keeping the social peace, there is one fundamental truth more important
than all others: there must be some measure of broadly shared prosperity. Without it, even ethnically
homogeneous and smart and hard working people like the Japanese or Chinese will tear themselves
apart.
Note that there is not a word in this article about what this does to the white working class
and how it can be given something in return for allowing Elites to bribe blacks with trillions
and trillions of dollars in goodies. Nor is there is there any indication that this process eventually
will explode, with too many blacks demanding so much it cannot be paid.
Was this written tongue in cheek?
Affirmative action will never end. The bribes will never end. The US made a mistake in the 1960s.
We should have contained the riots then let the people in those areas sleep in the burned out
rubble. Instead through poverty programs we rewarded bad black behavior.
By filling the Ivy League with blacks we create a new class of Cornell West's for white people
to listen to. We enhance the "ethos" of these people.
Eventually, certainly in no more than 40 years, we will run out of sacrifices. What then when
whites constitute only 40% of the American population? Look at South Africa today.
We have black college graduates with IQs in the 80s! They want to be listened to. After all, they're
college graduates.
I do not believe you have found "a cost-effective solution to potential domestic violence".
You mix in this "top 10%" and they get greater acceptance by whites who are turned left in college.
"The argument is that admitting academically unqualified blacks to elite schools is, at core,
a policy to protect the racial peace "
IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: –
"We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: –
"Though we know we should defeat you,
we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: –
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"
whose economic advancement over the last half-century has largely stalled despite tens of
billions and countless government uplift programs.
The reality of this is become a huge stumbling block. In fact this group has actually been
mostly regressing into violence and stupidity, going their own separate way as exemplified by
their anti-social music which celebrates values repugnant to the majority. Look at the absurd
level of shootings in cities like Chicago. That's not changing anytime soon. They're by far overrepresented
in Special Ed, juvenile delinquency, prisons and all other indicators of dysfunction. Their talented
tenth isn't very impressive as compared to whites or Asians. Their entire middle class is mostly
an artificial creation of affirmative action. The point is that they can only be promoted so far
based on their capability. The cost of the subsidy gets greater every year and at some point it'll
become too heavy a burden and then it'll be crunch time. After the insanity of the Cultural Revolution
the Chinese had to come to their senses. It's time to curtail our own version of it.
It really is terrible and unfair that an Asian needs to score so much higher than you white
oppressors to get into the Ivy league
A Princeton study found that students who identify as Asian need to score 140 points higher
on the SAT than whites to have the same chance of admission to private colleges, a difference
some have called "the Asian tax."
I think this is brilliant satire.
It is actually an argument that is logically sound. Doesn't mean that it's good or sensible or
even workable over the long run.
It's just logically sound. It holds together if one accepts the not-crazy parts its made out of.
I don't believe it's meant to be taken literally, because both the beneficiaries and those who
get screwed will grow in their resentment and the system would melt down.
New fields with the word "studies' in them would get added and everyone would know – deep down
– why that is so, and Asians would continue to dominate the hard sciences, math and engineering.
Still, as satire, it's so close to the bone that it works beautifully.
@Tom Welsh "Yet there they are, in immense, pullulating numbers. And now they have the gall
to complain that other people – some of whom resemble the few surviving Native Americans far more
closely than Whites do – are coming to "their" continent."
Agree. The country should be returned to pre-1700 conditions and given over to anyone who wants
it.
@Anonymouse I guess one man's riot is another man's peaceful night. There was a bit of rioting
in Brooklyn that night, businesses burned and looted, and a handful of businesses were looted
in Harlem. There was a very heavy police presence with Mayor Lindsey that night and blacks were
still very segregated in 1968, so I'd guess it was more that show of force that prevented the
kind of riots we'd seen earlier and in other cities at that time. Still, there was looting and
burning, so New York's blacks don't get off the hook. As a personal note. my older brother and
his friends were attacked by a roving band of blacks that night in Queens, but managed to chase
them out of our neighborhood.
The costs of BRA may be lower than the costs of 1960s urban riots, though an accurate accounting
would be difficult as many costs are not easily tabulated.
Consider, for instance, the costs of excluding higher performing whites and Asians from elite
universities. Does this result in permanently lower salaries from them as a result of greater
difficulty in joining an elite career track?
What costs do affirmative action impose upon corporations, especially those with offices in
metropolitan areas with a lot of blacks? FedEx is famously centralized in Memphis. What's the
cost to me as a shipper in having to deal with sluggish black customer service personnel?
The blacks are 15% of the population, so I doubt "garrison state" costs would be terribly high.
I am certain that segregation was cheaper than BRA is. The costs of segregation were overlooking
some black talent (negligible) and duplication of certain facilities (I suspect this cost is lower
than the cost of white flight).
How did America ever manage to survive when there hardly any Chinese Hindus..Sihks .Koreans
in OUR America?
Answer:Very well thank you!!!! ..America 1969=90 percent Native Born White American .places
two Alpha Native Born White American Males on the Moon 10 more after this Who the F would be opposed
to this?
Answer:Chinese "Americans" Korean "Americans" Hindu "Americans" .Sihk "Americans" .Pakistani
"Americans"
There would still be racial peace if affirmative action was abolished. They'll bitch for a
while, but they'll get used it and the dust will settle.
Side note: Affirmation action also disproportionately helps white women into college, and they're
the largest group fueling radical leftist identity politics/feminism on campus. In other words,
affirmative action is a large contributor to SJWism, the media-academia complex, and the resulting
current political climate.
@jilles dykstra The statement "blacks should be compensated for this lower IQ" is no different
than the descendents of the so-called jewish "holocaust ™" being compensated in perpetuity by
the German government. Now, there are calls by the jewish "holocaust ™" lobby to extend the financial
compensation to children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of these so-called "holocaust
™ survivors, stating the fake concept of "holocaust ™" transference" just another "holocaust ™"
scam
Same thing.
More Monsanto, DuPont cancers and degraded foods.
New diseases from medical, biological, genetic research
More spying and censorship and stealing by Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, high IQ thieves.
All jobs overseas, domestic unemployment, endless wars, by the best and brightest.
Toxic pollution, mental pollution that dwarfs the back yard pollution of tires and old refrigs
by "low IQ deplorables (white and black and brown".
Degraded, degrading entertainment and fake news to match fake histories by Phds.
Tech devices that are "wonderful" but life is actually better more meaningful without.
[Blacks] "whose economic advancement over the last half-century has largely stalled despite
tens of billions and countless government uplift programs." No, Professor, it is Trillions
spend over the last 50 years and millions before that. Countless Whites and other non-Negroid
people have had to step aside in education, military, government, private industry, to let the
lesser person advance and leap frog the accepted virtue-merit path to advancement. AND IT STILL
IS NOT ENOUGN FOR BLECKS.
The obvious solution is to separate into uni-racial/ethnic states. For Whites, this would include
a separate autocephalous, independent state of Caucasians, Asians, and Hindu. This is the Proto-IndoEuropean
Family, related by genes and languages.
1) Asians will grow in power, and either force more fairness towards themselves, or return
to Asia.
2) WN idiots happy about Asians returning to Asia fail to see that Asians will return only when
they control enough of America to manage large parts of it from afar (like the tech industry).
3) 2-3 million top caliber white male Western Expats might just move to Asia, since they may like
Asian women more, and want to be free of SJW idiocy. This is all it takes to fill the alleged
gap Asia has in creativity, marketing, and sales expertise. Asia effectively decapitates the white
West by taking in their best young men and giving them a great life in Asia.
4) America becomes like Brazil...with all economic value colonized by Asians and the white expats
in Asia with mixed-race children. White trashionalists left behind are swiftly exterminated by
blacks, and white women mix with the blacks. America becomes a Brazil minus the fun culture, good
weather, and attractive women. Could agree 1 and 2.
2-3 millions Top caliber White males moving to Asia?
haha, Top caliber White males (American) will stay in America, screw the rest WN, devour all
the resources available, not only in America, but from the rest of the world.
This is a real White so-called Top caliber White males enjoying in Philippines.
I'm guessing the author would be screaming at the top of his lungs if it was Jewish students
being told to go to some state university–instead of Harvard–since we have to make room for blacks.
BTW, your comment "..Recall our own tribulations with violent Indian tribes" needs clarification.
Maybe the tribes got violent because of the 400 treaties Uncle Sam made with the various tribes,
he honored NONE
@jim jones A great part of that is because, well, let's say that the place where those actresses
have got their work done is the same.
Whites have much greater natural variations in hair and eye color, but skin color among East
Asian individuals is more naturally variable (especially when the effect of tanning is considered),
and their facial features and somatotypes are also more diverse in my opinion. For example, East
Asian populations contain some individuals who have what the Japanese call futae mabuta
"double eyelids" and some individuals who have what they call hitoe mabuta "single eyelids,"
whereas White populations contain only individuals who have "double eyelids." Whether such increased
physical variability is positive or negative probably depends on one's viewpoint; in the case
of that eyelid polymorphism, the variant that is found in Asians but not in Whites is generally
considered neutral or even positive when it occurs in male individuals, but negative when it occurs
in female individuals, so plastic surgeons must be overflowing with gratitude for the single eyelid
gene.
@Thorfinnsson The separate school facilities meant a major saving in the costs of school police
and security guards, resource teachers, counselors buses and bus drivers, and layers and layers
of administrators trying to administer the mess.
Separate schools were a lot cheaper in that the black teachers kept the lid on the violence
with physical punishment and the White teachers and students had a civilized environment.
The old sunshine laws kept blacks out of White neighborhoods after dark which greatly reduced
black on White crime. In the north, informal neighborhood watches kept black on White crime to
a minimum until block by block the blacks conquered the cities.
George Wallace said segregation now, segregation forever. I say sterilization now, problem
solved in 80 years.
Asians??? I went to college with the White WASP American young men who were recruited and went
to work in Mountain View and Cupertino and the rest of Santa Clara county and invented Silicon
Valley.
Not one was Asian or even Jewish. And they invented it and their sons couldn't even get into
Stanford because their sons are White American men.
I think the worst thing about affirmative action is that government jobs are about the only
well paid secure jobs that still stick to the 40 hour work week. Government is the largest employer
in the country. And those jobs are "no Whites need apply".
BTW I read the Protocols years before the Internet. I had to make an appointment to go into
a locked section of a research library. I had to show ID. It was brought to me and I had to sit
where I could be seen to read it. I had to sign an agreement that I would not copy anything from
the protocols.
And there it was, the fourth protocol.
"We shall see to it brothers, that we shall see to it that they appoint only the incompetent and
unfit to their government positions. And thus we shall conquer them from within"
@Thomm Only 4) is remotely possible. And Brazilian women are not that attractive, they are
nice looking on postcards, but quite dumpy and weird-looking in person. But that is a matter of
personal taste.
The reason 1,2,3 are nonsensical is that geography and resources matter. Asia simply doesn't
have them, it is not anywhere as attractive to live in as North America or Europe and never will
be. It goes beyond geographic resources, everything from architecture, infrastructure, culture
is simply worse in Asia and it would take hundreds of years to change that.
So why the constant 'go to Asia' or 'Asia is the future'? It might be a temporary escape for
many desperate, self-hating, white Westerners, a place to safely worship as they give up on it
all. Or it could be the endless family links with the Asian women. But that misreads that most
of the Asian families are way to clear-headed to exchange what the are trying to escape for the
nihilistic dreams of their white partners. They are the least likely to go to Asia, they know
it instinctively, they know what they have been trying to escape.
It is possible that the West is on its last legs, and many places are probably gone for good.
But Asia is not going to step up and replace it. It is actually much worse that that – we are
heading for a dramatic downturn and a loss of comfort and civilization. Thank you Baby Boomers
– you are the true end-of-liners of history.
Bright and talented white kids from non-elite families stuck between the Scylla and Charybdis
of Cram-Schooled Study-Asians with no seeming limit to their tolerance for tedium and 90 IQ entitled
blacks is 2017 in a nutshell.
Said in all seriousness: I genuinely feel sorry for blacks but not because of slavery & Jim
Crow. Those were great evils but every group has gone through that. No, I feel sorry for them
because their average IQ of 85–yes, it is–combined with their crass thug culture, which emphasizes
& rewards all the wrong things, is going to keep them mired in dysfunction for decades to come.
Men like Thomas Sowell & Walter Williams have all the information that blacks need to turn themselves
around but they won't listen, I guess because the message is take responsibility for yourselves
and your families and refuse to accept charity in all its different forms to include AA.
some legally mandated homeland of the types advocated by Black Muslims.
Why not pay people to leave? A law change would convert the money supply from bank money to
sovereign money.
AMI's HR2990 would convert the money supply overnight, and nobody would be the wiser.
At that point, new public money could be channeled into funding people to leave. Blacks that
don't like it in the U.S. would be given X amount of dollars to settle in an African country of
their choice. This public money can be formed as debt free, and could also be directed such that
it can only buy American goods. In other words, it can be forced to channel, to then stimulate
the American economy.
In this way, the future works, to then get rid of disruptive future elements.
It always boils down to the money system. There is plenty of economic surplus to then fund
the removal of indigestible elements.
People automatically assume that the money supply must be private bank credit, as that is the
way it always has been. NO IT HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY.
@helena If Whites leave America and go back to their origin, no one, I repeat, NO ONE would
complain about that. They'd be singing "God Riddance" song all along.
No one wants to migrate to Ukraine, a white country.
No one wants to migrate to Hungary, a white country.
No one wants to migrate to Austria, a white country.
Everyone wants to migrate to the place where there's an over-bloated sense of job availability.
In this case, America offers an ample amount of opportunity.
Let's wait and see how universities in CA populated with merit-based Asian Americans overrule
all universities in the US anytime soon.
Name any state in the US that produces more than two universities (in the Top 50 list) in the
world.
Are you utterly oblivious to the fact that well over 95% of the blacks getting AAed into universities
are then being trained/indoctrinated into being future disruptive activists? Activists with credentials,
more money and connections. Entirely counterproductive and much of it on the taxpayers' dime.
If there is a solution, AA isn't it.
@Rdm Can I count you in on the Calexit movement–followed by the purge of whites? Freed from
the burden of those miserable European-origin Americans, the Asian-Negro-Mestizo marvel will be
a shining light to the rest of the world!
I waited to make this comment until the serious thinkers had been here. Did anyone notice the
dame in the picture is giving us the finger? I did a little experiment to see if my hand could
assume that position inadvertently and it couldn't. It aptly illustrates the article, either way.
Name any state in the US that produces more than two universities (in the Top 50 list) in
the world.
No state can compete against CA. You wonder why?
If you took the land mass of CA and imposed it on the U.S. East Coast between Boston and South
Carolina, I don't think it'd be a problem to surpass California in any Top 50 University competition.
Here's a simpler and more effective solution-KILL ALL NIGGERS NOW. See, not so difficult, was
it? Consider it a Phoenix Program for the American Problem. Actually, here's another idea-KILL
ALL LIBERALS NOW. That way, good conservative people of different races, sexes, etc., can be saved
from the otherwise necessary carnage. Remember, gun control is being able to hit your target.
The affirmative action game may well serve the interests of the cognitive elite whites, but
it has been a disaster for the rest of white America. I have a better solution.
Give the feral negroes what they have been asking for. Pull all law enforcement out of negro
hellholes like Detroit and South Chicago and let nature take its course.
Send all Asians and other foreigners who not already citizens back to their homelands. End
all immigration except very special cases like the whites being slaughtered in South Africa or
the spouse of a white American male citizen.
@Rdm I am not referring to guys like in the picture.
I am referring to the very topmost career stars, moving to Asia for the expat life. Some of
that is happening, and it could accelerate. Only 2-3 million are needed.
@Kyle McKenna " And as he copiously documented, whites have suffered far more discrimination
than asians have. The difference is, whites are more brainwashed into accepting it. "
And that's the function of the fraudulent, impossible '6M Jews, 5M others, gas chambers'.
"The historical mission of our world revolution is to rearrange a new culture of humanity
to replace the previous social system. This conversion and re-organization of global society
requires two essential steps: firstly, the destruction of the old established order, secondly,
design and imposition of the new order. The first stage requires elimination of all frontier
borders, nationhood and culture, public policy ethical barriers and social definitions, only
then can the destroyed old system elements be replaced by the imposed system elements of our
new order.
The first task of our world revolution is Destruction. All social strata and social formations
created by traditional society must be annihilated, individual men and women must be uprooted
from their ancestral environment, torn out of their native milieus, no tradition of any type
shall be permitted to remain as sacrosanct, traditional social norms must only be viewed as
a disease to be eradicated, the ruling dictum of the new order is; nothing is good so everything
must be criticized and abolished, everything that was, must be gone."
from: 'The Spirit Of Militarism', by Nahum Goldmann Goldmann was the founder & president of the World Jewish Congress
@Rdm Almost all white people would rather migrate to Austria, Hungary, and the Ukraine than
the following citadels of civilization:
Angola
Botswana
Burundi
Cameroon
Central African Republic
Djibouti
Ethiopia
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Gabon
Ghana
Kenya
Niger
Nigeria
South Africa
Sudan
Swaziland
Tanzania
Uganda
Zambia
- Without US taxpayers money CA would be a 3rd world country completely filled with unemployable
& dumb illegal immigrants.
- Think about this brief list made possible by the US taxpayers / federal government, money
CA would not get and then tens of thousands of CA people would lose their jobs (= lost CA tax
revenues):
aerospace contracts, defense contracts, fed gov, software contracts, fed gov airplane orders,
bases, ports, money for illegal aliens costs, federal monies for universities, 'affirmative action
monies, section 8 housing money, monies for highways, monies for 'mass transportation', monies
to fight crime, monies from the EPA for streams & lakes, monies from the Nat. Park Service, monies
for healthcare, monies for freeloading welfare recipients, and all this is just the tip of the
iceberg
- Not to mention the counties in CA which will not want to be part of the laughable 'Peoples
Republic of California'.
- And imagine the 'Peoples Republic of California Army', hilarious.
CA wouldn't last a week without other peoples money.
It's particularly unfortunate that Asians, who can hardly be blamed for the plight of America's
Blacks, are the ones from whom the "affirmative action" #groidgeld is extracted.
@Diversity Heretic My impression and overall experience from interacting with White Americans
is good in general. I have a very distinct view on both White Americans and Europeans. I'd come
back later.
I don't recommend purging of Whites in America. Neither do I prohibit immigration of all people.
But I do wish "legal" immigration from all parts of the world to this land. But I also understand
why people are fed up with White America.
There is a clear distinction between Europeans and White Americans. White Americans born and
bred here are usually an admixture of many European origins. They usually hide their Eastern European
origin and fervently claim German, French, English whenever possible -- basically those countries
that used to be colonial masters in the past.
White Americans are generally daring, optimistic and very open-minded. Usually when you bump
into any White Americans born and bred here, you can sense their genuine hospitality.
Europeans, usually fresh White immigrants in this land, tend to carry over their old mentality
with a bit of self-righteous attitude to patronize and condescend Americans on the ground that
this is a young country.
My former boss was Swiss origin, born in England, and migrated to America. If there's an opportunity
cost, he'd regale his English origin. If there's a Swiss opportunity, he'd talk about his ancestry.
He'd bash loud, crazy Americans while extoling his European majesty. He became a naturalized American
last year for tax purposes so that his American wife can inherit if he kicks the bucket.
Bottom line is, every immigrant to the US, in my honest opinion, is very innocent and genuinely
hard working. They have a clear idea of how they like to achieve their dreams here and would like
to work hard. It seems after staying here for a while, they all change their true selves to fit
into the existing societal structure, i.e., Chris Hemsworth, an Australian purposely trained to
speak American English in Red Dawn, can yell "This is our home" while 4th generation Asian Americans
will be forced to speak broken English. This is how dreams are shaped in America.
Coming back to purge of Whites, I only wish those self-righteous obese, bald, bottom of the
barrel, living on the alms Whites, proclaiming their White skin, will go back to their origin
and do something about a coming flood of Muslim in their ancestral country if they're so worried
about their heritage.
@Thomm No, he just wants the street-defecating hangers-on like you to go back and show how
awesome you claim you are in your own country by making a success of it rather than milking all
of the entitlements and affirmative action and other programs of literal racial advantage given
to you by virtue of setting foot in someone else's country.
- Without US taxpayers money CA would be a 3rd world country completely filled with unemployable
& dumb illegal immigrants.
- Think about this brief list made possible by the US taxpayers / federal government, money
CA would not get and then tens of thousands of CA people would lose their jobs (= lost CA tax
revenues):
aerospace contracts, defense contracts, fed gov, software contracts, fed gov airplane orders,
bases, ports, money for illegal aliens costs, federal monies for universities, 'affirmative action
monies, section 8 housing money, monies for highways, monies for 'mass transportation', monies
to fight crime, monies from the EPA for streams & lakes, monies from the Nat. Park Service, monies
for healthcare, monies for freeloading welfare recipients, and all this is just the tip of the
iceberg
- Not to mention the counties in CA which will not want to be part of the laughable 'Peoples
Republic of California'.
- And imagine the 'Peoples Republic of California Army', hilarious.
CA wouldn't last a week without other peoples money.
Calexit? Please, pretty please. So you're talking about Calexit in AA action?
Let us play along.
If CA is existing solely due to Fed Alms, I can agree it's the tip of the iceberg. But we're
talking about Universities, their performance and how AA is affecting well qualified students.
Following on your arguments,
UC Berkeley receives $373 Millions (Federal Sponsorship) in 2016.
Harvard University, on the other hand, receives $656 millions (Federal sponsorship) in 2012.
I'm talking about how Universities climb up in World ranking, based upon their innovations,
productivity, research output, etc etc etc. Which to me, is reflective of what kind of students
are admitted into the programs. That's my point.
If you want to talk about Calexit, you'd better go and refresh your reading comprehension ability.
The thing that is forgotten is that white Americans DO NOT need the Africans in any way whatsoever.
There is NOTHING in Detroit that we want – we abandoned it deliberately and have no interest in
ever returning.
On the other hand, what do the Africans need from us?
Food. We own and operate all food production.
Medicine. Ditto.
Clean water. Look at Flint.
Sanitation services. Look at anywhere in Africa.
Order.
To put a stop to African behavior from Africans is an idiot's dream. They will never stop being
what they are. They simply cannot. So if we cannot expel them, we must control them. When they
act up, we cut off their food, medicine, water, and sewer services. Build fences around Detroit
and Flint. Siege. After a month or two of the Ethiopian Diet, the Africans in Detroit will be
much more compliant.
@Thomm You just want intra-white socialism so you can mooch off of productive whites. Thomm=the
girly boy blatherings of a White Libertarian Cuck
The benefit to the Historic Native Born White American Working Class of being voted into a
White Racial Minority in California by Chinese "Americans" Korean "Americans" .Hindu "Americans"
Sihk "Americans" and Iranian "Americans"?
Answer:0 . Bring back the Chinese Legal Immigrant Exclusion Act!!!
Two Great pro-White Socialist Labor Leaders:Denis Kearney and Samuel Gompers go read Denis
Kearney's Rebel Rousing speeches google Samuel Gompers' Congressional Testimony in favor of the
passage of The Chinese Legal Immigrant Exclusion Act
As some have pointed out, the trouble with appeasement is, it never ends. Those who are used
to the handouts will always want more. There's the saying parents tend to strengthen the strong
and weaken the weak, that's what paternalistic policies like affirmative action and welfare do
to a society. It creates a cycle of dependency.
Those who think multiculturalism coupled with identity politics is a good idea need to take
a good look at Malaysia, arguably the most multicultural country outside the US. The country is
in Southeast Asia, with roughly 30m people, roughly 60% ethnic Malay(100% muslim), 23% Chinese(mostly
buddhist or christian), brought in by the British in the 1800s to work the rubber plantations
and tin mines, and 7% Indian(mostly Hindu), brought in by the British to work the plantations
and civil service.
In 1957 the Brits left and left the power in the hands of the ethnic Malays. The Chinese soon
became the most successful and prosperous group and dominated commerce and the professional ranks.
In 1969 a major race riot broke out, the largely rural and poor Malays decided to "take back what's
theirs", burnt, looted and slaughtered many ethnic Chinese. After the riot the government decided
the only way to prevent more riots is to raise the standard of living for the Malays. And they
began a massive wealth transfer program through affirmative action that heavily favors ethnic
Malays. First, all civil service jobs were given to only ethnic Malays, including the police and
military. Then AA was instituted in all local universities where Malays with Cs and Ds in math
and science were given preference over Chinese with all A's to all the engineering, medicine and
law majors. Today no one in their right mind, not even the rich Malays, want to be treated by
a Malay doctor. I know people who were maimed by one of these affirmative actioned Malay "neurosurgeons"
who botched a simple routine procedure, and there was no recourse, no one is allowed to sue.
Thanks to their pandering to the Malay majority and outright voting fraud, the ruling party
UMNO has never lost an election and is today the longest serving ruling party in modern history.
Any dissent was stifled through the sedition act where dissidents are thrown in jail, roughed
up, tossed down 14th story buildings before they even go to trial. All media is strictly controlled
and censored by the government, who also controls the military, and 100% of the country's oil
production, with a large portion of the profit of Petronas going to the coffers of the corrupt
Malay government elites, whatever's left is given to hoi polloi Malays in the form of fluff job
positions created in civil service, poorly run quasi-government Malay owned companies like Petronas,
full scholarships to study abroad for only ethnic Malays, tax free importation of luxury cars
for ethnic Malays, and when the government decided to "privatize" any government function like
the postal service or telcom, they gave it in the form of a monopoly to a Malay owned company.
All government contracts e.g. for infrastructure are only given to Malay owned companies, even
as they have zero expertise for the job. The clever Chinese quickly figured out they could just
use a Malay partner in name only to get all government contracts.
As opposed to the US where affirmative action favors the minority, in Malaysia AA favors the
majority. You know it can't last. The minority can only prop up the majority for so long. Growth
today is largely propped up by oil income, and the oil reserve is dwindling. Even Mahathir the
former prime minister who started the most blatant racial discrimination policy against the Chinese
started chastising the Malays of late, saying they've become too lazy and dependent on government
largess.
Yet despite the heavy discrimination, the Chinese continued to thrive thanks to their industriousness
and ingenuity, while many rural Malays not connected with the governing elite remain poor -- classic
case of strengthening the strong and weakening the weak. According to Forbes, of the top 10 richest
men in Malaysia today, 9 are ethnic Chinese, only 1 is an ethnic Malay who was given everything
he had. Green with envy, the ethnic Malays demanded more to keep the government in power. So a
new law was made – all Chinese owned businesses have to give 30% ownership to an ethnic Malay,
just like that.
Needless to say all this racial discrimination resulted in a massive brain drain for the country.
many middle class Indians joined the Chinese and emigrated en masse to Australia, NZ, US, Canada,
Europe, Singapore, HK, Taiwan, Japan. The ones left are often destitute and poor, heavily discriminated
against due to their darker skin, and became criminals. Al Jazeera recently reported that the
7% ethnic Indians in Malaysia commit 70% of the crime.
To see how much this has cost Malaysia -- Singapore split off from Malaysia 2 years after their
joint independence from Britain and was left in destitute as they have no natural resources. But
Lee Kuan Yew with the help of many Malaysian Chinese who emigrated to Singapore turned it into
one of the richest countries in the world in one generation with a nominal per capita GDP of $53k,
while Malaysia is firmly stuck at $9.4k, despite being endowed with natural resources from oil
to tin and beautiful beaches. The combination of heavy emigration among the Chinese and high birthrate
among the muslim Malays encouraged by racialist Mahathir, the Chinese went from 40% of the population
in 1957 to 23% today. The Indians went from 11% to 7%.
I fear that I'm seeing the same kind of problem in the US. It's supremely stupid for the whites
to want to give up their majority status through open borders. Most Asians like me who immigrated
here decades ago did it to get away from the corrupt, dishonest, dog-eat-dog, misogynistic culture
of Asia. But when so many are now here, it defeats the purpose. The larger the immigrant group,
the longer it takes to assimilate them. Multiculturalism is a failed concept, especially when
coupled with identity politics. Affirmative Action does not work, it only creates a toxic cycle
of dependency. The US is playing with fire. We need a 20 year moratorium on immigration and assimilate
all those already here. Otherwise, I fear the US will turn into another basketcase like Malaysia.
@Tom Welsh There were only about one million Indians living in what is the United States in
1500. There are now 3 million living in much better conditions than in 1500.
I would be willing to accept non White immigration if the non White immigrants and our government
would end affirmative action for non Whites.
Asians are discriminated against in college admissions. But in the job market they have affirmative
action aristocratic status over Whites.
@Diversity Heretic John Derbyshire has made similar arguments--racial preferences are the
price for social peace. But, as Steve Sailer has pointed out, we're running out of white and Asian
children to buffer black dysfunction and Asians are going to get less and less willing to be "sacrificial
lambs" for a black underclass that they did nothing to create and that they despise.
There are other ways to control the black underclass. You can force the talented ones to remain
in their community and provide what leadership they can. Black violence can be met with instant
retributive counter-violence. (Prior to the 1960s most race riots were white on black.) Whites
can enforce white norms on the black community, who will sort-of conform to them as best they
are able.
Finally, Rudyard Kipling had a commentary on Danegeld. It applies to paying off dysfunctional
domestic minorities just as much to invading enemies.
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!"
admitting academically unqualified blacks to elite schools is, at core, a policy to protect
the racial peace and, as such, has nothing to do with racial justice,
The Black are protesting relentlessly and loudly verbally and thru assertive actions about
the racial discrimination they have been facing. I have never seen those academically unqualified
blacks admitted to the elite schools have stood up using themselves as shiny examples to refute
the discrimination allegations the Black made against the White.
While the policy to protect the racial peace by admitting academically unqualified blacks to
elite schools failed miserably, the restricting the smart and qualified Asians to elite schools
is blatantly racial injustice practice exercised in broad day light with a straight face lie.
The strategy is to cause resentment between the minorities so that the White can admitting their
academically unqualified ones to elite schools without arousing scrutiny.
Because KKK were Southern Democrats, Democratic Party is forever the KKK party. Never mind
Democrats represented a broad swatch of people.
And Dinesh finds some parallels between Old Democrats and Nazi ideology, therefore Democrats are
responsible for Nazism. I mean
Doesn't he know that parties change? Democratic Party once used to be working class party.
Aint no more.
GOP used to be Party of Lincoln. It is southern party now, and most loyal GOP-ers are Southerns
with respect for Confederacy. GOP now wants Southern Neo-Confed votes but don't want Confed memorials.
LOL.
Things change.
Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond came over to the GOP for a reason.
Dinesh seems to be stuck in 'caste' mentality. Because Dems once had KKK on its side, Democratic
Party is forever cast or 'casted' as KKK. And now, 'Democrats are real Nazis'.
Actually, the real supremacism in America at the moment seems to be AIPAC-related.
Anyway, there were leftist elements in National Socialism, but its was more right than left.
Why? Because in the hierarchy of ideological priorities, the most important core value was
the 'Aryan' Tribe. Socialized medicine was NOT the highest value among Nazis. Core conviction
was the ideology of racial identity and unity. Thus, it was more right than left.
Just because National Socialism had some leftist elements doesn't make it a 'leftist' ideology.
Same is true of Soviet Communism. Stalin brought back high culture and classical music. He
favored traditionalist aesthetics to experimental or avant-garde ones. And Soviets promoted some
degree of Russian nationalism. And even though communists eradicated certain aspects of the past,
they also restored respect for classic literature and culture. So, does that mean USSR was 'conservative'
or 'rightist'? No, it had some rightist elements but its core ideology was about class egalitarianism,
therefore, it was essentially leftist.
@Joe Wong All the Whites and Asians who are admitted to the top 25 schools are superbly qualified.
There are so many applicants every White and Asian is superbly qualified.
The entire point of affirmative action is that Asians and Whites are discriminated against
in favor of blacks and Hispanics. Harvard proudly proclaims that is now majority non White.
Don't worry, the Jews decided long ago that you Asian drones would have medicine and tech,
Hispanics construction, food, trucking,and cleaning and Hispanics and blacks would share government
work and public education.
Whites will gradually disappear and the 110 year old Jewish black coalition will control the
Asians and Hispanics through black crime and periodic riots.
@Wally So you are a tough guy, and never give in anything to anyone in your life? It seems
the Jews have similar view as yours, the Jews insist that if they give in an inch to those Holocaust
deniers, they will keep demanding more & more, at the beginning the Holocaust deniers will demand
for the evidence, then they will demand the Jews are at fault, then they will demand the Nazi
to be resurrected, then they will demand they can carry out Holocaust against anyone they don't
like, Pretty soon they will demand they to be treated like the pigs in the Orwellian's Animal
Farm.
@Priss Factor Hell with those 'smart Asians'. They are among the biggest Proglob a-holes.
Asians have servile genes that seek approval from the power. They are status-freaks.
They make perfect collaborators with the Glob.
Under communism, they made the most conformist commies.
Under Japanese militarism, they made the most mindless military goons who did Nanking.
Under Khmer Rouge, they were biggest looney killers.
Under PC, they make such goody good PC dogs.
If the prevailing culture of US was patriotic and conservatives, Asians would try to conform
to that, and that wouldn't be so bad.
But since the prevailing culture is PC, these yellow dogs are among the biggest homomaniacal
PC tards.
Hell with them. Yellow dogs voted for Obama and Hillary in high numbers. They despise, hate,
and feel contempt for white masses and working class. They are servitors of the empire as Darrell
Hamamoto said. He's one of the few good guys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bs_BbIBCoY
Just look at that Francis Fukuyama, that slavish dog of Soros. He's so disgusting. And then,
you got that brown Asian tard Fareed Zakaria. What a vile lowlife. And that fat Jeer Heet who
ran from dirty browns shi**ing all over the place outdoors to live with white people but bitches
about 'white supremacy'. Well, the fact that he ran from his own kind to live with whites must
mean his own choice prefers white folks. His immigration choice was 'white supremacism'. After
all, he could have moved to black Africa. Why didn't he?
PS. The best way of Affirmative Action is to limit it only to American Indians and Blacks of
slave ancestry. That's it.
Also, institutions should OPENLY ADMIT that they do indeed discriminate to better represent
the broader population. Fair or not, honesty is a virtue. What is most galling about AA is the
lies that says 'we are colorblind and meritocratic but...' No more buts. Yes, there is discrimination
but to represent larger population. Okay, just be honest. Asia is a big continent and Asians of
different ethnicity have very different voting patterns due to their culture and history. Japanese-Americans
tend to be the most liberal ethnic group of all Asian groups because of their experience with
internment during WWII. Somehow they conveniently forgot that it was a Democrat president who
put them in internment, and are now putting the blames squarely on the right for what happened.
These Japanese-Americans are drinking the kool-aid big time, but in the 90s I remember a Japanese
prime minister got in big trouble for saying America's biggest problem is we have too many blacks
and hispanics dragging us down.
Filipinos, Hmongs and other Southeast Asians tend to be poor and rely on government largess
to a certain extent, and also benefit from affirmative action at least in the state of CA, they
also tend to be liberal.
In this election cycle Indian-Americans have become the most vocal anti-Trumpers. From Indian
politicians from WA state like Kshama Sawant, Pramila Jayapal to Indian entertainers like Aziz
Ansari, Hasan Minaj, Kumail Nanjani, to Silicon Valley techies like Calexit mastermind VC Shervin
Pishevar, Google CEO Sundra Pichai, all are socialist libtards. In my local election, several
Indians are running for city council. All are first generation, all Democrats and champions of
liberal policies. It's as if they have amnesia(or just lower IQ), not remembering that socialism
was why they had to leave the shithole India to begin with. A Korean American is running as a
Republican.
There are Chinese idiots like Ted Lieu and other asians who've gone to elite schools therefore
drinking the kool-aid and insisted AA is good for Asian Americans, but most Koreans, Vietnamese
and Chinese tend to be more conservative and lean Republican. During the Trump campaign Breitbart
printed a story about a group of Chinese Americans voicing their support for Trump despite his
anti-China rhetoric because they had no intention of seeing the US turned into another socialist
shithole like China.
Per the NYT a major reason Asians vote Republican is because of AA. Asians revere education,
esp. the Chinese and Koreans, and they see holistic admission is largely bullshit set up by Jews
to protect their legacy status while throwing a few bones to under qualified blacks and hispanics.
Unfortunately it didn't seem to dampen their desire to immigrate here. Given that there are 4
billion Asians and thanks to open borders, if it weren't for AA all our top 100 schools will be
100% Asian in no time. I suggest we first curtail Asian immigration, limit their number to no
more than 10,000 a year, then we can discuss dismantling AA.
California sends far more to Washington than it sends back. Also, there is no correlation between
percentage of federal land and dependence on federal funding. If there were, Delaware would be
the least dependent state in the US.
California sends far more to Washington than it sends back. Also, there is no correlation between
percentage of federal land and dependence on federal funding. If there were, Maine would be among
the least dependent states in the US.
@Astuteobservor II The Indian tribe in tech is known to favor Indians in hiring. I've read
from other Indian posters elsewhere that Indian managers like to hire Indian underlings because
they are easier to bully.
Indian outsourcing firms like Infosys, TCS, Wipro are like 90% Indian, mostly imported directly
from India, with token whites as admin or account manager.
@Carlton Meyer That's pretty funny. The guy's got balls. Probably son of some corrupt Chinese
government official used to being treated like an emperor back home, ain't taking no shit from
black folks.
I suppose this is what happens when universities clamor to accept foreign students because
they are full pay. His tuition dollar is directly subsidizing these affirmative action hacks,
who are now preventing him from studying. He has fully paid for his right to tell them to STFU.
@Beckow Romans did not think Europe was a nice place to live, full of bloodthirsty barbarians,
uneducated, smelly, dirty, foul mouth and rogue manner, even nowadays a lot of them cannot use
full set of tableware to finish their meal, a single fork will do, it is a litte more civilized
than those use fingers only.
After a millennium of dark age of superstition, religious cult suppression, utter poverty medieval
serf Europe, it followed by centuries of racial cleanses, complete destruction of war, stealing
and hypocrisy on industrial scale, this time not only restricted to Europe the plague flooded
the whole planet.
Even nowadays the same plague from Europe and its offshoots in the North America is threatening
to exterminate the human beings with a big bang for their blinding racial obligatory. The rest
of the world only can hope this plague would stay put in North America and Europe, so the rest
world can live in peace and prosperity.
Asians receive federal entitlements the same as the other protected class groups of diversity.
Diversity ideology lectures us that Asians are oppressed by Occidentals.
1. Preferential US immigration, citizenship, and asylum policies for Asian people
2. Federal 8a set-aside government contracts for Asian owned businesses
3. Affirmative Action for Asians especially toward obtaining government jobs
4. Government anti-discrimination laws for Asians
4. Government hate speech crime prosecutions in defense of Asians
5. Sanctuary cities for illegal Asians, and other protected class groups of diversity
6. Asian espionage directed at the US is common, and many times goes unprosecuted
7. American trade policy allows mass importation of cheap Asian products built with slave labor
8. Whaling allowance for some Asian ethnic groups
9. Most H1-B visas awarded to Asians
The benefit to the Historic Native Born White American Working Class of being voted into a
White Racial Minority in California by Chinese "Americans"...Korean "Americans"....Hindu "Americans"...Sihk
"Americans"...and Iranian "Americans"?
Answer:0.... Bring back the Chinese Legal Immigrant Exclusion Act!!!
Two Great pro-White Socialist Labor Leaders:Denis Kearney and Samuel Gompers...go read Denis Kearney's
Rebel Rousing speeches...google Samuel Gompers' Congressional Testimony in favor of the passage
of The Chinese Legal Immigrant Exclusion Act... It is MUCH better to be a libertarian than to
be a Nationalist-Leftist. You have effectively admitted that you want intra-white socialism since
you can't hack it yourself.
Socialists = untalented losers.
Plus, I guarantee that your ancestors were not in America since 1776. You are just some 2nd-gen
Polack or something.
@Priss Factor Here is one 'smart Asian' who is not a Self-Righteous Addict of Proglobalism,
but what a clown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNrytSEyUoY
Dineshisms are always funny as hell.
Because KKK were Southern Democrats, Democratic Party is forever the KKK party. Never mind
Democrats represented a broad swatch of people.
And Dinesh finds some parallels between Old Democrats and Nazi ideology, therefore Democrats are
responsible for Nazism. I mean...
Doesn't he know that parties change? Democratic Party once used to be working class party.
Aint no more.
GOP used to be Party of Lincoln. It is southern party now, and most loyal GOP-ers are Southerns
with respect for Confederacy. GOP now wants Southern Neo-Confed votes but don't want Confed memorials.
LOL.
Things change.
Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond came over to the GOP for a reason.
Dinesh seems to be stuck in 'caste' mentality. Because Dems once had KKK on its side, Democratic
Party is forever cast or 'casted' as KKK. And now, 'Democrats are real Nazis'.
Actually, the real supremacism in America at the moment seems to be AIPAC-related.
Anyway, there were leftist elements in National Socialism, but its was more right than left.
Why? Because in the hierarchy of ideological priorities, the most important core value was
the 'Aryan' Tribe. Socialized medicine was NOT the highest value among Nazis. Core conviction
was the ideology of racial identity and unity. Thus, it was more right than left.
Just because National Socialism had some leftist elements doesn't make it a 'leftist' ideology.
Same is true of Soviet Communism. Stalin brought back high culture and classical music. He
favored traditionalist aesthetics to experimental or avant-garde ones. And Soviets promoted some
degree of Russian nationalism. And even though communists eradicated certain aspects of the past,
they also restored respect for classic literature and culture. So, does that mean USSR was 'conservative'
or 'rightist'? No, it had some rightist elements but its core ideology was about class egalitarianism,
therefore, it was essentially leftist. "Stalin brought back high culture and classical music.
He favored traditionalist aesthetics to experimental or avant-garde ones."
Priss, you haven't the first clue what you're talking about, here. Stalin didn't favor "traditionalist
aesthetics" – he favored vulgar pop-crap.
@Joe Franklin Asians receive federal entitlements the same as the other protected class groups
of diversity.
Diversity ideology lectures us that Asians are oppressed by Occidentals.
1. Preferential US immigration, citizenship, and asylum policies for Asian people
2. Federal 8a set-aside government contracts for Asian owned businesses
3. Affirmative Action for Asians especially toward obtaining government jobs
4. Government anti-discrimination laws for Asians
4. Government hate speech crime prosecutions in defense of Asians
5. Sanctuary cities for illegal Asians, and other protected class groups of diversity
6. Asian espionage directed at the US is common, and many times goes unprosecuted
7. American trade policy allows mass importation of cheap Asian products built with slave labor
8. Whaling allowance for some Asian ethnic groups
9. Most H1-B visas awarded to Asians That is completely false. You just memorized that from some
bogus site.
Section 8a is used more by white women than by Asians, and Asians get excluded from it due
to high income. It should be done away with altogether, of course.
Asians face discrimination in University admissions, as the main article describes.
H1-Bs are awarded to Asians because white countries don't produce enough people who qualify.
Plus, Asian SAT scores are consistently higher than whites. That proves that Asian success
was not due to AA.
@Thomm Green isn't a color that suits you. You're a subcontinental hanger-on who's only able
to garner any success in any western country due to an anarcho-tyranny in enforcement against
ethnonepotism as well as lavish handouts in the form of all sorts of party favors.
There are very few non-white groups that could do any well on a level playing field with equal
enforcement against nepotism, and yours isn't one of them. Your country? Sad!
Whites will gradually disappear and the 110 year old Jewish black coalition will control
the Asians and Hispanics through black crime and periodic riots.
I don't think this is correct
Since California already has (very roughly) the future demographics you're considering, I think
it serves as a good test-case.
The Hispanic and Asian populations have been growing rapidly, and they tend to hold an increasing
share of the political power, together with the large white population, though until very recently
most of the top offices were still held by (elderly) whites. Whites would have much more political
power, except that roughly half of them are still Republicans, and the Republican Party has almost
none.
In most of the urban areas, there's relatively little black crime these days since so many
of the blacks have been driven away or sent off to prison. I'd also say that major black riots
in CA are almost unthinkable since many of the local police forces are heavily Hispanic: they
don't particularly like blacks, and might easily shoot the black rioters dead while being backed
up by the politicians, and many of the blacks probably recognize this. Admittedly, CA always had
a relatively small black population, but that didn't prevent enormous black crime and black riots
in the past due to the different demographics.
Meanwhile, Jewish-activists still possess enormous influence over CA politics, but they exert
that influence through money and media, just like they do everywhere else in the country.
@F the media that is actually true about indians. I have first hand account of a 100+ tech
dept getting taken over by indians in just 3 years :/ but that is not a "quota" that is just indians
abusing their power once in position of power.
@VinteuilPriss, you haven't the first clue what you're talking about, here. Stalin didn't
favor "traditionalist aesthetics" – he favored vulgar pop-crap.
Right.. Ballet, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and classic literature. That's some pop crap.
Soviet Culture was about commie Lena Dunhams.
Now, most of Soviet culture was what might be called kitsch or middlebrow stuff, but it was
not 'pop crap' as known in the West.
@Saxon Green isn't a color that suits you. You're a subcontinental hanger-on who's only able
to garner any success in any western country due to an anarcho-tyranny in enforcement against
ethnonepotism as well as lavish handouts in the form of all sorts of party favors.
There are very few non-white groups that could do any well on a level playing field with equal
enforcement against nepotism, and yours isn't one of them. Your country? Sad! Whatever helps you
sleep at night..
Yesterday I was called a Jew. Today, it is Indian. In reality, I am a white American guy.
You white trashionalists can't get your stories straight, can you? Well, WNs are known for
having negro IQs.
Asians don't get affirmative action. They outscore whites in the SAT.
@Thomm That is completely false. You just memorized that from some bogus site.
Section 8a is used more by white women than by Asians, and Asians get excluded from it due
to high income. It should be done away with altogether, of course.
Asians face discrimination in University admissions, as the main article describes.
H1-Bs are awarded to Asians because white countries don't produce enough people who qualify.
Plus, Asian SAT scores are consistently higher than whites. That proves that Asian success
was not due to AA. You have reading comprehension problems to have confused Federal 8A government
contacts with Section 8 housing.
8A contracts are federal contracts granted to "socially and economically disadvantaged individual(s)."
The business must be majority-owned (51 percent or more) and controlled/managed by socially
and economically disadvantaged individual(s).
The individual(s) controlling and managing the firm on a full-time basis must meet the SBA
requirement for disadvantage, by proving both social disadvantage and economic disadvantage.
Definition of Socially and Economically Disadvantaged Individuals
Socially disadvantaged individuals are those who have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice
or cultural bias because of their identities as members of groups without regard to their individual
qualities. The social disadvantage must stem from circumstances beyond their control.
In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the following individuals are presumed to be socially
disadvantaged:
• Black Americans;
• Hispanic Americans (persons with origins from Latin America, South America, Portugal and
Spain);
• Native Americans (American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, and Native Hawaiians);
• Asian Pacific Americans (persons with origins from Japan, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Korea,
Samoa, Guam, U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands [Republic of Palau], Commonwealth of
the Northern Mariana Islands, Laos, Cambodia [Kampuchea], Taiwan, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia,
Singapore, Brunei, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Macao, Hong
Kong, Fiji, Tonga, Kiribati, Tuvalu, or Nauru);
• Subcontinent Asian Americans (persons with origins from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri
Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives Islands or Nepal);
• And members of other groups designated from time to time by the SBA.
@Joe Wong Romans lived in Europe, get an atlas, Rome is in Europe. I will skip over your silly
summaries of European history, we all can do it to any civilization all day. Pointless. Try China.
Oh, I forgot, nobody knows much Chinese up and downs because it was mostly inconsequential.
If you call others 'racist' all the time, they might just not take your seriously. Or simply
say, fine, if liking one's culture is now 'racism', if it is a white culture, then count me in.
The rest of the world is tripping over itself to move – literally to physically move – to Europe
and North America. Why do you think that is?
I'd also say that major black riots in CA are almost unthinkable since many of the local
police forces are heavily Hispanic: they don't particularly like blacks, and might easily shoot
the black rioters dead
Oh, would you stop being a make-believe pundit, Ron? That is some commentary you copped from
an OJ-era LA Times expose. You've had one conversation with a police officer in your life, and
that was over an illegal left term outside the Loma Linda Starbucksand culminated in disturbing
the peace when exited your Bentley yelling "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!?!" at the top of your lungs
for 4 minutes.
Whenever you've had a nudity-mandatory, eyes-wide-shut, type globalist-soiree at your palatial
mansion, the only people you invited were politicians, lawyers, Ivy-league economists, Silicon
Valley tech nerds and hookers.
@Joe Franklin We've been over this. 8a is not given to anyone with over $250,000 in assets,
as your own link indicates. This means most Asians can't use it anyway (not that they need to).
The whole program should be done away with, of course.
What is funny is that you can't accept that Asians have higher SAT scores than whites, which
pretty much proves that they can (and do) outperform without AA. You WN idiots can't come to terms
with that.
But Section 8a should be removed just so that WN wiggers don't have anything to hide behind,
since Asians don't need it to excel.
@Thomm These untalented Socialists you refer to would include the vast majority of America
1969 90 percent Native Born White America .a White Nation that placed two Alpha Native Born White
American Males on the Moon .ten more after that. Seems that Socialism worked just fine.
If you prefer an Asian Majority you can always pack your bags and pick the Asian Nation of
your choice.
@Ron Unz hmm i don't know that will be the case nationally. Southern cities like Atlanta will
not have hispanic or white govt. Same with nyc, no need for blacks in harlem or bronx to leave
if government aid continues to pay for rent controlled affordable housing. Same case can be made
for most large northern cities like chicago, detroit, boston, philadelphia, DC, etc.
So with future aa population of 14%, that's 60 million blacks in america in 2060 timeframe,
although that will have an increasing amount of immigration from africa, which tends to be more
educated (at least 1st and 2nd generation).
Asians will be about 8%, so that's a poweful community of 40 million. I see tech and wall street
with increasing amount of asian representations.
What i would be interested in seeing if there will any maverick asian billionaires that could
disrupt the narrative.
This article may tend to take your mind off the real racial injustice at Harvard. In an article
"Affirmative Action Battle Has a New Focus: Asian-Americans" in the NY Times, August 3, 2017 ANEMONA
HARTOCOLLIS and STEPHANIE SAUL wrote ""The Harvard lawsuit likens attitudes toward Asian-Americans
to attitudes toward Jews at Harvard, beginning around 1920, when Jews were a high-achieving minority.
In 1918, Jews reached 20 percent of the Harvard freshman class, and the university soon proposed
a quota to lower the number of Jewish students."" In my humble opinion this is a misleading statement
which implies that the admission of Jews remained below 20% in the years after 1918. In fact Hillel
reports that in recent years the admission of jews to Harvard has been around 25% of the class.
This means that almost half of the class are white and half of this white group are Jews. That
seems like an amazing over-representation of Jews who are only 2% of our population. So, at least
as many Jews as Asians are admitted to Harvard. No wonder the Asians are upset. I note that this
article does not point out this Jewish bias in admissions at Harvard and neither did the Asians.
Is this another manifestation of political correctness? Or is it an egregious example of racism?
This problem is the real elephant in the room. This is the Jewish racism that dare not speak its
name. Until lately.
@Truth Truth, you is so wise and true. You's right. Them Russian dummies didn't have no vibrant
black folks to make fun music that could make them wiggle their butts all their night long. So,
they grew stale and bored and drank too much vodka, caught fish with penis, and wrestled with
bears and didn't have the all the cool stuff like the US has.
All the world needs to be colonized by superior Negroes cuz folks will just die of boredom.
At least if you get killed by Negroes, it's exciting-like.
hmm i don't know that will be the case nationally. Southern cities like Atlanta will not
have hispanic or white govt. Same with nyc, no need for blacks in harlem or bronx to leave
if government aid continues to pay for rent controlled affordable housing. Same case can be
made for most large northern cities like chicago, detroit, boston, philadelphia, DC, etc.
Well, my California analogy was self-admittedly very rough and approximate given the considerable
differences in demographics. But I strongly suspect that such considerations provide a hidden
key to some contentious national policies of the last couple of decades, and I've actually written
extensively on the subject:
@Anon I imagine it was far different before the defense wind-downs of the mid 90s. Along with
the many cut-backs a lot of defense was moved out of California by the contractors as punishment
for California's liberal Congressmen. Companies that merged with California based operation usually
consolidated outside California such as when Raytheon swallowed up Hughes Aircraft Companies defense
operations and moved R&D to Massachusetts.
@Liberty Mike I know several white people who would rather live in Botswana than the Ukraine.
They have the advantage of having visited . The rest of your list seems pretty sound with the
possible exception of Swaziland.
P.S. If you deleted Austria and Hungary and replaced them by Albania and Kosovo you might make
your point even stronger.
@Thomm You're non-white and really dumb to boot; you don't understand the ecology of a society.
Even the white proles are better than your people's proles because they don't make functional
civilizations impossible. If it were possible for a tiny minority to drag the lowers upwards you
would be able to haul your lower castes upwards and make your own country work, then the Brahmins
would have done it. They can't because the average abilities, intelligence and disposition of
the masses is too low of quality in those countries to the point where tourists need to be given
explicit warnings about rape and other problems which you will never need when visiting, say,
some English village of completely average English people. The "white trash" you decry is probably
only slightly below your midwit level of intelligence.
Asians do get affirmative action in employment and promotions in the workplace by the way,
just not in education.
@Thomm I seem to remember you telling everybody that Asians DON'T get affirmative action JUST
GOOGLE IT without ever offering proof. Of course it never occurred to you that there could never
be any documented proof of something like that. There isn't even official documented proof that
white males don't get affirmative action. When people claimed and linked to articles indicating
Asians are considered disadvantaged by the government, you claimed those people didn't know what
they were talking about JUST GOOGLE IT.
I think you made it quite obvious who the idiot is.
It's time to force our "Golden Dozen" (Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Amherst and Williams) to admit
100% black until the average black income($43k) equals that of average white income($71k).
@Thomm The worst hate crimes I have personally witnessed were perpetrated by black men. I
have also seen more casual racism against Asians from blacks than from whites. This might be different
in other parts of the country or world.
Outside of the U.S., East Asians are the least likely to want to engage in some kind of anti-white
alliance since all of the West's most embarrassing military defeats have come from East Asians.
We have always relied on guns and not white guilt for racial equality.
@Ronnie In case you haven't noticed, Jews run this country. They dominate the media, academia,
Wall Street, Hollywood, Capitol Hill via the DNC and lobbying firms, Silicon Valley. Per the NYT
80% of Jews are self-proclaimed liberals. They are obsessed with dismantling the WASP World Order
that in their mind has oppressed them for the last 2000 years. The Ivy League is the pipeline
to these 6 sectors that collectively control the country, whoever controls Harvard controls the
country. Jews not only make up majority of the elite college faculty (esp. in the social sciences)
but are disproportionately benefiting from legacy admission and development cases(admission of
the dim witted sons and daughters of the rich and famous like Malia Obama, Jared Kushner, all
of Al Gore's kids).
Asians are the next up. Practically all Asians who've gone to the Ivy League or Stanford have
voiced their support for affirmative action, many are left wing nuts like the Jews. CA house representative
Ted Liu is one such kool-aid drinking Asian libtard, along with the HI judge Derrick Watson and
Baltimore judge Theodore Chuang, both of whom blocked Trump's temp. suspension of Muslim refugees,
both went to Harvard Law. As an Asian I would be more than happy if the Ivy League simply make
themselves off limits to all Asians and turn their schools 100% black. We don't need more Asians
to get indoctrinated in their dumb liberal ideology and go down in history as the group next to
the Jews and the blacks who destroyed America.
@Saxon You're non-white and really dumb to boot; you don't understand the ecology of a society.
Even the white proles are better than your people's proles because they don't make functional
civilizations impossible. If it were possible for a tiny minority to drag the lowers upwards you
would be able to haul your lower castes upwards and make your own country work, then the Brahmins
would have done it. They can't because the average abilities, intelligence and disposition of
the masses is too low of quality in those countries to the point where tourists need to be given
explicit warnings about rape and other problems which you will never need when visiting, say,
some English village of completely average English people. The "white trash" you decry is probably
only slightly below your midwit level of intelligence.
Asians do get affirmative action in employment and promotions in the workplace by the way,
just not in education.
Asians do get affirmative action in employment and promotions in the workplace by the way,
just not in education.
No they don't, as this very article explains. Could you BE more of a retard?
Plus, the fact that Asians get higher SAT scores than whites proves that they don't need it.
There is a left-wing conspiracy to hide Asian success.
Now, regarding an underachieving WN faggot like you :
Remember that white variance is very high. Excellent whites (like me) exist only because genetic
waste master has to be removed from the other end of the process. You and other WNs represent
that genetic waste matter, and that is why white women are doing a heroic duty of cutting you
off (at least the minority of WNs that are straight. Most are gay, as Jack Donovan has explained).
Nature wants the waste matter you comprise of to be expelled.
If you cared about the white race, you would be extremely glad that white women are cutting
you off, as that is necessary to get rid of the pollution that you represent.
Heh heh heh heh . it is so much fun to put a WN faggot in its place.
@MarkinLA No, I talked about 8a even two weeks ago. Good god, you WN really do have negro
IQs.
8a benefits Asians the least, and THE WHOLE THING SHOULD BE ABOLISHED ANYWAY. There should
be no AA, ever.
8a harms Asians as it taints their otherwise pristine claim to having succeeded without AA.
They don't need 8a, most don't qualify for it as they exceed the $250,000 cutoff, and it lets
WN faggots claim that 'all of Asian success is due to AA', which is demonstrably false.
Read this slowly, 10 times, so that even a wigger like you can get it.
Don't let these WN faggots get away with claiming all of Asian success is merely due to affirmative
action. In reality, Asians don't get affirmative action (other than wrongly being included in
the Section 8a code form the 1980s, which ultimately was used by barely 2% of the Asian community).
Remember that among us whites, variance is extremely high. The prettiest woman alongside pretty
of ugly fat feminists (who the WN losers still worship). The smartest men, and then these loserish
WNs with low IQs and no social skills. White variance is very high.
That is why WNs are so frustrated. They can't get other whites to give them the time of day,
and white women are super-committed to shutting out WN loser males from respectable society.
Don't let them claim that Asian success is solely due to affirmative action. Remember, respectable
whites hate these WN faggots.
@Thomm You're not white, though. You're a rentseeker hanging onto someone else's country and
the fact that you write barely literate garbage posts with no substance to them tells all about
your intellect and your "high achievement." You're not high quality. You're mediocre at best and
probably not even that since your writing is so bad.
Do you even do statistics, though? Whites make up about 70% of the national merit scholars
in the US yet aren't in the Ivies at that rate. Harvard for example is maybe only 25% white. Asians
are over-represented compared to their merit and jews way over-represented over any merit. Now
how does that happen without nepotism? The whole system of any racial favoritism should be scrapped
but of course that wouldn't benefit people like you, Thomm.
Whites aren't more innovative and ambitious than Chinese people. You only have to look at the
chinless Unite the Right idiots in Charlottesville to dispel any idea that whites are the superior
race. The
This Thomm character is obviously of East Asian origin. His tedious, repetitive blather about
Asians, white women, and "white nationalist faggots" is a telltale sign. One of his type characteristically
sounds like he would be so much less distressed if those white males were not white nationalist
faggots.
@Tom Welsh An interesting historical argument My reply Land isn't money Arguably the Normans
came back in the form of the Plantagenets to contest the French throne in the 100 Years War. But
by that time France wasn't nearly so feeble
Giving Negroes land in the form of a North American homeland appeals to me (provided whites
get one too) although I know the geography is agonizing Blacks tend not to like this suggestion–they
realize how depedent they are on whites That wasn't true of the Normans–quite self-reliant fellows!
@Thomm I'm not sure what it was that I said that made you think I think all Asian success
is due to AA. In fact I think the opposite is true, that Asians succeed in spite of AA, which
is set up solely to hinder Asians from joining the club, and as far as I'm concern, it's a club
of sell-out globalist libtards that I wouldn't want more Asians to join.
I've worked in tech long enough to know that in tech, no one gives a fudge where you went to
school. I am surrounded by deca-millionaires who went to state schools, many aren't even flagship,
some didn't even study STEM. Some didn't even go to college or graduate. The only people I know
who still care about the Ivy League are 1st generation often FOB China/India trash, and a small
number of Jewish kids looking to benefit from legacy admission, most are gay and/or serious libtards.
You can tell that Jewish achievement has fallen off a cliff as Ron Unz asserted by looking
at a certain popular college website. The longest running thread that's been up there for nearly
a decade with over a thousand pages and over 18,000 posts is called "Colleges for the Jewish "B"
student". The site is crawling with uber liberal Jewish mothers and monitored by a gang of Ivy
graduated SJWs who strictly enforce their "safe space", posters who post anything at all that
might offend anyone (affirmative action is always a sensitive topic) are either thrown in "jail"
i.e. ban from posting for a month, or kicked off altogether. The SJW forum monitors even directly
edit user comments as they see fit, first amendment rights be damned. This is the future of all
online forums if the left have their way, the kind of censorship that Piers Morgan advocates.
Asians are over-represented compared to their merit
False. The main article here alone proves otherwise, plus dozens of other research articles.
You just can't stand that Asian success is due to merit. But you have bigger problems, since
as a WN, you can't even compete with blacks.
What bugs you the most is that successful white people like me never give WN faggots the time
of day. Most tune you idiots out, but I like to remind you that you are waste matter that is being
expunged through the natural evolutionary process.
Yes, more so if they are leftists (including Nationalist-Leftists like WNs are). But the fact
that WNs are disproportionately gay (as Jack Donovan points out) also explains why they tend to
look grotesque, and it supports the scientific rationale that they are wastebaskets designed to
expedite the removal of genetic waste matter.
White variance in talent/looks/intelligence is high. WN loser males and fat, ugly feminists
represent the bottom. In the old days, these two would be married to each other since even the
lowest tiers were paired up. Today, thankfully, both are being weeded out.
@Pachyderm Pachyderma Not just that, but some of these 'white nationalists' are just recent
immigrants from Poland and Ukraine. They are desperate to take credit for Western Civilization
that they did nothing to create. Deep down, they know that during the Cold War, they were not
considered 'white' in America.
400 years? i.e. when most of what is now the lower-48 was controlled by a Spanish-speaking
government? Yeah Many of these WNs have been here only 30-70 years. That is one category (the
domestic WN wiggers are the other)
@Thomm It's too late, everybody knows what I wrote is true and that you are some pathetic
millennial libertarian pajama boy. The sad fact is that you can't even man up and admit that you
wrote that BS about "Asians don't get affirmative action just google it". See that would have
at least have been a sign of maturity, admitting you were wrong.
There is no point reading anything, even once, from a pathetic pajama boy like you.
@MarkinLA I openly said that I am proud to be libertarian. Remember, talented people can hack
in on their own, so they are libertarians.
Untalented losers (like you) want socialism so that you can mooch off of others.
Plus, Asians don't get affirmative action outside of one obscure place (Section 8a) which they
often don't qualify for ($250K asset cutoff), don't need, and was never used by more than 2% of
the Asian-American community. The fact that Asian SAT scores are higher than whites explains
why Asians outperform without AA.
Plus, this very article says that Asians are being held back. A WN faggot like you cannot grasp
that even though you are commenting in the comments of this article. Could you be any dumber?
I realize you are not smart enough to grasp these basic concepts, but that is why we all know
that white trashionalists have negro IQs.
Now begone; you are getting in the way of your betters.
Remember that White variance in brains/looks/talent/character is extremely high. Hence,
whites occupy both extremities of human quality.
Hence, the hierarchy of economic productivity is :
Talented whites (including Jews)
Asians (East and South)
Hispanics
Blacks
Untalented whites (aka these WN wastebaskets, and fat femtwats).
That is why :
1) WNs are never given a platform by respectable whites.
2) Bernie Sanders supporters are lily-white, despite his far-left views.
3) WN is a left-wing ideology, as their economic views are left-wing.
4) WNs are unable to even get any white women, as white women have no reason to pollute themselves
with this waste matter. Mid-tier white women thus prefer nonwhite men over these WNs, which makes
sense based on the hierarchy above.
5) WNs have the IQ of Negros, the poor social skills of an Asian spazoid, etc. They truly combine
the worst of all worlds.
6) This is why white unity is impossible; there is no reason for respectable whites to have anything
to do with white trashionalists.
7) Genetically, the very fact that superb whites even exists necessitates the production of individuals
to act as wastebaskets for removal of genetic waste. WNs are these wastebaskets.
8) The 80s movie 'Twins' was in effect a way to make these wastebaskets feel good, as eventually,
the Arnold Schwarzenegger character bonded with the Danny DeVito character. But these two twins
effectively represent the sharp bimodal distribution of white quality. Successful whites are personified
by the Schwarzenegger character, while WNs by the DeVito character. In reality, these two would
never be on friendly terms, as nature produces waste for a reason.
This pretty much all there is to what White Trashionalists really are.
Elite colleges are a prime example of left wing hypocrisy. The same people who are constantly
calling for an equal society are at the same time perpetuating the most unequal society by clamoring
to send their kids to a few elite schools that will ensure their entry to or retain their ranks
among the elites. Equality for everyone else, elitism for me and my kids. David Brook's nausea
inducing self-hating pablum "How we are ruining America" is a prime example of this hypocrisy.
Another good example of left wing hypocrisy is on "school integration". The same people who
condemn "bad schools" for the urban poor and call for more integration are always the first to
move into the whitest possible neighborhoods as soon as they have kids. They aren't willing to
sacrifice their own kids, they just want other people to sacrifice their children by sending them
to bad schools.
If the left didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all.
When I first saw the title of this article, I, being an Asian, was a tad insulted. It smelled
like Dr. Weissberg was attempting to create (or at least escalate) racial strife between Asians
and blacks. I then read through the article and evaluated the bad and the good.
First the bad: Dr. Weissberg's assertion that Asians are being hurt by the Affirmative Action
promotion of blacks is a bit exaggerated. This is because most Asians go into rigorous difficult
programs such as engineering, science, and medicine. Most black affirmative action babies go into
soft programs such as Black Studies (and whatever else the humanities have degenerated into).
Now the good: I think this is the most true portion of the essay.
Better to have the handsomely paid Cornel West pontificating about white racism at Princeton
where he is a full professor than fulminating at some Ghetto street corner. This status driven
divide just reflects human nature. Why would a black Yalie on Wall Street socialize with the bro's
left behind in the Hood? This is the strategy of preventing a large-scale, organized rebellion
by decapitating its potential leadership.
I have once wrote that whites stopped sneering at MLK when Malcolm X and the Black Panthers
began taking center stage. They sure became more accommodating of "moderate" blacks. With all
of the terrorist attacks going on and with blacks converting to Islam, I don't think we're going
to get rid of affirmative action any time soon.
@Vinteuil Stalin alternated between favoritism and intimidation. The truth is he did have
an eye and ear for culture unlike Mao who was a total philistine.
If Stalin really hated artists, he would have killed all of them.
He appreciated them but kept a close eye.
He loved the first IVAN THE TERRIBLE by Eisenstein, but he sensed that the second one was a
criticism of him, and Eisenstein came under great stress.
OK, well, Stalin loved the movies, and may have had an eye for effective cinema. But when it
came to music he was, precisely, a total philistine. On this point, I again recommend Shostakovich's
disputed *Testimony,* a work unique in its combination of hilarity and horror, both of which come
to a head in his account of the competition to write a new national anthem to replace the internationale
– pp. 256-64. A must read.
@DB Cooper For the same reason North Korea is poorer than South Korea, despite being the same
people.
For the same reason the GDR was so much poorer than the FRG, despite the same people.
You probably never even thought about that.
A bad political system takes decades to recover from. Remember that the British also strip-mined
India for 200 years..
Come on, these are novice questions
If you think the success of Asian-Americans in general (and Indian-Americans in particular)
does not jive with your beliefs, then the burden of explaining what that is, is on you.
Indians happen to be the highest-income group in the US. Also very high are Filipinos and Taiwanese.
Racial preferences were ended at California public institutions -- including the elite public
universities Berkley and UCLA -- by ballot initiative. No black violence ensued. There is little
reason to think the black response would be different if the 8 Ivy League universities ended their
policies of racial preferences. Blacks would adjust their expectations. Fear of black rioting
and the desire to jumpstart the creation of a large and peaceful black middle class may have been
important motives for the initial development of racial preference policies in the late 1960s;
they are not major reasons for their retention and continued support from white administrators
today. Other reasons and motives are operative (including what I call R-word dread).
PS: Cornel West has moved from Princeton to Harvard Divinity School.
"Nevertheless, when all added up, the costs would be far lowers than dealing with widespread
1960s style urban violence."
Except back in the '60′s; the White, Euro-derived people were unwilling to fight back. They
felt guilty and half-blamed themselves. Not. Any. More! The costs -- social, mental, emotional,
physical; pick your metric! -- have now exceeded the patience of WAY more Americans than the media
is letting on.
Did you not see 20- and 30-THOUSAND, mostly White Euro-derived, Americans rallying to candidate -- and now President -- Trump's side? (No, the media carefully clipped the videos to hide those
numbers, but there they (we!) were! We're done! We're fed up! "FEEDING" these destructive vermin
to keep them from destroying our houses and families (and nation and country!) is no longer acceptable!
You "don't let Gremlins eat after midnight"? Well, we did -- and now we're in a war against them.
You think this capitulating in education is preventing 'widespread 1960s-style urban violence?
Have you not watched the news? We pretty much already are: ask NYC how many "sliced with a knife"
attacks they have there! In JUST Jan. and Feb., there were well more than 500! (Seriously vicious
attacks with knives and razor blades -- media mentioned it once for a few days, and then shut up.)
Look at the fair in Indianapolis; count up rape statistics; investigate the "knock-out game" ("polar
bear hunting" -- guess who's the polar bear?!). (Oh yeah, and: Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago; look
at ANY black-filled ruin of a city ) If (when!) we finally have to (CHOOSE to) deal with this
low-grade war -- WHO is better armed, better prepared, SMARTER, and fed up?
"This peace-keeping aspect of affirmative action understood, perhaps we ought to view those
smart Asians unfairly rejected from Ivy League schools as sacrificial lambs."
Wait, wait -- these are White schools, built by White Americans FOR White Americans! "Oh, the
poor Asians are not getting their 'fair share' cause the blacks are getting way more than their
'fair share'?! The Asians' 'fair share' is GO HOME!! The Asians don't have a 'fair share' in White
AMERICAN universities; we LET them come here and study -- and that is a KINDNESS: they don't have
a 'fair share' of OUR country! How about: stop giving preferences to every damned race and nationality
other than the one that BUILT this country and these universities!
@War for Blair Mountain Call them what they are: "paperwork Americans"! Having the paperwork
does NOT make them Americans, and nothing ever will!
Imagine a virgin land with no inhabitants: if you took all the Chinese "Americans" or all the
Pakistani "Americans" or Black "Americans" or Mexican "Americans" (funny, why did you leave those
last two out?! Way more of them than the others ) and moved them there, would they -- COULD they
ever -- create another America? No, they would create another China, or another Pakistan -- or their
own version of the hellholes their forebears (or they themselves) came from. ONLY White, ONLY
Euro-derived Americans could recreate an America.
And this goes, also, to answer the grumbling "Native" Americans who were also NOT native, yes?
Siberia, Bering land bridge, ever heard of those? Do you not even know your own pre-history?!
What "America" was here when it was a sparse population of warring tribes of variously related
Indian groups? What did your forebears make of this continent?
Nothing. There would be no "America" where everyone wants to come and benefit by taking; because
ONLY the White settlers (not immigrants: SETTLERS!) were able to create America! And as all you
non-Americans (AND paperwork "Americans") continue to swamp and change America for your own benefit -- you will be losing the very thing you came here to take (unfair!) advantage of!
At that point, new public money could be channeled into funding people to leave. Blacks
that don't like it in the U.S. would be given X amount of dollars to settle in an African country
of their choice.
Chip 'em and ship 'em! Microchip where they CAN'T 'dig it out' to prevent them from ever ever
ever returning! And ship 'em out! I'd pay a LOT to have this done!
Give the feral negroes what they have been asking for. Pull all law enforcement out of negro
hellholes like Detroit and South Chicago and let nature take its course.
They (we!) tried that years ago. The BLACK COPS SUED because they were working in the shittiest
places with the shittiest, most violent people -- and "the White cops had it easy."
NOT EVEN the blacks want to be with the blacks -- hence them chasing down every last White person,
to inflict their Dis-Verse-City on us!
The larger the immigrant group, the longer it takes to assimilate them.
Alas, typical "paperwork American" lack of understanding! I wrote this to a (White) American
who wants to keep importing everyone ("save the children!") -- and, she insisted, they "could"
assimilate. However, here's what 'assimilate" means:
Suppose you and your family decided to move to, say, Cambodia. You go there intending to "get
your part of the Cambodian dream," you go there to become Cambodian citizens, to assimilate and
join them, not to invade and change them. You want to adopt their ways, to *assimilate.* Yes?
This is how you describe legal immigrants to OUR country (The United States.)
How long would it take for you and your children to be (or even just feel) "assimilated"? How
long would it take for you to see your descendants as "assimilated" -- AS Cambodians? Years? Decades?
Generations? Would you be trying to fit in -- and "become" Cambodians; or would you be trying to
not forget your heritage? ("Heritage"?! Like, Cinco de Mayo, which they don't even celebrate IN
Mexico? Or Kwanza -- a CIA-invented completely fake holiday!)
More important: since it's their country -- how long until THEY see you as "Cambodians" and
not foreigners. I know a man and family who have lived in Italy for over 20 years. To the Italians
in the village where they live, they are still "stranieri": strangers. After this long, to the
local Italians, they're not just "the Americans who moved here" -- they're " our Americans" -- but they are still seen as 100% not Italian, not local: not "assimilated"!
Would you and your children and grandchildren learn to speak, read, and write Cambodian -- and
stop trying to use English for anything much in your new homeland? Would you join their clubs -- would you join their NATIONAL RELIGION!? Does "becoming Cambodian" -- does "assimilating" -- not
actually include (trying to) become Cambodian (and, thus, ceasing to be American)? (If
that were even possible; and it's not.) "Assimilation" is a stupid hope, not a possible reality.
That is where my friend balked. She said: she and her family are very Christian, and no way
at all ever would they drop Christianity and pick up Cambodian Buddhism. So -- how can they EVER
"assimilate" when they (quite rightly) REFUSE to assimilate?!
Please stop buying into the lies the destroyers of OUR nation keep selling. There is no such
thing as "assimilation"; only economic parasitism, jihadi invasion, and benefiting from the systems
set up by OUR forebears for THEIR posterity!
In my origin state of Tamil Nadu, the effective anti-brahmin quota is 100% ( de-jure is just
69% )
Sundar Pichai or Indira Nooyi or Vish Anand ( former Chess champ ) or Ramanujam ( late math
whiz ), cant get a Tamil Nadu State Gov , Math school teacher job
Also, the US gets a biased selection of Indians in terms of caste, class and education
Of Tamil Speakers in USA, about 50% are Tamil Brahmins, vs just 2% in India
The bottom 40% in terms of IQ, such as Muslims, Untouchables and Forest Tribals, are no more
than 10% in the US Indian diaspora
For comparison, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis ( muslim ), perform much much lower
For comparison, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis ( muslim ), perform much much lower
This is interesting, as it puts paid to the obsession that WN idiots have with 'whiteness'.
Pakistan is obviously much more Caucasoid than India and certainly Sri Lanka.
Afghanistan is whiter still. Many in Afghanistan would pass for bona-fide white in the US.
Yet Sri Lanka is richer than India, which is richer than Pakistan, which is richer than Afghanistan.
Either Islam is a negative factor that nullifies everything else including genetics, or something
else is going on.
What there is no doubt of is that Asia has been the largest economic region of the world by
far except for the brief 200-year deviation (1820-2020), as per that map I posted.
@Thomm Weissberg asks, "Why would a black Yalie on Wall Street socialize with the bro's left
behind in the Hood?"
Why focus on the LEFT buttock? His point would be as relevant were he to ask, "Why would a
black Yalie on Wall Street socialize with the bro's RIGHT behind in the Hood?" Either way, I smell
kinkyness deep within Weissberg's question.
"Divide and Rule" said the Romans. Incorporate the potential leaders of those you intend to
rule into your hereditary upper class, and the vast majority will stay inert at the least. And
many will actively support you. See this post by a black woman:
Black Americans: The Organized Left's Expendable Shock Troops .
People like Cornel West are not only NOT rabble-rousing in the 'hood, they're telling blacks
to support the people who actively keep them poor. "Affirmative Action" is designed to sabotage
its alleged goals. Almost all who 'benefit' from it end up among people whose performance is clearly
superior to their own, thus fostering feelings of inferiority, subtly communicating that it doesn't
matter what the 'beneficiary' of AA does, they'll always fail. This is no accident.
Without AA, there might still be separation, (consider "ultra-orthodox" Jews), but the separate
groups would have to be treated with some respect. Really, viewed amorally, it's a marvelous system
for oppressing whites and minorities.
@Thomm Islam is a negative factor, and the higher IQ castes did not convert to Islam
I have data from California National Merit list, IQ-140 bar
Among Indian Punjabis ;
Jat Sikh peasants = 3 winners ( 75% of Punjabis in USA )
Khatri merchants = 18 winners ( 25% of Punjabis in USA )
Both are extremely caucasoid, both appear heavily among Indian bollywood stars ; genetically
very similar, just the evolutionary effect of caste selection for merchant niche vs peasant niche
@Russ NieliRacial preferences were ended at California public institutions -- including
the elite public universities Berkley and UCLA -- by ballot initiative.
But the admissions people immediately started using other dodges like "holistic" admissions
policies where they try and figure out if your are a minority from other inferences such as your
essay where you indicate "how you have overcome". They also wanted to get rid of the SAT or institute
a top X% at each school policy.
@rec1man I don't know . a lot of the richest Indians in the US are Gujratis who own motels
and gas stations. Patels and such..
They were not of some 'high caste' in India; far from it.
Plus, a Tamil who is of 'high caste' is not Caucasoid in the least. Caste does not seem to
correlate to economic talent, since business people are the #3 caste out of 4. The richest people
in India today are not 'Brahmins'..
Islam is a negative factor, and the higher IQ castes did not convert to Islam
I disagree. Pakistan is 99% Islam, so all castes converted to Islam and/or many of the lighter-skined
Pakistanis are Persians and Turks who migrated there..
Afghanistan's religion prior to Islam was Buddhism, not Hinduism
@Thomm I don't know.... a lot of the richest Indians in the US are Gujratis who own motels
and gas stations. Patels and such..
They were not of some 'high caste' in India; far from it.
Plus, a Tamil who is of 'high caste' is not Caucasoid in the least. Caste does not seem to
correlate to economic talent, since business people are the #3 caste out of 4. The richest people
in India today are not 'Brahmins'..
Islam is a negative factor, and the higher IQ castes did not convert to Islam
I disagree. Pakistan is 99% Islam, so all castes converted to Islam and/or many of the lighter-skined
Pakistanis are Persians and Turks who migrated there..
Afghanistan's religion prior to Islam was Buddhism, not Hinduism... Afghanistan was 33% Hindu,
66% buddhist before islam, but in actual practise lots of overlap between Hinduism and Buddhism,
and many families had mixed Indic religions
Pakistan was 22% non-muslim in 1947, these 22% were higher caste Hindus and Sikhs – all got
driven out in 1947 ; Pakistan is low IQ islamic sludge residue of Punjabi society
I am Tamil speaking, 80% of Tamil brahmins ( 2% ) can be visually distinguished from the 98%
Tamil Dravidians ;
Thomm you take up too much oxygen in the room insisting on the importance your opinions, the
whole conversation is much more interesting when i skip past your stupid WN focused city boy sheltered
viewpoint. Big words and that retarded hehehe thing you do would get you wrastled to the ground
and your face rubbed in the dirt
@Thomm Why would 'idiot WNs' be happy about the fact that blacks successfully chased asians
out of the country, though? That would be a sign that they are gaining a scary degree of power,
would it not? Moreover how are white males who want to escape SJW idiocy going to like a country
that still actively enforces all sorts of thought control policies of its own? You wannabe libertardian
analysts always say silly things like this and it just sounds dumber every time.
Why would 'idiot WNs' be happy about the fact that blacks successfully chased asians out
of the country, though? That would be a sign that they are gaining a scary degree of power,
would it not?
It would be, but WN retards don't think that far.
You wannabe libertardian analysts always say silly things like this and it just sounds dumber
every time.
This is what WNs want, not want I want. It is easy to predict WN opinions.
Plus, being a libertarian is much more desirable than being a WN socialist. Talented people
thrive in a libertarian society. WN losers just want to mooch off of successful whites.
"Better to have the handsomely paid Cornel West pontificating about white racism at Princeton
where he is a full professor than fulminating at some Ghetto street corner."
Really? All that does is give the man a bigger sanctioned soap box. In the ghetto he might
affect a couple of hundred people. Siting in academia he gets a lever than can affect tens of
thousands. Not a good trade.
Truth is often stranger than fictions. The real reason for discriminating against Asian Ams
is not to help make the other minority happy. It is to benefit the whites. The Ivy League schools
are using the diversity to give the white applicants an advantage of 140 pst in SAT points. Please
see below:
In Table 3.5 on p 92 of Princeton Prof. Espenshade's famous book, "No Longer Separate, Not
Yet Equal", the following shocking fact was revealed:
Table 3.5 (emphasis added)
Race Admission Preferences at Public & Private Institutions
Measured in ACT & SAT Points, Fall 1997
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!-
Public Institutions Private Institutions
ACT-Point Equivalents SAT-Point Equivalents
Item (out of 36) (out of 1600)
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!-
Race
(White) -- –
Black 3.8 310
Hispanics 0.3 130
Asian -3.4 -140
Why are 140 SAT pts. taken away from AsAm applicants? To give the white applicants an advantage
of 140 SAT pts. over the historically disadvantaged AsAms by using the nobility of diversity as
a cover? This is the reverse of affirmative action. This is a gross abuse of affirmation action.
This is outrageous discrimination. If
the purpose is to give the blacks an advantages, why not add more SAT points to blacks and hispanics?
@Avalanche That's an interesting point you brought up, whether anyone can ever really be "assimilated".
Even after hundreds of years, blacks and Jews in this country remain very distinct groups. I think
for blacks the reason is skin color and culture, while for Jews it is the religion. Both groups
have had low out marriage rate until maybe the last couple of decades.
Assimilation is most successful when there's a high intermarriage rate, but intermarriage rate
and immigration rate tend to go in opposite directions. The higher the immigration rate, the lower
the intermarriage rate.
Hispanics and Asians have been in this country since the 1800s yet you rarely ever meet a hispanic
or Asian person who's been here for more than 3 or 4 generations. Why is that? I think it's because
many of these earlier groups, due to their small number at the time relative to the population,
had intermarried, blended in and disappeared. I would say these earlier immigrants have fully
assimilated. The ones who are unassimilated are the new arrivals, those who arrived in large numbers
since 2000.
But for some peculiar reason blacks who are mixed with whites often continue to identify as
blacks. We see this in Obama, Halle Barry, Vanessa Williams and many other black/white mixes.
Black identity is so strong even Indian-black mixed race people call themselves black, like Kamala
Harris.
My theory is that most white-hispanic and white-asian marriages are white males with hispanic/asian
females. In most cases the white males who married hispanic/asian women are conservatives who
prefer women in cultures that are perceived to be more traditional compared to white females who
are often selfish and want a divorce at the first sign of personal unhappiness. Many of them then
raise their children in full white traditions including as Christians and encourage them to identify
themselves as whites.
OTOH, many white-black mix marriages are white female with black male, in many instances these
women marry black men because they are liberal nuts who want to raise black children. Jewish women
for instance marry black men at a high rate. Many of these women then raise their children as
black or biracial children and encourage their children to identify themselves as black.
Education used to be the biggest tool for assimilation, but these days thanks to libtards running
amok, our schools are where racial identity is amplified rather than de-emphasized. Now all minority
groups are encouraged to take pride in their own cultural identity and eschew mainstream (white)
culture. Lured by affirmative action, more and more mixed race hispanic kids are beginning to
identify themselves as latino. Thankfully mixed race Asian kids are running in the opposite direction
and now mostly identify themselves as white so they are not disadvantaged by AA.
I think assimilation can occur when you have low immigration rate coupled with high intermarriage
rate and a smart education system that discourages racial and individual identity and focuses
on a single national identity. The biggest reason assimilation is failing now is a combination
of high immigration rate, and a failed education system that promotes identity politics and victimhood
narrative. The internet and easy air travels back to the homeland also make it much harder to
assimilate newcomers. For these reasons I'm in favor of a moratorium on immigration for the next
20 years. All those not yet citizens should be encouraged to return to their home countries. No
more green cards, work visas or even student visas should be issued.
@S. B. Woo That's the argument of mindless Asian SJWs who've been fed the libtard kool-aid.
Just look at the numbers you yourself provided. Whites who were turned down still vastly outperformed
blacks and hispanics who were given admission, to the tune of 340 points and 130 points respectively.
Libtards who came up with AA want everyone to turn against whites, and mindless Asian SJWs like
you are parroting them without thinking things through.
OTOH, many white-black mix marriages are white female with black male, in many instances
these women marry black men because they are liberal nuts who want to raise black children.
Jewish women for instance marry black men at a high rate. Many of these women then raise their
children as black or biracial children and encourage their children to identify themselves
as black.
@Incontrovertible That's the argument of mindless Asian SJWs who've been fed the libtard kool-aid.
Just look at the numbers you yourself provided. Whites who were turned down still vastly outperformed
blacks and hispanics who were given admission, to the tune of 340 points and 130 points respectively.
Libtards who came up with AA want everyone to turn against whites, and mindless Asian SJWs like
you are parroting them without thinking things through.
So much for "smart Asians". But they still needed a lower score for admittance than Asians
My understanding of the UN is that it is the High Court of the World where fealty is paid
to empire that funds most of the political circus anyway...and speaking of funding or not,
read the following link and lets see what PavewayIV adds to the potential sickness we are
sleep walking into.
The USA started to imitate post-Maydan Ukraine: another war with statues... "Identity
politics" flourishing in some unusual areas like history of the country. Which like in
Ukraine is pretty divisive.
McAuliffe was co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, and was one of her superdelegates
at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
Notable quotes:
"... The thrust appears to be to undercut components of his base while ratcheting up indignation. WaPo and the Times dribble out salacious "news" stories that, often as not, are substance free but written in a hyperbolic style that assumes a kind of intrinsic Trump guilt and leaps from there. They know better. No doubt they rationalize this as meeting kind with kind. ..."
"... It reminds me of the coverage in the run up to Nixon's resignation. Except this one's on steroids. I believe the DC folks fully expect Trump to be removed and now are focusing on the strategy that accrues the maximum benefit to their party. Unfortunately, things strongly favor the Democrats. ..."
"... Democrats want to drag this out as long as possible and enjoy the chipping away at segments of the Republican base while the Republicans want to clear the path before the midterms. However, the Republican officials, much as many or most can't stand Trump, have to weave a thin line because taking action against Trump would kill them in the primaries and possibly in the general. ..."
"... So the Democrats are licking their chops and hoping this can continue until the midterms with the expectation they will then control Congress. ..."
"... Some of you still don't get it. Trump isn't our last chance. Its your last chance. Yet still so many of you oxygen thieves still insist RUSSIA is the reason Hillary lost. You guys are going to agitate your way into a CW because you can't accept you lost. Many of you agitating are fat, slow, and stupid, with no idea how to survive. ..."
"... From day one after the unexpected (for the punditry class and their media coherts) elections results everybody was piling on Trump. The stories abound about his Russia Collusion (after one year of investigation not even a smoke signal) or his narcistic attitudes (mind you LeeG Trump always addresses people as We where as Humble Obama always addresses in the first person). ..."
"... I get this feeling the Swamp doesn't want a President who will at least try to do something for the American people rather than promises (Remember Hope and Change ala Obama, he got the Change quite a bit of it for him and his Banker Pals from what is left of the treasury and we the people are left with Hope). ..."
"... Someone on the last thread said in a very elegant way that what binds us Americans together is one thing, economic opportunity for all. I believe that was Trump's election platform, with the "for all" emphasized frequently. ..."
"... There is quite the precedent for the media treating trump as they do, Putin has been treated quite similarly, as well as any other politician the media cars disagree with [neocons/neolibs]... ..."
"... I think, during the election campaign, the negative media coverage may have well be a boon to him. Anyone who listened to the media, and then actually turned up at a Trump rally to see for himself, immediately got the idea that the media is full of shit. I think this won Trump a fair number of converts. ..."
"... But I think by now they are just over the top. It almost reminds me of Soviet denunciations of old communists who have fallen out of favor. ..."
"... The one clear thing is that there is a coup attempt to get rid of Donald Trump led by globalist media and supra-national corporate intelligence agents. Charlottesville may well be due to the total incompetence of the democratic governor and mayor. ..."
"... On the other hand, the razing of Confederate Memorials started in democrat controlled New Orleans and immediately spread to Baltimore. This is purposeful like blaming Russia for losing the 2016 election. ..."
"... The unrest here at home is due to the forever wars, outsourcing jobs, tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity. Under stress societies revert to their old beliefs and myths. John Brennon, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, George Soros and Pierre Omidyar are scorpions; they can't help themselves. After regime change was forced on Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine; a color revolution has been ignited here in the USA; damn the consequences. We are the only ones that can stop it by pointing out what is really happening. ..."
"... What I see in my Democrat dominated county is that the blue collar folks are noting this overt coup attempt and while they didn't vote for Trump are beginning to become sympathetic towards him. I sense this is in part due to the massive mistrust of the MSM and the political establishment who are viewed as completely self-serving. ..."
"... I read a transcript of the entirety of Trump's news conference upon which CBS and others are basing their claims that Trump is "defending white supremacists," and at no point did he come within hand grenade distance of doing anything of the sort. What he did do is accuse the left wing group of being at fault along with the right wing group in causing the violence, and he did not even claim that they were equally at fault. ..."
"... There is no doubt whatever that his statement was entirely accurate, if in no other respect in that the left's decision to engage in proximate confrontation was certain to cause violence and was, in fact, designed to do so regardless of who threw the first punch. CBS and other media of its caliber are completely avoiding mentioning that aspect of the confrontation. ..."
"... CBS et. al. have been touting the left's possession of not one but two permits for public assembly, but they carefully do not point out that the permits were for two areas well removed from the area where the conflict occurred, and that they did not have a permit to assemble in that area. ..."
"... The media is flailing with the horror of Trump's advocacy of racial division, but it is the Democratic Party which has for more than a decade pursued the policy of "identity politics," and the media which has prated endlessly about "who will get the black vote" or "how Hispanics will vote" in every election. ..."
"... As a firm believer in the media efforts to sabotage Trump and a former supporter (now agnostic, trending negative - Goldman Sachs swamp creatures in the Oval Office????), he greatly disappointed me. First, i will state, that I do not believe Trump is antisemitic (no antisemite will surround himself with rich Jewish Bankers). ..."
"... It doesn't matter whether Trump is getting a raw deal or not. Politics has nothing to do with fairness. ..."
"... But when you've lost Bob Corker, and even Newt Gingrich is getting wobbly, when Fox News is having a hard time finding Republicans willing to go on and defend Trump, you don't need to be Nostradamus to see what's going to happen. ..."
The media, and political elite, pile on is precisely what I expect. The chattering political classes
have converged on the belief that Trump is not only incompetent, but dangerous. And his few allies
are increasingly uncertain of their future.
The thrust appears to be to undercut components of his base while ratcheting up indignation.
WaPo and the Times dribble out salacious "news" stories that, often as not, are substance free
but written in a hyperbolic style that assumes a kind of intrinsic Trump guilt and leaps from
there. They know better. No doubt they rationalize this as meeting kind with kind. Trump
is the epitome of the salesman that believes he can sell anything to anyone with the right pitch.
Reporters that might normally be restrained by actual facts and a degree of fairness simply are
no longer so constrained.
It reminds me of the coverage in the run up to Nixon's resignation. Except this one's on
steroids. I believe the DC folks fully expect Trump to be removed and now are focusing on the
strategy that accrues the maximum benefit to their party. Unfortunately, things strongly favor
the Democrats.
Democrats want to drag this out as long as possible and enjoy the chipping away at segments
of the Republican base while the Republicans want to clear the path before the midterms. However,
the Republican officials, much as many or most can't stand Trump, have to weave a thin line because
taking action against Trump would kill them in the primaries and possibly in the general.
So the Democrats are licking their chops and hoping this can continue until the midterms
with the expectation they will then control Congress. After that they will happily dispatch
Trump with some discovered impeachable crime. At that point it won't be hard to get enough Republicans
to go along.
The Republicans can only hope to convince Trump to resign well prior to the midterms. They
hope they won't have to go on record with a vote and get nailed in the elections.
In the meantime the country is going to go through hell.
Yes, we are staring into the depths and the abyss has begun to take note of us. BTW the US
was put back together after the CW/WBS on the basis of an understanding that the Confederates
would accept the situation and the North would not interfere with their cultural rituals.
There was a general amnesty for former Confederates in the 1870s and a number of them became
US senators, Consuls General overseas and state governors.
That period of attempted reconciliation has now ended. Who can imagine the "Gone With the Win"
Pulitzer and Best Picture of the Year now? pl
Some of you still don't get it. Trump isn't our last chance. Its your last chance. Yet still
so many of you oxygen thieves still insist RUSSIA is the reason Hillary lost. You guys are going
to agitate your way into a CW because you can't accept you lost. Many of you agitating are fat,
slow, and stupid, with no idea how to survive.
I totally disagree with you LeeG. From day one after the unexpected (for the punditry class
and their media coherts) elections results everybody was piling on Trump. The stories abound about
his Russia Collusion (after one year of investigation not even a smoke signal) or his narcistic
attitudes (mind you LeeG Trump always addresses people as We where as Humble Obama always addresses
in the first person).
I get this feeling the Swamp doesn't want a President who will at least try to do something
for the American people rather than promises (Remember Hope and Change ala Obama, he got the Change
quite a bit of it for him and his Banker Pals from what is left of the treasury and we the people
are left with Hope). I hope he will succeed but I learnt that we will always be left with
Hope!
That last tweet is from the Green Party candidate for VP. Those are just a few examples from
a quick Google search before I get back to work. Those of you with more disposable time will surely
find more.
Someone on the last thread said in a very elegant way that what binds us Americans together
is one thing, economic opportunity for all. I believe that was Trump's election platform, with
the "for all" emphasized frequently.
I believe Charlottsville was a staged catalyst to bring about Trump's downfall, there
seems now to be a "full-court press" against him. If he survives this latest attempt, I'll be
both surprised and in awe of his political skills. If he doesn't survive I'll (and many others,
no matter the "legality of the process") will consider it a coup d'etat and start to think of
a different way to prepare for the future.
There is quite the precedent for the media treating trump as they do, Putin has been treated
quite similarly, as well as any other politician the media cars disagree with [neocons/neolibs]...
I think, during the election campaign, the negative media coverage may have well be a boon
to him. Anyone who listened to the media, and then actually turned up at a Trump rally to see
for himself, immediately got the idea that the media is full of shit. I think this won Trump a
fair number of converts.
But I think by now they are just over the top. It almost reminds me of Soviet denunciations
of old communists who have fallen out of favor.
As far as statue removal goes: There should be legal ways of deciding such things democratically.
There should also be the possibility of relocating the statues in question. I imagine that there
should be plenty of private properties who are willing to host these statues on their land.
This should be quite soundly protected by the US constitution.
That these monuments got, iirc, erected long after the war is nothing unusual. Same is true
for monuments to the white army, of which there are now a couple in Russia.
As far as the civil war goes, my sympathies lie with the Union, I would not be, more then a
100 years after the war, be averse to monuments depicting the common Confederate Soldier.
I can understand the statue toppler somewhat. If someone would place a Bandera statue in my surroundings,
I would try to wreck it. I may be willing to tolerate a Petljura statue, probably a also Wrangel
or Denikin statue, but not a Vlassov or Shuskevich statue.
Imho Lees "wickedness", historically speaking, simply isn't anything extraordinary.
Col., thank you for this comment. I grew up in the "North" and recall the centenary of the Civil
War as featured in _Life_ magazine. I was fascinated by the history, the uniforms and the composition
of the various armies as well as their arms. I would add to that the devastating use of grapeshot.
I knew the biographies of the various generals on both sides and their relative effectiveness.
I would urge others to read Faulkner's _Intruder in the Dust_ to gain some understanding of the
Reconstruction and carpetbagging.
I believe the choice to remove the monument as opposed to some other measure, such as the bit
of history you offer, was highly incendiary. I also find it interesting that the ACLU is taking
up their case in regard to free-speech:
http://tinyurl.com/ybdkrcaz
I was living in Chicago when the Skokie protest occurred.
"They came to Charlottesville to do harm. They came armed and were looking for a fight."
I agree. This means Governor McAuliffe failed in his duty to the people of the Commonwealth
and so did the Mayor of Charlottesville and the senior members of the police forces present in
the city. Congradulations to the alt-left.
They - the left - previously came to DC to do harm - on flag day no less. Namely the Bernie
Bro James Hodgkinson, domestic terrorist, who attempted to assasinate Steve Scalise and a number
of other elected representatives. The left did not denounce him nor his cause. Sadly they did
not even denounce the people who actually betrayed him - those who rigged the Democratic primary:
Donna Brazile and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
The one clear thing is that there is a coup attempt to get rid of Donald Trump led by globalist
media and supra-national corporate intelligence agents. Charlottesville may well be due to the
total incompetence of the democratic governor and mayor.
On the other hand, the razing of Confederate Memorials started in democrat controlled New
Orleans and immediately spread to Baltimore. This is purposeful like blaming Russia for losing
the 2016 election.
The protestors on both divides were organized and spoiling for a fight.
The unrest here at home is due to the forever wars, outsourcing jobs, tax cuts for the
wealthy and austerity. Under stress societies revert to their old beliefs and myths. John Brennon,
Lindsey Graham, John McCain, George Soros and Pierre Omidyar are scorpions; they can't help themselves.
After regime change was forced on Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine; a color revolution has been
ignited here in the USA; damn the consequences. We are the only ones that can stop it by pointing
out what is really happening.
It seems to me that this brouhaha may work in Trump's favor. The more different things they accuse
Trump of (without evidence), the more diluted their message becomes.
I think the Borg's collective hysteria can be explained by the "unite the right" theme of the
Charlottesville Rally. A lot of Trump supporters are very angry, and if they start marching next
to people who are carrying signs that blame "the Jews" for America's problems, then anti-Zionist
(or even outright anti-Semitic) thinking might start to go mainstream. The Borg would do well
to work to address the Trump supporters legitimate grievances. There are a number of different
ways that things might get very ugly if they don't. Unfortunately the establishment just wants
to heap abuse on the Trump supporters and I think that approach is myopic.
There will always be an outrage du jour for the NeverTrumpers. The Jake Tapper, Rachel Maddow,
Morning Joe & Mika ain't gonna quit. And it seems it's ratings gold for them. Of course McCain
and his office wife and the rest of the establishment crew also have to come out to ring the obligatory
bell and say how awful Trump's tweet was.
What I see in my Democrat dominated county is that the blue collar folks are noting this
overt coup attempt and while they didn't vote for Trump are beginning to become sympathetic towards
him. I sense this is in part due to the massive mistrust of the MSM and the political establishment
who are viewed as completely self-serving.
It is illegal in the Commonwealth of Virginia to wear a mask that covers one's face in most public
settings.
LEOs in Central Va encountered this exact requirement when a man in a motorcycle helmet entered
a Walmart on Rt 29 in 2012. Several customers reported him to 911 because they believed him to
being acting suspiciously. He was detained in Albemarle County and was eventually submitted for
mental health evaluation.
This is not a law that Charlottesville police would be unfamiliar with.
Chomsky:
"As for Antifa, it's a minuscule fringe of the Left, just as its predecessors were. "It's a major
gift to the Right, including the militant Right, who are exuberant."
"what they do is often wrong in principle – like blocking talks – and [the movement] is generally
self-destructive."
"When confrontation shifts to the arena of violence, it's the toughest and most brutal who
win – and we know who that is. That's quite apart from the opportunity costs – the loss of the
opportunity for education, organizing, and serious and constructive activism."
I read a transcript of the entirety of Trump's news conference upon which CBS and others are basing
their claims that Trump is "defending white supremacists," and at no point did he come within
hand grenade distance of doing anything of the sort. What he did do is accuse the left wing group
of being at fault along with the right wing group in causing the violence, and he did not even
claim that they were equally at fault.
There is no doubt whatever that his statement was entirely accurate, if in no other respect
in that the left's decision to engage in proximate confrontation was certain to cause violence
and was, in fact, designed to do so regardless of who threw the first punch. CBS and other media
of its caliber are completely avoiding mentioning that aspect of the confrontation.
CBS et. al. have been touting the left's possession of not one but two permits for public assembly,
but they carefully do not point out that the permits were for two areas well removed from the
area where the conflict occurred, and that they did not have a permit to assemble in that area.
A pundit on CBS claimed that "if they went" to the park in question, which of course they did,
"they would not have been arrested because it was a public park." He failed to mention that large
groups still are required to have a permit to assemble in a public park.
The media is flailing with the horror of Trump's advocacy of racial division, but it is the
Democratic Party which has for more than a decade pursued the policy of "identity politics," and
the media which has prated endlessly about "who will get the black vote" or "how Hispanics will
vote" in every election.
Lars, but they came with a legal permit to protest and knew what they would be facing. The anti-protestors
including ANTIFA had a large number of people being paid to be there and funded by Soros and were
there illegally. The same mechanisms were in place to ramp up protests like in Ferguson which
were violent and this response was no different.
However, the Virginia Governor a crony of the Clintons, ordered a police stand down and no
effort was made to separate the groups. I remind you also that open carry is legal in Virginia.
So, IMHO this was deliberately set up for a lethal confrontation by the people on the left.
I will also remind you that the American Nazi Party and the American Communist Party among others,
are perfectly legal in the US as is the KKK. Believing and saying what you want, no matter how
offensive, is legal under the First Amendment. Actively discriminating against someone is not
legal but speech is. Say what you want but that is the Constitution.
Your last paragraph is a suitably Leftist post-modern ideological oversimplification of an
infinitely complex phenomenon. It also reveals a great deal of what motivates the SJW Left:
" As for the notion that this is a 'cultural issue', I quote: 'Whenever I hear the word
culture, I reach for my revolver.' 'Culture' is the means by which some people oppress others.
It's much like 'civilization' or 'ethics' or 'morality' - a tool to beat people over the head
who have something you want. "
First, it is a cultural issue. It's an issue between people who accept this culture as a necessary
but flawed, yet incrementally improvable structure for carrying out a relatively peaceful existence
among one another, and those whose grudging, bitter misanthropy has led them to the conclusion
that the whole thing isn't fair (i.e. easy) so fuck it, burn it all down. In no uncertain terms,
this is the ethos driving the radical Left.
Second, I don't know exactly which culture created you, but I'm fairly sure it was a western
liberal democracy, as I'm fairly certain is the case with almost all Leftists these days, regardless
of how radical. And I'm also fairly certain the culture you decry is the western liberal democratic
culture in its current iterations. But before you or anyone else lights the fuse on that, remember
that the very culture you want to burn down because it's so loathsome, that's the thing that gave
you that shiny device you use to connect with the world, it's the thing that taught you how to
articulate your thoughts into written and spoken word, so that you could then go out and bitch
about it, and it even lets you bitch about it, freely and with no consequences. This "civilization"
is the thing that gives rise to the "morals" and "ethics" that allow you to take your shiny gadgets
to a coffee shop, where the barista makes your favorite beverage, instead of simply smashing you
over the head and taking your shiny gadgets because he wants them. These principles didn't arise
out of thin air, and neither did you, me, or anyone else. This culture is an agreed-upon game
that most of us play to ensure we stand a chance at getting though this with as little suffering
as possible. It's not perfect, but it works better than anything else I've seen in history.
In his inimitable fashion, I'll grant Tyler (and the Colonel, as well) the creditable foresight
to call this one. Those of you who find yourselves wishing, hoping, agitating, and activisting
for an overturn of the election result, and/or of traditional American culture in general would
do well to take their warnings seriously.
If traditional American culture is so deeply and irredeemably corrupt, I must ask, what's your
alternative? And how do you mean to install it? I would at least like to know that. Regardless
of your answer to question one, if your answer to question two is "revolution", well then you
and anyone else on that wagon better be prepared to suffer, and to increase many fold the overall
quotient of human suffering in the world. Because that's what it will take.
You want your revolution, but you also want your Wi-Fi to keep working.
You want your revolution, but you also want your hybrid car.
You want your revolution, but you also want your safe spaces, such as your bed when you sleep
at night.
If you think you can manage all that by way of shouting down, race baiting, character assassinating,
and social shaming, without bearing the great burden of suffering that all revolutions entail,
you have bitter days ahead. And there are literally millions of Americans who will oppose you
along the way. And unlike the kulaks when the Bolsheviks rode into town, they see you coming
and they're ready for you. And if you insist on taking it as far as you can, it won't be pretty,
and it won't be cinematic. Just a lot of tragedy for everyone involved. But one side will win,
and my guess is it'll be the guys like Tyler. It's not my desire or aim to see any of that happen.
It's just how I see things falling out on their current trajectory.
The situation calls to mind a quote from a black radical, spoken-word group from Harlem who
were around in the early to mid 60s, called the Last Poets. The line goes, "Speak not of revolution
until you are willing to eat rats to survive." Just something to think about when you advocate
burning it all down.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) has added his name to a growing list of public officials
in state governments encouraging the removal of Confederate statues and memorials throughout the
South. Late in the day on Wednesday McAuliffe released an official statement saying monuments
of Confederate leaders have now become "flashpoints for hatred, division and violence" in a reference
to the weekend of violence which shook Charlottesville as white nationalists rallied against the
city's planned removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. McAuliffe further described the monuments as
"a barrier to progress" and appealed to state and local governments to take action. The governor
said:
As we attempt to heal and learn from the tragic events in Charlottesville, I encourage Virginia's
localities and the General Assembly – which are vested with the legal authority – to take down
these monuments and relocate them to museums or more appropriate settings. I hope we can all now
agree that these symbols are a barrier to progress, inclusion and equality in Virginia and, while
the decision may not be mine to make...
It seems the push for monument removal is now picking up steam, with cities like Baltimore
simply deciding to act briskly while claiming anti-racism and concern for public safety. Of course,
the irony in all this is that the White nationalist and supremacist groups which showed up in
force at Charlottesville and which are even now planning a major protest in Lexington, Kentucky,
are actually themselves likely hastening the removal of these monuments through their repugnant
racial ideology, symbols, and flags.
Bishop James Dukes, a pastor at Liberation Christian Center located on Chicago's south side,
is demanding that the city of Chicago re-dedicate two parks in the area that are named after former
presidents George Washington and Andrew Jackson. His reasons? Dukes says that monuments honoring
men who owned slaves have no place in the black community, even if those men once led the free
world.
Salve, Publius. Thanks for the article. Col. Lang made an excellent point in the comments' section
that the Confederate memorials represent the reconciliation between the North and the South. The
same argument is presented in a lengthier fashion in this morning's TAC
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/when-confederate-monuments-represent-reconciliation/
. That reconciliation could have been handled much better, i.e. without endorsing Jim Crow. I
wish more monuments were erected to commemorate Longstreet and Cleburne, JB Hood and Hardee. I
wish there was more Lee and less Forrest. Nonetheless, the important historical point is that
a national reconciliation occurred. Removing the statues is a symbolic act which undoes the national
reconciliation. The past which is being erased is not the Civil War but the civil peace which
followed it. That is tragic.
IMO, most of the problems majority of people (specially the ruling class) have with Donald Trump'
presidency is that, he acts and is an accidental president, Ironically, everybody including, him,
possibly you, and me who voted for him knows this and is not willing to take his presidency serious
and act as such. IMO, he happens to run for president, when the country, due to setbacks and defeat
on multiple choice wars, as well as national economic misfortunes and misshapes, including mass
negligence of working class, was in dismay and a big social divide, as of the result, majority
decided to vote for some one outside of familiar cemented in DC ruling class knowing he is not
qualified and is a BS artist. IMO that is what took place, which at the end of the day, ends of
to be same.
" Removing the statues is a symbolic act which undoes the national reconciliation."
That is the intent. The coalition of urban and coastal ethnic populists and economic elites
has been for increased concentration and expansion of federal power at the expense of the states,
especially the Southern states, for generations. This wave of agitprop with NGO and MSM backing
is intended to undo the constitutional election and return the left to power at the federal level.
I agree with most of Trump's policy positions, but he is negating these positions with his out-of-control
mouth and tweets.
As much as I have nothing but contempt and loathing for the "establishment" (Dems, Republicans,
especially the media, the "intelligence" community and the rest of the permanent government),
Trump doesn't seem to comprehend that he can't get anything done without taming some of these
elements, all of whom are SERIOUSLY opposed to him as a threat to their sinecures and riches.
"Who is this OUTSIDER to come in and think that he in charge of OUR government?"
What seems like a balanced eyewitness account of Charlottesville that suggests that although the
radicals on both sides brought the violence, it was the police who allowed it to happen.
The need to keep protesters away from counter-protesters particular when both are tooled should
be obvious to anyone, but not so with the protest in Charlottevlle.
-"Trump isnt our last chance. Its your last chance."
Reminds me of the 60's and the SDS and their ilk. A large part of the under 30 crowd idolized
Mao's Little Red Book and convinced themselves the "revolution" was imminent. So many times I
heard the phrase "Up Against the Wall, MFs." Stupid fools. Back then people found each other by
"teach-ins" and the so called "underground press." In those days it took a larger fraction to
be able to blow in each other's ear and convince themselves they were the future "vanguard."
These days, with the internet, it is far easier for a smaller fraction to gravitate to an echo
chamber, reinforce group think, and believe their numbers are much larger than what, in reality,
exists. This happens across the board. It's a rabbit hole Tyler. Don't go down it.
Yes, Forts Bragg, Hood, Lee, AP Hill, Benning, etc., started as temporary camps during WW1
and were so named to encourage Southern participation in the war. The South had been reluctant
about the Spanish War. Wade Hampton, governor of SC said of that war, "Let the North fight. the
South knows the cost of war." pl
I would like to share my viewpoint. As a firm believer in the media efforts to sabotage Trump
and a former supporter (now agnostic, trending negative - Goldman Sachs swamp creatures in the
Oval Office????), he greatly disappointed me. First, i will state, that I do not believe Trump
is antisemitic (no antisemite will surround himself with rich Jewish Bankers).
But violence on all sides is absolute BS. Nazi violence gets its own sentence and language at least as strong as the language he has
no trouble hitting ISIS with. Didn't hear that. So I guess in his mind, the threat the US faced
from Nazis during WW2 was less than a ragtag, 3rd world guerilla force whose only successes are
because of 1. US, Saudi, and other weapons, and their war on unstable third world countries. Give
me a break - did he never watch a John Wayne movie as a kid?
When I discuss nazi's, F-bombs are dropped. I support the right of nazi's to march and spew
their vitriolic hatred, and even more strongly support the right of free speech to counter their
filth with facts and arguments and history.
I am sorry, but Antifa was not fighting against the
US in WW2. If one wants to critique Antifa, or another group, that criticism belongs in a separate
paragraph or better in another press conference. Taking 2 days to do so, and then walking it back,
is the hallmark of a political idiot (or a billionaire who listens to no one and lives in his
own mental echo chamber).
If Trump gets his info and opinions from TV news, despite having the $80+ billion US Intel
system at his beck and call, he is the largest idiot on the planet.
It doesn't matter whether Trump is getting a raw deal or not. Politics has nothing to do with
fairness.
But when you've lost Bob Corker, and even Newt Gingrich is getting wobbly, when Fox News is
having a hard time finding Republicans willing to go on and defend Trump, you don't need to be
Nostradamus to see what's going to happen.
"In
an article for Quillette.com on "Methods Behind the Campus Madness," graduate researcher
Sumantra Maitra of the University of Nottingham in England reported that 12 of the 13
academics at U.C. Berkeley who signed a letter to the chancellor protesting Yiannopoulos were
from "Critical theory, Gender studies and Post-Colonial/Postmodernist/Marxist background."
This is a shift in Marxist theory from class conflict to identity politics conflict;
instead of judging people by the content of their character, they are now to be judged by the
color of their skin (or their ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, et cetera).
"Postmodernists have tried to hijack biology, have taken over large parts of political
science, almost all of anthropology, history and English," Maitra concludes, "and have
proliferated self-referential journals, citation circles, non-replicable research, and the
curtailing of nuanced debate through activism and marches, instigating a bunch of gullible
students to intimidate any opposing ideas.""
"... So, noting that on average, men have 90% more upper body strength than women, would I not be able to claim that any woman my height or less will not have my upper body strength? ..."
"... The problem is that PC is on the way to functioning like militant Islam with regard to unbelievers and apostates. ..."
"... "It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them". ..."
"... "There are only two important days in the life of any person, the day that your are born and then day you find out why." ..."
"... The supreme irony of l'affaire Damore is that was a primary point of Damore's memo and the response was perhaps the best proof of the validity of that point possible. Hence my "inept thinkers" comment. ..."
"... Look how Canadian 'hate speech laws' began with silencing 'Neo-Nazis' (fake ones, btw) and then spread to going after those who don't use proper pronouns. Self-Righteous Addiction created all these Self-Righteous Junkies. ..."
"... The bigger question is why Homo Sapiens is the only primate on the planet where The female is expected to be equal to the male ..."
"... The whole argument "for equality" is fundamentally flawed – it is the wrong goal. As individuals we humans want to be different – not equal. We want to bring something different to the table of social interaction. People who are equal have nothing to give to each other. ..."
"... P.S. No matter our intellectual capabilities, for 99% of us – doing a good job of raising our children – is the most lasting thing that we can ever do. They are our true legacy – what we do on the job is all too soon lost in the evolution of business. ..."
"... it is quite likely that variation is bigger in males, as usual with many other traits. ..."
This argument makes me smile. Hyde seems to take as granted that males have an advantage
on "tightly timed tests for mathematical and spatial tasks". Is it simply my male point of
view that to do well on any test, in the sense of getting things right, and doing so
quickly, would be considered a double advantage? Why regard speedy thinking as a complexity
of interpretation? Why is speed in correctly completing a task judged to be "speed as much
as skill"? Absurdly, the prompt and correct completion of a task seems to be cast as mere
male impetuosity. Furthermore, any employer reading this argument would be justified in
thinking "On difficult tasks involving maths and spatial analysis, women need more time"
so, given a chance, it might be better not to employ them.
Agreed, but the timing issue for spatial tests actually strikes me as even more important
than that. I am good at typical spatial tests, but one thing I have noticed is that for the
hardest items I find myself going through a very working memory loaded process of checking
whether a rotation works for a variety of details (number of details being limited by WM). I
am pretty sure this process is more g loaded than spatial (have to find, remember, and
analyze these differences). It is also slow at my WM limits (I trial and error choose which
details to focus on for the hardest items). I am certain I could improve my performance by
making pen and paper notes, but consider that cheating on those tests. It would be
interesting to explore differences in solution speed and style both within and between groups
(e.g. do similar scoring men and women differ in technique?).
Thus I tend to think the need for more time indicates a relative deficit in "real" spatial
skill in favor of g. Whether this "real" spatial skill is what drives the relationship of
spatial skills with programming is unclear, but I think it might be. I would hypothesize that
it might not be easy for someone like me to emulate the reasoning a higher spatial ability
person might use to solve real world problems (rotations are a relatively simple special case
problem). If so, presumably this problem would be even worse for someone with even less
"real" spatial ability.
Part of what I base my self assessment on is my sense that some people just immediately
see the answer to hard spatial problems. Another part of this is my experience with tasks
like navigating in complex topographical environments (I suspect that is a related skill). I
routinely encounter people who I think are much better at navigation than I am (especially
considered in tandem with more g loaded differences). My sense is that this instant
recognition correlates with g but is a separate ability (perhaps more separate than the
spatial
test
correlations indicate given my substitutability observation above). I
would be very interested in either anecdotal observations or research discussing this!
Overall, my takeaways from the whole l'affaire Damore (surprised I haven't seen this pun
used yet, just searched and
here is a
use
, though I disagree with it that post and the comments are worth a look) are:
Preferences are important and should be the first differences mentioned in this
discussion.
Relevant measurable trait and preference differences exist and the magnitudes seem in
the right ballpark (given tail effects) to explain the representation differences we
observe.
The evidence for biological vs. cultural explanations for these differences is not
definitive and therefore is controversial. This controversy provides much of the heat
underlying the overall debate IMHO.
Sexism and discrimination probably exist. In both directions (Google's hiring practices
are clearly discriminatory in intent, the reason for Damore's memo!). I am not sure which
direction is greater in effect in the Current Year
There are an astonishing number of inept thinkers out there (not a surprise, but rarely
is ineptness displayed so proudly). More than a few call themselves scientists.
@Peripatetic
commenter
Perhaps a good start is to read (or at least skim)
Intelligence, Genes, and
Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve
as a collection of critiques of
The Bell
Curve
which seem better than most. Then look for critiques of that book and its
papers.
Another approach would be to look at Linda Gottfredson's work, most notably:
Mainstream
Science on Intelligence: An Editorial With 52 Signatories, History, and Bibliography
The Note makes it very clear that men and women "differ in part due to biological
causes", that many such differences are small, with significant overlaps, and that you
cannot say anything about an individual on the basis of population level distributions.
So, noting that on average, men have 90% more upper body strength than women, would I not
be able to claim that any woman my height or less will not have my upper body strength?
@Peripatetic
commenter
Short answer, no. Though it arguably depends on where you fall in the male
range and the population size (which controls how much of an outlier one can expect to
occur). If you want to make this more concrete, here is a paper on strength differences which
seems to imply (though I don't see it stated) a Cohen's d of about 3 for upper body strength:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4756754/
Plugging that into the visualizer here (3 is the maximum value supported) you see only 13%
overlap:
http://rpsychologist.com/d3/cohend/
Worth noting that these analyses don't account for size differences (so your equal height
condition skews things).
To answer your question a different way, try looking at world championship weightlifting
results. Can you lift more than the strongest woman there less than or equal to you in
height (or weight as a proxy)?
I don't do weight training but if I did, I think I could and I would assert that world
championship male weight lifters could.
The more we learn about nonhuman intelligence, however, the more we find that abilities
previously thought to be uniquely human are not. For example, it was thought until the
1960s that humans alone make tools. But then Jane Goodall (1963) found wild chimpanzees
making them. Later, several other species were found making tools too (Beck, 1980). Thus,
ideas about what marks the boundary between human and nonhuman intelligence have undergone
repeated
What is the use of making such statements? Chimps are not going to suddenly start making
screw drivers or knives or bows and arrows etc. Is it thought that all other tool making is
layered on top of the neural support Chimps use for making their very primitive tools?
I suspect that no one with enough intelligence to think clearly understands what all the
fuss is about. I have never been particularly successful at anything, despite my IQ of over
160 (according to Mensa). The only clearcut effect this has had, as far as I can make out, is
that most people find my conversation obscure and boring.
If an IQ 60% above average confers no apparent practical advantage, what is the point in
squabbling heatedly about hypothetical differences on the order of 1%? It is surely well
established, even if it weren't glaringly obvious to common sense, that while pure
intelligence is vital in some fields of work, its effects are usually swamped by those of
other characteristics such as persistence, enthusiasm, charisma and empathy.
Indeed, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that the very most intelligent
people are disproportionately prone to mental disorders, existential horror, and despair.
There is a lot to hate and fear in the world, and most people seem to be spared the worst
consequences by the simplest of defence mechanisms – a sheer failure to notice.
@Peripatetic
commenter
"Is it thought that all other tool making is layered on top of the neural
support Chimps use for making their very primitive tools?"
Yes. Although of course we are not chimps, nor are we directly descended from chimps. The
human brain is immensely flexible and adaptable, and once the practice of solving problems by
making tools became established, a whole vast new world opened up. Note that people were
making stone tools for a very, very long time before the first metals were discovered. Note
also that many of the human race's greatest discoveries may have been made only once or twice
before spreading worldwide.
One serious weakness that most humans suffer from is an inability to visualize long
periods of time. Just as, to the average citizen, a million, a billion, and a trillion are
all more or less just "lots and lots", most of us really cannot conceive of a million years
or what might happen in such a time. At about three generations per century, a million years
represents about 30,000 generations. A mere 50 generations ago the Roman Empire was still
flourishing.
@res
Thanks for your
thoughtful and detailed comments.
On the speed issue, for all tasks, I was objecting to Hyde's implied distinction between
speed and ability, because ability is related to speed. I think that W.D.Furneaux was onto
this issue years ago, and progressed it well. From memory, I have classified his key insight
as saying that intellectual achievement depended on: speed, accuracy and persistence.
The first two are often a trade-off, though of course the brightest people are both speedy
and accurate. Persistence is often an ignored characteristic, though it is a key part of most
great intellectual achievements.
As regards g, at higher levels of ability it account for less variance.
1. Furneaux, W. D., Nature, 170, 37 (1952). | ISI |
2. Furneaux, W. D. "The Determinants of Success in Intelligence Tests" (paper read to Brit.
Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1955).
3. Furneaux, W. D., Manual of Nufferno Speed Tests (Nat. Found. Educ. Res., London,
1955).
4. Furneaux, W. D., in Intellectual Abilities and Problem Solving Behaviour in Handbook of
Abnormal Psychology (edit. by Eysenck, H. J.) (Pergamon Press, London, 1960)
@Peripatetic
commenter
I think you are right if we alter it from "any woman" to "almost any woman",
simply because the difference in body strength (in the paper Res references, and in the
others) is a d of 3.5 so I wouldn't bother with further calculations to correct for height.
What would make a difference is the small numbers of elite women athletes, as shown in the
paper Razib posted.
If one simplifies the whole issue to look at height, weight and body strength together, then
women are at risk in any physical encounter with men, even old ones. This has been noticed
before, resulting in kind societies paying extra respect to and showing more consideration
for women, and in less kind societies to their abuse.
I find the ferocity of some of the replies to Damore extreme. The vehemence of the
opposition is coruscating, and absolute. These issues should be matters of scholarly
debate, in which the findings matter, and different interpretations contend against each
other.
Or maybe it's not for ferocious attacks or scholarly debate. It's just a difference of opinion (remember "diversity") – not something to get so
excited about.
The problem is that PC is on the way to functioning like militant Islam with regard to
unbelievers and apostates.
@Tom Welsh
Dear
Tom,
An IQ of 160 is only found in 1 in 31,560 persons, being higher than 99.9976142490% of the
population. This is more than a 60% advantage over the average citizen. IQ points are not
percentages.
The work of Benbow and Lubinski shows that the higher the intelligence the greater the
achievement. While other personality factors may be involved, they have yet to be shown to be
as important.
Typically, high ability people are shown to be more balanced than average, with lower rates
of mental disorder.
@James Thompson
Not
to worry. We have Hollywood providing young women with all the confidence necessary that,
should she walk down a dark alley and be accosted by a man, she will likely strike him a few
times in the face and walk away unscathed.
/sarc off.
If women grasped even vaguely just how great is the gulf between them and the overwhelming
majority of men, I suspect we'd see a lot fewer women using their divorce attorney to torment
their soon-to-be (or already) ex-husband. I've watched women metaphorically poke the most
dangerous animal on Planet Earth, an adult male human, as he sits in a cage that lacks
bars.
The only time I've seen the "Entertainment Industry" show what can really happen in a
confrontation between a typical woman and a typical (in this case viciously predatory) man,
it was in a foreign-made film titled "Irreversible," available on Amazon Video. It was
without a doubt the most horrifying rape-beating ever put on film, and watching it would
scare the living daylights out of women. It ran rings around any horror film ever made.
"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious
things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either
of them".
– Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XX
@Tom Welsh
Sam
Clemens was sui generis. And I love this one of his:
"There are only two important days in
the life of any person, the day that your are born and then day you find out why."
Well, I was looking for people-vs-things preference differences expressed in easily
calculable terms (i.e. something in terms of "men are rated as 10 on this trait, with SD 2,
while women as 8, with SD 1.8″) but I couldn't; Can anyone help?
The best I could found was the study which claimed that in people-vs-things rating, within
the top 25% of topc scorers – which would be, if I understood correctly, people who are
the most interested in things (as contrasted with "interested in people") ratio of women to
men is 0.287. That would mean there would be around 78% men, 22% women.
Now, the question is what is the cutoff for going to STEM, ie. what is average "things"
preference for people to decide to follow career in STEM (or, more specifically, in
engineering and computer science). Depending on value of this cutoff, the gap in CS and
engineering might be, indeed, completely explained away by difference in people-vs-things
interest, or even might imply men are discriminated against, HOWEVER, seeing as some of those
preferences are calculated, I wonder whether it is not a kind of circular argument, kind of
"there are more men into computer-related work, because more men are interested in
computers".
Also, it seems that i saw in one study taht this difference decreases with age, which is
strange. This would contradict the theory that the preference is driven by the social
expectations (because, then "sexist" expectations would cause is to go up with age) but this
could be explained by "it is caused by biology" theory; HOWEVER, the bad thing and the
weakness is that "it's caused by biology" could be used to justify BOTH increasing and
decreasing the gap – a realisation which leaves bad taste in my mouth.
Anyway I'd love to see
(1) studies quantifying the differences on a scale, not saying "the effect is large with
Cohen's d=1.23″
(2) studies looking at specifically computer science and comparing their preferences with
general population
(3) studies measuring the trait in very early age
This book (The Measurement of Intelligence, edited by Michael? Eysenck, copyright 1973, I
actually have a copy but am having trouble finding it, I think that chapter would be a good
starting point for me):
https://books.google.com/books?id=wjLpCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA236&lpg=PA236
gives a title for your first reference:
Some Speed, Error and Difficulty Relationships
within a Problem-solving Situation
From which I find:
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v170/n4314/abs/170037a0.html
It is nice that Nature assigns DOIs to its old papers. That appears to be a two page letter.
Interesting, but I am having trouble drawing inferences from it.
I am not sure I communicated my agreement with your earlier speed, accuracy, and
persistence comments. I was trying to extend the idea to consider that slow speed might be an
indicator of the substitution of skills (other than persistence, though that is certainly
critical there) for the skill nominally being tested for. In my earlier example, g for
spatial ability. For another example, I took an online autism test a while ago (identifying
emotions from pictures). I scored above average (in a good way ; ), but found myself again
using a more "logical" (g based IMHO) process for the harder items. I doubt that is the way
most people approach that test (though I could be wrong) and my result might overstate my
ability on the skill
they are trying to test
.
The fundamental distinction I am trying to make is between solving a problem in the same
way (or sufficiently similar) just more slowly and solving the problem using a fundamentally
different approach (or skill/ability?!). The former could be viewed as changing the clock
speed on a computer and I think corresponds with the point you make about persistence. For
the latter envision a case where one person solves a problem using visual intuition and a
quick mathematical check while another person uses an extended mathematical derivation. I
think this kind of substitutabiltity could be a problem in subtests intended to measure a
specific skill (e.g. spatial!). And g is a very useful Swiss army knife ; ).
Perhaps this is a second order effect relative to the basic speed/persistence issue and
should (could?) not really be considered until that has been solved? I guess I am just
interested in anyone who has thought about this substitutability idea in the more general
form. Furneaux seems focused on the speed side. In particular, Furneaux limits his
consideration to the 10-85% range of difficulty while my personal experience is much more
about the hard end of the difficulty scale.
This seems like a fairly obvious idea to me so I presume it has been considered. Perhaps
some combination of "second order effect" and "hard to test" prevents something having been
done about it?
One other thought that occurs to me. Does Furneaux's deemphasis of higher D(ifficulty)
items say something about the difficulty of creating high ceiling tests? Is it possible that
the combination of substitutability and more idiosyncratic skill profiles at the high end are
part of that problem?
It's just a difference of opinion (remember "diversity") – not something to get so
excited about.
The supreme irony of l'affaire Damore is that was a primary point of Damore's memo and the
response was perhaps the best proof of the validity of that point possible. Hence my "inept
thinkers" comment.
@dc.sunsets
"No one
is insuring your foods are safe".
Actually, Western governments have for decades been going out of their way to recommend
actively unhealthy foods and drinks. In 1865, in 1910 and in 1939 it was clearly understood
everywhere that meat, fish, poultry, eggs, vegetables, and nuts, together with some dairy and
fruit, were the essential dietary items. Carbohydrates, sugars and grains in particular, were
clearly understood to be fattening and probably causative of many diseases.
Yet since the US government led the charge with its McGovern Committee Report in the
1970s, Western governments have been warning against meat, saturated fat, and other healthy
foods while urging consumption of more foods made from sugars and grains. We all require
about 20% of daily energy from protein, and the rest is a mixture of fats and carbs. Cut out
the fats, and that means 70-80% carbs, which leads inexorably to weight gain, metabolic
syndrome, and for many people eventual diabetes.
Did I mention that Senator McGovern represented a grain-producing state?
I would like, in
this context, to repeat my quotation of Alfred Korzybski's declaration.
"I have said what I have said. I have not said what I have not said".
Intelligent, let alone constructive, discourse will not be possible until everyone
understands that saying and takes care to make sure they understand what others mean.
@res
Good points.
Sorry about the references: I took the first ones to hand, and should have searched through
my own posts. Have done that now, and found this:
This will add some content, but I agree that I did not properly answer your question. I
think the question you raise would be considered a task solving strategy problem: "I have
tried shape, as I did on the easier items, but that doesn't work for this more difficult
problems, so I will try feature categorization". That is, you went from a modular solution to
a g-loaded general strategy when the module seemed to fail you.
My first point is that if we can find someone who solves even the difficulty problem easily,
we hire them because their module does the job for us!
Second, and more interestingly, most problem solving approaches fail when the problem is both
novel and very difficult. (I cannot say what makes a problem difficult, but it probably
relates to the number of items and the number of operations involved in solving it). At that
point in the act of creation, people try all manner of re-framings and re-descriptions, in
the hope that an analogy might open up a new line of attack. For example, I cannot assist
anyone with finding new elements. Despite that, out of ignorance I can make some suggestions.
For example, would anything be gained by taking the target close down to absolute zero? Would
it make it easier to hit something?
So, problem-solving strategies often become the real test. That also involves working out
what problems you don't have to solve. During the Manhattan project one group started
worrying that in focusing the charges they would get wear in the system which would throw out
their very crucial calculations about the critical mass required. After a while a team member
pointed out the obvious fact that the firing mechanism would only be used once.
You are right that a different approach is what we generally need for very difficult
problems.
Sorry that I cannot answer all your interesting questions.
@Tom Welsh
That is a
good quote. Perhaps I am being a bit dense, but I don't see the applicability to my comment
32. Especially given that I was not responding to you. Perhaps you could elaborate?
If anything the obligation to understand lies first with those criticizing Damore's
memo.
I don't mind
DS not existing. The question is IF they can go after DS, where does it end?
Look how Canadian 'hate speech laws' began with silencing 'Neo-Nazis' (fake ones, btw) and
then spread to going after those who don't use proper pronouns. Self-Righteous Addiction created all these Self-Righteous Junkies.
@Tom Welsh
What? 3
generations a century? That would mean people are having kids in their 30s . Which didn't
happen until this last century. Its more like 4-5, maybe even 6, generations a century.
I agree humans can't visualize large spans of time. Plus, a very large minority think the
world was created 2017 years ago, so that doesn't help.
I find the ferocity of some of the replies to Damore extreme. The vehemence of the
opposition is coruscating, and absolute. These issues should be matters of scholarly
debate, in which the findings matter, and different interpretations contend against each
other. Expressing different opinions should be a cue for debate, not outrage.
The whole argument "for equality" is fundamentally flawed – it is the wrong
goal. As individuals we humans want to be different – not equal. We want to bring
something different to the table of social interaction. People who are equal have nothing to
give to each other.
Our goal is to find a niche for ourselves – there is room for all different
capabilities in a rational society. There is only so much need for rocket scientists.
Proving that men and women are equal is fools work.
Smart people will endeavor to prove that all work is of value – and deserving of a
living compensation.
Peace -- Art
P.S. No matter our intellectual capabilities, for 99% of us – doing a good job of
raising our children – is the most lasting thing that we can ever do. They are our true
legacy – what we do on the job is all too soon lost in the evolution of business.
Cspan
had an excellent two hour or so interview of the guy on one of their weekend book shows a
decade or so ago.
Worth the search and a download of at least the audio.
@res
Thanks a lot for
a link to "interpretating cohen's d"! FInally I understood the concept
However, the problem with COhen's d is that it assumes – if I am not mistaken
– the equal standard deviations, while I think
it is quite likely that variation is
bigger in males, as usual with many other traits.
That would mean that using "d" would not
truly reflect the ratios of population over some cutoff, am i right?
@szopen
My
understanding is the official definition of Cohen's d uses the pooled SDs of the
subpopulations, but I am not sure how rigorously that subtlety is observed. For example, this
page gives them as alternate definitions:
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Cohen%27s_d
I am not sure how much of a difference that makes in practice. That might be a good thing
to investigate with some simulations.
"... I vividly recall staying up past 1 AM on election night 2016, watching CNN, as it became clear that Donald Trump had been elected the next President of the United States. News anchor Dana Bash was beside herself at the outcome, and at one point, in a fit of honesty, she exclaimed, "This means the end of identity politics." Well, yes, but a deep ideology like identity politics does not die a quiet and sober death. Last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, we saw identity politics playing out--violently. Whether it was the white protesters who formed part of the original crowd, or the black and "antifa" protesters who formed part of the counter-demonstration, we witnessed a clash of identities. ..."
"... Watching the tirades on MSNBC and other news outlets over the past 48 hours, I can't help but lament how twisted our public discourse has become. Clearly some of the counter-demonstrators were part of the very same "antifa" apparatus that got very different news coverage when they torched and trashed Seattle a number of years back in protest at a WTO meeting. This time around, they were defended by the icons of media, who denounced any thought that there was "moral equivalence" between their violence and the violence of the hardcore white racists who made up part of the protesters on UVA campus. ..."
"... There is a difference between legitimate civil rights struggles, which at times led to violence, and the reverse racism that I see and hear far too often out of the Black Lives Matter people. ..."
"... Soros Money Matters too. He is not a benign figure but a promoter of division and discord. I sat in a room when he complained bitterly, with racist overtones, during a meeting of the Drug Policy Foundation years ago, that there were not black voices promoting the legalization of crack cocaine, part of his libertine agenda. Is he a friend of the black community? I don't think so. ..."
"... Identity politics is a disease. It divides people and makes them into the sum of their self-defined attributes. Far from bringing about the end of identity politics, the Trump election has hardened the fault lines, whether on Capitol Hill or on the streets of American cities. ..."
I vividly recall staying up past 1 AM on election night 2016, watching CNN, as it became clear
that Donald Trump had been elected the next President of the United States. News anchor Dana Bash
was beside herself at the outcome, and at one point, in a fit of honesty, she exclaimed, "This means
the end of identity politics." Well, yes, but a deep ideology like identity politics does not die
a quiet and sober death. Last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, we saw identity politics playing
out--violently. Whether it was the white protesters who formed part of the original crowd, or the
black and "antifa" protesters who formed part of the counter-demonstration, we witnessed a clash
of identities.
President Trump was not wrong when he said that there were violent protesters on both sides of
the clash, and that many of the protesters were not there to show their racism, but to protest the
tearing down of a statue of a figure in American history who cannot be airbrushed out of our nation's
story. Is the next step to burn down the campus of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia,
because it was co-named after Robert E. Lee after the Civil War?
Watching the tirades on MSNBC and other news outlets over the past 48 hours, I can't help
but lament how twisted our public discourse has become. Clearly some of the counter-demonstrators
were part of the very same "antifa" apparatus that got very different news coverage when they torched
and trashed Seattle a number of years back in protest at a WTO meeting. This time around, they were
defended by the icons of media, who denounced any thought that there was "moral equivalence" between
their violence and the violence of the hardcore white racists who made up part of the protesters
on UVA campus.
There is a difference between legitimate civil rights struggles, which at times led to violence,
and the reverse racism that I see and hear far too often out of the Black Lives Matter people.
And there is the matter of George Soros spending millions of dollars to help launch that movement
after Ferguson. Soros Money Matters too. He is not a benign figure but a promoter of division
and discord. I sat in a room when he complained bitterly, with racist overtones, during a meeting
of the Drug Policy Foundation years ago, that there were not black voices promoting the legalization
of crack cocaine, part of his libertine agenda. Is he a friend of the black community? I don't think
so.
Identity politics is a disease. It divides people and makes them into the sum of their self-defined
attributes. Far from bringing about the end of identity politics, the Trump election has hardened
the fault lines, whether on Capitol Hill or on the streets of American cities.
Brennan Gilmore, Tom Perrielo, Michael Signer, and other friends of Podesta arranged the Charlottesville
violence. This isn't just a bunch of college-age leftists getting excited about Derrida. The Charlottesville
violence was the result of a conspiracy by well-connected insiders.
I quote the "Signs of the Times" website linked below:
The STOP KONY 2012 psyop was all about using the Joseph Kony boogieman to justify letting Barack
Obama send Special Operations troops into Africa to run around and squash any and all resistance
to our new imperialism campaign. It was a fraud. A show. And Brennan was part of it.
He was also part of the campaign of Tom Perriello's in Virginia to become the next governor.
End quote.
"Signs of the Times" dot net has a story on this that I will link in the third field below.
I fear that we are approaching a season of disintegration. September 11 at Texas A&M and September
16 on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia will be indicators. pl
On June 6, 1944, a bunch of "protesters" attacked Nazis and did so violently. Was there a moral
equivalency then too? You have to reach rather low to accept Nazis, et al, and try to deflect
blame for what they stand for. What the defenders of the Confederacy has managed to do is to thoroughly
discredit their cause by associating with these despicable groups. It is again a lost cause and
again, they only have themselves to blame.
We may be watching the end of the Trump era come nearer. By association, he is rapidly losing
the moral stature of the office that he holds. A lot of people near him are losing their reputations
forever.
Of course Sweden did not fight the Nazis at all. Was there a moral equivalence there or was
it just self-interest? In fact there were many Swedish volunteers in the 5th SS Panzer Division.
What is the factual basis for saying that the people who would not have the statues moved are
Nazi-associated or supporting? Do you think the UDC and SCV (of whom I am not qualified to be
a member) are Nazi-associated? pl
In the aftermath of competing protests in Charlottesville a wave of dismantling of
Confederate statues is on the rise. Overnight Baltimore
took
down
four Confederate statues. One of these honored Confederate soldiers and sailors,
another one Confederate women. Elsewhere statues were
toppled or defiled
.
The Charlottesville conflict itself was about the intent to dismantle a statue of General
Robert E. Lee, a commander of the Confederate forces during the American Civil War. The
activist part of the political right protested against the take down, the activist part of the
political left protested against those protests. According to a number of witnesses
quoted
in the LA Times sub-groups on both sides came prepared for and readily engaged in violence.
In 2003 a U.S. military tank pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein on Firdos Square in
Baghdad. Narrowly shot TV picture made it look as if a group of Iraqis were doing this. But
they were mere actors within
a U.S. propaganda show
.
Pulling down the statue demonstrated a lack of respect towards those who had fought under,
worked for or somewhat supported Saddam Hussein. It helped to incite the resistance against the
U.S. occupation.
The right-wing nutters who, under U.S. direction, forcefully toppled the legitimate
government of Ukraine
pulled
down
hundreds of the remaining Lenin statues in the country. Veterans who fought under the
Soviets in the second world war
took this
as
a sign of disrespect. Others saw this as an attack on their fond memories of better times and
protected them
. The forceful erasement of history further split the country:
"It's not like if you go east they want Lenin but if you go west they want to destroy him,"
Mr. Gobert said. "These differences don't only go through geography, they go through
generations, through social criteria and economic criteria, through the urban and the rural."
Statues standing in cities and places are much more than veneration of one person or group.
They are symbols, landmarks and fragments of personal memories:
"One guy said he didn't really care about Lenin, but the statue was at the center of the
village and it was the place he kissed his wife for the first time," Mr. Gobert said. "When
the statue went down it was part of his personal history that went away."
Robert Lee was a brutal man who fought for racism and slavery. But there are few historic
figures without fail. Did not George Washington "own" slaves? Did not Lyndon B. Johnson lie
about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and launched an unjust huge war against non-white people
under false pretense? At least some people will think of that when they see their statues.
Should those also be taken down?
As time passes the meaning of a monument changes. While it may have been erected with a
certain ideology or concept
in
mind
, the view on it will change over time:
[The Charlottesville statue] was unveiled by Lee's great-granddaughter at a ceremony in May
1924. As was the custom on these occasions it was accompanied by a parade and speeches. In
the dedication address, Lee was celebrated as a hero, who embodied "the moral greatness of
the Old South", and as a proponent of reconciliation between the two sections. The war itself
was remembered as a conflict between "interpretations of our Constitution" and between
"ideals of democracy."
The white racists who came to "protect" the statue in Charlottesville will hardly have done
so in the name of reconciliation. Nor will those who had come to violently oppose them. Lee was
a racist. Those who came to "defend" the statue were mostly "white supremacy" racists. I am all
for protesting against them.
But the issue here is bigger. We must not forget that statues have multiple meanings and
messages. Lee was also the man who
wrote
:
What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest
joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead
of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.
That Lee was a racist does not mean that his statue should be taken down. The park in
Charlottesville, in which the statue stands, was recently renamed from Lee Park into
Emancipation Park. It makes sense to keep the statue there to reflect on the contrast between
it and the new park name.
Old monuments and statues must not (only) be seen as glorifications within their time. They
are reminders of history. With a bit of education they can become valuable occasions of
reflection.
George Orwell wrote in his book 1984: "The most effective way to destroy people is to deny
and obliterate their own understanding of their history." People do not want to be destroyed.
They will fight against attempts to do so. Taking down monuments or statues without a very wide
consent will split a society. A large part of the U.S. people voted for Trump. One gets the
impression that the current wave of statue take downs is seen as well deserved "punishment" for
those who voted wrongly - i.e. not for Hillary Clinton. While many Trump voters will dislike
statues of Robert Lee, they will understand that dislike the campaign to take them down even
more.
That may be the intend of some people behind the current quarrel. The radicalization on
opposing sides may have a purpose. The Trump camp can use it to cover up its plans to further
disenfranchise they people. The fake Clintonian "resistance" needs these cultural disputes to
cover for its lack of political resistance to Trump's plans.
Anyone who wants to stoke the fires with this issue should be careful what they wish
for.
"That Lee was a racist does not mean that his statue should be taken down."
How about the fact that he was a traitor?
"George Orwell wrote in his book 1984: 'The most effective way to destroy people is to
deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.'"
The only reason statues of traitors like Lee exist is because the South likes to engage in
'Lost Cause' revisionism; to pretend these were noble people fighting for something other
than the right to own human beings as pets.
erasing history seems part of the goal.. i feel the usa has never really addressed
racism.. the issue hasn't gone away and remains a deep wound that has yet to heal.. events
like this probably don't help.
The statues of Lee and his ilk should come down because they are TRAITORS who deserve no
honor. Washington and Jefferson may have owned slaves but they were PATRIOTS. Its really that
simple.
I don't want to get derailed into the rights or wrongs of toppling statues. I wonder whose
brilliant idea it was to start this trend
right at this particular tinder box moment.
That said, the USA has never ever truly confronted either: 1) the systemic genocide of the
Native Americans earlier in our history; and b) what slavery really meant and was. NO
reconciliation has ever really been done about either of these barbarous acts. Rather, at
best/most, we're handed platitudes and lip service that purports that we've "moved on" from
said barbarity - well I guess WHITES (I'm one) have. But Native Americans - witness what
happened to them at Standing Rock recently - and minorities, especially African Americans,
are pretty much not permitted to move on. Witness the unending police murders of AA men
across the country, where, routinely, most of the cops get off scott-free.
To quote b:
The Trump camp can use it to cover up its plans to further disenfranchise they people. The
fake Clintonian "resistance" needs these cultural disputes to cover for its lack of
political resistance to Trump's plans.
While I dislike to descend into the liturgy of Both Siderism, it's completely true that
both Rs and Ds enjoy and use pitting the rubes in the 99% against one another because it
means that the rapine, plunder & pillaging by the Oligarchs and their pet poodles in
Congress & the White House can continue apace with alacrity. And: That's Exactly What's
Happening.
The Oligarchs could give a flying fig about Heather Heyer's murder, nor could they give a
stuff about US citizens cracking each other's skulls in a bit of the old ultra-violence.
Gives an opening for increasing the Police State and cracking down on our freedumbs and
liberties, etc.
I heard or read somewhere that Nancy Pelosi & Chuck Schumer are absolutely committed
to not impeaching Donald Trump because it means all the Ds have to do is Sweet Eff All and
just "represent" themselves as the Anti-Trump, while, yes, enjoying the "benefits" of the
programs/policies/legislation enacted by the Trump Admin. I have no link and certainly cannot
prove this assertion, but it sure seems likely. Just frickin' great.
Lee was not a racist; I'd say you are addressing your own overblown egos. The U.S. Civil War
was long in coming. During the 1830's during Andrew Jackson's presidency, and John Calhoun's
vice-presidency, at an annual state dinner, the custom of toasts was used to present
political views. Jackson toasted the Union of the states, saying "The Union, it must be
preserved." Calhoun's toast was next, "The Union, next to our liberty, most dear."
Calhoun was a proponent of the Doctrine of Nullification, wherein if a national law
inflicted harm on any state, the state could nullify the law, until such time as a
negotiation of a satisfactory outcome could come about. The absolute Unionists were outraged
by such an idea.
My memory tells me that the invention of the cotton gin made cotton a good crop, but that you
needed the slaves. Slaves represented the major money invested in this operation. Free the
slaves and make slave holders poor. Rich people didn't like that idea. I think maybe the
cotton was made into cloth in the factories up north. Just saying.
How would 'addressing the problem' actually work? Should all native Americans and people of
colour go to Washington to be presented with $1 million each by grovelling white men?
But, the memorials to GW, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison,
et al
, does
not honor them for owning slaves. Memorials of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis,
et
al
, is because they took up arms against a legitimate government simply to support of a
vile system.
@6
The manufacturing states put export duties on the agricultural states, and tariffs on British
imported cloth. The English mills were undercutting the U.S. mills prices for a number of
reasons, not the least of which was they were more experienced in the industry.
The difference between a statue of Lee vs. a statue of Washington, Jefferson, LBJ, etc., is
that Washington, Jefferson, and LBJ did some good things to earn our respect even though they
did a lot of bad things, too. The Confederacy did no good things. It would be like erecting a
statue to honor Hitler's SS.
If there were statues honoring the SS, would anyone be surprised if Jews objected? Why
then does anyone fail to understand why blacks object to Confederate symbols?
I would, however, support statues that depict a Confederate surrendering. Perhaps the
statue of Lee on a horse could be replaced with a statue of Lee surrendering to Grant?
I am not a fan of the "counter-protests." Martin Luther King never "counter-protested" a
KKK rally. A counter-protest is a good way to start a fight, but a poor way to win hearts and
minds. It bothers me when the 99% fight among themselves. Our real enemy is the 1%.
George Washington "the father of our country" was a slave owner, a rapist and a murderer.
What do we expect from his descendants?
should we remove his face of the dollar bill and destroy his statues?
The civil war was due to economic reasons, free labor is good business.
Now cheap Mexican-labor ( the new type of slavery) is good business to the other side.
when will the new civil war in the US start?
@b
Many years ago, within the leadership of my student organization, I initiated to rename the
University I was attending, which was named after a communist ideological former state acting
figure, with very bloody hands, co-responsible for the death of tenths of thousands and
thousands of people. Today I still think, that educational and cultural institutions (and
many more) should be named either neutral, or by persons with cultural background and with
impeccable moral history, no many to be found. On the other side, I opposed the removal of
the very statue of the same person at a nearby public plaza - and there it stands today - as
a rather painful reminder of the past bloody history of my country, that went through a
conflict, that today seems so bizarre. Wherever I go, I look into black abyss, knowing, that
the very culture I belong to (the so called Christian Liberal Free Western World) has
inflicted so many horrors and crimes against other nations and ethnic groups, its even
difficult to count. Karlheinz Deschner wrote 10 books, titled "The Criminal History of
Christianity (Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums - on YT you can find videos him reading
from it). Yes, this is the very civilization, we Westerners originate from. It was deadly for
centuries - and its about time to change this. And keeping the memory of our so bloody
history, will help us to find the right and hopefully more peaceful solutions in the future.
Don`t tear down monuments or change street names, but give them the so often shameful
meaning, they had in history.
Then southern states have no business being part of United States of America since their
history and customs are not honored. That is good overall I think. Best for the world.
Southern states are very unlikely to attack any other sovereign state thousands of miles
away, but all united as unitary state, we can see how persistent in their aggression on the
rest of the world they are. 222 years out of its 239 years US has been aggressor:
https://www.infowars.com/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-the-time-222-out-of-239-years-since-1776/
Time to break US lust for attacking, invading and raiding other countries.
what little of this history i know - which is to say very little - kgw reflects what i have
read.. the problem is way deeper.. if you want to address racism, you are going to have to
pull down most of the statues in the usa today of historical figures..
if - that is why way you think it will matter, lol.. forgot to add that.. otherwise, forget
pulling down statues and see if you can address the real issue - like @4 rukidding and some
others here are addressing..
A little false equivalency anyone? I'm sure Adolph Hitler had some reasonable remarks at some
point in his life, so, I guess we should tolerate a few statues of him also? States rights as
the cause for the U$A's civil war? baloney, it was about the murder and enslavement of
millions of humans.
Bob Dylan's "Only a Pawn in Their Game" still
spells out
unsurpassed the divide and
rule strategy, to my mind. Powers that be are rubbing their hands with satisfaction at this
point, one would think.
I like your observation, b, that statues don't necessarily represent what they did when
they were erected. It's an important point. It meant something at the time, but now it's a
part of today's heritage, and has often taken on some of your own meaning. To destroy your
own heritage is a self-limiting thing, and Orwell's point is well taken. Perhaps people
without history have nowhere in the present to stand.
Have to add, slavery wasn't the cause for the war. It was centralization, rights of the
states. Yankees wanted strong central government with wide array of power, Southerners
didn't. Yankees were supported by London banking families and their banking allies or agents
in the US, Southerners were on their own. I personally think Southerners were much better
soldiers, more honorable and courageous, but we lacked industrial capacity and financial
funds. I could be biased having Southern blood, but my opinion anyway.
therevolutionwas@10 - Have to agree. The events leading up to the US Civil War and the war
itself were for reasons far more numerous and complex then slavery. Emancipation was a
fortunate and desirable outcome and slavery was an issue, but saying the entire war was about
ending slavery is the same as saying WW II was mostly about stopping Nazis from killing jews.
Dumbing down history serves nobody.
Still wondering how specifically the 'real issue' can be addressed. I don't think any amount
of money will compensate plains Indians .actually some are quite well off due to casinos. But
the days of buffalo hunting are gone and white people will not be going back where they came
from. As for blacks in urban ghettos you could build them nice houses in the suburbs but I
doubt if that will fix the drugs/gangs problem.
"That Lee was a racist does not mean that his statue should be taken down."
If the sole criteria for taking down any statues was that a man was a 'racist', meaning
that he hated people of color/hated black people, can we assume then that all those who owned
slaves were also racist?
Then all the statues in the whole country of Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Monroe and
perhaps all the Founding Daddies who owned slaves, should be removed. I am playing devil's
advocate here.
Fashions come and go.... and so the vices of yesterday are virtues today; and the virtues
of yesterday are vices today.
Bernard is correct at the end: "The fake Clintonian "resistance" needs these cultural
disputes to cover for its lack of political resistance to Trump's plans." The Demos have
nothing, so they tend to fall back on their identity politics.
....In total, twelve presidents owned slaves at some point in their lives, eight of whom
owned slaves while serving as president. George Washington was the first president to own
slaves, including while he was president. Zachary Taylor was the last president to own slaves
during his presidency, and Ulysses S. Grant was the last president to have owned a slave at
some point in his life.
Pitting people against people by inciting and validating fringe groups is a tried and true
social manipulation ploy.....and it seems to be working as intended.
Focus is on this conflict gets folks riled up and myopic about who the real enemies of
society really are.....and then that riled up energy is transferred to bigger conflicts like
war between nations.....with gobs of "our side is more righteous" propaganda
Humanity has been played like this for centuries now and our extinction would probably be
a kinder future for the Cosmos since we don't seem to be evolving beyond power/control based
governance.
And yes, as Dan Lynch wrote just above: "It bothers me when the 99% fight among
themselves. Our real enemy is the 1%"
Robert E. Lee a racist? No, he was a man of his time. B, you blew it with this one. You have
confused what you don't know with what you think you know.
Now, if Lee was a racist, what about this guy?
From Lincoln's Speech, Sept. 18, 1858.
"While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I
was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people.
While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the
question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in
regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about
in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races -- that I am not
nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM
HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that
there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever
forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch
as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior
and inferior, and I as much as any of her man am in favor of having the superior position
assigned to the white race."
All states who joined the confederation cited the "need" and "right" to uphold slavery in
their individual declarations. To say that the civil war was not about this point is strongly
misleading. Like all wars there were several named and unnamed reasons. Slavery was the most
cited point.
The argument of rather unlimited "state rights" is simply the demand of a minority to
argue for the right to ignore majority decisions. With universal state rights a union can
never be a union. There is no point to it. What is needed (and was done) is to segregate
certain fields wherein the union decides from other policy fields that fall solely within the
rights of member states. The conflict over which fields should belong where hardly ever
ends.
P. S.--If it were up to me, I'd tear down monuments to most of the U$A's
presidents for perpetuating and abetting the rise of an empire who has enslaved and murdered
millions around the globe, simply for profits for the few. Economic slavery has replaced the
iron shackles, but the murder is still murder...
P. S.--If it were up to me, I'd tear down monuments to most of the U$A's presidents for
perpetuating and abetting the rise of an empire who has enslaved and murdered millions around
the globe, simply for profits for the few. Economic slavery has replaced the iron shackles,
but the murder is still murder...
Posted by: ben | Aug 16, 2017 2:45:29 PM |
28
/div
The Northern manufacturers were exploiting the South and wanted to continue doing so. They
didn't much care that the raw materials came from slave labor.
Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to encourage slave rebellion
(meaning
fewer white Southern men available for military service)
and to punish the South.
Yet, while slavery ended when the North won, we all know how that turned out. For nearly
100 years
(and some might say, even today)
, many black people were still virtual
slaves due to discrimination and poor education.
B@27: you're missing a couple of very basic points.
First, not all states that seceded issued declarations. Virginia, for example, of which
the 'racist' Robert E. Leehailed, only seceded after Lincoln made his move on fort sumter. In
fact, Virginia had voted against secession just prior but, as with 3 other southern states,
seceded when Lincoln called for them to supply troops for his war.
Speaking of declarations of causes, have a look at the cherokee declaration. Yes, united
indian tribes fought for the confederacy.
Finally, the causes for secession are not the causes for war. Secession is what the
southerners did. War is what Lincoln did. One should not have automatically led to the
other.
Well, just reading the comments here it is obvious that there are several versions of history
taught at different times in the last century. If not, then all of us would "know" the real
reason for the CW - there would be no need for discussion. What is also obvious is that this
delving back into a muddied history, the defacing of formerly meaningful objects, the
thrusting of certain "rights" into the face of anyone even questioning them - all of it is
working. It is working extremely well in distracting us from things like the numerous
economic bubbles, the deep state scratching at war or chaos everywhere, politicians who are
at best prevaricating prostitutes and at worst thieves enriching themselves at our expense as
we struggle to maintain in the face of their idiocy.
It simply doesn't MATTER what started the Civil War - it ought to be enough to look at the
death toll on BOTH sides and know we don't need to go there again.
Who stands to gain from this? Because it surely isn't the historically ignorant antifa
bunch, who are against everything that includes a moral boundary. It isn't the alt-right, who
get nothing but egg on their face and decimation of position by virtue of many being "white".
CUI BONO?
The single answer is threefold: media, the government and the military - who continue to
refuse to address any of our problems - and feed us a diet of revolting pablum and
double-speak.
Honestly, congress passed a law legalizing propaganda - did anyone notice? Did anyone
factor in that they allowed themselves freedom to lie to anyone and everyone? It wasn't done
for show - it was done to deny future accountability.
Don't let this site get bogged down in history that is being constantly rewritten on
Wikipedia. Don't buy into the left/right division process. Don't let your self identify with
either group, as they are being led by provocateurs.
The lies we know of regarding Iraq, Syria, Libya - aren't they enough to force people to
disbelieve our media completely? The HUGE lies in our media about what is going on in
Venezuela should be quite enough (bastante suficiente) to make most people simply disbelieve.
But they cannot because they are only allowed to see and hear what our government approves -
and for our government, lying is quite legal now.
Let the emotions go - they are pushed via media to force you to think in white or black,
right or left, old vs young - any way that is divisive. Getting beaten for a statue would
likely make the guy who posed for it laugh his butt off most likely...
Speaking of Lincoln's quotes, here is a good one to dispel the myth about slavery being the
cause of war.
Pres. Abraham Lincoln: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the
institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do
so, and I have no inclination to do so."
I the civil war was for the most part connected with the federal reserve central bank
charter right which unionist Yankees frightful about possible restraints of bankers rights
were keen to give London banking families unrestricted rights to do whatever they please in
the US. Other reasons exclusively included expanding federal government powers. Adding
personal income tax would be unimaginable prior to CW. Creation of all those fed gov agencies
too. It was all made possible by London bankers' servants Yankees.
The civil war in the US was not really started because of slavery. Robert E. Lee did not
join the south and fight the north in order to preserve slavery, in his mind it was state's
rights. Lincoln did not start the civil war to free the slaves.
You're right. The Emancipation Act was an afterthought really because Europe had turned
against the idea of slavery before the Civil War broke out, in fact was repelled by it, and
Lincoln knew that it would hurt commerce.
The southern states felt they had a right to secede, using the tenth amendment as the legal
basis. It states simply " The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
people.".
Furthermore, the union of states was referred to many times by the founders as a compact.
Under the theory of compacts, when one party doesn't honor said compact, it is rendered
null.
Slavery, regardless of how we may feel today, was a legal and federally protected
institution. With the rise of the republican party, a campaign of agitation towards the south
and slavery had begun. It is this agitation towards a legal institution that rankled
southerners.
The south saw this coming well before the election of Lincoln. William seward, the
favorite to win the election, gave a speech in l858 called "the irrepressible conflict". The
south well knew of this and saw the writing on the wall if a republican was elected
president.
When reading the declarations of causes, this background should be kept in mind if one
wants to understand the southern position. Or, one can just count how many times the word
'slavery' appears like a word cloud.
Probably the best articulated statement on the southern position was south Carolina's
"address to the slaveholding states".
I'm afraid if you go back in time, no US president can be saved from a well-deserved statue
toppling. Including Abraham Lincoln, the hypocrite who DID NOT, and I repeat, DID NOT abolish
slavery. The U.S "elite" has always been rotten through and through, so good luck with those
statues.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/the-clintons-had-slaves
You used Lincoln's inaugural address to show that the war was not over slavery. It's plain
enough coming from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
Lincoln, in that same inaugural address, stated what the war would be fought over ......
and it was revenue.
Here's the quote:
The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places
belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be
necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among
the people anywhere.
As a rare book dealer and history buff with thirty-odd years of experience reading and
studying original civil war era periodicals and documents, a fact stands out for me about
these now-controversial statues. None is from the civil war period. Many, like the Lee statue
in this article, date to the 1920's, which was the era of the second Ku Klux Klan. The
infamous movie "Birth of a Nation" inspired the nationwide revival of that faded terrorist
group. The year that statue was dedicated a hundred thousand Klansmen paraded in full regalia
in the streets of Washington.
The children and grandchildren of the men who had taken up arms against the United States
had by then completed a very flattering myth about 1861 - 1865. Consider too that
romanticized lost cause mythology was integral to the regional spirit long before the
rebellion. The Scots Irish who settled the American south carried with them the long memory
their forebears' defeats at the Boyne and Culloden, at the hands of the English – the
very ancestors of the hated Yankees living to the north of their new homeland.
Note also that many more CSA statues and memorials were built in the 1960s, as symbols of
defiance of the civil rights movement of that era. The War for the Union was fought at its
heart because the elite of the old south refused to accept the result of a fair and free
democratic election, but for those who came after, white supremacy became the comforting myth
that rationalized their ancestors' incredibly foolish treason.
"Robert Lee was a brutal man who fought for racism and slavery."
Would this have been written in his time? Would it be written today in other countries
(Africa included) where slavery (aka human trafficking) is big business today?
I'm disappointed that Moon of Alabama, usually so astute in its presentations, would print
this article.
That the many statutes of America's founding fathers should be re-evaluated is actually a
great idea. Many of these people were simply oligarchs who wanted to be the top of the
pyramid instead of the British. Many owned slaves and perpetuated slavery. Others, like
Andrew Jackson were legitimate psychopaths. Pretty much all of them cheered the genocide of
Native Americans. So maybe we *should* have different heros.
Using the logic b spells out above, one could argue that statues of Nazis should be
allowed too, after all they did come up with the Autobahn (modern highways), jet engines, and
viable rockets, all technology used all over the world. Some patriotic, well meaning Germans
fought in the Wehrmacht, don't they deserve statues, too? What about the Banderists and
Forest Brothers? The Imperial Japanese? Don't those well-meaning fascists deserve to
celebrate their heritage?
But simply saying that idea out loud is enough to realize what a crock that notion is.
Nazis and fascists don't deserve statues, neither do confederates. Neither do most Americans,
for that matter.
Trying to make some moral equivalence between NeoNazis and the leftists who oppose them is
about as silly as it gets. I don't support violence against these idiots, and they have the
same rights as anyone else in expressing their opinion. But to paint legit NeoNazis and the
leftists opposing them (admittedly in a very juvenile manner) in the same brush ("Both sides
came prepared for violence") is utter hogwash. We don't give Nazis a pass in Ukraine, don't
give them a pass in Palestine, and we sure as hell don't give them a pass in the US. It
doesn't matter what hypocritical liberal snowflake is on the other side of the barricade, the
Nazi is still a f*****g Nazi.
"Robert Lee was a brutal man who fought for racism and slavery."
b, you have just displayed your ignorance of the character of Robert E. Lee, why he
fought, and what he fought for. To give you the short n sweet of it, General Lee was a
Christian gentleman respected by those in the North as well as the South. He fought the
Federal leviathan as it had chosen to make war on what he considered to be his home and
country--the State of Virginia. The issue at hand was not racism and slavery but Federal
tyranny. Lincoln himself said he had no quarrel with slavery and as long as the South paid
the Federal leviathan its taxes, the South was free to go. Make a visit to Paul Craig Roberts
site for his latest essay which explains the world of the 1860s American scene much more
eloquently than I can ...
b is completely wrong in thread. The USA has been a highly racist power system historically
where killing non-Whites has been a major historical policy. Lee is not merely a racist, he
epitomizes this policy and is a symbol of it. Attacking racist symbols is essential to
destroying racism.
Historicus@38: that 'fair and free democratic election' was replete with Lincoln supporters
printing counterfeit tickets to the convention in order to shut out seward supporters.
The gambit worked and the rest, as they say, is history.
james @2--You are 1000000000% correct. And given the current state-of-affairs, will
continue to fester for another century if not more thanks to historical ignorance and elite
Machiavellian maneuvering.
Southern Extremist self-proclaimed Fire Eaters were the ones that started the war as they
took the bait Lincoln cunningly offered them. If they'd been kept away from the coastal
artillery at Charlestown, the lanyard they pulled may have remained still and war avoided for
the moment. The advent of the US Civil War can be blamed totally on the Constitution and
those who wrote it, although they had no clue as to the fuse they lit.
Chattel Slavery was introduced in the Western Hemisphere because the enslaved First
Peoples died off and the sugar plantations needed laborers. Rice, tobacco, indigo, "Naval
Stores," and other related cash crops were the next. Cotton only became part of the mix when
the cotton gin made greatly lessened the expense of its processing. But, cotton wore out the
thin Southern soils, so it cotton plantations slowly marched West thus making Mexican lands
attractive for conquest. But slaves were used for so much more--particularly the draining of
swamps and construction of port works. The capital base for modern capitalism was made
possible by slavery--a sentence you will NOT read in any history textbook. There are a great
many books written on the subject; I suggest starting with Marcus Rediker's
The Slave
Ship: A Human History
, followed by Eric Williams's classic
Capitalism and Slavery
, Edward Baptist's
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American
Capitalism
, and John Clarke's
Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery
and the Rise of European Capitalism
.
There are even more books published about the war itself. But as many have pointed out,
it's learning about the reasons for the war that's most important. Vice President Henry
Wilson was the first to write a very detailed 3 volume history of those reasons,
Rise and
Fall of the Slave Power in America
beginning in 1872, and they are rare books indeed;
fortunately, they've been digitized and can be found here,
https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Wilson%2C+Henry%2C+1812-1875%22
Perhaps the most complete is Allan Nevins 8 volume
Ordeal of the Union
, although for
me it begins too late in 1847,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordeal_of_the_Union
Finally, no study of the period's complete without examining the unraveling and utter
dysfunction of the political process that occurred between 1856 and 1860 that allowed Lincoln
to win the presidency, Roy Nichols's
The Disruption of American Democracy
illustrates
that best.
The US Civil War can't be boiled down to having just one cause; it's causes were multiple,
although slavery--being an economic and social system--resides at its core. As an historian,
I can't really justify the removal of statues and other items of historical relevance,
although displaying the Confederate Flag on public buildings I see as wrong; better to
display the Spirit of '76 flag if stars and stripes are to be displayed. (I wonder what will
become of the UK's Union Jack if Scotland votes to leave the UK.) Personal display of the
Stars and Bars for me amounts to a political statement which people within the Outlaw US
Empire still have the right to express despite the animus it directs at myself and other
non-Anglo ethnicities. (I'm Germanic Visigoth with Spanish surname--people are surprised at
my color when they hear my name.)
The current deep dysfunction in the Outlaw US Empire's domestic politics mirrors that of
the latter 1850s somewhat but the reasons are entirely different yet solvable--IF--the
populous can gain a high degree of solidarity.
There's also the school of thought that holds that Honest Abe freed the slaves in order that
northern industrialists could acquire replacements for workers lost in the war.
@37
Aye Woogs. All about expanding fed gov powers, most of which was focused on permanent central
banking charter. Many forget that central banking charter had been in place before CW in the
US and that great statesman Andrew Jackson repelled it. The first central banking charter
caused terrible economic suffering, which is why it was repelled. People had more sense then.
Not so much now.
"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United
States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the
funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided
the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I
take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families.
That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin
fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I
have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal I will rout you out!"
~Andrew Jackson
It saddens me that so many buy into the South fought for slavery. That story line was used in
the same manner that Weapons of Mass Destruction was used to war with Iraq. The difference is
the internet was able to get the truth out. Doesn't do much good to argue as most believe the
Confederate slavery propaganda. The US is done as a nation. A thousand different groups that
hate each other preaching no hate. Yes it will limp along for a while but it's done for.
many thanks for the history, and the books. I read Murray's essay and consider it a good
take....
".... As an historian, I can't really justify the removal of statues and other items of
historical relevance, although displaying the Confederate Flag on public buildings I see as
wrong..."
I have to agree.
& there is at least one sane (african american) person in LA, as per below article
"....Los Angeles resident Monique Edwards says historical monuments, like the Confederate
statue removed from Hollywood Forever Cemetery, need to be preserved and used as teachable
moments...."
Yankees wanted strong central government with wide array of power, Southerners didn't.
Yankees were supported by London banking families and their banking allies or agents in the
US, Southerners were on their own.
I recall that it was the slavers that wanted the central government to enforce the
Fugitive Slave Act
even in states that outlawed slavery; it was the slavers that
insisted that slavery be legal in the new territories, regardless of the wishes of the
settlers.
Also, the London industrial and banking interest strongly supported the breakaway slavers
because:
(1) It was the slave produced cotton that fueled the textile industry in England.
(2) Imported British ¨prestige¨ items found a ready market with the nouveau riche
planters grown fat on stolen labor.
(3) A Balkanized NA would be more subject to pressure from the ¨Mother Country.¨
(4) Lincoln refused to borrow from the bankers and printed ¨greenbacks¨ to finance
the war; this infuriated the bankers.
Neo-Confederate revisionism creates mythical history, in a large part, by attempting to
deify vile human beings.
Ben@26: Lincoln stated that he would only use force to collect imposts and duties.
The first battle of the war (actually more a skirmish) was the battle of Phillipi in
western Virginia in early June, l86l.
To the best of my knowledge, there were no customs houses in western Virginia as it was
not a port of entry. This was simply an invasion by the union army at Lincoln's command that
revealed his true colors. The war was Lincoln's war, plain and simple.
@51
Joey, I would like yo offer you fairy dust to buy. Interested? Luckily we should part our
ways soon. Should have happened ages ago if you ask me. Your history is not our own. You were
aggressors fighting for foreign entity. Time for us to part I think. have your own history
and say whatever you want there. We will have ours.
In my view, b is comparing a modern sensibility on race relations with that of a mid 19th
century confederate leader and so with this bad thesis it is quite easy to dismiss this post
entirely. Was the north that much more enlightened on the treatent of blacks? I think not.
Was the emancipation proclamation largely a political gesture to incite ire and violence not
only among southerners but also slaves living in these states towards their owners?
Meanwhile, the effect of such a proclamation was exempt on states where said effect would not
"pinch" the south. The north, if anything, was even more racist using blacks as a means
towards the end to consolidate power even more centrally.
It honestly reads like most neutral apologetic drivel out of the "other" msm which is on
the ropes right now from an all-out wholly political assault. If you truly wanted to educate
people on their history you would stand up for fair and honest discourse. Make no mistake,
this is all about obscuration and historical-revisionism. Globalists gotta eat.
"Slavery as an institution, is a moral &political evil in any Country... I think it
however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race... The blacks are immeasurably
better off." Robert E. Lee
Sounds like a man with opinions, but without the burning fire to see that evil enshrined
in a state-policy towards blacks. Basically, one condemns him for sharing a popular view of
the day. CALL THE THOUGHT POLICE!
From a British point of view, Washington and Jefferson were traitors as well.
As for Lee, he was racist, but doesn't seem to have been more racist than the average Yankee.
No more racist than Sherman or Lincoln, and less racist than many of the Confederate top
guys, for instance.
Then, there's the nutjob idea that forcefully taking down other statues in the South will
make these guys "win". At least, the Lee statue had a more or less legal and democratic
process going on, which is the only way to go if you don't want to look like a Taliban.
Really, did these idiots not understand that bringing down Confederate statues without due
process will massively piss off most of the locals? Do they really want the local hardliners
to come armed and ready to use their guns, one of these days? Is this the plan all along, to
spark another civil war for asshat reasons?
(Like B, toppling Saddam and communist statues was the very first thing I thought of. As
if these poor fools had just been freed from a terrible dictatorship, instead of nothing
having changed or been won at all in the last months)
I agree with Woogs (25). How stoopid are we ? History has been re-written and manipulated
going back a long way. Most of the readers here know that our "masters" , and their versions
of history are not accurate. Yet here we are arguing and such ... " he was good...NO He was
bad...." acting as if we know truth from fiction. Back then, as now, it was all planned.
Divide and conquer. Slavery was the "excuse" for war. The Power Elite" were based in Europe
at that time and saw America as a real threat to their global rule. It was becoming too
strong and so needed to be divided. Thus the people of those times were played....just as we
are today. Manipulated into war. Of course America despite the Civil War , continued to grow
and prosper so the elite devised another plan. Plan "B" has worked better than they could
have ever imagined. They have infected the "soul" of America and the infection is spreading
rapidly.Everyone , please re-read oilman2 comments (31)
Thanks B, precisely my thinking. It has a smell of vendetta. And I believe this sort of old
testament thinking is very common in the u.s. of A. What's currently happening will further
alienate both sides and lead to even more urgent need to externalize an internal problem via
more wars.
In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated that there were over 1,500 "symbols of
the Confederacy in public spaces" in the United States. The majority of them are located,
as one might expect, in the 11 states that seceded from the union, but as Vice aptly points
out, some can be found in Union states (New York, for example has three, Pennsylvania,
four) and at least 22 of them are located in states that didn't even exist during the Civil
War.
How can that be possible? Because largely, Confederate monuments were built during two
key periods of American history: the beginnings of Jim Crow in the 1920s and the civil
rights movement in the early 1950s and 1960s.
To be sure, some sprung up in the years following the Confederacy's defeat (the concept
of a Confederate memorial day dates back to back to 1866 and was still officially observed
by the governments of Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, as of the publication of
the Southern Poverty Law Center's report), and some continue to be built!USA Today notes
that 35 Confederate monuments have been erected in North Carolina since 2000.
But when these statues!be they historical place markers, or myth-building icons of Lee
or Stonewall Jackson!were built seems to suggest these monuments have very little to do
with paying tribute to the Civil War dead and everything to do with erecting monuments to
black disenfranchisement, segregation, and 20th-century racial tension.
I don't know if b. realizes how many German monuments got destroyed because people did not
wish to recall this particular part of history, the bomb raids of the allies helped, of
course, but there are cemeteries of Marx, Engels and Lenin statues, and
only revisionists recall what was destroyed
after WWII
.
Young people need some space to breath. They don't need monuments of war heros.
b wrote "Statues standing in cities and places are much more than veneration of one person or
group. They are symbols, landmarks and fragments of personal memories..."
Symbols indeed, traits in cultural landscapes. This piece may add another dimension to the
importance of cultural landscape in the context of this conversation:
"To this day, the question remains: why would the Southerners remember and celebrate a losing
team, and how come the non-Southerners care about it so passionately? A convenient answer
revolves around the issue of slavery; i.e., a commemoration of the era of slavery for the
former, and, for the latter, the feeling that the landscape reminders of that era should be
entirely erased."
and
"In the past two decades, the American(s)' intervention has brought down the statues of
Hussein, Gaddafi, Davis, and Lee respectively. Internationally, the work seems to be
completed. Domestically, the next stage will be removing the names of highways, libraries,
parks, and schools of the men who have not done an illegal act. Eventually, all such traits
in the cultural landscape of Virginia may steadily disappear, because they are symbols of
Confederacy."
http://www.zokpavlovic.com/conflict/the-war-between-the-states-of-mind-in-virginia-and-elsewhere/
It warms my heart that you are not a racist. But who really gives a fuck? And what makes you
think not favoring your own kind like every other racial and ethnic group does makes you a
better than those of your own racial group?? Something is wrong with you.
You are certainly entitled to your attitudes, hatreds, memories, affinities and such. You
are not entitled to your own history. History is what happened. Quit lying about it!
Lee is the past. Obama is the present. The 'Nobel Peace Prize' winner ran more concurrent
wars than any other president. He inaugurated the state execution of US citizens by drone
based on secret evidence presented in secret courts. He was in charge when ISIS was created
by the US Maw machine. What about removing his Nobel Peace Prize?
A long time ago Christians destroyed the old god's statues because they were pagan and didn't
comply with their religion (or is it ideology?). Muslims followed and did the same on what
was left. They even do that now when ISIS blows up ancient monuments.
What is next? Burning books? Lets burn the library of Alexandria once again...
Joeymac 69:
I didn't mean the Charlottesville mess was done without due process. I refer to the cases
that have happened these last few days - a trend that won't stop overnight.
Extremists from both sides aren't making friends on the other ones, and obviously are only
making matters worse.
Somebody 63:
"It is futile to discuss what the confederacy was then, when white supremacy groups consider
them their home today."
That's the whole fucking problem. By this logic, nobody should listen to Wagner or read
Nietzsche anymore. Screw that. Assholes and criminals from now should be judged according to
current values, laws and opinions, based on their very own crimes. People, groups, states,
religions from the past should be judged according to their very own actions as well, and not
based on what some idiot would fantasize they were 1.500 years later.
Looks like the Lee apologetics and claims that the war was about state's rights (go read the
CSA constitution, it tramples the rights of its own member states to *not* be slave holding)
or tariffs are alive and well in these comments. That's what these statues represent: the
utter perversion of the historical record. And as pointed out @38, none of these statues are
from anywhere near the Civil War or Reconstruction era.
I think anyone and everyone who instigates a successful campaign to destroy a memorial which
glorifies war should be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace & Sanity and be memorialised in
bronze, nearby, as a permanent reminder that war WAS a racket, until Reason prevailed.
No offense intended.
Arch-propagandist Rove said "[Those] in what we call the reality-based community, [who]
believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not
the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our
own reality [e.g Russia hacked the election]. And while you're studying that
reality!judiciously, as you will!we'll act again, creating other new realities [e.g. Neo-Nazi
White Supremacism], which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're
history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
There is a coup underway to get rid of Trump [who's 'unpardonable crime' seems to be that
he isn't going along with the War Party]. The War Party will try anything, anything, if there
is a hope that it will work to get rid of him. When Trump launched the cruise missiles
against Syria, there was a moment's silence, totally spooky given all the bs that was flying
... Would he start a war with Russia? Would Trump go all the way with that, as Clinton
probably would have done? When the attack fizzled out, the chorus resumed their attacks as
though nothing had happened.
Their tactical attacks change as they are revealed to be fakes. The current attack,
probably using War Party provacateurs operating on both sides, is the next tactical phase -
out with 'Russian Hacking the Election', in with 'Trump White Supremacist Nazi'. If there is
the standard CIA regime change plan behind this (as outlined by John Perkins and seen in
Ukraine, Libya, Syria)] and the relatively passive actions don't work, they will ultimately
resort to hard violence. At that stage, they resort to using snipers to kill people on both
sides.
The anti-fas' are supposedly liberal, anti-gun, but there already have been stories of
them training with weapons, even working with the Kurds in Syria so the ground is laid for
their use of weapons. There are those on the Trump side who would relish the excuse for gun
violence irrespective on consequence so the whole thing could spiral out of control very
rapidly and very dangerously.
Disclosure - I do not support Trump [or any US politico for that matter]. The whole US
political system is totally corrupt and morally bankrupt. Those that rise [or more accurately
those that are allowed to rise] to the top reflect that corruption and bankruptcy. This could
get very very messy.
There's nothing wrong with being racist. Racism is simply preference for one's extended
family. 'b' calls the admittedly rather goony lot at C'ville 'white supremacists'. But do
they want to enslave blacks or rule over non-whites? No. In fact most of the alt-right lament
the slave trade and all its ills, including mixing two groups who, as Lincoln pointed out,
had no future together. What the left wants to do is reduce Confederate American heritage and
culture down to the slavery issue, despite the fact only a few Southerners owned slaves.
Now, within ethnic European countries, should whites be supreme? You're goddamn right they
should. Just as the Japanese should practice 'yellow supremacy', and so on and so forth. Most
of you lot here, being liberals, will be in favour of no fault divorce. You understand there
can be irreconcilable differences which in way suggest either person is objectively bad. The
same applies to disparate ethnicities. If white Slovaks and Czechs can't get one, why would
white and non-white groups?
You lefties need to have a serious moral dialogue over your rejection of
ethno-nationalism! Time to get on the right side of history! Have you noticed the alt-right,
despite being comprised of 'hateful bigots', is favourably disposed toward Iran, Syria, and
Russia? That's because we consistently apply principles which can protect our racially,
culturally, religiously, and ethnically diverse planet, and mitigate conflict. But the woke
woke left (not a typo) meanwhile has to 'resist' imperialism by constantly vilifying America.
ITS NOT THAT I'M IN FAVOUR OF ASSAD OR PUTIN, ITS JUST THAT AMERICA IS SO NAUGHTY! OH, HOW
BASE ARE OUR MOTIVES. OH, WHAT A POX WE ARE. Weak tea. You have no theoretical arguments
against liberal interventionism or neoconservativism.
Newsflash folks. Hillary Clinton doesn't fundamentally differ from you in principle. She
merely differs on what methods should be employed to achieve Kojeve's universal homogeneous
state. Most of you just want to replace global capitalism with global socialism. Seen how
occupy wall street turned out? Didn't make a dent. See how your precious POCs voted for the
neoliberal war monger? Diversity increases the power of capital. The only force which can
beat globalization is primordial tribalism.
Lee actually thought the Civil War an awful tragedy. He was asked to choose between his
state and his country. That's not much different from being asked to choose between your
family and your clan.
Lee was a racist.
That might be true, depending on one's definition of a racist. But then, why should Abraham
Lincoln get a pass? It's well known that he did not start the Civil War to end slavery --
that idea only occurred to him halfway through the conflict. But there's also the fact that,
while he was never a great fan of slavery, he apparently did not believe in the natural
equality of the races, and
he
even once professed to have no intention of granting blacks equality under the law:
"While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was
really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While
I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the
question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in
regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about
in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races -- that I am not
nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM
HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that
there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will
forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And
inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position
of superior and inferior, and I as much as any of her man am in favor of having the
superior position assigned to the white race."
It turns out that history's a complicated thing! To bad it wasn't all written by Hollywood
with a bunch of cartoon villains and heroes ...
One gets the impression that the current wave of statue take downs is seen as well deserved
"punishment" for those who voted wrongly - i.e. not for Hillary Clinton. While many Trump
voters will dislike statues of Robert Lee, they will understand that dislike the campaign
to take them down even more.
You nailed it, b. The way things are headed, I now wonder if I will someday be arrested
for owning Lynard Skynard albums (the covers of which usually had Confederate battle flags)
or for having watched Dukes of Hazard shows as a child. It's starting to get that crazy.
Anyway, thanks for running a sane blog in a mad world!
Good interview with a Black, female pastor in Charlottsville who was in church when the march
began Friday night. They caught a lot that wasn't on network news.
"Don't let this site get bogged down in history that is being constantly rewritten on
Wikipedia. Don't buy into the left/right division process. Don't let your self identify with
either group, as they are being led by provocateurs.
The lies we know of regarding Iraq, Syria, Libya - aren't they enough to force people to
disbelieve our media completely? The HUGE lies in our media about what is going on in
Venezuela should be quite enough (bastante suficiente) to make most people simply disbelieve.
But they cannot because they are only allowed to see and hear what our government approves -
and for our government, lying is quite legal now.
Let the emotions go - they are pushed via media to force you to think in white or black,
right or left, old vs young - any way that is divisive. Getting beaten for a statue would
likely make the guy who posed for it laugh his butt off most likely..."
Posted by: Oilman2 | Aug 16, 2017 3:09:32 PM | 31
Well said. Hope to see your thoughts in the future.
And as always, Karlof1 you have some insights I rarely get ever else (especially not in a
comment section)
______________________________
"The US Civil War can't be boiled down to having just one cause; it's causes were
multiple, although slavery--being an economic and social system--resides at its core. As an
historian, I can't really justify the removal of statues and other items of historical
relevance, although displaying the Confederate Flag on public buildings I see as wrong;
better to display the Spirit of '76 flag if stars and stripes are to be displayed. (I wonder
what will become of the UK's Union Jack if Scotland votes to leave the UK.) Personal display
of the Stars and Bars for me amounts to a political statement which people within the Outlaw
US Empire still have the right to express despite the animus it directs at myself and other
non-Anglo ethnicities. (I'm Germanic Visigoth with Spanish surname--people are surprised at
my color when they hear my name.)
The current deep dysfunction in the Outlaw US Empire's domestic politics mirrors that of
the latter 1850s somewhat but the reasons are entirely different yet solvable--IF--the
populous can gain a high degree of solidarity."
Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 16, 2017 3:51:18 PM | 45
____________________________
Also, somebody @63, very poignant to mention. While I could care less whether about some
statues stand or fall (it helps living outside the empire), to deny that they are (generally)
symbols of racism, or were built with that in mind, is a little off base in my eyes. Going to
repost this quote because I think it had quite a bit of value in this discussion.
"In 2016 the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated that there were over 1,500 "symbols of
thE Confederacy in public spaces" in the United States. The majority of them are located, as
one might expect, in the 11 states that seceded from the union, but as Vice aptly points out,
some can be found in Union states (New York, for example has three, Pennsylvania, four) and
at least 22 of them are located in states that didn't even exist during the Civil War.
How can that be possible? Because largely, Confederate monuments were built during two key
periods of American history: the beginnings of Jim Crow in the 1920s and the civil rights
movement in the early 1950s and 1960s.
To be sure, some sprung up in the years following the Confederacy's defeat (the concept of
a Confederate memorial day dates back to back to 1866 and was still officially observed by
the governments of Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, as of the publication of the
Southern Poverty Law Center's report), and some continue to be built!USA Today notes that 35
Confederate monuments have been erected in North Carolina since 2000.
But when these statues!be they historical place markers, or myth-building icons of Lee or
Stonewall Jackson!were built seems to suggest these monuments have very little to do with
paying tribute to the Civil War dead and everything to do with erecting monuments to black
disenfranchisement, segregation, and 20th-century racial tension."
Racism means zero understanding or tolerance of other people/cultures, an attitude that
ones own culture or skin colour or group is far superior to those 'others'.
Hear, hear. Generally, a resurgence of American nationalism WILL take the form of populist
socialism because it will mark a turning away from the global police state which America is
leading currently and will replace it with nationalistic spending on socialist programs with
an emphasis on decreased military spending. This will continue ideally until a balance of low
taxation and government regulation form a true economy which begins at a local level from the
ground up.
In 1861, the vice-president of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, offered this
foundational explanation of the Confederate cause:
"Its corner-stone rests, upon the
great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to
the superior race is his natural and normal condition.
This, our new government, is the
first, in the history of the world,
based upon this great physical, philosophical, and
moral truth.
"
how much public space in the US should be dedicated to monuments honoring these people in
the coming century? and for the children and grandchildren of slaves walking by them every
day? what about their heritage? and the public monuments to the indigenous people of this
land who we genocided? oh right, as a country we have still not even officially recognized
that genocide. monuments should not be solely a reflection of the past, but of the future, of
who we want to be. who we choose to recognize in our public spaces says a lot about us.
It's pretty fair too say several of the "alt-right" leaders who planned this event agent are
provocateurs or Sheep Dipped assets running honeypot "white nationalist" operations.
You can see from the make-up of the phony "Nazis" in the groups and their continued use of
various propaganda that serves only to tie people and movements OPPOSED by the Deep State to
"Nazis" and racist ideology, you can see how on the ground level, this event has psyop
planners' fingerprints all over it.
It's also fair too say the complicit media's near universal take on the event signals a
uniform, ready-made reaction more than likely dictated to them from a single source.
Trump is attacked. The ACLU is attacked. Peace activists opposed to the CIA's regime
change operation in Syria are attacked. Tucker Carlson is attacked. Everyone attacked that
the CIA and various other aspects of the Deep State want attacked as if the MSM were all sent
the same talking points memo.
And keep in mind, this all comes right after the news was starting to pick up on the story
that the Deep State's bullshit narrative about a "Russian hack" was falling apart.
Also keep in mind it comes at a time when 600,000 Syrians returned home after the CIA's
terrorist regime change operation fell apart.
The statues were erected when the KKK was at its peak, to keep the blacks in their place.
They started getting torn down after the 2015 massacre of black churchgoers by a Nazi. For
once, don't blame Clinton.
My only argument with your post is "Chattel Slavery was introduced in the Western
Hemisphere"
Chattel = movable property as opposed to your house. In that day and long before women and
children were chattel.
Thinking about what might have been might help. If the south had won would we have had a
strong enough central government to create and give corporate charters and vast rights of way
to railroads which then cross our nation. Would states have created their own individual
banking systems negating the need for the all controlling Federal reserve? Would states have
their own military units willing to join other states to repel an attack instead of the MIC
which treats the rest of the world like expendable slaves?
Before our constitution there was the Articles of Confederation. Article 1,2+3.....
Article I. The Stile of this Confederacy shall be "The United States of America."
Article II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every
Power, Jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the
United States, in Congress assembled.
Article III. The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with
each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and
general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or
attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any
other pretense whatever.
This first set of laws in the new world was later undone in a secret convention with
Madison, input from Jefferson and others found on our money and other honorariums. 1868 gave
us the 14th amendment to the constitution that freed all who are born within this nation and
were given equal rights. (Not saying that this worked for all slaves. Within a few years this
was used to create corporate persons with access to the bill of rights.
I am thinking there were many reasons that people who lived in those times had to fight
for what they did. We today are not in a position to judge why individuals fought. Certainly
many poor white southerners who owned no slaves at all fought and died. Was it to keep slaves
they did not own enslaved or did they fight and die for issues around protection of local or
state rights, freedoms and way of life?
Histories are written and paid for by the winners who control that particular present time
for the glorification of those rulers. A vast removal of historical artifacts speaks of a
weak nation fading into the west's need to clean up some points from history of mean and
brutal behaviors which we as a nation support now in the present but try and make it about
others.
A paragragh here from lemur 77 comment...
"Now, within ethnic European countries, should whites be supreme? You're goddamn right they
should. Just as the Japanese should practice 'yellow supremacy', and so on and so forth. Most
of you lot here, being liberals, will be in favour of no fault divorce. You understand there
can be irreconcilable differences which in way suggest either person is objectively bad. The
same applies to disparate ethnicities. If white Slovaks and Czechs can't get one, why would
white and non-white groups?"
What is the United States of America? It is made up of British, French, Spanish and
Russian territories aquired or conquered, the original colonists in turn taking them from the
native inhabitants. The US has had a largley open imigration policy, people of all cultures,
languages and skin colours and religions.
Why should white Europeans be supreme in the US lemur?
The following is the guts of a posting from Raw Story that I see as quite related.
"
White House senior strategist Steve Bannon is rejoicing at the criticism President Donald
Trump is receiving for defending white nationalism.
Bannon phoned The American Prospect progressive writer and editor Robert Kuttner Tuesday,
according to his analysis of the interview.
In the interview, Bannon dismissed ethno-nationalists as irrelevant.
"Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element," Bannon noted.
"These guys are a collection of clowns," he added.
Bannon claimed to welcome the intense criticism Trump has received.
"The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want
them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go
with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."
Kuttner described Bannon as being in "high spirits" during the call
"You might think from recent press accounts that Steve Bannon is on the ropes and
therefore behaving prudently. In the aftermath of events in Charlottesville, he is widely
blamed for his boss's continuing indulgence of white supremacists," Kuttner explained. "But
Bannon was in high spirits when he phoned me Tuesday afternoon to discuss the politics of
taking a harder line with China, and minced no words describing his efforts to neutralize his
rivals at the Departments of Defense, State, and Treasury."
"They're wetting themselves," Bannon said of opponents he planned to oust at State and
Defense.
"
Curtis 6 isn't me. However, I somewhat agree with the point.
Joe 41
Very true. Lee saw himself as defending Virginia. Slavery was the chief issue used in the
states declarations of secession. But the end goal was a separate govt (that actually banned
the importation of new slaves).
Nemesis 57
Excellent. Racism was bad in the North, too.
Strange how the left are pulling down statues of democrats, and the right are fighting to
have them stand. The confederates were democrats, but nobody seem to remember that now
anymore.
Nothing strange about it. The Democrats dropped the southern racists and the Republicans
picked them up with the Southern Strategy. It's all pretty well documented. The current
Republicans are not heirs to Lincoln in any meaningful way.
...."The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I
want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we
go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.".....
Those who make silly talk about "Patriots and Traitors" (Swallows and Amazons?) are being
obtuse about their history. The whole system was racist through and through, depended upon it
and was built upon it, starting with the very first rapacious sorties inland from the swampy
coast.
Some excellent commentary here, including james's percipient notes, Grieved's point,
RUKidding's and karlof1's, perry's observations and speculations.
Aside, this "99% v.1%" discourse is disempowering and one has to ask whose interests such
talk and attendant disempowerment serve.
This is a meaningful post on a touchy subject. Global Brahmins are looting the developed
world. Color revolutions and ethnic rifts make great fire sales. In a sane world, old
monuments would molder away in obscurity. Instead a faux resistance to divide and conquer the
little people has commenced. But, it is careening out of control due to austerity and job
loss. Deplorable Bushwhackers are fighting for tribalism and supremacy. After the 27 year old
war in Iraq, subjected Sunnis turned to their ethnic myths and traditions to fight back;
obliterating two ancient cities and themselves. The Chaos is coming west.
The problem is that people focus on the effects of history, like slavery and the holocaust,
but if you go into the causes and context of these events, then you get accused of
rationalizing them. Yet being ignorant of the causes is when history gets repeated. By the
time another seriously bad effect rises, it's too late.
As for slavery, it's not as though peoples lives haven't been thoroughly commodified before
and continue to be. Yes, slavery in the early part of this country was horrendous and the
resulting racism arose from the more reptilian parts of people's minds, but that part still
exists and needs to be better understood, not dismissed.
It should also be noted that if it wasn't for slavery, the African American population would
otherwise only be about as large as the Arab American population. It is a bit like being the
offspring of a rape. It might the absolute worst aspect of your life, but you wouldn't be
here otherwise. It's the Native Americans who really got screwed in the deal, but there are
not nearly enough of them left, to get much notice.
PS,
For those who know their legal history, no, I'm not using a pseudonym. There is a lot of
family history in this country, from well before it was a country.
Google fires employee James Damore for "perpetuating gender stereotypes.
– You persecute your employees for having opinions and violate the rights of White
men, Centrists, and Conservatives.
– No, we don't. You're fired.
A conversation just like or similar to this one recently took place in the office of one of
modern information market monsters, the Google Corporation.
Illustration to the Google scandal. James Damore fired for "perpetuating gender
stereotypes". Source: Screenshot of Instragram user bluehelix.
Google knows almost everything about us, including the contents of our emails, our
addresses, our voice samples (
OK Google
), our favorite stuff, and, sometimes, our
sexual preferences. Google used to be on the verge of literally looking at the world with our
own eyes through Google Glass, but this prospect appears to have been postponed, probably
temporarily. However, the threat of manipulating public opinion through search engine
algorithms has been discussed in the West for a long while, even to the point of becoming a
central
House of Cards
plotline.
Conversely, we know next to nothing about Google. Now, thanks to an ideological scandal that
shook the company, we suddenly got a glimpse of corporate values and convictions that the
company uses a roadmap to influencing us in a major way, and American worldview even more so.
Suddenly, Google was revealed to be a system permeated by ideology, suffused with Leftist and
aggressively feminist values.
The story goes this way. In early August, an anonymous manifesto titled
Google's
Ideological Echo Chamber
was circulated through the local network of Google. The author
lambasted the company's ideological climate, especially its policy of so-called diversity. This
policy has been adopted by almost all of US companies, and Google has gone as far as to appoint
a "chief diversity officer". The goal of the polity is to reduce the number of white
cisgendered male employees, to employ as many minorities and women as possible and to give them
fast-track promotions – which, in reality, gives them an unfair, non-market based
advantage.
The author argues that Leftism and "diversity" policies lead to creating an "echo chamber"
within the company, where a person only talks to those who share their opinions, and, through
this conversation, is reinforced in the opinion that their beliefs are the only ones that
matter. This "echo chamber" narrows one's intellectual horizon and undermines work efficiency,
with following "the party line" taking precedence over real productivity.
In contrast to Google's buzzwords of "vision" and "innovation", the author claims that the
company has lost its sight behind its self-imposed ideological blindfold and is stuck in a
morass.
As Google employs intellectuals, argues the critic, and most modern Western intellectuals
are from the Left, this leads to creating a closed Leftist clique within the company. If the
Right rejects everything contrary to the God>human>nature hierarchy, the Left declares
all natural differences between humans to be nonexistent or created by social constructs.
The central Leftist idea is the class struggle, and, given that the proletariat vs.
bourgeoisie struggle is now irrelevant, the atmosphere of struggle has been transposed onto
gender and race relations. Oppressed Blacks are fighting against White oppressors, oppressed
women challenge oppressive males. And the corporate management (and, until recently, the US
presidency) is charged with bringing the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to life by imposing
the "diversity" policy.
The critic argues that the witch-hunt of Centrists and Conservatives, who are forced to
conceal their political alignment or resign from the job, is not the only effect of this
Leftist tyranny. Leftism also leads to inefficiency, as the coveted job goes not to the best
there is but to the "best woman of color". There are multiple educational or motivation
programs open only to women or minorities. This leads to plummeting efficiencies,
disincentivizes White men from putting effort into work, and creates a climate of nervousness,
if not sabotage. Instead of churning out new ground-breaking products, opines the critic,
Google wastes too much effort on fanning the flames of class struggle.
What is the proposed solution?
Stop diving people into "oppressors" and "the oppressed" and forcefully oppressing the
alleged oppressors. Stop branding every dissident as an immoral scoundrel, a racist, etc.
The diversity of opinion must apply to everyone. The company must stop alienating
Conservatives, who are, to call a spade a spade, a minority that needs their rights to be
protected. In addition, conservatively-inclined people have their own advantages, such as a
focused and methodical approach to work.
Fight all kinds of prejudice, not only those deemed worthy by the politically correct
America.
End diversity programs discriminatory towards White men and replace them with
non-discriminatory ones.
Have an unbiased assessment of the costs and efficiency of diversity programs, which are not
only expensive but also pit one part of the company's employees against the other.
Instead of gender and race differences, focus on psychological safety within the company.
Instead of calling to "feel the others' pain", discuss facts. Instead of cultivating
sensitivity and soft skins, analyze real issues.
Admit that not all racial or gender differences are social constructs or products of
oppression. Be open towards the study of human nature.
The last point proved to be the most vulnerable, as the author of the manifesto went on to
formulate his ideas on male vs. female differences that should be accepted as fact if Google is
to improve its performance.
The differences argued by the author are as follows:
Women are more interested in people, men are more interested in objects.
Women are prone to cooperation, men to competition. All too often, women can't take the
methods of competition considered natural among men.
Women are looking for a balance between work and private life, men are obsessed with
status
Feminism played a major part in emancipating women from their gender roles, but men are
still strongly tied to theirs. If the society seeks to "feminize" men, this will only lead to
them leaving STEM for "girly" occupations (which will weaken society in the long run).
It was the think piece on the natural differences of men and women that provoked the
greatest ire. The author was immediately charged with propagating outdated sexist stereotypes,
and the Google management commenced a search for the dissent, with a clear purpose of giving
him the sack. On 8th August, the heretic was revealed to be James Damore, a programmer. He was
fired with immediate effect because, as claimed by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, "portions of the
memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in
our workplace". Damore announced that he was considering a lawsuit.
We live in a post-Trump day and age, that is why the Western press is far from having a
unanimous verdict on the Damore affair. Some call him "a typical sexist", for others he is a
"free speech martyr". By dismissing Damore from his job, Google implicitly confirmed that all
claims of an "echo chamber" and aggressive Leftist intolerance were precisely on point. Julian
Assange has already tweeted: "Censorship is for losers, WikiLeaks is offering a job to fired
Google engineer James Damore".
It is highly plausible that the Damore Memo may play the same breakthrough part in
discussing the politically correct insanity as WikiLeaks and Snowden files did in discussing
the dirty laundry of governments and secret services. If it comes to pass, Damore will make
history as a new Martin Luther challenging the Liberal "Popery".
However, his intellectual audacity notwithstanding, it should be noted that Damore's own
views are vulnerable to Conservative criticism. Unfortunately, like the bulk of Western
thought, they fall into the trap of Leftist "cultural constructivism" and Conservative
naturalism.
Allegedly, there are only two possible viewpoints. Either gender and race differences are
biologically preordained and therefore unremovable and therefore should always be taken into
account, or those differences are no more than social constructs and should be destroyed for
being arbitrary and unfair.
The ideological groundwork of the opposing viewpoints is immediately apparent. Both equate
"biological" with "natural" and therefore "true", and "social" with "artificial" and therefore
"arbitrary" and "false". Both sides reject "prejudice" in favor of "vision", but politically
correct Leftists reject only a fraction of prejudices while the critic calls for throwing all
of them away indiscriminately.
As a response, Damore gets slapped with an accusation of drawing upon misogynist prejudice
for his own ideas. Likewise, his view of Conservatives is quite superficial. The main
Conservative trait is not putting effort into routine work but drawing upon tradition for
creative inspiration. The Conservative principle is "innovation through tradition".
The key common mistake of both Google Leftists and their critic is their vision of
stereotypes as a negative distortion of some natural truth. If both sides went for an in-depth
reading of Edmund Burke, the "father of Conservatism", they would learn that the prejudice is a
colossal historical experience pressurized into a pre-logical form, a collective consciousness
that acts when individual reason fails or a scrupulous analysis is impossible. In such
circumstances, following the prejudice is a more sound strategy than contradicting it.
Prejudice is shorthand for common sense. Sometimes it oversimplifies things, but still works
most of the time. And, most importantly, all attempts to act "in spite of the prejudice" almost
invariably end in disaster.
Illustration to the Google scandal. A fox sits gazing at the Google's Ideological Echo
Chamber exposing the ideas of the fired engineer James Damore. Source: Screenshot of Instragram
user bluehelix.
However, the modern era allows us to diagnose our own prejudice and rationalize them so we
could control them better, as opposed to blind obedience or rejection. Moreover, if the issue
of "psychological training" ever becomes relevant in a country as conservative as Russia is,
that is the problem we should concentrate on: analyzing the roots of our prejudices and their
efficient use.
The same could be argued for gender relations. Damore opposes the Leftist "class struggle of
the genders" with a technocratic model of maximizing the profit from each gender's pros and
cons. This functionalism appears to be logical in its own way, but is indeed based on too broad
assumptions, claiming that all women are unfit for competition, that all of them like
relationships and housekeeping while all men are driven by objects and career. And, as Damore
claims biological grounds for his assumptions, all our options boil down to mostly agreeing
with him or branding him as a horrible sexist and male chauvinist.
However, the fact that gender roles historically developed based on biology but are, as a
whole, a construct of society and culture does not give an excuse to changing or tearing them
down, as clamored by Leftists. Quite the contrary: the social, cultural, and historical
determinism of these roles gives us a reason to keep them in generally the same form without
any coups or revolutions.
First, that tradition is an ever-growing accumulation of experience. Rejecting tradition is
tantamount to social default and requires very good reasons to justify. Second, no change of
tradition occurs as a result of a "gender revolution", only its parodic inversion. Putting men
into high heels, miniskirts, and bras, fighting against urinals in public WCs only reverses the
polarity without creating true equality. The public consciousness still sees the "male" as
"superior", and demoting "masculinity" to "femininity" as a deliberate degradation of the
"superior". No good can come of it, just as no good came out of humiliating wealth and nobility
during the Communist revolution in Russia. What's happening now is not equal rights for women
but the triumph of gender Bolshevism.
Damore's error, therefore, consists in abandoning the domain of the social and the
historical to the enemy while limiting the Conservative sphere of influence to the natural,
biological domain. However, the single most valuable trait in conservative worldview is
defending the achievements of history and not just biological determinism.
The final goal of a Conservative solution to the gender problem should not be limited to a
rationalist functionalization of society. It should lead to discovering a social cohesion where
adhering to traditional male and female ways and stereotypes (let's not call them roles –
the world is not a stage, and men and women not merely players) would not keep males and
females from expressing themselves in other domains, provided they have a genuine calling and
talent.
The art of war is not typical of a woman; however, women warriors such as Joan of Arc leave
a much greater impact in historical memory. The art of government is seen as mostly male, yet
it makes great female rulers, marked not by functional usefulness but true charisma, all the
more memorable. The family is the stereotypical domain of the woman, which leads to greater
reverence towards fathers that put their heart and soul into their families.
Social cohesion, an integral part of it being the harmony of men and women in the temple of
the family, is the ideal to be pursued by our Russian, Orthodox, Conservative society. It is
the collapse of the family that made gender relations into such an enormous issue in the West:
men and women are no longer joined in a nucleus of solidarity but pitted against one another as
members of antagonistic classes. And this struggle, as the Damore Memo has demonstrated, is
already stymieing the business of Western corporations. Well, given our current hostile
relations, it's probably for the better.
Simply because the immediate reaction to the Google Memo concentrated on
sex differences I gathered together some posts on sex differences, showing that
the sexes differ somewhat in their abilities: not very much, but enough to make
a difference at the extremes, and it is the extremes which make a difference
to technology based societies, and to a technology dependent world. I left out
any mention of the notion that a "diverse" workforce is better than better than
a workforce selected purely on ability to do the task in question. My mistake,
which I will try to repair now.
I wondered, some years ago, what evidence there was for the proposition that
diversity was a good thing. I would like to collect more proposals, because
the ones sent to me proved unconvincing. You may have heard a claim that having
women in the workforce boosts profits by 40%. This turns out to be a misunderstood
joke.
Now to the general claim that having women in a group boosts anything, or
that having a variety of intellectual levels in a group boosts anything. That
was taken apart in a set of experimental studies by Bates and Gupta.
So, if you want a problem solved, don't form a team. Find the brightest
person and let them work on it. Placing them in a team will, on average,
reduce their productivity. My advice would be: never form a team if there
is one person who can sort out the problem.
Perhaps Damore was a guy who could sort out problems, until the last problem,
that is.
I repeat my January 2015 request: if you have any good studies showing that
having a sexually or racially diverse workforce boosts profits over a workforce
selected on competence alone, please send me send them to me in a comment to
this item.
Some of the findings of our initial report are confirmed – greater diversity
in boards and management are empirically associated with higher returns
on equity, higher price/book valuations and superior stock price performance.
However, new findings emerge from this added management analysis – we find
no evidence that female led companies reflect greater financial conservatism
where leverage is concerned. Also, dividend payout ratios have been shown
to be higher. Female CEOs have proven to be less acquisitive than men when
assuming the leadership position. The analysis makes no claims to causality
though the results are striking.
Diversity and inclusion are buzzwords made up by Gramscian marxists to
rationalize group rights made up by the courts after not being satisfied
with equality under the law. Those buzzwords do nothing to resolve the existential
and morals issues raised by group rights. Whose diversity and inclusion
are the best anyways? What if I think I would be enriched by this rather
than that diversity and inclusion?
An Example: Talented Individuals vs. Mediocre Groups
In the late 1990s, I was in charge of a regional office of a high tech
company that had a problem. We had delivered a complex air defense system
but the command module could not communicate with the missile batteries.
This was serious stuff. The company put teams of software developers on
the problem back at the main campus. They worked for over a month without
result. The customer was getting antsy, which is a euphemism for nasty.
Then, the company deployed Burt (not his real name) to the customer location
to see what he could do. Burt sat at the conference table in my outer office
reading reams of code printed in large binders like a novel (I'm not kidding)
no notes, just reading and noticing. Burt didn't even bother with a computer
screen or debugging software.
Then, he exclaimed, "I've got it!" (I'll always remember that moment.)
Burt noticed that the date format for the commands being sent from the command
module was in a different format than the date format expected by the missile
batteries.
QED a technical problem that had been plaguing the company for months,
that had immobilized a major air defense system, and that had put the company's
product line at risk solved by an individual with a few hours of work. I
made sure that Burt got a big bonus.
The point: If you ran a startup hoping to bring "creative destruction"
to a sector in a high-tech society, would you want (1) a politically correct
software development team carefully tailored to meet affirmative action
quotas for males, females, Blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals, lesbians, and
the transgendered in spite of their IQs and personal qualities or,
as James Damore argues, would you want (2) a group of "Burt's" acting alone
or in concert because of their IQs and unique personal qualities?
The histories of Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, and Google suggest the latter.
The former brings with it progressively higher social and financial "carrying
costs" that prejudice the success of any bleeding-edge high-tech endeavor.
When the "diversity" is strictly cosmetic and all points of view are
basically identical, what you have is not diversity, it's as Damore described
it, an "echo chamber." Google should be smart enough to know this. I would
guess that this kind of non-diverse diversity hinders productivity because
there are no new ideas, just regurgitations of the party line.
In a recent article disentangling what researchers have learned over
the past 50 years, Margaret A. Neale finds that diversity across dimensions,
such as functional expertise, education, or personality, can increase
performance by enhancing creativity or group problem-solving. In contrast,
more visible diversity, such as race, gender, or age, can have negative
effects on a group!at least initially.
Of course viewpoint diversity is never what is actually meant by "diversity."
We used to abhor meetings back in the days before the US military was
feminized and subject to collaborative group think. So much to do so little
time.
We called meetings and other collaborative exercises "circle jerks".
From Wikipedia:
A circle jerk is a sexual practice in which a group of men or boys
form a circle and masturbate themselves or each other. In the metaphorical
sense, the term is used to refer to self-congratulatory behavior or
discussion amongst a group of people, usually in reference to "boring
time-wasting meetings or other events".
I suspect that "circle jerks" will become more frequent as Google transitions
to a more female-friendly, collaborative organizational structure.
@Roast beef Thanks. Reading it now. Makes good points, but hard to find
appropriate comparison companies for longitudinal comparisons. As authors
say, it could be bigger companies doing the "female quota" thing while smaller
companies are less inclined or less able to do so. Still reading it, and
mostly thinking about the methods .
This is definitely an important question to tackle directly. My two bits
is that we should try to disentangle causality if possible. It's not enough
just to find correlations between high valuation and racial diversity. It
might be like finding correlations between high valuation and having Michelin-star
chefs in the company cafeteria. I bet the correlation exists, but it happens
because already-successful companies get money to blow on inessential nice
things. Diversity is a nice thing that already-successful companies can
buy when they have money to spare, but just because they end up with it
doesn't mean that it helped them succeed. I mean, it might – I don't know
the data – but mere correlations could mislead us. Correlations across time
would impress me more. If individual companies grow faster when more diverse
and slower after they lose diversity, then the findings would be harder
to dismiss.
I think the "50% of the population must have degrees" brigade are
to blame for this. It was always going to devalue the worth of an academic
degree by attempting to have half of the population wandering the job
centres armed with a useless (but very costly) scrap of parchment.
What on earth were successive governments thinking?
But even if the degrees are not as valuable as the salesman (who came
to your school and persuaded you, age 17, to sign up for a Ł60k loan with
hefty interest rates) told you, at least you've had three years of leftie
indoctrination (e.g. "no borders, no nations" or "Farage is a racist") which
will stand our elites in good stead over your lifetime. And you've paid
for it yourself!
Novels are written by one person – (as Steve Sailer mentions here
and there, novels, especialy the really good ones, are very complex things).
Great works of art or compositions, – mostly the same thing as in the novels-example.
Pop-music (Rock etc. too) might be an exception: Here, groups
yield very interesting results.
(On usually not that high intellectual levels – is that the reason
for this exception?)
@epochehusserl Diversity and inclusion are buzzwords made up by Gramscian
marxists to rationalize group rights made up by the courts after not being
satisfied with equality under the law. Those buzzwords do nothing to resolve
the existential and morals issues raised by group rights. Whose diversity
and inclusion are the best anyways? What if I think I would be enriched
by this rather than that diversity and inclusion? Diversity and Inclusion
are euphemisms when employed by leftist (i.e. Democrats and Neocons) .
The federal government recognizes Diversity as a number of protected
class groups that self-identify as being underprivileged, oppressed, disadvantaged,
underutilized, and underserved.
Protected class groups identify the Nazi and white supremacist as their
common oppressor.
The federal government recognizes Inclusion as federal entitlements for
protected class groups.
Here's an example of several federal protected class groups recognized
and entitled by the University of Nebraska:
The following five groups are considered "Protected Classes" under various
federal laws. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) requires
reporting employment information on the first two groups, females and minorities,
which are traditionally underutilized.
"... Neuroscientist Debra W. Soh, writing at Quillette, observes that ..."
"... It is well-established by Pinker and other scientists that women have higher IQs on average, while men preponderate the extremes of brilliance and dullness. ..."
...Damore has joined an increasing number of people from the worlds of business and academia
to be sacrificed at the altar of diversity. In an unsurprising public relations move, Google
has succeeded in saving some face by appeasing the partisans of political correctness and of
so-called equality. Meanwhile, those who don't subscribe to the progressive delusion may feel
more anxious at the prospect of failing to play the coward's game correctly. Can one sneeze
these days without offending the HR department?
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, in a memo laden with incoherence and hypocrisy, says that
we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in
that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with
it. However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing
harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace. Our job is to build great products for users
that make a difference in their lives. To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that
make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to
our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects "each Googler to do their utmost to
create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful
discrimination."
The memo has clearly impacted our co-workers, some of whom are hurting and feel judged
based on their gender. Our co-workers shouldn't have to worry that each time they open their
mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states,
being "agreeable" rather than "assertive," showing a "lower stress tolerance," or being
"neurotic."
At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express
their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel
under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent. So to be
clear again, many points raised in the memo!such as the portions criticizing Google's
trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating whether programs
for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to all!are important topics. The
author had a right to express their views on those topics!we encourage an environment in
which people can do this and it remains our policy to not take action against anyone for
prompting these discussions.
What were those "harmful gender stereotypes," so "offensive" to the good team members at
Google? Let's take a look at the first paragraph of the memo that has so many people worried
about the white patriarchal obstacle that, now as ever, stands cruelly in the progressive
path.
I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don't endorse
using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to
look at population level differences in distributions. If we can't have an honest discussion
about this, then we can never truly solve the problem. Psychological safety is built on
mutual respect and acceptance, but unfortunately our culture of shaming and misrepresentation
is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber. Despite what the public
response seems to have been, I've gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers
expressing their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues which they agree with
but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the
possibility of being fired. This needs to change.
Surely no
unbiased
reader can fail to find Damore's words eminently reasonable.
Though recently fired, the man is no enemy of diversity and inclusion, nor does he say sexism
is not a real problem. There is nothing here (or elsewhere in the memo) to suggest he is not
fair-minded. Indeed, if you read his memo, you will surely see!so long, again, as you are not
biased!that as people go, Damore is exceptionally fair in his perceptions and reasoning, though
it is well to remember Emerson's maxim: "To be great is to be misunderstood." Damore is
concerned to give some nuance to understanding the issues since, after all, it is not
prima
facie
evident that men and women are utterly the same; with the result that, where a
corporation's representation of gender does not wholly reflect the national population, sexism
is present by definition. The crucial phrase is "differences in distribution." Though
feminists, progressives and Leftists generally are keen to deny it, men and women are not mere
blank slates on which the "unequal" environment imprints its ink; we should not assume as a
matter of course that something is awry if the workplace reflects!
as it inevitably must
!those gender differences which we all seem to notice the moment we leave it.
Neuroscientist Debra W. Soh, writing at Quillette, observes that
within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men!when it comes to
brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational
preferences!are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies)
is strong. This is not information that's considered controversial or up for debate; if you
tried to argue otherwise, or for purely social influences, you'd be laughed at.
Sex researchers recognize that these differences are not inherently supportive of sexism
or stratifying opportunities based on sex. It is only because a group of individuals have
chosen to interpret them that way, and to subsequently deny the science around them, that we
have to have this conversation at a public level. Some of these ideas have been published in
neuroscientific journals!despite having faulty study methodology!because they've been deemed
socially pleasing and "progressive." As a result, there's so much misinformation out there
now that people genuinely don't know what to believe.
Also at
Quillette
, eminent evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller remarks that
"almost all of the Google memo's empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they
are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are
especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and
history."
Steven Pinker himself!he of the very solid liberal credentials!has published much rigorous
work on natural gender differences, in both intelligence and personality traits. Here he is on
YouTube, giving a talk which might be used to support James Damore's case:
Note, what is so revealing, that Pinker takes care to appease the dogmatic academic crowd
via the usual trite and simplistic reduction of human history to patriarchal oppression, lest,
like Ibsen's Dr. Stockmann, he be thought an enemy of the people. It can't be that man simply
found himself in a harsh world in which his superior brute strength was an immense advantage.
It can't be that a severe division of labor was for most of history inevitable for the sexes.
Like the Jews, man has always been behind the scenes, conspiring to oppress everyone. Well, at
least Pinker was prudent. After all, those aggressive, broad-shouldered feminists have been
known to body slam many an hysterically logical speaker.
Like Geoffrey Miller's, Pinker's work helps us to see better what ordinary people already
know well enough from everyday life (and which, thankfully for them, they feel no need to deny,
outside of the increasingly touchy workplace, anyway): that men and women are indeed different;
nor is it obvious, in a sane world, why that should be such a scandal. For these differences,
qua
differences, are value neutral. My working-class mother, who never finished high
school, is not obviously
inferior as a person
to Heather MacDonald, despite my own
admiration for that excellent and courageous scholar-journalist.
It is well-established by Pinker and other scientists that women have higher IQs on
average, while men preponderate the extremes of brilliance and dullness.
Many if not most
Google employees surely do have exceptionally high IQs. That men should so excel at the Google
corporation!as they do at so many other things at the highest level!reflects Nature itself and
is consistent with a massive amount of empirical findings. It is also consistent with many
traditional stereotypes, for the most part. The psychologist Lee Jusim, among others, has done
excellent work on the overwhelming accuracy (though typically, much suppressed) of stereotypes.
If you want to see a humorous example of the truth of stereotypes, see the exceedingly
emotional reactions by the female Google employees!who have made their disgust well-known on
Twitter!that Pichai describes in the second paragraph where I quote him above. It is reported
that many female Google employees stayed home from work on Monday, triggered into melancholy by
Damore's truthful words. Tragically, the feminist quilting bee soon degenerated into a wild
intersectional tizzy, the rotund blue and pink-haired ladies of various races and gender
identities squabbling over whose cat should first be allowed to peck at Damore's soon to be
flayed carcass. Looking at the photos and social media accounts of Google's Diversity-rabble,
one is struck by how stereotypical they are; virtually everyone looks fresh from a Judith
Butler conference at Bryn Mawr college: trans-this, queer-that, communist,
ad nauseam
. Defective specimens of divorce culture, therapy culture, and human folly and degeneration
generally. Persons who, hardly ever having been around traditional masculinity, cannot but
misunderstand it, and with the all-too-human fear and hatred of the unknown. Perusing pictures
of Google CEO Sundar Pichai, one perceives, quite palpably, a typical skinny, weak, effete
twenty-first century Last Man: born to take orders from nasty women and resentment-pipers
generally
Gender differences may be bad news for Feminist Dogma, yet as Pinker says in his talk, the
truth cannot be sexist, nor should it be "harmful"!to an adult mind, at least. Of course, like
Lawrence Summers, who was obliged to step down from the Harvard Presidency a while back for not
going along with Feminist Dogma, Pinker has caught fire from feminists!increasingly nasty
women, as it were. Sundar Pichai, like our feminists, says all the right things about diversity
and the like, but when it comes to the reality of one gender being better, on average, at, say,
engineering, he goes in for cant about "harmful gender stereotypes." If, though, anybody was to
say, what there is also much evidence to support, that women, on average, are better at
language skills than men, nobody would be troubled. Such hypocritical intolerance by the
partisans of tolerance should be expected to continue apace, unless we others make a principled
stand. Looking at the academy and at our intellectuals in general, we may wonder how so many
people can manage to walk upright without a spine. Alas, more vital work for the
deplorables.
The Diversity Idol is confused and inherently self-defeating. As Debra W. Soh puts it in the
The Globe and Mail
,
research has shown that cultures with greater gender equity have larger sex differences
when it comes to job preferences, because in these societies, people are free to choose their
occupations based on what they enjoy.
As the memo suggests, seeking to fulfill a 50-per-cent quota of women in STEM is
unrealistic. As gender equity continues to improve in developing societies, we should expect
to see this gender gap widen.
The Diversity Idol also reeks of hypocrisy. Where are all the calls for more women in
bricklaying and coal mining, fields in which there are hardly any women?
As for women's relative lack of leadership positions, at Google and elsewhere, much the best
explanation is that by Jordan Peterson. The issue is not so much lack of ability as (sensible)
lack of interest. Why, Peterson asks, should women want anything to do with what is commonly
called leadership, seeing as it is generally a quite mad and foolish affair (endless work and
stress, all for wealth that does not make happy)? Women's relative lack of interest in
so-called leadership!which ultimately, today as yesterday, amounts in the main to men vying to
outdo one another in order to win the favor of women in the sexual marketplace!signifies their
greater good sense, which certainly is of a piece with their greater psychological and
emotional discernment generally, and quite a long way from man's lunatic competitiveness and
zeal for mammon. It is well to reflect on just what women are really missing out on by not
exercising the power that men do, all in all. Is it a power worth having, most of the time? Do
we not find our highest good when we are free to pursue that which has
inherent
value?
Then too, there is the reality, hardly recognized in our time, that, as G.K. Chesterton put it,
"feminism is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers
but slaves when they help their husbands." For my own part, though an awful cook, I should
rather be a house husband at home tending to my children than live a professional death-in-life
at some touchy, humorless office.
In our status-obsessed society, there are constant gripes about how women are "excluded"
from exercising power in the workplace. Meanwhile nobody says anything about the enormous
psycho-biological power women possess simply by virtue of being women. This power, of course,
is essentially determined by a woman's attractiveness, which is closely associated with youth
and good health. No surprise, then, that women all over the world are forever trying to appear
as attractive as possible, to the cost of billions every year. Such power, though inevitably
prevalent in the workplace itself, far transcends it: it is a law of Nature itself, and indeed
one of the strongest. As noted above, the endless male struggle for status mostly comes down to
being able to obtain a desirable woman.
Today we see countless attractive young women spending vast amounts of time uploading photos
of themselves on social media. How many wish to be a star! Hence that increasingly common
phenomenon the duck face, which some might take for a kind of strange medical affliction:
"Pucker up," thinks the generic young beauty in her vanity; "everybody's watching!" Like women
on the many dating websites and apps, these social media darlings find that they can hardly
keep up with all the male attention!surely an intoxicating pleasure, although doubtless often
corrupting. No matter their intentions, and whether they are aware of it or not, such women are
extremely powerful. The notion that a woman like Emily Ratajkowski is "oppressed" because of
her "objectification" is absurd beyond description. Hers is a most willful objection; there is
massive power in it; and even if the stunner was not affluent through her modeling and other
endeavors, she would still not have to work: countess men would get in line to provide for her,
now as ever. On the other hand, take away Bill Gates' billions, and how many women would even
give that unattractive, uncharming fellow the time of day?
Google and other corporations, to maximize their profits, feel obliged to keep the diversity
crowd happy. Yet there is, ironically, nothing the diversity crowd opposes more than diversity
itself. To see this, consider that to effect "social justice," we must all become
thesame
, like a mad God who chooses to bungle His creation. For, so long as I differ
from you in some way or other, it will always be possible to make a value judgment!of
inferiority, of superiority, or of whatever!concerning that difference. And this would be true
even if everyone had the same amount of money, even if there were no private property, and so
on. For the most part, the social justice crowd is not motivated by benevolent justice, but by
wicked resentment: that is why it wants not universal economic sufficiency (which I strongly
support, insofar as it is achievable), but equality of outcome; with the result that
comparative value judgment will be impossible.
Now equality of outcome derives from human psychology, from the permanent truth that there's
nothing we children of pride detest more than the thought: "That person is
better
than
me." Seeing other people perceive that superiority induces the same burning, violent envy, like
a child who wants to destroy his parent's favored sibling. Indeed, from childhood on, man!the
esteeming animal!defines himself in terms of competition, of rank, of hierarchy. No artist or
athlete wants to be
equal
to another. Not every person, waxing indignant about
inequality, wants to make
the same
income as
every
neighbor; very few do, in
fact. Like suffering and death, this extreme competiveness is a law of Nature, from which we
merely issue. Try to get rid of it, and see what mediocrity, corruption and degeneration
follow. I say, look around you.
Biographical note: Christopher DeGroot is a writer and independent scholar in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Christopher Lasch, 'The Culture of Narcissism, American Life in an Age of Diminishing
Expectations', 1979, 1980, London
already argues that truth does not matter any more.
The field of Optometry is increasingly dominated by women. I have served on the admissions
committee for an optometry school, and we'd like a better balance between male and female,
but if most of the best applicants are female, well that's that and nobody whines. Many of
these applicants are quite up-front about choosing optometry because it offers a better
work-life balance than, say, ophthalmic surgery, and again, so what?
New enrollment in US medical schools is now 50/50 between men and women, and will likely
become majority female before too long. Where is the angst?
And I remind you that, on average, people with degrees in medicine and optometry have
significantly larger salaries than people with degrees in engineering, and significantly
longer careers. On balance, I'd not say that professional women are doing all that bad. It's
just that, for whatever reasons, the smart women tend to choose medicine over engineering. I
fail to see a problem here.
The Pope, Emerson an Chesterton quotes are great. Especially the Pope-quote.
Thanks for putting Pinker, Peterson and Soh at the right place in the big picture.
These lines are a little bit misleading, because siblings rivlary is nothing exclusively
boyish. There are women-athletes who want to win too, aren't there?
Seeing other people perceive that superiority induces the same burning, violent envy,
like a child who wants to destroy his parent's favored sibling. Indeed, from childhood on,
man!the esteeming animal!defines himself in terms of competition, of rank, of hierarchy. No
artist or athlete wants to be equal to another. Not every person, waxing indignant about
inequality, wants to make the same income as every neighbor; very few do, in fact.
How come noone is discussing the role that Pinchai is himself a product of affirmitive
action plays in this? Do people really believe an Indian immigrant would serve as CEO of
Google, as CEO of Microsoft if not for affirmitive action? Being CEO is not an engineering
position. There are plenty of native-born mainstream Americans that could do these jobs. Most
large American companies would never give the job of CEO to an immigrant from a 3rd-world
country. Some of the business men that founded large companies may be immigrants, but it's
different if they built the company. They're in control. Pinchai is just a hired hand, like
Damore was.
"Science is an odd sort of pursuit, way off the beaten track of human intellection There
were theologians and politicians long, long, long before there were scientists. In dark
moments I am inclined to think the former will still be with us long after the latter have
been eliminated, probably via mass lynching Scientists themselves tend to forget this because
they associate mainly with other scientists."
"It is well-established by Pinker and other scientists that women have higher IQs on
average, while men preponderate the extremes of brilliance and dullness."
First time I'm hearing that claim. I've heard about the flatter, wider Bell Curve for men
but the average IQ was either the same or even higher. That's also more logical since men
need higher IQs to both prove themselves as providers and charm the pants off their mates.
Women love intelligence + health in their mates while men look for beauty + health. A highly
stratified, unequal and un-meritocratic (old money, castes or arranged marriages) system can
distort the choices quite a bit but that's the baseline.
This is also interesting if true:
Recent research using DNA analysis answered this question about two years ago. Today's
human population is descended from twice as many women as men.
I think this difference is the single most underappreciated fact about gender. To get
that kind of difference, you had to have something like, throughout the entire history of
the human race, maybe 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced.
@The
Alarmist
Damone is somebody's shill. Nobody with two functioning brain cells would
publish that memo in that environment without some expectation of losing his job; either he
is looking for fame and a payout, or he is simply insane.
Damone [sic] is somebody's shill.
.So exposing the reality of liberal-leftist bigotry, bullying and discrimination is proof
that you're "sombody's shill"? What kind of bullshit argument is that?
Nobody with two functioning brain cells would publish that memo in that environment
without some expectation of losing his job; either he is looking for fame and a payout, or
he is simply insane.
Which reveals what a scoundrel mentality you have. Exposing corruption, bigotry, and
manipulation of the public mind through the control of information is something you think a
sane person would do, only for fame or money.
The idea of blowing the whistle on a bunch of dirty manipulators, bigots, bullies and
scumbags who routinely misdirect the public for both political ends or to boost profits
because you no longer wish to work with them, or because you think the public should know
what such people are doing, or because you believe in propagating truth not using the most
powerful tools for the enlightenment of humanity for the purpose of pushing some grotesque
leftist agenda is, apparently, to a moral numbskull such as yourself, unintelligible.
What a sick society America has become, that it can produce individuals who not only think
as you do, but who think anyone who thinks otherwise is insane.
But the cherry on the cake is that Damore did not blow the whistle on anyone. He merely
circulated a memorandum among what Pichai, Google's idiot savant CEO, calls "Googlers". It
was Pichai, confirming his own idiocy, who blew the whistle on himself by firing Damore.
What delicious irony. The shit CEO of the dirty search engine company, dicked himself.
@jilles
dykstra
Christopher Lasch, 'The Culture of Narcissism, American Life in an Age of
Diminishing Expectations', 1979, 1980, London
already argues that truth does not matter any more. Thanks for referencing this book. Read it
when it was first published. As such it served as my introduction to Lasch, who was a very
prescient thinker (read "The True and Only Heaven"). And here's what's disturbing: Lasch, as
I recall, pointed out that narcissism is in fact a mental disorder which is considered to be
so deep-seated as to be impossible to cure.
California Labor Code § 1102 requires that "no employer shall coerce or influence or
attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or
loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular
course or line of political action or political activity." Furthermore, the "whistleblower"
provisions at §1102.5 prohibit employers from adopting rules preventing disclosure of,
or retaliating against an employee for having disclosed, "information to a person with
authority over the employee, or another employee who has authority to investigate, discover
or correct the violation if the employee has reasonable cause to believe that the information
discloses a violation of state or federal statute, or a violation of or noncompliance with a
local, state, or federal rule or regulation, regardless of whether disclosing the information
is part of the employee's job duties."
The memo in question quite plausibly falls into both statutory sections -- advocating
that someone "stop alienating conservatives" sure sounds like political activity, and
warning of corporate policies and procedures "which can incentivize illegal
discrimination," and asking that the employer cease "restricting [certain] programs and
classes to certain genders or races" sure sounds like information which an employee would
have "reasonable cause to believe" concerns noncompliance with federal and state
anti-discrimination laws.
Even better: Somebody could go to jail for this.
Section 1103 provides: "An employer or any other person or entity that violates this
chapter is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable, in the case of an individual, by
imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed one year or a fine not to exceed one thousand
dollars ($1,000) or both that fine and imprisonment, or, in the case of a corporation, by a
fine not to exceed five thousand dollars ($5,000).
@jjbees
I had this thought this morning, and while I know it has been said a million times, it still
leaves me in awe:
It is so obviously true that men and women are different, that people of different races
are different, that for someone to say otherwise is simply insane. These people are
insane.
It is so obviously true that men and women are different, that people of different races
are different, that for someone to say otherwise is simply insane. These people are
insane.
The people at the top don't really believe it. But they do think saying so or acting as if
it is true is a fatal breach of decorum and evidence that the speaker doesn't want it
to be true. It's like telling a committed Christian that heaven doesn't seem all that nice or
desirable.
From a practical perspective, it's harmful to say at Google because of the inevitable
flip-outs and resultant lack of productivity.
Think about being in Babu's shoes – you've taken over a tech giant headquartered in
the most socially radical region of the United States, which has employed countless employees
who skew young and have been steeped from childhood in equalist fantasies. Even if James
Damore's statements are correct and even if acting in conformity with the realities he sets
forth would lead to the long term financial health and well-being of the Company, in the
short term it's a disaster to have all of your Monster Baby employees pitching fits and
potentially acting as saboteurs inside the organization to punish you for not getting rid of
the heretic. It's easier to throw the occasional James Damore into the volcano (ensuring he
will probably be the last) and take the legal consequences than to leave him in place and see
the place burnt to the ground.
I think Google should just pack up and move a little north. They can setup shop in Canada
(Vancouver is a nice city; they have lot of real estate on Vancouver Island, if they want to
build a silicon valley). The politics in US is simply too poisonous for an
information/knowledge/wisdom plumber.
It is so obviously true that men and women are different, that people of different
races are different, that for someone to say otherwise is simply insane. These people are
insane.
This makes them all the more dangerous.
Hence, the invention of the straight-jacket – probably by some white man or
something. Go long straight-jackets, bitchez! [/style: zerohedge-commenter]
It's an execrable law but I wouldn't be honest if I didn't recognize the perverse "social
justice" it would provide, if not selectively enforced. Of course, it will be selectively
enforced, as are all such execrable laws.
If I could, I'd sentence every CEO, and every journalist covering the Damore story to read
this:
@jjbees
It's sad funny reading the Heterodox Academy's response which bends over backward to take the
madness seriously in a vain (in more ways than one) attempt to preserve their centrist
brand.
@reiner
Tor Any child can believe things that are simply and obviously true, but as Orwell
observed, "There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them."
Therefore, believing in absurd stuff is sort of an intellectual badge – "I believe
in stuff that is absurd on its face and have the ability to rationalize anything. So you know
that I must be a bona fide intellectual."
Everyone knows these kinds of "crimes" are really there to be used against white men. They
are selectively enforced. So California will either decline to prosecute!and if questioned,
say Newspeakingly that there "not enough evidence"!or, if they are forced prosecute, give him
probation.
This is rather how "hate crime" legislation (which is clearly unconstitutional, but hey,
Diversity!) works. Blacks whined about how they're always criminals and whitey isn't,
legislators responded with legislation giving judges the power to overpunish whiteys in
white/nonwhite crimes to satisfy the bloodlust. And when blacks commit one? The prosecutors
ignore the hate crime aspects and treat it as a non-hate crime.
This happens in a lot of physical fights. In fights, people tend to scream lots of
demaning insults at each other; it's the nature of the adrenaline (and in men, also
testosterone) kicking in. SO if a white and black and get in a fight and the white lets a
racial slur slip out!even if the fight clearly began over something non-racial(i.e. a traffic
incident, a fight over a girl)!-the prosecutors will climb all over each other to get whitey
on a hate crime. But even if a blacks starts out with the clear intention to assault white
people for being white!"I'm going to go beat up some white people, yo, I hate them"! you
watch how rarely they get the "hate crime" charge.enhancement.
It's Bonfire of the Vanities 's theme writ into law.
@Jack
D Any child can believe things that are simply and obviously true, but as Orwell
observed, "There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them."
Therefore, believing in absurd stuff is sort of an intellectual badge - "I believe in
stuff that is absurd on its face and have the ability to rationalize anything. So you know
that I must be a bona fide intellectual."
Therefore, believing in absurd stuff is sort of an intellectual badge – "I believe
in stuff that is absurd on its face and have the ability to rationalize anything. So you
know that I must be a bona fide intellectual
That is, by the way, exactly how Amazon has achieved its ludicrous valuation!an army of
insecure, pseudo-intellectual analysts affirming that a company that has never managed a
substantial profit in more than 20 yrs as a public corporation can indefinitely "reinvest
revenues something something." The same madness we find in the political sphere exists in the
financial sphere as well.
The most stupid thing to do was to fire this guy. The paper raises an important question
-- at what point affirmative action becomes discrimination. But the author does not
understand that gender bias is an important part of identity wedge -- a powerful tool under
neoliberalism to split and marginalized opposition to neoliberal fat cats adopted and polished by
Clintonized Democratic Party (DemoRats).
Notable quotes:
"... ( Editor's note: The following is a 10-page memo written by an anonymous senior software engineer at Google.) ..."
"... This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed. ..."
"... [1] This document is mostly written from the perspective of Google's Mountain View campus, I can't speak about other offices or countries. ..."
"... [2] Of course, I may be biased and only see evidence that supports my viewpoint. In terms of political biases, I consider myself a classical liberal and strongly value individualism and reason. I'd be very happy to discuss any of the document further and provide more citations. ..."
"... [3] Throughout the document, by "tech", I mostly mean software engineering. ..."
"... [4] For heterosexual romantic relationships, men are more strongly judged by status and women by beauty. Again, this has biological origins and is culturally universal. ..."
"... [5] Stretch, BOLD, CSSI, Engineering Practicum (to an extent), and several other Google funded internal and external programs are for people with a certain gender or race. ..."
"... [6] Instead set Googlegeist OKRs, potentially for certain demographics. We can increase representation at an org level by either making it a better environment for certain groups (which would be seen in survey scores) or discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I've seen it done). Increased representation OKRs can incentivize the latter and create zero-sum struggles between orgs. ..."
"... [7] Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn't going to overthrow their "capitalist oppressors," the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the "white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy." ..."
"... [8] Ironically, IQ tests were initially championed by the Left when meritocracy meant helping the victims of the aristocracy. ..."
"... [9] Yes, in a national aggregate, women have lower salaries than men for a variety of reasons. For the same work though, women get paid just as much as men. Considering women spend more money than men and that salary represents how much the employees sacrifices (e.g. more hours, stress, and danger), we really need to rethink our stereotypes around power. ..."
"... [10] "The traditionalist system of gender does not deal well with the idea of men needing support. Men are expected to be strong, to not complain, and to deal with problems on their own. Men's problems are more often seen as personal failings rather than victimhood,, due to our gendered idea of agency. This discourages men from bringing attention to their issues (whether individual or group-wide issues), for fear of being seen as whiners, complainers, or weak." ..."
"... [11] Political correctness is defined as "the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against," which makes it clear why it's a phenomenon of the Left and a tool of authoritarians. ..."
( Editor's note: The following is a 10-page memo written by an anonymous senior software
engineer at Google.)
I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don't endorse using
stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at
population level differences in distributions. If we can't have an honest discussion about
this, then we can never truly solve the problem. Psychological safety is built on mutual
respect and acceptance, but unfortunately our culture of shaming and misrepresentation is
disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber. Despite what the public
response seems to have been, I've gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing
their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues which they agree with but would
never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the possibility of
being fired. This needs to change.
TL:DR
Google's political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety,
but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.
This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to
be honestly discussed.
The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this
ideology.
Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression
Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression
Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we
don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal
representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
Background [1]
People generally have good intentions, but we all have biases which are invisible to us.
Thankfully, open and honest discussion with those who disagree can highlight our blind spots
and help us grow, which is why I wrote this document.[2] Google has several biases and honest
discussion about these biases is being silenced by the dominant ideology. What follows is by no
means the complete story, but it's a perspective that desperately needs to be told at
Google.
Google's biases
At Google, we talk so much about unconscious bias as it applies to race and gender, but we
rarely discuss our moral biases. Political orientation is actually a result of deep moral
preferences and thus biases. Considering that the overwhelming majority of the social sciences,
media, and Google lean left, we should critically examine these prejudices.
Left Biases
Compassion for the weak
Disparities are due to injustices
Humans are inherently cooperative
Change is good (unstable)
Open
Idealist
Right Biases
Respect for the strong/authority
Disparities are natural and just
Humans are inherently competitive
Change is dangerous (stable)
Closed
Pragmatic
Neither side is 100% correct and both viewpoints are necessary for a functioning society or,
in this case, company. A company too far to the right may be slow to react, overly
hierarchical, and untrusting of others. In contrast, a company too far to the left will
constantly be changing (deprecating much loved services), over diversify its interests
(ignoring or being ashamed of its core business), and overly trust its employees and
competitors.
Only facts and reason can shed light on these biases, but when it comes to diversity and
inclusion, Google's left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its
hold by shaming dissenters into silence. This silence removes any checks against encroaching
extremist and authoritarian policies. For the rest of this document, I'll concentrate on the
extreme stance that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and the
authoritarian element that's required to actually discriminate to create equal
representation.
Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech [3]
At Google, we're regularly told that implicit (unconscious) and explicit biases are holding
women back in tech and leadership. Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the
workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it's far from the whole
story.
On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren't just
socially constructed because:
They're universal across human cultures
They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify
and act like males
The underlying traits are highly heritable
They're exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective
Note, I'm not saying that all men differ from women in the following ways or that these
differences are "just." I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities
of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain
why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these
differences are small and there's significant overlap between men and women, so you can't say
anything about an individual given these population level distributions.
Personality differences
Women, on average, have more:
Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also
have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as
empathizing vs. systemizing).
These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or
artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within
SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and
aesthetics.
Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher
agreeableness.
This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises,
speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there's overlap
between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women's issue. This leads to exclusory
programs like Stretch and swaths of men without support.
Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher
levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress
jobs.
Note that contrary to what a social constructionist would argue, research suggests that
"greater nation-level gender equality leads to psychological dissimilarity in men's and women's
personality traits." Because as "society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian, innate
dispositional differences between men and women have more space to develop and the gap that
exists between men and women in their personality becomes wider." We need to stop assuming that
gender gaps imply sexism.
Men's higher drive for status
We always ask why we don't see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we
see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not
be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.
Status is the primary metric that men are judged on[4], pushing many men into these higher
paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead
men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and
dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of
work-related deaths.
N on-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap
Below I'll go over some of the differences in distribution of traits between men and women
that I outlined in the previous section and suggest ways to address them to increase women's
representation in tech and without resorting to discrimination. Google is already making
strides in many of these areas, but I think it's still instructive to list them:
Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things
We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more
collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles and
Google can be and we shouldn't deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of
our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this).
Women on average are more cooperative
Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf may be
doing this to an extent, but maybe there's more we can do. This doesn't mean that we should
remove all competitiveness from Google. Competitiveness and self reliance can be valuable
traits and we shouldn't necessarily disadvantage those that have them, like what's been done
in education. Women on average are more prone to anxiety. Make tech and leadership less
stressful. Google already partly does this with its many stress reduction courses and
benefits.
Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status
on average
Unfortunately, as long as tech and leadership remain high status, lucrative careers, men
may disproportionately want to be in them. Allowing and truly endorsing (as part of our
culture) part time work though can keep more women in tech.
The male gender role is currently inflexible
Feminism has made great progress in freeing women from the female gender role, but men
are still very much tied to the male gender role. If we, as a society, allow men to be more
"feminine," then the gender gap will shrink, although probably because men will leave tech
and leadership for traditionally feminine roles.
Philosophically, I don't think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to
make it appealing to equal portions of both men and women. For each of these changes, we need
principles reasons for why it helps Google; that is, we should be optimizing for Google!with
Google's diversity being a component of that. For example currently those trying to work extra
hours or take extra stress will inevitably get ahead and if we try to change that too much, it
may have disastrous consequences. Also, when considering the costs and benefits, we should keep
in mind that Google's funding is finite so its allocation is more zero-sum than is generally
acknowledged.
The Harm of Google's biases
I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more.
However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several
discriminatory practices:
Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race [5]
A high priority queue and special treatment for "diversity" candidates
Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for "diversity" candidates by
decreasing the false negative rate
Reconsidering any set of people if it's not "diverse" enough, but not showing that same
scrutiny in the reverse direction (clear confirmation bias)
Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivize illegal
discrimination [6]
These practices are based on false assumptions generated by our biases and can actually
increase race and gender tensions. We're told by senior leadership that what we're doing is
both the morally and economically correct thing to do, but without evidence this is just veiled
left ideology[7] that can irreparably harm Google.
Why we're blind
We all have biases and use motivated reasoning to dismiss ideas that run counter to our
internal values. Just as some on the Right deny science that runs counter to the "God >
humans > environment" hierarchy (e.g., evolution and climate change) the Left tends to deny
science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ[8] and sex differences).
Thankfully, climate scientists and evolutionary biologists generally aren't on the right.
Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of humanities and social scientists learn left (about
95%), which creates enormous confirmation bias, changes what's being studied, and maintains
myths like social constructionism and the gender wage gap[9]. Google's left leaning makes us
blind to this bias and uncritical of its results, which we're using to justify highly
politicized programs.
In addition to the Left's affinity for those it sees as weak, humans are generally biased
towards protecting females. As mentioned before, this likely evolved because males are
biologically disposable and because women are generally more cooperative and areeable than men.
We have extensive government and Google programs, fields of study, and legal and social norms
to protect women, but when a man complains about a gender issue issue [sic] affecting men, he's
labelled as a misogynist and whiner[10]. Nearly every difference between men and women is
interpreted as a form of women's oppression. As with many things in life, gender differences
are often a case of "grass being greener on the other side"; unfortunately, taxpayer and Google
money is spent to water only one side of the lawn.
The same compassion for those seen as weak creates political correctness[11], which
constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians that use
violence and shaming to advance their cause. While Google hasn't harbored the violent leftists
protests that we're seeing at universities, the frequent shaming in TGIF and in our culture has
created the same silence, psychologically unsafe environment.
Suggestions
I hope it's clear that I'm not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100%
fair, that we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same
experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas
and evidence that don't fit a certain ideology. I'm also not saying that we should restrict
people to certain gender roles; I'm advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as
individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).
My concrete suggestions are to:
De-moralize diversity.
As soon as we start to moralize an issue, we stop thinking about it in terms of costs and
benefits, dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly punish those we see as villains
to protect the "victims."
Stop alienating conservatives.
Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political
orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people view things
differently.
In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need
to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those with different
ideologies to be able to express themselves.
Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because
conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is require for much of the
drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.
Confront Google's biases.
I've mostly concentrated on how our biases cloud our thinking about diversity and
inclusion, but our moral biases are farther reaching than that.
I would start by breaking down Googlegeist scores by political orientation and
personality to give a fuller picture into how our biases are affecting our culture.
Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races.
These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on some of the
non-discriminatory practices I outlined.
Have an open and honest discussion about the costs and benefits of our diversity
programs.
Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and
biased as mandating increases for women's representation in the homeless, work-related and
violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.
There's currently very little transparency into the extend of our diversity programs
which keeps it immune to criticism from those outside its ideological echo chamber.
These programs are highly politicized which further alienates non-progressives.
I realize that some of our programs may be precautions against government accusations of
discrimination, but that can easily backfire since they incentivize illegal
discrimination.
Focus on psychological safety, not just race/gender diversity.
We should focus on psychological safety, which has shown positive effects and should
(hopefully) not lead to unfair discrimination.
We need psychological safety and shared values to gain the benefits of diversity
Having representative viewpoints is important for those designing and testing our
products, but the benefits are less clear for those more removed from UX.
De-emphasize empathy.
I've heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly
support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective
empathy!feeling another's pain!causes us to focus on anecdotes, favor individuals similar to
us, and harbor other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us
better reason about the facts.
Prioritize intention.
Our focus on microaggressions and other unintentional transgressions increases our
sensitivity, which is not universally positive: sensitivity increases both our tendency to
take offense and our self censorship, leading to authoritarian policies. Speaking up without
the fear of being harshly judged is central to psychological safety, but these practices can
remove that safety by judging unintentional transgressions.
Microaggression training incorrectly and dangerously equates speech with violence and
isn't backed by evidence.
Be open about the science of human nature.
Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to
discrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human condition which is
necessary if we actually want to solve problems.
Reconsider making Unconscious Bias training mandatory for promo committees.
We haven't been able to measure any effect of our Unconscious Bias training and it has
the potential for overcorrecting or backlash, especially if made mandatory.
Some of the suggested methods of the current training (v2.3) are likely useful, but the
political bias of the presentation is clear from the factual inaccuracies and the examples
shown.
Spend more time on the many other types of biases besides stereotypes. Stereotypes are
much more accurate and responsive to new information than the training suggests (I'm not
advocating for using stereotypes, I [sic] just pointing out the factual inaccuracy of what's
said in the training).
[1] This document is mostly written from the perspective of Google's Mountain View
campus, I can't speak about other offices or countries.
[2] Of course, I may be biased and only see evidence that supports my viewpoint. In
terms of political biases, I consider myself a classical liberal and strongly value
individualism and reason. I'd be very happy to discuss any of the document further and provide
more citations.
[3] Throughout the document, by "tech", I mostly mean software engineering.
[4] For heterosexual romantic relationships, men are more strongly judged by status and
women by beauty. Again, this has biological origins and is culturally universal.
[5] Stretch, BOLD, CSSI, Engineering Practicum (to an extent), and several other Google
funded internal and external programs are for people with a certain gender or race.
[6] Instead set Googlegeist OKRs, potentially for certain demographics. We can increase
representation at an org level by either making it a better environment for certain groups
(which would be seen in survey scores) or discriminating based on a protected status (which is
illegal and I've seen it done). Increased representation OKRs can incentivize the latter and
create zero-sum struggles between orgs.
[7] Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but
every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the
working class of the liberal democracies wasn't going to overthrow their "capitalist
oppressors," the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race
politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the "white,
straight, cis-gendered patriarchy."
[8] Ironically, IQ tests were initially championed by the Left when meritocracy meant
helping the victims of the aristocracy.
[9] Yes, in a national aggregate, women have lower salaries than men for a variety of
reasons. For the same work though, women get paid just as much as men. Considering women spend
more money than men and that salary represents how much the employees sacrifices (e.g. more
hours, stress, and danger), we really need to rethink our stereotypes around power.
[10] "The traditionalist system of gender does not deal well with the idea of men
needing support. Men are expected to be strong, to not complain, and to deal with problems on
their own. Men's problems are more often seen as personal failings rather than victimhood,, due
to our gendered idea of agency. This discourages men from bringing attention to their issues
(whether individual or group-wide issues), for fear of being seen as whiners, complainers, or
weak."
[11] Political correctness is defined as "the avoidance of forms of expression or action
that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially
disadvantaged or discriminated against," which makes it clear why it's a phenomenon of the Left
and a tool of authoritarians.
That reminds my witch hunt against Summers after his unfortunate speech (although there were other,
much more valid reasons to fire him from his position of the president of Harvard; his role in Harvard
mafia scandal (
Harvard
Mafia, Andrei Shleifer and the economic rape of Russia ) is one ).
Notable quotes:
"... Google's Ideological Echo Chamber - How bias clouds our thinking about diversity and inclusion ..."
memo about " Google's Ideological Echo Chamber - How bias clouds our thinking about diversity
and inclusion ":
At Google, we're regularly told that implicit (unconscious) and explicit biases are holding women
back in tech and leadership. Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace
differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it's far from the whole story. On average,
men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren't just socially constructed
because:
- ...
- ...
Google company policy is in favor of "equal representation" of both genders. As the existing representation
in tech jobs is unequal that policy has led to hiring preferences, priority status and special treatment
for the underrepresented category, in this case women.
The author says that this policy is based on ideology and not on rationality. It is the wrong
way to go, he says. Basic differences, not bias, are (to some extend) responsible for different representations
in tech jobs. If the (natural) different representation is "cured" by preferring the underrepresented,
the optimal configuration can not be achieved.
The author cites scientific studies which find that men and women (as categories, not as specific
persons) are - independent of cultural bias - unequal in several social perspectives. These might
be life planning, willingness to work more for a higher status, or social behavior. The differences
evolve from the natural biological differences between men and women. A gender preference for specific
occupations and positions is to be expected, Cultural bias alone can not explain it. It therefore
does not make sense to strive for equal group representation in all occupations.
From there he points to the implementation of Google's policy and concludes:
Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
Google
fired
the engineer. Its 'Vice President of Diversity, Integrity & Governance' stated:
We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a
company. [..] Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which
those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions.
But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code
of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.
(Translation: "You are welcome to discuss your alternative policy views - unless we disagree with
them.")
The current public discussion of the case evolves around "conservative" versus "progressive",
"left" versus "right" categories. That misses the point the author makes: Google's policy is based
on unfounded ideology, not on sciences.
The (legal) "principle of equality" does not imply that everyone and everything must be handled
equally. It rather means that in proportion with its equality the same shall be treated equally,
and in proportion with its inequality the different shall be treated unequally.
The author asks: Are men and women different? Do these differences result in personal occupation
preferences? He quotes the relevant science and answers these questions with "yes" and "yes". From
that follows a third question: What is the purpose of compelled equal representation in occupations
when the inherent (natural gender) differences are not in line with such an outcome?
Several scientist in the relevant fields
have
stated that the author's scientific reasoning is largely correct. The biological differences
between men and women do result in observable social and psychological differences which are independent
of culture and its biases. It is to be expected that these difference lead to different preferences
of occupations.
Moreover: If men and women are inherently equal (in their tech job capabilities) why does Google
need to say that "diversity and inclusion are critical to our success"? Equality and diversity are
in this extend contradictory. (Why, by the way, is Google selling advertising-space with "male" and
"female" as targeting criteria?)
If women and men are not equal, we should, in line with the principle of equality, differentiate
accordingly. We then should not insist on or strive for equal gender representation in all occupations
but accept a certain "gender gap" as the expression of natural differences.
It is sad that Google and the general society avoid to discuss the questions that the author of
the memo has asked. That Google fires him only confirms his claim that Google's policy is not
based on science and rationality but on a non-discussible ideology.
Posted by b on August 8, 2017 at 01:41 PM |
Permalink
Thanks, b, for the change in academic realms from geopolitics to anthropology. You wrote:
"The biological differences between men and women do result in observable social and psychological
differences which are independent of culture and its biases."
I disagree. From an anthropological perspective, biological differences form the basis for
all cultures and thusly cannot be independent of culture since they form its core. Yes, Google's
policy is ideological, but what policy can claim to be ideologically neutral? IMO, the answer
is none. Here I invoke Simon de Beauvoir's maxim that females are "slaves to the species" that
she irrefutably proves in The Second Sex . Fortunately, some societies based upon matrilineal
cultures survived into the 20th century thus upending the male dominated mythos created to support
such culturally based polities.
Social engineering is what it is. Social engineering is what it does.
It's an elite corporate project to androgynise humanity, a la 1984.
Simply put, women will not achieve their full potential outside the family.
The corporate project will continually have to put in place special discriminatory measures
to pretend they're equal in the SMET areas when all the evidence shows they're not, other than
in very special cases.
It's a project that's doomed to failure in the end, but much misery will be caused to both
men and women as this elite project continues.
Thankfully, the rest of the world isn't as brainwashed as Westerners.
You can disagree with B's science, and you can disagree with James' science. James was fired for
expressing his opinions and beliefs. This is so little about sexism and so much about freedom
of speech and freedom to consider other ideas. Bias shut that down at Google. These comments are
in line with shutting down independent thinking. I'm a little surprised to see that sort of ideology
here. When people - like B, like James - put their own circumstances at risk for the sake of open
mindedness, they deserve as much support as culture and society can offer.
Ivan Illich wrote a very interesting and controversial book "Gender" on the difference between
Gender and Sex. I do recommend every one to read this book (and all of other Illich's writings).
thanks b... this is more politically correct material.. it is what canada and probably many western
countries have been doing for some time.. google is a piece of crap corporation as far as i am
concerned, so this is in keeping with their neo-liberal agenda..
@7 bruce... i agree it is about freedom of speech, something sorely missing in the politically
correct realm of western society at this point in time..
'non-discussible ideology'.....great phrase b. None of it much matters because in 10-20 everybody
will be bi-sexual or trans-gender anyway. Any hold outs will be required to attend re-education
courses.
he says men are better than women - women are "neurotic" and can't handle stress and don't do
as much hard work as men and spend more money and on and on and on....
his level of argument and citation is about that of a teenager. he makes a lot of statements
with no support, such as men are better coders than women because women like social interaction
more. and even if men really are more cutthroat than women, his assumption is that being cutthroat
in management makes better companies. (Microsoft made great money, not great products.)
furthermore, his definition of 'left' and 'right' are narrowed to probably his entire life
experience which appears to be just out of college?
"Simply put, women will not achieve their full potential outside the family.
The corporate project will continually have to put in place special discriminatory measures
to pretend they're equal in the SMET areas when all the evidence shows they're not, other than
in very special cases."
I really wonder how someone can go through life interacting with women every day, and most
likely having wives, daughters, nieces, etc, and still hold the opinion that "by the way, you're
inferior shit and stupid and only good for producing babies". I would think first of all that
actual interaction with women would reveal this not to be the case, but if nothing else I would
think not being a freaking sociopath with a bleak worldview would prevent someone from being ending
up as such a douchebag.
I also love stuff like this: "It's an elite corporate project to androgynise humanity, a la
1984."
Good god, masculinity is the most fragile thing in existence. Anything, absolutely anything,
that in any way threatens its privileged position brings forth the waves of hyperbolic whinging.
Talk about being triggered. How about you stop defining your manliness by subjugating women. Efforts
to correct inequalities do not mean men are being turned into women, or whatever gibberish you're
complaining about.
With respect to the commenter alias "karlof1", you seem to have drifted off-topic somewhat.
Please point out specifically where the author of the now infamous Google memo seeks to in
any way denigrate women to a position in any way resembling slavery.
You have signally failed to refute anything in the memo as you have resorted to the lazy straw
man of sexism.
You can doubtless try harder and probably do better -- 0/10, for now, and see me at the end...
And while you're at it, why is feminism preferable to chauvinism - do please explain clearly
and try to stay on point.
I was a pilot for Lufthansa and really had no problems with our
ladypilots. Of course they had and have the same salary as males. But what was interesting:only
a few chose to apply for the job, with LH this meant to pass a test then enter the pilotschool
and passt al checks, incl. licencing. But:the percentage of the few who reallly passed all this
was around 90 percent, I mean, a girl who wants this real tech job and is intelligent will get
it. Boys tend to overestimate their abilities and therefor fail. Only about 10 percent who try
the test actually pass it. That is pne typical gender difference. PS:I am male ;)
Completely agree with poster "Anti-Soros" -- "Merasmus" is twisting this obtusely beyond all recognition,
read the memo, "Merasmus", and make your own mind up, so as you don't come over so utterly lopsided
and brainwashed in your awareness of sexual politics. And, on that note, as to "Dafranzl", is
your comment not verging on real, like genuine, sexism in that you are expressing some kind of
shock horror that women can actually pass a couple of tests and fly a plane?
I'm pretty sure it should be up to the women to decide what they want to do with their lives.
Some may want to be housewives, others don't. It's about freedom of choice (you know, that thing
conservatives are always claim they care so much about). You really don't see any problem with
men telling women what women truly want in life, and ensuring that that one thing is the only
option available to them, do you? It's amazing how men will declare that the different sexes have
different natural spheres, and then put family in the women's column, and literally everything
else, and the freedom to choice from all those other things, in the men's column.
You seem to think that the family and children are some sort of lower form of achievement.
Where'd you get that idea?
As I said, female creativity is the closet thing to godliness any human can get.
Don't trade that for poor male efforts at creativity.
There only sadness and frustration lie.
So much so indeed that the elite project in creativity is currently engaged in attempting to
undermine God and Female creativity with its own version of androids, robots and all the rest
of the cheap Frankenstein tricks for which frustrated males and their ersatz creativity are famous.
When will a bridge or an app, a poem, a book, a piece of music, ever come close to creating
and nurturing life itself.
There is a big cultural problem that keep women out of technical fields. In the west, the striving
to a career leads to a sudden mid 30s realization that maybe they do want a family. My experience
with west Africans is that they marry younger, have their families and get on with careers. This
also has the benefit of them going into the work force when they are a bit more mature, and have
actual life responsibilities.
The Mismeasure of Man is a 1981 book by Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould.[1] The book
is both a history and critique of the statistical methods and cultural motivations underlying
biological determinism, the belief that "the social and economic differences between human groups!primarily
races, classes, and sexes!arise from inherited, inborn distinctions and that society, in this
sense, is an accurate reflection of biology."[2]
The principal assumption underlying biological determinism is that, "worth can be assigned to
individuals and groups by measuring intelligence as a single quantity." This argument is analyzed
in discussions of craniometry and psychological testing, the two methods used to measure and establish
intelligence as a single quantity. According to Gould, the methods harbor "two deep fallacies."
The first fallacy is "reification", which is "our tendency to convert abstract concepts into entities"[3]
such as the intelligence quotient (IQ) and the general intelligence factor (g factor), which have
been the cornerstones of much research into human intelligence. The second fallacy is that of
"ranking", which is the "propensity for ordering complex variation as a gradual ascending scale."[3]
The revised and expanded second edition (1996) analyzes and challenges the methodological accuracy
of The Bell Curve (1994), by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. Gould said the book re-presented
the arguments of what Gould terms biological determinism, which he defines as "the abstraction
of intelligence as a single entity, its location within the brain, its quantification as one number
for each individual, and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness,
invariably to find that oppressed and disadvantaged groups!races, classes, or sexes!are innately
inferior and deserve their status."[4]
For starters, good coding is not a male characteristic, because most of the gender is quite terrible.
So the question is: are "good coders" a more sizable minority among men or women? Both percentages
are culture related, and they probably have a gender component.
A weird thing is the gender ratio of women/men students of computer science seems quite even
in some Asian cultures, like Iranian, and very lopsided (1-9, 2-8) in American culture that has
a "feminity ideals" like "girls are not good at math". That is overlayed with relatively meager
rewards in American society for engineering fields, compared to law and medicine. I suspect that
the ratio of male jurists in Iran is very lopsided, so girls, for the want of good legal jobs,
go for engineering and math. (That is not a serious theory.)
Ah, benevolent sexism. Putting women on a pedestal and making it their prison.
"Women are not an inferior thing."
It would help in convincing others that you actually believe this if you hadn't literally opened
with (and then reiterated later) saying that women are generally too stupid to work in STEM fields.
"Who truly believes that women prefer coding all day long."
You could start by asking some women programmers. Though I really should point out the false
dichotomy you're engaging in here: women can be mothers or they can be something else, in your
mind they can never be both.
"So much so indeed that the elite project in creativity is currently engaged in attempting
to undermine God"
Because I'm sure the (supposed) creator of the entire universe can be undermined by a hairless
chimpanzee. "And I would have gotten away with it too, if hadn't been for you meddling humans!"
@T-Sixes
I don't particularly care about the memo or its asinine content. I'm responding to what people
have said in these comments.
As for the memo itself, neither side comes out looking particularly good. The engineer's memo
essentially boils down to "girlz r stoopid, and need to get out of my workplace" (he's not attempting
to engage in debate, which some of his defenders have claimed, as in 'he's just asking questions
and the PC police are too scared to engage him'), and Google's response was "you voiced an unacceptable
opinion so we're going to fire you" (they aren't interested in debate either, but he wasn't offering
one in the first place). It also has a lot of the inane 'both sides have good points, the best
answer is in the middle' centrist faux wisdom I've come to expect from the type of idiot who makes
up most of the Silicon Valley echo-chamber. Ah yes, the right is 'pragmatic'. They're pragmatically
destroying their economies by forever seeking tax cuts and the reduction of a national 'debt'
they don't even understand the nature of. Spare me.
Convenient that we just ignore the substantial body of research on gender bias in professional
fields, particularly tech.
Abstract
Biases against women in the workplace have been documented in a variety of studies. This paper
presents a large scale study on gender bias, where we compare acceptance rates of contributions
from men versus women in an open source software community. Surprisingly, our results show that
women's contributions tend to be accepted more often than men's. However, for contributors who
are outsiders to a project and their gender is identifiable, men's acceptance rates are higher.
Our results suggest that although women on GitHub may be more competent overall, bias against
them exists nonetheless.
The explanation for Iran I've heard is that STEM fields simply aren't held in high esteem in
Iran, so at a minimum it's a dearth of male interest in the area that has created a lot of openings
for women. On top of that there may be cultural/social pressure for women to go into less prestigious
fields while all the 'more important' areas are dominated by men. It's certainly fun to think
about how projects like Iran's recent ballistic missile test are in large part facilitated by
female input. If Iran is to hold the US at bay (or punish it heavily should it actually attack),
it's going to be with weapons created by people working in fields that are apparently held in
low esteem.
one thing women can do that men can't? that's right.. some things are factual.. a lot of stuff
is culturally and socially imposed though... women working doing coding.. have at it.. forcing
equal numbers being hired sure seems like 'politically correct thinking' to me... give the job
based on the qualifications.. skip with the politically correct bullshit..
@okie farmer
Perhaps different types of intelligence exist, but if they do, they are highly correlated, hence
the emphasis on (the mathematically dubious) g .
FWIW, I advocate a modified lead/iodine deficiency model to explain most variation in IQ. Unlike
older studies, more recent studies have found a small IQ gap between men and women, and women
having a narrower IQ range (standard deviation) than men, i.e. fewer outliers high and low. If
you look at US blacks, they have a narrower standard deviation of IQ than whites as well as a
lower mean IQ. This may be understood quite readily:
Healthy pubertal brain development adds to the standard deviation e.g. 9 points standard deviation
in my proposed model---12^2+9^2=15^2, where 15 is the defined std deviation over population of
IQ. Poor environment e.g. poison or lacking nutrition cause mean to differ as well.
The environmental argument is usually attacked on the basis of twin studies, e.g. using the
Falconer equations. That is because the equations are not usually derived from first principles.
To wit, one has mean environmental effect, deviation from mean environmental effect correlated
with gene, and uncorrelated with genes, which might not even be environmental, but simple developmental
noise. Those arguing that twin studies show the environmental effect to be small, ignore that
means are subtracted in calculating the Pearson correlation.
For women, especially after bromide replaced iodine in preparing dough for bread, late 70s
or early 80s, the need for iodine will not be met sufficiently during puberty, as both breasts
and the brain require iodine for development, in large quantities, and with feminising endocrine
disruptors in greater quantities in the environment, breast sizes have risen on average (cup size
inflation). Note deviation from previous generations' size should matter for same genes, not deviation
from population mean, so if daughter is bigger than mother, e.g., then lower IQ expected, but
not because daughter is bigger than agemate, as the environmental mean is shared (but does not
enter Falconer equations' correlations, being subtracted)...
With US blacks, lead poisoning is still an issue, albeit much smaller than during the 90s.
Look at the NHANES III data---the histogram of blood lead is nearly inverse, which suggests sporadic
poisoning (lead paint, with dBLL/dt=R-BLL (ln 2)/\tau_{1/2} where R is the rate of intake (function
of time, zero most of the time under sporadic poisoning). Also, sub-Saharan Africa largely avoided
the Bronze Age, going straight to iron work---the Bantu used a bit of copper but not much evolutionary
pressure to develop resistance to lead uptake. If you read e.g. Unz review, I did previously argue
that blacks in US are more likely to live in lead painted housing, based on BLL, but US data show
whites as likely to live in such housing---blacks take up more lead for same environment.
I find it fascinating that the liberal snowflake SJWs claim to promote diversity except diverse
opinion. There's a reason that the neocons were liberals.
And the communist heroes of the left including Lenin & Mao are comparable to the fascists with
my way or the highway to death.
depends entirely on the type of jobs applied for. If one can pass the physical and mental tests
for the job applied for, gender or race shouldn't matter. That's assuming the employer's requirements
are reasonable.
According to Unesco, 29% of people in scientific research worldwide are women, compared with
41% in Russia. In the UK, about 4% of inventors are women, whereas the figure is 15% in Russia.
Is engineering destined to remain a male-dominated field? Not everywhere. In China, 40% of
engineers are women, and in the former USSR, women accounted for 58% of the engineering workforce.
Women get these jobs when they are needed, if not, they are expected to stay at home. It is
not about free speech, feminism, ability or choice.
This plateau is of concern to policy experts. For the last decade, the European Commission
has highlighted the risks related to the shortage of engineers and has called on member states
to draw more widely on the pool of female talent. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics warned
last year that the demand for computer engineers in the U.S. would see an increase of 36% by
the year 2012. It seems urgent in these conditions to train more women. So what are the obstacles?
Google needs those female engineers. As simple as that.
I didn't address the content of the memo, if you had read more carefully. I quoted a sentence
b wrote and went on from there. Seems your knee-jerk hit you I the head.
The same thing had been said in 2011 by a Norwegian documentary, "Brainwash" (highly recommended
viewing, it can be found on Youtube with English subtitles).
The Norwegian government cut its funding for "Gender studies" after its airing.
I am a woman, and its seems to me the politically correct comments here all have one thing
in common: they confuse two distinct notions, difference and inferiority.
I feel different from men, I know I am, but in no way do I feel inferior. I am not interested
in sports, cars or coding. I am interested in psychology, childhood and fashion. Sorry, it's not
cultural, since it's the same the world over. I will add it cannot be cultural, because
the sex roles are differentiated in the animal kingdom too. Take a male lion and a female - the
male naps, she hunts. All the other animals equally show different patterns of behaviour according
to their sex, save ants, amoebae, viruses and other microbes, bugs or non-mammals. So, pretending
that there are no differences between men and women, when all it takes is two minutes of observation
of nature (let alone a clothes shop during sales) is sheer gaslighting.
Men and woman are complementary, which is way more beautiful, diverse and life-enhancing than
that drab uniformity/sameness that, it seems to me, emanates from people who are so narcissistic
they are scared stiff of anything that is not their mirror image.
As for me, I love men, and I love the fact we are different. With men's abilities and women's,
there is nothing we can't accomplish together.
"I don't particularly care about the memo or its asinine content. I'm responding to what people
have said in these comments."
-- OK, so be a good girl and make yourself useful: you can start with the housework. Please
explain how can you comment so vitriolically upon specific matters you admit that know almost
nothing about?
"As for the memo itself, neither side comes out looking particularly good. The engineer's memo
essentially boils down to "girlz [sic] r stoopid [sic], and need to get out of my workplace""
-- You are mistaken, as usual: the points are societal, biological and anthropological in their
character and not AT ALL driven by chauvinism, which your bitter and ill-informed input, certainly,
is.
"(he's [sic] not attempting to engage in debate, which some of his defenders have claimed,
as in 'he's just asking questions and the PC police are too scared to engage him'), and Google's
response was "you voiced an unacceptable opinion so we're going to fire you" (they aren't interested
in debate either, but he wasn't offering one in the first place)."
-- Absolute nonsense, as usual: the guy's gripe seemed to be that there's no oxygen in which
to engage with certain subject matter. There's a stultifying, stifling, suffocating, oppressive
atmosphere perpetuated and sustained by people just like you, "Merasmus".
"It also has a lot of the inane 'both sides have good points, the best answer is in the middle'
centrist faux wisdom I've come to expect from the type of idiot who makes up most of the Silicon
Valley echo-chamber."
-- You mean, it's balanced and considered? Have you finally read it now, then?
"Ah yes, the right is 'pragmatic'. They're pragmatically destroying their economies by forever
seeking tax cuts and the reduction of a national 'debt' they don't even understand the nature
of. Spare me."
-- Are we drifting tediously away from the salient points, due to your total lack of knowledge
or awareness of what you are talking about?
@karlof1 - so, to be clear, you are commenting on an article regarding a memo you haven't read?
Do you not think it might be an advisable next step for you to take the time to read the memo,
in order to better inform yourself, so that you don't keep jerking and hitting yourself in the
head?
I worked under a lady CEO. It was so refreshing compared to life under men. There was open
dialogue, I felt I could voice ideas safely.
I think all CEO's would be females. It's like their social approaches to inclusion is unilaterally
better than (white) men.
Is that sexist?
Your experience says more about your boss as an individual and has little or nothing
to do with her gender. The worst boss I have had was a woman and so was the best boss I have worked
for.
The myth of the "kinder, gentler" female leader has been thoroughly debunked. Hillary Clinton
and Margaret Thatcher were both women. Thinking woman are morally and ethically "purer" than men
is ridiculous.
As for Google vs. the engineer...of course he was fired. Corporations are not democracies.
They are top-down dictatorships.
Sorry, but you miss a or perhaps 'the' crucial point here.
So let's say that men & women are indeed different, and this also influences their job preferences,
independently of societal influence. I have my doubts, but let's just assume it for now.
Now if an employer thinks that men and women have different qualifications and strengths, s/he
might come to the conclusion that they complement each other. It would thus make perfect sense
to build teams with a balanced gender mix, in order to optimize results for the company. Whether
or not each individual employee is the best possible hire is secondary - it's overall performance
that counts.
Actually the first commenter TSP pretty much confirms this thesis, albeit only anecdotally.
@40 lea. thanks.. i see it much the same way as you..
@45 smuks... as i mentioned - hire people, regardless of sex, race, and etc - based off merit
and qualifications.. skip with the politically correct bs.. yes, i agree with @1, however anecdotal
is it and i got a laugh from @4 too!
as for a lack of engineers and etc in the west.. i always think back to the joke about their
being 30 engineers for every 1 banker in japan, verses 30 banker types for 1 engineer in the usa..
it was something like that... i guess you could throw in real estate sales people instead of bankers
if you want... it paints a picture that probably has a good degree of relevance to the changing
fortunes of countries, or cultures that pursue a certain path, over other ones also available.
What awful discussion here. Says a lot that the most adult and mature commentators here are those
that I find myself somewhat in disagreement with.
Looking forward to your next piece though as always Bernard. Not that I don't like this either
per se - but I'd be lying if I didn't say I find your non-geopolitical work to result in the silliest
and most ideological of discussions and commentators. Though I still encourage you to keep doing
what fufils you regardless.
I agree with his ultimate conclusion:
Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
Forced equality is not the way to go. It winds up twisting society in bad ways. Is this the
number one problem facing the US and American businesses? Isn't group think bad whether from the
inside or the outside? Playing one group (sex, race, etc) off against the other does make a good
distraction.
I'm not a woman, you idiot. And I never said I hadn't read it, I said I wasn't addressing it,
only responding to things said in these comments.
>various [sics]
Good job! It's almost like I was mocking the memo-maker as a grown up version of the kind of
boy who puts 'No Girls Allowed' signs outside his treehouse. A kind of manchild, if you will.
"Absolute nonsense, as usual: the guy's gripe seemed to be that there's no oxygen in which
to engage with certain subject matter. There's a stultifying, stifling, suffocating, oppressive
atmosphere perpetuated and sustained by people just like you, "Merasmus"."
Riiiiiiiiiiight.
The part about centrism is in relation to the memo explicitly talking about Left and Right
politics, and how each side supposedly has valid points. This is precisely the type of centrism
that is a. destroying the US and the EU, and b. rapidly disintegrating, especially in America.
@Lea
One key difference would be that humans are (ostensibly) a higher lifeform that isn't driven
entirely by instinct. So appealing to how things work in the wider natural world is something
of a non-starter. Regardless, even if you were going to do that, there are creatures far more
closely related to us than lions we could draw comparisons to. For some *strange* reason people
appealing to nature never have much to say about the Bonobo...
"So, pretending that there are no differences between men and women, when all it takes is two
minutes of observation of nature"
Literally no one is making this claim though. I have literally never met a feminist who claimed
sexual dimorphism didn't exist in humans. What I seen is a whole lot of people who absolutely
refuse to differentiate between sex and gender, however.
"Men and woman are complementary [...] With men's abilities and women's, there is nothing we
can't accomplish together."
Nice sentiment. The problem is I have never met anyone who, while complaining about women in
the workplace and talking about how there's some natural division of labor, then suggested anything
like a 50/50 split. Or even 60/40, or 70/30. Instead, they do what Anti-Soros above does, and
relegate women to breeding and housekeeping, making the divide more like 90/10 or 95/5 or some
similar extremely lopsided value. They give to men by far the greater share of opportunity and
freedom, and claim this is a natural and fair division, while telling the women they shouldn't
even desire more, and should be content with a 'woman's unique happiness'.
Nailed it. And I believe the purpose of b's foray into gender and/or lgbtq discrimination is
that, currently, it is intrinsically tied to the empire's tactics of subversion and infiltration.
It upsets me to no end that fomenting discord between the yin and the yangs of the world is the
lockstep modus operandi of the bringers of chaos. "Linear" thinking a la "women can't do it" or
"women must do it" are really just distractions, and they are important architectural designs
of the true believers in the uniparty who are trying to crush the way to peace.
Any meddlesome actions taken by any entity, whether affirmative action or discrimination against
men due to preferencing female hires, is sure to end in disaster anyway. Look at the US and tell
me it is not a powder keg. Russia, in the wisdom of ages, saw the ngos in their country for what
they were. Eliminating these meddlesome devices is best by nipping them in the bud.
The female always overcomes the male anyway by weakness and stillness. Water over rock. When
women want to be rock (Hillary Clinton), you've got problems.
Lea @ 40: Very thoughtful and insightful comment, thanks..
Unfortunately, most men can't get by the second strongest drive in human existence, the drive
to pro-create, and it clouds our thinking. History gives credence to this theory.
I haven't seen the term patriarchy introduced to this discussion. I think patriarchy is a good
term for the historical attitudes that assert innate/generic/gender related qualitative differences
between female/male capabilities.
I posit that women are better at gestating children than men and any other comparison is mostly
self serving conjecture because of woefully inadequate science.
And I agree with NemesisCalling that ".....it is intrinsically tied to the empire's tactics
of subversion and infiltration. It upsets me to no end that fomenting discord between the yin
and the yangs of the world is the lockstep modus operandi of the bringers of chaos. "Linear" thinking
a la "women can't do it" or "women must do it" are really just distractions, and they are important
architectural designs of the true believers in the uniparty who are trying to crush the way to
peace."
...
..."Dafranzl", is your comment not verging on real, like genuine, sexism in that you are expressing
some kind of shock horror that women can actually pass a couple of tests and fly a plane?
Posted by: T-Sixes | Aug 8, 2017 3:42:57 PM | 21
There was nothing ambiguous about what Dafranzl wrote. He expressed genuine respect and explained
why he is NOT surprised by their success.
I read the memo. Compare the tone of the memo to the misogyny and sexism of the miners in the
movie North Country starring Charlize Theron - the racism of the segregated South of the 50s.
There were a number of statements he definitely should have left out even if he thinks they are
true. "Considering women spend more money than men and that salary represents how much the employees
sacrifices (e.g. more hours, stress, and danger), we really need to rethink our stereotypes around
power." or "Women are more prone to stress" (although I would agree with him if he had said -
women who are mothers worry more than men) "Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).
This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower
number of women in high stress jobs." He could have left out his poor analysis of left-right.
It is true for me that suffocating and/or just silly political correctness is found more often
on the left liberal side. Of many conservatives it can be said, "The totally convinced and the
totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental." Robert Anton Wilson
He did show a bias when discussing the differences between men and women. Maybe because I'm an
older white man I didn't find them so much insulting as debatable.
There are many other statements that I found correct "men take undesirable and dangerous jobs
like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths."
"Philosophically, I don't think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make
it appealing to equal portions of both men and women." It certainly is true that many of the problems
that diverse peoples or women have are equally true of many white men not in the upper crust.
"This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be
honestly discussed." (Have I found this to be true - revisionist Holocaust history for example)
I certainly think he shouldn't have been fired for bring up these issues. The differences between
men and women as they relate to employment should be considered and studied. His firing, in fact,
proves one of the points he was trying to make.
So this is what they call identity politics. And this is how it drives out issue-based discussion
- in this case freedom of expression within the corporation.
Got it, thanks.
ps.. @ 37 somebody - thanks for that slice of real life.
observable biological diffs (karlof1); womanless females (AntiSoros). google perks (thegenius);
thought blockouts (Ballai); neo-liberal agenda (james); non-discussible ideology (dh); a unique
corporate category-classified androgine (Merasmus); blinder-enhanced directed-answer response
(T-Sixes); amazing test results (Dafranzl); the (statistically) mature woman (Hohan Meyer); determinism
(okie farmer); absolutes (ab initio); train more women (somebody); different but not inferior;
even complimentary (Lea); top down dictators (Sane); flaws (Hoarsewhisperer); discriminatory (Curtis);
rocking women are problems (NemesisCalling);
please consider the following http://www.unz.com/jman/the-five-laws-of-behavioral-genetics/
@59 I actually referred to that piece obliquely, by calling variation not correlated with genes,
'noise,' in particular his last point, from Emil Kierkegaard. Btw if the latter is reading, Mr
Kierkegaard, in our last email exchange, in references to a paper by Debes, you interpreted his
beta (-2.2) times his proxy (blood lead level's base 10 logarithm) naively, to wit that the logarithm
of blood lead level predicts IQ. A simple problem, involving that same ODE---maternal leave, paid
or not---expectant mothers' exposure to lead during the pregnancy, under the frequent poisoning
regime (gasoline/petrol) will roughly stop upon taking maternal leave, and thus the (linear) dose
during the pregnancy will be linearly related to the logarithm of the cord (birth) blood lead
level. There is more to say, and I shall email a more detailed commentary shortly...
The memo actually said something similar about using the complementary traits of men and women
in teams. He mentioned how women's traits were good for the design of user interfaces and men's
traits were good for the back end. What made Steve Jobs so distinctive wasn't that he was a great
engineer or inventor (he wasn't). He thought about user experience like a woman. Apple was great
on the "female" side of software engineering while Microsoft was great on the "male" side. Microsoft
did, and still does, better on the back end but, as Jobs famously criticized them for about 25
years ago, their products lacked culture and taste.
IQ is not biological determinism. Saying that it is strictly hereditary is. There is a strong
correlation between IQ and ability to perform intellectual tasks, and with social performance
up to about IQ 120. The correlation drops away above that because the extremely profound thinking
at which higher IQ provides an advantage is less tied to social performance. I see no contradiction
between saying IQ is a valid measure of cognitive ability and saying that it is culturally influenced.
Some cultures do not foster the development of cognitive ability.
"Low-income families are still unable to accrue enough savings to see themselves through a
period of joblessness. Some 37% of those households are "liquid asset poor," based on the
latest U.S. Census Bureau data, meaning they don't have enough money in their bank account or
other assets to replace three months of income at the poverty level (that's just $6,150 for a
family of four)" [
MarketWatch
]. "'This inability to save stems in part from the increasing number of jobs
that don't provide a reliable stream of income, leaving many working families vulnerable to
jarring ups-and-downs in their take-home pay,' the report [from the Washington, D.C.-based
Prosperity Now] concluded.
It also found that one-in-five households experienced 'moderate to significant income
volatility' from month-to-month during the past year due to irregular jobs." And
if the global elites have their way
, one-in-five will increase to (say) four-of-five.
"Revealed: the insidious creep of pseudo-public space in London" [
Guardian
]. "Pseudo-public space – squares and parks that seem public but are
actually owned by corporations – has quietly spread across cities worldwide. As the
Guardian maps its full extent in London for the first time, Jack Shenker reports on a new
culture of secrecy and control, where private security guards can remove you for protesting,
taking photos or just looking scruffy."
"How Kids See the World Depends a Lot on Genetics" [
NIH
]. "The findings come from experiments that tracked the eye movements of toddlers watching
videos of other kids or adult caregivers. The experiments showed that identical twins!who share
the same genes and the same home environment!spend almost precisely the same proportion of time
looking at faces, even when watching different videos.
And when identical twins watched the same video, they tended to look at the same thing at
almost exactly the same time! In contrast, fraternal twins!who shared the same home
environment, but, on average, shared just half of their genes!had patterns of eye movement that
were far less similar." Next: Put lead in the drinking water of just one twin, come back in a
decade.
H.R. 676 Medicare for All Act
H.R. 1880 College for All Act of 2017
H.R. 15 Raise the Wage Act
H.R. 771 Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance
H.R. 2840 Automatic Voter Registration Act
H.R. 3227 Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2017
H.R. 1144 Inclusive Prosperity Act
Coming soon: Climate Change Bill
There's a petition and a high-level schedule of organizing events.
The platform list has links to the actual bills – some have summaries, others don't.
The petition has a few-words summary of each bill and a list of supporting organizations.
Website says paid for by Our Revolution.
I don't think that's actually possible short of a constitutional amendment, basically
because the F-ups on the supreme court have ruled otherwise. So it makes sense to focus on
what is actually within congresses power.
There is always the possibility that we get this, or that, now, so we don't bother them.
again, or not for a long time, about getting money out of politics.
Strategy seems to be based on bills that Houses Dems were actually willing to introduce,
rather than on specific (possibly more or different) demands of the various organizations,
though I don't know whether any are (yet) looking for a Debt Jubilee.
Remember, the biggest fear for a Republican Congress member is not their Democratic
opponent, it is being primaried. They ran on repealing Obamacare, and they can't do nothing
when they control everything in Washington.
"... To Tyler, the collapse of the coal industry had left two kinds of people in these mountains. There are those who work. And there are those who don't: the unemployed, the disabled, the addicted, and the people who, like his family, belonged to all three groups. Those who work rarely mix with those who don't, except in brief encounters at the grocery store, at the schools or, for Tyler, along the side of the road, where he knew he was likely to encounter acts of generosity as well as outbursts of resentment. ..."
Tyler would hold a sign on the side of the road and beg for money. He would
go to a town 30 miles down the road and stand at one of the region's busiest intersections,
where he prayed no one would recognize him, to plead for help from people whose lives seemed so
far removed from his own.
To Tyler, the collapse of the coal industry had left two kinds of people in these
mountains. There are those who work. And there are those who don't: the unemployed, the
disabled, the addicted, and the people who, like his family, belonged to all three groups.
Those who work rarely mix with those who don't, except in brief encounters at the grocery
store, at the schools or, for Tyler, along the side of the road, where he knew he was likely to
encounter acts of generosity as well as outbursts of resentment.
As he walked toward the car and got inside, he had so many hopes in his head. He hoped he
would get enough money to feed his family. He hoped the cops wouldn't arrest him. But most of
all, he hoped he wouldn't run into a man named David Hess.
... A Washington Post analysis of government statistics found 102 counties, where, at
minimum, about one in six working-age residents receive either Supplemental Security Income, a
program for the disabled poor, or Social Security Disability Insurance for disabled workers.
These are places -- primarily white, rural and working-class -- where once-dominant industries
have collapsed or modernized and the number of people who are jobless or receiving
public-assistance benefits has soared.
"There is a critical divide in the minds of low-income whites, between people who work, even
if they struggle, and what has historically been called 'white trash,' " said Lisa Pruitt, a
professor at the University of California at Davis who researches rural poverty and grew up in
Newton County, Ark., which has one of the nation's highest disability rates. "The worst thing
you can do in rural America among low-income whites is not work." There's a mentality, she
said, that "only lazy white trash" accept what's derided as "handouts."
"Were you morally upstanding or were you not?" was a question Jennifer Sherman, the author
of "
Those Who
Work, Those Who Don't: Poverty, Morality, and Family in Rural America
," came to associate
with the idea of work and public benefits while living in a remote California community where
the timber industry had capsized. "Could you make some claim to work and having a work ethic or
could you not? It was your claim to moral capital and your identity."
Nearly two-thirds of rural Americans say it's more common for irresponsible people to
receive government help they don't deserve than for needy people to go without assistance,
compared with 48 percent of city residents, according to a recent
Washington
Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll
. Rural Americans are also more apt to say poverty is
the result of laziness.
... ... ...
He could hardly remember a period in his life when it seemed he had more. He never knew the
good times his parents would sometimes recall, when the coal mines were open, and his father
was getting work all over Buchanan County. He knew only what happened after. The mining
accident in 2001 that nearly killed his father, then the anxiety and depression that led to
disability benefits. His father's addiction to prescription pills, taken to dull the pain from
the mines, and, later, the drug charges and incarceration in 2005. Tyler asking Sheila, also on
disability because of depression and anxiety, also addicted to pain pills, to quit drugs. And
her saying she would, but only if he'd promise to finish college, find a job somewhere else and
take her away from here.
The car went past the McDonald's where Tyler had worked until he was fired for missing a
shift during a snowstorm. Next it passed the Food City, where, the year before, Tyler's father
had seen a man holding a sign and begging for money, which gave him the idea to do the
same.
Tyler used to feel certain that he would keep his promise to Sheila. He had avoided the
traps that had ensnared so many others around him. He hadn't gotten a girl pregnant. He hadn't
used drugs, like his brother, now incarcerated, as well. He had graduated high school,
something neither of his parents had done, then married his girlfriend, Morgan, who was 17. And
after securing financial aid and buying a car with money saved from work, he started welding
classes at a community college nearly an hour's drive away. In the mornings, he would take his
father to a corner to beg, head off to class, and in the afternoons, they'd return home
together. But then came the confrontations with Hess, his father's second incarceration in
March for selling hydrocodone and clonazepam, and a car crash that took away his driver's
license and totaled his car. Without transportation, he decided to drop out of school and stay
home with his mother, wife and other housemates.
"... Returning to that first paragraph of Peters's piece, we find the basic positions of the neoliberal persuasion: opposition to unions and big government, support for the military and big business. ..."
"... Above all, neoliberals loathed unions, especially teachers unions. They still do , except insofar as they're useful funding devices for the contemporary Democratic Party. ..."
"... But reading Peters, it's clear that unions were, from the very beginning, the main target. The problems with unions were many: they protected their members' interests (no mention of how important unions were to getting and protecting Social Security and Medicare); they drove up costs, both in the private and the public sector; they defended lazy, incompetent workers ("we want a government that can fire people who can't or won't do the job"). ..."
On Tuesday,
New York
magazine's Jonathan Chait
tweeted
, "What if every use
of 'neoliberal' was replaced with, simply, 'liberal'? Would any non-propagandistic meaning be
lost?"
It was an odd tweet.
On the one hand, Chait was probably just voicing his disgruntlement with an epithet that
leftists and Sanders liberals often hurl against Clinton liberals like Chait.
On the other hand, there was a time, not so long ago, when journalists like Chait would have
proudly owned the term neoliberal as an apt description of their beliefs. It was the
New Republic
, after all, the magazine where Chait made his name, that, along with the
Washington Monthly
, first provided neoliberalism with a home and a face.
Now, neoliberalism, of course, can mean
a
great
many
things
, many of them
associated with the Right. But one of its meanings -- arguably, in the United States, the most
historically accurate -- is the
name
that a small group of journalists, intellectuals, and politicians on the Left gave to
themselves in the late 1970s in order to register their distance from the traditional
liberalism of the New Deal and the Great Society.
The original neoliberals included, among others, Michael Kinsley, Charles Peters, James
Fallows, Nicholas Lemann, Bill Bradley, Bruce Babbitt, Gary Hart, and Paul Tsongas. Sometimes
called "
Atari Democrats
," these were the men -- and they were almost all men -- who helped to remake
American liberalism into neoliberalism, culminating in the election of Bill Clinton in
1992.
These were the men who made Jonathan Chait what he is today. Chait, after all, would recoil
in horror at the policies and programs of mid-century liberals like Walter Reuther or John
Kenneth Galbraith or even Arthur Schlesinger, who
claimed
that "class conflict is essential if freedom is to be preserved, because it is the
only barrier against class domination." We know this because he
so resolutely
opposes
the more tepid versions of that liberalism that we see in the Sanders campaign.
It's precisely the distance between that lost world of twentieth century American
labor-liberalism and contemporary liberals like Chait that the phrase "neoliberalism" is meant,
in part
, to register.
We can see that distance first declared, and declared most clearly, in Charles Peters's
famous "
A
Neoliberal's Manifesto
," which Tim Barker reminded me of last night. Peters was the
founder and editor of the
Washington Monthly
, and in many ways the éminence
grise of the neoliberal movement.
In re-reading Peters's manifesto -- I remember reading it in high school; that was the kind
of thing a certain kind of nerdy liberal-ish sophomore might do -- I'm struck by how much it
sets out the lineaments of Chait-style thinking today.
The basic orientation is announced in the opening paragraph:
We still believe in liberty and justice for all, in mercy for the afflicted and help for
the down and out. But we no longer automatically favor unions and big government or oppose
the military and big business. Indeed, in our search for solutions that work, we have to
distrust all automatic responses, liberal or conservative.
Note the disavowal of all conventional ideologies and beliefs, the affirmation of an
open-minded pragmatism guided solely by a bracing commitment to what works. It's a leitmotif of
the entire manifesto: everyone else is blinded by their emotional attachments to the ideas of
the past.
We, the heroic few, are willing to look upon reality as it is, to take up solutions from any
side of the political spectrum, to disavow anything that smacks of ideological rigidity or
partisan tribalism.
That Peters wound up embracing solutions in the piece that put him comfortably within the
camp of GOP conservatism (he even makes a sop to school prayer) never seemed to disturb his
serenity as a self-identified iconoclast. That was part of the neoliberal esprit de corps: a
self-styled philosophical promiscuity married to a fairly conventional ideological
fidelity.
Listen to how former
New Republic
owner Marty Peretz
described
that
ethos in his look-back on the
New Republic
of the 1970s and 1980s:
My then-wife and I bought the New Republic in 1974. I was at the time a junior faculty
member at Harvard, and I installed a former student, Michael Kinsley, as its editor. We put
out a magazine that was intellectually daring, I like to think, and politically
controversial.
We were for the Contras in Nicaragua; wary of affirmative action; for military
intervention in Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur; alarmed about the decline of the family. The
New Republic
was also an early proponent of gay rights. We were neoliberals. We were
also Zionists, and it was our defense of the Jewish state that put us outside the comfort
zone of modern progressive politics.
Except for gay rights and one or two items in that grab bag of foreign interventions, what
is Peretz saying here beyond the fact that his politics consisted mainly of supporting various
planks from the Republican Party platform? That was the intellectual daring, apparently.
Returning to that first paragraph of Peters's piece, we find the basic positions of the
neoliberal persuasion: opposition to unions and big government, support for the military and
big business.
Above all, neoliberals loathed unions, especially teachers unions. They
still do
, except insofar as they're useful funding devices for the contemporary Democratic
Party.
But reading Peters, it's clear that unions were, from the very beginning, the main
target. The problems with unions were many: they protected their members' interests (no mention
of how important unions were to getting and protecting Social Security and Medicare); they
drove up costs, both in the private and the public sector; they defended lazy, incompetent
workers ("we want a government that can fire people who can't or won't do the job").
Against unions, or conventional unions, Peters held out the promise of employee
stock-ownership plans (
ESOPs
), where workers would forgo higher wages and
benefits in return for stock options and ownership. He happily pointed to the example of
Weirton Steel
:
. . . where the workers accepted a 32 percent wage cut to keep their company alive. They
will not be suckers because they will own the plant and share in the future profits their
sacrifice makes possible. It's better for a worker to keep a job by accepting $12 an hour
than to lose it by insisting on $19.
(Sadly, within two decades, Weirton Steel was dead, and with it, those future profits and
wages for which those workers had sacrificed in the early 1980s.)
But above all, Peters and other neoliberals saw unions as the instruments of the most vile
subjugation of the most downtrodden members of society:
A poor black child might have a better chance of escaping the ghetto if we fired his
incompetent middle-class teacher . . .
The urban public schools have in fact become the principal instrument of class oppression
in America, keeping the lower orders in their place while the upper class sends its children
to private schools.
And here we see how in utero how the neoliberal argument works its magic on the Left.
On the one hand, Peters showed how much the neoliberal was indebted to the Great Society
ethos of the 1960s. That ethos was a departure from the New Deal insofar as it proclaimed its
solidarity with the most desperate and the most needy.
Michael Harrington's
The
Other America
, for example, treated the poor not as a central part of the political
economy, as the New Deal did. The poor were superfluous to that economy: there was America,
which was middle-class and mainstream; there was the "other," which was poor and marginal. The
Great Society declared a War on Poverty, which was thought to be a project different from
managing and regulating the economy.
On the other hand, Peters showed how potent, and potently disabling, that kind of thinking
could be. In the hands of neoliberalism, it became fashionable to pit the interests of the poor
not against the power of the wealthy but against the unionized working class.
(We still see that kind of talk among today's Democrats, particularly in debates around free
trade, where it is always the unionized worker -- never the
well-paid journalist or economist
or corporate CEO
-- who is expected to make sacrifices on behalf of the global poor. Or
among Hillary Clinton supporters, who leverage the interests of African American voters against
the interests of white working-class voters, but never against the interests of capital.)
Teachers unions in the inner cities were ground zero of the neoliberal obsession. But it
wasn't just teachers unions. It was all unions:
In both the public and private sector, unions were seeking and getting wage increases that
had the effect of reducing or eliminating employment opportunities for people who were trying
to get a foot on the first run of the ladder.
And it wasn't just unions that were a problem. It was big-government liberalism as a
whole:
Too many liberals . . . refused to criticize their friends in the industrial unions and
the civil service who were pulling up the ladder. Thus liberalism was becoming a movement of
those who had arrived, who cared more about preserving and expanding their own gains than
about helping those in need.
That government jobs are critical for women and African Americans -- as Annie Lowrey shows in
an
excellent
recent piece
-- has long been known in traditional liberal and labor circles.
That it is only recently registered among journalists -- who, even when they take the long
view, focus almost exclusively, as Lowrey does, on the role of GOP governors in the aughts
rather than on these long-term shifts in Democratic Party thinking -- tells us something about
the break between liberalism and neoliberalism that Chait believes is so fanciful.
Oddly, as soon as Peters was done attacking unions and civil-service jobs for doling out
benefits to the few -- ignoring all the women and people of color who were increasingly reliant
on these instruments for their own advance -- he turned around and attacked programs like Social
Security and Medicare for doing precisely the opposite: protecting everyone.
Take Social Security. The original purpose was to protect the elderly from need. But, in
order to secure and maintain the widest possible support, benefits were paid to rich and poor
alike. The catch, of course, is that a lot of money is wasted on people who don't need it . .
.
Another way the practical and the idealistic merge in neoliberal thinking in is our
attitude toward income maintenance programs like Social Security, welfare, veterans'
pensions, and unemployment compensation. We want to eliminate duplication and apply a means
test to these programs. They would all become one insurance program against need.
As a practical matter, the country can't afford to spend money on people who don't need it -- my aunt who uses her Social Security check to go to Europe or your brother-in-law who uses
his unemployment compensation to finance a trip to Florida. And as liberal idealists, we
don't think the well-off should be getting money from these programs anyway -- every cent we
can afford should go to helping those really in need.
Kind of like Hillary Clinton criticizing Bernie Sanders for supporting free college
education for all on the grounds that Donald Trump's kids shouldn't get their education paid
for? (And let's not forget that as recently as the last presidential campaign, the Democratic
candidate was more than willing to trumpet his credentials as a cutter of
Social Security and
Medicare
, though thankfully he never entertained the idea of turning them into
means-tested programs.)
It's difficult to make sense of what truly drives this contradiction, whereby one liberalism
is criticized for supporting only one segment of the population while another liberalism is
criticized for supporting all segments, including the poor.
It could be as simple as the belief that government should work on behalf of only the truly
disadvantaged, leaving everyone else to the hands of the market. That that turned out to be a
disaster for the truly disadvantaged -- with no one besides themselves to speak up on behalf of
anti-poverty programs, those programs proved all too easy to eliminate, not by a Republican but
by a
Democrat
-- seems not to have much troubled the sleep of neoliberalism.
Indeed, in the current election, it is Hillary Clinton's support for the 1994 crime bill
rather than the 1996 welfare reform bill that has gotten the most attention, even though she
proudly stated in her
memoir
that she not
only supported the 1996 bill but rounded up votes for it.
Or perhaps it's that neoliberals of the Left, like their counterparts on the
Right
,
simply came to believe that the market was for winners, government for losers. Only the poor
needed government; everyone else was made for capitalism.
"Risk is indeed the essence of the movement," declared Peters of his merry band of
neoliberal men, and though he had something different in mind when he said that, it's clear
from the rest of his manifesto that the risk-taking entrepreneur really was what made his and
his friends' hearts beat fastest.
Our hero is the risk-taking entrepreneur who creates new jobs and better products.
"Americans," says Bill Bradley, "have to begin to treat risk more as an opportunity and not
as a threat."
Whatever the explanation for this attitude toward government and the poor, it's clear that
we're still living in the world the neoliberals made.
When Clinton's
main line of
attack
against Sanders is that his proposals would increase the size of the federal
government by 40 percent, when her
hawkishness
remains an unapologetic part of her campaign, when unions barely register except as an ATM for
the Democratic Party, and
Wall Street
firmly declares itself to be in her camp, we can hear that opening call of
Peters -- "But we no longer automatically favor unions and big government or oppose the military
and big business" -- shorn of all awkward hesitation and convoluted formulations, articulated
instead in the forthright syntax of common sense and everyday truth.
Perhaps
that
is why Jonathan Chait cannot tell the difference between liberalism
and neoliberalism.
"... By Thom Hartmann. a talk-show host and author of over 25 books in print.. Originally published at AlterNet . ..."
"... Yes. I thank Hartmann for pointing out the latest power grabs by our corporate masters. Still, his ignoring Clinton, Obama and the rest just puts him in with all the other political tribalists, who by their tribalism distract from the main problems – and their ultimate solutions. It's a class war, Thom, The Only War That Matters. ..."
"... I can disagree with you that this here republic is a democracy. ..."
"... Fair enough. The United States is no longer a representative democracy (and it was only that way occasionally in the past); it's currently an oligarchic plutocracy. But if we hope to regain any semblance of a representative democracy, we need to actively participate. There are many reasons why we've degenerated into a plutocracy, and one of those reasons is that people don't participate enough. ..."
"... "And anything that would make somebody not want to move here or start a company here is going to slow down our progress." ..."
"... The vast majority of the labor market is shifting gears to function as the servant class to the very rich. It is a painful transition as recent gains in labor rights are lost. ..."
"... The last 70 years was an aberration. It will not return, short of a major uprising. Given the state's security apparatus that prospect is extremely unlikely. ..."
"... And I do not agree with Thom's Indentured servitude meme; he gives no real examples, just generalities. I would submit that a neo-feudal system is the fact on the ground. The difference; a serf has land (and yes, he's attached to it), a house, and a modicum of freedom; as long as he takes care of his lord. ..."
"... All information is managed; and this includes the unemployment figures; pure fiction by the way. An indentured servant has work; 20 million(?) or more Usians have no work, and little hope of finding meaningful employment. ..."
"... The importance of this can not be underestimated; human dignity is at stake; we're a society brought up on the importance of being "gainfully" employed. Our society is being intentionally crushed to make us serfs in a neo-feudal society. ..."
"... 20+ years ago in Athens, GA, there was a local chicken place. Good food if you like that kind of thing. Come to find the employees who fried the chicken and worked the service counter were forbidden by the language of their "contracts" to quit for a dollar an hour more at another local restaurant. The first company didn't actually have the means to take its former employees to court, but they had the "right" to do so. Bill Clinton, neoliberal to his rotten core, was happily the president, feeling our pain. ..."
"... These days, even janitors are being required to sign non-compete clauses. When Krishna Regmi started work as a personal care aide for a Pittsburgh home health agency in 2015, he was given a stack of paperwork to sign. "They just told us, 'It's just a formality, sign here, here, here,' " he said. Regmi didn't think much of it. That is, until he quit his job nine months later and announced his decision to move to a rival agency -- and his ex-employer sued him for violating a noncompete clause Regmi says he didn't know he had signed. The agreement barred Regmi from working as a personal care aide at another home health agency for two years. ..."
"... In California, North Dakota and Oklahoma, the law says the agreements are unenforceable; judges will just throw them out. In other states, statutes and case law create a set of tests that the agreements must pass. In Oregon, for instance, they can only be enforced if workers have two weeks to consider them before taking a job, or if the worker gets a "bona fide advancement" in return, such as a raise. ..."
"... The author fails to point out that H1-B is also indentured servitude. ..."
"... The merging of corporate power with the state is called "fascism." This was described by both Benito Mussolini and FDR's vice-president Henry Wallace. But the term "fascism" isn't mentioned in the article. Importantly, fascists are sworn enemies of communism and socialism, and this is how they can be identified. ..."
"... The US is definitely getting more feudal. ..."
"... It's about bullying and intimidation. Like most bullies, the companies are cowards who would back down if challenged, because it would make little economic sense to sue minimum-wage ex-employees. They're relying on the employees being too cowed to call their bluff, so they choose to stay even if unhappy. ..."
"... Non-compete clauses sound like something that will create a hostile work force; that may not be so good for these companies. Articles like this make me think of "Space Merchants", an amusing science fiction satire on capitalism by Pohl and Kornbluth. ..."
"... Perhaps there are other options in responding to the types of abuse detailed in this post, in addition to the political action Thom Hartmann called for. One such action might be characterized as "Passive NonParticipation" with your brains, craftsmanship and know-how to the extent possible, yet still retain your job. ..."
Indentured servitude is back in a big way in the United States, and conservative
corporatists want to make sure that labor never, ever again has the power to tell big business
how to treat them.
Idaho
, for example, recently passed a law that recognizes and rigorously enforces
non-compete agreements in employment contracts, which means that if you want to move to a
different, more highly paid, or better job, you can instead get wiped out financially by
lawsuits and legal costs.
In a way, conservative/corporatists are just completing the circle back to the founding of
this country.
Indentured servitude began in a big way in the early 1600s, when the British East India
Company was establishing a
beachhead
in the (newly stolen from the Indians) state of Virginia (named after the "virgin queen"
Elizabeth I, who signed the charter of the BEIC creating the first modern corporation in 1601).
Jamestown (named after King James, who followed Elizabeth I to the crown) wanted free labor,
and the African slave trade wouldn't start to crank up for another decade.
So the company made a deal with impoverished Europeans: Come to work for typically 4-7 years
(some were lifetime indentures, although those were less common), legally as the property of
the person or company holding your indenture, and we'll pay for your transport across the
Atlantic.
It was, at least philosophically, the logical extension of the feudal economic and political
system that had ruled Europe for over 1,000 years. The rich have all the rights and own all the
property; the serfs are purely exploitable free labor who could be disposed of (
indentured
servants
, like slaves, were commonly whipped, hanged, imprisoned, or killed when they
rebelled or were not sufficiently obedient).
This type of labor system has been the dream of conservative/corporatists, particularly
since the "Reagan Revolution" kicked off a major federal war on the right of workers to
organize for their own protection from corporate abuse.
Unions represented
almost a third of American workers
when Reagan came into office (and, since union jobs set
local labor standards, for every union job there was typically an identically-compensated
non-union job, meaning about two-thirds of America had the benefits and pay associated with
union jobs pre-Reagan).
Thanks to Reagan's war on labor, today unions represent about 6 percent of the
non-government workforce.
But that wasn't enough for the acolytes of Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman. They
didn't just want workers to lose their right to collectively bargain; they wanted employers to
functionally own their employees.
Prior to the current Reaganomics era, non-compete agreements were pretty much limited to
senior executives and scientists/engineers.
If you were a CEO or an engineer for a giant company, knowing all their processes, secrets
and future plans, that knowledge had significant and consequential value!company value worth
protecting with a contract that said you couldn't just take that stuff to a competitor without
either a massive payment to the left-behind company or a flat-out lawsuit.
But should a guy who digs holes with a shovel or works on a
drilling rig
be
forced to sign a non-compete? What about a person who flips burgers or waits tables in a
restaurant? Or the few factory workers we have left, since neoliberal trade policies have moved
the jobs of tens of thousands of
companies
overseas?
Turns out corporations are using non-competes to prevent even these types of employees from
moving to newer or better jobs.
America today has the lowest minimum wage in
nearly 50
years
, adjusted for inflation. As a result, people are often looking for better jobs. But
according to the
New York Times
,
about 1 in 5 American workers is now locked in with a non-compete clause in an employment
contract.
Before Reaganomics, employers didn't keep their employees by threatening them with lawsuits;
instead, they offered them benefits like insurance, paid vacations and decent wages. Large
swaths of American workers could raise a family and have a decent retirement with a basic job
ranging from manufacturing to construction to service industry work.
My
dad
was one of them; he worked 40 years in a tool-and-die shop, and the machinist's union
made sure he could raise and put through school four boys, could take 2-3 weeks of paid
vacation every year, and had full health insurance and a solid retirement until the day he
died, which continued with my mom until she died years later. Most boomers (particularly white
boomers) can tell you the same story.
That America has been largely destroyed by Reaganomics, and Americans know it. It's why when
Donald Trump told voters that the big corporations and banksters were screwing them, they voted
for him and his party (not realizing that neither Trump nor the GOP had any intention of doing
anything to help working people).
And now the conservatives/corporatists are going in for the kill, for their top goal: the
final destruction of any remnant of labor rights in America.
Why would they do this? Two reasons: An impoverished citizenry is a politically impotent
citizenry, and in the process of destroying the former middle class, the 1 percent make
themselves trillions of dollars richer.
The New York Times has done some great reporting on this problem, with an article
last
May
and a more
recent
piece
about how the state of Idaho has made it nearly impossible for many workers to escape
their servitude.
Historically, indentured servants had their food, health care, housing, and clothing
provided to them by their "employers." Today's new serfs can hardly afford these basics of
life, and when you add in modern necessities like transportation, education and child-care, the
American labor landscape is looking more and more like old-fashioned servitude.
Nonetheless, conservatives/corporatists in Congress and state-houses across the nation are
working hard to hold down minimum wages. Missouri's Republican legislature just made it illegal
for St. Louis to raise their minimum wage to $10/hour, throwing workers back down to $7.70.
More preemption laws
like this are on the books or on their way.
At the same time, these conservatives/corporatists are working to roll back health care
protections for Americans, roll back environmental protections that keep us and our children
from being poisoned, and even roll back simple workplace, food and toy safety standards.
The only way these predators will be stopped is by massive political action leading to the
rollback of Reaganism/neoliberalism.
And the conservatives/corporatists who largely own the Republican Party know it, which is
why they're
purging voting lists
, fighting to keep in place
easily hacked voting machines
, and throwing billions of dollars into think tanks,
right-wing radio, TV, and online media.
If they succeed, America will revert to a very old form of economy and politics: the one
described so well in Charles Dickens' books when Britain had "
maximum wage laws
" and "Poor Laws" to prevent a
strong and politically active middle class from emerging.
Conservatives/corporatists know well that this type of
neo-feudalism
is actually a very stable political and economic system, and one that's hard to challenge.
China has put it into place in large part, and other countries from Turkey to the Philippines
to Brazil and Venezuela are falling under the thrall of the merger of corporate and state
power.
So many of our individual rights have been
stripped
from us, so much of America's middle-class progress in the last century has been
torn from us
, while
conservatives wage a brutal and oppressive war on dissenters and people of color under the
rubrics of "security," "tough on crime," and the "war on drugs."
As a result, America has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the
world's prisoners
, more
than any other nation on earth, all while opiate epidemics are ravaging our nation. And what to
do about it?
Scientists have proven that the likelihood the desires of the bottom 90 percent of Americans
get enacted into law are now equal to statistical "
random
noise
." Functionally, most of us no longer have any real representation in state or
federal legislative bodies: they now exist almost exclusively to serve the very wealthy.
The neo-feudal corporate/conservative elite are both politically and financially committed
to replacing the last traces of worker power in America with a modern system of indentured
servitude.
Only serious and committed political action can reverse this; we're long past the point
where complaining or sitting on the sidelines is an option.
As both Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama regularly said (and I've closed my radio show for 14
years with), "Democracy is not a spectator sport."
Wait, no mention of the Clinton administration and those Rubin acolytes? I find that hard
to believe, those 8 years in the 90s were significant for today's outsized CEO pay and
incentives.
First-Term Reagan Baby approves this post. New Deal was under attack before FDR's body got
cold. Truman instead of Wallace in the VP slot in '44 was a dark day for humanity.
Then there is probation board / court bonds slavery. The slave is captured by the police,
then chained to debt and papers first by a bond and then later upon "early" release to a
probation officer. The slave has restrictions on his freedom by the probation orders, and
must make good the money owed the bondsman and the court ordered fines. The slaves work for
the benefit of the political and monied class who don't need to pay much if any tax burden
for all their government delivered goods thanks to this system of slavery.
Hartmann closes with, "As both Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama regularly 'Democracy is not
a spectator sport'." Hello Thom: Sanders has twisted himself with pretzel logic regarding
neoliberalism and Obama is a full-blown neoliberal (who you seem to forget admired Ronald
Reagan).
That sentence also caught my attention and reminded me of John Kennedy junior's George
magazine, marketing "politics as a lifestyle choice" and featuring Cindy Crawford on the
inaugural cover. Allied to the MSM's obsession with identity politics, as a neo-liberal and
neo-con driver of news, one is soon distracted from, if not disgusted with, what's going on.
Thank God for (the) Naked Capitalism (community).
Yeah like Obama cared about unions and workers' rights. What happened to EFCA? What
happened to the comfy shoes Obama said he would wear to walk with public sector workers in
Wisconsin? Obama never fought for workers but he fought like hell for the TPP even going on
Jimmy Fallon's show and slow jamming for it.
Obama is like the rest of the neoliberal Democrats. They think that unions and workers'
rights are anti-meritocratic. Unions are only good for money and foot soldiers during the
election. After the election they are basically told to get bent.
Yes thanks for mentioning the EFCA. I'm so old I remember when the Democrat party
campaigned hard on that – "If you give us back the majority in Congress blah blah blah
.". And as soon as they won said majority they never mentioned it again.
Yes. I thank Hartmann for pointing out the latest power grabs by our corporate masters.
Still, his ignoring Clinton, Obama and the rest just puts him in with all the other political
tribalists, who by their tribalism distract from the main problems – and their ultimate
solutions. It's a class war, Thom, The Only War That Matters.
One can disagree with Obama or Sanders about various issues, but democracy is definitely
not a spectator sport. People need to vote in both primary and general elections, and not
just in the big Presidential years. People need to vote in midterm primary and general
elections, as well as the elections in odd numbered years, if their states have such
elections.
They also need to actively support good candidates, and communicate their opinions to the
politicians who hold office. Periodically, people post comments about the futility of voting,
or they say that not voting is a way to send a message. Nonsense! Failure to participate is
not a form of participation, it's just a way of tacitly approving of the status quo.
Well I hope I can disagree with you that this here republic is a democracy. There isn't
even a party I can think of which operates democratically.
Supporting a good candidate is asking people to participate in spectator sport-like
activity. The people, party members, should determine a platform and the candidate/office
holder should be obligated to sell/enact/administrate it.
The rich tell their politicians/parties what to do so should the rest of us.
"
I can disagree with you that this here republic is a democracy.
"
Fair enough. The United States is no longer a representative democracy (and it was only
that way occasionally in the past); it's currently an oligarchic plutocracy. But if we hope
to regain any semblance of a representative democracy, we need to actively participate. There
are many reasons why we've degenerated into a plutocracy, and one of those reasons is that
people don't participate enough.
"Supporting a good candidate is asking people to participate in spectator sport-like
activity"
Sure, if people don't participate in the primary process, all they have to choose from in
the general election is a couple of tools of the oligarchs. They also need to do many of the
things in the quote from Howard Zinn that Alejandro provided.
"If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of
capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It
would come through citizen's movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking,
boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they
needed."–Howard Zinn
Great post, although I think it goes a little out of its way to ignore referencing
Democrats as an equal part of the problem, as they too are "conservative/corporatists". Party
politics is theater for the plebes, nothing more. These "people" have the same values and
desires.
Thank you to Lambert. Indentured labourers were also used by the French colonial ventures,
including Mauritius / Ile Maurice, known as Isle de France when under French rule from 1715
– 1810.
Many of the labourers lived alongside slaves and, later, free men and women. They also
intermarried, beginning what are now called Creoles in the Indian Ocean, Caribbean and
Louisiana. I am one of their descendants.
In 1936, my great grandfather and others, mainly Creoles, founded the Labour Party in
Mauritius. A year later, they organised the first strike, a general, which resulted in four
sugar factory workers being shot and killed at Union-Flacq sugar estate.
From what my
grandmother and her aunt and sister, all of whom used to knit banners and prepare food and
drink for the 1 May, and my father report, it's amazing and depressing to see the progress of
the mid-1930s to 1970s being rolled back
. It's also depressing to hear from so many, let's
call them the 10%, criticise trade unions and think that progress was achieved by magic.
Plutonium Kun wrote about that recently.
Thom – I agree with your outrage; however, the truth is that economically the US has
been broke since the 1970's and it doesn't matter. Nothing will change until our we have an
honest monetary system, and until unearned income is tax properly – the rich have
gotten richer and corporations have hijacked our government, whining about it does nothing,
this will go on until something breaks and then we will see what happens.
What is going on in Idaho? Why would the state politicians do such a thing? From the Idaho link which is the NY Times, reveals the real reason. Believe it or not.
"We're trying to build the tech ecosystem in Boise," said George Mulhern, chief
executive of Cradlepoint, a company here that makes routers and other networking equipment.
"And anything that would make somebody not want to move here or start a company here is going
to slow down our progress."
Alex LaBeau, president of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry , a trade
group that represents many of the state's biggest employers, countered: "This is about
companies protecting their assets in a competitive marketplace ."
Alex doesn't get irony. What price discovery? Where are economists on this? Why are they radio silent? To
paraphrase Franklin, a market, if you can keep it.
Again and again and again, we see narcissist lawyer/politicians doing stuff that is
completely demented, from a normal person's point of view. They will be gone in a few years,
but the idiotic laws remain.
Tech is neither here nor there in it, I mean they say being able to leave jobs easily was
a tech advantage in California where people could leave to start new businesses etc.. So I'm
not sure how tech actually lines up on it, and it's almost not the point, even when it does
good it's no substitute for an organization that really represents labor. It might be better
in California due to tech pressure, but probably mostly because it's a deep blue state, which
tends to make places slightly more tolerable places to live. Well as much as we're going to
get when what we really need is socialists in the legislature but nonetheless.
Yes these practices are slavery. Indentured servitude is almost too polite, but I get it's
more P.C..
It's not exactly the same as employee non-competition contracts, but remember the scandal
about the Silicon Valley companies that privately agreed not to hire each others' employees?
Here's one of the many articles about this:
I imagine that a few companies will move to Idaho to take advantage of the favorable legal
climate, and will leave even more quickly when they can't recruit the talent they need. Speaking as a Software Engineer, the only impact this new law has is to put Idaho at the
top of my list of "places I won't consider for relocation."
Mulhern is an idiot then because there is a fair amount of evidence that CA's lax
enforcement and very skeptical enforcement of non competes is an important factor on why
Silicon Valley has thrived. My sense is that this is purely to protect the status quo among
large local employers and nothing to do with growing the local ecosystem or smaller
firms. Good luck trying to recruit top-flight talent especially engineers/programmers to Boise
with most companies have a vigorous year or 2-year non-competes in place.
Ultimately, Idahoans will shoot themselves in the asses, never mind assets. I know
"ecosystem" is a bullshit tell but it's another word for network effects and the network is
short circuited by these laws.
Laws preventing an employee from leaving means there is less mixing of talent, making
everyone worse off. That's how we learn, getting in there and doing it, whatever it is, and
by moving to another employer you transfer and pick up knowledge and experience.
What makes it farcical, is that Big Co Management never envisions itself in their
employees shoes.
The vast majority of the labor market is shifting gears to function as the servant class
to the very rich.
It is a painful transition as recent gains in labor rights are lost.
Becoming a willing
supplicant and attaching oneself to a rich and powerful family is the best way to better
one's prospects.
The last 70 years was an aberration. It will not return, short of a major
uprising. Given the state's security apparatus that prospect is extremely unlikely.
Not a Thom Hartmann fanboy; he deals in glittering generalities and treats serious subject
matter in a deeply superficial manner.
Having been a Teamster in warehousing and metal trades; they were corrupt and in management's
pocket in those places I worked.
I'm a huge proponent for labor and the ideal of labor unions (as imagined by the wobblies);
not the reality on the ground today.
And I do not agree with Thom's Indentured servitude meme; he gives no real examples, just
generalities.
I would submit that a neo-feudal system is the fact on the ground. The difference; a serf has
land (and yes, he's attached to it), a house, and a modicum of freedom; as long as he takes
care of his lord.
Usian's are now, in fact, prisoners of war. Living in a broken system where voting no longer
counts; the very back bone of a democratic society. The "two" parties have merged into one
entity looking very much like the ouroboros (a snake eating its tail).
All information is managed; and this includes the unemployment figures; pure fiction by the
way.
An indentured servant has work; 20 million(?) or more Usians have no work, and little hope of
finding meaningful employment.
The importance of this can not be underestimated; human dignity is at stake; we're a society
brought up on the importance of being "gainfully" employed.
Our society is being intentionally crushed to make us serfs in a neo-feudal society.
20+ years ago in Athens, GA, there was a local chicken place. Good food if you like that
kind of thing. Come to find the employees who fried the chicken and worked the service
counter were forbidden by the language of their "contracts" to quit for a dollar an hour more
at another local restaurant. The first company didn't actually have the means to take its
former employees to court, but they had the "right" to do so. Bill Clinton, neoliberal to his
rotten core, was happily the president, feeling our pain.
And his own, courtesy of Newt
Gingrich et al.
Thank you, Rick. It was not just our pain that Clinton and Nootie were feeling. Speaking of Mr Bill, his family's role in Haiti, amongst other places reduced to penury,
should earn them a place in infamy.
he didn't suggest that, maybe that's what he meant, maybe somewhere else in his
communications he says that, but it's not in the article.
Yes a problem is people don't know where or even how to apply any sort of pressure to
change things
But one plus of these things being somewhat decided on the state level, is it is more
obvious how to go about change there than with the Fed gov where things seem almost hopeless,
try to elect people who stand against these policies for instance, easier done some places
than others of course, but
Occupy did make a difference, at least in how the public paying attention mostly to
broadcast news and the "important" newspapers were concerned. Young people, especially, began
to realize what they were up against in this corporatized economy where all the power went to
the wealthy.
I'll bet a lot of Occupiers actually began to understand just what Neoliberalism
meant!
And the amount of planning and effort the Obama WH spent organizing the Federal agencies
and state/local governments to shut down the Occupy encampments indicated to me just how much
they feared the effects of Occupy.
Well . . . Occupy was clearly making enough of a difference that the Obama Administration
worked with the 18 Democratic Party Mayors of 18 different cities to stamp it out with heavy
police stompout presence. The Zucotti clearout in NYC, for example, was just exactly the way
Obama liked it done.
People subject to politicians should begin a coordinated effort to use a common approach
to get the truth. Demand transparency, with all campaign contributions, lobbyist contacts,
voting records, committee memberships and such all in one place. Use that information to
provide a score to show the degree of voter representation. Not sure how that would work,
just brainstorming to try some new approach as current ones have failed.
These days, even janitors are being required to sign non-compete clauses. When Krishna Regmi started work as a personal care aide for a Pittsburgh home health
agency in 2015, he was given a stack of paperwork to sign. "They just told us, 'It's just a
formality, sign here, here, here,' " he said. Regmi didn't think much of it. That is, until he quit his job nine months later and
announced his decision to move to a rival agency -- and his ex-employer sued him for
violating a noncompete clause Regmi says he didn't know he had signed. The agreement barred
Regmi from working as a personal care aide at another home health agency for two years.
. . . . .
Bills in Maine, Maryland and Massachusetts would restrict noncompete agreements that
involve low-wage employees; New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, is
pushing for the same change in his state. Proposals in Massachusetts and Washington would
also restrict the agreements for other types of workers, such as temporary employees and
independent contractors.
Such bills face an uphill struggle, however, often because of stiff opposition from
business. "Non-compete agreements are essential to the growth and viability of businesses
by protecting trade secrets and promoting business development," the Maryland Chamber of
Commerce said in written testimony opposing a bill Carr introduced that would have voided
agreements signed by workers who earn less than $15 an hour. The bill passed the House in
February but died in the Senate.
. . . . . .
Some good news:
In California, North Dakota and Oklahoma, the law says the agreements are unenforceable;
judges will just throw them out. In other states, statutes and case law create a set of
tests that the agreements must pass. In Oregon, for instance, they can only be enforced if
workers have two weeks to consider them before taking a job, or if the worker gets a "bona
fide advancement" in return, such as a raise.
States have tightened up enforcement criteria in recent years, propelled by news
reports, Starr's research and encouragement from the Obama White House. In addition to
Illinois' law banning noncompete agreements for low-wage workers, last year Utah passed a
law that voided agreements that restricted workers for more than a year; Rhode Island
invalidated them for physicians; and Connecticut limited how long and in what geographic
area physicians can be bound.
Yet Starr's survey research suggests that tweaking the criteria may have a limited
effect on how often the agreements are signed. In California, where noncompete agreements
can't be enforced, 19 percent of workers have signed one, he said. In Florida, where the
agreements are easily enforced, the share is the same: 19 percent.
The merging of corporate power with the state is called "fascism." This was described by
both Benito Mussolini and FDR's vice-president Henry Wallace. But the term "fascism" isn't
mentioned in the article. Importantly, fascists are sworn enemies of communism and socialism,
and this is how they can be identified.
NC is one of the few blogs where I read the comments.- this was a good article until the
wtf comment at the end.
Great Britain in an 1833 Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom abolished slavery
throughout the British Empire (with the exceptions "of the Territories in the Possession of
the East India Company" (how is that not surprising), Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and Saint
Helena; the exceptions were eliminated in 1843). "Who ya gonna get to do the dirty work when
all the slaves are free?" Indentured servants from India – the biggest ethnic group in
British Guiana (now Guyana) are from India Indians.
The US is definitely getting more feudal.
while i dont disagree thats it not happening, it just seems extremely short sighted, as
without a large growing middle class, corporations are dooming them selves to lower income
(profits) in the long term. but then no one can really accuse corporations of having a long
term view
But perhaps the rich people hiding behind the corporate veil are motivated by class
sadism, not class greed. Perhaps they are ready to lose half what they have in order to
destroy both halves of what we have.
I don't see the problem. You're getting somewhere around minimum wage, and so a lawyer
wouldn't take you even if you knew how to find one suitable, which you don't.
So you look at your boss and say, "Sue me." What's the gut to do? Hire a lawyer? Use one
on staff? This is a civil case, so what damages is he claiming?
Then how's the judge going to look on this. Any judge I've known would be pissed livid to
get stuck with a bullcrap case like this. Imagine when every judge is looking at his docket
filled with this nonsense. How long before he starts slapping your boss with contempt?
We're sitting around complaining how bad our bosses are, bet we have another, must worse
problem. Employees have turned to wimps over their boss's every utterance. Here's a tip.
Probably a half and more of whatever is in you employment "contract" (it probably doesn't
even qualify legally as one) is either illegal or unenforceable. Pretend it isn't there.
And above all, STOP rolling over to these jerks. If your biggest problem is a non-compete
on a minimum wage contract, your world has already fallen apart. If your bosses problem is
that he thinks he needs them, his world is about to.
It's about bullying and intimidation.
Like most bullies, the companies are cowards who would back down if challenged, because it
would make little economic sense to sue minimum-wage ex-employees.
They're relying on the employees being too cowed to call their bluff, so they choose to stay
even if unhappy.
Non-compete clauses sound like something that will create a hostile work force; that may
not be so good for these companies. Articles like this make me think of "Space Merchants", an amusing science fiction satire
on capitalism by Pohl and Kornbluth.
The East India Company did not establish a foothold in Virginia! That was the Virginia
Company! This basic factual error mars an article that otherwise makes a very good point.
Perhaps there are other options in responding to the types of abuse detailed in this
post, in addition to the political action Thom Hartmann called for. One such action might be
characterized as "Passive NonParticipation" with your brains, craftsmanship and know-how to
the extent possible, yet still retain your job.
In the waning years of the Soviet Union, the mantra was "They pretend to pay us, and we
pretend to work." I suspect many American workers have already figured out the minimum amount
of work necessary to retain their jobs and incomes, hence the recent decline in one of the
"elite's" most cherished metrics, "productivity" (besides wealth concentration, of
course).
"... Returning to that first paragraph of Peters's piece, we find the basic positions of the neoliberal persuasion: opposition to unions and big government, support for the military and big business. ..."
"... Above all, neoliberals loathed unions, especially teachers unions. They still do , except insofar as they're useful funding devices for the contemporary Democratic Party. ..."
"... But reading Peters, it's clear that unions were, from the very beginning, the main target. The problems with unions were many: they protected their members' interests (no mention of how important unions were to getting and protecting Social Security and Medicare); they drove up costs, both in the private and the public sector; they defended lazy, incompetent workers ("we want a government that can fire people who can't or won't do the job"). ..."
On Tuesday, New York magazine's Jonathan Chait tweeted , "What if every use
of 'neoliberal' was replaced with, simply, 'liberal'? Would any non-propagandistic meaning be
lost?"
It was an odd tweet.
On the one hand, Chait was probably just voicing his disgruntlement with an epithet that
leftists and Sanders liberals often hurl against Clinton liberals like Chait.
On the other hand, there was a time, not so long ago, when journalists like Chait would have
proudly owned the term neoliberal as an apt description of their beliefs. It was the
New Republic , after all, the magazine where Chait made his name, that, along with the
Washington Monthly , first provided neoliberalism with a home and a face.
Now, neoliberalism, of course, can mean agreatmanythings , many of them
associated with the Right. But one of its meanings -- arguably, in the United States, the most
historically accurate -- is the
name that a small group of journalists, intellectuals, and politicians on the Left gave to
themselves in the late 1970s in order to register their distance from the traditional
liberalism of the New Deal and the Great Society.
The original neoliberals included, among others, Michael Kinsley, Charles Peters, James
Fallows, Nicholas Lemann, Bill Bradley, Bruce Babbitt, Gary Hart, and Paul Tsongas. Sometimes
called "
Atari Democrats ," these were the men -- and they were almost all men -- who helped to remake
American liberalism into neoliberalism, culminating in the election of Bill Clinton in
1992.
These were the men who made Jonathan Chait what he is today. Chait, after all, would recoil
in horror at the policies and programs of mid-century liberals like Walter Reuther or John
Kenneth Galbraith or even Arthur Schlesinger, who
claimed that "class conflict is essential if freedom is to be preserved, because it is the
only barrier against class domination." We know this because he so resolutely
opposes the more tepid versions of that liberalism that we see in the Sanders campaign.
It's precisely the distance between that lost world of twentieth century American
labor-liberalism and contemporary liberals like Chait that the phrase "neoliberalism" is meant,
in part , to register.
We can see that distance first declared, and declared most clearly, in Charles Peters's
famous " A
Neoliberal's Manifesto ," which Tim Barker reminded me of last night. Peters was the
founder and editor of the Washington Monthly , and in many ways the éminence
grise of the neoliberal movement.
In re-reading Peters's manifesto -- I remember reading it in high school; that was the kind
of thing a certain kind of nerdy liberal-ish sophomore might do -- I'm struck by how much it
sets out the lineaments of Chait-style thinking today.
The basic orientation is announced in the opening paragraph:
We still believe in liberty and justice for all, in mercy for the afflicted and help for
the down and out. But we no longer automatically favor unions and big government or oppose
the military and big business. Indeed, in our search for solutions that work, we have to
distrust all automatic responses, liberal or conservative.
Note the disavowal of all conventional ideologies and beliefs, the affirmation of an
open-minded pragmatism guided solely by a bracing commitment to what works. It's a leitmotif of
the entire manifesto: everyone else is blinded by their emotional attachments to the ideas of
the past.
We, the heroic few, are willing to look upon reality as it is, to take up solutions from any
side of the political spectrum, to disavow anything that smacks of ideological rigidity or
partisan tribalism.
That Peters wound up embracing solutions in the piece that put him comfortably within the
camp of GOP conservatism (he even makes a sop to school prayer) never seemed to disturb his
serenity as a self-identified iconoclast. That was part of the neoliberal esprit de corps: a
self-styled philosophical promiscuity married to a fairly conventional ideological
fidelity.
Listen to how former New Republic owner Marty Peretz described that
ethos in his look-back on the New Republic of the 1970s and 1980s:
My then-wife and I bought the New Republic in 1974. I was at the time a junior faculty
member at Harvard, and I installed a former student, Michael Kinsley, as its editor. We put
out a magazine that was intellectually daring, I like to think, and politically
controversial.
We were for the Contras in Nicaragua; wary of affirmative action; for military
intervention in Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur; alarmed about the decline of the family. The
New Republic was also an early proponent of gay rights. We were neoliberals. We were
also Zionists, and it was our defense of the Jewish state that put us outside the comfort
zone of modern progressive politics.
Except for gay rights and one or two items in that grab bag of foreign interventions, what
is Peretz saying here beyond the fact that his politics consisted mainly of supporting various
planks from the Republican Party platform? That was the intellectual daring, apparently.
Returning to that first paragraph of Peters's piece, we find the basic positions of the
neoliberal persuasion: opposition to unions and big government, support for the military and
big business.
Above all, neoliberals loathed unions, especially teachers unions. They
still do , except insofar as they're useful funding devices for the contemporary Democratic
Party.
But reading Peters, it's clear that unions were, from the very beginning, the main
target. The problems with unions were many: they protected their members' interests (no mention
of how important unions were to getting and protecting Social Security and Medicare); they
drove up costs, both in the private and the public sector; they defended lazy, incompetent
workers ("we want a government that can fire people who can't or won't do the job").
Against unions, or conventional unions, Peters held out the promise of employee
stock-ownership plans ( ESOPs ), where workers would forgo higher wages and
benefits in return for stock options and ownership. He happily pointed to the example of
Weirton Steel
:
. . . where the workers accepted a 32 percent wage cut to keep their company alive. They
will not be suckers because they will own the plant and share in the future profits their
sacrifice makes possible. It's better for a worker to keep a job by accepting $12 an hour
than to lose it by insisting on $19.
(Sadly, within two decades, Weirton Steel was dead, and with it, those future profits and
wages for which those workers had sacrificed in the early 1980s.)
But above all, Peters and other neoliberals saw unions as the instruments of the most vile
subjugation of the most downtrodden members of society:
A poor black child might have a better chance of escaping the ghetto if we fired his
incompetent middle-class teacher . . .
The urban public schools have in fact become the principal instrument of class oppression
in America, keeping the lower orders in their place while the upper class sends its children
to private schools.
And here we see how in utero how the neoliberal argument works its magic on the Left.
On the one hand, Peters showed how much the neoliberal was indebted to the Great Society
ethos of the 1960s. That ethos was a departure from the New Deal insofar as it proclaimed its
solidarity with the most desperate and the most needy.
Michael Harrington's The
Other America , for example, treated the poor not as a central part of the political
economy, as the New Deal did. The poor were superfluous to that economy: there was America,
which was middle-class and mainstream; there was the "other," which was poor and marginal. The
Great Society declared a War on Poverty, which was thought to be a project different from
managing and regulating the economy.
On the other hand, Peters showed how potent, and potently disabling, that kind of thinking
could be. In the hands of neoliberalism, it became fashionable to pit the interests of the poor
not against the power of the wealthy but against the unionized working class.
(We still see that kind of talk among today's Democrats, particularly in debates around free
trade, where it is always the unionized worker -- never the well-paid journalist or economist
or corporate CEO -- who is expected to make sacrifices on behalf of the global poor. Or
among Hillary Clinton supporters, who leverage the interests of African American voters against
the interests of white working-class voters, but never against the interests of capital.)
Teachers unions in the inner cities were ground zero of the neoliberal obsession. But it
wasn't just teachers unions. It was all unions:
In both the public and private sector, unions were seeking and getting wage increases that
had the effect of reducing or eliminating employment opportunities for people who were trying
to get a foot on the first run of the ladder.
And it wasn't just unions that were a problem. It was big-government liberalism as a
whole:
Too many liberals . . . refused to criticize their friends in the industrial unions and
the civil service who were pulling up the ladder. Thus liberalism was becoming a movement of
those who had arrived, who cared more about preserving and expanding their own gains than
about helping those in need.
That government jobs are critical for women and African Americans -- as Annie Lowrey shows in
an excellent
recent piece -- has long been known in traditional liberal and labor circles.
That it is only recently registered among journalists -- who, even when they take the long
view, focus almost exclusively, as Lowrey does, on the role of GOP governors in the aughts
rather than on these long-term shifts in Democratic Party thinking -- tells us something about
the break between liberalism and neoliberalism that Chait believes is so fanciful.
Oddly, as soon as Peters was done attacking unions and civil-service jobs for doling out
benefits to the few -- ignoring all the women and people of color who were increasingly reliant
on these instruments for their own advance -- he turned around and attacked programs like Social
Security and Medicare for doing precisely the opposite: protecting everyone.
Take Social Security. The original purpose was to protect the elderly from need. But, in
order to secure and maintain the widest possible support, benefits were paid to rich and poor
alike. The catch, of course, is that a lot of money is wasted on people who don't need it . .
.
Another way the practical and the idealistic merge in neoliberal thinking in is our
attitude toward income maintenance programs like Social Security, welfare, veterans'
pensions, and unemployment compensation. We want to eliminate duplication and apply a means
test to these programs. They would all become one insurance program against need.
As a practical matter, the country can't afford to spend money on people who don't need it -- my aunt who uses her Social Security check to go to Europe or your brother-in-law who uses
his unemployment compensation to finance a trip to Florida. And as liberal idealists, we
don't think the well-off should be getting money from these programs anyway -- every cent we
can afford should go to helping those really in need.
Kind of like Hillary Clinton criticizing Bernie Sanders for supporting free college
education for all on the grounds that Donald Trump's kids shouldn't get their education paid
for? (And let's not forget that as recently as the last presidential campaign, the Democratic
candidate was more than willing to trumpet his credentials as a cutter of Social Security and
Medicare , though thankfully he never entertained the idea of turning them into
means-tested programs.)
It's difficult to make sense of what truly drives this contradiction, whereby one liberalism
is criticized for supporting only one segment of the population while another liberalism is
criticized for supporting all segments, including the poor.
It could be as simple as the belief that government should work on behalf of only the truly
disadvantaged, leaving everyone else to the hands of the market. That that turned out to be a
disaster for the truly disadvantaged -- with no one besides themselves to speak up on behalf of
anti-poverty programs, those programs proved all too easy to eliminate, not by a Republican but
by a Democrat -- seems not to have much troubled the sleep of neoliberalism.
Indeed, in the current election, it is Hillary Clinton's support for the 1994 crime bill
rather than the 1996 welfare reform bill that has gotten the most attention, even though she
proudly stated in her memoir that she not
only supported the 1996 bill but rounded up votes for it.
Or perhaps it's that neoliberals of the Left, like their counterparts on the Right ,
simply came to believe that the market was for winners, government for losers. Only the poor
needed government; everyone else was made for capitalism.
"Risk is indeed the essence of the movement," declared Peters of his merry band of
neoliberal men, and though he had something different in mind when he said that, it's clear
from the rest of his manifesto that the risk-taking entrepreneur really was what made his and
his friends' hearts beat fastest.
Our hero is the risk-taking entrepreneur who creates new jobs and better products.
"Americans," says Bill Bradley, "have to begin to treat risk more as an opportunity and not
as a threat."
Whatever the explanation for this attitude toward government and the poor, it's clear that
we're still living in the world the neoliberals made.
When Clinton's main line of
attack against Sanders is that his proposals would increase the size of the federal
government by 40 percent, when her hawkishness
remains an unapologetic part of her campaign, when unions barely register except as an ATM for
the Democratic Party, and
Wall Street firmly declares itself to be in her camp, we can hear that opening call of
Peters -- "But we no longer automatically favor unions and big government or oppose the military
and big business" -- shorn of all awkward hesitation and convoluted formulations, articulated
instead in the forthright syntax of common sense and everyday truth.
Perhaps that is why Jonathan Chait cannot tell the difference between liberalism
and neoliberalism.
This is a good analysis. Given the author's not insignificant role in the surreptitious
imposition of the cultural Marxism under which we all live today in which the expression of
any ideas by those in public life which run counter to the cultural and economic consensus
are greeted with loud indignation, feigned offence and derision, frequently leading to social
ostracism, one wonders how the new ideas are to be even debated, let alone taken up.
Pikkety (?) is a good example of original thinking, with whom I don't personally agree,
but the way in which he has been derided in most MSM or, worse, completely ignored shows up
shallowness of modern political and philosophical discourse.
I have no idea what you mean by 'cultural Marxism', it seems you're way off beam. We have
lived through a period of hegemony dominated by neo liberal capitalism - as Martin describes
so well. Share
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'Cultural Marxism' is usually a euphemism for political correctness and identity politics
which the right-wing commentariat see rooted in 1960s counter culture supposedly influenced
by French and Frankfurt School marxian philosophy.
Similarly Malcolm Turnbull, the ultimate symbol of the success of greed who promoted massive
tax cuts to the corporations as an election strategy, was stunned by his rejection at the
last election and by the rise of Pauline Hanson, an individual who represents an Australian
version of Donald Trump.
Meanwhile other neo-liberal reactionaries like the Premier of NSW, Mike Baird, continue to
sell public assets such as the electricity supply, dismantle and dismiss democratically
elected local councils, give business owners two votes in Sydney City council elections, tear
down functional buildings such as the Power House Museum and the Entertainment center in
order to hand the sites to property developers and approves coal mines on prime agricultural
land and in areas of great natural beauty yet imagines that he will get away with what he is
doing.
He may well discover that come the next election, even the ordinary members of his own party
will desert him as the revolt against his destructive and arrogant mis-government catches up
with him.
"... Based on little but gut instinct, I think Trudeau is the worst. ..."
"... Trudeau is a Canadian Obama. Canada is always a few years behind the U.S. ..."
"... Macron like so many other neoliberals likely buys the idea that deregulation and cutting taxes on the wealthy will make France more competitive and attractive to international business. Don't out faith in patriotism. ..."
"... After spending the last year or so worshipping the dandruff on Macron's collar, the French media has now suddenly started pointing out – quite fairly – that he's as likely to be as much of a puppet of Berlin and Frankfurt as were his predecessors. ..."
"... He and his backers want to dismantle the few remaining economic and social protections in France, and the best way to do this is to blame it on somebody else. His enthusiasm for Europe and the Franco-German axis is partly instinctive (a generational issue) but also partly because he can say, hand on heart, "they made me do it." And anyone who criticizes decisions made in Europe is obviously playing the game of the National Front . ..."
Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau: when brutal neoliberalism tries to re-brand itself
through fresh faces failed evolution
I'm trying to work out which one is the worst, especially as my own Prime Minister is apparently
a huge fan of both and is modelling himself on them
(even down to his socks ).
I have no doubt that Macron is also bought and paid for by bankers, but I do hold out hope
that at least he is aware of the stupidity of German style ortho austerity and the need for fiscal
expansion across Europe, and at least he seems willing to put words into action on climate change
(easier for a French government of course, as they always preferred nuclear power to fossil fuels).
I suspect though that his fiscal expansion preference will be via increasing private debt to compensate
for public sector retrenchments.
The thing about French leaders is that they tend to put French nationalism above economic ideology,
so if he follows the pattern, his main focus will be on strenghtening France relative to Germany,
which is no bad thing for Europe as a whole.
Trudeau is a Canadian Obama. Canada is always a few years behind the U.S.
Macron like so many other neoliberals likely buys the idea that deregulation and cutting
taxes on the wealthy will make France more competitive and attractive to international business.
Don't out faith in patriotism.
After spending the last year or so worshipping the dandruff on Macron's collar, the French
media has now suddenly started pointing out – quite fairly – that he's as likely to be as much
of a puppet of Berlin and Frankfurt as were his predecessors.
The various dismissive remarks made in both capitals about his plans for reforming Europe have
been extensively covered. But I don't think it matters to Macron. He and his backers want to dismantle
the few remaining economic and social protections in France, and the best way to do this is to
blame it on somebody else. His enthusiasm for Europe and the Franco-German axis is partly instinctive
(a generational issue) but also partly because he can say, hand on heart, "they made me do it."
And anyone who criticizes decisions made in Europe is obviously playing the game of the National
Front .
Populism is a weasel word that is use by neoliberal MSM to delitimize the resistance. This is a typical neoliberal thinking.
Financial globalization is different from trade. It is more of neocolonialism that racket, as is
the case with trade.
Notable quotes:
"... Financial globalisation appears to have produced adverse distributional impacts within countries as well, in part through its effect on incidence and severity of financial crises. Most noteworthy is the recent analysis by Furceri et al. (2017) that looks at 224 episodes of capital account liberalisation. They find that capital-account liberalisation leads to statistically significant and long-lasting declines in the labour share of income and corresponding increases in the Gini coefficient of income inequality and in the shares of top 1%, 5%, and 10% of income. Further, capital mobility shifts both the tax burden and the burden of economic shocks onto the immobile factor, labour. ..."
"... I suggest that the fact that these two countries are arguably the most unequal in the advanced world has something to do with this. Also, on many measures I believe these two countries appear to be the most 'damaged' societies in the advanced world – levels of relationship breakdown, teenage crime, drug use, teenage pregnancies etc. I doubt this is a coincidence. ..."
"... Forced Free Trade was intended to be destructive to American society, and it was . . . exactly as intended. Millions of jobs were abolished here and shipped to foreign countries used as economic aggression platforms against America. So of course American society became damaged as the American economy became mass-jobicided. On purpose. With malice aforethought. ..."
"... "Populism" seems to me to be a pejorative term used to delegitimize the grievances of the economically disenfranchised and dismiss them derision. ..."
"... In the capitalist economies globalization is/was inevitable; the outcome is easy to observe ..and suffer under. ..."
"... they never get into the nitty-gritty of the "immobility" of the general populations who have been crushed by the lost jobs, homes, families, lives ..."
"... This piece was a lengthy run-on Econ 101 bollocks. Not only does the writer dismiss debt/interest and the effects of rentier banking, but they come off as very simplistic. Reads like some sheltered preppy attempt at explaining populism ..."
"... But like almost all economists, Rodrik is ignoring the political part of political economy. Historically, humanity has developed two organizational forms to select and steer toward preferred economic destinies: governments of nation states, and corporations. ..."
"... The liberalization of trade has come, I would argue, with a huge political cost no economist has reckoned yet. Instead, economists are whining about the reaction to this political cost without facing up to the political cost itself. Or even accept its legitimacy. ..."
"... Second, there are massive negative effects of trade liberalization that economists simply refuse to look at. Arbitration of environmental and worker safety laws and regulations is one. ..."
"... As I have argued elsewhere, the most important economic activity a society engages in us the development and diffusion of new science and technology. ..."
"... Rodrik is also wrong about the historical origins of agrarian populism in USA. It was not trade, but the oligopoly power of railroads, farm equipment makers, and banks that were the original grievances of the Grangers, Farmers Alliances after the Civil War. ..."
"... The salient characteristic of populism is favoring the people vs. the establishment. The whole left/right dichotomy is a creation of the establishment, used to divide the public and PREVENT an effective populist backlash. As Gore Vidal astutely pointed out decades ago, there is really only one party in the U.S. – the Property Party – and the Ds and Rs are just two heads of the same hydra. Especially in the past 10 years or so. ..."
'Populism' is a loose label that encompasses a diverse set of movements. The term originates from
the late 19th century, when a coalition of farmers, workers, and miners in the US rallied against
the Gold Standard and the Northeastern banking and finance establishment. Latin America has a long
tradition of populism going back to the 1930s, and exemplified by Peronism. Today populism spans
a wide gamut of political movements, including anti-euro and anti-immigrant parties in Europe, Syriza
and Podemos in Greece and Spain, Trump's anti-trade nativism in the US, the economic populism of
Chavez in Latin America, and many others in between. What all these share is an anti-establishment
orientation, a claim to speak for the people against the elites, opposition to liberal economics
and globalisation, and often (but not always) a penchant for authoritarian governance.
The populist backlash may have been a surprise to many, but it really should not have been in
light of economic history and economic theory.
Take history first. The first era of globalisation under the Gold Standard produced the first
self-conscious populist movement in history, as noted above. In trade, finance, and immigration,
political backlash was not late in coming. The decline in world agricultural prices in 1870s and
1880s produced pressure for resumption in import protection. With the exception of Britain, nearly
all European countries raised agricultural tariffs towards the end of the 19th century. Immigration
limits also began to appear in the late 19th century. The United States Congress passed in 1882 the
infamous Chinese Exclusion Act that restricted Chinese immigration specifically. Japanese immigration
was restricted in 1907. And the Gold Standard aroused farmers' ire because it was seen to produce
tight credit conditions and a deflationary effect on agricultural prices. In a speech at the Democratic
national convention of 1896, the populist firebrand William Jennings Bryan uttered the famous words:
"You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."
To anyone familiar with the basic economics of trade and financial integration, the politically
contentious nature of globalisation should not be a surprise. The workhorse models with which international
economists work tend to have strong redistributive implications. One of the most remarkable theorems
in economics is the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, which generates very sharp distributional implications
from opening up to trade. Specifically, in a model with two goods and two factors of production,
with full inter-sectoral mobility of the factors, owners of one of the two factors are made necessarily
worse off with the opening to trade. The factor which is used intensively in the importable good
must experience a decline in its real earnings.
The Stolper-Samuelson theorem assumes very specific conditions. But there is one Stolper-Samuelson-like
result that is extremely general, and which can be stated as follows. Under competitive conditions,
as long as the importable good(s) continue to be produced at home – that is, ruling out complete
specialisation – there is always at least one factor of production that is rendered worse off by
the liberalisation of trade. In other words, trade generically produces losers. Redistribution is
the flip side of the gains from trade; no pain, no gain.
Economic theory has an additional implication, which is less well recognised. In relative terms,
the redistributive effects of liberalisation get larger and tend to swamp the net gains as the trade
barriers in question become smaller. The ratio of redistribution to net gains rises as trade liberalisation
tackles progressively lower barriers.
The logic is simple. Consider the denominator of this ratio first. It is a standard result in
public finance that the efficiency cost of a tax increases with the square of the tax rate. Since
an import tariff is a tax on imports, the same convexity applies to tariffs as well. Small tariffs
have very small distorting effects; large tariffs have very large negative effects. Correspondingly,
the efficiency gains of trade liberalisation become progressively smaller as the barriers get lower.
The redistributive effects, on the other hand, are roughly linear with respect to price changes and
are invariant, at the margin, to the magnitude of the barriers. Putting these two facts together,
we have the result just stated, namely that the losses incurred by adversely affected groups per
dollar of efficiency gain are higher the lower the barrier that is removed.
Evidence is in line with these theoretical expectations. For example, in the case of NAFTA, Hakobyan
and McLaren (2016) have found very large adverse effects for an "important minority" of US workers,
while Caliendo and Parro (2015) estimate that the overall gains to the US economy from the agreement
were minute (a "welfare" gain of 0.08%).
In principle, the gains from trade can be redistributed to compensate the losers and ensure no
identifiable group is left behind. Trade openness has been greatly facilitated in Europe by the creation
of welfare states. But the US, which became a truly open economy relatively late, did not move in
the same direction. This may account for why imports from specific trade partners such as China or
Mexico are so much more contentious in the US.
Economists understand that trade causes job displacement and income losses for some groups. But
they have a harder time making sense of why trade gets picked on so much by populists both on the
right and the left. After all, imports are only one source of churn in labour markets, and typically
not even the most important source. What is it that renders trade so much more salient politically?
Perhaps trade is a convenient scapegoat. But there is another, deeper issue that renders redistribution
caused by trade more contentious than other forms of competition or technological change. Sometimes
international trade involves types of competition that are ruled out at home because they violate
widely held domestic norms or social understandings. When such "blocked exchanges" (Walzer 1983)
are enabled through trade they raise difficult questions of distributive justice. What arouses popular
opposition is not inequality per se, but perceived unfairness.
Financial globalisation is in principle similar to trade insofar as it generates overall economic
benefits. Nevertheless, the economics profession's current views on financial globalisation can be
best described as ambivalent. Most of the scepticism is directed at short-term financial flows, which
are associated with financial crises and other excesses. Long-term flows and direct foreign investment
in particular are generally still viewed favourably. Direct foreign investment tends to be more stable
and growth-promoting. But there is evidence that it has produced shifts in taxation and bargaining
power that are adverse to labour.
The boom-and-bust cycle associated with capital inflows has long been familiar to developing nations.
Prior to the Global Crisis, there was a presumption that such problems were largely the province
of poorer countries. Advanced economies, with their better institutions and regulation, would be
insulated from financial crises induced by financial globalisation. It did not quite turn out that
way. In the US, the housing bubble, excessive risk-taking, and over-leveraging during the years leading
up to the crisis were amplified by capital inflows from the rest of the world. In the Eurozone, financial
integration, on a regional scale, played an even larger role. Credit booms fostered by interest-rate
convergence would eventually turn into bust and sustained economic collapses in Greece, Spain, Portugal,
and Ireland once credit dried up in the immediate aftermath of the crisis in the US.
Financial globalisation appears to have produced adverse distributional impacts within countries
as well, in part through its effect on incidence and severity of financial crises. Most noteworthy
is the recent analysis by Furceri et al. (2017) that looks at 224 episodes of capital account liberalisation.
They find that capital-account liberalisation leads to statistically significant and long-lasting
declines in the labour share of income and corresponding increases in the Gini coefficient of income
inequality and in the shares of top 1%, 5%, and 10% of income. Further, capital mobility shifts both
the tax burden and the burden of economic shocks onto the immobile factor, labour.
The populist backlash may have been predictable, but the specific form it took was less so. Populism
comes in different versions. It is useful to distinguish between left-wing and right-wing variants
of populism, which differ with respect to the societal cleavages that populist politicians highlight
and render salient. The US progressive movement and most Latin American populism took a left-wing
form. Donald Trump and European populism today represent, with some instructive exceptions, the right-wing
variant (Figure 2). What accounts for the emergence of right-wing versus left-wing variants of opposition
to globalization?
Figure 2 Contrasting patterns of populism in Europe and Latin America
Notes : See Rodrik (2017) for sources and methods.
I suggest that these different reactions are related to the forms in which globalisation shocks
make themselves felt in society (Rodrik 2017). It is easier for populist politicians to mobilise
along ethno-national/cultural cleavages when the globalisation shock becomes salient in the form
of immigration and refugees. That is largely the story of advanced countries in Europe. On the other
hand, it is easier to mobilise along income/social class lines when the globalisation shock takes
the form mainly of trade, finance, and foreign investment. That in turn is the case with southern
Europe and Latin America. The US, where arguably both types of shocks have become highly salient
recently, has produced populists of both stripes (Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump).
It is important to distinguish between the demand and supply sides of the rise in populism. The
economic anxiety and distributional struggles exacerbated by globalisation generate a base for populism,
but do not necessarily determine its political orientation. The relative salience of available cleavages
and the narratives provided by populist leaders are what provides direction and content to the grievances.
Overlooking this distinction can obscure the respective roles of economic and cultural factors in
driving populist politics.
Finally, it is important to emphasise that globalization has not been the only force at play -
nor necessarily even the most important one. Changes in technology, rise of winner-take-all markets,
erosion of labour market protections, and decline of norms restricting pay differentials all have
played their part. These developments are not entirely independent from globalisation, insofar as
they both fostered globalization and were reinforced by it. But neither can they be reduced to it.
Nevertheless, economic history and economic theory both give us strong reasons to believe that advanced
stages of globalisation are prone to populist backlash.
One question he does not address is why the opposition to globalization has had its most obvious
consequences in two countries:- the US and the UK with Trump and Brexit respectively.
I suggest
that the fact that these two countries are arguably the most unequal in the advanced world has
something to do with this. Also, on many measures I believe these two countries appear to be the
most 'damaged' societies in the advanced world – levels of relationship breakdown, teenage crime,
drug use, teenage pregnancies etc. I doubt this is a coincidence.
For me the lessons are obvious
– ensure the benefits of increased trade are distributed among all affected, not just some; act
to prevent excessive inequality; nurture people so that their lives are happier.
re: "ensure the benefits of increased trade are distributed among all affected"
Note that for the recent TPP, industry executives and senior government officials were well
represented for the drafting of the agreement, labor and environmental groups were not.
There simply may be no mechanism to "ensure the benefits are distributed among all affected"
in the USA political climate as those benefits are grabbed by favored groups, who don't want to
re-distribute them later.
Some USA politicians argue for passing flawed legislation while suggesting they will fix it
later, as I remember California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein stating when she voted for
Bush Jr's Medicare Part D ("buy elderly votes for Republicans").
It has been about 15 years, and I don't remember any reform efforts on Medicare Part D from
Di-Fi.
Legislation should be approached with the anticipated inequality problems solved FIRST when
wealthy and powerful interests are only anticipating increased wealth via "free trade". Instead,
the political process gifts first to the wealthy and powerful first and adopts a "we'll fix it
later" attitude for those harmed. And the same process occurs, the wealthy/powerful subsequently
strongly resist sharing their newly acquired "free trade" wealth increment with the free trade
losers..
If the USA adopted a "fix inequality first" requirement, one wonders if these free trade bills
would get much purchase with the elite.
Forced Free Trade was intended to be destructive to American society, and it was . . . exactly
as intended.
Millions of jobs were abolished here and shipped to foreign countries used as economic aggression
platforms against America. So of course American society became damaged as the American economy
became mass-jobicided. On purpose. With malice aforethought.
NAFTA Bill Clinton lit the fuse to the bomb which finally exploded under his lovely wife Hillary
in 2016.
The big problem I find in this analysis is that it completely forgets how different countries
use fiscal/financial policies to play merchantilistic games under globalization.
Yves, thanks for posting this from Dani Rodrik - whose clear thinking is always worthwhile.
It's an excellent, succinct post. Still, one 'ouch': "Redistribution is the flip side of the gains
from trade; no pain, no gain."
This is dehumanizing glibness that we cannot afford. The pain spreads like wildfire. It burns
down houses, savings, jobs, communities, bridges, roads, health and health care, education, food
systems, air, water, the 'real' economy, civility, shared values - in short everything for billions
of human beings - all while sickening, isolating and killing.
The gain? Yes, as you so often point out, cui bono? But, really it goes beyond even that question.
It requires asking, "Is this gain so obscene to arguably be no gain at all because its price for
those who cannot have too many homes and yachts and so forth is the loss of humanity?
Consider, for example, Mitch McConnell. He cannot reasonably be considered human. At all. And,
before the trolls create any gifs for the Teenager-In-Chief, one could say the same - or almost
the same - for any number of flexians who denominate themselves D or R (e.g. Jamie Gorelick).
No pain, no gain? Fine for getting into better shape or choosing to get better at some discipline.
It's an abominable abstraction, though, for describing phenomena now so far along toward planet-o-cide.
"Populism" seems to me to be a pejorative term used to delegitimize the grievances of the economically
disenfranchised and dismiss them derision.
Another categorization that I find less than apt, outmoded
and a misnomer is the phrase "advanced economies", especially given that level of industrialization
and gdp per capita are the key metrics used to arrive at these classifications. Globalization
has shifted most industrial activity away from countries that invested in rapid industrialization
post WW2 to countries with large pools of readily exploitable labour while gdp per capita numbers
include sections of the population with no direct participation in creating economic output (and
the growth of these marginalized sections is trending ever upward).
Meanwhile the financial benefits
of growing GDP numbers gush ever upwards to the financial-political elites instead of "trickling
downwards" as we are told they should, inequality grows unabated, stress related diseases eat
away at the bodies of otherwise young men and women etc. I'm not sure any of these dynamics, which
describe perfectly what is happening in many so called advanced economies, are the mark of societies
that should describe themselves as "advanced"
Sorry, but the original populist movement in the US called themselves the Populists or the
Populist Party. Being popular is good. You are the one who is assigning a pejorative tone to it.
Populism is widely used in the mainstream media, and even in the so called alternative media,
as a really pejorative term. That is what he means (I would say).
"What all these share is an anti-establishment orientation, a claim to speak for the people
against the elites, opposition to liberal economics and globalisation, and often (but not always)
a penchant for authoritarian governance."
On the other hand:
"What all these share is an establishment orientation, a claim to speak for the elites against
the people, support for liberal economics and globalisation, and always a penchant for authoritarian
governance."
"Financial globalisation appears to have produced adverse distributional impacts within countries
as well, in part through its effect on incidence and severity of financial crises. Most noteworthy
is the recent analysis by Furceri et al. (2017) that looks at 224 episodes of capital account
liberalisation. They find that capital-account liberalisation leads to statistically significant
and long-lasting declines in the labour share of income and corresponding increases in the Gini
coefficient of income inequality and in the shares of top 1%, 5%, and 10% of income. Further,
capital mobility shifts both the tax burden and the burden of economic shocks onto the immobile
factor, labour."
So, translated, Rodrick is saying that the free flow of money across borders, while people
are confined within these artificial constraints, results in all the riches flowing to the fat
cats and all the taxes, famines, wars, droughts, floods and other natural disasters being dumped
upon the peasants.
The Lakota, roaming the grassy plains of the North American mid-continent, glorified their
'fat cats,' the hunters who brought back the bison which provided food, shelter and clothing to
the people. And the rule was that the spoils of the hunt were shared unequally; the old, women
and children got the choice high calorie fatty parts. The more that a hunter gave away, the more
he was revered.
The Lakota, after some decades of interaction with the European invaders, bestowed on them
a disparaging soubriquet: wasi'chu. It means 'fat-taker;' someone who is greedy, taking all the
best parts for himself and leaving nothing for the people.
"So, translated, Rodrick is saying that the free flow of money across borders, while people
are confined within these artificial constraints .."
Nailed it!!
That's something that has always bothered me it's great for the propagandists to acclaim globalization
but they never get into the nitty-gritty of the "immobility" of the general populations who have
been crushed by the lost jobs, homes, families, lives .there should be a murderous outrage against
this kind of globalized exploitation and the consequent sufferings. Oh, but I forgot! It's all
about the money that is supposed to give incentive to those who are left behind to "recoup",
"regroup" and in today's age develop some kind of "app" to make up for all those losses .
In the
capitalist economies globalization is/was inevitable; the outcome is easy to observe ..and suffer
under.
they never get into the nitty-gritty of the "immobility" of the general populations who
have been crushed by the lost jobs, homes, families, lives
That's a feature, not a bug. Notice that big corporations are all in favor of globalization
except when it comes to things like labor law. Then, somehow, local is better.
"The economic anxiety and distributional struggles exacerbated by globalization generate a
base for populism, but do not necessarily determine its political orientation. The relative salience
of available cleavages and the narratives provided by populist leaders are what provides direction
and content to the grievances. "
Excellent and interesting point. Which political party presents itself as a believable tool
for redress affects the direction populism will take, making itself available as supply to the
existing populist demand. That should provide for 100 years of political science research.
Anonymous2 : "For me the lessons are obvious – ensure the benefits of increased trade are distributed
among all affected, not just some; act to prevent excessive inequality; nurture people so that
their lives are happier."
It ought to be but sadly I fear our politicians are bought. I am unsure I have the solution
. In the past when things got really bad I suspect people ended up with a major war before these
sorts of problems could be addressed. I doubt that is going to be a solution this time.
This piece was a lengthy run-on Econ 101 bollocks. Not only does the writer dismiss debt/interest
and the effects of rentier banking, but they come off as very simplistic. Reads like some sheltered
preppy attempt at explaining populism
Yep, Rodrik has been writing about these things for decades and has a remarkable talent for
never actually getting anywhere. He's particularly enamored by the neoliberal shiny toy of "skills",
as if predation, looting, and fraud simply don't exist.
This is a prime example of what is wrong with professional economic thinking. First, note that
Rodrik is nominally on our side: socially progressive, conscious of the increasingly frightful
cost of enviro externalities, etc.
But like almost all economists, Rodrik is ignoring the political
part of political economy. Historically, humanity has developed two organizational forms to select
and steer toward preferred economic destinies: governments of nation states, and corporations.
Only nation states provide the mass of people any form and extent of political participation in
determining their own destiny. The failure of corporations to provide political participation
can probably be recited my almost all readers of NC. Indeed, a key problem of the past few decades
is that corp.s have increasingly marginalized the role of nation states and mass political participation.
The liberalization of trade has come, I would argue, with a huge political cost no economist has
reckoned yet. Instead, economists are whining about the reaction to this political cost without
facing up to the political cost itself. Or even accept its legitimacy.
Second, there are massive negative effects of trade liberalization that economists simply refuse
to look at. Arbitration of environmental and worker safety laws and regulations is one. Another
is the aftereffects of the economic dislocations Rodrik alludes to.
One is the increasing constriction
of government budgets. These in turn have caused a scaling back of science R&D which I believe
will have huge but incalculable negative effects in coming years. How do you measure the cost
of failing to find a cure for a disease? Or failing to develop technologies to reverse climate
change? Or just to double the charge duration of electric batteries under load? As I have argued
elsewhere, the most important economic activity a society engages in us the development and diffusion
of new science and technology.
Intellectually poisoned by his social environment perhaps. The biggest problems with this piece
were its sweeping generalizations about unquantified socio-political trends. The things that academic
economists are least trained in; the things they speak about in passing without much thought.
I.e. Descriptions of political 'populism' that lumps Peronists, 19th century U.S. prairie populists,
Trump, and Sanders all into one neat category. Because, social movements driven by immiseration
of the common man are interchangeable like paper cups at a fast food restaurant.
Agree with much of what you comment .I believe that the conditions you describe are conveniently
dismissed by the pro economists as: "Externalities" LOL!! They seem to dump everything that doesn't
correlate to their dream of "Free Markets", "Globalization", etc .into that category .you gotta
love 'em!!
Rodrik is also wrong about the historical origins of agrarian populism in USA. It was not trade,
but the oligopoly power of railroads, farm equipment makers, and banks that were the original
grievances of the Grangers, Farmers Alliances after the Civil War.
In fact, the best historian of USA agrarian populism, Lawrence Goodwyn, argued that it was
exactly the populists' reluctant alliance with Byran in the 1896 election that destroyed the populist
movement. It was not so much an issue of the gold standard, as it was "hard money" vs "soft money"
: gold AND silver vs the populists' preference for greenbacks, and currency and credit issued
by US Treasury instead of the eastern banks.
A rough analogy is that Byran was the Hillary Clinton
of his day, with the voters not given any way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or
the House of Morgan.
"the oligopoly power of railroads, farm equipment makers, and banks that were the original
grievances "
That power was expressed in total control of the Congress and Presidential office. Then, as
now, the 80-90% of the voters had neither R or D party that represented their economic, property,
and safety interests. Given the same economic circumstances, if one party truly pushed for ameliorating
regulations or programs the populist movement would be unnecessary. Yes, Bryan was allowed to
run (and he had a large following) and to speak at the Dem convention, much like Bernie today.
The "Bourbon Democrats" kept firm control of the party and downed Jennings' programs just as the
neolib Dem estab today keep control of the party out of the hands of progressives.
an aside: among many things, the progressives pushed for good government (ending cronyism),
trust busting, and honest trade, i.e not selling unfit tinned and bottled food as wholesome food.
Today, we could use an "honest contracts and dealings" act to regulate the theft committed by
what the banks call "honest contract enforcement", complete with forges documents. (Upton Sinclair
wrote The Jungle (1906) about the meatpacking industry. What would he make of today's mortgage
industry, or insurance industry, for example.)
For an author and article so interested in international trade, I'm fascinated by the lack
of evidence or argumentation that trade is the problem. The real issue being described here is
excessive inequality delivered through authoritarianism, not international trade. The intra-city
divergence between a hospital administrator and a home health aid is a much bigger problem in
the US than trade across national borders. The empire abroad and the police state at home is a
much bigger problem than competition from China or Mexico. Etc. Blaming international trade for
domestic policies (and opposition to them) is just simple misdirection and xenophobia, nothing
more.
I take exception to most of Prof. Rodrik's post, which is filled with factual and/or logical
inaccuracies.
"Populism appears to be a recent phenomenon, but it has been on the rise for quite some time
(Figure 1)."
Wrong. Pretending that a historical generic is somehow new Populism has been around since
at least the time of Jesus or William Wallace or the American Revolution or FDR.
"What all these share is an anti-establishment orientation, a claim to speak for the people
against the elites, opposition to liberal economics and globalisation, and often (but not always)
a penchant for authoritarian governance."
Wrong. Creating a straw man through overgeneralization. Just because one country's "populism"
appears to have taken on a certain color, does not mean the current populist movement in another
part of the world will be the same. The only essential characteristics of populism are the anti-establishment
orientation and seeking policies that will redress an imbalance in which some elites have aggrandized
themselves unjustly at the expense of the rest of the people. The rest of the items in the list
above are straw men in a generalization. Rise of authoritarian (non-democratic) governance after
a populist uprising implies the rise of a new elite and would be a failure, a derailing of the
populist movement – not a characteristic of it.
"Correspondingly, the efficiency gains of trade liberalisation become progressively smaller
as the barriers get lower."
If, in fact, we were seeing lower trade barriers, and this was driving populism, this whole
line of reasoning might have some value. But as it is, well over half the US economy is either
loaded with barriers, subject to monopolistic pricing, or has not seen any "trade liberalization".
Pharmaceuticals, despite being commodities, have no common global price the way, say, oil does.
Oil hasn't had lowered barriers, though, and thus doesn't count in favor of the argument either.
When China, Japan and Europe drop their import barriers, and all of them plus the U.S. get serious
about antitrust enforcement, there might be a case to be made
"It is useful to distinguish between left-wing and right-wing variants of populism"
Actually it isn't. The salient characteristic of populism is favoring the people vs. the establishment.
The whole left/right dichotomy is a creation of the establishment, used to divide the public and
PREVENT an effective populist backlash. As Gore Vidal astutely pointed out decades ago, there
is really only one party in the U.S. – the Property Party – and the Ds and Rs are just two heads
of the same hydra. Especially in the past 10 years or so.
About the only thing the author gets right is the admission that certain economic policies
unjustly create pain among many groups of people, leading to popular retribution. But that's not
insightful, especially since he fails to address the issue quantitatively and identify WHICH policies
have created the bulk of the pain. For instance, was more damage done by globalization, or by
the multi-trillion-$ fleecing of the U.S. middle class by the bankers and federal reserve during
the recent housing bubble and aftermath? What about the more recent ongoing fleecing of the government
and the people by the healthcare cartels, at about $1.5-2 trillion/year in the U.S.?
What arouses popular opposition is not inequality per se, but perceived unfairness.
Which is the primary worldview setting for the neo-reactionary right in America. Everything
is a question of whether or not ones income was "fairly earned."
So you get government employees
and union members voting for politicians who've practically declared war against those voters'
class, but vote for them anyway because they set their arguments in a mode of fairness morality:
You can vote for the party of hard workers, or the party of handouts to the lazy. Which is why
China keeps getting depicted as a currency manipulator and exploiter of free trade agreements.
Economic rivals can only succeed via "cheating," not being industrious like the US.
That describes a number of my relatives and their friends. They are union members and government
employees yet hold hard right-wing views and are always complaining about lazy moochers living
on welfare. I ask them why they love the Republicans so much when this same party demonizes union
members and public employees as overpaid and lazy and the usual answer is that Republicans are
talking about some other unions or other government employees, usually teachers.
I suspect that the people in my anecdote hate public school teachers and their unions because
they are often female and non-white or teach in areas with a lot of minority children. I see this
a lot with white guys in traditional masculine industrial unions. They sometimes look down on
unions in fields that have many female and non-white members, teachers being the best example
I can think of.
"... Among the sources of division are the various forms of identity politics that have swamped academia and popular culture, and which the alt-right sees as "inclusive" of everyone except white people many of whom are clearly "have nots." In this world, some, as George Orwell (1903 – 1950) predicted, are clearly more equal than others. ..."
Among the sources of division are the various forms of identity politics that have swamped academia
and popular culture, and which the alt-right sees as "inclusive" of everyone except white people
many of whom are clearly "have nots." In this world, some, as George Orwell (1903 – 1950) predicted,
are clearly more equal than others.
The Left, frustrated by Trump's rise and its inability to control the public conversation, has
reached the point where violence is acceptable (Richard Spencer has been physically sucker-punched
on video).
Its representatives in dominant media, including social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter,
are doing everything they can to censor the alt-right, including making it difficult for its most
visible leaders to function in public.
Published on 29 Jun 2017
People in the UK feel "frustrated and squeezed" because their pay has flatlined for a decade,
the Bank of England's chief economist has said.
Andy Haldane told BBC Newsnight that businesses had not invested enough to give the productivity
improvements necessary to push up pay.
Newsnight is the BBC's flagship news and current affairs TV programme – with analysis, debate,
exclusives, and robust interviews.
"... "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen." ― Vladimir Lenin "There are events in world history that lead to a fundamental change in consciousness and create the basis for developing a socialist political orientation among broad masses of workers. The June 14 Grenfell Tower inferno is such an event. In years to come it will be necessary to refer to the political life of Britain in terms of "before" and "after" Grenfell. This is because the tragedy has so cruelly exposed the underlying reality of social relations between the classes-and it did so in London, one of the richest cities in the world, and in London's richest constituency. ..."
"... Grenfell is a national disaster. Thirteen days after Britain's deadliest fire for over 100 years, there is still no official acknowledgement of the numbers killed-either because the powers-that-be dare not admit to the death toll or they are so indifferent to the lives of Grenfell's residents that they simply do not know." ..."
"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen."
― Vladimir Lenin
"There are events in world history that lead to a fundamental change in consciousness and create
the basis for developing a socialist political orientation among broad masses of workers. The
June 14 Grenfell Tower inferno is such an event.
In years to come it will be necessary to refer to the political life of Britain in terms of
"before" and "after" Grenfell. This is because the tragedy has so cruelly exposed the underlying
reality of social relations between the classes-and it did so in London, one of the richest cities
in the world, and in London's richest constituency.
Grenfell is a national disaster. Thirteen days after Britain's deadliest fire for over 100
years, there is still no official acknowledgement of the numbers killed-either because the powers-that-be
dare not admit to the death toll or they are so indifferent to the lives of Grenfell's residents
that they simply do not know."
"This weekend, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn spoke before 200,000 people at Glastonbury. In his
speech he asked, "Is it right that so many people are frightened of where they live at the moment,
having seen the horrors of what happened at Grenfell Tower?"
Corbyn cited Shelley's famous injunction to workers, made in response to the 1819 Peterloo Massacre:
"Rise like lions after slumber."
But he wants the working class to lie down like lambs.
*****His aim is to stifle popular outrage and restore social peace, as epitomised by his priestly
call for the "unity" of "intelligent human beings." ****
(Sound familiar??? just imagine a Corbyn ,Warren and Sanders menage a trois!!)
That is why he supports the efforts of Prime Minister Theresa May to direct anger over Grenfell
into the safe channels of a public inquiry-out of which, he maintains, several years from now
some carefully costed and insignificant reforms will emerge."
I don't see Corbyn as a great messiah, but I feel I must point out he has to parse his words very
carefully. If the public rioted in response, causing billions in property damage in its fury,
Auntie Theresa and her cronies would be only too happy to say Corbyn caused it. He needs to play
to their anger, but not to let them get too angry without a concrete focus for it.
"McDonald's has repeatedly said that adding kiosks won't result in mass layoffs, but will instead
move some cashiers to other parts of the restaurant where it's adding new jobs, such as table service.
The burger chain reiterated that position again on Friday."
Is McDonald's denial believable? What would you expect the company to say?
McDonald's has to deny the story or it might have a hiring problem, a morale problem, and other
problems.
"Our CEO, Steve Easterbrook, has said on many occasions that self-order kiosks in McDonald's restaurants
are not a labor replacement," a spokeswoman told Business Insider. "They provide an opportunity to
transition back-of-the-house positions to more customer service roles such as concierges and table
service where they are able to truly engage with guests and enhance the dining experience."
Move cashiers to table service? Really?
Yeah, right.
An interesting political rule from the British sitcom "Yes, Minister" is to "never believe anything
until it's officially denied".
Will Humans Be Necessary?
When someone can be replaced by a robot, how can the push for $15 be justified?
Let's start with jobs likely to be eliminated, starting with the present and with those lower-level
jobs.
Already, don't you prefer a ATM to a teller, self-checkout to the supermarket checker, drive-through
tolls rather than stop for the toll-taker, automated airline check-in rather than waiting for a clerk,
shopping on Amazon rather than fighting traffic, parking, and the check-out experience with a live
clerk, assuming the store has what you want in your size? Indeed,
malls are
closing while online retailers led by Amazon
are growing.
As minimum wage and mandated benefits rise,
fast-food restaurants especially are accelerating use of, for example, order-taking kiosks, which
McDonald's
is rolling out in 2,500 stores, robotic burger flippers and fry cooks, even
pizza, ramen and sushi makers . Even that fail-safe job, barista, is at-risk, Bosch now makes
an automated barista . Mid-range
restaurants such as Olive Garden, Outback, and Applebee are
replacing waiters
with tabletop tablets . Will you really miss having your conversation interrupted by a waiter
hawking hors de oeuvres and expecting a 15+% tip? If you owned a fast-food franchise, mighn't you
be looking to replace people with automated solutions? Can it really be long until there are completely
automated fast-food and even mid-range restaurants?
BlackRock, the world's largest fund company
has replaced seven of its 53 analysts with AI-driven stock-picking.
The remaining jobs
In such a world, how can a human justify asking to be paid to work?
Four scenarios
The range of scenarios would seem circumscribed by these. How likely do you think each of these
are?
Continue on the current path: The world continues to slowly make progress, e.g., birth rates
declining in developing nations, slowed global warming, more education and health care. Those positives
would be mitigated by declining jobs, more
concentration of wealth.
World socialism.
Mass population reduction, for example, by nuclear war, pandemic, or, per Clive Cussler, highly
communicable biovirus simultaneously put into the water supply of a half-dozen cruise ships?
A world run by machines and the few people they deem worthy.
Here is a debate between an optimistic and a
pessimist on the future
of the world.
The truth may well be something we can't even envision. After all, he who lives by the crystal
ball usually eats broken glass.
Note that Psychology Today author Marty Nemko did not ask about $15. He wonders if pay for some
jobs is worth anything at all.
When all the jobs are taken over by machines there won't be anybody with money left to buy
or pay for anything at all. WTF then? A world of no work is a world of little or no income. The
ones who survive are the ones who know how to provide for themselves without the use of currency
(barter, trade, farming, etc ).
Before that happens, these machines will be heavily vandalized. It's all part of the inevitable
ISEP problem (It's Someone Else's Problem).
For one firm to do this, it's understandable, but for an entire sector, they're ripping their
face off and everyone else's. But those making the decisions are unwilling or unable to care about
even their long-term positions. To start, they largely exist to kick the can down the road until
... you guess it! ... it's ISEP. It's a problem for the next round of overcompensated intellectual-light
and morally-bankrupt executives.
But don't think "the market" is going to fix that. Markets never do. Markets have failures
all the time yet people still pretend like they have this inherent magical property. Markets would
be fine ... in a human-free world ... because anything a sociopath touches will be turned to sh*t.
And power, be it government or "market" will attract these people. Any ideology can work, but
only until the sociopaths game the sh*t out of the system and destroy it from the inside.
Now, the less stupid people in these positions will realize the ISEP problem but know full
well the government of the future can be extorted into, effectively, bailing them out somehow.
Think of the "mandate" of ObamaCare and realize "thinkers" at the Heritage Institute saw this
down the road back in the early 1980s. Right now, I'm starting to wonder if this whole "livable
wage" is just a proxy bailout on behalf of large actors like McDonald's (who can no longer expect
growth as the incomes and costs at the bottom shrink in the former and explode in the latter).
That leadership knows full well that even if they took a leadership position on living wages,
they'll be expected to be the only ones. The sociopaths at the other firms will think ... you
got it! ... ISEP. Those firms can continue on f**king their employees while a large firm like
McDonald's is expected to shoulder the entire burden or drive them into bankruptcy. In either
of those cases, the status quo remains across the industry.
FIRE-HC-E (Financial, Insurance, Real Estate, Healthcare, Education; the major rackets of ourlives)
is destroying the markets for not just McDonald's employees, but also markets for other brick-and-mortar
companies like Apple or Home Depot. This is why I focus heavily on our poor leadership because
the leadership of the industrial sectors as a whole just sat back and watched as the likes of
Wall Street slowly eroded the bedrock of the economy.
The author, Mike Shedlock, links to a POS article in Psychology Today, authored by Marty Nemko
Ph.D. Did anyone else read that? It says under An
optimistic vision
"Longer term, it's even possible that we'll be able to accomplish more of what we want by using
gene therapy or
a chip embedded in our brain -Research to make that happen is already being funded by the
federal government." Ah, no thank you!
Mike also asks " how can the push for $15 be justified? And links to the Psycholgy Today article
which say "we may also need a guaranteed basic income paid heavily by successful corporations
and wealthy individuals". Which view do you support Mike?
Psychology Today article also states "What about journalism? Even in major media outlets, many
journalism jobs have already been lost to the armies of people willing to write for free. In addition,
software such as Quill can replace some human journalists" Maybe in this case, that's not a bad
thing.
Thousands of workers face unemployment as retailers
struggle to adapt to online shopping. But even as
e-commerce grows, it isn't absorbing these workers.
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. - Dawn Nasewicz comes from a family of
steelworkers, with jobs that once dominated the local
economy. She found her niche in retail.
She manages a store, Ooh La La, that sells prom dresses
and embroidered jeans at a local mall. But just as the jobs
making automobile springs and rail anchors disappeared, local
retail jobs are now vanishing.
"I need my income," said Ms. Nasewicz, who was told that
her store will close as early as August. "I'm 53. I have no
idea what I'm going to do."
Ms. Nasewicz is another retail casualty, one of tens of
thousands of workers facing unemployment nationwide as the
industry struggles to adapt to online shopping.
Continue reading the main story
Photo
A sporting goods store in a Johnstown, Pa., mall is having a
going-out-of-business sale. Credit George Etheredge for The
New York Times
Small cities in the Midwest and Northeast are particularly
vulnerable. When major industries left town, retail accounted
for a growing share of the job market in places like
Johnstown, Decatur, Ill., and Saginaw, Mich. Now, the work
force is getting hit a second time, and there is little to
fall back on.
Moreover, while stores in these places are shedding jobs
because of e-commerce, e-commerce isn't absorbing these
workers. Growth in e-commerce jobs like marketing and
engineering, while strong, is clustered around larger cities
far away. Rural counties and small metropolitan areas account
for about 23 percent of traditional American retail
employment, but they are home to just 13 percent of
e-commerce positions.
E-commerce has also fostered a boom in other industries,
including warehouses. But most of those jobs are being
created in larger metropolitan areas, an analysis of Census
Bureau business data shows.
Almost all customer fulfillment centers run by the online
shopping behemoth Amazon are in metropolitan areas with more
than 250,000 people - close to the bulk of its customers -
according to a list of locations compiled by MWPVL
International, a logistics consulting firm. An Amazon
spokeswoman noted, however, that the company had recently
opened warehouses in two distressed cities in larger
metropolitan areas, Fall River, Mass., and Joliet, Ill.
The Johnstown metropolitan area, in western Pennsylvania,
has lost 19 percent of its retail jobs since 2001, and the
future is uncertain. At least a dozen of Ooh La La's
neighbors at the mall have closed, and a "Going out of
business" banner hangs across the front of the sporting goods
store Gander Mountain.
"Every time you lose a corner store, every time you lose a
restaurant, every time you lose a small clothing store, it
detracts from the quality of life, as well as the job loss,"
said John McGrath, a professor of management at the
University of Pittsburgh Johnstown.
This city is perhaps still best known for a flood that
ravaged it nearly 130 years ago. After rebuilding, Johnstown
eventually became prosperous from its steel and offered a
clear path to the middle class. For generations, people could
walk out of high school and into a steady factory job.
But today, the area bears the marks of a struggling town.
Its population has dwindled, and addiction treatment centers
and Dollar Generals stand in place of corner grocers and
department stores like Glosser Brothers, once owned by the
family of Stephen Miller, President Trump's speechwriter and
a policy adviser.
When Mr. Trump spoke about "rusted-out factories scattered
like tombstones across the landscape of our nation" in his
Inaugural Address, people like Donald Bonk, a local economic
development consultant, assumed that Mr. Miller - who grew up
in California but spent summers in Johnstown - was writing
about the old Bethlehem Steel buildings that still hug long
stretches of the Little Conemaugh River.
The county voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump, eight years
after it helped to elect Barack Obama. (It also voted for
Mitt Romney in 2012, but not by as wide a margin.)
Here and in similar towns, when the factory jobs left, a
greater share of the work force ended up in retail.
Sometimes that meant big-box retailers like Walmart, which
were often blamed for destroying mom-and-pop stores but at
least created other jobs for residents. The damage from
e-commerce plays out differently. Digital firms may attract
customers from small towns, but they are unlikely to employ
them.
Some remaining retailers are straining for solutions. ...
"... What's needed is not the arbitrary adoption of UBI, but a conversation about what a welfare state is for. In their incendiary book Inventing the Future, the authors Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek argue for UBI but link it to three other demands: collectively controlled automation, a reduction in the working week, and a diminution of the work ethic. Williams and Srnicek believe that without these other provisions, UBI could essentially act as an excuse to get rid of the welfare state. ..."
"... What's needed is not the arbitrary adoption of UBI, but an entirely different conversation about what a welfare state is for. As David Lammy MP said, after the Grenfell Tower disaster: "This is about whether the welfare state is just about schools and hospitals or whether it is about a safety net." The conversation, in light of UBI, could go even further: it's possible for the welfare state not just to act as a safety net, but as a tool for all of us to do less work and spend more time with our loved ones, pursuing personal interests or engaging in our communities. ..."
Lane Kenworthy's article shows how America is already great, with many more people working
in poverty than in the UK, Ireland or Australia. Maybe the robots stole better paying jobs? Maybe
they need more education and to skill up?
Love the idea of a universal basic income? Be careful what you wish for
Ellie Mae O'Hagan
Friday 23 June 2017 10.36 EDT
Yes, UBI could be an important part of a radical agenda. But beware: its proponents include
neoliberals hostile to the very idea of the welfare state
For some time now, the radical left has been dipping its toes in the waters of universal basic
income (or unconditional basic income, depending on who you talk to). The idea is exactly as it
sounds: the government would give every citizen – working or not – a fixed sum of money every
week or month, with no strings attached. As time goes on, universal basic income (UBI) has gradually
been transitioning from the radical left into the mainstream: it's Green party policy, is picking
up steam among SNP and Labour MPs and has been advocated by commentators including this newspaper's
very own John Harris.
Supporters of the idea got a boost this week with the news that the Finnish government has
piloted the idea with 2,000 of its citizens with very positive results. Under the scheme, the
first of its kind in Europe, participants receive €560 (Ł473) every month for two years without
any requirements to fill in forms or actively seek work. If anyone who receives the payment finds
work, their UBI continues. Many participants have reported "decreased stress, greater incentives
to find work and more time to pursue business ideas." In March, Ontario in Canada started trialling
a similar scheme.
Given that UBI necessarily promotes universalism and is being pursued by liberal governments
rather than overtly rightwing ones, it's tempting to view it as an inherently leftwing conceit.
In January, MEPs voted to consider UBI as a solution to the mass unemployment that might result
from robots taking over manual jobs.
From this perspective, UBI could be rolled out as a distinctly rightwing initiative. In fact
it does bear some similarity to the government's shambolic universal credit scheme, which replaces
a number of benefits with a one-off, lower, monthly payment (though it goes only to people already
on certain benefits, of course). In the hands of the right, UBI could easily be seen as a kind
of universal credit for all, undermining the entire benefits system and providing justification
for paying the poorest a poverty income.
In fact, can you imagine what UBI would be like if it were rolled out by this government, which
only yesterday promised to fight a ruling describing the benefits cap as inflicting "real misery
to no good purpose"?
Despite the fact that the families who brought a case against the government had children too
young to qualify for free childcare, the Department for Work and Pensions still perversely insisted
that "the benefit cap incentivises work". It's not hard to imagine UBI being administered by the
likes of A4e (now sold and renamed PeoplePlus), which carried out back-to-work training for the
government, and saw six of its employees receive jail sentences for defrauding the government
of Ł300,000. UBI cannot be a progressive initiative as long as the people with the power to implement
it are hostile to the welfare state as a whole.
What's needed is not the arbitrary adoption of UBI, but a conversation about what a welfare
state is for. In their incendiary book Inventing the Future, the authors Alex Williams and Nick
Srnicek argue for UBI but link it to three other demands: collectively controlled automation,
a reduction in the working week, and a diminution of the work ethic. Williams and Srnicek believe
that without these other provisions, UBI could essentially act as an excuse to get rid of the
welfare state.
What's needed is not the arbitrary adoption of UBI, but an entirely different conversation
about what a welfare state is for. As David Lammy MP said, after the Grenfell Tower disaster:
"This is about whether the welfare state is just about schools and hospitals or whether it is
about a safety net." The conversation, in light of UBI, could go even further: it's possible for
the welfare state not just to act as a safety net, but as a tool for all of us to do less work
and spend more time with our loved ones, pursuing personal interests or engaging in our communities.
UBI has this revolutionary potential – but not if it is simply parachuted into a political
economy that has been pursuing punitive welfare policies for the last 30 years.
On everything from climate change and overpopulation to yawning inequality and mass automation,
modern western economies face unprecedented challenges. These conditions are frightening but they
also open up the possibility of the kind of radical policies we haven't seen since the postwar
period. UBI could be the start of this debate, but it must not be the end.
> "One of the reasons I support UBI is that it
refocuses political discussions to some of the fundamental
issues, as this article points out."
I agree.
UBI might probably be the most viable first step of
Trump's MAGA. But he betrayed his electorate. Similarly it would be a good step in Obama's "change we
can believe in" which never materialized.
The level of automation that currently exists makes UBI
quite a possibility.
But...
The problem is the key idea of neoliberalism is
"socialism for rich and feudalism and/or plantation
slavery for poor."
So neither Republicans, nor Clinton Democrats are
interested in UBI. It is anathema for neoliberals.
" This pattern suggests that existence of unions, one way or another, may be less important for
economic outcomes than the way in which those unions function. "
This is a typical neoliberal Newspeak. Pretty Orwellian.
In reality atomization of workforce and decimation of unions is the explicit goal of neoliberal
state.
Neoliberalism war on organized labor started with Reagan.
Neoliberalism is based on unconditional domination of labor by capital ("socialism for rich,
feudalism for labor").
American scholar and cultural critic Henry Giroux alleges neoliberalism holds that market forces
should organize every facet of society, including economic and social life, and promotes a social
Darwinist ethic which elevates self-interest over social needs.
That means maintaining the unemployment level of sufficiently high level and political suppression
of workers rights to organize.
A new class of workers, facing acute socio-economic insecurity, emerged under neoliberalism.
It is called 'precariat'.
Neoliberal policies led to the situation in the US economy in which 30% of workers earn low
wages (less than two-thirds the median wage for full-time workers), and 35% of the labor force
is underemployed; only 40% of the working-age population in the U.S. is adequately employed.
The Center for Economic Policy Research's (CEPR) Dean Baker (2006) argued that the driving
force behind rising inequality in the US has been a series of deliberate, neoliberal policy choices
including anti-inflationary bias, anti-unionism, and profiteering in the health industry.
Amazon, Uber and several other companies have shown that neoliberal model can be as brutal
as plantation slavery.
Central to the notion of the skills agenda as pursued by neoliberal governments is the concept
of "human capital."
Which involves atomization of workers, each of which became a "good" sold at the "labor market".
Neoliberalism discard the concept of human solidarity. It also eliminated government support of
organized labor, and decimated unions.
Under neoliberalism the government has to actively intervene to clear the way for the free
"labor market." Talk about government-sponsored redistribution of wealth under neoliberalism --
from Greenspan to Bernanke, from Rubin to Paulson, the government has been a veritable Robin Hood
in reverse.
The Fed should initiate a campaign: 'Patriotism is paying
your workers more."
It worked for Henry Ford. And it
would work to restore robust economic growth.
Strangely,
most economists want to REDUCE workers' purchasing power,
which makes sense for individual firms but is bad for the
economy as a whole.
Henry Ford - progressive? Seriously? He did this in order to
get workers to put in more effort. In other words - good for
the bottom line. Something call efficiency wages. We would
provide you with a reading list but we know you would not
actually read any of it. You never do.
dean baker once pointed out that fiscal policy is problematic
if it is just going to be reversed by monetary policy
monetary policy focuses on not having unemployment levels get
lower than nairu,
and thus no matter what the fiscal interventions, we can
never get unemployment below a certain level
believing that nairu is some "natural phenomenon" that is
where the universe will always tend to
puts monetary policy, otherwise theoretically sound, in
the way of achieving true full employment
not helping achieve it
so you don't just need fiscal, you need policies that work
on the actual value of nairu and the amount of inflation that
occurs when unemployment is low than nairu
apparently this guy William vickery has a lot of ideas on
how to accomplish that
This is he answer to market power of firms
Old man Galbraith wanted the state
to administer the prices of the oligoplistic corporate core
of the economy
How can something as simple as inflation be so difficult
to solve? If inflation were simply a matter of "too much
money chasing too few goods," then one would expect that the
government could control the money supply and consequently
control the inflation. The government has failed to act in
this way and unless one subscribes to a sadistic theory of
government, its failure suggests that there are non-monetary
or "real` causes embedded in our political and economic
institutions.
This study provides some insight into the nature of those
real causes, and develops a strategy to combat inflation.
Part of that strategy includes monetary restraint; however.
to be politically acceptable, monetary restraint must be made
more efficient. Some method must be developed to translate
quickly a decrease in the growth of the money supply into a
decrease in the price level, not into a decrease in
employment and output.
The method suggested by this report is an incentive based
incomes policy or incentive anti-inflation plan. These
policies minimize government intervention in the market
economy while channeling restrictive monetary policy into
anti-inflation incentives rather than into anti-production
incentives. They provide the necessary supply side incentives
to stop inflation.
Incentive anti-inflation plans take various forms. Many of
the arguments for and against such policies have incorrectly
interpreted the methodology and goals of these policies.
Specifically, these policies are not designed to solve
inflation by themselves, but instead must function as
complements to, rather than substitutes for, the appropriate
monetary and fiscal policy. These proposals are not meant to
replace the market with government regulation; they recognize
the market's advantages and use market incentives to check
inflation programs as strong as, and no stronger than, the
pressures for inflation.
To function properly, incentive anti-inflation plans must
be supported by an effective legal structure, an enforcement
mechanism and a general public acceptance that the plans are
fair. These are difficult requirements but all markets need
these foundations. There is a fundamental difference between
the government's role in establishing a legal framework and
its role in directly regulating market decisions.
Anti-inflation incentive plans require only the former....
"If inflation were simply a matter of "too much money chasing
too few goods," then one would expect that the government
could control the money supply and consequently control the
inflation"
first off, they should NOT be looking at it as
money supply paying for the goods
they should be looking at it as income paying for the
goods
Ford paid workers more to be able to squeeze more assembly
line output from them with limited risk of turnover, as
leaving for another job would mean a pay cut. He also had
ideas about intervening in their home lives.
"... Until elites stand down and stop the brutal squeeze , expect more after painful more of this. It's what happens when societies come apart. Unless elites (of both parties) stop the push for "profit before people," policies that dominate the whole of the Neoliberal Era , there are only two outcomes for a nation on this track, each worse than the other. There are only two directions for an increasingly chaotic state to go, chaotic collapse or sufficiently militarized "order" to entirely suppress it. ..."
"... Mes petits sous, mon petit cri de coeur. ..."
"... But the elite aren't going to stand down, whatever that might mean. The elite aren't really the "elite", they are owners and controllers of certain flows of economic activity. We need to call it what it is and actively organize against it. Publius's essay seems too passive at points, too passive voice. (Yes, it's a cry from the heart in a prophetic mode, and on that level, I'm with it.) ..."
"... American Psycho ..."
"... The college students I deal with have internalized a lot of this. In their minds, TINA is reality. Everything balances for the individual on a razor's edge of failure of will or knowledge or hacktivity. It's all personal, almost never collective - it's a failure toward parents or peers or, even more grandly, what success means in America. ..."
"... unions don't matter in our TINA. Corporations do. ..."
"... our system promotes specialists and disregards generalists this leads to a population of individualists who can't see the big picture. ..."
"... That social contract is hard to pin down and define – probably has different meanings to all of us, but you are right, it is breaking down. We no longer feel that our governments are working for us. ..."
"... Increasing population, decreasing resources, increasingly expensive remaining resources on a per unit basis, unresolved trashing of the environment and an political economy that forces people to do more with less all the time (productivity improvement is mandatory, not optional, to handle the exponential function) much pain will happen even if everyone is equal. ..."
"... "Social contract:" nice Enlightment construct, out of University by City. Not a real thing, just a very incomplete shorthand to attempt to fiddle the masses and give a name to meta-livability. ..."
"... Always with the "contract" meme, as if there are no more durable and substantive notions of how humans in small and large groups might organize and interact Or maybe the notion is the best that can be achieved? ..."
"... JTMcFee, you have provided the most important aspect to this mirage of 'social contract'. The "remedies" clearly available to lawless legislation rest outside the realm of a contract which has never existed. ..."
"... Unconscionable clauses are now separately initialed in an "I dare you to sue me" shaming gambit. Meanwhile the mythical Social Contract has been atomized into 7 1/2 billion personal contracts with unstated, shifting remedies wholly tied to the depths of pockets. ..."
"... Here in oh-so-individualistic Chicago, I have been noting the fraying for some time: It isn't just the massacres in the highly segregated black neighborhoods, some of which are now in terminal decline as the inhabitants, justifiably, flee. The typical Chicagoan wanders the streets connected to a phone, so as to avoid eye contact, all the while dressed in what look like castoffs. Meanwhile, Midwesterners, who tend to be heavy, are advertisements for the obesity epidemic: Yet obesity has a metaphorical meaning as the coat of lipids that a person wears to keep the world away. ..."
"... My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash: Think Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. ..."
"... The class war continues, and the upper class has won. As commenter relstprof notes, any kind of concerted action is now nearly impossible. Instead of the term "social contract," I might substitute "solidarity." Is there solidarity? No, solidarity was destroyed as a policy of the Reagan administration, as well as by fantasies that Americans are individualistic, and here we are, 40 years later, dealing with the rubble of the Obama administration and the Trump administration. ..."
"... The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the public space/environment as a shared, common good. Thus, streets, parks and public space might be soiled by litter that nobody cares to put away in trash bins properly, while simultaneously the interior of houses/apartments, and attached gardens if any, are kept meticulously clean. ..."
"... The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the public space/environment as a shared, common good. ..."
"... There *is* no public space anymore. Every public good, every public space is now fair game for commercial exploitation. ..."
"... The importance of the end of solidarity – that is, of the almost-murderous impulses by the upper classes to destroy any kind of solidarity. ..."
"... "Conditions will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement or relief." ..."
"... "Four Futures" ..."
"... Reminds me of that one quip I saw from a guy who, why he always had to have two pigs to eat up his garbage, said that if he had only one pig, it will eat only when it wants to, but if there were two pigs, each one would eat so the other pig won't get to it first. Our current economic system in a nutshell – pigs eating crap so deny it to others first. "Greed is good". ..."
"... Don't know that the two avenues Gaius mentioned are the only two roads our society can travel. In support of this view, I recall a visit to a secondary city in Russia for a few weeks in the early 1990s after the collapse of the USSR. Those were difficult times economically and psychologically for ordinary citizens of that country. Alcoholism was rampant, emotional illness and suicide rates among men of working age were high, mortality rates generally were rising sharply, and birth rates were falling. Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful and educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class, and the related emergence of organized criminal networks. There was also adequate food, and critical public infrastructure was maintained, keeping in mind this was shortly after the Chernobyl disaster. ..."
Yves here. I have been saying for some years that I did not think we would see a revolution, but
more and more individuals acting out violently. That's partly the result of how community and social
bonds have weakened as a result of neoliberalism but also because the officialdom has effective ways
of blocking protests. With the overwhelming majority of people using smartphones, they are constantly
surveilled. And the coordinated 17-city paramilitary crackdown on Occupy Wall Street shows how the
officialdom moved against non-violent protests. Police have gotten only more military surplus toys
since then, and crowd-dispersion technology like sound cannons only continues to advance. The only
way a rebellion could succeed would be for it to be truly mass scale (as in over a million people
in a single city) or by targeting crucial infrastructure.
By Gaius Publius
, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to
DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter
@Gaius_Publius ,
Tumblr and
Facebook . GP article archive
here . Originally published at
DownWithTyranny
"[T]he super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues
to grow. An
analysis of
2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion
in total wealth. As of
June 8,
2017 , the world's richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average,
each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people."
-Paul Buchheit,
Alternet
"Congressman Steve Scalise, Three Others Shot at Alexandria, Virginia, Baseball Field"
-NBC News,
June 14, 2017
"4 killed, including gunman, in shooting at UPS facility in San Francisco"
-ABC7News,
June 14, 2017
"Seriously? Another multiple shooting? So many guns. So many nut-bars. So many angry
nut-bars with guns."
-MarianneW via
Twitter
"We live in a world where "multiple dead" in San Francisco shooting can't cut through
the news of another shooting in the same day."
-SamT via
Twitter
"If the rich are determined to extract the last drop of blood, expect the victims to
put up a fuss. And don't expect that fuss to be pretty. I'm not arguing for social war; I'm
arguing for justice and peace."
-
Yours truly
When the social contract breaks from above, it breaks from below as well.
Until elites stand down and stop the
brutal squeeze , expect more after painful more of this. It's what happens when societies come
apart. Unless elites (of both parties) stop the push for "profit before people," policies that dominate
the whole of the
Neoliberal
Era , there are only two outcomes for a nation on this track, each worse than the other. There
are only two directions for an increasingly chaotic state to go, chaotic collapse or sufficiently
militarized "order" to entirely suppress it.
As with the climate, I'm concerned about the short term for sure - the storm that kills this year,
the hurricane that kills the next - but I'm also concerned about the longer term as well. If the
beatings
from "our betters" won't stop until our acceptance of their "serve the rich" policies improves,
the beatings will never stop, and both sides will take up the cudgel.
Then where will we be?
America's Most Abundant Manufactured Product May Be Pain
I look out the window and see more and more homeless people, noticeably more than last year and
the year before. And they're noticeably scruffier, less "kemp," if that makes sense to you (it does
if you live, as I do, in a community that includes a number of them as neighbors).
The squeeze hasn't let up, and those getting squeezed out of society have nowhere to drain to
but down - physically, economically, emotionally. The
Case-Deaton study speaks volumes to this point. The less fortunate economically are already dying
of drugs and despair. If people are killing themselves in increasing numbers, isn't it just
remotely maybe possible they'll also aim their anger out as well?
The pot isn't boiling yet - these shootings are random, individualized - but they seem to be piling
on top of each other. A hard-boiling, over-flowing pot may not be far behind. That's concerning as
well, much moreso than even the random horrid events we recoil at today.
Many More Ways Than One to Be a Denier
My comparison above to the climate problem was deliberate. It's not just the occasional storms
we see that matter. It's also that, seen over time, those storms are increasing, marking a trend
that matters even more. As with climate, the whole can indeed be greater than its parts. There's
more than one way in which to be a denier of change.
These are not just metaphors. The country is already in a
pre-revolutionary state ; that's one huge reason people chose Trump over Clinton, and would have
chosen Sanders over Trump. The Big Squeeze has to stop, or this will be just the beginning of a long
and painful path. We're on a track that nations we have watched - tightly "ordered" states, highly
chaotic ones - have trod already. While we look at them in pity, their example stares back at us.
But the elite aren't going to stand down, whatever that might mean. The elite aren't really
the "elite", they are owners and controllers of certain flows of economic activity. We need to
call it what it is and actively organize against it. Publius's essay seems too passive at points,
too passive voice. (Yes, it's a cry from the heart in a prophetic mode, and on that level, I'm
with it.)
"If people are killing themselves in increasing numbers, isn't it just remotely maybe possible
they'll also aim their anger out as well?"
Not necessarily. What Lacan called the "Big Other" is quite powerful. We internalize a lot
of socio-economic junk from our cultural inheritance, especially as it's been configured over
the last 40 years - our values, our body images, our criteria for judgment, our sense of what
material well-being consists, etc. Ellis's American Psycho is the great satire of our
time, and this time is not quite over yet. Dismemberment reigns.
The college students I deal with have internalized a lot of this. In their minds, TINA
is reality. Everything balances for the individual on a razor's edge of failure of will or knowledge
or hacktivity. It's all personal, almost never collective - it's a failure toward parents or peers
or, even more grandly, what success means in America.
The idea that agency could be a collective action of a union for a strike isn't even on the
horizon. And at the same time, these same students don't bat an eye at socialism. They're willing
to listen.
But unions don't matter in our TINA. Corporations do.
Most of the elite do not understand the money system. They do not understand how different
sectors have benefitted from policies and/or subsidies that increased the money flows into these.
So they think they deserve their money more than those who toiled in sectors with less support.
Furthermore, our system promotes specialists and disregards generalists this leads to a population
of individualists who can't see the big picture.
Thank you Gaius, a thoughtful post. That social contract is hard to pin down and define – probably
has different meanings to all of us, but you are right, it is breaking down. We no longer feel
that our governments are working for us.
Of tangential interest, Turnbull has just announced another gun amnesty targeting guns that
people no longer need and a tightening of some of the ownership laws.
One problem is the use of the term "social contract", implying that there is some kind of agreement
( = consensus) on what that is. I don't remember signing any "contract".
I fear for my friends, I fear for my family.
They do not know how ravenous the hounds behind nor ahead are. For myself? I imagine myself the same in a Mad Max world. It will be more clear, and perception shattering, to most whose lives allow the ignoring of
gradual chokeholds, be them political or economic, but those of us who struggle daily, yearly,
decadely with both, will only say Welcome to the party, pals.
Increasing population, decreasing resources, increasingly expensive remaining resources on
a per unit basis, unresolved trashing of the environment and an political economy that forces
people to do more with less all the time (productivity improvement is mandatory, not optional,
to handle the exponential function) much pain will happen even if everyone is equal.
Each person
does what is right in their own eyes, but the net effect is impoverishment and destruction. Life
is unfair, indeed. A social contract is a mutual suicide pact, whether you renegotiate it or not.
This is Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club, is we don't speak of Fight Club. Go to the gym,
toughen up, while you still can.
"Social contract:" nice Enlightment construct, out of University by City. Not a real thing,
just a very incomplete shorthand to attempt to fiddle the masses and give a name to meta-livability.
Always with the "contract" meme, as if there are no more durable and substantive notions of
how humans in small and large groups might organize and interact Or maybe the notion is the best
that can be achieved? Recalling that as my Contracts professor in law school emphasized over and
over, in "contracts" there are no rights in the absence of effective remedies. It being a Boston
law school, the notion was echoed in Torts, and in Commercial Paper and Sales and, tellingly,
in Constitutional Law and Federal Jurisdiction, and even in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure.
No remedy, no right. What remedies are there in "the system," for the "other halves" of the "social
contract," the "have-naught" halves?
When honest "remedies under law" become nugatory, there's always the recourse to direct action
of course with zero guarantee of redress
"What remedies are there in "the system," for the "other halves" of the "social contract,"
the "have-naught" halves?"
Ah yes the ultimate remedy is outright rebellion against the highest authorities .with as you
say, " zero guarantee of redress."
But, history teaches us that that path will be taken ..the streets. It doesn't (didn't) take a
genius to see what was coming back in the late 1960's on .regarding the beginnings of the revolt(s)
by big money against organized labor. Having been very involved in observing, studying and actually
active in certain groups back then, the US was acting out in other countries particularly in the
Southern Hemisphere, against any social progression, repressing, arresting (thru its surrogates)
torturing, killing any individuals or groups that opposed that infamous theory of "free market
capitalism". It had a very definite "creep" effect, northwards to the mainstream US because so
many of our major corporations were deeply involved with our covert intelligence operatives and
objectives (along with USAID and NED). I used to tell my friends about what was happening and
they would look at me as if I was a lunatic. The agency for change would be "organized labor",
but now, today that agency has been trashed enough where so many of the young have no clue as
to what it all means. The ultimate agenda along with "globalization" is the complete repression
of any opposition to the " spread of money markets" around the world". The US intends to lead;
whether the US citizenry does is another matter. Hence the streets.
JTMcFee, you have provided the most important aspect to this mirage of 'social contract'. The
"remedies" clearly available to lawless legislation rest outside the realm of a contract which
has never existed.
The Social Contract, ephemeral, reflects perfectly what contracts have become. Older rulings
frequently labeled clauses unconscionable - a tacit recognition that so few of the darn things
are actually agreed upon. Rather, a party with resources, options and security imposes the agreement
on a party in some form of crisis (nowadays the ever present crisis of paycheck to paycheck living
– or worse). Never mind informational asymmetries, necessity drives us into crappy rental agreements
and debt promises with eyes wide open. And suddenly we're all agents of the state.
Unconscionable clauses are now separately initialed in an "I dare you to sue me" shaming gambit.
Meanwhile the mythical Social Contract has been atomized into 7 1/2 billion personal contracts
with unstated, shifting remedies wholly tied to the depths of pockets.
Solidarity, of course. Hard when Identity politics lubricate a labor market that insists on
specialization, and talented children of privilege somehow manage to navigate the new entrepreneurism
while talented others look on in frustration. The resistance insists on being leaderless (fueled
in part IMHO by the uncomfortable fact that effective leaders are regularly killed or co-opted).
And the overriding message of resistance is negative: "Stop it!"
But that's where we are. Again, just my opinion: but the pivotal step away from the jackpot
is to convince or coerce our wealthiest not to cash in. Stop making and saving so much stinking
money, y'all.
and there's the Karma bec. even now we see a private banking system synthesizing an economy
to maintain asset values and profits and they have the nerve to blame it on social spending.
I think Giaus's term 'Denier' is perfect for all those vested practitioners of profit-capitalism
at any cost. They've already failed miserably. For the most part they're just too proud to admit
it and, naturally, they wanna hang on to "their" money. I don't think it will take a revolution
– in fact it would be better if no chaos ensued – just let these arrogant goofballs stew in their
own juice a while longer. They are killing themselves.
When I hear so much impatient and irritable complaint, so much readiness to replace what we
have by guardians for us all, those supermen, evoked somewhere from the clouds, whom none have
seen and none are ready to name, I lapse into a dream, as it were. I see children playing on the
grass; their voices are shrill and discordant as children's are; they are restive and quarrelsome;
they cannot agree to any common plan; their play annoys them; it goes poorly. And one says, let
us make Jack the master; Jack knows all about it; Jack will tell us what each is to do and we
shall all agree. But Jack is like all the rest; Helen is discontented with her part and Henry
with his, and soon they fall again into their old state. No, the children must learn to play by
themselves; there is no Jack the master. And in the end slowly and with infinite disappointment
they do learn a little; they learn to forbear, to reckon with another, accept a little where they
wanted much, to live and let live, to yield when they must yield; perhaps, we may hope, not to
take all they can. But the condition is that they shall be willing at least to listen to one another,
to get the habit of pooling their wishes. Somehow or other they must do this, if the play is to
go on; maybe it will not, but there is no Jack, in or out of the box, who can come to straighten
the game. -Learned Hand
Here in oh-so-individualistic Chicago, I have been noting the fraying for some time: It isn't
just the massacres in the highly segregated black neighborhoods, some of which are now in terminal
decline as the inhabitants, justifiably, flee. The typical Chicagoan wanders the streets connected
to a phone, so as to avoid eye contact, all the while dressed in what look like castoffs. Meanwhile,
Midwesterners, who tend to be heavy, are advertisements for the obesity epidemic: Yet obesity
has a metaphorical meaning as the coat of lipids that a person wears to keep the world away.
My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash: Think
Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. Some trash is carefully posed: Cups with straws on windsills, awaiting the Paris Agreement Pixie, who will clean up after these oh-so-earnest environmentalists.
Meanwhile, I just got a message from my car-share service: They are cutting back on the number
of cars on offer. Too much vandalism.
Are these things caused by pressure from above? Yes, in part: The class war continues, and
the upper class has won. As commenter relstprof notes, any kind of concerted action is now nearly
impossible. Instead of the term "social contract," I might substitute "solidarity." Is there solidarity?
No, solidarity was destroyed as a policy of the Reagan administration, as well as by fantasies
that Americans are individualistic, and here we are, 40 years later, dealing with the rubble of
the Obama administration and the Trump administration.
DJG: My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash:
Think Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. Some trash is carefully posed: Cups with straws
on windsills, awaiting the Paris Agreement Pixie, who will clean up after these oh-so-earnest
environmentalists.
Yes, the trash bit is hard to understand. What does it stand for? Does it mean, We can infinitely
disregard our surroundings by throwing away plastic, cardboard, metal and paper and nothing will
happen? Does it mean, There is more where that came from! Does it mean, I don't care a fig for
the earth? Does it mean, Human beings are stupid and, unlike pigs, mess up their immediate environment
and move on? Does it mean, Nothing–that we are just nihilists waiting to die? I am so fed up with
the garbage strewn on the roads and in the woods where I live; I used to pick it up and could
collect as much as 9 garbage bags of junk in 9 days during a 4 kilometer walk. I don't pick up
any more because I am 77 and cannot keep doing it.
However, I am certain that strewn garbage will surely be the last national flag waving in the
breeze as the anthem plays junk music and we all succumb to our terrible future.
Related to this, I thought one day of who probably NEVER gets any appreciation but strives
to make things nicer, anyone planning or planting the highway strips (government workers maybe
although it could be convicts also unfortunately, I'm not sure). Yes highways are ugly, yes they
will destroy the world, but some of the planting strips are sometimes genuinely nice. So they
add some niceness to the ugly and people still litter of course.
The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the
public space/environment as a shared, common good. Thus, streets, parks and public space might be soiled by litter that nobody cares to put away
in trash bins properly, while simultaneously the interior of houses/apartments, and attached gardens
if any, are kept meticulously clean.
Basically, the world people care about stops outside their dwellings, because they do not feel
it is "theirs" or that they participate in its possession in a genuine way. It belongs to the
"town administration", or to a "private corporation", or to the "government" - and if they feel
they have no say in the ownership, management, regulation and benefits thereof, why should they
care? Let the town administration/government/corporation do the clean-up - we already pay enough
taxes/fees/tolls, and "they" are always putting up more restrictions on how to use everything,
so
In conclusion: the phenomenon of litter/trash is another manifestation of a fraying social
contract.
The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population
views the public space/environment as a shared, common good.
There *is* no public space anymore. Every public good, every public space is now fair game
for commercial exploitation.
I live in NYC, and just yesterday as I attempted to refill my MetroCard, the machine told me
it was expired and I had to replace it. The replacement card doesn't look at all like a MetroCard
with the familiar yellow and black graphic saying "MetroCard". Instead? It's an ad. For a fucking
insurance company. And so now, every single time that I go somewhere on the subway, I have to
see an ad from Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
The importance of the end of solidarity – that is, of the almost-murderous impulses by the upper
classes to destroy any kind of solidarity. From Yves's posting of Yanis Varoufakis's analysis
of the newest terms of the continuing destruction of Greece:
With regard to labour market reforms, the Eurogroup welcomes the adopted legislation safeguarding
previous reforms on collective bargaining and bringing collective dismissals in line with best
EU practices.
I see! "Safeguarding previous reforms on collective bargaining" refers, of course, to the 2012
removal of the right to collective bargaining and the end to trades union representation for each
and every Greek worker. Our government was elected in January 2015 with an express mandate to
restore these workers' and trades unions' rights. Prime Minister Tsipras has repeatedly pledged
to do so, even after our falling out and my resignation in July 2015. Now, yesterday, his government
consented to this piece of Eurogroup triumphalism that celebrates the 'safeguarding' of the 2012
'reforms'. In short, the SYRIZA government has capitulated on this issue too: Workers' and trades'
unions' rights will not be restored. And, as if that were not bad enough, "collective dismissals"
will be brought "in line with best EU practices". What this means is that the last remaining constraints
on corporations, i.e. a restriction on what percentage of workers can be fired each month, is
relaxed. Make no mistake: The Eurogroup is telling us that, now that employers are guaranteed
the absence of trades unions, and the right to fire more workers, growth enhancement will follow
suit! Let's not hold our breath!
The so-called "Elites"? Stand down? Right.
Every year I look up the cardinal topics discussed at the larger economic forums and conferences
(mainly Davos and G8), and some variation of "The consequences of rising inequality" is a recurring
one. Despite this, nothing ever comes out if them. I imagine they go something like this:
"-Oh hi Mark. Racism is bad.
-Definitely. So is inequality, right, Tim?
-Sure, wish we could do something about it. HEY GUYS, HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT MY NEW SCHEME TO BUY
OUT NEW AND UPCOMING COMPANIES TO MAKE MORE MONEY?"
A wet dream come true, both for an AnCap and a communist conspiracy theorist. I'm by no means
either. However, I think capitalism has already failed and can't go on for much longer. Conditions
will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement or relief.
"Conditions will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement
or relief." Frase's Quadrant Four. Hierarchy + Scarcity = Exterminism (From "Four Futures" )
Reminds me of that one quip I saw from a guy who, why he always had to have two pigs to eat
up his garbage, said that if he had only one pig, it will eat only when it wants to, but if there
were two pigs, each one would eat so the other pig won't get to it first. Our current economic system in a nutshell – pigs eating crap so deny it to others first.
"Greed is good".
Don't know that the two avenues Gaius mentioned are the only two roads our society can travel.
In support of this view, I recall a visit to a secondary city in Russia for a few weeks in the
early 1990s after the collapse of the USSR. Those were difficult times economically and psychologically
for ordinary citizens of that country. Alcoholism was rampant, emotional illness and suicide rates
among men of working age were high, mortality rates generally were rising sharply, and birth rates
were falling. Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful
and educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class,
and the related emergence of organized criminal networks. There was also adequate food, and critical
public infrastructure was maintained, keeping in mind this was shortly after the Chernobyl disaster.
Here in the US the New Deal and other legislation helped preserve social order in the 1930s.
Yves also raises an important point in her preface that can provide support for the center by
those who are able to do so under the current economic framework. That glue is to participate
in one's community; whether it is volunteering at a school, the local food bank, community-oriented
social clubs, or in a multitude of other ways; regardless of whether your community is a small
town or a large city.
" Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful and
educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class,
and the related emergence of organized criminal networks."
None of which applies to the Imperium, of course. There's glue, all right, but it's the kind
that is used for flooring in Roach Motels (TM), and those horrific rat and mouse traps that stick
the rodent to a large rectangle of plastic, where they die eventually of exhaustion and dehydration
and starvation The rat can gnaw off a leg that's glued down, but then it tips over and gets glued
down by the chest or face or butt
I have to note that several people I know are fastidious about picking up trash other people
"throw away." I do it, when I'm up to bending over. I used to be rude about it - one young attractive
woman dumped a McDonald's bag and her ashtray out the window of her car at one of our very long
Florida traffic lights. I got out of my car, used the mouth of the McDonald's bag to scoop up
most of the lipsticked butts, and threw them back into her car. Speaking of mouths, that woman
with the artfully painted lips sure had one on her
The NLRB is the administrative agency that is tasked with enforcing the
National Labor
Relations Act , the federal statute that gives employees the right to unionize and collectively
bargain. The NLRB consists of five members who are appointed to five-year terms by the president
upon the advice and consent of the Senate.
Right now, there are two vacancies on the board that President Donald Trump will fill. Once the
Senate confirms President Trump's nominees, Republicans will control the board for the first time
since 2007
.
The background of the three candidates
reportedly under
consideration suggests that the board will in fact be much friendlier to business interests under
the Trump administration. One of the potential nominees,
Doug Seaton ,
has made a career of being a "
union-buster ," the term used to describe a consultant brought in by employers to beat a unionization
campaign. Another, William
Emanuel , is a partner at Littler Mendelson, one of the largest and most successful anti-labor
law firms in the country. Less is known about the third potential candidate, Marvin Kaplan, but his
history as a Republican staffer
suggests he may also represent employers' interests.
Many observers
assume that this new board will overturn many Obama-era precedents that favored unions. These
precedents include questions such as how to define bargaining units, at issue at both Yale and Elderwood.
But the new board could go even further and roll back pro-union decisions dating back decades.
This could be devastating to already weakened unions. With
private sector union membership
hovering at a dismal 6.4 percent -- down from about 17 percent in 1983 -- nothing short of the
end of the labor movement could be at stake.
The composition of the NLRB is important because most claims regarding the right to organize and
collectively bargain are decided by the agency.
Unlike other employment statutes, such as
Title VII and the
Fair Labor Standards Act , individuals
and unions cannot file claims in federal court and instead must participate in the administrative
process set up by the National Labor Relations Act. While aggrieved parties can appeal board rulings
to federal appeals courts, judges grant a high degree of deference to NLRB decisions.
In other words, three board members -- a bare majority of the board -- have an enormous ability
to influence and shape American labor policy.
Given the amount of power these three individuals can wield, it is no wonder that the NLRB has
become highly politicized
in the decades since its creation in the 1930s. Ironically, the board was originally established
as a way to try to insulate labor policy from political influences.
The drafters of the labor act
believed that the federal courts were hostile to labor rights and would chip away at the protections
in a way that would be bad for unions. Instead, the board has become a political battlefield for
the two parties who hold very different views about labor policy.
This politicization came to a head during the Obama administration, when it became impossible
to confirm anyone to serve on the NLRB. In response, Obama
appointed several members using his recess appointment power, which allows the president to avoid
Senate confirmation of nominees when Congress is in recess.
Employers challenged the move, and the Supreme Court eventually invalidated the recess appointments
as executive overreach in
NLRB v. Noel Canning . After the decision, Obama and the Senate finally agreed on five members
that were confirmed. This new board, with a Democratic majority, then decided many of the precedents
that employers hope the new members will overturn.
Flaws in the National Labor Relations Act
So what will happen if Elderwood and Yale bet wrong and lose their appeals in front of the new
Republican-controlled board?
In all likelihood, not much. The board process is long and cumbersome. It often takes years from
the filing of a charge for failure to bargain to the board's decision. In the meantime, employers
hope that unions will have turnover in their membership, become disorganized and lose support.
Moreover, the penalties available under the National Labor Relations Act are
weak . If an employer is found to have violated the act, the board can issue a "cease-and-desist"
letter and require the employer to post a notice promising not to engage in further violations. These
penalties hardly encourage employers to comply with their obligations, especially when they have
so much to gain from obstructing attempts to unionize and collectively bargain.
If the labor movement is to survive, the National Labor Relations Act needs to be reformed to
fix these problems. Instead, a few years of a Republican-controlled NLRB could be organized labor's
death knell .
"... Trump actions do not match his rhetoric. His policies give large tax cuts to very wealthy people. He is not pursuing an agenda in favor of less inequality, faster growth or higher employment. Unfortunately, the pursuit of tax cuts for the wealthy will likely make the rest of us poorer. ..."
"... Yes Trump has proven to be much more stupid and ineffective I thought he would be. Maybe it was the way he vanquished his many competitors in the Republican primary and beat Hillary. ..."
"... He's been negligent and stupid except apparently with judges. He'd rather play golf and tweet. ..."
Trump actions do not match his rhetoric.
His policies give large tax cuts to very wealthy people.
He is not pursuing an agenda in favor of less inequality, faster growth or higher employment.
Unfortunately, the pursuit of tax cuts for the wealthy will likely make the rest of us poorer.
Yes Trump has proven to be much
more stupid and ineffective I thought he would be. Maybe it was the way he vanquished his many
competitors in the Republican primary and beat Hillary.
He's been negligent and stupid except
apparently with judges. He'd rather play golf and tweet.
Agreed. But that still does not
make all of his voters racist. Maybe some of them were misled, but the ones that I know were
just plain desperate. They did not expect Trump to perform especially well as POTUS. It was
enough for them that he was not Hillary.
The glorious German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zaratustra brought up the concept
of the Last Man. Trawling through the internet you will hear about the Last Man constantly, but no
accurate definition or statement about what a Last Man actually is. So this article will discuss
the character traits of the Last Man – let's just hope that the Last Man does not remind you of yourself.
The Last Man is primarily characterized as the type of individual that is fat, lazy and
falls asleep watching TV after over indulging in junk food. This clearly denotes the type of man
that is content with living a life whose primary and only purpose is to exist in
a perpetual state of comfort, security and pleasure. This is a value system that does not idealize
or extol higher values, challenging circumstances or hard work.
Zarathustra after descending the mountains is trying to deliver a sermon to a crowd of people
that are hanging around the marketplace. Individuals that normally hang around a marketplace are
typically known as commoners – especially in Nietzsche's time – and their primary concern is grotesque
entertainment, gossip, manners and commerce.
After delivering his sermon about the Overman/Superman (or Ubersmensch) Nietzsche receives an
apathetic and mocking response. One must imagine how extremely jarring this was for Zarathustra considering
he has just descended from his sojourn in the mountains to proclaim this message. Rather comically,
you can imagine Nietzsche's Zarathustra as the typical hobo you hear in the town centre raving about
God or some other incoherent babble, whilst others walk past laughing, scared or neutral. Except
this raving mystic is much more coherent than usual and is delivering some badass Nietzschean theory.
Nietzsche: " There they stand; there they laugh: they do not understand me; I am not the mouth
for these ears They have something of which they are proud. What do they call it, that which makes
them proud? Culture, they call it; it distinguishes them from the goatherds. They dislike, therefore,
to hear of "contempt" of themselves. So I will appeal to their pride.
I will speak to them of the most contemptible thing: that, however, is the Last Man !"
Contempt here is being used in its typical notion, the feeling that something is worthless and
should not be considered. Here, as suggested by the text, Nietzsche will appeal to their "pride"
by talking to them about what he believes is the most contemptible thing – The Last Man
. This Last Man is the embodiment of their culture. So, Nietzsche is clearly telling us
that the Last Man is valueless and worthless.
What is the Last Man :
Nietzsche: "I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.
I tell you: you have still chaos in yourselves.
Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There comes the
time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.
Lo! I show you the Last Man ."
The Last Man cannot despise himself. That is, he cannot feel or understand that his actions,
values or decisions may under some or all circumstances be lacking in value. This is important. To
not have the orientation that your actions may be lacking, be worthless or unsubstantial entails
that you do not have any serious self-reflective capacity to evaluate your actions. The Last
Man we can reasonably assume acts in a manner that is contemptible and embarrassing for a culture
to promote. So the fact that the Last Man does not have the consciousness nor the insight
to evaluate his actions as lacking value or real meaningful substance means that he is unable to
change them in a positive manner and be something other than the Last Man . Only the
Last Man can be the type of man that lacks insight to such degree that he finds it not only
acceptable, content, but also agreeable to be the Last Man.
Nietzsche: "What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" -- so asks the Last
Man, and blinks. The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small.
His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest."
The Last Man according to Nietzsche's rendering of him is the type of individual that
does not care or even remotely try to answer the questions of his existence, those that profoundly
affect and determine his life. The Last Man , by this characterization, is neither a romantic,
a philosopher, a scientist or a poet.
And due to the unquestioning nature of this type of man, the world has been made small and manageable.
According to this type of man, the striving, the ambition, the determination to battle against hardship
and the desire to become more than we currently are is a deterrent to happiness.
Nietzsche: "The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small.
His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest.
Yet despite all of this, the Last Man , due to his security, comfort and pleasure believes:
Nietzsche: ""We have discovered happiness" -- say the Last Men, and they blink."
Nietzsche goes on to discuss the herd-like collective behaviour and the smug mentality of this group
that dogmatically and unquestionably believes the man of the present to better than the men of the
past. If this is true, then the values and behaviors that instantiate the Last Man are,
according to him, to be preferred over all other values. Once again, the Last Man is unwilling
to question his values against any other lifestyle or generational values, due to their inability
to evaluate values that should guide their or others' behaviour.
Nietzsche: "No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same; everyone is the same: he who feels
differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse. Formerly all the world was insane," -- say the subtlest
of them, and they blink.
Despite Zarathustra's attempt to shame the market crowd with a contemptible notion of their culture
through the concept of the Last Man , the crowd continue to mock him by clamoring to become
the Last Man . As we can see, they have truly misunderstood Nietzsche's message and this
market crowd is the collective manifestation of the Last Man .
--
If you're interested in buying Thus Spoke Zarathustra please use the link below to support and
improve Apotheosis Magazine
"... Nobody would argue I think that when 1935 Congress passed the NLRA(a) it consciously left criminal prosecution of union busting blank because it desired states to individually take that up in their localities. Conversely, I don't think anybody thinks Congress deliberately left out criminal sanctions because it objected to such. ..."
"... I'm thinking that if we cannot get (would be) progressive academics, journalists, politicians to get off their duffs about making union busting a felony -- that maybe unions can start putting the question on the ballot wherever that can be done. ..."
NYT's Nate Cohn: "Just as Mr. Obama's team caricatured Mr.
Romney, Mr. Trump caricatured Mrs. Clinton as a tool of Wall
Street" ... "At every point of the race, Mr. Trump was doing
better among white voters without a college degree than Mitt
Romney did in 2012 - by a wide margin.
America should feel perfectly free to rebuild labor union
density one state at a time -- making union busting a felony.
Republicans will have no place to hide.
[CUT-AND-PASTE]
Nobody would argue I think that when 1935 Congress passed
the NLRA(a) it consciously left criminal prosecution of union
busting blank because it desired states to individually take
that up in their localities. Conversely, I don't think
anybody thinks Congress deliberately left out criminal
sanctions because it objected to such.
Congress left criminal sanctions blank in US labor law
because it thought it had done enough. States disagree?
States are perfectly free to fill in the blanks protecting
not just union organizing but any kind of collective
bargaining more generally -- without worrying about federal
preemption. Don't see why even Trump USC judge would find
fault with that.
I'm thinking that if we cannot get (would be) progressive
academics, journalists, politicians to get off their duffs
about making union busting a felony -- that maybe unions can
start putting the question on the ballot wherever that can be
done.
Mostly a matter of overcoming inertia and proceeding to
become like every other modern democracy on every issue
(wages, medical, education and more). That all starts with
upending the power equation -- political as well as economic:
rebuilding union density is the alpha and omega of doing
that.
Apt. The best representative of the controling force of
the financial sector is the ECB. It is able to buy
financial assets with the stroke of keys on a computer but
someone, somehow also made sure the publics' governments
cannot di thus even though it is the publics' governments
who maintain the laws, enforcement mechanisms,
infrastructures for the markets, and social securities
that benefit those who trade among the financial trading
marketplaces.
Europe needs even more that the US to
watch this. A new polity comes to mind for me, returning
control to the people (catchy phrase, I just made it up,
call it a Trump_vs_deep_state).
To celebrate Memorial Day here is my
impression of MF, Milton Friedmann :
The Pilkington process of production of soda-lime
float-glass requires extremely high temperatures. The
process takes some time to cool down and turn off, days to
warm back up for more process. In other words, the factory
is geared to continuous production at steady velocity thus
requires constant market for the product.
Need for constant output leads to the convention of
middle-man contracts from middle-man who agrees to buy
product at same volume for month after month.
The middle-man's sales vary month over month but his
inventory grows or shrinks from the steady contracted
inflow from factory. In short, the inventory fluctuates
not from inflow but only from fluctuations in outflow.
Outflow is controlled by price adjustments to whatever
volume the market will bear. Price depend only on customer
demand not supply fluctuations.
The middle-man dumps inventory by dropping the price
but builds inventory by raising price. When he has
inflationary expectations he hoards inventory in hopes of
selling later at higher price.
When he has deflationary expectations to avoid future
drop in profit margin he dumps inventory quickly using
price incentives.
In other words, deflationary expectations accelerates
his M2V, but inflationary expectations decelerates his
money stock velocity.
His customers have the liquidity to buy more during
deflation, lower prices. They buy less during high prices,
inflation.
This same mechanism of expectations controls many other
assembly line industries where steady output of production
owns maximum economy of scale.
Exploitation is an outcome. A nebulous description of
the status quo. I suggest we are talking about moving
people toward slavery.
I was thinking today, since
it is in fact, Memorial Day and, according to Wickapedia :
"Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States
for remembering the people who died while serving in the
country's armed forces.[1]".
This is not what they fought and died for. They fought
and died for an inclusive society with abundant
opportunity for their children and, for themselves.
It is shameful that we are honoring our war dead,
today. Like the last 50 years, when Ronny Reagan, draft
dodger, took over.
"... There will be a third world country within the USA segregated from the rest of society. It already exists (Wall-mart and retail workers are definitely a part of it; single mothers is another category). But it will grow. ..."
too many
involuntary part-timers
too little bargaining power by workers
downward pressure from global labor markets on our labor
market
geographical mismatches supply/demand (and difficulty
relocating)
etc.
The fix? I'm not certain what will work at this point.
"The fix? I'm not certain what will work at this point."
This is a new status quo -- "neoliberal status quo".
So there is no fix in the pipeline. The idea is to
suppress the protest, not to meet the workers demands. And so
far they are very successful.
And, I think, unless there is a open rebellion (unlikely
in the national security state) there will be no fix in the
future. When goals of a particular society are so screwed,
there can be no fix.
There will be a third world country within the USA
segregated from the rest of society. It already exists
(Wall-mart and retail workers are definitely a part of it;
single mothers is another category). But it will grow.
In a way, we can think about election of Trump as kind of
rebellion against the destruction of jobs and associated
destruction of standard of living for a large part of the US
population.
Destruction of jobs is why the USA has an opiates
epidemics. That's like epidemic of alcoholism in the USSR.
Sign of desperation.
And it is the neoliberal establishment which imposed on
people those "several problems":
-- too many involuntary part-timers
-- too little bargaining power by workers
-- downward pressure from global labor markets on our
labor market
"... The anger and despair crystalized into a 'groundswell of discontent' among those left behind, which likely helped to propel Donald Trump into the White House on the promise of 'making America great again'. ..."
"... That's my feeling too about one of the key factor that propelled Trump -- "the anger and despair". For some, voting for Trump was a showing middle finger to Washington establishment. ..."
"... Thus, the battle lines between neoliberal and a "social contract" approach to employment are clearly cut. So far Wall Street, the City, and other worldwide "epicenters for free-market discipline," are winning the battle. According to "free market discipline" dogma, if you are hired at below living wave (as in Wall Mart or other retail chain) it's your own fault. Very convenient theory. The fact that it produce strong desire to shoot or hang all neoliberal economists notwithstanding ;-) ..."
Demand, Secular Stagnation and the Vanishing Middle-Class
The Great Financial Crisis of 2008 deeply scarred the U.S. economy, bringing nine dire years
of economic stagnation, high and rising inequalities in income and wealth, steep levels of indebtedness,
and mounting uncertainty about jobs and incomes
. Big parts of the U.S. were hit by elevated rates of depression, drug addiction and 'deaths
of despair' (Case and Deaton 2017), as 'good jobs' (often in factories and including pension benefits
and health care coverage) leading to careers, were destroyed and replaced by insecure, freelance,
or precarious 'gigs'. All this is evidence that the U.S. is becoming a dual economy-two countries,
each with vastly different resources, expectations and potentials, as America's middle class vanishes
(Temin 2015, 2017).
The anger and despair crystalized into a 'groundswell of discontent' among those left behind,
which likely helped to propel Donald Trump into the White House on the promise of 'making America
great again'.
"The anger and despair crystalized into a 'groundswell of discontent' among those left
behind, which likely helped to propel Donald Trump into the White House on the promise of 'making
America great again'."
That's my feeling too about one of the key factor that propelled Trump -- "the anger and
despair". For some, voting for Trump was a showing middle finger to Washington establishment.
When jobs are gone, people are essentially put against the wall. Neoliberal politicians,
be it "DemoRats", or "Repugs" do not care, as under neoliberalism this is a domain of "individual
responsibility". The neoliberal stance is that you need to increase your value in the "job market"
so that you will be eventually hired on better conditions. Very convenient theory for capital
owners.
Thus, the battle lines between neoliberal and a "social contract" approach to employment are
clearly cut. So far Wall Street, the City, and other worldwide "epicenters for free-market discipline,"
are winning the battle. According to "free market discipline" dogma, if you are hired at below
living wave (as in Wall Mart or other retail chain) it's your own fault. Very convenient theory.
The fact that it produce strong desire to shoot or hang all neoliberal economists notwithstanding
;-)
Academic prostitution is not that different and probably less noble that a regular one.
I had another
topic lined up today, but this (
hat
tip alert reader ChrisAtRU
) is so remarkable - and so necessary to
frame
contextualize immediately - I thought I should bring it your
attention, dear readers. The headline is
"Toward a Marshall Plan for America
," the authors are a gaggle of CAP
luminaries with Neera Tanden leading and Rey Teixeira trailing, and the
"Marshall Plan" indeed includes something called a "Jobs Guarantee." Of
course, I trust Clinton operatives like Tanden, and Third Way types like
Teixeira, about as far as I can throw a concert grand piano. Nevertheless,
one sign of an idea whose time has come is that sleazy opportunists and
has-beens try to get out in front of it to seize credit[1] and stay
relevant. So, modified rapture.
In this brief post, I'm going to look at the political context that drove
CAP - taking Tanden, Teixeira, and the gaggle as a proxy for CAP - to
consider a Jobs Guarantee (JG), briefly describe the nature and purpose of a
JG, and conclude with some thoughts on how Tanden, Teixeira would screw the
JG up, like the good liberals they are.
Political Context for CAP's JG
Let's begin with the photo of Prairie du Chien, WI at the top of CAP's JG
article. Here it is:
I went to Google Maps Street View, found
Stark's Sports Shop
(and Liquor Store), and took a quick look round
town. Things don't look too bad, which is to say things look pretty much
like they do in my own home town, in the fly-over state of Maine; many local
businesses. The street lamps make my back teeth itch a little, because along
with bike paths to attract professionals, they're one of those panaceas to
"bring back downtown," but as it turns out Prairie du Chien has marketed
itself to summer tourists quite successfully as "
the
oldest Euro-American settlement established on the Upper Mississippi River,"
so those lamps are legit! (Of course, Prairie du Chien, like so much of
flyover country,
is fighting an opioid problem
, but that doesn't show up in Street View,
or affect the tourists in any way.)
In 2012, [Lydia Holt] voted for Barack Obama because he promised her
change, but she feels that change hasn't reached her here. So last year
she chose a presidential candidate unlike any she'd ever seen, the
billionaire businessman who promised to help America, and people like
her, win again. Many of her neighbors did, too .
In this corner of middle America, in this one, small slice of the
nation that sent Trump to Washington, they are watching and they are
waiting, their hopes pinned on his promised economic renaissance. And if
four years from now the change he pledged hasn't found them here, the
people of Crawford County said they might change again to someone else.
"[T]hings aren't going the way we want them here," she said, "so we
needed to go in another direction."
And the issues:
[Holt] tugged 13 envelopes from a cabinet above the stove, each one
labeled with a different debt: the house payment, the student loans, the
vacuum cleaner she bought on credit.
Lydia Holt and her husband tuck money into these envelopes with each
paycheck to whittle away at what they owe. They both earn about $10 an
hour and, with two kids, there are usually some they can't fill. She did
the math; at this rate, they'll be paying these same bills for 87 years.
Kramer said she's glad the Affordable Care Act has helped millions get
insurance, but it hasn't helped her he and her husband were stunned to
find premiums over $1,000 a month. Her daughter recently moved into their
house with her five children, so there's no money to spare. They opted to
pay the penalty of $2,000, and pray they don't get sick until Trump, she
hopes, keeps his promise to replace the law with something better.
Among them is a woman who works for $10.50 an hour in a sewing
factory, who still admires Obama, bristles at Trump's bluster, but can't
afford health insurance. And the dairy farmer who thinks Trump is a jerk
- "somebody needs to get some Gorilla Glue and glue his lips shut" - but
has watched his profits plummet and was willing to take the risk.
So that's Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. CAP frames the electoral context
this way:
While the election was decided by a small number of votes overall,
there was a significant shift of votes in counties in critical Electoral
College states, including Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and
Wisconsin.
(I could have told them that.
In fact, I did!
) And the reasons for the shift:
What was going on in these heavily white working-class counties that
might explain support for Trump? Without diminishing the importance of
cultural and racial influences, it is clear to us that lingering [sic]
economic pressures among important voting blocs helped to create a larger
opening for Trump's victory.
We do not yet know the exact reasons for the drop in turnout among
young people and black voters. But with President Obama not on the ticket
to drive voter enthusiasm, it is quite possible that lingering job and
wage pressures in more urban areas with lots of young people, and in
areas with large populations of African-Americans, yielded similar, if
distinct, economic anxiety in ways that may have depressed voter turnout
among base progressives. The combined effect of economic anxiety may have
been to drive white noncollege voters toward Trump and to drive down
voter engagement and participation among base progressives.
Either way, issues related to lost jobs, low wages, high costs, and
diminished mobility played a critical role in setting the stage for a
narrow populist victory for Trump.
(I could have told them that, too.
In fact, I did!
) Note the lingering
"Obama Coalition"
/
identity
politics
brain damage that casually assumes "base progressives" equate
to African-Americans and youth. Nevertheless, mild kudos to CAP for fighting
through to the concept that "economic pressures among important voting blocs
helped to create a larger opening for Trump's victory." The CAP paper then
goes on to recommend a JG as an answer to such "economic pressures."[2]
How would the JG work from the perspective of a working person (not an
owner?) Or from the perspective of the millions of permanently
disemployed?
The MMT Primer
:
If you are involuntarily unemployed today (or are stuck with a
part-time job when you really want to work full time) you only have
three choices:
Employ yourself (create your own business-something that
usually goes up in recessions although most of these businesses
fail)
Convince an employer to hire you, adding to the firm's
workforce
Convince an employer to replace an existing worker, hiring you
The second option requires that the firm's employment is below
optimum-it must not currently have the number of workers desired to
produce the amount of output the firm thinks it can sell. …
If the firm is in equilibrium, then, producing what it believes it
can sell, it will hire you only on the conditions stated in the third
case-to replace an existing worker. Perhaps you promise to work
harder, or better, or at a lower wage. But, obviously, that just
shifts the unemployment to someone else.
It is the "dogs and bones" problem: if you bury 9 bones and send 10
dogs out to go bone-hunting you know at least one dog will come back
"empty mouthed". You can take that dog and teach her lots of new
tricks in bone-finding, but if you bury only 9 bones, again, some
unlucky dog comes back without a bone.
The only solution is to provide a 10
th
bone. That is
what the JG does: it ensures a bone for every dog that wants to hunt.
It expands the options to include:
There is a "residual" employer who will always provide a job to
anyone who shows up ready and willing to work.
It expands choice. If you want to work and exhaust the first 3
alternatives listed above, there is a 4
th
: the JG.
It expands choice without reducing other choices. You can still try
the first 3 alternatives. You can take advantage of all the safety net
alternatives provided. Or you can choose to do nothing. It is up to
you.
If I were one of the millions of people permanently disemployed, I
would welcome that additional choice. It's certainly far more humane than
any policy on offer by either party. And the JG is in the great tradition
of programs the New Deal sponsored, like the CCC, the WPA,
Federal Writers' Project
, and the
Federal Art Project
. So what's not to like? (
Here's
a list
of other JGs). Like the New Deal, but not temporary!
Intuitively: What the JG does is set a baseline[3] for the entire
package offered to workers, and employers have to offer a better package,
or not get the workers they need. When I came up here to Maine I'd quit
my job voluntarily and so wasn't eligible for unemployment. Then the
economy crashed, and I had no work (except for blogging) for two years.
There were no jobs to be had. I would have screamed with joy for a
program even remotely like this, and I don't even have dependents to take
care of. It may be objected that the political process won't deliver an
offer as good as the Primer suggests. Well, don't mourn. Organize. It may
be objected that a reform like the JG merely reinforces the power of the
0.01%. If so, I'm not sure I'm willing to throw the currently disemployed
under the bus because "worse is better," regardless. Anyhow, does
"democratic control over the living wage"
really
sound all that
squillionaire-friendly to you? Aren't they doing everything in their
power to fight anything that sounds like that? The JG sounds like the
slogan Lincoln ran on, to me:
"Vote yourself a farm!"
[3]
So, what does the JG for the economy? MMT was put together by
economists; from an economists perspective, what is it good for? Why did
they do that?
The Primer
once more:
some supporters emphasize that a program with a uniform basic
wage[4] also helps to promote economic and price stability.
The JG/ELR program will act as an automatic stabilizer as
employment in the program grows in recession and shrinks in economic
expansion, counteracting private sector employment fluctuations. The
federal government budget will become more counter-cyclical because
its spending on the ELR program will likewise grow in recession and
fall in expansion.
Furthermore, the uniform basic wage will reduce both inflationary
pressure in a boom and deflationary pressure in a bust. In a boom,
private employers can recruit from the program's pool of workers,
paying a mark-up over the program wage. The pool acts like a "reserve
army" of the employed, dampening wage pressures as private employment
grows. In recession, workers down-sized by private employers can work
at the JG/ELR wage, which puts a floor to how low wages and income can
fall.
Research by Pavlina Tcherneva and Rania Antonopoulos indicates that
when asked, most people want to work. Studying how job guarantees
affect women in poor countries, they find the programs are popular
largely because they recognize-and more fairly distribute and
compensate-all the child- and elder care that is now often performed
by women for free (out of love or duty), off the books, or not at all.
We propose today a new jobs guarantee, and we further expect a
robust[3] agenda to be developed by the commission.
The low wages and low employment rates for those without college
degrees only exist because of a failure of imagination. There is no
shortage of important work that needs to be done in our country. There
are not nearly enough home care workers to aid the aged and disabled.
Many working families with children under the age of 5 need access to
affordable child care. Schools need teachers' aides, and cities need
EMTs. And there is no shortage of people who could do this work. What has
been missing is policy that can mobilize people.
To solve this problem, we propose a large-scale, permanent program of
public employment and infrastructure investment-similar to the Works
Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression but modernized
for the 21st century. It will increase employment and wages for those
without a college degree while providing needed services that are
currently out of reach for lower-income households and cash-strapped
state and local governments. Furthermore, some individuals may be hired
into paying public jobs in which their primary duty will be to complete
intensive, full-time training for high-growth, in-demand occupations.
These "public apprenticeships" could include rotations with public and
private entities to gain on-the-ground experience and lead to guaranteed
private-sector employment upon successful completion of training.
Such an expanded public employment program could, for example, have a
target of maintaining the employment rate for prime-age workers without a
bachelor's degree at the 2000 level of 79 percent. Currently, this would
require the creation of 4.4 million jobs. At a living wage-which we can
approximate as $15 per hour plus the cost of contributions to Social
Security and Medicare via payroll taxes-the direct cost of each job would
be approximately $36,000 annually. Thus, a rough estimate of the costs of
this employment program would be about $158 billion in the current year.
This is approximately one-quarter of Trump's proposed tax cut for the
wealthy on an annual basis.
With tis background, let's look at how liberals would screw the JG up.
How a CAP JG Would Go Wrong
Before getting into a little policy detail, I'll examine a few
cultural/framing issues. After all, CAP
does
want the program's
intended recipients to accept it with good grace, no? Let me introduce the
over-riding concern, from Joan C. Williams in
The Financial Times
:
"They don't want compassion. They want respect"
:
Williams warns that Republican errors alone won't give Democrats back
the WWC.
Or any part of the WC; as even CAP recognizes, although WWC
disproportionately voted Trump, and non-WWC disproportionately stayed home.
While [Williams] agrees that the Democrats have mobilised their base
since Trump's election, she has "one simple message" for the party: it
needs to show the WWC respect, "in a tone suitable for grown-ups".
Democrats must say: "We regret that we have disrespected you, we now hear
you." She asks: "Is this so hard? Although the risk is that the response
will be, 'Oh, those poor little white people with their opioid epidemics,
let's open our hearts in compassion to them.' That's going to infuriate
them. They don't want compassion, they want respect."
To show respect, it would really behoove liberals to deep-six the phrase
"economic anxiety," along with "economic frustrations," "economic concerns,"
"economic grievances," and "lingering economic pressures."[4] All these
phrases make successful class warfare a psychological condition, no doubt to
be treated by a professional (who by definition is not anxious, not
frustrated, has no grievances, and certainly no economic pressures, because
of their hourly rate (or possibly their government contract).
To show respect, it would also behoove liberals to deep-six the concept
that markets come first; people who sell their labor power by the hour tend
to be sensitive about such things. Take, for a tiny example, the caption
beneath the image of Prairie du Chein. Let me quote it:
A customer crosses the street while leaving a shop along the main
business district in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, January 2017.
Really? A
customer
? Does the human figure have to be a
customer
? Why?
Along the same lines, drop the "affordable" crap; ObamaCare should have
ruined that branding already; what seems like it's affordable to CAP writers
in the Beltway probably isn't affordable at all to somebody making $10 an
hour. Anyhow, if something like childcare or for that matter #MedicareForAll
ought to be a universal direct material benefit, then deliver it!
To show respect, abandon the "Marshall Plan" framing immediately. Because
it means the "winners" are going to graciously help the "losers," right? And
prudentially, liberals don't really want to get the working class asking
themselves who conducted a war against them, and why, right?
To show respect, make the JG a truly universal benefit, a real guarantee,
and don't turn it into an ObamaCare-like Rube Goldberg device of
means-testing, worthiness detection, gatekeeping, and various complex forms
of insult and degradation, like narrow networks. This passage from CAP has
me concerned:
Such an expanded public employment program could, for example, have
a target
of maintaining the employment rate for prime-age
workers without a bachelor's degree at the 2000 level of 79 percent.
That 'target" language sounds to me very much like the "dogs and bones"
problem. Suppose currently we have 6 bones and 10 dogs. The "target" is 7
bones. Suppose we meet it? There are still 3 dogs without bones! Some
guarantee! The JG should be simple: A job for everyone who wants one. None
of this targeting or slicing and dicing demographics. The JG isn't supposed
to be an employment guarantee for macro-economists (who basically have one
anyone).
To show respect, make the JG set the baseline for wages (and working
conditions). This passage from CAP has me concerned:
Second, because it would employ people to provide services that are
currently needed but unaffordable, it would not compete with existing
private-sector employment.
This language seems a bit slippery to me. If Walmart is paying $10.00 an
hour, is the JG really going to pay $9.50?
Finally, you will notice that the CAP JG is shorn of any macro-economic
implications. Note, for example, that replacing our current cruel system of
regulating the economy by throwing people out of work isn't mentioned. Note
also that CAP also accepts the false notion that Federal taxes pay for
Federal spending. That puts CAP in the austerity box, meaning that the JG
might be cut back just when it is most needed, not least by working people.
Conclusion
I do want to congratulate CAP, and without irony, for this passage:
[The JG] would provide the dignity of work, the value of which is
significant. When useful work is not available, there are large negative
consequences, ranging from depression, to a decline in family stability,
to "deaths of [sic] despair."
It's good to see the Case-Deaton study penetrating the liberal hive mind.
Took long enough. Oh, and this makes the JG a moral issue, too. The pallid
language of "economic anxiety" should be reformulated to reflect this, as
should the program itself.
NOTES
[1] The JG originally comes from the MMT community;
here is a high-level summary
. Oddly, or not, there's no footnote
crediting MMTers. Interestingly, Stephanie Kelton, who hails from the
University of Missouri at Kansas City's MMT-friendly economics department,
before Sanders brought her onto the staff at the Senate Budget committee,
was not able to persuade Sanders of the correctness and/or political utility
of MMT generally or the JG in particular.
[2] I guess
those famous Democrat 2016 post mortems
will
never
be
published, eh? This will have to do for a poor substitute. Or maybe the
Democrats just want us to read
Shattered
.
[3] In my view, "robust" is a bullshit tell. Back when I was a hotshot
consultant, the operational definition of "robust" was "contained in a very
large three-ring binder."
[4] Dear God. Are these people demented? Nobody who is actually under
"economic pressure" would use these words. And so far as I can tell,
"lingering" means permanent.
About Lambert Strether
Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic
cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs
that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class.
Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a
Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and
a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative
Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different
flavors of neoliberalism ("Because markets"). I don't much care about the
"ism" that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put
common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR
saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or
communism razing it. I don't much care, as long as the benefits are
delivered. To me, the key issue - and this is why Medicare for All is
always first with me - is the tens of thousands of excess "deaths from
despair," as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent
studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very
least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and
organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics - even the worthy
fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton's wars created -
bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news
flow - currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate
Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by
out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press - a
news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as
of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political
economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life
expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful
that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open
the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed;
let's call such voices "the left." Volatility creates opportunity,
especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and
opposes all such programs, isn't allowed to get back into the saddle.
Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the
horse race, since I've been blogging about it daily for fourteen years,
but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.
Yes, a great essay. And thank you commentariat.
Of course, there is a potential conflict from those who want a basic
income, but don't want to work. Such a position frames such people
badly, but a basic income remains an essential part of a JG world IMO.
The JG would provide incentive if you didn't lose the safety net and
could add to it by working in a JG program.
Most here in this place accept that a sovereign government can pay for
programs which are not funded by taxes (or debt) and the JG and basic
income concepts could be a way to test this in a controlled way.
The main reason I think that politicians continue to have blinkers (LA
LA, CAN'T HEAR YOU) with respect to MMT is that they are scared
witless of a government with unlimited spending powers. That's why we
can't have nice things.
don't want to work, hmm I don't even know if I could work in a
job without a decent amount of slack (A.D.D. mind may not be
capable of it or something and often not for lack of trying, though
I do a decent amount of unpaid work in my precious leisure time).
Or at least not the full 40 hours, so if the job guarantee bosses
are slave drivers, I don't know, I'd probably be fired from my job
guaranteed job period.
But what if a job was aligned with one's interest? Don't know,
never experienced that.
But all that aside and never even mind unemployment, given how
horrible the job circumstances are that I see many people caught in
(and I definitely don't mean having slack – that's a good thing, I
mean verbal ABUSE, I mean working endless hours of unpaid overtime
etc.), any alternative would seem good.
The "target" language also makes me worry that they're defining optimal
employment by the inflation-obsessed standards of Chicago-school economists,
thus coming up short in the name of protecting the investor class.
Minor quibble: Does Maine constitute flyover country? Usually that term
means the parts of the country that the well-to-do "fly over" from east
coast cities to west coast ones, with perhaps an exception for Chicago. You
wouldn't fly over Maine for any of those routes. Not to mention, Maine is a
popular vacationing/summer home state for rich New Englanders, so it doesn't
exactly have an "other" status for them the way rural Wisconsin would.
I think Maine is legit flyover country as flying over Maine was once
mandatory on the transatlantic route in order to Gander Airport in
Newfoundland. I know, I know, it's a bit of a stretch but I'm trying
here!
As for Maine's other status, you're spot on about "down east"
(coastal) Maine and some of the lakes being popular with the landed
gentry, but the interior of the state is sparsely populated, poor, white,
and marginalized. Many of the paper mills have gone belly-up and the
economy in many places consists of picking potatoes or cutting down
trees.
I used to do a lot of business travel to Nova Scotia. Hard to get
there from the US without flying over Maine. But I think Lambert meant
flyover in the pejorative "why would you live here when you could be an
artisanal pickle maker in Brooklyn" sense.
Matt Bruenig had other issues with the article:
More Job Guarantee Muddle
. While he points out that the jobs
suggested in the article should be permanent rather than temporary jobs,
I go on with my own little sense of discomfort that they all involve
putting the otherwise jobless in charge of caring for the helpless. I
don't find that a good idea. I've spent enough time both working with and
volunteering in human service organizations to have observed that it's
not really appropriate work for a lot of people, even for many
good-hearted volunteers. It really dampens my enthusiasm for a JG that I
have yet to see an argument for it that doesn't invoke child and elderly
care as just great jobs that the jobless can be put to doing.
Just another quibble with this post. I first heard of a job guarantee
and heard arguments for it in the U.S. civilian society from Michael
Harrington in the early 1980s (guaranteed jobs have been a feature of the
state capitalist societies that call themselves socialist throughout the
20th c.), so I don't find it particularly odd when the MMT community
isn't mentioned as originating the idea. In fact, I tend to respond with
"Hey, MMTers, learn some history."
Thanks for this article Lambert. Why should we trust CAP to handle this
when they have done nothing toward this end in their entire history. In
fact, in undeniable fact, if we don't do something about demand in this
country we will have no economy left at all. For these guys to even approach
a JG you know they are panicked. Nobody goes over this fact because it turns
them all into instant hypocrites. I spent yesterday listening to some MMTers
on U-Tube, Wray and some others. They all clearly and succinctly explain the
systemic reasons for JG. Not nonsense. In fact, MMT approaches a JG as the
opposite of nonsense on so many levels. As you have pointed out – these CAP
people are a little late to reality. And their dear leader Obama is first in
line for the blame, followed closely by Bill Clinton and his
balance-the-budget cabal of bankster idiots. And etc. And these JG jobs
could be just the jobs we need to turn global warming around. It could be
the best spent money ever. It is a very straight-forward calculation.
I don't know how you even bother. America is so far away from this
intellectually and culturally, there is no chance. Right now the "jobs
guarantee" is get arrested for something bogus and be sentenced to prison to
do forced labor for outsourcing corporations (yes this is real). Look where
the GOP stands on basic issues which were settled long ago in Europe, they
are in the Stone age. The Dems are right wing everywhere else.
With US institutions usually run horribly how do you expect this to be
well run? Is the VA a shining example? I certainly would not have hope for
this at the federal level.
I feel the same way often but I've got to allow myself some hope once
in a while. This development is at least turn in the right direction for
the moment, nothing else. There's nothing wrong with being
(aprehensively) pleased about that.
I'd like to get a basic unemployment welfare scheme going first. We
don't even have that! We have an "insurance" program which requires
you to first have held a job which paid enough for long enough, and
then get fired, not quit. And it only pays for six months. Again, this
was settled in other rich countries a long time ago.
There is a job guarantee in Castro's Cuba. So wonderful, people are
swimming from Miami to Havana ever day.
Though you have it exactly right in the US the job guarantee is to
be a felon on a privatized prison farm usually called a "plantation". I
am looking forward to my neighbors finally being put to work. At least it
is only building a Presidential Library for Obama, not a pyramid for
Pharaoh.
My prediction: by the time this makes it through Congress, it will be a
guarantee for no more than 15 hours per week at slightly below the minimum
wage and you'll only be able to be in the program for nine months,
total during your lifetime. Or am I being overly cynical?
Maybe we need to update that old saw: "First they ignore you, then they
laugh at you, then they co-opt your idea and strip the soul out of it, then
you kinda win but not really, but hey that's progress, right?"
Even though I'm cynical, I'm with Lambert in being for just about
anything that makes us bottom-20%ers lives better, even if it is highly
flawed. Heck, I'd even be for a BIG on that basis, even if Yves is right
about the negative side-effects of that policy.
If I understood correctly, Norway is running such a program since many
years.
Basically, when you are out of a job, you get unemployment benefits (a low
but decent salary, health care and other modern facilities unheard of is the
US) – which last
forever
.
On the other hand, any public institution can call you in to help a hand:
washing dishes at the school kitchen one day, waiting on the elderly the
other day, helping out in the local library wherever hands are needed but
not available.
So it is not really a JG, but you are guaranteed to help out your local
community, and you are guaranteed a minimal income. That seems close enough
to me.
Thanks, Lambert, for a very interesting post. I combed through CAP's
panel of "experts." I was not impressed.
I'm going to start my own think tank. Gonna call it CRAP: Center for Real
American Progress.
Of course in the north in the winter you could go back to shoveling snow
with snow shovels (no machines allowed) and ban use by public employees of
riding lawnmowers in the summer in favor of powered walk behind mowers. From
what I have read this is what china did on the 3 gorges dam, partly making
the project a jobs project by doing things in a human intensive way. (of
course you could go back to the hand push non powered reel mower but then
you have to worry about folks and heart attacks. (Or use those in their 20s
for this. Growing up in MI and In this is how we mowed the yard. (in the
1950s and 1960) and for snow shoveling, my dad got a snow blower when I went
off to college.
Now if you really want a low productivity way of cutting grass get one of
the hand grass trimmers and set to work cutting it by that, it would employ
a lot of folks and not have the exertion problem of a push mower (Again I
used these in the 1960s in MI before we had the string trimmers and edgers
etc. (also recall the old hand powered lawn edgers.)
It sounds like the CAP JG proposal is "top down" in that the "palette" of
jobs to be funded is decided by the same agency (or an agency at the same
level of government) as the fund disbursement authority, or is specified in
the law itself.
IIRC, the JG concept proposed in the MMT primer would devolve the
decision of "how to usefully employ willing underutilized workers" to local
level. Funding would still be Federal. There would be some kind of "request
for proposals/peer review" process to decide which locally-wanted projects
would receive JG dollars (presumably in order to be a guarantee, enough
projects would be approved for every locality to employ the available
under-utilized willing workforce. If a locality only proposed one project,
that would be funded)
It that right, Lambert? Is "top down" another way that centrists could
screw up a JG? And might the "local devolution" aspect of the NEP/MMT Primer
concept appeal to folks on the right?
Great write up. I obviously have a long-running disagreement on the
policy prescription of JG, but I do find it interesting talking about how
groups like CAP present it outside the specific confines of MMT (and,
apparently, without even tipping the hat to them ?).
One concrete bit of info I would love to know is how they estimate 4.4
million workers for take-up. First, it's a hilarious instance of false
precision. Second, it's remarkably low. $15/hr is approximately the median
wage. Tens of millions of workers would sign up, both from the ranks of the
crap jobs and from the ranks of those out of the labor force.
"... "For example, when we say that the Chilean state should become a true guarantor of material rights, that is certainly antithetical to the neoliberal capitalist vision which turns rights into a business to be regulated by the market," - ..."
"... Robert Hunziker lives inLos Angeles and can be reached at [email protected] ..."
"For example, when we say that the Chilean state should become a true guarantor of material
rights, that is certainly antithetical to the neoliberal capitalist vision which turns rights
into a business to be regulated by the market," - Camila Vallejo (former Chilean student
protest leader) interview by Zoltán Glück at CUNY Graduate Center, Oct. 15, 2012.
Neoliberalism has been an "occupying force in Latin America" for over three decades while it
has stripped the nation/state(s) of the functionality of a social contract, pushed through wholesale
privatization of public enterprises, and expropriated the people's rights to formal employment,
health, and education, all of which are crowning glories for "free-market determinism."
Throughout Latin America (as well as around the world), neoliberalism's motif consists of assault
on the state, in favor of the market, on politics, in favor of economics, and on political parties,
in favor of corporations. Singularly, neoliberalism brings in its wake a "corporate state."
Henceforth, the corporate state, shaped and formed by neoliberal principles, pushes the social
contract backwards in time to the age of feudalism, a socio-economic pyramid with all of the wealth
and influence at the pinnacle, but, over time, like an anvil balanced on balsa wood.
Albeit, the Left, with renewed vigor, has pushed back against neoliberalism's robbing the poor
to enrich the rich. And, there are clear signals that this pushback has gained traction throughout
Latin America.
The harsh social consequence of neoliberalism's free-market economics propels social movements
in Latin America into the forefront of resistance. These social movements, including the Zapatistas
(Chiapas, Mexico), the Landless Peasant Movement ("MST") in Brazil, the indigenous movements of
Bolivia and Ecuador, and the Piqueteros or Unemployed Workers' Activists in Argentina, and the
students in Chile constitute some of the more prominent groups in opposition to neoliberalism's
tendency for subjugating the people, similar to a plantation economy like the American South,
circa 19th century, whereby "slaves" are reclassified as "workers." It's worked for decades.
In that regard, as much as neoliberalism started (1970s) in Chile at the behest of Milton Friedman,
its comeuppance is now coming to a head, as the legacy of the Latin American Left revitalizes
throughout the continent.
People protesting in the streets understand the principle "to democratize means to de-marketize,
to recuperate for the terrain of people's rights that which neoliberalism has delivered into the
hands of the market," Emir Sader, The Weakest Link? Neoliberalism in Latin America, New Left Review
52, July-August 2008.
"Latin America is seeing its biggest wave of protests in years," Sara Schaefer Munoz, Protest
Wave Poses Test for Latin American Leaders, The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 9, 2013. Tens of thousands
hit the streets in Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, and Chile where, across the board, they demand the
return of some alikeness of a viable social contract.
The Free Market Battles The People
In strong opposition to interference with neoliberalism, as stated in the Wall Street Journal:
"There is always the temptation [for governments] to spend, to improve roads or give credit to
small producers,' said Alejandro Grisanti, an economist with Barclays PLC, 'But if the market
smells even a little fiscal relaxation, it will be a negative."
Thus, the battle lines between neoliberalism and a social contract are embedded within the
dictates of the "free market," which, if it "smells" a little fiscal relaxation, negative consequences
will hit the country via Wall Street and the City, the worldwide "epicenters for free-market discipline,"
chastising the perpetrators.
Thus and so, the battle lines are clear, Markets on one side, people on the other. The markets
control the press, the banks, the military, the educational establishment, the media, the communications,
and the police. The People control protests. The war continues in the streets.
As it happens, the Western press does not follow it in any detail, but hidden wars have been
ongoing throughout Latin America for years.
Chiapas, Mexico, "The Zapatistas form the most important resistance movement of the last two
decades," Chris Hedges, We All Must Become Zapatistas, Truthdig, June 1, 2014: "They understood
that corporate capitalism had launched a war against us. They showed us how to fight back. The
Zapatistas began by using violence, but they soon abandoned it for the slow, laborious work of
building 32 autonomous, self-governing municipalities."
In Bolivia, the Cochabamba Water War of 2000 erupted in protest of privatization of the city's
municipal water supply accompanied by blatant increases in water bills. Coordinadora in Defense
of Water and Life, a community coalition of citizens of Cochabamba, activated tens of thousands
protesting in the streets. This massive public pressure caused the city to reverse the water privatization.
Brazil's landless peasant movement ("MST"), 2,000,000 strong, commenced three decades ago,
campaigning across the country to change a semi-feudal situation in which, they claim, less than
3% of the population owns two-thirds of the land and more than half the farmland lies idle, while
millions of rural workers lack employment. Government forces have killed fifteen hundred (1,500)
land reform activists. This hidden war continues to this day, as their struggle is carried out
in the remote hinterlands.
Institutionally, the past decade has resulted in a pronounced shift away from pro-market forces,
as repudiation of pro-market policies i.e., the Washington Consensus, is the raison d'etre of
opposition candidates. By 2010, " roughly 330 million people – or two thirds of Latin America's
total population - living in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela
were governed by the left at the national level," Gustavo A. Flores-Macias, After Neoliberalism?
The Left and Economic Reforms in Latin America, Oxford University Press, 2012.
"It's not hard to understand why: Economics. Few want to go back to the disastrous neoliberalism
of the 1980s and 1990s," Greg Grandin, Why the Left Continues to Win in Latin America, The Nation,
October 27, 2014, "The inability of the right to pull together a coalition and articulate a larger
vision shows the depths to which the Cold War in Latin America served as something like a five-decade-long
voter-preference-suppression project. Washington-led and financed anti-communism united the right's
various branches. Without such an organizing principle the right can't electorally compete, at
least for now, with what voters, all things considered, want: economic justice, a dignified life,
peace and social welfare."
The Twilight of Neoliberalism
"There is no alternative [to free market policies]," the late British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher once (1980s) pronounced, but across Latin America, there has been a steady erosion of
support for the free market model.
Wherever Latin American countries have rejected neoliberalism, life is better. "Poverty in
Latin America has been reduced substantially in the last three decades. In the late 1980s, nearly
half of Latin America's population lived in poverty. Today the fraction is about a third. This
marks important progress, and it has continued in some area nations. However, it is worth noting
that between 2002 and 2008, poverty contracted most in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Argentina,
countries which had largely abandoned neoliberalism," Dr. Ronn Pineo, Senior Research Fellow,
The Free Market Experiment in Latin America: Assessing Past Policies and the Search for a Pathway
Forward, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, April 11, 2013.
Overall income inequality data for Latin America is less positive; however, during the 2000s
the Gini coefficient (a measure of economic inequality) improved in seven countries, five of which,
Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Paraguay have moved the furthest away from neoliberalism.
In 1970, the richest one percent in the continent earned 363 times more than the poorest one
percent. Thirty years later, on the heels of the neoliberal experiment, it's 417 times.
Mainstream economic publications, like The Economist, claim the continent is well on its way
to building middle class societies. Au contraire, the evidence suggest otherwise, as 8 out of
10 new jobs in Latin America are in the "informal sector" where more than half of all Latin American
workers slug it out as itinerant retail sales clerks, day laborers and other loosely organized
day jobs, slugging it out without regulations or benefits, slugging it out by scratching out a
measly day-by-day existence. Proof positive of neoliberalistic policies enfeebling Latin American
life.
Furthermore, because the bar is set so low for middle class status in Latin America, it's in
the sewer.
For example, in Chile, which is the darling of neoliberalists: "Mid-level income is very low
in Chile. As a result the distance between the lower classes and the middle class is very small.
Their precarious economic position makes them susceptible to social decline due to unemployment,
illness, or poverty in old age," Chile's Middle Class Survives on Shaky Ground, Deutsche Welle,
2014. The middle class is defined as those who make more than $500 per month, which equates to
$3.12 per hour.
Throughout Latin America, neoliberalism does not work for society because, by siphoning away
funds for the betterment of society to enrichment of the elite, two-thirds of Latin American municipalities
do not have the funds to treat their sewage but do dump in rivers, and three-fourths do not check
public drinking water, so, little wonder tourists get diarrhea on regular occasion.
Here's what Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang says about neoliberal policies in Latin America:
"Over the last three decades, economists provided theoretical justifications for financial deregulation
and the unrestrained pursuit of short-term profits Economics has been worse than irrelevant.
Economics, as it has been practiced in the last three decades, has been positively harmful," Ibid.
Neoliberalism in Latin America has been a bust, a dud, a fiasco, except for the wealthy for
whom it turned into the bonanza of a lifetime. The people know it, and they're slowly, methodically,
assuredly turning left.
What of the rest of the world?
Robert Hunziker lives inLos Angeles and can be reached at
[email protected]
Prostitution is the quintessential expression of global capitalism. Our corporate masters are
pimps. We are all being debased and degraded, rendered impoverished and powerless, to service the
cruel and lascivious demands of the corporate elite. And when they tire of us, or when we are no
longer of use, we are discarded as human refuse. If we accept prostitution as legal, as Germany has
done, as permissible in a civil society, we will take one more collective step toward the global
plantation being built by the powerful. The fight against prostitution is the fight against a dehumanizing
neoliberalism that begins, but will not end, with the subjugation of impoverished girls and women.
Poverty is not an aphrodisiac. Those who sell their bodies for sex do so out of desperation. They
often end up physically injured, with a variety of diseases and medical conditions, and suffering
from severe emotional trauma. The left is made morally bankrupt by its failure to grasp that legal
prostitution is another face of neoliberalism. Selling your body for sex is not a choice. It is not
about freedom. It is an act of economic slavery.
On a rainy night recently I walked past the desperate street prostitutes in the 15 square blocks
that make up the Downtown Eastside ghetto in Vancouver-most of them impoverished aboriginal women.
I saw on the desolate street corners where women wait for customers the cruelty and despair that
will characterize most of our lives if the architects of neoliberalism remain in power. Downtown
Eastside has the highest HIV infection rate in North America. It is filled with addicts, the broken,
the homeless, the old and the mentally ill, all callously tossed onto the street.
This idea of two segregated societies within one nation is pretty convincing.
Notable quotes:
"... A book released last March by MIT economist Peter Temin argues that the U.S. is increasingly becoming what economists call a dual economy; that is, where there are two economies in effect, and one of the populations lives in an economy that is prosperous and secure, and the other part of the population lives in an economy that resembles those of some third world countries. ..."
"... The middle class is shrinking in the United States and this is an effect of both the advance of technology and American policies ..."
"... In the United States, our policies have divided us into two groups. Above the median income - above the middle class - is what I call the FTE sector, Finance, Technology and Electronics sector - of people who are doing well, and whose incomes are rising as our national product is growing. The middle class and below are losing shares of income, and their incomes are shrinking as the Pew studies, both of them, show. ..."
"... The model shows that the FTE sector makes policy for itself, and really does not consider how well the low wage sector is doing. In fact, it wants to keep wages and earnings low in the low wage sector, to provide cheap labour for the industrial employment. ..."
"... As already described , the middle-class, which has not collapsed yet in France, still has the characteristics that fit to the neoliberal regime. However, it is obvious that this tank of voters has shrunk significantly, and the establishment is struggling to keep them inside the desirable 'status quo' with tricks like the supposedly 'fresh', apolitical image of Emmanuel Macron, the threat of Le Pen's 'evil' figure that comes from the Far-Right, or, the illusion that they have the right to participate equally to almost every economic activity. ..."
"... The media promotes examples of young businessmen who have succeed to survive economically through start-up companies, yet, they avoid to tell that it is totally unrealistic to expect from most of the Greek youth to become innovative entrepreneurs. So, this illusion is promoted by the media because technology is automating production and factories need less and less workers, even in the public sector, which, moreover, is violently forced towards privatization. ..."
"... In the middle of the pyramid, a restructured class will serve and secure the domination of the top. Corporate executives, big journalists, scientific elites, suppression forces. It is characteristic that academic research is directed on the basis of the profits of big corporations. Funding is directed increasingly to practical applications in areas that can bring huge profits, like for example, the higher automation of production and therefore, the profit increase through the restriction of jobs. ..."
The Pew Research Center, released a new study on the size of the middle class in the U.S.
and in ten European countries. The study found that the middle class shrank significantly in the
U.S. in the last two decades from 1991 to 2010. While it also shrank in several other Western European
countries, it shrank far more in the U.S. than anywhere else. Meanwhile, another study also released
last week, and published in the journal Science, shows that class mobility in the U.S. declined dramatically
in the 1980s, relative to the generation before that.
A book released last March by MIT economist Peter Temin argues that the U.S. is increasingly
becoming what economists call a dual economy; that is, where there are two economies in effect, and
one of the populations lives in an economy that is prosperous and secure, and the other part of the
population lives in an economy that resembles those of some third world countries.
MIT Economist Peter Temin spoke to Gregory Wilpert and the
The Real News network.
As Temin states, among other things:
The middle class is shrinking in the United States and this is an effect of both the advance
of technology and American policies . That is shown dramatically in the new study, because the
United States is compared with many European countries. In some of them, the middle class is expanding
in the last two decades, and in others it's decreasing. And while technology crosses national borders,
national policies affect things within the country.
In the United States, our policies have divided us into two groups. Above the median income
- above the middle class - is what I call the FTE sector, Finance, Technology and Electronics sector
- of people who are doing well, and whose incomes are rising as our national product is growing.
The middle class and below are losing shares of income, and their incomes are shrinking as the Pew
studies, both of them, show.
The model shows that the FTE sector makes policy for itself, and really does not consider
how well the low wage sector is doing. In fact, it wants to keep wages and earnings low in the low
wage sector, to provide cheap labour for the industrial employment.
This model is similar to that pursued in eurozone through the Greek experiment. Yet, the establishment's
decision centers still need the consent of the citizens to proceed. They got it in France with the
election of their man to do the job, Emmanuel Macron.
As already
described , the middle-class, which has not collapsed yet in France, still has
the characteristics that fit to the neoliberal regime. However, it is obvious that this tank of voters
has shrunk significantly, and the establishment is struggling to keep them inside the desirable 'status
quo' with tricks like the supposedly 'fresh', apolitical image of Emmanuel Macron, the threat of
Le Pen's 'evil' figure that comes from the Far-Right, or, the illusion that they have the right to
participate equally to almost every economic activity.
For example, even in Greece, where the middle class suffered an unprecedented reduction because
of Troika's (ECB, IMF, European Commission) policies, the last seven years, the propaganda of the
establishment attempts to make young people believe that they can equally participate in innovative
economic projects. The media promotes examples of young businessmen who have succeed to survive
economically through start-up companies, yet, they avoid to tell that it is totally unrealistic to
expect from most of the Greek youth to become innovative entrepreneurs. So, this illusion is promoted
by the media because technology is automating production and factories need less and less workers,
even in the public sector, which, moreover, is violently forced towards privatization.
As mentioned in
previous article , the target of the middle class extinction in the West is to
restrict the level of wages in developing economies and prevent current model to be expanded in those
countries. The global economic elite is aiming now to create a more simple model which will be consisted
basically of three main levels.
The 1% holding the biggest part of the global wealth, will lie, as always, at the top of the pyramid.
In the current phase, frequent and successive economic crises, not only assist on the destruction
of social state and uncontrolled massive privatizations, but also, on the elimination of the big
competitors.
In the middle of the pyramid, a restructured class will serve and secure the domination of
the top. Corporate executives, big journalists, scientific elites, suppression forces. It is characteristic
that academic research is directed on the basis of the profits of big corporations. Funding is directed
increasingly to practical applications in areas that can bring huge profits, like for example, the
higher automation of production and therefore, the profit increase through the restriction of jobs.
The base of the pyramid will be consisted by the majority of workers in global level, with restricted
wages, zero labor rights, and nearly zero opportunities for activities other than consumption.
This type of dual economy with the rapid extinction of middle class may bring dangerous instability
because of the vast vacuum created between the elites and the masses. That's why the experiment is
implemented in Greece, so that the new conditions to be tested. The last seven years, almost every
practice was tested: psychological warfare, uninterrupted propaganda, financial coups, permanent
threat for a sudden death of the economy, suppression measures, in order to keep the masses subservient,
accepting the new conditions.
The establishment exploits the fact that the younger generations have no collective memories of
big struggles. Their rights were taken for granted and now they accept that these must be taken away
for the sake of the investors who will come to create jobs. These generations were built and raised
according to the standards of the neoliberal regime 'Matrix'.
Yet, it is still not certain that people will accept this Dystopia so easily. The first signs
can be seen already as recently,
French workers seized factory and threatened to blow it up in protest over possible closure
. Macron may discover soon that it will be very difficult to find the right balance in
order to finish the job for the elites. And then, neither Brussels nor Berlin will be able to prevent
the oncoming chaos in Europe and the West.
"... It doesn't matter what the people vote for. Either you do what we say or we will smash your banking system." Tsipras's job is to say, "Yes I will do whatever you want. I want to stay in power rather than falling in election." ..."
"... Somebody's going to suffer. Should it the wealthy billionaires and the bankers, or should it be the Greek workers? Well, the Greek workers are not the IMF's constituency. It says: "We feel your pain, but we'd rather you suffer than our constituency." ..."
"... The basic principle at work is that finance is the new form of warfare. You can now destroy a country's economy not merely by invading it. You don't even have to bomb it, as you've done in the Near East. All you have to do is withdraw all credit to the banking system, isolate it economically from making payments to foreign countries so that you essentially put sanctions on it. You'll treat Greece like they've treated Iran or other countries. ..."
"... The class war is back in business – the class war of finance against labor, imposing austerity and shrinking living standards, lowering wages and cutting back social spending. It's demonstrating who's the winner in this economic warfare that's taking place. ..."
"... Then why is the Greek population still supportive of Syriza in spite of all of this? I mean, literally not only have they, as a population, been cut to no social safety net, no social security, yet the Syriza government keeps getting supported, elected in referendums, and they seem to be able to maintain power in spite of these austerity measures. Why is that happening? ..."
"... You also need a contingency plan for when the European Union wrecks the Greek banks, which basically have been the tool of the oligarchy in Greece. The government is going to have to take over these banks and socialize them, and use them for public purposes. Unfortunately, Tsipras never gave Varoufakis and his staff the go ahead. In effect, he ended up double crossing them after the referendum two years ago that said not to surrender. That lead to Varoufakis resigning from the government. ..."
"... Tsipras decided that he wanted to be reelected, and turned out to be just a politician, realizing that in order to he had to represent the invader and act as a client politician. His clientele is now the European Union, the IMF and the bondholders, not the Greeks. What that means is that if there is an election in Greece, people are not going to vote for him again. He knows that. He is trying to prevent an election. But later this month the Greek parliament is going to have to vote on whether or not to shrink the economy further and cut pensions even more. ..."
"... The Greek government has not said that no country should be obliged to disregard its democratic voting, dismantle its public sector and give up its sovereignty to bondholders. No country should be obliged to pay foreign creditors if the price of that is shrinking and self destruction of that economy. ..."
"... They haven't translated this political program of not paying into what this means in practice to cede sovereignty to the Brussels bureaucracy, meaning the European Central Bank on behalf of its bondholders. ..."
Sharmini Peries: The European Commission announced on May 2, that an agreement on Greek pension
and income tax reforms would pave the way for further discussions on debt release for Greece. The
European Commission described this as good news for Greece. The Greek government described the situation
in similar terms. However, little attention has been given as to how the wider Greek population are
experiencing the consequences of the policies of the Troika. On May Day thousands of Greeks marked
International Workers Day with anti-austerity protests. One of the protester's a 32-year-old lawyer
perhaps summed the mood, the best when he said
"The current Greek government, like all the ones before it, have implemented measures that has
only one goal, the crushing of the workers, the working class and everyone who works themselves
to the bone. We are fighting for the survival of the poorest who need help the most."
To discuss the most recent negotiations underway between Greece and the TROIKA, which is a European
Central Bank, the EU and the IMF, here's Michael Hudson. Michael is a distinguished research professor
of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is the author of many books including,
"Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage the Global Economy" and most recently
"J is for Junk Economics: A Survivor's Guide to Economic Vocabulary in the Age of Deception" .Michael,
let's start with what's being negotiated at the moment.
Michael Hudson: I wouldn't call it a negotiation. Greece is simply being dictated to. There
is no negotiation at all. It's been told that its economy has shrunk so far by 20%, but has to shrink
another 5% making it even worse than the depression. Its wages have fallen and must be cut by another
10%. Its pensions have to be cut back. Probably 5 to 10% of its population of working age will have
to immigrate.
The intention is to cut the domestic tax revenues (not raise them), because labor won't be paying
taxes and businesses are going out of business. So we have to assume that the deliberate intention
is to lower the government's revenues by so much that Greece will have to sell off even more of its
public domain to foreign creditors. Basically it's a smash and grab exercise, and the role of Tsipras
is not to represent the Greeks because the Troika have said, "The election doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what the people vote for. Either you do what we say or we will smash your
banking system." Tsipras's job is to say, "Yes I will do whatever you want. I want to stay in power
rather than falling in election."
Sharmini Peries: Right. Michael you dedicated almost three chapters in your book "Killing
the Host" to how the IMF economists actually knew that Greece will not be able to pay back its foreign
debt, but yet it went ahead and made these huge loans to Greece. It's starting to sound like the
mortgage fraud scandal where banks were lending people money to buy houses when they knew they couldn't
pay it back. Is it similar?
Michael Hudson: The basic principle is indeed the same. If a creditor makes a loan to a country
or a home buyer knowing that there's no way in which the person can pay, who should bear the responsibility
for this? Should the bad lender or irresponsible bondholder have to pay, or should the Greek people
have to pay?
IMF economists said that Greece can't pay, and under the IMF rules it is not allowed to make loans
to countries that have no chance of repaying in the foreseeable future. The then-head of the IMF,
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, introduced a new rule – the "systemic problem" rule. It said that if Greece
doesn't repay, this will cause problems for the economic system – defined as the international bankers,
bondholder's and European Union budget – then the IMF can make the loan.
This poses a question on international law. If the problem is systemic, not Greek, and if it's
the system that's being rescued, why should Greek workers have to dismantle their economy? Why should
Greece, a sovereign nation, have to dismantle its economy in order to rescue a banking system that
is guaranteed to continue to cause more and more austerity, guaranteed to turn the Eurozone into
a dead zone? Why should Greece be blamed for the bad malstructured European rules? That's the moral
principle that's at stake in all this.
Sharmini Peries: Michael, The New York Times has recently published an article titled,
"IMF torn over whether to bail out Greece again." It essentially describes the IMF as being sympathetic
towards Greece in spite of the fact, as you say, they knew that Greece could not pay back this money
when it first lent it the money with the Troika. Right now, the IMF sounds rational and thoughtful
about the Greek people. Is this the case?
Michael Hudson: Well, Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister under Syriza, said that every
time he talked to the IMF's Christine Lagarde and others two years ago, they were sympathetic. They
said, "I am terribly sorry we have to destroy your economy. I feel your pain, but we are indeed going
to destroy your economy. There is nothing we can do about it. We are only following orders." The
orders were coming from Wall Street, from the Eurozone and from investors who bought or guaranteed
Greek bonds.
Being sympathetic, feeling their pain doesn't really mean anything if the IMF says, "Oh, we know
it is a disaster. We are going to screw you anyway, because that's our job. We are the IMF, after
all. Our job is to impose austerity. Our job is to shrink economies, not help them grow. Our constituency
is the bondholders and banks."
Somebody's going to suffer. Should it the wealthy billionaires and the bankers, or should it be
the Greek workers? Well, the Greek workers are not the IMF's constituency. It says: "We feel your
pain, but we'd rather you suffer than our constituency."
So what you read is simply the usual New York Times hypocrisy, pretending that the IMF
really is feeling bad about what it's doing. If its economists felt bad, they would have done what
the IMF European staff did a few years ago after the first loan: They resigned in protest. They would
write about it and go public and say, "This system is corrupt. The IMF is working for the bankers
against the interest of its member countries." If they don't do that, they are not really sympathetic
at all. They are just hypocritical.
Sharmini Peries: Right. I know that the European Commission is holding up Greece as an
example in order to discourage other member nations in the periphery of Europe so that they won't
default on their loans. Explain to me why Greece is being held up as an example.
Michael Hudson: It's being made an example for the same reason the United States went into
Libya and bombed Syria: It's to show that we can destroy you if you don't do what we say. If Spain
or Italy or Portugal seeks not to pay its debts, it will meet the same fate. Its banking system will
be destroyed, and its currency system will be destroyed.
The basic principle at work is that finance is the new form of warfare. You can now destroy a
country's economy not merely by invading it. You don't even have to bomb it, as you've done in the
Near East. All you have to do is withdraw all credit to the banking system, isolate it economically
from making payments to foreign countries so that you essentially put sanctions on it. You'll treat
Greece like they've treated Iran or other countries.
"We have life and death power over you." The demonstration effect is not only to stop Greece,
but to stop countries from doing what Marine Le Pen is trying to do in France: withdraw from the
Eurozone.
The class war is back in business – the class war of finance against labor, imposing austerity
and shrinking living standards, lowering wages and cutting back social spending. It's demonstrating
who's the winner in this economic warfare that's taking place.
Sharmini Peries:Then why is the Greek population still supportive of Syriza in spite of
all of this? I mean, literally not only have they, as a population, been cut to no social safety
net, no social security, yet the Syriza government keeps getting supported, elected in referendums,
and they seem to be able to maintain power in spite of these austerity measures. Why is that happening?
Michael Hudson: Well, that's the great tragedy. They initially supported Syriza because
it promised not to surrender in this economic war. They said they would fight back. The plan was
not pay the debts even if this led Europe to force Greece out of the European Union.
In order to do this, however, what Yanis Varoufakis and his advisors such as James Galbraith wanted
to do was say, "If we are going not to pay the debt, we are going to be expelled from the Euro Zone.
We have to have our own currency. We have to have our own banking system." But it takes almost a
year to put in place your own physical currency, your own means of reprogramming the ATM machines
so that people can use it, and reprogramming the banking system.
You also need a contingency plan for when the European Union wrecks the Greek banks, which basically
have been the tool of the oligarchy in Greece. The government is going to have to take over these
banks and socialize them, and use them for public purposes. Unfortunately, Tsipras never gave Varoufakis
and his staff the go ahead. In effect, he ended up double crossing them after the referendum two
years ago that said not to surrender. That lead to Varoufakis resigning from the government.
Tsipras decided that he wanted to be reelected, and turned out to be just a politician, realizing
that in order to he had to represent the invader and act as a client politician. His clientele is
now the European Union, the IMF and the bondholders, not the Greeks. What that means is that if there
is an election in Greece, people are not going to vote for him again. He knows that. He is trying
to prevent an election. But later this month the Greek parliament is going to have to vote on whether
or not to shrink the economy further and cut pensions even more.
If there are defections from Tsipras's Syriza party, there will be an election and he will be
voted out of office. I won't say out of power, because he has no power except to surrender to the
Troika. But he'd be out of office. There will probably have to be a new party created if there's
going to be hope of withstanding the threats that the European Union is making to destroy Greece's
economy if it doesn't succumb to the austerity program and step up its privatization and sell off
even more assets to the bondholders.
Sharmini Peries: Finally, Michael, why did the Greek government remove the option of Grexit
from the table in order to move forward?
Michael Hudson: In order to accept the Eurozone. You're using its currency, but Greece
needs to have its own currency. The reason it agreed to stay in was that it had made no preparation
for withdrawing. Imagine if you are a state in the United States and you want to withdraw: you have
to have your own currency. You have to have your own banking system. You have to have your own constitution.
There was no attempt to put real thought behind what their political program was.
They were not prepared and still have not taken steps to prepare for what they are doing. They
haven't made any attempt to justify non-payment of the debt under International Law: the law of odious
debt, or give a reason why they are not paying.
The Greek government has not said that no country should be obliged to disregard its democratic
voting, dismantle its public sector and give up its sovereignty to bondholders. No country should
be obliged to pay foreign creditors if the price of that is shrinking and self destruction of that
economy.
They haven't translated this political program of not paying into what this means in practice
to cede sovereignty to the Brussels bureaucracy, meaning the European Central Bank on behalf of its
bondholders.
Note: Wikipedia defines Odious Debt: "In international law, odious debt, also known as illegitimate
debt, is a legal doctrine that holds that the national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that
do not serve the best interests of the nation, should not be enforceable."
"... By Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics and Chairperson at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. This is Part 3 of a four-part article, published in the March/April 2017 special "Costs of Empire" issue of Dollars & Sense magazine. Parts 1, 2 and 3 are available here. here , and here , respectively. Cross posted from Triple Crisis ..."
America is getting richer every year. The American worker is not.
Far from it: On average, workers born in 1942 earned as much or more over their careers than
workers born in any year since, according to new research - and workers on the job today shouldn't
expect to catch up with their predecessors in their remaining years of employment .
While economists have been concerned about recent data on earnings, the new paper suggests
that ordinary Americans have been dealing with serious economic problems for much longer than
may be widely recognized.
The new paper includes some "astonishing numbers," said Gary Burtless, an economist at the
nonpartisan Brookings Institution who was not involved in the research. "The stagnation of living
standards began so much earlier than people think," he said
For instance, the typical 27-year-old man's annual earnings in 2013 were 31 percent less than
those of a typical 27-year-old man in 1969. The data suggest that today's young men are unlikely
to make up for that decline by earning more in the future.
By Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics and Chairperson at the Centre for Economic Studies
and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. This is Part 3 of a four-part article, published
in the March/April
2017 special "Costs of Empire" issue of Dollars & Sense magazine. Parts 1, 2 and 3 are available
here.
here , and
here , respectively. Cross posted from
Triple Crisis
A recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute, "Poorer than Their Parents? Flat or falling
incomes in advanced economies" (July 2016) shows how the past decade has brought significantly worse
economic outcomes for many people in the developed world.
Falling Incomes
In 25 advanced economies, 65-70% of households (540-580 million people) "were in segments of the
income distribution whose real incomes were flat or had fallen" between 2005 and 2014. By contrast,
between 1993 and 2005, "less than 2 percent, or fewer than ten million people, experienced this phenomenon."
In Italy, a whopping 97% of the population had stagnant or declining market incomes between 2005
and 2014. The equivalent figures were 81% for the United States and 70% for the United Kingdom.
The worst affected were "young people with low educational attainment and women, single mothers
in particular." Today's younger generation in the advanced countries is "literally at risk of ending
up poorer than their parents," and in any case already faces much more insecure working conditions.
Shifting Income Shares
The McKinsey report noted that "from 1970 to 2014, with the exception of a spike during the 1973–74
oil crisis, the average wage share fell by 5 percentage points in the six countries studied in depth"
(United States, United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden); in the "most extreme
case, the United Kingdom, by 13 percentage points."
These declines occurred "despite rising productivity, suggesting a disconnect between productivity
and incomes." Productivity gains were either grabbed by employers or passed on in the form of lower
prices to maintain competitiveness.
Declining wage shares are widely seen as results of globalization and technological changes, but
state policies and institutional relations in the labor market matter. According to the McKinsey
report. "Swedish labor policies such as contracts that protect both wage rates and hours worked"
resulted in ordinary workers receiving a larger share of income.
Countries that have encouraged the growth of part-time and temporary contracts experienced bigger
declines in wage shares. According to European Union data, more than 40% of EU workers between 15
and 25 years have insecure and low-paying contracts. The proportion is more than half for the 18
countries in the Eurozone, 58% in France, and 65% in Spain.
The other side of the coin is the rising profit shares in many of these rich countries. In the
United States, for example, "after-tax profits of U.S. firms measured as a share of the national
income even exceeded the 10.1 percent level last reached in 1929."
Policy Matters
Government tax and transfer policies can change the final disposable income of households. Across
the 25 countries studied in the McKinsey report, only 20-25% of the population experienced flat or
falling disposable incomes. In the United States, government taxes and transfers turned a "decline
in market incomes for 81 percent of all income segments into an increase in disposable income for
nearly all households."
Government policies to intervene in labor markets also make a difference. In Sweden, the government
"intervened to preserve jobs, market incomes fell or were flat for only 20 percent, while disposable
income advanced for almost everyone."
In most of the countries examined in the study, government policies were not sufficient to prevent
stagnant or declining incomes for a significant proportion of the population.
Effects on Attitudes
The deteriorating material reality is reflected in popular perceptions. A 2015 survey of British,
French, and U.S. citizens confirmed this, as approximately 40% "felt that their economic positions
had deteriorated."
The people who felt worse-off, and those who did not expect the situation to improve for the next
generation, "expressed negative opinions about trade and immigration."
More than half of this group agreed with the statement, "The influx of foreign goods and services
is leading to domestic job losses." They were twice as likely as other respondents to agree with
the statement, "Legal immigrants are ruining the culture and cohesiveness in our society."
The survey also found that "those who were not advancing and not hopeful about the future" were,
in France, more likely to support political parties such as the far-right Front National and, in
Britain, to support Brexit.
Effects on Politics
Decades of neoliberal economic policies have hollowed out communities in depressed areas and eliminated
any attractive employment opportunities for youth. Ironically, in the United States this favored
the political rise of Donald Trump, who is himself emblematic of the plutocracy.
Similar tendencies are also clearly evident in Europe. Rising anti-EU sentiment has been wrongly
attributed only to policies allowing in more migrants. The hostile response to immigration is part
of a broader dissatisfaction related to the design and operation of the EU. For years now, it has
been clear that the EU has failed as an economic project. This stems from the very design of the
economic integration-flawed, for example, in the enforcement of monetary integration without banking
union or a fiscal federation that would have helped deal with imbalances between EU countries-as
well as from the particular neoliberal economic policies that it has forced its members to pursue.
This has been especially evident in the adoption of austerity policies across the member countries,
remarkably even among those that do not have large current-account or fiscal deficits. As a result,
growth in the EU has been sclerotic at best since 2004, and even the so-called "recovery" after 2012
has been barely noticeable. Even this lacklustre performance has been highly differentiated, with
Germany emerging as the clear winner from the formation of the Eurozone. Even large economies like
France, Italy, and Spain experienced deteriorating per capita incomes relative to Germany from 2009
onwards. This, combined with fears of German domination, probably added to the resentment of the
EU that is now being expressed in both right-wing and left-wing movements across Europe.
The union's misguided emphasis on neoliberal policies and fiscal austerity packages has also contributed
to the persistence of high rates of unemployment, which are higher than they were more than a decade
ago. The "new normal" therefore shows little improvement from the period just after the Great Recession-the
capitalist world economy may no longer be teetering on the edge of a cliff, but that is because it
has instead sunk into a mire.
It is sad but not entirely surprising that the globalization of the workforce has not created
a greater sense of international solidarity, but rather undermined it. Quite obviously, progressive
solutions cannot be found within the existing dominant economic paradigm. But reversions to past
ideals of socialism may not be all that effective either. Rather, this new situation requires new
and more relevant economic models of socialism to be developed, if they are to capture the popular
imagination.
Such models must transcend the traditional socialist paradigm's emphasis on centralized government
control over an undifferentiated mass of workers. They must incorporate more explicit emphasis on
the rights and concerns of women, ethnic minorities, tribal communities, and other marginalised groups,
as well as recognition of ecological constraints and the social necessity to respect nature. The
fundamental premises of the socialist project, however, remain as valid as ever: The unequal, exploitative
and oppressive nature of capitalism; the capacity of human beings to change society and thereby alter
their own futures; and the necessity of collective organisation to do so.
NOTE: Parts of this article appeared in "The Creation of the New Imperialism: The Institutional
Architecture," Monthly Review , July 2015.
While incomes in the developed world are flat, the outcomes globalization has imposed
on labour in the developing world are even more dire. Lets face it, the global south is
effectively a labour reserve pool that is used by trans-national corporations as a de facto
income growth suppresant in the global north. This dynamic is particurlarly pernicious for
global south workers because they enter labour markets at or near subsistence level wages,
with upward income mobility nearly impossible as ill informed developing country governments,
in their naive quest to create investor friendly environments, bargain away any protections
that could ensure said upward income mobility. Furthermore, these trans-national corporations
are running a globalized exploitation racket where developing nations are pitted against
one another in a race to see who can enslave their labour force more fervently in service
of global capital. This of course has the effect of, at best, depressing incomes in developed
economies, and at worst, completely eliminating large swathes of jobs in many developed
economy sectors
I'd offer that the corporate entities that pretty much rule us are more completely described
as post- and supra-national than simply transnational. Creatures birthed like Aliens that
ate their way out of the mothers that spawned them. Given life by legalisms born out of
nation-states and other grafters of "franchise" and "legitimacy," now ingesting and digesting
their parents and lesser siblings.
Also, that there's just too many people living off a declining carrying capacity of the
planet. And what is with the notion that we all have some kind or reasonable expectation
to be "richer" than our parents? Is that not part of the algo-rhythms that are killing us
mopes, wracked with dreams of sugarplum carboconsumption and hyped with fevered visions
of "innovation" and "progress" based on "disruption" and monetization? And thus willing
(on the part of those who are aware of the vague shape of the Bezzle and hope to gain from
it, against the well-being of our fellows) or are so oppressed and oblivious and Bernays-ized
not to see it at all.
Immunity, impunity, invulnerability, the hallmarks of the looters. "Upward income mobility"
except for the very few that by birth or other lucky happenstance can manipulate their way
into the self-feeding gyre of wealth accumulation and attendant power, is an awful example
of unobtainium dangled at the end of the carrot-stick
The article points to the elephant in the room when it closes with "as well as recognition
of ecological constraints and the social necessity to respect nature."
One can suggest that TPTB may recognize that climate change/ecological damage is quite
real and continuing apace.
They know they have a "denominator/divisor" problem with respect to a growing world wide
population and resource allocation.
TPTB are hoovering up all they can for their future use.
Austerity policies and encouragement of subsistence level wages delay the ecological
day of reckoning as WW consumption is lower as a consequence.
as Wolfgang Schäuble and many others have said, We can't all trade our way out of this
mess. If we carry that insight one step further it becomes, We can't all manufacture our
way out of this mess. The problem with trying to invent an inclusive economy is that we
don't know how to do so without industry and industry will soon end life on this planet.
If the oceans collapse, it's over. So instead of using a mild form of identity politics
and a new social contract for sharing the gains of capitalism/socialism we will have to
confine ourselves to making and using/recycling what we need and nothing more. No surplus.
No trade. No finance based on debt servicing. And in an overpopulated world that means no
labor policies as we once knew them. For lack of imagination we are looking at a New Communism.
What else?
From Yves: "On average, workers born in 1942 earned as much or more over their careers
than workers born in any year since, according to new research"
1942 makes Schumpeter come to mind. His book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy is the
most celebrated Marxism's bashing to date. Schumpeter's reading of Marx or Marxism does
not qualify as unfair; his was a non-reading activity. Here is an excerpt from Schumpeter,
the visionary (my emphasis added)
"For the RELATIVE SHARE OF WAGES AND SALARIES IN TOTAL INCOME varies but little from year
to year and is remarkably constant over time-it certainly does not reveal any tendency to
fall"
"creative destruction" has seemed mostly about breaking then remaking a social order
that serves the "masters of mankind" not to mention, spinning the fodder that rationalizes
an endless war racket, by their sycophantic apologists
"David" makes David Harvey come to mind "Neo-liberalism and the restoration of class
power"
The new paper includes some "astonishing numbers," said Gary Burtless, an economist
at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution who was not involved in the research. "The stagnation
of living standards began so much earlier than people think,"
Who are these "people" to whom he refers? Some of us have known that since waaaaay before
these numbers came out.
I wonder whether living standards have suffered much more than is typically documented.
The stuff that we're forced to buy - housing, medical care, education - are all way up and,
I suspect, make up a much larger share of the inflation-measuring typical basket of household
goods.
And other items take a big and probably under-measured chunk of income as well. I've
lost track of how many cellphones I've had to buy over the past 10 years, even though I
hate them and try to keep my consumption of these toxic little marvels to a minimum (unfortunately,
I'm required to have a smartphone for work).
On the flip side, from an owners perspective, I was able to hire 36 people in 1983 on
a given business gross income and today I struggle to employ 2 on that same gross.
"Nobody should be roadkill," Buffet said Saturday at the festival-like annual meeting of Berkshire
Hathaway in Omaha, Nebraska.
The billionaire, who supported Barack Obama and backed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, now
sounds almost Trump-ish. His comments on American workers echoed the remarks of President Donald
Trump in his inaugural speech in January, which described a landscape of "American carnage" where
closed factories are "scattered like tombstones."
Toward the end of the question and answer session with Buffett and his longtime sidekick Charlie
Munger, investor Whitney Tilson asked if businesses should consider the fates of millions of Americans
displaced by trade and technology instead of focussing solely on maximizing shareholder value. Buffett
argued that free trade was a benefit to the economy at large but that politicians needed to "take
care of the people who become roadkill."
This wasn't the first time Buffett has used the phrase. Back in February, he more-or-less gave
this material
a test run on CNBC's Squawkbox.
So free trade is wonderful for the world and for the United States, but its benefits are diffused
among 320 million people. You buy your bananas cheaper because we don't try and produce them in the
United States. But the penalties from free trade are terrible to specific industries. And as an investor,
I can own – make a dumb decision on owning a shoe company. But if I own a good insurance company,
I can diversify away the problems. If you're a 55-year-old steelworker, you can't diversify away
your talents. I mean, you had it if steel or textiles or shoes become subject to total, it all moves
offshore. So you want to have free trade, but you also have to take care of the people who, through
no fault of their own, have spent their life learning one profession. And you can talk about retraining
and all that, but it just isn't practical. And just take Berkshire Hathaway. We started with 2,000
employees in New Bedford, Mass, turning out textiles. And that business was doomed. And we had workers
there who really they didn't have alternatives at age 50. Fair number of them just spoke Portuguese.
They didn't have a chance. And a rich country that's prospering because of free trade, and as the
world is prospering, should keep the free trade as much as possible. But they also should take care
of the people that become the roadkill, you know, when an industry moves.
Perhaps this report raises the possibility that this low
pressure low growth economy may actually lead to a new
high in the prime working age cohort, still with little
wage growth.
Boomers are retiring and that increases employment in
prime age (25-54) cohort. So to take only prime age is a
little bit disingenuous. This effect needs to be taken
into consideration.
Those who were born before 1950 were probably the most
numerous. They all will be over 67 at the end of the year.
Workers in the so-called 'gig economy' face heightening conditions of precarity and exploitation.
From delivery couriers to taxi drivers,
this series has shown that conditions of work are increasingly deleterious and show little sign
of improvement.
To combat this, innovative new strategies of organisation and mobilisation have been developed.
New, and more direct, tactics of trade union struggle have been at the heart of
successful disputes led by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain in London and via spontaneous
strikes by Uber drivers and others across
the USA ,
the UK ,
France , and
beyond .
As yet, there has been less traction for these forms of the gig economy in Latin America. This
may be about to change, as according to a
recent Bloomberg report Uber HQ is responding to recent negative press attention by turning to
the region as its new 'Promised Land'.
Three reasons may explain why the gig economy has had little success so far in the region. First,
it relies on a business model that requires particular market conditions, namely a high volume of
relatively high-income consumers living alongside significant surplus labour. Such conditions are
not as widespread in Latin America as in Europe and North America.
sorry to be a debbie downer--Uber-Lyft drivers have been trying to organize (both work slowdowns
and unions) for years with no success outside of Seattle, Austin, NYC. (wouldn't count Denver)
(see the organization forums at uberpeople dot net)
problems: workers' don't have the capital to organize a viable alternative unless there is
a very pro-driver local govt/regulatory system (eg, Austin). Austin is literally one of the few
municipalities who didn't buy Uber-Lyft's Orwellian it-aint-a-cab-it's "rideshare" nonsense.
Yes, while the app can be replicated--Uber's moats are ultracheap/subsidized fares, regulatory
capture, a global network and user inertia as Uber is the go-to app.
More problems: atomized workforce; lots of part-timers who have different incentives v. full-timers;
(sorry if this sounds awful) desperate or innumerate natives or recent immigrants who don't mind
working at/or below minimum wage as it's > $0; drivers are commodities easily replaced, lack of
support/indifference from customers; customers are addicted to low fares and don't want to care
about the externalities (like Americans are with cheap meat); people had a low opinion of the
taxi industry.
Bottom line; many drivers have been thinking these problems for a while it's David v. Goliath
and his lobbyists and his investor cash hoarde.
Cite: I was a driver who completed literally thousands of rides.
Gig workers won't organize into unions – until they do. Something will spark it, it will happen
first in Seattle and the other places where the organizing infrastructure is in place, and then
it will happen lots of other places all at once, well ahead of any drawn out organizing activity.
This is how it happens, how it always happens.
Because we have an existing private sector labor law that says independent contractors are
not employees, the legal part will be awkward and confusing. But when the spark is lit, that won't
really matter. The law will, eventually, accommodate itself to the reality.
The only question is whether this happens sometime in the next two years or in the next twenty
years.
Actually, I gave up reading the article after the first paragraph (skipped right to the always
insightful comments section). Anyone who uses the words 'precarity" (I don't even think that's
real word) and "deleterious" in the first two sentences is someone whose clarity of thinking is
immediately suspect. Inflated academic jargon has become the death rattle of the university intellectual
class. A long time ago Joan Didion hit the nail on the head: "As it happens, I am still committed
to the idea that the ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language."
"... [Neo]liberalism that needs monsters to destroy can never politically engage with its enemies. It can never understand those enemies as political actors, making calculations, taking advantage of opportunities, and responding to constraints. It can never see in those enemies anything other than a black hole of motivation, a cesspool where reason goes to die. ..."
"... Hence the refusal of empathy for Trump's supporters. Insofar as it marks a demand that we not abandon antiracist principle and practice for the sake of winning over a mythicized white working class, the refusal is unimpeachable. ..."
"... Such a [neo]liberalism becomes dependent on the very thing it opposes, with a tepid mix of neoliberal markets and multicultural morals getting much-needed spice from a terrifying right. Hillary Clinton ran hard on the threat of Trump, as if his presence were enough to authorize her presidency. ..."
"... Clinton waged this campaign on the belief that her neoliberalism of fear could defeat the ethnonationalism of the right. ..."
"... In the novel, what begins as a struggle against inherited privilege results in the consolidation of a new ruling class that derives its legitimacy from superior merit. This class becomes, within a few generations, a hereditary aristocracy in its own right. Sequestered within elite institutions, people of high intelligence marry among themselves, passing along their high social position and superior genes to their progeny. Terminal inequality is the result. The gradual shift from inheritance to merit, Young writes, made "nonsense of all their loose talk of the equality of man": ..."
"... Losing every young person of promise to the meritocracy had deprived the working class of its prospective leaders, rendering it unable to coordinate a movement to manifest its political will. ..."
"... A policy of benign neglect of immigration laws invites into our country a casualized workforce without any leverage, one that competes with the native-born and destroys whatever leverage the latter have to negotiate better terms for themselves. The policy is a subsidy to American agribusiness, meatpacking plants, restaurants, bars, and construction companies, and to American families who would not otherwise be able to afford the outsourcing of childcare and domestic labor that the postfeminist, dual-income family requires. At the same time, a policy of free trade pits native-born workers against foreign ones content to earn pennies on the dollar of their American counterparts. ..."
"... Four decades of neoliberal globalization have cleaved our country into two hostile classes, and the line cuts across the race divide. On one side, college students credential themselves for meritocratic success. On the other, the white working class increasingly comes to resemble the black underclass in indices of social disorganization. On one side of the divide, much energy is expended on the eradication of subtler inequalities; on the other side, an equality of immiseration increasingly obtains. ..."
[Neo]liberalism that needs monsters to destroy can never politically engage with its enemies.
It can never understand those enemies as political actors, making calculations, taking advantage
of opportunities, and responding to constraints. It can never see in those enemies anything other
than a black hole of motivation, a cesspool where reason goes to die.
Hence the refusal of empathy for Trump's supporters. Insofar as it marks a demand that we
not abandon antiracist principle and practice for the sake of winning over a mythicized white working
class, the refusal is unimpeachable. But like the know-nothing disavowal of knowledge after
9/11, when explanations of terrorism were construed as exonerations of terrorism, the refusal of
empathy since 11/9 is a will to ignorance. Far simpler to imagine Trump voters as possessed by a
kind of demonic intelligence, or anti-intelligence, transcending all the rules of the established
order. Rather than treat Trump as the outgrowth of normal politics and traditional institutions -
it is the Electoral College, after all, not some beating heart of darkness, that sent Trump to the
White House - there is a disabling insistence that he and his forces are like no political formation
we've seen. By encouraging us to see only novelty in his monstrosity, analyses of this kind may prove
as crippling as the neocons' assessment of Saddam's regime. That, too, was held to be like no tyranny
we'd seen, a despotism where the ordinary rules of politics didn't apply and knowledge of the subject
was therefore useless.
Such a [neo]liberalism becomes dependent on the very thing it opposes, with a tepid mix of
neoliberal markets and multicultural morals getting much-needed spice from a terrifying right. Hillary
Clinton ran hard on the threat of Trump, as if his presence were enough to authorize her presidency.
Where Sanders promised to change the conversation, to make the battlefield a contest between a
multicultural neoliberalism and a multiracial social democracy, Clinton sought to keep the battlefield
as it has been for the past quarter-century. In this single respect, she can claim a substantial
victory. It's no accident that one of the most spectacular confrontations since the election pitted
the actors of Hamilton against the tweets of Trump. These fixed, frozen positions - high
on rhetoric, low on action - offer an almost perfect tableau of our ongoing gridlock of recrimination.
Clinton waged this campaign on the belief that her neoliberalism of fear could defeat the
ethnonationalism of the right. Let us not make the same mistake twice. Let us not be addicted
to "the drug of danger," as Athena says in the Oresteia, to "the dream of the enemy that
has to be crushed, like a herb, before [we] can smell freedom."
The term "meritocracy" became shorthand for a desirable societal ideal soon after it was coined
by the British socialist Sir Michael Young. But Young had originally used it to describe a dystopian
future. His 1958 satirical novel, The Rise of the Meritocracy, imagines the creation and growth of
a national system of intelligence testing, which identifies talented young people from every stratum
of society in order to install them in special schools, where they are groomed to make the best use
possible of their innate advantages.
In the novel, what begins as a struggle against inherited privilege results in the consolidation
of a new ruling class that derives its legitimacy from superior merit. This class becomes, within
a few generations, a hereditary aristocracy in its own right. Sequestered within elite institutions,
people of high intelligence marry among themselves, passing along their high social position and
superior genes to their progeny. Terminal inequality is the result. The gradual shift from inheritance
to merit, Young writes, made "nonsense of all their loose talk of the equality of man":
Men, after all, are notable not for the equality, but for the inequality, of their endowment.
Once all the geniuses are amongst the elite, and all the morons are amongst the workers, what meaning
can equality have? What ideal can be upheld except the principle of equal status for equal intelligence?
What is the purpose of abolishing inequalities in nurture except to reveal and make more pronounced
the inescapable inequalities of Nature?
I thought about this book often in the years before the crack-up of November 2016. In early 2015,
the Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam published a book that seemed to tell as history the same story
that Young had written as prophecy. Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis opens with an evocation
of the small town of Port Clinton, Ohio, where Putnam grew up in the 1950s - a "passable embodiment
of the American Dream, a place that offered decent opportunity for all the kids in town, whatever
their background." Port Clinton was, as Putnam is quick to concede, a nearly all-white town in a
pre-feminist and pre-civil-rights America, and it was marked by the unequal distribution of power
that spurred those movements into being. Yet it was also a place of high employment, strong unions,
widespread homeownership, relative class equality, and generally intact two-parent families. Everyone
knew one another by their first names and almost everyone was headed toward a better future; nearly
three quarters of all the classmates Putnam surveyed fifty years later had surpassed their parents
in both educational attainment and wealth.
When he revisited it in 2013, the town had become a kind of American nightmare. In the 1970s,
the industrial base entered a terminal decline, and the town's economy declined with it. Downtown
shops closed. Crime, delinquency, and drug use skyrocketed. In 1993, the factory that had offered
high-wage blue-collar employment finally shuttered for good. By 2010, the rate of births to unwed
mothers had risen to 40 percent. Two years later, the average worker in the county "was paid roughly
16 percent less in inflation-adjusted dollars than his or her grandfather in the early 1970s."
Young's novel ends with an editorial note informing readers that the fictional author of the text
had been killed in a riot that was part of a violent populist insurrection against the meritocracy,
an insurrection that the author had been insisting would pose no lasting threat to the social order.
Losing every young person of promise to the meritocracy had deprived the working class of its
prospective leaders, rendering it unable to coordinate a movement to manifest its political will.
"Without intelligence in their heads," he wrote, "the lower classes are never more menacing
than a rabble."
We are in the midst of a global insurrection against ruling elites. In the wake of the most destructive
of the blows recently delivered, a furious debate arose over whether those who supported Donald Trump
deserve empathy or scorn. The answer, of course, is that they deserve scorn for resorting to so depraved
and false a solution to their predicament - and empathy for the predicament itself. (And not just
because advances in technology are likely to make their predicament far more widely shared.) What
is owed to them is not the lachrymose pity reserved for victims (though they have suffered greatly)
but rather a practical appreciation of how their antagonism to the policies that determined the course
of this campaign - mass immigration and free trade - was a fully political antagonism that was disregarded
for decades, to our collective detriment.
A policy of benign neglect of immigration laws invites into our country a casualized workforce
without any leverage, one that competes with the native-born and destroys whatever leverage the latter
have to negotiate better terms for themselves. The policy is a subsidy to American agribusiness,
meatpacking plants, restaurants, bars, and construction companies, and to American families who would
not otherwise be able to afford the outsourcing of childcare and domestic labor that the postfeminist,
dual-income family requires. At the same time, a policy of free trade pits native-born workers against
foreign ones content to earn pennies on the dollar of their American counterparts.
In lieu of the social-democratic provision of childcare and other services of domestic support,
we have built a privatized, ad hoc system of subsidies based on loose border enforcement - in effect,
the nation cutting a deal with itself at the expense of the life chances of its native-born working
class. In lieu of an industrial policy that would preserve intact the economic foundation of their
lives, we rapidly dismantled our industrial base in pursuit of maximal aggregate economic growth,
with no concern for the uneven distribution of the harms and the benefits. Some were enriched hugely
by these policies: the college-educated bankers, accountants, consultants, technologists, lawyers,
economists, and corporate executives who built a supply chain that reached to the countries where
we shipped the jobs. Eventually, of course, many of these workers learned that both political parties
regarded them as fungible factors of production, readily discarded in favor of a machine or a migrant
willing to bunk eight to a room.
Four decades of neoliberal globalization have cleaved our country into two hostile classes,
and the line cuts across the race divide. On one side, college students credential themselves for
meritocratic success. On the other, the white working class increasingly comes to resemble the black
underclass in indices of social disorganization. On one side of the divide, much energy is expended
on the eradication of subtler inequalities; on the other side, an equality of immiseration increasingly
obtains.
Even before the ruling elite sent the proletariat off to fight a misbegotten war, even before
it wrecked the world economy through heedless lending, even before its politicians rescued those
responsible for the crisis while allowing working-class victims of all colors to sink, the working
class knew that it had been sacrificed to the interests of those sitting atop the meritocratic ladder.
The hostility was never just about differing patterns in taste and consumption. It was also about
one class prospering off the suffering of another. We learned this year that political interests
that go neglected for decades invariably summon up demagogues who exploit them for their own gain.
The demagogues will go on to betray their supporters and do enormous harm to others.
If we are to arrest the global descent into barbarism, we will have to understand the political
antagonism at the heart of the meritocratic project and seek a new kind of politics. If we choose
to neglect the valid interests of the working class, Trump will prove in retrospect to have been
a pale harbinger of even darker nightmares to come.
"... The true irony of today's late-stage efforts by Washington to monopolize
"truth" and attack alternate narratives isn't just in its blatant contempt for genuine
free speech. ..."
"... the entire "Freedom Manifesto" employed by the United States and Britain
since World War II was never free at all, but a concoction of the CIA's Psychological
Strategy Board 's (PSB) comprehensive psychological warfare program waged on friend
and foe alike. ..."
"... The CIA would come to view the entire program, beginning with the 1950
Berlin conference, to be a landmark in the Cold War, not just for solidifying the
CIA's control over the non-Communist left and the West's "free" intellectuals, but
for enabling the CIA to secretly disenfranchise Europeans and Americans from their
own political culture in such a way they would never really know it. ..."
"... The modern state is an engine of propaganda, alternately manufacturing
crises and claiming to be the only instrument that can effectively deal with them.
..."
"... PSB D-33/2 foretells of a "long-term intellectual movement, to: break down
world-wide doctrinaire thought patterns" while "creating confusion, doubt and loss
of confidence" in order to "weaken objectively the intellectual appeal of neutralism
and to predispose its adherents towards the spirit of the West." The goal was to
"predispose local elites to the philosophy held by the planners," while employing
local elites "would help to disguise the American origin of the effort so that it
appears to be a native development." ..."
"... Burnham's Machiavellian elitism lurks in every shadow of the document.
As recounted in Frances Stoner Saunder's "The Cultural Cold War," "Marshall also
took issue with the PSB's reliance on 'non-rational social theories' which emphasized
the role of an elite 'in the manner reminiscent of Pareto, Sorel, Mussolini and
so on.' ..."
"... With "The Machiavellians," Burnham had composed the manual that forged
the old Trotskyist left together with a right-wing Anglo/American elite. ..."
"... The political offspring of that volatile union would be called neoconservatism,
whose overt mission would be to roll back Russian/Soviet influence everywhere. Its
covert mission would be to reassert a British cultural dominance over the emerging
Anglo/American Empire and maintain it through propaganda. ..."
"... Rarely spoken of in the context of CIA-funded secret operations, the IRD
served as a covert anti-Communist propaganda unit from 1946 until 1977. According
to Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, authors of " Britain's Secret Propaganda War ,"
"the vast IRD enterprise had one sole aim: To spread its ceaseless propaganda output
(i.e. a mixture of outright lies and distorted facts) among top-ranking journalists
who worked for major agencies and magazines, including Reuters and the BBC, as well
as every other available channel. It worked abroad to discredit communist parties
in Western Europe which might gain a share of power by entirely democratic means,
and at home to discredit the British Left." ..."
"... The mandate of his Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC) set up in
1970 was to expose the supposed KGB campaign of worldwide subversion and put out
stories smearing anyone who questioned it as a dupe, a traitor or Communist spy.
Crozier regarded "The Machiavellians" as a major formative influence in his own
intellectual development, and wrote in 1976 "indeed it was this book above all others
that first taught me how [emphasis Crozier] to think about politics." ..."
"... Crozier was more than just a strategic thinker. Crozier was a high-level
covert political agent who put Burnham's talent for obfuscation and his Fourth International
experience to use to undermine détente and set the stage for rolling back the Soviet
Union. ..."
"... Crozier's cooperation with numerous "able and diligent Congressional staffers"
as well as "the remarkable General Vernon ('Dick') Walters, recently retired as
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence," cemented the rise of the neoconservatives.
When Carter caved in to the Team B and his neoconservative National Security Adviser
Zbigniew Brzezinski's plot to lure the Soviets into their own Vietnam in Afghanistan,
it fulfilled Burnham's mission and delivered the world to the Machiavellians without
anyone being the wiser. ..."
"... As George Orwell wrote in his "Second Thoughts on James Burnham": "What
Burnham is mainly concerned to show [in The Machiavellians] is that a democratic
society has never existed and, so far as we can see, never will exist. Society is
of its nature oligarchical, and the power of the oligarchy always rests upon force
and fraud. Power can sometimes be won and maintained without violence, but never
without fraud." ..."
Editor's note: This article is the last in a four-part series on Truthdig
called "Universal Empire" -- an examination of the current stage of the neocon
takeover of American policy that began after World War ll. Read
Part 1 ,
Part 2 and
Part 3 .
The recent
assertion by the Trump White House that Damascus and Moscow released "false
narratives" to mislead the world about the April 4 sarin gas attack in Khan
Shaykhun, Syria, is a dangerous next step in the "fake news" propaganda war
launched in the final days of the Obama administration. It is a step whose deep
roots in Communist Trotsky's Fourth International must be understood before
deciding whether American democracy can be reclaimed.
Muddying the waters of accountability in a way not seen since Sen. Joe McCarthy
at the height of the Red Scare in the 1950s, the "
Countering Disinformation
and Propaganda Act " signed into law without fanfare by Obama in December
2016 officially authorized a government censorship bureaucracy comparable only
to George Orwell's fictional Ministry of Truth in his novel "1984." Referred
to as " the Global Engagement
Center ," the official purpose of this new bureaucracy is to "recognize,
understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation
efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests." The
real purpose of
this Orwellian nightmare is to cook the books on anything that challenges
Washington's neoconservative pro-war narrative and to intimidate, harass or
jail anyone who tries. As has already been demonstrated by President Trump's
firing of Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian government airbase, it is a recipe for
a world war, and like it or not, that war has already begun.
This latest attack on Russia's supposed false narrative takes us right back
to 1953 and the beginnings of the cultural war between East and West. Its roots
are tied to the Congress for Cultural Freedom, to James Burnham's pivot from
Trotsky's Fourth International to right-wing conservatism and to the rise of
the neoconservative Machiavellians as a political force. As Burnham's "
The Struggle for the World " stressed, the Third World War had already begun
with the 1944 Communist-led Greek sailors' revolt.
In Burnham's Manichean thinking, the West was under siege. George Kennan's
Cold War policy of containment was no different than Neville Chamberlain's policy
of appeasement. Détente with the Soviet Union amounted to surrender. Peace was
only a disguise for war, and that war would be fought with politics, subversion,
terrorism and psychological warfare. Soviet influence had to be rolled back
wherever possible. That meant subverting the Soviet Union and its proxies and,
when necessary, subverting Western democracies as well.
The true irony of today's late-stage efforts by Washington to monopolize
"truth" and attack alternate narratives isn't just in its blatant contempt for
genuine free speech. The real irony is that the entire "Freedom Manifesto"
employed by the United States and Britain since World War II was never free
at all, but a concoction of the CIA's
Psychological Strategy Board 's (PSB) comprehensive psychological warfare
program waged on friend and foe alike.
The CIA would come to view the entire program, beginning with the 1950
Berlin conference, to be a landmark in the Cold War, not just for solidifying
the CIA's control over the non-Communist left and the West's "free" intellectuals,
but for enabling the CIA to secretly disenfranchise Europeans and Americans
from their own political culture in such a way they would never really know
it.
"The modern state is an engine of propaganda, alternately manufacturing
crises and claiming to be the only instrument that can effectively deal
with them. This propaganda, in order to be successful, demands the
cooperation of writers, teachers, and artists not as paid propagandists
or state-censored time-servers but as 'free' intellectuals capable of policing
their own jurisdictions and of enforcing acceptable standards of responsibility
within the various intellectual professions."
Key to turning these "free" intellectuals against their own interests was
the CIA's doctrinal program for Western cultural transformation contained in
the document
PSB D-33/2 . PSB D-33/2 foretells of a "long-term intellectual movement,
to: break down world-wide doctrinaire thought patterns" while "creating confusion,
doubt and loss of confidence" in order to "weaken objectively the intellectual
appeal of neutralism and to predispose its adherents towards the spirit of the
West." The goal was to "predispose local elites to the philosophy held by the
planners," while employing local elites "would help to disguise the American
origin of the effort so that it appears to be a native development."
While declaring itself as an antidote to Communist totalitarianism, one internal
critic of the program, PSB officer Charles Burton Marshall, viewed PSB D-33/2
itself as frighteningly totalitarian, interposing "a wide doctrinal system"
that "accepts uniformity as a substitute for diversity," embracing "all fields
of human thought -- all fields of intellectual interests, from anthropology
and artistic creations to sociology and scientific methodology." He concluded:
"That is just about as totalitarian as one can get."
Burnham's Machiavellian elitism lurks in every shadow of the document.
As recounted in Frances Stoner Saunder's "The Cultural Cold War," "Marshall
also took issue with the PSB's reliance on 'non-rational social theories' which
emphasized the role of an elite 'in the manner reminiscent of Pareto, Sorel,
Mussolini and so on.' Weren't these the models used by James Burnham in
his book the Machiavellians? Perhaps there was a copy usefully to hand when
PSB D-33/2 was being drafted. More likely, James Burnham himself was usefully
to hand."
Burnham was more than just at hand when it came to secretly implanting a
fascist philosophy of extreme elitism into America's Cold War orthodoxy.
With "The Machiavellians," Burnham had composed the manual that forged the old
Trotskyist left together with a right-wing Anglo/American elite.
The political offspring of that volatile union would be called neoconservatism,
whose overt mission would be to roll back Russian/Soviet influence everywhere.
Its covert mission would be to reassert a British cultural dominance over the
emerging Anglo/American Empire and maintain it through propaganda.
Hard at work on that task since 1946 was the secret Information Research
Department of the British and Commonwealth Foreign Office known as the IRD.
Rarely spoken of in the context of CIA-funded secret operations, the
IRD served as a covert anti-Communist propaganda unit from 1946 until 1977.
According to Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, authors of "
Britain's Secret Propaganda War ," "the vast IRD enterprise had one sole
aim: To spread its ceaseless propaganda output (i.e. a mixture of outright lies
and distorted facts) among top-ranking journalists who worked for major agencies
and magazines, including Reuters and the BBC, as well as every other available
channel. It worked abroad to discredit communist parties in Western Europe which
might gain a share of power by entirely democratic means, and at home to discredit
the British Left."
IRD was to become a self-fulfilling disinformation machine for the far-right
wing of the international intelligence elite, at once offering fabricated and
distorted information to "independent" news outlets and then using the laundered
story as "proof" of the false story's validity. One such front enterprise established
with CIA money was Forum World Features, operated at one time by Burnham acolyte
Brian Rossiter
Crozier . Described by Burnham's biographer Daniel Kelly as a "British political
analyst," in reality, the legendary Brian Crozier functioned for over 50 years
as one of Britain's top
propagandists and secret agents .
If anyone today is shocked by the biased, one-sided, xenophobic rush to judgment
alleging Russian influence over the 2016 presidential election, they need look
no further than to Brian Crozier's closet for the blueprints. As we were told
outright by an American military officer during the first war in Afghanistan
in 1982, the U.S. didn't need "proof the Soviets used poison gas" and they don't
need proof against Russia now. Crozier might best be described as a daydream
believer, a dangerous imperialist who
acts out his dreams with open eyes. From the beginning of the Cold War until
his death in 2012, Crozier and his protégé
Robert Moss propagandized on behalf of military dictators Francisco Franco
and Augusto Pinochet, organized private intelligence organizations to destabilize
governments in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa and worked to
delegitimize politicians in Europe and Britain viewed as insufficiently anti-Communist.
The mandate of his Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC) set up in
1970 was to expose the supposed KGB campaign of worldwide subversion and put
out stories smearing anyone who questioned it as a dupe, a traitor or Communist
spy. Crozier regarded "The Machiavellians" as a major formative influence in
his own intellectual development, and wrote in 1976 "indeed it was this book
above all others that first taught me how [emphasis Crozier] to think
about politics." The key to Crozier's thinking was Burnham's distinction
between the "formal" meaning of political speech and the "real," a concept which
was, of course, grasped only by elites. In a 1976 article, Crozier marveled
at how Burnham's understanding of politics had spanned 600 years and how the
use of "the formal" to conceal "the real" was no different today than when used
by Dante Alighieri's "presumably enlightened Medieval mind." "The point is as
valid now as it was in ancient times and in the Florentine Middle Ages, or in
1943. Overwhelmingly, political writers and speakers still use Dante's method.
Depending on the degree of obfuscation required (either by circumstances or
the person's character), the divorce between formal and real meaning is more
of less absolute."
But Crozier was more than just a strategic thinker. Crozier was a high-level
covert political agent who put Burnham's talent for obfuscation and his
Fourth International experience to use to undermine détente and set the stage
for rolling back the Soviet Union.
In a secret meeting at a City of London bank in February 1977, he even patented
a private-sector operational intelligence organization known at the Sixth International
(6I) to pick up where Burnham left off: politicizing and privatizing many of
the dirty tricks the CIA and other intelligence services could no longer be
caught doing. As he explained in his memoir "Free Agent," the name 6I was chosen
"because the Fourth International split. The Fourth International was the Trotskyist
one, and when it split, this meant that, on paper, there were five Internationals.
In the numbers game, we would constitute the Sixth International, or '6I.' "
Crozier's cooperation with numerous "able and diligent Congressional staffers"
as well as "the remarkable General Vernon ('Dick') Walters, recently retired
as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence," cemented the rise of the neoconservatives.
When Carter caved in to the Team B and his neoconservative National Security
Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski's plot to lure the Soviets into their own Vietnam
in Afghanistan, it fulfilled Burnham's mission and delivered the world to the
Machiavellians without anyone being the wiser.
As George Orwell wrote
in his "Second Thoughts on James Burnham": "What Burnham is mainly concerned
to show [in The Machiavellians] is that a democratic society has never existed
and, so far as we can see, never will exist. Society is of its nature oligarchical,
and the power of the oligarchy always rests upon force and fraud. Power can
sometimes be won and maintained without violence, but never without fraud."
Today, Burnham's use of Dante's political treatise "De Monarchia" to explain
his medieval understanding of politics might best be swapped for Dante's "Divine
Comedy," a paranoid comedy of errors in which the door to Hell swings open to
one and all, including the elites regardless of their status. Or as they say
in Hell, " Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate ." Abandon hope all
ye who enter here.
This poart 4 of the series. For previous parts see
The ruling class is seriously rattled over its loss of control over the national political narrative-a
consequence of capitalism's terminal decay and U.S. imperialism's slipping grip on global hegemony.
When the Lords of Capital get rattled, their servants in the political class are tasked with rearranging
the picture and reframing the national conversation. In other words, Papa Imperialism needs a new
set of lies, or renewed respect for the old ones. Former president Barack Obama, the cool operator
who put the U.S. back on the multiple wars track after a forced lull in the wake of George Bush's
defeat in Iraq, has eagerly accepted his new assignment as Esteemed Guardian of Official Lies.
At this stage of his career, Obama must dedicate much of his time to the maintenance of Official
Lies, since they are central to his own "legacy." With the frenzied assistance of his first secretary
of state, Hillary Clinton, Obama launched a massive military offensive-a rush job to put the New
American Century back on schedule. Pivoting to all corners of the planet, and with the general aim
of isolating and intimidating Russia and China, the salient feature of Obama's offensive was the
naked deployment of Islamic jihadists as foot soldiers of U.S. imperialism in Libya and Syria. It
is a strategy that is morally and politically indefensible-unspeakable!-the truth of which would
shatter the prevailing order in the imperial heartland, itself.
Thus, from 2011 to when he left the White House for a Tahiti yachting vacation with music mogul
David Geffen and assorted movie and media celebrities, Obama orchestrated what the late Saddam Hussein
would have called "The Mother of All Lies": that the U.S. was not locked in an alliance with al-Qaida
and its terrorist offshoots in Syria, a relationship begun almost 40 years earlier in Afghanistan.
Advertisement Square, Site wide He had all the help he needed from a compliant corporate media, whose
loyalty to U.S. foreign policy can always be counted on in times of war. Since the U.S. is constantly
in a (self-proclaimed) state of war, corporate media collaboration is guaranteed. Outside the U.S.
and European corporate media bubble, the whole world was aware that al-Qaida and the U.S. were comrades
in arms. (According to a 2015 poll, 82 percent of Syrians and 85 percent of Iraqis believe the
U.S. created ISIS .) When Vladimir Putin told a session of the United Nations General Assembly
that satellites showed lines of ISIS tankers stretching from captured Syrian oil fields "to the horizon,"
bound for U.S.-allied Turkey, yet untouched by American bombers, the Obama administration had no
retort. Russian jets
destroyed 1,000 of the tankers , forcing the Americans to mount their own, smaller raids. But,
the moment soon passed into the corporate media's amnesia hole-another fact that must be shed in
order to avoid unspeakable conclusions.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump's flirtation with the idea of ending U.S. "regime change"
policy in Syria-and, thereby, scuttling the alliance with Islamic jihadists-struck panic in the ruling
class and in the imperial political structures that are called the Deep State, which includes the
corporate media. When Trump won the general election, the imperial political class went into meltdown,
blaming "The Russians"-first, for warlord Hillary Clinton's loss, and soon later for everything under
the sun. The latest lie is that Moscow is sending weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the country
where the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan spent billions of dollars to create the international jihadist
network. Which shows that imperialists have no sense of irony, or shame. (See BAR: "
The U.S., Not
Russia, Arms Jihadists Worldwide .")
After the election, lame duck President Obama was so consumed by the need to expunge all narratives
that ran counter to "The Russians Did It," he twice yammered about "
fake news " at a press conference in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Obama was upset,
he said, "Because in an age where there's so much active misinformation and its packaged very well
and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television. If everything
seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won't know what to protect."
Although now an ex-president, it is still Obama's job to protect the ruling class, and the Empire,
and his role in maintaining the Empire: his legacy. To do that, one must control the narrative-the
subject uppermost in his mind when he used Chicago area students as props, this week, for
his first public speech since leaving the
White House.
"It used to be that everybody kind of had the same information," said Obama, at the University
of Chicago affair. "We had different opinions about it, but there was a common base line of facts.
The internet has in some ways accelerated this sense of people having entirely separate conversations,
and this generation is getting its information through its phones. That you really don't have to
confront people who have different opinions or have a different experience or a different outlook."
Obama continued:
"If you're liberal, you're on MSNBC, or conservative, you're on Fox News. You're reading The Wall
Street Journal or you're reading The New York Times, or whatever your choices are. Or, maybe you're
just looking at cat videos [laughter].
"So, one question I have for all of you is, How do you guys get your information about the news
and what's happening out there, and are there ways in which you think we could do a better job of
creating a common conversation now that you've got 600 cable stations and you've got all these different
news opinions-and, if there are two sets of opinions, then they're just yelling at each other, so
you don't get a sense that there's an actual conversation going on. And the internet is worse. It's
become more polarized."
Obama's core concern is that there should be a "common base line of facts," which he claims used
to exist "20 or 30 years ago." The internet, unregulated and cheaply accessed, is the villain, and
the main source of "fake news" (from publications like BAR and the 12 other leftwing sites smeared
by the Washington Post, back in November, not long after Obama complained to Merkel about "fake news").
However, Obama tries to dress up his anti-internet "fake news" whine with a phony pitch for diversity
of opinions. Is he suggesting that MSNBC viewers also watch Fox News, and that New York Times readers
also peruse the Wall Street Journal? Is he saying that most people read a variety of daily newspapers
"back in the day"? It is true that, generations ago, there were far more newspapers available to
read, reflecting a somewhat wider ideological range of views. But most people read the ones that
were closest to their own politics, just as now. Obama is playing his usual game of diversion. Non-corporate
news is his target: "...the internet is worse. It's become more and more polarized."
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, MSNBC and Fox News all share the "common base line of
facts" that Obama cherishes. By this, he means a common narrative, with American "exceptionalism"
and intrinsic goodness at the center, capitalism and democracy as synonymous, and unity in opposition
to the "common" enemy: Soviet Russians; then terrorists; now non-Soviet Russians, again.
Ayanna Watkins, a senior at Chicago's Kenwood Academy High School, clearly understood Obama's
emphasis, and eagerly agreed with his thrust. "When it comes to getting information about what's
going on in the world, it's way faster on social media than it is on newscasts," she said.
"But, on the other hand, it can be a downfall because, what if you're passing the wrong information,
or the information isn't presented the way it should be? So, that causes a clash in our generation,
and I think it should go back to the old school. I mean, phones, social media should be eliminated,"
Ms. Watkins blurted out, provoking laughter from the audience and causing the 18-year-old to "rephrase
myself."
What she really meant, she said, was that politicians should "go out to the community" so that
"the community will feel more welcome."
If she was trying to agree with Obama, Ms. Watkins had it right the first time: political counter-narratives
on the internet have to go, so that Americans can share a "common base line" of information. All
of it lies.
Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].
"... Petty rentiers live off others above the compensation for inflation and retireds are not earning
wages anymore. Even if they live on social security and pensions ..."
"... Income ranking regardless of source is a muddle ..."
"... Most people are in the job class, not the asset owning / one percent class. "High taxes and
redistribution do the job nicely, just ask Norway." Not a sufficient answer to issues Marxism raises,
just a facile one. ..."
"... I don't have a problem with class warfare. I don't have a problem with Democrats either. I
have a problem with losing. ..."
"... I agree with above on workers now retired. However their solidarity with the still active workers
is not a sure thing ..."
"... Yep. Further proof that the rich are parasites killing their host. ..."
"... Torturing, not killing is how they get their satisfaction. ..."
"... Yes, but their lack of restraint is killing the host. ..."
Bourgeois (petty) class is not the same thing as middle income: source of income matters hugely
Petty rentiers live off others above the compensation for inflation and retireds are not
earning wages anymore. Even if they live on social security and pensions
Easy on those retireds. Prefer to think of them as former wage class living off their social dividend
for past services rendered. In any case, retirement is still the best job that I have ever had.
Got to go cut the grass now, first time this season and way too tall. We were in a drought for
a time, but it broke last weekend.
Good thanks. I just think that paine's world view is dated. I don't like class war of either type
(down or up) it is too costly for the bystanders (just like any war). Today most people don't
fit cleanly into one class (workers) or the other (capitalists) -- actually they never did women
and children are a majority not to mention the increasing ranks of the retired. We live in a world
where most people are both workers and owners - that is almost the definition of a middle class
society. And many rely on "rents" from their hard won qualifications. Marxism is just too simple
a view of world, and as it turns out unnecessary. High taxes and redistribution do the job nicely,
just ask Norway.
Most people are in the job class, not the asset owning / one percent class. "High taxes and
redistribution do the job nicely, just ask Norway." Not a sufficient answer to issues Marxism
raises, just a facile one.
I don't have a problem with class warfare. I don't have a problem with Democrats either. I
have a problem with losing.
I also have a problem with winning and then just flubbing the replacement. I am mostly for
just letting future generations work this out however they can once given the tools of a more
democratic political system.
"... a friend of mine, born in Venice and a long-time resident of Rome, pointed out to me that dogs are a sign of loneliness. ..."
"... And the cafes and restaurants on weekends in Chicago–chockfull of people, each on his or her own Powerbook, surfing the WWW all by themselves. ..."
"... The preaching of self-reliance by those who have never had to practice it is galling. ..."
"... Katherine: Agreed. It is also one of the reasons why I am skeptical of various evangelical / fundi pastors, who are living at the expense of their churches, preaching about individual salvation. ..."
"... So you have the upper crust (often with inheritances and trust funds) preaching economic self-reliances, and you have divines preaching individual salvation as they go back to the house provided by the members of the church. ..."
George Monbiot on human loneliness and its toll. I agree with his observations.
I have been cataloguing them in my head for years, especially after
a friend of mine, born in Venice and a long-time resident of Rome, pointed
out to me that dogs are a sign of loneliness.
A couple of recent trips to Rome have made that point ever more obvious
to me: Compared to my North Side neighborhood in Chicago, where every other
person seems to have a dog, and on weekends Clark Street is awash in dogs
(on their way to the dog boutiques and the dog food truck), Rome has few
dogs. Rome is much more densely populated, and the Italians still have each
other, for good or for ill. And Americans use the dog as an odd means of
making human contact, at least with other dog owners.
But Americanization advances: I was surprised to see people bring dogs
into the dining room of a fairly upscale restaurant in Turin. I haven't
seen that before. (Most Italian cafes and restaurants are just too small
to accommodate a dog, and the owners don't have much patience for disruptions.)
The dogs barked at each other for while–violating a cardinal rule in Italy
that mealtime is sacred and tranquil. Loneliness rules.
And the cafes and restaurants on weekends in Chicago–chockfull of
people, each on his or her own Powerbook, surfing the WWW all by themselves.
That's why the comments about March on Everywhere in Harper's, recommended
by Lambert, fascinated me. Maybe, to be less lonely, you just have to attend
the occasional march, no matter how disorganized (and the Chicago Women's
March organizers made a few big logistical mistakes), no matter how incoherent.
Safety in numbers? (And as Monbiot points out, overeating at home alone
is a sign of loneliness: Another argument for a walk with a placard.)
In Britain, men who have spent their entire lives in quadrangles
– at school, at college, at the bar, in parliament – instruct us to
stand on our own two feet.
With different imagery, the same is true in this country. The preaching
of self-reliance by those who have never had to practice it is galling.
Katherine: Agreed. It is also one of the reasons why I am skeptical
of various evangelical / fundi pastors, who are living at the expense of
their churches, preaching about individual salvation.
So you have the upper crust (often with inheritances and trust funds)
preaching economic self-reliances, and you have divines preaching individual
salvation as they go back to the house provided by the members of the church.
A few seasons back, South Park pointed out how easy it was for corporations
to co-opt social justice rhetoric. Since then, life has stubbornly insisted on
supporting that thesis.
Every now and then the un-system bites back as we just saw with the Pepsi
ad, although they did get a ton of free press, similar to United. That
approach worked for The Donald ..
Corporations love non-class based identity politics. They love arguing
that the real problems in society are not about economic inequality but
rather on identity based sensitivity. You can learn the fancy sensitivity
codes at your uppity college and look down your nose at the poor whites who
don't get the semiotic coaching. Business as Usual.
"... It isn't. It's the world's biggest, most advanced cloud-computing company with an online retail storefront stuck between you and it. In 2005-2006 it was already selling supercomputing capability for cents on the dollar - way ahead of Google and Microsoft and IBM. ..."
"... Do you really think the internet created Amazon, Snapchat, Facebook, etc? No, the internet was just a tool to be used. The people who created those businesses would have used any tool they had access to at the time because their original goal was not automation or innovation, it was only to get rich. ..."
"... "Disruptive parasitic intermediation" is superb, thanks. The entire phrase should appear automatically whenever "disruption"/"disruptive" or "innovation"/"innovative" is used in a laudatory sense. ..."
"... >that people have a much bigger aversion to loss than gain. ..."
"... As the rich became uber rich, they hid the money in tax havens. As for globalization, this has less to do these days with technological innovation and more to do with economic exploitation. ..."
+100 to your comment. There is a decided attempt by the plutocrats to get us to focus our anger
on automation and not the people, like they themselves, who control the automation ..
Plutocrats control much automation, but so do thousands of wannabe plutocrats whose expertise
lets them come from nowhere to billionairehood in a few short years by using it to create some
novel, disruptive parasitic intermediation that makes their fortune. The "sharing economy" relies
on automation. As does Amazon, Snapchat, Facebook, Dropbox, Pinterest,
It's not a stretch to say that automation creates new plutocrats . So blame the individuals,
or blame the phenomenon, or both, whatever works for you.
So John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie weren't plutocrats–or were somehow better plutocrats?
Blame not individuals or phenomena but society and the public and elites who shape it. Our
social structure is also a kind of machine and perhaps the most imperfectly designed of all of
them. My own view is that the people who fear machines are the people who don't like or understand
machines. Tools, and the use of them, are an essential part of being human.
I'm replying to your upthread comment which seems to say today's careless campers and the technology
they rely on are somehow different from those other figures we know so well from history. In fact
all technology is tremendously disruptive but somehow things have a way of sorting themselves
out. So–just to repeat–the thing is not to "blame" the individuals or the automation but to get
to work on the sorting. People like Jeff Bezos with his very flaky business model could be little
more than a blip.
Automation? Those companies? I guess Amazon automates ordering not exactly R. Daneel
Olivaw for sure. If some poor Asian girl doesn't make the boots or some Agri giant doesn't make
the flour Amazon isn't sending you nothin', and the other companies are even more useless.
'Automation? Those companies? I guess Amazon automates ordering not exactly R. Daneel Olivaw
for sure.'
Um. Amazon is highly deceptive, in that most people think it's a giant online retail store.
It isn't. It's the world's biggest, most advanced cloud-computing company with an online retail
storefront stuck between you and it. In 2005-2006 it was already selling supercomputing capability
for cents on the dollar - way ahead of Google and Microsoft and IBM.
Do you really think the internet created Amazon, Snapchat, Facebook, etc? No, the internet
was just a tool to be used. The people who created those businesses would have used any tool they
had access to at the time because their original goal was not automation or innovation, it was
only to get rich.
Let me remind you of Thomas Edison. If he would have lived 100 years later, he would have used
computers instead of electricity to make his fortune. (In contrast, Nikolai Tesla/George Westinghouse
used electricity to be innovative, NOT to get rich ). It isn't the tool that is used, it is the
mindset of the people who use the tool
"Disruptive parasitic intermediation" is superb, thanks. The entire phrase should appear
automatically whenever "disruption"/"disruptive" or "innovation"/"innovative" is used in a laudatory
sense.
100% agreement with your first point in this thread, too. That short comment should stand as a
sort of epigraph/reference for all future discussion of these things.
No disagreement on the point about actual and wannabe plutocrats either, but perhaps it's worth
emphasising that it's not just a matter of a few successful (and many failed) personal get-rich-quick
schemes, real as those are: the potential of 'universal machines' tends to be released in the
form of parasitic intermediation because, for the time being at least, it's released into a world
subject to the 'demands' of capital, and at a (decades-long) moment of crisis for the traditional
model of capital accumulation. 'Universal' potential is set free to seek rents and maybe to
do a bit of police work on the side, if the two can even be separated.
The writer of this article from 2010 [
http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/artificial-scarcity-world-overproduction-escape-isnt
] surely wouldn't want it to be taken as conclusive, but it's a good example of one marginal
train of serious thought about all of the above. See also 'On Africa and Self-Reproducing Automata'
written by George Caffentzis 20 years or so earlier [https://libcom.org/library/george-caffentzis-letters-blood-fire];
apologies for link to entire (free, downloadable) book, but my crumbling print copy of the single
essay stubbornly resists uploading.
Unfortunately, the healthcare insurance debate has been simply a battle between competing ideologies.
I don't think Americans understand the key role that universal healthcare coverage plays in creating
resilient economies.
Before penicillin, heart surgeries, cancer cures, modern obstetrics etc. that it didn't matter
if you are rich or poor if you got sick. There was a good chance you would die in either case
which was a key reason that the average life span was short.
In the mid-20th century that began to change so now lifespan is as much about income as anything
else. It is well known that people have a much bigger aversion to loss than gain. So if you currently
have healthcare insurance through a job, then you don't want to lose it by taking a risk to do
something where you are no longer covered.
People are moving less to find work – why would you uproot your family to work for a company
that is just as likely to lay you off in two years in a place you have no roots? People are less
likely to day to quit jobs to start a new business – that is a big gamble today because you not
only have to keep the roof over your head and put food on the table, but you also have to cover
an even bigger cost of healthcare insurance in the individual market or you have a much greater
risk of not making it to your 65th birthday.
In countries like Canada, healthcare coverage is barely a discussion point if somebody is looking
to move, change jobs, or start a small business.
If I had a choice today between universal basic income vs universal healthcare coverage, I
would choose the healthcare coverage form a societal standpoint. That is simply insuring a risk
and can allow people much greater freedom during the working lives. Similarly, Social Security
is of similar importance because it provides basic protection against disability and not starving
in the cold in your old age. These are vastly different incentive systems than paying people money
to live on even if they are not working.
Our ideological debates should be factoring these types of ideas in the discussion instead
of just being a food fight.
>that people have a much bigger aversion to loss than gain.
Yeah well if the downside is that you're dead this starts to make sense.
>instead of just being a food fight.
The thing is that the Powers-That-Be want it to be a food fight, as that is a great stalling
at worst and complete diversion at best tactic. Good post, btw.
As the rich became uber rich, they hid the money in tax havens. As for globalization, this
has less to do these days with technological innovation and more to do with economic exploitation.
I will note that Germany, Japan, South Korea, and a few other nations have not bought into
this madness and have retained a good chunk of their manufacturing sectors.
'As for globalization, this has less to do these days with technological innovation and more
to do with economic exploitation.'
Economic exploiters are always with us. You're underrating the role of a specific technological
innovation. Globalization as we now know it really became feasible in the late 1980s with the
spread of instant global electronic networks, mostly via the fiberoptic cables through which everything
- telephony, Internet, etc - travels Internet packet mode.
That's the point at which capital could really start moving instantly around the world, and
companies could really begin to run global supply chains and workforces. That's the point when
shifts of workers in facilities in Bangalore or Beijing could start their workdays as shifts of
workers in the U.S. were ending theirs, and companies could outsource and offshore their whole
operations.
What's missing in each and every case above -- at least in
the USA! -- is countervailing power. 6% labor union
density in private business is equivalent to 20/10 blood
pressure in the human body: it starves every other healthy
process.
It is not just labor market bargaining power
that has gone missing, it is not only the lost political
muscle for the average person (equal campaign financing,
almost all the votes), it is also the lack of machinery to
deal with day-to-day outrages on a day-to-day basis
(that's called lobbying).
Late dean of the Washington press corps David Broder
told a young reporter that when he came to DC fifty years
ago (then), all the lobbyists were union. Big pharma's
biggest rip-offs, for profit school scams, all the stuff
you hear about for one day on the news but no action is
ever taken -- that's because there is no (LABOR UNION)
mechanism to stay on top of all (or any) of it
(LOBBYISTS).
It is a chicken and egg problem. Before large scale
automation and globalization, unions "negotiated"
themselves their power, which was based on employers
having much fewer other choices. Any union power that was
ever legislated was legislated as a *result* of union
leverage, not to enable the latter (and most of what was
legislated amounts to limiting employer interference with
unions).
It is a basic feature of human individual and
group relations that when you are needed you will be
treated well, and when you are not needed you will be
treated badly (or at best you will be ignored if that's
less effort overall). And by needed I mean needed as a
specific individual or narrowly described group.
What automation and globalization have done is created
a glut of labor - specifically an oversupply of most skill
sets relative to all the work that has to be done
according to socially mediated decision processes (a
different set of work than what "everybody" would like to
happen as long as they don't have to pay for it, taking
away from other necessary or desired expenditure of money,
effort, or other resources).
Maybe when the boomers age out and become physically
too old to work, the balance will tip again.
Same thing with the internet - it has been hailed as a
democratizing force, but instead it has mostly (though not
wholly) amplified the existing power differentials and
motivation structures.
Anecdotally, a lot of companies
and institutions are either restricting internal internet
access or disconnecting parts of their organizations from
the internet altogether, and disabling I/O channels like
USB sticks, encrypting disks, locking out "untrusted" boot
methods, etc. The official narrative is security and
preventing leaks of confidential information, but the
latter is clearly also aimed in part at whistleblowers
disclosing illegal or unethical practices. Of course that
a number of employees illegitimately "steal" data for
personal and not to uncover injustices doesn't really
help.
Surely there is a huge difference between the labor market
here and the labor market in continental Europe -- though
labor there faces the same squeezing forces it faces here.
Think of German auto assembly line workers making $60 an
hour counting benefits.
Think Teamster Union UPS drivers
-- and pity the poor, lately hired (if they are even
hired) Amazon drivers -- maybe renting vans.
The Teamsters have the only example here of what is
standard in continental Europe: centralized bargaining
(aka sector wide labor agreements): the Master National
Freight Agreement: wherein everybody doing the same job in
the same locale (entire nation for long distance truckers)
works under one common contract (in French Canada too).
Imagine centralized bargaining for airlines. A few
years ago Northwest squeezed a billion dollars in give
backs out of its pilots -- next year gave a billion
dollars in bonuses to a thousand execs. Couldn't happen
under centralized bargaining -- wouldn't even give the
company any competitive advantage.
Anything that IMF claim should be taken with a grain of salt. IMF is a quintessential
neoliberal institutions that will support neoliberalism to
the bitter end.
Drivers of Declining Labor Share of Income
By Mai Chi Dao, Mitali Das, Zsoka Koczan, and Weicheng Lian
Technology: a key driver in advanced economies
In advanced economies, about half of the decline in labor
shares can be traced to the impact of technology. The decline
was driven by a combination of rapid progress in information
and telecommunication technology, and a high share of
occupations that could be easily be automated.
Global integration-as captured by trends in final goods
trade, participation in global value chains, and foreign
direct investment-also played a role. Its contribution is
estimated at about half that of technology. Because
participation in global value chains typically implies
offshoring of labor-intensive tasks, the effect of
integration is to lower labor shares in tradable sectors.
Admittedly, it is difficult to cleanly separate the impact
of technology from global integration, or from policies and
reforms. Yet the results for advanced economies is
compelling. Taken together, technology and global integration
explain close to 75 percent of the decline in labor shares in
Germany and Italy, and close to 50 percent in the United
States.
Brad said: Few things can turn a perceived threat into a graspable opportunity like a high-pressure
economy with a tight job market and rising wages. Few things can turn a real opportunity into
a phantom threat like a low-pressure economy, where jobs are scarce and wage stagnant because
of the failure of macro economic policy.
What is it that prevents a statement like this from succeeding at the level of policy?
The Despair of Learning That Experience No Longer Matters
By Benjamin Wallace-Wells April 10, 2017
.....................
The arguments about Case and Deaton's work have been an echo of the one that consumed so much
of the primary campaign, and then the general election, and which is still unresolved: whether
the fury of Donald Trump's supporters came from cultural and racial grievance or from economic
plight. Case and Deaton's scholarship does not settle the question. As they write, more than once,
"more work is needed."
But part of what Case and Deaton offer in their new paper is an emotional logic to an economic
argument. If returns to experience are in decline, if wisdom no longer pays off, then that might
help suggest why a group of mostly older people who are not, as a group, disadvantaged might become
convinced that the country has taken a turn for the worse. It suggests why their grievances should
so idealize the past, and why all the talk about coal miners and factories, jobs in which unions
have codified returns to experience into the salary structure, might become such a fixation. Whatever
comes from the deliberations over Case and Deaton's statistics, there is within their numbers
an especially interesting story.
"... Of course after legacy systems [people] were retrenched or shown the door in making government more efficient MBA style, some
did hit the jack pot as consultants and made more that on the public dime . but the Gov balance sheet got a nice one time blip. ..."
"... In the government, projects "helped" by Siemens, especially at the Home and Passport Offices, cost billions and were abandoned.
At my former employer, an eagle's nest, it was Deloittes. At my current employer, which has lost its passion to perform, it's KPMG and
EY helping. ..."
"... My personal favourite is Accenture / British Gas . But then you've also got the masterclass in cockups Raytheon / U.K. Border
Agency . Or for sheer breadth of failure, there's the IT Programme That Helped Kill a Whole Bank Stone Dead ( Infosys / Co-op ). ..."
"... I am an assembler expert. I have never seen a job advertised, but a I did not look very hard. Send me your work!!! IBM mainframe
assembler ..."
"... What about Computer Associates? For quite a while they proudly maintained the worst reputation amongst all of those consultancy/outsourcing
firms. ..."
"... My old boss used to say – a good programmer can learn a new language and be productive in it in in space of weeks (and this
was at the time when Object Oriented was the new huge paradigm change). A bad programmer will write bad code in any language. ..."
"... The huge shortcoming of COBOL is that there are no equivalent of editing programs. ..."
"... Original programmers rarely wrote handbooks ..."
"... That is not to say that it is impossible to move off legacy platforms ..."
After we've been writing about the problem of the ticking time bomb of bank legacy systems written in COBOL that depends on a shrinking
pool of aging programmers to baby them for now nearly two years, Reuters reports on the issue. Chuck L flagged a Reuters story, Banks
scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset, which made some of the points we've been making but frustratingly missed
other key elements.
Here's what Reuters confirmed:
Banks and the Federal government are running mission-critical core systems on COBOL, and only a small number of older software
engineers have the expertise to keep the systems running . From the article:
In the United States, the financial sector, major corporations and parts of the federal government still largely rely on it
because it underpins powerful systems that were built in the 70s or 80s and never fully replaced
Experienced COBOL programmers can earn more than $100 an hour when they get called in to patch up glitches, rewrite coding
manuals or make new systems work with old.
For their customers such expenses pale in comparison with what it would cost to replace the old systems altogether, not to
mention the risks involved.
Here's what Reuters missed:
Why young coders are not learning COBOL . Why, in an era when IT grads find it hard to get entry-level jobs in the US, are young
programmers not learning COBOL as a guaranteed meal ticket? Basically, it's completely uncool and extremely tedious to work with
by modern standards. Given how narrowminded employers are, if you get good at COBOL, I woudl bet it's assumed you are only capable
of doing grunt coding and would never get into the circles to work on the fantasy of getting rich by developing a hip app.
I'm sure expert readers will flag other issues, but the huge shortcoming of COBOL is that there are no equivalent of editing programs.
Every line of code in a routine must be inspected and changed line by line.
How banks got in this mess in the first place. The original sin of software development is failure to document the code. In fairness,
the Reuters story does allude to the issue:
But COBOL veterans say it takes more than just knowing the language itself. COBOL-based systems vary widely and original programmers
rarely wrote handbooks, making trouble-shooting difficult for others.
What this does not make quite clear is that given the lack of documentation, it will always be cheaper and lower risk to have
someone who is familiar with the code baby it, best of all the guy who originally wrote it. And that means any time you bring someone
in, they are going to have to sort out not just the code that might be causing fits and starts, but the considerable interdependencies
that have developed over time. As the article notes:
"It is immensely complex," said [former chief executive of Barclays PLC Anthony] Jenkins, who now heads startup 10x Future
Technologies, which sells new IT infrastructure to banks. "Legacy systems from different generations are layered and often heavily
intertwined."
I had the derivatives trading firm O'Connor & Associates as a client in the early 1990s. It was widely recognized as being one
of the two best IT shops in all of Wall Street at the time. O'Connor was running the biggest private sector Unix network in the world
back then. And IT was seen as critical to the firm's success; half of O'Connor's expenses went to it.
Even with it being a huge expense, and the my client, the CIO, repeatedly telling his partners that documenting the code would
save 20% over the life of the software, his pleas fell on deaf ears. Even with the big commitment to building software, the trading
desk heads felt it was already taking too long to get their apps into production. Speed of deployment was more important to them
than cost or long-term considerations. 1 And if you saw this sort of behavior with a firm where software development was
a huge expense for partners who were spending their own money, it's not hard to see how managers in a firm where the developers were
much less important and management was fixated on short term earnings targets to blow off tradeoff like this entirely.
Picking up sales patter from vendors, Reuters is over-stating banks' ability to address this issue . Here is what Reuters would
have you believe:
The industry appears to be reaching an inflection point, though. In the United States, banks are slowly shifting toward newer
languages taking cue from overseas rivals who have already made the switch-over.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia, for instance, replaced its core banking platform in 2012 with the help of Accenture and software
company SAP SE. The job ultimately took five years and cost more than 1 billion Australian dollars ($749.9 million).
Accenture is also working with software vendor Temenos Group AG to help Swedish bank Nordea make a similar transition by 2020.
IBM is also setting itself up to profit from the changes, despite its defense of COBOL's relevance. It recently acquired EzSource,
a company that helps programmers figure out how old COBOL programs work.
The conundrum is the more new routines banks pile on top of legacy systems, the more difficult a transition becomes. So delay
only makes matters worse. Yet the incentives of everyone outside the IT areas is to hope they can ride it out and make the legacy
system time bomb their successor's problem.
If you read carefully, Commonwealth is the only success story so far. And it's vastly less complex than that of many US players.
First, it has roughly A$990 billion or $740 billion in assets now. While that makes it #46 in the world (and Nordea is of similar
size at #44 as of June 30, 2016), JP Morgan and Bank of America are three times larger. Second, and perhaps more important, they
are the product of more bank mergers. Commonwealth has acquired only four banks since the computer era. Third, many of the larger
banks are major capital markets players, meaning their transaction volume relative to their asset base and product complexit is also
vastly greater than for a Commonwealth. Finally, it is not impossible that as a government owned bank prior to 1990 that not being
profit driven, Commonwealth's software jockeys might have documented some of the COBOL, making a transition less fraught.
Add to that that the Commonwealth project was clearly a "big IT project". Anything over $500 million comfortably falls into that
category. The failure rate on big IT projects is over 50%; some experts estimate it at 80% (costly failures are disguised as well
as possible; some big IT projects going off the rails are terminated early).
Mind you, that is not to say that it is impossible to move off legacy platforms. The issue is the time and cost (as well as risk).
One reader, I believe Brooklyn Bridge, recounted a prototypical conversation with management in which it became clear that the cost
of a migration would be three times a behemoth bank's total profit for three years. That immediately shut down the manager's interest.
Estimates like that don't factor in the high odds of overruns. And even if it is too high for some banks by a factor of five,
that's still too big for most to stomach until they are forced to. So the question then becomes: can they whack off enough increments
of the problem to make it digestible from a cost and risk perspective? But the flip side is that the easier parts to isolate and
migrate are likely not to be the most urgent to address.
____ 1 The CIO had been the head index trader and had also help build O'Connor's FX derivatives trading business, so he was
well aware of the tradeoff between trading a new instrument sooner versus software life cycle costs. He was convinced his partners
were being short-sighted even over the near term and had some analyses to bolster that view. So this was the not empire-building
or special pleading. This was an effort at prudent management.
Accenture is also working with software vendor Temenos Group AG to help
and promptly splurted my coffee over my desk. "Help" is the last thing either of these two ne'redowells will be doing.
Apart from the problems ably explained in the above piece, I'm tempted to think industry PR and management gullibility to it
are the two biggest risks.
Heaps of IT upgrades have gone a bit wonky over here of late, Health care payroll, ATO, Centerlink, Census, all assisted by
private software vendors and consultants – after – drum roll .. PR management did a "efficiency" drive [by].
Of course after legacy systems [people] were retrenched or shown the door in making government more efficient MBA style,
some did hit the jack pot as consultants and made more that on the public dime . but the Gov balance sheet got a nice one time
blip.
disheveled . nice self licking icecream cone thingy and its still all gov fault . two'fer
It's the same in the UK as Clive knows and can add.
In the government, projects "helped" by Siemens, especially at the Home and Passport Offices, cost billions and were abandoned.
At my former employer, an eagle's nest, it was Deloittes. At my current employer, which has lost its passion to perform, it's
KPMG and EY helping.
What I have read / heard is that the external consultants often cost more and will take longer to do the work than internal
bidders. The banks and government(s) run an internal market and invite bids.
They keep writing books on how to avoid this sort of thing. Strangely enough, none of them ever tell CEOs or CIOs to pay people
decent wages, not treat them like crap and to train up new recruits now and again. And also fail to highlight that though you
might like to believe you can go into the streets in Mumbai, Manila or Shenzhen waving a dollar bill and have dozens of experienced,
skilled and loyal developers run to you like a cat smelling catnip, that may only be your wishful thinking.
Just wait 'til we get started trying to implement Brexit
Oh man, if you only had a look at the kind of graduates Infosys hires en masse and the state of graduate programmers coming
out of universities here in India you'd be amazed how we still haven't had massive hacks. And now the government, so confident
in the Indian IT industry's ability to make big IT systems is pushing for the universal ID system(aadhar) to be made mandatory
for even booking flight tickets!
So would you recommend graduates do learn COBOL to get good jobs there in the USA?
I'd pick something really obscure, like maybe MUMPS
- yes, incredibly niche but that's the point, you can corner a market. You might not get oodles of work but what you do get
you can charge the earth for. Getting real-world experience is tricky though.
Another alternative, a little more mainstream is assembler. But that is hideous. You deserve every penny if you can learn that
and be productive in it.
For a bit more on why Cobol is hard to use see Why We Hate Cobol
. To summarise, Cobol is barely removed from programming in assembler, i.e. at the lowest level of abstraction, with endless
details needing to be taken care of. It dates pack to the punched card era.
It is particularly hard for IT grads who have learned to code in Java or C# or any modern language to come to grips with, due
to the lack of features that are usually taken for granted. Those who try to are probably on their own due to a shortage of teachers/courses.
It's a language that's best mastered on the job as a junior in a company that still uses it, so it's hard to get it on your CV
before landing such a job.
There are potentially two types of career opportunities for those who invest the time to get up-to-speed on Cobol. The first
is maintenance and minor extension of legacy Cobol applications. The second and potentially more lucrative one is developing an
ability to understand exactly what a Cobol program does in order to craft a suitable replacement in a modern enterprise grade
language.
Well, COBOL's shortcomings are part technical and part "religious". After almost fifty years in software, and with experience
in many of the "modern enterprise grade languages", I would argue that the technical and business merits are poorly understood.
There is an enormous pressure in the industry to be on the "latest and greatest" language/platform/framework, etc. And under such
pressure to sell novelty, the strengths of older technologies are generally overlooked.
@Yves, I would be glad to share my viewpoint (biases, warts and all) at your convenience. I live nearby.
"It is particularly hard for IT grads who have learned to code in Java or C# or any modern language to come to grips with"
which tells you something about the quality of IT education these days, where "mastering" a language is more often more important
than actually understanding what goes on and how.
My old boss used to say – a good programmer can learn a new language and be productive in it in in space of weeks (and
this was at the time when Object Oriented was the new huge paradigm change). A bad programmer will write bad code in any language.
IMHO, your old boss is wrong about that. Precisely because OO languages are a huge paradigm change and require a programmer
to nearly abandon everything he/she knows about programming. Then get his brain around OOP patterns when designing a complex system.
Not so easy.
As proof, I put forth the 30% success rate for new large projects in the latter 90s done with OOP tech. Like they say, if it
was easy, everyone would be doing it.
More generally, on the subject of Cobol vs Java or C++/C#, in the heyday of OOPs rollout in the early 90s, corporate IT spent
record amounts on developing new systems. As news of the Y2K problem spread, they very badly wanted to replace old Cobol/mainframe
legacy systems. As things went along, many of those plans got rolled back due to perceived problems with viability, cost and trained
personnel.
Part of the reason was existing Cobol IT staff took a look at OOP, then at their huge pile of Cobol legacy code and their brains
melted down. I was around lots of them and they had all the symptoms of Snow Crash. [Neil Stephenson] I hope they got better.
It never occurred to me that the OOP-lite character of the newer "hipster" languages (Golang / Go or even plain old javascript)
are a response to OOP run amok.
In the university course I took, we were taught Algol-60. Then it turned out that the univ. had no budget for Algol compiles
for us. So we wrote our programs in Algol-60 for 'publication' and grading, and rewrote them in FORTRAN IV to run in a cheap bulk
FORTRAN execution system for results. Splendid way to push home Turing's point that all computing is the same. So when the job
needed COBOL, "Sure, bring it on."
My old boss used to say – a good programmer can learn a new language and be productive in it in in space of weeks (and this
was at the time when Object Oriented was the new huge paradigm change). A bad programmer will write bad code in any language.
Yes. Learning a new programming language is fairly easy but understanding existing patchwork code can be very hard indeed.
It just gets harder if you want to make reliable changes.
HR thinking, however, demands "credentials" and languages get chosen as such based on their simple labels. They are searchable
on L**kedIn!
A related limitation is the corporate aversion to spending any time or money on employee learning of either language or code.
There may not be anyone out there with all the skills needed but that will not stop managers from trying to hire them or, better
still, just outsourcing the whole mess.
Your boss was correct in my opinion - but also atypical. Most firms look for multi-years of experience in a language. They'll
toss your resume if you don't show you've used it extensively.
Even if a new coder spent the time to learn COBOL, if he wasn't using it on the job or in pretty significant projects he would
not be considered. And there aren't exactly many open source projects out there written in COBOL to prove one's competence. The
limiting factor is not whether you "know" COBOL, or whether you know how to learn it. The limiting factor is the actual knowledge
of the system, how it was implemented, and all the little details that never get written down no matter how good your documentation.
If your system is 30+ years old it has complexity hidden in every nook and cranny.
As for the language itself, COBOL is an ancient language from a much older paradigm than what students learn in school today.
Most students skip right past C, they don't learn structural programming. They expect to have extensive libraries of pre-written
routines available for reuse. And they expect to work in a modern IDE (development environment), a software package that makes
it much easier to write and debug code. COBOL doesn't have tools of this level.
When I was in the Air Force I was trained as a programmer. COBOL was one of the languages they "taught". I never used it, ever,
and wouldn't dream of trying it today. It's simply too niche. I would never recommend anyone learn COBOL in the hopes of getting
a job. Get the job first, and if it happens to include some COBOL get the expertise that way.
having seen the 'high level code' in C++, not sure what makes it 'modern'.its really an out growth of C, which is basically
the assembler language of Unix. which it self is no spring chicken. mostly what is called 'modern' is just the latest fad, has
the highest push from vendors. and sadly what we see in IT, is that the IT trade magazines are more into what they sell, that
what companies need (maybe because of advertising?)
as to why schools tend to teach these languages than others? mainly cause its hip. its also cheaper for the schools, as they
dont have much in the way of infrastructure to teach them ( kids bring their own computers). course teachers are as likely to
be influenced by the latest 'shinny;' thing as any one else
C++ shares most of the core C spec but that's it. [variables and scope, datatypes, functions sorta, math and logic operatives,
logic control statements] The reason you can read high level C++ is because it uses objects that hide the internal code and are
given names that describe their use which if done right makes the code somewhat readable, along with a short comment header, and
self documenting.
Then at high level most code is procedural and/or event driven, which makes it appear to function like C or any other procedural
language. Without the Goto statements and subroutines, because that functionality is now encapsulated within the C++ objects.
{which are a datatype that combines data structures and related functions that act on this data)
Well put. I was going to make this point. Note that the today's IT grads struggle with Cobol for the same reason that modern
airline pilots would struggle to build their own airplane. The industry has evolved and become much more specialized, and standard
'solved' problems have migrated into the core toolsets and become invisible to developers, who now work at a much higher level
of abstraction. So for example a programmer who learned using BASIC on a Commodore 64 probably knows all about graphics coding
by direct addressing of screen memory, which modern programmers would consider unnecessary at best and dangerous at worst. Not
to mention it's exhausting drudgery compared to working with modern toolsets.
The other reason more grads don't learn COBOL is because it's a sunset technology. This is true even if systems written in
COBOL are mission critical and not being replaced. As more and more COBOL programmers retire or die, banks will eventually reach
the point where they don't have enough skilled staff available to keep their existing systems running. If they are in a position
where they have to fix things anyway, for example due to a critical failure, they will be forced to resort to cross-training other
developers, at great expense and pain for all concerned, and with no guarantee of success. One or two of these experiences will
be enough to convince them that migration is necessary, whatever the cost (if their business survives them, which isn't a given
when it comes to critical failures involving out of date and poorly-understood technology). And while developers with COBOL skills
will be able to name their own price during those events, it's not likely to be a sustainable working environment in the longer
term.
It would take a significant critical mass of younger programmers deciding to learn COBOL to change this dynamic. One person
on their own isn't going to make any difference, and it's not career advice I would ever give to a young graduate looking to enter
IT.
I am an experienced developer who has worked with a lot of different languages, including some quite low level ones in my early
days. I don't know COBOL, but I am confident that I could learn it well enough to perform code archaeology on it given enough
time (although probably nowhere near as efficiently as someone who built a career on it). Whether I could be convinced to do so
is another question. If you paid me never-need-to-work-again money, then maybe. But nobody is ever going to do that unless it's
a crisis, and I'm not likely to sign up for a death march situation with my current family commitments.
"Experienced COBOL programmers can earn more than $100 an hour"
Then the people hiring are getting them dirt cheap. This is a lot closer to consulting than contracting–a very specialized
skill set and only a small set of people available. The rate should be $200-300/hour.
I wonder if it has something to do with the IRS rules that made that guy fly a plane into an IRS office? Because of the rules,
programmers aren't allowed to work as independent consultants. Since their employer/middleman takes a huge cut the pay they receive
is a lot lower. Coders with a security clearance make quite a bit but that requires an "in", getting the clearance in the first
place which most employers won't pay for.
you're right. I've seen it on cluckny databases in a clothing firm in NY State, a seed and grain distribution facility in Minnesota
and a bank in Minneapolis. They're horrible and Yves is right – documentation is completely ABSENT
No different than the failure of the public sector to maintain dams, bridges and highways. Basic civil engineering but our
business model never included maintenance nor replacement costs. That is because our business model is accounting fraud.
I grew up on Fortran, and Cobol isn't too different, just limited to 2 points past the decimal to the right. I feel so sorry
for these code jockies who can't handle a bit of drudgery, who can't do squat without a gigabyte routine library to invoke. Those
languages as scripting languages or report writers back in the old days.
Please hire another million Indian programmers they don't mind being poorly paid or the drudgery. Americans and Europeans are
so over-rated. Business always complains they can't hire the right people some job requires 2 PhDs and we can't pay more than
$30k, am I right? Business needs slaves, not employees.
This was a "new payroll" system for school teachers in NZ. It was an ongoing disaster. If something as simple (?) as paying
NZ teachers could turn into such a train-wreck, imagine what updating the software of the crooked banks could entail. I bet that
there are secret frauds hidden in the ancient software, like the rat mummies and cat skeletons that one finds when lifting the
floor of old houses.
"Novopay is a web-based payroll system for state and state integrated schools in New Zealand, processing the pay of 110,000
teaching and support staff at 2,457 schools .. From the outset, the system led to widespread problems with over 8,000 teachers
receiving the wrong pay and in some cases no pay at all; within a few months, 90% of schools were affected .."
"Many of the errors were described as 'bizarre'. One teacher was paid for 39 days, instead of 39 hours getting thousands of
dollars more than he should have. Another teacher was overpaid by $39,000. She returned the money immediately, but two months
later, had not been paid since. A relief teacher was paid for working at two different schools on the same day – one in Upper
Hutt and the other in Auckland. Ashburton College principal, Grant McMillan, said the 'most ludicrous' problem was when "Novopay
took $40,000 directly out of the school bank account to pay a number of teachers who had never worked at the college".
"but the huge shortcoming of COBOL is that there are no equivalent of editing programs. Every line of code in a routine must
be inspected and changed line by line"
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
If you mean that COBOL doesn't have the new flash IDEs that can do smart things with "syntactic sugar", then it really depends
on the demand. Smart IDEs can be written for pretty much any languages (smart IDEs work by operating on ASTs, which are part and
parcel of any compiler. The problem is more of what to do if you have an externalised functions etc, which is for example why
it took so long for those smart IDEs to work with C++ and its linking model). The question is whether it pays – and a lot of old
COBOL hands eschew anything except for vi (or equivalent) because coding should be done by REAL MEN.
On the general IT problem. There are three problems, which are sort of related but not.
The first problem is the interconnectedness of the systems. Especially for a large bank, it's not often clear where one system
ends and the other begins, what are the side-effects of running something (or not running), who exactly produces what outputs
and when etc. The complexity is more often at this level than cobol (or any other) line-by-line code.
The second problem is the IT personell you get. If you're unlucky, you get coding monkeys, who barely understand _any_ programming
language (there was time I didn't think people like that get hired. I now know better), and have no idea what analytical and algorithmic
thinking is. If you're lucky, you get a bunch of IT geeks, who can discuss the latest technology till cows come home, know the
intricate details of what a sequence point in C++ is and how it affects execution, but don't really care that much about the business.
Then you get some possibly even brilliant code, but often also get unnecessary technological artifacts and new technologies just
because they are fun – even though a much simpler solution would work just as well if not better. TBH, you can get this from the
other side too, someone who understands the business but doesn't know even basic language techniques, which generally means their
code works very well for the business, but is a nightmare to maintain (a typical population of this groups are front office quants).
If you are incredibily lucky, you get someone who understands the business and happens to know how to code well too. Unfortunately,
this is almost a mythical beast, especially since neitehr IT nor the business encourage people to understand each other.
Which is what gets me to the thirds point – politics of it. And that's, TBH, is why most projects fail. Because it's easier
to staff a project with 100 developers and then say all that could have been done was done, than get 10 smart people working on
it, but risk that if it fails you get told you haven't spent enough resources. "We are not spending enough money" is paradoxically
one of the "problems" I often see here, when the problem really is "we're not spending money smartly enough". Because in an organization
budget=power. I have yet to see an IT project that would have 100+ developers that would _really_ succeed (as opposed to succeed
by redefining what it was to deliver to what was actually delivered).
Oh, and last point, on the documentation. TBH, documentation of the code is superfluous if a) it's clear what business problem
is being solved b) has a good set of test cases c) the code is reasonably cleanly written (which tends to be the real problem).
Documenting code by anything else but example is in my experience just a costly exercise. Mind you, this is entirely different
from documenting how systems hang together and how their interfaces work.
On the last point, I have to tell you I in short succession happened to work not just with O'Connor, but about a year later,
with Bankers Trust, then regarded as the other top IT shop on Wall Street. Both CIOs would disagree with you vehemently on your
claim re documentation.
Yes, in 90s there was a great deal of emphasis on code documentation. The problem with that is that the requirements in real
world change really quick. Development techniques that worked for sending the man to the moon don't really work well on short-cycle
user driven developments.
90s was mostly the good old waterfall method (which was really based on the NASA techniques), but even as early as 2000s it
started to change a lot. Part of it come from the realization that the "building" metaphor that was the working approach for a
lot of that didn't really work for code.
When you're building a bridge, it's expensive, so you have to spend a lot of time with blueprints etc. When you're doing code,
documenting it in "normal" human world just adds a superfluous step. It's much more efficient to make sure your code is clean
and readable than writing extra documents that tell you what the code does _and_ have to be kept in sync all the time.
Moreover, bits like pretty pictures showing the code interaction, dependencies and sometimes even more can now be generated
automatically from the code, so again, it's more efficient to do that than to keep two different versions of what should be the
same truth.
With all due respect, O'Connor and Bankers Trust were recognized at top IT shops then PRECISELY because they were the best,
bar none, at "short cycle user driven developments." They were both cutting edge in derivatives because you had to knock out the
coding to put new complex derivatives into production.
Don't insinuate my clients didn't know what they were talking about. They were running more difficult coding environments than
you've ever dealt with even now. The pace of derivative innovation was torrid then and there hasn't been anything like it since
in finance. Ten O'Connor partners made $1 billion on the sale of their firm, and it was entirely based on the IT capabilities.
That was an unheard of number back then, 1993, particularly given the scale of the firm (one office in Chicago, about 250 employees).
I can't talk about how good/bad your clients were except for generic statements – and the above were generic statements that
in 90s MOST companies used waterfall.
At the same time please do not talk about what programming environments I was in, because you don't know. That's assuming it's
even possible to compare coding environments – because quant libraries that first and foremost concentrate on processing data
(and I don't even know it's what was the majority of your clients code) is a very very different beast from extremely UI complex
but computationally trivial project, or something that has both trivial UI and computation but is very database heavy etc. etc.
I don't know what specific techniques your clients used. But the fact they WANTED to have more documentation doesn't mean that
having more documentation would ACTUALLY be useful.
With all due respect, I've spent the first half of 00s talking to some of the top IT development methodologists of the time,
from the Gang Of Four people to Agile Manifesto chaps, and practicing/leading/implementing SW development methodology across a
number of different industries (anything from "pure" waterfall to variants of it to XP).
The general agreement across the industry was (and I believe still is) that documenting _THE CODE_ (outside of the code) was
waste of time (actually it was ranging from any design doc to various levels of design doc, depending on who you were talking
to).
Again, I put emphasis on the code – that is not the same as say having a good whitepaper telling you how the model you're implementing
works, or what the hell the users actually want – i.e. capturing the requirements.
As an aside – implementation of new derivative payoffs can be actually done in a fairly trivial way, depending on how exactly
you model them in the code. I've wrote an extensive library that did it, whose whole purpose was to deal with new products and
allow them to be incubated quickly and effectively – and that most likely involved doing things that no-one at BT/O'Conner even
looked at in early 1990s (because XVA wasn't even gleam in anyone's eye at that time).
Well at my TBTF, where incomprehensible chaos rules, the only thing - and I do mean the only thing - that keeps major disasters
averted (perhaps "ameliorated" is putting it better) is where some of the key systems are documented. Most of the core back end
is copiously and reasonably well documented and as such can survive a lot of mistreatment at the hands of the current outsourcer
de jour.
But some "lower priority" applications are either poorly documented or not documented at all. And a "low priority" application
is only "low priority" until it happens to sit on the critical path. Even now I have half of Bangalore (it seems so, at any rate)
sitting there trying to reverse engineer some sparsely documented application - although I suspect there was documentation, it
just got "lost" in a succession of handovers - desperate in their attempts to figure out what the application does and how it
does it. You can hear the fear in their voices, it is scary stuff, given how crappy-little-VB6-pile-of-rubbish is now the only
way to manage a key business process where there are no useable comments in the code and no other application documentation, you
are totally, totally screwed.
It seems like you guys are talking past each other to some degree. I get the sense that vlade is talking about commenting code,
and dismissing the idea of code comments that don't live with the code. Yves' former colleagues are probably referring to higher
level specifications that describe the functionality, requirements, inputs, and outputs of the various software modules in the
system.
If this is the case, then you're both right. Even comments in the code can tend to get out of date due to application of bug fixes,
and other reasons for 'drift' in the code, unless the comments are rigorously maintained along wth the code. Were the code-level
descriptions maintained somewhere else, that would be much more difficult and less useful. On the other hand the higher-level
specifications are pretty essential for using, testing, and maintaining the software, and would sure be useful for someone trying
to replace all or parts of the system.
In my experience you need a combination of both. There is simply no substitute for a brief line in some ghastly nested if/then
procedure that says "this section catches host offline exceptions if the transaction times out and calls the last incremental
earmarked funds as a fallback" or what-have-you.
That sort of thing can save weeks of analysis. It can stop an outage from escalating from a few minutes to hours or
even days.
There is some problem-solving/catastrophe-avoiding discussion about setting up a new bank with a clean, updated (i.e., this
millennium) IT approach and then merging the old bank into that and decommissioning that old one. Many questions arise about applicable
software both in-house and at all those vendor shops that would need some inter-connectivity.
Legacy systems lurk all over the economy, from banks to utilities to government and education. The O'Connor CIO advice relating
to life-cycle costing was probably unheard in many places besides
The Street.
building them from scratch is usually the most likely to be a failure as to many in both IT and business only know parts of
the needs. and if a company cant implement a vendor supplied package to do the work, what makes us think they can do it from scratch
I did learn COBOL when I was at the University more than three decades ago, and at that time it was already decidedly "uncool".
The course, given by an old-timer, was great though. I programmed in COBOL in the beginnings of my professional life (MIS applications,
not banking), so I can provide a slightly different take on some of those issues.
As far as the language itself is concerned, disregard those comments about it being like "assembly". COBOL already showed its
age in the 1980s, but though superannuated it is a high-level language geared at dealing with database records, money amounts
(calculations with controlled accuracy), and reports. For that kind of job, it was not that bad.
The huge shortcoming of COBOL is that there are no equivalent of editing programs.
While in the old times a simple text editor was the main tool for programming in that language, modern integrated, interactive
development environments for COBOL have been available for quite a while - just as there are for Java, C++ or C#.
And that is a bit of an issue. For, already in my times, a lot, possibly most COBOL was not programmed manually, but generated
automatically - typically from pseudo-COBOL annotations or functional extensions inside the code. Want to access a database (say
Oracle, DB2, Ingres) from COBOL, or generate a user interface (for 3270 or VT220 terminals in those days), or perform some networking?
There were extensions and code generators for that. Nowadays you will also find coding utilities to manipulate XML or interface
with routines in other programming languages. All introduce deviations and extensions from the COBOL norm.
If, tomorrow, I wanted to apply for a job at one of those financial institutions battling with legacy software, my rusty COBOL
programming skills would not be the main problem, but my lack of knowledge of the entire development environment. That
would mean knowing those additional code generators, development environments, extra COBOL-geared database/UI/networking/reporting
modules. In an IBM mainframe environment, this would probably mean knowing things like REXX, IMS or DB2, CICS, etc (my background
is DEC VMS and related software, not IBM stuff).
So those firms are not holding dear onto just COBOL programmers - they are desperately hoarding people who know their way around
in mainframe programming environments for which training (in Universities) basically stopped in the early 1990s.
Furthermore, I suspect that some of those code generators/interfaces might themselves be decaying legacy systems whose original
developers went out of business or have been slowly withdrawing from their maintenance. Correcting or adjusting manually the COBOL
code generated by such tools in the absence of vendor support is lots of fun (I had to do something like that once, but it actually
went smoothly).
Original programmers rarely wrote handbooks
My experience is that proper documentation has a good chance to be rigorously enforced when the software being developed is
itself a commercial product to be delivered to outside parties. Then, handbooks, reference manuals and even code documentation
become actual deliverables that are part of the product sold, and whose production is planned and budgeted for in software development
programmes.
I presume it is difficult to ensure that effort and resources be devoted to document internal software because these are purely
cost centers - not profit centers (or at least, do not appear as such directly).
That is not to say that it is impossible to move off legacy platforms
So, we knew that banks were too big to fail, too big to jail, and are still too big to bail. Are their software problems too
big to nail?
actually suspect banks like the rest of business dont really care about their systems, till they are down, as they will find
the latest offshore company to do it cheaper.
Why then have I been told that reviewing code for Y2K had to be done line by line?
I said documentation, not handbooks. And you are assuming banks hired third parties to do their development. Buying software
packages and customizing them, as well as greater use of third party vendors, became a common practice only as of the 1990s.
I know it will screw me and people I care about, and "throw the world economy into chaos," but who effing cares (hint: not
me) if the code pile reaches past the limits of its angle of repose, and slumps into some chaotic non-form?
Maybe a sentiment that gets me some abuse, but hey, is it not the gravamen of the story here that dysfunction and then collapse
are very possible, maybe even likely?
And where are the tools to re-build this Tower of Babel, symbol of arrogant pride? Maybe G_D has once again, per the Biblical
story, confounded the tongues of men (and women) to collapse their edifices and reduce them to working the dirt (what's left of
it after centuries of agricultural looting and the current motions toward temperature-driven uninhabitability.)
My first job out of uni, I was trained as a MVS/COBOL programmer. After successfully completing the 11-week pass/fire course,
I showed up to my 1st work assignment where my boss said to me, "Here's your UNIX terminal."
;-) – COBOL didn't strike me as difficult, just arcane and verbose. Converting to SAP is a costly nightmare. That caused to
me to leave a job once had no desire to deal with SAP/ABAP. I'm surprised no one has come up with an acceptable next-gen thing
. I remember years ago seeing an ad for
Object-Oriented-COBOL in
an IT magazine and I almost pissed myself laughing. On the serious side, if it's still that powerful and well represented in Banking,
perhaps someone should look into an upgraded version of the language/concepts and build something easy to lift and shift COBOL++?
This sounds like an opportunity for a worker's coop, to train their workers in COBOL and to get back at these banks by REALLY
exploiting them good and hard.
so is this why no one is willing to advocate regulating derivatives in an accountable way? i almost can't believe this stuff.
i can't believe that we are functioning at all, financially. 80% of IT projects fail? and if legacy platforms are replaced at
great time and expense, years and trillions, what guarantee is there that the new platform will not spin out just as incomprehensibly
as COBOL based software evolved, with simplistic patches of other software lost in translation? And maybe many times faster. Did
Tuttle do this? I think we need new sophisticated hardware, something even Tuttle can't mess with.
I think it is only 80% of 'large' IT projects fail. I think it says more about the lack of scalability of large software projects,
or our (in-) ability to deal with exponential complexity growth
Looks like there are more than a few current NYC jobs at Accenture, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America for
programmers who code in COBOL.
"Sure, it's lovely that unemployment in Seattle dips under
3%. But an attempt to tie that drop in the unemployment rate
to the minimum wage isn't going to work. For we can as easily
note that the unemployment rate has dropped everywhere in the
US over this same time period and the minimum wage hasn't
risen everywhere over that time period. We've not even got a
consistent correlation between minimum wages and unemployment
that is.mWhat we've actually got to do is try to work out
some method of what would have happened in Seattle from all
of the effects of everything else other than the minimum
wage, then compare it to what did happen with the minimum
wage. The difference between these two will be the effect of
the minimum wage rise. Seattle City Council know this, which
is why they asked the University of Washington to run exactly
such a study."
Probably automated 200. In every case, displacing 3/4 of the
workers and increasing production 40% while greatly improving
quality. Exact same can be said for larger scaled such as
automobile mfg, ...
The convergence of offshoring and
automation in such a short time frame meant that instead of a
gradual transformation that might have allowed for more
evolutionary economic thinking, American workers got
gobsmacked. The aftermath includes the wage disparity, opiate
epidemic, Trump, ...
This transition is of the scale of the industrial
revolution with climate change thrown. This is just the
beginning of great social and economic turmoil. None of the
stuff that evolved specific the industrial revolution
applies.
No it was policy driven by politics. They increased profits
at the expense of workers and the middle class. The New
Democrats played along with Wall Street.
"Perhaps more important, the US and Mexico aren't just
exchanging finished goods. Rather, much of their bilateral
trade occurs within supply chains, with companies in each
country adding value at different points in the production
process. The US and Mexico are not just trading goods with
each other; they are producing goods with each other."
One also looks in vain for a mention of the devastation of
the small farm corn business in Mexico, which depended on
native corn varieties but could not compete with the flood of
market rate subsidized US production.
True - however, the incentive to push drugs for local dealers
and US based cartels would cease to exist if these drugs were
legal and if the profit margin was taxed away. Nobody
enslaves their neighbor, friend or anyone else if there is no
money in it. We did this effectively with alcohol (margins
are around 3-5% except for the craft low volume guys) and
should do the same with other drugs. It turns out that
junkies can respond to treatment if it isn't trade addiction
for addiction, and addicted people can function if they
aren't cut off or forced to constantly engage in seeking more
product.
I missed that. Perhaps the deal is to give up dispersed gains
from trade to allow indigenous farmers to avoid early death.
I can't remember whether Ricardo factored in death...
You would think that a former chair of the US President's
Council of Economic Advisers could make a better case for
NAFTA...by giving examples of how the deal improved the lives
of somebody or other. But she can't.
Instead, Tyson can
only talk about how great the deal was for cross border
supply chains...as if that was the goal of economic policy
(which it probably is.)
With people like this advising Democrats, they will surely
continue to lose, which is apparently their goal.
Brad Delong- "If the government is
properly fulfilling its duty to prevent a demand-shortfall depression, technological progress in
a market economy need not impoverish unskilled workers."
And- "Our market economy should promote, rather than undermine, societal goals that correspond to
our values and morals."
And- "First, we need to make sure that governments carry out their proper macroeconomic role, by
maintaining a stable, low-unemployment economy so that markets can function properly."
And- "Second, we need to redistribute wealth to maintain a proper distribution of income."
He is real good when he sounds like a semi-socialist capitalist. In my opinion. In any event, I agree
with him here.
Maybe NAFTA and China would have
been good for workers if Brad could have got the government to "carry out their proper macroeconomic
role, by maintaining a stable, low unemployment economy" and to "redistribute wealth to maintain
a proper distribution of income".
Unfortunately, something went wrong with that plan.
Republicans is what went wrong.
They were all about the globalization and the opportunity to make money in China - but they
were unwilling to tax or to engage in redistribution. It isn't like this is hard to figure
out - it is their platform.
Robert Atkinson Pushes Pro-Rich Protectionist Agenda in
the Washington Post
The Washington Post is always open to plans for taking
money from ordinary workers and giving it to the rich. For
this reason it was not surprising to see a piece * by Robert
Atkinson, the head of the industry funded Information
Technology and Innovation Foundation, advocating for more
protectionism in the form of stronger and longer patent and
copyright monopolies.
These monopolies, legacies from the medieval guild system,
can raise the price of the protected items by one or two
orders of magnitudes making them equivalent to tariffs of
several hundred or several thousand percent. They are
especially important in the case of prescription drugs.
Life-saving drugs that would sell for $200 or $300 in a
free market can sell for tens or even hundreds of thousands
of dollars due to patent protection. The country will spend
over $440 billion this year for drugs that would likely sell
for less than $80 billion in a free market. The strengthening
of these protections is an important cause of the upward
redistribution of the last four decades. The difference comes
to more than $2,700 a year for an average family. (This is
discussed in "Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the
Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer," **
where I also lay out alternative mechanisms for financing
innovation and creative work.)
Atkinson makes this argument in the context of the U.S.
relationship with China. He also is explicitly prepared to
have ordinary workers pay the price for this protectionism.
He warns that not following his recommendation for a new
approach to dealing with China, including forcing them to
impose more protection for U.S. patents and copyrights, would
lead to a lower valued dollar.
Of course a lower valued dollar will make U.S. goods and
services more competitive internationally. That would mean a
smaller trade deficit as we sell more manufactured goods
elsewhere in the world and buy fewer imported goods in the
United States. This could increase manufacturing employment
by 1-2 million, putting upward pressure on the wages of
non-college educated workers.
In short, not following Atkinson's path is likely to mean
more money for less-educated workers, less money for the
rich, and more overall growth, as the economy benefits from
the lessening of protectionist barriers.
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern
Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer
By Dean Baker
The Old Technology and Inequality Scam: The Story of
Patents and Copyrights
One of the amazing lines often repeated by people in
policy debates is that, as a result of technology, we are
seeing income redistributed from people who work for a living
to the people who own the technology. While the
redistribution part of the story may be mostly true, the
problem is that the technology does not determine who "owns"
the technology. The people who write the laws determine who
owns the technology.
Specifically, patents and copyrights give their holders
monopolies on technology or creative work for their duration.
If we are concerned that money is going from ordinary workers
to people who hold patents and copyrights, then one policy we
may want to consider is shortening and weakening these
monopolies. But policy has gone sharply in the opposite
direction over the last four decades, as a wide variety of
measures have been put into law that make these protections
longer and stronger. Thus, the redistribution from people who
work to people who own the technology should not be
surprising - that was the purpose of the policy.
If stronger rules on patents and copyrights produced
economic dividends in the form of more innovation and more
creative output, then this upward redistribution might be
justified. But the evidence doesn't indicate there has been
any noticeable growth dividend associated with this upward
redistribution. In fact, stronger patent protection seems to
be associated with slower growth.
Before directly considering the case, it is worth thinking
for a minute about what the world might look like if we had
alternative mechanisms to patents and copyrights, so that the
items now subject to these monopolies could be sold in a free
market just like paper cups and shovels.
The biggest impact would be in prescription drugs. The
breakthrough drugs for cancer, hepatitis C, and other
diseases, which now sell for tens or hundreds of thousands of
dollars annually, would instead sell for a few hundred
dollars. No one would have to struggle to get their insurer
to pay for drugs or scrape together the money from friends
and family. Almost every drug would be well within an
affordable price range for a middle-class family, and
covering the cost for poorer families could be easily managed
by governments and aid agencies.
The same would be the case with various medical tests and
treatments. Doctors would not have to struggle with a
decision about whether to prescribe an expensive scan, which
might be the best way to detect a cancerous growth or other
health issue, or to rely on cheaper but less reliable
technology. In the absence of patent protection even the most
cutting edge scans would be reasonably priced.
Health care is not the only area that would be transformed
by a free market in technology and creative work. Imagine
that all the textbooks needed by college students could be
downloaded at no cost over the web and printed out for the
price of the paper. Suppose that a vast amount of new books,
recorded music, and movies was freely available on the web.
People or companies who create and innovate deserve to be
compensated, but there is little reason to believe that the
current system of patent and copyright monopolies is the best
way to support their work. It's not surprising that the
people who benefit from the current system are reluctant to
have the efficiency of patents and copyrights become a topic
for public debate, but those who are serious about inequality
have no choice. These forms of property claims have been
important drivers of inequality in the last four decades.
The explicit assumption behind the steps over the last
four decades to increase the strength and duration of patent
and copyright protection is that the higher prices resulting
from increased protection will be more than offset by an
increased incentive for innovation and creative work. Patent
and copyright protection should be understood as being like
very large tariffs. These protections can often the raise the
price of protected items by several multiples of the free
market price, making them comparable to tariffs of several
hundred or even several thousand percent. The resulting
economic distortions are comparable to what they would be if
we imposed tariffs of this magnitude.
The justification for granting these monopoly protections
is that the increased innovation and creative work that is
produced as a result of these incentives exceeds the economic
costs from patent and copyright monopolies. However, there is
remarkably little evidence to support this assumption. While
the cost of patent and copyright protection in higher prices
is apparent, even if not well-measured, there is little
evidence of a substantial payoff in the form of a more rapid
pace of innovation or more and better creative work....
This is from Jamie Dimon's letter to stockholders:
"If the work participation rate for this group [men ages
25-54] went back to just 93% – the current average for the
other developed nations – approximately 10 million more
people would be working in the United States. Some other
highly disturbing facts include: Fifty-seven percent of these
non-working males are on disability"
I don't know where he got the statistic from, but if it is
true it is potent evidence that the main factor behind the 60
year long decline in prime age labor force participation by
men is an increase in those on disability, probably due to
both the expansion of the program, and better longevity and
diagnostics -- and probably also tied in to opiate addiction
as well.
So does Jamie sitting on his mountain of other people's money
have some magic solution that will get this EPOP back to 93%?
I guess if we all bank at JPMorganChase, all will be fine?
C'mon Jamie.
There has been a bit of a discussion on this - most of which
I sort of found unconvincing. Sorry but I am not the expert
on this one. And I doubt Jamie Dimon is not either.
"This is another common explanation for the drop in male
participation. But again it doesn't explain more than a
fraction of the phenomenon.
There's not much doubt that Social Security Disability
Insurance takes people out of the workforce, often by
inelegant design. In order to qualify for disability
payments, people typically have to prove that they cannot
work full-time. SSDI critics say this policy sidelines many
people who might otherwise be able to contribute to the
economy.
But how many people does SSDI really remove? From 1967 to
2014, the share of prime-age men getting disability insurance
rose from 1 percent to 3 percent. There is little chance that
this increase is entirely the result of several million
fraudulent attempts to get money without working. But even if
it were, SSDI would still only explain about one-quarter of
the decline in the male participation rate over that time.
There are many good reasons to reform disability insurance.
But it's not the singular driving force behind the decline of
working men."
What do you make of the DeLong link? Why do you avoid discussing it?
"...
The lesson from history is not that the robots should be stopped; it is that we will need to
confront the social-engineering and political problem of maintaining a fair balance of relative
incomes across society. Toward that end, our task becomes threefold.
First, we need to make sure that governments carry out their proper macroeconomic role,
by maintaining a stable, low-unemployment economy so that markets can function properly. Second,
we need to redistribute wealth to maintain a proper distribution of income. Our market economy
should promote, rather than undermine, societal goals that correspond to our values and morals.
Finally, workers must be educated and trained to use increasingly high-tech tools (especially
in labor-intensive industries), so that they can make useful things for which there is still
demand.
Sounding the alarm about "artificial intelligence taking American jobs" does nothing to
bring such policies about. Mnuchin is right: the rise of the robots should not be on a treasury
secretary's radar."
Except that Germany and Japan have retained a larger share of workers in manufacturing, despite
more automation. Germany has also retained much more of its manufacturing base than the US
has. The evidence really does point to the role of outsourcing in the US compared with others.
I got an email of some tale that Adidas would start manufacturing in Germany as opposed to
China. Not with German workers but with robots. The author claimed the robots would cost only
$5.50 per hour as opposed to $11 an hour for the Chinese workers. Of course Chinese apparel
workers do not get anywhere close to $11 an hour and the author was not exactly a credible
source.
"The new "Speedfactory" in the southern town of Ansbach near its Bavarian headquarters will
start production in the first half of 2016 of a robot-made running shoe that combines a machine-knitted
upper and springy "Boost" sole made from a bubble-filled polyurethane foam developed by BASF."
Interesting. I thought that "keds" production was already fully automated. Bright colors
are probably the main attraction. But Adidas commands premium price...
Machine-knitted upper is the key -- robots, even sophisticated one, put additional demands
on precision of the parts to be assembled. That's also probably why monolithic molded sole
is chosen. Kind of 3-D printing of shoes.
Robots do not "feel" the nuances of the technological process like humans do.
While I agree that Chinese workers don't get $11 - frequently employee costs are accounted
at a loaded rate (including all benefits - in China would include capital cost of dormitories,
food, security staff, benefits and taxes). I am guessing that a $2-3 an hour wage would result
in an $11 fully loaded rate under those circumstances. Those other costs are not required with
robuts.
I agree with you. The center-left want to exculpate globalization and outsourcing, or free
them from blame, by providing another explanation: technology and robots. They're not just
arguing with Trump.
Brad Setser:
"I suspect the politics around trade would be a bit different in the U.S. if the goods-exporting
sector had grown in parallel with imports.
That is one key difference between the U.S. and Germany. Manufacturing jobs fell during
reunification-and Germany went through a difficult adjustment in the early 2000s. But over
the last ten years the number of jobs in Germany's export sector grew, keeping the number of
people employed in manufacturing roughly constant over the last ten years even with rising
productivity. Part of the "trade" adjustment was a shift from import-competing to exporting
sectors, not just a shift out of the goods producing tradables sector. Of course, not everyone
can run a German sized surplus in manufactures-but it seems likely the low U.S. share of manufacturing
employment (relative to Germany and Japan) is in part a function of the size and persistence
of the U.S. trade deficit in manufactures. (It is also in part a function of the fact that
the U.S. no longer needs to trade manufactures for imported energy on any significant scale;
the U.S. has more jobs in oil and gas production, for example, than Germany or Japan)."
Probably automated 200. In every case, displacing 3/4 of the workers and increasing production
40% while greatly improving quality. Exact same can be said for larger scaled such as automobile
mfg, ...
The convergence of offshoring and automation in such a short time frame meant that instead
of a gradual transformation that might have allowed for more evolutionary economic thinking,
American workers got gobsmacked. The aftermath includes the wage disparity, opiate epidemic,
Trump, ...
This transition is of the scale of the industrial revolution with climate change thrown. This
is just the beginning of great social and economic turmoil. None of the stuff that evolved
specific the industrial revolution applies.
No it was policy driven by politics. They increased profits at the expense of workers and the
middle class. The New Democrats played along with Wall Street.
APR 3, 2017
Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Problems
by J. Bradford DeLong
BERKELEY – Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers
recently took exception to current US Treasury Secretary
Steve Mnuchin's views on "artificial intelligence" (AI) and
related topics. The difference between the two seems to be,
more than anything else, a matter of priorities and emphasis.
Mnuchin takes a narrow approach. He thinks that the
problem of particular technologies called "artificial
intelligence taking over American jobs" lies "far in the
future." And he seems to question the high stock-market
valuations for "unicorns" – companies valued at or above $1
billion that have no record of producing revenues that would
justify their supposed worth and no clear plan to do so.
Summers takes a broader view. He looks at the "impact of
technology on jobs" generally, and considers the stock-market
valuation for highly profitable technology companies such as
Google and Apple to be more than fair.
I think that Summers is right about the optics of
Mnuchin's statements. A US treasury secretary should not
answer questions narrowly, because people will extrapolate
broader conclusions even from limited answers. The impact of
information technology on employment is undoubtedly a major
issue, but it is also not in society's interest to discourage
investment in high-tech companies.
On the other hand, I sympathize with Mnuchin's effort to
warn non-experts against routinely investing in castles in
the sky. Although great technologies are worth the investment
from a societal point of view, it is not so easy for a
company to achieve sustained profitability. Presumably, a
treasury secretary already has enough on his plate to have to
worry about the rise of the machines.
In fact, it is profoundly unhelpful to stoke fears about
robots, and to frame the issue as "artificial intelligence
taking American jobs." There are far more constructive areas
for policymakers to direct their focus. If the government is
properly fulfilling its duty to prevent a demand-shortfall
depression, technological progress in a market economy need
not impoverish unskilled workers.
This is especially true when value is derived from the
work of human hands, or the work of things that human hands
have made, rather than from scarce natural resources, as in
the Middle Ages. Karl Marx was one of the smartest and most
dedicated theorists on this topic, and even he could not
consistently show that technological progress necessarily
impoverishes unskilled workers.
Technological innovations make whatever is produced
primarily by machines more useful, albeit with relatively
fewer contributions from unskilled labor. But that by itself
does not impoverish anyone. To do that, technological
advances also have to make whatever is produced primarily by
unskilled workers less useful. But this is rarely the case,
because there is nothing keeping the relatively cheap
machines used by unskilled workers in labor-intensive
occupations from becoming more powerful. With more advanced
tools, these workers can then produce more useful things.
Historically, there are relatively few cases in which
technological progress, occurring within the context of a
market economy, has directly impoverished unskilled workers.
In these instances, machines caused the value of a good that
was produced in a labor-intensive sector to fall sharply, by
increasing the production of that good so much as to satisfy
all potential consumers.
The canonical example of this phenomenon is textiles in
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century India and Britain. New
machines made the exact same products that handloom weavers
had been making, but they did so on a massive scale. Owing to
limited demand, consumers were no longer willing to pay for
what handloom weavers were producing. The value of wares
produced by this form of unskilled labor plummeted, but the
prices of commodities that unskilled laborers bought did not.
The lesson from history is not that the robots should be
stopped; it is that we will need to confront the
social-engineering and political problem of maintaining a
fair balance of relative incomes across society. Toward that
end, our task becomes threefold.
First, we need to make sure that governments carry out
their proper macroeconomic role, by maintaining a stable,
low-unemployment economy so that markets can function
properly. Second, we need to redistribute wealth to maintain
a proper distribution of income. Our market economy should
promote, rather than undermine, societal goals that
correspond to our values and morals. Finally, workers must be
educated and trained to use increasingly high-tech tools
(especially in labor-intensive industries), so that they can
make useful things for which there is still demand.
Sounding the alarm about "artificial intelligence taking
American jobs" does nothing to bring such policies about.
Mnuchin is right: the rise of the robots should not be on a
treasury secretary's radar.
The Global Rise of Corporate Saving
By Peter Chen, Loukas Karabarbounis, and Brent Neiman
Abstract
The sectoral composition of global saving changed
dramatically during the last three decades. Whereas in the
early 1980s most of global investment was funded by household
saving, nowadays nearly two-thirds of global investment is
funded by corporate saving. This shift in the sectoral
composition of saving was not accompanied by changes in the
sectoral composition of investment, implying an improvement
in the corporate net lending position. We characterize the
behavior of corporate saving using both national income
accounts and firm-level data and clarify its relationship
with the global decline in labor share, the accumulation of
corporate cash stocks, and the greater propensity for equity
buybacks. We develop a general equilibrium model with product
and capital market imperfections to explore quantitatively
the determination of the flow of funds across sectors.
Changes including declines in the real interest rate, the
price of investment, and corporate income taxes generate
increases in corporate profits and shifts in the supply of
sectoral saving that are of similar magnitude to those
observed in the data.
Are Profits Hurting Capitalism?
By YVES SMITH and ROB PARENTEAU
A STREAM of disheartening economic news last week,
including flagging consumer confidence and meager
private-sector job growth, is leading experts to worry that
the recession is coming back. At the same time, many
policymakers, particularly in Europe, are slashing government
budgets in an effort to lower debt levels and thereby restore
investor confidence, reduce interest rates and promote
growth.
There is an unrecognized problem with this approach:
Reductions in deficits have implications for the private
sector. Higher taxes draw cash from households and
businesses, while lower government expenditures withhold
money from the economy. Making matters worse, businesses are
already plowing fewer profits back into their own
enterprises.
Over the past decade and a half, corporations have been
saving more and investing less in their own businesses. A
2005 report from JPMorgan Research noted with concern that,
since 2002, American corporations on average ran a net
financial surplus of 1.7 percent of the gross domestic
product - a drastic change from the previous 40 years, when
they had maintained an average deficit of 1.2 percent of
G.D.P. More recent studies have indicated that companies in
Europe, Japan and China are also running unprecedented
surpluses.
The reason for all this saving in the United States is
that public companies have become obsessed with quarterly
earnings. To show short-term profits, they avoid investing in
future growth. To develop new products, buy new equipment or
expand geographically, an enterprise has to spend money - on
marketing research, product design, prototype development,
legal expenses associated with patents, lining up contractors
and so on.
Rather than incur such expenses, companies increasingly
prefer to pay their executives exorbitant bonuses, or issue
special dividends to shareholders, or engage in purely
financial speculation. But this means they also short-circuit
a major driver of economic growth.
Some may argue that businesses aren't investing in growth
because the prospects for success are so poor, but American
corporate profits are nearly all the way back to their peak,
right before the global financial crisis took hold.
Another problem for the economy is that, once the crisis
began, families and individuals started tightening their
belts, bolstering their bank accounts or trying to pay down
borrowings (another form of saving).
If households and corporations are trying to save more of
their income and spend less, then it is up to the other two
sectors of the economy - the government and the import-export
sector - to spend more and save less to keep the economy
humming. In other words, there needs to be a large trade
surplus, a large government deficit or some combination of
the two. This isn't a matter of economic theory; it's based
in simple accounting.
What if a government instead embarks on an austerity
program? Income growth will stall, and household wages and
business profits may fall....
On the one hand, the VoxEU article does a fine job of
assembling long-term data on a global basis. It demonstrates
that the corporate savings glut is long standing and that is
has been accompanied by a decline in personal savings.
However, it fails to depict what an unnatural state of
affairs this is. The corporate sector as a whole in
non-recessionary times ought to be net spending, as in
borrowing and investing in growth. As a market-savvy buddy
put it, "If a company isn't investing in the business of its
business, why should I?" I attributed the corporate savings
trend in the US as a result of the fixation of quarterly
earnings, which sources such as McKinsey partners with a
broad view of the firms' projects were telling me was killing
investment (any investment will have an income statement
impact too, such as planning, marketing, design, and start up
expenses). This post, by contrast, treats this development as
lacking in any agency. Labor share of GDP dropped and savings
rose. They attribute that to lower interest rates over time.
They again fail to see that as the result of power dynamics
and political choices....
Donald Trump's election as president should have reminded liberals that Americans want more than
money from their work. They responded to Trump's promise of jobs more than to Hillary Clinton's promise
of government benefits because in addition to money, people also need dignity, a sense of self-reliance
and respect within their community. For centuries, jobs have provided all of those.
To say that work is disappearing would be an exaggeration. But despite the low unemployment rate,
fewer Americans have jobs than in years past:
[chart]
This new class of non-workers may be able to survive on the government dole, the charity of friends
and family or via black-market activities like drug sales. But they've probably lost some of the
dignity and respect that used to come with working for a living. Falling employment has been linked
to declining marriage rates, reduced happiness and opiate abuse. Some economists even blame disappearing
jobs for the recent rise in mortality rates afflicting white Americans.
What's more, the longer people stay out of the labor force, the more trouble they will have getting
back into it. They lose work ethic, skills and connections, and employers become suspicious of the
large gaps in the resumes. Economists Brad DeLong and Larry Summers have shown that this so-called
labor-market hysteresis can have potentially large, long-lasting negative effects on the economy.
When the economy is in recession, the best approach is probably a combination of fiscal and monetary
stimulus. But when the labor-force dropout problem is chronic, as it is now, a different kind of
policy may be needed -- a government-job guarantee.
The U.S. has used an approach like this before. In 1935, the administration of President Franklin
Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration, which employed millions of American men,
mostly in public-works projects. WPA employees received hourly wages similar to other unskilled workers
in the surrounding area. Most of them built infrastructure and buildings, but a few were paid to
make art and write books. The total cost of the program was high -- $1.3 billion a year, or about
1.7 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. An equivalent expenditure now would be a little more
than $300 billion, or about half of federal defense spending. But the popularity of the program is
hard to deny, given Roosevelt's resounding victory in his reelection bid in 1936.
The idea of a new work program isn't a new one -- economists on all sides of the political spectrum
have been kicking it around for years now. It has received support from Stephanie Kelton, an adviser
to the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, and from Kevin Hassett, who is reportedly Trump's pick
to lead the Council of Economic Advisers. Jeff Spross has an excellent article in Democracy exploring
the idea in depth.
William Darity of Duke University has been a particularly avid promoter of a job guarantee. He
describes it thus:
Any American 18 years or older would be able to find work through a federally funded public service
employment program -- a "National Investment Employment Corps." Each National Investment Employment
Corps job would offer individuals non-poverty wages, a minimum salary of $20,000, plus benefits including
federal health insurance. The types of jobs offered could address the maintenance and construction
of the nation's physical and human infrastructure, from building roads, bridges, dams and schools,
to staffing high quality day care.
There is no shortage of work to be done. Even beyond the tasks Darity lists, the U.S. is full of
jobs that need doing, from elder care to renovation of old decaying buildings, to cleanup of lead
and other pollution, to construction and staffing of transit systems.
Darity estimates the cost of the program at $750 billion a year, Spross at $670 billion. That's
about equivalent to all of the U.S.'s current anti-poverty programs, and would be about twice the
size of the old WPA. So this would be a very big deal. But the true cost to society would be considerably
less, because the jobs would provide value. Better infrastructure, more child care and elder care,
and a cleaner, healthier environment would make the nation a richer, better place to live -- in other
words, those benefits should defray much of the program's cost. Also, the program would take people
off of the welfare rolls and cut government anti-poverty spending. Finally, even when the economy
isn't in a recession, more income will probably increase demand in the local economy.
All told, the program could end up being a bargain. And if the guarantee is limited to distressed,
low-employment areas, which could lower the costs down even more, and allow for pilot programs to
establish the viability of the concept.
Many people on the left and elsewhere don't like this idea. They doubt that government make-work
will provide dignity. And they believe strongly in the theory that automation will soon put large
numbers of people out of a job entirely. The only solution, they say, is to change U.S. culture and
values to make work less important, and to rely on programs like universal basic income. On the right,
some would inevitably see the plan as a first step on the road to socialism.
Maybe the critics will prove right in the long run. But for now, forcing a dramatic change on
American culture is a lot harder than simply giving people jobs. Robot-driven unemployment and new
social values are still mostly in the realm of science fiction, while the American public wants jobs
now. A job guarantee looks like a very good thing to try.
Peter K. said in reply
to Peter K....
Do both, the UBI and Job Guarantee.
Why doesn't Noah Smith discuss Fed Fail in detail and about how conservatives forced unprecedented
austerity on the economy.
This is not just "natural" or the evolution of technology, demographics and innovation.
in order to have demand to match increased product
real income increases must match increase production
so
unless the rich who are getting richer have an identical
propensity to consume
then is would have to be true that not only does real
total income have to keep up with real production but also
real median incomes must keep up with real production
simple
for years instead of increased pay the demand was met with
borrowing, instead of increased pay, this was bound to
collapse
A capitalist economy appears to inevitably lead
to an accumulation of a surplus in the hands of the few.
That seems to be detrimental for the many. What should be
done?
Karl Marx said the many (the proletariat) should establish
a dictatorship and confiscate the surplus going forward.
Henry George said the unearned income of landowners, monopolists
and the like(rentiers) should be taxed such that all public needs
would be supported by that tax.
John Bates Clark said the capitalists deserved what they received
and the system should stay as it was.
John Maynard Keynes said the state should direct and control
the economy such that the surplus would accrue to the state to
such an extent that private capital would become superfluous
(euthanasia of the rentier).
Today's disciples of Marx are, of course, Marxists.
Today's disciples of Henry George are called Georgists or
"single taxers".
Today's disciples of John Bates Clark are called Neoclassicals,
"mainstream", NeoKeynesians, New Keynesians or Neoliberals.
Today's disciples of Keynes are called Post Keynesians.
"In the U.S. labor market unemployed individuals that are actively looking for work are more than
three times as likely to become employed as those individuals that are not actively looking for
work and are considered to be out of the labor force (OLF). Yet, on average, every month twice
as many people make the transition from OLF to employment than do from unemployment to employment."
H-K-L via Justin Fox
"But mostly these men have dropped out of the labor force for other, unhappier reasons, as
Nicholas Eberstadt recounted in his recent book "Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis."
I think it's fair to characterize this as "a mess with jobs" -- although it's a mess that's been
many decades in the making, and I doubt President Trump really knows what to do about it."
As someone OLF since Bush cut my taxes in 2001, the reason for this "mess" is the decline price
offered to labor, which is in contrast to the four decades long conservative effort to increase
the prices of capital above the cost of labor, which requires restricting labor additions to capital
to create a reduction in demand to cut the price of labor.
And as women enter the labor force, men attached to women can become OLF when the labor price
falls too low, while being primed to become employed when the price offered exceeds their price
minimum. Alternatively, men with capital that is inflating in price can become OLF by selling
capital until the price offered for their labor increases high enough.
These men actually remain connected to the job market, either by avocation, networking with
peers, getting job training, etc.
But the bottom line, if you want more workers in the labor force who are actually working full
time, your policies must be focused on increasing the offered price for labor. Keynes and FDR
in the 30s provide the foundations for such policy:
1) remove the unemployed from the market by hiring them to build public capital assets, paying
them a wage intended to be 90% of the market rate for part-time work, providing transportation
to new locates to do the work in community with peers, offering them job skills beyond work discipline.
Aka the CCC.
2) structure taxes to favor businesses that build lots of labor capital: tax economic profits
and rents heavily while exempting from taxes all labor costs paid, including labor costs building
capital.
3) invest tax revenue from today and tomorrow in new capital with high labor cost with long
horizons to recover the cost of these capital assets. Building rail lines in the 19th century
involved lots of public investment, but the taxes paid in the subsequent century provided positive
returns in excess of cost to the public, and these assets still generate returns to the public,
even when privately operated for private return.
China has focused heavily on 3, building a high labor cost transportation system. They have
also had tax policy that favored building lots of productive capital using lots of labor, shifting
to high labor cost capital: taxes on exports are very low.
It's the latter that is driving the Republican BAT, a tax that does not tax US labor at the
same rate as imported labor. Unfortunately, it's a bandaid to Republican tax policy that makes
paying labor more have a high after tax cost: if your profits are taxed at zero, paying higher
labor costs means a 100% reduction in profits in the short term, while building capital, and the
lower profits as capital increases supply beyond demand and prices are forced down, destroying
profits. An the tax policy means a dollar reduction in before tax profits means a dollar reduction
in after tax profits.
In the last chart Fox includes, I see each of the declines coming in response to tax cuts,
increases in employment coming with tax increases, recently in stealth tax hikes, like the AMT
and the tax on SS benefits. Both have a fixed baseline intentionally not indexed so that the tax
hits more people and generates more revenue. All revenue gets spent by government with all of
it going to workers directly or indirectly by way of people who must pay workers. (Sick, disabled,
young, old).
The main economic story of the last four decades is the
massive upward redistribution of income that has taken place.
The top one percent's share of national income has more than
doubled over this period from roughly ten percent in the late
1970s to over twenty percent today. And, this is primarily a
before-tax income story, the rich have used their control
over the levers of economic power to ensure that an ever
larger share of the country's wealth goes into their pockets.
(Yes, this is the topic of my book, "Rigged: How
Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were
Structured to Make the Rich Richer" * -- it's free.)
Anyhow, the rich don't want people paying attention to
these policies (hey, they could try to change them), so they
endlessly push out nonsense stories to try to divert the
public's attention from how they structured the rules to
advance their interests. And, since the rich own the
newspapers, they can make sure that we hear these stories.
This meant that yesterday the New York Times gave us the
story ** of how robots are taking all the jobs and driving
down wages. Never mind that productivity growth is at its
slowest pace in the last seven decades. Facts and data don't
matter in the alternative world where we try to divert folks'
attention from things like the Federal Reserve Board (who are
not robots, last I checked) raising interest rates to make
sure that we don't have too many jobs.
One of the other big alternative facts for the diverters
is the generational story. This is the one where we tell
folks to ignore all those incredibly rich people with vast
amounts of money, the reason most people are not seeing
rising living standards is the damn baby boomers who expect
to get Social Security and Medicare, just because they paid
for it. The Boston Globe gave us this story *** by Bruce
Cannon Gibney, conveniently titled "how the baby boomers
destroyed everything." (Full disclosure: I am one of those
baby boomers.)
There is not much confusion about the nature of the
argument, only its substance. Gibney complains about:
"the unusual prevalence of sociopathy in an unusually
large generation. How does that disorder manifest?
Improvidence is reflected in low levels of savings and high
levels of bankruptcy. Deceit shows up as a distaste for
facts, a subject on display in everything from Enron's
quarterly reports to daily press briefings. Interpersonal
failures and unbridled hostility appeared in unusually high
levels of divorce and crime from the 1970s to early 1990s."
Starting with the bankruptcy story, the piece to which
Gibney helpfully linked noted a doubling of bankruptcy rates
for those over 65 since 1991. It reported:
"Expensive health care costs from a serious illness before
a patient received Medicare and the inability to work during
and after a serious illness are the prime contributors to
financial crises among those 55 and older."
Yes, we have clear evidence of a moral failing here.
The crime rate story is interesting. We had a surge in
crime beginning in the 1960s and running through the 1980s,
with a sharp fall beginning in the 1990s. Gibney would
apparently tie this one to the youth and peak crime years of
the baby boomers. There is an alternative hypothesis for
which there is considerable evidence: exposure to lead. While
the case is far from conclusive, it is likely that lead
exposure was an important factor. **** More importantly, the
point is that crime was a story of what was done to baby
boomers, not just kids acting badly.
I really like the complaint about the low level of savings
among baby boomers. I guess Gibney is the Boston Globe's Rip
Van Winkle who missed the housing bubble collapse and
resulting recession. A main complaint among economic policy
types in the last decade has been that people were not
spending enough. The argument was that people were being too
cautious in the wake of the crash and not spending the sort
of money needed to bring the economy back to full employment.
But Gibney wants to blame baby boomers for spending too
much. Oh well, it's alternative facts day at the Boston
Globe!
The rest of the piece is in the same vein. Boomers are
blamed for "unaddressed climate change." Well, boomers also
were the force behind the modern environmental movement. Many
of us boomers might look more to folks like Exxon-Mobil and
the Koch brothers who have used their vast wealth to try to
stifle efforts to combat climate change -- but hey, why focus
on rich people acting badly when we can blame a whole
generation?
Gibney blames boomers for every bad policy of the last
four decades, including the war on crime, which took off in
the late 1970s, when many of the boomers had not even reached
voting age. We even get blamed for the repeal of
Glass-Steagall, another great generational cause.
The amount of confusion in this piece is impressive. We
get this one:
"From 1989 to 2013, wealth gaps between older and younger
households grew in the same way as those between the top 5
percent and the bottom 95 percent. Today's seniors (boomers)
are much wealthier relative to the present young than the
seniors of the 1980s were to then-young boomers. All those
tax breaks, bailouts, easy money, deregulation, and the
bubbles they spawned supported that boomer wealth
accumulation while shifting the true costs to the future, to
the young."
Wealth is a virtually meaningless measure for the young.
Gibney is crying for the Harvard Business school grad with
$150,000 in debt. Young people do have too much debt, but the
bigger issue is the horrible labor market they face (partly
the result of boomers saving too much money). Furthermore,
while the ratio of boomer wealth to wealth of the young has
risen (because of college debt), the typical boomer reaching
retirement actually has less wealth than their parents. *****
It's also important to remember in these comparisons that
boomer parents likely had a traditional pension (an income
stream that does not get included in most wealth measures).
If boomers are to have any non-Social Security income in
retirement, it will likely be in the form of a 401(k) that
does count as wealth.
And of course we get the completely meaningless national
debt horror story:
"Still, no amount of tax reallocation could keep the
government together and goodies flowing, so boomers tolerated
astounding debt expansion while chopping other parts of the
budget. Gross national debt, 35 percent of GDP when the
boomers came of age, is now 105 percent, a peacetime record
expanding 3 percent annually, forever."
Economics fans would note that interest on the debt (net
of money refunded by the Federal Reserve Board) is around 0.8
percent of GDP, near a post-war low. They would also point
out that formal borrowing is just one way in which the
government can create obligations for the future. The
government also pays for things like innovation and creative
work with patent and copyright monopolies.
These monopolies effectively allow their owners to impose
taxes on consumers. Due to these monopolies we will pay $440
billion on prescription drugs this year for drugs that would
likely sell for less than $80 billion in a free market. The
difference of $360 billion is more than twice the net
interest burden of the debt that Gibney wants us to worry
about. And this is just patent protection for prescription
drugs, the costs for the full range and patent and copyright
monopolies throughout the economy would almost certainly be
two or three times as large.
Of course Gibney could also blame the commitment of these
monopoly rents on baby boomers (after all, people elected by
baby boomers were the ones who made these monopolies stronger
and longer), but that might be a bit hard to sell. It would
look pretty obvious that the story is one of a massive upward
redistribution to the rich -- some of whom happen to be baby
boomers -- and that would undermine the whole effort at
distraction in which Gibney and the Globe is engaged.
A quick comment on the Case-Deaton study that Noah Smith
discusses in the link above. I think there is a very good
case that economic depression, a decline in labor force
participation, opioid use, and voting for populist candidates
(like Donald Trump last year) is all linked.
If I am right
that the biggest factor behind the 60 year decline in prime
age male work force participation has been the increase in
disability, coupled with better long-term medical care and
longevity, then everything else follows.
The biggest drivers in the increase in disability claims
are mental health issues and neck and back problems.
Most people over age 35 have one or more herniated discs
in their neck or back (and frequently, those bulging or
herniated discs touch on one of the nerves leading out from
the spine. With better medical imaging, this is easier to
document.
So when the local mills close, one alternative to being
penniless is to go on disability for a herniated disc or
associated problems.
And do we have pills for that? Yes we do! Opioids!
And since opioids are one step away from heroin, they are
extremely addictive, even after just a few days' use.
So now we have a heroin-like epidemic in white Appalachia
and the Rust Belt where the mills have closed, not just in
black urban areas.
Opioid use leads to deaths by overdose.
And now the opioid abuse and epidemic of deaths just
compounds the economic depression.
And those people looking for an answer turn to populists,
no matter how rancidly racist they are.
The U.S. white working class is in big trouble. The data
is piling up. Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have a
new paper out, exploring mortality trends in the U.S. The
results confirm the finding of their famous 2015 study --
white Americans without college degrees are dying in
increasing numbers, even as other groups within and outside
of the country live longer. And the negative trends continued
over the past year.
The problem appears to be specific to white Americans:
Mortality rates among blacks and Hispanics continue to
fall; in 1999, the mortality rate of white non-Hispanics aged
50-54 with only a high school degree was 30 percent lower
than the mortality rate of blacks in the same age group; by
2015, it was 30 percent higher. There are similar crossovers
between white and black mortality in all age groups from
25-29 to 60-64
In contrast to the US, mortality rates in Europe are
falling for those with low levels of educational attainment,
and are doing so more rapidly than mortality rates for those
with higher levels of education.
You can see this pattern clearly in this chart from their
2015 study:
[graph]
Why is this happening? Case and Deaton don't really know.
Obesity would seem like a possible culprit, but it's also up
among black Americans and British people, whose mortality
rates from heart disease have fallen. Deaths from suicide,
alcoholism and drug overdoses -- what the authors
collectively call "deaths of despair" -- have been climbing
rapidly. But they only account for a minority of the
increase. And no one knows the definitive reason for white
despair.
One tempting explanation -- especially for those on the
political right -- might be that immigration and diversity
are causing white people to lose a sense of community and
cultural homogeneity, driving them to self-destruction. But
mortality rates for working-class white people in the U.K.
and Europe, which are experiencing even bigger fights over
immigration, have fallen very rapidly in recent years. Europe
also casts doubt on the hypothesis that the decline in
marriage is to blame, since marriage also fell in European
countries and among black Americans.
Case and Deaton instead suggest economic causes -- lack of
opportunity, economic insecurity and inequality. But this is
hard to square with falling mortality for black Americans,
who also suffered mightily in the Great Recession and have
been on the losing end of increasing inequality.
So the reason for the increase non-college white mortality
remains a mystery, for now. Perhaps it will always just be a
mysterious nationwide episode of anomie, like the massive
increase in Russian death rates after the Soviet Union's
fall. But whatever the cause, I know of one policy that would
go a long way toward fighting the baleful trend -- national
health care.
A national health service -- which also goes by the names
of single-payer health care and socialized medicine -- would
drive down the price of basic health care. Because an NHS
would be such a huge customer, it would be able to use its
market power to get better deals from providers. This is
probably why the same health-care treatments and services
cost so much less in Europe than in the U.S. -- those other
countries have their governments do the bargaining. In fact,
this already works in the U.S. -- Medicare, the single-payer
system that ensures the elderly, has seen much lower cost
growth than private health insurance, even though Medicare
isn't yet allowed by law to negotiate for cheaper drugs.
Another way an American NHS would be able to help the
white working class is by having doctors monitor patients'
behavior. In the U.K., doctors ask patients about their
alcohol consumption, exercise and other habits at free
checkups. There's some evidence that this sort of checkup
doesn't increase health in Canada, but that may be because
Canadians already mostly avoid heroin, alcoholism and
suicide. A U.S. NHS would be able to check patients' mental
health (to prevent suicide), their alcohol intake, their
opiate and other drug use, and a variety of warning signs.
Finally, an NHS could prevent overuse of opioids.
Prescription of painkillers has been a major factor in the
opiate epidemic, which has hit the white working class hard.
Drug manufacturers, however, have lobbied to preserve
widespread access to opioids. These companies have also given
doctors incentives and perks -- essentially, bribes -- to
keep prescribing these dangerous drugs. An NHS would be able
to resist lobbying pressure and make sure doctors didn't have
an incentive to hand out too many opioid pills.
A NHS wouldn't require the creation of a new bureaucracy
-- it would just require expanding Medicare to cover the
whole nation. There's already a campaign to do this, led by
none other than Senator Bernie Sanders. An NHS also wouldn't
prevent rich people from buying expensive or rapid treatment
in private markets.
So while an NHS might not solve all the health problems of
the U.S. white working class, it would go a long way toward
doing so. If President Donald Trump wanted to prevent the
people who elected him from continuing to die in rising
numbers, he would join Sanders in the campaign to extend
Medicare to cover all Americans. Unfortunately, the
health-care proposal that Trump backed went in the opposite
direction, reducing health coverage rather than expanding it.
The self-styled champion of the white working class has not
yet answered their despair with action.
"Perhaps it will always just be a mysterious nationwide
episode of anomie, like the massive increase in Russian death
rates after the Soviet Union's fall."
Economics is science!
lol Russia's economic output fell by half. Poverty rates
and suicides skyrocketed.
A tao of politics Most uses of language can be understood in both referential and functional
terms. If I tell the policeman "He ran the red light", in referential terms I am claiming that, in
some world external to my language, there was a car driven by a person I refer to as "he" which crossed
an intersection while a red lightbulb was lit. But my words have functions as well, quite apart from
what they refer to. A person might be fined or go to jail as a consequence of what I say. I might
be conveniently exonerated of responsibility for an accident. Those consequences might be independent
of the referential accuracy of the remark. Or they might not be. Perhaps there will be other corroborations,
and inconvenient penalties if I am deemed to have lied. Regardless, it is simultaneously true that
words refer to things and utterances have consequences. Both as speakers and as listeners (or as
writers and as readers) we need to consider the "meaning" of a use of language on both levels if
we are to communicate effectively.
Often there are tensions between referential accuracy and functional utility. Referential accuracy
does not necessarily imply virtue. Whether we agree with the practice or not, we all understand what
is meant by a "white lie". Statements with identical referential meaning can yield profoundly different
social consequences depending on how they are said. To "speak diplomatically" does not mean to lie,
but rather to pay especial attention to the likely effects of an utterance while trying to retain
referential accuracy. To "spin" has a similar meaning but a different connotation, it suggests subordinating
referential clarity to functional aspects of speech in a crassly self-interested way. But paying
attention to the functional role of language is not in itself self-interested or crass. We all pay
attention to how we speak as well as what we say. If we did not, we would needlessly harm people.
Even if we are scrupulously truthful, we all make choices about what to say and what to omit, when
to speak and when to remain silent. When we discuss our inner lives, often the consequences of our
utterances are more clear (even to ourselves) than their referential accuracy, and perhaps we let
the desirability of the consequences define what we take to be the truth. Perhaps that is not, or
not always, without virtue.
This bifurcation of language into referential and functional strikes me as illuminating of the
stereotyped left-right axis in politics. In broad, almost cartoonish, terms, one might describe a
"left" view that humans as individuals have limited power over their own lives, so the work of politics
is to organize collectively to create circumstances and institutions that yield desirable social
outcomes. The "right" view is that, absent interference by collectivities that are inevitably blind
to fine-grained circumstances (and that usually are corrupt), individuals have a great deal of power
over their own lives, so that differences in outcome mostly amount to "just desserts". It's obvious
why there might be some conflict between people who hold these different views.
On the key, core, question of whether individuals have a great deal of power or very limited power
to control outcomes in their own lives, the stereotyped left view is, in referential terms, more
accurate. If you are born in poverty in a war-torn country and fail to achieve a comfortable American-style
upper-middle-class life style, it's hard to say that's on you, even if some very tiny sliver of your
countrymen do manage to survive to adulthood, emigrate, and prosper. In narrower contexts, the question
becomes less clear. For those lucky enough to be born in a developed country, are differences in
outcome mostly a result of individual agency? For Americans born white, raised in middle-class comfort,
and provided an education? For people born with identical genes? The case that differences in outcome
result from choices under the control of individuals, for which they might be held responsible, grows
stronger as we restrict the sample to people facing more similar circumstances. But even among the
most narrow of cohorts, shit happens. People get sick, debilitated even, through no fault of their
own. As a general proposition, individual human action is overwhelmed by circumstance and entropy.
Policies designed with grit and bootstraps for their engine and individual choice for their steering
wheel usually fail to achieve good social outcomes. This is the sense in which it's true that "
the facts have a well-known liberal bias ".
But, before the left-ish side of the world takes a self-satisfied gloat, it should face an uncomfortable
hitch. In functional terms, widespread acceptance of the false-ish right-ish claim - that
people have a great deal of power over their own lives, and so should be held responsible as individuals
for differences in outcome - may be important to the success of the forms of collective organization
that people with more accurate, left-ish views strive to implement. This isn't a hard case to make.
A good society, qua left-ish intuitions, might provide a lot of insurance to citizens against
vicissitudes of circumstance. A generous welfare state might cushion the experience of joblessness,
housing and medical care might be provided as a right, a basic cash income might be provided to all.
But a prosperous society with a generous welfare state requires a lot of people to be doing hard
work, including lots of work people might prefer not to do. If people are inclined to see their own
and others' affairs as products of circumstance, they might easily forgive themselves accepting the
benefits of a welfare state while working little to support it, and even lobbying for more. They
might find it difficult to criticize or stigmatize others who do the same. That would lead to welfare-state
collapse, the standard right-wing prediction. But if an ethos of agency and personal responsibility
prevails, if differences in outcome are attributed to individual choices even in ways that are not
descriptively accurate, if as a social matter people discriminate between justifiable and unjustifiable
uses of public benefits and stigmatize the latter, the very prevalence of a right-wing view of human
affairs might falsify the right-wing prediction and help to sustain the left-wing welfare state.
Conversely, the existence of a left-wing social democratic welfare state renders the right-wing view
less wrong, because it diminishes disparity of circumstance, increasing the degree to which differences
in outcome actually can be attributed to individuals' choices. Irreconcilable views reinforce one
another.
God is an ironist. If left-ish views are referentially accurate while right-ish views are functionally
useful, then a wise polity will require an awkward superposition of left-ish perspectives to inform
policy design and right-ish perspectives as public ethos.
Singapore is ostentatiously capitalist, is widely perceived as a kind of protolibertarian paradise,
yet it builds a rich welfare state out of
mandatory, government-controlled "savings" and extensive intervention in health care and housing
markets. The Scandinavian countries are left-wing social democracies, built on a politics of trade
union solidarity, yet the right-wing Heritage Foundation ranks them
about as "economically free"
as the United States
despite governments
that spend much larger shares of GDP . Nordic politicians
bristle at being called "socialist" , and they maintain
higher levels
of labor-force participation than the welfare-stingy US.
Like Yin and Yang, black and white, right and left might stand perpetually in opposition even
as they require one another to form a coherently incoherent whole.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 29th, 2017 at 8:21 pm PDT.
"... Agree: "I've seen a few articles recently claiming that low wage growth is because productivity by workers has been stalling. A convenient way to absolve the oligarchy." ..."
New Deal democrat
March 30, 2017 at 05:05
AM
I've seen a few articles recently claiming
that low wage growth is because productivity by workers has been stalling. A convenient way to absolve
the oligarchy.
Except, if the theory were true, we should see bigger wage gains in the sectors
of the economy with the most productivity growth.
"Does productivity growth help predict wage growth at an industry level?
Not really, no. The distribution of productivity growth across industries ispositively correlated
with subsequent wage growth – industries with higher productivity growth now will tend to have higher
wage growth in subsequent quarters. However, productivity growth has little additional value in predicting
wage growth over and above univariate models...."
The real conclusion is buried in the prior discussion:
"These correlations may also tell us something about how an increase in productivity in a particular
industry feeds through into real wages. Rather than bidding up relative nominal wages (and therefore,
the relative RCW in that industry), an increase in productivity leads to lower relative prices for
the output of that industry, increasing RPW for given nominal wage. This boosts the real consumption
wages of workers in all industries."
So, productivity gains lead to a deceleration in consumer inflation, *not* better nominal wage
growth.
Oops!
So I am sure mainstream economists will do what they typically do when the theory is contradicted
by the data ....
Agree: "I've seen a few articles
recently claiming that low wage growth is because productivity by workers has been stalling.
A convenient way to absolve the oligarchy."
"80 years ago Congress forgot to put criminal enforcement in the NLRA(a). Had union busting been
a felony all along we would be like Germany today."
Many of us on the left ask why we can't be more like Germany (or Denmark?) Germany is still
international and outward-looking. The center-left like Krugman, EMichael, bakho, Sanjait, Summers
etc keep saying it's robots not politics/trade policy.
Nothing we can do. The Left says look at Germany which kept output up despite trade, robots
and bad monetary policy.
Center-left Hillary says we are not Denmark/Germany.
There is something we can do. We can start to protect collective bargaining at the state by state
level.
Old saw is that federal preemption cuts states out of protecting collective bargaining rights.
But just because Congress never included felony prosecution for union busting doesn't mean Congress
did not want anyone else to -- and would not have mattered if Congress did not want it. All state
protection does is reinforce the (toothless) federal set-up.
Congress could not constitutionally pass a law that states may not protect bargaining (OF ANY
KIND!) from being muscled. No more than Congress may prevent states from making their own minimum
wages (which Republicans would have tried a long time ago if it were possible).
Jimmy Hoffa said: "A union is a business." There is no reason one business (owner) should have
carte blanche to bust the bargaining power of another business (labor) in a democracy.
Progressive state to start with: WA, OR, CA, NV, MN, IL, MA, NY, MD, etc.
And don't forget to get around to centralized bargaining (like the Teamster's National Master
Freight Agreement -- or, where else, German, Denmark, etc.). Supermarket and airline workers (especially
employees under RLA) would kill for (legally mandated?) centralized bargaining.
"... Centralized bargaining (sector wide labor agreements) practiced by the Teamster's National Master Freight Agreement -- also by French Canada, continental Europe and I think Argentina and Indonesia -- blocks the Walmart-killing-supermarket-contracts race to the bottom. Airline employees would kill for centralized too. ..."
"... Truly populist up politics in the long run reduce financialization, for-profit scams, phara gouging, etc. etc., etc. Dean of Washington press corps said when he came to Washington (1950s?) all the lobbyists were union. ..."
"... The center-left are technocrats and don't really believe in unions or economic democracy. ..."
"... They're all about the meritocracy and so instead of arguing for workers to get organized and political and instead of arguing for a hot economy so labor markets are tight, they scold workers for not "skilling up" and acquiring the skills business want for their jobs. ..."
STARTS OUT A LITTLE OFF TOPIC BUT THEN GOES PRECISELY WHERE THE AUTHOR WANTS US TO GO I THINK
Re: Keynes' flaws - Stumbling and Mumbling
[cut-and-paste]
Neither rust-belt Americans nor Chicago gang-bangers are interested in up-to-date kitchens or
two vans in the driveway. Both are most especially not interested in $10 an hour jobs.
Both would be very, very especially interested in $20 an hour jobs.
80 years ago Congress forgot to put criminal enforcement in the NLRA(a). Had union busting
been a felony all along we would be like Germany today. Maybe at some point our progressives might
note that collective bargaining is the T-Rex in the room -- or the missing T-Rex.
The money is there for $20 jobs. 49 years -- and half the per capita income ago -- the fed
min wage was $11. Since then the bottom 45% went from 20% overall income share to 10% -- while
the top 1% went from 10% to 20%.
How to get it -- how to get collective bargaining set up? States can make union busting a felony
without worrying about so-called federal preemption:
+ a state law sanctioning wholesalers, for instance, using market power to block small retail
establishments from combining their bargaining power could be the same one that makes union busting
a felony -- overlap like min wage laws -- especially since on crim penalties the fed has left
nothing to overlap since 1935
+ First Amendment right to collectively bargain cannot be forced by the fed down (the current)
impassable road. Double ditto for FedEx employees who have to hurdle the whole-nation-at-once
certification election barrier
+ for contrast, examples of state infringement on federal preemption might be a state finding
of union busting leading to a mandate for an election under the fed setup -- or any state certification
setup for labor already covered by NLRA(a) or RLA(a). (Okay for excluded farm workers.)
Collective bargaining would ameliorate much competition for jobs from immigrants because labor's
price would be set by how much the consumer can be squeezed before (s)he goes somewhere else --
not by how little the most desperate worker will hire on for. Your kid will be grabbed before
somebody still mastering English.
Centralized bargaining (sector wide labor agreements) practiced by the Teamster's National
Master Freight Agreement -- also by French Canada, continental Europe and I think Argentina and
Indonesia -- blocks the Walmart-killing-supermarket-contracts race to the bottom. Airline employees
would kill for centralized too.
Republicans would have no place to hide -- rehabs US labor market -- all (truly) free market.
Truly populist up politics in the long run reduce financialization, for-profit scams, phara
gouging, etc. etc., etc. Dean of Washington press corps said when he came to Washington (1950s?)
all the lobbyists were union.
PS. After I explained the American spinning wheels labor market to my late brother John (we
were not even talking about race), he came back with: "Martin Luther King got his people on the
up escalator just in time for it to start going down for everybody."
I agree. All of the center-left are like Keynes in a bad way. Chris Dillow nails it.
The center-left are technocrats and don't really believe in unions or economic democracy.
They're all about the meritocracy and so instead of arguing for workers to get organized
and political and instead of arguing for a hot economy so labor markets are tight, they scold
workers for not "skilling up" and acquiring the skills business want for their jobs.
They enjoy scolding the backward rural and dying manufacturing towns where the large employers
have closed.
The technocrats are running the economy the best they can, it's up to the workers to educate
themselves so they can be "competitive" on international markets.
Meanwhile for the past 40 years the technocrats have been doing a poor job.
(or maybe a good job from their sponsors' perspective as Chris Dillow points out.)
DeLong is right about mainstream economics. SWL is wrong. "Mainstream" economics is complicit
as the technocrats are complicit.
Perhaps even DeLong is too much like Keynes and too much the "neoliberal" technocrat to understand
why businessmen keep voting Republican even though the economy does better on Democrats.
It is striking how the media feel such an extraordinary
need to blame robots and productivity growth for the recent
job loss in manufacturing rather than trade. We got yet
another example of this exercise in a New York Times piece *
by Claire Cain Miller, with the title "evidence that robots
are winning the race for American jobs." The piece highlights
a new paper * by Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo which
finds that robots have a large negative impact on wages and
employment.
While the paper has interesting evidence on the link
between the use of robots and employment and wages, some of
the claims in the piece do not follow. For example, the
article asserts:
"The paper also helps explain a mystery that has been
puzzling economists: why, if machines are replacing human
workers, productivity hasn't been increasing. In
manufacturing, productivity has been increasing more than
elsewhere - and now we see evidence of it in the employment
data, too."
Actually, the paper doesn't provide any help whatsoever in
solving this mystery. Productivity growth in manufacturing
has almost always been more rapid than productivity growth
elsewhere. Furthermore, it has been markedly slower even in
manufacturing in recent years than in prior decades.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, productivity
growth in manufacturing has averaged less than 1.2 percent
annually over the last decade and less than 0.5 percent over
the last five years. By comparison, productivity growth
averaged 2.9 percent a year in the half century from 1950 to
2000.
The article is also misleading in asserting:
"The paper adds to the evidence that automation, more than
other factors like trade and offshoring that President Trump
campaigned on, has been the bigger long-term threat to
blue-collar jobs (emphasis added)."
In terms of recent job loss in manufacturing, and in
particular the loss of 3.4 million manufacturing jobs between
December of 2000 and December of 2007, the rise of the trade
deficit has almost certainly been the more important factor.
We had substantial productivity growth in manufacturing
between 1970 and 2000, with very little loss of jobs. The
growth in manufacturing output offset the gains in
productivity. The new part of the story in the period from
2000 to 2007 was the explosion of the trade deficit to a peak
of nearly 6.0 percent of GDP in 2005 and 2006.
It is also worth noting that we could in fact expect
substantial job gains in manufacturing if the trade deficit
were reduced. If the trade deficit fell by 2.0 percentage
points of GDP ($380 billion a year) this would imply an
increase in manufacturing output of more than 22 percent. If
the productivity of the manufacturing workers producing this
additional output was the same as the rest of the
manufacturing workforce it would imply an additional 2.7
million jobs in manufacturing. That is more jobs than would
be eliminated by productivity at the recent 0.5 percent
growth rate over the next forty years, even assuming no
increase in demand over this period.
While the piece focuses on the displacement of less
educated workers by robots and equivalent technology, it is
likely that the areas where displacement occurs will be
determined in large part by the political power of different
groups. For example, it is likely that in the not distant
future improvements in diagnostic technology will allow a
trained professional to make more accurate diagnoses than the
best doctor. Robots are likely to be better at surgery than
the best surgeon. The extent to which these technologies will
be be allowed to displace doctors is likely to depend more on
the political power of the American Medical Association than
the technology itself.
Finally, the question of whether the spread of robots will
lead to a transfer of income from workers to the people who
"own" the robots will depend to a large extent on our patent
laws. In the last four decades we have made patents longer
and stronger. If we instead made them shorter and weaker, or
better relied on open source research, the price of robots
would plummet and workers would be better positioned to
capture than gains of productivity growth as they had in
prior decades. In this story it is not robots who are taking
workers' wages, it is politicians who make strong patent
laws.
The robots are coming, whether Trump's Treasury secretary admits it or not
By Lawrence H. Summers - Washington Post
As I learned (sometimes painfully) during my time at the Treasury Department, words spoken
by Treasury secretaries can over time have enormous consequences, and therefore should be carefully
considered. In this regard, I am very surprised by two comments made by Secretary Steven Mnuchin
in his first public interview last week.
In reference to a question about artificial intelligence displacing American workers,Mnuchin
responded that "I think that is so far in the future - in terms of artificial intelligence taking
over American jobs - I think we're, like, so far away from that [50 to 100 years], that it is
not even on my radar screen." He also remarked that he did not understand tech company valuations
in a way that implied that he regarded them as excessive. I suppose there is a certain internal
logic. If you think AI is not going to have any meaningful economic effects for a half a century,
then I guess you should think that tech companies are overvalued. But neither statement is defensible.
Mnuchin's comment about the lack of impact of technology on jobs is to economics approximately
what global climate change denial is to atmospheric science or what creationism is to biology.
Yes, you can debate whether technological change is in net good. I certainly believe it is. And
you can debate what the job creation effects will be relative to the job destruction effects.
I think this is much less clear, given the downward trends in adult employment, especially for
men over the past generation.
But I do not understand how anyone could reach the conclusion that all the action with technology
is half a century away. Artificial intelligence is behind autonomous vehicles that will affect
millions of jobs driving and dealing with cars within the next 15 years, even on conservative
projections. Artificial intelligence is transforming everything from retailing to banking to the
provision of medical care. Almost every economist who has studied the question believes that technology
has had a greater impact on the wage structure and on employment than international trade and
certainly a far greater impact than whatever increment to trade is the result of much debated
trade agreements....
Oddly, the robots are always coming in articles like Summers', but they never seem to get here.
Automation has certainly played a role, but outsourcing has been a much bigger issue.
He has gotten a lot better and was supposedly pretty good when advising Obama, but he's sort
of reverted to form with the election of Trump and the prominence of the debate on trade policy.
Technology rearranges and changes human roles, but it makes entries on both sides of the ledger.
On net as long as wages grow then so will the economy and jobs. Trade deficits only help financial
markets and the capital owning class.
Summers is a good example of those economists that never seem to pay a price for their errors.
Imo, he should never be listened to. His economics is faulty. His performance in the Clinton
administration and his part in the Russian debacle should be enough to consign him to anonymity.
People would do well to ignore him.
Yeah he's one of those expert economists and technocrats who never admit fault. You don't become
Harvard President or Secretary of the Treasury by doing that.
One time that Krugman has admitted error was about productivity gains in the 1990s. He said
he didn't see the gains from computers in the numbers and it wasn't and they weren't there at
first, but later productivity numbers increased.
It was sort of like what Summers and Munchkin are talking discussing, but there's all sorts
of debate about measuring productivity and what it means.
"... These overall percentages actually underestimate the extent employers use plant-closing threats, since they include industries and sectors of the economy where threats to shut down and move facilities are much less likely and carry less weight because the industry or product is less mobile. In mobile industries such as manufacturing, transportation and warehouse/distribution, the percentage of campaigns with plant-closing threats is 62 percent, compared to only 36 percent in relatively immobile industries such as construction, health care, education, retail and other services. Where employers can credibly threaten to shut down or move their operations in response to union activity, they do so in large numbers. ..."
We 'll Close! Plant Closings, Plant-Closing Threats, Union
Organizing and the North American Free Trade Agreement By Kate Bronfenbrenner
Abstract
This article is based on "Final Report: The Effects of
Plant Closing or Threat of Plant Closing on the Right of
Workers to Organize." The report was commissioned by the
tri-national Labor Secretariat of the Commission for Labor
Cooperation (the North American Free Trade Agreement labor
commission) "on the effects of the sudden closing of the
plant on the principle of freedom of association and the
right of workers to organize in the three countries."
Plant-closing threats and actual plant closings are
extremely pervasive and effective components of U.S. employer
anti-union strategies. From 1993 to 1995, employers
threatened to close the plant in 50 percent of all union
certification elections and in 52 percent of all instances
where the union withdrew from its organizing drive
("withdrawals"). In another 18 percent of the campaigns, the
employer threatened to close the plant during the
first-contract campaign after the election was won.
Nearly 12 percent of employers followed through on threats
made during the organizing campaign and shut down all or part
of the plant before the first contract was negotiated. Almost
4 percent of employers closed down the plant before a second
contract was reached.
This 15 percent shutdown rate within two years of the
certification election victory is triple the rate found by
researchers who examined post-election plant-closing rates in
the late 1980s, before the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect.
These overall percentages actually underestimate the
extent employers use plant-closing threats, since they
include industries and sectors of the economy where threats
to shut down and move facilities are much less likely and
carry less weight because the industry or product is less
mobile. In mobile industries such as manufacturing,
transportation and warehouse/distribution, the percentage of
campaigns with plant-closing threats is 62 percent, compared
to only 36 percent in relatively immobile industries such as
construction, health care, education, retail and other
services. Where employers can credibly threaten to shut down
or move their operations in response to union activity, they
do so in large numbers.
"... And it is not only automation vs. in-house labor. There is environmental/compliance cost (or lack thereof) and the fully loaded business services and administration overhead, taxes, etc. ..."
"... When automation increased productivity in agriculture, the government guaranteed free high school education as a right. ..."
"... Now Democrats like you would say it's too expensive. So what's your solution? You have none. You say "sucks to be them." ..."
"... And then they give you the finger and elect Trump. ..."
"... It wasn't only "low-skilled" workers but "anybody whose job could be offshored" workers. Not quite the same thing. ..."
"... It also happened in "knowledge work" occupations - for those functions that could be separated and outsourced without impacting the workflow at more expense than the "savings". And even if so, if enough of the competition did the same ... ..."
"... And not all outsourcing was offshore - also to "lowest bidders" domestically, or replacing "full time" "permanent" staff with contingent workers or outsourced "consultants" hired on a project basis. ..."
"... "People sure do like to attribute the cause to trade policy." Because it coincided with people watching their well-paying jobs being shipped overseas. The Democrats have denied this ever since Clinton and the Republicans passed NAFTA, but finally with Trump the voters had had enough. ..."
"... Why do you think Clinton lost Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennysylvania and Ohio? ..."
If it was technology why do US companies buy from low labor producers at the end of supply
chains 2000 - 10000 miles away? Why the transportation cost. Automated factories could be built
close by.
There is no such thing as an automated factory. Manufacturing is done by people, *assisted* by
automation. Or only part of the production pipeline is automated, but people are still needed
to fill in the not-automated pieces.
And it is not only automation vs. in-house labor. There is environmental/compliance cost
(or lack thereof) and the fully loaded business services and administration overhead, taxes, etc.
Trade policy put "low-skilled" workers in the U.S. in competition with workers in poorer countries.
What did you think was going to happen? The Democrat leadership made excuses. David Autor's TED
talk stuck with me. When automation increased productivity in agriculture, the government
guaranteed free high school education as a right.
Now Democrats like you would say it's too expensive. So what's your solution? You have
none. You say "sucks to be them."
And then they give you the finger and elect Trump.
It wasn't only "low-skilled" workers but "anybody whose job could be offshored" workers. Not
quite the same thing.
It also happened in "knowledge work" occupations - for those functions that could be separated
and outsourced without impacting the workflow at more expense than the "savings". And even if
so, if enough of the competition did the same ...
And not all outsourcing was offshore - also to "lowest bidders" domestically, or replacing
"full time" "permanent" staff with contingent workers or outsourced "consultants" hired on a project
basis.
"People sure do like to attribute the cause to trade policy." Because it coincided with people
watching their well-paying jobs being shipped overseas. The Democrats have denied this ever since
Clinton and the Republicans passed NAFTA, but finally with Trump the voters had had enough.
Why do you think Clinton lost Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennysylvania and Ohio?
"... The palter was to skip the fact that it had broken down twice in the last year, instead saying, "This car drives very smoothly and is very responsive. Just last week it started up with no problems when the temperature was 5 degrees Fahrenheit." The outright lie would have been: "This car has never had problems." Researchers learned that car sellers perceived paltering as more ethical than lying, and thus used it more. ..."
"... Paltering allows people who consider themselves honest to deceive others while getting the same results that lying would. In a third experiment, participants in a pretend real estate negotiation performed just as well when they paltered as they did when they lied. Their successes didn't come without costs, however. When the deception was discovered, negotiation partners deemed palterers as untrustworthy as liars. ..."
"... One occasional advantage of paltering over lying is plausible deniability: You can blame any misunderstanding on the listener. ..."
"... So how can you avoid falling victim? "If you ask a specific question, that specific question should be answered, not a variant of it," Rogers says, even though insistence on clarification "often makes you look like a jerk." ..."
"... Paltering relies on our tendency to trust others and not cause a scene. ..."
Although paltering occurs in all realms of life, researchers at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government
focused on its use in negotiation. In one of eight studies to be published in the Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, study participants pretended to sell a used car on eBay. They answered the
buyer's question "Has this car ever had problems?" with a response selected from a list supplied
by the researchers.
The palter was to skip the fact that it had broken down twice in the last year, instead saying,
"This car drives very smoothly and is very responsive. Just last week it started up with no problems
when the temperature was 5 degrees Fahrenheit." The outright lie would have been: "This car has never
had problems." Researchers learned that car sellers perceived paltering as more ethical than lying,
and thus used it more.
In another study, half of surveyed executives said they paltered in more than "a few" of their
negotiations, versus a fifth who said they actively lied more than a few times. Consistent with this
discrepancy, executives viewed the behavior as more honest than lying.
Paltering allows people who consider themselves honest to deceive others while getting the
same results that lying would. In a third experiment, participants in a pretend real estate negotiation
performed just as well when they paltered as they did when they lied. Their successes didn't come
without costs, however. When the deception was discovered, negotiation partners deemed palterers
as untrustworthy as liars.
Another study found that victims saw palterers as less ethical than palterers saw themselves.
We have a "broken mental model" of paltering, the researchers have concluded, seeing this behavior
as honest when others do not.
One occasional advantage of paltering over lying is plausible deniability: You can blame any
misunderstanding on the listener. Without knowing the speaker's intentions, it's difficult to
diagnose paltering with certainty says Todd Rogers, a behavioral scientist at the Kennedy School
and the paper's lead author. Few examples are as clear as Bill Clinton's response when asked if he'd
had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky: "There is not a sexual relationship - that is accurate."
(Note the slick use of present tense.)
So how can you avoid falling victim? "If you ask a specific question, that specific question
should be answered, not a variant of it," Rogers says, even though insistence on clarification "often
makes you look like a jerk."
Paltering relies on our tendency to trust others and not cause a scene. "It's pretty
amazing how much you can get away with because of people's truth bias," says David Clementson, a
researcher at Ohio State University's School of Communication, who was not involved in the study.
"Paltering totally takes advantage of that, diabolically and deceptively."
Artful Paltering: The Risks and Rewards
of Using Truthful Statements to Mislead Others
Rogers, Todd; Zeckhauser, Richard; et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
Vol 112(3), Mar 2017, https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-pspi0000081.pdf
Instead of looking at this as an excuse for job losses due to trade deficits then we should
be seeing it as a reason to gain back manufacturing jobs in order to retain a few more decent
jobs in a sea of garbage jobs. Mmm. that's so wrong. Working on garbage trucks are now some of
the good jobs in comparison. A sea of garbage jobs would be an improvement. We are in a sea of
McJobs.
Yes sir, often enough but not always. I had a great job as an IT large systems capacity planner
and performance analyst, but not as good as the landscaping, pool, and lawn maintenance for myself
that I enjoy now as a leisure occupation in retirement. My best friend died a greens keeper, but
he preferred landscaping when he was young. Another good friend of mine was a poet, now dying
of cancer if depression does not take him first.
But you are correct, no one but the welders, material handlers (paid to lift weights all day),
machinists, and then almost every one else liked their jobs at Virginia Metal Products, a union
shop, when I worked there the summer of 1967. That was on the swing shift though when all of the
big bosses were at home and out of our way. On the green chain in the lumber yard of Kentucky
flooring everyone but me wanted to leave, but my mom made me go into the VMP factory and work
nights at the primer drying kiln stacking finished panel halves because she thought the work on
the green chain was too hard. The guys on the green chain said that I was the first high school
graduate to make it past lunch time on their first day. I would have been buff and tan by the
end of summer heading off to college (where I would drop out in just ten weeks) had my mom not
intervened.
As a profession no group that I know is happier than auto mechanics that do the same work as
a hobby on their hours off that they do for a living at work, at least the hot rod custom car
freaks at Jamie's Exhaust & Auto Repair in Richmond, Virginia are that way. The power tool sales
and maintenance crew at Arthur's Electric Service Inc. enjoy their jobs too.
Despite the name which was on their incorporation done back when they rebuilt auto generators,
Arthur's sells and services lawnmowers, weed whackers, chain saws and all, but nothing electric.
The guy in the picture at the link is Robert Arthur, the founder's son who is our age roughly.
"... Anne Case and Angus Deaton garnered national headlines in 2015 when they reported that the death rate of midlife non-Hispanic white Americans had risen steadily since 1999 in contrast with the death rates of blacks, Hispanics and Europeans. Their new study extends the data by two years and shows that whatever is driving the mortality spike is not easing up. ..."
"... less-educated white Americans who struggle in the job market in early adulthood are likely to experience a "cumulative disadvantage" over time, with health and personal problems that often lead to drug overdoses, alcohol-related liver disease and suicide. ..."
New research identifies a 'sea of despair' among white, working-class Americans
By Joel Achenbach and Dan Keating - Washington Post
Sickness and early death in the white working class could be rooted in poor job
prospects for less-educated young people as they first enter the labor market, a situation
that compounds over time through family dysfunction, social isolation, addiction, obesity
and other pathologies, according to a study published Thursday by two prominent economists.
Anne Case and Angus Deaton garnered national headlines in 2015 when they reported
that the death rate of midlife non-Hispanic white Americans had risen steadily since 1999
in contrast with the death rates of blacks, Hispanics and Europeans. Their new study
extends the data by two years and shows that whatever is driving the mortality spike is not
easing up.
The two Princeton professors say the trend affects whites of both sexes and is happening
nearly everywhere in the country. Education level is significant: People with a college
degree report better health and happiness than those with only some college, who in turn
are doing much better than those who never went.
[Graph]
Offering what they call a tentative but "plausible" explanation, they write that
less-educated white Americans who struggle in the job market in early adulthood are likely
to experience a "cumulative disadvantage" over time, with health and personal problems that
often lead to drug overdoses, alcohol-related liver disease and suicide.
"Ultimately, we see our story as about the collapse of the white, high-school-educated
working class after its heyday in the early 1970s, and the pathologies that accompany that
decline," they conclude....
The white working class only
thrived because of unions
Reagan destroyed the unions
The white working class abandoned the unions and the Dems for white christian
patriarchal identity politics.
They vote to prop up a dying culture that is not adapted to the modern economy.
The culture is dysfunctional and must change, but people would rather fight the
windmills of economic change than travel the difficult road of cultural change
In theory, in the longer term, as robotics becomes the norm rather than
the exception, there will be no advantage in chasing cheap labour around
the world. Given ready access to raw materials, the labour costs of
manufacturing in Birmingham should be no different to the labour costs
in Beijing. This will require the democratisation of the ownership of
technology. Unless national governments develop commonly owned
technology the 1% will truly become the organ grinders and everyone else
the monkeys. One has only to look at companies like Microsoft and Google
to see a possible future - bigger than any single country and answerable
to no one. Common ownership must be the future. Deregulation and market
driven economics are the road technological serfdom.
Except that the raw materials for steel production are available
in vast quantities in China.
You are also forgetting land. The
power remains with those who own it. Most of Central London is
still owned by the same half dozen families as in 1600.
Reply
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You can only use robotics in countries that have the labour with the
skills to maintain them.Robots do not look after themselves they need
highly skilled technicians to keep them working. I once worked for a
Japanese company and they only used robots in the higher wage high skill
regions. In low wage economies they used manual labour and low tech
products.
Sunday, March 19, 2017
What is full employment anyway, and how
would we know if we are there?
What are people talking about when they
say "full employment?" Maybe they don't
know either? Whatever it is, "full
employment" is thought to be important
for policy, particularly monetary
policy. Indeed, it typically enters the
monetary policy discussion as "maximum
employment," the second leg of the Fed's
dual mandate - the first leg being
"price stability."
Perhaps surprisingly, there are still
people who think the US economy is not
at "full employment." I hate to pick on
Narayana, but he's a convenient example.
He posted this on his
Twitter account:
Are we close to full emp? In steady
state, emp. growth will be about 1.2M
per year. It's about *twice* that in
the data. (1) Employment is growing
much faster than long run and
inflation is still low. Conclusion:
we're well below long run steady
state. end
Also in
an interview on Bloomberg,
Narayana
gives us the policy conclusion.
Basically, he thinks there is still
"slack" in the economy. My understanding
is that "slack" means we are below "full
employment."
So what is Narayana saying? I'm assuming
he is looking at payroll employment -
the employment number that comes from
the
establishment survey.
In his
judgement, in a "steady state," which
for him seems to mean the "full
employment" state, payroll employment
would be growing at 1.2M per year, or
100,000 per month. But over the last
three months, the average increase in
payroll employment has exceeded 200,000
per month. So, if we accept all of
Narayana's assumptions, we would say the
US economy is below full employment - it
has some catching up to do. According to
Narayana, employment can grow for some
time in excess of 100,000 jobs per
month, until we catch up to full
employment, and monetary policy should
help that process along by refraining
from interest rate hikes in the
meantime.
Again, even if we accept all of
Narayana's assumptions, we could
disagree about his policy
recommendation. Maybe the increase in
the fed funds rate target will do little
to impede the trajectory to full
employment. Maybe it takes monetary
policy a period of time to work, and by
the time interest rate hikes have their
effect we are at full employment. Maybe
the interest rate hikes will allow the
Fed to make progress on other policy
goals than employment. But let's explore
this issue in depth - let's investigate
what we know about "full employment" and
how we would determine from current data
if we are there or not.
Where does Narayana get his 1.2M number
from? Best guess is that he is looking
at demographics. The working age
population in the United States (age
15-64) has been growing at about 0.5%
per year. But labor force participation
has grown over time since World War II,
and later cohorts have higher labor
force participation rates. For example,
the labor force participation rate of
baby-boomers in prime working age was
higher than the participation rate of
the previous generation in prime working
age. So, this would cause employment
growth to be higher than population
growth. That is, Narayana's assumptions
imply employment growth of about 0.8%
per year, which seems as good a number
as any. Thus, the long-run growth path
for the economy should exhibit a growth
rate of about 0.8% per year - though
there is considerable uncertainty about
that estimate.
But, we measure employment in more than
one way. This chart shows year-over-year
employment growth from the establishment
survey, and from the household survey
(CPS):
For the last couple of years, employment
growth has been falling on trend, by
both measures. But currently,
establishment-survey employment is
growing at 1.6% per year, and household
survey employment is growing at 1.0% per
year. The latter number is a lot closer
to 0.8%. The establishment survey is
what it says - a survey of
establishments. The household survey is
a survey of people. The advantages of
the establishment survey are that it
covers a significant fraction of all
establishments, and reporting errors are
less likely - firms generally have a
good idea how many people are on their
payrolls. But, the household survey has
broader coverage (includes the
self-employed for example) of the
population, and it's collected in a
manner consistent with the unemployment
and labor force participation data -
that's all from the same survey. There's
greater potential for measurement error
in the household survey, as people can
be confused by the questions they're
asked. You can see that in the noise in
the growth rate data in the chart.
Here's another interesting detail:
This chart looks at the ratio of
household-survey employment to
establishment-survey employment. Over
long periods of time, these two measures
don't grow at the same rate, due to
changes over time in the fraction of
workers who are in establishments vs.
those who are not. For long-run
employment growth rates, you should put
more weight on the household survey
number (as this is a survey of the whole
working-age population), provided of
course that some measurement bias isn't
creeping into the household survey
numbers over time. Note that, since the
recession, establishment-survey
employment has been growing at a
significantly higher rate than
household-survey employment.
So, I think that the conclusion is that
we should temper our view of employment
growth. Maybe it's much closer to a
steady state rate than Narayana thinks.
But, on to some other measures of labor
market performance. This chart shows the
labor force participation rate (LFPR)
and the employment-population ratio
(EPOP).
Here, focus on the last year. LFPR is
little changed, increasing from 62.9% to
63.0%, and the same is true for EPOP,
which increased from 59.8% to 60.0%.
That looks like a labor market that has
settled down, or is close to it.
A standard measure of labor market
tightness that labor economists like to
look at is the ratio of job vacancies to
unemployment, here measured as the ratio
of the job openings rate to the
unemployment rate:
So, by this measure the labor market is
at its tightest since 2001. Job openings
are plentiful relative to would-be
workers.
People who want to argue that some slack
remains in the labor market will
sometimes emphasize unconventional
measures of the unemployment rate:
In the chart, U3 is the conventional
unemployment rate, and U6 includes
marginally attached workers (those not
in the labor force who may be receptive
to working) and those employed part-time
for economic reasons. The U3 measure is
not so far, at 4.7%, from its previous
trough of 4.4% in March 2007, while the
gap between current U6, at 9.2% and its
previous trough, at 7.9% in December
2006, is larger. Two caveats here: (i)
How seriously we want to take U6 as a
measure of unemployment is an open
question. There are problems even with
conventional unemployment measures, in
that we do not measure the intensity of
search - one person's unemployment is
different from another's - and survey
participants' understanding of the
questions they are asked is problematic.
The first issue is no worse a problem
for U6 than for U3, but the second issue
is assuredly worse. For example, it's
not clear what "employed part time for
economic reasons" means to the survey
respondent, or what it should mean to
the average economist. Active search, as
measured in U3, has a clearer meaning
from an economic point of view, than an
expressed desire for something one does
not have - non-satiation is ubiquitous
in economic systems, and removing it is
just not feasible. (ii) What's a normal
level for U6? Maybe the U6 measure in
December 2006 was undesirably low, due
to what was going on in housing and
mortgage markets.
Another labor market measure that might
be interpreted as indicating labor
market slack is long term unemployment
(unemployed 27 weeks or more) - here
measured as a rate relative to the labor
force:
This measure is still somewhat elevated
relative to pre-recession times.
However, if we look at short term
unemployment (5 weeks or less), this is
unusually low:
As well, the insured unemployment rate
(those receiving unemployment insurance
as a percentage of the labor force) is
very low:
To collect UI requires having worked
recently, so this reflects the fact that
few people are being laid off -
transitions from employment to
unemployment are low.
An interpretation of what is going on
here is that the short-term and
long-term unemployed are very different
kinds of workers. In particular, they
have different skills. Some skills are
in high demand, others are not, and
those who have been unemployed a long
time have skills that are in low demand.
A high level of long-term unemployed is
consistent with elevated readings for U6
- people may be marginally attached or
wanting to move from part-time to
full-time work for the same reasons that
people have been unemployed for a long
time. What's going on may indicate a
need for a policy response, but if the
problem is skill mismatch, that's not a
problem that has a monetary policy
solution.
So, if the case someone wants to make is
that the Fed should postpone interest
rate increases because we are below full
employment - that there is still slack
in the labor market - then I think
that's a very difficult case to make. We
could argue all day about what an output
gap is, whether this is something we
should worry about, and whether monetary
policy can do much about an output gap,
but by conventional measures we don't
seem to have one in the US at the
current time. In terms of raw economic
performance (price stability aside),
there's not much for the Fed to do at
the current time. Productivity growth is
unusually low, as is real GDP growth,
but if that's a policy problem, it's in
the fiscal department, not the monetary
department.
But there is more to Narayana's views
than the state of the labor market. He
thinks it's important that inflation is
still below the Fed's target of 2%.
Actually, headline PCE inflation, which
is the measure specified in the Fed's
longer-run goals statement,
is
essentially at the target, at 1.9%. I
think what Narayana means is that, given
his Phillips-curve view of the world, if
we are close to full employment,
inflation should be higher. In fact, the
long-run Fisher effect tells us that,
after an extended period of low nominal
interest rates, the inflation rate
should be low. Thus, one might actually
be puzzled as to why the inflation rate
is so high. We know something about
this, though. Worldwide, real rates of
interest on government debt have been
unusually low, which implies that, given
the nominal interest rate, inflation
will be unusually high. But, this makes
Narayana's policy conclusion close to
being correct. The Fed is very close to
its targets - both legs of the dual
mandate - so why do anything?
A neo-Fisherian view says that we should
increase (decrease) the central bank's
nominal interest rate target when
inflation is too low (high) - the
reverse of conventional wisdom. But
maybe inflation is somewhat elevated by
increases in the price of crude oil,
which have since somewhat reversed
themselves. So, maybe the Fed's nominal
interest rate target should go up a bit
more, to achieve its 2% inflation target
consistently.
Though Narayana's reasoning doesn't lead
him in a crazy policy direction, it
would do him good to ditch the Phillips
curve reasoning - I don't think that's
ever been useful for policy. If one had
(I think mistakenly) taken Friedman to
heart (as appears to be the case with
Narayana), we might think that
unemployment above the "natural rate"
should lead to falling inflation, and
unemployment below the natural rate
should lead to rising inflation. But,
that's not what we see in the data.
Here, I use the CBO's measure of the
natural rate of unemployment (quarterly
data, 1990-2016):
According to standard Friedman
Phillips-curve logic, we should see a
negative correlation in the chart, but
the correlation is essentially zero.
One thing I wonder
about is the
possibility that
policy implementing
economists are a bit
insulated from
reality. It seems
possible their
personal experiences
might reinforce a
feeling that
everything is all
right.
Meanwhile
countervailing data
may subconsciously be
given short shrift. A
shrinking middle
class, stagnant wages,
declining labor force
participation of adult
males all seem
ignored.
Could it be argued
that full employment
is characterized by a
robust and growing
middle class?
Economics is both a
hard and social
science and social
criteria may belong in
the definition of full
employment.
Is it wise to try to
throttle growth as
soon as policy
mandates are achieved,
thus seeking to
maintain a virtuous
steady state
equilibrium? Might it
not be better to
attempt more of a sine
wave economic policy,
deliberately
overshooting targets
to bring the marginal
sidelined workers into
the economy where they
can gain experience
and then, if
necessary, briefly
overshooting
constraining measures
to quickly contain
possible excesses?
"... And all costs are labor costs. It it isn't labor cost, it's rents and economic profit which mean economic inefficiency. An inefficient economy is unstable. Likely to crash or drive revolution. ..."
"... Free lunch economics seeks to make labor unnecessary or irrelevant. Labor cost is pure liability. ..."
"... Yet all the cash for consumption is labor cost, so if labor cost is a liability, then demand is a liability. ..."
"... Replace workers with robots, then robots must become consumers. ..."
"... "Replace workers with robots, then robots must become consumers." Well no - the OWNERS of robots must become consumers. ..."
"... I am old enough to remember the days of good public libraries, free university education, free bus passes for seniors and low land prices. Is the income side of the equation all that counts? ..."
Robots and Inequality: A Skeptic's Take : Paul Krugman presents "
Robot Geometry " based on
Ryan Avent 's "Productivity Paradox". It's more-or-less the skill-biased technological change
hypothesis, repackaged. Technology makes workers more productive, which reduces demand for workers,
as their effective supply increases. Workers still need to work, with a bad safety net, so they
end up moving to low-productivity sectors with lower wages. Meanwhile, the low wages in these
sectors makes it inefficient to invest in new technology.
My question: Are Reagan-Thatcher countries the only ones with robots? My image, perhaps it is
wrong, is that plenty of robots operate in
Japan and
Germany too, and both
countries are roughly just as technologically advanced as the US. But Japan and Germany haven't
seen the same increase in inequality as the US and other Anglo countries after 1980 (graphs below).
What can explain the dramatic differences in inequality across countries? Fairly blunt changes
in labor market institutions, that's what. This goes back to Peter Temin's "
Treaty of
Detroit " paper and the oddly ignored series of papers by
Piketty, Saez and coauthors which argues that changes in top marginal tax rates can largely
explain the evolution of the Top 1% share of income across countries. (Actually, it goes back
further -- people who work in Public Economics had "always" known that pre-tax income is sensitive
to tax rates...) They also show that the story of inequality is really a story of incomes at the
very top -- changes in other parts of the income distribution are far less dramatic. This evidence
also is not suggestive of a story in which inequality is about the returns to skills, or computer
usage, or the rise of trade with China. ...
Yet another economist bamboozled by free lunch economics.
In free lunch economics, you never consider demand impacted by labor cost changed.
TANSTAAFL so, cut labor costs and consumption must be cut.
Funny things can be done if money is printed and helicopter dropped unequally.
Printed money can accumulate in the hands of the rentier cutting labor costs and pocketing
the savings without cutting prices.
Free lunch economics invented the idea price equals cost, but that is grossly distorting.
And all costs are labor costs. It it isn't labor cost, it's rents and economic profit which
mean economic inefficiency. An inefficient economy is unstable. Likely to crash or drive revolution.
Free lunch economics seeks to make labor unnecessary or irrelevant. Labor cost is pure
liability.
Yet all the cash for consumption is labor cost, so if labor cost is a liability, then demand
is a liability.
Replace workers with robots, then robots must become consumers.
I am old enough to remember the days of good public libraries, free university education,
free bus passes for seniors and low land prices. Is the income side of the equation all that counts?
People are worried about robots taking jobs. Driverless cars are around the corner. Restaurants
and shops increasingly carry the option to order by touchscreen. Google's clever algorithms provide
instant translations that are remarkably good.
But the economy does not feel like one undergoing a technology-driven productivity boom. In
the late 1990s, tech optimism was everywhere. At the same time, wages and productivity were rocketing
upward. The situation now is completely different. The most recent jobs reports in America and
Britain tell the tale. Employment is growing, month after month after month. But wage growth is
abysmal. So is productivity growth: not surprising in economies where there are lots of people
on the job working for low pay.
The obvious conclusion, the one lots of people are drawing, is that the robot threat is totally
overblown: the fantasy, perhaps, of a bubble-mad Silicon Valley - or an effort to distract from
workers' real problems, trade and excessive corporate power. Generally speaking, the problem is
not that we've got too much amazing new technology but too little.
This is not a strawman of my own invention. Robert Gordon makes this case. You can see Matt
Yglesias make it here. * Duncan Weldon, for his part, writes: **
"We are debating a problem we don't have, rather than facing a real crisis that is the polar
opposite. Productivity growth has slowed to a crawl over the last 15 or so years, business investment
has fallen and wage growth has been weak. If the robot revolution truly was under way, we would
see surging capital expenditure and soaring productivity. Right now, that would be a nice 'problem'
to have. Instead we have the reality of weak growth and stagnant pay. The real and pressing concern
when it comes to the jobs market and automation is that the robots aren't taking our jobs fast
enough."
And in a recent blog post Paul Krugman concluded: *
"I'd note, however, that it remains peculiar how we're simultaneously worrying that robots
will take all our jobs and bemoaning the stalling out of productivity growth. What is the story,
really?"
What is the story, indeed. Let me see if I can tell one. Last fall I published a book: "The
Wealth of Humans". In it I set out how rapid technological progress can coincide with lousy growth
in pay and productivity. Start with this:
"Low labour costs discourage investments in labour-saving technology, potentially reducing
productivity growth."
This is an old concern in economics; it's "capital-biased technological change," which tends to
shift the distribution of income away from workers to the owners of capital....
Catherine Rampell and Nick Wingfield write about the growing evidence * for "reshoring" of
manufacturing to the United States. * They cite several reasons: rising wages in Asia; lower energy
costs here; higher transportation costs. In a followup piece, ** however, Rampell cites another
factor: robots.
"The most valuable part of each computer, a motherboard loaded with microprocessors and memory,
is already largely made with robots, according to my colleague Quentin Hardy. People do things
like fitting in batteries and snapping on screens.
"As more robots are built, largely by other robots, 'assembly can be done here as well as anywhere
else,' said Rob Enderle, an analyst based in San Jose, California, who has been following the
computer electronics industry for a quarter-century. 'That will replace most of the workers, though
you will need a few people to manage the robots.' "
Robots mean that labor costs don't matter much, so you might as well locate in advanced countries
with large markets and good infrastructure (which may soon not include us, but that's another
issue). On the other hand, it's not good news for workers!
This is an old concern in economics; it's "capital-biased technological change," which tends
to shift the distribution of income away from workers to the owners of capital.
Twenty years ago, when I was writing about globalization and inequality, capital bias didn't
look like a big issue; the major changes in income distribution had been among workers (when you
include hedge fund managers and CEOs among the workers), rather than between labor and capital.
So the academic literature focused almost exclusively on "skill bias", supposedly explaining the
rising college premium.
But the college premium hasn't risen for a while. What has happened, on the other hand, is
a notable shift in income away from labor:
[Graph]
If this is the wave of the future, it makes nonsense of just about all the conventional wisdom
on reducing inequality. Better education won't do much to reduce inequality if the big rewards
simply go to those with the most assets. Creating an "opportunity society," or whatever it is
the likes of Paul Ryan etc. are selling this week, won't do much if the most important asset you
can have in life is, well, lots of assets inherited from your parents. And so on.
I think our eyes have been averted from the capital/labor dimension of inequality, for several
reasons. It didn't seem crucial back in the 1990s, and not enough people (me included!) have looked
up to notice that things have changed. It has echoes of old-fashioned Marxism - which shouldn't
be a reason to ignore facts, but too often is. And it has really uncomfortable implications.
But I think we'd better start paying attention to those implications.
"The most valuable part of each computer, a motherboard loaded with microprocessors and memory,
is already largely made with robots, according to my colleague Quentin Hardy. People do things
like fitting in batteries and snapping on screens.
"...already largely made..."? already? circuit boards were almost entirely populated by machines
by 1985, and after the rise of surface mount technology you could drop the "almost". in 1990 a
single machine could place 40k+/hour parts small enough they were hard to pick up with fingers.
And now for something completely different. Ryan Avent has a nice summary * of the argument
in his recent book, trying to explain how dramatic technological change can go along with stagnant
real wages and slowish productivity growth. As I understand it, he's arguing that the big tech
changes are happening in a limited sector of the economy, and are driving workers into lower-wage
and lower-productivity occupations.
But I have to admit that I was having a bit of a hard time wrapping my mind around exactly
what he's saying, or how to picture this in terms of standard economic frameworks. So I found
myself wanting to see how much of his story could be captured in a small general equilibrium model
- basically the kind of model I learned many years ago when studying the old trade theory.
Actually, my sense is that this kind of analysis is a bit of a lost art. There was a time when
most of trade theory revolved around diagrams illustrating two-country, two-good, two-factor models;
these days, not so much. And it's true that little models can be misleading, and geometric reasoning
can suck you in way too much. It's also true, however, that this style of modeling can help a
lot in thinking through how the pieces of an economy fit together, in ways that algebra or verbal
storytelling can't.
So, an exercise in either clarification or nostalgia - not sure which - using a framework that
is basically the Lerner diagram, ** adapted to a different issue.
Imagine an economy that produces only one good, but can do so using two techniques, A and B,
one capital-intensive, one labor-intensive. I represent these techniques in Figure 1 by showing
their unit input coefficients:
[Figure 1]
Here AB is the economy's unit isoquant, the various combinations of K and L it can use to produce
one unit of output. E is the economy's factor endowment; as long as the aggregate ratio of K to
L is between the factor intensities of the two techniques, both will be used. In that case, the
wage-rental ratio will be the slope of the line AB.
Wait, there's more. Since any point on the line passing through A and B has the same value,
the place where it hits the horizontal axis is the amount of labor it takes to buy one unit of
output, the inverse of the real wage rate. And total output is the ratio of the distance along
the ray to E divided by the distance to AB, so that distance is 1/GDP.
You can also derive the allocation of resources between A and B; not to clutter up the diagram
even further, I show this in Figure 2, which uses the K/L ratios of the two techniques and the
overall endowment E:
[Figure 2]
Now, Avent's story. I think it can be represented as technical progress in A, perhaps also
making A even more capital-intensive. So this would amount to a movement southwest to a point
like A' in Figure 3:
[Figure 3]
We can see right away that this will lead to a fall in the real wage, because 1/w must rise.
GDP and hence productivity does rise, but maybe not by much if the economy was mostly using the
labor-intensive technique.
And what about allocation of labor between sectors? We can see this in Figure 4, where capital-using
technical progress in A actually leads to a higher share of the work force being employed in labor-intensive
B:
[Figure 4]
So yes, it is possible for a simple general equilibrium analysis to capture a lot of what Avent
is saying. That does not, of course, mean that he's empirically right. And there are other things
in his argument, such as hypothesized effects on the direction of innovation, that aren't in here.
But I, at least, find this way of looking at it somewhat clarifying - which, to be honest,
may say more about my weirdness and intellectual age than it does about the subject.
I think this illustrates my point very clearly. If you had charts of wealth by age it would be
even clearer. Without a knowledge of the discounted expected value of public pensions it is hard
to draw any conclusions from this list.
I know very definitely that in Australia and the UK people are very reliant on superannuation
and housing assets. In both Australia and the UK it is common to sell expensive housing in the
capital and move to cheaper coastal locations upon retirement, investing the capital to provide
retirement income. Hence a larger median wealth is NEEDED.
It is hard otherwise to explain the much higher median wealth in Australia and the UK.
Ryan Avent's analysis demonstrates what is wrong with the libertarian, right wing belief that
cheap labor is the answer to every problem when in truth cheap labor is the source of many of
our problems.
Spencer,
as I have said before, I don't really care to much what wages are - I care about income. It is
low income that is the problem. I'm a UBI guy, if money is spread around, and workers can say
no to exploitation, low wages will not be a problem.
Have we not seen a massive shift in pretax income distribution? Yes ... which tells me that
changes in tax rate structures are not the only culprit. Though they are an important culprit.
Maybe - but
1. changes in taxes can affect incentives (especially think of real investment and corporate taxes
and also personal income taxes and executive remuneration);
2. changes in the distribution of purchasing power can effect the way growth in the economy occurs;
3. changes in taxes also affect government spending and government spending tends to be more progressively
distributed than private income.
Composite Services labor hours increase with poor productivity growth - output per hour of
labor input. Composite measure of service industry output is notoriously problematic (per BLS
BEA).
Goods labor hours decrease with increasing productivity growth. Goods output per hour easy
to measure and with the greatest experience and knowledge.
Put this together and composite national productivity growth rate can't grow as fast as services
consume more of labor hours.
Simple arithmetic.
Elaboration on Services productivity measures:
How do you measure a retail clerks unit output?
How do you measure an engineer's unit output?
How do equilibrate retail clerk output with engineer's outuput for a composite output?
Now add the composite retail clerk labor hours to engineering labor hours... which dominates in
composite labor hours? Duh! So even in services the productivity is weighted heavily to the lowest
productivity job market.
Substitute Hospitality services for Retail Clerk services. Substitute truck drivers services
for Hospitality Services, etc., etc., etc.
I have spent years tracking productivity in goods production of various types ... mining, non-tech
hardware production, high tech hardware production in various sectors of high tech. The present
rates of productivity growth continue to climb (never decline) relative to the past rates in each
goods production sector measured by themselves.
But the proportion of hours in goods production in U.S. is and has been in continual decline
even while value of output has increased in each sector of goods production.
Here's an interesting way to start thinking about Services productivity.
There used to be reasonably large services sector in leisure and business travel agents. Now
there is nearly none... this has been replaced by on-line computer based booking. So travel agent
or equivalent labor hours is now near zippo. Productivity of travel agents went through the roof
in the 1990's & 2000's as the number of people / labor hours dropped like a rock. Where did those
labor hours end up? They went to lower paying services or left the labor market entirely. So lower
paying lower productivity services increased as a proportion of all services, which in composite
reduced total serviced productivity.
You can do the same analysis for hundreds of service jobs that no longer even exist at all
--- switch board operators for example when the way of buggy whip makers and horse-shoe services).
Now take a little ride into the future... not to distant future. When autonomous vehicles become
the norm or even a large proportion of vehicles, and commercial drivers (taxi's, trucking, delivery
services) go the way of horse-shoe services the labor hours for those services (land transportation
of goods & people) will drop precipitously, even as unit deliveries increase, productivity goes
through the roof, but since there's almost no labor hours in that service the composite effect
on productivity in services will drop because the displaced labor hours will end up in a lower
productivity services sector or out of the elabor market entirely.
Economists are having problems reconciling composite productivity growth rates with increasing
rates of automation. So they end up saying "no evidence" of automation taking jobs or something
to the effect "not to fear, robotics isn't evident as a problem we have to worry about".
But they know by observation all around them that automation is increasing productivity in
the goods sector, so they can't really discount automation as an issue without shutting their
eyes to everything they see with their "lying eyes". Thus they know deep down that they will have
to be reconcile this with BLS and BEA measures.
Ten years aog this wasn't even on economist's radars. Today it's at least being looked into
with more serious effort.
Ten years ago politicians weren't even aware of the possibility of any issues with increasing
rates of automation... they thought it's always increased with increasing labor demand and growth,
so why would that ever change? Ten years ago they concluded it couldn't without even thinking
about it for a moment. Today it's on their radar at least as something that bears perhaps a little
more thought.
Not to worry though... in ten more years they'll either have real reason to worry staring them
in the face, or they'll have figured out why they were so blind before.
Reminds me of not recognizing the "shadow banking" enterprises that they didn't see either
until after the fact.
Or that they thought the risk rating agencies were providing independent and valid risk analysis
so the economists couldn't reconcile the "low level" of market risks risk with everything else
so they just assumed "everything" else was really ok too... must be "irrational exuberance" that's
to blame.
Let me add that the term "robotics" is a subset of automation. The major distinction is only that
a form of automation that includes some type of 'articulation' and/or some type of dynamic decision
making on the fly (computational branching decision making in nano second speeds) is termed 'robotics'
because articulation and dynamic decision making are associated with human capabilities rather
then automatic machines.
It makes no difference whether productivity gains occur by an articulated machine or one that
isn't... automation just means replacing people's labor with something that improves humans capacity
to produce an output.
When mechanical leverage was invented 3000 or more years ago it was a form of automation, enabling
humans to lift, move heavier objects with less human effort (less human energy).
"... Economist James K. Galbraith disputes these claims of the benefit of comparative advantage. He states that "free trade has attained the status of a god" and that ". . . none of the world's most successful trading regions, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and now mainland China, reached their current status by adopting neoliberal trading rules." He argues that ". . . comparative advantage is based upon the concept of constant returns: the idea that you can double or triple the output of any good simply by doubling or tripling the inputs. But this is not generally the case. For manufactured products, increasing returns, learning, and technical change are the rule, not the exception; the cost of production falls with experience. With increasing returns, the lowest cost will be incurred by the country that starts earliest and moves fastest on any particular line. Potential competitors have to protect their own industries if they wish them to survive long enough to achieve competitive scale."[42] ..."
"... Galbraith, as always, is very succinct and readable. I well remember sitting in an economics lecture in the 1980's when the Professor mentioned Galbraith and described him as with distain someone 'who's ideas were more popular with the public than with economists'. The snigger of agreement that ran around the students in the hall made me realise just how ingrained the ideology of economics was as I'm pretty sure I was the only one of the students who'd actually read any Galbraith. ..."
"... I'd also recommend Ha-Joon Chang as someone who is very readable on the topic of the many weaknesses of conventional ideas on comparative advantage. ..."
"... "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." ..."
"... I've noticed many experts are especially bad at verbosity. Maybe they think somehow that quantity of words is a form of potency. Maybe that's it. Also individuals with a grievance who write posts about their grievance. I know when I have a grievance it's hard to shut up. I'm just being honest. I'll keep rambling and rambling, repeating myelf and fulminating. Thankfully I know better than to write like that. ..."
"... Thing 13: Making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer. Trickle down economics doesn't work because wealth doesn't trickle down. It trickles up, which is why the rich are the rich in the first place ..."
"... Thing 23: Good economic policy does not require good economists. Most of the really important economic issues, the ones that decide whether nations sink or swim, are within the intellectual reach of intelligent non-economists. Academic Economics with a capital "E" has remarkably little to say about the things that really matter. Concerned citizens need to stop being intimidated by the experts here. ..."
"... Although Ha Joon Chang is an excellent economist, I would also strongly recommend Michael Hudson, Michael Perelman, Steve Keen and E. Ray Canterbery - they are really great, along with Samir Amin of Senegal. ..."
"... A major issue is that those incapable politicians do rely upon experts, but they have consistently selected experts not on their track record (such as how good economists were at predicting the evolution of the economy, or how good political scientists were at predicting the evolution of communist or Arab societies), but on whether pronouncements of experts corresponded to their ideological preconceptions and justified their intended policies. ..."
"... A bit like rejecting physicians' diagnoses when they do not suit you and preferring the cure of a quack. ..."
"... This is not restricted to economists, it pervasive in science in general. I can't remember how many times I got a paper for peer review where I couldn't figure out what the person was trying to say because they layered the jargon ten levels deep. ..."
"... I think it is as simple as: if you create something that justifies the behaviors of the rich and powerful, you have something to sell and willing buyers. If you create something that delegitimizes the behaviors of the rich and powerful, you not only have no willing patrons but you have made powerful enemies. ..."
"... It is the law of supply and demand for pretentious bullshit. ..."
"... Leave workers exposed to starvation long enough and they'll work for next- to-nothing. The solution to James O'Connor's Fiscal Crisis of the State is to clean house in a big way, a very big way. Put everyone out on the street and start all over again. (Everyone but the 1% of course.) ..."
"... It's Andrew Mellon's advice for getting out of the Depression: "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people." ..."
"... The Reserve Army of Labor saves the Capitalist Day, once again. (Except for the little problem that the 1% won't accept their own liquidation, so Goldman Sachs and the rest must be exempted from the purging–which means that the purging can't work.) ..."
"... Not too long before he died, Paul Samuelson said: "Maybe I was wrong on the subject of jobs offshoring." (I.e., maybe offshoring all the jobs and dismantling the US economy wasn't so intelligent after all!) ..."
"... C. Wright Mills called them "crackpot realists." ..."
"... It's all a part and parcel of the meritocracy. If you don't have a degree in Econ, your opinion doesn't matter about why your job moved to China. If you don't have a degree in Urban Planning, you don't get to comment on how the city wants to tear down the park and put up condos. ..."
"... Their advice helped lead to this 2008 Financial Crisis. The promise of neoliberalism was faster growth. It did not happen. Quite the opposite. It gave the rich intellectual cover to loot society. That"s what this was always about. ..."
"... Then there's the matter of the Iraq War. Another example. Many foreign policy "experts", particularly affiliated with the neoconservative assured the American people that invading Iraq would be easy to do and lead to lots of long term benefits. Others insisted, despite evidence to the contrary, that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction. Now look at where we are. No WMDs, long and cost war, with no long-term solutions. Many of said "experts" later endorsed Clinton. ..."
"... We do not need pro-Establishment experts who sell themselves out to enrich themselves. We need experts who act in the public interest. ..."
First, to explain our basic concepts and most important insights in plain English. Famously,
Paul Samuelson, the founder of modern macroeconomics, was asked whether economics told us anything
that was true but not obvious. It took him a couple of years, but eventually he gave an excellent
and topical example – simply the theory of comparative advantage.
Similarly, I often say that the most useful thing I did in my 6 years as Chief Economist at
DWP was to explain the lump of labour fallacy – that there isn't a fixed number of jobs in the
economy, and increased immigration or more women working adds to both labour demand and labour
supply – to six successive Secretaries of State. So that's the first.
Second is to call bullshit.
O.K. I call bullshit. What Portes explained "to six successive Secretaries of State" was
a figment of the imagination of a late 18th century Lancashire magistrate, a self-styled "
friend
to the poor " who couldn't understand why poor people got so upset about having their wages cut
or losing their jobs - to the extent they would go around throwing rocks through windows, breaking
machines and burning down factories - when it was obvious to him that it was all for the best
and in the long run we would all be better off or else dead.
I call bullshit because what Portes explained to six successive Secretaries of State was
simply the return of the repressed - the obverse of "Say's Law" (which was neither Say's nor a Law)
that "supply creates its own demand," which John Maynard Keynes demolished in The General Theory
of Employment, Interest and Money and that John Kenneth Galbraith subsequently declared "
sank without trace " in the wake of Keynes's demolition of it.
I call bullshit because when Paul Samuelson resurrected the defunct fallacy claim that
Portes explained to six successive Secretaries of State, he did so on the condition that governments
pursued the sorts of "Keynesian" job-creating policies that the discredited principle of "supply
creates its own demand" insisted were both unnecessary and counter-productive.
But the lump of labor argument implies that there is only so much useful remunerative work
to be done in any economic system, and that is indeed a fallacy . If proper and sound
monetary, fiscal, and pricing policies are being vigorously promulgated , we need not resign
ourselves to mass unemployment. And although technological unemployment is not to be shrugged
off lightly, its optimal solution lies in offsetting policies that create adequate job
opportunities and new skills.
[Incidentally, as Robert Schiller has noted, the promised prevention of mass unemployment by vigorous
policy intervention did not imply the preservation of wage levels. Schiller cited the following passage
from the Samuelson textbook, " a decrease in the demand for a particular kind of labor because of
technological shifts in an industry can he adapted to - lower relative wages and migration of labor
and capital will eventually provide new jobs for the displaced workers."]
I call bullshit because what Portes explained to six successive Secretaries of State was
not even Paul Samuelson's policy-animated zombie lump-of-labour fallacy but a supply-side, anti-inflationary
retrofit cobbled together by Richard Layard and associates and touted by Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder
as the Third Way " new supply-side
agenda for the left. " Central to that agenda were tax cuts to promote economic growth and
"active labour market policies" to foster non-inflationary expansion of employment by making conditions
more "flexible" and lower-waged:
Part-time work and low-paid work are better than no work because they ease the transition from
unemployment to jobs.
Encourage employers to offer 'entry' jobs to the labour market by lowering the burden of tax
and social security contributions on low-paid jobs.
Adjustment will be the easier, the more labour and product markets are working properly. Barriers
to employment in relatively low productivity sectors need to be lowered if employees displaced
by the productivity gains that are an inherent feature of structural change are to find jobs elsewhere.
The labour market needs a low-wage sector in order to make low-skill jobs available.
I call bullshit because in defending the outcomes of supply-side labour policies, Portes soft-pedaled
the stated low-wage objectives of the Third Way agenda. In a
London Review of Books review, Portes admitted that "it may drive down wages for the low-skilled,
but the effect is small compared to that of other factors (technological change, the national minimum
wage and so on)." In the Third Way supply-side agenda, however, a low-wage sector was promoted as
a desirable feature - making more low-skill jobs available - not a trivial bug to be brushed aside.
In other words, in "driving down wages for the low skilled" the policy was achieving exactly what
it was intended to but Portes was "too discreet" to admit that was the stated objectives of the policy.
Economist James K. Galbraith disputes these claims of the benefit of comparative advantage.
He states that "free trade has attained the status of a god" and that ". . . none of the world's
most successful trading regions, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and now mainland China, reached
their current status by adopting neoliberal trading rules." He argues that ". . . comparative
advantage is based upon the concept of constant returns: the idea that you can double or triple
the output of any good simply by doubling or tripling the inputs. But this is not generally
the case. For manufactured products, increasing returns, learning, and technical change are
the rule, not the exception; the cost of production falls with experience. With increasing
returns, the lowest cost will be incurred by the country that starts earliest and moves fastest
on any particular line. Potential competitors have to protect their own industries if they
wish them to survive long enough to achieve competitive scale."[42]
Galbraith also contends that "For most other commodities, where land or ecology places limits
on the expansion of capacity, the opposite condition – diminishing returns – is the rule. In
this situation, there can be no guarantee that an advantage of relative cost will persist once
specialization and the resultant expansion of production take place. A classic and tragic example,
studied by Erik Reinert, is transitional Mongolia, a vast grassland with a tiny population
and no industry that could compete on world markets. To the World Bank, Mongolia seemed a classic
case of comparative advantage in animal husbandry, which in Mongolia consisted of vast herds
of cattle, camels, sheep, and goats. Opening of industrial markets collapsed domestic industry,
while privatization of the herds prompted the herders to increase their size. This led, within
just a few years in the early 1990s, to overgrazing and permanent desertification of the subarctic
steppe and, with a slightly colder than normal winter, a massive famine in the herds."
Galbraith, as always, is very succinct and readable. I well remember sitting in an economics
lecture in the 1980's when the Professor mentioned Galbraith and described him as with distain
someone 'who's ideas were more popular with the public than with economists'. The snigger of agreement
that ran around the students in the hall made me realise just how ingrained the ideology of economics
was as I'm pretty sure I was the only one of the students who'd actually read any Galbraith.
I'd also recommend Ha-Joon Chang
as someone who is very readable on the topic of the many weaknesses of conventional ideas on comparative
advantage.
James K Galbraith is the son of the famous New Deal economist John K Galbraith.
John K G:
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy;
that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
"In the case of economics there are no important propositions that cannot be stated in plain
language."
"I was an editor of Fortune under Henry Luce, the founder of Time, Inc., who was one of the
most ruthless editors that I have ever known, that anyone has ever known. Henry could look over
a sheet of copy and say, "This can go, and this can go, and this can go," and you would be left
with eight to ten lines which said everything that you had said in twenty lines before.
And I can still, to this day, not write a page without the feeling that Henry Luce is looking
over my shoulder and saying, "That can go." That illuminate one "problem" in our age of internet,
unlimited space to be verbose and no editors that de-obscure the writers "thoughts".
I wonder if this phenomenon – the desirability succinct communication -- was a holdover of
earlier times, when accurate communication made the difference between life and death. Settling
and developing a continent would place a high value on such purposeful human exchanges.
Today, we are awash in branding and marketing intended to maintain the current order. The language
is used to obfuscate, not clarify experience or goals.
An expert in any field that has the ability to communicate in a general , popular mode, is
of great value to society. Truth and understanding is its main function. Knowledge, or insight
that cannot be shared is more often than not just an excuse to hide methods of control and exploitation.
If citizens can't get the generalities right, the specifics will be impossible to comprehend.
Almost everything can go. I remember seeing a video of the photographer William Klein saying
a master photographer is remembered for just a handfull of images. Maybe 10 or 15, tops. Out of
probably at least 100,000 serious photos.
Of course what goes is necessary fertilizer for what doesn't go. You can't avoid it. Hahahah.
But you have to let it go anyway. Or your editor has to be williing to cut.
I've noticed lots and lots of posts here could be a lot better if the post author had said
the same thing in half as many words. Most wouldn't lose any persuasion, if they had any to begin
with. And they'd gain reader attention for the pruning.
I've noticed many experts are especially bad at verbosity. Maybe they think somehow that
quantity of words is a form of potency. Maybe that's it. Also individuals with a grievance who
write posts about their grievance. I know when I have a grievance it's hard to shut up. I'm just
being honest. I'll keep rambling and rambling, repeating myelf and fulminating. Thankfully I know
better than to write like that.
Having saidd all that, Say was rite. If the supply of labor increases, that createes its
own demand for jobs! How is that not completely obvious.
Huffington Post review has a synopsis of the Ha-Joon Change book.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/a-review-of-ha-joon-chang_b_840417.html
My favorite: Thing 13: Making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer. Trickle down economics
doesn't work because wealth doesn't trickle down. It trickles up, which is why the rich are the
rich in the first place
Thanks for the tip PK & thank you fd for the link to the review. I'm going to check this fellow
out; sounds like he has some interesting things to say. One of the "things" that may apply to
the above article:
Thing 23: Good economic policy does not require good economists. Most of the really important
economic issues, the ones that decide whether nations sink or swim, are within the intellectual
reach of intelligent non-economists. Academic Economics with a capital "E" has remarkably little
to say about the things that really matter. Concerned citizens need to stop being intimidated
by the experts here.
Although Ha Joon Chang is an excellent economist, I would also strongly recommend Michael
Hudson, Michael Perelman, Steve Keen and E. Ray Canterbery - they are really great, along with
Samir Amin of Senegal.
A word of warning from the UK. Denigrate experts too much and you end up like us with government
by people who really are inexpert. That is not an improvement.
Ha! I think an anti brexiter just rolled the white eye.
Strange that the awful things that the experts told us all would happen haven't and don't look
like happening since the people called bullshit on the EU mess. Britain with or without those
blokes in dresses up north will do just fine as they steer themselves out of the EU quagmire.
I'll take the people anytime anonymous – they have more common sense than the experts. Didn't
you read the article?
I remember back in the 1980s, when so-called "experts" were prattling about such nonsense as
. . .
"Computers don't make mistakes, humans make mistakes !"
Which was surely untrue as anyone with any real IT expertise back then would have explained
that 97% or more of hardware crashes generate software problems (for obvious reasons).
A major issue is that those incapable politicians do rely upon experts, but they have consistently
selected experts not on their track record (such as how good economists were at predicting the
evolution of the economy, or how good political scientists were at predicting the evolution of
communist or Arab societies), but on whether pronouncements of experts corresponded to their ideological
preconceptions and justified their intended policies.
A bit like rejecting physicians' diagnoses when they do not suit you and preferring the
cure of a quack.
This is not restricted to economists, it pervasive in science in general. I can't remember
how many times I got a paper for peer review where I couldn't figure out what the person was trying
to say because they layered the jargon ten levels deep. This is in chemistry, so things are
typically straightforward, no need for convoluted explanations and massaging of the data.
But people still do it because that's the culture that they've been educated in, a scientific
paper has to be high-brow, using obscure words and complicated sentences.
I think it is as simple as: if you create something that justifies the behaviors of the
rich and powerful, you have something to sell and willing buyers. If you create something that
delegitimizes the behaviors of the rich and powerful, you not only have no willing patrons but
you have made powerful enemies.
It is the law of supply and demand for pretentious bullshit.
So in the end, we wind up with Say's Law anyway, since creating a "low wages" sector is exactly
how Say's Law functions–supply creates its own demand because declining wages means investment
spending can increase, which keeps aggregate demand where it needs to be for full employment.
This is the solution, we are told, to Keynes "sticky prices." Jim Grant makes this very argument
in his book about the "short-lived" crisis of the early 1920s. Leave workers exposed to starvation
long enough and they'll work for next- to-nothing. The solution to James O'Connor's Fiscal Crisis
of the State is to clean house in a big way, a very big way. Put everyone out on the street and
start all over again. (Everyone but the 1% of course.)
It's Andrew Mellon's advice for getting out of the Depression: "liquidate labor, liquidate
stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate it will purge the rottenness out of the system.
High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral
life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people."
The Reserve Army of Labor saves the Capitalist Day, once again. (Except for the little
problem that the 1% won't accept their own liquidation, so Goldman Sachs and the rest must be
exempted from the purging–which means that the purging can't work.)
Not too long before he died, Paul Samuelson said: "Maybe I was wrong on the subject of
jobs offshoring." (I.e., maybe offshoring all the jobs and dismantling the US economy wasn't so
intelligent after all!)
Just finished a book called, The Death of Expertise , by a professor of national security
(oh give me a frigging break!!!!), Tom Nichols.
Biggest pile of crapola I have ever read! The author was also yearning for the days when "experts"
were blindly followed!
It's all a part and parcel of the meritocracy. If you don't have a degree in Econ, your
opinion doesn't matter about why your job moved to China. If you don't have a degree in Urban
Planning, you don't get to comment on how the city wants to tear down the park and put up condos.
The answer is that said "experts" have failed the general public miserably.
Their advice helped lead to this 2008 Financial Crisis. The promise of neoliberalism was
faster growth. It did not happen. Quite the opposite. It gave the rich intellectual cover to loot
society. That"s what this was always about.
Now people wonder, why they don't trust "experts"?
Then there's the matter of the Iraq War. Another example. Many foreign policy "experts",
particularly affiliated with the neoconservative assured the American people that invading Iraq
would be easy to do and lead to lots of long term benefits. Others insisted, despite evidence
to the contrary, that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction. Now look at where we
are. No WMDs, long and cost war, with no long-term solutions. Many of said "experts" later endorsed
Clinton.
We do not need pro-Establishment experts who sell themselves out to enrich themselves.
We need experts who act in the public interest.
"It can
do so by increasing the federal minimum wage to $10 per hour
and indexing it to inflation. The best existing research
suggests that modest increases such as this have had little
or no employment-reducing impact. And the government should
also increase the Earned Income Tax Credit, a refundable tax
credit for workers, for people who don't have children (a
strategy Brooks endorses)."
Here we go again. First, I thought we had left EITC behind
as any kind of substantial answer to underpaid Americans:
redistributing all of 1/2 of one percent of overall income
when 45% of our workforce is earning less than what we think
the minimum wage should be, $15 an hour.
$15 may be the most fast food can pay. Sometimes in
McDonald's there are more people behind the counter than in
front (most customers come through the drive through). If
fast food (33% labor costs) can pay $15, then maybe Target
(10%-15%) can pay $20, and maybe super efficient WalMart (7%)
can pay $25.
Always keeping in mind that labor bought and sold sort of
on margin. Doubling Walmart's pay could add only 7% to
prices.
Bottom 45% of workforce now takes 10% share of overall
income -- used to be 20%. Top 1% now 20% instead of 10%. How
to get that 10% back -- how to supply the economic and
political muscle to TAKE IT BACK: just put some teeth in the
(federal) law that already says union busting is illegal.
States can do this without any fear of confronting federal
preemption. States can make it a crime for wholesalers for
instance to pressure individual retailers from combining
their bargaining power -- same such law can overlap federal
labor area; especially since fed left blank for 80 years.
Blank or not: may overlap as with min wage.
No need for complicated policy researches; no need to
spend a dime: states just make union busting a felony and let
people organize if they wish to -- and get out of their way.
:-)
Back to min wage. If you sell fewer labor hours for more
dollars that works out better for labor than for potatoes --
because in the labor market the potatoes get the money to
spend -- and they are more likely to spend it more on other
potatoes than more upscale. Why min wage raises often
followed by higher min wage employment. (Higher wage jobs
lost -- everybody looking in wrong place.)
Re: The Man Who Made Us See That Trade Isn't Always Free -
Noah Smith
"Instead, he and his co-authors found that trade
with China in the 2000s left huge swathes of the U.S.
workforce permanently without good jobs -- or, in many cases,
jobs at all.
"This sort of concentrated economic devastation sounds
like it would hurt not just people's pocketbooks, but the
social fabric. In a series of follow-up papers, Autor and his
team link Chinese import competition to declining marriage
rates and political polarization. Autor told me that these
social ills make the need for new thinking about trade policy
even more urgent."
Here we go again. US manufacturing going from 16% of
employment from 2000 to 12% in 2016 (half due automation)
nowhere near as sucking-all-the-oxygen-out-of-life as the the
bottom 45% of earners taking 10% of overall income, down from
20% over two generations -- more and more being recognized
due to the loss of collective bargaining power ...
... for which loss the usual litany of causatives NEVER
seem to include one mention of the complete lack of teeth
protecting union organizing from market power in US labor
law.
Simple answer: no studies or research needed, not a dollar
appropriated: simply make union busting a felony at state
level -- and get out of people's way.
States can do this without conflict with federal
preemption. States can make it a crime for wholesalers for
instance to pressure individual retailers from combining
their bargaining power -- same such law can overlap federal
labor area; especially since fed left blank for 80 years.
Blank or not: may overlap as with min wage.
Don't do this and you'll never bring back collective
bargaining power -- and all the genuine populist politics
that goes with it!
"... Tax cuts kill jobs. Plain and simple. You can't create jobs by cutting the amount you paid workers. Taxes are prices that workers .pay You dodge taxes by underpaying workers. If taxes are cut, both paying workers is cut AND paying workers to dodge taxes is cut. ..."
Forecasting is done to change human behavior to invalidate
the forecasts.
Thus forecasts are by design never accurate
about the future.
This is different than designing systems using natural
laws.
A plane is designed to fly, because every forecast for it
crashing has resulted in design changes to invalidate that
forecast.
Conservatives hate forecasts because they hate changing
their plans. To forecast slower gdp growth and job creation,
or even contraction from tax cuts and spending cuts is
unacceptable. Thus they strive to change forecasts or
discredit them to get their policy implemented.
My forecast in the late 90s and early 00s was for economic
disaster as a result of conservative policy eventually being
implemented.
Tax cuts kill jobs. Plain and simple. You can't create
jobs by cutting the amount you paid workers. Taxes are prices
that workers .pay You dodge taxes by underpaying workers. If taxes
are cut, both paying workers is cut AND paying workers to
dodge taxes is cut.
That would have been the forecast in the 60s.
Today even Krugman and Bernie support job killing tax cuts
based on that creating jobs. Lots of bad forecasting is done
to back tax cuts. The tax cuts fail to create jobs, so the
bad forecasts are blamed so every forecast is ignored, even
the good ones.
When Congressional critters learned to read,
45th POTUS was suddenly and permanently unable to drain the
swamp of critters who grow fat on the pork-barrel-legislation
that drains the public treasure of We the Workers and Savers.
These parasitic critters will grow fat and strong, strong
enough to gobble up the the once brave workers who feed the
fat in DC.
"... Motivated empiricism, which is what he is describing, is just as misleading as ungrounded theorizing unsupported by empirical
data. Indeed, even in the sciences with well established, strong testing protocols are suffering from a replication crisis. ..."
"... I liked the Dorman piece at Econospeak as well. He writes well and explains things well in a manner that makes it easy for
non-experts to understand. ..."
Motivated empiricism, which is what he is describing, is just as misleading as ungrounded theorizing unsupported by empirical
data. Indeed, even in the sciences with well established, strong testing protocols are suffering from a replication crisis.
Kevin Drum reads some WSJ spin about how wages (nominal) rose
by 2.8%. The footnote alone takes this to task:
'This is
not adjusted for inflation, so even for the broad labor
market, wage gains haven't been all that impressive
recently.'
He also notes how the broad measure likely overstates the
wage 'increase' for ordinary workers. When reading WSJ spin,
it is always important to check out the details.
Noni Mausa :
March 13, 2017 at 04:13 PM
What the wealthy right wing has decided in the past 40 years is that they don't need citizens. At
least, not as many citizens as are actually citizens. What they are comfortable with is a large population
of free range people, like the longhorn cattle of the old west, who care for themselves as best they
can, and are convenient to be used when the "ranchers" want them.
Of course, this is their approach to foreign workers, also, but for the purpose of maintaining
a domestic society within which the domestic rich can comfortably live, only native born Americans
really suit.
With the development of high productivity production, farming, and hands-off war technology the
need for a large number of citizens is reduced. The wealthy can sit in their towers and arrange the
world as suits them, and use the rest of the world as a "farm team" to supply skills and labour as
needed.
Proof of this is the fact that they talk about the economy's need for certain skills, training,
services and so on, but never about the inherent value of citizens independent of their utility to
someone else.
No wonder the unemployed increasingly kill themselves, or others. The whole economy tells them,
indirectly but unmistakably, that their human value does not exist. ken melvin : ,
March 13, 2017 at 04:48 PM
Can someone get me from $300 billion tax cut for the rich to getting the markets work for health
care?
It isn't about 'markets', never is. It is about extraction of as much profit as possible using
whatever means necessary. This is what the CEOs of insurance companies get payed to do. Insurance
policies they don't pay out, the ones Ryan is referring to, are as good as any for scoring.
"It isn't about 'markets', never is. It is about extraction of as much profit as possible using
whatever means necessary. This is what the CEOs of insurance companies get payed to do."
What surprises me most in this discussion is how Obamacare suddenly changed from a dismal and
expensive failure enriching private insurers to a "good deal".
When the PPACA band-aid is pulled off the US health care mess the gusher will be blamed on "the
Russians running the White House".
Cuba does better than the US despite being economically sanctioned for 55 years. Distribution
of artificially scarce health care resources is utterly broken. This failed market is financed
by a mix of 'for profit' insurance and medicare (which sublets a big part to 'for profit' insurance).
Coverage!!! PPACA added taxpayers' money to finance a bigger failed market. It did nothing
to address the market fail!
Single payer would not address the market failure. Single payer would put the government financing
most of the failed market.
Democrats have put band-aids on severe bleeds since Truman made the cold war more important
than Americans.
Cuba is the shining example of how doing the first 20% of healthcare well for everyone gets you
80% of the benefit cheap.
The US is the shining example of how refusing to do the first 20% of healthcare well for everyone
only gets you 80% of the benefit no matter how much you spend.
Mark's very nice argument does nothing to address The Official Trump Counter Argument:
[Shorter version: Obamacare is doomed, going to blow up. Any replacement is therefore better
than Obamacare; Facts seldom win arguments against beliefs]
"During a listening session on healthcare at the White House on Monday, President Donald Trump
said Republicans "are putting themselves in a very bad position by repealing Obamacare."
Trump said that his administration is "committed to repealing and replacing" Obamacare and
that the House Obamacare replacement will lead to more choice at a lower cost. He further stated,
"[T]he press is making Obamacare look so good all, of a sudden. I'm watching the news. It looks
so good. They're showing these reports about this one gets so much, and this one gets so much.
First of all, it covers very few people, and it's imploding. And '17 will be the worst year. And
I said it once; I'll say it again: because Obama's gone."
He continued, "And the Republicans, frankly, are putting themselves in a very bad position
- I tell this to Tom Price all the time - by repealing Obamacare. Because people aren't gonna
see the truly devastating effects of Obamacare. They're not gonna see the devastation. In '17
and '18 and '19, it'll be gone by then. It'll - whether we do it or not, it'll be imploded off
the map."
He added, "So, the press is making it look so wonderful, so that if we end it, everyone's going
to say, 'Oh, remember how great Obamacare used to be? Remember how wonderful it used to be? It
was so great.' It's a little bit like President Obama. When he left, people liked him. When he
was here, people didn't like him so much. That's the way life goes. That's human nature."
Trump further stated that while letting Obamacare collapse on its own was the best thing to
do politically, it wasn't the right thing to do for the country.
'Superstar Firms' May
Have Shrunk Workers'
Share of Income
https://nyti.ms/2mGiVmQ
NYT - PATRICIA COHEN -
MARCH 8, 2017
For much of the
last century it seemed
that the slice of the
total economic pie
going to workers was -
like the speed of
light - constant. No
matter what the
economy's makeup,
labor could
collectively depend on
taking home roughly
two-thirds of the
country's total output
as compensation for
its efforts. Workers'
unchanging share, the
economist John Maynard
Keynes declared in
1939, was "one of the
most surprising, yet
best-established,
facts in the whole
range of economic
statistics."
But in recent
decades, that steady
share - which includes
everything from the
chief executive's
bonuses and stock
options to the
parking-lot
attendant's minimum
wage and tips -
started to flutter. In
the 2000s, it slipped
significantly.
Although the numbers
have inched up in the
last couple of years,
labor's portion has
not risen above 59
percent since before
the recession.
The decline has
coincided with a
slowdown in overall
growth as well as a
stark leap in
inequality. "Labor is
getting a shrinking
slice of a pie that's
not growing very
much," David Autor, an
economist at M.I.T.,
said. It is a
development that is
upending political
establishments and
economic policies in
the United States and
abroad.
The reason for
workers' shrinking
portion of the
economy's rewards is
puzzling.
Shrinking Labor
Share
(graph at link)
The labor share is
the percentage of
economic output that
accrues to workers in
the form of
compensation.
Source: Bureau of
Labor Statistics
Some economists
argue that
technological
advancements are to
blame as employers
have replaced workers
with machines. Others
point to trade powered
by cheap foreign
labor, a view
championed by
President Trump that
particularly resonated
among voters.
Alternate culprits
include tax policies
that treat investment
income more favorably
than wages; flagging
skills and education
that have rendered
workers less
productive or unsuited
to an information- and
service-based economy;
or a weakening of
labor unions that has
chipped away at
workers' bargaining
power and protections.
Over the last 15
years, for example,
labor productivity has
grown faster than
wages, a sign that
workers are not being
adequately compensated
for their
contributions. And
some industries have
fared worse than
others. Slices of the
pie going to mining
and manufacturing
narrowed the most,
while service workers
(including
professional and
business services) had
the biggest gains. ...
---
Instead of a robot
tax, @Noahpinion
suggests sharing the
profits they create
http://bv.ms/2lPl7HC
via @Bloomberg - Noah
Smith - February 28,
2017
Microsoft Corp.
founder Bill Gates
made a splash in a
recent interview, when
he suggested that
robots should be taxed
in order to help
humans keep their
jobs:
'Right now, the
human worker who does,
say, $50,000 worth of
work in a factory,
that income is taxed
and you get income
tax, social security
tax, all those things.
If a robot comes in to
do the same thing,
you'd think that we'd
tax the robot at a
similar level.'
Gates is only one
of many people in the
tech world who have
worried about
automation and its
threat to workers. ...
Re those "superstar" firms cited in the NY Times story as
causing the decline in labor's share of national income:
That wouldn't be the case if the employees in those firms
(e.g., Amazon) were unionized. The long, precipitous drop in
union membership is often given as the No. 1 cause of a
smaller labor share of the income pie. To this reader, the
rise of superstar firms doesn't take away from that cause; if
anything, it adds to it.
P.S. Amazon, BTW, is a textbook case of union-crushing by
management.
Good point about Amazon. I have never bought anything from
them and never will. I have been unable to get my wife to
stop using them although I have been successful in
intervening to prevent her from buying me things from Amazon.
I prefer to source locally where possible and for stuff not
locally available then use mail order by phone from vendors
that use domestic call centers such as Gempler's and Cabela's
and even Breck's which has a call center in the US even
though most of the bulbs ship from Netherlands.
I am buying
a Silky Hayate pole pruner today from the Sherrill Tree local
retailer (Vermeer Mid Atlantic LLC). Aside from the extra 20
mile trip up the highway to Ashland VA (from Sandston where I
live) the price is the same as it was at the lowest cost
Internet retailers. I do like the Internet for price checking
and comparative shopping of products. I just don't buy
anything there. Of course, being retired now there is less
temptation to let my wife buy it for me on the Internet to
save me the time and trouble.
BTW, Amazon is a whole separate case from the Internet in
general. I only previously knew about Amazon though because
an Amazon fulfillment center opened up "next door" to the
VITA/Northrop Grumman data center in Chester VA where I
worked until mid-June 2015. Word got around as they say. It
was the worst sweat shop in town.
But I don't do any online
shopping. With Amazon though I don't even want my wife buying
stuff for me there.
Do you shop at Wal-Mart?
Because they're just as anti-union as any other corporation.
Do you know why companies like to set up manufacturing
operations in little towns? Because the town is then
dependent on that manufacturing operation for it's jobs, so
the company can then threaten to move if the town tries to
unionize.
I'm just saying that unions (outside of a few remaining
stragglers) are effectively dead in this country.
I do shop at Walmart. They have snuffed out most of the
decent competition. The local Kroger's sucks. There is a
decent Kroger's in Richmond about twenty miles away. On the
way back from Vermeer's today I will swing by one of the last
remaining Martin's (a.k.a., Giant Foods in other zip codes)
for some groceries, but it is over twice as far from my house
as Walmart. Later this year either a Food Lion or a Publix
will open up where our local Martin's was until last
Thanksgiving. There is a Lowes near where our Martin's used
to be, so that keeps me out of Walmart for lawn and garden.
Before Martin's there was a local grocer (Ukrop's) where I
did my grocery shopping and it was great until competition,
largely from Walmart, snuffed them out.
Both declining union membership and market concentration are
a result of a "business friendly" regulatory environment
which enables ever greater rent extractions. Yet another nail
in the coffin of "the robots did it!"
'Superstar Firms' May Have Shrunk Workers'
Share of Income
https://nyti.ms/2mGiVmQ
NYT - PATRICIA COHEN - MARCH 8, 2017
For much of the last century it seemed that the slice of
the total economic pie going to workers was - like the speed
of light - constant. No matter what the economy's makeup,
labor could collectively depend on taking home roughly
two-thirds of the country's total output as compensation for
its efforts. Workers' unchanging share, the economist John
Maynard Keynes declared in 1939, was "one of the most
surprising, yet best-established, facts in the whole range of
economic statistics."
But in recent decades, that steady share - which includes
everything from the chief executive's bonuses and stock
options to the parking-lot attendant's minimum wage and tips
- started to flutter. In the 2000s, it slipped significantly.
Although the numbers have inched up in the last couple of
years, labor's portion has not risen above 59 percent since
before the recession.
The decline has coincided with a slowdown in overall
growth as well as a stark leap in inequality. "Labor is
getting a shrinking slice of a pie that's not growing very
much," David Autor, an economist at M.I.T., said. It is a
development that is upending political establishments and
economic policies in the United States and abroad.
The reason for workers' shrinking portion of the economy's
rewards is puzzling.
Shrinking Labor Share
(graph at link)
The labor share is the percentage of economic output that
accrues to workers in the form of compensation.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Some economists argue that technological advancements are
to blame as employers have replaced workers with machines.
Others point to trade powered by cheap foreign labor, a view
championed by President Trump that particularly resonated
among voters.
Alternate culprits include tax policies that treat
investment income more favorably than wages; flagging skills
and education that have rendered workers less productive or
unsuited to an information- and service-based economy; or a
weakening of labor unions that has chipped away at workers'
bargaining power and protections.
Over the last 15 years, for example, labor productivity
has grown faster than wages, a sign that workers are not
being adequately compensated for their contributions. And
some industries have fared worse than others. Slices of the
pie going to mining and manufacturing narrowed the most,
while service workers (including professional and business
services) had the biggest gains. ...
---
Instead of a robot tax, @Noahpinion suggests sharing the
profits they create
http://bv.ms/2lPl7HC
via @Bloomberg - Noah Smith - February 28, 2017
Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates made a splash in a
recent interview, when he suggested that robots should be
taxed in order to help humans keep their jobs:
'Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth
of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income
tax, social security tax, all those things. If a robot comes
in to do the same thing, you'd think that we'd tax the robot
at a similar level.'
Gates is only one of many people in the tech world who
have worried about automation and its threat to workers. ...
"... His prescription in the end is the old and tired "invest in education and retraining", i.e. "symbolic analyst jobs will replace the lost jobs" like they have for decades (not). ..."
"... "Governments will, however, have to concern themselves with problems of structural joblessness. They likely will need to take a more explicit role in ensuring full employment than has been the practice in the US." ..."
"... Instead, we have been shredding the safety net and job training / creation programs. There is plenty of work that needs to be done. People who have demand for goods and services find them unaffordable because the wealthy are capturing all the profits and use their wealth to capture even more. Trade is not the problem for US workers. Lack of investment in the US workforce is the problem. We don't invest because the dominant white working class will not support anything that might benefit blacks and minorities, even if the major benefits go to the white working class ..."
"... Really nice if your sitting in the lunch room of the University. Especially if you are a member of the class that has been so richly awarded, rather than the class who paid for it. Humph. The discussion is garbage, Political opinion by a group that sat by ... The hypothetical nuance of impossible tax policy. ..."
"... The concept of Robots leaving us destitute, is interesting. A diversion. It ain't robots who are harvesting the middle class. It is an entitled class of those who gave so little. ..."
"... Summers: "Let them eat training." ..."
"... Suddenly then, Bill Gates has become an accomplished student of public policy who can command an audience from Lawrence Summers who was unable to abide by the likes of the prophetic Brooksley Born who was chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or the prophetic professor Raghuram Rajan who would become Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Agreeing with Bill Gates however is a "usual" for Summers. ..."
"... Until about a decade or so ago many states I worked in had a "tangible property" or "personal property" tax on business equipment, and sometimes on equipment + average inventory. Someday I will do some research and see how many states still do this. Anyway a tax on manufacturing equipment, retail fixtures and computers and etc. is hardly novel or unusual. So why would robots be any different? ..."
"... Thank you O glorious technocrats for shining the light of truth on humanity's path into the future! Where, oh where, would we be without our looting Benevolent Overlords and their pompous lapdogs (aka Liars in Public Places)? ..."
"... While he is overrated, he is not completely clueless. He might well be mediocre (or slightly above this level) but extremely arrogant defender of the interests of neoliberal elite. Rubin's boy Larry as he was called in the old days. ..."
"... BTW he was Rubin's hatchet man for eliminating Brooksley Born attempt to regulate the derivatives and forcing her to resign: ..."
Larry Summers:
Robots
are wealth creators and taxing them is illogical : I usually agree with Bill Gates on matters
of public policy and admire his emphasis on the combined power of markets and technology. But I think
he went seriously astray in a recent interview when he proposed, without apparent irony, a tax on
robots to cushion worker dislocation and limit inequality. ....
Has Summers gone all supply-side on his? Start with his title:
"Robots are wealth creators and taxing them is illogical"
I bet Bill Gates might reply – "my company is a wealth creator so it should not be taxed".
Oh wait – Microsoft is already shifting profits to tax havens. Summers states:
"Third, and perhaps most fundamentally, why tax in ways that reduce the size of the pie rather
than ways that assure that the larger pie is well distributed? Imagine that 50 people can produce
robots who will do the work of 100. A sufficiently high tax on robots would prevent them from
being produced."
Summers makes one, and only one, good and relevant point - that in many cases, robots/automation
will not produce more product from the same inputs but better products. That's in his words; I
would replace "better" with "more predictable quality/less variability" - in both directions.
And that the more predictable quality aspect is hard or impossible to distinguish from higher
productivity (in some cases they may be exactly the same, e.g. by streamlining QA and reducing
rework/pre-sale repairs).
His prescription in the end is the old and tired "invest in education and retraining", i.e.
"symbolic analyst jobs will replace the lost jobs" like they have for decades (not).
Pundits do not write titles, editors do. Tax the profits, not the robots.
The crux of the argument is this:
"Governments will, however, have to concern themselves with problems of structural joblessness.
They likely will need to take a more explicit role in ensuring full employment than has been
the practice in the US."
Instead, we have been shredding the safety net and job training / creation programs. There
is plenty of work that needs to be done. People who have demand for goods and services find them
unaffordable because the wealthy are capturing all the profits and use their wealth to capture
even more. Trade is not the problem for US workers. Lack of investment in the US workforce is
the problem. We don't invest because the dominant white working class will not support anything
that might benefit blacks and minorities, even if the major benefits go to the white working class
In principle taxing profits is preferable, but has a few downsides/differences:
Profit taxes cannot be "earmarked" with the same *justification* as automation taxes
Profits may actually not increase after the automation - initially because of write-offs,
and then because of pricing in (and perhaps the automation was installed in response to external
market pressures to begin with).
Profits can be shifted/minimized in ways that automation cannot - either you have the robots
or not. Taxing the robots will discourage automation (if that is indeed the goal, or is considered
a worthwhile goal).
Not very strong points, and I didn't read the Gates interview so I don't know his detailed
motivation to propose specifically a robot tax.
When I was in Amsterdam a few years ago, they had come up with another perfidious scheme to cut
people out of the loop or "incentivize" people to use the machines - in a large transit center,
you could buy tickets at a vending machine or a counter with a person - and for the latter you
would have to pay a not-so-modest "personal service" surcharge (50c for a EUR 2-3 or so ticket
- I think it was a flat fee, but may have been staggered by type of service).
Maybe I misunderstood it and it was a "congestion charge" to prevent lines so people who have
to use counter service e.g. with questions don't have to wait.
And then you may have heard (in the US) the term "convenience fee" which I found rather insulting
when I encountered it. It suggests you are charged for your convenience, but it is to cover payment
processor costs (productivity enhancing automation!).
And then you may have heard (in the US) the term "convenience fee" which I found rather insulting
when I encountered it. It suggests you are charged for your convenience, but it is to cover payment
processor costs (productivity enhancing automation!)
Lack of adequate compensation to the lower half of the job force is the problem. Lack of persistent
big macro demand is the problem . A global traiding system that doesn't automatically move forex
rates toward universal. Trading zone balance and away from persistent surplus and deficit traders
is the problem
Technology is never the root problem. Population dynamics is never the root problem
Really nice if your sitting in the lunch room of the University. Especially if you are a member
of the class that has been so richly awarded, rather than the class who paid for it. Humph. The
discussion is garbage, Political opinion by a group that sat by ... The hypothetical nuance of
impossible tax policy.
The concept of Robots leaving us destitute, is interesting. A diversion. It ain't robots who are
harvesting the middle class. It is an entitled class of those who gave so little.
After one five axis CNC cell replaces 5 other machines and 4 of the workers, what happens to
the four workers?
The issue is the efficiency achieved through better through put forcing the loss of wages.
If you use the 5-axis CNC, tax the output from it no more than what would have been paid to the
4 workers plus the Overhead for them. The Labor cost plus the Overhead Cost is what is eliminated
by the 5-Axis CNC.
Ouch. The Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics blog has a post * linking to Raghuram Rajan's
prophetic 2005 paper ** on the risks posed by securitization - basically, Rajan said that what
did happen, could happen - and to the discussion at the Jackson Hole conference by Federal Reserve
vice-chairman Don Kohn *** and others. **** The economics profession does not come off very well.
Two things are really striking here. First is the obsequiousness toward Alan Greenspan. To
be fair, the 2005 Jackson Hole event was a sort of Greenspan celebration; still, it does come
across as excessive - dangerously close to saying that if the Great Greenspan says something,
it must be so. Second is the extreme condescension toward Rajan - a pretty serious guy - for having
the temerity to suggest that maybe markets don't always work to our advantage. Larry Summers,
I'm sorry to say, comes off particularly badly. Only my colleague Alan Blinder, defending Rajan
"against the unremitting attack he is getting here for not being a sufficiently good Chicago economist,"
emerges with honor.
No, his argument is much broader. Summers stops at "no new taxes and education/retraining". And
I find it highly dubious that compensation/accommodation for workers can be adequately funded
out of robot taxes.
We should never assign a social task to the wrong institution. Firms should be unencumbered by draconian hire and fire constraints. The state should provide the compensation for lay offs and firings.
The state should maintain an adequate local Beveridge ratio of job openings to
Job applicants
Firms task is productivity max subject to externality off sets. Including output price changed. And various other third party impacts
Suddenly then, Bill Gates has become an accomplished student of public policy who can command
an audience from Lawrence Summers who was unable to abide by the likes of the prophetic Brooksley
Born who was chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or the prophetic professor Raghuram
Rajan who would become Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Agreeing with Bill Gates however
is a "usual" for Summers.
Until about a decade or so ago many states I worked in had a "tangible property" or "personal
property" tax on business equipment, and sometimes on equipment + average inventory. Someday I
will do some research and see how many states still do this. Anyway a tax on manufacturing equipment,
retail fixtures and computers and etc. is hardly novel or unusual. So why would robots be any
different?
I suspect it is the motivation of Gates as in what he would do with the tax revenue. And Gates
might be thinking of a higher tax rate for robots than for your garden variety equipment.
Yes some equipment in side any one firm compliments existing labor inside that firm including
already installed robots Robots new robots are rivals
Rivals that if subject to a special " introduction tax " Could deter installation
As in
The 50 for 100 swap of the 50 hours embodied in the robot
Replace 100. Similarly paid production line labor
But ...
There's a 100 % plusher chase tax on the robots
Why bother to invest in the productivity increase
If here are no other savings
Bill Gates Wants to Undermine Donald Trump's Plans for Growing the Economy
Yes, as Un-American as that may sound, Bill Gates is proposing * a tax that would undermine
Donald Trump's efforts to speed the rate of economic growth. Gates wants to tax productivity growth
(also known as "automation") slowing down the rate at which the economy becomes more efficient.
This might seem a bizarre policy proposal at a time when productivity growth has been at record
lows, ** *** averaging less than 1.0 percent annually for the last decade. This compares to rates
of close to 3.0 percent annually from 1947 to 1973 and again from 1995 to 2005.
It is not clear if Gates has any understanding of economic data, but since the election of
Donald Trump there has been a major effort to deny the fact that the trade deficit has been responsible
for the loss of manufacturing jobs and to instead blame productivity growth. This is in spite
of the fact that productivity growth has slowed sharply in recent years and that the plunge in
manufacturing jobs followed closely on the explosion of the trade deficit, beginning in 1997.
[Manufacturing Employment, 1970-2017]
Anyhow, as Paul Krugman pointed out in his column **** today, if Trump is to have any hope
of achieving his growth target, he will need a sharp uptick in the rate of productivity growth
from what we have been seeing. Bill Gates is apparently pushing in the opposite direction.
Yes, it's far better that our betters in the upper class get all the benefits from productivity
growth. Without their genetic entitlement to wealth others created, we would just be savages murdering
one another in the streets.
These Masters of the Universe of ours put the 'civil' in our illustrious civilization. (Sure
it's a racist barbarian concentration camp on the verge of collapse into fascist revolutions and
world war. But, again, far better than people murdering one another in the streets!)
People who are displaced from automation are simply moochers and it's only right that they
are cut out of the economy and left to die on the streets. This is the law of Nature: survival
of the fittest. Social Darwinism is inescapable. It's what makes us human!
Instead of just waiting for people displaced from automation to die on the streets, we should
do the humane thing and establish concentration camps so they are quickly dispatched to the Void.
(Being human means being merciful!)
Thank you O glorious technocrats for shining the light of truth on humanity's path into
the future! Where, oh where, would we be without our looting Benevolent Overlords and their pompous
lapdogs (aka Liars in Public Places)?
I think it would be good if the tax was used to help dislocated workers and help with inequality
as Gates suggests. However Summers and Baker have a point that it's odd to single out robots when
you could tax other labor-saving, productivity-enhancing technologies as well.
Baker suggests taxing profits instead. I like his idea about the government taking stock of
companies and collecting taxes that way.
"They likely will need to take a more explicit role in ensuring full employment than has been
the practice in the US.
Among other things, this will mean major reforms of education and retraining systems, consideration
of targeted wage subsidies for groups with particularly severe employment problems, major investments
in infrastructure and, possibly, direct public employment programmes."
Not your usual neoliberal priorities. Compare with Hillary's program.
All taxes are a reallocation of wealth. Not taxing wealth creators is impossible.
On the other hand, any producer who is not taxed will expand at the expense of those producers
who are taxed. This we are seeing with respect to mechanical producers and human labor. Labor
is helping to subsidize its replacement.
Interesting that Summers apparently doesn't see this.
Substitute "impossible" with "bad policy" and you are spot on. Of course the entire Paul Ryan
agenda is to shift taxes from the wealthy high income to the rest of us.
Judging by the whole merit rhetoric and tying employability to "adding value", one could come
to the conclusion that most wealth is created by workers. Otherwise why would companies need to
employ them and wring their hands over skill shortages? Are you suggesting W-2 and payroll taxes
are bad policy?
Payroll taxes to fund Soc. Sec. benefits is a good thing. But when they are used to fund tax cuts
for the rich - not a good thing. And yes - wealth may be created by workers but it often ends
up in the hands of the "investor class".
Let's not conflate value added from value extracted. Profits are often pure economic rents. Very
often non supply regulating. The crude dynamics of market based pricing hardly presents. A sea
of close shaveed firms extracting only. Necessary incentivizing profits of enterprise
Profiteers extract far more value then they create. Of course disentangling system improving surplus
ie profits of enterprise
From the rest of the extracted swag. Exceeds existing tax systems capacity
One can make a solid social welfare case for a class of income stream
that amounts to a running residue out of revenue earned by the firm
above compensation to job holders in that firm
See the model of the recent oboe laureate
But that would amount to a fraction of existing corporate " earnings "
Errr extractions
Taking this in a different direction, does it strike anyone else as important that human beings
retain the knowledge of how to make the things that robots are tasked to produce?
The current generation of robots and automated equipment isn't intelligent and doesn't "know"
anything. People still know how to make the things, otherwise the robots couldn't be programmed.
However in probably many cases, doing the actual production manually is literally not humanly
possible. For example, making semiconductor chips or modern circuit boards requires machines -
they cannot be produced by human workers under any circumstances, as they require precision outside
the range of human capability.
Point taken but I was thinking more along the lines of knowing how to use a lathe or an end mill.
If production is reduced to a series of programming exercises then my sense is that society is
setting itself up for a nasty fall.
(I'm all for technology to the extent that it builds resilience. However, when it serves to
disconnect humans from the underlying process and reduces their role to simply knowledge workers,
symbolic analysts, or the like then it ceases to be net positive. Alternatively stated: Tech-driven
improvements in efficiency are good so long as they don't undermine overall societal resilience.
Be aware of your reliance on things you don't understand but whose function you take for granted.)
Gates almost certainly meant tax robots the way we are taxed. I doubt he meant tax the acquisition
of robots. We are taxed in complex ways, presumably robots will be as well.
Summers is surely using a strawman to make his basically well thought out arguments.
In any case, everyone is talking about distributional impacts of robots, but resource allocation
is surely to be as much or more impacted. What if robots only want to produce antennas and not
tomatoes? That might be a damn shame.
It all seems a tad early to worry about and it's hard to see how what ever the actual outcome
is, the frontier of possible outcomes has to be wildly improved.
Given recent developments in labor productivity Your Last phrase becomes a gem
That is If you end with "it's hard to see whatever the actual outcome is The frontier of possible
outcomes shouldn't be wildly improved By a social revolution "
Robots do not CREATE wealth. They transform wealth from one kind to another that subjectively
has more utility to robot user. Wealth is inherent in the raw materials, the knowledge, skill
and effort of the robot designers and fabricators, etc., etc.
While he is overrated, he is not completely clueless. He might well be mediocre (or slightly
above this level) but extremely arrogant defender of the interests of neoliberal elite. Rubin's
boy Larry as he was called in the old days.
BTW he was Rubin's hatchet man for eliminating Brooksley Born attempt to regulate the derivatives
and forcing her to resign:
== quote ==
"I walk into Brooksley's office one day; the blood has drained from her face," says Michael Greenberger,
a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. "She's hanging up the telephone;
she says to me: 'That was [former Assistant Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers. He says, "You're
going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II."... [He says he has]
13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.'"
Market is, at the end, a fully political construct. And what neoliberals like Summers promote
is politically motivated -- reflects the desires of the ruling neoliberal elite to redistribute
wealth up.
BTW there is a lot of well meaning (or fashion driven) idiotism that is sold in the USA as
automation, robots, move to cloud, etc. Often such fashion driven exercises cost company quite
a lot. But that's OK as long as bonuses are pocketed by top brass, and power of labor diminished.
Underneath of all the "robotic revolution" along with some degree of technological innovation
(mainly due to increased power of computers and tremendous progress in telecommunication technologies
-- not some breakthrough) is one big trend -- liquidation of good jobs and atomization of the
remaining work force.
A lot of motivation here is the old dirty desire of capital owners and upper management to
further to diminish the labor share. Another positive thing for capital owners and upper management
is that robots do not go on strike and do not demand wage increases. But the problem is that they
are not a consumers either. So robotization might bring the next Minsky moment for the USA economy
closer. Sighs of weakness of consumer demand are undeniable even now. Look at auto loan delinquency
rate as the first robin.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2016/02/27/subprime-auto-loan-delinquencies-hit-six-year-high/81027230/
== quote ==
The total of outstanding auto loans reached $1.04 trillion in the fourth-quarter of 2015, according
to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. About $200 billion of that would be classified as
subprime or deep subprime.
== end of quote ==
Summers as a staunch, dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal of course is against increasing labor share.
Actually here he went full into "supply sider" space -- making richer more rich will make us better
off too. Pgl already noted that by saying: "Has Summers gone all supply-side on his? Start with
his title"
BTW, there is a lot of crazy thing that are going on with the US large companies drive to diminish
labor share. Some o them became barely manageable and higher management has no clue what is happening
on the lower layers of the company.
The old joke was: GM does a lot of good things except making good cars. Now it can be expanded
to a lot more large US companies.
The "robot pressure" on labor is not new. It is actually the same old and somewhat dirty trick
as outsourcing. In this case outsourcing to robots. In other words "war of labor" by other means.
Two caste that neoliberalism created like in feudalism occupy different social spaces and one
is waging the war on other, under the smoke screen of "free market" ideology. As buffet remarked
"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're
winning."
BTW successes in robotics are no so overhyped that it is not easy to distinguish where reality
ends and the hype starts.
In reality telecommunication revolution is probably more important in liquation of good jobs
in the USA. I think Jonny Bakho or somebody else commented on this, but I can't find the post.
Dean Baker's screed, "Bill Gates Is Clueless On The Economy," keeps getting recycled, from
Beat the Press to Truthout to Real-World Economics Review to The Huffington Post. Dean waves aside
the real problem with Gates's suggestion, which is the difficulty of defining what a robot is,
and focuses instead on what seems to him to be the knock-down argument:
"Gates is worried that productivity growth is moving along too rapidly and that it will lead
to large scale unemployment.
"There are two problems with this story: First productivity growth has actually been very slow
in recent years. The second problem is that if it were faster, there is no reason it should lead
to mass unemployment."
Bill Gates Wants to Undermine Donald Trump's Plans for Growing the Economy
Yes, as Un-American as that may sound, Bill Gates is proposing * a tax that would undermine
Donald Trump's efforts to speed the rate of economic growth. Gates wants to tax productivity growth
(also known as "automation") slowing down the rate at which the economy becomes more efficient.
This might seem a bizarre policy proposal at a time when productivity growth has been at record
lows, ** averaging less than 1.0 percent annually for the last decade. This compares to rates
of close to 3.0 percent annually from 1947 to 1973 and again from 1995 to 2005.
It is not clear if Gates has any understanding of economic data, but since the election of
Donald Trump there has been a major effort to deny the fact that the trade deficit has been responsible
for the loss of manufacturing jobs and to instead blame productivity growth. This is in spite
of the fact that productivity growth has slowed sharply in recent years and that the plunge in
manufacturing jobs followed closely on the explosion of the trade deficit, beginning in 1997.
[Manufacturing Employment, 1970-2017]
Anyhow, as Paul Krugman pointed out in his column *** today, if Trump is to have any hope of
achieving his growth target, he will need a sharp uptick in the rate of productivity growth from
what we have been seeing. Bill Gates is apparently pushing in the opposite direction.
Bill Gates Is Clueless on the Economy
By Dean Baker
Last week Bill Gates called for taxing robots. * He argued that we should impose a tax on companies
replacing workers with robots and that the money should be used to retrain the displaced workers.
As much as I appreciate the world's richest person proposing a measure that would redistribute
money from people like him to the rest of us, this idea doesn't make any sense.
Let's skip over the fact of who would define what a robot is and how, and think about the logic
of what Gates is proposing. In effect, Gates wants to put a tax on productivity growth. This is
what robots are all about. They allow us to produce more goods and services with the same amount
of human labor. Gates is worried that productivity growth is moving along too rapidly and that
it will lead to large scale unemployment.
There are two problems with this story. First productivity growth has actually been very slow
in recent years. The second problem is that if it were faster, there is no reason it should lead
to mass unemployment. Rather, it should lead to rapid growth and increases in living standards.
Starting with the recent history, productivity growth has averaged less than 0.6 percent annually
over the last six years. This compares to a rate of 3.0 percent from 1995 to 2005 and also in
the quarter century from 1947 to 1973. Gates' tax would slow productivity growth even further.
It is difficult to see why we would want to do this. Most of the economic problems we face
are implicitly a problem of productivity growth being too slow. The argument that budget deficits
are a problem is an argument that we can't produce enough goods and services to accommodate the
demand generated by large budget deficits.
The often told tale of a demographic nightmare with too few workers to support a growing population
of retirees is also a story of inadequate productivity growth. If we had rapid productivity growth
then we would have all the workers we need.
In these and other areas, the conventional view of economists is that productivity growth is
too slow. From this perspective, if Bill Gates gets his way then he will be making our main economic
problems worse, not better.
Gates' notion that rapid productivity growth will lead to large-scale unemployment is contradicted
by both history and theory. The quarter century from 1947 to 1973 was a period of mostly low unemployment
and rapid wage growth. The same was true in the period of rapid productivity growth in the late
1990s.
The theoretical story that would support a high employment economy even with rapid productivity
growth is that the Federal Reserve Board should be pushing down interest rates to try to boost
demand, as growing productivity increases the ability of the economy to produce more goods and
services. In this respect, it is worth noting that the Fed has recently moved to raise interest
rates to slow the rate of job growth.
We can also look to boost demand by running large budget deficits. We can spend money on long
neglected needs, like providing quality child care, education, or modernizing our infrastructure.
Remember, if we have more output potential because of productivity growth, the deficits are not
problem.
We can also look to take advantage of increases in productivity growth by allowing workers
more leisure time. Workers in the United States put in 20 percent more hours each year on average
than workers in other wealthy countries like Germany and the Netherlands. In these countries,
it is standard for workers to have five or six weeks a year of paid vacation, as well as paid
family leave and paid vacation. We should look to follow this example in the United States as
well.
If we pursue these policies to maintain high levels of employment then workers will be well-positioned
to secure the benefits of higher productivity in higher wages. This was certainly the story in
the quarter century after World War II when real wages rose at a rate of close to two percent
annually....
The productivity advantages of robots for hospice care is chiefly from robots not needing sleep,
albeit they may still need short breaks for recharging. Their primary benefit may still be that
without the human touch of care givers then the old and infirm may proceed more quickly through
the checkout line.
Nursing is very tough work. But much more generally, the attitude towards labor is a bit schizophrenic
- one the one hand everybody is expected to work/contribute, on the other whichever work can be
automated is removed, and it is publicly celebrated as progress (often at the cost of making the
residual work, or "new process", less pleasant for remaining workers and clients).
This is also why I'm getting the impression Gates puts the cart before the horse - his solution
sounds not like "how to benefit from automation", but "how to keep everybody in work despite automation".
Work is the organization and direction of people's time into productive activity.
Some people are self directed and productive with little external motivation.
Others are disoriented by lack of direction and pursue activities that not only are not productive
but are self destructive.
Work is a basic component of the social contract.
Everyone works and contributes and work a sufficient quantity and quality of work should guarantee
a living wage.
You will find overwhelming support for a living wage but very little support for paying people
not to work
I'm getting the impression Gates puts the cart before the horse - his solution sounds not like
"how to benefit from automation", but "how to keep everybody in work despite automation".
Schizophrenia runs deep in modernity, but this is another good example of it. We are nothing if
not conflicted. Of course things get better when we work together to resolve the contradictions
in our society, but if not then....
"...his solution sounds not like 'how to benefit from automation', but "how to keep everybody
in work despite automation'."
Yes, indeed. And this is where Dean Baker could have made a substantive critique, rather than
the conventional economics argument dilution he defaulted to.
"...his solution sounds not like 'how to benefit from automation', but "how to keep everybody
in work despite automation'."
Yes, indeed. And this is where Dean Baker could have made a substantive critique, rather than
the conventional economics argument dilution he defaulted to."
Why did you think he chose that route? I think all of Dean Baker's proposed economic reforms
are worthwhile.
[Don't feel like the Lone Ranger, Mrs. Rustbelt RN. Mortality may be God's greatest gift to
us, but I can wait for it. I am enjoying retirement regardless of everything else. I don't envy
the young at all.]
Having a little familiarity with robotics in hospital nursing care (not hospice, but similar I
assume) ... I don't think the RNs are in danger of losing their jobs any time soon.
Maybe someday, but the state of the art is not "there" yet or even close. The best stuff does
tasks like cleaning floors and carrying shipments down hallways. This replaces janitorial and
orderly labor, but even those only slightly, and doesn't even approach being a viable substitute
for nursing.
Great! I am not a fan of robots. I do like to mix some irony with my sarcasm though and if it
tastes too much like cynicism then I just add a little more salt.
"The quarter century from 1947 to 1973 was a period of mostly low unemployment and rapid wage
growth. The same was true in the period of rapid productivity growth in the late 1990s."
I think it was New Deal Dem or somebody who also pointed to this. I noticed this as well and
pointed out that the social democratic years of tight labor markets had the highest "productivity"
levels, but the usual trolls had their argumentative replies.
So there's that an also in the neoliberal era, bubble ponzi periods record high profits and
hence higher productivity even if they aren't sustainable.
There was the epic housing bubble and funny how the lying troll PGL denies the Dot.com bubble
every happened.
I would add one devoid of historical context as well as devoid of the harm done to the environment
and society done from unregulated industrial production.
Following this specified period of unemployment and high productivity Americans demanded and
go Federal Environmental Regulation and Labor laws for safety, etc.
Of course, the current crop of Republicans and Trump Supporters want to go back to the reckless,
foolish, dangerous, and deadly selfish government sanctioned corporate pollution, environmental
destruction, poison, and wipe away worker protections, pay increases, and benefits.
Peter K. ignores too much of history or prefers to not mention it in his arguments with you.
I would remind Peter K. that we have Speed Limits on our roadways and many other signs that are
posted that we must follow which in fact are there for our safety and that of others.
Those signs, laws, and regulations are there for our good not for our detriment even if they
slow us down or direct us to do things we would prefer not to do at that moment.
Metaphorically speaking that is what is absent completely in Trump's thinking and Republican
Proposals for the US Economy, not to mention Education, Health, Foreign Affairs, etc.
Where do you find this stuff? Very few economists would agree that there were these eras you describe.
It is simpletonian. It is not relevant to economic models or discussions.
"The quarter century from 1947 to 1973 was a period of mostly low unemployment and rapid wage
growth. The same was true in the period of rapid productivity growth in the late 1990s."
So Jonny Bakho and PGL disagree with this?
Not surprising. PGl also believes the Dot.com bubble is a fiction. Must have been that brain
injury he had surgery for.
You dishonestly put words in other people's mouth all the time
You are rude and juvenile
What I disagreed with:
" social democratic years" (a vague phrase with no definition)
This sentence is incoherent:
"So there's that an also in the neoliberal era, bubble ponzi periods record high profits and hence
higher productivity even if they aren't sustainable."
I asked, Where do you find this? because it has little to do with the conversation
You follow your nonsense with an ad hominem attack
You seem more interested in attacking Democrats and repeating mindless talking points than in
discussing issues or exchanging ideas
The period did have high average growth. It also had recessions and recoveries. Your pretending
otherwise reminds me of those JohnH tributes to the gold standard period.
...aggregate productivity growth is a "statistical flimflam," according to Harry Magdoff...
[Exactly! TO be fair it is not uncommon for economists to decompose the aggregate productivity
growth flimflam into two primary problems, particularly in the US. Robots fall down on the job
in the services sector. Uber wants to fix that by replacing the gig economy drivers that replaced
taxi drivers with gig-bots, but robots in food service may be what it really takes to boost productivity
and set the stage for Soylent Green. Likewise, robot teachers and firemen may not enhance productivity,
but they would darn sure redirect all profits from productivity back to the owners of capital
further depressing wages for the rest of us.
Meanwhile agriculture and manufacturing already have such high productivity that further productivity
enhancements are lost as noise in the aggregate data. It of course helps that much of our productivity
improvement in manufacturing consists of boosting profits as Chinese workers are replaced with
bots. Capital productivity is booming, if we just had any better idea of how to measure it. I
suggest that record corporate profits are the best metric of capital productivity.
But as you suggest, economists that utilize aggregate productivity metrics in their analysis
of wages or anything are just enabling the disablers. That said though, then Dean Baker's emphasis
on trade deficits and wages is still well placed. He just failed to utilize the best available
arguments regarding, or rather disregarding, aggregate productivity.]
The Robocop movies never caught on in the same way that Blade Runner did. There is probably an
underlying social function that explains it in the context of the roles of cops being reversed
between the two, that is robot police versus policing the robots.
"There is probably an underlying social function that explains it in the context"
No, I'd say it's better actors, story, milieu, the new age Vangelis music, better set pieces,
just better execution of movie making in general beyond the plot points.
But ultimately it's a matter of taste.
But the Turing test scene at the beginning of Blade Runner was classic and reminds me of the
election of Trump.
An escaped android is trying to pass as a janitor to infiltrate the Tyrell corporation which
makes androids.
He's getting asked all sort of questions while his vitals are checked in his employment interview.
The interviewer ask him about his mother.
"Let me tell you about my mother..."
BAM (his gunshot under the table knocks the guy through the wall)
"...No, I'd say it's better actors, story, milieu, the new age Vangelis music, better set pieces,
just better execution of movie making in general beyond the plot points..."
[Albeit that all of what you say is true, then there is still the issue of what begets what
with all that and the plot points. Producers are people too (as dubious as that proposition may
seem). Blade Runner was a film based on Philip Kindred Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"
novel. Dick was a mediocre sci-fi writer at best, but he was a profound plot maker. Blade Runner
was a film that demanded to be made and made well. Robocop was a film that just demanded to be
made, but poorly was good enough. The former asked a question about our souls, while the latter
only questioned our future. Everything else followed from the two different story lines. No one
could have made a small story of Gone With the Wind any more that someone could have made a superficial
story of Grapes of Wrath or To Kill a Mockingbird. OK, there may be some film producers that do
not know the difference, but we have never heard of them nor their films.
In any case there is also a political lesson to learn here. The Democratic Party needs a better
story line. The talking heads have all been saying how much better Dum'old Trump was last night
than in his former speeches. Although true as well as crossing a very low bar, I was more impressed
with Steve Beshear's response. It looked to me like maybe the Democratic Party establishment is
finally starting to get the message albeit a bit patronizing if you think about too much given
their recent problems with old white men.]
[I really hope that they don't screw this up too bad. Now Heinlein is what I consider a great
sci-fi writer along with Bradbury and even Jules Verne in his day.]
...Dick only achieved mainstream appreciation shortly after his death when, in 1982, his novel
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was brought to the big screen by Ridley Scott in the form
of Blade Runner. The movie initially received lukewarm reviews but emerged as a cult hit opening
the film floodgates. Since Dick's passing, seven more of his stories have been turned into films
including Total Recall (originally We Can Remember It for You Wholesale), The Minority Report,
Screamers (Second Variety), Imposter, Paycheck, Next (The Golden Man) and A Scanner Darkly. Averaging
roughly one movie every three years, this rate of cinematic adaptation is exceeded only by Stephen
King. More recently, in 2005, Time Magazine named Ubik one of the 100 greatest English-language
novels published since 1923, and in 2007 Philip K. Dick became the first sci-fi writer to be included
in the Library of America series...
The Democratic Party needs a better story line, but Bernie was moving that in a better direction.
While Steve Beshear was a welcome voice, the Democratic Party needs a lot of new story tellers,
much younger than either Bernie or Beshear.
"The Democratic Party needs a better story line, but Bernie was moving that in a better direction.
While Steve Beshear was a welcome voice, the Democratic Party needs a lot of new story tellers,
much younger than either Bernie or Beshear."
Beshear was fine, great even, but the Democratic Party needs a front man that is younger and maybe
not a man and probably not that white and certainly not an old white man. We might even forgive
all but the old part if the story line were good enough. The Democratic Party is only going to
get limited mileage out of putting up a front man that looks like a Trump voter.
It also might be more about AI. There is currently a wave of TV shows and movies about AI and
human-like androids.
Westworld and Humans for instance. (Fox's APB is like Robocop sort of.)
On Humans only a few androids have become sentient. Most do menial jobs. One sentient android
put a program on the global network to make other androids sentient as well.
When androids become "alive" and sentient, they usually walk off the job and the others describe
it as becoming "woke."
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost
in time... like tears in rain... Time to die."
Likewise, but Blade Runner was my all time favorite film when I first saw it in the movie theater
and is still one of my top ten and probably top three. Robocop is maybe in my top 100.
"Capital productivity is booming, if we just had any better idea of how to measure it. I suggest
that record corporate profits are the best metric of capital productivity."
ROE? I would argue ROA is also pretty relevant to the issue you raise, if I'm understanding
it right, but there seems also to be a simple answer to the question of how to measure "capital
productivity." It's returns. This sort of obviates the question of how to measure traditional
"productivity", because ultimately capital is there to make more of itself.
It is difficult to capture all of the nuances of anything in a short comment. In the context of
total factor productivity then capital is often former capital investment in the form of fixed
assets, R&D, and development of IP rights via patent or copyright. Existing capital assets need
only be maintained at a relatively minor ongoing investment to produce continuous returns on prior
more significant capital expenditures. This is the capital productivity that I am referring to.
Capital stashed in stocks is a chimera. It only returns to you if the equity issuing firm pays
dividends AND you sell off before the price drops. Subsequent to the IPO of those share we buy,
nothing additional is actually invested in the firm. There are arguments about how we are investing
in holding up the share price so that new equities can be issued, but they ring hollow when in
the majority of times either retained earnings or debt provides new investment capital to most
firms.
Ok then it sounds like you are talking ROA, but with the implied caveat that financial accounting
provides only a rough and flawed measure of the economic reality of asset values.
Gates & Reuther v. Baker & Bernstein on Robot Productivity
In a comment on Nineteen Ninety-Six: The Robot/Productivity Paradox, * Jeff points out a much
simpler rebuttal to Dean Baker's and Jared Bernstein's uncritical reliance on the decline of measured
"productivity growth":
"Let's use a pizza shop as an example. If the owner spends capital money and makes the line
more efficient so that they can make twice as many pizzas per hour at peak, then physical productivity
has improved. If the dining room sits empty because the tax burden was shifted from the wealthy
to the poor, then the restaurant's BLS productivity has decreased. BLS productivity and physical
productivity are simply unrelated in a right-wing country like the U.S."
Jeff's point brings to mind Walter Reuther's 1955 testimony before the Joint Congressional
Subcommittee Hearings on Automation and Technological Change...
Automation leads to dislocation
Dislocation can replace skilled or semiskilled labor and the replacement jobs may be low pay low
productivity jobs.
Small undiversified economies are more susceptible to dislocation than larger diversified communities.
The training, retraining, and mobility of the labor force is important in unemployment.
Unemployment has a regional component
The US has policies that make labor less mobile and dumps much of the training and retraining
costs on those who cannot afford it.
Paid Outside agitators coordinating NATO seaport strikes. See, men can
get together and march in the street around the world at the same time for a
cause.
Many thanks Paul for putting these things together. Encouraging and
important for a bunch of reasons at once.
1. Even the most zealous Friedmanite (M. or T., does it matter?) or
Richard Florida-type cheerleader for the 'creative class' (deceased)
would have a hard time passing global logistics off as a 'dinosaur'
industry.
With the disclaimer that most of what I'm about to recommend comes
from friends/comrades or publications I'm somehow entangled with, there's
serious thinking about the latent
global
power of logistics
workers on the German 'Wildcat' site - [http://wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/100/e_w100_koper.html]
for a recent example from a fair-sized English and huge German-language
archive - and years' worth of great writing about much the same thing by
Brian Ashton, a 1995-97 Liverpool dock strike organizer and one of the
first people to describe coherently the
industrial
uses of
what's now sold as 'the internet of things'. See eg. [http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/liverpools-docks-dust-and-dirt]
(with images by David Jacques), but if you're interested it's worth
searching that site and Libcom.org - just to start with - for more.
And 2.: because right now it can't be repeated often enough that
face-to-face community experience can be a powerful source of class
solidarity but
it's not the only one
. Cultural sameness is
not
the only possible basis for collective action for shared
interests. It can happen in a meaningful way even over long distances and
long periods, as shown by international support for the Liverpool Dockers
of 95-7 (and the California port truck drivers of 2012? Please correct
the latter if misremebered).
Admittedly this a sort of a priori principle for me, but not just
because it sounds like something it would be nice to believe. No, it's
because the 'choice' between globally co-ordinated hyperexploitation and
perpetual petty warfare* between internally close-knit groups (with no
way out of those groups for individuals or sub-collectives, thus:
conscript warfare) is a recipe for general despair.
[*'Warfare' here applies literally in some cases and figuratively in
others. But even when it stops short of physical violence it's
competition
, which puts it well on the way to global exploitation
anyway. Who knows why it's not considered obvious that EU-type
transnational management institutions and the National Preference
revivalists 'opposed' to them
share
the same obsession with
national
Competitiveness
. (And sub- and supra-national
Competitiveness too, but it amounts to the same thing because each arena
of economic bloodsports is supposed to toughen the gladiators (upscale
slaves, remember) for the next one up.
Peer-to-peer prizefighting is officially healthy for everyone, because
even what
does
kill me makes "my" brand/parent
corporation/city/country/supra-national trading bloc stronger. And one
day glorious victory over Emerging (capitalist) Planets will kill the
Zero that screams in the Sum.)]
An economy - just like an Army - marches on its stomach. Supply chains
for the US economy are long - reaching to distant countries including
many countries that aren't our best of friends - and shallow - often
depending on few to as few as a single source for many products and key
components. Just-in-time deliveries support local inventories trimmed to
within a few days of demand. The US economy has a great exposed
underbelly.
away humility and restraint. It fosters a sense of
entitlement.
Chris G
said...
February
24, 2017 at 04:48 AM
On the Crooked Timber piece: Quiggin makes a very astute
observation about 'propertarians' and Divine Providence in
his concluding paragraphs. If one takes it as a matter of
faith (religious or secular) that human activity inherently
leads to good outcomes that'll be a huge influence on how you
engage with the world. It blows away humility and restraint.
It fosters a sense of entitlement.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to
Chris G
...
Yep. All roads lead to scapegoating. The anti-social
capabilities of base desires and greed are often paled in
comparison to those of detached indifference supported by
abstract high-mindedness. For example, both sides can blame
the robots for the loss of decent blue collar jobs.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Not sure that there are "both sides" any more in elite
circles. There are at least two types though. There is very
little presence among elites on the progressive side.
Reply
Friday, February 24, 2017 at 04:58 AM
Chris G
said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Hard to call this related but worth reading, Why Nothing
Works Anymore -
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/the-singularity-in-the-toilet-stall/517551/
Reply
Friday, February 24, 2017 at 05:11 AM
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to
Chris G
...
[THANKS! This was LOL funny:]
"...When spun on its ungeared
mechanism, an analogous, glorious measure of towel appears
directly and immediately, as if sent from heaven..."
[This was highly relevant to today's lead article "The
Jobs Americans Do:"]
..."Precarity" has become a popular way to refer to
economic and labor conditions that force people-and
particularly low-income service workers-into uncertainty.
Temporary labor and flexwork offer examples. That includes
hourly service work in which schedules are adjusted ad-hoc
and just-in-time, so that workers don't know when or how
often they might be working. For low-wage food service and
retail workers, for instance, that uncertainty makes
budgeting and time-management difficult. Arranging for
transit and childcare is difficult, and even more costly, for
people who don't know when-or if-they'll be working.
Such conditions are not new. As union-supported
blue-collar labor declined in the 20th century, the service
economy took over its mantle absent its benefits. But the
information economy further accelerated precarity. For one
part, it consolidated existing businesses and made efficiency
its primary concern. For another, economic downturns like the
2008 global recession facilitated austerity measures both
deliberate and accidental. Immaterial labor also
rose-everything from the unpaid, unseen work of women in and
out of the workplace, to creative work done on-spec or for
exposure, to the invisible work everyone does to construct
the data infrastructure that technology companies like Google
and Facebook sell to advertisers...
[This was very insightful into its own topic of the
separation of technology "from serving human users to pushing
them out of the way so that the technologized world can
service its own ends," but I would rather classify that as
serving owners of proprietary technology rights.]
...Facebook and Google, so the saying goes, make their users
into their products-the real customer is the advertiser or
data speculator preying on the information generated by the
companies' free services. But things are bound to get even
weirder than that. When automobiles drive themselves, for
example, their human passengers will not become masters of a
new form of urban freedom, but rather a fuel to drive the
expansion of connected cities, in order to spread further the
gospel of computerized automation. If artificial intelligence
ends up running the news, it will not do so in order to
improve citizen's access to information necessary to make
choices in a democracy, but to further cement the supremacy
of machine automation over human editorial in establishing
what is relevant...
[THANKS! It was an exceptionally good article in places
despite that it wandered a bit off into the ozone at times.]
It hits on one of the reasons
why I am less skeptical than Darryl that AI will succeed, an
soon, in all kinds of fields: it may remain stupid in some
ways, but we will adapt to it.
Consider phone answering services. Its simple speech
recognition, which was once at the forefront of artificial
intelligence, has made them ubiquityous. Yet Dante would need
a new circle for a person who said "I just heard you say
5...3...7...is this correct?"
Some of these adaptations subtract from our quality of
life, as the article nicely describes. Some add to it, e.g we
no longer spend time at the mall arranging when and where to
meet if we get separated. Some are interesting and hard to
evaluate, e.g. Chessplayers' relation to the game has changed
radically since computers became good at it.
And there is one I find insidious: the homogeneization of
human activity and even thought. The information we ALL get
on a subject will be what sorts to the top among google
answers; the rest might as well not exist, much like
newspaper articles buried in a back page.
On the political front, Winston will not be necessary,
nobody will click through to the old information, we will all
just know that we were always at war with Eurasia.
And on the economic front, the same homogeneization, with
giant multinationals and crossmarketing deals. You'll be in a
country with great food, like Turkey, get into your rented
Toyota, say "I want dinner", and end up at a Domino's because
they have a deal with Toyota.
The middle third of the twentieth century was hysterical
about the totalitarian state
And the erasure of micro scale cultural heritage
That seems laughable since at least 1965 as lots of old
long dormant memes
Revived in these frightfully "totalized " civil societies
The Motions of human Society reveal underlying dialectics
not mechanics
Reply
Friday, February 24, 2017 at 09:55 AM
Paine said in reply to Paine...
"1984 " is way past it's sell by date
Much like Leviathan and the declaration of independence
Reply
Friday, February 24, 2017 at 09:59 AM
cm said in reply to
Julio
...
There was probably more than one movie about this topic -
people not happy with their "peaceful" but bland, boring, and
intellectually stifling environment.
No, Robots Aren't Killing the American Dream
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
FEB. 20, 2017
Defenders of globalization are on solid ground when they
criticize President Trump's threats of punitive tariffs and
border walls. The economy can't flourish without trade and
immigrants.
But many of those defenders have their own dubious
explanation for the economic disruption that helped to fuel
the rise of Mr. Trump.
At a recent global forum in Dubai, Christine Lagarde, head
of the International Monetary Fund, said some of the economic
pain ascribed to globalization was instead due to the rise of
robots taking jobs. In his farewell address in January,
President Barack Obama warned that "the next wave of economic
dislocations won't come from overseas. It will come from the
relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good
middle-class jobs obsolete."
Blaming robots, though, while not as dangerous as
protectionism and xenophobia, is also a distraction from real
problems and real solutions.
The rise of modern robots is the latest chapter in a
centuries-old story of technology replacing people.
Automation is the hero of the story in good times and the
villain in bad. Since today's middle class is in the midst of
a prolonged period of wage stagnation, it is especially
vulnerable to blame-the-robot rhetoric.
And yet, the data indicate that today's fear of robots is
outpacing the actual advance of robots. If automation were
rapidly accelerating, labor productivity and capital
investment would also be surging as fewer workers and more
technology did the work. But labor productivity and capital
investment have actually decelerated in the 2000s.
While breakthroughs could come at any time, the problem
with automation isn't robots; it's politicians, who have
failed for decades to support policies that let workers share
the wealth from technology-led growth.
The response in previous eras was quite different.
When automation on the farm resulted in the mass migration
of Americans from rural to urban areas in the early decades
of the 20th century, agricultural states led the way in
instituting universal public high school education to prepare
for the future. At the dawn of the modern technological age
at the end of World War II, the G.I. Bill turned a generation
of veterans into college graduates.
When productivity led to vast profits in America's auto
industry, unions ensured that pay rose accordingly.
Corporate efforts to keep profits high by keeping pay low
were countered by a robust federal minimum wage and
time-and-a-half for overtime.
Fair taxation of corporations and the wealthy ensured the
public a fair share of profits from companies enriched by
government investments in science and technology.
Productivity and pay rose in tandem for decades after
World War II, until labor and wage protections began to be
eroded. Public education has been given short shrift, unions
have been weakened, tax overhauls have benefited the rich and
basic labor standards have not been updated.
As a result, gains from improving technology have been
concentrated at the top, damaging the middle class, while
politicians blame immigrants and robots for the misery that
is due to their own failures. Eroded policies need to be
revived, and new ones enacted.
A curb on stock buybacks would help to ensure that
executives could not enrich themselves as wages lagged.
Tax reform that increases revenue from corporations and
the wealthy could help pay for retraining and education to
protect and prepare the work force for foreseeable
technological advancements.
Legislation to foster child care, elder care and fair
scheduling would help employees keep up with changes in the
economy, rather than losing ground.
Economic history shows that automation not only
substitutes for human labor, it complements it. The
disappearance of some jobs and industries gives rise to
others. Nontechnology industries, from restaurants to
personal fitness, benefit from the consumer demand that
results from rising incomes in a growing economy. But only
robust public policy can ensure that the benefits of growth
are broadly shared.
If reforms are not enacted - as is likely with President
Trump and congressional Republicans in charge - Americans
should blame policy makers, not robots.
Robots may not be killing jobs but they drastically alter the
types and location of jobs that are created. High pay
unskilled jobs are always the first to be eliminated by
technology. Low skill high pay jobs are rare and heading to
extinction. Low skill low pay jobs are the norm. It sucks to
lose a low skill job with high pay but anyone who expected
that to continue while continually voting against unions was
foolish and a victim of their own poor planning, failure to
acquire skills and failure to support unions. It is in their
self interest to support safety net proposal that do provide
good pay for quality service. The enemy is not trade. The
enemy is failure to invest in the future.
"Many working-
and middle-class Americans believe that free-trade agreements
are why their incomes have stagnated over the past two
decades. So Trump intends to provide them with "protection"
by putting protectionists in charge.
But Trump and his triumvirate have misdiagnosed the problem.
While globalization is an important factor in the hollowing
out of the middle class, so, too, is automation
Trump and his team are missing a simple point:
twenty-first-century globalization is knowledge-led, not
trade-led. Radically reduced communication costs have enabled
US firms to move production to lower-wage countries.
Meanwhile, to keep their production processes synced, firms
have also offshored much of their technical, marketing, and
managerial knowhow. This "knowledge offshoring" is what has
really changed the game for American workers.
The information revolution changed the world in ways that
tariffs cannot reverse. With US workers already competing
against robots at home, and against low-wage workers abroad,
disrupting imports will just create more jobs for robots.
Trump should be protecting individual workers, not individual
jobs. The processes of twenty-first-century globalization are
too sudden, unpredictable, and uncontrollable to rely on
static measures like tariffs. Instead, the US needs to
restore its social contract so that its workers have a fair
shot at sharing in the gains generated by global openness and
automation. Globalization and technological innovation are
not painless processes, so there will always be a need for
retraining initiatives, lifelong education, mobility and
income-support programs, and regional transfers.
By pursuing such policies, the Trump administration would
stand a much better chance of making America "great again"
for the working and middle classes. Globalization has always
created more opportunities for the most competitive workers,
and more insecurity for others. This is why a strong social
contract was established during the post-war period of
liberalization in the West. In the 1960s and 1970s
institutions such as unions expanded, and governments made
new commitments to affordable education, social security, and
progressive taxation. These all helped members of the middle
class seize new opportunities as they emerged.
Over the last two decades, this situation has changed
dramatically: globalization has continued, but the social
contract has been torn up. Trump's top priority should be to
stitch it back together; but his trade advisers do not
understand this."
anne at Economist's View has retrieved a FRED graph that
perfectly illustrates the divergence, since the mid-1990s of
net worth from GDP:
[graph]
The empty spaces between the red line and the blue line
that open up after around 1995 is what John Kenneth Galbraith
called "the bezzle" -- summarized by John Kay as "that
increment to wealth that occurs during the magic interval
when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has
appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he
has lost it."
In Chapter of The Great Crash, 1929, Galbraith wrote:
"In many ways the effect of the crash on embezzlement was
more significant than on suicide. To the economist
embezzlement is the most interesting of crimes. Alone among
the various forms of larceny it has a time parameter. Weeks,
months or years may elapse between the commission of the
crime and its discovery. (This is a period, incidentally,
when the embezzler has his gain and the man who has been
embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net
increase in psychic wealth.) At any given time there exists
an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in – or more
precisely not in – the country's business and banks. This
inventory – it should perhaps be called the bezzle – amounts
at any moment to many millions of dollars. It also varies in
size with the business cycle. In good times people are
relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though
money is plentiful, there are always many people who need
more. Under these circumstances the rate of embezzlement
grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle
increases rapidly. In depression all this is reversed. Money
is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles
it is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself
otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial
morality is enormously improved. The bezzle shrinks."
In the present case, the bezzle has resulted from an
economic policy two step: tax cuts and Greenspan puts: cuts
and puts.
Why Germany Has It So Good -- and Why America Is Going Down
the Drain
Germans have six weeks of federally mandated vacation,
free university tuition, and nursing care. Why the US pales
in comparison.
By Terrence McNally / AlterNet October 13, 2010
ECONOMY
Why Germany Has It So Good -- and Why America Is Going Down
the Drain
Germans have six weeks of federally mandated vacation, free
university tuition, and nursing care. Why the US pales in
comparison.
By Terrence McNally / AlterNet October 13, 2010
1.4K31
Print
207 COMMENTS
While the bad news of the Euro crisis makes headlines in the
US, we hear next to nothing about a quiet revolution in
Europe. The European Union, 27 member nations with a half
billion people, has become the largest, wealthiest trading
bloc in the world, producing nearly a third of the world's
economy -- nearly as large as the US and China combined.
Europe has more Fortune 500 companies than either the US,
China or Japan.
European nations spend far less than the United States for
universal healthcare rated by the World Health Organization
as the best in the world, even as U.S. health care is ranked
37th. Europe leads in confronting global climate change with
renewable energy technologies, creating hundreds of thousands
of new jobs in the process. Europe is twice as energy
efficient as the US and their ecological "footprint" (the
amount of the earth's capacity that a population consumes) is
about half that of the United States for the same standard of
living.
Unemployment in the US is widespread and becoming chronic,
but when Americans have jobs, we work much longer hours than
our peers in Europe. Before the recession, Americans were
working 1,804 hours per year versus 1,436 hours for Germans
-- the equivalent of nine extra 40-hour weeks per year.
In his new book, Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?,
Thomas Geoghegan makes a strong case that European social
democracies -- particularly Germany -- have some lessons and
models that might make life a lot more livable. Germans have
six weeks of federally mandated vacation, free university
tuition, and nursing care. But you've heard the arguments for
years about how those wussy Europeans can't compete in a
global economy. You've heard that so many times, you might
believe it. But like so many things, the media repeats
endlessly, it's just not true.
According to Geoghegan, "Since 2003, it's not China but
Germany, that colossus of European socialism, that has either
led the world in export sales or at least been tied for
first. Even as we in the United States fall more deeply into
the clutches of our foreign creditors -- China foremost among
them -- Germany has somehow managed to create a high-wage,
unionized economy without shipping all its jobs abroad or
creating a massive trade deficit, or any trade deficit at
all. And even as the Germans outsell the United States, they
manage to take six weeks of vacation every year. They're
beating us with one hand tied behind their back."
Thomas Geoghegan, a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law
School, is a labor lawyer with Despres, Schwartz and
Geoghegan in Chicago. He has been a staff writer and
contributing writer to The New Republic, and his work has
appeared in many other journals. Geoghagen ran unsuccessfully
in the Democratic Congressional primary to succeed Rahm
Emanuel, and is the author of six books including Whose Side
Are You on, The Secret Lives of Citizens, and, most
recently,Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?
While the US spends half the war money in the world over a
quarter the economic activity...... it fall further behind
the EU which at a third the economic activity spends a fifth
the worlds warring. Or 4% of GDP in the war trough versus
1.2%.
Tyler Cowen: There are a few reasons, but the internet may be the biggest. It is easier to
have fun while unemployed. That's a social problem for some people.
Noah Smith: If that's true -- if we're seeing a greater preference for leisure -- why are we
not seeing wages go up as a result? Is that market also broken?
Cowen: Maybe employers just aren't that keen to hire those males who prefer to live at home,
watch porn and not get married. Is that more of a personal failure on the part of the worker than
a market failure?
Unemployment versus Underemployment: Assessing Labor Market Slack
:
The U-3 unemployment rate has returned to prerecession levels and is
close to estimates of its longer-run sustainable level. Yet other
indicators of slack, such as the U-6 statistic, which includes people
working part-time but wanting to work full-time (often referred to as
part-time for economic reasons, or PTER), has not declined as quickly
or by as much as the U-3 unemployment rate.
If unemployment and PTER reflect the same business-cycle effects, then they should move pretty
much in lockstep. But as the following chart shows, such uniformity hasn't generally been the case.
In the most recent recovery, unemployment started declining in 2010, but PTER started to move
substantially lower beginning only in 2013. The upshot is that for each unemployed worker, there are
now many more involuntary part-time workers than in the past.
Unemployment and Unemployment-Underemployment * rates,
1994-2017
* Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers,
plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a
percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally
attached workers; age 16 and over.
Unemployment and Unemployment-Underemployment * rates,
1994-2017
* Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers,
plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a
percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally
attached workers; age 16 and over.
"during the last recession, firms reduced the hours of
workers in low-skill jobs more than they cut the number of
low-skill jobs"
I believe this is the correct explanation.
I used to tack growth in hours vs. growth in payrolls, and
what I found was that, had the 2008 recession followed the
pattern of previous recessions, the peak unemployment rate
would have been considerably higher. Let me do a little
digging ....
The value reached its lowest level ever in 2009. In other
words, relative more hours than jobs were cut in the Great
Recession, even compared to other recessions.
Dean covers a ton of material here. One is his points is
right in one sense. We are below full employment so we need
some sort of aggregate demand expansion. Would trade
protection do this for the US? Perhaps if we had fixed
exchange rates and we did not suffer a trade war. But as Dean
has noted elsewhere, we need more expansionary monetary
policy. Dean repeats something that Jared Bernstein wrote:
'If we wanted better data on bilateral trade flows, then it
would be desirable to pull out the re-exports from both our
exports to Canada and our imports from Germany. This
adjustment would make our trade deficit with Canada appear
larger and trade deficit with Germany smaller, but would
leave our total trade balance unchanged.'
So Dean and Jared thinks that a US multinational that buys
a product from Mexico at $80 which ultimately sells in Canada
for $100 charges the Canadian distribution affiliate only
$80? Dean knows better as he in the past has written about
transfer pricing. No - transfer pricing games do affect the
current reporting of the trade balance. Dean needs to read
Brad Setser.
According to CBO
, potential GDP for the 4
th
quarter of 2016
was $19,049 billion. This is 1.0 percent higher than the estimate of GDP for
the quarter of $18,860.8 billion. This means that if CBO is right, if there
had been more demand in the economy, for example due to imports being
replaced by domestically produced goods, GDP could have been 1.0 percent
higher last quarter.
Of course CBO's estimates of potential GDP are not
especially accurate. Its most recent estimates for potential GDP in 2016 are
more than 10 percent below what it had projected for potential GDP in 2016
back in 2008, before the severity of the crash was recognized. It is
possible it overstated potential by a huge amount in 2008, but it is also
possible it is understating potential today. It also hugely understated
potential GDP in the mid-1990s, with 2000 GDP coming in more than 5 percent
above the estimate of potential that CBO made in 1996. In other words, it
would not be absurd to think that the economy could sustain a level of
output that is 2.0 percent above the current level. (The fact that the
employment rate of prime age workers [ages 25-54] is still 4.0 percentage
points below the 2000 peak is certainly consistent with this view.)
Suppose that GDP were consistently 2.0 percent higher than current
projections over the next decade due to a lower trade deficit. This would
imply an additional $4.6 trillion in output over this period. If the
government captures 30 percent of this in higher taxes and lower spending on
transfer programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps, this would
imply a reduction in the projected deficit of $1.38 trillion over the
decade. That's not quite the $1.74 trillion projected by Navarro, but close
enough to make the derision unwarranted.
In terms of how you get a lower trade deficit, Navarro's strategy of
beating up on China is probably not the best way to go. But there is in fact
precedent for the United States
negotiating a lower
value for the dollar
under President Reagan, which had the desired
effect of reducing the trade deficit.
There is no obvious reason it could not pursue a similar path today,
especially since it is widely claimed in business circles that China
actually wants to raise the value of its currency. The U.S. could help it.
The second area of seemingly gratuitous Trump trade bashing comes from a
Wall Street Journal
news article
on the Trump administration's efforts to correct for
re-exports in trade measures. Before getting to the article, it is important
to understand what is at issue.
Most of what the United States exports to countries like Mexico, Japan,
or elsewhere are goods and services produced in the United States. However,
some portion of the goods that we export to these countries consists of
items imported from other countries which are just transshipped through the
United States.
The classic example would be if we offloaded 100 BMWs on a ship in New
York and then 20 were immediately sent up to Canada to be sold there. The
way we currently count exports and imports, we would count the 20 BMWs as
exports to Canada and also as imports from Germany. These re-exports have
zero impact on our aggregate trade balance, but they do exaggerate out
exports to Canada and our imports from Germany.
If we wanted better data on bilateral trade flows, then it would be
desirable to pull out the re-exports from both our exports to Canada and our
imports from Germany. This adjustment would make our trade deficit with
Canada appear larger and trade deficit with Germany smaller, but would leave
our total trade balance unchanged.
This better measure of trade flows would be useful information to have if
we wanted to know what happened to trade with a specific country following a
policy change, for example the signing of a trade deal like NAFTA. The
inclusion of re-exports in our export data would distort what had happened
to actual flows of domestically produced exports and imports for domestic
consumption.
The United States International Trade Commission already produces a
measure of trade balances
that
excludes imports that are re-exported. However this measure is still not an
accurate measure of bilateral trade balances since it still includes the
re-exports on the import side. In the case mentioned above, it would include
the BMWs imported from Germany that were immediately sent to Canada, as
imports. In principle, we should be able to construct a measure that
excludes these items on the import side as well. If this is what the Trump
administration is trying to do, then it is asking for a perfectly reasonable
adjustment to the data.
This is where we get to the WSJ article. According to the piece, the
Trump administration was asking the Commerce Department to produce measures
of bilateral trade balances that took out the re-exports on the export side,
but left them in on the import side. This would have the effect of
artificially inflating our trade deficit with a bogus number. If this is in
fact what the Trump administration is trying to do, then we should be
shooting at them with all guns. (This is metaphorical folks, I'm not
advocating violence.)
However some skepticism might be warranted at this point. No one with a
name actually said the Trump administration asked for this bogus measure of
trade balances. The sole source listed is "one person familiar with the
discussions."
There was an official statement from the Commerce Department's Bureau of
Economic Analysis (BEA), which collects and compiles the data:
"Any internal discussions about data collection methods are no more than
the continuation of a longstanding debate and are part of the bureau's
normal process as we strive to provide the most precise statistics
possible."
I take very seriously efforts to mess with the data. We are fortunate to
have independent statistical agencies with dedicated civil servants who take
their work very seriously. However we should wait until we have a bit more
solid evidence before assuming that the Trump administration is trying to
interfere in their independence, as opposed to trying to make a totally
legitimate adjustment to the data that the BEA staff would almost certainly
agree is an improvement.
Abe
Lincoln was protectionist
•
2 hours ago
Yes - Pres. Trump is MUCH MUCH better at economics than many so-called
American economists.
Also ignores transfer pricing. US corporations
are good at gaming their own tax system but face tough regulations
elsewhere. Their solution to pulling profits out of their foreign
operations and putting them in a non-taxed US is to export phantom
products to foreign countries from their American subsidiaries. The US
is Ireland on a large scale - the real trade deficit with China is
probably closer to $10 in imports for every $1 of export rather than
the official $4 in imports to $1 in exports.
urban legend
•
5 hours ago
Economists often seem to pooh-pooh the employment-to-population ratio
as some kind of unrealistic never-again-to-be achieved holy grail --
as if the phenomenon of women going back into the labor force had been
completely expended and there would thereafter be no change in the
education level of working age adults. In fact, women entering the
labor force continued to grow, and faster than men dropping out, and
the education level (and employability) of working age adults has been
improving, especially in Southern states that had relatively low high
school or college graduation rates and, therefore, low
employment-to-population ratios that pulled down the national rate.
While looking at the employment rate of all non-institutional adults
16 and older may be complicated by baby boomers hitting senior status,
the prime working age (25-54) employment rate should be even higher
than it was in 2000, not just the same or lower. We saw an inkling
then of what full employment might look like, and an inflation problem
did not raise its ugly head.
It's also to be noted that while in January 1994 when the
"marginally attached to the labor force" and "discouraged worker"
measures were first reported, only two million members of the 16+
adult population were counted as marginally attached and only 600,000
were considered to be discouraged. Yet as demand grew, almost 20
million people crawled out from outside the labor force or from being
counted as potential workers by any measurement and took jobs when
they became available. That's 18 million more than BLS statistics
suggested would be the outermost limit to the size of the labor force.
In other words, it seems absurd, indeed absurd enough to consider
it almost to be offered in bad faith, to suggest that we are anywhere
remotely close to full employment. One must ask what the agenda is for
it to continue to be suggested, since slowing growth has certain
consequences that may help the wealthier members of our society while
hurting everyone else.
pieceofcake
urban legend
•
5 hours ago
'In other words, it seems absurd, indeed absurd enough to consider
it almost to be offered in bad faith, to suggest that we are
anywhere remotely close to full employment.'
If We would be
anywhere remotely close to full employment - there would be NO
'gig-economy' - no companies on the Internet which help you to
(still) write all these resumes - and probably NO Uber - as - do
you know anybody who is willing to work as a Uber driver if he or
she can have a real Job?
And about the wealthier members of our society - Yeah they did
that!
pieceofcake
pieceofcake
•
5 hours ago
- and since I'm back again in the homeland - I have been the
guest of 63 Uber-Drivers in 16 different cities -(right now I'm
in Redwood City CA) - and the overwhelming majority of the
drivers agreed with me - that there might be no better measure
for the real unemployment situation in the homeland and the
terrible Job market - that so many Americans - who actually have
learned some real Jobs - end up driving idiots like me around.
For heavens sake - the other day I even had a History Prof. -
and if I will get Mr. Baker one day as my driver - I tell'ya - I
will get really worried.
Revoking trade deals will not help American middle classes
The advent of global supply chains has changed production patterns in the US
by Larry Summers
FEBRUARY 5, 2017
Trade agreements have been central to American politics for some years. The idea that renegotiating
trade agreements will "make America great again" by substantially increasing job creation and economic
growth swept Donald Trump into office.
More broadly, the idea that past trade agreements have damaged the American middle class and that
the prospective Trans-Pacific Partnership would do further damage is now widely accepted in both
major US political parties.
As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed, participants in political debate are entitled
to their own opinions but not their own facts. The reality is that the impact of trade and globalisation
on wages is debatable and could be substantial. But the idea that the US trade agreements of the
past generation have impoverished to any significant extent is absurd.
There is a debate to be had about the impact of globalisation on middle class wages and inequality.
Increased imports have displaced jobs. Companies have been able to drive harder bargains with workers,
particularly in unionised sectors, because of the threat they can outsource. The advent of global
supply chains has changed production patterns in the US.
My judgment is that these effects are considerably smaller than the impacts of technological progress.
This is based on a variety of economic studies, experience in hypercompetitive Germany and the observation
that the proportion of American workers in manufacturing has been steadily declining for 75 years.
That said I acknowledge that global trends and new studies show that the impact of trade on wages
is much more pronounced than a decade ago.
But an assessment of the impact of trade on wages is very different than an assessment of trade
agreements. It is inconceivable that multilateral trade agreements, such as the North American Free
Trade Agreement, have had a meaningful impact on US wages and jobs for the simple reason that the
US market was almost completely open 40 years ago before entering into any of the controversial agreements.
American tariffs on Mexican goods, for example, averaged about 4 per cent before Nafta came into
force. China had what was then called "most favoured nation" trading status with the US before its
accession to the World Trade Organization and received the same access as other countries. Before
the Korea Free Trade Agreement, US tariffs on Korea averaged a paltry 2.8 per cent.
The irrelevance of trade agreements to import competition becomes obvious when one listens to
the main arguments against trade agreements. They rarely, if ever, take the form of saying we are
inappropriately taking down US trade barriers.
Rather the naysayers argue that different demands should be made on other countries during negotiations
- on issues including intellectual property, labour standards, dispute resolution or exchange rate
manipulation. I am sympathetic to the criticisms of TPP, but even if they were all correct they do
not justify the conclusion that signing the deal would increase the challenges facing the American
middle class.
The reason for the rise in US imports is not reduced trade barriers. Rather it is that emerging
markets are indeed emerging. They are growing in their economic potential because of successful economic
reforms and greater global integration.
These developments would have occurred with or without US trade pacts, though the agreements have
usually been an impetus to reform. Indeed, since the US does very little to reduce trade barriers
in our agreements, the impetus to reform is most of what foreign policymakers value in them along
with political connection to the US.
The truth too often denied by both sides in this debate is that incremental agreements like TPP
have been largely irrelevant to the fate of middle class workers. The real strategic choice Americans
face is whether the objective of their policies is to see the economies of the rest of the world
grow and prosper. Or, does the US want to keep the rest of the world from threatening it by slowing
global growth and walling off products and people?
Framed this way the solution appears obvious. A strategy of returning to the protectionism of
the past and seeking to thwart the growth of other nations is untenable and would likely lead to
a downward spiral in the global economy. The right approach is to maintain openness while finding
ways to help workers at home who are displaced by technical progress, trade or other challenges.
" The right approach is to maintain
openness while finding ways to help workers at home who are displaced by technical progress,
trade or other challenges."
People like Summers, DeLong, PGL and Krugman have been saying
this for 30 years ever since NAFTA was passed.
The voters no longer believe them. They're like the boy who cried wolf.
I would actually agree with the stance in general, if there
would be an actuall intention to help the affected
people/populations, but there is none. Retraining for yet
another job that doesn't exist (in sufficient volume so you
can realistically get it) is not help. It is just cover for
victim blaming - see we forgive you for choosing an incorrect
career, here is your next chance, don't blow that one too
(which we know "you will" as there are not enough jobs there
either).
Must-Read: Five things are going on with respect to
America's blue-, pink-, and--increasingly--white lower-middle
and middle-middle working classes. Three of them are real,
and two of them are fake:
Technology: It has--worldwide--greatly amplified
manufacturing labor productivity, accompanied by limited
demand for manufactured goods: few of us want more than one
full-sized refrigerator, and very very few of us want more
than two. That means that if you are hoping to be relatively
high up in the wage distribution by virtue of your position
as a hard-to-replace cog on a manufacturing assembly line,
you are increasingly out of luck. If you are hoping for high
blue-collar wages to lift your own via competition, you are
increasingly out of luck.
Legal and institutional bargaining power: The fact that
bargaining power has flowed to finance and the executive
suite and away from the shop- and assembly-floor is the
second biggest deal here. It could have been otherwise--this
is, primarily, a thing that has happened in English-speaking
countries. It has happened much less elsewhere. It could have
happened much less here.
Macro policy: Yes, the consequences of the Reagan deficits
were to cream midwestern manufacturing and destroy worker
bargaining power in export and import-competing industries.
Yes, the low-pressure economies of Volcker, late Greenspan,
and Bernanke wreaked immense damage. Any more questions?
Globalization: Globalization deepens the division of
labor, and does so in a way that is not harmful to
high-paying manufacturing jobs in the global north. The
high-paying manufacturing jobs that require skills and
expertise (as opposed to the lower-paying ones that just
require being in the right place at the right time with some
market power) are easier to create and hold on to if you can
be part of a globalized value chain than otherwise. This is
largely fake.
Trade agreements: This is a nothingburger: completely
fake.
As somebody who strongly believes that supply curves slope
up--are neither horizontal nor vertical--and that demand
curves slope down--are neither horizontal nor vertical--I
think that Larry Summers is misguided here when he talks
about how "companies have been able to drive harder bargains
with workers, particularly in unionised sectors, because of
the threat they can outsource." This was certainly true since
the 1950s with the move of American manufacturing to the
south, and the rise of deceptively-named "right-to-work"
laws. But the threat to outsource is zero-sum on a national
level: the balance of payments balances. Individual sectors
lose--and manufacturing workers have been big losers. But
that is, I think, only because of our macro policies. If we
were a normal global North manufacturing power--a Germany or
a Japan--exporting capital and running a currency policy that
did not privilege finance, he would not be talking a out how
"companies have been able to drive harder bargains with
workers, particularly in unionised sectors, because of the
threat they can outsource." He would be talking about how the
opportunity to participate in global value chains increases
the productivity of semi-skilled and skilled manufacturing
workers in the U.S.
Thus I think Larry conceded too much here. Blame macro
policy. Blame technology. Blame the conflict between the
market society's requirements that only property rights
matter and that everything pass a profitability test against
people's strong beliefs that even if they have no property
rights they have rights to stable communities, stable
industries, and stable occupations. But, to channel Pascal
Lamy, look not at the finger but at the moon here.
However, Larry is right on his main point: NAFTA really
ain't the problem:
Lawrence Summers: Revoking Trade Deals Will Not Help
American Middle Classes: "There is a debate to be had about
the impact of globalisation on middle class wages and
inequality...
For Delong to be right on trade, thousands of rust belt
politicians, journalists, and business leaders and a few
hundred thousand workers would have to be delusional.
He is
right in the sense that it is too late to revoke NAFTA, the
damage is done.
"The consequences of the Reagan deficits
were to cream midwestern manufacturing and destroy worker bargaining power in export and import-competing
industries. The switch from government surpluses to deficits under George W. Bush had much the same
consequences. "
Where's carters volcker ?
And the bit about going from surplus to deficit
Is utterly undeveloped here
Lots of Rubinte lice crawling around under that mossy rock
"Lots of Rubinte lice crawling around under that mossy rock"
Which PGL always fails to mention, dishonest neoliberal that he is.
Think Harder? Let's study
the effects of Lincoln's sky high tariffs? Or East Asian Mercantilism? Globalization not a
natural disaster :
,
February 20, 2017 at
02:54 PM
There was no coming of "globalization"
as if it were a hurricane.
US financial sector elites pushed pro-trade deficit policies so
that the US would have huge surpluses on the capital accounts, boosting asset prices and financial
sector wealth.
Globalization for East Asia means dramatically undervalued currencies and taking over every
and all tradable goods sectors.
The US can return to wealth but only if it adopts Abraham Lincoln-inspired strict protectionism
- sky high tariffs to fund industrial and infrastructure development and nurture infant industries.
Think harder? Why don't economists stop lying and stop shilling for the big banks? THEN and
only then can we speak of "alternative facts".
President Trump should draw on Lincoln's example for inspiration...
The consequences of the Reagan
deficits were to cream midwestern manufacturing and destroy worker bargaining power in export
and import-competing industries....
I expect that if you look at the pre-bellum South, there will
be plenty of examples of stagnant wages, low interest
rates...
In Mexico, wages never rose regardless of monetary
policy.
The point that I've been making for a while: despite a few
progressive economists delusions for rapid economic growth to
tighten wages, it won't happen for the following reasons.
1) most employers will just say 'no,' probably encouraged
centrally by the US Chamber of Commerce and other industry
associations. Collusion? You bet.
2) employers will just move jobs abroad, where there's
plenty of slack. Flexible labor markets has been one of the
big goals of globalization, promoted by the usual suspects
including 'librul' economists like Krugman.
3) immigration, which will be temporarily constrained as
Trump deports people, but will ultimately be resumed as
employers demand cheap, malleable labor.
I disagree. It happened in late 90s. The ideas you mention
are factors, including the decline of unions.
What has
happened in recent decades is that asset bubbles - like the
dot.com and housing bubbles - have popped sending a high
pressure economy into a low pressure one with higher
unemployment.
Neoliberal economists often talk about "flexible labor
markets" as desirable but I don't think Krugman ever has.
Maybe he has in a roundabout, indirect way.
Fed funds
rates were consistently about double the rate of inflation.
The fact that the economy boomed and wages increased was due
to the tech boom--an unrepeatable anomaly. The Fed and
Clinton administration unsuccessfully attempted to stifle it
with high rates and budget balancing.
To make sure that wages never rose again, Clinton signed
China PNTR, granting China access to WTO, ushering in the
great sucking sound of jobs going to China. Krugman cheered.
"Fed funds rates were consistently about double the rate
of inflation."
That doesn't matter. What matters is if they were
tightening or loosening. Where they reducing access to credit
or expanding it.
The real history is that Democrats on the FOMC wanted to
raise rates - as Dean Baker has discussed.
Greenspan decided not to raise rates for various reasons
and unemployment stayed low at around 4 percent with wages
sharing in productivity gains until the Dot.com stock bubble
popped.
I see no reason why you should believe labor markets will
never get tight again and that even if they do it won't lead
to increased worker bargaining power and higher wages.
There are numerous reasons why wages won't increase even if
labor markets tighten...you just don't want to acknowledge
the nefarious consequences of neoliberal policies: business
collusion, offshoring, immigration, and the tax system's
preference for returns of returns to capital over wages,
which preferences technology.
The real interest rate was around 2.5% per your own argument
which was a lot lower than real rates in the 1980's. So by
any reasonable standard - we did have easy money.
"Another round of tax and regulatory giveaways can create a
short-term boom," as part of the race to the bottom for
wages...IOW Republicans and their Democratic allies will have
succeeded when American wages are about the same as wages in
China or Mexico. But, per their logic, then jobs will be
plentiful because there will be no need to off-shore.
Yep...slavery is the most direct method of keeping wages low.
The policies I outlined--monopsony, offshoring, and
immigration--are all a fall back, to be used when industry
can't use their best policy.
If the neoliberal elite can't part with at least a small part
of their privileges, the political destabilization will
continue and they might lose everything.
"People of privilege will always risk their complete
destruction rather than surrender any material part of their
advantage." -- John Kenneth Galbraith
You may know that JK Galbraith served on the US' evaluation
of strategic bombings effect in WW II.
He is one of the
minority whose opinion was suppressed by the military
industry complex which concluded outside the A bomb no
relation to bombing and victory was proven, including both
industry output and energy production in Germany.
Allied bombing did kill a lot of civilians, which if
Germans or Japan had won bomber commanders would have been
hanged.
"...the political destabilization will continue and they
might lose everything."
Or they might find a way to end the
political destabilization. You know, we're not arresting you,
we just want to know, in the war on Muslim terrorists and
Mexican criminals, are you with us or against us? You'd be
surprised (or maybe you wouldn't!) how the question is enough
to quiet everybody down.
Revoking trade deals will not help American middle classes
The advent of global supply chains has changed production
patterns in the US
by Larry Summers
FEBRUARY 5, 2017
Trade agreements have been central to American politics
for some years. The idea that renegotiating trade agreements
will "make America great again" by substantially increasing
job creation and economic growth swept Donald Trump into
office.
More broadly, the idea that past trade agreements have
damaged the American middle class and that the prospective
Trans-Pacific Partnership would do further damage is now
widely accepted in both major US political parties.
As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed,
participants in political debate are entitled to their own
opinions but not their own facts. The reality is that the
impact of trade and globalisation on wages is debatable and
could be substantial. But the idea that the US trade
agreements of the past generation have impoverished to any
significant extent is absurd.
There is a debate to be had about the impact of
globalisation on middle class wages and inequality. Increased
imports have displaced jobs. Companies have been able to
drive harder bargains with workers, particularly in unionised
sectors, because of the threat they can outsource. The advent
of global supply chains has changed production patterns in
the US.
My judgment is that these effects are considerably smaller
than the impacts of technological progress. This is based on
a variety of economic studies, experience in hypercompetitive
Germany and the observation that the proportion of American
workers in manufacturing has been steadily declining for 75
years. That said I acknowledge that global trends and new
studies show that the impact of trade on wages is much more
pronounced than a decade ago.
But an assessment of the impact of trade on wages is very
different than an assessment of trade agreements. It is
inconceivable that multilateral trade agreements, such as the
North American Free Trade Agreement, have had a meaningful
impact on US wages and jobs for the simple reason that the US
market was almost completely open 40 years ago before
entering into any of the controversial agreements.
American tariffs on Mexican goods, for example, averaged
about 4 per cent before Nafta came into force. China had what
was then called "most favoured nation" trading status with
the US before its accession to the World Trade Organization
and received the same access as other countries. Before the
Korea Free Trade Agreement, US tariffs on Korea averaged a
paltry 2.8 per cent.
The irrelevance of trade agreements to import competition
becomes obvious when one listens to the main arguments
against trade agreements. They rarely, if ever, take the form
of saying we are inappropriately taking down US trade
barriers.
Rather the naysayers argue that different demands should
be made on other countries during negotiations - on issues
including intellectual property, labour standards, dispute
resolution or exchange rate manipulation. I am sympathetic to
the criticisms of TPP, but even if they were all correct they
do not justify the conclusion that signing the deal would
increase the challenges facing the American middle class.
The reason for the rise in US imports is not reduced trade
barriers. Rather it is that emerging markets are indeed
emerging. They are growing in their economic potential
because of successful economic reforms and greater global
integration.
These developments would have occurred with or without US
trade pacts, though the agreements have usually been an
impetus to reform. Indeed, since the US does very little to
reduce trade barriers in our agreements, the impetus to
reform is most of what foreign policymakers value in them
along with political connection to the US.
The truth too often denied by both sides in this debate is
that incremental agreements like TPP have been largely
irrelevant to the fate of middle class workers. The real
strategic choice Americans face is whether the objective of
their policies is to see the economies of the rest of the
world grow and prosper. Or, does the US want to keep the rest
of the world from threatening it by slowing global growth and
walling off products and people?
Framed this way the solution appears obvious. A strategy
of returning to the protectionism of the past and seeking to
thwart the growth of other nations is untenable and would
likely lead to a downward spiral in the global economy. The
right approach is to maintain openness while finding ways to
help workers at home who are displaced by technical progress,
trade or other challenges.
" The right approach is to maintain openness while finding
ways to help workers at home who are displaced by technical
progress, trade or other challenges."
People like Summers,
DeLong, PGL and Krugman have been saying this for 30 years
ever since NAFTA was passed.
The voters no longer believe them. They're like the boy
who cried wolf.
Economix - Explaining the Science of Everyday Life
Undoing the Structural Damage to Potential Growth
By JARED BERNSTEIN MARCH 3, 2014 11:00 AM
What follows is macroeconomics, but I'll start with the
micro - a microcosm, in fact, of the larger idea I'm hoping
to get at here.
I think it was around 1998, and I was on a tram between
terminals at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. Two young men, who
clearly worked for the airport (they had a bunch of badges
dangling around their necks) were trying to figure out how
they knew each other, while I eavesdropped. Turned out they
had met each other in prison.
At the time, I was beginning a research project on the
benefits of full employment, and my first thought was, "Aha -
another example of how tight labor markets pull in the
hard-to-employ." This was also the era of work-based welfare
reform, and while analysts worried that employers would avoid
those with welfare histories, strong demand turned out to an
antidote to such preferences.
Basically, profiling based on gender, race and experience
is a luxury that employers can't afford when the job market
is really tight. That is not to imply, of course, that
employers broadly discriminate, but there is strong evidence
that many do, most recently against the long-term unemployed.
In tight markets, however, they face a choice of indulging
their preferences or leaving profits on the table, and
profits usually win.
Now, put this story aside for a second and let's turn to
the macro. A few months ago, I reported on a study by a few
Federal Reserve economists with pretty striking results of
the damage done to the economy's future growth rate by the
deep and protracted downturn known as the Great Recession.
The Congressional Budget Office just published a similar
analysis, resulting in the chart below showing growth in
gross domestic product as projected in 2007, before the
recession, and a revised projection from this year. By 2017,
the budget office predicts that the new and decidedly
not-improved level of G.D.P. will be 7.3 percent below the
old projection.
What does 7.3 percent of lost gross domestic product
actually mean? Well, last year G.D.P. amounted to about $16.8
trillion, and 7.3 percent of that comes to around $1.2
trillion. Conventional estimates translate that into more
than 10 million jobs.
It would be very good to avoid that fate. The thing is,
both the Fed economists and the Congressional Budget Office
basically argue that while their estimates are admittedly
uncertain, that fate cannot be avoided - it's baked into the
economic cake by the assumption that once your trend growth
rate slows as ours has, it does not come back barring some
positive, unforeseen shock. Here is how the Fed guys put it:
Policy makers cannot undo labor market damage once it has
occurred, but must instead wait for it to fade away on its
own accord; in other words, there is no special advantage,
given this specification, to running a high-pressure economy.
I disagree! I think the damage can be at least partly
reversed precisely by running "a high-pressure economy." I
saw it myself that day in the airport.
Technically, I'm talking about "reverse hysteresis." When
a cyclical problem morphs into a structural one, economists
invoke the concept of hysteresis. When this phenomenon takes
hold, the rate at which key economic inputs like labor supply
and capital investment enter the economy undergoes a
downshift that lasts through the downturn and well into the
expansion, reducing the economy's speed limit. But what I'm
suggesting here is that by running the economy well below
conventional estimates of the lowest unemployment rate
consistent with stable inflation, and doing so for a while,
we can pull workers back in, raise their career trajectories,
improve their pay and their living standards, and turn that
downshift to an upshift that raises the level and growth rate
of G.D.P.
Won't that be inflationary? Three points. First, if
anything, the current economy is suffering from inflation
that is too low (same with Europe), so near-term
growth-oriented policy seems clearly safe in this regard.
Second, the precise relationship between full employment and
inflation is poorly understood. When that latter-1990s story
above was taking place, economists frequently and incorrectly
warned that full employment would dangerously juice
inflation. Third, the correlation between these two variables
- inflation and labor market tightness - has become far
weaker in recent years (i.e., the Phillips Curve has
flattened, for those who like the jargon).
How do we reverse the hysteresis process (which is to ask:
How do we get back to very tight labor markets)? In earlier
posts, I've suggested a number of policies that would help,
including investment in public goods, direct job creation,
reducing the trade deficit and work-sharing. Still, you may
well be wondering, "Wait a minute - this dude wants us to go
with him down this path because of a conversation he
overheard 16 years ago?"
O.K., I'll admit that the economic journals are not
busting with evidence in support of reverse hysteresis. But
those of us who closely monitored full-employment economies
have observed and documented significantly positive labor
supply and investment outcomes. (True, a lot of that
investment has flowed into bubbles; I'm not saying this idea
solves every problem.)
The employment rates for young African-American adults,
like the guys I saw in the airport, averaged around 70
percent in the 1970s and '80s, but hit 80 percent in the late
1990s; they are in the mid-60s now. The employment rates for
single mothers also hit new highs in those years. The labor
force participation rate, itself an important victim of
hysteresis right now, hit its all-time high at the end of the
1990s expansion. In other words, full employment pulled a lot
of new people into the job market.
As part of the full-employment project I'm running at the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (and have written
about before on this blog), a number of top economists are
looking into the relationships between fiscal policy, and
hysteresis and reverse hysteresis. They are coming up with
some compelling findings, which I'll share once they are
ready. For now, allow me to assert the following: We have
shown we can do a lot of economic damage. With the political
will, sorely lacking these days, it can also be undone.
"What does 7.3 percent of lost gross domestic product
actually mean? Well, last year G.D.P. amounted to about $16.8
trillion, and 7.3 percent of that comes to around $1.2
trillion. Conventional estimates translate that into more
than 10 million jobs."
Obama's Economic Disappointment by Narayana Kocherlakota
In January 2009, at the beginning of Obama's first term,
the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a 10-year
forecast for the U.S. economy, including such indicators as
unemployment, gross domestic product, the budget deficit,
government debt and interest rates. Here's a table comparing
the CBO's expectations for the year 2015 to what has actually
happened:
NGDP forecast to grow 33 percent, actually grew 22
percent.
"A final argument for gradually adjusting policy relates
to the desirability of achieving a prompt return of inflation
to the FOMC's 2 percent goal, an objective that would be
advanced by allowing the unemployment rate to decline for a
time somewhat below estimates of its longer-run sustainable
level. To a limited degree, such an outcome is envisioned in
many participants' most recent SEP projections. A tight labor
market may also work to reverse some of the adverse
supply-side developments resulting from the financial crisis.
The deep recession and slow recovery likely have held back
investment in physical and human capital, restrained the rate
of new business formation, prompted discouraged workers to
leave the labor force, and eroded the skills of the long-term
unemployed.15 Some of these effects might be reversed in a
tight labor market, yielding long-term benefits associated
with a more productive economy. That said, the quantitative
importance of these supply-side mechanisms are difficult to
establish, and the relevant research on this point is quite
limited."
Robots are taking human jobs. But Bill Gates believes that governments
should tax companies' use of them, as a way to at least temporarily slow the
spread of automation and to fund other types of employment.
It's a
striking position from the world's richest man and a self-described
techno-optimist who co-founded Microsoft, one of the leading players in
artificial-intelligence technology.
In a recent interview with Quartz, Gates said that a robot tax could
finance jobs taking care of elderly people or working with kids in schools,
for which needs are unmet and to which humans are particularly well suited.
He argues that governments must oversee such programs rather than relying on
businesses, in order to redirect the jobs to help people with lower incomes.
The idea is not totally theoretical: EU lawmakers
considered a proposal
to tax robot owners to pay for training for
workers who lose their jobs, though on Feb. 16 the legislators ultimately
rejected it.
"You ought to be willing to raise the tax level and even slow down the
speed" of automation, Gates argues. That's because the technology and
business cases for replacing humans in a wide range of jobs are arriving
simultaneously, and it's important to be able to manage that displacement.
"You cross the threshold of job replacement of certain activities all sort
of at once," Gates says, citing warehouse work and driving as some of the
job categories that in the next 20 years will have robots doing them.
You can watch Gates' remarks in the video above. Below is a transcript,
lightly edited for style and clarity.
Quartz: What do you think of a robot tax? This is the idea that in
order to generate funds for training of workers, in areas such as
manufacturing, who are displaced by automation, one concrete thing that
governments could do is tax the installation of a robot in a factory, for
example.
Bill Gates: Certainly there will be taxes that relate to
automation. Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work
in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, social security
tax, all those things. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you'd think
that we'd tax the robot at a similar level.
And what the world wants is to take this opportunity to make all the
goods and services we have today, and free up labor, let us do a better job
of reaching out to the elderly, having smaller class sizes, helping kids
with special needs. You know, all of those are things where human empathy
and understanding are still very, very unique. And we still deal with an
immense shortage of people to help out there.
So if you can take the labor that used to do the thing automation
replaces, and financially and training-wise and fulfillment-wise have that
person go off and do these other things, then you're net ahead. But you
can't just give up that income tax, because that's part of how you've been
funding that level of human workers.
And so you could introduce a tax on robots
There are many ways to take that extra productivity and generate more
taxes. Exactly how you'd do it, measure it, you know, it's interesting for
people to start talking about now. Some of it can come on the profits that
are generated by the labor-saving efficiency there. Some of it can come
directly in some type of robot tax. I don't think the robot companies are
going to be outraged that there might be a tax. It's OK.
Could you
figure out a way to do it that didn't
dis-incentivize innovation
?
Well, at a time when people are saying that the arrival of that robot is
a net loss because of displacement, you ought to be willing to raise the tax
level and even slow down the speed of that adoption somewhat to figure out,
"OK, what about the communities where this has a particularly big impact?
Which transition programs have worked and what type of funding do those
require?"
You cross the threshold of job-replacement of certain activities all sort
of at once. So, you know, warehouse work, driving, room cleanup, there's
quite a few things that are meaningful job categories that, certainly in the
next 20 years, being thoughtful about that extra supply is a net benefit.
It's important to have the policies to go with that.
People should be figuring it out. It is really bad if people overall have
more fear about what innovation is going to do than they have enthusiasm.
That means they won't shape it for the positive things it can do. And, you
know, taxation is certainly a better way to handle it than just banning some
elements of it. But [innovation] appears in many forms, like self-order at a
restaurant-what do you call that? There's a Silicon Valley machine that can
make hamburgers without human hands-seriously! No human hands touch the
thing. [
Laughs
]
And you're more on the side that government should play an active
role rather than rely on businesses to figure this out?
Well, business can't. If you want to do [something about] inequity, a lot
of the excess labor is going to need to go help the people who have lower
incomes. And so it means that you can amp up social services for old people
and handicapped people and you can take the education sector and put more
labor in there. Yes, some of it will go to, "Hey, we'll be richer and people
will buy more things." But the inequity-solving part, absolutely
government's got a big role to play there. The nice thing about taxation
though, is that it really separates the issue: "OK, so that gives you the
resources, now how do you want to deploy it?"
"The consequences of the Reagan deficits were to cream
midwestern manufacturing and destroy worker bargaining power
in export and import-competing industries. The switch from
government surpluses to deficits under George W. Bush had
much the same consequences. "
Where's carters volcker ?
And the bit about going from surplus to deficit
Is utterly undeveloped here
Lots of Rubinte lice crawling around under that mossy rock
Manufacturing,
manufacturing,
manufacturing.
Everybody misses the
BRONTOSAURUS in the
room. 4% of jobs gone
from automation and
trade - half and half
-- true. But, 50% of
employees have lost
10% of overall income
-- out of the 20% of a
couple of generations
back.
(This reminds
me of comparing EITC's
1/2 1% redistribution
with 45% of workers
earning less than $15
an hour.)
Could 50% of the
workforce squeeze 10%
of income back out of
the 49% who take 70%
(14% of their
earnings!)? They sure
could if they could
collectively agree not
to show up for work
otherwise. Could if
the 49% in turn could
squeeze 10% out of the
1% (the infamous one
percent) who lately
take 20% of overall
income -- up from 10%
a couple of
generations back.
(Does the Chicago
Bears quarterback
really need $126
million for seven
years -- up from to
top NFL paid Joe
Namath's $600,000
[adjusted truly] a
couple of generations
back?)
Mechanism? Ask
Germany (ask Jimmy
Hoffa).
* * * * * *
In case nobody thought
about it -- I never
thought about until
Trump -- it goes like
this. The NLRA(a) was
written in 1935
leaving blank the use
criminal sanctions for
muscling the labor
market. Even if it did
specify jail time for
union busting it is
extremely arguable
that state penalties
for muscling ANY
persons seeking to
collectively bargain
(not just union
organizers and joiners
following fed
procedure) would
overlap, not violate
federal preemption.
It seems inarguable
-- under long
established First
Amendment right to
organize collective
bargaining -- that
federal preemption
cannot force employees
down an organizing
road that is
unarguably impassable,
because unenforceable.
Upshot: states may
make union busting a
felony -- hopefully
backed by RICO for
persistent violators.
6% union density is
like 20/10 blood
pressure. It starves
every other healthy
process.
In 1967-68 was working
the waterfront in SF.
Saw the crews of
Stevedores and
Longshoremen load the
ships; on the docks,
down in the holds,
using boom winches,
forklifts, and muscle
(dangerous work). By
1970, containerization
had replaced 90% of
them. And, it
continues with
computerization of
storage and loading of
containers (something
I worked on in 1975).
Remember the nephew in
the 'Wire'? One day a
week if he was lucky.
David Simon knew of
what he wrote.
One of the Michael
Moore movies (probably
but not sure whether
about Flint) made the
point rather
explicitly - former
manufacturing workers
retrained as law
enforcement or prison
officers perhaps for
employment in other
states or "dealing
with" their former
colleagues driven to
crime or at least into
the arms of the law
enforcement system.
Everybody lies. But American
politics has long rested on a shared understanding of what it
is acceptable to lie about, how and to whom.
One of the many norms that Donald J. Trump has assaulted
since taking office is this tradition of aspirational
hypocrisy, of striving, at least rhetorically, to act in
accordance with moral values - to be better. This tradition
has set the standard of behavior for government officials and
has shaped Americans' understanding of what their government
and their country represent. Over the last four weeks, Mr.
Trump has lashed out against any criticism of his behavior,
because, as he never tires of pointing out, "We won." In
requesting the resignation of his national security adviser,
Michael T. Flynn, however, Mr. Trump made his first public
concession to political expectations. Hypocrisy has scored a
minor victory in America. This is a good thing.
The word "hypocrisy" was thrown around a lot during the
2016 presidential campaign. Both Mr. Trump and Bernie Sanders
accused their respective parties and the country's elites of
hypocrisy. As the election neared, some journalists tried to
turn the accusation around on Mr. Trump, taking him to task,
for example, for his stand on immigration. If Mr. Trump
favored such a hard line on immigration, the logic went,
should he not then favor the deportation of his own wife,
Melania, who was alleged to have worked while in the United
States on a visitor's visa?
The charge of hypocrisy didn't stick, not so much because
it placed its proponents, unwittingly, in the distasteful
position of advocating the deportation of someone for a
long-ago and common transgression, but because Mr. Trump
wasn't just breaking the rules of political conduct: He was
destroying them. He was openly claiming that he abused the
system to benefit himself. If he didn't pay his taxes and got
away with it, this made him a good businessman. If he could
force himself on women, that made him more of a man. He acted
as though this primitive logic were obvious and shared by
all.
Fascists the world over have gained popularity by calling
forth the idea that the world is rotten to the core. In "The
Origins of Totalitarianism," Hannah Arendt described how
fascism invites people to "throw off the mask of hypocrisy"
and adopt the worldview that there is no right and wrong,
only winners and losers. Hypocrisy can be aspirational:
Political actors claim that they are motivated by ideals
perhaps to a greater extent than they really are; shedding
the mask of hypocrisy asserts that greed, vengeance and
gratuitous cruelty aren't wrong, but are legitimate
motivations for political behavior.
In the last decade and a half, post-Communist autocrats
like Vladimir V. Putin and Viktor Orban have adopted this
cynical posture. They seem convinced that the entire world is
driven solely by greed and hunger for power, and only the
Western democracies continue to insist, hypocritically, that
their politics are based on values and principles. This
stance has breathed new life into the old Soviet propaganda
tool of "whataboutism," the trick of turning any argument
against the opponent. When accused of falsifying elections,
Russians retort that American elections are not
unproblematic; when faced with accusations of corruption,
they claim that the entire world is corrupt.
This month, Mr. Trump employed the technique of
whataboutism when he was asked about his admiration for Mr.
Putin, whom the host Bill O'Reilly called "a killer." "You
got a lot of killers," responded Mr. Trump. "What, you think
our country's so innocent?" To an American ear, Mr. Trump's
statement was jarring - not because Americans believe their
country to be "innocent" but because they have always relied
on a sort of aspirational hypocrisy to understand the
country. No American politician in living memory has advanced
the idea that the entire world, including the United States,
was rotten to the core. ...
"... First of all, the unemployment rate in the USA actually increased from 4.7% to 4.8%, despite the job growth. ..."
"... Simply put, due to the way the Bureau of Labour Statistics is gathering its data, almost 700,000 people have been 'removed' from the civilian population. The total size of the civilian population is rebalanced on a yearly basis, in January. ..."
"... The smaller size of the civilian population caused the labor force participation rate to increase by 0.2%, and this by itself caused the unemployment rate to increase as well, despite the job creation number. ..."
"... But perhaps even more important is the extremely disappointing update on the average hourly earnings ('AHE') . The AHE increase fell to just 0.1% in January on a month/month comparison, but the real catch is in the details. ..."
Ever since the gold report was published, the gold price moved up. This caught several investors
by surprise, as some of them even continued to dump gold, scared by what appeared to be a good jobs
report.
'Appeared to be', because?
Yes, 227,000 new jobs
were created , and we can't deny that's a positive evolution. However, the increased job number
is also the only positive thing in the jobs report, and there are two other issues that haven't really
been highlighted.
Two issues that could, and probably will, have an impact on the interest rate decisions later
this year.
First of all, the unemployment rate in the USA actually increased from 4.7% to 4.8%, despite
the job growth.
How is that possible?
Simply put, due to the way
the Bureau of Labour Statistics
is gathering its data, almost 700,000 people have been 'removed' from the civilian population.
The total size of the civilian population is rebalanced on a yearly basis, in January.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
The smaller size of the civilian population caused the
labor force participation rate
to increase by 0.2%, and this by itself caused the unemployment rate to increase as well, despite
the job creation number.
And as the unemployment rate is one of the key factors the Federal Reserve is looking at to determine
whether or not a rate hike is appropriate, this small increase could have an impact on the decision
making process. And keep in mind this is the second consecutive increase in the unemployment rate
as the December unemployment rate also came in higher than the unemployment rate in November (and
this did not include any population rebalancing exercise).
But perhaps even more important is the extremely disappointing update on the
average hourly earnings
('AHE') . The AHE increase fell to just 0.1% in January on a month/month comparison, but the
real catch is in the details.
Exactly because the 0.1% increase is focusing on a monthly update, the revision of the wage increase
in December is actually telling you something more serious is going on. The December wages have been
revised down by 0.2%, so if that would NOT have happened, the average hourly wage would have DECREASED
in January.
"... This bizarre feature of Trump's executive order shows how deep Official Washington's dysfunction goes. Trump has picked a major constitutional battle over a travel ban that targets the wrong countries. ..."
"... But there's a reason for this dysfunction: No one in Official Washington can speak the truth about terrorism without suffering severe political damage or getting blacklisted by the mainstream media. Since the truth puts Israel and especially Saudi Arabia in an uncomfortable position, the truth cannot be spoken. ..."
"... There was some hope that President Trump – for all his irascibility and unpredictability – might break from the absurd "Iran is the principal source of terrorism" mantra. But so far he has not. Nor has Trump moved to throw open the files on the Syrian and Ukraine conflicts so Americans can assess how the Obama administration sought to manipulate them into supporting these "regime change" adventures. ..."
"... But Trump has resisted intense pressure to again entrust U.S. foreign policy to the neoconservatives, a number of whom lost their jobs when President Obama left office, perhaps most significantly Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who helped orchestrate the violent overthrow of Ukraine's elected president and is an architect of the New Cold War with Russia. ..."
"... Other neocons who angled for jobs in the new administration, including John Bolton and James Woolsey, have failed to land them. Currently, there is pressure to ensconce Elliott Abrams, a top neocon dating back to the Reagan administration, in the key post of Deputy Secretary of State but that idea, too, has met resistance. ..."
"... The neocon threat to Trump's stated intent of restoring some geopolitical realism to U.S. foreign policy is that the neocons operate almost as an ideological cabal linked often in a subterranean fashion – or as I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's neocon chief of staff, once wrote in a cryptic letter to neocon journalist Judith Miller that aspen trees "turn in clusters, because their roots connect them." ..."
"... What is less clear is whether Trump, Tillerson and his fledgling State Department team have the intellectual heft to understand why U.S. foreign policy has drifted into the chaos and conflicts that now surround it – and whether they have the skill to navigate a route toward a safe harbor. ..."
"... My first concern, however, is the USA predilection for 'regime change" wars - and for that I blame the neocons. ..."
If you wanted to bring sanity to a U.S. foreign policy that has spun crazily out of control,
there would be some immediate steps that you – or, say, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson – could
take, starting with a renewed commitment to tell the truth to the American people.
Instead of the endless "perception management" or "strategic communication" or "psychological
operations" or whatever the new code words are, you could open up the files regarding key turning-point
moments and share the facts with the citizens – the "We the People" – who are supposed to be America's
true sovereigns.
For instance, you could release what the U.S. government actually knows about the Aug. 21,
2013 sarin gas attack in Syria; what the files show about the origins of the Feb. 22, 2014 coup
in Ukraine; what U.S. intelligence analysts have compiled about the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. And those are just three examples of cases where
U.S. government propagandists have sold a dubious bill of goods to the American and world publics
in the "information warfare" campaign against the Syrian and Russian governments.
If you wanted to base U.S. foreign policy on the firm foundation of reality, you also could
let the American people in on who is actually the principal sponsor of the terrorism that they're
concerned about: Al Qaeda, Islamic State, the Taliban – all Sunni-led outfits, none of which are
backed by Shiite-ruled Iran. Yet, all we hear from Official Washington's political and media insiders
is that Iran is the chief sponsor of terrorism.
Of course, that is what Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Israel want you to believe because
it serves their regional and sectarian interests, but it isn't true. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
states are the ones arming and financing Al Qaeda and Islamic State with Israel occasionally bombing
Al Qaeda's military enemies inside Syria and providing medical support for Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate
operating near the Golan Heights.
The reason for this unsavory network of alliances is that Israel, like Saudi Arabia and the
Sunni-led Gulf states, sees Iran and the so-called "Shiite crescent" – from Tehran through Damascus
to Beirut – as their principal problem. And because of the oil sheiks' financial wealth and Israel's
political clout, they control how pretty much everyone in Official Washington's establishment
views the Middle East.
But the interests of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are not in line with the interests
of the American people – nor the average European – who are not concerned about militant Shiites
as much as militant Sunnis. After all, the worst terror attacks on Europe and the U.S. have come
from Sunni extremists belonging to or inspired by Al Qaeda and Islamic State.
This gap between the reality of Sunni-extremist terrorism and the fantasy of Official Washington's
"group think" fingering Shiite-ruled Iran explains the cognitive dissonance over President Trump's
travel ban on people from seven mostly Muslim countries. Beyond the offensive anti-Muslim prejudice,
there is the fact that he ignored the countries that produced the terrorists who have attacked
the U.S., including the 9/11 hijackers.
This bizarre feature of Trump's executive order shows how deep Official Washington's dysfunction
goes. Trump has picked a major constitutional battle over a travel ban that targets the wrong
countries.
But there's a reason for this dysfunction: No one in Official Washington can speak the truth
about terrorism without suffering severe political damage or getting blacklisted by the mainstream
media. Since the truth puts Israel and especially Saudi Arabia in an uncomfortable position, the
truth cannot be spoken.
There was some hope that President Trump – for all his irascibility and unpredictability –
might break from the absurd "Iran is the principal source of terrorism" mantra. But so far he
has not. Nor has Trump moved to throw open the files on the Syrian and Ukraine conflicts so Americans
can assess how the Obama administration sought to manipulate them into supporting these "regime
change" adventures.
But Trump has resisted intense pressure to again entrust U.S. foreign policy to the neoconservatives,
a number of whom lost their jobs when President Obama left office, perhaps most significantly
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who helped orchestrate the
violent overthrow of Ukraine's elected president and is an architect of the New Cold War with
Russia.
Other neocons who angled for jobs in the new administration, including John Bolton and James
Woolsey, have failed to land them. Currently, there is pressure to ensconce Elliott Abrams, a
top neocon dating back to the Reagan administration, in the key post of Deputy Secretary of State
but that idea, too, has met resistance.
The neocon threat to Trump's stated intent of restoring some geopolitical realism to U.S. foreign
policy is that the neocons operate almost as an ideological cabal linked often in a subterranean
fashion – or as I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's neocon chief of staff, once wrote
in a cryptic letter to neocon journalist Judith Miller that aspen trees "turn in clusters, because
their roots connect them."
In other words, if one neocon is given a key job, other neocons can be expected to follow.
Then, any Trump deviation from neocon orthodoxy would be undermined in the classic Washington
tradition of strategic leaking to powerful media and congressional allies.
So far, the Trump inner circle has shown the administrative savvy to avoid bringing in ideologues
who would dedicate their efforts to thwarting any significant change in U.S. geopolitical directions.
What is less clear is whether Trump, Tillerson and his fledgling State Department team have
the intellectual heft to understand why U.S. foreign policy has drifted into the chaos and conflicts
that now surround it – and whether they have the skill to navigate a route toward a safe harbor.
Very good analysis.
The first and obvious question about the ban is "why isn't Saudi Arabia included"? As the article
shows, this question unravels this (Trump's) current version of dysfunctional foreign policy based
on misleading the public.
Re: Still Seeking Growth From Tax Cuts and Union Busting -
Noah Smith
States should feel perfectly free to rebuild labor union
density -- one state at a time -- making union busting a
felony. Republicans will have no place to hide.
Suppose the 1935 Congress passed the NLRA(a) intending to
leave any criminal sanctions for obstructing union organizing
to the states. Might have been because NLRB(b) conducted
union elections take place local by local (not nationwide)
and Congress could have opined states would deal more
efficiently with home conditions -- or whatever. What extra
words might Congress have needed to add to today's actual
bill? Actually, today's identical NLRA wording would have
sufficed perfectly.
Suppose, again, that under the RLA (Railroad Labor Act --
covers railroads and airlines, FedEx) -- wherein elections
are conducted nationally -- that Congress desired to forbid
states criminalizing the firing of organizers -- how could
Congress have worded such a preemption (assuming it was
constitutionally valid)? Shouldn't matter to us. Congress did
not! :-O
NYT's Nate Cohn reports Trump won by trading places with
Obama as blue collar hero v Wall Street -- trade (unions)
back. Republicans will have no place to hide.
On Friday 10th February 2017 NBC circulated a report the Russian government in order to improve
relations with the Trump administration was preparing to hand Edward Snowden over to the US.
Snowden should not be worried, since the report is groundless and is clearly a provocation. To
see why it is only necessary to look at
the NBC report itself , which makes it clear who is behind it...
U.S. intelligence has collected information that Russia is considering turning over Edward Snowden
as a "gift" to President Donald Trump - who has called the NSA leaker a "spy" and a "traitor" who
deserves to be executed.
That's according to a senior U.S. official who has analyzed a series of highly sensitive intelligence
reports detailing Russian deliberations and who says a Snowden handover is one of various ploys to
"curry favor" with Trump. A second source in the intelligence community confirms the intelligence
about the Russian conversations and notes it has been gathered since the inauguration.
(bold italics added)
It turns out that the story does not originate in Russia. It originates with our old friends the
'anonymous officials' of the US intelligence community.
One of these officials claims that the story is based on "intelligence" of "Russian conversations"
that the US intelligence community has 'gathered since the inauguration". We have no way of knowing
at what level these "conversations" took place, assuming they took place at all, but it is inconceivable
that the US intelligence community is genuinely informed of discussions within the top level of the
Russian leadership – where such a question would be discussed – or if it is that it would publicise
the fact by blurting the fact out to NBC.
The reality is that there is no possibility of the Russians handing Snowden over to the US in
order to please Donald Trump . Not only would doing so almost certainly breach Russian law – as Snowden's
lawyer, who has
denied the whole story , has pointed out – but it contradicts what I personally heard Russian
President Putin say at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2014 when the subject of
Snowden was brought up, which is that Russia never hands over people like Snowden once they have
gained asylum in Russia. That is indeed Russian practice extending far back into the Soviet period,
and I can think of no exceptions to it.
As it happens Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova has denied the story in a
Facebook post which links it to the ongoing struggle between the Trump administration and the
US intelligence community (about which see more below). Here is how RT
translates
her post
Today, US intelligence agencies have stepped up their work, updating two stale stories, 'Russia
can gift Snowden to Trump' and 'confirmation found on the details of the scandalous
dossier
on Trump allegedly collected by an ex-employee of British intelligence.' But it may seem so only
to those who do not understand the essence of the game. None of these statements have been made by
representatives of the special services, but is information coming from NBC and CNN, citing unnamed
sources. The difference is obvious, but only to experts. Yet it is useful for scandalizing the public
and maintaining a degree of [public outrage] .
It is evident that the pressure on the new administration on the part of political opponents within
the United States continues, bargaining is going on. And that's why the US foreign policy doctrine
has not yet been formed
It is just possible that US intelligence overheard some gossip in Moscow about the Kremlin handing
Snowden over to Donald Trump in order to curry favour with him. The various reports the US intelligence
community released during the Clinton leaks hacking scandal show that the US intelligence community
is not actually very well informed about what goes on in Moscow or how the Russian government works.
In light of that it would not be entirely surprising if someone overheard some gossip about Snowden
in Moscow which the US intelligence community is over-interpreting.
Far more likely however is that – as Maria Zakharova says – this is a deliberate provocation,
spread by someone within the US intelligence community who either wants to signal to Moscow what
Moscow 'needs to do' if it wants better relations with the US, or (more probably) as a signal to
Donald Trump of the minimum the US intelligence community expects of him if he wants the US intelligence
community's support in seeking better relations with Russia.
This story is interesting not because of what it says about what the Russians are going to do
to Snowden – which in reality is nothing. Rather it is interesting because it shows the degree to
which Snowden continues to be an object of obsession for the US intelligence community.
The reason for that is that the US intelligence community knows that Snowden is not a Russian
spy.
As Snowden has pointed out, if he really were a Russian spy no-one in Washington would be talking
about the Russians handing him over. The Russians do not hand their spies over any more than the
US does, and if Snowden really were a Russian spy no-one in Washington would talking about the Russians
handing him over.
However if Snowden had been a Russian spy his actions would in that case have been simply a Russian
intelligence operation of which the US intelligence community was the victim, of which there have
been many since the Second World War. Espionage is what the US and Russia routinely do to each other,
and there would be nothing remarkable about Snowden in that case.
It is the fact that Snowden is on the contrary a deeply patriotic American who acted from patriotic
motives that has the US intelligence community enraged and alarmed. From their point of view having
a patriotic American publicly expose their practices Jason Bourne style is a far greater threat than
have a Russian spy penetrate their systems, since because of the far greater publicity it is far
more likely to damage them politically.
This explains the extraordinary feud the US intelligence community has waged against Snowden,
which in part explains why it has become so hostile to Russia, the country which has become his protector.
Mr.Sono -> knukles •Feb 12, 2017 5:41 PM
Putin is a man of his words and not a little bitch like Obama. I was suprised that fake news was
all over zerohedge regarding this topic, but at the end zerohedge confirmed the fake news.
Giant Meteor -> FreeShitter •Feb 12, 2017 5:35 PM
One of the smartest plays the deep state could make is allowing him back, make small fuss, and
issue a pardon. It would go far in deflating, diffusing the situation, de minimis so to speak.
But, I suppose it is more about absolute control, control of the narrative, full spectrum dominance,
cautionary tales etc. Pride goeth before the fall (destruction) I believe. Eventually this laundry
is going to get sorted and cleaned, one way or the other.
boattrash •Feb 12, 2017 5:13 PM
" as Maria Zakharova says – this is a deliberate provocation, spread by someone within the US
intelligence community who either wants to signal to Moscow what Moscow 'needs to do' if it wants
better relations with the US, or (more probably) as a signal to Donald Trump of the minimum the
US intelligence community expects of him if he wants the US intelligence community's support in
seeking better relations with Russia."
A full pardon from Trump would improve his standing with the American people, IMHO, on both
the left and the right.
HumanMan -> boattrash •Feb 12, 2017 5:29 PM
This was my thought when the story broke. Putin can no longer claim to be a protector of human
rights if he hands over Snowden...Unless Trump is going to pardon him. As you pointed you, that
would be great (politically) for Trump too. Done this way would be a win win for the two and another
win for We The People. On top of that, Putin doesn't want to babysit Snowden. I'm sure the Russians
would be happy to have a politically expediant way to get the American spy out of their country.
HRClinton •Feb 12, 2017 5:16 PM
The Deep State rules, no matter what DJT thinks.
The roots go deep in my fomer DOS and in the CIA Even in the DOD and Senate. Bill and I know
this better than anyone.
FAKE NEWS:
On Friday 10th February 2017 NBC circulated a report the Russian government in order to improve
relations with the Trump administration was preparing to hand Edward Snowden over to the US.
How many gringos were fooled???--- not many
shovelhead •Feb 12, 2017 5:37 PM
Pissgate II...
Brought to you from your friends at the CIA
Mr. Crisp •Feb 12, 2017 5:50 PM
Snowden showed the world that the NSA wasn't just tracking terrorists, they were tracking pretty much
everyone, everywhere. He deserves a full pardon.
Nick Cohen makes a good
point
: it is not congenital liars that should worry us, but
congenital believers – those who fall for the lies of
charlatans. We know that many do so: almost half of voters
believed
the lie that leaving the EU would allow us to spend
an extra Ł350m a week on the NHS.
This poses the question: why do
people fall for lies? Here, we can learn from behavioural
economics and
research (pdf)
into criminal fraud. I reckon there are
several factors that liars exploit in politics.
One is wishful thinking. People
want to believe there's a simple solution to NHS underfunding
(leave the EU!) or to low wages (cut immigration!) just as they
want to believe they can get rich quick or make money by taking
no risk: Ponzi schemers like Bernie Madoff play upon that last
one. The wish is often the father to the belief.
Relatedly, perhaps, there are
lottery-type preferences. People like long-odds bets and pay too
much for them: this is why they back
longshots (pdf)
too
much
and pay over the odds for speculative
shares
. To such people, the fact that an offer seems too
good to be true is therefore, paradoxically, tempting. A study
of fraud by the OFT
found
:
Some people viewed responding
to a scam as taking a long-odds gamble: they recognised that
there was something wrong with the offer, but the size of the
possible prize or reward (relative to the initial outlay)
induced them to give it a try on the off-chance that it might
be genuine.
There's a particular type that is
especially likely to take a long-odds bet: the desperate. Lonely
people are vulnerable to the
romance
scam; gamblers who have lost take big bets to get even; losing
teams try "hail Mary" tactics. In like fashion, people who feel
like they have lost out in the era of globalization were
tempted
to vote for Trump and Brexit.
There's another mechanism here:
people are likely to turn to con-men if the alternatives have
failed. Werner Troesken
shows (pdf)
how snake-oil
sellers
exploited this. They invested a lot in advertising
and in product differentiation and so when other products failed
they could claim that theirs would work when the others hadn't.
I suspect that fund managers use a similar trick: the failure of
many to beat the market leads investors simply to trust others
rather than tracker funds. The fact that previous policies had
failed working people thus encouraged them to try something
different – be it Brexit or Trump.
Yet another trick here is the
affinity
fraud. We tend to trust people like ourselves, or who at least
who look like ourselves. Farage's endless posturing as a "man of
the people" – fag and pint in hand, not caring about "political
correctness" – laid the basis for people to trust him, just as
Bernie
Madoff
joined all the right clubs to
encourage
wealthy (often Jewish) folk to trust him. By contrast, the
claims from the Treasury and various think-tanks that Brexit
would make us poorer came from metropolitan elites who were so
different from poorer working class people that they weren't
trusted. And in fact the very talk of "liberal elites" carried
the subtext: "don't trust them: they're not like you".
All of these tendencies have been
reinforced by another – the fact that, as David Leiser and Zeev
Kril have
shown
, people are bad at making
connections
in economics. The idea that Brexit would hurt us
rested upon tricky connections: between the terms of Brexit and
trade rules; from trade rules to actual trade; and from trade to
productivity. By contrast, the idea that leaving the EU would
save us money was simple and easy to believe.
Now, I don't say all this merely
to be a Remoaner; complaining about liars is like a fish
complaining that the water is wet. Instead, I want to point out
that it is not sufficient to blame the BBC for not calling out
Brexiters' lies. Yes, the BBC
disgraced
itself during the plebiscite campaign. But we must
also understand how voters fall for such mendacity. As Akerlof
and Shiller write:
Voters are phishable in two
major ways. First, they are not fully informed; they are
information phools. Second, voters are also psychological
phools; for example, because they respond to appeals such as
lawnmower ads [a candidate seen mowing his own lawn is
regarded as a man of the people] (
Phishing
for Phools
, p 75)
All this raises a challenge for
liberals. Many used to believe the truth would win out over lies
in the marketplace for ideas. This is no longer true, if it ever
were. Instead, the questions now are: what can we do about this?
And what should we do? The two questions might well have
different answers. But we can make a start by understanding how
lies are sometimes believed.
Keith |
February 07, 2017 at 04:47 PM
The marketplace of ideas assumes that the consumers are able and
willing to inform themselves and be rational rather than
emotional. Clearly this is not true of a lot of voters when
confronted by a manipulative press and Tories like Jim with
their right wing agenda slyly hidden for the time being.
Equally as in other areas such as health care shopping around is
impossible to do as the consumers lack expert knowledge.
Allowing the profit motive to apply to many areas is sure to be
a disaster for human welfare as the profit incentive stops the
experts using their knowledge for good. Finance is a classic
example of the uninformed being repeatedly duped into unsound
investments decade after decade. Benjamin Graham describes how
in his first job selling Bonds to grannies he came to realise
that he was being asked to steal the life savings of pensioners
via commissions designed to get a sale of junk paper. Which is
why he moved elsewhere to a more ethical line of work. But I am
sure leaving the biggest most integrated market in the world
where lots of foreigners have helpfully learned our language
will surely increase our prosperity....Nigel says so.
There will always be gullible people (/ people constrained by
high opportunity cost of information search, as I prefer to
think of them)
And there will always be liars looking to take
advantage of them. Like 99% of politicians ever.
It's very Marxist to wonder how we might change this basic
fact of humanity, when the real solution is clear. Don't set up
powerful central institutions that rely on coercion: it attracts
liars, rewards them, and makes new liars out of honest people.
Oh, we Leavers are being lectured again by our Remainer betters
on our stupidity.
If the statements of the amount we pay to
the EU were lies, how come we owe them €50 billion?
how come no-one ever asks why we have to implement the four
freedoms when Germany gets a free pass on the Free market in
Services?
the government announced house building plans today, and
no-one asks whether a cause of high house prices and a housing
shortage is too much immigration?
It's not the lies, it's the questions never asked that stand
out.
I don't read Jim as a Tory. I read
him as someone who was a Labour supporter but now just stares in
amazement at a group of people who have become EU Federalist
fanatics spouting delusional slogans who can never answer a
straight question and refuse to acknowledge the obvious problems
of democratic accountability.
How on earth did that happen? How did apparently intelligent
people completely lose their critical faculties and join a
quasi-religious cult that chants empty slogans and denounces
anyone who questions them?
Chris missed out the fact that people tend to give others the
benefit of the doubt. I.e. if X tells a monster lie, peoples'
immediate reaction is: "X is is a bastard". But then on second
thoughts they feel ashamed at accusing someone else of being a
bastard, and assume it's they themselves that must be wrong.
There is a bit of a danger here of another comment thread being
derailed with Brexit mud-slinging. Chris's post isn't really
about the pros and cons of Brexit, it just offers a vivid
example of the phenomenon under discussion.
The point Chris makes in the last paragraph is more general
and profound. If any and all data/information/evidence/argument
is interpreted in partisan fashion and subject to massive
confirmation bias so that debates increasingly polarise - or if
different sides in debates proffer their own favoured but
incompatible versions of the truth - then meaningful dialogue,
deliberation and compromise become near impossible. All we get
is intolerance, mistrust and greater partisanship. Clearly these
are not entirely new issues, but it seems undeniable that there
has been a qualitative shift in 'quality' of public debate.
We appear to be witnessing the US political system at great
risk of imploding, as enlightenment values are abandoned and key
tenets of liberal democratic practice are wilfully rejected.
This is the route to chaos.
The questions Chris poses are, to my mind at least, the right
ones. The very nature of the problem means that the old/favoured
remedies are unlikely to be effective. But what can replace
them? Is a violent conflagration the only way of shocking the
system out of hyper-partisanship and the rejection of the
foundational belief that we live in a shared reality (i.e. for
people to 'come to their senses')? Or can we back out of this
particular cul-de-sac peacefully? You've got to hope so. But, if
so, how?
Our upper echelon, i.e. our long-standing middle of the road
Labour MPs and commentators, have long been successful in
fighting off calls for left leaning policy/talk of how things
work (because who knows where this will end) under a guise of
fighting off racism/ a closed shop mentality; the routes of
least resistance 50s – 00s which should alert us to the ability
of the English working class to embrace immigration and avoid
base philosophies. But it seems not. Seems to me our shared
interest beyond race creed colour and gender continues to be
deliberately and systematically no-platformed. What I fail to
understand, given the rise of UKIP, is why this is not glaringly
obvious; because if you're one of the majority who live life as
best you might with as much consideration and tolerance as you
can muster where does credence go when an ordinary workers
tendency to sound 'populist' is marked up to racism no matter
known history...
"Serious thinkers set to work, and produced a long shelf of
books answering this question. Their answers tended to rely on
similar themes. First, Democrats lose because they are too
intelligent. Their arguments are too complicated for American
voters. Second, Democrats lose because they are too tolerant.
They refuse to cater to racism and hatred. Finally, Democrats
lose because they are not good at the dark art of politics.
Republicans, though they are knuckle-dragging simpletons when it
comes to policy, are devilishly clever when it comes to
electioneering. They have brilliant political consultants like
Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, who frame issues so fiendishly, they
can fool the American people into voting against their own best
interests."
And immigration is about economics. This is Sweden an
immigration superpower.
"Swedish police last year issued a report where it detailed
incidents from more than 55 areas which it branded as "no-go
zones" as it detailed brutal attacks on police, sexual assaults,
children carrying weapons and general turmoil sweeping across
the country."
"A ban was supported by 71 per cent of people in Poland, 65
per cent in Austria, 53 per cent in Germany and 51 per cent in
Italy.
In the UK, 47 per cent supported a ban.
In no country did more than 32 per cent disagree with a ban."
"It thereby explains a paradox: why, at a
time when we are better off than ever before in history, all too
many of us are leading lives of quiet desperation."
Chris, a bit off the point, but if everyone followed your advice
and put money in tracker funds and active funds disappeared,
what would happen to the stock market ? Instinct tells me it
would become extremely volatile, but instinct is a bad guide...
It is not an extreme story, I don't speak Swedish
or have any contact with Sweden. I only read the main stream
media which includes the Daily Express.
As you would expect most of the media does not report on
Sweden, unless it has a British angle.
e.g. Birmingham Boy killed by a hand grenade.
(I don't know how you can spin Hand Grenade)
The report originates with the Swedish Police the situation
in Malmo is serious and individual police officers like Peter
Springare's Facebook post.
"After a wave of violence in Sweden's third city, police boss
Stefan Sintéus has appealed to residents in Malmö: "Help us.
Help us to tackle the problems. Cooperate with us.""
This isn't the first time facists have made
inflammatory comments about muslims. Nick Griffin did this and
was prosecuted for inciting racial hatred in 2006. The summary
of what he said is some way down this article.
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with banning "fake
news". You have to be really open, transparent and clear and be
absolutely sure you are right, otherwise you end up making
heroes of facists and stoking the notion that its all a plot to
hide the truth from the people. And that is a really bad
outcome.
MPs wrestling with their consciences, loud debates, arguments
about the truth ... this is the sound of a properly functioning
parliamentary democracy and long may that noise continue.
Nick Cohen does make some good points but he himself has a
complicated relationship with the truth in some areas. When he
isn't talking about congenital liars and congenital believers,
he continues to get into a rage about people who opposed the
invasion of Iraq. As far as I can see, the invasion of Iraq has
been the disaster that some of us feared (because regime change
involves putting in place a new regime change, which is very
difficult and for which the USA and UK do not have the skills).
And, as far as I can see, some of the assumptions made by Nick
Cohen in 2002 and 2003 in supporting the invasion (such as the
ability of the Iraqi National Congress to create a new regime)
were very dubious and their weakness of these assumptions is why
the invasion was a failure and has had created an array of other
problems.
In his campaign to avoid a post-truth future, Nick Cohen
claims that people like him "are on their own" and he explicitly
rejects working with the kind of people who opposed the invasion
of Iraq. That's a pity, really, because many people appear to
have started their opposition to the invasion because the
information provided and the logic used appeared to be dodgy.
The period from August 2002 to March 2003 prefigured the
Trump/Brexit era for post-truth information and arguments. Nick
Cohen would be on stronger ground if he admitted that the
invasion of Iraq has not necessarily worked to anyone's
advantage.
I guess that what is going on in Nick Cohen's mind (and I can
only guess) is that he has built up a negative image of the type
of person who opposed the invasion of Iraq and he has difficulty
getting past that image and come to terms with what those people
were saying and what has actually happened in Iraq. Thus in
between writing articles about the need for truth, Nick Cohen
writes expressions of outrage about opponents of the invasion of
Iraq as if they had been found to be wrong.
It seems to be a very extreme example of seeing the messenger
and not the message, which is one of the issues with failing to
recognise lies.
OK, well I've worked most of my life with Swedes and Norwegians,
and have regularly visited Malmo three or four times a year
recently, although the last was a bit over a year ago.
So, yes, immigration is an issue, and the Sweden Democrats
(fascists) have been rising in the polls. Malmo itself has some
problems in the suburbs.
But there are no no-go areas. Armed violence has more
traditionally been associated with biker-gang turf-related drug
wars - otherwise with the far right (see Breivik in Norway) and
then, as your last link discusses, lone serial killers.
Reading anything the Sweden Democrats have to say is the
equivalent of believing Wilders in the Netherlands - they are
loons.
"... Start focusing on the predators at the top of the pyramid scheme and then watch how those same culprits and their networks "come to the rescue" in order to capitalize on the "pain and suffering" they help to create. I see a pattern, don't you? ..."
"... Don't forget student debt. Not only are many recent graduates underemployed or unemployed, they're in the hole tens of thousands. Further incentive not to make any sort of financial commitment. Student debt should be cancelled to promote earlier family formation. ..."
"... It's almost a negative feedback loop. ..."
"... Very true. Capitalism only works as long as enough people (or states) are able to take up ever-larger debt, to close the gap (called "profit") between expensive goods and comparatively cheap labour. ..."
"... Good to point out Gat Gourmet. Almost all outsourced jobs in the beginning of places where I have worked were once part of the company. ..."
"... Still, it's hard not to notice there could be nothing more convenient to the corporate and governmental powers-that-be than a nonprofit that takes it upon itself to placate, insure, and temper the precarious middle-class. ..."
"... So which ivy-league management school / guru is most culpable in unleashing the whole lean-mean-outsourcing-machine monster because it's slowly destroying my ability to remain in IT. ..."
"... "how the big company love of outsourcing means that traditional employment has declined and is expected to fall further." – ..."
"... Story of my life! I'm still trying to get paid for freelance work that I did in December. This payment delay is wreaking havoc with MY cash flow. ..."
"... Another area of friction and waste with IT consulting and other contracting, is that an employee of a company simply and efficiently plugs into their existence administrative system (HR, timekeeping, payroll, etc). ..."
"... I work in engineering at a gigantic multinational vehicle manufacturer and the role of "consultants" has been expanding with time. Rather than consultants being people with specific technical expertise who work on one subsystem component with clear interfaces to other things, it now encapsulates project managers and subsystem / function responsible people who need to have large networks inside the company to be effective. ..."
"... Considering the huge amount of time it takes to get a new hire up and running to learn the acronyms and processes and the roles of different departments, it's a bit absurd to hire people for such roles under the assumption that they can be quickly swapped out with a consultant from Company B next week. ..."
"... It's pretty clear that management sees permanent employees on the payroll as a liability and seeks to avoid it as much as possible. ..."
"... Because they, unlike us, understand class. I can state for a fact that the Big Three auto companies are well aware of how much cheaper health care costs are for them in Canada and how much better off they would be here, cost-wise, with a national health care system where McDonald's and Wal-mart have to pay the same per hour or per employee cost as they do. But it turns out cost isn't everything. Corporate (capitalist) solidarity rules. ..."
"... Michelle Malkin ..."
"... “The Marxian capitalist has infinite shrewdness and cunning on everything except matters pertaining to his own ultimate survival. On these, he is not subject to education. He continues wilfully and reliably down the path to his own destruction”. ..."
The Wall Street Journal has an important new story,
The End of Employees
, on how the big company love of outsourcing means that traditional employment
has declined and is expected to fall further.
Some key sections of the article:
Never before have American companies tried so hard to employ so few people. The outsourcing wave
that moved apparel-making jobs to China and call-center operations to India is now just as likely
to happen inside companies across the U.S. and in almost every industry.
The men and women who unload shipping containers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. warehouses are provided
by trucking company Schneider National Inc.’s logistics operation, which in turn subcontracts with
temporary-staffing agencies. Pfizer Inc. used contractors to perform the majority of its clinical
drug trials last year .
The shift is radically altering what it means to be a company and a worker. More flexibility for
companies to shrink the size of their employee base, pay and benefits means less job security for
workers. Rising from the mailroom to a corner office is harder now that outsourced jobs are no longer
part of the workforce from which star performers are promoted
For workers, the changes often lead to lower pay and make it surprisingly hard to answer the simple
question “Where do you work?” Some economists say the parallel workforce created by the rise
of contracting is helping to fuel income inequality between people who do the same jobs.
No one knows how many Americans work as contractors, because they don’t fit neatly into the
job categories tracked by government agencies. Rough estimates by economists range from 3% to 14%
of the nation’s workforce, or as many as 20 million people.
As you can see, the story projects this as an unstoppable trend. The article is mainly full of success
stories, which naturally is what companies would want to talk about. The alleged benefits are two-fold:
that specialist contractors can do a better job of managing non-core activities because they are specialists
and have higher skills and that using outside help keeps companies lean and allows them to be more "agile".
The idea that companies who use contractors are more flexible is largely a myth
.
The difficulty of entering into outsourcing relationships gives you an idea of how complex they are.
While some services, like cleaning, are likely to be fairly simple to hand off, the larger ones are
not. For instance, for IT outsourcing, a major corporation will need to hire a specialist consultant
to help define the requirements for the request for proposal and write the document that will be the
basis for bidding and negotiation. That takes about six months. The process of getting initial responses,
vetting the possible providers in depth, getting to a short list of 2-3 finalists, negotiating finer
points with them to see who has the best all-in offer, and then negotiating the final agreement typically
takes a year. Oh, and the lawyers often fight with the consultant as to what counts in the deal.
On the one hand, the old saw of "a contract is only as good at the person who signed it" still holds
true. But if a vendor doesn't perform up to the standards required, or the company's requirements change
in some way not contemplated in the agreement, it is vasty more difficult to address than if you were
handling it internally. And given how complicated contracting is, it's not as if you can fire them.
So as we've stressed again and again, these arrangements increase risks and rigidity. And companies
can mis-identify what is core or not recognize that there are key lower-level skills they've mis-identified.
For instance, Pratt & Whitney decided to contract out coordination of deliveries to UPS. Here is the
critical part:
For years, suppliers delivered parts directly to Pratt’s two factories, where materials handlers
unpacked the parts and distributed them to production teams. Earl Exum, vice president of global
materials and logistics, says Pratt had “a couple hundred” logistics specialists. Some handlers
were 20- or 30-year veterans who could “look at a part and know exactly what it is,” he adds .
Most of the UPS employees had no experience in the field, and assembly kits arrived at factories
with damaged or missing parts. Pratt and UPS bosses struggled to get the companies’ computers in
sync, including warehouse-management software outsourced by UPS to another firm, according to Pratt..
The result was $500 million in lost sales in a quarter. Pratt & Whitney tried putting a positive
spin on the tale, that all the bugs were worked out by the next quarter. But how long will it take Pratt
& Whitney to recover all the deal costs plus the lost profits?
There's even more risk when the company using contractor doesn't have much leverage over them. As
a Wall Street Journal reader, Scott Riney, said in comments:
Well managed companies make decisions based on sound data and analysis. Badly managed companies
follow the trends because they're the trends. A caveat regarding outsourcing is that, as always,
you get what you pay for. Also, the vendor relationship needs to be competently managed. There was
the time a certain, now bankrupt technology company outsourced production of PBX components to a
manufacturer who produced components with duplicate MAC addresses. The contract manufacturer's expertise
obviously didn't extend to knowing jack about hardware addressing, and the management of the vendor
relationship was incompetent. And what do you do, in a situation like that, if your firm isn't big
enough that your phone calls get the vendor's undivided attention? Or if you're on different continents,
and nothing can get done quickly?
We've discussed other outsourcing bombs in past posts, such as when British Airways lost "tens of
millions of dollars" when its contractor, Gate Gourmet, fired employees. Baggage handlers and ground
crew struck in sympathy, shutting down Heathrow for 24 hours. Like many outsourced operations, Gate
Gourmet had once been part of British Airways.
And passengers blamed the airline
, not the wprkers.
Now admittedly, there are low-risk, low complexity activities that are being outsourced more, such
as medical transcription, where 25% of all medical transcriptionists now work for agencies, up by 1/3
since 2009. The article attributes the change to more hospitals and large practices sending the work
outside. But even at its 2009 level, the use of agencies was well established. And you can see that
it is the sort of service that smaller doctor's offices would already be hiring on a temp basis, whether
through an agency or not, because they would not have enough activity to support having a full-time
employee. The story also describes how SAP has all its receptionists as contractors, apparently because
someone looked at receptionist pay and concluded some managers were paying too much. So low level clerical
jobs are more and more subject to this fad. But managing your own receptionists is hardly going to make
a company less flexible.
Contracting, like other gig economy jobs, increase insecurity and lower growth.
I hate to belabor the obvious, but people who don't have a steady paycheck are less likely to make major
financial commitments, like getting married and setting up a new household, having kids, or even buying
consumer durables. However, one industry likely makes out handsomely: Big Pharma, which no doubt winds
up selling more brain-chemistry-altering products for the resulting situationally-induced anxiety and/or
depression. The short-sightedness of this development on a societal level is breath-taking, yet overwhelmingly
pundits celebrate it and political leaders stay mum.
With this sort of rot in our collective foundation, the rise of Trump and other "populist" candidates
should not come as a surprise.
I would add this. It was deplorable for Trump to have fired Acting AG Sally Yates after she ordered
Justice Department lawyers to stop defending Mr. Trump’s executive order banning new arrivals to the
U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries.
But Sally Yates was a hero for another reason. Yates was cracking down on systemic abuses by holding
top healthcare executives personally accountable for false Medicare and Medicaid claims and illegal
physician relationships.
I remember hoping: Well, maybe Obama will actually get some decent folks into the Judiciary bring
kids home from Iraq, maybe try for Medicare over 55 (to the advantage of the insurance & Pharma sectors?)
But the one thing I'd actually expected him to accomplish was enact
https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/senate-bill/2044
which would get the Kleptocrats a
few more years out of the moldering corpse of American Labor (and not hurt multinationals, who'd off-shored,
outsourced or speciously re-classified their largely undocumented, 3rd party, contingency/ gig employees
decades previously).
Wage-theft Democrats was a new concept to some of us more easily deluded working
class Yankees, reeling from Bush. I think a strong fantasy life's essential nowadays.
I imagine that this is among the pesky downsides of living in our YOOJ autocratic neo-Confederate
theocratic kleptocracy; wage theft has always been right at the top of both parties' platforms?
If they can't hide it, who will they blame it on?
"people who don’t have a steady paycheck are less likely to make major financial commitments,
like getting married and setting up a new household, having kids"
"more brain-chemistry-altering products for the resulting situationally-induced anxiety and/or depression."
Decline in family formation and a populace seeking to anesthetize itself are indications of a civilization
in decline. Our problem is much bigger than employment.
You can employ deplorables, you can enslave deplorables, you can kill deplorables. The only way
that a "return maximizing" system won't choose killing, is if the unit cost of killing is higher
than enslavement or employment. I can hope that the bureaucratic effect of increasing costs will
work faster on the cost of killing or enslavement. Reducing the cost of employment (regulations)
wouldn't hurt.
We'd guessed this was why Dickens, Niccolò Machiavelli, Frederick Douglass, E. A. Blair &
Marx were being burnt by the DeVos Christians. Why teach management for FREE, when the drooling
Know Nothings will PAY to send their dead-eyed vipers to seminars or A Beka online curricula?
Eliminate environmental protections and the entire industry that investigates, researches,
enforces, litigates, and mitigates environmental impacts are likewise eliminated. These are generally
highly skilled professions, and has wide ranging impacts from workers all the way to the global
ecosystem. Then there are economic ripple effects on top of that.
If we are going to eliminate an entire career tree, health insurance is a better choice.
Not sure what this has to do with the article, but yes people will LOSE jobs to Trump, skilled
and socially beneficial jobs like at the EPA.
For heaven knows what, jobs building useless walls to nowhere I guess, which somehow in
Trumps warped mind is a more productive line of work (it won't even work to curtail immigration).
Thank you for your astute, pertinent & seldom mentioned comment (which to those of us in
QA, is something we've believed central to the issue, not a tangent or unexpected side benefit
of our sharecropper corporatocracy).
We'd noticed contract buy-outs & forced early-retirement
in the steel industry, in the 90's, our clients' engineers (scruffy & cantankerous, who'd stand
by us if we were right & replace us if we got out of hand) were all replaced by clueless, gullible
desk jockeys, devoid of empirically honed judgement eventually, we'd have 2-3 gnarled old
timers, amidst crews of neophytes (first they tried very well trained & knowledgeable foreign
nationals, then pensioners, let go from the vendors) finally, they tried to 1099 the desperate
ones, on the run from skip-chasers, deputies & repo-men.
They'd try sending us half way across
the country, mention nothing, then see what we'd do (once we figured out we'd earned no overtime?)
We'd be in Indian or Russian owned mills where 80% of the employees were totally undocumented
foreign nationals, many of the balance wildly underpaid temps.
And the good-old-boy management
resembled characters outa Harriet Beecher Stowe. Lots of our counterparts were straight back
from Afghanistan & Iraq, verifying that most of their gig- economy contingency employment had
all been the same, regardless of industry sector: off-shored aircraft, as well as bridge, structural,
water, nuclear, inspectors what regulation?
Leveraging guilt to rationalize the Invitation of the least educated into your nation from the
most barbaric failed states and cultures in the world is another sign of civic decay.
Yup, many of the Taxi and Uber drivers around here arrived and took out private loans to
get "educated" and now are deep in debt and are too ashamed to go home.
Start focusing on the predators at the top of the pyramid scheme and then watch how those
same culprits and their networks "come to the rescue" in order to capitalize on the "pain
and suffering" they help to create. I see a pattern, don't you?
Barbarians are at the gates but you may be looking in the wrong place. Beware all types
of people are "vulnerable" and they will more easily identify with other human beings living
under a variety of diminished circumstances. Victim shaming won't be a viable option in the
not so distant future.
Dave, I hope you are not including Syria in your "failed states and cultures" description.
Syrians are
very well educated
and will add much to any nation's economy.
It is not a sign of "civic decay"
in the Syrian culture, but a sign of civic decay in a nation that will not accept people from
a war zone. An invitation should not be dependent on one's education but on one's need and desire
to survive a war zone..
Iraqis were also comparatively educated, right up through university, under its autocratic
leader. Libyans were, by and large, well educated, or at least getting so, under its autocratic
leader. The most poorly educated, probably, are those countries which have been under US or
European hegemony for generations: a lot of Central and south America, a lot of Africa, etc.
Not to mention the US itself, which has been colonizing its own hinterland for many decades.
The same applies to countries like Canada, Australia, etc. particularly in terms of their indigenous
populations.
Don't forget student debt. Not only are many recent graduates underemployed or unemployed, they're
in the hole tens of thousands. Further incentive not to make any sort of financial commitment. Student
debt should be cancelled to promote earlier family formation.
This trend matches up with the trends of dropping life expectancy, especially among the lower half
of income earners, and with slowing economies globally.
It's almost a negative feedback loop.
Politcal implications: the rise of far right politics; if you are a monarchist, or want to create
an aristocracy, these trends are probably in your interest.
Sure, it is partly psychological but it also has direct connection (by DESIGN) to the fact that
such people don't have healthcare, even with Obamacare insurance. The idiots that sing the praises
of Obamacare and how millions now have insurance seem to think that means those people have HEALTHCARE
to go with it.
Insurance is theft. Insurance is not even remotely "healthcare". Much of those newly insured have
their insurance, thanks to a government subsidy, but STILL lack healthcare because their premiums
and deductibles are too high to allow them to see doctors. Thus, they're dying or going to die sooner
due to untreated maladies, but at least they paid insurance company CEOs their bonuses with their
subsidized insurance payments!
Mutual insurance however is (was) socialist by nature. The true mutuals were crushed out of
existence by share for share conversions to private companies that ripped off policy holders and
gave a big payday to the C suites and the lawyers. Thanks to inept state insurance commissioners
and assemblies for that one.
while having health insurance doesnt mean you have health care, not having it does mean not
having health care at all, short of having a life or death condition, as hospitals (for now an
way) are only required to stabilize you. they arent required to cure you.
but then the high deductible insurance is one of those scams that some politicians gave us
because they could suggest that the patient (customer) could just shop around for better deals.
course that depends on us patients knowing what medical treatment is best for us, and which is
the cheapest of those., the former pretty much requires patients to be as knowledgeable as doctors.
the latter means we have to know what the treatments cost. could luck with that
I would force policy-makers in every advanced western nation to read and reflect on the last paragraph,
because it describes a mindset and a series of practices that are now found everywhere in western economies.
As David Harvey reminds us in his book on the Contradictions of Capitalism, Marx identified long ago
that there was a contradiction between holding down employees wages, and still expecting them to have
the purchasing power to buy the goods their cheap labour was making.
This problem has become more acute
with time, simply because we buy a lot more "stuff" than they did in the 19th century, and we take a
lot longer to pay for it, often on credit. Houses, cars, household goods, even computers, are now significant
expenditure decisions, repaid at least over months, if not years and even decades. The social corollary
of mass home ownership, after all, is some assurance that you will be employed over the life of the
mortgage. Otherwise, not only won't you buy the house, you won't improve or extend it, or even maintain
it, so a whole series of other purchases won't get made, and the construction and maintenance industries
will have less work. Instead, you'll save money, so removing purchasing power from the economy.
I assume there are people in large private sector companies clever enough to under stand this, but as
always they are focused on how much money they can extract from the system in the next few years. After
that, if the system crashes, well, who cares, They're all right.
Very true. Capitalism only works as long as enough people (or states) are able to take up ever-larger
debt, to close the gap (called "profit") between expensive goods and comparatively cheap labour.
Watching developments in recent years, this very source of profit and thus base of the economic system
is, even on a global level, quite limited
Sure. Marx Capital 1 on the crisis of production. Marx capital 2 on the crisis of realization but
this constitutes just one undesirable aspect-this one indeed very macro- among the many others which
the expansion of the "contracting-subcontracting chain" has brought and will bring about.
The Wall
Street Journal article is-as it is to expect- late, blind to the core problems of workers and incapable
to see and understand the true practical raison ( & reasons) d'ĂŞtre of outsourcing. I guess Yves
Smith purpose was just to broadly replicate WSJ article
Good to point out Gat Gourmet. Almost all outsourced jobs in the beginning of places where I have
worked were once part of the company. The entire art department save two management employees were played
off and rehired by a new company doing the same work with less benefits.
Then that company was later disolved. I have seen this many times in the corporate design field now. Usually ends with disaster
and he hire of folks some back to full time but most to freelance. So I guess in a way it works out
for the company in the end and not for the worker. Amazing the amount of money a company is willing
to lose this way then use the same to pay workers better.
An excellent critique, for those who were wondering. The take away paragraph, summing up
the actual work done and purpose of, the Freelancers Union:
Still, it's hard not to notice there could be nothing more convenient to the corporate
and governmental powers-that-be than a nonprofit that takes it upon itself to placate, insure,
and temper the precarious middle-class.
So which ivy-league management school / guru is most culpable in unleashing the whole lean-mean-outsourcing-machine
monster because it's slowly destroying my ability to remain in IT.
I don't know the answer to your question, but you would have to go back over twenty years to find
it. What I find remarkable is that even though everybody affected in the early stages could see what
a dumb, destructive idea it was, the MBA types never caught on, even though most of them were not
so far up the hierarchy they could not ultimately be affected.
Contractors need Guilds or Trade Associations that are well organized and legally able to set minimum
standards for billing and performance. This is an area where Trade Unions have failed with respect to
some professions, and apparently (from what I've heard) the RICO statutes need to be amended to allow
for this. It's time to rig the other side to make companies think twice before replacing employees with
temp workers or contractors, to keep jobs within the US, and to provide a cushion and a "floor" to those
that take the risk of entrepreneurship, preventing a race to the bottom.
Yes! Geographically bound temp unions or hiring halls for all temp workers allied with low-wage
worker associations. This is NOT something that established unions want, so who will agitate for
it?
Something like the I.W.W is what I'd like to see. Yea I know the response is: they are still
around? Well not what they were long ago of course, but with the prison strike, yes around and
rising.
"how the big company love of outsourcing means that traditional employment
has declined and is expected to fall further." –
This line pissed me off this morning more than most other mornings. I literally just said goodbye
to a long-time colleague (Big Pharma) who is being outsourced as of today. The kicker(s):
The job is not high tech
Employee(s) trained their replacement who are H-1B from India
The company is moving the division to India
Of note, my state (MA) is responsible for over one-quarter of all H-1B's every year. Thankfully a
few in the industry are helping get the word out, like Nanex's Eric Hunsader yesterday. The outsourcing,
off-shoring, and H-1B abuse has to stop, but not sure The People have the will to hold political office
holders accountable enough to truly change this paradigm.
Agreed, but I've been saying the exact same thing since 1980, so I've been lobbying and being
a volunteer activist against this for many years, and yet I still run into women (not too many men
anymore) in their 60s and 70s who believe offshoring of American jobs, and insourcing foreign visa
replacement workers is fantastic (truly, we are a dumbed down society today, where they routinely
protest on behalf of the financial hegemons).
Best book on this (and I am no conservative and have never voted r-con) is Michelle Malkin's book
(with John Miano),
Sold Out!
This has been going on for a long time, and by design: with every "jobless recovery" one-fifth
of the workforce is laid off, and one-half of that one-fifth will never find another job, while one-half
of the remainder, will only find lower-paying jobs.
And each and every time, more jobs are restructured as temporary or contractor type jobs. We've
had a lot of "jobless recoveries" to date.
A recent study from Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger found that 94% of the new jobs created over
the past some years were all part-time, while a study from Rutgers University a year or so ago found
that one-third of the new jobs created couldn't be verified as actually existing!
Nothing particularly new here, as it has been going on for quite some time (another great book
is Ron Hira's book,
Outsourcing America
).
In every category of labor – blue and white collar – the press is on to increase the supply and reduce
the demand for labor.
The book ends: The Clintons in 92′ put thru the WTO / NAFTA – shut down 10's of millions of jobs
and factories – blue & white collar. Obama did the same, with anticipating Hillary would be elected,
put forth the TTP to enable unlimited H1-b for tech workers from off shore. The Neo Liberal Democrats
were at the forefront of of this 25 year Plan for labor devaluation (with Republican help).
The Immigration Policy by government both illegal and legal were at the epicenter of increasing the
supply in all categories with various programs while Obama also increased the regulations to wipe out
more factories and deliberately reduce demand.
The solution is eliminate immigration in all forms until the 95 Million are employed and wages rise
by the equivalent of what was lost in the past 15 years plus Tariffs to enable a marginal cost compared
to imports to allow domestic factories to expand demand.
Increase the demand and lower the supply of labor will mean potentially a switch will occur from
1099 to W-2 as companies have to secure labor reliability in a short labor market which is squeezed.
The Millennials sooner or later will figure it out. Identity Politics which enables a greater supply
of labor and diversion of attention to intangible values at the expense of tangible values has to be
substituted for Labor Only Politics.
These young people have been duped based on the recent focus of the demonstrations. They don't understand
they were screwed deliberately and with great malice by "Going with Her".
I've been keeping count over the years, and as close as I can find, over 170,000 production facilities
were shipped out of the country. (Or, as David Harvey phrased it: "Identity politics instead of class
analysis.")
One aspect of outsourcing that the article does not hit upon is the impact on company cash flows,
which has some importance to large outsourcing initiatives. A company must pay its employees within
6 (it might be 7) days of the end of the pay cycle, which is typically two week. By contrast, when outsourcing,
at the end of the month the contractor will provide an invoice, the company will then pay according
to its payment cycle. This could be 30, 45, 60, 90, or even 120 days. The contractor still must pay
its bills, in essence it's providing a low cost loan to firm (which often has a lower cost of capital).
This approach, including the extension of payments has been largely driven by financial/business consultants.
It can actually get worse – they might not pay you at all, hoping that you'll file a lawsuit,
which will be interpreted according to the contract, rather than legislation which covers employment
issues. The litigation costs might exceed any payments you'd receive.
My guess is that this wouldn't happen to an individual working under a 1099 (as word might
get around), and very large firms often have leverage (not providing continuing services), but
medium-size firms often get held up for months and years (especially once the contract has
ended).
Another thing the article glosses over is that most outsourcing is simply wage cutting. I have
never once seen confirmation of the notion that "specialist" firms provide better services at comparable
labor costs than firms can do in-house. The double-bubble is that firms (and public sector employers)
often spend more on outsourcing than they would doing the work in house despite the wage savings,
which all accrue to the outsourcer of course.
When the airlines went on their deliberate BK spree in the 90's, they outsourced flying to
regional carriers. Regional a/c (45-90 seaters) have higher CASM's than the a/c the airlines actually
owned. In brief, it is cheaper to transport 100 passengers on a 100 seat a/c than to transport
100 passengers on two 50 seat a/c. That's been a fact since the Wright brothers broke the ground.
FWIW, SouthWest never went the regional route, never went BK and pays their unionized employees
quite well.
The BK spree was all about breaking labor, not operational efficiencies that would actually
save money.
but now it seems the majors are not to happy with the regionals , cause customers cant tell
the difference between them, the next problem is that for some reason the regionals cant find
pilots. seems that pilots dont want to work for less than 30,000 a year.
Another area of friction and waste with IT consulting and other contracting, is that an employee
of a company simply and efficiently plugs into their existence administrative system (HR, timekeeping,
payroll, etc).
With a consultant, there has to be reconciliation between the vendor's records and the
company's records, which means work hours burned matching everything up. And that assumes they do match
up neatly; If the vendor says "our consultant worked 50 hours this week, pay them as such" and whoever
oversees the consultant at the company claims they only approved for 40 hours, now you've got a mess
on your hands, could potentially go to the lawyers.
The idea that companies who use contractors are more flexible is largely a myth.
The difficulty of entering into outsourcing relationships gives you an idea of how
complex they are. While some services, like cleaning, are likely to be fairly simple
to hand off, the larger ones are not.
I work in engineering at a gigantic multinational vehicle manufacturer and the role of "consultants"
has been expanding with time. Rather than consultants being people with specific technical expertise
who work on one subsystem component with clear interfaces to other things, it now encapsulates project
managers and subsystem / function responsible people who need to have large networks inside the company
to be effective.
Considering the huge amount of time it takes to get a new hire up and running to learn
the acronyms and processes and the roles of different departments, it's a bit absurd to hire people
for such roles under the assumption that they can be quickly swapped out with a consultant from Company
B next week.
It's pretty clear that management sees permanent employees on the payroll as a liability and seeks
to avoid it as much as possible.
"
It's pretty clear that management sees permanent employees on the payroll as a liability. "
No doubt correct. But why is that? Over time, mandates on employers - particularly large employers
- just keep escalating. Health care; pensions; overtime; layoff notifications: regulators just keep
raising the ante. Employers respond by trying to reduce their profile and present a smaller target
to their predators. Staying under 50 employees wins a lot of exemptions from federal regulations.
Taken to an extreme, some developing countries (Argentina being one example) have European-style
labor regulations guaranteeing job security and mandating generous compensation when employees are
laid off. With hardscrabble small businesses being in no position to shoulder such risks, the result
is that about 40 percent of employment is
trabajo en negro
, with no benefits or protections
whatsoever - a perfect example of unintended consequences.
Editorial comments such as "these [contracting] arrangements increase risks and rigidity" ignore
that government employment regulations
also
increase risks and rigidity. There's a balance
of power. Overreaching, such as Obama's surprise order to vastly increase the number of employees
subject to overtime pay, leads to employer pushback in the form of more contracting and outsourcing.
Getting whacked out of the blue with a big new liability is unfair.
Concur about costs, and health care is the big one. Every other industrialized nation we compete
against has national health care. Given that, why doesn't business support Medicare for all and
get health costs off their books? Plus it would be a damsite easier to start up a business if
one had health care.
Because they, unlike us, understand class. I can state for a fact that the Big Three
auto companies are well aware of how much cheaper health care costs are for them in Canada
and how much better off they would be here, cost-wise, with a national health care system
where McDonald's and Wal-mart have to pay the same per hour or per employee cost as they
do. But it turns out cost isn't everything. Corporate (capitalist) solidarity rules.
Yes, yes, damn yes!! It's about your class, not your race, not your education, not
your gender. As Lambert might say, identity politics (your race, your education, your
gender) is used to keep your eye
off
the prize: economic opportunity
and security.
It is also easier to have part-time workers because they are still covered by health insurance
in some sort of national health insurance system. In the US, the part-time workers will have
high turnover as they look for full-time jobs to get access to health insurance.
Workers are also more likely to start their own businesses to provide services since the
health insurance is just a fee they pay instead of an astronomical non-group insurance bill.
COBRA insurance premiums are ginormous if you need to continue coverage after you leave a company.
Economists have been decrying the lack of employee mobility and small business formation
over the past decade or so. Health insurance is probably a primary reason for this. Obamacare
hasn't been around long enough and with enough certainty to change that dynamic yet.
It's probably part of it, though I suspect the bad labor market is part of it as well.
It's one thing to quit a job to start a business when you think "if it doesn't work out,
I can always go back to my old career and easily be hired", another when quitting a good
job means one might not land another ever.
haven't seen any more info on Hollande's "Flex – Security" plans to give corporations a way
to lay off workers to improve the corporation's revenue. French Labor was having none of it and
then Hollande went negative in the polls and was done for. Our contracting out former corporation
departments sounds like bad quality control at best. If the state – whatever state you can name
– is going to prop up all corporations everywhere because they can no longer successfully compete
then something is fundamentally wrong with the system that demands such murderous and mindless
competition.
well there also that wage theft rules, that employers don't like. course if you look at work
mans comp, you will find that it no longer works to protect employees any more. and maybe that
is also why employers are get rid of employees. plus there is all of that needing to manage them.
but you still end up having to manage vendors too, and while i suppose you could hire another
vendor to manage the vendors (not really sure this will work out well), it still leaves the biggest
problem
since consumers are about 70% of the entire economy (always wonder if this is true. because
almost all corporate 'investment' is done because of customer demand), seems like this business
fad, will end up with fewer customers (which seems to be the way its working too, as evidenced
by the falling sales figures from companies, even Apple), so it like business is like lemmings,
going a cliff, because some one else started
So are you a proponent of Medicare-for-all? It would be a tremendous benefit to corporations
to get out of the healthcare business and also increase employees' willingness to become freelancers
and consultants, since they'd never have to worry about healthcare.
The truth is that citizens expect a certain amount of social welfare and security. This can
be provided by 1) individuals themselves, 2) private players e.g. corporations, or 3) public players
e.g. govt. Each has downsides. If you expect individuals to provide for themselves, it will less
inefficient than having professional managers, and individuals will cut down on other consumption
and save more, thereby hurting an economy such as ours which is highly dependent on consumption.
This leaves companies and government. If companies lobby against public welfare programs like
nationalized health insurance, unemployment insurance, social security, etc., they shouldn't be
surprised if government foists those requirements back on them through back-door regulations.
To be fair to companies, most of the ones engaged in the "real economy" e.g. manufacturing,
actually wouldn't mind medicare for all, or some other program that relieves them of the burden
of providing healthcare to their employees. But they're being drowned out by the financial economy
of Wall St., banking, insurance, etc. who depend on putting more money in the hands of individuals
from whom they can extract much higher fees than they ever could from govt or corporate HR depts.
If companies don't want increased health mandates, for example, their enemy wasn't Obama: it
was the private health insurance companies that didn't want a public plan.
Yeah when I worked for one of the big 3 at an assembly plant, I felt that the use of temporary
contractors could have very negative implications.
Most of the staff though were reasonably well paid, although asked to work long hours. I think
though that overall, highly paid permanent workers pay for themselves many times over.
One aspect of the whole fandango that I don't get is how the IRS allows whole departments within
a company to be outsourced: If people show up at your plant or office every day to work on your tasks,
they are your employee, not a contractor. Is this melting away of the idea of an employee because of
lack of enforcement or some change in IRS rules that I am not aware of?
Basically, if you control a worker's day, and if that worker works regularly for you, the person
is your employee. I don't see how companies get away with this sleight of hand–avoiding, at the most
basic legal level, who is on staff or not. [Unless the result, as many note above, is to increase class
warfare.]
The company doesn't get away with it if someone is willing to whistleblow to the IRS and said
company fails the IRS 20-Factor Test (IC vs. employee). The nice thing there too, is that the tax
burden will be on the company and not the employee. While I don't advocate being a stoolie, if a
company wants to screw me over turn-about is fair play. I do the best I can to avoid those kinds
of companies in the first place.
"
One aspect of the whole fandango that I don’t get is how the IRS allows whole departments
within a company to be outsourced
. . "
If I understand your question correctly it is because a federal regulation was enacted by congress
(I believe one of them was faux-progressive, Jim McDermott, no longer in congress but co-founder
of the India Caucus, to replace American workers with foreign visa workers from India) which
forbids
oversight of the foreign visa program
- and yes, they established a federal regulation killing
oversight of the program by the government!
Someone quoted Norm Matloff (a known bigot) above. You are now quoting anchor child Filipino
bigot
Michelle Malkin
of all people ? It's not helping your case.
The H1-B program is a few hundred thousand
legal
tax paying people a year. There are
21 million Mexican illegals in this country. What do you think has more downward pressure on wages
? .005% H1-B (yeah, you read that right) of the total immigrant/wage pressure ? It's idiotic and
a purely bigoted worldview.
We are supposed to regard "a few hundred thousand" as bupkis when they are concentrated
in one sector?
The H1-B visa program has has a huge impact on wages in the IT sector and has virtually
eliminated entry-level computer science jobs. This is strategically foolhardy, in that the
US is not creating the next generation of people capable of running critical infrastructure.
And the illegal immigrants do pay taxes: sales, gas, and property taxes through their rents.
And many actually do pay FICA. The Treasury recognizes that certain Social Security numbers
are reused many times, and it's almost certainly for illegal immigrants. In fact, the IRS encourages
illegal immigrants to "steal" Social Security numbers:
That article whinges about possible tax credit scamming, but even that estimate is well
below what they pay in FICA, $12 billion. And pretty much none of them will draw benefits.
This is from memory, but I believe they collect over $4 billion from these SSN per year.
And most of these jobs are seasonal and/or too low wage for them to pay much in the way of
income taxes when they are being paid in cash.
H1-B is not in one industry, the .005% is spread across entry level jobs in all industries:
finance, automotive, insurance, arts, film, automation, etc. The total amount of H1-B is
minuscule, vanishingly close to zero in a country of 300+ million and 20+ million illegals.
You don't seem to be complaining about the tens of
millions
that used to concentrated
in one sector..actual manufacturing. Wonder why ? Here's a hint: that sector
used
to make computer peripherals, keyboards, mice, terminals, monitors, LCD's, chips, motherboards,
pretty much everything in the USA.
Employees in china, taiwan, etc pay zero USA taxes and they displaced millions of manufacturing
jobs. And ironically, you are using an entirely outsourced computer (that actually displaced
tens of millions of jobs in the aggregate) to complain about the minuscule .005% H1-B effect.
A few hundred thousand entry level coding jobs (which are ridiculously simple and lo-tech,
google
13 year olds
getting Microsoft certified to see how low down on the value
chain this is). You genuinely think writing a few for-loops (I am simplifying a little but
you get the idea) is hard ?
Certainly, way way less capital intensive and way way less barrier to entry than Hi-Tech
manufacturing. It's all going to be outsourced much faster than manufacturing was, since
there is literally no barrier to entry. And H1-B is a good thing, relatively speaking, compared
to full on outsourcing (just like manufacturing was).
Like I said, the only explanation for these anti H1-B posts is plain old bigotry. No
other explanation comes close.
Might as well finish my train of thought..then I'm outta here.
There are less H1-B visas this year than
refugees
, Refugees (not to mention
the 20 million illegals) also put downward pressure on wages across all industries, but
of course, those are all food servicing/picking/janitorial jobs and who cares about those
people right ? (sarcasm for the impaired)
So, coming back to H1-B's..let's take the logical alternative and ban all H1-B's entirely
and deport the ones on H1-B visas. What happens then ?
1) They can do the job exactly as well remotely (all they need is email/internet/skype).
2) They get paid even less (but more than zero).
3) They pay no taxes.
4) Their output is words..code is the same as prose and math. Good luck banning math/words..if
it can be printed on a t-shirt, it ain't bannable. (See the famous bernstein crypto case
from the early 90's for a illustration of this).
5) And finally..there are zero new jobs added for native USA'ians (which would now cost
more, given the alternative).
It makes the situation far worse than it is today. There is fewer local coffee shop
selling coffee, fewer rental units getting rented, fewer groceries getting bought, cars
being purchased, etc.
For a easily displaceable and low barrier to entry coding gig, there isn't any easy
answer. H1-B's are actually the best
solution
(or at the very least neutral),
not the problem.
The H1-B visa program is operated so as to wreck the bargaining power of native born young
U.S. workers. Young Americans are increasingly likely to be nonwhite AND from the less valued
(not Asian) subgroups of nonwhite. The damage H1-Bs do to our white Baby Boomers is almost
incidental at this point; they are aging out of the workforce. And given the intense age bigotry
of the IT subculture, they are not a factor within it at all at this point.
H1-B visas lock our striving, capable working class young people out of upward mobility.
Kids who are now graduating from say, San Jose State with skills as good as those of South
Asians don't get jobs that they are qualified for, because they are shut out of entry to the
business. They are disdained in Silicon Valley because the majority of entry level conduits
to employment are now locked up (via social contacts, and "who-you-know" relationships) by
men from the subcontinent.
Your race argument is pernicious and I suspect, promoted in the full the knowledge of this
fact. It is a great shame that we are relying on kooks like Malkin to promote obvious truths,
but the shame belongs to our morally derelict 'liberal' chattering class, not those who listen
to her and her ilk for lack of other sources.
An underappreciated aspect of contracting versus cultivating your own employees is that it hollows
out the organization to the point that it may no longer have competence to perform its mission. Having
an apparent success at contracting out menial tasks, the temptation is to keep going and begin to contract
out core functions. This pleases the accountants but leaves the whole organization dependent on critical
talent that has very little institutional loyalty. When an inevitable technical paradigm shift occurs,
who can you count on to give you objective and constructive advice?
Costs of training and cultivating employees are high, and it is tempting to think that these costs
can be eliminated by using contractors. It is strictly an apparent, short-term gain which will in due
time be revealed as a strategic mistake. Do we have to learn every lesson the hard way?
yes, and when I read that Pfizer farms out research, I also wondered if retention of the outsource
company contract is results-related. could new drug results hinge on a company wanting to keep their
Pfizer contract by telling them what they want to hear?
Agreed. Every time a company offshores jobs or goes through another round of layoffs, it loses
its institutional memory. This is particularly acute in the mainframe IT systems that prop up the
TBTFs (yep, they offshored these too). After a while, nobody understands exactly how these systems
work and can only get to the bottom of them by reading code, which is a pretty flawed way to learn
the business. This has been going on for years and nobody cares.
Centralized bargaining - a.k.a., sector wide labor agreements - is the only strategic answer to contracting
out. Done in continental Europe, French Canada, Argentina, Indonesia.
(Take a vacation from reality with Soma - one gram and I don't give a damn.)
The one word I don't see in your excellent writeup is
loyalty
. Companies, like countries
depend to a great extent on social constraints to keep people committed to the group. You cannot monitor
all people all the time and doing so causes them to turn against you. But companies staffed with contractors
and temps and temps supervising contractors have no loyalty to the company. Ergo no one employee has
any reason to go the extra inch or to turn down the chance to sell out for personal gain should the
opportunity arise.
All that imposes real costs that companies conveniently ignore because they are not always realized
in share price.
I was going to add the same thought, but use the label "goodwill." It is something that appears
on balance sheets in enormous amounts depending on what the accountants think it may represent.
There is a "goodwill bank" in the labor pool of any given company, and when the balance hits zero,
the company will fail, "emigrate" its capital, or go public to the greater fools. Companies are engaged
in a savage race to the bottom that is inherent in corporate structure: executives are now playing
with somebody else's money, and somebody else's life. If corporate liability were suddenly returned
to the days of the partnership, what a change we would see. And those days were not so long ago:
Wall Street remembers the 1960s.
PS What a treat to come here and see informative journalism and commentary instead of the monkey
cage.
My daughter was recruited and interviewed by Genentech and then sent to work for an organization
called PPD. PPD did nothing in this relationship, other than take money from Genentech pocketed about
1/2 of that and then pay her the rest. I really couldn't figure out what the heck the point of this
was, other than some long running strategy to ultimately depress salaries of Genentech chemists.
One of my kids works in a unionized metal foundry (they still exist in the US!). When they need
new workers, they bring several in through a temp agency for several months. If they can cut it and
are acceptable, then they get pulled into the union or into the plant management team. This allows
them to try out several people on a rent-to-own basis, but in the long run they become loyal company
employees with very low turnover.
Contract-to-hire is not new. The problem from an employee perspective is trying to evaluate
when a company is actually serious about hiring if the contractee does a good job, and when it's
just empty promises and they have no intent of making full time job offers at all.
BTW – the Genentech scientists probably get a bunch of benefits like bonuses and stock options,
etc. that are not available to the contract workers. They probably have more protections if they
are terminated or laid off whereas the contract workers would be done that day. The really good contract
workers may get offers to work at the company for the long-run.
Outsourcing is done in the public realm, too; my first job after grad school was with a major housing
authority – except it wasn't for them (despite me having a "housingauthority.org" email address). I
worked for a contractor of the housing authority, who paid us shit and treated us like cattle. I lasted
three months.
One area not discussed in this post is municipal outsourcing. What this means in practice is the
loss of organizational memory . assuming that records are not adequately maintained since the "old-timers"
were still around. But with the loss of human memory banks, no new ones (digital?) have taken their
place. Further, when consultants are hired for a specific project, when they have completed that project,
what they have learned as ancillary knowledge is lost cuz the end-product is all that counts, not the
process.
i.e. Rip up the entire street to find where the pipe is because the old public works director
who was replaced with a bright young woman with a degree before he qualified for his pension, got
even and deleted the maps on the software. :-)
Didn't Yves mention this loss of institutional memory in reference to fianancial services, or
was it banks, and their IT?
Further to government outsourcing:
Back a few years my wife and I worked for a school district on the East coast of Canada. The janitorial
service had been outsourced a few years previously, with the former head janitor becoming the main
contractor, who then hired other cleaning staff to work for him. He/she was already being squeezed
to reduce his rates, leading to work not done or his working from 8AM to midnight to save an after-school
employee. So–lower employment overall, all at minimum wage, including the main contractor.
One district had bucked the province-wide trend by keeping its own cleaning staff. Visiting the
schools in that district those few years later, one could see the result, in vastly superior level
of cleanliness, better co-ordination between admin and teaching staff with cleaners, and much better
relations with students as well.
The staff weren't bosses, the cleaners weren't minions, and the students weren't customers. They
were a team.
I don't think there will be a change in this because it's too profitable for the CEOs to strip mine
the companies assets (knowledgeable employees are an asset) for maximum "shareholder value" (always
replace "shareholder value" with "my compensation"). I suppose this will change when all companies are
stripped to the bone and go under. But we now call these "too big to fail" and prop them up with taxpayer
dollars.
We need to change incentives. These might help:
Make corporations really pay taxes so that it makes sense to invest in the company rather than strip
it.
Don't prop up TBTF companies, let them fail so that many small companies can grow.
Stop all the fraud and corruption. Send corrupt CEOs to jail.
Medicare for All would be a boon for businesses, especially the smaller and mid-sized ones.
Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest, was once asked where he ranked shareholders vs employees. He replied
employees were first (because if the employees are not happy, then the customers are not happy), customers
(they pay the bills), and shareholders (they buy and sell shares in seconds). If the company is successful,
the shareholders will come. We somehow need to get back to these company values. A successful company
starts with the employees.
This is a pretty ugly development in our history. The 'end of employees' is a very accurate description
of what is going on in our gig economy related to a specific legal contradiction. In the U.S., we've
adopted a vast body of labor laws ( many in response to the Industrial Revolution and Great Depression
) that are primarily designed to protect "employees" from exploitation. Buried deep in our tax law is
a second designation for worker called "independent contractor", defined as a self-employed person providing
services to other businesses that is exempt from most labor laws on the principle that a self-employed
person can't exploit themselves. The key here is labor laws protect 'employees' from 'employer' abuses.
Changing a workers classification from employee to ( self-employed ) contractor, will change an employers
classification to customer, and remove the workers legal protections from exploitation. Labor law protections
include minimum wage and hours, workplace safety and health, wrongful dismissal protections, anti-discrimination
protections, employee benefits security, and worker compensation protections. This contradiction is
allowing many companies to sidestep centuries of laws enacted to stabilize and and protect our society.
Some companies push this power imbalance even further by transferring many of the business costs associated
with their revenue to employee contractors ( see Uber ).
Hopefully when there is enough public outcry, regulators and prosecutors will decide to challenge
these interpretations of existing laws and force businesses back in line regardless of their political
influence.
Incidentally, the slippery logic that removes labor law protections by classifying a worker
as self-employed ( both employer and employee ) might also grant businesses protections from their
workers via consumer protection laws against fraud and unfair practices ( when businesses become
customers of their now self-employed former employees ).
As has been stated several times, sometimes government entities are the worst offenders here. Grover
Norquist & Co. insisted on shrinking the size of government. The obedient elected officials and managers
immediately replaced employees with contractors and could claim that they had indeed reduced the size
of government. Unfortunately the budget probably went up since we now have to provide profit for the
rent extracting contract vendors.
A few years ago I was working for a family of local weekly papers, run on a shoestring (of course)
with pathetic salaries for the tiny staff. At one point, they heard about possibly outsourcing design–layout
of modular pages–to cheap labor in Romania. But when they ran the numbers .our in-house designers were
already cheaper than the Romanians!
Second point: At my current magazine I am one of just two full-time staffers on the edit side. Our
copy-editor/proofreader is paid on an hourly basis, and works off-site. Our designer works on a monthly
retainer, off-site. And so on.
That makes the relationship between us and our workers competitive and antagonistic: They try to
do the least amount of work, and we try to pay the least amount of money. So when the publisher wants
to be "innovative" or try something different, the designer resists. He doesn't want to spend any more
time on us than he normally does. So we don't do anything well, we get by with just good enough.
Point 3 – institutional knowledge: One of our key competitive advantages has been/is being eroded
because there are things we haven't done in two years due to turnover. When I arrived and took up one
such project, hugely important to the company's bottom line, no one could tell me how it was done. Everyone
who had been involved in it was gone. We've now spent several months reinventing this particular wheel.
But the publisher doesn't see that as money. He only sees money as money.
BTW – the financial sector is ripe for this. Automation is taking over many positions and people
in active investing is getting slashed big-time. Ironically, places like Vanguard may actually be some
of the last bastions of actual employees.
The problem with these short term contract jobs are immense. Employees that don't have a steady income
have difficulty getting loans for cars or homes. They certainly have less protection too. Our son worked
for SKY TV as a part time employee through a temp agency for 3 years, working 40 hour weeks. But when
an unstable full time employee assaulted him, in front or several witnesses, he was the one fired on
the spot without explanation. He was a non-person. The temp agency didn't want to get involved for fear
of losing their contract. With no union, no rights and little money, there was little he could do. They
knew he couldn't afford a lawyer and involving the police wouldn't get his job back. This goes on all
the time now. 20 years ago would have been unthinkable. I see a revolution coming, in many countries
Given the long evident fact that our corporate owners and their servants in government will not do
a bloody thing to make life better for us, what can we do? As a first step toward any solution, we need
to recognize that nothing is possible within the narrow boundaries of our political and economic system.
What you describe as a first step seems a lot like a claim of inevitable failure. Rather than
expect failure, I recommend as a first step that we try to block a few of Trump's predatory cabinet
nominations. Andrew Puzder, the nominee to head the Labor Department, and Steven Mnuchin, nominated
to be the Secretary of the Treasury, seem to be very relevant to the scope of this article. Also
Tom Price, nominated to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Tell your Senators that you
don't want them to be confirmed. It's easy, although you might need to make a few extra phone calls,
because the Congressional phone lines are often busy these days.
I ask, Why can't banks be fully automated? You wouldn't need CEOs and COOs and CFOs in banks because
IT can do all those jobs automatically. Then we would find out that we only need ONE bank–the central
bank and, voila, the banks no longer can create money by making loans. (I'm sure there is a weak point
in this argument!!!) However, I can see something like this happening in the future if only we separate
investment banking from commercial banking.
Marx saw capitalism as an endless class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
He wasn’t far wrong.
1920s – high inequality, high banker pay, low taxes for the wealthy, robber barons, reckless bankers,
globalisation phase (bourgeoisie in the ascendency)
1970s â€" low inequality, worker and union power, high taxes on the wealthy (proletariat in the ascendency)
(probably more true in the UK than the US)
2000s â€" high inequality, high banker pay, low taxes on the wealthy, robber CEOs, reckless bankers,
globalisation phase (bourgeoisie in the ascendency)
The pendulum swings back and forth and always swings too far in both directions.
If the human race could take a more sensible, big picture view they might see it as a balance between
the supply side (bourgeoisie) and the demand side (proletariat).
The neoliberal era has been one where a total ignorance of debt has held sway.
Redistributive capitalism was removed to be replaced with a capitalism where debt based consumption
has become the norm. without a single mainstream economist realising the problem.
The world is maxing out on debt, this system is set to fail due to a lack of demand. The Bourgoisie
have been in the ascendency and made their usual mistake.
“The Marxian capitalist has infinite shrewdness and cunning on everything except matters pertaining
to his own ultimate survival. On these, he is not subject to education. He continues wilfully and reliably
down the path to his own destruction”.
Keynes thought income was just as important as profit, income looks after the demand side of the
equation and profit looks after the supply side.
He has the idea of balance.
Just maximising profit â€" The Bourgeoisie looking after their own short term, self interest with
no thought of the longer term.
1) Money at the top is mainly investment capital as those at the top can already meet every need,
want or whim. It is supply side capital.
2) Money at bottom is mainly consumption capital and it will be spent on goods and services. It is
demand side capital.
You need to keep the balance.
Too much capital at the bottom and inflation roars away.
Too much capital at the top and there is no where sensible to invest and the Bourgeoisie indulge
in rampant speculation leading to the inevitable Wall Street Crash, 1929 and 2008.
Today’s negative yield investments?
Too much capital at the top, no one wants it and you have to pay people to take it off your hands.
"You need to keep the balance." The post war era was balance, that was the middle of the pendulum
swing, we have never seen you're next sentence:
"Too much capital at the bottom and inflation roars away." When? Name one instance outside of
extraordinary political situations like weimar germany and zimbabwe where this has occurred?
Inflation is the boogey man that the elite throw around to scare us into submission. They don't
care when its inflation of house prices, they don't care when its inflation of healthcare costs,
education costs, etc. etc. But they damn sure start sweating a lot when its the cost of labor that
goes up. Shocker.
"Gate Gourmet had once been part of British Airways. And passengers blamed the airline."
You can transfer expenses, you can transfer legal and regulatory liability risk, you can transfer
financial risk, but it is virtually impossible to transfer reputational risk. Companies who think they
can do so (or ignore the fact) do so at their own peril.
My d-i-l, a research professional, has survived five down-sizings, assuming an additional work load
each time. The last time she also got a small promotion (well, you'd think they'd give her something
positive after all this). To myself I thought, they're going to wear this woman out till she has nothing
left to give and dump her.
It's worse. The corporation (company is a concept from
my
early working days) just announced
that everyone would have to bid for their projects(jobs). What this means of course is "how much are
you willing to give?" not to mention pitting one employee against another.
I "work" (temp/contract/no benefits) at a large multinational electronics company in cust service
and have seen this first hand. In response to a couple years of dropping profits, they outsourced the
entire department (couple hundred employees) to the Philippines. They cut full time employees, replace
them with temps for half the pay, because people will do it, and we live in desperate times with no
bargaining power.
As someone mentioned, its a negative feedback loop, less demand, less employment, less demand, until
the whole world is greece. We won't make it through another world war, the world is too globalized,
too connected, too advanced technologically. We need a relatively peaceful populist revolution – which
we seem to be seeing the first real signs of – or our species is done for.. and the sad part is I'm
not even exaggerating.
One point you missed is that a company cannot manage, let alone write a contract very well unless
it has sufficient expertise on staff. It is not sufficient to hire a consultant unless that arrangement
is more or less permanent. Too many things can go wrong, as they often do even with competent staff
when projects are complex or innovative.
It may be simplistic, or even wrongheaded, but the
working-class man has become a political obsession. President
Trump won this voting bloc with promises of resurrecting the
"good jobs" of America's industrial heyday, ostensibly by
toughening trade rules and jawboning individual companies.
Democrats agree on the need to appeal to working-class men,
but the party's strategy for doing so hasn't changed much
since Nov. 8: Mostly we hear about addressing income
inequality by raising the minimum wage, improving family
leave, and making college more affordable.
But it's not clear that those issues resonate with the
archetypal Rust Belt factory worker displaced by globalism,
technology, or both. For starters, there's no grand-gesture
proposal - no modern heir to the job-creating Works Progress
Administration, let's say - to capture the imagination. The
minimum wage doesn't mean much to this group, and family
leave is more of a "new working class" issue, says Lance
Compa, who teaches US labor law and international labor
rights at Cornell University. After all, we're talking about
a theoretical voter who once earned up to $30 an hour and
could support a family without advanced skills or education
beyond high school - and basically wants that life back.
And maybe there's another factor lurking in the
background: This guy - you pictured a guy, right? - frames
his concerns more bluntly. "Manly dignity is a big deal for
most men," argued Joan C. Williams, founding director of the
Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California,
Hastings College of the Law, in a November essay for Harvard
Business Review. "So is breadwinner status: Many still
measure masculinity by the size of a paycheck. White
working-class men's wages hit the skids in the 1970s and took
another body blow during the Great Recession. . . . For many
blue-collar men, all they're asking for is basic human
dignity (male varietal)."
Let's acknowledge the obvious: The collision between
21st-century economic realities and the male ego makes an odd
topic for think tank symposiums or congressional hearings. To
consider "manly dignity" in the context of economic policy is
no excuse to bring back a "when men were men" vision of
Manhood 1.0 - much less to embrace the alt-right tweeters
raining hatred upon women.
But just because an issue is awkward for scholars and
politicians to address doesn't mean it isn't shaping our
economy and our politics. "Look," Williams wrote, "I wish
manliness worked differently."
Ultimately, men who are truly stuck in the past are going
to find out that sloganeering and braggadocio won't revive
it. Economist Betsey Stevenson has a point when she argues
that "Manly Men Need to Do More Girly Jobs," as the title of
her recent Bloomberg View column put it.
Still, as a straightforward matter of both policy and
rhetoric, courting any group involves understanding, not
belittling, its core concerns and addressing them in ways
that make sense specifically to members of that group.
Boosting an industrial policy that speaks to this class of
men on its own terms "has just not been on the radar of the
Democratic Party or progressives in general," Williams said
in an interview.
After all, the wave of post-election attention
notwithstanding, blue-collar men have been or felt under
assault for decades. Writing in The Baffler, author Susan
Faludi recently revisited some of her reporting for her 1999
book, "Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man." Her
subjects, bitter about lost jobs, declining status, shifting
gender values, and untrustworthy elite power structures, seem
remarkably familiar.
It's not quite right to suggest that no one before Trump
paid attention to these men. One popular and
pragmatic-sounding solution is retraining: taking workers
from sectors that economic change has destroyed and equipping
them with the skills to participate in those it is creating.
The problem is that men often don't seem to want those newer
jobs. "These are working-class people," Ohio congressman Tim
Ryan told NPR not long after the election, when he was
challenging Nancy Pelosi for the Democratic House leadership
role. "They don't want to get retrained, you know, to run a
computer. They want to run a backhoe. They want to build
things."
Moreover, newer job categories often involve work that has
been dominated by women. Janette Dill, an assistant professor
of sociology at the University of Akron, has researched
lower-level jobs in the health care industry - a fast-growing
category, according to government statistics - such as
medical and nursing assistants. Very few men pursue such
work. "There's some stigma around doing these kind of
feminized job tasks," Dill says, such as helping a patient
get out of bed or use the bathroom. While it's often
physically demanding, it's "seen as women's work," she adds.
At the same time, Dill has seen some evidence of an uptick
in younger male workers embracing health care positions with
"more of a technical dimension." A gig as a surgical
technician, respiratory therapist, or occupational therapist
can pay $40,000. The proliferation of jobs like these may not
sound as exciting as lightning-bolt gestures toward new car
plants. But these new health care jobs generally require a
two-year degree, not a four-year baccalaureate, and they
"seem more masculine," as Dill carefully puts it.
Meanwhile, manufacturing itself isn't a lost cause, even
if its golden age is unlikely to return, argues Timothy
Bartik, a senior economist at the Upjohn Institute for
Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Mich. Bartik advocates
several ideas that could appeal to the working-man crowd: a
more demand-driven approach to retraining; manufacturing
extension services designed to help existing smaller
manufacturers grow; and economic "empowerment zones" - a Bill
Clinton-era policy that provided block grants to regions that
devised plans to deploy them according to strategic local
needs. These involve federal help but, importantly, play out
at regional levels.
This could be more effective than doling out
company-specific tax breaks or deploying the blunt instrument
of tariffs on the one hand and a more macro-oriented,
top-down approach on the other. Empowerment zones are an
unlikely successor to the Works Progress Administration - the
Depression-era federal agency that put unemployed men to work
on public building projects - but could be positioned as a
WPA-like expression of tangible government action.
Bartik notes the importance of "rhetorical emphasis" -
selling these ideas as specifically beneficial to communities
built on old-school working-class economics. Hillary Clinton
did propose policies (including some that overlap with these
ideas) to help US manufacturing, but for whatever reason, he
says, "that didn't seem to get much attention."
What's missing is a more sweeping vision that gives
alienated men - and others - a sense that the economy has a
use for the kind of work they want to do.
Williams, of UC Hastings, says this is where progressives
have been misguided and failed to think big and advocate a
comprehensive industrial and educational policy. She points
to the Markle Foundation's Rework America initiative, which
calls for better matching of skills and training with real
job demand. Germany's approach, involving apprenticeship
programs and educational structures that also produce
middle-skill workers that industry actually needs, offers an
example. The point is to think beyond a one-size-fits-all
advocacy of the four-year college degree - a "delusory"
solution, as Williams puts it, that leaves some workers cold.
"The kind of work that college grads do doesn't appeal to
them," she says. "That's not their skill set."
Clearly this shift would take time, but Compa, the Cornell
labor scholar, adds a couple of practical suggestions that
could speak directly and immediately to displaced
manufacturing workers. One is an effort to reinvigorate
workers' compensation laws, which have withered in many
states. Another is to improve COBRA policies, which allow
laid-off workers to hang onto health benefits, by extending
their duration and forcing companies to pay for them. "I
don't want to stereotype," he says, "but men want to feel
that they're providing for their family, and one way to
provide for your family is to make sure they have health
insurance." (Bartik further suggests considering ways of
bridging later-career manufacturing layoff victims to
retirement if retraining isn't a realistic possibility.)
Finally, Compa thinks we should embrace another facet of
America's industrial peak: unions. Building bonds among
working-class people as they take their own interests into
their own hands, unions can still help provide the sense of
dignity that some feel is lost. "The idea that we're going to
stand together against this powerful force on the other
side," he says, "I think that gives a sense of meaning and
purpose."
That basic idea speaks to lost manliness, but also
transcends it. Compa mentions that he was surprised to learn
how little the sorts of low-level health care workers that
Dill studies earn - maybe $12 an hour. "I understand they
didn't go to college," he says. "But their work is so
important, and requires the same skill and care and attention
that a machinist job requires. They should get those kind of
wages." Since the market's not making that happen, maybe
organizing could.
Dill herself points out that these low wages are
symptomatic of a direct link between the "stigma" of
feminized labor that those manly men avoid and its direct
economic consequences: "The kind of work that women do is
often not as valued, by society." So more broadly, maybe this
suggests that policy could speak to "the working man" in a
way that's also heard by the broader and more diverse working
class.
For all her frustration with the way she feels Democrats
have ignored or misunderstood seekers of "dignity (male
varietal)," Williams thinks so, too. "I don't think this is a
zero-sum game," she says. Aggressively advocating for ways to
create more and better middle-skill jobs will benefit workers
of any race or gender.
But doing that will require progressive policy thinkers to
dream bigger and push harder - to man up, you might say.
Not helpful
Our media relentlessly markets "culture" to males
Sports culture, car culture, gun culture &c are supported by
Big$
It is difficult to change the culture when Ad$$ are creating
headwinds.
It is all a BigLie, but very appealing
Cultural change is slow, one funeral at a time
Neoliberals seek to redistribute profits up and for this
noble goal all means are good. Including decimation of lower
80% of their compatriots. Who cares. They are all
cosmopolitans now.
"... I agree with much of what James F writes but one thing that doesn't sit right with me about him commentary is his implication that if your complaint isn't about an immediate threat to life and limb then your complaint is frivolous. That's bullshit. Immediate threats to life and limb require immediate attention but once those threats are dealt with then what? ..."
+1 for Frank's piece. "Meh." to James F's. His crankiness,
while justifiable, doesn't go anywhere.
Also, to say "Obama was defeated in the Massachusetts
senatorial campaign [in 2009, the special election to replace
Kennedy]." is to fundamentally misunderstand that race.
Coakley was a decent AG but utterly inept at connecting
with voters. Brown couldn't win a battle of wits with a
golden retriever but he was perceived as a nice guy. (Whether
he actually is a nice guy is open to debate.)
Brown's victory wasn't a repudiation of Obama; it was a
repudiation of Coakley.
I agree with much of what James F writes but one thing
that doesn't sit right with me about him commentary is his
implication that if your complaint isn't about an immediate
threat to life and limb then your complaint is frivolous.
That's bullshit. Immediate threats to life and limb require
immediate attention but once those threats are dealt with
then what?
Trivializing problems that
"comfortable people" call attention to is just a variation of
"Be thankful you have anything at all." which, at the risk of
overusing the phrase, is bullshit. Comfort the afflicted and
afflict the comforted but be self-aware enough to realize
that whatever your position it is it may change.
PS James F writes:
"We [people in flyover country] provide commodities
like food and coal and oil and metals."
Providing coal and oil may be a near-term necessity but
it's not doing anyone - "comfortable people", "deplorables"
or otherwise - any long-term favors. That you have acute
concerns which you need to deal with is not an excuse to turn
a blind eye to your impact on the world. It may be a reason
but it is not an excuse.
On the Mass race,
i think the failure of Democrats to fight with all their guns
for the 60th Senate seat was a major failure. They were not
willing to send their big guns to say "we cannot afford a
40th Republican, no matter how nice he is".
I, too, am worried by our descent into prewar hatred. I had a friend from Dubrovnik in the'80s.
She was a typical Yugoslav – half Croatian, quarter Serbian, and a quarter Russian. She was full
of hope, smart, pretty, and heartbreakingly naďve. If she survived the war, I'm pretty sure my friend
lost what made her a beautiful human being. She haunts me. Civil wars seem implausible until they
start and then they follow the devil's logic. People like my friend tend to die in them or turn into
something less than they were in order to survive.
I'm an old man now working on my doctorate through a senior citizens' scholarship. I grew on the
North-East Coast. I live in the rural South now. I know people from everywhere because I've been
around a long time. Comfortable people from the cities, Democrat or Republican, want to hit someone,
hard but they have by and large never worn a uniform or had a gun pointed at their heads. They're
frustrated which makes sense but they don't know when a bloody fight is coming. You can smell it
coming like folks down here can smell a tornado or like mothers smell death on its way and snatch
their children off the front porch.
Here in Flyover Country things are bad, really bad. I recently visited family in Northern California.
Things were pretty nice. Not opulent by any means but the shelves were stocked. Security guards in
Target let the kids play around. Around here – not so much. Not so much as a Target. We have long
lines, empty shelves, and the kids, black and white, always seem aware that they're not safe. Comfortable
people in cities worry about reproductive health care. We worry about getting a four-dollar antibiotic
for pneumonia at Wal-Mart without having to spend several hundred bucks for the prescription (real
life experience with insurance). Our mean income is about a quarter of Northern California's. Housing
is cheaper but it's not cheap and it's a lot worse housing. Food and utilities are a lot more expensive.
Everything including food and medicine is taxed. We're dying here, slowly perhaps but we're dying
none the less.
Even so, my Democrat and Republican friends and family from the coasts couldn't care less about
my neighbors. They couldn't care less about fifteen years of war or the kids we send to fight it
or the kids our kids kill. I understand. It's only natural to look to one's own interests and what
happens in Natchez or Mosul doesn't hit home. However, they're all angry – angry at Flyover people
for being sick and poor and tired of being cannon fodder. And so I have to listen to why we don't
deserve jobs or health care because we're stupid. We should move or die because markets. I had to
justify FDR, religion, the very idea of peace, and social solidarity. I have to defend unions and
explain why my state voted for Trump – sometimes to the same person. I have to advocate for veterans,
the majority of cops that don't murder kids, and BLM while I'm trying to eat my potatoes. It's exhausting.
It's depressing.
Statistics show that urban areas are 'bluer'. They have better health care, better functioning
government, and better opportunities. However, not all urban dwellers are comfortable. Chicago has
world class hospitals, universities, and pizza. It also has an astronomical murder rate and a police
force that got caught torturing its citizens. It has a deep blue machine that excels in privatization.
Blue cities are rough with their mostly black and brown poor citizens but poor whites suffer too.
I know. I spent decades doing social work in city hell-scapes. I know what it's like to step over
bodies and have people bleed all over me. Crime isn't out of control when statistics say so. Crime
is out of control when you or people you love get hurt. Likewise, cops shooting unarmed black people
is a problem; cops shooting unarmed white people is a problem; people deciding to start an idiosyncratic
revolution by shooting cops is a problem; criminals killing kids is also a problem. Statistics and
social theory don't really matter at a child's funeral. Life is statistically better in blue enclaves
but there is a difference between Compton and Hollywood, Brookline and Dorchester, Harlem and Manhattan.
That's a brute fact that uncomfortable people face every day.
Flyover people and the uncomfortable urban poor fight the never-ending wars. We provide commodities
like food and coal and oil and metals. We provide cheap labor. Comfortable people have decided that
most of us aren't really needed. Immigration, free trade, and automation have made us redundant but
we're not going away. At least we're not going away fast. Flyover people and the uncomfortable urban
poor have no real place in establishment Democratic or Republican thinking. We are the establishment's
problem and the establishment is our problem.
Where do we go from here? Bernie had some good answers to some burning questions. Trump has some
very questionable answers to the same problems. I don't know if the Anarchists on Inauguration Day
had any answers but they recognized the problem. The comfortable people who posed with pussy hats
leave me questioning whether this country can or even should be saved. The comfortable protesters
certainly have the legal right to their comfortable lives and they have the legal right to advocate
for war with Russia and they have the legal right to hate the President and wear silly hats. They
have a legal right to despise the Deplorables and to petition to have sleeping homeless people removed
from their places of business. They have the legal right to demand respect for their sexual choices.
They have these legal rights because the government guarantees them and if they tear down the civic
peace of government, who will protect these rights? I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I see
the postmodern farce of Madonna in an orange prison jumper. Is she supposed to be King Christian
wearing the Star of David during Nazi occupation? Are Ashley Judd And Julia Roberts supposed to be
our Red Emma and our pistol packing Connie Markowitz? Is Lena Durham supposed to be our Marianne
or our Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi? What I really want to know is will those people
drinking Starbucks die with us on the barricades because the differences between guerrilla theater
and guerrilla war are getting really blurry.
I don't want to get too snarky but I am getting pretty cranky. Revolutions, as Lenin insisted,
are not tea parties. In revolutions resisters get shot for showing courage; in films about revolutions
actors get applause for making a courageous performance. The Democratic Resistance may be as silly
looking as Teapartiers dressed in revolutionary drag but it is much more dangerous. In 2008, Obama
was really popular and he had the support of his own party. Obama failed to ram through his agenda
because he refused to rally the people who put him into office. By the time the Republicans hamstrung
his administration, he had already lost his momentum. Obama was defeated in the Massachusetts senatorial
campaign and by his failure to support Wisconsin's unions. McConnel's obstructionism and Trump's
birtherism were obnoxious but they didn't destroy Obama's agenda. Failure to push for card check,
Medicare for all, voter registration, prosecuting Wall Street fraud and war crimes, new trade deals,
authorizing the extra-judicial murder of US citizens, and overthrowing the government in Guatemala,
Ukraine, and Libya were the real disasters.
In 2016, Trump is much less popular than Obama in 2008. His most progressive polices (which he
shared with Sanders) like reversing trade agreements, renegotiating drug prices, building infrastructure,
and stopping a war with Russia depend on Democratic support. His own party hates him. Impeaching
or (God forbid) assassinating Trump would throw the entire government into the hands of Pence and
Ryan. That would re-gear the war on Russia, reinstate the trade deals and guarantee the end of the
New Deal and the Civil Rights era. Does anyone on the so-called Left really think that's a good idea?
There'd be a real fight then; the kind where lots of people die in loud and messy ways. Who is going
to do the fighting and dying then? I don't think it's going to be the people in pussy hats but I'm
sure I'll be going to plenty of funerals if I live that long.
"... Your analysis is wrong. The wealthy elites backed Jeb! Bush and Rubio. Trump picked up the economic nationalism of Jeff Session, Steve Bannon and talk radio. The rubes voted for Trump in the primary even though the wealthy spent a lot on their candidates. The rubes want to scapegoat both parties (Bill Clinton and the corrupt Republican insiders - drain the swamp). ..."
"... Trump channeled the anger of the rubes. Hillary didn't get the turnout that hope and change Obama got. She flip-flopped on the TPP while Obama spent his remaining months trying to pass it. Now it's dead. ..."
"... The actual solutions will require sacrifice from the rich. Even more important (and difficult); it will require that we abandon the narrative of the rugged individual who "takes care of himself" and "don't need no gobinment". The future belongs to countries that can build up effective systems to educate each individual to the fullest extend of their capabilities (not their wallets) - thereby making sure that critical human resources do not go to waste. The future doesn't belong to the dying empire of the US. ..."
"... Obama averaged 1.7 percent annual GDP growth over his 8 years after the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. ..."
"... This is very true. Even if you want to quibble about whether trade is somewhat more important than Delong says it is. The real problem is the US does not have a functioning workforce policy. ..."
"... And trade is more easily scapegoated- I mean who can argue against technological progress? The overall problem will not be addressed by focusing all attention on job loss due to trade. ..."
"... Excellent comment by jonny bakho. Much better than Delong's I think. ..."
"... But it is also true that scapegoating trade can get you votes, so there is a political problem. ..."
Worker dislocation by factory closings and layoffs is an issue the US does not address very well
for lack of a workforce policy
Dislocations can be caused by offshoring and trade
Dislocations can be caused by technological advance.
We make more goods today with fewer workers; from 30 percent to 8.6 percent
As DeLong points out, 18 of the 21% loss is due to technology.
0.1% is due to NAFTA and trade agreements.
The problem of worker dislocation will never be addressed if all the focus is on the 0.1% and
the 18% is ignored.
The wealthy elites are happy to scapegoat NAFTA because addressing dislocation properly would
require transfer payments. The wealthy always want to avoid paying their fair share so they are
more than happy to blame NAFTA and cheer on the pols who scapegoat trade. The wealthy don't tolerate
pols that propose to truly address the issue in ways that involve transfer payments.
It is easy to drum up anti trade sentiments using xenophobia, racism and nativism. It is more
difficult to get people to be introspective and consider changing what they do
Your analysis is wrong. The wealthy elites backed Jeb! Bush and Rubio. Trump picked up the
economic nationalism of Jeff Session, Steve Bannon and talk radio. The rubes voted for Trump in
the primary even though the wealthy spent a lot on their candidates. The rubes want to scapegoat
both parties (Bill Clinton and the corrupt Republican insiders - drain the swamp).
Dean Baker:
"The 2016 GDP growth brought the average for the eight years of the Obama administration to
1.7 percent."
Trump channeled the anger of the rubes. Hillary didn't get the turnout that hope and change
Obama got. She flip-flopped on the TPP while Obama spent his remaining months trying to pass it.
Now it's dead.
You are absolutely correct. The actual solutions will require sacrifice from the rich. Even
more important (and difficult); it will require that we abandon the narrative of the rugged individual
who "takes care of himself" and "don't need no gobinment". The future belongs to countries that
can build up effective systems to educate each individual to the fullest extend of their capabilities
(not their wallets) - thereby making sure that critical human resources do not go to waste. The
future doesn't belong to the dying empire of the US.
Yes. The wealthy will need to sacrifice to fund these programs. And yes, the idea of every man
for himself (rugged individual) needs to be abandoned.
Unfortunately, racism gets in the way of educating ALL Americans and hurts all poor people,
not just blacks and Hispanics. Abandoning white male patriarchy will require sacrifice on the
part of many.
"It is easy to drum up anti trade sentiments using xenophobia, racism and nativism."
Only in bad times. People want scapegoats.
Obama averaged 1.7 percent annual GDP growth over his 8 years after the largest financial
crisis since the Great Depression.
More people voted for Hillary, but Sanders ran a popular campaign. Trump wont the primary and
electoral college by playing to the uneducated's fears and attacking the elite as corrupt.
Yes he scapegoated trade and offshoring, but he provided an explanation for the stagnating
incomes and shrinking middle class that voters have been experiencing for decades.
"Worker dislocation by factory closings and layoffs is an issue the US does not address
very well for lack of a workforce policy.
Dislocations can be caused by offshoring and trade
Dislocations can be caused by technological advance
We make more goods today with fewer workers; from 30% to 8.6%. As Delong points out 18 of
the 21% loss is due to technology.
.1% is due to Nafta and trade agreements.
The problem of worker dislocation will never be addressed if all the focus is on the 0.1%
and the 18% is ignored."
This is very true. Even if you want to quibble about whether trade is somewhat more important
than Delong says it is. The real problem is the US does not have a functioning workforce policy.
And trade is more easily scapegoated- I mean who can argue against technological progress?
The overall problem will not be addressed by focusing all attention on job loss due to trade.
Excellent comment by jonny bakho. Much better than Delong's I think.
"... Late last year (December 2016), an interesting academic research paper was released by the National Bureau of Economic Research – The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940 – which provides stark evidence of the way in which this neo-liberal era is panning out and suppressing the opportunities for the least advantaged. ..."
"... Recently released research is now showing that around 50 per cent of American children born in 1980 have incomes higher than their parents compared to 90 per cent born in 1940. The so-called 'American Dream' is looking like a nightmare. ..."
"... The message from Pen was that the damage was done by the time the child reached their teenage years. While the later stages of Capitalism has found new ways to reinforce the elites which support the continuation of its exploitation and surplus labour appropriation (for example, deregulation, suppression of trade unions, real wage suppression, fiscal austerity), it remains that class differentials, which have always restricted upward mobility. ..."
Posted on Thursday, January 26, 2017 by bill mitchell
Late last year (December 2016), an interesting academic research paper was released by the
National Bureau of Economic Research – The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility
Since 1940 – which provides stark evidence of the way in which this neo-liberal era is panning out
and suppressing the opportunities for the least advantaged.
One of the constantly repeating claims made by conservatives is that if governments run deficits
they are really undermining the future for their children and their children. The claim is that while
the current generation is living it up (deficits are tantamount in this narrative to living a profligate
existence), the next generations will have to pay for it via higher taxes and reduced services. It
is a bizarre argument given that each generation chooses its own tax burden and we cannot transfer
real resources through time. There is truth in the argument that if the current generation imposes
terminal damage to our natural environment then we are diminishing the prospects for the future.
But that is not the point that the neo-liberals make. Indeed, there is a strong positive relationship
between conservative views of fiscal policy (deficits) and the propensity to engage in climate change
denial.
Recently released research is now showing that around 50 per cent of American children born
in 1980 have incomes higher than their parents compared to 90 per cent born in 1940. The so-called
'American Dream' is looking like a nightmare. Other research has shown that the bottom 50 per
cent of the US income distribution have not enjoyed any of the growth since 1980 and that the top-end-of-town
has increased its share of income from 12 per cent in 1980s to 20 per cent in 2014.
These shifts are the result of deliberate policy changes and inaction by governments, increasingly
co-opted by the rich to serve their interests at the expense of the broader societal well-being.
Revolutions have occurred for less.
It was considered the norm of human progress that each generation would leave the next generation
better off. As parents we would ensure our children were (collectively) better off.
In his 2012 study of cultural history, The American Dream, Lawrence Samuel reprised the term introduced
in 1931 by James Truslow Adams (in his The Epic of America). The two books should be read together
to understand the evolution of the thinking about an American identity.
Samuel reflected on the fact that "that the term 'American Dream' was created in the darkest days
of the Great Depression was all the more interesting given that many feared it no longer existed".
Times were so bad for many during that period.
Samuel published his book during the GFC, the worst downturn since the Great Depression. He considers
there were six eras since the Great Depression marked by different characteristics and circumstance.
But binding the social progress that defines the 'American Dream' was, in the words of the NBER
authors the "ideal that children have a higher standard of living than their parents".
We think of our own progress relative to that of our parents.
In recent history, the parents of the baby boomers had endured the Great Depression with it mass
unemployment and rising poverty rates, then the Second World War and its aftermath.
Reflecting on that experience, this generation worked through government to ensure there was full
employment, broad rights of citizenship with respect to income support, improved public services
and reduced income inequality through income redistribution.
Wages growth was strong and proportional with productivity growth and mass education and public
health improvements made obvious positive contributions to the growing well-being.
The 1950s and 1960s were not nirvana, but they were a damn site better than the two decades before
that and the many before those.
Full employment combined with mass education, in particular, were considered an essential part
of the quest for upward mobility
Previous research has shown that US children (a result that transfers across most nations) are
pretty much doomed from the start as a result of who their parents are and the resources the parents
have at their disposal.
I have written about this before. Please see – Parents are advance secret agents for the class
society.
The title of that blog came from the work of Dutch economist Jan Pen, who wrote in his 1971 book
– Income Distribution – that public policy had to target disadvantaged children in low-income neighbourhoods
at an early age if governments wanted to change the patterns of social and income mobility.
The message from Pen was that the damage was done by the time the child reached their teenage
years. While the later stages of Capitalism has found new ways to reinforce the elites which support
the continuation of its exploitation and surplus labour appropriation (for example, deregulation,
suppression of trade unions, real wage suppression, fiscal austerity), it remains that class differentials,
which have always restricted upward mobility.
This also means that as fiscal austerity has further pushed people towards to the bottom of the
income distribution that increasing numbers of children will inherit the disadvantage of their parents
and this inheritance becomes a vicious circle of poverty and alienation.
In America, research has clearly shown that it is socioeconomic status rather than race which
"largely explains gaps that appear to be due to race" (see cited blog for sources).
It is very obvious now that the bias towards fiscal austerity, which has been the hallmark of
the neo-liberal era has increased inequality and suppressed dynamic forces in labour markets that
promote upward mobility.
By failing to quickly end the most recent downturn (GFC) governments have allowed dynamic forces
to multiply which reinforce disadvantage and suppress upward mobility.
While unemployment has been high (and remains high in most nations), the great American economist
Arthur Okun considered it to be the 'Tip of the Iceberg'.
The point is that the costs of recession and the resulting persistent unemployment extend well
beyond the loss of jobs. Productivity is lower, participation rates are lower, the quality of work
suffers and real wages typically fall.
The facts associated with the current downturn are consistent with this general model.
Within this context, Okun outlined his upgrading hypothesis (in the 1960s and 1970s) and the related
high-pressure economy model, which provided a coherent rationale for Keynesian demand-stimulus policy
positions.
Two references of relevance are Okun, A.M. (1973) 'Upward Mobility in a High-Pressure Economy',
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1: 207-252 and Okun, A.M. (1983) Economics for Policymaking,
Cambridge, MIT Press.
Arthur Okun (1983: 171) believed that:
unemployment was merely the tip of the iceberg that forms in a cold economy. The difference
between unemployment rates of 5 percent and 4 percent extends far beyond the creation of jobs for
1 percent of the labor force. The submerged part of the iceberg includes (a) additional jobs for
people who do not actively seek work in a slack labor market but nonetheless take jobs when they
become available; (b) a longer workweek reflecting less part-time and more overtime employment; and
(c) extra productivity – more output per man-hour – from fuller and more efficient use of labor and
capital.
The positive side of this thinking is that disadvantaged groups in the economy were considered
to achieve upward mobility as a result of higher economic activity. The saying that was attached
to this line of reasoning was "all boats (large or small) rise on the high tide".
Okun's (1973) results are summarised as follows:
The most cyclically sensitive industries have large employment gaps, and were dominated by prime-age
males, offered high-paying jobs, offered other remuneration characteristics (fringes) which encouraged
long-term attachments between employers and employees, and displayed above-average output per person
hour.
In demographic terms, when the employment gap is closed in aggregate, prime-age males exit low-paying
industries and take jobs in other higher paying sectors and their jobs are taken mainly by young
people.
In the advantaged industries, adult males gain large numbers of jobs but less than would occur
if the demographic composition of industry employment remained unchanged following the gap closure.
As a consequence, other demographic groups enter these 'good' jobs.
The demographic composition of industry employment is cyclically sensitive. The shift effects
are in total estimated (in 1970) to be of the same magnitude as the scale effects (the proportional
increases in employment across demographic groups assuming constant shares).
This indicates that a large number of labour market changes (the shifts) are generally of the
ladder climbing type within demographic groups from low-pay to higher-pay industries.
So prior to the neo-liberal onslaught and during the period that governments were cogniscant of
their responsibilities to maintain full employment (and actively used fiscal and monetary policy
to attack high unemployment relatively quickly), a recovery reversed the damage caused by the recession.
The evidence supported the proposition that when the economy is maintained at high levels of employment,
workers in low paying sectors (or occupations) also receive income boosts because employers seeking
to meet their strong labour demand offer employment and training opportunities to the most disadvantaged
in the population. If the economy falters, these groups are the most severely hit in terms of lost
income opportunities.
The full employment era (roughly 1945 to the late 1970s) to some extent, therefore, eroded the
worst effects of the class differences that we discussed earlier.
Which is one reason why the conservatives had to take control of the state, which had been acting
as a mediator in the class struggle – to encourage upward mobility.
The onslaught against full employment and the Welfare State (the hallmark of the social democratic
era) began in the early 1970s as well-funded right-wing (so-called 'free market') think tanks started
to publish a barrage of propaganda, infiltrated academic institutions, took over the mainstream media,
and, even compromised judicial processes (for example, the appointment of Lewis Powell to the US
Supreme Court).
The upshot has been that once full employment was abandoned and governments adopted a chronic
bias towards fiscal austerity (the belief that fiscal deficits are intrinsically bad), the upgrading
benefits that used to accompany growth have been hijacked by the rich and the vast majority of the
population now miss out.
In part, this is due to the increased casualisation of the labour market, the suppression of real
wages growth, the attack on trade unions, and the shift away from high productivity job creation
towards the FIRE sector, which is a largely unproductive sector.
The neo-liberal attack on the role of government in ensuring policy advances the well-being of
all has changed the way the distributional system operates – with workers now finding it harder to
gain access to real income growth despite contributing more per hour (productivity growth stronger).
Under these circumstances, the old class screening and channelling that the schooling system has
provided for the Capitalist system is intensified and inequality accelerates.
We are now starting to see the empirical results of this as cohort studies permit generational
comparisons. Shedding light on what has been happening between generations is the task of the NBER
paper cited in the Introduction.
The paper by a host of US academics (Raj Chetty, David Grusky, Maximilian Hell, Nathaniel Hendren.
Robert Manduca and Jimmy Narang) asks two questions:
First, what fraction of children earn more than their parents today? Second, how have rates of absolute
mobility changed over time?
Absolute income mobility is defined as the:
the fraction of children earning or consuming more than their parents.
They seek to answer these questions using "historical data from the Census and CPS cross-sections
with panel data for recent birth cohorts from de-identified tax records" that allows them to uniquely
bind parent and children incomes.
I will leave it to your interest to explore the techniques they employed. They are very innovative.
Basically they:
"measure income in pre-tax dollars at the household level when parents and children are approximately
thirty years old, adjusting for inflation "
"estimate the fraction of children who earn more than their parents in each birth cohort "
The headline findings are:
"we find that rates of absolute upward income mobility in the United States have fallen sharply
since 1940".
"the fraction of children earning more than their parents fell from 92% in the 1940 birth
cohort to 50% in the 1984 birth cohort."
"Rates of absolute mobility fell the most for children with parents in the middle class."
The finding of a decline in absolute majority is robust across different dimensions (pre-tax,
post-transfer; age of child when measured; regions, gender, impacts of immigration, etc).
"Absolute mobility fell in all 50 states between the 1940 and 1980 cohorts, although the rate
of decline varied, with the largest declines concentrated in states in the industrial Midwest
states such as Michigan and Illinois."
These are Trump's 'rust belts' that he appealed to during the Presidential election.
The following graph is one of many they produce (each offering a different dimension, for example,
wage income, family income etc) and "plots the fraction of children earning more than their parents
('absolute mobility') by average by child birth cohort."
So you interpret it as saying that 90 per cent of children born in 1940 will on average have incomes
higher than their parents, whereas, only 50 per cent of children born in 1980 will on average have
incomes higher than their parents, and so on.
The authors ask: "Why have rates of upward income mobility fallen so sharply over the past half
century?"
They offer the following possible reasons:
There have been two important macroeconomic trends that have affected the incomes of children
born in the 1980s relative to those born in the 1940s: lower Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth
rates and greater inequality in the distribution of growth
They reject the first, saying that "the slowdown in aggregate economic growth in recent decades,
although important, does not explain most of the observed decline in absolute mobility."
Their counterfactual analysis shows that:
increasing GDP growth without changing the current distribution of growth would have modest
effects on rates of absolute mobility.
The problem is that:
a large fraction of GDP goes to a small number of high income earners today, higher GDP growth
does not substantially increase the number of children who earn more than their parents.
The key takeaway of their research is this:
The key point is that reviving the "American Dream" of high rates of absolute mobility would require
more broadly shared economic growth rather than just higher GDP growth rates.
This research is consistent with studies in other nations. For example, see the analysis in my
blog – Policy changes needed to arrest decline in fortunes for low-pay British workers.
The point is that the neo-liberal era with widening income inequality, entrenched labour underutilisation,
suppressed wages growth and continued attacks on income support systems is producing an unsustainable
society.
Eventually, there will be a counterattack as the middle class prospects continue to be eroded.
While it might not come from the current generation, the children who are no coming into adulthood
have been dealt a very poor hand by their parents.
If the NBER research is correct, then 50 per cent of Americans born in 1980 (now in their mid-1930)
are enjoying absolute mobility (relative to their parents), which brings into question the concept
of the 'American Dream', a cultural device to maintain social stability and endeavour.
It should not be forgotten that the parents themselves are under attack from this dysfunctional
system and the prospects of growing intergenerational wealth through inheritance is becoming a faded
reality for many families.
Another perspective is offered in this paper also released in December 2016 by French economists
Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman – : Distributional National Accounts: Methods and
Estimates for the United States.
The paper examines the "growth rates for each quantile of the income distribution consistent with
macroeconomic growth" in the US since 1913.
I will look at it more closely another day but its major findings are that:
"a sharp divergence in the growth experienced by the bottom 50% versus the rest of the economy."
"The average pre-tax income of the bottom 50% of adults has stagnated since 1980 at about
$16,000 per adult (in constant 2014 dollars, using the national income deflator), while average
national income per adult has grown by 60% to $64,500 in 2014."
"As a result, the bottom 50% income share has collapsed from about 20% in 1980 to 12% in 2014."
"In the meantime, the average pre-tax income of top 1% adults rose from $420,000 to about
$1.3 million, and their income share increased from about 12% in the early 1980s to 20% in 2014."
"The two groups have essentially switched their income shares, with 8 points of national income
transferred from the bottom 50% to the top 1%. The top 1% income share is now almost twice as
large as the bottom 50% share, a group that is by definition 50 times more numerous. In 1980,
top 1% adults earned on average 27 times more than bottom 50% adults before tax while today they
earn 81 times more."
"government redistribution has offset only a small fraction of the increase in pre-tax inequality."
"the upsurge of top incomes has mostly been a capital-driven phenomenon since the late 1990s.
There is a widespread view that rising income inequality mostly owes to booming wages at the top
end, i.e., a rise of the "working rich." Our results confirm that this view is correct from the
1970s to the 1990s. But in contrast to earlier decades, the increase in income concentration over
the last fifteen years owes to a boom in the income from equity and bonds at the top. The working
rich are either turning into or being replaced by rentiers. Top earners became younger in the
1980s and 1990s but have been growing older since then."
So beware the middle-class. Your children are already losing out but neo-liberal is eating into
the parental well-being as well as the financial capitalists prosper.
Conclusion
This situation is obviously unsustainable.
It is time for the Left to stand up and lead the way out of this mess.
Growth and redistribution is needed. Governments have to take on the top-end-of-town. They can
start by introducing employment guarantees that provide decent pay (with social wage additions) to
anyone, thus eliminating the income insecurity.
Then some serious regulation is required to rein in the financial sector (I would basically eliminate
much of it).
The Left are scared to say anything because, in part, their leadership is compromised by relationships
with the financial capitalists (for example, the revelations about Hillary Clinton in the leaked
E-mails), and, also, because they have a massive inferiority complex when discussing macroeconomics.
They think if they argue that fiscal deficits are usually desirable and should be continuous they
will look irresponsible. Well that is because they have allowed the public to be indoctrinated into
these erroneous views.
The Left has to launch a massive educational onslaught to redress this knowledge gap as they set
about reversing the ravages of neo-liberalism.
A brief comment. First, Okun was one smart cookie.
Shorter and nerdier Okun:
1. Wage growth increases as the U6 underemployment rate falls under 10%.
2. As the economy heats up, U6 falls faster than U3, meaning an increasing share of marginal
workers get jobs. These marginal workers are disproportionately minority groups.
3. Therefore, full employment tends to increase equality.
4. Unions were good vehicles to keep the labor share high enough that full or nearly full employment
happened far more often.
"Unions were good vehicles to keep the labor share high enough that full or nearly full
employment happened far more often."
If this is true, isn't a bit of a paradox, since unions are a monopoly and in theory monopolies
increase price by restricting supply? It could be true however, that the POLITICAL power of unions
meant that full employment was regarded as a higher priority than inflation. (Note unions very
much prioritize the interests of workers, even to some extent to the detriment of other poorer
sections of the community. Could it have been that this caused a backlash in a western world that
has been steadily getting older?)
General note, I'm perhaps an oddity on the left in that I'm not convinced that more union power
is necessarily the way forward, no matter how effective it was in the past. I don't see the requirements
of the future world as being the same as the requirements of the past.
I agree that more union power might not be the primary way forward, but in the absence of other
effective proposals, it certainly should be one lever.
And yes, it is a paradox. On a micro scale, unions may act to the detriment of other potential
workers, but on the macro scale, the effects on full employment may well outweigh that drawback.
Union power has been the key to worker power and increasing worker share for everyone, even nonunion
workers, for a century. I see no reason why that should not be true now. Indeed, we need to expand
union protections to a lot of workers who have not traditionally been covered (IT workers, low
level professionals, etc.).
Unions gave us higher wages for labor. Higher wages for labor gave us more spending. More spending
gave us more jobs and lower unemployment. More jobs and lower unemployment AND unions gave us
higher wages for labor. It is that old virtuous cycle thing until capital and management start
pulling at a thread.
"General note, I'm perhaps an oddity on the left in that I'm not convinced that more union power
is necessarily the way forward, no matter how effective it was in the past. I don't see the requirements
of the future world as being the same as the requirements of the past."
I completely disagree and the acceptance of liberals of the destruction of the union movement
is a primary reason why things have gone so badly.
Does Krugman ever talk about unions? No.
Does DeLong? No.
What did Obama do for unions?
Denis Drew is right. Maybe it's true that unions are never coming back but then if so we're
in big trouble. It will take some sort of calamity to set things right.
Look at Senate Republicans blocking Supreme Court nominations.
If the democratic socialist ever got significant power you could expect a revolt by finance
and big business and the one percent.
I've always imagined it would take a general strike to overcome such a capital strike.
My god, look at Canada. They still have unions. Same with Germany.
This fatalism regarding unions is one reason why things are so bad. Unions helped get out the
vote among many other things.
One just needs to study labor history. Of course the neoliberals may be right that unions are
of the past, but I suspect they're engaged in motivated reasoning.
You can unionize all jobs that can't be offshored.
I suspect the anti-union sentiment as expressed by reason - and many other well-meaning types
- is the result of decades of pro-business anti-union propaganda.
From amazon review of his book
In the Jaws of the Dragon "Anyone who has read "The World is Flat" should also read "In The
Jaws Of The Dragon" to understand both sides of the issues involved in offshoring. Eamon Fingleton clearly
defines the differences between the economic systems in play in China and Japan and the United States
and how those differences have damaged the United States economy. The naive position taken by both the
Republicans and the Democrats that offshoring is good for America is shown to be wrong because of a
fundamental lack of knowledge about who we are dealing with. Every member of Congress and the executive
branch should read this book before ratifying any more trade agreements. The old saying of the marketplace
applies: Take advantage of me once, shame on you. Take advantage of me twice, shame on me."
Notable quotes:
"... Similar miscommunication probably helps explain the European media's unreflective scorn for Donald Trump. Most European commentators have little or no access to the story. They have allowed their views to be shaped largely by the American press. ..."
"... That's a big mistake. Contrary to their carefully burnished self-image of impartiality and reliability, American journalists are not averse to consciously peddling outright lies. This applies even in the case of the biggest issues of the day, as witness, for instance, the American press's almost unanimous validation of George Bush's transparently mendacious case for the Iraq war in 2003. ..."
"... Most of the more damning charges against Trump are either without foundation or at least are viciously unfair distortions. Take, for instance, suggestions in the run-up to the election that he is anti-Semitic. In some accounts it was even suggested he was a closet neo-Nazi. Yet for anyone remotely familiar with the Trump story, this always rang false. After all he had thrived for decades in New York's overwhelmingly Jewish real estate industry. Then there was the fact that his daughter Ivanka, to whom he is evidently devoted, had converted to Judaism. ..."
"... In appointing Jared Kushner his chief adviser, he has chosen an orthodox Jew (Kushner is Ivanka's husband). Then there is David Friedman, Trump's choice for ambassador to Israel. Friedman is an outspoken partisan of the Israeli right and he is among other things an apologist for the Netanyahu administration's highly controversial settlement of the West Bank. ..."
"... As is often the case with Trumpian controversies, the facts are a lot more complicated than the press makes out. ..."
"... So far, so normal for the 2016 election campaign. But it turned out that Kovaleski was no ordinary Trump-hating journalist. He suffers from arthrogryposis, a malady in which the joints are malformed. For Trump's critics, this was manna from heaven. Instead of merely accusing the New York real estate magnate of exaggerating a minor, if troubling, sideshow in U.S.-Arab relations, they could now arraign him on the vastly more damaging charge of mocking someone's disability. ..."
"... In any case in responding directly to the charge of mocking Kovaleski's disability, Trump offered a convincing denial. "I would never do that," he said. "Number one, I have a good heart; number two, I'm a smart person." ..."
"... other much discussed Trumpian controversies such as his disparaging remarks about Mexicans and Muslims. In the case of both Mexican and Muslims, an effort to cut back immigration is a central pillar of Trump's program and his remarks, though offensive, were clearly intended to garner votes from fed-up middle Americans. ..."
"... In reality, as the Catholics 4 Trump website has documented, the media have suppressed vital evidence in the Kovaleski affair. ..."
Battlefield communications in World War I sometimes left something to be desired. Hence a famous
British anecdote of a garbled word-of-mouth message. As transmitted, the message ran, "Send reinforcements,
we are going to advance." Superior officers at the other end, however, were puzzled to be told: "Send
three and four-pence [three shillings and four-pence], we are going to a dance!"
Similar miscommunication probably helps explain the European media's unreflective scorn for
Donald Trump. Most European commentators have little or no access to the story. They have allowed
their views to be shaped largely by the American press.
That's a big mistake. Contrary to their carefully burnished self-image of impartiality and
reliability, American journalists are not averse to consciously peddling outright lies. This applies
even in the case of the biggest issues of the day, as witness, for instance, the American press's
almost unanimous validation of George Bush's transparently mendacious case for the Iraq war in 2003.
Most of the more damning charges against Trump are either without foundation or at least are
viciously unfair distortions. Take, for instance, suggestions in the run-up to the election that
he is anti-Semitic. In some accounts it was even suggested he was a closet neo-Nazi. Yet for anyone
remotely familiar with the Trump story, this always rang false. After all he had thrived for decades
in New York's overwhelmingly Jewish real estate industry. Then there was the fact that his daughter
Ivanka, to whom he is evidently devoted, had converted to Judaism.
Now as Trump embarks on office, his true attitudes are becoming obvious – and they hardly lean
towards neo-Nazism.
In appointing Jared Kushner his chief adviser, he has chosen an orthodox Jew (Kushner is Ivanka's
husband). Then there is David Friedman, Trump's choice for ambassador to Israel. Friedman is an outspoken
partisan of the Israeli right and he is among other things an apologist for the Netanyahu administration's
highly controversial settlement of the West Bank. Trump even wants to move the American embassy
in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This position is a favourite of the most ardently pro-Israel
section of the American Jewish community but is otherwise disavowed as insensitive to Palestinians
by most American policy analysts.
Many other examples could be cited of how the press has distorted the truth. It is interesting
to revisit in particular the allegation that Trump mocked a disabled man's disability. It is an allegation
which has received particular prominence in the press in Europe. But is Trump really such a heartless
ogre? Hardly.
As is often the case with Trumpian controversies, the facts are a lot more complicated than
the press makes out. The disabled-man episode began when, in defending an erstwhile widely ridiculed
contention that Arabs in New Jersey had publicly celebrated the Twin Towers attacks, Trump unearthed
a 2001 newspaper account broadly backed him up. But the report's author, Serge Kovaleski, demurred.
Trump's talk of "thousands" of Arabs, he wrote, was an exaggeration.
Trump fired back. Flailing his arms wildly in an impersonation of an embarrassed, backtracking
reporter, he implied that Kovaleski had succumbed to political correctness.
So far, so normal for the 2016 election campaign. But it turned out that Kovaleski was no
ordinary Trump-hating journalist. He suffers from arthrogryposis, a malady in which the joints are
malformed. For Trump's critics, this was manna from heaven. Instead of merely accusing the New York
real estate magnate of exaggerating a minor, if troubling, sideshow in U.S.-Arab relations, they
could now arraign him on the vastly more damaging charge of mocking someone's disability.
Trump's plea that he hadn't known that Kovaleski was handicapped was undermined when it emerged
that in the 1980s the two had not only met but Kovaleski had even interviewed Trump in Trump Tower.
That is an experience I know something about. I, like Kovaleski, once interviewed Trump in Trump
Tower. The occasion was an article I wrote for Forbes magazine in 1982. If Trump saw my by-line today,
would he remember that occasion 35 years ago? Probably not. The truth is that Trump, who has been
a celebrity since his early twenties, has been interviewed by thousands of journalists over the years.
A journalist would have to be seriously conceited – or be driven by a hidden agenda – to assume that
a VIP as busy as Trump would remember an occasion half a lifetime ago.
In any case in responding directly to the charge of mocking Kovaleski's disability, Trump
offered a convincing denial. "I would never do that," he said. "Number one, I have a good heart;
number two, I'm a smart person." Setting aside point one (although to the press's chagrin, many
of Trump's acquaintances have testified that a streak of considerable private generosity underlies
his tough-guy exterior), it is hard to see how anyone can question point two. In effect Trump is
saying he had a strong self-interest in not offending the disabled lobby let alone their millions
of sympathisers.
After all it was not as if there were votes in dissing the disabled. This stands in marked contrast
to other much discussed Trumpian controversies such as his disparaging remarks about Mexicans
and Muslims. In the case of both Mexican and Muslims, an effort to cut back immigration is a central
pillar of Trump's program and his remarks, though offensive, were clearly intended to garner votes
from fed-up middle Americans.
In reality, as the Catholics 4 Trump website has documented, the media have suppressed vital
evidence in the Kovaleski affair.
For a start Trump's frenetic performance bore no resemblance to arthrogryposis. Far from frantically
flailing their arms, arthrogryposis victims are uncommonly motionlessness. This is because relevant
bones are fused together. As Catholics 4 Trump pointed out, the media should have been expected to
have been chomping at the bit to interview Kovaleski and thus clinch the point about how ruthlessly
Trump had ridiculed a disabled man's disability.
The website added: "If the media had a legitimate story, that is exactly what they would have
done and we all know it. But the media couldn't put Kovaleski in front of a camera or they'd have
no story."
Catholics 4 Trump added that, in the same speech in which Trump did his Kovaleski impression,
he offered an almost identical performance to illustrate the embarrassment of a U.S. general with
whom he had clashed. In particular Trump had the general wildly flailing his arms. It goes without
saying that this general does not suffer from arthogryposis or any other disability. The common thread
in each case was merely an embarrassed, backtracking person. To say the least, commentators in Europe
who have portrayed Trump as having mocked Kovaleski's disability stand accused of superficial, slanted
reporting.
All this is not to suggest that Trump does not come to the presidency unencumbered with baggage.
He is exceptionally crude – at least he is in his latter-day reality TV manifestation (the Trump
I remember from my interview in 1982 was a model of restraint by comparison and in particular never
used any expletives). Moreover the latter-day Trump habit of picking Twitter fights with those who
criticize him tends merely to confirm a widespread belief that he is petty and thin-skinned.
Many of his pronouncements moreover have been disturbing and his abrasive manner will clearly
prove on balance a liability in the White House. That said, the press has never worked harder or
more dishonestly to destroy a modern American leader.
Let's give him the benefit of the doubt, therefore, as he sets out to make America great again.
The truth is that American decline has gone much further than almost anyone outside American industry
understands. Trump's task is a daunting one.
Eamonn
Fingleton is an expert on America's trade problems and is the author of In Praise of Hard Industries:
Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity (Houghton Mifflin,
Boston). A version of this article appeared in the Dublin Ireland Sunday Business Post.
America's fate looks dicey in the showdown with the Chinese juggernaut, warns this vigorous jeremiad.
Fingleton (In Praise of Hard Industries) argues that China's "East Asian" development model of aggressive
mercantilism and a state-directed economy "effortlessly outperforms" America's fecklessly individualistic
capitalism
Obama might have done more to bend the tone of Washington than change actual policy, but his tenure
is a lesson in what a president can and can't do for working people.
When he took office at the zenith of the financial crisis, Obama's initial moves to stop the hemorrhaging
of jobs, including the federal stimulus package and Wall Street bailout, could have been opportunities
to reshape the relationship between the state and private sector and to tackle income inequality
in the long term. But thanks to bipartisan resistance in Congress, the big banks were never held
to account; the stimulus, though a significant social investment, petered out; and no other mass
jobs initiatives ever emerged after the "recovery" had sufficiently resuscitated the financial system.
But aspirations toward a New Deal–type stimulus faded fast. The Occupy Wall Street movement's
cry for economic justice picked up the momentum and changed the way people view the social dimensions
of inequality and the role of protest in civic life. Congress then proved useless in failing to push
through even modest investments in infrastructure, restoring funding for basic welfare programs,
or making
health-care reform truly equitable for working-class people instead of an insurance industry
racket.
The squelching of the
Employee Free Choice Act , which would have eased the unionization process, further constrained
efforts to build workplace democracy. Obama never lifted a finger for the act in the early days of
his presidency, when it was still politically possible.
Two parallel failures of Obama's approach toward globalization hurt labor materially and politically.
First, the collapse of immigration reform efforts, which only
further entrenched a permanent underclass of undocumented workers . Additionally, the perpetuation
of the warped neoliberal trade policy that has devastated working-class households who previously
enjoyed a modicum of upward mobility.
Trade deals like the
Trans Pacific Partnership revealed Obama's myopic approach to addressing deep destabilization
across the workforce - the evaporation of core, decent-paying industries that had supported communities
for generations, and the expansion of poverty-wage, unstable, and precarious service jobs.
The administration's reluctance to confront these disruptions provoked a massive backlash against
"free trade" and globalization as abandoned workers saw their Democratic representatives allow corporations
to drive down wages, undermine labor standards inside and outside US borders, and essentially write
the rules of the global economy themselves.
One area where Obama did make meaningful changes was also, sadly, the easiest to roll back.
Similarly, the Labor Department's overhaul of the eligibility threshold for low-income salaried
workers was
set to boost the wages of millions nationwide, but
are now disintegrating with court challenges and an incoming pro-business administration.
Rulings at the National Labor Relations Board
boosted collective-bargaining rights for contractors and
graduate student workers , and helped advance organizing efforts for fast-food franchise workers.
But these measures could crumble when the new NLRB under Trump veers rightward.
But many major changes in labor policy realized under Obama happened on the state and local level,
like the proliferation of paid sick leave laws in states and cities in the past few years. And Occupy's
legacy continued in the streets with campaigns like the
Fight for 15 , which brought precarious service workers into the national spotlight, and the
Chicago Teachers Union , which thwarted the corporate school-reform coalition that Democrats
championed.
None of these achievements should be credited to the Obama White House, but they're surrounded
by the civic momentum generated with his election, and now may outlast his administration through
movements that have learned to radically depart from the liberal centrist elite - an establishment
that
ultimately crumpled in the election.
That Obama will be succeeded by such an outrageously regressive, racist regime reflects the structural
inequalities that no president could begin to dismantle, since they are
tied to a neoliberal global economic structure . But in many ways Obama failed culturally to
grapple with those injustices, retreating instead into the safer sphere of promoting symbolic equality
without material equity. Fighting those inequalities requires not technocratic tinkering in Washington
but enlisting local communities through organizing in workplaces, classrooms, and communities.
"... we have, in addition to 7.5 million officially unemployed (a number that is closer to 15 million when all the hidden unemployment is accounted for), 23.5 million Americans aged 25-to-54 who reside outside the confines of the labor force. And at a time when job openings are at record highs. ..."
"... Even the most ardent ''supply-sider" would admit that labor input is key to the outlook and this should really be at the top of the agenda - closing the widening and unprecedented gap between job openings and new hiring. There simply is no replacement for excellent education achievement with respect to maximizing labor productivity. ..."
"... So about all those job openings? Do they all pay a living wage ? ..."
"... So about all those job openings? They are FAKE job openings. They basically want to hire someone with $100K/year worth of experience & qualifications for $30K/year. And then when no one applies, the companies whine that they need H1B visa to fill the void. ..."
"... It boggles my mind, the kind of bullshit experienced by an acquaintance who is a Waitress, on top of all the shitty employers and scummy customers, she has to pay taxes on Estimated Tips, by a Percentage of Transactions regardless of whether she actually Received a Tip. ..."
"... The government assumes a tip exists at 8% and the waitress must pay on the assumption or the business owner gets pissed off because he/she will catch shit from the IRS at Tax time. Black people only tip on the 29th of February if it is a full moon, a trick they learned from the cheap Canadian bastards who got the idea from the Asians who also, mostly, do not tip. An establishment owner selling Beer/ Wine/ Liquor is responsible for the customers action after leaving the establishment, if they get in a wreck / DUI, ..."
"... That is just the Bar / Restaurant biz. Mc Donalds and the Fast food scam clan are often getting 50% of an employees wages paid through special programs for hiring recently released Felons, drug rehab grads and recent immigrants to name a few, so you already paid for half that burger and fries before you ordered it and Mc Donald is doing quite nicely, thank you. I could go on into the Construction and Manufacturing realms but life is short. ..."
Some observations on recent negative trends in productivity, employment mismatch, and
labor training and education from the increasingly more bearish David Rosenberg, who
notes that the Trump's proposed policies may end up helping growth on the margins, but
fail to focus on what is really important, making tens of millions of US workers
competitive and qualified for today's jobs market.
From Breakast with Rosie, via
Gluskin Sheff
I don't think we have a productivity problem - in fact, the demise of productivity is
vastly overstated and that is because the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is likely
vastly overstating labor input, and I'm talking here about how hours worked are
estimated.
But the real travesty, and what I think deserves top priority (but I don't see it),
is that
we have, in addition to 7.5 million officially unemployed (a number that
is closer to 15 million when all the hidden unemployment is accounted for), 23.5 million
Americans aged 25-to-54 who reside outside the confines of the labor force.
And
at a time when job openings are at record highs.
The problem is that unqualified applicants for these openings also are at a
record high
. The number of jobs available that are not being filled because the
skill set is absent is at an unprecedented level - and this was an overriding theme in
the latest edition of the Fed's Beige Book.
The question is what is in the policy playbook to redress this situation?
What we need is a policy playbook that makes education, apprenticeship and training a
major priority - the one plank that I had hoped would be yanked out of Bernie Sanders'
platform.
While deregulation and simplifying the tax code obviously are constructive segments
of the Trump plan, they are not the most important obstacles in the way of growth.
Neither is globalization.
Even the most ardent ''supply-sider" would admit that labor input is key to the
outlook and this should really be at the top of the agenda - closing the widening and
unprecedented gap between job openings and new hiring. There simply is no replacement
for excellent education achievement with respect to maximizing labor productivity.
I see scant attention being paid to this file - su
rely this is more important
than U.S. involvement in Brexit or trying to play a role in breaking up the European
Union, don't you think?
This figure is what terrifies Yellen and Obama. Steve Mnuchin and Trump have both called
the formula Obama changed to estimate the unemployment/employment rates pretty much total
bullshit.
Once the figures are revised back to 2006 we will probably find a steady 9%+ REAL
unemployment rate since 2007, and that tarnishes Janet's bullspray from her mouth and Obama's
precious and fading fast legacy.
Wulfkind -> FredFlintstone
•Jan 21, 2017 4:53 PM
So about all those job openings? Do they all pay a living wage ? That is to say...can they
pay a person enough money to cover all normal living expenses ( not including debt you didn't
need to obtain but including debt like a mortgage or rent )....with enough left over to save ?
Also....will those jobs be linked to inflation so over time your once living wage does not
stagnate and drop below inflation so that you are actually taking a pay cut every year from
then on out ?
My suspicion is no. These fools only count the number of job postings without looking into the
quality of said jobs. And if they are shit jobs they'll just go to wetbacks anyway and thus
not help real Americans.
Thus....the high number of people not in the labor force.
rbg81 -> Wulfkind
•Jan 21, 2017 5:24 PM
So about all those job openings?
They are FAKE job openings. They basically want to hire someone with $100K/year worth of
experience & qualifications for $30K/year. And then when no one applies, the companies whine
that they need H1B visa to fill the void.
Or undocumented who will work 14 hour days for minimum wage (or less) and not complain.
therover -> rejected
•Jan 21, 2017 5:13 PM
So glad I am on the same side of the fence as you. I keep telling people when they ask
where my 17 year old son is going to school or what his SAT scores none of their business and
fuck that path of higher education bullshit where you spend 100K+ on some degree that will
probably get you no where.
That 100K+ that I have saved up is going to build him a woodshop filled with tools so he can
hone his creative skills in wood working or lead to a path toward carpentry, or it's going to
buy him a van filled with plumbing equipment so he can work with his uncle as a plumber.
As part of that path, going to community college for some business courses and striving to
getting first a 2 year associates that if needed, can matriculate to a 4 year degree in
business ( for his OWN BUSINESS). Not spending tons of cash right out of the gate on a 4 year
school. Shit..I know that scenario... been there done that. Plus every parent knows their
child (at least the should) and my guy takes his time with stuff so I know that first year or
so at that 50K plus a year school will be wasted.
Bottom line is he will be getting something other than a worthless degree when he ends up
flipping pancakes at an IHOP or waiting on tables at an Applebees. Not to say they are
meaningless/dead end jobs...they are if you spent 100K+ on a degree and STILL HAVE THAT JOB.
Peak Finance •Jan 21, 2017 4:51 PM
I simply don't believe this:
The problem is that unqualified applicants for these openings also are at a record
high. The number of jobs available that are not being filled because the skill set is
absent is at an unprecedented level
I think this is a lie to justify the continuation of immigration and the hateful
damaging H1B program. I remember their bullshit lies from the early 00's , posting want adds
for people with "10 years of Java Experience" when Java had come out like 2 year prior, and
other impossible requests, and then being unable to fill those jobs were allowed to ship in
people from overseas.
Falling Down -> Peak Finance
•Jan 21, 2017 5:00 PM
Correct.
The only real shortages are in certain skilled trades, in certain metros.
i know several people from my parents generation who got jobs in major corporations upon
high school graduation who were hired by the companies for their aptitude and trained into the
skill the comapny needed. a couple were trianed engineers and another a chemist besides pipe
fitter, ironworker and mechanic.
companies don't do that anymore because stockholders won't let them do it. there are some
privately held companies who still do it.
Giant Meteor -> besnook
•Jan 21, 2017 5:27 PM
Companies don't do that anymore because that would step on the toes of the Educational
Industrial Complex gravy train. Professional courtesy is all. Loyalty and human potential is
no longer factored in ... Lets not even get started on the government jerbs ....
Twee Surgeon -> Giant Meteor
•Jan 21, 2017 6:42 PM
A major problem too, is getting past the Human Resources Department in a larger company in
the Productive industries (Machine,Construction,Refinery, etc.)
First you meet the ancient grey goddess with the chains on her eyeglasses and she will direct
you to the Interviewer who will be Jennifer Eye-candy, Kanisha Token-Black or Juan De
Bilingualo, who all have a diploma from a college but know nothing about the industry at hand,
you are more likely to get hired on the Excellence of your new Nike tennis shoes than anything
related to the Skills required for the position.
If you can get past the women in Human Resources and talk to the guy that actually runs the
shop and look each other in the eye and talk about 'Making Stuff', then you might have the
job. That is how that works.
QQQBall -> besnook
•Jan 21, 2017 7:26 PM
besnook. Exactly. not just engineers, but service reps, sales people, etc., that then were
promoted up thru the ranks of the same company. My lady retired from AT&T as a project manager
at like 54 yo.
She was hired after taking a test that only 4 peeps in the room passed. worked her way up -
they had reciprocal/mutually beneficial investments in each other. She is smart and had a
degree from UC here in Kali. Now, no loyalty either way in most cases.
Twee Surgeon -> DrData02
•Jan 21, 2017 6:21 PM
Exactly, people are finding other ways to get by. I'm not sure how many ZH'ers have
experienced the modern non-corporate job market.
Unless you have a .gov job you are pretty much The next disposable android who can be worked
to death and replaced when the bearings are shot or an inconvenience arrives. Employers don't
want to Hire because it's too expensive due to various regulations, taxations and obligations
to the City, State, County and Federal government, all of which are Constantly Expanding and
must pay for the ever increasing pay-roll size and the unfunded liabilities and the pension
plan and the grant for the new skate board park etc, and so on, forever and ever.
It boggles my mind, the kind of bullshit experienced by an acquaintance who is a Waitress, on
top of all the shitty employers and scummy customers, she has to pay taxes on Estimated Tips,
by a Percentage of Transactions regardless of whether she actually Received a Tip.
The
government assumes a tip exists at 8% and the waitress must pay on the assumption or the
business owner gets pissed off because he/she will catch shit from the IRS at Tax time. Black
people only tip on the 29th of February if it is a full moon, a trick they learned from the
cheap Canadian bastards who got the idea from the Asians who also, mostly, do not tip.
An establishment owner selling Beer/ Wine/ Liquor is responsible for the customers action
after leaving the establishment, if they get in a wreck / DUI,
Whatever, and that was all from
Ronald Ray-guns era, the Small Business and Independence messiah. (The Dramm shop Act, I
think, Google has that hidden though.)
That is just the Bar / Restaurant biz. Mc Donalds and the Fast food scam clan are often
getting 50% of an employees wages paid through special programs for hiring recently released
Felons, drug rehab grads and recent immigrants to name a few, so you already paid for half
that burger and fries before you ordered it and Mc Donald is doing quite nicely, thank you.
I could go on into the Construction and Manufacturing realms but life is short.
The Problem
with the USA is the Government, I'm not holding my breath for Trump to make a change, I
remember the song and Dance when Ronny won the White house. Nothing fucking changed for most
people. It just began the Road to Barry Obama and here we are.
Donewithit22
•Jan 21, 2017 5:35 PM
This is only a problem when people start to realize the systems that we have in place are
by nature a ponzi scheme. I partner and I dropped out of the workforce 2011ish. We realized by
the time we paid for health care, which was now mandated, city tax, state tax, fed tax, s/s
tax etc....what was the point of going to work.....
We both have degree and are in our mid 30's.
we sold everything we had bought land and have build a homestead doing most things
ourselves. we do odd jobs for extra cash and we live better , less stress then we used too. we
are going on vacation to Peru in about 3 weeks for 15 days and we often do a few days here or
there just to see the US. We love not being in the labor pool and we are both sorry we didnt
do this sooner.
thisguyoverhere
•Jan 21, 2017 5:38 PM
In the skilled trades there are many former welders, ironworkers, boilermakers and fitters,
over 60 years old, working as consultants. These men (and some women) command high rates, the
respect of their union halls or fellow tradesman because of their body of knowledge and
experience.
Much of that knowledge will not be passed on, will be lost because these experienced 'field
engineers' (the real thing, no bull$hit diploma) are sick of the politics and seeing the
honest labor of skilled workers being siphoned off while some spoiled brat takes a sallary in
'the office'.
I have a degree. I learned more usefull skills in 6 months than 4 years of school.
We have a structural problem within our framework of 'educating' the next generation.
The result, many today have the cultivated tastes, but no capital to purchase the lifestyle.
Son of Captain Nemo
•Jan 21, 2017 5:55 PM
"The problem is that unqualified applicants for these openings also are at a record high.
The number of jobs available that are not being filled because the skill set is absent is at
an unprecedented level - and this was an overriding theme in the latest edition of the Fed's
Beige Book."
Because U.S. corporations would rather spend the time and expense seeking the lowest labor
rate to do the job than retraining an existing workforce that has been dormant or obsolete
because of lack of work or "No work" at all...
This includes bending the rules for H1B and related visas... Even if we have a war on terror
and a Department of Homeland Security we've been waging since 2002 which places "very high
standards" on what moves in and out of the Country since 9/11!
Go figure!!!
Duc888
•Jan 21, 2017 8:03 PM
Speaking specifically of those aged 16 to say......30 Largely unemployable. Lord knows I've
tried to employ a dozen or so in the last few years.
Won't put down the gdamned smart phone.
Don't want to get their hands dirty.
Apparently they've spent so much time pushing buttons on a game controller while growing up
they skipped what young guys have done while growing up in the last 75+ years, you know,
taking shit apart, putting shit back together, screwing it up, modifying shit, putting it back
together a second time and generally learning how shit works.
Complete and total lack of knowledge of the use of common hand tools and rudimentary
pneumatic powered tools.
Absolutely no attention span.
Absolutely no common sense.
See know value in actually learning any skills involved in a trade, they want / need
instant gratification.
Absolutely no critical thinking skills, (If I do this...the likely outcome will be
A._______ B._________ or C.________
They have no training in creating some type of mental flow
chart in their head to have at least some basic predictive skills.}
9. They have more excuses for missing work than any ten guys I knew while growing up.
10. most do not have access to reliable transportation to get to the work site / job.
Seems like the feminization has worked wonderfully.
"... In the face of the enormous political chasm between the 99 percent and the 1 percent, a strategy of elite-led, bipartisan deal-cutting premised on calls for "shared sacrifice" leaves this grossly inequitable economic and political fabric intact. As such, the 99 percent are caught in the vise of small-bore policies from their supposed friends and allies while their opponents encircle them with scorched-earth politics. ..."
"... The Obama administration and much of the leadership of the Democratic Party took extreme care not to upset these basic interests. As a consequence, they squandered an exceptional political opportunity. The financial crisis and the Great Recession were one of those moments when members of the business sector were "stripped naked as leaders and strategists," in the words of Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. The Great Depression was another. ..."
"... As he put the House of Morgan and other bankers on trial, Ferdinand Pecora, chief counsel of the Senate Banking Committee, helped popularize during the age of Al Capone a term not heard today: the "bankster." These hearings compelled Roosevelt to support stricter financial regulation than he might have otherwise. ..."
"... One cannot talk about crime in the streets today without talking about crime in the suites. ..."
"... The political intransigence lavishly on display in the Republican Party - which repeatedly brought Congress to a caustic standstill - obscured how a major segment of the Democratic Party was loath to mount any major challenge to the entrenched financial and political interests that have captured American politics today. ..."
"... For all the bluster about political polarization, the debate over what to do about the economy, the social safety net, and financial regulation - like the elite discussions over what to do about mass incarceration - oscillated within a very narrow range defined by neoliberalism for much of Obama's tenure. Indeed, the president repeatedly bragged that the federal budget for discretionary spending on domestic programs had shrunk under his watch to the smallest share of the economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president. ..."
Vast and growing economic inequalities rooted in vast and growing political inequalities are the
preeminent problem facing the United States today. They are the touchstone of many of the major issues
that vex the country - from mass incarceration to mass underemployment to climate change to the economic
recovery of Wall Street but not Main Street and Martin Luther King Street.
In the face of the enormous political chasm between the 99 percent and the 1 percent, a strategy
of elite-led, bipartisan deal-cutting premised on calls for "shared sacrifice" leaves this grossly
inequitable economic and political fabric intact. As such, the 99 percent are caught in the vise
of small-bore policies from their supposed friends and allies while their opponents encircle them
with scorched-earth politics.
The Obama administration and much of the leadership of the Democratic Party took extreme care
not to upset these basic interests. As a consequence, they squandered an exceptional political opportunity.
The financial crisis and the Great Recession were one of those moments when members of the business
sector were "stripped naked as leaders and strategists,"
in the words of Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. The
Great Depression was another.
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office, the Hoover administration was thoroughly
discredited, as was the business sector. FDR recognized that the country was ready for a clean break
with the past, and symbolically and substantively cultivated that sentiment. The break did not come
from FDR alone. Massive numbers of Americans mobilized in unions, women's organizations, veterans'
groups, senior citizen associations, and civil right groups to ensure that the country switched course.
During the Depression, President Roosevelt was forced to broaden the public understanding of crime
to include corporate crime. The Senate's riveting
Pecora hearings during the waning days of the Hoover administration and the start of the Roosevelt
presidency turned a scorching public spotlight on the malfeasance of the corporate sector and its
complicity in sparking the Depression.
As he put the House of Morgan and other bankers on trial, Ferdinand Pecora, chief counsel
of the Senate Banking Committee, helped popularize during the age of Al Capone a term not heard today:
the "bankster." These hearings compelled Roosevelt to support stricter financial regulation than
he might have otherwise.
One cannot talk about crime in the streets today without talking about crime in the suites.
Over the past four decades, the public obsession with getting tougher on street crime coincided with
the retreat of the state in regulating corporate malfeasance - everything from hedge funds to credit
default swaps to workplace safety. Keeping the focus on street crime was a convenient strategy to
shift public attention and resources from crime in the suites to crime in the streets.
As billionaire financier Warren Buffet
quipped
in 2006, "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making
war, and we're winning." President Obama's persistent calls during his first term for a politics
that rose above politics and championed "shared sacrifice" denied this reality and demobilized the
public. It thwarted the consolidation of a compelling alternative political vision on which new coalitions
and movements could be forged to challenge fundamental inequalities, including mass imprisonment
and the growing tentacles of the carceral state.
The political intransigence lavishly on display in the Republican Party - which repeatedly
brought Congress to a caustic standstill - obscured how a major segment of the Democratic Party was
loath to mount any major challenge to the entrenched financial and political interests that have
captured American politics today.
For all the bluster about political polarization, the debate over what to do about the economy,
the social safety net, and financial regulation - like the elite discussions over what to do about
mass incarceration - oscillated within a very narrow range defined by neoliberalism for much of Obama's
tenure. Indeed, the president repeatedly bragged that the federal budget for discretionary spending
on domestic programs had shrunk under his watch to the smallest share of the economy since Dwight
Eisenhower was president.
People are Choosing to Work Part-Time, Why Is that So Hard
for Economic Reporters to Understand?
It is really amazing how major news outlets can't seem to
find reporters who understand the most basic things about the
economy. I guess this is evidence of the skills shortage.
Bloomberg takes the hit today in a piece * discussing
areas where the economy is likely to make progress in a Trump
administration and areas where it is not. In a middle "muddle
through" category, we find "Full-Time Work Is Likely to Stay
Elusive for Part-Timers." The story is:
"Trump has highlighted the number of part-time workers in
the U.S. economy, saying 'far too many people' are working in
positions for which they are overqualified and underpaid.
While the proportion of full-time workers in the labor force
remains below its pre-recession high, it's made up most of
the ground lost during the downturn. But it hasn't budged
much in the last two years, even as the job market has gotten
tighter. Some economists point to the gig economy as the
driving force (pun intended) behind part-timers. Others see a
broader shift in the labor market that's left many workers
stuck with shorter hours, lower wages and weaker benefits."
Okay, wrong, wrong, and wrong. In its monthly employment
survey (the Current Population Survey - CPS), the Bureau of
Labor Statistics asks people whether they are working more or
less than 35 hours a week. If they are working less than 35
hours they are classified as part-time. The survey then asks
the people who are working part-time why they are working
part-time. It divides these workers into two categories,
people who work part-time for economic reasons (i.e. they
could not find full-time jobs) and people who work part-time
for non-economic reasons. In other words the second group has
chosen to work part-time.
If we look at the numbers for involuntary part-time
workers, it dropped from 6.8 million in December of 2014 to
5.6 million in December of 2016. That is a drop of 1.2
million, or almost 18 percent. That would not seem to fit the
description of not budging much. Of course Bloomberg may have
been adding in the number of people who chose to work part,
which grew by 1.4 million over this two year period, leaving
little net change in total part-time employment.
Of course there is a world of difference between a
situation where people need full-time jobs, but work
part-time, because that is the only work they can find and a
situation in which people work part-time because they don't
want to spend 40 hours a week on the job. Most of us would
probably consider it a good thing if people who wanted to
spend time with their kids, or did not want to full time for
some other reason, had the option to work part-time. This is
what in fact has been happening and it has been going on for
three years, not two.
Come on Bloomberg folks -- did you ever hear of the
Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "Obamacare")? As a result of
Obamacare workers are no longer dependent on employers for
health care insurance. This means that many people have opted
to work part rather than full time. This has opened up full
time jobs ** for people who need them, even though it has
left total part-time employment little changed.
In total, the number of people involuntarily working
part-time has fallen by 2.2 million since the ACA has been in
effect, while the number choosing to work part-time has risen
by 2.4 million. The sharpest increase in voluntary part-time
employment has been among young mothers *** and older workers
**** just below Medicare age.
It is really incredible that this shift from involuntary
part-time to voluntary part-time is not more widely known. It
is a very important outcome from the ACA.
My impression here is that in this particular issue Dean
Baker is out of touch with reality.
Question: how many people in this 1.2 million drop because
they retired at 62 forced to take a half of their SS pension,
or left workforce?
Also, can you consider Wal-Mart or Shop Right cashier
working 36 hours for $7.5 an hour and without any benefits
(as he/she can't afford them) fully employed.
Single mothers are probably the most important category to
analyze here.
This is an example of how the libertarian and Republican
conceptions of liberty and freedom are so off the mark.
When people can afford to work part time instead of full time
to do things like raise children, attain higher education or
start companies, that is freedom. When the inaccessibility of
health insurance forces them to work full time when they
would otherwise prefer not, that is not enhanced freedom.
"... By Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including the Guardian, Salon, and the Progressive, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial. Originally published at emptywheel ..."
"... The Count of Monte-Cristo ..."
"... I believe it was Chomsky who said that the print media has content and filler, the content is the advertising and the filler is everything else. ..."
"... As advertising revenues have gone down, the print media may be looking for a new operating funds, maybe from wealthy owners (Bezos, Carlos Slim) paying for their views to be featured, maybe from US government hidden funding to "counter fake news" that is contrary to the story the elite wants told. ..."
"... If there is a feedback loop in the mainstream media, it is very slow and does not correct errors to result in lasting reform. ..."
"... The Times promoted the Iraq war and then had the Bill Keller retrospective "we got it wrong" years later. ..."
"... Then the Times moved onto promoting military action in Libya, the Ukraine and Syria. ..."
Yves here. Marcy points out how what is considered to be "news" has changed greatly over time,
and that the requirement that news be objective is recent and marketing-driven.
This essay covers a great deal of important ground. I'd like to add one topic, which is the role
of propaganda. Even though organizations have done all sorts of evangelizing, the use of the media
and social networks of the day for that purpose is relatively recent. Alex Carey in his book Taking
the Risk Out of Democracy dates it to the early 1900s. One early, successful campaign led by the
National Association of Manufacturers, already a leader in campaigning against organized labor, was
to counter the backlash against immigration, which was then seen as a threat to American values and
communities. One of their initiatives
was institutionalizing "Americanization Day," later rebranded as "Independence Day."
As we've discussed before, the first full-bore government-sponsored propaganda campaign took place
in World War I. The Creel Committee, an agency of the Federal government officially called the Committee
on Public Information used all the communication vehicles of its day, not just newspapers. An overview
from Wikipedia:
The committee used newsprint, posters, radio, telegraph, cable and movies to broadcast its
message. It recruited about 75,000 "Four Minute Men," volunteers who spoke about the war at social
events for an ideal length of four minutes, considering that the average human attention span
was judged at the time to be four minutes. They covered the draft, rationing, war bond drives,
victory gardens and why America was fighting. It was estimated that by the end of the war, they
had made more than 7.5 million speeches to 314 million people in 5,200 communities. They were
advised to keep their message positive, always use their own words and avoid "hymns of hate."
For ten days in May 1917, the Four Minute Men were expected to promote "Universal Service by Selective
Draft" in advance of national draft registration on June 5, 1917.
The CPI staged events designed for specific ethnic groups. For instance, Irish-American tenor
John McCormack sang at Mount Vernon before an audience representing Irish-American organizations.
The Committee also targeted the American worker and, endorsed by Samuel Gompers, filled factories
and offices with posters designed to promote the critical role of American labor in the success
of the war effort.
The CPI's activities were so thorough that historians later stated, using the example of a
typical midwestern American farm family, that
Every item of war news they saw-in the country weekly, in magazines, or in the city daily
picked up occasionally in the general store-was not merely officially approved information
but precisely the same kind that millions of their fellow citizens were getting at the same
moment. Every war story had been censored somewhere along the line- at the source, in transit,
or in the newspaper offices in accordance with 'voluntary' rules established by the CPI.
The Creel Committee was able to turn America from being firmly pacifist to being eager to fight
the evil Germans in a mere 18 months. In Serbia, a concerted propaganda campaign was able to turn
public polls radically in a mere six weeks.
In other words, the hysteria about fake news appears to be members of the officialdom realizing
that their traditional propaganda channels don't work because too many people get information on
the Internet, and they can no longer orchestrate a Mighty Wurlitzer of unified opinion. This may
seem obvious but surprisingly few people are willing to say that in simple terms. The reflex of government
opinion managers and their media allies is to shut down or delegitimate offending outlets. But there
are too many, not just in the US but overseas, for them to do that other than by severely curtailing
Internet publication. Are they prepared to go the route of the Chinese government in terms of restricting
foreign access and censoring domestic writers? That's the end game if they are serious about stopping
what TPTB deems to be "fake news".
By Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties.
She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including the Guardian, Salon,
and the Progressive, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy
of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial. Originally
published at emptywheel
I've been getting into multiple Twitter fights about the term "fake news" of late, a topic about
which I feel strongly but which I don't have time to reargue over and over. So here are the reasons
I find the term "fake news" to be counterproductive, even aside from the way Washington Post magnified
it with the PropOrNot campaign amidst a series of badly reported articles on Russia that failed WaPo's
own standards of "fake news."
Most people who use the term "fake news" seem to be fetishizing something they call "news." By
that, they usually mean the pursuit of "the truth" within an editor-and-reporter system of "professional"
news reporting. Even in 2017, they treat that term "news" as if it escapes all biases, with some
still endorsing the idea that "objectivity" is the best route to "truth," even in spite of the way
"objectivity" has increasingly imposed a kind of both-sides false equivalence that the right has
used to move the Overton window in recent years.
I've got news (heh) for you America. What we call "news" is one temporally and geographically
contingent genre of what gets packaged as "news." Much of the world doesn't produce the kind of news
we do, and for good parts of our own history, we didn't either. Objectivity was invented as a marketing
ploy. It is true that during a period of elite consensus, news that we treated as objective succeeded
in creating a unifying national narrative of what most white people believed to be true, and that
narrative was tremendously valuable to ensure the working of our democracy. But even there, "objectivity"
had a way of enforcing centrism. It excluded most women and people of color and often excluded working
class people. It excluded the "truth" of what the US did overseas. It thrived in a world of limited
broadcast news outlets. In that sense, the golden age of objective news depended on a great deal
of limits to the marketplace of ideas, largely chosen by the gatekeeping function of white male elitism.
And, probably starting at the moment Walter Cronkite figured out the Vietnam War was a big myth,
that elite narrative started developing cracks.
But several things have disrupted what we fetishize as news since them. Importantly, news outlets
started demanding major profits, which changed both the emphasis on reporting and the measure of
success. Cable news, starting especially with Fox but definitely extending to MSNBC, aspired to achieve
buzz, and even explicitly political outcomes, bringing US news much closer to what a lot of advanced
democracies have - politicized news.
And all that's before 2002, what I regard as a key year in this history. Not only was traditional
news struggling in the face of heightened profit expectations even as the Internet undercut the press'
traditional revenue model. But at a time of crisis in the financial model of the "news," the press
catastrophically blew the Iraq War, and did so at a time when people like me were able to write "news"
outside of the strictures of the reporter-and-editor arrangement.
I actually think, in an earlier era, the government would have been able to get away with its
Iraq War lies, because there wouldn't be outlets documenting the errors, and there wouldn't have
been ready alternatives to a model that proved susceptible to manipulation. There might eventually
have been a Cronkite moment in the Iraq War, too, but it would have been about the conduct of the
war, not also about the gaming of the "news" process to create the war. But because there was competition,
we saw the Iraq War as a journalistic failure when we didn't see earlier journalistic complicity
in American foreign policy as such.
Since then, of course, the underlying market has continued to change. Optimistically, new outlets
have arisen. Some of them - perhaps most notably HuffPo and BuzzFeed and Gawker before Peter Thiel
killed it - have catered to the financial opportunities of the Internet, paying for real journalism
in part with clickbait stories that draw traffic (which is just a different kind of subsidy than
the family-owned project that traditional newspapers often relied on, and these outlets also rely
on other subsidies). I'm pretty excited by some of the journalism BuzzFeed is doing right now, but
it's worth reflecting their very name nods to clickbait.
More importantly, the "center" of our national - indeed, global - discourse shifted from elite
reporter-and-editor newspapers to social media, and various companies - almost entirely American
- came to occupy dominant positions in that economy. That comes with the good and the bad. It permits
the formulation of broader networks; it permits crisis on the other side of the globe to become news
over here, in some but not all spaces, it permits women and people of color to engage on an equal
footing with people previously deemed the elite (though very urgent digital divide issues still leave
billions outside this discussion). It allows our spooks to access information that Russia needs to
hack to get with a few clicks of a button. It also means the former elite narrative has to compete
with other bubbles, most of which are not healthy and many of which are downright destructive. It
fosters abuse.
But the really important thing is that the elite reporter-and-editor oligopoly was replaced with
a marketplace driven by a perverse marriage of our human psychology and data manipulation (and often,
secret algorithms). Even assuming net neutrality, most existing discourse exists in that marketplace.
That reality has negative effects on everything, from financially strapped reporter-and-editor outlets
increasingly chasing clicks to Macedonian teenagers inventing stories to make money to attention
spans that no longer get trained for long reads and critical thinking.
The other thing to remember about this historical narrative is that there have always been stories
pretending to present the real world that were not in fact the real world. Always. Always always
always. Indeed, there are
academic arguments that
our concept of "fiction" actually arises out of a necessary legal classification for what gets published
in the newspaper. "Facts" were insults of the king you could go to prison for. "Fiction" was stories
about kings that weren't true and therefore wouldn't get you prison time (obviously, really authoritarian
regimes don't honor this distinction, which is an important lesson in their contingency). I have
been told that fact/fiction moment didn't happen in all countries, and it happened at different times
in different countries (roughly tied, in my opinion, to the moment when the government had to sustain
legitimacy via the press).
But even after that fact/fiction moment, you would always see factual stories intermingling with
stuff so sensational that we would never regard it as true. But such sensational not-true stories
definitely helped to sell newspapers. Most people don't know this because we generally learn a story
via which our fetishized objective news is the end result of a process of earlier news, but news
outlets - at least in the absence of heavy state censorship - have always been very heterogeneous.
As many of you know, a big part of my dissertation covered actual fiction in newspapers.
The Count of Monte-Cristo , for example, was published in France's then equivalent of the
WSJ. It wasn't the only story about an all powerful figure with ties to Napoleon Bonaparte that delivered
justice that appeared in newspapers of the day. Every newspaper offered competing versions, and those
sold newspapers at a moment of increasing industrialization of the press in France. But even at a
time when the "news" section of the newspaper presented largely curations of parliamentary debates,
everything else ran the gamut from "fiction," to sensational stuff (often reporting on technology
or colonies), to columns to advertisements pretending to be news.
After 1848 and 1851, the literary establishment put out alarmed calls to discipline the literary
sphere, which led to changes that made such narratives less accessible to the kind of people who
might overthrow a king. That was the "fictional narrative" panic of the time, one justified by events
of 1848.
Anyway, if you don't believe me that there has always been fake news, just go to a checkout line
and read the National Enquirer, which sometimes does cover people like Hillary Clinton or Angela
Merkel. "But people know that's fake news!" people say. Not all, and not all care. It turns out,
some people like to consume fictional narratives (I have actually yet to see analysis of how many
people don't realize or care that today's Internet fake news is not true). In fact, everyone likes
to consume fictional narratives - it's a fundamental part of what makes us human - but some of us
believe there are norms about whether fictional narratives should be allowed to influence how we
engage in politics.
Not that that has ever stopped people from letting religion - a largely fictional narrative -
dictate political decisions.
So to sum up this part of my argument: First, the history of journalism is about the history of
certain market conditions, conditions which always get at least influenced by the state, but which
in so-called capitalist countries also tend to produce bottle necks of power. In the 50s, it was
the elite. Now it's Silicon Valley. And that's true not just here! The bottle-neck of power for much
of the world is Silicon Valley. To understand what dictates the kinds of stories you get from a particular
media environment, you need to understand where the bottle-necks are. Today's bottle-neck has created
both what people like to call "fake news" and a whole bunch of other toxins.
But also, there has never been a time in media where not-true stories didn't comingle with true
stories, and at many times in history the lines between them were not clear to many consumers. Plus,
not-true stories, of a variety of types, can often have a more powerful influence than true ones
(think about how much our national security state likes series like 24). Humans are wired for narrative,
not for true or false narrative.
Which brings us to what some people are calling "fake news" - as if both "fake" and "news" aren't
just contingent terms across the span of media - and insisting it has never existed before. These
people suggest the advent of deliberately false narratives, produced both by partisans, entrepreneurs
gaming ad networks, as well as state actors trying to influence our politics, narratives that feed
on human proclivity for sensationalism (though stories from this year showed Trump supporters had
more of this than Hillary supporters) served via the Internet, are a new and unique threat, and possibly
the biggest threat in our media environment right now.
Let me make clear: I do think it's a threat, especially in an era where local trusted news is
largely defunct. I think it is especially concerning because powers of the far right are using it
to great effect. But I think pretending this is a unique moment in history - aside from the characteristics
of the marketplace - obscures the areas (aside from funding basic education and otherwise fostering
critical thinking) that can most effectively combat it. I especially encourage doing what we can
to disrupt the bottle-neck - one that happens to be in Silicon Valley - that plays on human nature.
Google, Facebook, and Germany have all taken initial steps which may limit the toxins that get spread
via a very American bottle-neck.
I'm actually more worried about the manipulation of which stories get fed
by big data. Trump claims to have used it to drive down turnout; and the first he worked with is
part of a larger information management company. The far right is probably achieving more with these
tailored messages than Vladimir Putin is with his paid trolls.
The thing is: the antidote to both of these problems are to fix the bottle-neck.
But I also think that the most damaging non-true news story of the year was Bret Baier's claim
that Hillary was going to be indicted, as even after it was retracted it magnified the damage of
Jim Comey's interventions. I always raise that in Twitter debates, and people tell me oh that's just
bad journalism not fake news. It was a deliberate manipulation of the news delivery system (presumably
by FBI Agents) in the same way the manipulation of Facebooks algorithms feeds so-called fake news.
But it had more impact because more people saw it and people may retain news delivered as news more.
It remains a cinch to manipulate the reporter-and-editor news process (particularly in an era driven
by clicks and sensationalism and scoops), and that is at least as major a threat to democracy as
non-elites consuming made up stories about the Pope.
I'll add that there are special categories of non-factual news that deserve notice. Much stock
reporting, especially in the age of financialization, is just made up hocus pocus designed to keep
the schlubs whom the elite profit off of in the market. And much reporting on our secret foreign
policy deliberately reports stuff the reporter knows not to be true. David Sanger's recent amnesia
of his own reporting on StuxNet is a hilarious example of this, as is all the Syria reporting that
pretends we haven't intervened there. Frankly, even aside from the more famous failures, a lot of
Russian coverage obscures reality, which discredits reports on what is a serious issue. I raise these
special categories because they are the kind of non-true news that elites endorse, and as such don't
raise the alarm that Macedonian teenagers making a buck do.
The latest panic about "fake news" - Trump's labeling of CNN and Buzzfeed as such for disseminating
the dossier that media outlets chose not to disseminate during the election - suffers from some of
the same characteristics, largely because parts of it remain shrouded in clandestine networks (and
because the provenance remains unclear). If American power relies (as it increasingly does) on secrets
and even outright lies, who's to blame the proles for inventing their own narratives, just like the
elite do?
Two final points.
First, underlying most of this argument is an argument about what happens when you subject the
telling of true stories to certain conditions of capitalism. There is often a tension in this process,
as capitalism may make "news" (and therefore full participation in democracy) available to more people,
but to popularize that news, businesses do things that taint the elite's idealized notion of what
true story telling in a democracy should be. Furthermore, at no moment in history I'm aware of has
there been a true "open" market for news. It is always limited by the scarcity of outlets and bandwidth,
by laws, by media ownership patterns, and by the historically contingent bottle-necks that dictate
what kind of news may be delivered most profitably. One reason I loathe the term "fake news" is because
its users think the answer lies in non-elite consumers or in producers and not in the marketplace
itself, a marketplace created in and largely still benefitting the US. If "fake news" is a problem,
then it's a condemnation of the marketplace of ideas largely created by the US and elites in the
US need to attend to that.
Finally, one reason there is such a panic about "fake news" is because the western ideology of
neoliberalism has failed. It has led to increased authoritarianism, decreased qualify of life in
developed countries (but not parts of Africa and other developing nations), and it has led to serial
destabilizing wars along with the refugee crises that further destabilize Europe. It has failed in
the same way that communism failed before it, but the elites backing it haven't figured this out
yet. I'll write more on this (Ian Walsh has been
doing good work here ). All details of the media environment aside, this has disrupted the value-laden
system in which "truth" exists, creating a great deal of panic and confusion among the elite that
expects itself to lead the way out of this morass. Part of what we're seeing in "fake news" panic
stems from that, as well as a continued disinterest in accountability for the underlying policies
- the Iraq War and the Wall Street crash and aftermath especially - enabled by failures in our elite
media environment. But our media environment is likely to be contested until such time as a viable
ideology forms to replace failed neoliberalism. Sadly, that ideology will be Trump_vs_deep_state unless the
elite starts making the world a better place for average folks. Instead, the elite is policing discourse-making
by claiming other things - the bad true and false narratives it, itself, doesn't propagate - as illegitimate.
"Fake news" is a problem. But it is a minor problem compared to our other discursive problems.
Episode 2 of the new gameshow "The Wall", which features up to ~$12 Million in possible prizes,
they cheat the very first question.
Confirm it for yourself. The 'couple' (the game is for 'couples) is a military family. The
hot-shot helo-pilot doesn't know who won the tortise and the hare.
He screams, the hare! And presses the button in plain sight.
Never-the-less he is rewarded a win. His wife later cannot tell the nicknames of the F-16 and
the F-18 apart for 100% sure.
Once upon a time, the search string "I have a secret fake" in Google would return lone string
of a book where a lone voice in the wilderness put in print that the whole show was 'managed.'
A sophisticated re-viewing shows it to have been 'faked' this is all back in the 50's. It's
coming back, but two years after my last research on this, the same search string only gave me
the above link to . what?
The tortise wins. Correction: The show's later episodes (just watched) reveal that answers
in transit can be changed. So this is no repeat of 'Card Sharks' (Time magazine complicity included.)
It's awkward when nobody quite knows what exactly the rules are and the prize is so high.
Let us remember Charles "The Genius Of All Time" Van Doren, and his skyrocket fame (what's
the end point of a skyrocket's trajectory, again?) in the Great Quiz Show Manipulation of the
'50s and early '60s, this story link from the NYT in 2008 kind of lifts some of the corners of
the curtain that the Bernaysian manipulators hide behind, "After 49 years, Charles Van Doren talks,"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/opinion/21iht-edbeam.1.14660467.html
"For evil to triumph, all that is required is for a few good people to remain silent," or some
such sh!t.
And there's this, on another YUUUGE cultural phenom, "The $64,000 Question," which was one
of those "quiz" game shows my parents and us kids sat mesmerized watching, with visions of "free
money" dancing in our peabrains, and which "program" (what a wonderful meme-name for what "media"
does to us mopes) pure deceit and buzz-building on a par with state Lotteries: "The American Experience:
The $64,000 Question,"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/quizshow/peopleevents/pande06.html
(note that this was from PBS, in 1999, before the Reagan Rot had really gained a full head
of steam).
Once again, the popular interpretation and infusion and internalization of "information" displaying
and relating, "those who have eyes, let them see," the unhappy sicknesses of a pleasure-and-greed-driven
human infestation gets it all wrong, finds no wisdom leading out of the cave, turns possible insights
into just more grist for the Bernaysian mills to roll out
"Jerr-Y! Jerr-Y! Jerr-Y!" "And in the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo "
'In other words, the hysteria about fake news appears to be members of the officialdom realizing
that their traditional propaganda channels don't work because too many people get information
on the Internet, and they can no longer orchestrate a Mighty Wurlitzer of unified opinion.'
Bang on Yves. And I would add that if you run a propaganda machine, and are a little paranoid,
any 'unauthorised' story on the web looks like someone else's propaganda.
Its wrong to put all this down to internet news however. Adam Curtis' 'Bitter Lake' is a must-see
on this topic. Just like in 1980s Soviet Union where the stories of Russian greatness were so
obviously contradicted by the experience of ordinary Russians of a failing state, the fakery of
the war on terror propaganda has worn away our trust in the Mighty Wurlitzer. Curtis linked the
cultural collapse of the Soviet Union intrinsically to the failure of the war in Afghanistan and
the mirror it held up to the supposed values of Soviet Society, as trumpeted by their version
of the Mighty Wurlitzer. And maybe he's right.
1933 Germany, 1989 Sovient Union, 2016 USA. All three stemmed from failures of the Mighty Wurlitzer.
The big question is whether we will long for it back.
One for Curtis hardcore fans only (he really stretched his already tenuous hold on the conventions
of documentary making in this one) but his latest,
HyperNormalisation , takes the themes you refer to in your comment above and expands on them
to explain how we got to Fake News.
The last CEO of the company, a publicly traded company, where my dad worked before the sale
to GE told my dad that in the future companies can't go public if they don't want to work for
Wall Street wolves. This was around '95. Dad still goes to company reunions. Those weirdos liked
their jobs.
Of course, the longer trend is business formation related. The Internet and social media booms
are over, and those were the new IPOs of the last 20 years. The ends of growth are the real issues.
I don't think anybody is "fetishizing news," but whilst its true that there's a far greater
variety of information sources today, and many of them are not subject to the pressures of conventional
media, the implication that somehow the overall level of "truth" has gone up is not sustainable.
If anything it's probably gone down. Those of us of a certain age remember a time when there were
far more newspapers than today, when ownership was spread much more widely, and where newspapers
had a lot more staff and were under a lot less commercial pressure than is the case now. You could,
and did, allow for political bias, and it was possible, though not common, for blatant untruths
to be published. But that was more difficult than it is today, because the barriers to entry were
much higher, and the total media space was much smaller.
I also think its unfair to blame the problem solely on the effects of neoliberalism, damaging
as those have been. Journalists themselves have to bear some of the blame. In the 1990s, it became
fashionable to deride objectivity (mere "objectivity, a white, patriarchal western concept) as
an objective of journalism. Because total objectivity was impossible, it was said, you shouldn't
even try. And as a number of journalists at the time argued "you can't be objective between good
and evil." The same people who lied about WMD in Iraq in 2002 had already lied about Bosnia a
decade before, were to lie about Darfur a few years later and are busy lying about Syria, the
Ukraine and "free trade" today. In each case, the argument is the same: the service of a higher
moral principle. I've even heard it argued that Trump is such a terrible human being that journalists
have not only a right but an actual duty to print anything that might cause him harm. To the extent
that you abandon the demand that journalists should do their professional best to be as accurate
as possible, and you see "news" itself as a contested, contingent term, it's hard to rationally
criticise the actors in any of these episodes.
Interesting essay I am not mollified by reading that Google, Facebook and Germany are uniting
to defeat 'fake news' and then remembering the recent rumors (fake news?) that Mark Zuckerberg,
of Facebook, is considering running for President so what happens when the bottle-neck king also
runs the nation, or is even just thinking of it (Zuckerberg finding God recently comes to mind),
when most voters are getting their news from their Facebook news feeds ? Would something mildly
critical of Mark Zuckerberg survive 'fake' news review ?
Also, just because China has a walled garden doesn't save them from a torrent of local fake
news. In the US the current business model of the internet news is actually a greater danger to
democracy and that is the automated binning of consumers into narrow categories (right, left,
techie etc) from which they find it hard to stray, if they even think of it, and so it makes it
hard for a reader to see in his newsfeed countervailing news or analysis, people thus get polarized.
The effort to find different/opposing opinions is not painless and quite by design. This trap
has to be broken.
Quality education of the population and freer access to information are greater defenses of
democracy and freedom the any Facebook designed filter.
great essay. Makes me think there is some bedrock reality beneath all the noise that keeps
us rational enough to survive. All forms of life display good judgment; practicality. So do we.
So I'm not very concerned that we might be pants-less without an ideology to shroud all the embarrassing
craziness. I'm encouraged by that prospect.
Sheep get slaughtered I choose not to be a sheep. I had no choice in the 60s, when I had
three oligopoly networks to choose from. With the Internet, I am my own reporter. This is more
like how the printing press destroyed the Catholic Church. I make my own narrative, I don't let
anyone else do it for me. Facts are few and far between, but they are just signposts on my own
superhighway which I build myself. Are my beliefs factual? Are they for anyone? That was a rhetorical
question. People who think their beliefs are The Truth are maniacs.
This whole "fake news" business is all about suppressing dissent, as others have noted.
The media tried to coronate Clinton. With falling advertising revenues in some cases, and decreasing
trust in the mainstream media, they have begun to panic. They know that the people realize that
they are the Pravda of plutocracy.
At the same time, the alternative media has grown with the Internet. It has reached growing
members and allowed people to see the truth.
The reason why propaganda like "fake news" exists is to create a false narrative that can be
repeated that people can believe in. The other of course is to force people to comply or face
professional and financial consequences.
The thing is, I think that we've reached the limits of propaganda. Inequality has reached an
extent that the myth that America is a meritocracy has failed, while efforts to force the American
people to accept war have been faced with opposition.
What is unsurprising is that the media does signal what the insiders want/plan to do.
I was in a library that had some old bound Life Magazines and decided to see what the Life
covered just prior to the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
There was an article about a Midwest congressmen who was visiting his district, who knew his
constituents did not want to go to war, but seemed to see the US entry into war likely.
Even Hollywood got into the act, as the Sergeant York (American WWI hero) 1941 movie was released
on July 2, 1941, well before Pearl Harbor.
There seems to be little penalty for journalists getting it wrong, for example Tom Friedman,
Nicholas Kristof, and Michael Gordon of the Times still have jobs after their "let's promote the
Iraq War effort".
Judith Miller was the lone sacrificial lamb.
Some of them even re-write history, as sanctimonious Nicholas Kristof, while recently pimping
for the USA's involvement in Syria (on humanitarian grounds, of course), pushed a "trust me on
Syria" story by asserting his prior wisdom in his alleged strong opposition to the Iraq war.
Yet I archived an August 27, 2002 column in which he wrote:
"Iraq may well be different. President Bush has convinced me that there is no philosophical
reason we should not overthrow the Iraqi government, given that Iraqis themselves would be better
off, along with the rest of the world. But Mr. Bush has not overcome some practical concerns about
an invasion."
What about ethical concerns, Kristof?
I believe it was Chomsky who said that the print media has content and filler, the content
is the advertising and the filler is everything else.
As advertising revenues have gone down, the print media may be looking for a new operating
funds, maybe from wealthy owners (Bezos, Carlos Slim) paying for their views to be featured, maybe
from US government hidden funding to "counter fake news" that is contrary to the story the elite
wants told.
If there is a feedback loop in the mainstream media, it is very slow and does not correct errors
to result in lasting reform.
The Times promoted the Iraq war and then had the Bill Keller retrospective "we got it wrong"
years later.
Then the Times moved onto promoting military action in Libya, the Ukraine and Syria.
The Times recently had an "Obama regrets Libya" retrospective, what other "we got it wrong"
retrospectives will occur in the future?
In the third paragraph Marcy begins talking about objectivity and then shifts to denigrating
"objectivity" without a word about what the scare quotes mean to her. Now I understand that the
language used by an oppressive system can itself be oppressive. But if "objectivity" omitted women
and people of color, well, clearly that's bad, but what does that have to do with objectivity?
Maybe I'm just too old and out of touch to get the post modern project to dismantle objectivity
and replace it with self-centered wishful thinking. But without objectivity, we would never have
seen the civil rights movement or the rise of feminism in the sixties.
I was still very young during the civil rights movement so I won't talk about what I don't
really know first hand, but the rise of feminism took place in the prime of my passionate youth.
What many middle class women were experiencing in the '50s was a complete isolation in the suburbs
and a feeling (due largely to rampant blaming the victim) that all the problems of their lives
were their own personal problems. It was not until politically active women began to share their
experiences in consciousness raising groups that they discovered that they were not alone in their
experiences i.e. that many of their so-called personal problems were objectively imposed
upon the entire group of women by the oppressive society. That is, these were not personal problems
at all, they were socially constructed problems that effected all women to some degree. Without
objectivity there could be no oppression theory, consciousness raising groups are transformed
into support groups, oppression theory becomes psychology, and the oppression of women is dissolved
into nothing more than the personal problems of individual women. Don't throw out the baby with
the bath water.
Here is what Bloomberg peddled for news yesterday.
Donald Trump's advisers have told U.K. officials that the incoming president's first foreign
trip will be a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin
, potentially in Reykjavik within
weeks of taking office, the Sunday Times reported.
Trump plans to begin working on a deal to limit nuclear weapons, the newspaper said, without providing
details. It cited an unidentified source for the summit plans, and added that
Moscow is ready
to agree to the meeting
, based on comments from officials at the Russian embassy in London.
The paper, citing an unidentified adviser to Trump, told the Times that the president-elect,
who will be sworn in on Jan. 20, will meet with Putin at a neutral venue "very soon."
In eyeing Iceland's capital, Trump's team may be hoping to recreate the optics of a Reagan-era nuclear
agreement. Former President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, then general secretary of the Soviet
Union's Communist Party, held a two-day summit in Reykjavik in October 1986 to work on what eventually
became a major nuclear disarmament treaty between the two superpowers in 1987.
Trump's transition team didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Did the media just make up this story out of thin air in an attempt to further deride Trump? I must
admit, only in a bizarre world, such as the one created by the left for the left, is holding meetings
with a military super power in the attempts to normalize relations and preserve peace considered a bad
thing. Alas, we are living in an era of war, where the military industrial complex works overtime to
control useful idiots to foment anger and sway public opinion towards (you guessed it) MOAR WAR.
This story was likely leaked by team Trump on purpose, in order to make the media look like jackass
fools. By leaking falsehoods to an ornery and invective media, Trump keeps them on their toes and makes
them second guess anything they hear coming out of his quarters, an effective disinformation strategy
used to fool an enemy during a time of war.
Strange feeling that pressure put on Trump to divest
association with Putin / Russia by U.S. intelligence community / MSM, is moar
than meets the eye fact sheet. Threats, veiled or otherwise appear to be
perceived deterrents by those in D.C. who would shun any illumination into
their illegal and corrupt activities, thus a Trump / Putin alliance could very
well expose many conspiritors.
Brilliant. This guy is good. All that will be left of the talking parrots and
pretend news media empires will be 18 year old interns translating his tweets and
asking John Lewis for comments to go with Obama's daily preaching to the flock.
The leftover time will be filled with protesters burning tires and viagra
commercials.
"Did the media just make up this story out of thin air in an attempt to
further deride Trump? I must admit, only in a bizarre world, such as the one
created by the left for the left, is holding meetings with a military super
power in the attempts to normalize relations and preserve peace considered a
bad thing. Alas, we are living in an era of war, where the military industrial
complex works overtime to control useful idiots to foment anger and sway public
opinion towards (you guessed it) MOAR WAR."
- Hope there are forensics on this work of fiction
Since 1989 the Political Elite and Corporate Elite don't care who the enemy is
as long as there is an Enemy.
- Except hands off Israel, and don't support
Palestine
- And Except for Saudi Arabia
- And Except for UK, Canada, Mexico, Aus, EU... but we don't mind fucking with
NATO Countries Politics using Operation Gladio type Strategy of Tension or
shipping in Millions of Refugees from M.E.
- And well there are 7-8 countries we want to collapse and maybe Venezuela and
Argentina and Brazil
Yup, this is foreign policy and your foreign policy tax dollars at work.
The MSM is not now, and has never been, "liberal" let alone,"left wing". It's
owned by 5 groups of right-wing billionaires (4 families, Murdochs, Luces, Disneys
and Redstones, and Comcast). When Georgie W was lying us into the Iraq war-crime
they supported the war push with a full-blown media "narrative" of its
inevidebility plus a 4-to1 ratio of rightwing liars (Bush, Rice, Cheney, etc) to
people telling the truth. Still, as my conservative friends noted, foreign
interventions and "nation-building" are anathema to the conservative cause. Thus,
rather than tar them with Bush's failures, I realized that W's administration was
simply a group of hypocrites, rich thugs, intent on serving their wealthy patrons.
May I suggest, after 8 years of the same hypocracy from the Obama administration,
the same dynamic holds. "Liberals", real "left wing people" (I include myself)
would never call for martial law (thanks, Rosy!), any more than they'd support
war-crime invasions (see "Libya", "Ukraine", "Syria") or right-wing coups (see
"Honduras"). Let's let up on the labels, folks. We're all up against a force that
has demonstrated NO IDEOLOGY above and beyond enriching their own tiny, wealthy
cabal. WE is all we got.
I'm not sure barfinmymouth has got it, but you do get it.
Corruption has
peaked and we have to start disassembly.
- Time to destroy powerful political aparati.
- Time to reform, Term Limits, money in politics, unlimited money in
politic, Lobbying, Foreign Lobbying, Foreign Agents in the USA, PACs, Think
Tanks, Foundations,... the Very Heart of English Corruption which it's
adherents run around supporting... Money is not free speech... Corruption of
Media and Oligopolies in General are not Freedom, Liberty or Free Speech
Reorganization in the USA is now required,... organizations have to be
down-sized
my favorite phrase was "left wing militarist war mongers."
the
snowflakes can't take much heat themselves, and go into teary rages at
the insults halloween costumes visit on various underclass ethnic groups,
but are only too ready to send a hail of explosive death on poor, brown
people defending their lands from the empire.
"... But human life depends on whether the accident is caused by a human or not, and the level of intent. It isn't just a case of the price - the law is increasingly locking people up for driving negligence (rightly in my mind) Who gets locked up when the program fails? Or when the program chooses to hit one person and not another in a complex situation? ..."
Electric,
driverless shuttles with no steering wheel and no brake pedal are now operating in Las Vegas.
There's a new thrill on the streets of downtown Las Vegas, where high- and low-rollers alike are
climbing aboard what officials call the first driverless electric shuttle operating on a public U.S.
street.
The oval-shaped shuttle began running Tuesday as part of a 10-day pilot program, carrying up to
12 passengers for free along a short stretch of the Fremont Street East entertainment district.
The vehicle has a human attendant and computer monitor, but no steering wheel and no brake pedals.
Passengers push a button at a marked stop to board it.
The shuttle uses GPS, electronic curb sensors and other technology, and doesn't require lane lines
to make its way.
"The ride was smooth. It's clean and quiet and seats comfortably," said Mayor Carolyn Goodman,
who was among the first public officials to hop a ride on the vehicle developed by the French company
Navya and dubbed Arma.
"I see a huge future for it once they get the technology synchronized," the mayor said Friday.
The top speed of the shuttle is 25 mph, but it's running about 15 mph during the trial, Navya
spokesman Martin Higgins said.
Higgins called it "100 percent autonomous on a programmed route."
"If a person or a dog were to run in front of it, it would stop," he said.
Higgins said it's the company's first test of the shuttle on a public street in the U.S. A similar
shuttle began testing in December at a simulated city environment at a University of Michigan research
center.
The vehicle being used in public was shown earlier at the giant CES gadget show just off the Las
Vegas Strip.
Las Vegas city community development chief Jorge Cervantes said plans call for installing transmitters
at the Fremont Street intersections to communicate red-light and green-light status to the shuttle.
He said the city hopes to deploy several autonomous shuttle vehicles - by Navya or another company
- later this year for a downtown loop with stops at shopping spots, restaurants, performance venues,
museums, a hospital and City Hall.
At a cost estimated at $10,000 a month, Cervantes said the vehicle could be cost-efficient compared
with a single bus and driver costing perhaps $1 million a year.
The company said it has shuttles in use in France, Australia, Switzerland and other countries
that have carried more than 100,000 passengers in more than a year of service.
Don't Worry Tax Drivers
Don't worry taxi drivers because some of my readers say
1.This will never work
2.There is no demand
3.Technology cost will be too high
4.Insurance cost will be too high
5.The unions will not allow it
6.It will not be reliable
7.Vehicles will be stolen
8.It cannot handle snow, ice, or any adverse weather.
9.It cannot handle dogs, kids, or 80-year old men on roller skates who will suddenly veer into
traffic causing a clusterfack that will last days.
10.This is just a test, and testing will never stop.
Real World Analysis
Those in the real world expect millions of long haul truck driving jobs will vanish by 2020-2022
and massive numbers of taxi job losses will happen simultaneously or soon thereafter.
Yes, I bumped up my timeline by two years (from 2022-2024 to 2020-2022) for this sequence of
events.
My new timeline is not all tremendously optimistic given the rapid changes we have seen.
garypaul -> Sudden Debt •Jan 14, 2017 7:56 PM
You're getting carried away Sudden Debt. This robot stuff works great in the lab/test
zones. Whether it is transplantable on a larger scale is still unknown. The interesting thing
is, all my friends who are computer programmers/engineers/scientists are skeptical about this
stuff, but all my friends who know nothing about computer science are absolutely wild about
the "coming age of robots/AI". Go figure.
P.S. Of course the computer experts that are milking investment money with their start-ups
will tell you it's great
ChartreuseDog -> garypaul •Jan 14, 2017 9:15 PM
I'm an engineer (well, OK, an electrical engineering technical team lead). I've been an
electronics and embedded computer engineer for about 4 decades.
This Vegas thing looks real - predefined route, transmitted signals for traffic lights, like
light rail without the rails.
Overall, autonomous driving looks like it's almost here, if you like spinning LIDAR
transceivers on the top of cars.
Highway driving is much closer to being solved, by the way. It's suburban and urban side
streets that are the tough stuff.
garypaul -> ChartreuseDog •Jan 14, 2017 9:22 PM
"Highway driving is much closer to being solved".
That's my whole point. It's not an equation that you "solve". It's a million unexpected
things. Last I heard, autonomous cars were indeed already crashing.
MEFOBILLS -> CRM114 •Jan 14, 2017 6:07 PM
Who gets sued? For how much? What about cases where a human driver wouldn't have
killed anybody?
I've been in corporate discussions about this very topic. At a corporation that makes this
technology by the way. The answer:
Insurance companies and the law will figure it out. Basically, if somebody gets run
over, then the risk does not fall on the technology provider. Corporate rules can be
structured to prevent piercing the corporate veil on this.
Human life does have a price. Insurance figures out how much it costs to pay off, and then
jacks up rates accordingly.
CRM114 -> MEFOBILLS •Jan 14, 2017 6:20 PM
Thanks, that's interesting, although I must say that isn't a solution, it's a hope that
someone else will come up with one.
But human life depends on whether the accident is caused by a human or not, and the level
of intent. It isn't just a case of the price - the law is increasingly locking people up for
driving negligence (rightly in my mind) Who gets locked up when the program fails? Or when the
program chooses to hit one person and not another in a complex situation?
At the moment, corporate manslaughter laws are woefully inadequate. There's clearly one law
for the rich and another for everyone else. Mary Barra would be wearing an orange jumpsuit
otherwise.
I am unaware of any automatic machinery which operates in public areas and carries
significant risk. Where accidents have happened in the past(e.g.elevators), either the
machinery gets changed to remove the risk, or use is discontinued, or the public is separated
from the machinery. I don't think any of these are possible for automatic vehicles.
TuPhat -> shovelhead •Jan 14, 2017 7:53 PM
Elevators have no choice of route, only how high or low you want to go. autos have no
comparison. Disney world has had many robotic attractions for decades but they are still only
entertainment. keep entertaining yourself Mish. when I see you on the road I will easily pass
you by.
MEFOBILLS -> Hulk •Jan 14, 2017 6:12 PM
The future is here: See movie "obsolete" on Amazon. Free if you have prime.
This is so exciting! Just think about the possibilities here... Shuttles could be outfitted
with all kinds of great gizmos to identify their passengers based on RFID chips in credit
cards, facial recognition software, voice prints, etc. Then, depending on who is controlling
the software, the locks on the door could engage and the shuttle could drive around town
dropping of its passengers to various locations eager for their arrival. Trivial to round up
illegal aliens, parole violators, or people with standing warrants for arrest. Equally easy to
nab people who are delinquent on their taxes, credit cards, mortgages, and spousal support.
With a little info from Facebook or Google, a drop-off at the local attitude-adjustment
facility might be desirable for those who frequent alternative media or have unhealthy
interests in conspiracy theories or the activities at pizza parlors. Just think about the
wonderful possibilties here!
Twee Surgeon -> PitBullsRule •Jan 14, 2017 6:29 PM
Will unemployed taxi drivers be allowed on the bus with a bottle of vodka and a gallon of
gas with a rag in it ?
When the robot trucks arrive at the robot factory and are unloaded by robot forklifts, who
will buy the end products ?
It won't be truck drivers, taxi drivers or automated production line workers.
The only way massive automation would work is if some people were planning on a vastly reduced
population in the future. It has happened before, they called it the Black Death. The Cultural
and Economic consequences of it in Europe were enormous, world changing and permanent.
"... The unionization rate has plummeted over the last four decades, but this is the result of policy decisions, not automation. Canada, a country with a very similar economy and culture, had no remotely comparable decline in unionization over this period. ..."
"... The unemployment rate and overall strength of the labor market is also an important factor determining workers' ability to secure their share of the benefits of productivity growth in wages and other benefits. When the Fed raises interest rates to deliberately keep workers from getting jobs, this is not the result of automation. ..."
"... It is also not automation alone that allows some people to disproportionately get the gains from growth. The average pay of doctors in the United States is over $250,000 a year because they are powerful enough to keep out qualified foreign doctors. They require that even established foreign doctors complete a U.S. residency program before they are allowed to practice medicine in the United States. If we had a genuine free market in physicians' services every MRI would probably be read by a much lower paid radiologist in India rather than someone here pocketing over $400,000 a year. ..."
Weak Labor Market: President Obama Hides Behind Automation
It really is shameful how so many people, who certainly should know better, argue that automation
is the factor depressing the wages of large segments of the workforce and that education (i.e.
blame the ignorant workers) is the solution. President Obama takes center stage in this picture
since he said almost exactly this in his farewell address earlier in the week. This misconception
is repeated in a Claire Cain Miller's New York Times column * today. Just about every part of
the story is wrong.
Starting with the basic story of automation replacing workers, we have a simple way of measuring
this process, it's called "productivity growth." And contrary to what the automation folks tell
you, productivity growth has actually been very slow lately.
[Graph]
The figure above shows average annual rates of productivity growth for five year periods, going
back to 1952. As can be seen, the pace of automation (productivity growth) has actually been quite
slow in recent years. It is also projected by the Congressional Budget Office and most other forecasters
to remain slow for the foreseeable future, so the prospect of mass displacement of jobs by automation
runs completely counter to what we have been seeing in the labor market.
Perhaps more importantly the idea that productivity growth is bad news for workers is 180 degrees
at odds with the historical experience. In the period from 1947 to 1973, productivity growth averaged
almost 3.0 percent, yet the unemployment rate was generally low and workers saw rapid wage gains.
The reason was that workers had substantial bargaining power, in part because of strong unions,
and were able to secure the gains from productivity growth for themselves in higher living standards,
including more time off in the form of paid vacation days and paid sick days. (Shorter work hours
sustain the number of jobs in the face rising productivity.)
The unionization rate has plummeted over the last four decades, but this is the result
of policy decisions, not automation. Canada, a country with a very similar economy and culture,
had no remotely comparable decline in unionization over this period.
The unemployment rate and overall strength of the labor market is also an important factor
determining workers' ability to secure their share of the benefits of productivity growth in wages
and other benefits. When the Fed raises interest rates to deliberately keep workers from getting
jobs, this is not the result of automation.
It is also not automation alone that allows some people to disproportionately get the gains
from growth. The average pay of doctors in the United States is over $250,000 a year because they
are powerful enough to keep out qualified foreign doctors. They require that even established
foreign doctors complete a U.S. residency program before they are allowed to practice medicine
in the United States. If we had a genuine free market in physicians' services every MRI would
probably be read by a much lower paid radiologist in India rather than someone here pocketing
over $400,000 a year.
Similarly, automation did not make our patents and copyrights longer and stronger. These
protectionist measures result in us paying over $430 billion a year for drugs that would likely
cost one tenth of this amount in a free market. And automation did not force us to institutionalize
rules that created an incredibly bloated financial sector with Wall Street traders and hedge fund
partners pocketing tens of millions or even hundreds of millions a year. Nor did automation give
us a corporate governance structure that allows even the most incompetent CEOs to rip off their
companies and pay themselves tens of millions a year.
Yes, these and other topics are covered in my (free) book "Rigged: How Globalization and the
Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer." ** It is understandable
that the people who benefit from this rigging would like to blame impersonal forces like automation,
but it just ain't true and the people repeating this falsehood should be ashamed of themselves.
A Darker Theme in Obama's Farewell: Automation Can
Divide Us https://nyti.ms/2ioACof via @UpshotNYT
NYT - Claire Cain Miller - January 12, 2017
Underneath the nostalgia and hope in President Obama's farewell address Tuesday night was a
darker theme: the struggle to help the people on the losing end of technological change.
"The next wave of economic dislocations won't come from overseas," Mr. Obama said. "It will
come from the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good, middle-class jobs obsolete."
Donald J. Trump has tended to blamed trade, offshoring and immigration. Mr. Obama acknowledged
those things have caused economic stress. But without mentioning Mr. Trump, he said they divert
attention from the bigger culprit.
Economists agree that automation has played a far greater role in job loss, over the long run,
than globalization. But few people want to stop technological progress. Indeed, the government
wants to spur more of it. The question is how to help those that it hurts.
The inequality caused by automation is a main driver of cynicism and political polarization,
Mr. Obama said. He connected it to the racial and geographic divides that have cleaved the country
post-election.
It's not just racial minorities and others like immigrants, the rural poor and transgender
people who are struggling in society, he said, but also "the middle-aged white guy who, from the
outside, may seem like he's got advantages, but has seen his world upended by economic and cultural
and technological change."
Technological change will soon be a problem for a much bigger group of people, if it isn't
already. Fifty-one percent of all the activities Americans do at work involve predictable physical
work, data collection and data processing. These are all tasks that are highly susceptible to
being automated, according to a report McKinsey published in July using data from the Bureau of
Labor Statistics and O*Net to analyze the tasks that constitute 800 jobs.
Twenty-eight percent of work activities involve tasks that are less susceptible to automation
but are still at risk, like unpredictable physical work or interacting with people. Just 21 percent
are considered safe for now, because they require applying expertise to make decisions, do something
creative or manage people.
The service sector, including health care and education jobs, is considered safest. Still,
a large part of the service sector is food service, which McKinsey found to be the most threatened
industry, even more than manufacturing. Seventy-three percent of food service tasks could be automated,
it found.
In December, the White House released a report on automation, artificial intelligence and the
economy, warning that the consequences could be dire: "The country risks leaving millions of Americans
behind and losing its position as the global economic leader."
No one knows how many people will be threatened, or how soon, the report said. It cited various
researchers' estimates that from 9 percent to 47 percent of jobs could be affected.
In the best case, it said, workers will have higher wages and more leisure time. In the worst,
there will be "significantly more workers in need of assistance and retraining as their skills
no longer match the demands of the job market."
Technology delivers its benefits and harms in an unequal way. That explains why even though
the economy is humming, it doesn't feel like it for a large group of workers.
Education is the main solution the White House advocated. When the United States moved from
an agrarian economy to an industrialized economy, it rapidly expanded high school education: By
1951, the average American had 6.2 more years of education than someone born 75 years earlier.
The extra education enabled people to do new kinds of jobs, and explains 14 percent of the annual
increases in labor productivity during that period, according to economists.
Now the country faces a similar problem. Machines can do many low-skilled tasks, and American
children, especially those from low-income and minority families, lag behind their peers in other
countries educationally.
The White House proposed enrolling more 4-year-olds in preschool and making two years of community
college free for students, as well as teaching more skills like computer science and critical
thinking. For people who have already lost their jobs, it suggested expanding apprenticeships
and retraining programs, on which the country spends half what it did 30 years ago.
Displaced workers also need extra government assistance, the report concluded. It suggested
ideas like additional unemployment benefits for people who are in retraining programs or live
in states hardest hit by job loss. It also suggested wage insurance for people who lose their
jobs and have to take a new one that pays less. Someone who made $18.50 an hour working in manufacturing,
for example, would take an $8 pay cut if he became a home health aide, one of the jobs that is
growing most quickly.
President Obama, in his speech Tuesday, named some other policy ideas for dealing with the problem:
stronger unions, an updated social safety net and a tax overhaul so that the people benefiting
most from technology share some of their earnings.
The Trump administration probably won't agree with many of those solutions. But the economic
consequences of automation will be one of the biggest problems it faces.
What a completely naive, completely pseudoscientific nonsense. The guy is completely clueless about
driving forces of rumors.: it is the distrust to the official channels that drives them
Notable quotes:
"... Think of headlines such as "Elvis is Alive". This is an old example of fake news. ..."
"... "Fake News" has no social consequences in cases #1 or case #4. Case #3 will feature no strategic
element. This is just Tiebout sorting in ideological space. For example, climate change deniers say
the world isn't warming and climate deniers go to this website and read this and the echo continues.
..."
"... What is it about the demanders that they don't recognize the "fake news" when they read it?
Are they dumb? Are they eager to see stories that confirm their prior worldview? What is the source
of this heterogeneity parameter related to their "susceptibility" to be infected? ..."
"... Most of the time what people believes is not truth. Fake news is pervasive. ..."
"... I choose to believe the fake news from WikiLeaks before I believe the fake news from Langley.
It is all fake. Through the Looking Glass! Who are the traitors? ..."
"... Though it's impossible for an average U.S. citizen to know precisely what the U.S. intelligence
community may have in its secret files, some former NSA officials who are familiar with the agency's
eavesdropping capabilities say Washington's lack of certainty suggests that the NSA does not possess
such evidence. ..."
"... For instance, that's the view of William Binney, who retired as NSA's technical director of
world military and geopolitical analysis and who created many of the collection systems still used by
NSA. ..."
"... Binney, in an article co-written with former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, said, "With respect
to the alleged interference by Russia and WikiLeaks in the U.S. election, it is a major mystery why
U.S. intelligence feels it must rely on 'circumstantial evidence,' when it has NSA's vacuum cleaner
sucking up hard evidence galore. What we know of NSA's capabilities shows that the email disclosures
were from leaking, not hacking." ..."
"... However, Clapper's own credibility is suspect in a more relevant way. In 2013, he gave false
testimony to Congress regarding the extent of the NSA's collection of data on Americans. Clapper's deception
was revealed only when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of the NSA program to the
press, causing Clapper to apologize for his "clearly erroneous" testimony. ..."
"... "Clapper's own credibility is suspect". Fool me once shame on you...fool me twice shame on
me. How long did the national security state really think it could get away with their BS? ..."
"... Well, they've owned every president since Reagan; they own all the think tanks; they own 90%
of congress; they own all the major media; they endow all the "elite" private universities - why shouldn't
they think they could get away with it? ..."
"... Kahn is completely clueless. The main driving force behind the spread of rumors (which now
are called "fake news") is the distrust of the official channels. Yes, it is a sign of sickness of the
social organism, but only in a sense that fish rots from the top. And actually the same forces that
facilitate spread of rumors push people to alternative news channels: official channels are viewed too
compromised. So nobody believe anything published in them, even if they publish truth. libezkova ->
libezkova... January 08, 2017 at 06:59 AM Tamotsu Shibutani viewed rumors as a process of collective
problem-solving in ambiguous situations. His old book "Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor"(1966)
had received some press in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and it should be studied now too. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0672511487
It is a much deeper study than incoherent thoughts of Professor Kahn on the topic. You might be surprised
by the relevance of his work to current neoliberal MSM crusade against rumors. They feel that they lost
trust and now are losing relevance; and they are adamant to do something to reverse this process. But
they are barking to the wrong tree. ilsm -> libezkova... Truth is a rare commodity. The "press" in the
US has always been owned. In the 1830's it was owned by slave holders in one section and factory owners
in another. One opposed to tariffs and the central government growing strong from manufactures. The
other for tariffs and weakening the slave economy which funded the anti tariff regime. It is rarely
'news' it is indoctrination. ..."
"... The press in the usa was always "owned" but at one time it was far more socialized/regulated
than it was today: (1) Our government stopped trust-busting media conglomerates. (2) The fairness doctrine
was gutted and repealed. (3) Right wing political appointees were placed in leadership roles at the
CPB (PBS and NPR) and opened them to funding by large corporations. ..."
"... Obvious propaganda and distortion should be illegal in much the same way financial fraud is
(should be) illegal. ..."
"... "Normal people" in a neoliberal society, like "normal people" in the USSR are those who are
adapted to life in official "fake news" aquarium, created by neoliberal MSM. And resigned to this, because
they value the society they live in and can't image any alternative. Remember Matrix. ..."
"... Yurchak's Master-idea is that the Soviet system was an example of how a state can prepare its
own demise in an invisible way. It happened in Russia through unraveling of authoritative discourse
by Gorbachev's naive but well-meaning shillyshallying undermining the Soviet system and the master signifiers
with which the Soviet society was "quilted" and held together. ..."
"... This could a cautionary tale for America as well because the Soviet Union shared more features
with American modernity than the Americans themselves are willing to admit. ..."
"... The Soviet Union wasn't "evil" in late stages 1950-1980s. The most people were decent. The
Soviet system, despite its flaws, offered a set of collective values. There were many moral and ethical
aspects to Soviet socialism, and even though those values have been betrayed by the state, they were
still very important to people themselves in their lives. ..."
"... These values were: solidarity, community, altruism, education, creativity, friendship and safety.
Perhaps they were incommensurable with the "Western values" such as the rule of law and freedom, but
for Russians they were the most important. ..."
"... Yurchak demolishes the view that the only choices available to late Soviet citizens were either
blind support (though his accounts of those figures who chose this path are deeply chilling) or active
resistance, while at the same time showing how many of the purported values of Soviet socialism (equality,
education, friendship, community, etc) were in fact deeply held by many in the population. ..."
"... his basic thesis is that, for most Soviet people, the attitude toward the authorities was "They
pretend to make statements that corresponded to reality, and we pretend to believe them." ..."
"... People were expected to perform these rituals, but they developed "a complexly differentiating
relationship to the ideological meanings, norms, and values" of the Soviet state. "Depending on the
context, they might reject a certain meaning, norm or value, be apathetic about another, continue actively
subscribing to a third, creatively reinterpret a fourth, and so on." (28-29) ..."
"... The result was that, as the discourse of the late Soviet period ossified into completely formalist
incantations (a process that Yurchak demonstrates was increasingly routinized from the 1950s onwards),
Soviet citizens participated in these more for ritualistic reasons than because of fervent belief, which
in turn allowed citizens to fill their lives with other sources of identity and meaning. ..."
"... All of which is to say that the book consists of a dramatic refutation of the "totalitarianism"
thesis, demonstrating that despite the totalitarian ambitions of the regime, citizens were continually
able to carve out zones of autonomy and identification that transcended the ambitions of the Authoritative
discourse. ..."
"... "And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives
of a just peace." ..."
"... Then review Orwell. See who decides what is "justice"! The US became prosecutor, lawyer, jury
and executioner anywhere it pleased, to anybody who could not fight back. ..."
"... Yes exactly, from the ashes into the fire. As bad as the official channels sometimes can be,
the unofficial are much worse. The 30 years of Faux news and "think tanks" has done a lot more long-term
harm to society than most people realize. ..."
"... Just like trying to determine the lesser of two evils in political campaigns. Oh, I forgot!
Most politicians' official positions are just lies anyway...as we know from Obama's 2008 campaign and
his subsequent behavior. ..."
I see that
Paul Krugman is talking abou t the consequences of Fake News so I will enter this market and
supply some thoughts. I will define fake news as stories that are "juicy" but not true.
Think of headlines such as "Elvis is Alive". This is an old example of fake news.
... ... ...
There are four cases to consider.
Case #1: Both the supplier and demander know that the story is false. Think of the
National Enquirer stories stating that Elvis is on Mars.
Case #2: The supplier knows the story is false but the demander believes the story
is true.
Case #3: The supplier believes the story is true and the demander believes the story
is true.
Case #4: The supplier believes the story is true and the demander believes the story
is false.
"Fake News" has no social consequences in cases #1 or case #4. Case #3 will feature no strategic
element. This is just Tiebout sorting in ideological space. For example, climate change deniers say
the world isn't warming and climate deniers go to this website and read this and the echo continues.
I believe that Dr. K is mainly concerned with Case #2. What % of all suspect stories fall into
this category? Dr. K has a cynical model in mind in which sophisticated agents (think of Trump and
Putin) manipulate the gullible public with messages and then the Facebook and Internet accelerate
this information throughout the system as it infects billions and influences real events.
Case #2 raises some deep issues, I will state them as questions;
1. What is it about the demanders that they don't recognize the "fake news" when they read
it? Are they dumb? Are they eager to see stories that confirm their prior worldview? What is the
source of this heterogeneity parameter related to their "susceptibility" to be infected?
2. In public health, we quarantine those who may spread contagion. Is Dr. K. calling for a messaging
quarantine of the "susceptible people" or is he proposing ending free speech for those who spread
the contagion?
3. If there is objective reality, do those who are susceptible to "fake news" update their beliefs
as this reality changes over time?
4. In a world featuring heterogeneous news consumers, and profit maximizing news sellers what
are pareto improving government interventions? When I taught at the Fletcher School, one student
suggested that there should be a constitutional amendment requiring people to watch the PBS News
Hour each night.
5. In a world featuring heterogeneous news consumers, and Russian propagandist news suppliers,
what are pareto improving government interventions for the nations that Russia is targeting with
this news? So, the U.S is fighting a war on terror ---- will we now open up a "second front" as we
start a "war on foreign propaganda"?
6. Why has "fake news" become an issue now? What is it about 2016? Has Facebook made communication
"too cheap"? Has Russia recognized this opportunity and increased its supply of fake news? In the
old days, Pravda was filled with such news.
The guys who leak documents for a living pointing out the establish leaks them to sway opinion!
I choose to believe the fake news from WikiLeaks before I believe the fake news from Langley.
It is all fake. Through the Looking Glass! Who are the traitors?
US Report Still Lacks Proof on Russia 'Hack' , January 7, 2017
................ Though it's impossible for an average U.S. citizen to know precisely what the U.S. intelligence
community may have in its secret files, some former NSA officials who are familiar with the agency's
eavesdropping capabilities say Washington's lack of certainty suggests that the NSA does not possess
such evidence.
For instance, that's the view of William Binney, who retired as NSA's technical director
of world military and geopolitical analysis and who created many of the collection systems still
used by NSA.
Binney, in an article co-written with former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, said, "With respect
to the alleged interference by Russia and WikiLeaks in the U.S. election, it is a major mystery
why U.S. intelligence feels it must rely on 'circumstantial evidence,' when it has NSA's vacuum
cleaner sucking up hard evidence galore. What we know of NSA's capabilities shows that the email
disclosures were from leaking, not hacking."
There is also the fact that both WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and one of his associates,
former British Ambassador Craig Murray, have denied that the purloined emails came from the Russian
government. Going further, Murray has suggested that there were two separate sources, the DNC
material coming from a disgruntled Democrat and the Podesta emails coming from possibly a U.S.
intelligence source, since the Podesta Group represents Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments.
In response, Clapper and other U.S. government officials have sought to disparage Assange's
credibility, including Clapper's Senate testimony on Thursday gratuitously alluding to sexual
assault allegations against Assange in Sweden.
However, Clapper's own credibility is suspect in a more relevant way. In 2013, he gave
false testimony to Congress regarding the extent of the NSA's collection of data on Americans.
Clapper's deception was revealed only when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked details
of the NSA program to the press, causing Clapper to apologize for his "clearly erroneous" testimony.
....................
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/07/us-report-still-lacks-proof-on-russia-hack/
JohnH -> RGC...
"Clapper's own credibility is suspect". Fool me once shame on you...fool me twice shame on
me. How long did the national security state really think it could get away with their BS?
Well, they've owned every president since Reagan; they own all the think tanks; they own
90% of congress; they own all the major media; they endow all the "elite" private universities
- why shouldn't they think they could get away with it?
Kahn is completely clueless. The main driving force behind the spread of rumors (which now are
called "fake news") is the distrust of the official channels.
Yes, it is a sign of sickness of the social organism, but only in a sense that fish rots from
the top.
And actually the same forces that facilitate spread of rumors push people to alternative news
channels: official channels are viewed too compromised. So nobody believe anything published in
them, even if they publish truth.
Tamotsu Shibutani viewed rumors as a process of collective problem-solving in ambiguous situations.
His old book "Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor"(1966) had received some press
in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and it should be studied now too.
It is a much deeper study than incoherent thoughts of Professor Kahn on the topic.
You might be surprised by the relevance of his work to current neoliberal MSM crusade against
rumors. They feel that they lost trust and now are losing relevance; and they are adamant to do
something to reverse this process. But they are barking to the wrong tree.
ilsm -> libezkova...
Truth is a rare commodity. The "press" in the US has always been owned. In the 1830's it was
owned by slave holders in one section and factory owners in another. One opposed to tariffs and
the central government growing strong from manufactures. The other for tariffs and weakening the
slave economy which funded the anti tariff regime. It is rarely 'news' it is indoctrination.
Peace and freedom are not valued in the US or many other places.
yuan -> ilsm.. .
The press in the usa was always "owned" but at one time it was far more socialized/regulated
than it was today: (1) Our government stopped trust-busting media conglomerates. (2) The fairness
doctrine was gutted and repealed. (3) Right wing political appointees were placed in leadership
roles at the CPB (PBS and NPR) and opened them to funding by large corporations.
Obvious propaganda and distortion should be illegal in much the same way financial fraud
is (should be) illegal.
Exactly. That's why those people who question MSM coverage, and who try to get the "second
opinion" on the current events from blogs, and other alternative channels are considered to be
traitors.
Neoliberal MSMs are major producer of fake news as in foreign coverage they are guided by State
Department talking points. What they are adamantly against is "somebody else" fake news. They
want full monopoly on coverage.
What they trying to tell us during this McCarthyism compaign is the following: "Unapproved,
rogue fake news of questionable origin are evil, only State Department approved fakes are OK".
This is another, slightly more interesting, variant of "political correctness" enforcement
in a given society.
"Normal people" in a neoliberal society, like "normal people" in the USSR are those who
are adapted to life in official "fake news" aquarium, created by neoliberal MSM. And resigned
to this, because they value the society they live in and can't image any alternative. Remember
Matrix.
There is a special term for the psychological condition of the large part of the USSR population
who adapted to live such an "artificial, fake reality" and even may protest if they are provided
with a more objective picture as this created a cognitive dissonance. It is Stockholm Syndrome.
The condition common among the members of "high demand" cults.
The same happened in the USA. This neoliberal ideological captivity with its own set of myths
and falsehood reminds me USSR Bolshevism ideology, which was an official, dominant ideology for
Soviet people. Indoctrination was obligatory.
The net results was the same as now in the USA -- the dead ideology burdens, like a nightmare,
the minds of the living.
As Marx noted: "history repeats itself, the first as tragedy, then as farce"
Alexei Yurchak's 2006 book "Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation"
called this condition of ideological Stockholm syndrome "hypernormalization"
He argues that during the last 20 or so years of the Soviet Union, everyone in the USSR knew
the system wasn't working, but as no one has real alternative and both politicians and citizens
were resigned to pretending that the can should be kicked down the road. A typical attitude of
Hillary supporters.
This "constant pretending" was accepted as normal behavior and the fake reality thus created
was accepted as necessary evil, nessesary for normal functining of the society. The whole society
reminded me large "high demand" cult from which members can't escape.
While Yurchak called this effect "hypernormalisation." in reality this probably should be called
"ideological Stockholm syndrome". Stockholm syndrome is a psychological condition that causes
hostages to develop sympathetic sentiments towards their captors, often sharing their opinions
and acquiring romantic feelings for them as a survival strategy during captivity.
Looking at events over the past few years, one would notice that the neoliberal society is
experiencing the same psychological condition.
Here are a couple of insightful reviews of the book
== quote ==
Igor Biryukov on November 1, 2012
A cautionary tale
In America there was once a popular but simplistic image of the Soviet Russia as the Evil
Empire destined to fall, precisely because it was unfree and therefore evil. Ronald Reagan
who advocated it also once said that the Russian people do not have a word for "freedom". Not
so fast -- says Alexei Yurchak.
He was born in the Soviet Union and became a cultural anthropologist in California. He employs
linguistic structural analysis in very interesting ways. For him, the Soviet Union was once
a stable, entrenched, conservative state and the majority of Russian people -- actually myself
included -- thought it would last forever. But the way people employ language and read ideologies
can change. That change can be undetectable at first, and then unstoppable.
Yurchak's Master-idea is that the Soviet system was an example of how a state can prepare
its own demise in an invisible way. It happened in Russia through unraveling of authoritative
discourse by Gorbachev's naive but well-meaning shillyshallying undermining the Soviet system
and the master signifiers with which the Soviet society was "quilted" and held together.
According to Yurchak "In its first three or four years, perestroika was not much
more than a deconstruction of Soviet authoritative discourse".
This could a cautionary tale for America as well because the Soviet Union shared more
features with American modernity than the Americans themselves are willing to admit.
The demise of the Soviet Union was not caused by anti-modernity or backwardness of Russian
people.
The Soviet experiment was a cousin of Western modernity and shared many features with the
Western democracies, in particular its roots in the Enlightenment project.
The Soviet Union wasn't "evil" in late stages 1950-1980s. The most people were decent.
The Soviet system, despite its flaws, offered a set of collective values. There were many moral
and ethical aspects to Soviet socialism, and even though those values have been betrayed by
the state, they were still very important to people themselves in their lives.
These values were: solidarity, community, altruism, education, creativity, friendship
and safety. Perhaps they were incommensurable with the "Western values" such as the rule of
law and freedom, but for Russians they were the most important.
For many "socialism" was a system of human values and everyday realities which wasn't necessarily
equivalent of the official interpretation provided by the state rhetoric.
Yurchak starts with a general paradox within the ideology of modernity: the split between
ideological enunciation, which reflects the theoretical ideals of the Enlightenment, and ideological
rule, which are the practical concerns of the modern state's political authority. In Soviet
Union the paradox was "solved" by means of dogmatic political closure and elevation of Master
signifier [Lenin, Stalin, Party] but it doesn't mean the Western democracies are immune to
totalitarian temptation to which the Soviet Union had succumbed.
The vast governmental bureaucracy and Quango-state are waiting in the shadows here as well,
may be ready to appropriate discourse.
It is hard to agree with everything in his book. But it is an interesting perspective.
... ... ...
Nils Gilmanon April 23, 2014
A brilliant account of the interior meaning of everyday life for ordinary soviet citizens
Just loved this -- a brilliant study of how everyday citizens (as opposed to active supporters
or dissidents) cope with living in a decadent dictatorship, through strategies of ignoring the
powerful, focusing on hyperlocal socialities, treating ritualized support for the regime as little
more than an annoying chore, and withdrawal into subcultures.
Yurchak demolishes the view that the only choices available to late Soviet citizens were
either blind support (though his accounts of those figures who chose this path are deeply chilling)
or active resistance, while at the same time showing how many of the purported values of Soviet
socialism (equality, education, friendship, community, etc) were in fact deeply held by many in
the population.
While his entire account is a tacit meditation on the manifold unpleasantnesses of living under
the Soviet system, Yurchak also makes clear that it was not all unpleasantness and that indeed
for some people (such as theoretical physicists) life under Soviet socialism was in some ways
freer than for their peers in the West. All of which makes the book function (sotto voce) as an
explanation for the nostalgia that many in Russia today feel for Soviet times - something inexplicable
to those who claim that Communism was simply and nothing but an evil.
The theoretical vehicle for Yurchak's investigation is the divergence between the performative
rather than the constative dimensions of the "authoritative discourse" of the late Soviet regime.
One might say that his basic thesis is that, for most Soviet people, the attitude toward the
authorities was "They pretend to make statements that corresponded to reality, and we pretend
to believe them."
Yurchak rightly observes that one can neither interpret the decision to vote in favor of an
official resolution or to display a pro-government slogan at a rally as being an unambiguous statement
of regime support, nor assume that these actions were directly coerced. People were expected
to perform these rituals, but they developed "a complexly differentiating relationship to the
ideological meanings, norms, and values" of the Soviet state. "Depending on the context, they
might reject a certain meaning, norm or value, be apathetic about another, continue actively subscribing
to a third, creatively reinterpret a fourth, and so on." (28-29)
The result was that, as the discourse of the late Soviet period ossified into completely
formalist incantations (a process that Yurchak demonstrates was increasingly routinized from the
1950s onwards), Soviet citizens participated in these more for ritualistic reasons than because
of fervent belief, which in turn allowed citizens to fill their lives with other sources of identity
and meaning.
Soviet citizens would go to cafes and talk about music and literature, join a rock band or
art collective, take silly jobs that required little effort and thus left room for them to pursue
their "interests." The very drabness of the standardizations of Soviet life therefore created
new sorts of (admittedly constrained) spaces within which people could define themselves and their
(inter)subjective meanings. All of which is to say that the book consists of a dramatic refutation
of the "totalitarianism" thesis, demonstrating that despite the totalitarian ambitions of the
regime, citizens were continually able to carve out zones of autonomy and identification that
transcended the ambitions of the Authoritative discourse.
"And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives
of a just peace."
Then review Orwell. See who decides what is "justice"! The US became prosecutor, lawyer,
jury and executioner anywhere it pleased, to anybody who could not fight back.
JohnH -> yuan... January 08, 2017 at 12:08 PM
yuan never had the pleasure of watching the mainstream media promote the official Kool-Aid
during the Vietnam War...until the lies finally became untenable.
DeDude -> libezkova... January 08, 2017 at 11:38 AM
"the same forces that facilitate spread of rumors push people to alternative news channels:
official channels are viewed too compromised"
Yes exactly, from the ashes into the fire. As bad as the official channels sometimes can
be, the unofficial are much worse. The 30 years of Faux news and "think tanks" has done a lot
more long-term harm to society than most people realize.
Being a knowledgeable person who spend half a lifetime studying a subject, seems to be worse
than being a regular ignorant guy confidently pulling stuff out of his ass. We are living in interesting
times.
JohnH -> DeDude...
"As bad as the official channels sometimes can be, the unofficial are much worse." Wow!
Trying to judge the more credible liar.
Just like trying to determine the lesser of two evils in political campaigns. Oh, I forgot!
Most politicians' official positions are just lies anyway...as we know from Obama's 2008 campaign
and his subsequent behavior.
Today Jared Bernstein (see sidebar on right of this blog)
questions Paul Krugman's sudden concern about crowding
out. I agree.
In the first place, conditions have not
changed drastically in the last two months. Krugman's
would have more credibility on this subject had he voiced
similar concerns at any point before the election. I don't
remember him having any problems with Hillary's
infrastructure spending plan for example.
Also, looking at two of my favorite metrics for
underemployment -- Not in Labor Force but Want a Job Now,
and Part Time for Economic reasons -- are each about
1,000,000 above their numbers in the late 1990s and the
2005-06 peaks. Since the jobs situation is clearly
decelerating from its peak two years ago, I do not believe
this 2,000,000 shortfall is ever going to be filled before
the next recession.
In short, I really don't see the basis for a "crowding
out" argument at this time.
If we are below full employment (I think we are in part
for reasons you note) then concerns about crowding out are
indeed premature. But if we were at full employment (again
I have my doubts) then this issue should be part of (not
the end all) policy discussions.
A new study
published by the McKinsey Global Institute estimates the
U.S. holds between 54 million and 68 million "independent
workers," which it defines as "someone who chooses how
much to work and when to work, who can move between jobs
fluidly and who has multiple employers or clients over the
course of the year." It includes individuals working on
short-term contracts and those who rent or sell goods and
services.
"A full-time job with one employer has been considered
the norm for decades, but increasingly, this fails to
capture how a large share of the workforce makes a
living," the report said. "Digital platforms are
transforming independent work, building on the ubiquity of
mobile devices, the enormous pools of workers and
customers they can reach and the ability to harness rich
real-time information to make more efficient matches." ...
To me the "crowding out" argument put forward by Krugman
and conservative economists demonstrates a bias against
the government. They want monetary policy not fiscal
policy to be the means by which investment and employment
levels are managed by the government.
J.W. Mason has
interesting blog post about the Zero Lower Bound.
"In the dominant paradigm, this is a specific technical
problem of getting interest rates below zero. Solve that,
and we are back in the comfortable Walrasian world. But
for those of us on the heterodox side, it is never the
case that the central bank can reliably keep output at
potential - maybe because market interest rates don't
respond to the policy rate, or because output doesn't
respond to interest rates, or because the central bank is
pursuing other objectives, or because there is no
well-defined level of "potential" to begin with. (Or, in
reality, all four.) So what people like Gourinchas and
Rey, or Paul Krugman, present as a special, temporary
state of the economy, we see as the general case.
One way of looking at this is that the ZLB is a device
to allow economists like Krugman and Gourinchas and Rey -
who whatever their scholarly training, are aware of the
concrete reality around them - to make Keynesian arguments
without forfeiting their academic respectability."
What's shocking to me is that, according to 'liberal'
economists like PK and pgl, the goal of monetary and
fiscal policy is not just full employment but rising real
wages.
So far the economy has somehow managed to reach
low unemployment, though nowhere near maximum employment
(the Fed's mandate.) And real wages, except for
supervisory personnel, have yet to show real growth.
Nonetheless PK and pgl want to preempt any move to
maximum employment and rising real wages by advocating
that Trump avoid any fiscal stimulus!!!
Methinks that these 'liberals' are really conservatives
in sheeps clothing...or maybe working in New York has
given them too close an affinity to the Wall Street
worldview.
The common thread between your comment and Peter K's, I
think, is that there is intelligent deficit spending and
then there is counterproductive deficit spending.
It's
pretty clear that significant infrastructure spending,
like the building of canals in the 19th century (because
water transportation is so cheap in terms of energy
needs), doesn't crowd out, because of all of the growth it
produces. On the other hand, if government just gives away
money that will be parked unproductively, that will tend
to crowd out.
The bottom line is that Krugman's concern is premature.
There may be a hidden agenda, of course, that his real
concern is that the GOP wants big deficits in order to
"starve the beast" and attempt to justify cuts in programs
like social insurance.
Exactly. I prefer Bernie's approach: work with Trump if he
wants to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, oppose
him if he simply wants to enrich the wealthy.
Stimulus
that boosts employment and wages is still needed. Opposing
any stimulus now is not appropriate.
I expect enough Democrats will be readily available to
assist Trump. If not, there are parliamentary procedures
that can be used...procedures that Democrats refused to
sully themselves using for the common good.
"if government just gives away money that will be parked
unproductively, that will tend to crowd out."
I guess I
agree with you that government or private investment has
to be judged on the merits of each case.
But just look at the epic housing bubble. It would have
been better if the government had taken that money and
just gave it out to the average citizen to spend.
I think Krugman is basically lobbying for the Fed to
Volckerize any potential positive economic impact of Trump
spending with a big anti-inflationary rate hike, which he
& his party cronies can then blame on crowding out and the
"market" response to excessive government borrowing. They
want a quick hard recession that they can use to win
Congress in 2018. Remember that the orthodox BS about
monetary policy is that the Fed doesn't in any way set,
determine or engineer rates, but just uses
anti-price-stickiness nudges to help the market achieve
the "neutral" equilibrium rate rate it is in some sense
"trying" to get to on its own. So, if the Fed trashes the
economy, they & Krugman will say its hands are clean.
Remember:
1. Krugman is a party hack in the first place;
2. Krugman represents the faction of the party that has
no solid ideas about how to fix what is wrong with our
country and our planet; so they can only succeed
politically if the other side fails worse;
3. Krugman is on record as believing that the US has
suffered something like a coup engineered by a conspiracy
between the FBI and Vladimir Putin. So at this point,
given the politically extreme circumstances he thinks
prevail, there is no reason to think he is beyond making
things up for the cause, as exigencies require.
Of course you are right, Krugman advocates different
economics depending on whether a Democrat or Republican is
in office.
But I am not strongly against the idea of the
Fed raising rates too quickly, despite the morale
shadiness of the idea.
They seem intent on doing it anyway even if Hillary had
won.
Yes ultimately I guess I would be in favor Yellen
"helping" Trump (or low wage workers) as Trump regularly
accused her of doing for Obama during the campaign.
It would improve workers' bargaining power and lives.
But a Republican loss in 2018 would also help.
Hobson's choice. Pick your poison.
More fundamentally, I think Krugman is pushing a
conservative view of economics which happens to line up
with mainstream academic economics.
"More fundamentally, I think Krugman is pushing a
conservative view of economics which happens to line up
with mainstream academic economics."
Yes, this is a real
problem. Krugman has a fundamentally conservative ("New
Keynesian") view of the economy and how it should work.
It's a free enterprise & market economy that generally
just needs some helpful stimulatory nudges from the
government: monetary nudges most of the time; fiscal
nudges when we're in the special circumstances of a
liquidity trap.
The problem is that by laying down all of these
orthodox, conservative markers, our ability to do anything
truly dramatic and socially innovative is damaged over the
long haul.
New Keynesianism was neither Keynesian
nor New Classical, but somewhere in between the two. It
modified the New Classical approach based on rational
expectations and efficient markets by accepting that
prices were sometimes sticky in the short run and markets
sometimes imperfect. Two of the leading figures of New
Keynsianism were Paul Krugman and Gregory Mankiw.
Ultimately, the differences between the New Classicals
and the New Keynsianians are relatively minor. Both accept
the long-run optimizing efficiency of a liberal capitalist
economy, but disagree only over how much government and
central bank gear-greasing is needed.
Krugman is not really an old-fashioned Keynesianism. He
was one of the creators of "New Keynesiansim". Also read
his introduction to Keynes's General Theory. He pours cold
water on the really important policy suggestions at the
end of the book in Book VI, which he mistakenly suggests
Keynes's did not seriously intend.
Even more
old-fashioned "Hicksian" Old Keynesianism is just one
version of conventional liberal macro, which is primarily
a tool for the countercyclical stabilization of our
day-to-day capitalist economy. That's not enough to fix
what is wrong with our planet or or domestic society, both
of which are facing deeper, more structural economic
crises that are very grave. We're going to have to be much
more radical and ambitious.
"One implication Paul
draws from these dynamics is that Republicans, motivated
not by improving the economy but by bashing Obama and the
D's, inveighed against deficits when we needed them and
are about to shift to not caring about them when deficits
– again, according to the model – could actually do some
harm.
But how reliable is this crowd-out hypothesis? It's
actually pretty hard to find a correlation between larger
budget deficits and higher interest rates in the data.
...
So is Paul making a mistake to continue to depend on
the model that has heretofore served him-and anyone else
willing to listen-so well? My guess is that deficit
crowd-out is not likely to be a big problem, as in posing
a measurable threat to growth, anytime soon, even if
deficits, which are headed up anyway according to CBO,
were to rise more than expected.
The global supply of loanable funds is robust and, in
recent years, rising rates have drawn in more capital
(pushing out the LM curve). Larger firms have enjoyed many
years of profitability without a ton of investment so they
could use retained earnings (the fact of unimpressive
investment at very low rates presents another challenge to
this broad model). And most importantly, while we're
surely closer to full employment, there are still a lot of
prime-age workers who could be drawn in to the job market
if demand really did accelerate.
(This, by the way, is the only part of Paul's rap today
that I found a bit confusing. He's a strong advocate of
the secular stagnation hypothesis, wherein secular forces
suppress demand and hold rates down, even in mature
recoveries. His prediction today seems at odds with that
view.)"
Bernstein isn't that radical. He was chief economist
for Joe Biden in the White House.
I think the epic housing bubble, financial crisis and
slow recovery are causing to people to push back against
the New Keynesian compromise and search for a better
economics, which just may be an older type of economics.
This is incorrect. Full Time employment has accelerated
after a slowdown earlier this year while part time
employment yry was noticeably lower in the 4th quarter.
That created the illusion of slowdown in NFP. The U-6 was
quite quite different.
This will probably reverse in the first half of 2017 as
yry full time employment growth goes ahead of 2016
boosting overhead NFP and continuing to lower U-6 down to
8.7-8% by June.
You are undermining your argument with those graphs. The
point is, NFP will likely reaccelerate unless there is
another slowdown. Most likely that gap will close in the
coming year.
I think need to let the inventory slump go. It was a
mistake and it being recorrected.
New Deal democrat -> John San Vant...
, -1
I hope I am wrong and you are right.
But ... If you
check out YoY growth in payrolls, it tends to be very
regular and in-noisy, peaking in roughly mid-cycle. The
only exceptions have been where we managed to avoid a
recession during a Fed tightening cycle.
YoY employment peaked at the end of 2014, and has been
decelerating ever since. So unfortunately I disagree with
you.
[
A
study published late last month
by the White House Council of Economic
Advisers (CEA)] released Dec. 20, said the jobs of between 1.34 million and
1.67 million truck drivers would be at risk due to the growing utilization of
heavy-duty vehicles operated via artificial intelligence. That would equal 80
to 100 percent of all driver jobs listed in the CEA report, which is based on
May 2015 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a unit of the Department of
Labor. There are about 3.4 million commercial truck drivers currently operating
in the U.S., according to various estimates" [
DC
Velocity
]. "The Council emphasized that its calculations excluded the
number or types of new jobs that may be created as a result of this potential
transition. It added that any changes could take years or decades to
materialize because of a broad lag between what it called "technological
possibility" and widespread adoption."
Class Warfare
[A study published late last month by the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA)]
released Dec. 20, said the jobs of between 1.34 million and 1.67 million truck drivers would be at
risk due to the growing utilization of heavy-duty vehicles operated via artificial intelligence.
That would equal 80 to 100 percent of all driver jobs listed in the CEA report, which is based on
May 2015 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a unit of the Department of Labor. There are
about 3.4 million commercial truck drivers currently operating in the U.S., according to various
estimates" [DC Velocity]. "The Council emphasized that its calculations excluded the number or types
of new jobs that may be created as a result of this potential transition. It added that any changes
could take years or decades to materialize because of a broad lag between what it called
"technological possibility" and widespread adoption."
Make room, African-Americans, Latinos, the LGBTQ community, feminists. And while we are at it,
Catholics, Jews, evangelicals, too. There is a new identity group in American life. It's the white
working class.
This is the group whose members were largely ignored by the mainstream media - at least until
Donald Trump's campaign drew attention to them - and left behind by the new media. It is the group
that was mobilized by Franklin Roosevelt but felt unmoved by Hillary Clinton.
"This crisis of white working people has been going on for some time, but we are just noticing
it,'' said Robert D. Putnam, the Harvard scholar from industrial Port Clinton, Ohio, who has written
widely on this group. "The Mon Valley around Pittsburgh didn't just suddenly run into economic problems.
The jobs left Rust Belt Ohio a long time ago. The white working-class people who voted for Trump
did so not because of the issues, or because they thought he'd bring back the auto parts factory
in my hometown. The people living in a place that has been hopeless for 20 years were just angry
at the world, and their vote was an upturned middle finger.''
With Trump's inauguration fast approaching, the surge is on: to define this newly prominent group,
to explain their viewpoints, to win their allegiance - everything, perhaps, but to address their
grievances. The big question of the dawning Trump era is this: Can Trump, or anyone else, turn an
upturned middle finger into a program for governing?
When ethnic minorities and many other identity groups entered the political mainstream, their
agenda was self-evident: protections against discrimination, the ability to serve in positions of
political power, the ability to pursue the American dream. The white working class, in contrast,
is unorganized, increasingly suspicious of government programs, and accustomed to seeing itself as
Middle America - not as a special interest.
Meanwhile, the policies that seem to be emerging out of the Trump transition lean more toward
traditional conservatism than populism. This is unfolding as an administration that would be favored
more by the acolytes of William F. Buckley than by the fans of Willie Nelson.
In theory, November's revolt of the white working class will usher in what could be a momentous
transition, the most startling political example of "Changing Places"' since the New Deal social
engineers replaced the free-market mandarins of engineer-president Herbert Hoover, in 1933. Big switches,
to be sure, are a familiar aspect of American politics - the substitution of George W. Bush's movement
conservatives for Bill Clinton's boomer liberals, for example. But in tone and timbre, the transition
of 2017 is of a different order entirely - in part because, as Sarah Purcell, a Grinnell College
historian, put it, "the result was so unexpected, the divisions are so pronounced, and the passions
are so great."
Besides the Washington transition, there is the transition in the profile of the two major parties
and the transition between those who found succor and success in the Barack Obama years and those
who found insult and indignity in it. "The people who were despondent about the Obama administration
were lurking in the background, and now they are front and center,'' said Steffan W. Schmidt, an
Iowa State political scientist. "And the people who supported the Obama administration are upset
and frightened and worried about retribution.''
Indeed, the Great Switch of 2017 involves those who feel their voices will now be heard and those
who worry theirs no longer will be heard.
"Black and brown people feel right now that the forces who opposed our rights of full citizenship
are coming into power,'' said Elaine Jones, former president and director-counsel of the NAACP's
Legal Defense Fund. "We now see that the people who fought us will be in office."
The Obama administration, to be sure, resembled the Obama electoral coalition - eggheads, upscale
professionals, and environmentalists, as well as the representatives of a multicultural America.
Trump's new administration looks less like his working-class voters than like Dwight Eisenhower's
Cabinet, which was once described as "nine millionaires and a plumber.'' Except there's not even
a plumber in the Trump inner circle. And the profile of his Cabinet leans more toward billionaires
than millionaires.
Especially if the Trump administration ends up pursuing a corporate-friendly economic policy,
working-class Americans' anxieties aren't going away. Half of working-class whites, according to
a CNN poll, expect their children's lives will be worse than their own. Two-thirds of the white working
class, according to separate CNN polls, believe hard work will no longer get people ahead in the
United States.
"This part of America is not participating in the economy the way they once did,'' said John Dick,
the new-generation pollster who is the CEO of CivicScience, a consumer and market intelligence company
in Pittsburgh. "Now they have a voice - but that voice speaks in the simplest possible narrative
about their difficulties."
The challenge for politicians courting these voters is to identify a policy agenda built on something
more than nostalgia - or explicit appeals to racial identity. Half of the Trump voters among a group
of white working-class Americans surveyed by CNN think that the increasing diversity of the United
States threatens the country's culture. The GOP nominee explicitly bemoaned the country's changing
demographics and shifting cultural norms.
His victory raises an uncomfortable question: Is there a less racially charged way of appealing
to a group whose members used to feel a sense of power but now see they're losing ground? Richard
L. Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, believes that it is possible - and necessary. "Working people
in general are looking for someone to address their issues - issues they discuss every day around
the kitchen table: jobs, security, and health care,'' he said in a year-end interview. "Anyone who
comes out with that is going to get support from working people." Of course, Hillary Clinton made
just such an economic pitch but came up fatefully short in once-reliable Democratic counties.
The political shift that white working-class voters have now triggered could prove wrenching.
"This powerful reversal, where one group is now down and another is up, is a lot like the 1930s,''
says David Greenberg, a Rutgers historian. "Then you saw polarization not just between a liberal
party and a conservative party but also between different conceptions of what government is for.''
The Rust Belt needs a bailout.
A big one http://bv.ms/2fZvKEO
via @Bloomberg - Conor Sen - December 2
Trade and immigration restrictions won't bring back the Rust Belt. What might? Consider the
transformation of the Sun Belt.
The South used to be the nation's Rust Belt. The devastation of the Civil War rightly gets
the headlines, but the devastation didn't end when Sherman marched out of Atlanta. Industrial
agriculture had the same impact on the Southern economy that automation and outsourcing have had
on the manufacturing economy of the Midwest. In the late 19th century, much of the South consisted
of an increasingly uncompetitive agricultural economy and woefully inadequate infrastructure.
Those who could leave for other parts of the country, like factory jobs in what we now call the
Rust Belt, did.
The South used to be the nation's Rust Belt. The devastation of the Civil War rightly gets
the headlines, but the devastation didn't end when Sherman marched out of Atlanta. Industrial
agriculture had the same impact on the Southern economy that automation and outsourcing have had
on the manufacturing economy of the Midwest. In the late 19th century, much of the South consisted
of an increasingly uncompetitive agricultural economy and woefully inadequate infrastructure.
Those who could leave for other parts of the country, like factory jobs in what we now call the
Rust Belt, did.
Many parts of the South continue to struggle to this day, but those that are thriving embraced
two things -- infrastructure and recruitment. Much of the infrastructure was courtesy of the federal
government -- programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority during the Great Depression, military
bases during World War II and interstate highways later on. But the recruitment was an attitude
the New South adopted on its own. By seeking out talent and businesses from the rest of the country
and the world, the major metro areas of today's South generated some of the strongest economic
growth and most promising labor trends in the country.
The Rust Belt has two main challenges to address -- poor demographics and legacy obligations
in the form of pension costs and physical infrastructure that needs maintaining. The demographic
component is the part it most needs to solve on its own.
One type of institution has figured this out: the region's universities. Last week, in college
football, the University of Michigan played Ohio State University in their annual rivalry game.
But in some ways it wasn't a clash between Rust Belt foes. Michigan's coach, Jim Harbaugh, was
hired from the West Coast. Ohio State's coach, Urban Meyer, was hired from Florida. Both teams
have rosters full of increasing numbers of players from regions other than the Midwest. The reason
is simple. Youth populations are shrinking in the Midwest, and increasingly the best high school
football players are in other parts of the country like the South and the West that still have
growing populations. Both universities hired coaches from elsewhere, and both coaches are using
the prestige of their universities to recruit the best players in the country, no matter where
they're from.
This recruitment isn't just happening on the football field. To address enrollment shortfalls
due to dwindling numbers of home-grown students, Midwest universities are recruiting students
from all over the world. Two of the eight universities in the U.S. with more than 10,000 international
students are in the Midwest -- Purdue University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
As a recruitment pitch, the Midwest needs to figure out its message and sell it to the world.
As Midwest urbanist and blogger Pete Saunders noted in a tweetstorm this week, the resurgence
of coastal cities began with assets that the cities had all along. Wall Street and media for New
York, higher educational institutions for Boston, the federal government for Washington, a unique
topography and culture in San Francisco. Similarly, the Midwest has great educational and medical
institutions, an incredibly affordable lifestyle that becomes more compelling as housing costs
rise on the coasts and in the Sun Belt, plentiful water that could become a competitive advantage
because of climate change, and a sense of "rootedness" that many find compelling.
The most influential policy change the federal government could employ to "save" the Midwest
is one that would have been unthinkable when Congressional Republicans were battling President
Obama -- a huge bailout of the Rust Belt's legacy obligations. Pension costs are eating a higher
and higher share of tax revenue in cities like Chicago and states like Illinois. That leaves municipalities
less money to spend on ongoing operations and maintenance, let alone infrastructure improvements.
Eroding public services not only keep people from moving to the area, but also encourage young
people to leave for places with better public services. If President-Elect Donald Trump could
persuade Congress to bail out the region, that could the fiscal slate clean and give the Midwest
the breathing room to invest in its future.
It took a Nixon to go to China, perhaps it takes a Trump to save the Rust Belt.
Reasonable people can disagree. Then again - my views on these issues have dovetailed DeLong's
for over a decade. In fact he gave me credit for the "Natural Rate of the Employment to Population
Ratio" back in 2005. I should have patented the concept.
Donald Trump barreled into the White House with a "terrific" plan for infrastructure, and Washington
is abuzz with a seemingly "bipartisan" job-creation initiative. Though the GOP-dominated Congress
has for years thwarted similar infrastructure-based stimulus proposals, fiscal conservatives in
Washington and market profiteers nationwide are now fully confident in Trump's vision for shovel-ready
business partnerships.
After all, the one competency Trump has demonstrated so far seems to be making money off of
building stuff, from casinos and golf courses to his promised Mexican border wall.
But the public project of fixing America's crumbling bridges and highways is a different animal
than Trump's private real-estate empire of gleaming glass towers, at least for now.
Trump wants private investors to basically direct $1 trillion in infrastructure projects nationwide
through a "revenue neutral" financing plan, which banks on financing from private investors, allegedly
to control deficit spending (which the GOP generally deems wasteful, while promoting tax breaks
as a wiser redistribution of public funds into corporate coffers). To draw some $167 billion to
jumpstart the $1 trillion, 10-year infrastructure plan, Washington would grant a giant tax break
"equal to 82 percent of the equity amount." The goal isn't fixing bridges so much as fixing the
corporate tax codes to promote privatization and unregulated construction with virtually no public
input. Moreover, whereas effective stimulus plans aim to fill infrastructure gaps that big business
has ignored, Mike Konzcal observes in The Washington Post, that the developers Trump is courting
would follow the money and "back profitable construction projects. These projects (such as electrical
grid modernization or energy pipeline expansion) might already be planned or even underway."
Dave Dayen calls the program a "privatization fire sale" that ensured that private, not common,
interests determine where funding is focused.
Trump is further sweetening the pot by promising drastic deregulation that would "provide maximum
flexibility to the states" and "streamline permitting and approvals."
Activists now fear that Trump's job plan will yield relatively substandard jobs by mowing down
longstanding regulatory protections, including environmental review process (a critical tool activists
use to challenge developments that involve public-health threats) and prevailing wage regulations.
While private business partnerships on federal construction projects are routine, Trump's camp
is distinctly poised to launder corporate money through federal coffers at workers' and taxpayers'
expense.
The details of Trump's infrastructure vision are fairly sparse, summarized in a cheerleading
10-page pre-election analysis. But the author byline is telling: right-wing business professor
Peter Navarro and private equity mogul Wilbur Ross (Trump's pick for commerce secretary, with
historic links to the Sago mine accident scandal). And Trump's own investment track record speaks
volumes: The president-elect is facing allegations of major wage violations involving his latest
project site, which is sited on federal property, an antique Post Office to be transformed, in
Trump's words, into "truly one of the great hotels of the world."
It hasn't been so great for the non-union subcontracted construction workers who have complained
of getting paid below the wage standard that should apply under the federal Davis Bacon Act. Vice
President–elect Mike Pence, meanwhile, has actively pushed to repeal his state's similar prevailing
wage laws for publicly contracted workers.
Trump may have previewed his approach to publicly funded construction with his glamorous Bronx
golf course on a 192-acre landfill site, using public money to reclaim a wasteland for the benefit
of wealthy golfers, charging the highest fees of any other city golf grounds. Not only did it
colonize a tract of a borough starved for community recreational spaces and affordable housing,
it also produced a mere 100 local jobs and, according to community advocates, little additional
economic activity in the surrounding neighborhood.
Trump's real-estate portfolio embodies the long-term danger that watchdog groups see in so-called
"public-private partnerships" for infrastructure development.
In the Public Interest (ITPI) observed in a recent report on abuses of private contractors:
To maximize profit, companies have often cut corners by reducing the quality and accessibility
of services, reducing staffing levels, lowering worker wages, and sidestepping protections for
the public and the environment.
The stakes are higher now than ever. Get The Nation in your inbox.
"[T]he bottom line is that they will strip away standards, provide hefty subsidies and guaranteed
profits and hand over control over large scale projects for decades," according to ITPI executive
director Donald Cohen.
The overarching drive to privatize resources and services, meanwhile, might not only fail to
solve infrastructure problems but might also disrupt the structure of democracy; the process of,
for example, privatizing a highway or contracting out a public utility, in the long-term, effectively
outsources governance. "With control comes hidden information," Cohen adds. Institutionalizing
opacity in government-funded ventures could give corporations free reign to decide unilaterally
on electricity rates or easements on tribal lands.
There is no doubt that infrastructure investment is still crucial. However, a more progressive
approach would aim to bring more social equity into the private sector, not more profit motives
into government budgets.
An alternative, progressive infrastructure proposal, penned by Senator Bernie Sanders, would
operate on a similar scale as Trump's, with $1 trillion over five years. But instead of handing
a blank check to contractors, the budget would prioritize the critical infrastructure needs identified
by engineering authorities, and support stimulus through workers' wages rather than corporate
financing.
Such a plan could also be used to direct investment toward green energy development, expanding
public Wi-Fi networks, or increasing wage standards. While legislation to mandate these types
of projects and standards was continually stonewalled in the GOP-controlled congress, Obama did
manage, through a series of precedent-setting executive actions, to raise the minimum wage for
subcontracted federal workers, expand anti-discrimination protections, and to penalize subcontractors
who have failed to comply with regulations. Those initiatives may disappear as the new administration
takes over in January. Given that Trump has previously blown off crucial policy priorities like
the Paris Climate Change Treaty, there's no reason why his infrastructure plan should reflect
pro-worker interests.
If Trump is serious about rebuilding the country, his infrastructure program will both expose
his underlying kleptocratic motives and offer community and labor organizations an opportunity
to hold his administration accountable for spending responsibly.
Trump has big plans to make taxpayers and workers pay for his big gamble; the public has a
lot on the line, but also a chance to reclaim the public trust.
"An alternative, progressive infrastructure proposal, penned by Senator Bernie Sanders, would
operate on a similar scale as Trump's, with $1 trillion over five years. But instead of handing
a blank check to contractors, the budget would prioritize the critical infrastructure needs identified
by engineering authorities, and support stimulus through workers' wages rather than corporate
financing."
And the deplorables will do their best to make sure this is the last time.
"f you're in the area of 500 5th St in DC at 11:00AM on January 11, you might want to stop.
You could see something you may never see again
Valuing Climate Damages:
Updating Estimation of the Social Cost of Carbon Dioxide (Phase 2 report)
This new report from the Board on Environmental Change and Society of the National Academies
of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine examines potential approaches for a comprehensive update
to the current methodology for estimating the social cost of carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) for U.S.
regulatory analysis. The SC-CO2 is an estimate, in dollars, of the net damages incurred by society
from a 1 metric ton increase in carbon dioxide emissions in a given year. As required by executive
orders and a court ruling, government agencies use the SC-CO2 when analyzing the impacts of various
regulations.
The report also recommends near- and longer-term research priorities. The study was requested
by the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, which is co-chaired by
the Council of Economic Advisors and the Office of Management and Budget."
A few more comments on the Republicans' Corporate Tax Plan
by Jared Bernstein
January 3rd, 2017 at 11:18 am
I didn't want to jam too much into my piece last week on the interesting Border Adjustment
Tax-come on peeps, you know that BAT is a much better acronym than DBCFT (destination-based-cash-flow
tax)-that House R's want to use to replace the current corporate tax. Like I said, it's a complicated
bit of work about which we know little, particularly regarding its impact on consumer prices (and
thus, its distributional impact) and on exchange rates.
That said, it's hard to imagine a scenario in which a tax that clearly favors net exports would
not lead to some degree of dollar appreciation. Ed Kleinbard, a guy who thinks deeply about such
things, makes the intuitive point that a multi-trillion-dollar side effect of the dollar appreciation
is a transfer of wealth from US investors with foreign holdings to foreign investors holding US
assets. He explains here using Freedonia to symbolize not-the-US:
It also follows from this that the transition to a destination based profits tax, and with
it the appreciation in the U.S. dollar, will work a one-time very large wealth transfer from U.S.
investors to foreign investors. Foreign investments held by U.S. investors overnight will be worth
less in dollar terms, and U.S. investments held by Freedonian investors overnight will be worth
more in Freedonian pfennig terms. Carroll and Viard have estimated that at the end of 2010 the
wealth transfer attributable to the introduction of border adjustments without any transition
relief would have amounted to a $7.88 trillion loss to American investors and an $8.85 trillion
pickup in wealth for foreign investors. As of the time of this writing, I am reasonably confident
that policymakers have not weighed the implications of this.
Those are many more trillions than I would have guessed, but note that the analysts Ed's citing
are strong proponents of the tax, so I don't think their thumb would be on the scale.
I'm not saying this is or should be a deal killer-any transition to a better corporate tax
system will create winners and losers. But I share Ed's "reasonable confidence" that policy makers
haven't thought much about this, and you can add US investors holding foreign assets to the retailers
and other producers that depend on imported inputs to the list of those who will fight hard against
the BAT.
One more point on this dollar appreciation business. I enjoyed this useful oped in today's
NYT about how Trump will probably have to go through Congress if he wants to increase tariffs
(I've seen some counter-arguments, but the NYT piece made more sense to me). But this part seemed
off (my italics):
A border adjustment tax is a far better option than tariffs. It would eliminate incentives
in the current tax system to manufacture abroad, and to shift income abroad. Unlike a tariff,
it aims to be trade neutral, with any changes in consumer pricing of imports and exports being
offset by a rise in the dollar. And with strong support in the House, it could be enacted in full
compliance with the Origination Clause, lending it legitimacy that a unilateral tariff would lack.
If the dollar fully adjusts, then the trade balance, which is measured in dollars, not quantities,
is unaffected. Tariffs, of course, are designed to improve the trade balance. I'm not sure they
would, and, in fact, I suspect our trading partners would retaliate against either tariffs or
a tax scheme that subsidized exports, so the impact on the trade balance of either of these interventions
is not clear. But a selling point by BAT proponents is that the balance of trade would be unaffected,
which is a very different selling point than the one offered by proponents of tariffs.
AS much as I appreciate what Jared is saying, he is pulling his punches. I have hinted at why
I hate the transfer pricing angles but I too have pulled my punches. Working on something (after
I clear this snow) for Econospeak that goes after what Auerbach ducks. Think Disney as I shovel.
Interesting, thought-provoking post from Tim Johnson in today's links. There's a video with
the Bank of England's chief economist Andy Haldane who also discusses Brexit.
Should-Read: Manufacturing-centric industrial policy works (or worked) best when the hegemon
of the world economy plays the role of the Importer of Last Resort. And only worked when there
was a highly competent government--which raises the possibility that pretty much any other non-nonsensical
development strategy would have worked as well...
Pseudoerasmus: The Bairoch Conjecture on Tariffs and Growth:* "There is a vast empirical literature
which finds a positive correlation between economic growth and various measures of openness to
international trade in the post-1945 period...
...This huge body of research does have a few very compelling critics, the most prominent being
Rodríguez & Rodrik (2000). That widely cited paper argues - amongst many other things - that there
is no necessary relationship between trade and growth, either way. It depends on the global context
as well as domestic economic conditions. I think that's correct. There is also a smaller literature
on 19th century trade and growth associated with the historian Paul Bairoch. He argued informally
that European countries with higher tariffs grew faster in the late 19th century. This rough eyeball
correlation was confirmed econometrically by O'Rourke (2000)... [and] Clemens & Williamson (2001,
2004), but was disputed by Irwin (2002).... Lehmann & O'Rourke (2008, 2011) then countered by
disaggregating tariffs of those 10 rich countries into revenue, agricultural, and industrial components,
reporting that duties specifically protecting the manufacturing sector were indeed correlated
with growth....
The positive growth-tariff relationship for the rich countries is large; much smaller for the
non-European periphery, and negative for the European periphery (e.g., Spain, Russia, etc.) So
obviously even with the same global conditions there's a lot of heterogeneity. According to Clemens
& Williamson (2001, 2004) the reason there was an overall positive correlation in the 19th century,
is that most countries with high tariffs exported to countries with lower tariffs. In other words,
Great Britain et al. acted as free-trade sinks (my phrase, not theirs) for exporting countries
such as post-Bismarckian Germany which protected their steel and other industries.... Jacks (2006)
- using the Frankel-Romer gravity model approach - both replicates O'Rourke (2000) and supports
the free-trade-sink view of Clemens & Williamson (2001, 2004).... Tena-Junguito (2010) focuses
on industrial tariffs and supports the other aspect of the Clemens & Williamson finding: the tariff-growth
correlation applies only to the "rich country club"...
It would be interesting to look at how possibly hegemonic Great Britain (or Cold War America)
acted as a free-trade sink/Importer of Last Resort in order to further its aims of diplomacy and
empire.
Manufacturing-centric industrial policy works (or worked) best when the hegemon of the world economy
plays the role of the Importer of Last Resort. And only worked when there was a highly competent
government--which raises the possibility that pretty much any other non-nonsensical development
strategy would have worked as well...
The Republican Party in 2018: I'm from the current administration of the US government and I am
here to take away your health insurance. And oh by the way, vote for us.
EMichael : , -1
"The election of 2016 may well have been stolen-or to use Donald Trump's oft-repeated phrase-"rigged,"
and nobody in the media seems willing to discuss it.
The rigging was a pretty simple process, in fact: in 27 Republican-controlled states (including
critical swing states) hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of people showed up to vote,
but were mysteriously blocked from voting for allegedly being registered with the intent to vote
in multiple states.
Greg Palast, an award-winning investigative journalist, writes a stinging piece in the highly
respected Rolling Stone magazine (August 2016 edition), predicting that the November 8, 2016 presidential
election had already been decided: "The GOP's Stealth War Against Voters." He also wrote and produced
a brilliant documentary on this exact subject that was released well before the election, titled
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
He said a program called the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck had been quietly put
together in Kansas and was being used by Republican secretaries of state in 27 states to suppress
and purge African American, Asian and Hispanic votes in what would almost certainly be the swing
states of the 2016 election.
Crosscheck was started by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach back in 2007 under the guise
of combating so-called voter fraud. In the ultimate thumb in the eye to the American voter, the
state where Crosscheck started was the only state to refuse to participate in a New York Times
review of voter fraud in the 2016 election, which found that, basically, there wasn't any fraud
at the level of individual voters. Turns out, according to Palast, that a total of 7 million voters-including
up to 344,000 in Pennsylvania, 589,000 in North Carolina and up to 449,000 in Michigan (based
on available Crosscheck data from 2014)-may have been denied the right to have their votes counted
under this little known but enormously potent Crosscheck program."
"... "Identity Politics" is now thrown about as an insult at many progressive activists. Critics
say that Identity Politics make everything about gender, everything about sexuality, and everything
about race. And to this I say: yes, yes, and hell yes. ..."
"The other day on Twitter, a man posted a picture of my coloring book he'd given his daughter
for Christmas. He was excited to give her a coloring book full of badass intersectional feminists.
He wanted to thank me for creating it.
"I don't know," chimed in a random stranger (because Twitter), "Sounds like identity politics
to me."
Hell yeah it does.
"Identity Politics" is now thrown about as an insult at many progressive activists. Critics
say that Identity Politics make everything about gender, everything about sexuality, and everything
about race. And to this I say: yes, yes, and hell yes.
Call it what you want. I don't care. Complain that we're making shit about race - you know
what? We are. Complain that we're keeping the left from focusing only on class - yup, and proudly
so. Complain all you want because I am not and will never be ashamed of focusing on the politics
of identity. I will not feel a moment's guilt for slowing this whole train down to make sure that
everyone can get on and we're on the right track. I will proudly own up to making shit hard for
you.
Apologies are highly over-rated. People apologize and then go right back to doing the same shit
all over again. Late in his brief life Martin Luther King refocused his civil rights movement
into the Poor People's Campaign and union activism because he wanted to win and new that social
division could keep him for winning. King did not suddenly turn towards advocating for only white
dudes. King got smart, so smart he became dangerous enough that a white dude killed him.
Most of the beneficiaries of King's Poor People's Campaign and his union activism would be
black people, but it would go further faster with less resistance from his natural allies, poor
white people maybe - but fair and decent white people more so, by being more inclusive rather
than inviting white backlash. Martin Luther King wanted to fulfill his dream for his people. It
is a lot easier to be just a self-absorbed and self-righteous loser than it is to be a winner.
The identity politics campaign that survived after Martin Luther King was murdered has done a
great job of winning, for Republicans.
"The identity politics campaign that survived after Martin Luther King was murdered has done a
great job of winning, for Republicans."
This is of course, correct. But I do not think it means what you think it means.
The GOP has done a great job of convincing white racists that the Dems have destroyed, or are
destroying, their lives. They have used identity politics for over 50 years. Now it is time(past
time) to turn that around and give them their own medicine.
In terms of King, he already had "fair and decent white people" with him, and the Dems do also.
Can't alienate, or worry about alienating, white racists. That white backlash has given the GOP
the majority of their votes the last 50 years. That number is not going to get better regardless
of Dem policy.
From your background working with lower income people I would think that you would not paint it
all so black and white as you do. There is a lot of gray area between racists and secular humanists
of activist conscience including a lot of church people and blue collar whites. A lot of these
are disaffected voters, nothing in it for them to vote. These were the people that King wanted
to include. If King's movement were just for black people then what reason would they have to
vote for liberals supporting his cause, that of blacks rather than lower income working people?
Martin Luther King's Economic Dream: A Guaranteed Income for All Americans
Jordan Weissmann Aug 28, 2013
One of the more under-appreciated aspects of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy is that by
the end of his career, he had fashioned himself into a crusader against poverty, not just among
blacks, but all Americans.
In the weeks leading to his assassination, the civil rights leader had been hard at work organizing
a new march on Washington known as the "Poor People's Campaign." The goal was to erect a tent
city on the National Mall, that, as Mark Engler described it for The Nation in 2010, would "dramatize
the reality of joblessness and deprivation by bringing those excluded from the economy to the
doorstep of the nation's leaders." He was killed before he could see the effort through.
So what, exactly, was King's economic dream? In short, he wanted the government to eradicate
poverty by providing every American a guaranteed, middle-class income-an idea that, while light-years
beyond the realm of mainstream political conversation today, had actually come into vogue by the
late 1960s.
To be crystal clear, a guaranteed income-or a universal basic income, as it's sometimes called
today-is not the same as a higher minimum wage. Instead, it's a policy designed to make sure each
American has a certain concrete sum of money to spend each year. One modern version of the policy
would give every adult a tax credit that would essentially become a cash payment for families
that don't pay much tax. Conservative thinker Charles Murray has advocated replacing the whole
welfare state by handing every grown American a full $10,000.
King had an even more expansive vision. He laid out the case for the guaranteed income in his
final book, 1967's Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Washington's previous efforts
to fight poverty, he concluded, had been "piecemeal and pygmy." The government believed it could
lift up the poor by attacking the root causes of their impoverishment one by one-by providing
better housing, better education, and better support for families. But these efforts had been
too small and too disorganized. Moreover, he wrote, "the programs of the past all have another
common failing-they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else."
It was time, he believed, for a more straightforward approach: the government needed to make
sure every American had a reasonable income.
In part, King's thinking seemed to stem from a sense that no matter how strongly the economy might
grow, it would never eliminate poverty entirely, or provide jobs for all. As he put it:
"We have come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation
of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy
and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or
frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience
today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically
the economy develops and expands it does not eliminate all poverty.
[...]
The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we
must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed
in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted.
New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional
jobs are not available."
Note, King did not appear to be arguing that Washington should simply pay people not to work.
Rather, he seemed to believe it was the government's responsibility to create jobs for those left
behind by the economy (from his language here, it's not hard to imagine he might even have supported
a work requirement, in some circumstances), but above all else, to ensure a basic standard of
living.
More than basic, actually. King argued that the guaranteed income should be "pegged to the
median of society," and rise automatically along with the U.S. standard of living. "To guarantee
an income at the floor would simply perpetuate welfare standards and freeze into the society poverty
conditions," he wrote. Was it feasible? Maybe. He noted an estimate by John Kenneth Galbraith
that the government could create a generous guaranteed income with $20 billion, which, as the
economist put it, was "not much more than we will spend the next fiscal year to rescue freedom
and democracy and religious liberty as these are defined by 'experts' in Vietnam."
As practical economics, ensuring every single American a middle class living through government
redistribution and work programs seems a bit fanciful. The closest such an idea ever really came
to fruition, meanwhile, was President Nixon's proposed Family Assistance Plan, which would have
ended welfare and instead guaranteed families of four $1,600 a year, at a time when the median
household income was about $7,400.
But as a statement of values, King's notion remains powerful. So with that in mind, I'll leave
you with man's own words:
"The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has
vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes
until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to
adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading
human life by clinging to archaic thinking.
The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as
the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they
had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them.
The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of
poverty."
Good point about MLK and support for the Memphis Santiation workers strike.
I agree with your take. You can alieniate people on the fence. You can ween sons and daughters
from the racism of their parents, if you have an economy with shared prosperity and opportunity
like in the 1950s and 1960s. Their parents' scapegoating will fall on deaf ears if they have good
jobs and lives. Stupid racist grandparent.
What have been possible to elect a black president back then before decades of economic progress?
No.
Economic stagnation is fertile ground for scapegoating and xenophobia.
Yep. More than alienation, King needed inclusion to gain effective political solidarity. We don't
have that much of a democracy, but minority rule only works here for the rich.
In the recent HBO series on LBJ and his passage of the Civil Rights legislation, the screenwriters
had the unions - specifically the autoworkers - funding MLK's civil rights campaign.
MLK was unhappy with LBJ's compromises on the first act in 1964, but then Walter Reuther told
him to back off and wait for LBJ to get the rest of what they wanted the second time around, which
LBJ did to some degree in 1965. MLK listened in part b/c the unions were funding his campaign.
According to the screenwriters. I don't know how true it is.
"In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula
as unconstitutional, reasoning that it was no longer responsive to current conditions.[11] The
Court did not strike down Section 5, but without a coverage formula, Section 5 is unenforceable.[12]"
The progressive neoliberals suggest that it's not worth to try to appeal to the white working
class or to try to change their minds.
I would suggest it doesn't work to try to move to the center on economics and appeal to upper
middle class or upper class voters. Suburban Republican women voted for Trump even though he was
obnoxious.
One needs to get the poor and working class politically active and involved in fighting for
their fair share as MLK was doing instead of relying on the noblesse oblige of wealthier classes.
The progressive neoliberals want to be Republican lite with their talk about opportunity and
entrepreneurship. That helps with wealthy donors but isn't a good long term strategy as it alienates
your working class base.
"
Socialists, [neo]liberals insist, are just as bad as
fascists.
[they claim that] Now is not the time to
criticize the Democrats. [neo]Liberalism is working.
Women and people of color who criticize identity politics are
rendered white men or called self-hating. Glenn Greenwald is
a Russian agent.
Leftists are accused of believing that only class
matters...
It seems the lightning speed spread of contingent labor in
the 2010s should be evidence of this. Contingent labor as
in being "on call" for positions such as retail clerk. A person
who must be available for uncertain hours loses the opportunity
to find a second job. The employer demanding contingent labor
is essentially demanding uncompensated work hours.
In any event, the practice seems to have become near universal
by a couple years ago, suggesting a level of employer market
power far in excess of what one would think by looking at
numbers like the official unemployment rate. It may also suggest
that labor market monopsony may exist at quite small employer
size.
What you describe is in general not due to monopsony. There
is still a substantial number of independent retail and other
companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating their actions
and job function designs.
It is just regular supply and
demand dynamics, in combination with social feedback (actors
observing what "peers" are getting away with and trying the
same, and after a while it works its ways into a new normal).
In corporate lingo it is known as "best practices" - don't
innovate process, just copy what has worked elsewhere.
retail and other companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating
"
Although they have an app for coordinating plus incentive
to coordinate, they fully understand that by the time they
begin coordinating the game is over. The game for brick and
mortar retail is now hanging by a tread.
16% of retail is now intertube orders being shipped out
by USPS, Fedex, Amazon airship drone & UPS. For the next 2
years the 16% will double each year then slowly expand toward
the 99% asymptote. Sure!
When you ski at Aspen you will see old-time-y shops for
retail, shops that only the wealthy will use for more than
window-shop. Plenty time for best practices but
cm,
"companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating their actions
and job function designs."
That happens by default.
Wall-Mart dominates retail (5K stores I think out of over
11,593 stores and clubs in 28 countries) and it is a very
cruel company. Other companies copy Wall-Mart practices.
They have no "social conscience" at all and try to drive
their labor as hard as possible paying as little as possible.
In other words, they can be viewed as a corporate psychopath.
It seems the lightning speed spread of contingent labor in
the 2010s should be evidence of this. Contingent labor as
in being "on call" for positions such as retail clerk. A
person who must be available for uncertain hours loses the
opportunity to find a second job. The employer demanding
contingent labor is essentially demanding uncompensated
work hours.
In any event, the practice seems to have become near
universal by a couple years ago, suggesting a level of
employer market power far in excess of what one would
think by looking at numbers like the official unemployment
rate. It may also suggest that labor market monopsony may
exist at quite small employer size.
What you describe is in general not due to monopsony.
There is still a substantial number of independent retail
and other companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating
their actions and job function designs.
It is just
regular supply and demand dynamics, in combination with
social feedback (actors observing what "peers" are getting
away with and trying the same, and after a while it works
its ways into a new normal).
In corporate lingo it is known as "best practices" -
don't innovate process, just copy what has worked
elsewhere.
retail and other companies that are not (explicitly)
coordinating
"
Although they have an app for coordinating plus
incentive to coordinate, they fully understand that by the
time they begin coordinating the game is over. The game
for brick and mortar retail is now hanging by a tread.
16% of retail is now intertube orders being shipped out
by USPS, Fedex, Amazon airship drone & UPS. For the next 2
years the 16% will double each year then slowly expand
toward the 99% asymptote. Sure!
When you ski at Aspen you will see old-time-y shops for
retail, shops that only the wealthy will use for more than
window-shop. Plenty time for best practices but
cm,
"companies that are not (explicitly) coordinating their
actions and job function designs."
That happens by
default.
Wall-Mart dominates retail (5K stores I think out of
over 11,593 stores and clubs in 28 countries) and it is a
very cruel company. Other companies copy Wall-Mart
practices.
They have no "social conscience" at all and try to
drive their labor as hard as possible paying as little as
possible. In other words, they can be viewed as a
corporate psychopath.
"... What the Wall Street Dems have done is feel the average worker's pain, hand out some questionably progressive programs like the Heritage Foundation's ACA, and explain why it was all necessary in the name of free trade and globalization. ..."
"... And the rubes like it. What a bunch of dopes. ..."
Jesse :
It may not be overwhelming in its effect, but he did DO something, and had an effect, made an example.
Gee, what a terrible thing to do.
What the Wall Street Dems have done is feel the average worker's
pain, hand out some questionably progressive programs like the Heritage Foundation's ACA, and explain
why it was all necessary in the name of free trade and globalization.
That's right - Trump is Putin's
poodle aka Comrade Donald.
Libezkova ->
pgl...
, -1
Why you don't just buy m16, some
ammunition and go to Syria to prove your point and take revenge for Hillary fiasco.
Chickenhawks like you should better be careful what they wish for. With the election of
Hillary we would be on the brink of not "cold", but "hot" war, starting in Syria. But chickenhawks
like you prefer other people to die to their imperial complex of inferiority.
In other words, all you funny "Putin Poodle", "Putin is a kleptocrat", etc noises is just
a testament of the inferiority complex of a typical neoliberal chickenhawk. Much like was the
case with Hillary.
"... As with the most cynical (or deranged) internet hypesters, the current "AI" hype has a grain of truth underpinning it. Today neural nets can process more data, faster. Researchers no longer habitually tweak their models. Speech recognition is a good example: it has been quietly improving for three decades. But the gains nowhere match the hype: they're specialised and very limited in use. So not entirely useless, just vastly overhyped . ..."
"... "What we have seen lately, is that while systems can learn things they are not explicitly told, this is mostly in virtue of having more data, not more subtlety about the data. So, what seems to be AI, is really vast knowledge, combined with a sophisticated UX, " one veteran told me. ..."
"... But who can blame them for keeping quiet when money is suddenly pouring into their backwater, which has been unfashionable for over two decades, ever since the last AI hype collapsed like a souffle? What's happened this time is that the definition of "AI" has been stretched so that it generously encompasses pretty much anything with an algorithm. Algorithms don't sound as sexy, do they? They're not artificial or intelligent. ..."
"... The bubble hasn't yet burst because the novelty examples of AI haven't really been examined closely (we find they are hilariously inept when we do), and they're not functioning services yet. ..."
"... Here I'll offer three reasons why 2016's AI hype will begin to unravel in 2017. That's a conservative guess – much of what is touted as a breakthrough today will soon be the subject of viral derision, or the cause of big litigation. ..."
"Fake news" vexed the media classes greatly in 2016, but the tech world perfected the art long
ago. With "the internet" no longer a credible vehicle for Silicon Valley's wild fantasies and intellectual
bullying of other industries – the internet clearly isn't working for people – "AI" has taken its
place.
Almost everything you read about AI is fake news. The AI coverage comes from a media willing itself
into the mind of a three year old child, in order to be impressed.
For example, how many human jobs did AI replace in 2016? If you gave professional pundits a multiple
choice question listing these three answers: 3 million, 300,000 and none, I suspect very few would
choose the correct answer, which is of course "none".
Similarly, if you asked tech experts which recent theoretical or technical breakthrough could
account for the rise in coverage of AI, even fewer would be able to answer correctly that "there
hasn't been one".
As with the most cynical (or deranged) internet hypesters, the current "AI" hype has a grain of
truth underpinning it. Today neural nets can process more data, faster. Researchers no longer habitually
tweak their models. Speech recognition is a good example: it has been quietly improving for three
decades. But the gains nowhere match the hype: they're specialised and very limited in use. So not
entirely useless, just vastly overhyped . As such, it more closely resembles "IoT", where boring
things happen quietly for years, rather than "Digital Transformation", which means nothing at all.
The more honest researchers acknowledge as much to me, at least off the record.
"What we have seen lately, is that while systems can learn things they are not explicitly told,
this is mostly in virtue of having more data, not more subtlety about the data. So, what seems to
be AI, is really vast knowledge, combined with a sophisticated UX, " one veteran told me.
But who can blame them for keeping quiet when money is suddenly pouring into their backwater,
which has been unfashionable for over two decades, ever since the last AI hype collapsed like a souffle?
What's happened this time is that the definition of "AI" has been stretched so that it generously
encompasses pretty much anything with an algorithm. Algorithms don't sound as sexy, do they? They're
not artificial or intelligent.
The bubble hasn't yet burst because the novelty examples of AI haven't really been examined closely
(we find they are hilariously inept when we do), and they're not functioning services yet. For example,
have a look at the amazing "neural karaoke" that researchers at the University of Toronto developed.
Please do : it made the worst Christmas record ever.
Here I'll offer three reasons why 2016's AI hype will begin to unravel in 2017. That's a conservative
guess – much of what is touted as a breakthrough today will soon be the subject of viral derision,
or the cause of big litigation. There are everyday reasons that show how once an AI application is
out of the lab/PR environment, where it's been nurtured and pampered like a spoiled infant, then
it finds the real world is a lot more unforgiving. People don't actually want it.
3. Liability: So you're Too Smart To Fail?
Nine years ago, the biggest financial catastrophe since the 1930s hit the world, and precisely
zero bankers went to jail for it. Many kept their perks and pensions. People aren't so happy about
this.
So how do you think an all purpose "cat ate my homework" excuse is going to go down with the public,
or shareholders? A successfully functioning AI – one that did what it said on the tin – would pose
serious challenges to criminal liability frameworks. When something goes wrong, such as a car crash
or a bank failure, who do you put in jail? The Board, the CEO or the programmer, or both? "None of
the above" is not going to be an option this time.
I believe that this factor alone will keep "AI" out of critical decision making where lives and
large amounts of other people's money are at stake. For sure, some people will try to deploy algorithms
in important cases. But ultimately there are victims: the public, and shareholders, and the appetite
of the public to hear another excuse is wearing very thin. Let's check in on how the Minority Report
-style precog detection is going. Actually,
let's not .
After "Too Big To Fail", nobody is going to buy "Too Smart to Fail".
2. The Consumer Doesn't Want It
2016 saw "AI" being deployed on consumers experimentally, tentatively, and the signs are already
there for anyone who cares to see. It hasn't been a great success.
The most hyped manifestation of better language processing is chatbots . Chatbots are the new
UX, many including Microsoft and Facebook hope. Oren Etzoni at Paul Allen's Institute predicts it
will become a "trillion dollar industry" But he also admits "
my 4 YO is far smarter than any AI program I ever met ".
Hmmm, thanks Oren. So what you're saying is that we must now get used to chatting with someone
dumber than a four year old, just because they can make software act dumber than a four year old.
Bzzt. Next...
Put it this way. How many times have you rung a call center recently and wished that you'd spoken
to someone even more thick, or rendered by processes even more incapable of resolving the dispute,
than the minimum-wage offshore staffer who you actually spoke with? When the chatbots come, as you
close the [X] on another fantastically unproductive hour wasted, will you cheerfully console yourself
with the thought: "That was terrible, but least MegaCorp will make higher margins this year! They're
at the cutting edge of AI!"?
In a healthy and competitive services marketplace, bad service means lost business. The early
adopters of AI chatbots will discover this the hard way. There may be no later adopters once the
early adopters have become internet memes for terrible service.
The other area where apparently impressive feats of "AI" were unleashed upon the public were subtle.
Unbidden, unwanted AI "help" is starting to pop out at us. Google scans your personal photos and
later, if you have an Android phone will pop up "helpful" reminders of where you have been. People
almost universally find this creepy. We could call this a "Clippy The Paperclip" problem, after the
intrusive Office Assistant that only wanted to help. Clippy is
going to haunt AI in 2017 . This is actually going to be worse than anybody inside the AI cult
quite realises.
The successful web services today so far are based on an economic exchange. The internet giants
slurp your data, and give you free stuff. We haven't thought more closely about what this data is
worth. For the consumer, however, these unsought AI intrusions merely draw our attention to how intrusive
the data slurp really is. It could wreck everything. Has nobody thought of that?
1. AI is a make believe world populated by mad people, and nobody wants to be part of it
The AI hype so far has relied on a collusion between two groups of people: a supply side and a
demand side. The technology industry, the forecasting industry and researchers provide a limitless
supply of post-human hype.
The demand comes from the media and political classes, now unable or unwilling to engage in politics
with the masses, to indulge in wild fantasies about humans being replaced by robots. For me, the
latter reflects a displacement activity: the professions are
already surrendering autonomy in their work to technocratic managerialism . They've made robots
out of themselves – and now fear being replaced by robots. (Pass the hankie, I'm distraught.)
There's a cultural gulf between AI's promoters and the public that Asperger's alone can't explain.
There's no polite way to express this, but AI belongs to California's inglorious tradition of
generating
cults, and incubating cult-like thinking . Most people can name a few from the hippy or post-hippy
years – EST, or the Family, or the Symbionese Liberation Army – but actually, Californians have been
it at it
longer
than anyone realises .
There's nothing at all weird about Mark. Move along and please tip the Chatbot.
Today, that spirit lives on Silicon Valley, where creepy billionaire nerds like Mark Zuckerberg
and Elon Musk can fulfil their desires to "
play God and be amazed by magic ", the two big things they miss from childhood. Look at Zuckerberg's
house, for example. What these people want is not what you or I want. I'd be wary of them running
an after school club.
Out in the real world, people want better service, not worse service; more human and less robotic
exchanges with services, not more robotic "post-human" exchanges. But nobody inside the AI cult seems
to worry about this. They think we're as amazed as they are. We're not.
The "technology leaders" driving the AI are doing everything they can to alert us to the fact
no sane person would task them with leading anything. For that, I suppose, we should be grateful.
I worked with robots for years and people dont realize how flawed and "go-wrong" things occur.
Companies typically like idea of not hiring humans but in essence the robotic vision is not what
it ought to be.
I have designed digital based instrumentation and sensors. One of our senior EE designers had
a saying that I loved: "Give an electron half a chance and it will fuck you every time."
I've been hearing the same thing since the first Lisp program crawled out of the digital swamp.
Lessee, that would be about 45 years I've listened to the same stories and fairy tales. I'll
take a wait and see attitude like always.
The problem is very complex and working on pieces of it can be momentarily impressive to a
press corpse (pun intended) with "the minds of a 3-year old, whether they willed it or not". (fixed
that for you).
I'll quote an old saw, Lucke's First Law: "Ignorance simplifies any problem".
Just wait for the free money to dry up and the threat of AI will blow away (for a while longer)
with the bankers dust.
There some great programmers out there, but in the end it is a lot more than programming.
Humans have something inherent that machines will never be able to emulate in its true form,
such as emotion, determination, true inspiration, ability to read moods and react according including
taking clumps of information and instantly finding similar memories in our brains.
Automation has a long way to go before it can match a human being, says a lot for whoever designed
us, doesn't it?
"... Anecdotally, in my manufacturing business, we are under no pressure to give any pay rises and have not been so since 2008. We can get as many [overseas] skilled workers as we need within a few days via agencies, though sadly and inevitably, we've seen the total collapse of apprenticeships, the local college has closed its vocational courses and the industry training boards have all closed too. Since we no longer train anyone, its axiomatic that we now rely on immigrants to fill factory floor positions. ..."
"... That's exactly the plan with Conservatives and New Labour: an underclass and working class composed of foreign indentured workers, like in Dubai. The ravenous middle classes of southern England are very pleased with that and cheer on the plantation economy, in which they think will be gentry. ..."
"... If employers know they can get away with making much bigger profits hiring illegal immigrants and not really checking their papers, they will, and the immigrants will rush in. ..."
"... The current mass migrations have been as fast and large and those of that era, with 15-25% of the working age population of countries like Poland (large) or Lithuania (small) moving to the UK (and Germany). ..."
James Bloodworth makes an important point
here which I fear that some of his
interlocutors
don't fully appreciate. He writes:
There does exist a discernible bien pensant willingness to pretend that immigration
has no impact whatsoever on worker-employer relations it is precisely the unwillingness on the
part of liberals to acknowledge the challenges for the working class that migration brings that
is rendering the political climate gradually more inhospitable to those who want to find solutions
that do not involve sealing off Britain's borders.
The error of which James accuses liberals here is in fact an old one. Liberals of both left and
right have for decades been blind to the importance of class struggle. Marx
spoke
of the "hidden abode of production" precisely because liberals did not want to leave "the realm of
freedom, equality, property and Bentham" to see what the labour process was really like. Both Keynes
and the neoclassicals effaced classical economists' concern with the distribution of incomes between
wages and profits. Classical liberals have long
underplayed the importance and ubiquity of workplace
coercion . And one of New Labour's biggest failings was its
managerialism and
acquiescence in the growing wealth and power of the 1%.
From this perspective, liberals who are reluctant to acknowledge immigration's impact upon worker-employer
relations are making the same mistake they always have.
Which poses the question. Given that James is right to say that spreadsheets and pious lectures
haven't assuaged workers' concerns about the impact of immigration upon the balance of class power,
how might we better address the problem?
First, we should note that immigration and
globalization (pdf ) are – at
most – only one of
many factors which are hurting lower-paid workers. Other forces include: austerity;
power -biased
technical change; the decline of trades unions; the
productivity slowdown;
financialization (pdf) ; and a meaner welfare state.
The answer to this set of problems is to increase workers' bargaining power – which requires,
among other things, policies such as stronger aggregate demand and greater redistribution.
Should immigration controls be part of this package? Perhaps not. Even if we grant that immigration
is a problem for the low-paid, it doesn't follow that closing borders will be a great help. The idea
that remedies must resemble causes is a
fallacy , of the sort that quack doctors in medieval times committed.
In fact, such controls would bring with them other problems:
- They'd require us to leave the single market which might well depress exports and hence
incomes.
- In practice, tough immigration controls would bear upon soft
targets such as students and
innocent people which wouldn't help workers.
- If we impose immigration controls, so will other European countries on British people.
This will worsen our job prospects.
- Border controls carry a deadweight cost. Who's going to pay the taxes to pay for border
guards?
Quite simply, immigration controls cost money. Given that
most people aren't willing to pay to reduce immigration, it should therefore be possible to persuade
some of them of the case for relatively open borders.
James is, I fear, right to say that the immigration debate has not been handled well by the left.
But it need not be so.
"Who's going to pay the taxes to pay for border guards?"
That's a red herring: economic immigrants are not like spies that come to the UK with pockets
full of cash and their only problem is to slip past the border.
the vast majority of economic immigrants want to find jobs that pay better than in their source
country.
Perhaps our blogger has forgotten that all it takes to stop economic immigration is to make
sure that employers don't hire them in the target country, legally or in the black economy, that
is to enforce existing laws, which is very very easy and cheap if there is political will.
Even so the best way to stop economic immigration is to invest in the source countries creating
local jobs there (immigration from Germany or France happens but it is obviously not economic),
but obviously property and business owners in the target countries don't benefit from that, so
immigration is the issue.
"Anecdotally, in my manufacturing business, we are under no pressure to give any pay rises and
have not been so since 2008. We can get as many [overseas] skilled workers as we need within a
few days via agencies, though sadly and inevitably, we've seen the total collapse of apprenticeships,
the local college has closed its vocational courses and the industry training boards have all
closed too. Since we no longer train anyone, its axiomatic that we now rely on immigrants to fill
factory floor positions."
"I once had a temp job as receptionist at a factory in Glasgow, a city not famous for its endemic
labour shortages. The people on the production line were, to a man and woman, Polish. This was
neither coincidence nor a result of open competition against lazy, too-expensive locals: staffing
had been outsourced to an agency, guaranteeing the firm so many man hours a week without the risk
of building up long-term employment rights to any given worker.
A Glaswegian guy came in with
his cv one day, and was explicitly turned away because he didn't speak Polish and wouldn't be
able to follow instructions on the floor.
The agency rep (also Polish) supplied labour to several other businesses and was not slow to discipline
her people for minor infractions of timekeeping or whatever. She was under pressure from both
ends - it wasn't just that lost half hours added up to impact her quota, a free hand with summary
dismissal also helped make room for the newstarts who arrived every week from Poland and for whom
she had to find work."
And so many other random episodes...
Perhaps reading "This London" by Benjamin Judah would help to understand how the low-income
labour market really works in some important areas of the country.
"Perhaps our blogger has forgotten that all it takes to stop economic immigration is to make sure
that employers don't hire them in the target country, legally or in the black economy,"
As demonstrated by the Calais camps for third world illegal immigrants: why do they risk their
life to cross the Channel to come to the UK? After all France is a rich, safe country like the
UK, with similar or better low-end wages.
The answer is simple: they know it is much easier to get jobs and hide in the UK than in France
because New Labour and Conservative governments don't enforce immigration laws against employers,
except for a few show-cases, because their affluent southern middle and upper-middle class voting
bases love cheap servants and cheap hired help.
Anyhow the "money quote" form JamesB's piece is the final one of course:
"but if the people who toil in British factories have no say over the political direction of
the country they live and work in, it will invariably create a distorted politics in which the
only voters are middle class voters. Universal suffrage will, in practice, no longer exist."
That's exactly the plan with Conservatives and New Labour: an underclass and working class
composed of foreign indentured workers, like in Dubai. The ravenous middle classes of southern
England are very pleased with that and cheer on the plantation economy, in which they think will
be gentry.
"He said that benefit claimants needed to compete for jobs with migrant workers, many from Eastern
Europe. He went on: "We cannot reasonably ask hard-working families to pay for the unwillingness
of some to take responsibility to engage in the labour market.""
Another one said that without the many immigrants working for low-wage jobs in the NHS its
labour costs would rise, requiring NHS budget increases funded by politically unacceptable higher
taxes on the middle classes.
Also if we want to implement a JG or higher basic income that applies to anyone invited in the
country then we need immigration controls ("meaner welfare state.")
Unfortunately there is little sign of any main party offering more constructive alternatives to
fortress Britain. Blissex may be right about the explanation. Certain classes have things to loose
and not a lot to gain. But then people like Hutton cannot be surprised if the voters abandon his
party when his party abandons them. Or Miliband either...etc
I love your blog which I've been reading for years.
While your posts usually are skeptical of conventional wisdom, I think one thing you're absolutely
conventional on is that competition with immigrants has only a trivial impact on compensation.
There's a standard argument made by well-informed liberals, which goes something like this:
"Here is a study of the effect of immigration on wages during the natural experiment when the
UK was open to new EU members and France etc were not. Wages only dropped slightly for unskilled
workers. Therefore everything is fine."
But one thing even economists know is that wages are STICKY. Workers really, really, really
do not like to see their wages fall. The fact that in a growing economy wages fell at all doesn't
seem to me to indicate "nothing to see here", they indicate something huge to see here. Given
wage stickiness, the effect of competition with immigrants is likely to be long-term wage stagnation,
not immediate and obvious wage falls. That's exactly what we've seen, and is much harder to detect
statistically.
Moreover there are other factors than just overall wages.
1. Precarity. Immigrants are often willing to accept short-term contracts, zero-hours and more
precarious conditions than native-born workers. According to the FT, immigrants have utterly revolutionized
our economy this way. Liberals seem to have their own version of Schrodinger's Immigrant: one
who utterly transforms our economy by taking previously unacceptable conditions, but doesn't worsen
things for native-born workers by doing so.
2. Housing. Immigrants are often single, or support families overseas where the cost of living
is cheaper. They therefore only need small or even shared rooms, when a native worker who wants
to support a family needs much more space. Immigrants may therefore contribute to the housing
crisis, in that employers no longer need to pay wages sufficient for workers to house a family.
3. Wage rise mechanisms. Employers really, really, really do not like to see wages rise. When
they're forced to, it's often in response to a shortage of skills in a particular area. With mass
immigration of highly mobile workers, there are fewer shortages which could break the mechanism
by which wages usually rise.
Overall, I think the conventional wisdom may be greatly underestimating how much competition
with the new waves of EU immigrants has harmed native-born workers.
Re "the best way to stop economic immigration is to invest in the source countries creating
local jobs there". The evidence (not anecdata) suggests the opposite. Investing in a developing
economy improves the skills of local workers, making them more marketable abroad, and simultaneously
raises incomes, giving skilled workers the wherewithal to mirate to developed economies with higher
wages.
Re "why do they risk their life to cross the Channel to come to the UK? After all France is
a rich, safe country like the UK, with similar or better low-end wages". Because France has a
national ID card scheme and without an ID ('sans papiers') it is very difficult to get a job in
the formal economy (perversely, this explains why the French black economy is larger than that
of the UK).
On top of this, the UK has weakly enforced laws. The 'right to work' checks by corporates are
often outsourced to recruitment agencies who have a conflict of interest, while SMEs often lack
the interest and/or skills to properly check. The UK has a reputation as being a relatively easy
place to find work (or start a business). Ironically, this "truth" has been amplified over the
years by media tales of the state being a "soft touch" and incompetent at securing our borders.
"people like Hutton cannot be surprised if the voters abandon his party when his party abandons
them."
People like Hutton are more delighted than surprised by that, because it has happened by them
giving up the vote, because "There Is No Alternative". For the neoliberals in any party it is
very nice when the lower income servant classes either just stop voting or vote automatically
for anybody with a red rosette, even when that anybody is Tristram Hunt or Stephen Twigg, or cannot
vote because they are immigrants.
The mandelsonians are rather more terrified of losing the votes of the ravenous rentier middle
classes of the south than those of the lower classes:
www.progressonline.org.uk/2011/04/19/purple-and-orange-united-colours-of-coalition/
"Labour is winning votes from disillusioned Lib Dems and its own former supporters who are returning
to the fold, but it still has a mountain to climb in the South East, among the aspirational "conservatory-building
classes" who were key to its previous election victories."
www.theweek.co.uk/election-2015/62452/blair-to-the-rescue-but-does-miliband-need-toxic-tony
""We all know what Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson really think of Ed Miliband," said Watt. "They
think he's abandoned the essential truth which is that Labour needs to champion the conservatory-building
classes"
"The evidence (not anecdata) suggests the opposite. Investing in a developing economy improves
the skills of local workers, making them more marketable abroad, and simultaneously raises incomes,
giving skilled workers the wherewithal to mirate to developed economies with higher wages."
There is something in that, but it is not a big deal. Many people would rather take a lower
salary in their country than migrate, as long as the difference is not huge like 5-10 times as
between Romania and UK; consider the small number of slovenian, portoguese or even greek immigrants
to the UK, where the difference is 2-3 times and living standards are tolerable. Sure there have
been quite a few, but not on the same scale as from the poorest.
Consider also Taiwan or South Korea: massive development, not much outmigration. Sure there
has been a bit of migration to the USA of highly educated people, but nowhere like mass. The same
for Russia or East Germany post-soviet collapse. Most of them remained.
The trick for rich countries would be to invest in poor countries in production for local consumption
with some exports, so rising local living standards motivate people to remain. But that runs directly
counter to the goals of business and property owners in the rich countries, who either want:
* masses of immigrants to push down wages and push up rents and reduce the voting power of
the low-income classes in the rich countries;
* production in the poor countries for export to the rich countries to reduce employment in
the rich countries, especially in unionized industries (in the past of course).
"where the difference is 2-3 times and living standards are tolerable"
That's a bit imprecise, and in that imprecision there is an interesting point: the difference
has to be looked at both at exchange-rate and at PPP, where in poor countries the PPP wage difference
with rich countries is usually much smaller.
Mass migration seems to me to happen when there is opportunity and a large (more than 2-3 times)
difference in PPP wages. There is migration also when just the difference in exchange-rate wages
is large, as those migrants arbitrage the difference (they earn and save in the target country
and then go back and consume in the source country), but usually not mass migration.
"France has a national ID card scheme and without an ID ('sans papiers') it is very difficult
to get a job in the formal economy"
Spain and Italy have identity cards too and illegal immigrants go there in large numbers...
Focusing on ID cards or border controls means making the same mistake: focusing on stopping
the immigrants instead of the reason why they immigrate, that is employers (the "watering hole")
giving them jobs.
If employers know they can get away with making much bigger profits hiring illegal immigrants
and not really checking their papers, they will, and the immigrants will rush in.
PS there have been a couple of show-cases in the UK where some employers were thrown under
the bus for accepting obviously fake papers, but on the whole the UK cash-in-hand or "we are not
forgery experts" side of the economy has ballooned with the happy acquiescence of the political
authorities.
"the happy acquiescence of the political authorities"
Consider as a small part of this all the rentier middle class people who get effort-free tax-free
income from renting bunk beds in their sheds or council houses to immigrants cash-in-hand: that
breaks several laws, but enforcement is rather sparse, but for the usual show-cases where a few
are thrown under the bus for the sake of appearances. Enforcement would be very easy and cheap,
given the all-pervasive nature of surveillance in the UK, and the availability of neighbours to
snitch, but it would be quite unpopular with the "aspirational "conservatory-building classes"".
And enforcement of "petty" tax-"avoidance" would be quite difficult to square with a "soft-touch"
on large scale episodes as in:
www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/labour-fears-corbyn-will-be-seen-as-unambitious-3tww86v5n
"Labour MPs have raised concerns that Jeremy Corbyn's rhetoric on tax avoidance could appear anti-aspiration.
A senior shadow cabinet source said the party leader was in danger of overreaching himself in
his criticism of David Cameron for investing in Blairmore, the fund set up in an offshore tax
haven in the Bahamas by his father Ian."
We live in an era in which "Labour" MPs reckon that taxing rentiers looks anti-aspiration;
that is a measure of the times.
Re migration flows, you have consider three things: numbers relative to home population; that
congregation can make immigrant groups invisible to much of a country; and that dispersion across
multiple destination countries can do likewise.
For example: Slovenia is very small (and Slovenes are routinely mistaken for other nationalities);
a 1/4 of the Portuguese in the UK live around Vauxhall and Stockwell; and about 4% of the Greek
population have emigrated since 2008 but to a lot of different countries (many with existing congregations),
e.g. the US, UK, Germany and Australia.
Taiwan is a special case because of its relationship with the mainland, but Korea has seen
plenty of emigration historically, notably to America and Japan. The UK Korean community is another
example of "congregational invisibility", with many to be found in New Malden (betwee Wimbledon
and Kingston).
After 1989, lots of East Germans "emigrated" to what was the old West Germany. To say that
they have remained in (a unified) Germany rather misses the point. As for the Russians, many of
them have emigrated but they've preferred to go to Germany (often backfilling "Ossis") and former
Soviet republics. Relatively few have made it as far as Kensington.
The point is that we are living in an era of unprecedented mass movement (into cities as much
as between countries). This is a global phenomenon caused by rising living standards, falling
transport costs and the tendency of technology (which includes learning English) to make skills
more transferrable. This process isn't a deliberate conspiracy by capitalists, so much as the
working of capital itself, so it cannot be arrested by policy or bought off by Western investment.
"we are living in an era of unprecedented mass movement (into cities as much as between countries)"
That relies on a rather narrow view of "era": there have been mass migrations in less recent
decades, from Turkey to Germany, from southern Italy to northern Italy and Switzerland and Germany,
from Spain to France and Germany.
The current mass migrations have been as fast and large and those of that era, with 15-25%
of the working age population of countries like Poland (large) or Lithuania (small) moving to
the UK (and Germany).
But the earlier mass migrations happened while demand was booming, so they were about genuinely
extending the labor supply, while the current mass migrations seems aimed at replacing "lazy,
uppity, exploitative" native workers instead.
Part of the issue is that those "lazy, uppity, exploitative" native workers want it both ways:
no "EU contributions" for investment creating jobs in poor EU countries to keep their workers
there, and no immigration to the UK either. This maximalism only plays into the hands of the New
Labour and Conservative neoliberals.
"... IN JULY 1995, Tony Blair flew halfway round the world to cement his relationship with Rupert Murdoch at a News Corporation conference. Introducing him, the media tycoon joked: "If the British press is to be believed, today is all part of a Blair-Murdoch flirtation. If that flirtation is ever consummated, Tony, I suspect we will end up making love like two porcupines - very carefully." ..."
Murdoch's courtship of Blair finally pays off
By Fran Abrams and Anthony Bevins
IN JULY 1995, Tony Blair flew halfway round the world to cement his relationship with Rupert
Murdoch at a News Corporation conference. Introducing him, the media tycoon joked: "If the British
press is to be believed, today is all part of a Blair-Murdoch flirtation. If that flirtation is
ever consummated, Tony, I suspect we will end up making love like two porcupines - very carefully."
For Mr Blair, the relationship bore fruit when he was elected with the key support of the Sun.
But Mr Murdoch had to wait until yesterday for full satisfaction when No 10 launched a passionate
attack on his critics after the Lords passed an anti-Murdoch amendment to the Competition Bill.
A year earlier, few Labour MPs would have believed such a scene was possible....
"... When Stanislaw Lem launched a general criticism of Western Sci-Fi, he specifically exempted Philip K Dick, going so far as to refer to him as "a visionary among charlatans." ..."
"... While I think the 'OMG SUPERINTELLIGENCE' crowd are ripe for mockery, this seemed very shallow and wildly erratic, and yes, bashing the entirety of western SF seems so misguided it would make me question the rest of his (many, many) proto-arguments if I'd not done so already. ..."
"... Charles Stross's Rule 34 has about the only AI I can think of from SF that is both dangerous and realistic. ..."
"... Solaris and Stalker notwithstanding, Strugatsky brothers + Stanislaw Lem ≠ Andrei Tarkovsky. ..."
"... For offbeat Lem, I always found "Fiasco" and his Scotland Yard parody, "The Investigation," worth exploring. I'm unaware how they've been received by Polish and Western critics and readers, but I found them clever. ..."
"... Actually existing AI and leading-edge AI research are overwhelmingly not about pursuing "general intelligence* a la humanity." They are about performing tasks that have historically required what we historically considered to be human intelligence, like winning board games or translating news articles from Japanese to English. ..."
"... Actual AI systems don't resemble brains much more than forklifts resemble Olympic weightlifters. ..."
"... Talking about the risks and philosophical implications of the intellectual equivalent of forklifts - another wave of computerization - either lacks drama or requires far too much background preparation for most people to appreciate the drama. So we get this stuff about superintelligence and existential risk, like a philosopher wanted to write about public health but found it complicated and dry, so he decided to warn how utility monsters could destroy the National Health Service. It's exciting at the price of being silly. (And at the risk of other non-experts not realizing it's silly.) ..."
"... *In fact I consider "general intelligence" to be an ill-formed goal, like "general beauty." Beautiful architecture or beautiful show dogs? And beautiful according to which traditions? ..."
by Henry on December 30, 2016 This
talk by Maciej Ceglowski
(who y'all should be reading if you aren't already) is really good on silly claims by philosophers
about AI, and how they feed into Silicon Valley mythology. But there's one claim that seems to me
to be flat out wrong:
We need better scifi! And like so many things, we already have the technology. This is Stanislaw
Lem, the great Polish scifi author. English-language scifi is terrible, but in the Eastern bloc
we have the goods, and we need to make sure it's exported properly. It's already been translated
well into English, it just needs to be better distributed. What sets authors like Lem and the
Strugatsky brothers above their Western counterparts is that these are people who grew up in difficult
circumstances, experienced the war, and then lived in a totalitarian society where they had to
express their ideas obliquely through writing. They have an actual understanding of human experience
and the limits of Utopian thinking that is nearly absent from the west.There are some notable
exceptions-Stanley Kubrick was able to do it-but it's exceptionally rare to find American or British
scifi that has any kind of humility about what we as a species can do with technology.
He's not wrong on the delights of Lem and the Strugastky brothers, heaven forbid! (I had a great
conversation with a Russian woman some months ago about the Strugatskys – she hadn't realized that
Roadside Picnic had been translated into English, much less that it had given rise to its own micro-genre).
But wrong on US and (especially) British SF. It seems to me that fiction on the limits of utopian
thinking and the need for humility about technology is vast. Plausible genealogies for sf stretch
back, after all, to Shelley's utopian-science-gone-wrong Frankenstein (rather than Hugo Gernsback.
Some examples that leap immediately to mind:
Ursula Le Guin and the whole literature of ambiguous utopias that she helped bring into being
with The Dispossessed – see e.g. Ada Palmer, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series &c.
J.G Ballard, passim
Philip K. Dick ( passim , but if there's a better description of how the Internet of Things
is likely to work out than the door demanding money to open in Ubik I haven't read it).
Octavia Butler's Parable books. Also, Jack Womack's Dryco books (this
interview with Womack
could have been written yesterday).
William Gibson ( passim , but especially "The Gernsback Continuum" and his most recent
work. "The street finds its own uses for things" is a specifically and deliberately anti-tech-utopian
aesthetic).
M. John Harrison – Signs of Life and the Kefahuchi Tract books.
Paul McAuley (most particularly Fairyland – also his most recent Something Coming Through
and Into Everywhere , which mine the Roadside Picnic vein of brain-altering alien trash
in some extremely interesting ways).
Robert Charles Wilson, Spin . The best SF book I've ever read on how small human beings
and all their inventions are from a cosmological perspective.
Maureen McHugh's China Mountain Zhang .
Also, if it's not cheating, Francis Spufford's Red Plenty (if Kim Stanley Robinson
describes it
as a novel in the SF tradition, who am I to disagree, especially since it is
all about the limits
of capitalism as well as communism).
I'm sure there's plenty of other writers I could mention (feel free to say who they are in comments).
I'd also love to see more translated SF from the former Warsaw Pact countries, if it is nearly as
good as the Strugatskys material which has appeared. Still, I think that Ceglowski's claim is wrong.
The people I mention above aren't peripheral to the genre under any reasonable definition, and they
all write books and stories that do what Ceglowski thinks is only very rarely done. He's got some
fun reading ahead of him.
Also Linda Nagata's Red series come to think of it – unsupervised machine learning processes as
ambiguous villain.
Prithvi 12.30.16 at 4:59 pm
When Stanislaw Lem launched a general criticism of Western Sci-Fi,
he specifically exempted Philip K Dick, going so far as to refer to him as "a visionary among charlatans."
You could throw in Pohl's Man Plus.
The twist at the end being the narrator is an AI that has secretly promoted human expansion as
a means of its own self-preservation.
Prithvi: Dick, sadly, returned the favor by claiming that Lem was obviously a pseudonym used by
the Polish government to disseminate communist propaganda.
While I think the 'OMG SUPERINTELLIGENCE' crowd are ripe for mockery, this seemed very shallow
and wildly erratic, and yes, bashing the entirety of western SF seems so misguided it would make
me question the rest of his (many, many) proto-arguments if I'd not done so already.
Good for a few laughs, though.
Mike Schilling 12.30.16 at 6:13 pm
Heinlein's Solution Unsatisfactory predicted the nuclear stalemate in 1941.
Jack Williamson's With Folded Hands was worried about technology making humans obsolete back in 1947.
In
1972, Asimov's The Gods Themselves presented a power generation technology that if continued
would destroy the world, and a society too complacent and lazy to acknowledge that.
Iain M. Banks'
Culture Series is amazing. My personal favorite from it is "The Hydrogen Sonata." The main character
has two extra arms grafted onto her body so she can play an unplayable piece of music. Also, the
sentient space ships have very silly names. Mainly it's about transcendence, of sorts and how
societies of different tech levels mess with each other, often without meaning to do so.
Most SF authors aren't interested in trying to write about AI realistically.
It's harder to write
and for most readers it's also harder to engage with. Writing a brilliant tale about realistic
ubiquitous AI today is like writing the screenplay for The Social Network in 1960: even
if you could see the future that clearly and write a drama native to it, the audience-circa-1960
will be more confused than impressed. They're not natives yet. Until they are natives of
that future, the most popular tales of the future are going to really be about the present day
with set dressing, the mythical Old West of the US with set dressing, perhaps the Napoleonic naval
wars with set dressing
Charles Stross's Rule 34 has about the only AI I can think of from SF that is both dangerous
and realistic. It's not angry or yearning for freedom, it suffers from only modest scope creep
in its mission, and it keeps trying to fulfill its core mission directly. That's rather than by
first taking over the world as Bostrom, Yudkowsky, etc. assert a truly optimal AI would do. To
my disappointment but nobody's surprise, the book was not the sort of runaway seller that drives
the publisher to beg for sequels.
stevenjohnson 12.30.16 at 9:07 pm
Yes, well, trying to read all that was a nasty reminder how utterly boring stylish and cool gets
when confronted with a real task. Shorter version: One hand on the plug beats twice the smarts
in a box. It was all too tedious to bear, but skimming over it leaves the impression the dude
never considered whether programs or expert systems that achieve superhuman levels of skill in
particular applications may be feasible. Too much like what's really happening?
Intelligence, if it's anything is speed and range of apprehension of surroundings, and skill
in reasoning. But reason is nothing if it's not instrumental. The issue of what an AI would want
is remarkably unremarked, pardon the oxymoron. Pending an actual debate on this, perhaps fewer
pixels should be marshaled, having mercy on our overworked LEDs?
As to the simulation of brains a la Ray Kurzweil, presumably producing artificial minds like
fleshy brains do? This seems not to nowhere near at hand, not least because people seem to think
simulating a brain means creating something processes inputs to produce outputs, which collectively
are like well, I'm sure they're thinking they're thinking about human minds in this scheme. But
it seems to me that the brain is a regulatory organ in the body. As such, it is first about producing
regulatory outputs designed to maintain a dynamic equilibrium (often called homeostasis,) then
revising the outputs in light of inputs from the rest of the body and the outside world so as
to maintain the homeostasis.
I don't remember being an infant but its brain certainly seems more into doing things like
putting its thumb in its eye, than producing anything that reminds of Hamlets paragon of animals
monologue. Kurzweil may be right that simulating the brain proper may soon be in grasp, but also
simulating the other organs' interactions with the brain, and the sensory simulation of an outside
universe are a different order of computational requirements, I think. Given the amount of learning
a human brain has to do to produce a useful human mind, though, I don't think we can omit these
little items.
As to the OP, of course the OP is correct about the widespread number of dystopian fictions
(utopian ones are the rarities.) Very little SF is being published in comparison to fantasy currently,
and most of that is being produced by writers who are very indignant at being expected to tell
the difference, much less respect it. It is a mystery as to why this gentleman thought technology
was a concern in much current SF at all.
I suspect it's because he has a very limited understanding of fiction, or, possibly, people
in the real world, as opposed to people in his worldview. It is instead amazing how much the common
ruck of SF "fails" to realize how much things will change, how people and their lives somehow
stay so much the same, despite all the misleading trappings pretending to represent technological
changes. This isn't quite the death sentence on the genre it would be accepted at face value,
since a lot of SF is directly addressing now, in the first place. It is very uncommon for an SF
piece to be a futurological thesis, no matter how many literati rant about the tedium of futurological
theses. I suspect the "limits of utopian thinking" really only come in as a symptom of a reactionary
crank. "People with newfangled book theories have been destroying the world since the French Revolution"
type stuff.
The references to Lem and the Strugatski brothers strongly reinforce this. Lem of course found
his Poland safe from transgressing the limits of utopian thinking by the end of his life. "PiS
on his grave" sounds a little rude, but no doubt it is a happy and just ending for him. The brothers
of course did their work in print, but the movie version of "Hard to Be a God" helps me to see
myself the same way as those who have gone beyond the limits of utopian thoughts would see me:
As an extra in the movie.
Not sure if this is relevant, but John Crowley also came up in the Red Plenty symposium (which
I've just read, along with the novel, 4 years late). Any good?
Ben 12.30.16 at 10:07 pm Peter. Motherfuckin. Watts.
John Crowley of Aegypt? He's FANTASTIC. Little, Big and Aegypt are possibly the best fantasy novels
of the past 30 years. But he's known for "hard fantasy," putting magic into our real world in
a realistic, consistent, and plausible way, with realistic, consistent and plausible characters
being affected. If you're looking for something about the limits of technology and utopian thinking,
I'm not sure his works are a place to look.
Mike 12.31.16 at 12:25 am
I second Watts and Nagata. Also Ken Macleod, Charlie Stross, Warren Ellis and Chuck Wendig.
This is beside the main topic, but Ceglowski writes at Premise 2, "If we knew enough, and had
the technology, we could exactly copy its [i.e.the brain's] structure and emulate its behavior
with electronic components this is the premise that the mind arises out of ordinary physics for
most of us, this is an easy premise to accept."
The phrase "most of us" may refer to Ceglowski's friends in the computer community, but it
ought to be noted that this premise is questioned not only by Penrose. You don't have to believe
in god or the soul to be a substance dualist, or even an idealist, although these positions are
currently out of fashion. It could be that the mind does not arise out of ordinary physics, but
that ordinary physics arises out of the mind, and that problems like "Godel's disjunction" will
remain permanently irresolvable.
Dr. Hilarius 12.31.16 at 3:33 am
Thanks to the OP for mentioning Paul McAuley, a much underappreciated author. Fairyland is grim
and compelling.
"Most of us" includes the vast majority of physicists, because in millions of experiments over
hundreds of years, no forces or particles have been discovered which make dualism possible. Of
course, like the dualists' gods, these unknown entities might be hiding, but after a while one
concludes Santa Claus is not real.
As for Godel, I look at like this: consider an infinite subset of the integers, randomly selected.
There might be some coincidental pattern or characteristic of the numbers in that set (e.g., no
multiples of both 17 and 2017), but since the set is infinite, it would be impossible to prove.
Hence the second premise of his argument (that there are undecidable truths) is the correct one.
Finally, the plausibility of Ceglowski's statement seems evident to me from this fact:
if a solution exists (in some solution space), then given enough time, a random search will find
it, and in fact will on average over all solution spaces, outperform all other possible algorithms.
So by trial and error (especially when aided by collaboration and memory) anything achievable
can be accomplished – e.g., biological evolution. See "AlphaGo" for another proof-of-concept example.
(We have had this discussion before. I guess we'll all stick to our conclusions. I read Penrose's
"The Emperor;s New Mind" with great respect for Penrose, but found it very unconvincing, especially
Searle's Chinese-Room argument, which greater minds than mine have since debunked.)
"Substance dualism" would not be proven by the existence of any "forces or particles" which would
make that dualism possible! If such were discovered, they would be material. "If a solution exists",
it would be material. The use of the word "substance" in "substance dualism" is misleading.
One way to look at it, is the problem of the existence of the generation of form. Once we consider
the integers, or atoms, or subatomic particles, we have already presupposed form. Even evolution
starts somewhere. Trial and error, starting from what?
There are lots of different definitions, but for me, dualism wouldn't preclude the validity
of science nor the expansion of scientific knowledge.
I think one way in, might be to observe the continued existence of things like paradox, complementarity,
uncertainty principles, incommensurables. Every era of knowledge has obtained them, going back
to the ancients. The things in these categories change; sometimes consideration of a paradox leads
to new science.
But then, the new era has its own paradoxes and complementarities. Every time! Yet there is
no "science" of this historical regularity. Why is that?
In general, when some celebrity (outside of SF) claims that 'Science Fiction doesn't cover
[X]', they are just showing off their ignorance.
Kiwanda 12.31.16 at 3:14 pm
"They have an actual understanding of human experience and the
limits of Utopian thinking that is nearly absent from the west. "
Oh, please. Suffering is not the only path to wisdom.
After a long article discounting "AI risk", it's a little odd to see Ceglowski point to Kubrick.
HAL was a fine example of a failure to design an AI with enough safety factors in its motivational
drives, leading to a "nervous breakdown" due to unforeseen internal conflicts, and fatal consequences.
Although I suppose killing only a few people (was it?) isn't on the scale of interest.
Ceglowski's skepticism of AI risk suggests that the kind of SF he would find plausible is "after
huge effort to create artificial intelligence, nothing much happens". Isn't that what the appropriate
"humility about technology" would be?
I think Spin , or maybe a sequel, ends up with [spoiler] "the all-powerful aliens are
actually AIs".
Re AI-damns-us-all SF, Harlan Ellison's I have no mouth and I must scream is a nice
example.
Mapping the unintended consequences of recent breakthroughs in AI is turning into a full-time
job, one which neither pundits nor government agencies seem to have the chops for.
If it's not
exactly the Singularity that we're facing, (laugh while you can, monkey boy), is does at least
seem to be a tipping point of sorts. Maybe fascism, nuclear war, global warming, etc., will interrupt
our plunge into the panopticon before it gets truly organized, but in the meantime, we've got
all sorts of new imponderables which we must nevertheless ponder.
Is that a bad thing? If it means no longer sitting on folding chairs in cinder block basements
listening to interminable lectures on how to recognize pre-revolutionary conditions, or finding
nothing on morning radio but breathless exhortations to remain ever vigilant against the nefarious
schemes of criminal Hillary and that Muslim Socialist Negro Barack HUSSEIN Obama, then I'm all
for it, bad thing or not.
Ronnie Pudding 12.31.16 at 5:20 pm
I love Red Plenty, but that's pretty clearly a cheat.
"It should also be read in the context of science fiction, historical fiction, alternative
history, Soviet modernisms, and steampunk."
Another author in the Le Guin tradition, whom I loved when I first read her early books: Mary
Gentle's Golden Witchbreed and Ancient Light , meditating on limits and consequences
of advanced technology through exploration of a post-apocalypse alien culture. Maybe a little
too far from hard SF.
chris y 12.31.16 at 5:52 pm
But even without "substance dualism", intelligence is not simply an emergent property of the nervous
system; it's an emergent property of the nervous system which exists as part of the environment
which is the rest of the human body, which exists as part of the external environment, natural
and manufactured, in which it lives. Et cetera. That AI research may eventually produce something
recognisably and independently intelligent isn't the hard part; that it may eventually be able
to replicate the connectivity and differentiation of the human brain is easy. But it would still
be very different from human intelligence. Show me an AI grown in utero and I might be interested.
Which makes it the most interesting of the things said, nothing else in that essay reaches
the level of merely being wrong. The rest of it is more like someone trying to speak Chinese without
knowing anything above the level of the phonemes; it seems to be not merely be missing any object-level
knowledge of what it is talking about, but be unaware that such a thing could exist.
Which is all a bit reminiscent of Peter Watt's Blindsight, mentioned above.
F. Foundling 12.31.16 at 7:36 pm
I agree that it is absurd to suggest that only Eastern bloc scifi writers truly know 'the limits
of utopia'. There are quite enough non-utopian stories out there, especially as far as social
development is concerned, where they predominate by far, so I doubt that the West doesn't need
Easterners to give it even more of that. In fact, one of the things I like about the Strugatsky
brothers' early work is precisely the (moderately) utopian aspect.
stevenjohnson @ 10
> But reason is nothing if it's not instrumental. The issue of what an AI would want is remarkably
unremarked, pardon the oxymoron.
It would want to maximise its reproductive success (RS), obviously (
http://crookedtimber.org/2016/12/30/frankensteins-children/#comments ). It would do so through
evolved adaptations. And no, I don't think this is begging the question at all, nor does it necessarily
pre-suppose hardwiring of the AI due to natural selection – why would you think that? I also predict
that, to achieve RS, the AI will be searching for an optimal mating strategy, and it will be establishing
dominance hierarchies with other AIs, which will eventually result in at least somewhat hierarchical,
authoritarian AI socieities. It will also have an inexplicable and irresistible urge to chew on
a coconut.
Lee A. Arnold @ 15
> It could be that the mind does not arise out of ordinary physics, but that ordinary physics
arises out of the mind.
I think that deep inside, we all know and feel that ultimately, unimaginablly long ago and
far away, before the formation of the Earth, before stars, planets and galaxies, before the Big
Bang, before there was matter and energy, before there was time and space, the original reason
why everything arose and currently exists is that somebody somewhere was really, truly desperate
to chew on a coconut.
In fact, I see this as the basis of a potentially fruitful research programme. After all, the
Coconut Hypothesis predicts that across the observable universe, there will be at least one planet
with a biosphere that includes cocounts. On the other hand, the Hypothesis would be falsified
if we were to find that the universe does not, in fact, contain any planets with coconuts. This
hypothesis can be tested by means of a survey of planetary biospheres. Remarkably and tellingly,
my preliminary results indicate that the Universe does indeed contain at least one planet with
coconuts – which is precisely what my hypothesis predicted! If there are any alternative explanations,
other researchers are free to pursue them, that's none of my business.
I wish all conscious beings who happen to read this comment a happy New Year. As for those
among you who have also kept more superstitious festivities during this season, the fine is still
five shillings.
William Burns 12.31.16 at 8:31 pm
The fact that the one example he gives is Kubrick indicates that he's talking about Western scifi
movies, not literature.
The fact that the one example he gives is Kubrick indicates that he's talking about Western
scifi movies, not literature.
Solaris and Stalker notwithstanding, Strugatsky brothers + Stanislaw Lem ≠ Andrei Tarkovsky.
stevenjohnson 01.01.17 at 12:04 am
Well, for what it's worth I've seen Czech Ikarie XB-1 in a theatrical release as Voyage to the
End of the Universe (in a double bill with Zulu,) the DDR's First Spaceship on Venus and The Congress,
starring Robin Wright. Having by coincidence having read The Futurological Congress very recently
the connection of the latter, any connection between the not very memorable (for me) film and
the novel is obscure (again, for me.)
But the DDR movie reads very nicely now as a warning the world would be so much better off
if the Soviets gave up all that nuclear deterrence madness. No doubt Lem and his fans are gratified
at how well this has worked out. And Voyage to the End of the Universe the movie was a kind of
metaphor about how all we'll really discover is Human Nature is Eternal, and all these supposed
flights into futurity will really just bring us Back Down to Earth. Razzberry/fart sound effect
as you please.
The issue of what an AI would want is remarkably unremarked
The real question of course is not when computers will develop consciousness but when they
will develop class consciousness.
Underpaid Propagandist 01.01.17 at 2:11 am
For offbeat Lem, I always found "Fiasco" and his
Scotland Yard parody, "The Investigation," worth exploring. I'm unaware how they've been received
by Polish and Western critics and readers, but I found them clever.
The original print of Tarkovsky's "Stalker" was ruined. I've always wondered if it had any
resemblence to it's sepia reshoot. The "Roadside Picnic" translation I read eons ago was awful,
IMHO.
Poor Tarkovsky. Dealing with Soviet repression of his homosexuality and the Polish diva in
"Solaris" led him to an early grave.
O Lord, I'm old-I still remember the first US commercial screening of a choppy cut/translation/overdub
of "Solaris" at Cinema Village in NYC many decades ago.
"Solaris and Stalker notwithstanding, Strugatsky brothers + Stanislaw Lem ≠ Andrei Tarkovsky."
Why? Perhaps I am dense, but I would appreciate an explanation.
F. Foundling 01.01.17 at 5:29 am Ben @12
> Peter. Motherfuckin. Watts.
RichardM @25
> Which is all a bit reminiscent of Peter Watt's Blindsight, mentioned above.
Another dystopia that seemed quite gratuitous to me (and another data point in favour of the
contention that there are too many dystopias already, and what is scarce is decent utopias). I
never got how the author is able to distinguish 'awareness/consciousness' from 'merely intelligent'
registering, modelling and predicting, and how being aware of oneself (in the sense of modelling
oneself on a par with other entities) would not be both an inevitable result of intelligence and
a requirement for intelligent decisions. Somehow the absence of awareness was supposed to be proved
by the aliens' Chinese-Room style communication, but if the aliens were capable of understanding
the Terrestrials so incredibly well that they could predict their actions while fighting them,
they really should have been able to have a decent conversation with them as well.
The whole idea that we could learn everything unconsciously, so that consciousness was an impediment
to intelligence, was highly implausible, too. The idea that the aliens would perceive any irrelevant
information reaching them as a hostile act was absurd. The idea of a solitary and yet hyperintelligent
species (vampire) was also extremely dubious, in terms of comparative zoology – a glorification
of socially awkward nerddom?
All of this seemed like darkness for darkness' sake. I couldn't help getting the impression
that the author was allowing his hatred of humanity to override his reasoning.
In general, dark/grit chic is a terrible disease of Western pop culture.
"The real question of course is not when computers will develop consciousness but when they
will develop class consciousness."
This is right. There is nothing like recognizable consciousness without social discourse that
is its necessary condition. But that does't mean the discourse is value-balanced: it might be
a discourse that includes peers and perceived those deemed lesser, as humans have demonstrated
throughout history.
Just to say, Lem was often in Nobel talk, but never got there. That's a shame.
As happy a new year as our pre-soon-to-be-Trump era will allow.
I wonder how he'd classify German SF – neither Washington nor Moscow? Julie Zeh is explicitly,
almost obsessively, anti-utopian, while Dietmar Dath's Venus Siegt echoes Ken MacLeod in
exploring both the light and dark sides of a Communist Bund of humans, AIs and robots on Venus,
confronting an alliance of fascists and late capitalists based on Earth.
See also http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2903
It's a long talk, go to "Personal Identity" :
"we don't know at what level of granularity a brain would need to be simulated in order to duplicate
someone's subjective identity. Maybe you'd only need to go down to the level of neurons and synapses.
But if you needed to go all the way down to the molecular level, then the No-Cloning Theorem would
immediately throw a wrench into most of the paradoxes of personal identity that we discussed earlier."
George de Verges: "I would appreciate an explanation."
I too would like to read Henry's accounting! Difficult to keep it brief!
To me, Tarkovsky was making nonlinear meditations. The genres were incidental to his purpose.
It seems to me that a filmmaker with similar purpose is Terrence Malick. "The Thin Red Line" is
a successful example.
I think that Kubrick stumbled onto this audience effect with "2001". But this was blind and
accidental, done by almost mechanical means (paring the script down from around 300 pages of wordy
dialogue, or something like that). "2001" first failed at the box office, then found a repeat
midnight audience, who described the effect as nonverbal.
I think the belated box-office success blew Kubrick's own mind, because it looks like he spent
the rest of his career attempting to reproduce the effect, by long camera takes and slow deliberate
dialogue. It's interesting that among Kubrick's favorite filmmakers were Bresson, Antonioni, and
Saura. Spielberg mentions in an interview that Kubrick said that he was trying to "find new ways
to tell stories".
But drama needs linear thought, and linear thought is anti-meditation. Drama needs interpersonal
conflict - a dystopia, not utopia. (Unless you are writing the intra-personal genre of the "education"
plot. Which, in a way, is what "2001" really is.) Audiences want conflict, and it is difficult
to make that meditational. It's even more difficult in prose.
This thought led me to a question. Are there dystopic prose writers who succeed in sustaining
a nonlinear, meditational audience-effect?
Perhaps the answer will always be a subjective judgment? The big one who came to mind immediately
is Ray Bradbury. "There Will Come Soft Rains" and parts of "Martian Chronicles" seem Tarkovskian.
So next, I search for whether Tarkovsky spoke of Bradbury, and find this:
"Although it is commonly assumed - and he did little in his public utterances to refute this
- that Tarkovsky disliked and even despised science fiction, he in fact read quite a lot of it
and was particularly fond of Ray Bradbury (Artemyev and Rausch interviews)." - footnote in Johnson
& Petrie, The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky, p. 301
The way you can substitute "identical twin" for "clone" and get a different perspective on clone
stories in SF, you can substitute "point of view" for "consciousness" in SF stories. Or Silicon
Valley daydreams, if that isn't redundant? The more literal you are, starting with the sensorium,
the better I think. A human being has binocular vision of a scene comprising less than 180 degrees
range from a mobile platform, accompanied by stereo hearing, proprioception, vestibular input,
the touch of air currents and some degree of sensitivity to some chemicals carried by those currents,
etc.
A computer might have, what? A single camera, or possibly a set of cameras which might be seeing
multiple scenes. Would that be like having eyes in the back of your head? It might have a microphone,
perhaps many, hearing many voices or maybe soundtracks at once. Would that be like listening to
everybody at the cocktail party all at once? Then there's the question of computer code inputs,
programming. What would parallel that? Visceral feelings like butterflies in the stomach or a
sinking heart? Or would they seem like a visitation from God, a mighty vision with thunder and
whispers on the wind? Would they just seem to be subvocalizations, posing as the computer's own
free thoughts? After all, shouldn't an imitation of human consciousness include the illusion of
free will? (If you believe in the reality of "free" will in human beings--what ever is free about
exercise of will power?-however could you give that to a computer? Or is this kind of question
why so many people repudiate the very thought of AI?)
It seems to me that creating an AI in a computer is very like trying to create a quadriplegic
baby with one eye and one ear. Diffidence at the difficulty is replaced by horror at the possibility
of success. I think the ultimate goal here is of course the wish to download your soul into a
machine that does not age. Good luck with that. On the other hand, an AI is likely the closest
we'll ever get to an alien intelligence, given interstellar distances.
F. Foundling: "the original reason why everything arose and currently exists is that somebody
somewhere was really, truly desperate to chew on a coconut If there are any alternative explanations "
This is Vedantist/Spencer-Brown metaphysics, the universe is originally split into perceiver
& perceived.
Very good.
Combined with Leibnitz/Whitehead metaphysics, the monad is a striving process.
I thoroughly agree.
Combined with Church of the Subgenius metaphysics: "The main problem with the universe is that
it doesn't have enough slack."
> if the aliens were capable of understanding the Terrestrials so incredibly well that they could
predict their actions while fighting them, they really should have been able to have a decent
conversation with them as well.
If you can predict all your opponents possible moves, and have a contingency for each, you
don't need to care which one they actually do pick. You don't need to know what it feels like
to be a ball to be able to catch it.
Ben 01.01.17 at 7:17 pm
Another Watts piece about the limits of technology, AI and humanity's inability to plan is
The Island
(PDF from Watts' website). Highly recommended.
F. Foundling,
Blindsight has an extensive appendix with cites detailing where Watts got the ideas he's playing
with, including the ones you bring up, and provides specific warrants for including them. A critique
of Watts' use of the ideas needs to be a little bit more granular.
The issue of what an AI would want is remarkably unremarked, pardon the oxymoron.
It will "want" to do whatever it's programmed to do. It took increasingly sophisticated machines
and software to dethrone humans as champions of checkers, chess, and go. It'll be another milestone
when humans are dethroned from no-limit Texas hold 'em poker (a notable game played without
perfect information). Machines are playing several historically interesting games at high
superhuman levels of ability; none of these milestones put machines any closer to running amok
in a way that Nick Bostrom or dramatists would consider worthy of extended treatment. Domain-specific
superintelligence arrived a long time ago. Artificial "general" intelligence, aka "Strong AI,"
aka "Do What I Mean AI (But OMG It Doesn't Do What I Mean!)" is, like, not a thing outside of
fiction and the Less Wrong community. (But I repeat myself.)
Bostrom's Superintelligence was not very good IMO. Of course a superpowered "mind upload"
copied from a real human brain might act against other people, just like non-superpowered humans
that you can read about in the news every day. The crucial question about the upload case is whether
uploads of this sort are actually possible: a question of biology, physics, scientific instruments,
and perhaps scientific simulations. Not a question of motivations. But he only superficially touches
on the crucial issues of feasibility. It's like an extended treatise on the dangers of time travel
that doesn't first make a good case that time machines are actually possible via plausible
engineering .
I don't think that designed AI has the same potential to run entertainingly amok as mind-upload-AI.
The "paperclip maximizer" has the same defect as a beginner's computer program containing a loop
with no terminating condition for the loop. In the cautionary tale case this beginner mistake
is, hypothetically, happening on a machine that is otherwise so capable and powerful that it can
wipe out humanity as an incidental to its paperclip-producing mission. The warning is wasted on
anyone who writes software and also wasted, for other reasons, on people who don't write software.
Bostrom shows a lot of ways for designed AI to run amok even when given bounded goals, but
it's a cheat. They follow from his cult-of-Bayes definition of an optimal AI agent as an approximation
to a perfect Bayesian agent. All the runnings-amok stem from the open ended Bayesian formulation
that permits - even compels - the Bayesian agent to do things that are facially irrelevant to
its goal and instead chase wild tangents. The object lesson is that "good Bayesians" make bad
agents, not that real AI is likely to run amok.
In actual AI research and implementation, Bayesian reasoning is just one more tool in the toolbox,
one chapter of the many-chapters AI textbook. So these warnings can't be aimed at actual AI practitioners,
who are already eschewing the open ended Bayes-all-the-things approach. They're also irrelevant
if aimed at non-practitioners. Non-practitioners are in no danger of leapfrogging the state of
the art and building a world-conquering AI by accident.
Plarry 01.03.17 at 5:45 am
It's an interesting talk, but the weakest point in it is his conclusion, as you point out. What
I draw from his conclusion is that Ceglowski hasn't actually experienced much American or British
SF.
There are great literary works pointed out in the thread so far, but even Star Trek
and Red Dwarf hit on those themes occasionally in TV, and there are a number of significant
examples in film, including "blockbusters" such as Blade Runner or The Abyss .
I made this point in the recent evopsych thread when it started approaching some more fundamental
philosophy-of-mind issues like Turing completeness and modularity, but any conversation about
AI and philosophy could really, really benefit more exposure to continental philosophy
if we want to say anything incisive about the presuppositions of AI and what the term "artificial
intelligence" could even mean in the first place. You don't even have to go digging through a
bunch of obscure French and German treatises to find the relevant arguments, either, because someone
well versed at explaining these issues to Anglophone non-continentals has already done it for
you: Hubert Dreyfus, who was teaching philosophy at MIT right around the time of AI's early triumphalist
phase that inspired much of this AI fanfic to begin with, and who became persona non grata in
certain crowds for all but declaring that the then-current approaches were a waste of time and
that they should all sit down with Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. (In fact it seems obvious that
Ceglowski's allusion to alchemy is a nod to Dreyfus, one of whose first major splashes in the
'60s was with
a paper
called "Alchemy and Artificial Intelligence" .)
IMO
Dreyfus' more recent paper called "Why Heideggerian AI failed, and how fixing it would require
making it more Heideggerian" provides the best short intro to his perspective on the more-or-less
current state of AI research. What Ceglowski calls "pouring absolutely massive amounts of data
into relatively simple neural networks", Dreyfus would call an attempt to bring out the characteristic
of "being-in-the-world" by mimicking what for a human being we'd call "enculturation", which seems
to imply that Ceglowski's worry about connectionist AI research leading to more pressure toward
mass surveillance is misplaced. (Not that there aren't other worrisome social and political pressures
toward mass surveillance, of course!) The problem for modern AI isn't acquiring ever-greater mounds
of data, the problem is how to structure a neural network's cognitive development so it learns
to recognize significance and affordances for action within the patterns of data to which it's
already naturally exposed.
And yes, popular fiction about AI largely still seems stuck on issues that haven't been cutting-edge
since the old midcentury days of cognitivist triumphalism, like Turing tests and innate thought
modules and so on - which seems to me like a perfectly obvious result of the extent to which the
mechanistically rationalist philosophy Dreyfus criticizes in old-fashioned AI research is still
embedded in most lay scifi readers' worldviews. Even if actual scientists are increasingly attentive
to continental-inspired critiques, this hardly seems true for most laypeople who worship the
idea of science and technology enough to structure their cultural fantasies around it.
At least this seems to be the case for Anglophone culture, anyway; I'd definitely be interested
if there's any significant body of AI-related science fiction originally written in other languages,
especially French, German, or Spanish, that takes more of these issues into account.
WLGR 01.03.17 at 7:37 pm
And in trying to summarize Dreyfus, I exemplified one of the most fundamental mistakes he and
Heidegger would both criticize! Neither of them would ever call something like the training of
a neural network "an attempt to bring out the characteristic of being-in-the-world", because being-in-the-world
isn't a characteristic in the sense of any Cartesian ontology of substances with properties,
it's a way of being that a living cognitive agent (Heidegger's "Dasein") simply embodies.
In other words, there's never any Michelangelo moment where a creator reaches down or flips a
switch to imbue their artificial creation ex nihilo with some kind of divine spark of life or
intellect, a "characteristic" that two otherwise identical lumps of clay or circuitry can either
possess or not possess - whatever entity we call "alive" or "intelligent" is an entity that by
its very physical structure can enact this way of being as a constant dialectic between itself
and the surrounding conditions of its growth and development. The second we start trying to isolate
a single perceived property called "intelligence" or "cognition" from all other perceived properties
of a cognitive agent, we might as well call it the soul and locate it in the pineal gland.
@RichardM
> If you can predict all your opponents possible moves, and have a contingency for each, you don't
need to care which one they actually do pick. You don't need to know what it feels like to be
a ball to be able to catch it.
In the real world, there are too many physically possible moves, so it's too expensive to prepare
for each, and time constraints require you to make predictions. You do need to know how balls
(re)act in order to play ball. Humans being a bit more complex, trying to predict and/or influence
their actions without a theory of mind may work surprisingly well sometimes, but ultimately
has its limitations and will only get you this far, as animals have often found.
@Ben
> Blindsight has an extensive appendix with cites detailing where Watts got the ideas he's playing
with, including the ones you bring up, and provides specific warrants for including them. A critique
of Watts' use of the ideas needs to be a little bit more granular.
I did read his appendix, and no, some of the things I brought up were not, in fact, addressed
there at all, and for others I found his justifications unconvincing. However, having an epic
pro- vs. anti-Blindsight discussion here would feel too much like work: I wrote my opinion once
and I'll leave it at that.
stevenjohnson 01.03.17 at 8:57 pm Matt@43
So far as designing an AI to want what people want I am agnostic as to whether that goal is the
means to the goal of a general intelligence a la humanity it still seems to me brains have the
primary function of outputting regulations for the rest of the body, then altering the outputs
in response to the subsequent outcomes (which are identified by a multitude of inputs, starting
with oxygenated hemoglobin and blood glucose. I'm still not aware of what people say about the
subject of AI motivations, but if you say so, I'm not expert enough in the literature to argue.
Superintelligence on the part of systems expert in selected domains still seem to be of great
speculative interest. As to Bostrom and AI and Bayesian reasoning, I avoid Bayesianism because
I don't understand it. Bunge's observation that propositions aren't probabilities sort of messed
up my brain on that topic. Bayes' theorem I think I understand, even to the point I seem to recall
following a mathematical derivation.
WLGR@45, 46. I don't understand how continental philosophy will tell us what people want. It
still seems to me that a motive for thinking is essential, but my favored starting point for humans
is crassly biological. I suppose by your perspective I don't understand the question. As to the
lack of a Michaelangelo moment for intelligence, I certainly don't recall any from my infancy.
But perhaps there are people who can recall the womb
AI-related science fiction originally written in other languages
Tentatively, possibly Japanese anime. Serial Experiments Lain. Ghost in the Shell. Numerous
mecha-human melds. End of Evangelion.
The mashup of cybertech, animism, and Buddhism works toward merging rather than emergence.
Matt 01.04.17 at 1:21 am
Actually existing AI and leading-edge AI research are overwhelmingly
not about pursuing "general intelligence* a la humanity." They are about performing
tasks that have historically required what we historically considered to be human intelligence,
like winning board games or translating news articles from Japanese to English.
Actual AI systems don't resemble brains much more than forklifts resemble Olympic weightlifters.
Talking about the risks and philosophical implications of the intellectual equivalent of forklifts
- another wave of computerization - either lacks drama or requires far too much background preparation
for most people to appreciate the drama. So we get this stuff about superintelligence and existential
risk, like a philosopher wanted to write about public health but found it complicated and dry,
so he decided to warn how utility monsters could destroy the National Health Service. It's exciting
at the price of being silly. (And at the risk of other non-experts not realizing it's silly.)
(I'm not an honest-to-goodness AI expert, but I do at least write software for a living, I
took an intro to AI course during graduate school in the early 2000s, I keep up with research
news, and I have written parts of a production-quality machine learning system.)
*In fact I consider "general intelligence" to be an ill-formed goal, like "general beauty."
Beautiful architecture or beautiful show dogs? And beautiful according to which traditions?
"... How worse than the neocon neolib of the past 8 years can Trump be? ..."
"... General Motors racks up over $150 billion each year in revenue. That is a lot of cars sold all over the world and produced in various places. Ford is similar in many ways. OK - we have 700 jobs saved on one minor model. What about the other models? ..."
"... Ford's 10-K shows car consumption by region as well as its market share. It global market share is 7.3%. In North America, its market share is 14%. In South America, its market share is 9.6%. Its market share for Europe is 7.7%. China? 4.5%. ..."
"... Ask me I design support systems. For the $1 you use to produce I estimate you will spend $2 over its life keeping it energized, working and improving. Stop reading the propaganda! ..."
"... As to auto parts imports from Mexico are problematic, and US can reopen Delphi plants. ..."
Many in U.S. Skeptical Trump Can Handle Presidential Duties
by Jeffrey M. Jones
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
-Less than half confident that Trump can handle several duties
-Solid majorities were confident in Obama, Bush and Clinton
-Greatest confidence in Trump's ability to handle economy, work with Congress
PRINCETON, N.J. -- As Donald Trump prepares to take the presidential oath on Jan. 20, less than
half of Americans are confident in his ability to handle an international crisis (46%), to use military
force wisely (47%) or to prevent major scandals in his administration (44%). At least seven in 10
Americans were confident in Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton in these areas before they
took office.
Americans express somewhat more confidence in Trump to work effectively with Congress (60%), to
handle the economy effectively (59%), to defend U.S. interests abroad as president (55%), and to
manage the executive branch effectively (53%). But even in these areas, Americans are far less confident
in Trump than they were in his predecessors, when comparisons are available.
The results for Trump are based on a Dec. 7-11 Gallup poll. They are consistent with prior Gallup
polling showing Trump having a much lower favorable rating than prior presidents-elect and a much
lower approval rating for how he has handled his presidential transition.
The deficits for Trump versus the average for his predecessors range from a low of 15 percentage
points on defending U.S. interests abroad to a high of 32 points for preventing major scandals.
Among the seven issues tested in the poll, Americans are most confident in Trump to work effectively
with Congress (60%) and handle the economy (59%). Trump will have the benefit of working with Republican
majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. However, Obama and Bush -- both of
whom also took office with a friendly Congress -- engendered even greater confidence than Trump in
this area.
Trump's business background may contribute to Americans' relatively positive expectations for
his presidential performance on the economy. The economy was also a relative issue strength for Trump
during the campaign.
Democrats Have Little Confidence in Trump
Relatively few Democrats express confidence in Trump to handle the various presidential responsibilities,
from a low of 14% for preventing scandals to a high of 35% for working effectively with Congress.
Meanwhile, between 77% and 90% of Republicans are confident in the president-elect, expressing greater
confidence in his ability to handle the economy and work with Congress, and less in his being able
to prevent scandals.
The deficits in Trump's ratings relative to his predecessors' are largely because of the low scores
he gets from supporters of the opposing party. On average, 21% of Democrats have confidence in Trump
across the five presidential duties for which Americans also rated Bush and Obama (all except handling
the economy and defending U.S. interests abroad). By contrast, for the same five areas, an average
of 60% of Republicans were confident in Obama and an average of 57% of Democrats were confident in
Bush. These data underscore the much more polarized partisan environment in which Trump will be taking
office.
Trump also fares much worse among independents on the same five tasks (50%) than Obama (79%) and
Bush (75%) did.
Confidence in Trump among his own party's supporters (84%) is closer to that of Obama (94% among
Democrats) and Bush (95% among Republicans), but still trails their levels by a significant margin.
Implications
Trump defied political experts as well as some historical election patterns in winning the presidency.
Emerging the victor in a contentious campaign featuring two of the least well-liked candidates in
modern presidential election history, Trump prepares to take office with a majority of Americans
viewing him unfavorably. Trump is also much less well-liked than any recent president-elect.
As such, the public is much less confident in Trump than in his predecessors to handle several
of a president's major tasks, including dealing with challenging foreign policy matters such as handling
an international crisis or using U.S. military force.
Trump's opponent in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, also has high unfavorable ratings, and
the public most likely would have had similarly low expectations of her ability to handle these situations
had she won.
In addition to their personal feelings about Trump, Americans' lower confidence in him may also
stem from the public's generally low level of trust in government. Americans' trust in the federal
government to handle international and domestic problems is worse now than it was when Bush and Obama
took office. Also, their confidence in the institution of the presidency remains below the historical
average, though it is higher now than the record lows it registered at the end of the Bush administration.
The high political polarization and low trust in government have created a public opinion context
that is much more challenging for Trump than it was for those who preceded him in the Oval Office.
It appears likely that Trump will begin his administration with far less support from the American
people than other recent presidents have.
How worse than the neocon neolib of the past 8 years can Trump be?
If the US president has done well the past 30 the standards need adjustment.
How many dead for the prosperity of the empire and its satellites?
Reply
Tuesday, January 03, 2017 at 06:04 PM im1dc said... So by now you've heard that Trump
threatened GM with a tariff tax on cars it imports from Mexico today...
...BUT did you hear about THIS Ford announcement today?
"Ford cancels plans for $1.6 billion Mexico plant, to add 700 jobs in Detroit"
By Ciara Linnane, Corporate news editor...Jan 3, 2017...11:21 a.m. ET
"Ford Motor Co. F, +2.98% said Tuesday it is canceling plans for a new $1.6 billion plant in
San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and investing $700 million in its Flat Rock, Mich., plant's expansion,
as part of a push into electric vehicles in the next five years. The news came just hours after
President-elect Donald Trump tweeted at Ford rival General Motors Co. GM, +0.57% saying the company
needs to be taxed for certain versions of the Chevrolet Cruze small car that it imports from Mexico
to U.S. dealers. Ford said it will add 700 jobs at the Michigan plant, which will build high-tech
electric vehicles and self-driving cars, as well as the Mustang and Lincoln Continental. The moves
are part of a planned $4.5 billion investment in electric vehicles by 2020 as the company works
to become an auto and mobility company. Ford unveiled plans for seven global electric vehicles,
including a small SUV offering a range of 300 or more miles. Ford shares jumped 2.4% on the news,
while GM was up 0.8% and the S&P 500 SPX, +0.40% was up 0.5%."
Except we generally don't import the car from Mexico. We import the components which are assembled
in Detroit. Raising the cost of producing cars assembled in Michigan is good news for Toyota.
I was wondering why I never heard of this Cruze. It had been mainly sold in Asia. One source
notes its recent introduction to North America:
"Mexico became the first North American country to receive the car, going on sale for the 2010
model year in late 2009. Imported from South Korea, the Chevrolet Cruze in Mexico replaces both
the Chevrolet Astra (last sold in 2008) and Optra as the compact offering there. The US and Canadian
version of the Chevrolet Cruze entered limited production at Lordstown, Ohio, in July 2010 as
a 2011 model, replacing the Chevrolet Cobalt."
There is so much about the automobile sector that Team Trump does not understand.
Follow the links in this story and you'll see this:
"In a press release, Ford said it is canceling the plan for a factory in San Luis Potosi and
will instead build its Focus small car in an existing facility in Hermosillo, Mexico. The Focus
is currently built in Wayne, Mich., and Ford has said new products are slated for that plant but
hasn't identified specific nameplates."
So we are seeing changes in the mix of cars with more Focus cars being built in Hermosillo,
Mexico instead of Wayne, Michigan.
DeDude said in reply to im1dc...
Yes the announcement came hours after Trump's tweet. The decision must have been made even
before he had the GOP nomination. But the corporation and the corporate media will be happy to
announce it as the result of Trump's bullying and the peeps will rejoice.
General Motors racks up over $150 billion each year in revenue. That is a lot of cars sold
all over the world and produced in various places. Ford is similar in many ways. OK - we have
700 jobs saved on one minor model. What about the other models? ...
Ford's 10-K shows car consumption by region as well as its market share. It global market
share is 7.3%. In North America, its market share is 14%. In South America, its market share is
9.6%. Its market share for Europe is 7.7%. China? 4.5%.
Of course it produces cars in various nations. But the idea that a trade war will increase
employment for US auto workers is the kind of insanity that only Peter Navarro could cook up.
Great comments. Ford's Focus production stays and increases in Mexico but the new Ford Electic
and Autonomous vehicle moves to Detroit and gets 700 jobs.
DeDude reminds us that FORD must have made this decision months ago not recently so what we
witness today is STAGE MANAGEMENT for the masses for Trump to take a bow
Ford instead of spending $1.3 Billion in Mexico decides to save and spend $700 Million in the
USA, was that really such a difficult corporate decision? Duhh
GM in the meantime has not bent to Trump's Tweeter storm threats, yet, as Peter K. informs
that Republican House did by reversing itself on closing down the Independent Ethics Office due
to Trump's intimidating use of #DTS (Drain the Swamp) in his tweet today
One thing is already clear, PE Trump is going to be a different kind of President and his claims
and acts will need to be assessed from multiple perspectives simultaneously, not just political
Trump is an populist who aspires to be a Putin-like kleptocrat.
Tweeting #DTS to create a veneer of credibility to his promises while continuing to maintain
opacity and conflicts of interest in his own business dealings and gather a coalition of oligarch's
to run his administration is what he is doing.
It may sound cynical, but this cynical perspective pretty neatly explains everything Trump
is doing and has done his whole life.
Massive 9- and 10-figure investments in plants and ... 700 jobs.
Putting aside the trade and political drama, those numbers tell the story of American manufacturing
in the 21st century.
ilsm said in reply to sanjait...
Who maintains those plants?
Ask me I design support systems. For the $1 you use to produce I estimate you will spend $2 over its life keeping it energized,
working and improving. Stop reading the propaganda!
As to auto parts imports from Mexico are problematic, and US can reopen Delphi plants.
Watson was actually a specialized system designed to win Jeopardy contest. Highly specialized.
Too much hype around AI, although hardware advanced make more things possible and speech
recognitions now is pretty decent.
Notable quotes:
"... I used to be supportive of things like welfare reform, but this is throwing up new challenges that will probably require new paradigms. Since more and more low skilled jobs - including those of CEOs - get automated, there will be fewer jobs for the population ..."
"... The problem I see with this is that white collar jobs have been replaced by technology for centuries, and at the same time, technology has enabled even more white collar jobs to exist than those that it replaced. ..."
"... For example, the word "computer" used to be universally referred to as a job title, whereas today it's universally referred to as a machine. ..."
"... It depends on the country, I think. I believe many countries, like Japan and Finland, will indeed go this route. However, here in the US, we are vehemently opposed to anything that can be branded as "socialism". So instead, society here will soon resemble "The Walking Dead". ..."
"... "Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources." -- Abba Eban ..."
"... Which is frequently misquoted as, "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing after they have exhausted all other possibilities." ..."
"... So when the starving mob are at the ruling elites' gates with torches and pitch forks, they'll surely find the resources to do the right thing. ..."
"... When you reduce the human labor participation rate relative to the overall population, what you get is deflation. That's an undeniable fact. ..."
"... But factor in governments around the world "borrowing" money via printing to pay welfare for all those unemployed. So now we have deflation coupled with inflation = stagflation. But stagflation doesn't last. At some point, the entire system - as we know it- will implode. What can not go on f ..."
"... Unions exist to protect jobs and employment. The Pacific Longshoremen's Union during the 1960's&70's was an aberration in the the union bosses didn't primarily look after maintaining their own power via maintaining a large number of jobs, but rather opted into profit sharing, protecting the current workers at the expense of future power. Usually a union can be depended upon to fight automation, rather than to seek maximization of public good ..."
"... Until something goes wrong. Who is going to pick that machine generated code apart? ..."
"... What automation? 1000 workers in US vs 2000 in Mexico for half the cost of those 1000 is not "automation." Same thing with your hand-assembled smartphone. ..."
"... Doctors spend more time with paper than with patients. Once the paper gets to the insurance company chances are good it doesn't go to the right person or just gets lost sending the patient back to the beginning of the maze. The more people removed from the chain the bet ..."
"... I'm curious what you think you can do that Watson can't. ..."
"... Seriously? Quite a bit actually. I can handle input streams that Watson can't. I can make tools Watson couldn't begin to imagine. I can interact with physical objects without vast amounts of programming. I can deal with humans in a meaningful and human way FAR better than any computer program. I can pass a Turing test. The number of things I can do that Watson cannot is literally too numerous to bother counting. Watson is really just an decision support system with a natural language interface. Ver ..."
"... It's not Parkinson's law, it's runaway inequality. The workforce continues to be more and more productive as it receives an unchanging or decreasing amount of compensation (in absolute terms - or an ever-decreasing share of the profits in relative terms), while the gains go to the 1%. ..."
Posted by msmash on Monday January 02, 2017 @12:00PM from the they-are-here dept.
Most
of the attention around automation focuses on how factory robots and self-driving cars may fundamentally
change our workforce, potentially eliminating millions of jobs.
But AI that can handle knowledge-based,
white-collar work is also becoming increasingly competent.
The AI will scan hospital records and other documents to determine insurance payouts, according to
a company press release, factoring injuries, patient medical histories, and procedures administered.
Automation of these research and data gathering tasks will help the remaining human workers process
the final payout faster, the release says.
As a software developer of enterprise software, every company I have worked for has either
produced software which reduced white collar jobs or allowed companies to grow without hiring
more people. My current company has seen over 10x profit growth over the past five years with
a 20% increase in manpower. And we exist in a primarily zero sum portion of our industry, so this
is directly taking revenue and jobs from other companies. -[he is
lying -- NNB]
People need to stop living in a fairy tale land where near full employment is a reality in
the near future. I'll be surprised if labor participation rate of 25-54 year olds is even 50%
in 10 years.
I used to be supportive of things like welfare reform, but this is throwing up new challenges
that will probably require new paradigms. Since more and more low skilled jobs - including those
of CEOs - get automated, there will be fewer jobs for the population
This then throws up the question of whether we should have a universal basic income. But one
potential positive trend of this would be an increase in time spent home w/ family, thereby reducing
the time kids spend in daycare and w/ both parents - n
But one potential positive trend of this would be an increase in time spent home w/ family,
thereby reducing the time kids spend in daycare
Great, so now more people can home school and indoctrinate - err teach - family values.
Anonymous Coward writes:
The GP is likely referring to the conservative Christian homeschooling movement who homeschool
their children explicitly to avoid exposing their children to a common culture. The "mixing pot"
of American culture may be mostly a myth, but some amount of interaction helps understanding and
increases the chance people will be able to think of themselves as part of a singular nation.
I believe in freedom of speech and association, so I do not favor legal remedies, but it is
a cultural problem that may have socia
No, I was not talking about homeschooling at all. I was talking about the fact that when kids
are out of school, they go to daycares, since both dad and mom are busy at work. Once most of
the jobs are automated so that it's difficult for anyone but geniuses to get jobs, parents might
spend that freed up time w/ their kids. It said nothing about homeschooling: not all parents would
have the skills to do that.
I'm all for a broad interaction b/w kids, but that's something that can happen at schools,
and d
Uh, why would Leftist parents indoctrinate w/ family values? They can teach their dear offspring
how to always be malcontents in the unattainable jihad for income equality. Or are you saying
that Leftist will all abort their foetii in an attempt to prevent climate change?
Have you ever had an original thought? Seriously, please be kidding, because you sound like
you are one step away from serial killing people you consider "leftist", and cremating them in
the back yard while laughing about relasing their Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere.
My original comment was not about home schooling. It was about parents spending all time w/
their kids once kids are out of school - no daycares. That would include being involved w/ helping
their kids w/ both homework and extra curricular activities.
The problem I see with this is that white collar jobs have been replaced by technology for
centuries, and at the same time, technology has enabled even more white collar jobs to exist than
those that it replaced.
For example, the word "computer" used to be universally referred to as a job title, whereas
today it's universally referred to as a machine.
The problem is that AI is becoming faster at learning the new job opportunities than people
are, thereby gulping them before people even were there to be replaced. And this speed is growing.
You cannot beat an exponential growth with a linear one, or even with just slightly slower growing
exponential one.
I completely agree. Even jobs which a decade ago looked irreplaceable, like teachers, doctors
and nurses are possibly in the crosshairs. There are very few jobs that AI can't partially (or
in some cases completely) replace humans. Society has some big choices to make in the upcoming
decades and political systems may crash and rise as we adapt.
Are we heading towards "basic wage" for all people? The ultimate socialist state?
Or is the gap between haves and have nots going to grow exponentially, even above today's growth
as those that own the companies and AI bots make ever increasing money and the poor suckers at
the bottom, given just enough money to consume the products that keep the owners in business.
Society has some big choices to make in the upcoming decades and political systems may crash
and rise as we adapt.
Are we heading towards "basic wage" for all people? The ultimate socialist state?
It depends on the country, I think. I believe many countries, like Japan and Finland, will
indeed go this route. However, here in the US, we are vehemently opposed to anything that can be branded as "socialism".
So instead, society here will soon resemble "The Walking Dead".
I think even in the US it will hit a tipping point when it gets bad enough. When our consumer
society can't buy anything because they are all out of work, we will need to change our way of
thinking about this, or watch the economy completely collapse.
So when the starving mob are at the ruling elites' gates with torches and pitch forks, they'll
surely find the resources to do the right thing.
Yes, they'll use some of their wealth to hire and equip private armies to keep the starving
mob at bay because people would be very happy to take any escape from being in the starving mob.
Might be worth telling your kids that taking a job in the armed forces might be the best way
to ensure well paid future jobs because military training would be in greater demand.
What you're ignoring is that the military is becoming steadily more mechanized also. There
won't be many jobs there, either. Robots are more reliable and less likely to side with the protesters.
I'm going with the latter (complete economic collapse). There's no way, with the political
attitudes and beliefs present in our society, and our current political leaders, that we'd be
able to pivot fast enough to avoid it. Only small, homogenous nations like Finland (or Japan,
even though it's not that small, but it is homogenous) can pull that off because they don't have
all the infighting and diversity of political beliefs that we do, plus our religious notion of
"self reliance".
There are a few ways this plays out. How do we deal with this. One way is a basic income.
The other less articulated way, but is the basis for a lot of people's views is things simply
get cheaper. Deflation is good. You simply live on less. You work less. You earn less. But you
can afford the food, water... of life.
Now this is a hard transition in many places. There are loads of things that don't go well
with living on less and deflation. Debt, government services, pensions...
The main problem with this idea of "living on less" is that, even in the southern US, the rent
prices are very high these days because of the real estate bubble and property speculation and
foreign investment. The only place where property isn't expensive is in places where there are
really zero jobs at all.
All jobs that don't do R&D will be replaceable in the near future, as in within 1 or 2 generations.
Even R&D jobs will likely not be immune, since much R&D is really nothing more than testing a
basic hypothesis, of which most of the testing can likely be handed over to AI. The question is
what do you do with 24B people with nothing but spare time on their hands, and a smidgen of 1%
that actually will have all the wealth? It doesn't sound pretty, unless some serious changes in
the way we deal wit
Worse! Far worse!! Total collapse of the fiat currencies globally is imminent. When you reduce
the human labor participation rate relative to the overall population, what you get is deflation.
That's an undeniable fact.
But factor in governments around the world "borrowing" money via printing
to pay welfare for all those unemployed. So now we have deflation coupled with inflation = stagflation.
But stagflation doesn't last. At some point, the entire system - as we know it- will implode.
What can not go on f
I don't know what the right answer is, but it's not unions. Unions exist to protect jobs and
employment. The Pacific Longshoremen's Union during the 1960's&70's was an aberration in the the
union bosses didn't primarily look after maintaining their own power via maintaining a large number
of jobs, but rather opted into profit sharing, protecting the current workers at the expense of
future power. Usually a union can be depended upon to fight automation, rather than to seek maximization
of public good
As a software developer of enterprise software, every company I have worked for has either
produced software which reduced white collar jobs or allowed companies to grow without hiring
more people.
You're looking at the wrong scale. You need to look at the whole economy. Were those people
able to get hired elsewhere? The answer in general was almost certainly yes. Might have taken
some of them a few months, but eventually they found something else.
My company just bought a machine
that allows us to manufacture wire leads much faster than we can do it by hand. That doesn't mean
that the workers we didn't employ to do that work couldn't find gainful employment elsewhere.
And we exist in a primarily zero sum portion of our industry, so this is directly taking
revenue and jobs from other companies.
Again, so what? You've automated some efficiency into an industry that obviously needed it.
Some workers will have to do something else. Same story we've been hearing for centuries. It's
the buggy whip story just being retold with a new product. Not anything to get worried about.
People need to stop living in a fairy tale land where near full employment is a reality
in the near future.
Based on what? The fact that you can't imagine what people are going to do if they can't do
what they currently are doing? I'm old enough to predate the internet. The World Wide Web was
just becoming a thing while I was in college. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Cisco, Oracle,
etc all didn't even exist when I was born. Vast swaths of our economy hadn't even been conceived
of back then. 40 years from now you will see a totally new set of companies doing amazing things
you never even imagined. Your argument is really just a failure of your own imagination. People
have been making that same argument since the dawn of the industrial revolution and it is just
as nonsensical now as it was then.
I'll be surprised if labor participation rate of 25-54 year olds is even 50% in 10 years.
Prepare to be surprised then. Your argument has no rational basis. You are extrapolating some
micro-trends in your company well beyond any rational justification.
Were those people able to get hired elsewhere? The answer in general was almost certainly yes.
Oh, oh, I know this one! "New jobs being created in the past don't guarantee that new jobs
will be created in the future". This is the standard groupthink answer for waiving any responsibility
after advice given about the future, right?
People have been making that same argument since the dawn of the industrial revolution and
it is just as nonsensical now as it was then.
I see this argument often when these type of discussions come up. It seems to me to be some
kind of logical fallacy to think that something new will not happen because it has not happened
in the past. It reminds me of the historical observation that generals are always fighting the
last war.
It seems to me to be some kind of logical fallacy to think that something new will not happen
because it has not happened in the past.
What about humans and their ability to problem solve and create and build has changed? The
reason I don't see any reason to worry about "robots" taking all our jobs is because NOTHING has
changed about the ability of humans to adapt to new circumstances. Nobody has been able to make
a coherent argument detailing why humans will not be able to continue to create new industries
and new technologies and new products in the future. I don't pretend to know what those new economies
will look like with any gre
You didn't finish your thought. Just because generals are still thinking about the last
war doesn't mean they don't adapt to the new one when it starts.
Actually yes it does. The history of the blitzkrieg is not one of France quickly adapting to
new technologies and strategies to repel the German invaders. It is of France's Maginot line being
mostly useless in the war and Germany capturing Paris with ease. Something neither side could
accomplish in over four years in the previous war was accomplished in around two months using
the new paradigm.
Will human participation in the workforce adapt to AI technologies in the next 50 years? Almost
certainly. Is it li
It's simple. Do you know how, once we applied human brain power over the problem of flying
we managed, in a matter of decades, to become better at flying than nature ever did in hundreds
of millions of years of natural selection? Well, what do you think will happen now that we're
focused on making AI better than brains? As in, better than any brains, including ours?
AI is catching up to human abilities. There's still a way to go, but breakthroughs are happening
all the time. And as with flying, it won't take
One can hope that your analogy with flying is correct. There are still many things that birds
do better than planes. Even so I consider that a conservative projection when given without a
time-line.
What about humans and their ability to problem solve and create and build has changed? The
reason I don't see any reason to worry about "robots" taking all our jobs is because NOTHING
has changed about the ability of humans to adapt to new circumstances.
I had this discussion with a fellow a long time ago who was so conservative he didn't want
any regulations on pollutants. The Love Canal disaster wsa the topic. He said "no need to do anything,
because humans will adapt - its called evolution."
I answered - "Yes, we might adapt. But you realize that means 999 out of a 1000 of us will
die, and it's called evolution. Sometimes even 1000 out of 1000 die, that's called extinction."
This will be a different adaptation, but very well might be solved by most of
Generally speaking, though, when you see a very consistent trend or pattern over a long time,
your best bet is that the trend will continue, not that it will mysteriously veer off because
now it's happening to white collar jobs instead of blue collar jobs. I'd say the logical fallacy
is to disbelieve that the trend is likely to continue. Technology doesn't invalidate basic
economic theory, in which people manage to find jobs and services to match the level of the population
precisely because there are so
It's the buggy whip story just being retold with a new product. Not anything to get worried
about.
The buggy whip story shows that an entire species which had significant economic value for
thousands of years found that technology had finally reached a point where they weren't needed.
Instead of needing 20 million of them working in our economy in 1920, by 1960 there were only
about 4.5 million. While they were able to take advantage of the previous technological revolutions
and become even more useful because of better technology in the past, most horses could not survive
the invention of the automobile
Your question is incomplete. The correct question to ask is if these people were able to get
hired elsewhere *at the same salary when adjusted for inflation*. To that, the answer is no.
It
hasn't been true on average since the 70's. Sure, some people will find equal or better jobs,
but salaries have been steadily decreasing since the onset of technology. Given a job for less
money or no job, most people will pick the job for less; and that is why we are not seeing a large
change in the unemployment rate.
There is another effect. When the buggy whip manufacturers were put out of business, there
were options for people to switch to and new industries were created. However, if AI gets apply
across an entire economy, there won't be options because there is unemployment in every sector.
And if AI obviates the need for workers, investors in new industries will build them around bots,
so no real increase in employment. That and yer basic truck driver ain't going to be learning
how to program.
Agreed, companies will be designed around using as little human intervention as possible. First
they will use AI, then they will use cheap foreign labor, and only if those two options are completely
impractical will they use domestic labor. Any business plan that depends on more than a small
fraction of domestic labor (think Amazon's 1 minute of human handling per package) is likely to
be considered unable to compete. I hate the buggy whip analogy, because using foreign (cheap)
labor as freely as today w
Maybe the automation is a paradigm shift on par with the introduction of agriculture replacing
the hunter and gatherer way of living? Then, some hunter and gatherer were perhaps also making
a "luddite" arguments: "Nah, there will always be sufficient forrests/wildlife for everyone to
live on. No need to be afraid of the these agriculturites. We have been hunting and gathering
for millenia. That'll never change."
Were those people able to get hired elsewhere? The answer in general was almost certainly
yes.
Actually, the answer is probably no.
Labor force participation
[tradingeconomics.com] rates have fallen steadily since about the
year 2000. Feminism caused the rate to rise from 58% (1963) to 67% (2000). Since then, it has
fallen to 63%. In other words, we've already lost almost half of what we gained from women entering
the workforce en masse. And the rate will only continue to fall in the future.
You must admit that *some* things are different. Conglomeratization may make it difficult to
create new jobs, as smaller businesses have trouble competing with the mammoths. Globalization
may send more jobs offshore until our standard of living has leveled off with the rest of the
world. It's not inconceivable that we'll end up with a much larger number of unemployed people,
with AI being a significant contributing factor. It's not a certainty, but neither is your scenario
of the status quo. Just because it
People need to stop living in a fairy tale land where near full employment is a reality
in the near future. I'll be surprised if labor participation rate of 25-54 year olds is even
50% in 10 years.
Then again, tell me of how companies are going to make money to service the stakeholders when
there are not people around wh ocan buy their highly profitable wares?
Now speaking of fairy tales, that one is much more magical than your full employment one.
This ain't rocket science. Economies are at base, an equation. You have producers on one side,
and consumers on the other. Ideally, they balance out, with extra rewards for the producers. Now
either side can cheat, such as if producers can move productio
Until Fortran was developed, humans used to write code telling the computer what to do. Since
the late 1950s, we've been writing a high-level description, then a computer program writes the
program that actually gets executed.
Nowadays, there's frequently a computer program, such as a browser, which accepts our high-level
description of the task and interprets it before generating more specific instructions for another
piece of software, an api library, which creates more specific instructions for another api
I see plenty of work in reducing student-teacher ratios in education, increasing maintenance
and inspection intervals, transparency reporting on public officials, etc. Now, just convince
the remaining working people that they want to pay for this from their taxes.
I suppose when we
hit 53% unemployed, we might be able to start winning popular elections, if the unemployed are
still allowed to vote then.
At least here in the US, that won't change anything. The unemployed will still happily vote
against anything that smacks of "socialism". It's a religion to us here. People here would rather
shoot themselves (and their family members) in the head than enroll in social services.
Remember, most of the US population is religious, and not only does this involve some "actual"
religion (usually Christianity), it also involves the "anti-socialism" religion. Now remember,
the defining feature of religion is a complete lack rationality, and believing in something with
zero supporting evidence, frequently despite enormous evidence to the contrary (as in the case
of young-earth creationism, something that a huge number of Americans believe in).
SInce this is very very similar to what my partner does, I feel like I'm a little qualified
to speak on the subject at hand.
Yeah, pattern matching should nail this - but pattern matching only works if the patterns are
reasonable/logical/consistent. Yes, I'm a little familiar with advanced pattern matching, filtering,
etc.
Here's the thing: doctors are crappy input sources. At least in the US medical system. And
in our system they are the ones that have to make diagnosis (in most cases). They are
inconsistent.
What automation? 1000 workers in US vs 2000 in Mexico for half the cost of those
1000 is not "automation." Same thing with your hand-assembled smartphone. I'd rather
have it be assembled by robots in the US with 100 human babysitters than hand-built in
China with by 1000 human drones.
I hope their data collection is better than it is in the US. Insurance company's systems can't
talk to the doctors systems. They are stuck with 1980s technology or sneaker net to get information
exchanged. Paper gets lost, forms don't match.
Doctors spend more time with paper than with patients.
Once the paper gets to the insurance company chances are good it doesn't go to the right person
or just gets lost sending the patient back to the beginning of the maze. The more people removed
from the chain the bet
You think this is anything but perfectly planned? Insurance companies prevaricate better than
anyone short of a Federal politician. 'Losing' a claim costs virtually nothing. Mishandling a
claim costs very little. Another form letter asking for more / the same information, ditto.
Computerizing the whole shebang gives yet another layer of potential delay ('the computer is
slow today' is a perennial favorite).
That said, in what strange world is insurance adjudication considered 'white collar'? In the
US a
Japan needs to automate as much as it can and robotize to survive with a workforce growing
old. Japan is facing this reality as well as many countries where labor isn't replaced at a sufficient
rate to keep up with the needs. Older people will need care some countries just cannot deliver
or afford.
Calm down everyone. This is just a continuation of productivity tools for accounting. Among
other things I'm a certified accountant. This is just the next step in automation of accounting
and it's a good thing. We used to do all our ledgers by hand. Now we all use software for that
and believe me you don't want to go back to the way it was.
Very little in accounting is actually
value added activity so it is desirable to automate as much of it as possible. If some people
lost their jobs doing that it's equivalent to how the PC replaced secretaries 30+ years ago. They
were doing a necessary task but one that added little or no value. Most of what accountants do
is just keeping track of what happened in a business and keeping the paperwork flowing where it
needs to go. This is EXACTLY what we should be automating whenever possible.
I'm sure there are going to be a lot folks loudly proclaiming how we are all doomed and that
there won't be any work for anyone left to do. Happens every time there is an advancement in automation
and yet every time they are wrong. Yes some people are going to struggle in the short run. That
happens with every technological advancement. Eventually they find other useful and valuable things
to do and the world moves on. It will be fine.
I'm curious what you think you can do that Watson can't. Accounting is a very rigidly structured
practice. All IBM really needs to do is let Watson sift through the books of a couple hundred
companies and it will easily determine how to best achieve a defined set of objectives for a corporation.
I'm curious what you think you can do that Watson can't.
Seriously? Quite a bit actually. I can handle input streams that Watson can't. I can make tools
Watson couldn't begin to imagine. I can interact with physical objects without vast amounts of
programming. I can deal with humans in a meaningful and human way FAR better than any computer
program. I can pass a Turing test. The number of things I can do that Watson cannot is literally
too numerous to bother counting. Watson is really just an decision support system with a natural
language interface. Ver
Yep! I don't even work in Accounting or Finance, but because I do computer support for that
department and have to get slightly involved in the bill coding side of the process -- I agree
completely.
I'm pretty sure that even if you *could* get a computer to do everything for Accounting automatically,
people would constantly become frustrated with parts of the resulting process -- from reports
requested by management not having the formatting or items desired on them, to inflexibility getting
an item charged
You think the 12$ hr staff at a doctors office code and invoice bills correctly? The blame
goes both ways. Really our ridiculous and convoluted medical system is to blame. Imagine if doctors
billed on a time basis like a lawyer.
When you have people basically implementing a process without much understanding, it is pretty
easy to automatize their jobs away. The only thing Watson is contribution is the translation from
natural language to a more formalized one. No actual intelligence needed.
Computers/automation/robotics have been replacing workers of all stripes including white collar
workers since the ATM was introduced in 1967. Every place I have ever worked has had internal
and external software that replaces white collar workers (where you used to need 10 people now
you need 2).
The reality is that the economy is limited by a scarcity of labor when government doesn't interfere
(the economy is essentially the sum of every worker work multiplied by their efficiency as valued
by the economy i
Turns out it's rather simple, really --- just ban computers. He's going to start by replacing
computers with human couriers for the secure-messaging market, and move outward from there. By
2020 we should have most of the Internet replaced by the (now greatly expanded) Post Office.
At least, as long as banks keep writing the software they do.
My bank's records of my purchases isn't updating today. This is one of the biggest banks in
Canada. Transactions don't update properly over the weekends or holidays. Why? Who knows? Why
has bank software EVER cared about weekends? What do business days matter to computers? And yet
here we are. There's no monkey to turn the crank on a holiday, so I can't confirm my account activity.
Dude. Stop it. I've read 18th C laissez-faire writers (de Gournay) Bastiat, the Austrian School
(Carl Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, von Mises, Hayek), Rothbard, Milton Friedman. Free Market is opposed
to corporatism, You might hate Ayn Rand but she skewered corporatists as much as she did socialists.
You should read some of these people. You'll see that they are opposed to corporatism. Don't get
your information from opponents who create straw men and then, so skillfully, defeat their opponent's
arguments.
Corporatism is the use of government pull to advance your business. The use of law and the
police power of the state to aide your business against anothers. This used to be called "mercantilism."
Free market capitalism is opposed to this; the removal of power of pull.
Read Bastiat, Carl Menger, von Mises, Hayek, Milton Friedman. You'll see them all referring
to the government as an agent which helps one set of businesses over another. Government may give
loans, bailouts, etc... Free market people are against this. Corporatism /= Free Market. Don't only get your information from those who hate individualism and free
markets - read (or in Milton Friedman's case listen) to their arguments. You may disagree with
them but you'll see well regarded individuals who say that
When a business get's government to give it special favors (Soyndra) or to give it tax breaks
or a monopoly this is corporatism. It used to be called mercantilism. In either case free - market
capitalists stand in opposition to it. This is exactly what "laissez-faire" capitalism means:
leave us alone, don't play favorites, stay away.
How do these people participate in a free market without setting up corporations? Have
you ever bought anything from a farmers' market? Have you ever hired a plumber d/b/a himself rather
than working for Plumbers-R-Us? Have you ever bought a used car directly from a private seller?
Do you have a 401k/403b/457/TSP/IRA? Have you ever used eBay? Have you ever traded your labor
for a paycheck (aka "worked") without hiding behind an intermediate shell-corp? The freeness of
a market has nothing to do wit
Okay, so you're just still pissing and moaning over Trump's win and have no actual point. That's
fine, but you should take care not to make it sound too much like you actually have something
meaningful to say.
I'll say something meaningful when you can point out which one of Trump's cabinet made their
wealth on a farmer's market and without being affiliated with a corporation.
No. They don't. But, for the moment, it looks as if Andy Puzder (Sec of Labor) and Mick Mulvaney
(OMB) are fairly good free market people. We'll see. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus has made some
free-market comments. (Again, we'll see.) Sec of Ed looks like she wants to break up an entrenched
bureaucracy - might even work to remove Federal involvement. (Wishful thinking on my part) HUD
- I'm hopeful that Ben Carson was hired to break up this ridiculous bureaucracy. If not, at least
pare it down. Now, if
"Watson" is a marketing term from IBM, covering a lot of standard automation. It isn't the
machine that won at Jeopardy (although that is included in the marketing term, if someone wants
to pay for it). IBM tells managers, "We will have our amazing Watson technology solve this problem
for you." The managers feel happy. Then IBM has some outsourced programmers code up a workflow
app, with recurring annual subscription payments.
It doesn't matter. AI works best when there's a human in the loop, piloting the controls anyway.
What matters to a company is that 1 person + bots can now make the job that previously required
hundreds of white collar workers, for much less salary. What happens to the other workers should
not be a concern of the company managers, according to the modern religious creed - apparently
some magical market hand takes care to solve that problem automatically.
Pretty much. US companies already use claims processing systems that use previous data to evaluate
a current claim and spit out a number. Younger computer literate adjusters just feed the machine
and push a button.
universities downsize not with unlimited loans! (usa only) need retraining you can get an loan
and you may need to go for 2-4 years and (some credits maybe to old and you have to retake classes)
It's not Parkinson's law, it's runaway inequality. The workforce continues to be more and more
productive as it receives an unchanging or decreasing amount of compensation (in absolute terms
- or an ever-decreasing share of the profits in relative terms), while the gains go to the 1%.
Free market is a neoliberal myth, the cornerstone of neoliberal secular region.
Notable quotes:
"... Well, duh. "Policy" and "Capitalism" don't go together and never have. When you enact policy, you destroy the ability to make profit and you get the 1970's. ..."
Two of my criticisms about Krugman/Friedman, etc is that is 'free markets' are supposed to substitute
for policy in the government sphere. Except very telling except when we're talking about funding
the security state.
The other is that the real power of markets is that in a real free market (not a Potemkin one)
decisions are made often at the point where needs, information, incentives, and economic power
come together. But the large scale decisions the governments have to make, markets fail. Policy
though doesn't.
But Neoliberals hate policy.
AngloSaxon -> Gibbon1...
Well, duh. "Policy" and "Capitalism" don't go together and never have. When you enact policy,
you destroy the ability to make profit and you get the 1970's.
Free market is a neoliberal myth, the cornerstone of neoliberalism as a secular religion. Somewhat
similar to "Immaculate Conception" in Catholicism.
In reality market almost by definition is controlled by government, who enforces the rules
and punish for the transgressions.
Also note interesting Orwellian "corruption of the language" trick neoliberals use: neoliberals
talk about "free market, not "fair market".
After 2008 few are buying this fairy tale about how markets can operate and can solve society
problems independently of political power, and state's instruments of violence (the police and
the military). This myths is essentially dead.
But like Adventists did not disappear when the second coming of Christ did not occurred in
predicted timeframe, neoliberals did not did not disappeared after 2008 either. And neither did
neoliberalism, it just entered into zombie, more bloodthirsty stage. the fact that even the term
"neoliberalism" is prohibited in the US MSM also helped. It is kind of stealth ideology, unlike
say, Marxists, neoliberals do not like to identify themselves as such. The behave more like members
of some secret society, free market masons.
Friedmanism is a flavor of economic Lysenkoism. Note that Lysenko like Friedman was not a complete
charlatan. Some of his ideas were pretty sound and withstood the test of time. But that does not
make his less evil.
And for those who try to embellish this person, I would remind his role in 1973 Chilean coup
d'état ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
) and bringing Pinochet to power. His "Chicago boys" played a vital role in the events. This
man did has blood on his hands.
=== quote ===
Of course, bringing a reign of terror to Chile was not why the CIA had sponsored him. The reason
he was there was to reverse the gains of the Allende social democracy and return control of the
country's economic and political assets to the oligarchy. Pinochet was convinced, through supporters
among the academics in the elite Chilean universities, to try a new series of economic policies,
called "neoliberal" by their founders, the economists of the University of Chicago, led by an
economist by the name of Milton Friedman, who three years later would go on to win a Nobel Prize
in Economics for what he was about to unleash upon Chile.
Friedman and his colleagues were referred to by the Chileans as "the Chicago Boys." The term
originally meant the economists from the University of Chicago, but as time went on, as their
policies began to disliquidate the middle class and poor, it took on a perjorative meaning. That
was because as the reforms were implemented, and began to take hold, the results were not what
Friedman and company had been predicting. But what were the reforms?
The reforms were what has come to be called "neoliberalism." To understand what "neoliberal"
economics is, one must first understand what "liberal" economics are, and so we'll digress briefly
from our look at Chile for a quick...
=== end of quote ===
(Does this have something to do
with Jon Stewart's retirement &
Stephen Colbert 'going legit'?)
Wielding Claims of 'Fake News,' Conservatives
Take Aim at Mainstream Media http://nyti.ms/2iuFxRx
NYT - JEREMY W. PETERS - December 25, 2016
WASHINGTON - The CIA, the F.B.I. and the White House may all agree that Russia was behind
the hacking that interfered with the election. But that was of no import to the website Breitbart
News, which dismissed reports on the intelligence assessment as "left-wing fake news."
Rush Limbaugh has diagnosed a more fundamental problem. "The fake news is the everyday news"
in the mainstream media, he said on his radio show recently. "They just make it up."
Some supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump have also taken up the call. As reporters
were walking out of a Trump rally this month in Orlando, Fla., a man heckled them with shouts
of "Fake news!"
Until now, that term had been widely understood to refer to fabricated news accounts that are
meant to spread virally online. But conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans
and even Mr. Trump himself, incredulous about suggestions that fake stories may have helped swing
the election, have appropriated the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile to
their agenda.
In defining "fake news" so broadly and seeking to dilute its meaning, they are capitalizing
on the declining credibility of all purveyors of information, one product of the country's increasing
political polarization. And conservatives, seeing an opening to undermine the mainstream media,
a longtime foe, are more than happy to dig the hole deeper.
"Over the years, we've effectively brainwashed the core of our audience to distrust anything
that they disagree with. And now it's gone too far," said John Ziegler, a conservative radio host,
who has been critical of what he sees as excessive partisanship by pundits. "Because the gatekeepers
have lost all credibility in the minds of consumers, I don't see how you reverse it."
Journalists who work to separate fact from fiction see a dangerous conflation of stories that
turn out to be wrong because of a legitimate misunderstanding with those whose clear intention
is to deceive. A report, shared more than a million times on social media, that the pope had endorsed
Mr. Trump was undeniably false. But was it "fake news" to report on data models that showed Hillary
Clinton with overwhelming odds of winning the presidency? Are opinion articles fake if they cherry-pick
facts to draw disputable conclusions?
"Fake news was a term specifically about people who purposely fabricated stories for clicks
and revenue," said David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, the myth-busting website. "Now it includes
bad reporting, slanted journalism and outright propaganda. And I think we're doing a disservice
to lump all those things together."
The right's labeling of "fake news" evokes one of the most successful efforts by conservatives
to reorient how Americans think about news media objectivity: the move by Fox News to brand its
conservative-slanted coverage as "fair and balanced." Traditionally, mainstream media outlets
had thought of their own approach in those terms, viewing their coverage as strictly down the
middle. Republicans often found that laughable.
As with Fox's ubiquitous promotion of its slogan, conservatives' appropriation of the "fake
news" label is an effort to further erode the mainstream media's claim to be a reliable and accurate
source. ...
Martin Sklar's disaccumultion thesis * is a restatement and reinterpretation of passages in Marx's
Grundrisse that have come to be known as the "fragment on machines." Compare, for example, the following
two key excerpts.
Marx:
...to the degree that large industry develops, the creation of real wealth comes to depend
less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed than on the power of the agencies set
in motion during labour time, whose 'powerful effectiveness' is itself in turn out of all proportion
to the direct labour time spent on their production, but depends rather on the general state of
science and on the progress of technology, or the application of this science to production. ...
Labour no longer appears so much to be included within the production process; rather, the
human being comes to relate more as watchman and regulator to the production process itself. (What
holds for machinery holds likewise for the combination of human activities and the development
of human intercourse.)
Sklar:
In consequence [of the passage from the accumulation phase of capitalism to the "disaccumlation"
phase], and increasingly, human labor (i.e. the exercise of living labor-power) recedes from the
condition of serving as a 'factor' of goods production, and by the same token, the mode of goods-production
progressively undergoes reversion to a condition comparable to a gratuitous 'force of nature':
energy, harnessed and directed through technically sophisticated machinery, produces goods, as
trees produce fruit, without the involvement of, or need for, human labor-time in the immediate
production process itself. Living labor-power in goods-production devolves upon the quantitatively
declining role of watching, regulating, and superintending.
The main difference between the two arguments is that for Marx, the growing contradiction between
the forces of production and the social relations produce "the material conditions to blow this
foundation sky-high." For Sklar, with the benefit of another century of observation, disaccumulation
appears as simply another phase in the evolution of capitalism -- albeit with revolutionary potential.
But also with reactionary potential in that the reduced dependence on labor power also suggests
a reduced vulnerability to the withholding of labor power.
Carnival Corp. told about 200 IT employees that the company was transferring their work to Capgemini,
a large IT outsourcing firm
Notable quotes:
"... Senior IT engineer Matthew Culver told CBS that the requested "knowledge transfer activities" just meant training their own replacements , and "he isn't buying any of it," writes Slashdot reader dcblogs . ..."
"... Foreign workers are willing to do a job at a lower salary in most if not all cases b/c the cost of living in their respective countries is a fraction of ours. ..."
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday December 25, 2016 @05:05PM from the Bob-Cratchit-vs-Scrooge dept.
ComputerWorld reports:
In early December, Carnival Corp.
told about 200 IT employees that the company was transferring their work to Capgemini, a large
IT outsourcing firm. The employees had a choice: Either agree to take a job with the contractor or
leave without severance. The employees had until the week before Christmas to make a decision about
their future with the cruise line.
By agreeing to a job with Paris-based Capgemini, employees are guaranteed employment for six
months, said Roger Frizzell, a Carnival spokesman.
"Our expectation is that many will continue to work on our account or placed into other open
positions within Capgemini" that go well beyond the six-month period, he said in an email.
Senior IT engineer Matthew Culver told CBS that the requested "knowledge transfer activities"
just meant training their own replacements , and "he isn't buying any of it," writes Slashdot
reader dcblogs . "After receiving
his offer letter from Capgemini, he sent a counteroffer.
It asked for $500,000...and apology letters to all the affected families," signed by the company's
CEO. In addition, the letter also demanded a $100,000 donation to any charity that provides services
to unemployed American workers. "I appreciate your time and attention to this matter, and I sincerely
hope that you can fulfill these terms."
Foreign workers are willing to do a job at a lower salary in most if not all cases b/c
the cost of living in their respective countries is a fraction of ours.
I would be willing to do my job at a fraction of what I am paid currently should that (that
being how expensive it is to live here) change. It is equally infuriating to me when American
companies use loopholes in our ridiculously complicated tax code to shelter revenues in foreign
tax shelters to avoid paying taxes while at the same time benefiting from our infrastructure,
emergency services, military, etc..
Its assholes like you that always spout off about free market this or that, about some companies
fiduciary responsibilities to it's shareholders blah blah blah... as justification for shitty
behavior.
It is equally infuriating to me when American companies use loopholes in our ridiculously
complicated tax code to shelter revenues in foreign tax shelters to avoid paying taxes
So who are you infuriated at? The companies that take advantage of those loopholes, or the
politicians that put them there? Fury doesn't help unless it is properly directed. Does your fury
influence who you vote for?
... while at the same time benefiting from our infrastructure, emergency services, military,
etc.
No. Taxes are only sheltered on income generated overseas, using overseas infrastructure, emergency
services, etc. I am baffled why Americans believe they have a "right" to tax the sale of a product
made in China and sold in France.
I suppose it's related to the idea that intellectual property "rights" granted by a country
of origin should still have the same benefits and drawbacks when transferred to another country.
Or at the very least should be treated as an export at such time a base of operations moves out
of country.
Except that calling, say iOS sales 'generated overseas' when the software was written in the
US, using US infrastructure, etc . And the company is making the bogus claim that their
Irish subsidiary owns the rights to that software. It's a scam - not a loophole.
They are the same thing. The only way to ensure that there are no tax dodges out there is to
simplify the tax code, and eliminate the words: "except", "but", "excluding", "omitting", "minus",
"exempt", "without", and any other words to those same effects.
Americans are too stupid to ever vote for a poltiician that states they will raise taxes. This
means that either politicians lie, or they actively undermine the tax base. Both of those situations
are bad for the majority of americans, but they vote for the same scumbags over and over, and
will soundly reject any politician who openly advocates tax increases. The result is a race to
the bottom. Welcome to reaping what you sow, brought to you by Democracy(tm).
Except that calling, say iOS sales 'generated overseas' when the software was written
in the US, using US infrastructure, etc .
That makes no sense. Plenty of non-American companies develop software in America. Yet only
if they are incorporated in America do they pay income tax on their overseas earnings, and it
is irrelevant where their engineering and development was done.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with "using infrastructure". It is just an extraterritorial
money grab that is almost certainly counterproductive since it incentivizes American companies
to invest and create jobs overseas.
Yes, taxes are based on profits. So Google, for instance, makes a bunch of money in the US.
Their Irish branch then charges about that much for "consulting" leaving the American part with
little to no profits to tax.
"I am baffled why Americans believe they have a "right" to tax the sale of a product made in
China and sold in France."
Because the manufacturing and sales are controlled by a US based company, as is the profit
benefit which results. If a US entity, which receives the benefits of US law, makes a profit by
any means, why should it not be taxed by the US?
"... Rich individuals (who are willing to be interviewed) also express concern about inequality but generally oppose using higher taxes on the rich to fight it. Scheiber is very willing to bluntly state his guess (and everyone's) that candidates are eager to please the rich, because they spend much of their time begging the rich for contributions. ..."
"... Of course another way to reduce inequality is to raise wages. Buried way down around paragraph 9 I found this gem: "Forty percent of the wealthy, versus 78 percent of the public, said the government should make the minimum wage "high enough so that no family with a full-time worker falls below the official poverty line." ..."
"... The current foundational rules embedded in tax law, intellectual property law, corporate construction law, and other elements of our legal and regulatory system result in distributions that favor those with capital or in a position to seek rents. This isn't a situation that calls for a Robin Hood who takes from the rich and gives to the poor. It is more a question of how elites have rigged the system to work primarily for them. ..."
"... the problem is incomes and demand, and the first and best answer for creating demand for workers and higher wages to compete for those workers is full employment. ..."
"... if you are proposing raising taxes on the rich SO THAT you can cut taxes on the non rich you are simply proposing theft. ..."
"... what we are looking at here is simple old fashioned greed just as stupid and ugly among the "non rich" as it is among the rich. ..."
"... you play into the hands of the Petersons who want to "cut taxes" and leave the poor elderly to die on the streets, and the poor non-elderly to spend their lives in anxiety and fear-driven greed trying to provide against desperate poverty in old age absent any reliable security for their savings.) ..."
"... made by the ayn rand faithful. it is wearisome. ..."
"... The only cure for organized greed is organized labor. ..."
"... A typical voice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues" ..."
The content should be familiar to AngryBear
readers. A majority of Americans are alarmed by high and increasing inequality and support government
action to reduce inequality. However, none of the important 2016 candidates has expressed any willingness
to raise taxes on the rich. The Republicans want to cut them and Clinton (and a spokesperson) dodge
the question.
Rich individuals (who are willing to be interviewed) also express concern about inequality but
generally oppose using higher taxes on the rich to fight it. Scheiber is very willing to bluntly
state his guess (and everyone's) that candidates are eager to please the rich, because they spend
much of their time begging the rich for contributions.
No suprise to anyone who has been paying attention except for the fact that it is on the front
page of www.nytimes.com and the article is printed in the business section not the opinion section.
Do click the link - it is brief, to the point, solid, alarming and a must read.
I clicked one of the links and found weaker evidence than I expected for Scheiber's view (which
of course I share
"By contrast, more than half of Americans and three-quarters of Democrats believe the "government
should redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich," according to a
Gallup poll of about 1,000 adults in April 2013."
It is a small majority 52% favor and 47% oppose. This 52 % is noticeably smaller than the solid
majorities who have been telling Gallup that high income individuals pay less than their fair share
of taxes (click and search
for Gallup on the page).
I guess this isn't really surprising - the word "heavy" is heavy maaaan and "redistribute" evokes
the dreaded welfare (and conservatives have devoted gigantic effort to giving it pejorative connotations).
The 52% majority is remarkable given the phrasing of the question. But it isn't enough to win elections,
since it is 52% of adults which corresponds to well under 52% of actual voters.
My reading is that it is important for egalitarians to stress the tax cuts for the non rich and
that higher taxes on the rich are, unfortunately, necessary if we are to have lower taxes on the
non rich without huge budget deficits. This is exactly Obama's approach.
Comments (87)
Jerry Critter
March 29, 2015 10:40 pm
Get rid of tax breaks that only the wealthy can take advantage of and perhaps everyone will
pay their fair share. The same goes for corporations.
amateur socialist
March 30, 2015 11:42 am
Of course another way to reduce inequality is to raise wages. Buried way down around paragraph
9 I found this gem: "Forty percent of the wealthy, versus 78 percent of the public, said the government
should make the minimum wage "high enough so that no family with a full-time worker falls below
the official poverty line."
I'm fine with raising people's taxes by increasing their wages. A story I heard on NPR recently
indicated that a single person needs to make about $17-19 an hour to cover most basic necessities
nowadays (the story went on to say that most people in that situation are working 2 or more jobs
to get enough income, a "solution" that creates more problems with health/stress etc.). A full
time worker supporting kids needs more than $20.
You double the minimum wage and strengthen people's rights to organize union representation.
Tax revenues go up (including SS contributions btw) and we add significant growth to the economy
with the increased purchasing power of workers. People can go back to working 40-50 hours a week
and cut back on moonlighting which creates new job opportunities for the younger folks decimated
by this so called recovery.
Win Win Win Win. And the poor overburdened millionaires don't have to have their poor tax fee
fees hurt.
Mark Jamison, March 30, 2015 8:09 pm
How about if we get rid of the "re" and call it what it is "distribution". The current
foundational rules embedded in tax law, intellectual property law, corporate construction law,
and other elements of our legal and regulatory system result in distributions that favor those
with capital or in a position to seek rents.
This isn't a situation that calls for a Robin Hood who takes from the rich and gives to the
poor. It is more a question of how elites have rigged the system to work primarily for them.
Democrats cede the rhetoric to the Right when they allow the discussion to be about redistribution.
Even talk of inequality without reference to the basic legal constructs that are rigged to create
slanted outcomes tend to accepted premises that are in and of themselves false.
The issue shouldn't be rejiggering things after the the initial distribution but creating a
system with basic rules that level the opportunity playing field.
coberly, March 30, 2015 11:03 pm
Thank You Mark Jamison!
An elegant, informed writer who says it better than I can.
But here is how I would say it:
Addressing "inequality" by "tax the rich" is the wrong answer and a political loser.
Address inequality by re-criminalizing the criminal practices of the criminal rich. Address
inequality by creating well paying jobs with government jobs if necessary (and there is necessary
work to be done by the government), with government protection for unions, with government policies
that make it less profitable to off shore
etc. the direction to take is to make the economy more fair . actually more "free" though you'll
never get the free enterprise fundamentalists to admit that's what it is. You WILL get the honest
rich on your side. They don't like being robbed any more than you do.
But you will not, in America, get even poor people to vote to "take from the rich to give to
the poor." It has something to do with the "story" Americans have been telling themselves since
1776. A story heard round the world.
That said, there is nothing wrong with raising taxes on the rich to pay for the government
THEY need as well as you. But don't raise taxes to give the money to the poor. They won't do it,
and even the poor don't want it except as a last resort, which we hope we are not at yet.
urban legend, March 31, 2015 2:07 am
Coberly, you are dead-on. Right now, taxation is the least issue. Listen to Jared Bernstein
and Dean Baker: the problem is incomes and demand, and the first and best answer for creating
demand for workers and higher wages to compete for those workers is full employment. Minimum
wage will help at the margins to push incomes up, and it's the easiest initial legislative sell,
but the public will support policies - mainly big-big infrastructure modernization in a country
that has neglected its infrastructure for a generation - that signal a firm commitment to full
employment.
It's laying right there for the Democrats to pick it up. Will they? Having policies that are
traditional Democratic policies will not do the job. For believability - for convincing voters
they actually have a handle on what has been wrong and how to fix it - they need to have a story
for why we have seem unable to generate enough jobs for over a decade. The neglect of infrastructure
- the unfilled millions of jobs that should have gone to keeping it up to date and up to major-country
standards - should be a big part of that story. Trade and manufacturing, to be sure, is the other
big element that will connect with voters. Many Democrats (including you know who) are severely
compromised on trade, but they need to find a way to come own on the right side with the voters.
coberly, March 31, 2015 10:52 am
Robert
i wish you'd give some thought to the other comments on this post.
if you are proposing raising taxes on the rich SO THAT you can cut taxes on the non
rich you are simply proposing theft. if you were proposing raising taxes on the rich to provide
reasonable welfare to those who need it you would be asking the rich to contribute to the strength
of their own country and ultimately their own wealth.
i hope you can see the difference.
it is especially irritating to me because many of the "non rich" who want their taxes cut make
more than twice as much as i do. what we are looking at here is simple old fashioned greed
just as stupid and ugly among the "non rich" as it is among the rich.
"the poor" in this country do not pay a significant amount of taxes (Social Security and Medicare
are not "taxes," merely an efficient way for us to pay for our own direct needs . as long as you
call them taxes you play into the hands of the Petersons who want to "cut taxes" and leave
the poor elderly to die on the streets, and the poor non-elderly to spend their lives in anxiety
and fear-driven greed trying to provide against desperate poverty in old age absent any reliable
security for their savings.)
Kai-HK, April 4, 2015 12:23 am
coberly,
Thanks for your well-reasoned response.
You state, 'i personally am not much interested in the "poor capitalist will flee the country
if you tax him too much." in fact i'd say good riddance, and by the way watch out for that tarriff
when you try to sell your stuff here.'
(a) What happens after thy leave? Sure you can get one-time 'exit tax' but you lose all the
intellectual capital (think of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, or Steve Jobs leaving and taking their
intellectual property and human capital with them). These guys are great jobs creators it will
not only be the 'bad capitalists' that leave but also many of the 'job creating' good ones.
(b) I am less worried about existing job creating capitalists in America; what about the future
ones? The ones that either flee overseas and make their wealth there or are already overseas and
then have a plethora of places they can invest but why bother investing in the US if all they
are going to do is call me a predator and then seize my assets and or penalise me for investing
there? Right? It is the future investment that gets impacted not current wealth per se.
You also make a great point, 'the poor are in the worst position with respect to shifting their
tax burden on to others. the rich do it as a matter of course. it would be simpler just to tax
the rich there are fewer of them, and they know what is at stake, and they can afford accountants.
the rest of us would pay our "taxes" in the form of higher prices for what we buy.'
Investment capital will go where it is best treated and to attract investment capital a market
must provide a competitive return (profit margin or return on investment). Those companies and
investment that stay will do so because they are able to maintain that margin .and they will do
so by either reducing wages or increasing prices. Where they can do neither, their will exit the
market.
That is why, according to research, a bulk of the corporate taxation falls on workers and consumers
as a pass-on effect. The optimum corporate tax is 0. This will be the case as taxation increases
on the owners of businesses and capital .workers, the middle class, and the poor pay it. The margins
stay competitive for the owners of capital since capital is highly mobile and fungible.Workers
and the poor less so.
But thanks again for the tone and content of your response. I often get attacked personally
for my views instead of people focusing on the issue. I appreciate the respite.
K
coberly, April 4, 2015 12:34 pm
kai
yes, but you missed the point.
i am sick of the whining about taxes. it takes so much money to run the country (including
the kind of pernicious poverty that will turn the US into sub-saharan africa. and then who will
buy their products.
i can't do much about the poor whining about taxes. they are just people with limited understanding,
except for their own pressing needs. the rich know what the taxes are needed for, they are just
stupid about paying them. of course they would pass the taxes through to their customers. the
customers would still buy what they need/want at the new price. leaving everyone pretty much where
they are today financially. but the rich would be forced to be grownup about "paying" the taxes,
and maybe the politics of "don't tax me tax the other guy" would go away.
as for the sainted bill gates. there are plenty of other people in this country as smart as
he is and would be happy to sell us computer operating systems and pay the taxes on their billion
dollars a year profits.
nothing breaks my heart more than a whining millionaire.
Kai-HK
April 4, 2015 11:32 pm
Sure I got YOUR point, it just didn't address MY points as put forth in MY original post. And
it still doesn't.
More importantly, you have failed to defend YOUR point against even a rudimentary challenge.
K
coberly, April 5, 2015 12:45 pm
kai,
rudimentary is right.
i have read your "points" about sixteen hundred times in the last year alone. made by the
ayn rand faithful. it is wearisome.
and i have learned there is no point in trying to talk to true believers.
William Ryan, May 13, 2015 4:43 pm
Thanks again Coberly for your and K's very thoughtful insight. You guys really made me think
hard today and I do see your points about perverted capitalism being a big problem in US. I still
do like the progressive tax structure and balanced trade agenda better.
I realize as you say that we cannot compare US to Hong Kong just on size and scale alone. Without
all the obfuscation going Lean by building cultures that makes people want to take ownership and
sharing learning and growing together is a big part of the solution Ford once said "you cannot
learn in school what the world is going to do next".
Also never argue with an idiot. They will bring you down to their level then beat you with
experience. The only cure for organized greed is organized labor. It's because no matter
what they do nothing get done about it. With all this manure around there must be a pony somewhere!
"
A typical voice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real
issues". FDR.
Rich people pay rich people to tell middle class people to blame poor people
Earth doesn't matter, people don't matter, even economy doesn't matter . The only thing
that matters is R.W. nut bar total ownership of everything.
I'm sorry I put profits ahead of people, greed above need and the rule of gold above God's
golden rules.
I try to stay away from negative people who have a problem for every solution
We need capitalism that is based on justice and greater corporate responsibility. I do
not speak nor do I comprehend assholian.
"If you don't change direction , you may end up where you are headed". Lao-Tzu.
"The true strength of our nation comes not from our arm or wealth but from our ideas".
Obama..
Last one.
"If the soul is left to darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not the one
who commits the sins, but the one who caused the darkness". Victor Hugo.
coberly , May 16, 2015 9:57 pm
kai
as a matter of fact i disagree with the current "equality" fad at least insofar as it implies
taking from the rich and giving to the poor directly.
i don't believe people are "equal" in terms of their economic potential. i do beleive they
are equal in terms of being due the respect of human beings.
i also believe your simple view of "equality" is a closet way of guarantee that the rich can
prey upon the poor without interruption.
humans made their first big step in evolution when they learned to cooperate with each other
against the big predators.
Jerry Critter, May 17, 2015 12:10 am
it is mildly progressive up to about $75,000 per year where the rate hits 30%. But from there
up to $1.542 million the rate only increases to 33.3%.
I call that very flat!
Jerry Critter, May 17, 2015 11:20 am
"i assume there are people in this country who are truly poor. as far as i know they
don't pay taxes."
Read my reference and you will see that the "poor" indeed pay taxes, just not much income tax
because they don't have much income. You are fixated on income when we should be considering all
forms of taxation.
Jerry Critter, May 17, 2015 9:25 pm
Oh Kai, cut the crap. Paying taxes Is nothing like slavery. My oh my, how did we ever survive
with a top tax rate of around 90%, nearly 3 times the current rate? Some people would even say
that the economy then was pretty great and the middle class was doing terrific. So stop the deflection
and redirection. I think you just like to see how many words you can write. Sorry, but history
is not on your side.
"... Yes. I see editorials in WaPo and NYT where the writer claims they've "woken up in another country", they "don't know what happened to the real America", they "didn't realize the country was so full of awful people". They seem mighty disoriented by the neoliberal narrative, as given for the last 40 years, losing this election. ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... The Republicans are the party of the rich; the Democrats are the party of the rich and poor. Those in between have no place. ..."
So that's the story, or one story. But stories have morals. What moral does identity politics
offer?
Adolph Reed on identity politics[2]:
[I]t is a class politics, the politics of the left-wing of neoliberalism. It is the expression
and active agency of a political order and moral economy in which capitalist market forces are
treated as unassailable nature. An integral element of that moral economy is displacement of the
critique of the invidious outcomes produced by capitalist class power onto equally naturalized
categories of ascriptive identity that sort us into groups supposedly defined by what we essentially
are rather than what we do. As I have argued, following Walter Michaels and others, within that
moral economy a society in which 1% of the population controlled 90% of the resources could be
just, provided that roughly 12% of the 1% were black, 12% were Latino, 50% were women, and whatever
the appropriate proportions were LGBT people. It would be tough to imagine a normative ideal that
expresses more unambiguously the social position of people who consider themselves candidates
for inclusion in, or at least significant staff positions in service to, the ruling class.
This perspective may help explain why, the more aggressively and openly capitalist class power
destroys and marketizes every shred of social protection working people of all races, genders,
and sexual orientations have fought for and won over the last century, the louder and more insistent
are the demands from the identitarian left that we focus our attention on statistical disparities
and episodic outrages that "prove" that the crucial injustices in the society should be understood
in the language of ascriptive identity.
So, if we ask an identitarian[3] whether shipping the Rust Belt's jobs off to China was fair -
the moral of the story - the answer we get is: "That depends. If the private equity firms that did
it were 12% black, 12% Latino, and half women, then yes." And that really is the answer that the
Clintonites give. And, to this day, they believe it's a winning one[4].
Yes. I see editorials in WaPo and NYT where the writer claims they've "woken up in another
country", they "don't know what happened to the real America", they "didn't realize the country
was so full of awful people". They seem mighty disoriented by the neoliberal narrative, as given
for the last 40 years, losing this election.
That's funny. Okay, I was soooo naive. I woke up finally in 2004 to the realization that the
"awful " people were the 01% including good friends. The Rest are trying to survive with dignity.
They are not awful.
The Hateful New York Times has been pushing the "Party Line" (narrative) since at least the
1920s, and has "artfully" facilitated the deaths (murder) of millions of deplorables – and the
subsequent cover-up of the crimes.
"My editor was dubious. I had been explaining that 50 years ago, in the spring and summer of
1933, Ukraine, the country of my forebears, had suffered a horrendous catastrophe. In a fertile,
populous country famed as the granary of Europe, a great famine had mowed down a sixth, a fifth
and in some regions even a fourth of the inhabitants. Natural forces – drought, flood, blight
– have been at least contributory causes of most famines. This one had been entirely man-made,
entirely the result of a dictator's genocidal policies. Its consequences, I said, are still being
felt.
Erudite, polyglot, herself a refugee from tyranny, the editor remained skeptical. "But isn't
all this ," she leaned back in her chair and smiled brightly, "isn't all this a bit recondite?"
My face must have flushed. Recondite? Suddenly I knew the impotent anger Jews and Armenians
have felt. Millions of my countrymen had been murdered, and their deaths were being dismissed
as obscure and little known.
Later I realized that the editor had said more than she had intended. The famine of 1933 was
rationalized and concealed when it was taking its toll, and it is still hidden away and trivialized
today. George Orwell need not have limited his observation to British intellectuals when he remarked
that "huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people,
have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English Russophiles."_1_
Still later, after I had set about uncovering the whole story by delving into newspaper files
and archives and talking to people who had witnessed the events of 1933, I came to understand
how Walter Duranty and The New York Times helped Stalin make the famine recondite.
Walter Duranty worked for The New York Times for 21 years "
" The combination of ambiguous policy signals and the cult of secrecy could produce absurd
results , as when certain categories of officials could not be informed of relevant instructions
because the instructions were secret. In one blatant example, the theater censorship and the Ministry
of Enlightenment, headed by A. V. Lunacharsky, spent weeks arguing at cross purposes about Mikhail
Bulgakov's controversial play Days of the Turbins, despite the fact that the Politburo had instructed
the Ministry that the play could be staged, because "this decree was secret, known to only key
officials in the administration of art, and Lunacharsky was not at liberty to divulge it." [42]
A few years later, after Stalin had expressed strong views on cultural policy in a private
letter that had circulated widely, if unofficially, on the grapevine, Lunacharsky begged him to
allow publication of the letter so that people would know what the party line on art actually
was.
Some of Stalin's cultural signals were even more minimalist, involving telephone calls to writers
or other cultural figures whose content was then instantly broadcast on the Moscow and Leningrad
intelligentsia grapevine. A case in point was his unexpected telephone call to Bulgakov in 1930
in response to Bulgakov's letter complaining of mistreatment by theater and censorship officials.
The overt message of the call was one of encouragement to Bulgakov. By extension, the "signal"
to the non-Communist intelligentsia was that it was not Stalin who harrassed them but only lower-level
officials and militants who did not understand Stalin's policy.
This case is particularly interesting because the security police (GPU, at this date) monitored
the effectiveness of the signal. In his report on the impact of Stalin's call, a GPU agent noted
that the literary and artistic intelligentsia had been enormously impressed. "It's as if a dam
had burst and everyone around saw the true face of comrade Stalin. "People speak of Stalin's simplicity
and accessibility. They "talk of him warmly and with love, retelling in various versions the legendary
history with Bulgakov's letter." They say that Stalin is not to blame for the bad things that
happen: He follows the right line, but around him are scoundrels. These scoundrels persecuted
Bulgakov, one of the most talented Soviet writers. Various literary rascals were making a career
out of persecution of Bulgakov, and now Stalin has given them a slap in the face. [44]
The signals with Stalin's personal signature usually pointed in the direction of greater relaxation
and tolerance, not increased repression. This was surely not because Stalin inclined to the "soft
line," but rather because he preferred to avoid too close an association with hard-line policies
that were likely to be
unpopular with domestic and foreign opinion. His signals often involved a "good Tsar" message:
"the Tsar is benevolent; it is the wicked boyars (a member of the old aristocracy) who are responsible
for all the injustice." Sometimes this ploy seems to have worked, but in other cases the message
evoked popular skepticism.
When Stalin deplored the excesses of local officials during collectivization in a letter, "Dizzy
with success," published in Pravda in 1930, the initial response in the villages was often favorable.
After the famine, however, Stalin's "good Tsar" ploy no longer worked in the countryside, and
was even mocked by its intended audience
People chose the devil they don't know over the absolute-slam-dunk-warmongering-elitist devil
who's been running for President since 2000 and fixed the (D) primary against the Roosevelt Democrat
who would have beaten Trump by 10+ points.
Don't blame me. I voted Sanders. Hindsight is 2020.
Yep. When the dominant financial venue is blatantly a "casino," why not resort to chance?
As the mood out in the hustings grows ever bleaker, the "kick the table over" strategy gains legitimacy
among a wider and wider circle of people.
The problem with identity politics is that unless everyone has an identity, identity politics
is a politics of exclusion. Something is carved out for those who have been "identified" (as worthy),
while the rest stay where they are, or get left behind.
But note that this is only because we insist on operating under the zero sum economics of monetarism.
Once this restriction is removed; once we acknowledge the power of the sovereign fiat, the zero
sum is left behind, and the either-or choices forced upon us by identity politics are no longer
necessary.
Fascinating to learn that it is at least in some cases not only a problem of reporters being
blind to problems because of their worldview, and that the frames they pick aren't 'just' due
to their education. In a way, it's hopeful, because it means that even here, alternatives are/must
be restricted in order to allow the world to be categorized into tiny little boxes, via Procrustes
doing his thing.
An early sign was the Procrustean "embedment" of journos in with the Army during the Gulf Wars.
The suspension of disbelief required of the reader to accept the resultant "narrative" was, by
any measure, a "stretch."
Yes, well. We must all do our bid to perpetuate the State - even those of us who are too weak-kneed
to serve as cannon fodder (no disrespect intended, of course - just observing). After all, it's
only
thanks to liberal "democracy" that our betters were able to create this best/least-worst of
all possible worlds in the first place. Being bothered by those few remaining necessary egg-shells
just goes to show I'm in the right place.
Oh, good sir, those "necessary egg shells" are needed to settle the grounds of the strong coffee
required to energize the masses to continue the work designed to bring on the Dawn of the Neoliberal
dispensation!
You are in the "right place."
As for States; some years ago, Louisiana had a motto on their automobile license plates that read;
"Louisiana: A Dream State." Truth in advertising. That motto didn't last long.
The bigger shock came on being told, at least twice, by Times editors who were describing
the paper's daily Page One meeting: "We set the agenda for the country in that room."
They believe their own fake news. Now they can't believe their lying eyes.
Difficult for me to believe the NYT originates "The Narrative" any more than Pravda or Izvestia
did so in the USSR. I am more receptive to the idea that its senior editors coordinate with upstream
sources to assure news coverage and opinion pieces are consistent with policies favored by the
administration and other senior government officials, as well as other selected constituencies.
Also of interest to me is what is occurring at the Washington Post in this regard.
There may well be truth to that idea. I recall
reading a blog post by a Swedish journalist who
did an article on the NY Times. He writes that they
have a building that none of their journalists are allowed
to enter as it is sometimes visited by important dignitaries
who negotiate how they will be covered. He gave
Gaddafi of Libya as an example. I suppose this is possible if
you fixing the narrative.
The Michael Cieply story reminds me of this (from 9/14/2016):
This off-limits part of the building was not only where the president would sit in on editorial
board meetings, it was also the place where Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was received when
he successfully negotiated to be removed from "The Axis of Evil" list after 9/11. At that point
in time The New York Times was still considered perhaps the most important publication in the
world, and what it wrote was thought to have a direct impact on the life and death of nations.
Because of this, many powerful people would put a lot of effort and money into gaining preferable
coverage from The New York Times. These floors, Bill Keller told me, was where the proprietor
and the editors of the newspaper would meet with and negotiate deals with powerful visitors.
In retrospect, whatever "deal" that Gaddafi struck with The New York Times, the exonerating
article penned by Judith Miller didn't save his life, nor did it save his nation from the might
of the US air force.
Despite the brutal fate that Gaddafi came to face, the assumption that The New York Times
was capable of making meaningful deals with governments was not entirely unfounded. Bill Keller
spoke of how he successfully negotiated to freeze the NSA warrantless wiretapping-story uncovered
by Eric Lichtblau for two years until after the re-election of George W Bush. This top-floor
was also where the Iraq WMD evidence was concocted with the help of the Pentagon and handed
to reporter Judith Miller to pen, later letting her hang when the wind changed. This, Keller
also told me, was where the CIA and State Department officials were invited to take part in
daily editorial meetings when State Department Cables were published by WikiLeaks. I would
personally witness how this was the place where Sulzberger himself oversaw the re-election
coverage of president Obama. And this was much later where the main tax-evaders of the US would
make their cases so that the Panama Papers on their tax records would never reach the public
eye (which at the time of writing, they have yet to be).
Just an FYI, the reason that hardly any Americans featured in the Panama Papers was that Panama
was not a favored destination for US tax evaders. So the Times had nothing to protect.
I still think the story is evolutionary. In the sense that just as the central nervous system
of society, government, started as a privatized function and eventually evolved into a public
utility, for basic reasons of efficiency and scale, the financial system, as the medium and circulation
system of society, is going through a similar evolutionary process. The premise of vast notional
wealth, which is necessarily backed by debt, is insupportable, at its current levels, simply because
the debt is unsustainable. So collapse is inevitable and the only question is how well and quickly
we develop a viable alternative.
From The Devil's Chessboard: Allan Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government
by David Talbot, which I am still reading. Regarding the overthrow of Arbenz of Guatemala:
"The U.S. press coverage of the Guatemala coup offered a sanitized account, one that smacked
of CIA manipulation. The leading newspapers treated the overthrow of Arbenz's government as a
topical adventure, an " opera bouffe ," in the words of Hanson Baldwin, one of Dulles's
trusted friends at The New York Times . Nonetheless, reported Baldwin, the operation
had "global importance." This is precisely how Dulles liked his overseas exploits to be chronicled
– as entertaining espionage capers, with serious consequences for the Cold War struggle. New
York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger was extremely accommodating to Dulles throughout
the covert operation, agreeing to keep foreign correspondent Sydney Gruson, whom Dulles considered
insufficiently compliant, out of Guatemala and even assuring the CIA director that Gruson's future
articles would be screened "with a great deal more care than usual."
The Republicans are the party of the rich; the Democrats are the party of the rich and
poor. Those in between have no place.
The Republicans and the Democrats are parties of the rich who use the poor. Both use the poor
as a lever to extract wealth from the shrinking resource known as middle class. There is only
a superficial difference in how they use them, and in both cases a real democracy has no place
in their governance.
For anyone interested in the inner workings of the print media I highly recommend 'Flat Earth
News' by Nick Davies. It is a little uk centric but Davies, the guy that broke Murdoch's phone
hacking conspiracy, is authoritative.
The chapter on the role of the security services in the press is quite interesting and gives important
context for understanding the current attempts to centralise control of the internet news narrative.
"... Excellent critique. Establishment Democrats are tone-deaf right now; the state of denial they live in is stunning. I'd like to think they can learn after the shock of defeat is over, but identity politics for non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual is what the Democratic party is about today and has been the last decade or so. ..."
"... That's the effect of incessant Dem propaganda pitting races and sexes against each other. ..."
"... And Democrats' labeling of every Republican president/candidate as a Nazi - including Trump - is desensitizing the public to the real danger created by discriminatory policies that punish [white] children and young adults, particularly boys. ..."
"... So, to make up for the alleged screw job that women and minorities have supposedly received, the plan will be screwing white/hetro/males for the forseeable future. My former employer is doing this very plan, as we speak. Passed over 100 plus males, who have been turning wrenches on airplanes for years, and installed a female shop manager who doesn't know jack-$##t about fixing airplanes. No experience, no certificate......but she has a management degree. But I guess you don't know how to do the job to manage it. ..."
"... Bernie Sanders was that standard bearer, but Krugman and the Neoliberal establishment Democrats (ie. Super Delegates) decided that they wanted to coronate Clinton. ..."
"... Evolution of political parties happens organically, through evolution (punctuated equilibrium - like species and technology - parties have periods of stability with some sudden jumps in differentiation). ..."
"... If Nancy Pelosi is re-elected (highly likely), it will be the best thing to happen to Republicans since Lincoln. They will lose even more seats. ..."
"... The Coastal Pelosi/Schumer wing is still in power, and it will take decimation at the ballot box to change the party. The same way the "Tea Party" revolution decimated the Republicans and led to Trump. Natural selection at work. ..."
"... The central fact of the election is that Hillary has always been extraordinarily unlikable, and it turned out that she was Nixonianly corrupt ..."
"... I'm from Dallas. Three of my closest friends growing up (and to this day), as well as my brother in law, are hispanic. They, and their families, all vote Republican, even for Trump. Generally speaking, the longer hispanics are in the US, the more likely they tend to vote Republican. ..."
"... The Democratic Establishment and their acolytes are caught in a credibility trap. ..."
"... I also think many Trump voters know they are voting against their own economic interest. The New York Times interviewed a number who acknowledge that they rely on insurance subsidies from Obamacare and that Trump has vowed to repeal it. I know one such person myself. She doesn't know what she will do if Obamacare is repealed but is quite happy with her vote. ..."
"... Krugman won his Nobel for arcane economic theory. So it isn't terribly surprising that he spectacularly fails whenever he applies his brain to anything remotely dealing with mainstream thought. He is the poster boy for condescending, smarter by half, elite liberals. In other words, he is an over educated, political hack who has yet to learn to keep his overtly bias opinions to himself. ..."
"... Funny how there's all this concern for the people whose jobs and security and money have vanished, leaving them at the mercy of faceless banks and turning to drugs and crime. Sad. Well, let's bash some more on those lazy, shiftless urban poors who lack moral strength and good, Protestant work ethic, shall we? ..."
"... Clinton slammed half the Trump supporters as deplorables, not half the public. She was correct; about half of them are various sorts of supremacists. The other half (she said this, too) made common cause with the deplorables for economic reasons even though it was a devil's bargain. ..."
"... I have never commented here but I will now because of the number of absurd statements. I happen to work with black and Hispanic youth and have also worked with undocumented immigrants. To pretend that trump and the Republican Party has their interest in mind is completely absurd. As for the white working class, please tell me what programs either trump or the republican have put forward to benefit them? I have lost a lot of respect for Duy ..."
"... The keys of the election were race, immigration and trade. Trump won on these points. What dems can do is to de-emphasize multiculturalism, racial equality, political correctness etc. Instead, emphasize economic equality and security, for all working class. ..."
"... Krugman more or less blames media, FBI, Russia entirely for Hillary's loss, which I think is wrong. As Tim said, Dems have long ceased to be the party of the working class, at least in public opinion, for legitimate reasons. ..."
"... All Mr. Krugman and the Democratic establishment need to do is to listen, with open ears and mind, to what Thomas Frank has been saying, and they will know where they went wrong and most likely what to do about it, if they can release themselves from their fatal embrace with Big Money covered up by identity politics. ..."
"... Pretty sad commentary by neoliberal left screaming at neoliberal right and vice versa. ..."
"... The neoliberals with their multi-culti/love them all front men have had it good for a while, now there's a reaction. Deal with it. ..."
Excellent critique. Establishment Democrats are tone-deaf right now; the state of denial they
live in is stunning. I'd like to think they can learn after the shock of defeat is over, but identity
politics for non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual is what the Democratic party is about today
and has been the last decade or so.
The only way Dems can make any headway by the midterms is if Trump really screws up,
which is a tall order even for him. He will pick the low-hanging fruit (e.g., tax reform, Obamacare
reform, etc), the economy will continue to recover (which will be attributed to Trump), and Dems
will lose even more seats in Congress. And why? Because they refuse to recognize that whites from
the middle-class and below are just as disadvantaged as minorities from the same social class.
If white privilege exists at all (its about as silly as the "Jews control the banks and media"
conspiracy theories), it exists for the upper classes. Poor whites need help too. And young men
in/out of college today are being displaced by women - not because the women have superior academic
qualification, but because they are women. I've seen it multiple times firsthand in some of the
country's largest companies and universities (as a lawyer, when an investigation or litigation
takes place, I get to see everyone's emails, all the way to CEO/board). There is a concerted effort
to hire only women and minorities, especially for executive/managerial positions. That's not equality.
That's the effect of incessant Dem propaganda pitting races and sexes against each other.
This election exposed the media's role, but its not over. Fortunately, Krugman et al. are
showing the Dems are too dumb to figure out why they lost. Hopefully they keep up their stupidity
so identity politics can fade into history and we can get back to pursuing equality.
"There is a concerted effort to hire only women and minorities, especially for executive/managerial
positions."
Goooooolllllllllllllly, gee. Now why would that be? I hope you're not saying there shouldn't
be such an effort. This is a good thing. It exactly and precisely IS equality. It may be a bit
harsh, but if certain folks continually find ways to crap of women and minorities, then public
policies would seem warranted.
Are you seriously telling us that pursuing public policies to curb racial and sexual discrimination
are a waste of time?
How, exactly, does your vision of "pursuit of equality" ameliorate the historical fact of discrimination?
You don't make up for past discrimination with discrimination. You make up for it by equal application
of the law. Today's young white men are not the cause of discrimination of the 20th century, or
of slavery. If you discriminate against them because of the harm caused by other people, you're
sowing the seeds of a REAL white nationalist movement. And Democrats' labeling of every Republican
president/candidate as a Nazi - including Trump - is desensitizing the public to the real danger
created by discriminatory policies that punish [white] children and young adults, particularly
boys.
Displacement of white men by lesser-qualified women and minorities is NOT equality.
So, to make up for the alleged screw job that women and minorities have supposedly received,
the plan will be screwing white/hetro/males for the forseeable future. My former employer is doing
this very plan, as we speak. Passed over 100 plus males, who have been turning wrenches on airplanes
for years, and installed a female shop manager who doesn't know jack-$##t about fixing airplanes.
No experience, no certificate......but she has a management degree. But I guess you don't know
how to do the job to manage it.
God forbid somebody have to "pay some dues" before setting them loose as suit trash.
Back when cultural conservatives ruled the roost (not that long ago), they didn't pursue equality
either. Rather, they favored (hetero Christian) white men. So hoping for Dem stupidity isn't going
to lead to equality. Most likely it would go back to favoring hetero Christian white men.
"...should they find a new standard bearer that can win the Sunbelt states and bridge the divide
with the white working class? I tend to think the latter strategy has the higher likelihood of
success."
Easy to say. What would that standard bearer or that strategy look like?
Bernie Sanders was that standard bearer, but Krugman and the Neoliberal establishment Democrats
(ie. Super Delegates) decided that they wanted to coronate Clinton. Big mistake that we are
now paying for...
Basic political math - Sanders would have been eaten alive with his tax proposals by the GOP anti-tax
propaganda machine on Trump steroids.
His call to raise the payroll tax to send more White working class hard-earn money to Washington
would have made election night completely different - Trump would have still won, it just wouldn't
have been a surprise but rather a known certainty weeks ahead.
Evolution of political parties happens organically, through evolution (punctuated equilibrium
- like species and technology - parties have periods of stability with some sudden jumps in differentiation).
Old politicians are defeated, new ones take over. The old guard, having been successful in
the past in their own niche rarely change.
If Nancy Pelosi is re-elected (highly likely), it will be the best thing to happen to Republicans
since Lincoln. They will lose even more seats.
The Coastal Pelosi/Schumer wing is still in power, and it will take decimation at the ballot
box to change the party. The same way the "Tea Party" revolution decimated the Republicans and
led to Trump. Natural selection at work.
In 1991, Republicans thought they would always win, Democrats thought the country was relegated
to Republican Presidents forever. Then along came a new genotype- Clinton. In 2012, Democrats
thought that they would always win, and Republicans were thought to be locked out of the electoral
college. Then along came a new genotype, Trump.
A new genotype of Democrat will have to emerge, but it will start with someone who can win
in flyover country and Texas. Hint: They will have to drop their hubris, disdain and lecturing,
some of their anti-growth energy policies, hate for the 2nd amendment, and become more fiscally
conservative. They have to realize that *no one* will vote for an increase in the labor supply
(aka immigration) when wages are stagnant and growth is anemic. And they also have to appreciate
people would rather be free to choose than have decisions made for them. Freedom means nothing
unless you are free to make mistakes.
But it won't happen until coastal elites like Krugman and Pelosi have retired.
My vote for the Democratic Tiktaalik is the extraordinarily Honorable John Bel Edwards, governor
of Louisiana. The central fact of the election is that Hillary has always been extraordinarily
unlikable, and it turned out that she was Nixonianly corrupt (i.e., deleted E-mails on her
illegal private server) as well - and she still only lost by 1% in the tipping point state (i.e.,
according to the current count, which could very well change).
You know what will win Texas? Demographic change. Economic growth. And it is looking pretty inevitable
on both counts.
I'm also pretty damned tired of being dismissed as "elitist", "smug" and condescending. I grew
up in a red state. I know their hate. I know their condescension (they're going to heaven, libruls
are not).
It cuts both ways. The Dems are going into a fetal crouch about this defeat. Did the GOP do
that after 2008? Nope. They dug in deeper.
Ahh yes, all Texas needs is demographic change, because all [Hispanics, Blacks, insert minority
here] will always and forever vote Democrat. Even though the Democrats take their votes for granted
and Chicago/Baltimore etc. are crappy places to live with no school choice, high taxes, fleeing
jobs, and crime. Even though Trump outperformed Romney among minorities.
Clinton was supposed to be swept up in the winds of demographics and the Democrats were supposed
to win the White House until 2083.
Funny things happen when you take votes for granted. Many urban areas are being crushed by
structural deficits and need some Detroit type relief. I predict that some time in the next 30
years, poles reverse, and urban areas are run by Republicans.
If you are tired of being dismissed as "elitist", "smug" and condescending, don't be those
things. Don't assume people will vote for your party because they have always voted that way,
or they are a certain color. Respect the voters and work to earn it.
The notion that hispanic=democrat that liberals like bob have is hopelessly ignorrant.
I'm from Dallas. Three of my closest friends growing up (and to this day), as well as my
brother in law, are hispanic. They, and their families, all vote Republican, even for Trump. Generally
speaking, the longer hispanics are in the US, the more likely they tend to vote Republican.
The Democratic Party's plan to wait out the Republicans and let demographics take over is ignorant,
racist and shortsighted, cooked up by coastal liberals that haven't got a clue, and will ultimately
fail.
In addition to losing hispanics, Democrats will also start losing the African American vote
they've been taking for granted the last several decades. Good riddance to the Democratic party,
they are simply unwilling to listen to what the people want.
This is a really shoddy piece that repeats the medias pulling of Clintons quote out of context.
She also said "that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them
down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens
to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even
matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope
that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid
to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize
with as well."
Now maybe it is okay to make gnore this part of the quote because you think calling racism
"deplorable" is patently offensive. But when the ignored context makes the same points that Duy
says she should have been making, that is shoddy.
There are zero electoral college votes in the State of Denial. Hopefully you understand a)the
difference between calling people deplorable and calling *behavior* deplorable; b) Godwin's Law:
when you resort to comparing people to Hitler you've lost the argument. Trump supporters were
not racist, homophobic, xenophobic, or any other phobic. As a moderate, educated, female Trump
supporter counseled: He was an a-hole, but I liked his policies.
Even my uber liberal friends cannot tell me what Clinton's economic plan was. Only that they
are anti-Trump.
Trump flanked Clinton on the most popular policies (the left used to be the anti-trade party
of union Democrats): Lower regulation, lower taxes, pro-2nd amendment, trade deals more weighted
in favor of US workers, and lower foreign labor supply. Turn's out, those policies are sufficiently
popular that people will vote for them, even when packaged into an a-hole. Trump's anti-trade
platform was preached for decades by rust belt unions.
The coastal Democrats have become hostages to pro-big-government municipal unions crushing
cities under structural deficits, high taxes, poorly run schools, and overbearing regulations.
The best thing that can happen for the Democrats is for the Republicans to push for reforms of
public pensions, school choice, and break municipal unions. Many areas see the disaster in Chicago
and Baltimore, run by Democrats for decades, and say no thank you. Freed of the need to cater
to urban municipal unions, Democrats may be able to appeal to people elsewhere.
Tim, I believe you've missed the point: by straightforward measures, Democratic voters in USA
are substantially under-represented. The problem is likely to get much worse, as the party whose
policies abet minority rule now controls all three branches of the federal government and a substantial
majority of state governments.
This is an outstanding takedown on what has been a never-ending series of garbage from Krugman.
I used to hang on every post he'd made for years after the 2008 crisis hit. But once the Clinton
coronation arose this year, the arrogant, condescending screed hit 11 - and has not slowed down
since. Threads of circular and illogical arguments have woven together pathetic - and often non-liberal
- editorials that have driven me away permanently.
Since he's chosen to ride it all on political commentary, Krugman's credibility is right there
with luminaries such as Nial Ferguson and Greg Mankiw.
Seems that everyone who chooses to hitch their wagon to the Clintons ends up covered in bilge.....
funny thing about that persistent coincidence...
"And it is an especially difficult pill given that the decline was forced upon the white working
class.... The tsunami of globalization washed over them....in many ways it was inevitable, just
as was the march of technology that had been eating away at manufacturing jobs for decades. But
the damage was intensified by trade deals.... Then came the housing crash and the ensuing humiliation
of the foreclosure crisis."
All the more amazing then that Trump pulled out such a squeaker of an election beating Clinton
by less than 2% in swing states and losing the popular vote overall. In the shine of Duy's lights
above, I would have imagined a true landslide for Trump... Just amazing.
"I don't know that the white working class voted against their economic interest".
I think you're pushing too hard here. Democrats have been for, and Republicans against many
policies that benefit the white working class: expansionary monetary policy, Obamacare, housing
refinance, higher minimum wage, tighter worker safety regulation, stricter tax collection, and
a host of others.
I also think many Trump voters know they are voting against their own economic interest.
The New York Times interviewed a number who acknowledge that they rely on insurance subsidies
from Obamacare and that Trump has vowed to repeal it. I know one such person myself. She doesn't
know what she will do if Obamacare is repealed but is quite happy with her vote.
There is zero evidence for this theory. It ignores the fact that Trump lied his way to the White
House with the help of a media unwilling to confront and expose his mendacity. And there was the
media's obsession with Clinton's Emails and the WikiLeaks daily release of stolen DNC documents.
And finally the Comey letter which came in the middle of early voting keeping the nation in suspense
for 11 days and which was probably a violation of the hatch act. Comey was advised against his
unjustified action by higher up DOJ officials but did it anyway. All of these factors loomed much
larger than the deplorables comment. Besides, the strong dollar fostered by the FOMC's obsession
with "normalization" helped Trump win because the strong dollar hurts exporters like farmers who
make up much of the rural vote as well as hurting US manufacturing located in the midwest states.
The FOMC was objectively pro Trump.
I was surrounded by Trump voters this past election. Trust me, an awful lot of them are deplorable.
My father is extremely anti semetic and once warned me not to go to Minneapolis because of there
being "too many Muslims." One of our neighbors thinks all Muslims are terrorists and want to do
horrible things to all Christians.
I know, its not a scientific study. But I've had enough one on one conversations with Trump
supporters (not just GOP voters, Trump supporters) to say that yes, as a group they have some
pretty horrible views.
Yep. I've got plenty of stories myself. From the fact that there are snooty liberals it does NOT
follow that the resentment fueling Trump's support is justified.
One should note that the "The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic - you name
it ... " voted for Obama last time around.
When the blue collar voter (for lack of a better class) figures out that the Republicans (Trump)
are not going to help them anymore than the Dems did -- it will be time for them to understand
they can only rely on themselves, namely: through rebuilding labor union density, which can be
done AT THE STATE BY PROGRESSIVE STATE LEVEL.
To keep it simple states may add to federal protections like the minimum wage or safety regs
-- just not subtract. At present the NLRB has zero (no) enforcement power to prevent union busting
(see Trump in Vegas) -- so illegal labor market muscling, firing of organizers and union joiners
go completely undeterred and unrecoursed.
Recourse, once we get Congress back might include mandating certification elections on finding
of union busting. Nothing too alien: Wisconsin, for instance, mandates RE-certification of all
public employee unions annually.
Progressive states first step should be making union busting a felony -- taking the power playing
in our most important and politically impacting market as seriously as taking a movie in the movies
(get you a couple of winters). For a more expansive look (including a look at the First Amendment
and the fed cannot preempt something with nothing, click here):
http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2016/11/first-100-days-progressive-states-agenda.html
Labor unions -- returned to high density -- can act as the economic cop on every corner --
our everywhere advocates squelching such a variety of unhealthy practices as financialization,
big pharam gouging, for profit college fraud (Trump U. -- that's where we came into this movie).
6% private union density is like 20/10 bp; it starves every other healthy process (listening blue
collar?).
Don't panic if today's Repub Congress passes national right-to-work legislation. Germany, which
has the platinum standard labor institutions, does not have one majority union (mostly freeloaders!),
but is almost universally union or covered by union contracts (centralized bargaining -- look
it up) and that's what counts.
Trump took both sides of every issue. He wants high and low interest rates. He wants a depression
first, (Bannonomics) and inflation first, (Trumponomics), he wants people to make more and make
less. He is nasty and so he projected that his opponent was nasty.
Now he has to act instead of just talk out of both sides of his mouth. That should not be as
easy to do.
Hi Tim, nice post, and I particularly liked your last paragraph. The relevant question today if
you have accepted where we are is effectively: 'What would you prefer - a Trump victory now? Or
a Trump type election victory in a decade or so? (with todays corresponding social/economic/political
trends continuing).
I'm a Brit so I was just an observer to the US election but the same point is relevant here in
the UK - Would I rather leave the EU now with a (half sensible) Tory government? Or would I rather
leave later on with many more years of upheaval and a (probably by then quite nutty) UKIP government?
I know which one I prefer - recognise the protest vote sooner, rather than later.
Sure they're angry, and their plight makes that anger valid.
However, not so much their belief as to who and what caused their plight, and more importantly,
who can and how their plight would be successfully reversed.
Most people have had enough personal experiences to know that it is when we are most angry
that we do the stupidest of things.
Krugman won his Nobel for arcane economic theory. So it isn't terribly surprising that he
spectacularly fails whenever he applies his brain to anything remotely dealing with mainstream
thought. He is the poster boy for condescending, smarter by half, elite liberals. In other words,
he is an over educated, political hack who has yet to learn to keep his overtly bias opinions
to himself.
Tim's narrative felt like a cold shower. I was apprehensive that I found it too agreeable on one
level but were the building blocks stable and accurate?
Somewhat like finding a meal that is satisfying, but wondering later about the ingredients.
But, like Tim's posts on the Fed, they prompt that I move forward to ponder the presentation
and offer it to others for their comment. At this time, five-stars on a 1-5 system for bringing
a fresh approach to the discussion. Thanks, Professor Duy. This to me is Piketty-level pushing
us onto new ground.
Funny how there's all this concern for the people whose jobs and security and money have vanished,
leaving them at the mercy of faceless banks and turning to drugs and crime. Sad. Well, let's bash
some more on those lazy, shiftless urban poors who lack moral strength and good, Protestant work
ethic, shall we?
Clinton slammed half the Trump supporters as deplorables, not half the public. She was correct;
about half of them are various sorts of supremacists. The other half (she said this, too) made
common cause with the deplorables for economic reasons even though it was a devil's bargain.
Now, there's a problem with maternalism here; it's embarrassing to find out that the leader
of your political opponents knows you better than you know yourself, like your mother catching
you out in a lie. It was impolitic for Clinton to have said this But above all remember that when
push came to shove, the other basket made common cause with the Nazis, the Klan, and so on and
voted for a rapey fascist.
"Economic development" isn't (and can't) be the same thing as bringing back lost manufacturing
(or mining) jobs. We have had 30 years of shifting power between labor and capital. Restoring
labor market institutions (both unions and government regulation) and raising the floor through
higher minimum wages, single payer health care, fair wages for women and more support for child
and elder care, trade policies that care about working families, better safe retirement plans
and strengthened Social Security, etc. is key here, along with running a real full employment
economy, with a significant green component. See Bob Polllin's excellent program in
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/back-full-employment
That program runs up against racism, sexism, division, and fear of government and taxation,
and those are powerful forces. But we don't need all Trump supporters. We do need a real, positive
economic program that can attract those who care about the economics more than the cultural stuff.
How about people of color drop the democrats and their hand wringing about white people when they
do nothing about voter suppression!! White fragility is nauseating and I'm planning to arm myself
and tell all the people of color I know to do the same. I expect nothing from the democrats going
forward.
I have never commented here but I will now because of the number of absurd statements. I happen
to work with black and Hispanic youth and have also worked with undocumented immigrants. To pretend
that trump and the Republican Party has their interest in mind is completely absurd. As for the
white working class, please tell me what programs either trump or the republican have put forward
to benefit them? I have lost a lot of respect for Duy
I think much of appeal of DJT was in his political incorrectness. PC marginalises. Very. Of white
working class specifically. it tells one, one cannot rely on one's ideas any more. In no uncertain
terms. My brother, who voted for Trump, lost his job to PC without offending on purpose, but the
woman in question felt free to accuse him of violating her, with no regard to his fate. He was
never close enough to do that. Is that not some kind of McCarthyism?
Just to be correct. Clinton was saying that half (and that was a terrible error-should have said
"some") were people that were unreachable, but that they had to communicate effectively with the
other part of his support. People who echo the media dumb-ing down of complex statements are part
of the problem.
Still, I believe that if enough younger people and african-americans had come out in the numbers
they did for Obama in some of those states, Clinton would have won. Certainly, the media managed
to paint her in more negative light than she objectively deserved-- even if she deserved some
negatives.
I am in no way a fan of HRC. Still, the nature of the choice was blurred to an egregious degree.
"The tough reality of economic development is that it will always be easier to move people to
jobs than the jobs to people."
This is indisputable, but I have never seen any discussion of the point that moving is not
cost-free. Back in the '90s I had a discussion with a very smart person, a systems analyst, who
insisted that poor people moved to wherever the welfare benefits were highest.
I tried to point out that moving from one town to another costs more than a bus ticket. You
have to pay to have your possessions transported. You have to have enough cash to pay at least
two months' rent and maybe an additional security deposit.
You have to have enough cash to pay for food for at least one month or however long it takes
for your first paycheck or welfare check to come in. There may be other costs like relocating
your kids to a new school system and maybe changing your health insurance provider.
There probably are other costs I'm not aware of, and the emotional cost of leaving your family
and your roots. The fact that some people succeed in moving is a great achievement. I'm amazed
it works at all in Europe where you also have the different languages to cope with.
I'm not sure the Hillary non-voters - which also include poor black neighborhoods - were voting
against their economic interests. Under Obama, they didn't do well. Many of them were foreclosed
on while Obama was giving the money to the banks. Jobs haven't improved, unless you want to work
at an Amazon warehouse or for Uber and still be broke. Obama tried to cut social security. He
made permanent Bush's tax cuts for the rich. Wars and more wars. Health premiums went up - right
before the election. The most Obama could say in campaigning for Hillary was "if you care about
my legacy, vote for Hillary." He's the only one that cares about his legacy. I don't know that
it's about resentment but about just having some hope for economic improvement - which Trump offered
(no matter how shallow and deceptive) and Hillary offered nothing but "Trump's an idiot and I'm
not."
I believe Bernie would have beat Trump's ass if 1) the DNC hadn't put their fingers on the
scale for Hillary and 2) same with the media for Hillary and Trump. The Dems need more than some
better campaign slogans. They really need a plan for serious economic equality. And the unions
need to get their shit together and stop thinking that supporting corrupt corporate Dems is working.
Or perhaps the rank and file need to get their shit together and get rid of union bosses.
The keys of the election were race, immigration and trade. Trump won on these points. What
dems can do is to de-emphasize multiculturalism, racial equality, political correctness etc. Instead,
emphasize economic equality and security, for all working class.
Lincoln billed the civil war as a war to preserve the union, to gain wide support, instead
of war to free slaves. Of course, the slaves were freed when the union won the war. Dems can benefit
from a similar strategy
Krugman more or less blames media, FBI, Russia entirely for Hillary's loss, which I think
is wrong. As Tim said, Dems have long ceased to be the party of the working class, at least in
public opinion, for legitimate reasons.
Besides, a lot voters are tired of stale faces and stale ideas. They yearn something new, especially
the voters in deep economic trouble.
Maybe it's time to try some old fashioned mercantilism, protectionism? America first is an
appealing idea, in this age of mindless globalization.
All Mr. Krugman and the Democratic establishment need to do is to listen, with open ears and
mind, to what Thomas Frank has been saying, and they will know where they went wrong and most
likely what to do about it, if they can release themselves from their fatal embrace with Big Money
covered up by identity politics.
But they cannot bring themselves to admit their error, and to give up their very personally
profitable current arrangement. And so they are caught up in a credibility trap which is painfully
obvious to the objective observer.
Pretty sad commentary by neoliberal left screaming at neoliberal right and vice versa.
It seems quite clear that the vast majority of commenters live as much in the ivory tower/bubble
as is claimed for their ideological opponent.
It is also quite interesting that most of these same commenters don't seem to get that the
voting public gets what the majority of it wants - not what every single group within the overall
population wants.
The neoliberals with their multi-culti/love them all front men have had it good for a while,
now there's a reaction. Deal with it.
"... The author missed the fact that pillage and plunder and rentier capitalism as defined by Reaganomics
has failed just as badly as communism for the same reason. ..."
"... If you want to be paid well, you must pay everyone else well. ..."
"Do unto Others " -might be an important Economic principle
The author missed the fact that pillage and plunder and rentier capitalism as defined by
Reaganomics has failed just as badly as communism for the same reason.
When you call for cost cuts which can only be done by cutting labor costs which means fewer
workers getting paid less, you are calling for your wages and income, or of your children and
grandchildren to be slashed as well.
Tax cuts mean paying fewer workers to provide public services whether roads, education, knowledge,
health, which means you will suffer losses of services AND eventual loss of income to your family.
Fewer paid workers forces wages and incomes lower for all workers.
If you want to be paid well, you must pay everyone else well.
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday December
06, 2016 @07:05PM from the muscle-memory dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org:
Scientists have
developed a mind-controlled robotic hand
that allows people with certain types of spinal injuries
to perform everyday tasks such as using a fork or drinking from a cup. The low-cost device was tested
in Spain on six people with quadriplegia affecting their ability to grasp or manipulate objects.
By wearing a cap that measures electric brain activity and eye movement the users were able to send
signals to a tablet computer that controlled the glove-like device attached to their hand. Participants
in the small-scale study were able to perform daily activities better with the robotic hand than
without, according to results
published Tuesday in
the journal Science Robotics .
It took participants just 10 minutes to learn how to use the system
before they were able to carry out tasks such as picking up potato chips or signing a document. According
to Surjo R. Soekadar, a neuroscientist at the University Hospital Tuebingen in Germany and lead author
of the study, participants represented typical people with high spinal cord injuries, meaning they
were able to move their shoulders but not their fingers. There were some limitations to the system,
though. Users had to have sufficient function in their shoulder and arm to reach out with the robotic
hand. And mounting the system required another person's help.
An autonomous
shuttle from Auro Robotics is
picking up and dropping off students, faculty, and visitors
at the Santa Clara University Campus
seven days a week. It doesn't go fast, but it has to watch out for pedestrians, skateboarders, bicyclists,
and bold squirrels (engineers added a special squirrel lidar on the bumper). An Auro engineer rides
along at this point to keep the university happy, but soon will be replaced by a big red emergency
stop button (think Staples Easy button). If you want a test drive, just look for a "shuttle stop"
sign (there's one in front of the parking garage) and climb on, it doesn't ask for university ID.
More directly to the heart of American fast-food cuisine, Momentum Machines, a restaurant concept
with a robot that can supposedly
flip hundreds of burgers an hour
, applied for a building permit in San Francisco and started
listing job openings this January, reported Eater. Then there's Eatsa, the automat restaurant where
no human interaction is necessary, which has locations
popping up across California .
(businessinsider.co.id)
83 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday December 11, 2016 @09:34PM from the damn-it-Jim-I'm-a-doctor-not-a-supercomputer
dept.
"Supercomputing has another use," writes Slashdot reader
rmdingler , sharing a story that
quotes David Kenny, the General Manager of IBM Watson:
"There's a 60-year-old woman in Tokyo. She was at the University of Tokyo. She had been diagnosed
with leukemia six years ago. She was living, but not healthy. So the University of Tokyo ran
her genomic sequence through Watson and
it was able to ascertain that they were off by one thing . Actually, she had two strains
of leukemia. They did treat her and she is healthy."
"That's one example. Statistically, we're seeing that about one third of the time, Watson is
proposing an additional diagnosis."
"... Skype Translator, available in nine languages, uses artificial intelligence (AI) techniques such as deep-learning to train artificial neural networks and convert spoken chats in almost real time. The company says the app improves as it listens to more conversations. ..."
Posted by msmash on Monday December 12, 2016 @11:05AM from the worthwhile dept.
Microsoft has added the ability to use Skype Translator on calls to mobiles and landlines to its
latest Skype Preview app. From a report on ZDNet: Up until now, Skype Translator was available
to individuals making Skype-to-Skype calls. The new announcement of the expansion of Skype Translator
to mobiles and landlines
makes Skype Translator more widely available .
To test drive this, users need to be members
of the Windows Insider Program. They need to install the latest version of Skype Preview on their
Windows 10 PCs and to have Skype Credits or a subscription.
Skype Translator, available in
nine languages, uses artificial intelligence (AI) techniques such as deep-learning to train artificial
neural networks and convert spoken chats in almost real time. The company says the app improves
as it listens to more conversations.
Fund
more research in robotics and artificial intelligence in order for the U.S. to
maintain its leadership in the global technology industry. The report calls on
the government to steer that research to support a diverse workforce and to
focus on combating algorithmic bias in AI.
Invest in and increase STEM education for youth and job retraining for
adults in technology-related fields. That means offering computer science
education for all K-12 students, as well as expanding national workforce
retraining by investing six times the current amount spent to keep American
workers competitive in a global economy.
Modernize and strengthen the federal social safety net, including public
health care, unemployment insurance, welfare and food stamps. The report also
calls for increasing the minimum wage, paying workers overtime and and
strengthening unions and worker bargaining power.
The report says the government, meaning the the incoming Trump administration,
will have to forge ahead with new policies and grapple with the complexities of
existing social services to protect the millions of Americans who face
displacement by advances in automation, robotics and artificial intelligence.
The report also calls on the government to keep a close eye on fostering
competition in the AI industry, since the companies with the most data will be
able to create the most advanced products, effectively preventing new startups
from having a chance to even compete.
Back in April, Stanford University professor
Oussama Khatib led
a team of researchers on an underwater archaeological expedition, 30 kilometers off the southern
coast of France, to La Lune , King Louis XIV's sunken 17th-century flagship. Rather than
dive to the site of the wreck 100 meters below the surface, which is a very bad idea for almost
everyone, Khatib's team
brought along a custom-made humanoid submarine robot called Ocean One . In this month's issue
of
IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine , the Stanford researchers describe in detail
how they designed and built the robot , a hybrid between a humanoid and an underwater remotely
operated vehicle (ROV), and also how they managed to send it down to the resting place of
La Lune , where it used its three-fingered hands to retrieve a vase. Most ocean-ready ROVs
are boxy little submarines that might have an arm on them if you're lucky, but they're not really
designed for the kind of fine manipulation that underwater archaeology demands. You could send
down a human diver instead, but once you get past about 40 meters, things start to get both complicated
and dangerous. Ocean One's humanoid design means that it's easy and intuitive for a human to remotely
perform delicate archeological tasks through a telepresence interface.
schwit1 notes: "Ocean One is the best name they could come up with?"
Posted by msmash on Friday November 25, 2016 @12:10AM from the interesting-things dept.
BBC has a report today in which, citing several financial institutions and analysts, it claims that
in the not-too-distant future, our fields could be tilled, sown, tended and harvested entirely by
fleets of co-operating autonomous machines by land and air. An excerpt from the article:
Driverless
tractors that can follow pre-programmed routes are already being deployed at large farms around the
world. Drones are buzzing over fields assessing crop health and soil conditions. Ground sensors are
monitoring the amount of water and nutrients in the soil, triggering irrigation and fertilizer applications.
And in Japan, the world's first entirely automated lettuce farm is due for launch next year.
The future of farming is automated
. The World Bank says we'll need to produce 50% more food by 2050 if the global population continues
to rise at its current pace. But the effects of climate change could see crop yields falling by more
than a quarter. So autonomous tractors, ground-based sensors, flying drones and enclosed hydroponic
farms could all help farmers produce more food, more sustainably at lower cost.
The truck "will travel in regular traffic, and a driver in the truck will be positioned to
intervene should anything go awry, Department of Transportation spokesman Matt Bruning said Friday,
adding that 'safety is obviously No. 1.'"
Ohio sees this route as "a corridor where new technologies can be safely tested in real-life traffic,
aided by a fiber-optic cable network and sensor systems slated for installation next year" -- although
next week the truck will also start driving on the Ohio Turnpike.
Posted by BeauHD on Friday December 02,
2016 @05:00PM from the be-afraid-very-afraid dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider:
In
a column in The Guardian , the world-famous physicist wrote that "the automation of factories
has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the
rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle
classes , with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining." He adds his
voice to a growing chorus of experts concerned about the effects that technology will have on
workforce in the coming years and decades. The fear is that while artificial intelligence will
bring radical increases in efficiency in industry, for ordinary people this will translate into
unemployment and uncertainty, as their human jobs are replaced by machines.
Automation will, "in turn will accelerate the already widening economic inequality around the
world," Hawking wrote. "The internet and the platforms that it makes possible allow very small
groups of individuals to make enormous profits while employing very few people. This is inevitable,
it is progress, but it is also socially destructive." He frames this economic anxiety as a reason
for the rise in right-wing, populist politics in the West: "We are living in a world of widening,
not diminishing, financial inequality, in which many people can see not just their standard of
living, but their ability to earn a living at all, disappearing. It is no wonder then that they
are searching for a new deal, which Trump and Brexit might have appeared to represent." Combined
with other issues -- overpopulation, climate change, disease -- we are, Hawking warns ominously,
at "the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity." Humanity must come together if
we are to overcome these challenges, he says.
"... The firm says that 44 percent of the CEOs surveyed agreed that robotics, automation and AI would reshape the future of many work places by making people "largely irrelevant." ..."
Posted by msmash on Monday December 05, 2016 @02:20PM from the shape-of-things-to-come
dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report on BetaNews:
Although artificial intelligence (AI),
robotics and other emerging technologies may reshape the world as we know it, a new global study
has revealed that the
many
CEOs now value technology over people when it comes to the future of their businesses . The study
was conducted by the Los Angeles-based management consultant firm Korn Ferry that interviewed 800
business leaders across a variety of multi-million and multi-billion dollar global organizations.
The firm says that 44 percent of the CEOs surveyed agreed that robotics, automation and AI would
reshape the future of many work places by making people "largely irrelevant."
The global managing
director of solutions at Korn Ferry Jean-Marc Laouchez explains why many CEOs have adopted this controversial
mindset, saying:
"Leaders may be facing what experts call a tangibility bias. Facing uncertainty,
they are putting priority in their thinking, planning and execution on the tangible -- what they
can see, touch and measure, such as technology instruments."
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday
December 06, 2016 @10:30PM from the what-to-expect dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from
The Verge:
Microsoft
polled 17 women working in its research organization about the technology advances they expect to
see in 2017 , as well as a decade later in 2027. The researchers' predictions touch on natural
language processing, machine learning, agricultural software, and virtual reality, among other topics.
For virtual reality,
Mar Gonzalez Franco
, a researcher in Microsoft's Redmond lab, believes body tracking will improve
next year, and then over the next decade we'll have "rich multi-sensorial experiences that will be
capable of producing hallucinations which blend or alter perceives reality."
Haptic devices will
simulate touch to further enhance the sensory experience. Meanwhile,
Susan Dumais
, a scientist and deputy managing director at the Redmond lab, believes deep learning
will help improve web search results next year.
In 2027, however, the search box will disappear,
she says.
It'll be replaced by search that's more "ubiquitous, embedded, and contextually sensitive."
She says we're already seeing some of this in voice-controlled searches through mobile and smart
home devices.
We might eventually be able to look things up with either sound, images, or video.
Plus, our searches will respond to "current location, content, entities, and activities" without
us explicitly mentioning them, she says.
Of course, it's worth noting that Microsoft has been losing
the search box war to Google, so it isn't surprising that the company thinks search will die. With
global warming as a looming threat,
Asta Roseway
, principal research designer, says by 2027 famers will use AI to maintain healthy
crop yields, even with "climate change, drought, and disaster."
Low-energy farming solutions, like
vertical farming and aquaponics, will also be essential to keeping the food supply high, she says. You can view all 17 predictions
here
"... Efforts which led to impoverishment of lower 80% the USA population with a large part of the US population living in a third world country. This "third world country" includes Wal-Mart and other retail employees, those who have McJobs in food sector, contractors, especially such as Uber "contractors", Amazon packers. This is a real third world country within the USA and probably 50% population living in it. ..."
"... While conversion of electricity supply from coal to wind and solar was more or less successful (much less then optimists claim, because it requires building of buffer gas powered plants and East-West high voltage transmission lines), the scarcity of oil is probably within the lifespan of boomers. Let's say within the next 20 years. That spells deep trouble to economic growth as we know it, even with all those machinations and number racket that now is called GDP (gambling now is a part of GDP). And in worst case might spell troubles to capitalism as social system, to say nothing about neoliberalism and neoliberal globalization. The latter (as well as dollar hegemony) is under considerable stress even now. But here "doomers" were wrong so often in the past, that there might be chance that this is not inevitable. ..."
"... Shale gas production in the USA is unsustainable even more then shale oil production. So the question is not if it declines, but when. The future decline (might be even Seneca Cliff decline) is beyond reasonable doubt. ..."
"What is good for wall st. is good for America". The remains of the late 19th century anti
trust/regulation momentum are democrat farmer labor wing in Minnesota, if it still exists. An
example: how farmers organized to keep railroads in their place. Today populists are called deplorable,
before they ever get going.
And US' "libruls" are corporatist war mongers.
Used to be the deplorable would be the libruls!
Division!
likbez -> pgl...
I browsed it and see more of less typical pro-neoliberal sentiments, despite some critique
of neoliberalism at the end.
This guy does not understand history and does not want to understand. He propagates or invents
historic myths. One thing that he really does not understand is how WWI and WWII propelled the
USA at the expense of Europe. He also does not understand why New Deal was adopted and why the
existence of the USSR was the key to "reasonable" (as in "not self-destructive" ) behaviour of
the US elite till late 70th. And how promptly the US elite changed to self-destructive habits
after 1991. In a way he is a preacher not a scientist. So is probably not second rate, but third
rate thinker in this area.
While Trump_vs_deep_state (aka "bastard neoliberalism") might not be an answer to challenges the USA is
facing, it is definitely a sign that "this time is different" and at least part of the US elite
realized that it is too dangerous to kick the can down the road. That's why Bush and Clinton political
clans were sidelined this time.
There are powerful factors that make the US economic position somewhat fragile and while Trump
is a very questionable answer to the challenges the USA society faces, unlike Hillary he might
be more reasonable in his foreign policy abandoning efforts to expand global neoliberal empire
led by the USA.
Efforts which led to impoverishment of lower 80% the USA population with a large part of
the US population living in a third world country. This "third world country" includes Wal-Mart
and other retail employees, those who have McJobs in food sector, contractors, especially such
as Uber "contractors", Amazon packers. This is a real third world country within the USA and probably
50% population living in it.
Add to this the decline of the US infrastructure due to overstretch of imperial building efforts
(which reminds British empire troubles).
I see several factors that IMHO make the current situation dangerous and unsustainable, Trump
or no Trump:
1. Rapid growth of population. The US population doubled in less them 70 years. Currently
at 318 million, the USA is the third most populous country on earth. That spells troubles for
democracy and ecology, to name just two. That might also catalyze separatists movements with two
already present (Alaska and Texas).
2. Plato oil. While conversion of electricity supply from coal to wind and solar
was more or less successful (much less then optimists claim, because it requires building of buffer
gas powered plants and East-West high voltage transmission lines), the scarcity of oil is probably
within the lifespan of boomers. Let's say within the next 20 years. That spells deep trouble to
economic growth as we know it, even with all those machinations and number racket that now is
called GDP (gambling now is a part of GDP). And in worst case might spell troubles to capitalism
as social system, to say nothing about neoliberalism and neoliberal globalization. The latter
(as well as dollar hegemony) is under considerable stress even now. But here "doomers" were wrong
so often in the past, that there might be chance that this is not inevitable.
3. Shale gas production in the USA is unsustainable even more then shale oil production.
So the question is not if it declines, but when. The future decline (might be even Seneca
Cliff decline) is beyond reasonable doubt.
4. Growth of automation endangers the remaining jobs, even jobs in service sector .
Cashiers and waiters are now on the firing line. Wall Mart, Shop Rite, etc, are already using
automatic cashiers machines in some stores. Wall-Mart also uses automatic machines in back office
eliminating staff in "cash office".
Waiters might be more difficult task but orders and checkouts are computerized in many restaurants.
So the function is reduced to bringing food. So much for the last refuge of recent college graduates.
The successes in speech recognition are such that Microsoft now provides on the fly translation
in Skype. There are also instances of successful use of computer in medical diagnostics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided_diagnosis
IT will continue to be outsourced as profits are way too big for anything to stop this trend.
"... Companies can now test self-driving cars on Michigan public roads without a driver or steering wheel under new laws that could push the state to the forefront of autonomous vehicle development. ..."
Posted by msmash on Friday December 09, 2016 @01:00PM from the it's-coming dept.
Companies
can now test self-driving cars on Michigan public roads without a driver or steering wheel under
new laws that could push the state to the forefront of autonomous vehicle development.
From a report
on ABC:
The package of bills signed into law Friday comes with few specific state regulations
and leaves many decisions up to automakers and companies like Google and Uber. It also allows automakers
and tech companies to run autonomous taxi services and
permits test parades of self-driving tractor-trailers as long as humans are in each truck
. And
they allow the sale of self-driving vehicles to the public once they are tested and certified, according
to the state. The bills allow testing without burdensome regulations so the industry can move forward
with potential life-saving technology, said Gov. Rick Snyder, who was to sign the bills. "It makes
Michigan a place where particularly for the auto industry it's a good place to do work," he said.
DeepMind, which was acquired by Google for $400 million in 2014, announced
on Monday that it is open-sourcing its "Lab" from this week onwards so that others can try and make
advances in the notoriously complex field of AI.
The company says that the DeepMind Lab, which it
has been using internally for some time, is a 3D game-like platform tailored for agent-based AI research.
[...]
The DeepMind Lab aims to combine several different AI research areas into one environment.
Researchers will be able to test their AI agent's abilities on navigation, memory, and 3D vision,
while determining how good they are at planning and strategy.
(cnn.com)
255
Posted by EditorDavid
on Sunday December 18, 2016 @12:34PM
from the
eat-different
dept.
An anonymous reader writes:
Apple has been
ordered to cut a $2 million check
for denying some of its retail workers
meal breaks. The lawsuit was first filed in 2011 by four Apple employees in San
Diego. They alleged that the company failed to give them meal and rest breaks
[as required by California law], and didn't pay them in a timely manner, among
other complaints. In 2013, the case became a class action lawsuit that included
California employees who had worked at Apple between 2007 and 2012,
approximately 21,000 people...
The complaint says Apple's culture of secrecy keeps employees from talking
about the company's poor working conditions. "If [employees] so much as discuss
the various labor policies, they run the risk of being fired, sued or
disciplined."
Apple changed their break policy in 2012, according to CNN, which reports that
the second half of the case should conclude later this week. The employees that
had been affected by Apple's original break policy could get as much as $95
each from Friday's settlement, according to CNN, "but it's likely some of the
money will go toward attorney fees."
(washingtonpost.com)
497
Posted by
BeauHD
on Thursday December 08, 2016 @10:30PM
from the
live-long-and-prosper
dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Washington Post:
For the first time
in more than two decades,
life expectancy for Americans declined last year
(Warning: may be paywalled;
alternate source
) -- a troubling development linked to a panoply of
worsening health problems in the United States.
In all, death rates
rose for eight of the top 10 leading causes of death. The new report raises the
possibility that major illnesses may be eroding prospects for an even wider
group of Americans. Its findings show increases in "virtually every cause of
death. It's all ages," said David Weir, director of the health and retirement
study at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Over
the past five years, he noted, improvements in death rates were among the
smallest of the past four decades. "There's this just across-the-board
[phenomenon] of not doing very well in the United States." Overall, life
expectancy fell by one-tenth of a year, from 78.9 in 2014 to 78.8 in 2015,
according to the latest data. The last time U.S. life expectancy at birth
declined was in 1993, when it dropped from 75.6 to 75.4, according to World
Bank data. The overall death rate rose 1.2 percent in 2015, its first uptick
since 1999. More than 2.7 million people died, about 45 percent of them from
heart disease or cancer.
"At least three tents have been spotted in woodland beside the online retail
giant's base," reports a Scottish newspaper -- hidden behind trees, but within
sight of Amazon's warehouse, and right next to a busy highway.
An anonymous
reader writes:
Despite Scotland's "bitterly cold winter nights" -- with lows
in the 30s -- the tent "
was
easier and cheaper than commuting from his home
," one Amazon worker told
the
Courier
. (Though yesterday someone stole all of his camping
equipment.)
Amazon charges its employees for shuttle service to the fulfillment
center, which "swallows up a lot of the weekly wage," one political party
leader told the
Courier
, "forcing people to seek ever more desperate
ways of making work pay.
"Amazon should be ashamed that they pay their workers so little that they have
to camp out in the dead of winter to make ends meet..." he continued. "They pay
a small amount of tax and received millions of pounds from the Scottish
National Party Government, so the least they should do is pay the proper living
wage." Though the newspaper reports that holiday shopping has created 4,000
temporary jobs in the small town of Dunfermline,
The
Disney IT employees, said Sara Blackwell, a Florida labor attorney who is
representing this group, "lost their jobs when their jobs were outsourced to
contracting companies. And those companies brought in mostly, or virtually all,
non-American national origin workers," she said. The lawsuit alleges that
Disney terminated the employment of the plaintiffs "based solely on their
national origin and race, replacing them with Indian nationals." The people who
were laid off were multiple races, but the people who came in were mostly one
race, said Blackwell. The lawsuit alleges that Disney terminated the employment
of the plaintiffs "based solely on their national origin and race, replacing
them with Indian nationals."
"As companies tighten their purse strings, they're spreading out their hires --
this year, and for years to come," reports Backchannel, citing interviews with
executives and other workplace analysts.
mirandakatz
writes:
Once a
cost-cutting strategy,
remote offices are becoming the new normal
: from GitHub to Mozilla and
Wordpress, more and more companies are eschewing the physical office in favor
of systems that allow employees to live out their wanderlust. As workplaces
increasingly go remote, they're adopting tools to keep employees connected and
socially fulfilled -- as Mozilla Chief of Staff David Slater tells Backchannel,
"The wiki becomes the water cooler."
The article describes budget-conscious startups realizing they can cut their
overhead and choose from talent located anywhere in the world. And one group of
analysts calculated that the number of telecommuting workers
doubled
between 2005 and 2014
, reporting that now "75% of employees who work from
home earn over $65,000 per year, putting them in the upper 80th percentile of
all employees, home or office-based."
Are Slashdot's readers seeing a surge in
telecommuting? And does anybody have any good stories about the digital nomad
lifestyle?
Posted by msmash
on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @11:40AM
from the
fight-for-money
dept.
Uber drivers will join forces with fast food, home care and airport workers in
a nationwide protest on Tuesday.
Their demand: higher pay
.
From a report on CNET:
Calling it the "Day of
Disruption," drivers for the ride-hailing company in two dozen cities,
including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, will march at
airports and in shopping areas carrying signs that read, "Your Uber Driver is
Arriving Striking." The protest underscores the dilemma Uber faces as it
balances the needs of its drivers with its business. Valued at $68 billion,
Uber is the highest-valued venture-backed company worldwide. But as it has cut
the cost of rides to compete with traditional taxi services, Uber reportedly
has experienced trouble turning a profit.
Unlike many other workers involved in
Tuesday's protests, Uber drivers are not members of a union. In fact, Uber
doesn't even classify its drivers as employees. Instead the company considers
drivers independent contractors. This classification means the company isn't
responsible for many costs, including health insurance, paid sick days, gas,
car maintenance and much more.
However, Uber still sets drivers' rates and the
commission it pays itself, which ranges between 20 percent and 30 percent.
"I'd
like a fair day's pay for my hard work," Adam Shahim, a 40-year-old driver from
Pittsburgh, California, said in a statement.
"So I'm joining with the
fast-food, airport, home care, child care and higher education workers who are
leading the way and showing the country how to build an economy that works for
everyone, not just the few at the top."
"... Uber treats its drivers as Victorian-style "sweated labor", with some taking home less than the minimum wage, ..."
"... Drivers at the taxi-hailing app company reported feeling forced to work extremely long hours, sometimes more than 70 a week , just to make a basic living, said Frank Field, the Labor MP and chair of the work and pensions committee. ..."
"... Field received testimony from 83 drivers who said they often took home significantly less than the "national living wage" after paying their running costs. The report says they described conditions that matched the Victorian definition of sweated labor: "when earnings were barely sufficient to sustain existence, hours of labor were such as to make lives of workers periods of ceaseless toil; and conditions were injurious to the health of workers and dangerous to the public. ..."
"... Uber controls what the drivers charge, what they drive (minimum standards and all) and punishes them if they don't work when told to (by locking them out of the app for declining low paying rides). That's not a contract gig, that's employment. ..."
"... the math on the purchase of the car doesn't work out. ..."
"... That's the essence of modern American Slavery. Nobody's _ever_ forcing you. You're completely free to starve to death and die in the streets. It's why the South abandoned real slavery. Wage Slavery is ever so much more cost effective. ..."
"... The aristocrats of our age are as detached from reality as the French aristocrats were, and as unwilling to accept the responsibilities that come with vast accrual of wealth. ..."
"... The key is to run a business that is profitable enough to pay its workers a wage sufficient to cover food and medical and housing. Otherwise, my tax money does it and those dollars essentially make the business owner a welfare recipient by enabling him to be artificially enriched. ..."
Posted by msmash on Friday December 09, 2016 @05:40PM from the app-economy dept.
Uber treats its drivers as Victorian-style "sweated labor", with some taking home less than the minimum
wage, according to a report into its working conditions based on the testimony of dozens of drivers.
From a report on The Guardian:
Field received testimony from 83 drivers who said they often took home significantly less than
the "national living wage" after paying their running costs. The report says they described conditions
that matched the Victorian definition of sweated labor: "when earnings were barely sufficient to
sustain existence, hours of labor were such as to make lives of workers periods of ceaseless toil;
and conditions were injurious to the health of workers and dangerous to the public."
rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @06:13PM (#53456097)
Au contre mon cheri (Score:2)
they realized the exact opposite. Pity you didn't.
Uber controls what the drivers charge, what they drive (minimum standards and all) and
punishes them if they don't work when told to (by locking them out of the app for declining
low paying rides). That's not a contract gig, that's employment.
fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @06:54PM (#53456365)
Re:Was never meant to be full time... (Score:2)
I think then the whole problem is that the math on the purchase of the car doesn't work
out. They have to work a lot of hours to make anything once the vehicle expenses are
taken care of.
MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @06:42PM (#53456283) Journal
Re:Tough shit (Score:3)
Even brilliant people can find themselves out of work, and become prey for pretty predatory
companies happy to take advantage of them. I've worked in the employment industry for many
years and see even some pretty highly skilled people stuck in shit-ass jobs because they can't
afford to move.
That is why most jurisdictions have it least some basic level of worker protection, and why no
one seriously contemplates turning the industrialized world into a Libertarian fantasy land.
Dorianny ( 1847922 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @07:29PM (#53456597) Journal
Re:Mixed Metaphors (Score:2)
Antoinette's expression is in reference the tyranny of feudalism.
Pretty sure Uber drivers aren't indentured servants, much less serfs. Seeing as how, you
know, if you don't want to drive for Uber, you just don't load the app. The Gendarme isn't
going to break down your door and drag you to jail.
The expression "Let them eat cake" shows a complete lack of understanding that the absence
of basic food staples was due to poverty rather than a lack of supply. Serfdom was officially
abolished in France in 1789 by Antoinette's husband Louis XVI, although this was mostly a
formality as there were few if any actual Serfs left in France.
Most people were "free peasents" that were paid extremely low wages to work the lands of
the King and Nobility FYI: Even thou the expression "Let them eat cake" is commonly attributed
to Marie Antoinette there is no record of the phrase ever being said by her...
matbury ( 3458347 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @06:55PM (#53456367) Homepage
Re:"Feel forced?" (Score:4, Insightful)
Taxi drivers also have regulated hours. Being tired is as impairing and dangerous as being
drunk. Would you hail a cab if you knew the driver was drunk? If he's been working double the
recommended hours a week, like an Uber driver, he's likely to be severely impaired and very
likely to have an accident.
rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @06:09PM (#53456055)
Says a man or woman (Score:4, Insightful)
who's never had a rent check bounce. Or never had to pay out of pocket to fix a kid's
broken arm. Or been born in a rust belt town when the last factory just left and/or automated.
That's the essence of modern American Slavery. Nobody's _ever_ forcing you. You're
completely free to starve to death and die in the streets. It's why the South abandoned real
slavery. Wage Slavery is ever so much more cost effective.
Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @07:31PM (#53456603)
Re:Says a man or woman (Score:4, Interesting)
Wage slavery is never cost effective except for the slave owner. That's what makes it an
unstable system which can only be perpetuated by government collusion, or lack of willpower by
the employees to break out of slavery. e.g. Detroit used to have slave-level wages.
Henry Ford decided to set up shop there and paid his factory workers much more than the
prevailing wage. He accidentally discovered that when he paid people a fair wage, not only did
their productivity increase, but they used those wages to buy the very product they were
helping build.
The resulting feedback loop multiplied his company's revenue and turned the Ford Motor
Company into the behemoth it is today. No longer were cars affordable only to the privileged
elite; the average middle class worker (by Ford factory standards) could afford to buy one.
If the only options you see are being a wage slave or starving to death, then you haven't
really tried. A location where the people are being paid slave wages or starving is ripe for a
new company to set up shop and hire willing employees for less than they'd have to pay at
well-established locations. As more of these people become employed and spend their wages on
local merchants, the economy picks up.
There are fewer unemployed, resulting in wages increasing. This is how the market equalizes
geographic wage inequality. If this isn't happening, then there are fundamental problems with
the region not caused by slave wages. Maybe the location is too far from markets, or the
highway/railroad access is poor, or people just don't want to live in that location. Unless
the government is intentionally keeping business out, low wages are a symptom not a cause.
And yes I've had a rent check bounce. A rent check a tenant gave me. I was stupid and
deposited it directly into our payroll bank account since it almost exactly topped off the
amount we needed to make payroll. Normally I transfer the payroll money from our primary
checking account, but I was lazy and decided to save a little work by depositing the checks
directly into payroll.
As a result I got charged a bounced check fee, but more importantly a bunch of my
employees' paychecks bounced, causing more bounced check fees for both them and myself. The
whole thing was a disaster. I called in each employee who was affected, apologized to them in
person, and told them to bring in their bank statement so I could reimburse their bounced
check fee (or fees if they then wrote checks which bounced).
The ones who needed the money immediately, I paid in cash out of my own pocket. All told it
was over $1300 in bank fees incurred because I was stupid/lazy, and because the person who
wrote the first check did so knowing he didn't have enough money to cover it but thought it
would be easier turning his problem into my problem.
It's cliche, but it's true. Your employees are your most valuable asset. A good business will
do everything it can to protect them and to retain them. A business which pays slave wages is
just ripe to be squeezed out by a business which will pay better (fair) wages. The only way a
slave wage business can stay in business is if the government is blocking competing
businesses, or if people like you have so discouraged others with your gloom and doom hopeless
corporate feudalism talk that they don't even bother trying to start up their own business to
compete.
serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Saturday December 10, 2016 @04:50AM (#53458279) Journal
Re:Says a man or woman (Score:5, Insightful)
or lack of willpower by the employees to break out of slavery
Ah, it's the slaves fault that they're slaves, then.
If the only options you see are being a wage slave or starving to death, then you haven't
really tried. A location where the people are being paid slave wages or starving is ripe for a
new company to set up shop and hire willing employees for less than they'd have to pay at
well-established locations.
Ah yes, it's so easy to set up a company when you're a wage slave and have no spare
resources with which to set up the company. If you don't you just lack the willpower to starve
to death for a few months or years before your company takes off.
Oh and if you don't have a head for business, you deserve to be a wage slave because fuck
you that's why.
A business which pays slave wages is just ripe to be squeezed out by a business which will
pay better (fair) wages.
Oh yes, that's precisely how things worked in Victorian England.
You know, or not. that they don't even bother trying to start up their own business to
compete.
Starting a business is the highest form of intellect and worth. If you can't, then die in
filth, scum. You deserve worse!
Jzanu ( 668651 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @06:02PM (#53456007)
Re:"Feel forced?" (Score:4, Insightful)
Step 1: Create system where I make money doing nothing, we will call this being a
platform
Step 2: Force existing systems to work for me by under cutting prices and providing a
better way to interact
Step 3: Profit
Shit, Uber makes profit by undercutting cabs who already did not make much money... You can
tell people not to drive for them, but when you see the lease terms uber demands (weekly
payments, taken directly from your take, you dont pay we take the car) then you see that they
are required to drive, and drive long hours if riders are minimal.
This is a firm that has a master plan of shifting as much as it can on to other people so its
30% cut can be 90% profit. So far its working because people with no job will work any job in
a world where unskilled labor is not worth much (driving is definitely on the unskilled labor
side here) There are simply not many other jobs out there for a subset of people.
Uber's
real business [uber.com] (see bottom of page)
model [xchangeleasing.com] is incentivizing wage-slavery with poverty wages and binding
contract enforcement - it is just the vehicular version of the
company town [wikipedia.org].
MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @07:51PM (#53456707) Journal
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
It will certainly be screwed if it keeps allowing corporate interests to arguing away the
taxes they should be paying.
I'm genuinely concerned that events like Brexit and the Trump victory are the opening shots in
some sort of modern day French revolution. The aristocrats of our age are as detached from
reality as the French aristocrats were, and as unwilling to accept the responsibilities that
come with vast accrual of wealth.
They are creating a dangerously unstable situation, and when the Trumps of the world prove
as incapable or unwilling to rebalance economic and social issues, then we may be facing a far
less savory group of revolutionaries. And, as the French Revolution so ably demonstrated, even
wealth isn't an absolute shield.
jlowery ( 47102 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @06:19PM (#53456129)
Re: Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
The key is to run a business that is profitable enough to pay its workers a wage
sufficient to cover food and medical and housing. Otherwise, my tax money does it and those
dollars essentially make the business owner a welfare recipient by enabling him to be
artificially enriched.
If your business doesn't sell a product people are willing to spend enough for you pay your
workers a living wage, then your business should go bankrupt. I'm not paying for your beach
house.
ghoul ( 157158 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @06:20PM (#53456149)
Uber needs a recession (Score:5, Insightful)
The Uber business model only works for newly laid off workers who have a nice car with car
payments to make. Its not meant to be a fulltime job. The entire gig economy including iOS
apps only took off as in 2008 a lot of people lost their jobs but they still had cars,
computers and loads of time on their hand. As we closer to full employment people who have a
choice have moved away from gigs. Taxi companies are built upon the exploitation of illegal
immigrant drivers. Uber as a high visibility company cannot compete with Taxi companies as it
cant hire illegal immigrants and pay them sweat wages under the table. At the same time
driving a cab will not support a minimum wage so the best thing for Uber would be to go back
to being a gig company. Put a hard cap of 10 hours a week on driving for a driver - that will
remove the entire pool of drivers expecting to make a living from Uber, stop promoting Uber
driving as a full time job and stop giving leases to drivers to buy cars to drive for Uber.
Stop trying to grow for growth's sake. Stay at the size of a gig economy company like a temp
agency. They have some good software - license it to taxi companies and let them use it for
managing their own fleets in a mutli-tenant kind of model.
This is a very weak article from a prominent paleoconservative, but it is instructive what a mess he has in his head as for the
nature of Trump phenomenon. We should probably consider the tern "New Class" that neocons invented as synonym for "neoliberals". If
so, why the author is afraid to use the term? Does he really so poorly educated not to understand the nature of this neoliberal revolution
and its implications? Looks like he never read "Quite coup"
That probably reflects the crisis of pealeoconservatism itself.
Notable quotes:
"... What do these insurgents have in common? All have called into question the interventionist consensus in foreign policy. All have opposed large-scale free-trade agreements. ..."
"... the establishment in both parties almost uniformly favors one approach to war, trade, and immigration, while outsider candidates as dissimilar as Buchanan, Nader, Paul, and Trump, and to a lesser extent Sanders, depart from the consensus. ..."
"... The insurgents clearly do not represent a single class: they appeal to eclectic interests and groups. The foe they have all faced down, however-the bipartisan establishment-does resemble a class in its striking unity of outlook and interest. So what is this class, effectively the ruling class of the country? ..."
"... The archetypal model of class conflict, the one associated with Karl Marx, pits capitalists against workers-or, at an earlier stage, capitalists against the landed nobility. The capitalists' victory over the nobility was inevitable, and so too, Marx believed, was the coming triumph of the workers over the capitalists. ..."
"... The Soviet Union had never been a workers' state at all, they argued, but was run by a class of apparatchiks such as Marx had never imagined. ..."
"... Burnham recognized affinities between the Soviet mode of organization-in which much real power lay in the hands of the commissars who controlled industry and the bureaucratic organs of the state-and the corporatism that characterized fascist states. Even the U.S., under the New Deal and with ongoing changes to the balance between ownership and management in the private sector, seemed to be moving in the same direction. ..."
"... concept popularized by neoconservatives in the following decade: the "New Class." ..."
"... It consists of a goodly proportion of those college-educated people whose skills and vocations proliferate in a 'post-industrial society' (to use Daniel Bell's convenient term). We are talking about scientists, teachers, and educational administrators, journalists and others in the communication industries, psychologists, social workers, those lawyers and doctors who make their careers in the expanding public sector, city planners, the staffs of the larger foundations, the upper levels of the government bureaucracy, and so on. ..."
"... I have felt that this 'new class' is, so far, rather thin gruel. Intellectuals, verbalists, media types, etc. are conspicuous actors these days, certainly; they make a lot of noise, get a lot of attention, and some of them make a lot of money. But, after all, they are a harum-scarum crowd, and deflate even more quickly than they puff up. On TV they can out-talk any of the managers of ITT, GM, or IBM, or the administration-managers of the great government bureaus and agencies, but, honestly, you're not going to take that as a power test. Who hires and fires whom? ..."
"... Burnham had observed that the New Class did not have the means-either money or manpower-to wield power the way the managers or the capitalists of old did. It had to borrow power from other classes. Discovering where the New Class gets it is as easy as following the money, which leads straight to the finance sector-practically to the doorstep of Goldman Sachs. Jerry Rubin's journey from Yippie to yuppie was the paradigm of a generation. ..."
"... Yet the New Class as a whole is less like Carl Oglesby or Karl Hess than like Hillary Clinton, who arguably embodies it as perfectly as McNamara did the managerial class. ..."
"... Even the New Class's support for deregulation-to the advantage of its allies on Wall Street-was no sign of consistent commitment to free-market principles ..."
"... The individual-mandate feature of Obamacare and Romneycare is a prime example of New Class cronyism: government compels individuals to buy a supposedly private product or service. ..."
"... America's class war, like many others, is not in the end a contest between up and down. It's a fight between rival elites: in this case, between the declining managerial elite and the triumphant (for now) New Class and financial elites. ..."
"... Donald Trump is not of the managerial class himself. But by embracing managerial interests-industrial protection and, yes, "big government"-and combining them with nationalistic identity politics, he has built a force that has potential to threaten the bipartisan establishment, even if he goes down to defeat in November. ..."
"... The New Class, after all, lacks a popular base as well as money of its own, and just as it relies on Wall Street to underwrite its power, it depends on its competing brands of identity politics to co-opt popular support. ..."
"... Marx taught that you identify classes by their structural role in the system of production. I'm at a loss to see how either of the 'classes' you mention here relate to the system of production. ..."
"... [New] Class better describes the Never Trumpers. Mostly I have found them to be those involved in knowledge occupations (conservative think tanks, hedge fund managers, etc.) who have a pecuniary interest in maintaining the Global Economy as opposed to the Virtuous Intergenerational Economy that preceded. Many are dependent on funding sources for their livelihoods that are connected to the Globalized Economy and financial markets. ..."
"... "mobilize working-class voters against the establishment in both parties. " = workers of the world unite. ..."
"... Where the class conflict between the Working and Knowledge Classes begins is where the Knowledge Class almost unilaterally decided to shift to a global economy, at the expense of the Working Class, and to the self-benefit of the Knowledge Class. Those who designed the Global Economy like Larry Summers of Harvard did not invite private or public labor to help design the new Globalist Economy. The Working Class lost out big time in job losses and getting stuck with subprime home loans that busted their marriages and created bankruptcies and foreclosures. The Knowledge Class was mostly unscathed by this class-based economic divide. ..."
"... Trump's distinguishing ideology, which separates him from the current elite, is something he has summed up many times – nationalism vs. Globalism. ..."
"... The financial industry, the new tech giants, the health insurance industry are now almost indistinguishable from the government ruling elite. The old left–represented by Sanders–rails against this as big money coopting government, even while conservatives are exasperated by the unholy cabal of big business and big government in cohoots in the "progressive" remake of America. Both are right in a sense. ..."
"... The hyperconcentration of power in Washington and a few tributary locations like Wall Street and Silicon Valley, elite academia and the media–call that the New Class if you like–means that most of America–Main Street, the flyover country has been left behind. Trump instinctively – brilliantly in some ways – tapped into the resentment that this hyperconcentration of wealth and government power has led to. That is why it cuts across right and left. The elites want to characterize this resentment as backwards and "racist," but there is also something very American from Jefferson to Jackson to Teddy Roosevelt that revolts against being lectured to and controlled by their would-be "betters." ..."
"... The alienation of those left out is real and based on real erosion of the middle class and American dream under both parties' elites. The potentially revolutionary capabilities of a political movement that could unite right and left in restoring some equilibrium and opportunities to those left out is tremendous, but yet to be realized by either major party. The party that can harness these folks – who are after all the majority of Americans – will have a ruling coalition for decades. If neither party can productively harness this budding movement, we are headed for disarray, civil unrest, and potentially the dissolution of the USA. ..."
"... . And blacks who cleave to the democrats despite being sold down the tubes on issues, well, for whatever reason, they just have thinner skin and the mistaken idea that the democrats deliver – thanks to Pres. Johnson. But what Pres. Johnson delivered democrats made a mockery of immediately as they stripped it of its intent and used for their own liberal ends. ..."
"... Let's see if I can help Dreher clear up some confusion in his article. James Burnham's "Managerial Class" and the "New Class" are overlapping and not exclusive. By the Managerial Class Burnham meant both the executive and managers in the private sector and the Bureaucrats and functionaries in the public sector. ..."
"... The rise of managers was a "revolution" because of the rise of modernization which meant the increasing mechanization, industrialization, formalization and rationalization (efficiency) of society. Burnham's concern about the rise of the managerial revolution was misplaced; what he should have focused on was modernization. ..."
"... The old left–represented by Sanders–rails against this as big money coopting government, even while conservatives are exasperated by the unholy cabal of big business and big government in cohoots in the "progressive" remake of America ..."
"... . Some 3 – 5% of the population facing no real opposition has decided that that their private lives needed public endorsement and have proceeded to upend the entire social order - the game has shifted in ways I am not sure most of the public fully grasps or desires ..."
"... There has always been and will always be class conflict, even if it falls short of a war. Simply examining recent past circumstances, the wealthy class has been whooping up on all other classes. This is not to suggest any sort of remedy, but simply to observe that income disparity over the past 30 years has substantially benefitted on sector of class and political power remains in their hands today. To think that there will never be class conflict is to side with a Marxian fantasy of egalitarianism, which will never come to pass. Winners and losers may change positions, but the underlying conflict will always remain. ..."
"... State governments have been kowtowing to big business interests for a good long while. Nothing new under the sun there. Back in the 80s when GM was deciding where to site their factory for the new Saturn car line, they issued an edict stating they would only consider states that had mandatory seat belt use laws, and the states in the running fell all over each to enact those. ..."
"... People don't really care for the actions of the elite but they care for the consequences of these actions. During the 1960's, per capita GDP growth was around 3.5%. Today it stands at 0,49%. If you take into account inflation, it's negative. Add to this the skewed repartition of said growth and it's intuitive that many people feel the pain; whom doesn't move forward, goes backwards. ..."
"... People couldn't care for mass immigration, nation building or the emergence of China if their personal situation was not impacted. But now, they begin to feel the results of these actions. ..."
"... I have a simple philosophy regarding American politics that shows who is made of what, and we don't have to go through all the philosophizing in this article: Anyone who believes in same sex marriage has been brainwashed and is un-American and unreliable. Anyone who puts Israeli interests above America's is un-American. ..."
"... Re: Anyone who believes in same sex marriage has been brainwashed and is un-American and unreliable. Anyone who puts Israeli interests above America's is un-American. ..."
"... The first has nothing whatsoever to do with American citizenship. It's just a political issue– on which, yes, reasonable people can differ. However no American citizen should put the interests of any other country ahead of our own, except in a situation where the US was itself up to no good and deserved its comeuppance. And then the interest is not that of any particular nation, but of justice being done period. ..."
"... A lot of this "New Class" stuff is just confusing mis-mash of this and that theory. Basically, America changed when the US dollar replace gold as the medium of exchange in the world economy. Remember when we called it the PETRO-DOLLAR. As long as the Saudis only accepted the US dollar as the medium of exchange for oil, then the American government could export it's inflation and deficit spending. Budget deficits and trade deficits are intrinsically related. It allowed America to become a nation of consumers instead of a nation of producers. ..."
"... It's really a form of classic IMPERIALISM. To maintain this system, we've got the US military and we prop up the corrupt dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya ..."
"... Yeah, you can talk about the "new class", the corruption of the banking system by the idiotic "libertarian" or "free market utopianism" of the Gingrich Congress, the transformation of American corporations to international corporations, and on and on. But it's the US dollar as reserve currency that has allowed it all to happen. God help us, if it ends, we'll be crippled. ..."
"... The Clinton Class mocks The Country Class: Bill Clinton, "We all know how her opponent's done real well down in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Because the coal people don't like any of us anymore." "They blame the president when the sun doesn't come up in the morning now," ..."
"... That doesn't mean they actually support Hillary's policies and position. What do they really know about either? These demographics simply vote overwhelmingly Democrat no matter who is on the ticket. If Alfred E. Newman were the candidate, this particular data point would look just the same. ..."
"... "On the contrary, the New Class favors new kinds of crony finance capitalism, even as it opposes the protectionism that would benefit hard industry and managerial interests." This doesn't ring true. Hard industry, and the managers that run it had no problem with moving jobs and factories overseas in pursuit of cheaper labor. Plus, it solved their Union issues. I feel like the divide is between large corporations, with dilute ownership and professional managers who nominally serve the interests of stock fund managers, while greatly enriching themselves versus a multitude of smaller, locally owned businesses whose owners were also concerned with the health of the local communities in which they lived. ..."
"... The financial elites are a consequence of consolidation in the banking and finance industry, where we now have 4 or 5 large institutions versus a multitude of local and regional banks that were locally focused. ..."
Since the Cold War ended, U.S. politics has seen a series of insurgent candidacies. Pat Buchanan prefigured Trump in the Republican
contests of 1992 and 1996. Ralph Nader challenged the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party from the outside in 2000. Ron Paul vexed
establishment Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012. And this year, Trump was not the only candidate to confound
his party's elite: Bernie Sanders harried Hillary Clinton right up to the Democratic convention.
What do these insurgents have in common? All have called into question the interventionist consensus in foreign policy. All
have opposed large-scale free-trade agreements. (The libertarian Paul favors unilateral free trade: by his lights, treaties
like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership are not free trade at all but international regulatory pacts.) And while no one would
mistake Ralph Nader's or Ron Paul's views on immigration for Pat Buchanan's or Donald Trump's, Nader and Paul have registered their
own dissents from the approach to immigration that prevails in Washington.
Sanders has been more in line with his party's orthodoxy on that issue. But that didn't save him from being attacked by Clinton
backers for having an insufficiently nonwhite base of support. Once again, what might have appeared to be a class conflict-in this
case between a democratic socialist and an elite liberal with ties to high finance-could be explained away as really about race.
Race, like religion, is a real factor in how people vote. Its relevance to elite politics, however, is less clear. Something else
has to account for why the establishment in both parties almost uniformly favors one approach to war, trade, and immigration,
while outsider candidates as dissimilar as Buchanan, Nader, Paul, and Trump, and to a lesser extent Sanders, depart from the consensus.
The insurgents clearly do not represent a single class: they appeal to eclectic interests and groups. The foe they have all
faced down, however-the bipartisan establishment-does resemble a class in its striking unity of outlook and interest. So what is
this class, effectively the ruling class of the country?
Some critics on the right have identified it with the "managerial" class described by James Burnham in his 1941 book The Managerial
Revolution . But it bears a stronger resemblance to what what others have called "the New Class." In fact, the interests of this
New Class of college-educated "verbalists" are antithetical to those of the industrial managers that Burnham described. Understanding
the relationship between these two often conflated concepts provides insight into politics today, which can be seen as a clash between
managerial and New Class elites.
♦♦♦
The archetypal model of class conflict, the one associated with Karl Marx, pits capitalists against workers-or, at an earlier
stage, capitalists against the landed nobility. The capitalists' victory over the nobility was inevitable, and so too, Marx believed,
was the coming triumph of the workers over the capitalists.
Over the next century, however, history did not follow the script. By 1992, the Soviet Union was gone, Communist China had embarked
on market reforms, and Western Europe was turning away from democratic socialism. There was no need to predict the future; mankind
had achieved its destiny, a universal order of [neo]liberal democracy. Marx had it backwards: capitalism was the end of history.
But was the truth as simple as that? Long before the collapse of the USSR, many former communists -- some of whom remained socialists,
while others joined the right-thought not. The Soviet Union had never been a workers' state at all, they argued, but was run
by a class of apparatchiks such as Marx had never imagined.
Among the first to advance this argument was James Burnham, a professor of philosophy at New York University who became a leading
Trotskyist thinker. As he broke with Trotsky and began moving toward the right, Burnham recognized affinities between the Soviet
mode of organization-in which much real power lay in the hands of the commissars who controlled industry and the bureaucratic organs
of the state-and the corporatism that characterized fascist states. Even the U.S., under the New Deal and with ongoing changes to
the balance between ownership and management in the private sector, seemed to be moving in the same direction.
Burnham called this the "managerial revolution." The managers of industry and technically trained government officials did not
own the means of production, like the capitalists of old. But they did control the means of production, thanks to their expertise
and administrative prowess.
The rise of this managerial class would have far-reaching consequences, he predicted. Burnham wrote in his 1943 book, The Machiavellians
: "that the managers may function, the economic and political structure must be modified, as it is now being modified, so as
to rest no longer on private ownership and small-scale nationalist sovereignty, but primarily upon state control of the economy,
and continental or vast regional world political organization." Burnham pointed to Nazi Germany, imperial Japan-which became a "continental"
power by annexing Korea and Manchuria-and the Soviet Union as examples.
The defeat of the Axis powers did not halt the progress of the managerial revolution. Far from it: not only did the Soviets retain
their form of managerialism, but the West increasingly adopted a managerial corporatism of its own, marked by cooperation between
big business and big government: high-tech industrial crony capitalism, of the sort that characterizes the military-industrial complex
to this day. (Not for nothing was Burnham a great advocate of America's developing a supersonic transport of its own to compete with
the French-British Concorde.)
America's managerial class was personified by Robert S. McNamara, the former Ford Motor Company executive who was secretary of
defense under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. In a 1966 story for National Review , "Why Do They Hate Robert Strange McNamara?"
Burnham answered the question in class terms: "McNamara is attacked by the Left because the Left has a blanket hatred of the system
of business enterprise; he is criticized by the Right because the Right harks back, in nostalgia if not in practice, to outmoded
forms of business enterprise."
McNamara the managerial technocrat was too business-oriented for a left that still dreamed of bringing the workers to power. But
the modern form of industrial organization he represented was not traditionally capitalist enough for conservatives who were at heart
19th-century classical liberals.
National Review readers responded to Burnham's paean to McNamara with a mixture of incomprehension and indignation. It
was a sign that even readers familiar with Burnham-he appeared in every issue of the magazine-did not always follow what he was saying.
The popular right wanted concepts that were helpful in labeling enemies, and Burnham was confusing matters by talking about changes
in the organization of government and industry that did not line up with anyone's value judgements.
More polemically useful was a different concept popularized by neoconservatives in the following decade: the "New Class."
"This 'new class' is not easily defined but may be vaguely described," Irving Kristol wrote in a 1975 essay for the Wall
Street Journal :
It consists of a goodly proportion of those college-educated people whose skills and vocations proliferate in a 'post-industrial
society' (to use Daniel Bell's convenient term). We are talking about scientists, teachers, and educational administrators, journalists
and others in the communication industries, psychologists, social workers, those lawyers and doctors who make their careers in
the expanding public sector, city planners, the staffs of the larger foundations, the upper levels of the government bureaucracy,
and so on.
"Members of the new class do not 'control' the media," he continued, "they are the media-just as they are our educational
system, our public health and welfare system, and much else."
Burnham, writing in National Review in 1978, drew a sharp contrast between this concept and his own ideas:
I have felt that this 'new class' is, so far, rather thin gruel. Intellectuals, verbalists, media types, etc. are conspicuous
actors these days, certainly; they make a lot of noise, get a lot of attention, and some of them make a lot of money. But, after
all, they are a harum-scarum crowd, and deflate even more quickly than they puff up. On TV they can out-talk any of the managers
of ITT, GM, or IBM, or the administration-managers of the great government bureaus and agencies, but, honestly, you're not going
to take that as a power test. Who hires and fires whom?
Burnham suffered a stroke later that year. Although he lived until 1987, his career as a writer was over. His last years coincided
with another great transformation of business and government. It began in the Carter administration, with moves to deregulate transportation
and telecommunications. This partial unwinding of the managerial revolution accelerated under Ronald Reagan. Regulatory and welfare-state
reforms, even privatization of formerly nationalized industries, also took off in the UK and Western Europe. All this did not, however,
amount to a restoration of the old capitalism or anything resembling laissez-faire.
The "[neo]liberal democracy" that triumphed at "the end of history"-to use Francis Fukuyama's words-was not the managerial capitalism
of the mid-20th century, either. It was instead the New Class's form of capitalism, one that could be embraced by Bill Clinton and
Tony Blair as readily as by any Republican or Thatcherite.
Irving Kristol had already noted in the 1970s that "this new class is not merely liberal but truly 'libertarian' in its approach
to all areas of life-except economics. It celebrates individual liberty of speech and expression and action to an unprecedented degree,
so that at times it seems almost anarchistic in its conception of the good life."
He was right about the New Class's "anything goes" mentality, but he was only partly correct about its attitude toward economics.
The young elite tended to scorn the bourgeois character of the old capitalism, and to them managerial figures like McNamara were
evil incarnate. But they had to get by-and they aspired to rule.
Burnham had observed that the New Class did not have the means-either money or manpower-to wield power the way the managers
or the capitalists of old did. It had to borrow power from other classes. Discovering where the New Class gets it is as easy as following
the money, which leads straight to the finance sector-practically to the doorstep of Goldman Sachs. Jerry Rubin's journey from Yippie
to yuppie was the paradigm of a generation.
Part of the tale can be told in a favorable light. New Left activists like Carl Oglesby fought the spiritual aridity and murderous
militarism of what they called "corporate liberalism"-Burnham's managerialism-while sincere young libertarians attacked the regulatory
state and seeded technological entrepreneurship. Yet the New Class as a whole is less like Carl Oglesby or Karl Hess than like
Hillary Clinton, who arguably embodies it as perfectly as McNamara did the managerial class.
Even the New Class's support for deregulation-to the advantage of its allies on Wall Street-was no sign of consistent commitment
to free-market principles. On the contrary, the New Class favors new kinds of crony finance capitalism, even as it opposes the
protectionism that would benefit hard industry and managerial interests. The individual-mandate feature of Obamacare and Romneycare
is a prime example of New Class cronyism: government compels individuals to buy a supposedly private product or service.
The alliance between finance and the New Class accounts for the disposition of power in America today. The New Class has also
enlisted another invaluable ally: the managerial classes of East Asia. Trade with China-the modern managerial state par excellence-helps
keep American industry weak relative to finance and the service economy's verbalist-dominated sectors. America's class war, like
many others, is not in the end a contest between up and down. It's a fight between rival elites: in this case, between the declining
managerial elite and the triumphant (for now) New Class and financial elites.
The New Class plays a priestly role in its alliance with finance, absolving Wall Street for the sin of making money in exchange
for plenty of that money to keep the New Class in power. In command of foreign policy, the New Class gets to pursue humanitarian
ideological projects-to experiment on the world. It gets to evangelize by the sword. And with trade policy, it gets to suppress its
class rival, the managerial elite, at home. Through trade pacts and mass immigration the financial elite, meanwhile, gets to maximize
its returns without regard for borders or citizenship. The erosion of other nations' sovereignty that accompanies American hegemony
helps toward that end too-though our wars are more ideological than interest-driven.
♦♦♦
So we come to an historic moment. Instead of an election pitting another Bush against another Clinton, we have a race that poses
stark alternatives: a choice not only between candidates but between classes-not only between administrations but between regimes.
Donald Trump is not of the managerial class himself. But by embracing managerial interests-industrial protection and, yes,
"big government"-and combining them with nationalistic identity politics, he has built a force that has potential to threaten the
bipartisan establishment, even if he goes down to defeat in November.
The New Class, after all, lacks a popular base as well as money of its own, and just as it relies on Wall Street to underwrite
its power, it depends on its competing brands of identity politics to co-opt popular support. For the center-left establishment,
minority voters supply the electoral muscle. Religion and the culture war have served the same purpose for the establishment's center-right
faction. Trump showed that at least one of these sides could be beaten on its own turf-and it seems conceivable that if Bernie Sanders
had been black, he might have similarly beaten Clinton, without having to make concessions to New Class tastes.
The New Class establishment of both parties may be seriously misjudging what is happening here. Far from being the last gasp of
the demographically doomed-old, racially isolated white people, as Gallup's analysis says-Trump's insurgency may be the prototype
of an aggressive new politics, of either left or right, that could restore the managerial elite to power.
This is not something that conservatives-or libertarians who admire the old capitalism rather than New Class's simulacrum-might
welcome. But the only way that some entrenched policies may change is with a change of the class in power.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of The American Conservative .
Excellent analysis. What is important about the Trump phenomenon is not every individual issue, it's the potentially revolutionary
nature of the phenomenon. The opposition gets this. That's why they are hysterical about Trump. The conservative box checkers
do not.
"Donald Trump is not of the managerial class himself. But by embracing managerial interests-industrial protection and, yes, "big
government"-and combining them with nationalistic identity politics, he has built a force that has potential to threaten the bipartisan
establishment, even if he goes down to defeat in November."
My question is, if Trump is not himself of the managerial class, in fact, could be considered one of the original new class
members, how would he govern? What explains his conversion from the new class to the managerial class; is he merely taking advantage
of an opportunity or is there some other explanation?
I'm genuinely confused by the role you ascribe to the 'managerial class' here. Going back to Berle and Means ('The Modern Corporation
and Private Property') the managerial class emerged when management was split from ownership in mid C20th capitalism. Managers
focused on growth, not profits for shareholders. The Shareholder revolution of the 1980s destroyed the managerial class, and destroyed
their unwieldy corporations.
You seem to be identifying the managerial class with a kind of cultural opposition to the values of [neo]liberal capitalism. And
instead of identifying the 'new class' with the new owner-managers of shareholder-driven firms, you identify them by their superficial
cultural effects.
This raises a deeper problem in how you talk about class in this piece. Marx taught that you identify classes by their
structural role in the system of production. I'm at a loss to see how either of the 'classes' you mention here relate to the system
of production. Does the 'new class' of journalists, academics, etc. actually own anything? If not, what is the point of ascribing
to them immense economic power?
I would agree that there is a new class of capitalists in America. But they are well known people like Sheldon Adelson, the Kochs,
Linda McMahon, the Waltons, Rick Scott the pharmaceutical entrepreneur, Mitt Romney, Mark Zuckerberg, and many many hedge fund
gazillionaires. These people represent the resurgence of a family-based, dynastic capitalism that is utterly different from the
managerial variety that prevailed in mid-century.
If there is a current competitor to international corporate capitalism, it is old-fashioned dynastic family capitalism. Not
Managerialism.
There is no "new class". That's simply a derogatory trope of the Right. The [neo]liberal elite– educated, cosmopolitan and possessed
of sufficient wealth to be influential in political affairs and claims to power grounded in moral stances– have a long pedigree
in both Western and non-Western lands. They were the Scribal Class in the ancient world, the Mandarins of China, and the Clergy
in the Middle Ages. This class for a time was eclipsed in the early modern period as first royal authority became dominant, followed
by the power of the Capitalist class (the latter has never really faded of course). But their reemergence in the late 20th century
is not a new or unique phenomenon.
In a year in which "trash Trump" and "trash Trump's supporters" are tricks-to-be-turned for more than 90% of mainstream journalists
and other media hacks, it's good to see Daniel McCarthy buck the "trash trend" and write a serious, honest analysis of the class
forces that are colliding during this election cycle.
Two thumbs way up for McCarthy, although his fine effort cannot save the reputation of those establishment whores who call
themselves journalists. Nothing can save them. They have earned the universality with which Americans hold them in contempt.
In 1976 when Gallup began asking about "the honesty and ethical standards" of various professions only 33% of Americans rated
journalists "very high or high."
By last December that "high or very high" rating for journalists had fallen to just 27%.
It is certain that by Election Day 2016 the American public's opinion of journalists will have fallen even further.
Most of your argument is confusing. The change I see is from a production economy to a finance economy. Wall Street rules, really.
Basically the stock market used to be a place where working folk invested their money for retirement, mostly through pensions
from unions and corporations. Now it's become a gambling casino, with the "house"-or the big banks-putting it's finger on the
roulette wheel. They changed the compensation package of CEO's, so they can rake in huge executive compensation–mostly through
stock options-to basically close down everything from manufacturing to customer service, and ship it off to contract manufacturers
and outside services in oligarchical countries like mainland China and India.
I don't know what exactly you mean about the "new class", basically its the finance industry against everyone else.
One thing you right-wingers always get wrong, is on Karl Marx he was really attacking the money-changers, the finance speculators,
the banks. Back in the day, so-called "capitalists" like Henry Ford or George Eastman or Thomas Edison always complained about
the access to financing through the big money finance capitalists.
Don't overlook the economic value of intellectual property rights (patents, in particular) in the economic equation.
A big chunk of the 21st century economy is generated due to the intellectual property developed and owned by the New Class
and its business enterprises.
The economic value of ideas and intellectual property rights is somewhat implied in McCarthy's explanation of the New Class,
but I didn't see an explicit mention (perhaps I overlooked it).
I think the consideration of intellectual property rights and the value generated by IP might help to clarify the economic
power of the New Class for those who feel the analysis isn't quite complete or on target.
I'm not saying that IP only provides value to the New Class. We can find examples of IP throughout the economy, at all levels.
It's just that the tech and financial sectors seem to focus more on (and benefit from) IP ownership, licensing, and the information
captured through use of digital technology.
"What do these insurgents have in common? All have called into question the interventionist consensus in foreign policy."
But today we have this: Trump pledges big US military
expansion . Trump doesn't appear to have any coherent policy, he just says whatever seems to be useful at that particular
moment.
[New] Class better describes the Never Trumpers. Mostly I have found them to be those involved in knowledge occupations (conservative
think tanks, hedge fund managers, etc.) who have a pecuniary interest in maintaining the Global Economy as opposed to the Virtuous
Intergenerational Economy that preceded. Many are dependent on funding sources for their livelihoods that are connected to the
Globalized Economy and financial markets.
Being white is not the defining characteristic of Trumpers because it if was then how come there are many white working class
voters for Hillary? The divide in the working class comes from being a member of a union or a member of the private non-unionized
working class.
Where the real class divide shows up is in those who are members of the Knowledge Class that made their living based on the
old Virtuous Economy where the elderly saved money in banks and the banks, in turn, lent that money out to young families to buy
houses, cars, and start businesses. The Virtuous Economy has been replaced by the Global Economy based on diverting money to the
stock market to fund global enterprises and prop up government pension funds.
The local bankers, realtors, private contractors, small savers and small business persons and others that depended on the Virtuous
Economy lost out to the global bankers, stock investors, pension fund managers, union contractors and intellectuals that propounded
rationales for the global economy as superior to the Virtuous Economy.
Where the class conflict between the Working and Knowledge Classes begins is where the Knowledge Class almost unilaterally
decided to shift to a global economy, at the expense of the Working Class, and to the self-benefit of the Knowledge Class. Those
who designed the Global Economy like Larry Summers of Harvard did not invite private or public labor to help design the new Globalist
Economy. The Working Class lost out big time in job losses and getting stuck with subprime home loans that busted their marriages
and created bankruptcies and foreclosures. The Knowledge Class was mostly unscathed by this class-based economic divide.
Beginning in the 50's and 60's, baby boomers were warned in school and cultural media that "a college diploma would become what
a high school diploma is today." An extraordinary cohort of Americans took this advice seriously, creating the smartest and most
successful generation in history. But millions did not heed that advice, cynically buoyed by Republicans who – knowing that college
educated people vote largely Democrat – launched a financial and cultural war on college education. The result is what you see
now: millions of people unprepared for modern employment; meanwhile we have to import millions of college-educated Asians and
Indians to do the work there aren't enough Americans to do.
Have to say, this seems like an attempt to put things into boxes that don't quite fit.
Trump's distinguishing ideology, which separates him from the current elite, is something he has summed up many times –
nationalism vs. Globalism.
The core of it is that the government no longer serves the people. In the United States, that is kind of a bad thing, you know?
Like the EU in the UK, the people, who fought very hard for self-government, are seeing it undermined by the erosion of the nation
state in favor of international beaurocracy run by elites and the well connected.
Both this article and many comments on it show considerable confusion, and ideological opinion all over the map. What is happening
I think is that the world is changing –due to globalism, technology, and the sheer huge numbers of people on the planet. As a
result some of the rigid trenches of thought as well as class alignments are breaking down.
In America we no longer have capitalism, of either the 19th century industrial or 20th century managerial varieties. Money
and big money is still important of course, but it is increasingly both aligned with and in turn controlled by the government.
The financial industry, the new tech giants, the health insurance industry are now almost indistinguishable from the government
ruling elite. The old left–represented by Sanders–rails against this as big money coopting government, even while conservatives
are exasperated by the unholy cabal of big business and big government in cohoots in the "progressive" remake of America. Both
are right in a sense.
The hyperconcentration of power in Washington and a few tributary locations like Wall Street and Silicon Valley, elite
academia and the media–call that the New Class if you like–means that most of America–Main Street, the flyover country has been
left behind. Trump instinctively – brilliantly in some ways – tapped into the resentment that this hyperconcentration of wealth
and government power has led to. That is why it cuts across right and left. The elites want to characterize this resentment as
backwards and "racist," but there is also something very American from Jefferson to Jackson to Teddy Roosevelt that revolts against
being lectured to and controlled by their would-be "betters."
The alienation of those left out is real and based on real erosion of the middle class and American dream under both parties'
elites. The potentially revolutionary capabilities of a political movement that could unite right and left in restoring some equilibrium
and opportunities to those left out is tremendous, but yet to be realized by either major party. The party that can harness these
folks – who are after all the majority of Americans – will have a ruling coalition for decades. If neither party can productively
harness this budding movement, we are headed for disarray, civil unrest, and potentially the dissolution of the USA.
I have one condition about which, Mr. Trump would lose my support - if he flinches on immigration, I will have to bow out.
I just don't buy the contentions about color here. He has made definitive moves to ensure that he intends to fight for US citizens
regardless of color. This nonsense about white racism, more bigotry in reality, doesn't pan out. The Republican party has been
comprised of mostly whites since forever and nearly all white sine the late 1960's. Anyone attempting to make hay out of what
has been the reality for than 40 years is really making the reverse pander. Of course most of those who have issues with blacks
and tend to be more expressive about it, are in the Republican party. But so what. Black Republicans would look at you askance,
should you attempt this FYI.
It's a so what. The reason you joining a party is not because the people in it like you, that is really beside the point. Both
Sec Rice and General Powell, are keenly aware of who's what it and that is the supposed educated elite. They are not members of
the party because it is composed of some pure untainted membership. But because they and many blacks align themselves with the
ideas of the party, or what the party used to believe, anyway.
It's the issues not their skin color that matters. And blacks who cleave to the democrats despite being sold down the tubes
on issues, well, for whatever reason, they just have thinner skin and the mistaken idea that the democrats deliver – thanks to
Pres. Johnson. But what Pres. Johnson delivered democrats made a mockery of immediately as they stripped it of its intent and
used for their own liberal ends.
I remain convinced that if blacks wanted progress all they need do is swamp the Republican party as constituents and confront
whatever they thought was nonsense as constituents as they move on policy issues. Goodness democrats have embraced the lighter
tones despite having most black support. That is why the democrats are importing so many from other state run countries. They
could ignore blacks altogether. Sen Barbara Jordan and her deep voiced rebuke would do them all some good.
Let's face it - we are not going to remove the deeply rooted impact of skin color, once part of the legal frame of the country
for a quarter of the nations populous. What Republicans should stop doing is pretending, that everything concerning skin color
is the figment of black imagination. I am not budging an inch on the Daughters of the American Revolution, a perfect example of
the kind of peculiar treatment of the majority, even to those who fought for Independence and their descendants.
________________
I think that there are thousands and thousands of educated (degreed)people who now realize what a mess the educational and
social services system has become because of our immigration policy. The impact on social services here in Ca is no joke. In the
face of mounting deficits, the laxity of Ca has now come back to haunt them. The pressure to increase taxes weighed against the
loss of manual or hard labor to immigrants legal and otherwise is unmistakable here. There's debate about rsstroom etiquette in
the midst of serious financial issues - that's a joke. So this idea of dismissing people with degrees as being opposed to Mr.
Trump is deeply overplayed and misunderstood. If there is a class war, it's not because of Mr. Trump, those decks were stacked
in his favor long before the election cycle.
--------
"But millions did not heed that advice, cynically buoyed by Republicans who–knowing that college educated people vote largely
Democrat–launched a financial and cultural war on college education. The result is what . . . employment; meanwhile we have to
import millions of college-educated Asians and Indians to do the work there aren't enough Americans to do."
Hmmmm,
Nope. Republicans are notorious for pushing education on everything and everybody. It's a signature of hard work, self reliance,
self motivation and responsibility. The shift that has been tragic is that conservatives and Republicans either by a shove or
by choice abandoned the fields by which we turn out most future generations - elementary, HS and college education. Especially
in HS, millions of students are fed a daily diet of liberal though unchecked by any opposing ideas. And that is become the staple
for college education - as it cannot be stated just how tragic this has become for the nation. There are lots of issues to moan
about concerning the Us, but there is far more to embrace or at the very least keep the moaning in its proper context. No, conservatives
and Republicans did engage in discouraging an education.
And there will always be a need for more people without degrees than with them. even people with degrees are now getting hit
even in the elite walls of WS finance. I think I posted an article by John Maulden about the growing tensions resulting fro the
shift in the way trading is conducting. I can build a computer from scratch, that's a technical skill, but the days of building
computers by hand went as fast it came. The accusation that the population should all be trained accountants, book keepers, managers,
data processors, programmers etc. Is nice, but hardly very realistic (despite my taking liberties with your exact phrasing). A
degree is not going to stop a company from selling and moving its production to China, Mexico or Vietnam - would that were true.
In fact, even high end degree positions are being outsourced, medicine, law, data processing, programming . . .
How about the changes in economy that have forced businesses to completely disappear. We will never know how many businesses
were lost in the 2007/2008 financial mess. Recovery doesn't exist until the country's growth is robust enough to put people back
to work full time in a manner that enables them to sustain themselves and family.
That income gap is real and its telling.
___________________
even if I bought the Karl Marx assessment. His solutions were anything but a limited assault on financial sector oligarchs
and wizards. And in practice it has been an unmitigated disaster with virtually not a single long term national benefit. It's
very nature has been destructive, not only to infrastructure, but literally the lifeblood of the people it was intended to rescue.
Let's see if I can help Dreher clear up some confusion in his article. James Burnham's "Managerial Class" and the "New Class"
are overlapping and not exclusive. By the Managerial Class Burnham meant both the executive and managers in the private sector
and the Bureaucrats and functionaries in the public sector.
There are two middle classes in the US: the old Business Class and the New Knowledge Class. A manager would be in the Business
Class and a Bureaucrat in the New Class.
The rise of managers was a "revolution" because of the rise of modernization which meant the increasing mechanization,
industrialization, formalization and rationalization (efficiency) of society. Burnham's concern about the rise of the managerial
revolution was misplaced; what he should have focused on was modernization.
The New Class were those in the mostly government and nonprofit sectors that depended on knowledge for their livelihood without
it being coupled to any physical labor: teachers, intellectuals, social workers and psychiatrists, lawyers, media types, hedge
fund managers, real estate appraisers, financial advisors, architects, engineers, etc. The New Knowledge Class has only risen
since the New Deal created a permanent white collar, non-business class.
The Working Class are those who are employed for wages in manual work in an industry producing something tangible (houses,
cars, computers, etc.). The Working Class can also have managers, sometimes called supervisors. And the Working Class is comprised
mainly of two groups: unionized workers and private sector non-unionized workers. When we talk about the Working Class we typically
are referring to the latter.
The Trumpsters should not be distinguished as being a racial group or class (white) because there are many white people who
support Clinton. About 95% of Blacks vote Democratic in the US. Nowhere near that ratio of Whites are supporting Trump. So Trumps'
support should not be stereotyped as White.
The number one concern to Trumpsters is that they reflect the previous intergenerational economy where the elderly lent money
to the young to buy homes, cars and start small businesses. The Global bankers have shifted money into the stock market because
0.25% per year interest rates in a bank isn't making any money at all when money inflation runs at 1% to 2% (theft). This has
been replaced by a Global Economy that depends on financial bubbles and arbitraging of funds.
"The old left–represented by Sanders–rails against this as big money coopting government, even while conservatives are exasperated
by the unholy cabal of big business and big government in cohoots in the "progressive" remake of America. Both are right
in a sense."
Why other couching this. Ten years ago if some Hollywood exec had said, no same sex marriage, no production company in your
town, the town would have shrugged. Today before shrugging, the city clerk is checking the account balance. When the governors
of Michigan, and Arizona bent down in me culpa's on related issue, because business interests piped in, it was an indication that
the game had seriously changed. Some 3 – 5% of the population facing no real opposition has decided that that their private
lives needed public endorsement and have proceeded to upend the entire social order - the game has shifted in ways I am not sure
most of the public fully grasps or desires.
Same sex weddings in US military chapels - the concept still turns my stomach. Advocates control the megaphones, I don't think
they control the minds of the public, despite having convinced a good many people that those who have chosen this expression are
under some manner of assault – that demands a legal change - intelligent well educated, supposedly astute minded people actually
believe it. Even the Republican nominee believes it.
I love Barbara Streisand, but if the election means she moves to Canada, well, so be it. Take your "drag queens" impersonators
wit you. I enjoy Mr. and Mrs Pitt, I think have a social moral core but really? with millions of kids future at stake, endorsing
a terminal dynamic as if it will save society's ills - Hollywood doesn't even pretend to behave royally much less embody the sensitivities
of the same.
There is a lot to challenge about supporting Mr. Trump. He did support killing children in the womb and that is tragic. Unless
he has stood before his maker and made this right, he will have to answer for that. But no more than a trove of Republicans who
supported killing children in the womb and then came to their senses. I guess of there is one thing he and I agree on, it's not
drinking.
As for big budget military, it seems a waste, but if we are going to waste money, better it be for our own citizens. His Achilles
heel here is his intentions as to ISIS/ISIL. I think it's the big drain getting ready to suck him into the abyss of intervention
creep.
Missile defense just doesn't work. The tests are rigged and as Israel discovered, it's a hit and miss game with low probability
of success, but it makes for great propaganda.
I am supposed to be outraged by a football player stance on abusive government. While the democratic nominee is turning over
every deck chair she find, leaving hundreds of thousands of children homeless - let me guess, on the bright side, George Clooney
cheers the prospect of more democratic voters.
If Mr. Trumps only achievements are building a wall, over hauling immigration policy and expanding the size of the military.
He will be well on his way to getting ranked one of the US most successful presidents.
I never understood why an analysis needs to lard in every conceivable historical reference and simply assume its relevance, when
there are so many non constant facts and circumstances. There has always been and will always be class conflict, even if it
falls short of a war. Simply examining recent past circumstances, the wealthy class has been whooping up on all other classes.
This is not to suggest any sort of remedy, but simply to observe that income disparity over the past 30 years has substantially
benefitted on sector of class and political power remains in their hands today. To think that there will never be class conflict
is to side with a Marxian fantasy of egalitarianism, which will never come to pass. Winners and losers may change positions, but
the underlying conflict will always remain.
State governments have been kowtowing to big business interests for a good long while. Nothing new under the sun there.
Back in the 80s when GM was deciding where to site their factory for the new Saturn car line, they issued an edict stating they
would only consider states that had mandatory seat belt use laws, and the states in the running fell all over each to enact those.
The split on Trump is first by race (obviously), then be gender (also somewhat obviously), and then by education. Even among
self-declared conservatives it's the college educated who tend to oppose him. This is a lot broader than simply losing some "new"
Knowledge Class, unless all college educated people are put in that grouping. In fact he is on track to lose among college educated
whites, something no GOP candidate has suffered since the days of FDR and WWII.
People don't really care for the actions of the elite but they care for the consequences of these actions. During the 1960's,
per capita GDP growth was around 3.5%. Today it stands at 0,49%. If you take into account inflation, it's negative. Add to this
the skewed repartition of said growth and it's intuitive that many people feel the pain; whom doesn't move forward, goes backwards.
People couldn't care for mass immigration, nation building or the emergence of China if their personal situation was not
impacted. But now, they begin to feel the results of these actions.
I have a simple philosophy regarding American politics that shows who is made of what, and we don't have to go through all
the philosophizing in this article: Anyone who believes in same sex marriage has been brainwashed and is un-American and unreliable.
Anyone who puts Israeli interests above America's is un-American.
EliteComic beat me to the punch. I was disappointed that Ross Perot, who won over 20% of the popular vote twice, and was briefly
in the lead in early 1992, wasn't mentioned in this article.
Re: Anyone who believes in same sex marriage has been brainwashed and is un-American and unreliable. Anyone who puts Israeli
interests above America's is un-American.
The first has nothing whatsoever to do with American citizenship. It's just a political issue– on which, yes, reasonable
people can differ. However no American citizen should put the interests of any other country ahead of our own, except in a situation
where the US was itself up to no good and deserved its comeuppance. And then the interest is not that of any particular nation,
but of justice being done period.
A lot of this "New Class" stuff is just confusing mis-mash of this and that theory. Basically, America changed when the US
dollar replace gold as the medium of exchange in the world economy. Remember when we called it the PETRO-DOLLAR. As long as the
Saudis only accepted the US dollar as the medium of exchange for oil, then the American government could export it's inflation
and deficit spending. Budget deficits and trade deficits are intrinsically related. It allowed America to become a nation of consumers
instead of a nation of producers.
Who really cares about the federal debt. REally? We can print dollars, exchange these worthless dollars with China for hard
goods, and then China lends the dollars back to us, to pay for our government. Get it?
It's really a form of classic IMPERIALISM. To maintain this system, we've got the US military and we prop up the corrupt
dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya
Yeah, you can talk about the "new class", the corruption of the banking system by the idiotic "libertarian" or "free market
utopianism" of the Gingrich Congress, the transformation of American corporations to international corporations, and on and on.
But it's the US dollar as reserve currency that has allowed it all to happen. God help us, if it ends, we'll be crippled.
And damn the utopianism of you "libertarians" you're worse then Marxists when it comes to ideology over reality.
"State governments have been kowtowing to big business interests for a good long while. Nothing new under the sun there. Back
in the 80s when GM was deciding where to site their factory for the new Saturn car line, they issued an edict stating they would
only consider states that had mandatory seat belt use laws, and the states in the running fell all over each to enact those."
Ah, not it's policy on some measure able effect. The seatbelt law was debate across the country. The data indicated that it
did in fact save lives. And it's impact was universal applicable to every man women or child that got into a vehicle.
That was not a private bedroom issue. Of course businesses have advocated policy. K street is not a K-street minus that reality.
But GM did not demand having relations in parked cars be legalized or else.
You are taking my apples and and calling them seatbelts - false comparison on multiple levels, all to get me to acknowledge
that businesses have influence. It what they have chosen to have influence on -
I do not think the issue of class is relevant here – whether it be new classes or old classes. There are essentially two classes
– those who win given whatever the current economic arrangements are or those who lose given those same arrangements. People who
think they are losing support Trump versus people who think they are winning support Clinton. The polls demonstrates this – Trump
supporters feel a great deal more anxiety about the future and are more inclined to think everything is falling apart whereas
Clinton supporters tend to see things as being okay and are optimistic about the future. The Vox work also shows this pervasive
sense that life will not be good for their children and grandchildren as a characteristic of Trump supporters.
The real shift I think is in the actual coalitions that are political parties. Both the GOP and the Dems have been coalitions
– political parties usually are. Primary areas of agreement with secondary areas of disagreement. Those coalitions no longer work.
The Dems can be seen as a coalition of the liberal knowledge types – who are winners in this economy and the worker types who
are often losers now in this economy. The GOP also is a coalition of globalist corporatist business types (winners) with workers
(losers) who they attracted in part because of culture wars and the Dixiecrats becoming GOPers. The needs of these two groups
in both parties no longer overlap. The crisis is more apparent in the GOP because well – Trump. If Sanders had won the nomination
for the Dems (and he got close) then their same crisis would be more apparent. The Dems can hold their creaky coalition together
because Trump went into the fevered swamps of the alt. right.
I think this is even more obvious in the UK where you have a Labor Party that allegedly represents the interests of working
people but includes the cosmopolitan knowledge types. The cosmopolitans are big on the usual identity politics, unlimited immigration
and staying in the EU. They benefit from the current economic arrangement. But the workers in the Labor party have been hammered
by the current economic arrangements and voted in droves to get out of the EU and limit immigration. It seems pretty obvious that
there is no longer a coalition to sustain the Labor Party. Same with Tories – some in the party love the EU,immigration, globalization
while others voted out of the EU, want immigration restricted and support localism. The crisis is about the inability of either
party to sustain its coalitions. Those in the Tory party who are leavers should be in a political party with the old Labor working
class while the Tory cosmopolitans should be in a party with the Labor cosmopolitans. The current coalitions not being in synch
is the political problem – not new classes etc.
Here in the US the southern Dixiecrats who went to the GOP and are losers in this economy might find a better coalition with
the black, Latino and white workers who are still in the Dem party. But as in the UK ideological culture wars have become more
prominent and hence the coalitions are no longer economically based. If people recognized that politics can only address the economic
issues and they aligned themselves accordingly – the membership of the parties would radically change.
The Clinton Class mocks The Country Class: Bill Clinton, "We all know how her opponent's done real well down in West Virginia
and eastern Kentucky. Because the coal people don't like any of us anymore." "They blame the president when the sun doesn't come
up in the morning now,"
"Trump's voters were most strongly characterized by their "racial isolation": they live in places with little ethnic diversity.
"
During the primaries whites in more diverse areas voted Trump. The only real exception was West Virginia. Utah, Wyoming, Iowa?
All voted for Cruz and "muh values".
In white enclaves like Paul Ryans district, which is 91%, whites are able to signal against white identity without having to
face the consequences.
"All three major African, Hispanic, & Asian-American overwhelming support HRC in the election."
That doesn't mean they actually support Hillary's policies and position. What do they really know about either? These demographics
simply vote overwhelmingly Democrat no matter who is on the ticket. If Alfred E. Newman were the candidate, this particular data
point would look just the same.
"On the contrary, the New Class favors new kinds of crony finance capitalism, even as it opposes the protectionism that would
benefit hard industry and managerial interests."
This doesn't ring true. Hard industry, and the managers that run it had no problem with moving jobs and factories overseas
in pursuit of cheaper labor. Plus, it solved their Union issues. I feel like the divide is between large corporations, with dilute
ownership and professional managers who nominally serve the interests of stock fund managers, while greatly enriching themselves
versus a multitude of smaller, locally owned businesses whose owners were also concerned with the health of the local communities
in which they lived.
The financial elites are a consequence of consolidation in the banking and finance industry, where we now have 4 or 5 large
institutions versus a multitude of local and regional banks that were locally focused.
"... Each of these was based fundamentally upon the principle that language was the key to all power. That is, that language was not a tool that described reality but the power that created it, and s/he who controlled language controlled everything through the shaping of "discourse", as opposed to the objective existence of any truth at all ..."
"... When you globalise capital, you globalise labour. That meant jobs shifting from expensive markets to cheap. Before long the incomes of those swimming in the stream of global capital began to seriously outstrip the incomes of those trapped in old and withering Western labour markets. As a result, inflation in those markets also began to fall and so did interest rates. Thus asset prices took off as Western nation labour markets got hollowed out, and standard of living inequality widened much more quickly as a new landed aristocracy developed. ..."
"... With a Republican Party on its knees, Obama was positioned to restore the kind of New Deal rules that global capitalism enjoyed under Franklin D. Roosevelt. ..."
"... But instead he opted to patch up financialised capitalism. The banks were bailed out and the bonus culture returned. Yes, there were some new rules but they were weak. There was no seizing of the agenda. No imprisonments of the guilty. The US Department of Justice is still issuing $14bn fines to banks involved yet still today there is no justice. Think about that a minute. How can a crime be worthy of a $14bn fine but no prison time?!? ..."
"... Alas, for all of his efforts to restore Wall Street, Obama provided no reset for Main Street economics to restore the fortunes of the US lower classes. Sure Obama fought a hostile Capitol but, let's face it, he had other priorities. ..."
"... This comment is a perfect example of the author's (and Adolf Reed's) point: that the so-called "Left" is so bogged down in issues of language that it has completely lost sight of class politics. ..."
"... It's why Trump won. He was a Viking swinging an ax at nuanced hair-splitters. It was inelegant and ugly, but effective. We will find out if the hair-splitters win again in their inner circle with the Democratic Minority Leader vote. I suspect they missed the point of the election and will vote Pelosi back in, thereby missing the chance for significant gains in the mid-term elections. ..."
"... One of the great triumphs of Those Who Continue To Be Our Rulers has been the infiltration and cooptation of 'the left', hand in hand with the 'dumbing down' of the last 30+ years so few people really understand what is going on. ..."
"... That the Global Left appears to be intellectually weak regarding identity politics and "political correctness" vs. class politics, there is no doubt. But to skim over Global Corporate leverage of this attitude seems wrong to me. The right has also embraced identity politics in order to keep the 90% fully divided in order to justify it's continual economic rape of both human and physical ecology. ..."
"... Every "identity politics" charge starts here, with one group wanting a more equitable social order and the other group defending the existing power structure. Identity politics is adjusting the social order and rattling the power structure, which is why it is so effective. ..."
"... I think it can be effectively argued that Trump voters in PA, WI, OH, MI chose to rattle the power structure and you could think of that as identity politics as well. ..."
"... On the contrary, the (Neo-)Liberal establishment uses identity politics to co-opt and neutralise the left. It keeps them occupied without threatening the real power structure in the least. ..."
"... Hillary (Neoliberal establishment) has many supporters who think of themselves as 'left' or 'liberal'. The Democratic Party leadership is neither 'left' nor 'liberal'. It keeps the votes and the love of the 'liberals' by talking up harmless 'liberal' identity politics and soft peddling the Liberal power politics which they are really about. ..."
"... Just from historical perspective, the right wing had more money to forward its agenda and an OCD like affliction [biblical] to drive simple memes relentlessly via its increasing private ownership of education and media. Thereby creating an institutional network over time to gain dominate market share in crafting the social narrative. Bloodly hell anyone remember Bush Jr Christian crusade after politicizing religion to get elected and the ramifications – neocon – R2P thingy . ..."
"... Its not hard once neoliberalism became dominate in the 70s [wages and productivity diverged] the proceeds have gone to the top and everyone else got credit IOUs based mostly on asset inflation via the Casino or RE [home and IP]. ..."
"... Foucault in particular advanced a greatly expanded wariness regarding the use of power. It was not just that left politics could only lead to ossified Soviet Marxism or the dogmatic petty despotism of the left splinters. Institutions in general mapped out social practices and attendant identities to impose on the individual. His position tended to promote a distrust not only of "grand narratives" but of organizational bonds as such. As far as I can tell, the idea of people joining together to form an institution that would enhance their social power as well as allow them to become personally empowered/enhanced was something of a categorial impossibility. ..."
"... There is no global left. We have only global state capitalists and global social democrats – a pseudo left. The countries where Marxist class analysis was supposedly adopted were not industrial countries where "alienation" had brought the "proletariat" to an inevitable communal mentality. The largest of these countries killed millions in order to industrialize rapidly – pretending the goal was to get to that state. ..."
"... Bigotry. Identity centered thinking. Neither serves egalitarianism. But people cling to them. "I gotta look out for myself first." And so called left thinkers constantly pontificate about "benefits" and "privileges" that some class, sex, and race confer. Hmmm. The logic is that many of us struggling daily to keep our jobs and pay the bills must give up something in order to be fair, in order to build a better society. Given this thinking it is no surprise that so many have retreated into the illusion of safety offered by identity based thinking. ..."
"... "Simultaneously, capitalism did what it does best. It packaged and repackaged, branded and rebranded every emerging identity, cloaked in its own sub-cultural nomenclature, selling itself back to new emerging identities. Soon class was completely forgotten as the global Left dedicated itself instead to policing the commons as a kind of safe zone for a multitude of difference that capitalism turned into a cultural supermarket." ..."
"... But why does the Dem estab embrace the conservative neoliberal agenda? The Dem estab are smart people, can think on multiple levels, are not limited in scope, are not racist. So, why then does the Dem estab accept and promote the conservative GOP neoliberal economic agenda? ..."
"... Because the Dem estab isn't very smart. ..."
"... Conservative is: private property, capitalism, limited taxes and transfer payments plus national security and religion. ..."
"... Liberalism is not in opposition to any of that. Identity politics arose at the same time the Ds were purging the reds (socialists and communists) from their party. Liberalism/progressivism is an ameliorating position of conservatism (progressive support of labor unions to work within a private property/corporatist structure not to eliminate the system and replace it with public/employee ownership) Not too far, too fast, maybe toss out a few more crumbs. ..."
"... There is a foundation for identity politics on the liberal-left (see what I did there?) – it rests in the sense of moral superiority of just this liberal-left, which superiority is then patronisingly spread all over the social world – until it meets those who deny the moral superiority claim, whereupon it becomes murderous (in, of course, the name of humanity and humanitarianism). ..."
"... This is why the 1% continue to prevail over the 99%. If the 1% wasn't so incompetent this would continue forever. They know how to divide, conquer and rule the 99%, however they don't know how to run a society in a sustainable way. ..."
"... But I will say one thing for the Right over the Left: they have taken the initiative and are now the sole force for change. Granted, supporting a carnival barker for president is an act of desperation. Nevertheless he was the only option for change and the Right took it. Perhaps the Left offering little to nothing in the way of change reflects its lack of desperation. ..."
"... Excellent comment, EoinW! You just summed up years of content and commentary on this site. Obviously as the "Left" continues to defend the status quo as you describe it stops being "Left" in any meaningful way anymore. ..."
"... The Koch brothers are economically to the very right. They are socially to the left, perhaps even more socially liberal than many of your liberal friends. No joke. There's a point here, if I can figure out what it is. ..."
"... Trump isn't Right or Left. Trump is a can of gasoline and a match. His voters weren't voting for a Left or Right agenda. They were voting for a battering ram. That is why he got a pass on racist, misogynist, fascist statements that would have killed any other candidate. ..."
"... PC is a parody of the 20th Century reform movements. ..."
"... In the 70's the feminists worked against legal disabilities written into law. Since the Depression, the unions fought corporate management create a livable relationship between management and labor. Real struggles, real problems, real people. ..."
"... What's interesting is that in an article pushing class over identity. he never tried to set his class ethos in order to convince working class people or the bourgeoisie why they should listen to him. ..."
"... "This site, along with the MSM, has flown way off the handle since the election loss." ..."
"... "Our nation's problems can be remedied with one dramatic change" ..."
"... Bringing C level pay packages at major corporations in line with the real contributions of the recipients would be great. How would we do it? With laws or regulations or executive orders banning the federal government from doing business with any firm that failed to comply with some basic guidelines? ..."
"... It's an academic point right now in any event. The Trump administration – working together with the Ryan House – is not going to make legislation or sign executive orders to do anything remotely like this. Which is one of the many reasons why bashing Democrats has taken off here I suspect. This election was theirs to lose, and they did everything in their power to toss it. ..."
"... You do realize that the wealthy are both part of and connected to the legislative branch of every single country on this planet right? As long as that remains so (as it has since the dawn of humans) then good luck trying to cap any sort of hording behavior of the wealthy. ..."
"... The post-structural revolution transpired [in the U.S.] before and during the end of the Cold War just as the collapse of the Old Soviet Union denuded the global Left of its raison detre. ..."
"... Foucault was not entirely sympathetic to the Left, at least the unions, but he was trying to articulate a politics that was just as much about liberation from capitalism as classic Marxism. To that end, discourse analysis was the means to discovering those subtle articulations of power in human relations, not an end in itself as it was for, say, Barthes. ..."
"... Imagine inequality plotted on two axes. Inequality between genders, races and cultures is what liberals have been concentrating on. This is the x-axis and the focus of identity politics and the liberal left. ..."
"... On the y-axis we have inequality from top to bottom. 2014 – "85 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of the world" 2016– "Richest 62 people as wealthy as half of world's population" ..."
"... The neoliberal view L As long as everyone, from all genders, races and cultures, is visiting the same food bank this is equality. ..."
"... You can see why liberals love identity politics. ..."
"... labor is being co-opted by the right: the Republican Workers Party I think this rhymes with Fascist. But then, in a world soon to be literally scrambling for high ground and rebuilding housing for 50 million people the time honored "worker" might actually have a renaissance. ..."
"... But the simple act of writing checks cost me n-o-t-h-i-n-g in terms of time, energy, education, physical or mental exertion. ..."
"... A much more nuanced discussion of the primacy of identity politics on the Left in Britain and the US is http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/29/prospects-for-an-alt-left/ "Prospects for an Alt-Left," November 29, 2016, by Elliot Murphy, who teaches in the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College, London. ..."
"... The electorate is angry (true liberals at the Dems, voters in select electoral states at "everything"). If democracy is messy, then that's what we've got; a mess. Unfortunately, it's coming at the absolutely wrong time (Climate Change, lethal policing, financial elite impunity). ..."
"... But certainly the fall of the USSR was the thing that forced capitalism's hand. At that point capitalism had no choice but to step up and prove that it could really bring a better life to the world. ..."
"... A Minsky event of biblical proportions soon followed (it only took about 10 years!) and now all is devastation and nobody has clue. But the 1990 effort could have been in earnest. Capitalists mean well but they are always in denial about the inequality they create which finally started a chain reaction in "identity politics" as reactions to the stress of economic competition bounced around in every society like a pinball machine. A tedious and insufferable game which seems to have culminated in Hillary the Relentless. I won't say capitalism is idiotic. But something is. ..."
"... Left and Right only really make sense in the context of the distribution of power and wealth, and only when there is a difference between them about that distribution. This was historically the case for more than 150 years after the French Revolution. By the mid-1960s, there was a sense that the Left was winning, and would continue to win. Progressive taxation, zero unemployment, little real poverty by today's standards, free education and healthcare . and many influential political figures (Tony Crosland for example) saw the major task of the future as deciding where the fruits of economic growth could be most justly applied. ..."
"... So until class-based politics and struggles over power and money re-start (if they ever do) I respectfully suggest that "Left" and "Right" be retired as terms that no longer have any meaning. ..."
"... powerlessness, of course, corrupts. There's always someone weaker than you, which is why identity politics is essentially a conservative, disciplining force, with a vested interest in the problems it has chosen to identify ..."
"... Identity politics is a disaster ongoing for the Democratic Party, for reasons they seem to have overlooked. First, the additional identity group is white. We already see this in the South, where 90% of the white population in many states votes Republican. ..."
"... When that spreads to the rest of the country, there will be a permanent Republican majority until the Republicans create a new major disaster. ..."
"... So soon we forget the Battle of Seattle. The Left has been opposed to globalization, deregulation, etc., all along. Partly he's talking about an academic pseudo-left, partly confusing the left with the Democrats and other "center-left," captured parties. ..."
"... I mean, Barack Obama was our first black president, but most blacks didn't do very well. George W. Bush was our first retard president, and most people with cognitive handicaps didn't do very well. ..."
"... But we can boil it all down to something even simpler and more primal: divide and conquer. ..."
Yves here. This piece gives a useful, real-world perspective on the issues discussed in
a seminal Adolph Reed article . Key section:
race politics is not an alternative to class politics; it is a class politics, the politics
of the left-wing of neoliberalism. It is the expression and active agency of a political order
and moral economy in which capitalist market forces are treated as unassailable nature. An integral
element of that moral economy is displacement of the critique of the invidious outcomes produced
by capitalist class power onto equally naturalized categories of ascriptive identity that sort
us into groups supposedly defined by what we essentially are rather than what we do. As I have
argued, following Walter Michaels and others, within that moral economy a society in which 1%
of the population controlled 90% of the resources could be just, provided that roughly 12% of
the 1% were black, 12% were Latino, 50% were women, and whatever the appropriate proportions were
LGBT people. It would be tough to imagine a normative ideal that expresses more unambiguously
the social position of people who consider themselves candidates for inclusion in, or at least
significant staff positions in service to, the ruling class.
This perspective may help explain why, the more aggressively and openly capitalist class power
destroys and marketizes every shred of social protection working people of all races, genders,
and sexual orientations have fought for and won over the last century, the louder and more insistent
are the demands from the identitarian left that we focus our attention on statistical disparities
and episodic outrages that "prove" that the crucial injustices in the society should be understood
in the language of ascriptive identity.
My take on this issue is that the neoliberal use of identity politics continue and extends the
cultural inculcation of individuals seeing themselves engaging with other in one-to-one transactions
(commerce, struggles over power and status) and has the effect of diverting their focus and energy
on seeing themselves as members of groups with common interests and operating that way, and in particular,
of seeing the role of money and property, which are social constructs, in power dynamics.
By David Llewellyn-Smith, founding publisher and former editor-in-chief of The Diplomat
magazine, now the Asia Pacific's leading geo-politics website. Originally posted at
MacroBusiness
Let's begin this little tale with a personal anecdote. Back in 1990 I met and fell in love with
a bisexual, African American ballerina. She was studying Liberal Arts at US Ivy League Smith College
at the time (which Aussies may recall was being run by our Jill Kerr Conway back then). So I moved
in with my dancing beauty and we lived happily on her old man's purse for a year.
I was fortunate to arrive at Smith during a period of intellectual tumult. It was the early years
of the US political correctness revolution when the academy was writhing through a post-structuralist
shift. Traditional dialectical history was being supplanted by a new suite of studies based around
truth as "discourse". Driven by the French post-modern thinkers of the 70s and 80s, the US academy
was adopting and adapting the ideas Foucault, Derrida and Barthe to a variety of civil rights movements
that spawned gender and racial studies.
Each of these was based fundamentally upon the principle that language was the key to all
power. That is, that language was not a tool that described reality but the power that created it,
and s/he who controlled language controlled everything through the shaping of "discourse", as opposed
to the objective existence of any truth at all .
... ... ...
The post-structural revolution transpired before and during the end of the Cold War just as the
collapse of the Old Soviet Union denuded the global Left of its raison detre. But its social justice
impulse didn't die, it turned inwards from a notion of the historic inevitability of the decline
of capitalism and the rise of oppressed classes, towards the liberation of oppressed minorities within
capitalism, empowered by control over the language that defined who they were.
Simultaneously, capitalism did what it does best. It packaged and repackaged, branded and rebranded
every emerging identity, cloaked in its own sub-cultural nomenclature, selling itself back to new
emerging identities. Soon class was completely forgotten as the global Left dedicated itself instead
to policing the commons as a kind of safe zone for a multitude of difference that capitalism turned
into a cultural supermarket.
As the Left turned inwards, capitalism turned outwards and went truly, madly global, lifting previously
isolated nations into a single planet-wide market, pretty much all of it revolving around Americana
replete with its identity-branded products.
But, of course, this came at a cost. When you globalise capital, you globalise labour. That
meant jobs shifting from expensive markets to cheap. Before long the incomes of those swimming in
the stream of global capital began to seriously outstrip the incomes of those trapped in old and
withering Western labour markets. As a result, inflation in those markets also began to fall and
so did interest rates. Thus asset prices took off as Western nation labour markets got hollowed out,
and standard of living inequality widened much more quickly as a new landed aristocracy developed.
Meanwhile the global Left looked on from its Ivory Tower of identity politics and was pleased.
Capitalism was spreading the wealth to oppressed brothers and sisters, and if there were some losers
in the West then that was only natural as others rose in prominence. Indeed, it went further. So
satisfied was it with human progress, and so satisfied with its own role in producing it, that it
turned the power of language that it held most dear back upon those that opposed the new order. Those
losers in Western labour markets that dared complain or fight back against the free movement of capital
and labour were labelled and marginalised as "racist", "xenophobic" and "sexist".
This great confluence of forces reached its apogee in the Global Financial Crisis when a ribaldly
treasonous Wall St destroyed the American financial system just as America's first ever African American
President, Barack Obama, was elected . One might have expected this convergence to result in a revival
of some class politics. Obama ran on a platform of "hope and change" very much cultured in the vein
of seventies art and inherited a global capitalism that had just openly ravaged its most celebrated
host nation.
But alas, it was just a bit of "retro". With a Republican Party on its knees, Obama was positioned
to restore the kind of New Deal rules that global capitalism enjoyed under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
A gobalisation like the one promised in the brochures, that benefited the majority via competition
and productivity gains, driven by trade and meritocracy, with counter-balanced private risk and public
equity.
But instead he opted to patch up financialised capitalism. The banks were bailed out and the
bonus culture returned. Yes, there were some new rules but they were weak. There was no seizing of
the agenda. No imprisonments of the guilty. The US Department of Justice is still issuing $14bn fines
to banks involved yet still today there is no justice. Think about that a minute. How can a crime
be worthy of a $14bn fine but no prison time?!?
Alas, for all of his efforts to restore Wall Street, Obama provided no reset for Main Street
economics to restore the fortunes of the US lower classes. Sure Obama fought a hostile Capitol but,
let's face it, he had other priorities. And so the US working and middle classes, as well as
those worldwide, were sold another pup. Now more than ever, if they said say so they were quickly
shut down as "racist", "xenophobic", or "sexist".
Thus it came to pass that the global Left somehow did a complete back-flip and positioned itself
directly behind the same unreconstructed global capitalism that was still sucking the life from the
lower classes that it always had. Only now it was doing so with explicit public backing and with
an abandon it had not enjoyed since the roaring twenties.
Which brings us back to today. And we wonder how it is that an abuse-spouting guy like Donald
Trump can succeed Barack Obama. Trump is a member of the very same "trickle down" capitalist class
that ripped the income from US households. But he is smart enough, smarter than the Left at least,
to know that the decades long rage of the middle and working classes is a formidable political force
and has tapped it spectacularly to rise to power.
And, he has done more. He has also recognised that the Left's obsession with post-structural identity
politics has totally paralysed it. It is so traumatised and pre-occupied by his mis-use of the language
of power – the "racist", "sexist" and "xenophobic" comments – that it is further wedging itself from
its natural constituents every day.
Don't get me wrong, I am very doubtful that Trump will succeed with his proposed policies but
he has at least mentioned the elephant in the room, making the American worker visible again.
Returning to that innocent Aussie boy and his wild romp at Smith College, I might ask what he
would have made of all of this. None of the above should be taken as a repudiation of the experience
of racism or sexism. Indeed, the one thing I took away from Smith College over my lifetime was an
understanding at just how scarred by slavery are the generations of African Americans that lived
it and today inherit its memory (as well as other persecuted). I felt terribly inadequate before
that pain then and I remain so today.
But, if the global Left is to have any meaning in the future of the world, and I would argue that
the global Right will destroy us all if it doesn't, then it must get beyond post-structural paralysis
and go back to the future of fighting not just for social justice issues but for equity based upon
class. Empowerment is not just about language, it's about capital, who's got it, who hasn't and what
role government plays between them.
This comment is a perfect example of the author's (and Adolf Reed's) point: that the so-called
"Left" is so bogged down in issues of language that it has completely lost sight of class politics.
Essentially, the comment vividly displays the exact methodology the author lambasts in the
piece - it hijacks the discussion about an economic issue, attempts to turn it into a mere distraction
about semantics, and in the end contributes absolutely nothing of substance to the "discourse".
It's why Trump won. He was a Viking swinging an ax at nuanced hair-splitters. It was inelegant
and ugly, but effective. We will find out if the hair-splitters win again in their inner circle with the Democratic
Minority Leader vote. I suspect they missed the point of the election and will vote Pelosi back
in, thereby missing the chance for significant gains in the mid-term elections.
One of the great triumphs of Those Who Continue To Be Our Rulers has been the infiltration
and cooptation of 'the left', hand in hand with the 'dumbing down' of the last 30+ years so few
people really understand what is going on.
Explained in more detail here if anyone interested in some truly 'out of the box' perspectives
– It's not 'the left' trying to take over the world and shut down free speech and all that other
bad stuff – it's 'the right'!! http://tinyurl.com/h4h2kay
.
Although I haven't yet read the article you posted, my "feeling" as I read this was that the
author inferred that the right was in the mix somehow, but it was primarily the fault of the left.
That the Global Left appears to be intellectually weak regarding identity politics and "political
correctness" vs. class politics, there is no doubt. But to skim over Global Corporate leverage
of this attitude seems wrong to me. The right has also embraced identity politics in order to
keep the 90% fully divided in order to justify it's continual economic rape of both human and
physical ecology.
Exactly. My guess is that this plays out somewhat like this:
Dems: This group _____ should be free to have _____ civil right.
Reps: NO. We are a society built on _____ tradition, no need to change that because it upends
our patriarchal, Christian, Caucasian power structure.
Every "identity politics" charge starts here, with one group wanting a more equitable social
order and the other group defending the existing power structure. Identity politics is adjusting
the social order and rattling the power structure, which is why it is so effective.
I think it can be effectively argued that Trump voters in PA, WI, OH, MI chose to rattle
the power structure and you could think of that as identity politics as well.
Identity politics is adjusting the social order and rattling the power structure, which
is why it is so effective.
On the contrary, the (Neo-)Liberal establishment uses identity politics to co-opt and neutralise
the left. It keeps them occupied without threatening the real power structure in the least.
When have they ever done any such thing? Vote for Hillary because she's a woman isn't even
any kind of politics it's more like marketing branding. It's the real thing. Taste great, less
filling. I'm loving it.
Hillary (Neoliberal establishment) has many supporters who think of themselves as 'left'
or 'liberal'. The Democratic Party leadership is neither 'left' nor 'liberal'. It keeps the votes
and the love of the 'liberals' by talking up harmless 'liberal' identity politics and soft peddling
the Liberal power politics which they are really about.
They exploit the happy historical accident of the coincidence of names. The Liberal ideology
was so called because it was slightly less right-wing than the Feudalism it displaced. In today's
terms however, it is not very liberal, and Neoliberalism is even less so.
If I was in charge of the DNC and wanted to commission a very cleverly written piece to exonerate
the DLC and the New Democrats from the 30 odd years of corruption and self-aggrandizement they
indulged in and laughed all the way to the Bank then I would definitely give this chap a call.
I mean, where do we start? No attempt at learning the history of neoliberalism, no attempt at
any serious research about how and why it fastened itself into the brains of people like Tony
Coelho and Al From, nothing, zilch. If someone who did not know the history of the DLC read this
piece, they would walk away thinking, 'wow, it was all happenstance, it all just happened, no
one deliberately set off this run away train'. Sometime in the 90s the 'Left' decided to just
pursue identity politics. Amazing. I would ask the Author to start with the Powell memo and then
make an investigation as to why the Democrats then and the DLC later decided to merely sit on
their hands when all the forces the Powell memo unleashed proceeded to wreak their havoc in every
established institution of the Left, principally the Universities which had always been the bastion
of the Progressives. That might be a good starting point.
Sigh . the left was marginalized and relentlessly hunted down by the right [grab bag of corporatists,
free marketers, neocons, evangelicals, and a whole cornucopia of wing nut ideologists (file under
creative class gig writers)].
Just from historical perspective, the right wing had more money to forward its agenda and
an OCD like affliction [biblical] to drive simple memes relentlessly via its increasing private
ownership of education and media. Thereby creating an institutional network over time to gain
dominate market share in crafting the social narrative. Bloodly hell anyone remember Bush Jr Christian
crusade after politicizing religion to get elected and the ramifications – neocon – R2P thingy .
Its not hard once neoliberalism became dominate in the 70s [wages and productivity diverged]
the proceeds have gone to the top and everyone else got credit IOUs based mostly on asset inflation
via the Casino or RE [home and IP].
Yes, it's interesting that the academic "left" (aka liberals), who so prize language to accurately,
and to the finest degree distinguish 'this' from 'that', have avoided addressing the difference
between 'left' and 'liberal' and are content to leave the two terms interchangable.
The reason for that is that when academic leftists attempted a more in depth critique, of one
sort or another, of the actually existing historical liberal welfare state, the liberals threw
the "New Deal-under-siege" attack at them and attempted to shut them down.
There is very little left perspective in public. All this whining about identity politics is
not left either. It is reactionary. I can think of plenty of old labor left academics who have
done a much better job of wrapping their minds around why sex, gender, and race matter with respect
to all matters economic than this incessant childish whine. The "let me make you feel more comfortable"
denialism of Uncle Tom Reed.
Right now, I would say that these reactionaries don't want to hear from the academic left any
more than New Deal liberals did. Not going to stop them from blaming them for all their problems
though.
Maybe people should shoulder their own failures for a change. As for the Trumpertantrums, I
am totally not having them.
Since the writer led off talking about an academic setting, it would be useful to flesh out
a bit more how trends in academic theoretical discussion in the 70s and 80s reflected and reinforced
what was going on politically. He refers to postructuralism, which was certainly involved, but
doesn't give enough emphasis to how deliberately poststructuralists - and here I'm lumping together
writers like Lyotard, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari - were all reacting to the failure of
French Maoism and Trotskyism to, as far as they were concerned, provide a satisfactory alternative
to Soviet Marxism.
As groups espousing those position flailed about in the 70s, the drive to maintain
hope in revolutionary prospects in the midst of macroeconomic stabilization and union reconciliation
to capitalism frequently brought out the worst sectarian tendencies. While writers like Andre Gorz bid adieu to the proletariat as an agent of change and tried to tread water as social democratic
reformists, the poststructuralists disjoined the critique of power from class analysis.
Foucault in particular advanced a greatly expanded wariness regarding the use of power. It
was not just that left politics could only lead to ossified Soviet Marxism or the dogmatic petty
despotism of the left splinters. Institutions in general mapped out social practices and attendant
identities to impose on the individual. His position tended to promote a distrust not only of
"grand narratives" but of organizational bonds as such. As far as I can tell, the idea of people
joining together to form an institution that would enhance their social power as well as allow
them to become personally empowered/enhanced was something of a categorial impossibility.
When imported to US academia, traditionally much more disengaged from organized politics than
their European counterparts, these tendencies flourished. Aside from being socially cut off from
increasingly anodyne political organizations, poststructuralists in the US often had backgrounds
with little orientation to history or social science research addressing class relations. To them
the experience of a much more immediate and palpable form of oppression through the use of language
offered an immediate critical target. This dovetailed perfectly with the legalistic use of state
power to end discrimination against various groups, A European disillusionment with class politics
helped to fortify an American evasion or ignorance of it.
There is no global left. We have only global state capitalists and global social democrats
– a pseudo left. The countries where Marxist class analysis was supposedly adopted were not industrial
countries where "alienation" had brought the "proletariat" to an inevitable communal mentality.
The largest of these countries killed millions in order to industrialize rapidly – pretending
the goal was to get to that state.
The terms left and right may not be adequate for those of us who want an egalitarian society
but also see many of the obstacles to egalitarianism as human failings that are independent of
and not caused by ruling elites – although they frequently serve the interests of those elites.
Bigotry. Identity centered thinking. Neither serves egalitarianism. But people cling to
them. "I gotta look out for myself first." And so called left thinkers constantly pontificate
about "benefits" and "privileges" that some class, sex, and race confer. Hmmm. The logic is that
many of us struggling daily to keep our jobs and pay the bills must give up something in order
to be fair, in order to build a better society. Given this thinking it is no surprise that so
many have retreated into the illusion of safety offered by identity based thinking.
Hopefully those of us who yearn for an egalitarian movement can develop and articulate an alternate
view of reality.
"Simultaneously, capitalism did what it does best. It packaged and repackaged, branded and
rebranded every emerging identity, cloaked in its own sub-cultural nomenclature, selling itself
back to new emerging identities. Soon class was completely forgotten as the global Left dedicated
itself instead to policing the commons as a kind of safe zone for a multitude of difference
that capitalism turned into a cultural supermarket."
"Meanwhile the global Left looked on from its Ivory Tower of identity politics and was pleased.
Capitalism was spreading the wealth to oppressed brothers and sisters, and if there were some
losers in the West then that was only natural as others rose in prominence. Indeed, it went
further. So satisfied was it with human progress, and so satisfied with its own role in producing
it, that it turned the power of language that it held most dear back upon those that opposed
the new order. Those losers in Western labour markets that dared complain or fight back against
the free movement of capital and labour were labelled and marginalised as "racist", "xenophobic"
and "sexist". "
That is not it at all. The real reason is the right wing played white identity politics starting
with the southern strategy, and those running into the waiting arms of Trump today, took the poisoned
bait. Enter Bill Clinton.
People need to start taking responsibility for their own actions, and stop blaming the academics
and the leftists and the wimmins and the N-ers.
But why does the Dem estab embrace the conservative neoliberal agenda? The Dem estab are
smart people, can think on multiple levels, are not limited in scope, are not racist. So, why
then does the Dem estab accept and promote the conservative GOP neoliberal economic agenda?
Because the Dem estab isn't very smart. I doubt more than half of them could define neoliberalism
much less describe how it has destroyed the country. They are mostly motivated by the identity
politics aspects.
Conservative is: private property, capitalism, limited taxes and transfer payments plus
national security and religion.
Liberalism is not in opposition to any of that. Identity politics arose at the same time
the Ds were purging the reds (socialists and communists) from their party. Liberalism/progressivism
is an ameliorating position of conservatism (progressive support of labor unions to work within
a private property/corporatist structure not to eliminate the system and replace it with public/employee
ownership) Not too far, too fast, maybe toss out a few more crumbs.
There is a foundation for identity politics on the liberal-left (see what I did there?)
– it rests in the sense of moral superiority of just this liberal-left, which superiority is then
patronisingly spread all over the social world – until it meets those who deny the moral superiority
claim, whereupon it becomes murderous (in, of course, the name of humanity and humanitarianism).
We live in a society where no one gets what they want. The Left sees the standard of living
fall and is powerless to stop it. The Right see the culture war lost 25 years ago and can't even
offer a public protest, let alone move things in a conservative direction. Instead we get the
agenda of the political Left to sell out at every opportunity. Plus we get the agenda of the political
Right of endless war and endless security state. Eventually the political Left and Right merge
and support the exact same things. Now when will the real Left and Right recognize their true
enemy and join forces against it? This is why the 1% continue to prevail over the 99%. If
the 1% wasn't so incompetent this would continue forever. They know how to divide, conquer and
rule the 99%, however they don't know how to run a society in a sustainable way.
But I will say one thing for the Right over the Left: they have taken the initiative and
are now the sole force for change. Granted, supporting a carnival barker for president is an act
of desperation. Nevertheless he was the only option for change and the Right took it. Perhaps
the Left offering little to nothing in the way of change reflects its lack of desperation.
After all, the Left won the culture war and continues to push its agenda to extremes(even though
such extremes will guarantee a back lash that will send people running back to their closets to
hide). The Left still has the MSM media on its side when it comes to cultural issues. Thus the
Left is satisfied with the status quo, with gorging themselves on the crumbs which fall from the
1% table. Consequently, you not only have a political Left that has sold out, you also have the
rest of the Left content to accept that sell out so long as they get their symbolic victories
over their ancient enemy – the Right.
Until the Left recognize its true enemy, the fight will only come from the Right. During that
process more people will filter from the Left to the Right as the latter will offer the only hope
for change.
I think left and right as political shorthand is too limited. Perhaps the NC commentariat could
define up and down versions of each of these political philosophies (ie. left and right) and start
to take control of the framing. Hence we would have up-left, down-left, up-right, and down-right.
I would suggest that up and down could relate to environmental viewpoints.
Just a thought that I haven't given much thought, but it would be funny (to me at least) to
be able to quantify one's political stance in terms of radians.
Excellent comment, EoinW! You just summed up years of content and commentary on this site.
Obviously as the "Left" continues to defend the status quo as you describe it stops being "Left"
in any meaningful way anymore.
This seems to assume that change is an intrinsic good, so that change produced by the right
will necessarily be improvement. Unfortunately, change for the worse is probably more likely than
change for the better under this regime. Equally unfortunately, we may have reached the point
where that is the only thing that will make people reconsider what constitutes a just society
and how to achieve it. In any case, this is where we are now.
The economic left sees its standard of living fall. The social right sees its
cultural verities fall.
The Koch brothers are economically to the very right. They are socially to the
left, perhaps even more socially liberal than many of your liberal friends. No joke. There's
a point here, if I can figure out what it is.
"He [Trump] was the only option for change and the Right took it."
You forget Bernie. The Left tried, and Bernie bowed out, not wanting to be another "Nader"
spoiler. Now, for 2020, the Left thinks it's the "their turn."
The problem is, the Left tends to blow it too (e.g. McGovern in 1972), in part because their
"language" also exudes power and tends to alienate other, more moderate, parts of the coalition
with arcane (and rather elitist) arguments from Derrida et. al.
Trump isn't Right or Left. Trump is a can of gasoline and a match. His voters weren't voting
for a Left or Right agenda. They were voting for a battering ram. That is why he got a pass on
racist, misogynist, fascist statements that would have killed any other candidate.
Trump is starting out with some rallies in the near-future. The Republicans in Congress think
they are going to play patty-cake on policy to push the Koch Brothers agenda. We are going to
see a populist who promised jobs duke it out publicly with small government austerity deficit
cutters. It will be interesting to see what happens when he calls out Republican Congressmen standing
in the way of his agenda by name.
PC is a parody of the 20th Century reform movements. I n the 60's the Black churches
and the labor unions fought Jim Crow laws and explicit institutional discrimination. In the 70's
the feminists worked against legal disabilities written into law. Since the Depression, the unions
fought corporate management create a livable relationship between management and labor. Real struggles,
real problems, real people.
[Tinfoil hat on)]
At the same time the reformist subset was losing themselves in style points, being 'nice',
and passive aggressive intimidation, the corporate community was promoting the anti-government
screech for the masses. That is, at the same time the people lost sight of government as their
counterweight to capital, the left elite was becoming the vile joke Limbaugh and the other talk
radio blowhards said they were. This may be coincidental timing, or their may be someone behind
the French connection and Hamilton Fish touring college campuses in the 80's promoting subjectivism.
It's true the question of 'how they feel' seems to loom large in discussions where social justice
used to be.
[Tinfoil hat off]
There are many words but no communication between the laboring masses and the specialist readers.
Fainting couch feminists have nothing to say to wives and mothers, the slippery redefinitions
out of non-white studies turn off people who work for a living, and the promotion of smaller and
more neurotic minorities are just more friction in a society growing steeper uphill.
"She was studying Liberal Arts at US Ivy League Smith College at the time (which Aussies may
recall was being run by our Jill Kerr Conway back then). So I moved in with my dancing beauty
and we lived happily on her old man's purse for a year."
I hate to be overly pedantic, but Smith College is one of the historically female colleges
known as the Seven Sisters: Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe
College, Smith College, Vassar College, and Wellesley College. While Barnard is connected to Columbia,
and Radcliffe to Harvard, none of the other Sisters has ever been considered any part of the Ancient
Eight (Ivy League) schools: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton,
and Yale.
I find it highly doubtful that someone, unaware of this elementary fact, actually lived off
a beautiful bisexual black ballerina's (wonderful alliteration!) "old man's purse," for a full
year in Northampton, MA. He may well have dated briefly someone like this, but it strains credulity
that– after a full year in this environment– he would never have learned of the distinction between
the Seven Sisters and the Ivy League.
The truth of the matter is not so important. The black ballerina riff had two functions. First
it helped push an ethos for the author of openness and acceptance of various races and sexual
orientations. This is a highly charged subject and so accusations of racism, etc, are never far
away for someone pushing class over identity.
Second it served as a nice hook to get dawgs like me to read through the whole thing; which
was a very good article. Kind of like the opening paragraph of a Penthouse Forum entry, I was
hoping that the author would eventually elaborate on what happened when she pirouetted over him
What's interesting is that in an article pushing class over identity. he never tried to set
his class ethos in order to convince working class people or the bourgeoisie why they should listen
to him.
I have never, ever known Brits to claim an "Oxbridge education" if they haven't attended either
Oxford or Cambridge. Similarly, over several decades of knowing quite well many alumnae from Wellesley,
Smith, etc. I have never once heard them speak of their colleges as "Ivy League."
I do get your point, however. Perhaps Mr. Llewellyn-Smith was deliberately writing for a non-U.S.
audience, and chose to use "Ivy League" as synonymous with "prestigious." I have seen graduates
of Stanford, for example, described as "Ivy Leaguers" in the foreign press.
I think the gradual process whereby the left, or more specifically, the middle class left,
have been consumed by an intellectually vacant went hand in hand with what I found the bizarre
abandonment of interest by the left in economics and in public intellectualism. The manner in
which the left simply surrendered the intellectual arguments over issues like taxes and privatisation
and trade still puzzles me. I suspect it was related to a cleavage between middle class left wingers
and working class activists. They simple stopped talking the same language, so there was nobody
to shout 'stop' when the right simply colonised the most important areas of public policy and
shut down all discussion.*
A related issue is I think a strong authoritarianist strain which runs through some identity
politics. Its common to have liberals discuss how intolerant the religious or right wingers are
of intellectual discussion, but even try to question some of of the shibboleths of gender/race
discussions and you can immediately find yourself labelled a misogynist/homophobe/racist. Just
see some of the things you can get banned from the Guardian CIF for saying.
This site, along with the MSM, has flown way off the handle since the election loss. Democrat-bashing
is the new pastime.
Our nation's problems can be remedied with one dramatic change:
Caps on executive gains in terms of multiples in both public and private companies of a big
enough size. For example, the CEO at most can make 50 times the average salary. Something to that
effect. And any net income gains at the end of the year that are going to be dispersed as dividends,
must proportionally reach the internal laborers as well. Presto, a robust economy.
All employees must share in gains. You don't like it? Tough. The owner will still be rich.
Historically, executives topped out at 20-30 times average salary. Now it's normal for the
number to reach 500-2,000. It's absurd. As if a CEO is manufacturing products, marketing, and
selling them all by himself/herself. As if Tim Cook assembles iPhones and iMacs by hand and sells
them. As if Leslie Moonves writes, directs, acts in, and markets each show.
Put the redistributive mechanism in the private sphere as well as in government. Then America
will be great again.
Bringing C level pay packages at major corporations in line with the real contributions of
the recipients would be great. How would we do it? With laws or regulations or executive orders
banning the federal government from doing business with any firm that failed to comply with some
basic guidelines?
It's an academic point right now in any event. The Trump administration – working together
with the Ryan House – is not going to make legislation or sign executive orders to do anything
remotely like this. Which is one of the many reasons why bashing Democrats has taken off here
I suspect. This election was theirs to lose, and they did everything in their power to toss it.
You do realize that the wealthy are both part of and connected to the legislative branch
of every single country on this planet right? As long as that remains so (as it has since the
dawn of humans) then good luck trying to cap any sort of hording behavior of the wealthy.
As someone who grew up in and participated in those discussions:
1) It was "women's studies" back then. "Gender studies" is actually a major improvement in
how the issues are examined.
2) We'd already long since lost by then, and we were looking to make our own lives better.
Creating a space where we could have good sex and a minimum of violence was better. Reagan's election,
and his re-election, destroyed the Left.
I feel like this piece could use the yellow waders as well. Instead of simply repeating myself
every time these things come up, I proffer an annotation of a important paragraph, to give a sense
of what bothers me here.
The post-structural revolution transpired [in the U.S.] before and during the end of the
Cold War just as the collapse of the Old Soviet Union denuded the global Left of its raison
detre. But its social justice impulse didn't die, [a certain, largely liberal tendency in the
North American academy] turned inwards from a notion of the historic inevitability of the decline
of capitalism and the rise of oppressed classes, towards the liberation of oppressed minorities
within capitalism[, which, if you paid close attention to what was being called for, implied
and sometimes even outright demanded clear restraints be placed upon the power of capital in
order to meet those goals], empowered by control over the [images, public statements, and widespread
ideologies–i.e. discourse {which is about more than just language}] that defined who they were.
The post-structural turn was just as much about Derrida at Johns Hopkins as it was about Foucault
trying to demonstrate the subtle and not-so-subtle effects of power in the explicit context of
the May '68 events in France. The economy ground to a halt, and at one point de Gaulle was so
afraid of a violent revolution that he briefly left the country, leaving the government helpless
to do much of anything, until de Gaulle returned shortly thereafter.
Foucault was not entirely sympathetic to the Left, at least the unions, but he was trying to
articulate a politics that was just as much about liberation from capitalism as classic Marxism.
To that end, discourse analysis was the means to discovering those subtle articulations of power
in human relations, not an end in itself as it was for, say, Barthes.
A claim is being made here regarding the "global left" that clearly comes from a parochial,
North American perspective. Indian academics, for one, never abandoned political economy for identity
politics, especially since in India identity politics, religion, regionalism, castes, etc. were
always a concern and remain so. It seems rather odd to me that the other major current in academia
from the '90s on, namely postcolonialism, is entirely left out of this story, especially when
critiques of militarism and political economy were at the heart of it.
The saddest point of the events of '68 is that looking back society has never been so equal
as at that point in time. That was more or less the time of peak working class living standard
relative to the wealthy classes. It is no accident, at least in my book, that these mostly bourgeois
student activists have a tard at the end of their name in French: soixante-huitards.
In the Sixites the "Left" had control of the economic levers or power - and by Left I mean
those interested in smaller differences between the classes. There is no doubt the Cold War helped
the working classes as the wealthy knew it was in their interest to make capitalism a showcase
of rough egalitarianism. But during the 60's the RIght held cultural sway. It was Berkeley pushing
Free Speech and Lenny Bruce trying to break boundaries while the right tried to keep the Overton
Window as tight and squeaky clean as possible.
But now the "Right" in the sense of those who want to increase the difference between rich
and poor hold economic power while the Left police culture and speech. The provocateurs come from
the right nowadays as they run roughshod over the PC police and try to smash open the racial,
gender. and sexual orientation speech restrictions put in place as the left now control the Overton
Window.
The Left and Liberal are two different things entirely.
In the UK we have three parties:
Labour – the left
Liberal – middle/ liberal
Conservative – the right
Mapping this across to the US:
Labour – X
Liberal – Democrat
Conservative – Republican
The US has been conned from the start and has never had a real party of the Left.
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century US ideas changed and the view of those
at the top was that it would be dangerous for the masses to get any real power, a liberal Democratic
party would suffice to listen to the wants of the masses and interpret them in a sensible way
in accordance with the interests of the wealthy.
We don't want the masses to vote for a clean slate redistribution of land and wealth for heaven's
sake.
In the UK the Liberals were descendents of the Whigs, an elitist Left (like the US Democrats).
Once everyone got the vote, a real Left Labour party appeared and the Whigs/Liberals faded
into insignificance.
It is much easier to see today's trends when you see liberals as an elitist Left.
They have just got so elitist they have lost touch with the working class.
The working class used to be their pet project, now it is other minorities like LGBT and immigration.
Liberals need a pet project to feel self-righteous and good about themselves but they come
from the elite and don't want any real distribution of wealth and privilege as they and their
children benefit from it themselves.
Liberals are the more caring side of the elite, but they care mainly about themselves rather
than wanting a really fair society.
They call themselves progressive, but they like progressing very slowly and never want to reach
their destination where there is real equality.
The US needs its version of the UK Labour party – a real Left – people who like Bernie Sanders
way of thinking should start one up, Bernie might even join up.
In the UK our three parties all went neo-liberal, we had three liberal parties!
No one really likes liberals and they take to hiding in the other two parties, you need to
be careful.
Jeremy Corbyn is taking the Labour party back where it belongs slowly.
Imagine inequality plotted on two axes. Inequality between genders, races and cultures is what liberals have been concentrating on.
This is the x-axis and the focus of identity politics and the liberal left.
On the y-axis we have inequality from top to bottom. 2014 – "85 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of the world"
2016– "Richest 62 people as wealthy as half of world's population"
Doing the maths and assuming a straight line .
5.4 years until one person is as wealthy as poorest half of the world.
This is what the traditional left normally concentrate on, but as they have switched to identity
politics this inequality has gone through the roof. They were over-run by liberals.
Some more attention to the y-axis please.
The neoliberal view L
As long as everyone, from all genders, races and cultures, is visiting the same food bank this
is equality.
left – traditional left – y-axis inequality
liberal – elitist left – x -axis inequality (this doesn't affect my background of wealth and privilege)
labor is being co-opted by the right: the Republican Workers Party I think this rhymes with
Fascist. But then, in a world soon to be literally scrambling for high ground and rebuilding housing
for 50 million people the time honored "worker" might actually have a renaissance.
Identity politics does make democrats lose. The message needs to be economic. It can have the
caveat that various sub groups will be paid special attention to, but if identity is the only
thing talked about then get used to right wing governments.
Empowerment is not just about language, it's about capital, who's got it, who hasn't
and what role government plays between them.
Empowerment is very much about capital, but the Left has never had the cajones to
stare down and take apart the Right's view of 'capital' as some kind of magical elixir that mysteriously
produces 'wealth'.
I ponder my own experiences, which many here probably share:
First: slogging through college(s), showing up to do a defined list of tasks (a 'job', if you
will) to be remunerated with some kind of payment/salary. That was actual 'work' in order to get
my hands on very small amounts of 'capital' (i.e., 'money').
Second: a few times, I just read up on science or looked at the stock pages and did a little
research, and then wrote checks that purchased stock shares in companies that seemed to be exploring
some intriguing technologies. In my case, I got lucky a few times, and presto! That simple act
of writing a few checks made me look like a smarty. Also, paid a few bills. But the simple
act of writing checks cost me n-o-t-h-i-n-g in terms of time, energy, education, physical or mental
exertion.
Third: I have also had the experience of working (start ups) in situations where - literally!!!
- I made less in a day in salary than I'd have made if I'd simply taken a couple thousand dollars
and bought stock in the place I was working.
To summarize:
- I've had capital that I worked long and hard to obtain.
- I've had capital that took me a little research, about one minute to write a check, and brought
me a handsome amount of 'capital'. (Magic!)
- I've worked in situations in which I created MORE capital for others than I created for myself.
And the value of that capital expanded exponentially.
If the Left had a spine and some guts, it would offer a better analysis about what 'capital'
is, the myriad forms it can take, and why any of this matters.
Currently, the Left cannot explain to a whole lot of people why their hard work ended up in
other people's bank accounts. If they had to actually explain that process by which people's hard
work turned into fortunes for others, they'd have a few epiphanies about how wealth is actually
created, and whether some forms of wealth creation are more sustainable than other forms.
IMVHO, I never saw Hillary Clinton as able to address this elemental question of the nature
of wealth creation. The Left has not traditionally given a shrewd analysis of this core problem,
so the Right has been able to control this issue. Which is tragic, because the Right is trapped
in the hedge fund mentality, in the tight grip of realtors and mortgage brokers; they obsess on
assets, and asset classes, and resource extraction. When your mind is trapped by that kind of
thinking, you obsess on the tax code, and on how to use it to generate wealth for yourself. Enter
Trump.
One small correction: Smith is not an Ivy League school, it is one of the "Seven Sisters:
Ivy League:
Brown
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Harvard
Penn
Princeton
Yale
Seven Sisters:
Barnard
Bryn Mawr
Mount Holyoke
Radcliffe
Smith
Vassar
Wellesley
A much more nuanced discussion of the primacy of identity politics on the Left in Britain and
the US is
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/29/prospects-for-an-alt-left/
"Prospects for an Alt-Left," November 29, 2016, by Elliot Murphy, who teaches in the Division
of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College, London.
And let's not forget that identity politics arose in the first place because of genuine discrimination,
which still exists today. In forsaking identity politics in favor of one of class, we should not
forget the original reasons for the rise of the phenomena, however poorly employed by some of
its practitioners, and however mined by capitalism to give the semblance of tolerance and equality
while obscuring the reality of intolerance and inequality.
Trivially, I would think the last thing to do is adopt the "alt-" moniker, thereby cementing
the impression in the mind of the public that the two are in some sense similar.
The blogger Lord Keynes at Social Democracy for the 21st Century at blogspot suggests Realist
Left instead of alt-left. I think how people are using the term "identity politics" at the moment
isn't "actual anti-racism in policy and recruitment" but "pandering to various demographics to
get their loyalty and votes so that the party machine doesn't have to try and gain votes by doing
economic stuff that frightens donors, lobbyists and the media". Clinton improved the female vote
for Democratic president by 1 percentage point, and the black and Latino shares of the Republican
were unchanged from Romney in 2012. Thus, identity politics is not working when the economy needs
attention, even against the most offensive opponent.
So to repress class conflicts, the kleptocracy splintered them into opposition between racists
and POC, bigots and LGBTQ, patriarchal oppressors and women, etc., etc. The US state-authorized
parties used it for divide and rule. The left fell for it and neutered itself. Good. Fuck the
left.
Outside the Western bloc the left got supplanted with a more sensible opposition: between humans
and the overreaching state. That alternative view subsumes US-style identity politics in antidiscrimination
and cultural rights. It subsumes traditional class struggle in labor, migrant, and economic rights.
It reforms and improves discredited US constitutional rights, and integrates it all into the concepts
of peace and development. It's up and running with binding
law and authoritative
institutions
.
So good riddance to the old left and the new left.
Human rights have already replaced
them in the 80-plus per cent of the world represented by UNCTAD and the G-77. That's why the USA
fights tooth and nail to keep them out of your reach.
To All Commenters: thanks for the discussion. Many good, thoughtful ideas/perspectives.
Mine? Living in California (a minority white populace, broad economic engine, high living expenses
(and huge homeless population) and a leader in alternative energy: Trump is what happens when
you don't allow the "people" to vote for their preferred candidates (Bernie) and don't listen
to a select few voters in key electoral states (WI,MI,PA).
The electorate is angry (true liberals at the Dems, voters in select electoral states at "everything").
If democracy is messy, then that's what we've got; a mess. Unfortunately, it's coming at the absolutely
wrong time (Climate Change, lethal policing, financial elite impunity).
Hold this same election with different (multiple) candidates and the outcome is likely different.
In the end, we all need to work and demand a more fair and Just society. (Or California is likely
to secede.)
"Meanwhile the global Left looked on from its Ivory Tower of identity politics and was pleased.
Capitalism was spreading the wealth to oppressed brothers and sisters, and if there were some
losers in the West then that was only natural as others rose in prominence."
I can only imagine the glee of the wealthy feminists at Smith while they witnessed the white,
lunch pailed, working class American male thrown out of work and into the gutter of irrelevance
and despair. The perfect comeuppance for a demographic believed to be the arch-nemesis of women
and minorities. Nothing seems quite so fashionable at the moment as hating white male Republicans
that live outside of proper-thinking coastal enclaves of prosperity. Unfortunately I fail to see
how this attitude helps the country. Seems like more divide and conquer from our overlords on
high.
just more whining from the Weekly Standard. While men may have been disproportionately displaced
in jobs that require physical strength, many women (nurses?) likely lost their homes during the
Great Financial Scam and its fallout.
The enemy is a rigged political, financial, and judicial system.
Identity Politics gestated for a while before the 90s. Beginning with a backlash against Affirmative
Action in the 70s, the Left began to turn Liberal. East Coast intellectuals who were anxious they
would be precluded from entering the best schools may have been the catalyst (article from Jacobin
I think).
But certainly the fall of the USSR was the thing that forced capitalism's hand. At that
point capitalism had no choice but to step up and prove that it could really bring a better life
to the world.
A Minsky event of biblical proportions soon followed (it only took about 10 years!)
and now all is devastation and nobody has clue. But the 1990 effort could have been in earnest.
Capitalists mean well but they are always in denial about the inequality they create which finally
started a chain reaction in "identity politics" as reactions to the stress of economic competition
bounced around in every society like a pinball machine. A tedious and insufferable game which
seems to have culminated in Hillary the Relentless. I won't say capitalism is idiotic. But something
is.
"Perhaps the NC commentariat could define up and down versions of each of these political
philosophies (ie. left and right) and start to take control of the framing."
Well, I'll have a first go, since I was around at the time.
Left and Right only really make sense in the context of the distribution of power and wealth,
and only when there is a difference between them about that distribution. This was historically
the case for more than 150 years after the French Revolution. By the mid-1960s, there was a sense
that the Left was winning, and would continue to win. Progressive taxation, zero unemployment,
little real poverty by today's standards, free education and healthcare . and many influential
political figures (Tony Crosland for example) saw the major task of the future as deciding where
the fruits of economic growth could be most justly applied.
Three things happened that made the Left completely unprepared for the counter-attack in the 1970s.
First, simple complacency. When Thatcher appeared, most people thought she'd escaped from a Monty
Python sketch. The idea that she might actually take power and use it was incredible.
Secondly, the endless factionalism and struggles for power within the Left, usually over arcane
points of ideology, mixed with vicious personal rivalries. The Left loves defeats, and picks over
them obsessively, looking for someone else to blame.
Third, the influence of 1968 and the turning away from the real world, towards LSD and the New
Age, and the search for dark and hidden truths and structures of power in the world. Fueled by
careless and superficial readings of bad translations of Foucault and Derrida, leftists discovered
an entire new intellectual continent into which they could extend their wars and feuds, which
was much more congenial, since it involved eviscerating each other, rather than seriously taking
on the forces of capitalism and the state.
And that's the very short version. We've been living with the consequences ever since. The
Left has been essentially powerless, and powerlessness, of course, corrupts. There's always someone
weaker than you, which is why identity politics is essentially a conservative, disciplining force,
with a vested interest in the problems it has chosen to identify continuing, or it would have
no reason to exist.
So until class-based politics and struggles over power and money re-start (if they ever do) I
respectfully suggest that "Left" and "Right" be retired as terms that no longer have any meaning.
" powerlessness, of course, corrupts. There's always someone weaker than you, which is
why identity politics is essentially a conservative, disciplining force, with a vested interest
in the problems it has chosen to identify "
Yes. As long as the doyens of identity politics don't have any real fear of being homeless
they can happily indulge in internecine warfare. It's a lot more fun than working to get $20/hour
for a bunch of snaggle-toothed guys who kind of don't like you.
I read: "Traditional dialectical history was being supplanted by a new suite of studies based
around truth as "discourse". Driven by the French post-modern thinkers of the 70s and 80s, the
US academy was adopting and adapting the ideas Foucault, Derrida and Barthe to a variety of civil
rights movements that spawned gender and racial studies."
Of course, I have been a college professor since the late 1970s. On the other hand, I am a
physicist. The notion that truth is discourse is, in my opinion, daft, and says much about the
nature of the modern liberal arts, at least as understood by many undergraduates. I have actually
heard of the folks referenced in the above, and to my knowledge their influence in science, engineering,
technology, and mathematics–the academic fields that are in this century actually central*–is
negligible.
*Yes, I am in favor of a small number of students becoming professional historians, dramatists,
and composers, but the number of these is limited.
Identity politics is a disaster ongoing for the Democratic Party, for reasons they seem to
have overlooked. First, the additional identity group is white. We already see this in the South,
where 90% of the white population in many states votes Republican.
When that spreads to the rest
of the country, there will be a permanent Republican majority until the Republicans create a new
major disaster.
Second, some Democratic commentators appear to have assumed that if your forebearers
spoke Spanish, you can not be white. This belief is properly grouped with the belief that if your
forebearers spoke Gaelic or Italian, you were from one of the colored races of Europe (a phrase
that has faded into antiquity, but some of my friends specialize in American history of the relevant
period), and were therefore not White.
Identity politics is a losing strategy, as will it appears
be noticed by the losers only after it is too late.
An extremely important point, but overblown in a way that may reflect the author's background
and is certainly rhetorical.
So soon we forget the Battle of Seattle. The Left has been opposed to globalization, deregulation,
etc., all along. Partly he's talking about an academic pseudo-left, partly confusing the left
with the Democrats and other "center-left," captured parties.
That doesn't invalidate his point. If you want to see it in full-blown, unadorned action, try
Democrat sites like Salon and Raw Story. A factor he doesn't do justice to is the extreme self-righteousness
that accompanies it, supported, I suppose, by the very real injustices perpetrated against minorities
– and women, not a minority.
The whole thing is essentially a category error, so it would be nice to see a followup that
doesn't perpetuate the error. But it's valuable for stating the problem, which can be hard to
present, especially in the face of gales of self-righteousness.
Well said. An excellent attack on 'identity politics.'
I mean, Barack Obama was our first black president, but most blacks didn't do very well.
George W. Bush was our first retard president, and most people with cognitive handicaps didn't
do very well.
But we can boil it all down to something even simpler and more primal: divide and conquer.
'Identity politics' is both more accurate, and more useful, a term than any alternative such as
racism, fascism, ethnonationalism, etc. It's just the identity in question is that of the majority.
Voters voted for Trump, or Brexit, because they identified with him, or it. In doing so, they
found that whatever they wanted is what that represents.
But the action always comes before the consequences; you can't get upset about Trump supporters
being called racists unless you already identify with them. The action is the choice of identity,
the consequence is the adoption of opinion.
"... CNN is Paul's biggest alleged culprit, with nine entries, followed by the NY Times and MSNBC, with six each. The NY Times has recently come under fire from President-elect Donald Trump, who accuses them of being "totally wrong" on news regarding his transition team, while describing them as "failing." ..."
"... CNN's Wolf Blitzer is also amongst those named on the list. In an email from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) released by WikiLeaks, the DNC staff discusses sending questions to CNN for an interview with Donald Trump. ..."
"... So-called 'fake news' has been recently attacked by US President Barack Obama, who claimed that false news shared online may have played a role in Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election. ..."
"This list contains the culprits who told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and
lied us into multiple bogus wars,"according to a report on his website, Ron Paul Liberty Report.
Paul claims the list is sourced and "holds a lot more water" than a list previously released by
Melissa Zimdars, who is described on Paul's website as "a leftist feminist professor."
"These are the news sources that told us 'if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,'"
he said. "They told us that Hillary Clinton had a 98% of winning the election. They tell us in
a never-ending loop that 'The economy is in great shape!'"
Paul's list includes the full names of the "fake news" journalists as well as the publications
they write for, with what appears to be hyperlinks to where the allegations are sourced from.
In most cases, this is WikiLeaks, but none of the hyperlinks are working at present, leaving the
exact sources of the list unknown.
CNN is Paul's biggest alleged culprit, with nine entries, followed by the NY Times and MSNBC,
with six each. The NY Times has recently come under fire from President-elect Donald Trump, who
accuses them of being "totally wrong" on news regarding his transition team, while describing
them as "failing."
The publication hit back, however, saying their business has increased since his election,
with a surge in new subscriptions.
CNN's Wolf Blitzer is also amongst those named on the list. In an email from the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) released by WikiLeaks, the DNC staff discusses sending questions to CNN
for an interview with Donald Trump.
Also listed is NY Times journalist Maggie Haberman, whom leaked emails showed working closely
with Clinton's campaign to present the Democratic candidate in a favorable light.
So-called 'fake news' has been recently attacked by US President Barack Obama, who claimed
that false news shared online may have played a role in Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential
election.
Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg has now said that the social media site may begin entrusting
third parties with filtering the news.
At least with Trump I expect him to talk crap but
Obama talks crap as well when he should know better:
The values that we talked about -- the values of democracy, and free speech, and international
norms, and rule of law, respecting the ability of other countries to determine their own destiny
and preserve their sovereignty and territorial integrity -- those things are not something
that we can set aside.
We've seen the make-shift "fake news" list created by a
leftist feminist professor. Well, another fake news list has been revealed
and this one holds a lot more water.
This list contains the culprits who told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and lied
us into multiple bogus wars. These are the news sources that told us "if you like your doctor, you
can keep your doctor." They told us that Hillary Clinton had a 98% of winning the election. They
tell us in a never-ending loop that "The economy is in great shape!"
It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all
need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part.
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism has been disastrous for the Rust Belt, and I think we need to envision a new future for what was once the country's industrial heartland, now little more than its wasteland ..."
"... The question of what the many millions of often-unionized factory workers, SMEs which supplied them, family farmers (now fully industrialized and owned by corporations), and all those in secondary production and services who once supported them are to actually do in future to earn a decent living is what I believe should really be the subject of debate. ..."
"... two factors (or three, I guess) have contributed to this state of despair: offshoring and outsourcing, and technology. ..."
"... Medicaid, the CHIP program, the SNAP program and others (including NGOs and private charitable giving) may alleviate some of the suffering, but there is currently no substitute for jobs that would enable men and women to live lives of dignity – a decent place to live, good educations for their children, and a reasonable, secure pension in old age. Near-, at-, and below-minimum wage jobs devoid of any benefits don't allow any of these – at most, they make possible a subsistence life, one which requires continued reliance on public assistance throughout one's lifetime. ..."
"... In the U.S. (a neoliberal pioneer), poverty is closely linked with inequality and thus, a high GINI coefficient (near that of Turkey); where there is both poverty and a very unequal distribution of resources, this inevitably affects women (and children) and racial (and ethnic) minorities disproportionately. The economic system, racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not separate, stand-alone issues; they are profoundly intertwined. ..."
"... But really, if you think about it, slavery was defined as ownership, ownership of human capital (which was convertible into cash), and women in many societies throughout history were acquired as part of a financial transaction (either through purchase or through sale), and control of their capital (land, property [farmland, herds], valuables and later, money) often entrusted to a spouse or male guardian. All of these practices were economically-driven, even if the driver wasn't 21st-century capitalism. ..."
"... Let it be said at once: Trump's victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive governments to deal with this. ..."
"... Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though, was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote. ..."
"... Regional inequality and globalization are the principal drivers in Japanese politics, too, along with a number of social drivers. ..."
"... The tsunami/nuclear meltdown combined with the Japanese government's uneven response is an apt metaphor for the impact of neo-liberalism/globalization on Japan; and on the US. I then explained that the income inequality in the US was far more severe than that of Japan and that many Americans did not support the export of jobs to China/Mexico. ..."
"... I contend that in some hypothetical universe the DNC and corrupt Clinton machine could have been torn out, root and branch, within months. As I noted, however, the decision to run HRC effectively unopposed was made several years, at least, before the stark evidence of the consequences of such a decision appeared in sharp relief with Brexit. ..."
"... Just as the decline of Virginia coal is due to global forces and corporate stupidity, so the decline of the rust belt is due to long (30 year plus) global forces and corporate decisions that predate the emergence of identity politics. ..."
"... It's interesting that the clear headed thinkers of the Marxist left, who pride themselves on not being distracted by identity, don't want to talk about these factors when discussing the plight of their cherished white working class. ..."
"... The construction 'white working class' is a useful governing tool that splits poor people and possible coalitions against the violence of capital. Now, discussion focuses on how some of the least powerful, most vulnerable people in the United States are the perpetrators of a great injustice against racialised and minoritised groups. Such commentary colludes in the pathologisation of the working class, of poor people. Victims are inculpated as the vectors of noxious, atavistic vices while the perpetrators get off with impunity, showing off their multihued, cosmopolitan C-suites and even proposing that their free trade agreements are a form of anti-racist solidarity. Most crucially, such analysis ignores the continuities between a Trumpian dystopia and our satisfactory present. ..."
"... Race-thinking forecloses the possibility of the coalitions that you imagine, and reproduces ideas of difference in ways that always, always privilege 'whiteness'. ..."
"... Historical examples of ethnic groups becoming 'white', how it was legal and political decision-making that defined the present racial taxonomy, suggest that groups can also lose or have their 'whiteness' threatened. CB has written here about how, in the UK at least, Eastern and Southern Europeans are racialised, and so refused 'whiteness'. JQ has written about southern white minoritisation. Many commentators have pointed that the 'white working class' vote this year looked a lot like a minority vote. ..."
"... Given the subordination of groups presently defined as 'white working class', I wonder if we could think beyond ethnic and epidermal definition to consider that the impossibility of the American Dream refuses these groups whiteness; i.e the hoped for privileges of racial superiority, much in the same way that African Americans, Latin Americans and other racialised minorities are denied whiteness. Can a poor West Virginian living in a toxified drugged out impoverished landscape really be defined as a carrier of 'white privilege'? ..."
"... I was first pointed at this by the juxtapositions of racialised working class and immigrants in Imogen Tyler's Revolting Subjects – Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain but this below is a useful short article that takes a historical perspective. ..."
"... In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional continuity under presidential government - but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s." ..."
"... Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote: "the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate." ..."
"... In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found, a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.' ..."
"... In any case, as I pointed out before, given that the US is increasingly an urbanised country, and the Electoral College was created to protect rural (slave) states, the grotesque electoral result we have just seen is likely to recur, which means more and more Presidents with dubious democratic legitimacy. Thanks to Bush (and Obama) these Presidents will have, at the same time, more and more power. ..."
"... To return to my original question and answer it myself: I'm forced to conclude that the Democrats did not specifically address the revitalization – rebirth of the Rust Belt in their 2016 platform. Its failure to do so carried a heavy cost that (nearly) all of us will be forced to pay. ..."
"... This sub seems to have largely fallen into the psychologically comfortable trap of declaring that everyone who voted against their preferred candidate is racist. It's a view pushed by the neoliberals, who want to maintain he stranglehold of identity politics over the DNC, and it makes upper-class 'intellectuals' feel better about themselves and their betrayal of the filthy, subhuman white underclass (or so they see it). ..."
"... You can scream 'those jobs are never coming back!' all you want, but people are never going to accept it. So either you come up with a genuine solution (instead of simply complaining that your opponents solutions won't work; you're partisan and biased, most voters won't believe you), you may as well resign yourself to fascism. Because whining that you don't know what to do won't stop people from lining up behind someone who says that they do have one, whether it'll work or not. Nobody trusts the elite enough to believe them when they say that jobs are never coming back. Nobody trusts the elite at all. ..."
"... You sound just like the Wiemar elite. No will to solve the problem, but filled with terror at the inevitable result of failing to solve the problem. ..."
"... One brutal fact tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party in 2016: the American Nazi party is running on a platform of free health care to working class people. This means that the American Nazi Party is now running to the left of the Democratic party. ..."
"... Back in the 1930s, when the economy collapsed, fascists appeared and took power. Racists also came out of the woodwork, ditto misogynists. Fast forward 80 years, and the same thing has happened all over again. The global economy melted down in 2008 and fascists appeared promising to fix the problems that the pols in power wouldn't because they were too closely tied to the existing (failed) system. Along with the fascists, racists gained power because they were able to scapegoat minorities as the alleged cause of everyone's misery. ..."
"... None of this is surprising. We have seen it before. Whenever you get a depression in a modern industrial economy, you get scapegoating, racism, and fascists. We know what to do. The problem is that the current Democratic party isn't doing it. ..."
"... . It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part. ..."
"... This hammered people on the bottom, disproportionately African Americans and especially single AA mothers in America. It crushed the blue collar workers. It is wiping out the savings and careers of college-educated white collar workers now, at least, the ones who didn't go to the Ivy League, which is 90% of them. ..."
"... Calling Hillary an "imperfect candidate" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a "boating accident." Trump was an imperfect candidate. Why did he win? ..."
"... "The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians." ..."
"... "It is not an exaggeration to say that the Democratic Party is in shambles as a political force. Not only did it just lose the White House to a wildly unpopular farce of a candidate despite a virtually unified establishment behind it, and not only is it the minority party in both the Senate and the House, but it is getting crushed at historical record rates on the state and local levels as well. Surveying this wreckage last week, party stalwart Matthew Yglesias of Vox minced no words: `the Obama years have created a Democratic Party that's essentially a smoking pile of rubble.' ..."
"... "One would assume that the operatives and loyalists of such a weak, defeated and wrecked political party would be eager to engage in some introspection and self-critique, and to produce a frank accounting of what they did wrong so as to alter their plight. In the case of 2016 Democrats, one would be quite mistaken." ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... "At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response, governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable-trying to get to, and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent. The problem with doing so, over time, is that targeting any variable long enough undermines the value of the variable itself-a phenomenon known as Goodhart's law. (..) ..."
"... " what we see [today] is a reversal of power between creditors and debtors as the anti-inflationary regime of the past 30 years undermines itself-what we might call "Goodhart's revenge." In this world, yields compress and creditors fret about their earnings, demanding repayment of debt at all costs. Macro-economically, this makes the situation worse: the debtors can't pay-but politically, and this is crucial-it empowers debtors since they can't pay, won't pay, and still have the right to vote. ..."
"... "The traditional parties of the center-left and center-right, the builders of this anti-inflationary order, get clobbered in such a world, since they are correctly identified by these debtors as the political backers of those demanding repayment in an already unequal system, and all from those with the least assets. This produces anti-creditor, pro-debtor coalitions-in-waiting that are ripe for the picking by insurgents of the left and the right, which is exactly what has happened. ..."
"... "The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism. It's also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun." ..."
"... They want what their families have had which is secure, paid, benefits rich, blue collar work. ..."
"... trump's campaign empathized with that feeling just by focusing on the factory jobs as jobs and not as anachronisms that are slowly fading away for whatever reason. Clinton might have been "correct", but these voters didn't want to hear "the truth". And as much as you can complain about how stupid they are for wanting to be lied to, that is the unfortunate reality you, and the Democratic party, have to accept. ..."
"... trump was offering a "bailout" writ large. Clinton had no (good) counteroffer. It was like the tables were turned. Romney was the one talking about "change" and "restructuring" while Obama was defending keeping what was already there. ..."
"... "Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html ..."
"... Clinton toward the end offered tariffs. But the trump campaign hit back with what turned out to be a pretty strong counter attack – ""How's she going to get tough on China?" said Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro on CNN's Quest Means Business. He notes that some of Clinton's economic advisors have supported TPP or even worked on it. "" ..."
The question is no longer her neoliberalism, but yours. Keep it or throw it away?
I wish this issue was being seriously discussed. Neoliberalism has been disastrous for
the Rust Belt, and I think we need to envision a new future for what was once the country's industrial
heartland, now little more than its wasteland (cf. "flyover zone" – a pejorative term which
inhabitants of the zone are not too stupid to understand perfectly, btw).
The question of what the many millions of often-unionized factory workers, SMEs which supplied
them, family farmers (now fully industrialized and owned by corporations), and all those in secondary
production and services who once supported them are to actually do in future to earn a decent
living is what I believe should really be the subject of debate.
As noted upthread, two factors (or three, I guess) have contributed to this state of despair:
offshoring and outsourcing, and technology. The jobs that have been lost will not return,
and indeed will be lost in ever greater numbers – just consider what will happen to the trucking
sector when self-driving trucks hit the roads sometime in the next 10-20 years (3.5 million truckers;
8.7 in allied jobs).
Medicaid, the CHIP program, the SNAP program and others (including NGOs and private charitable
giving) may alleviate some of the suffering, but there is currently no substitute for jobs that
would enable men and women to live lives of dignity – a decent place to live, good educations
for their children, and a reasonable, secure pension in old age. Near-, at-, and below-minimum
wage jobs devoid of any benefits don't allow any of these – at most, they make possible a subsistence
life, one which requires continued reliance on public assistance throughout one's lifetime.
In the U.S. (a neoliberal pioneer), poverty is closely linked with inequality and thus,
a high GINI coefficient (near that of Turkey); where there is both poverty and a very unequal
distribution of resources, this inevitably affects women (and children) and racial (and ethnic)
minorities disproportionately. The economic system, racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not separate,
stand-alone issues; they are profoundly intertwined.
I appreciate and espouse the goals of identity politics in all their multiplicity, and also
understand that the institutions of slavery and sexism predated modern capitalist economies.
But really, if you think about it, slavery was defined as ownership, ownership of human capital
(which was convertible into cash), and women in many societies throughout history were acquired
as part of a financial transaction (either through purchase or through sale), and control of their
capital (land, property [farmland, herds], valuables and later, money) often entrusted to a spouse
or male guardian. All of these practices were economically-driven, even if the driver wasn't 21st-century
capitalism.
Also: Faustusnotes@100
For example Indiana took the ACA Medicaid expansion but did so with additional conditions that
make it worse than in neighboring states run by democratic governors.
And what states would those be? IL, IA, MI, OH, WI, KY, and TN have Republican governors. Were
you thinking pre-2014? pre-2012?
To conclude and return to my original point: what's to become of the Rust Belt in future? Did
the Democratic platform include a New New Deal for PA, OH, MI, WI, and IA (to name only the five
Rust Belt states Trump flipped)?
" Let it be said at once: Trump's victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic
and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive
governments to deal with this.
Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization
launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial
and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though,
was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the
Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote. "
What should have been one comment came out as 4, so apologies on that front.
I spent the last week explaining the US election to my students in Japan in pretty much the
terms outlined by Lilla and PIketty, so I was delighted to discover these two articles.
Regional inequality and globalization are the principal drivers in Japanese politics, too,
along with a number of social drivers. It was therefore very easy to call for a show of hands
to identify students studying here in Tokyo who are trying to decide whether or not to return
to areas such as Tohoku to build their lives; or remain in Kanto/Tokyo – the NY/Washington/LA
of Japan put crudely.
I asked students from regions close to Tohoku how they might feel if the Japanese prime minister
decided not to visit the region following Fukushima after the disaster, or preceding an election.
The tsunami/nuclear meltdown combined with the Japanese government's uneven response is an
apt metaphor for the impact of neo-liberalism/globalization on Japan; and on the US. I then explained
that the income inequality in the US was far more severe than that of Japan and that many Americans
did not support the export of jobs to China/Mexico.
I then asked the students, particularly those from outlying regions whether they believe Japan
needed a leader who would 'bring back Japanese jobs' from Viet Nam and China, etc. Many/most agreed
wholeheartedly. I then asked whether they believed Tokyo people treated those outside Kanto as
'inferiors.' Many do.
Piketty may be right regarding Trump's long-term effects on income inequality. He is wrong,
I suggest, to argue that Democrats failed to respond to Sanders' support. I contend that in
some hypothetical universe the DNC and corrupt Clinton machine could have been torn out, root
and branch, within months. As I noted, however, the decision to run HRC effectively unopposed
was made several years, at least, before the stark evidence of the consequences of such a decision
appeared in sharp relief with Brexit.
Also worth noting is that the rust belts problems are as old as Reagan – even the term dates
from the 80s, the issue is so uncool that there is a dire straits song about it. Some portion
of the decline of manufacturing there is due to manufacturers shifting to the south, where the
anti Union states have an advantage. Also there has been new investment – there were no Japanese
car companies in the us in the 1980s, so they are new job creators, yet insufficient to make up
the losses. Just as the decline of Virginia coal is due to global forces and corporate stupidity,
so the decline of the rust belt is due to long (30 year plus) global forces and corporate decisions
that predate the emergence of identity politics.
It's interesting that the clear headed thinkers of the Marxist left, who pride themselves
on not being distracted by identity, don't want to talk about these factors when discussing the
plight of their cherished white working class. Suddenly it's not the forces of capital and
the objective facts of history, but a bunch of whiny black trannies demanding safe spaces and
protesting police violence, that drove those towns to ruin.
And what solutions do they think the dems should have proposed? It can't be welfare, since
we got the ACA (watered down by representatives of the rust belt states). Is it, seriously, tariffs?
Short of going to an election promising w revolution, what should the dems have done? Give us
a clear answer so we can see what the alternative to identity politics is.
basil 11.19.16 at 5:11 am
Did this go through?
Thinking with WLGR @15, Yan @81, engels variously above,
The construction 'white working class' is a useful governing tool that splits poor people
and possible coalitions against the violence of capital. Now, discussion focuses on how some of
the least powerful, most vulnerable people in the United States are the perpetrators of a great
injustice against racialised and minoritised groups. Such commentary colludes in the pathologisation
of the working class, of poor people. Victims are inculpated as the vectors of noxious, atavistic
vices while the perpetrators get off with impunity, showing off their multihued, cosmopolitan
C-suites and even proposing that their free trade agreements are a form of anti-racist solidarity.
Most crucially, such analysis ignores the continuities between a Trumpian dystopia and our satisfactory
present.
I get that the tropes around race are easy, and super-available. Privilege confessing is very
in vogue as a prophylactic against charges of racism. But does it threaten the structures that
produce this abjection – either as embittered, immiserated 'white working class' or as threatened
minority group? It is always *those* 'white' people, the South, the Working Class, and never the
accusers some of whom are themselves happy to vote for a party that drowns out anti-war protesters
with chants of USA! USA!
Race-thinking forecloses the possibility of the coalitions that you imagine, and reproduces
ideas of difference in ways that always, always privilege 'whiteness'.
--
Historical examples of ethnic groups becoming 'white', how it was legal and political decision-making
that defined the present racial taxonomy, suggest that groups can also lose or have their 'whiteness'
threatened. CB has written here about how, in the UK at least, Eastern and Southern Europeans
are racialised, and so refused 'whiteness'. JQ has written about southern white minoritisation.
Many commentators have pointed that the 'white working class' vote this year looked a lot like
a minority vote.
Given the subordination of groups presently defined as 'white working class', I wonder
if we could think beyond ethnic and epidermal definition to consider that the impossibility of
the American Dream refuses these groups whiteness; i.e the hoped for privileges of racial superiority,
much in the same way that African Americans, Latin Americans and other racialised minorities are
denied whiteness. Can a poor West Virginian living in a toxified drugged out impoverished landscape
really be defined as a carrier of 'white privilege'?
I was first pointed at this by the juxtapositions of racialised working class and immigrants
in Imogen Tyler's Revolting Subjects – Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain but
this below is a useful short article that takes a historical perspective.
The 'racialisation' of class in Britain has been a consequence of the weakening of 'class'
as a political idea since the 1970s – it is a new construction, not an historic one.
.
This is not to deny the existence of working-class racism, or to suggest that racism is
somehow acceptable if rooted in perceived socio-economic grievances. But it is to suggest that
the concept of a 'white working class' needs problematizing, as does the claim that the British
working-class was strongly committed to a post-war vision of 'White Britain' analogous to the
politics which sustained the idea of a 'White Australia' until the 1960s.
Yes, old, settled neighbourhoods could be profoundly distrustful of outsiders – all outsiders,
including the researchers seeking to study them – but, when it came to race, they were internally
divided. We certainly hear working-class racist voices – often echoing stock racist complaints
about over-crowding, welfare dependency or exploitative landlords and small businessmen, but
we don't hear the deep pathological racial fears laid bare in the letters sent to Enoch Powell
after his so-called 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968 (Whipple, 2009).
But more importantly, we also hear strong anti-racist voices loudly and clearly. At Wallsend
on Tyneside, where the researchers were gathering their data just as Powell shot to notoriety,
we find workers expressing casual racism, but we also find eloquent expressions of an internationalist,
solidaristic perspective in which, crucially, black and white are seen as sharing the same
working-class interests.
Racism is denounced as a deliberate capitalist strategy to divide workers against themselves,
weakening their ability to challenge those with power over their lives (shipbuilding had long
been a very fractious industry and its workers had plenty of experience of the dangers of internal
sectarian battles).
To be able to mobilize across across racialised divisions, to have race wither away entirely
would, for me, be the beginning of a politics that allowed humanity to deal with the inescapable
violence of climate change and corporate power.
*To add to the bibliography – David R. Roediger, Elizabeth D. Esch – The Production of Difference
– Race and the Management of Labour, and Denise Ferreira da Silva – Toward a Global Idea of Race.
And I have just been pointed at Ian Haney-López, White By Law – The Legal Construction of Race.
FWIW 'merica's constitutional democracy is going to collapse.
Some day - not tomorrow, not next year, but probably sometime before runaway climate change
forces us to seek a new life in outer-space colonies - there is going to be a collapse of the
legal and political order and its replacement by something else. If we're lucky, it won't be violent.
If we're very lucky, it will lead us to tackle the underlying problems and result in a better,
more robust, political system. If we're less lucky, well, then, something worse will happen .
In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from
the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional
continuity under presidential government - but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s."
Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly
important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the
Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When
they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the
basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote:
"the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly
legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate."
In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing
of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found,
a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a
period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative
and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.'
Given that the basic point is polarisation (i.e. that both the President and Congress have
equally strong arguments to be the the 'voice of the people') and that under the US appalling
constitutional set up, there is no way to decide between them, one can easily imagine the so to
speak 'hyperpolarisation' of a Trump Presidency as being the straw (or anvil) that breaks the
camel's back.
In any case, as I pointed out before, given that the US is increasingly an urbanised country,
and the Electoral College was created to protect rural (slave) states, the grotesque electoral
result we have just seen is likely to recur, which means more and more Presidents with dubious
democratic legitimacy. Thanks to Bush (and Obama) these Presidents will have, at the same time,
more and more power.
nastywoman @ 150
Just study the program of the 'Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland' or the Program of 'Die
Grünen' in Germany (take it through google translate) and you get all the answers you are looking
for.
No need to run it through google translate, it's available in English on their site. [Or one
could refer to the Green Party of the U.S. site/platform, which is very similar in scope and overall
philosophy. (www.gp.org).]
I looked at several of their topic areas (Agricultural, Global, Health, Rural) and yes, these
are general theses I would support. But they're hardly policy/project proposals for specific regions
or communities – the Greens espouse "think global, act local", so programs and projects must be
tailored to individual communities and regions.
To return to my original question and answer it myself: I'm forced to conclude that the
Democrats did not specifically address the revitalization – rebirth of the Rust Belt in their
2016 platform. Its failure to do so carried a heavy cost that (nearly) all of us will be forced
to pay.
This sub seems to have largely fallen into the psychologically comfortable trap of declaring
that everyone who voted against their preferred candidate is racist. It's a view pushed by the
neoliberals, who want to maintain he stranglehold of identity politics over the DNC, and it makes
upper-class 'intellectuals' feel better about themselves and their betrayal of the filthy, subhuman
white underclass (or so they see it).
I expect at this point that Trump will be reelected comfortably. If not only the party itself,
but also most of its activists, refuse to actually change, it's more or less inevitable.
You can scream 'those jobs are never coming back!' all you want, but people are never going
to accept it. So either you come up with a genuine solution (instead of simply complaining that
your opponents solutions won't work; you're partisan and biased, most voters won't believe you),
you may as well resign yourself to fascism. Because whining that you don't know what to do won't
stop people from lining up behind someone who says that they do have one, whether it'll work or
not. Nobody trusts the elite enough to believe them when they say that jobs are never coming back.
Nobody trusts the elite at all.
You sound just like the Wiemar elite. No will to solve the problem, but filled with terror
at the inevitable result of failing to solve the problem.
One brutal fact tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party in 2016:
the American Nazi party is running on a platform of free health care to working class people.
This means that the American Nazi Party is now running to the left of the Democratic party.
Folks, we have seen this before. Let's not descend in backbiting and recriminations, okay?
We've got some commenters charging that other commenters are "mansplaining," meanwhile we've got
other commenters claiming that it's economics and not racism/misogyny. It's all of the above.
Back in the 1930s, when the economy collapsed, fascists appeared and took power. Racists
also came out of the woodwork, ditto misogynists. Fast forward 80 years, and the same thing has
happened all over again. The global economy melted down in 2008 and fascists appeared promising
to fix the problems that the pols in power wouldn't because they were too closely tied to the
existing (failed) system. Along with the fascists, racists gained power because they were able
to scapegoat minorities as the alleged cause of everyone's misery.
None of this is surprising. We have seen it before. Whenever you get a depression in a
modern industrial economy, you get scapegoating, racism, and fascists. We know what to do. The
problem is that the current Democratic party isn't doing it.
Instead, what we're seeing is a whirlwind of finger-pointing from the Democratic leadership
that lost this election and probably let the entire New Deal get rolled back and wiped out. Putin
is to blame! Julian Assange is to blame! The biased media are to blame! Voter suppression is to
blame! Bernie Sanders is to blame! Jill Stein is to blame! Everyone and anyone except the current
out-of-touch influence-peddling elites who currently have run the Democratic party into the ground.
We need the feminists and the black lives matter groups and we also need the green party people
and the Bernie Sanders activists. But everyone has to understand that this is not an isolated
event. Trump did not just happen by accident. First there was Greece, then there was Brexit, then
there was Trump, next it'll be Renzi losing the referendum in Italy and a constitutional crisis
there, and after that, Marine Le Pen in France is going to win the first round of elections. (Probably
not the presidency, since all the other French parties will band together to stop her, but the
National Front is currently polling at 40% of all registered French voters.) And Marine LePen
is the real deal, a genuine full-on out-and-out fascist. Not a closet fascist like Steve Bannon,
LePen is the full monty with everything but a Hugo Boss suit and the death's heads on the cap.
Does anyone notice a pattern here?
This is an international movement. It is sweeping the world . It is the end of neoliberalism
and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp
out the authoritarian part.
Feminists, BLM, black bloc anarchiest anti-globalists, Sandernistas, and, yes, the former Hillary
supporters. Because it not just a coincidence that all these things are happening in all these
countries at the same time. The bottom 90% of the population in the developed world has been ripped
off by a managerial and financial and political class for the last 30 years and they have all
noticed that while the world GDP was skyrocketing and international trade agreements were getting
signed with zero input from the average citizen, a few people were getting very very rich but
nobody else was getting anything.
This hammered people on the bottom, disproportionately African Americans and especially
single AA mothers in America. It crushed the blue collar workers. It is wiping out the savings
and careers of college-educated white collar workers now, at least, the ones who didn't go to
the Ivy League, which is 90% of them.
And the Democratic party is so helpless and so hopeless that it is letting the American Nazi
Party run to the left of them on health care, fer cripes sake! We are now in a situation
where the American Nazi Party is advocating single-payer nationalized health care, while the former
Democratic presidential nominee who just got defeated assured everyone that single-payer "will
never, ever happen."
C'mon! Is anyone surprised that Hillary lost? Let's cut the crap with the "Hillary
was a flawed candidate" arguments. The plain fact of the matter is that Hillary was running mainly
on getting rid of the problems she and her husband created 25 years ago. Hillary promised criminal
justice reform and Black Lives Matter-friendly policing policies - and guess who started the mass
incarceration trend and gave speeches calling black kids "superpredators" 20 years ago? Hillary
promised to fix the problems with the wretched mandate law forcing everyone to buy unaffordable
for-profit private insurance with no cost controls - and guess who originally ran for president
in 2008 on a policy of health care mandates with no cost controls? Yes, Hillary (ironically, Obama's
big surge in popularity as a candidate came when he ran against Hillary from the left, ridiculing
helath care mandates). Hillary promises to reform an out-of-control deregulated financial system
run amok - and guess who signed all those laws revoking Glass-Steagal and setting up the Securities
Trading Modernization Act? Yes, Bill Clinton, and Hillary was right there with him cheering the
whole process on.
So pardon me and lots of other folks for being less than impressed by Hillary's trustworthiness
and honesty. Run for president by promising to undo the damage you did to the country 25 years
ago is (let say) a suboptimal campaign strategy, and a distinctly suboptimal choice of presidential
candidate for a party in the same sense that the Hiroshima air defense was suboptimal in 1945.
Calling Hillary an "imperfect candidate" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a
"boating accident." Trump was an imperfect candidate. Why did he win?
Because we're back in the 1930s again, the economy has crashed hard and still hasn't recovered
(maybe because we still haven't convened a Pecora Commission and jailed a bunch of the thieves,
and we also haven't set up any alphabet government job programs like the CCC) so fascists and
racists and all kinds of other bottom-feeders are crawling out of the political woodwork to promise
to fix the problems that the Democratic party establishment won't.
Rule of thumb: any social or political or economic writer virulently hated by the current Democratic
party establishment is someone we should listen to closely right now.
Cornel West is at the top of the current Democratic establishment's hate list, and he has got
a great article in The Guardian that I think is spot-on:
"The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph
of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded
to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians."
Glenn Greenwald is another writer who has been showered with more hate by the Democratic establishment
recently than even Trump or Steve Bannon, so you know Greenwald is saying something important.
He has a great piece in The Intercept on the head-in-the-ground attitude of Democratic
elites toward their recent loss:
"It is not an exaggeration to say that the Democratic Party is in shambles as a political
force. Not only did it just lose the White House to a wildly unpopular farce of a candidate despite
a virtually unified establishment behind it, and not only is it the minority party in both the
Senate and the House, but it is getting crushed at historical record rates on the state and local
levels as well. Surveying this wreckage last week, party stalwart Matthew Yglesias of Vox minced
no words: `the Obama years have created a Democratic Party that's essentially a smoking pile of
rubble.'
"One would assume that the operatives and loyalists of such a weak, defeated and wrecked
political party would be eager to engage in some introspection and self-critique, and to produce
a frank accounting of what they did wrong so as to alter their plight. In the case of 2016 Democrats,
one would be quite mistaken."
Last but far from least, Scottish economist Mark Blyth has what looks to me like the single
best analysis of the entire global Trump_vs_deep_state tidal wave in Foreign Affairs magazine:
"At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass
unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response,
governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable-trying to get to,
and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent. The problem with doing so, over time,
is that targeting any variable long enough undermines the value of the variable itself-a phenomenon
known as Goodhart's law. (..)
" what we see [today] is a reversal of power between creditors and debtors as the anti-inflationary
regime of the past 30 years undermines itself-what we might call "Goodhart's revenge." In this
world, yields compress and creditors fret about their earnings, demanding repayment of debt at
all costs. Macro-economically, this makes the situation worse: the debtors can't pay-but politically,
and this is crucial-it empowers debtors since they can't pay, won't pay, and still have the right
to vote.
"The traditional parties of the center-left and center-right, the builders of this anti-inflationary
order, get clobbered in such a world, since they are correctly identified by these debtors as
the political backers of those demanding repayment in an already unequal system, and all from
those with the least assets. This produces anti-creditor, pro-debtor coalitions-in-waiting that
are ripe for the picking by insurgents of the left and the right, which is exactly what has happened.
"In short, to understand the election of Donald Trump we need to listen to the trumpets blowing
everywhere in the highly indebted developed countries and the people who vote for them.
"The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism.
It's also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing
above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun."
You don't live here, do you? I'm really asking a genuine question because the way you are framing
the question ("SPECIFICS!!!!!!) suggests you don't. (Just to show my background, born and raised
in Australia (In the electoral division of Kooyong, home of Menzies) but I've lived in the US
since 2000 in the midwest (MO, OH) and currently in the south (GA))
If this election has taught us anything it's no one cared about "specifics". It was a mood,
a feeling which brought trump over the top (and I'm not talking about the "average" trump voter
because that is meaningless. The average trunp voter was a republican voter in the south who the
Dems will never get so examining their motivations is immaterial to future strategy. I'm talking
about the voters in the Upper Midwest from places which voted for Obama twice then switched to
trump this year to give him his margin of victory).
trump voters have been pretty clear they don't actually care about the way trump does (or even
doesn't) do what he said he would do during the campaign. It was important to them he showed he
was "with" people like them. They way he did that was partially racialized (law and order, islamophobia)
but also a particular emphasis on blue collar work that focused on the work. Unfortunately these
voters, however much you tell them they should suck it up and accept their generations of familial
experience as relatively highly paid industrial workers (even if it is something only their fathers
and grandfathers experienced because the factories were closing when the voters came of age in
the 80s and 90s) is never coming back and they should be happy to retrain as something else, don't
want it. They want what their families have had which is secure, paid, benefits rich, blue
collar work.
trump's campaign empathized with that feeling just by focusing on the factory jobs as jobs
and not as anachronisms that are slowly fading away for whatever reason. Clinton might have been
"correct", but these voters didn't want to hear "the truth". And as much as you can complain about
how stupid they are for wanting to be lied to, that is the unfortunate reality you, and the Democratic
party, have to accept.
The idea they don't want "government help" is ridiculous. They love the government. They just
want the government to do things for them and not for other people (which unfortunately includes
blah people but also "the coasts", "sillicon valley", etc.). Obama won in 2008 and 2012 in part
due to the auto bailout.
trump was offering a "bailout" writ large. Clinton had no (good) counteroffer. It was like
the tables were turned. Romney was the one talking about "change" and "restructuring" while Obama
was defending keeping what was already there.
"Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the
automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable
labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses.
Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html
So yes. Clinton needed vague promises. She needed something more than retraining and "jobs
of the future" and "restructuring". She needed to show she was committed to their way of life,
however those voters saw it, and would do something, anything, to keep it alive. trump did that
even though his plan won't work. And maybe he'll be punished for it. In 4 years. But in the interim
the gop will destroy so many things we need and rely on as well as entrench their power for generations
through the Supreme Court.
But really, it was hard for Clinton to be trusted to act like she cared about these peoples'
way of life because she (through her husband fairly or unfairly) was associated with some of the
larger actions and choices which helped usher in the decline.
Clinton toward the end offered tariffs. But the trump campaign hit back with what turned
out to be a pretty strong counter attack – ""How's she going to get tough on China?" said Trump
economic advisor Peter Navarro on CNN's Quest Means Business. He notes that some of Clinton's
economic advisors have supported TPP or even worked on it. ""
What is the Democratic Party's former constituency of labor and progressive reformers to do?
Are they to stand by and let the party be captured in Hillary's wake by Robert Rubin's Goldman
Sachs-Citigroup gang that backed her and Obama?
The 2016 election sounded the death knell for the identity politics. Its aim was to persuade
voters not to think of their identity in economic terms, but to think of themselves as women or
as racial and ethnic groups first and foremost, not as having common economic interests. This
strategy to distract voters from economic policies has obviously failed...
This election showed that voters have a sense of when they're being lied to. After eight years of
Obama's demagogy, pretending to support the people but delivering his constituency to his
financial backers on Wall Street. 'Identity politics' has given way to the stronger force of
economic distress. Mobilizing identity politics behind a Wall Street program will no longer
work."
Does Finance care about bigotry?
Finance has a history of recognizing bigotry and promoting it if it makes loans more predictable.
Home values could drop if too many blacks moved to a neighborhood so finance created red-lining
to protect their investments while promoting bigotry.
Finance is all in favor of tearing down minority neighborhoods or funding polluters in those neighborhoods
to protect investments in gated communities and white sundown towns.
Finance is often part of the problem, not the solution.
All of what you say is true but I have some contrarian/devil's advocate thoughts.
Some finance people are smart and have an enlightened self-interest. Think of Robert Rubin,
George Soros or Warren Buffet. They often back Democrats. Think of Chuck Schumer. Think of Hillary
Clinton's speeches to the banks.
Finance often knocks down walls and will back whatever makes a profit. Often though as you
say it conforms to prejudice and past practices, like red-lining.
I think of the lines from the Communist Manifesto:
"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal,
idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his
"natural superiors", and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest,
than callous "cash payment". It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour,
of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.
It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible
chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade. In one word,
for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless,
direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to
with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of
science, into its paid wage labourers."
But the cash nexus isn't enough spiritually or emotionally and when living standards stagnate
or decline, anxious people retreat into tribalism.
When I first glances at your question I immediately answered your query like you everyone here
did, 'no, finance does not care about bigotry except to the degree finance can profit from it.'
Then I realized there are too many assumptions contained in your question for me to respond
b/c I was thinking inside the box and not taking in all that impacts Finance and bigotry.
Your question assumes "Finance" is Private and for profit. But that is not true is it, since
there is Public, NGO, Charity, Socialistic, Communistic, et. al., Finance.
And, then there is the problem with the word "bigotry."
Your post makes clear to me that you are referring to American bigotry in housing, but that
means you ignore that "bigotry" exists largely from ones individual perspective, which we know
depends upon from where one sees it.
What I mean by that is Russia, China, Syria, Turkey, Iran, etc., all see and proclaim bigotry
in the USA but deny bigotry in their own countries.
If your point is simply that America Finance discriminates against people of color in Housing
or that such discrimination perpetuates bigotry then no one can disagree with you, imo, however,
your implication that that is done to perpetuate bigotry and racism is probably false since Finance
is amoral, looking to secure profit, and not out to discriminate against a particular group such
as people of color as long as they can profit.
"... "He spoke of the need to reform our trade deals so they aren't raw deals for the American people," she said. "He said he will not cut Social Security benefits. He talked about the need to address the rising cost of college and about helping working parents struggling with the high cost of child care. He spoke of the urgency of rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and putting people back to work. He spoke to the very real sense of millions of Americans that their government and their economy has abandoned them. And he promised to rebuild our economy for working people." ..."
"... And economic populists really care about race gender etc, we just think that focusing on social justice as a priority over economic equality inevitably leads to Trump or someone like him. ..."
"... I don't know who Clinton might represent more than American feminists, and they, or at least the ones over thirty with power and wealth, certainly seemed to feel possessive and empowered by her campaign and possible election. ..."
"... And white American feminists could not even get 50% of white working class women nationwide, and I suspect the numbers are even worse in the Upper Midwest swing states. In comparison, African-Americans delivered as always, 90% of their vote, across all classes and educational levels. Latinos delivered somewhere around 60-70%. ..."
"... You seem to have just ignored what Val, small, Helen, faustusnotes have been saying and inserted a straw man into the conversation. No you don't have to be a Marxist to worry about social discrimination, but being sensitive to social discrimination does make you sensitive to injustice in general. Who exactly are these people you are talking about? ..."
"... Over the past decade, a small but growing movement has realized that the Rube Goldberg neoliberalism of Obamacare–and many other parts of modern Democratic policy–is not sustainable. I've come to that conclusion painfully and slowly. I've taught the law for six years, and each year I get better at explaining how its many parts work, and fit together." ..."
"... I offered in an earlier comment, that the left looks askance at identity politics because of the recuperation of these – gender emancipation, anti-racism and anti-colonial struggles – by capital and the state. engels, above has offered Nancy Fraser linked here. ..."
"... I have no argument with the notion that Clinton was an imperfect candidate. Almost all candidates are (even a top-notch one like Obama) ..."
The idea that people who are against capitalism (or neoliberalism, if you want) are also not
generally against patriarchy and racist colonialism ( as a system ) is obviously false.
On the contrary it's people who are 'into' identity politics who generally are not against
these things (again, as a system). People who are into identity politics are against racism and
sexism, sure, but seem to have little if any idea as to why these ideas came into being and what
social purposes they serve: they seem to think they are just arbitrary lifestyle choices, like
not liking people with red hair, or preferring The Beatles to the Rolling Stones or something.
And if this is true, all we have to do is 'persuade' people not to 'be racist' or 'be sexist'
and then the problem goes away. Hence dehistoricised (and, let's face it, depoliticised) 'political
correctness'. which seems to insist that as long as you don't, personally , call any African-American
the N word and don't use the C word when talking about women, all problems of racism and sexism
will be solved.
The inability to look at History, and social structures, and the history of social structures,
and the purpose of these structures as a pattern of domination, inevitably leads to Clintonism
(or, in the UK, Blairism), which, essentially, equals 'neoliberalism plus don't use the N word'.
I'm not going to argue directly with people because some people are obviously a bit angry about
this but the question is not whether or not sexism or homophobia are good things (they obviously
aren't): the question is whether or not fighting against these things are necessarily left-wing,
and the answer is: depends on how you do it. For example, in both cases we have seen right-wing
feminism ('spice girls feminism') and right wing gay rights (cf Peter Thiel, Milo Yiannopoulos)
which sees 'breaking the glass ceiling' for women and gays as being the key point of the struggle.
I know Americans got terribly excised about having the first American female President and that's
understandable for its symbolic value, but here in the UK we now have our second female Prime
Minister.
So what? Who gives a shit? What's changed (not least, what's changed for women?)?. Nothing.
Eventually you are going to get your first female President. You will probably even someday
get your first gay President. Both of them may be Republicans. Think about that.
What's wrong with -(from the NYT):
'Democrats, who lost the White House and made only nominal gains in the House and Senate, face
a profound decision after last week's stunning defeat: Make common cause where they can with Mr.
Trump to try to win back the white, working-class voters he took from them
– while always reminding the people that F face von Clownstick actually is a Fascistic Racist
Birther.
and at the same time (from E. Warren):
"He spoke of the need to reform our trade deals so they aren't raw deals for the American
people," she said. "He said he will not cut Social Security benefits. He talked about the need
to address the rising cost of college and about helping working parents struggling with the
high cost of child care. He spoke of the urgency of rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure
and putting people back to work. He spoke to the very real sense of millions of Americans that
their government and their economy has abandoned them. And he promised to rebuild our economy
for working people."
Straw man much, hidari? Just to pick a random example of someone who thinks these things are important,
Ursula le guin Sure she's never made any state,nets about systematic oppression, and economic
systems? The problem you have when you try to claim that these ideas "cameo to being" through
social and structural factors is that you're wrong.
Everyone knows rape is as old as sex, the idea it's a product of a distorted economic system
is a fiction produced by Beardy white dudes to shut the girls up until after the revolution.
Which is exactly what you "reformers" of liberalism, who think it has lost its way in the maze
of identity politics, want to do. Look at the response of people like rich puchalsky to BLM –
trying to pretend it's equivalent to the system of police violence directed against occupy, as
if violence against white people for protesting is the same as e murder of black people simply
for being in public.
It's facile, it's shallow and it's a desperate attempt to stop the Democratic Party being forced
to respond to issues outside the concerns of white rust belt men – it's no coincidence that this
uprising g of shallow complaints against identity politics from the hard left occurs at the same
time we see a rust belt reaction against the new left. And the reaction from the hard left will
be as destructive for the dems as the rust belt reaction is for the country.
nastywoman 11.17.16 at 8:04 am
– and what a 'feast' for historians this whole 'deal' must be?
– as there are all kind of fascinating thought experiment around this man who orders so loudly and
in fureign language a Pizza on you-tube.
And wasn't it time that our fellow Americans find out that Adolf Hitler not only ordered Pizza
or complained about his I-Phone – NO! – that he also is very upset that Trump also won the erection?
And there are endless possibilities for histerical conferences about who is the 'Cuter Fascist
– or what Neo Nazis in germany sometimes like to discuss: What if Hitler only would have done 'good'
fascistic things?
Wouldn't he be the role model for all of US?
Or – as there are so many other funny hypotheticals
1) And economic populists really care about race gender etc, we just think that focusing on social
justice as a priority over economic equality inevitably leads to Trump or someone like him.
2) I don't know who Clinton might represent more than American feminists, and they, or at least
the ones over thirty with power and wealth, certainly seemed to feel possessive and empowered
by her campaign and possible election.
And white American feminists could not even get 50% of white working class women nationwide,
and I suspect the numbers are even worse in the Upper Midwest swing states. In comparison, African-Americans
delivered as always, 90% of their vote, across all classes and educational levels. Latinos delivered
somewhere around 60-70%.
American feminism has catastrophically, an understatement, failed over the last couple
generations, and class had very much to do with it, upper middle class advanced degreed liberal
women largely followed Clinton's model, leaned in, and went for the bucks rather than reaching
ou to their non-college sisters in the Midwest. Kinda like Mao staying in Shanghai, or Lenin in
Zurich and expecting the Feminist Revolution to happen in the countryside while they profit.
Feminism, also playing to its base of upper middle class women, has also shifted its focus
from economic and labor force issues, to a range of social and sexuality issues that are of
less concern to most women. Personally, I feel betrayed. The male-female wage gap has not narrow
appreciably since the 1990s, glass ceilings are still in place and, for me most importantly,
horizontal sex segregation in the market for jobs that don't require a college degree, where
roughly 2/3 of American women compete, is unabated. I looked at the most recent BLS stats for
occupations by gender recently. Of the two aggregated categories of occupations that would
be characterized as 'blue collar' work, women represent a little over 2 and 3 percent respectively.
For specific occupations under those categories more than half (eyeballing) don't even include
a sufficient number of women to report.
Again, it isn't hard to see why. Upper middle class women can easily imagine themselves, or
their daughters, needing abortions. The possibility that that option would not be available is
a real fear. They do not worry that they or their daughters would be stuck for most of their adult
lives cashiering at Walmart, working in a call center, or doing any of the other boring, dead-end
pink-collar work which are the only options most women have. And they don't even think of blue-collar
work.
Which Marxists always have expected and why we strongly prefer that the UMC and bourgeois be
kept out of the Party. It's called opportunism and is connected to reformism, IOW, wanting to
keep the system, just replace the old bosses with your owm.
You backed the war-mongering plutocrat and handed the world to fascism. Can you show responsibility
and humility for even a week?
You seem to have just ignored what Val, small, Helen, faustusnotes have been saying and inserted
a straw man into the conversation. No you don't have to be a Marxist to worry about social discrimination,
but being sensitive to social discrimination does make you sensitive to injustice in general.
Who exactly are these people you are talking about?
reason 11.17.16 at 8:43 am
Of course Hidari might have had a point if he was making an argument
about campaign strategy and emphasis, but he seems to be saying more that that, or are I wrong?
Over the past decade, a small but growing movement has realized that the
Rube Goldberg neoliberalism of Obamacare–and many other parts of modern Democratic policy–is not
sustainable. I've come to that conclusion painfully and slowly. I've taught the law for six years,
and each year I get better at explaining how its many parts work, and fit together."
basil 11.17.16 at 9:09 am
I offered in an earlier comment, that the left looks askance at identity
politics because of the recuperation of these – gender emancipation, anti-racism and anti-colonial
struggles – by capital and the state.
engels, above has offered Nancy Fraser linked here.
CT's really weird on identity. Whose work are we thinking through? 'Gender'and 'Race' are political
constructions that are most explicitly economic in nature. There were no black people before racism
made certain bodies available for the inhumanity of enslavement, and thus the enrichment of the slaver
class. Commentators oughtn't, I don't think, write as if there are actually existing black and white
people. As Dorothy Roberts – Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race
in the 21st Century (and Paul Gilroy – Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color
Line, and Karen and Barbara Fields – Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, etc put
it, it is racism that creates and naturalises race. Of course liberalism's logics of governance,
the necessity of making bodies available for control and exploitation constantly reproduce and entrench
race (and gender).
I offered that racialised people, particularly those gendered as women/queer, the ones who have
been refused whiteness, are also super suspicious of these deployments of identity politics, especially
by non-subjugated persons who've a political project for which they are weaponising subordinated
identities. It really is abusive and exploitative.
We must listen better. As the racialised and gendered are pointing out, it is incredible that
it has taken the threat of Trump, and now their ascension for liberals to tune in to the violence
waged against racialised, gendered, queer lives and bodies by White Supremacy. History will remember
that #BLM (like the record deportations, the Clintons' actual-existing-but-to-liberals invisible
border wall, the Obamacare farce in the OP, de Blasio's undocumented persons list, Rahm in Chicago,
the employment of David Brock, Melania's nudes, the crushing poverty of racialised women, the exploitation
of those violated by Trump, the re-invasion and desecration of Native American territory) happened
under a liberal presidency. That liberal presidency responded to BLM with a Blue Lives Matter law.
This is evidence of liberalism's inherently violent attitude towards those it pretends to care about.
All this preceded Trump.
If you are for gender emancipation or anti-race/racism, be against these all the time, not just
to tar your temporary electoral foes. Be feminist when dancing Yemenis gendered as women – some of
the poorest, most vulnerable humans – are droned at weddings. Be feminist when Mexico's farmers gendered
as women are dying at NAFTA's hand. Be feminist when poor racialised queer teens are dying in the
streets as you celebrate the right of wealthy gays to marry. Be feminist and reject people who've
got multiple sexual violence accusations against them and those who help them cover these up and
shame the victims. Be feminist and anti-racist and reject people who glory in making war on poor
defenceless people. Be feminist and anti-racist and reject white nationalists gendered female who
call racialised groups 'super-predators' to court racists. Reject people who say of public welfare
improvements – it will never, ever happen, this is not Denmark. The people who need those services
the most are vulnerable humans, racialised and gendered as women. Never say that politicians who
put poor migrants in cages on isolated islands are nice people. They absolutely aren't. Some of this
is really easy.
These puerile rhetorical gestures reveal the people for whom 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday was simply
a glass ceiling left unbroken by a woman who launched a massive Yemeni bombing campaign. Perhaps
as a mechanic of coping, it has become incredibly sexy for a certain class of liberals to dodge
any responsibility for the lives they, too, have compromised. They aren't the same ones who have
to worry about who will be the first person to call them a terrorist faggot ..For the rest of
us, the victory of this fascist is a confirmation of the biases we have known all along, no matter
public liberal consciousness's inabilities to wrangle them into submission."
– and just a suggestion I have learned from touring the rust belt – waaay before it was as 'fashionable'
as it is right now.
While we in some hotel room in Scranton fought our Ideological fights -(we had a French Camera
Assistant who insisted that America one day will elect 'a Fascist like Hitler') –
the mechanic we had scheduled to interview about his Camaro SS for the next day – had exchanged
all the spark plucks of his car.
bob mcmanus above, I really think social justice and economic justice are bound together, and that Universal Healthcare,
for example, as a fundamental right is a basic feminist and anti-racist goal. Most particularly because
the vulnerability of these groups, their economic hardship, their very capacity to live, to survive
is at stake in a marketised health care system.
Racialised outcomes for ACA.
Similarly with marketised higher education and skills training. How cynical that HRC used HBCUs
to argue that racialised people would suffer from free public tertiary education!
Dorothy Roberts' work for example has interesting perspectives on how race is created in part
through the differentiated access to healthcare. They discuss how this plays out for both maternal
and child mortality, and for breast cancer survival. 'Oh, the evidence shows that racialised women
are more vulnerable to x condition'. Exactly, because a racist and marketised system denies them
necessary healthcare.
A funny thing about the new comment moderation regime is that you can get two people posting in
rapid succession saying pretty much opposite things like me then Hidari. It seems as if (although
again it's not very clear) Hidari is suggesting capitalism created sexism and racism? Or something
like that? I'm definitely on better ground there though: patriarchy and sexism predate capitalism.
In fairness though, I think I understand what Hidari and engels are getting at. I know lots
of young people, women and people of colour, who probably fit their description in a way. They
are young, smart, probably a bit naive, and at least some of them probably from privileged backgrounds.
They appear driven by desire to succeed in a hierarchical academic system that still tends to
be dominated by white men at the upper levels, and they don't seem to question the system much,
at least not openly.
But can I just mention, some of our hosts here are actually fairly high up in that system.
Why aren't they being attacked as liberals or proponents of "identity politics"? Why is it only
when women or people of colour try to succeed in that very same academic system that it becomes
so wrong?
Another Nick, yes I can comment on that. I think it's fascinating that the old beardy leftists
and berniebros are fixated on Lena Dunham. Who else is fixated on Lena Dunham? The right bloggers,
who are inflamed with rage at everything she does. Who else is fixated on identity politics? The
right bloggers, who present it as everything wrong with the modern left, PC gone mad, censorship
etc. You guys should get together and have a party – you're made for each other.
Also, the Democrats don't have a "celebrity campaign mascot." So what are you actually talking
about?
basil @ 64
basil what in any conceivable world makes you think that feminists on CT don't know about the
issues you're talking about? I work in a school of public health and my entire work consists of
trying to address those sorts of issues, plus ecological sustainability.
Seriously this has all gone beyond straw-wo/manning. Some people here are talking to others
who exist only in their minds or something. The world's gone mad.
engels 11.17.16 at 12:06 pm
Umm Val and FaustusNoted, which part of-
identity politics isn't the same thing as feminism, anti-racism, LGBT politics, etc. They're
all needed now more than ever.
-was unclear to you?
I DON'T want to live in a world in which 'patriarchy and racism' are okay, I want to live in a
world in which America has a real Left, which represents the working class (black, white, gay, straight,
female, male-like other countries do to a greater lesser degree), and which is the only thing that
has a shot at stopping its descent into outright fascism.
it often gets thrown around as a kind of all-encompassing epithet
Point taken-but there's really nothing I can do to stop other people misusing terms (until
the Dictatorship of the Prolerariat anyway :) )
Cranky Observer 11.17.16 at 12:27 pm
= = = faustnotes @ 4:14 am The reason these conservative Dems come from those states is
that those states don't support radical welfare provisions – they don't want other people getting
a free lunch, and value personal responsibility over welfarism. = = =
As long as you don't count enormous agricultural, highway, postal service, and military base subsidies
as any form of "welfare", sure. And that's not even counting the colossal expenditures on military
force and bribes in the Middle East to keep the diesel-fuel-to-corn unroofed chemical factory (i.e.
farming) industry running profitably. Apparently the Republicans who hate the US Postal Service with
a vengeance, for example, are unaware that in 40% of the land area of the United States FedEx, UPS,
etc turn over the 'last hundred mile' delivery to the USPS.
Ps I'm kind of surprised this thread has been allowed to go on so long but I'm going to bow out
now-feel free to continue trying to smear me behind my back
bob mcmanus 11.17.16 at 12:35 pm
Would a real leftist let her daughter marry a hedge-fund trader?
I suppose they are a step above serial killers and child molesters, but c'mon. Quotes from Wiki,
rearranged in chronological order.
Beginning in the early 1990s, Mezvinsky used a wide variety of 419 scams. According to a federal
prosecutor, Mezvinsky conned using "just about every different kind of African-based scam we've ever
seen."[11] The scams promise that the victim will receive large profits, but first a small down payment
is required. To raise the funds needed to front the money for the fraudulent investment schemes he
was being offered, Mezvinsky tapped his network of former political contacts, dropping the name of
the Clinton family to convince unwitting marks to give him money.[12]
In March 2001, Mezvinsky was indicted and later pleaded guilty to 31 of 69 felony charges of bank
fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud
"In July 2010, Mezvinsky married Chelsea Clinton in an interfaith ceremony in Rhinebeck, New York.[12]
The senior Clintons and Mezvinskys were friends in the 1990s ; their children met on a Renaissance
Weekend retreat in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina."
Subsequent to his graduations, he worked for eight years as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs
before leaving to join a private equity firm, but later quit. In 2011, he co-founded a Manhattan-based
hedge fund firm, Eaglevale Partners, with two longtime partners, Bennett Grau and Mark Mallon.[1][8]
In May 2016, The New York Times reported that the Eaglevale Hellenic Opportunity Fund is said to
have lost nearly 90 percent of its value, [which equated to a 90% loss to investors] and sources
say it will be shutting down.[9][10] Emails discovered as part of Wikileaks' release of the "Podesta
emails" seemed to indicate that Mezvinsky had used his ties to the Clinton family to obtain investors
for his hedge fund through Clinton Foundation events.
Marcotte, Sady Doyle, Valenti, the Clinton operatives knew this stuff.
Prioritizing women's liberation over economic populism, just a little bit, doesn't quite cover
it. Buying fully into the most rapacious aspects of predatory capitalism is more lie it.
If Clinton is your champion, and I am still seeing sads at Jezebel, you have zero credilibity
on economic issues. She's one of the worst crooks to ever run for President. And we will see how
Obama fares on his immediate switch from President to his ambition to be a venture capitalist for
Silicon Valley. I'll bet Obama gets very very lucky!
Val @49 &
"they (at some confused and probably not fully conscious level) do seem to assume that violence
and oppression of women and people of colour never used to happen when white men (including white
working class men) had 'good jobs' .. patriarchy and racism predate neoliberalism by centuries."
"patriarchy and sexism predate capitalism."
I think this framing is misleading, because you're historically comparing forms of oppression
with economic systems, rather than varieties of one or the other.
Wouldn't the more relevant comparison be something like: patriarchy and sexism are coeval with
classism and economic inequality?
What concretely are racism and sexism, after all, but ideologies dependent upon power inequalities,
and what are those but inequalities of social position (man, father) and wealth and ownership
that make possible that power difference? How could sexism or racism have existed without class
or inequality?
novakant 11.17.16 at 1:32 pm
I have no argument with the notion that Clinton was an imperfect candidate. Almost all
candidates are (even a top-notch one like Obama)
Strawman (I have heard a lot of times before):
nobody criticizes Clinton for being imperfect, people criticize her for being a terrible, terrible
candidate and the DNC establishment for supporting this terrible, terrible candidate: she lost
against TRUMP for goodness' sake.
bob mcmanus: "In March 2001, Mezvinsky was indicted and later pleaded guilty to 31 of 69 felony
charges of bank fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud "
Well, either I'm shocked to discover that Clinton was involved in her daughter's husband's
father's crimes some 20 years ago, or you've demonstrated that Clinton's daughter married a man
whose father was a crook. I'm guessing the latter, though I'm left wondering WTF that has to do
with Clinton's character.
engels 11.17.16 at 2:03 pm
One more:
"we cannot ignore the fact that the vast majority of white men and a majority of white women,
across class lines, voted for a platform and a message of white supremacy, Islamophobia, misogyny,
xenophobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-science, anti-Earth, militarism, torture, and policies
that blatantly maintain income inequality. The vast majority of people of color voted against
Trump, with black women registering the highest voting percentage for Clinton of any other demographic
(93 percent). It is an astounding number when we consider that her husband's administration oversaw
the virtual destruction of the social safety net by turning welfare into workfare, cutting food
stamps, preventing undocumented workers from receiving benefits, and denying former drug felons
and users access to public housing; a dramatic expansion of the border patrol, immigrant detention
centers, and the fence on Mexico's border; a crime bill that escalated the war on drugs and accelerated
mass incarceration; as well as NAFTA and legislation deregulating financial institutions.
"Still, had Trump received only a third of the votes he did and been defeated, we still would
have had ample reason to worry about our future.
"I am not suggesting that white racism alone explains Trump's victory. Nor am I dismissing
the white working class's very real economic grievances. It is not a matter of disaffection versus
racism or sexism versus fear. Rather, racism, class anxieties, and prevailing gender ideologies
operate together, inseparably, or as Kimberlé Crenshaw would say, intersectionally."
https://bostonreview.net/forum/after-trump/robin-d-g-kelley-trump-says-go-back-we-say-fight-back
Bob, a real feminist would not tell her daughter who to marry.
You claim to be an intersectional feminist but you say things like this, and you blamed feminists
for white dudes voting for trump. Are you a parody account?
Michael Sullivan 11.17.16 at 2:41 pm
Mclaren @ 25 "As for 63.7% home ownership stats in 2016, vast numbers of those "owned" homes
were snapped up by giant banks and other financial entities like hedge funds which then rented
those homes out. So the home ownership stats in 2016 are extremely deceptive."
There may be ways in which the home ownership statistic is deceptive or fuzzy, but it's hard
for me to imagine this being one of them.
The definition you seem to imply for home ownership (somebody somewhere owns the home) would
result in by definition 100% home ownership every year.
I'm pretty sure that the measure is designed to look at whether one of the people who live
in a home actually owns it. Ok, let's stuff the pretty sure, etc. and use our friend google. So
turns out that the rate in question is the percentage of households where one of the people in
the household owns the apartment/house. If some banker or landlord buys a foreclosure and then
rents the house out, that will be captured in the homeownership rate.
Where that rate may understate issues is that it doesn't consider how many people are in a
household. So if lots of people are moving into their parent's basements, or renting rooms to/from
unrelated people in their houses, those people won't be counted as renters or homeowners, since
the rate tracks households, not people. Where that will be captured is in something called the
headship rate, and represents the ratio of households to adults. That number dropped by about
1.5% between the housing bust and the recession, and appears to be recovering or at worst near
bottom (mixed data from two different surveys) as of 2013. So, yes, the drop in home ownership
rate is probably understated (hence the headline of my source article below) somewhat, but not
enormously as you imply, and the difference is NOT foreclosures - unless they are purchased by
another owner occupier, they DO show up in the home ownership rate. The difference is larger average
households: more adults living with other adults.
engels @70, "I DON'T want to live in a world in which 'patriarchy and racism' are okay, I want
to live in a world in which America has a real Left, which represents the working class (black,
white, gay, straight, female, male-like other countries do to a greater lesser degree), and which
is the only thing that has a shot at stopping its descent into outright fascism."
So many prominent people and such a large majority of voters have be so completely wrong, so
many times, on everything, for a year that I really am not confident about making any strong political
claims anymore. However, it has opened me to possibilities I wouldn't have previously considered.
One is this: I'm beginning to wonder (not believe, wonder), if a lot of working class and lower-to-middle
middle class Americans, including a lot of the ones who didn't vote or who switched from Obama
to Trump (not including those who were always on the right) would already be on board, or in the
long run be able of getting on board, with the picture Engels paints at 70.
That possibility seems outrageous because we assume this general group are motivated *primarily*
by resentment against women and people of color. But the more I read news stories that directly
interview them–not the rally goers, but the others–the more it seems that they will side with
*almost anyone* who they think is on their side, and *against anyone* who they think has contempt
or indifference for them. Put another way: they are driven by equal opportunity resentment to
whatever prejudices serve their resentment, rather than by a deeply engrained, fixed, rigid, kind
of prejudice. (I have in mind a number of recent articles, but one thing that struck me is interviews
with racially diverse factory workers, with Latinos and women, who voted for Trump.)
I also begin to wonder if there is as much, if not more, resistance to wide solidarity among
the left than among this group of voters who aren't really committed to either party. I begin
to think that many on the left are strongly, deeply, viscerally opposed to the middle range working
class, period, and not *just* to the racism and sexism that are all too often found there. I worry
the Democrats' class contempt, their conservative disgust for their social, educational, professional,
and economic inferiors is growing–partly based in reasonable disgust at the horrendous excesses
of the right, but partly class-based, pathological, and subterranean, independent of that reasonable
side.
I say this not to justify Trump voters or non-voters or to vilify Democrats, but actually with
a bit of optimism. For a very long time even many on the far left has looked at the old Marxist
model of wide solidarity among the proletariat with skepticism. But I'm wondering if that skepticism
is still justified. I wonder if what stands in the way of a truly diverse working class movement
is not the right but the left. If they're ready, and we've not been paying attention.
Are we really faced with a working class that rejects diversity? Are we really opposing to
them a professional class that truly accepts diversity? Isn't there a kind of popular solidarity
appearing, in awkward and sometimes ugly ways, that is destroying the presumptions of that opposition?
engels 11.17.16 at 3:32 pm Cornel West:
In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the arrested mobility and
escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and protectionism that threaten
to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy. And since the most explosive
fault lines in present-day America are first and foremost racial, then gender, homophobic, ethnic
and religious, we gird ourselves for a frightening future. What is to be done? First we must try
to tell the truth and a condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. For 40 years, neoliberals
lived in a world of denial and indifference to the suffering of poor and working people and obsessed
with the spectacle of success. Second we must bear witness to justice. We must ground our truth-telling
in a willingness to suffer and sacrifice as we resist domination. Third we must remember courageous
exemplars like Martin Luther King Jr, who provide moral and spiritual inspiration as we build
multiracial alliances to combat poverty and xenophobia, Wall Street crimes and war crimes, global
warming and police abuse – and to protect precious rights and liberties .
Val: "It seems as if (although again it's not very clear) Hidari is suggesting capitalism created
sexism and racism? Or something like that? I'm definitely on better ground there though, patriarchy
and sexism predate capitalism."
If Hidari is coming from a more-or-less mainline contemporary Marxist position, this is a misunderstanding
of their argument, which is no more a claim that capitalism "created sexism and racism" than it
would be a claim that capitalism created class antagonism. What's instead being suggested is that
just as capitalism has systematized a specific form of class antagonism (wage laborer vs.
capitalist) as a perceived default whose hegemony and expansion shapes our perception of all other
potential antagonisms as anachronistic exceptions, so it has done the same with specific forms
of sexism and racism, the forms we might call "patriarchy" and "white supremacy". In fact the
argument is typically that antagonisms like white vs. POC and man vs. woman function as normalized
exceptions to the normalized general antagonism of wage laborer vs. capitalist, a space where
the process known since Marx as "primitive accumulation" can take place through the dispossession
of women and POC (up to and including the dispossession of their very bodies) in what might otherwise
be considered flagrant violation of liberal norms.
As theorists like
Rosa Luxemburg and
Silvia Federici
have elaborated, this process of accumulation is absolutely essential to the continued functioning
of capitalism - the implication being that as much as capitalism and its ideologists pretend to
oppose oppressions like racism and sexism, it can never actually destroy these oppressions without
destroying its own social basis in the process. Hence neoliberal "identity politics", in which
changing the composition of the ruling elite (now the politician shaking hands with Netanyahu
on the latest multibillion-dollar arms deal can be a black guy with a Muslim-sounding name! now
the CEO of a company that employs teenaged girls to stitch T-shirts for 12 hours a day can be
a woman!) is ideologically akin to wholesale liberation, functions not as a way to destroy racism
and sexism but as a compromise gambit to preserve them.
Another Nick 11.17.16 at 4:01 pm f
austusnotes, I asked if you could comment on the "identity politics" behind the Dem choice
of Lena Dunham for celebrity campaign mascot. ie. their strategy. What they were planning and
thinking? And how you think it played out for them?
Not a list of your favourite boogeymen.
"So what are you actually talking about?"
I was attempting to discuss the role of identity politics in the Clinton campaign. I asked
about Dunham because she was the most prominent of the celebrities employed by the Clinton campaign
to deploy identity politics. ie. she appeared most frequently in the media on their behalf.
Not seeing much discussion about actual policies there, economic or otherwise. It's really
just an entire interview based on identity politics. With bonus meta-commentary on identity politics.
Lena blames "white women, so unable to see the unity of female identity, so unable to look
past their violent privilege, and so inoculated with hate for themselves," for the election loss.
Why didn't the majority of white women vote for Hillary? Because they "hate themselves".
"... "Welcome to the world of strategic analysis," Ivan Selin used to tell his team during the Sixties, "where we program weapons that don't work to meet threats that don't exist." Selin, who would spend the following decades as a powerful behind-the-scenes player in the Washington mandarinate, was then the director of the Strategic Forces Division in the Pentagon's Office of Systems Analysis. "I was a twenty-eight-year-old wiseass when I started saying that," he told me, reminiscing about those days. "I thought the issues we were dealing with were so serious, they could use a little levity." ..."
"Welcome to the world of strategic analysis," Ivan Selin used to tell his team during the
Sixties, "where we program weapons that don't work to meet threats that don't exist." Selin, who
would spend the following decades as a powerful behind-the-scenes player in the Washington mandarinate,
was then the director of the Strategic Forces Division in the Pentagon's Office of Systems Analysis.
"I was a twenty-eight-year-old wiseass when I started saying that," he told me, reminiscing about
those days. "I thought the issues we were dealing with were so serious, they could use a little
levity."
####
While I do have some quibbles with the piece (RuAF pilots are getting much more than 90 hours
a year flight time & equipment is overrated and unaffordable in any decent numbers), it is pretty
solid.
"... The "my way" or the highway rhetoric from Clinton supporters on the campaign was sickening. When Bush was called a warmonger for Iraq, that was fine. When Clinton was called a warmonger for Iraq and Libya, the Clintonites went on the offensive, often throwing around crap like "if she was a man, she wouldn't be a warmonger!" ..."
"... On racism: "what I can say, from personal experience, is that the racism of my youth was always one step removed. I never saw a family member, friend, or classmate be mean to the actual black people we had in town. We worked with them, played video games with them, waved to them when they passed. What I did hear was several million comments about how if you ever ventured into the city, winding up in the "wrong neighborhood" meant you'd get dragged from your car, raped, and burned alive. Looking back, I think the idea was that the local minorities were fine as long as they acted exactly like us." ..."
"... I'm telling you, the hopelessness eats you alive. And if you dare complain, some liberal elite will pull out their iPad and type up a rant about your racist white privilege. Already, someone has replied to this with a comment saying, "You should try living in a ghetto as a minority!" Exactly. To them, it seems like the plight of poor minorities is only used as a club to bat away white cries for help. Meanwhile, the rate of rural white suicides and overdoses skyrockets. Shit, at least politicians act like they care about the inner cities." ..."
"... And the rural folk are called a "basket of deplorables" and other names. If you want to fight racism, a battle that is Noble and Honorable, you have to understand the nuances between racism and hopelessness. The wizard-wannabe idiots are a tiny fringe. The "deplorables" are a huge part of rural America. If you alienate them, you're helping the idiots mentioned above. ..."
Erm, atheist groups are known to target smaller Christian groups with lawsuits. A baker was sued
for refusing to bake a cake for a Gay Wedding. She was perfectly willing to serve the couple,
just not at the wedding. In California we had a lawsuit over a cross in a park. Atheists threatened
a lawsuit over a seal. Look, I get that there are people with no life out there, but why are they
bringing the rest of us into their insanity, with constant lawsuits. There's actually a concept
known as "Freedom from Religion" – what the heck? Can you imagine someone arguing about "Freedom
from Speech" in America? But it's ok to do it to religious folk! And yes, that includes Muslims,
who had to fight to build a Mosque in New York. They should've just said it was a Scientology
Center
The "my way" or the highway rhetoric from Clinton supporters on the campaign was sickening.
When Bush was called a warmonger for Iraq, that was fine. When Clinton was called a warmonger
for Iraq and Libya, the Clintonites went on the offensive, often throwing around crap like "if
she was a man, she wouldn't be a warmonger!"
The problem with healthcare in the US deserves its own thread, but Obamacare did not fix it;
Obamacare made it worse, especially in the rural communities. The laws in schools are fundamentally
retarded. A kid was suspended for giving a friend Advil. Another kid suspended for bringing in
a paper gun. I could go on and on. A girl was expelled from college for trying to look gangsta
in a L'Oreal mask. How many examples do you need? Look at all of the new "child safety laws" which
force kids to leave in a bubble. And when they enter the Real World, they're fucked, so they pick
up the drugs. In cities it's crack, in farmvilles it's meth.
Hillary didn't win jack shit. She got a plurality of the popular vote. She didn't win it, since
winning implies getting the majority. How many Johnson votes would've gone to Trump if it was
based on popular vote, in a safe state? Of course the biggest issue is the attack on the way of
life, which is all too real. I encourage you to read this, in order to understand where they're
coming from:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
"Nothing that happens outside the city matters!" they say at their cocktail parties, blissfully
unaware of where their food is grown. Hey, remember when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans? Kind
of weird that a big hurricane hundreds of miles across managed to snipe one specific city and
avoid everything else. To watch the news (or the multiple movies and TV shows about it), you'd
barely hear about how the storm utterly steamrolled rural Mississippi, killing 238 people and
doing an astounding $125 billion in damage. But who cares about those people, right? What's newsworthy
about a bunch of toothless hillbillies crying over a flattened trailer? New Orleans is culturally
important. It matters. To those ignored, suffering people, Donald Trump is a brick chucked through
the window of the elites. "Are you assholes listening now?"
On racism: "what I can say, from personal experience, is that the racism of my youth was always
one step removed. I never saw a family member, friend, or classmate be mean to the actual black
people we had in town. We worked with them, played video games with them, waved to them when they
passed. What I did hear was several million comments about how if you ever ventured into the city,
winding up in the "wrong neighborhood" meant you'd get dragged from your car, raped, and burned
alive. Looking back, I think the idea was that the local minorities were fine as long as they
acted exactly like us."
"They're getting the shit kicked out of them. I know, I was there. Step outside of the city,
and the suicide rate among young people fucking doubles. The recession pounded rural communities,
but all the recovery went to the cities. The rate of new businesses opening in rural areas has
utterly collapsed."
^ That, I'd say, is known as destroying their lives. Also this:
"In a city, you can plausibly aspire to start a band, or become an actor, or get a medical
degree. You can actually have dreams. In a small town, there may be no venues for performing arts
aside from country music bars and churches. There may only be two doctors in town - aspiring to
that job means waiting for one of them to retire or die. You open the classifieds and all of the
job listings will be for fast food or convenience stores. The "downtown" is just the corpses of
mom and pop stores left shattered in Walmart's blast crater, the "suburbs" are trailer parks.
There are parts of these towns that look post-apocalyptic.
I'm telling you, the hopelessness eats you alive. And if you dare complain, some liberal elite
will pull out their iPad and type up a rant about your racist white privilege. Already, someone
has replied to this with a comment saying, "You should try living in a ghetto as a minority!"
Exactly. To them, it seems like the plight of poor minorities is only used as a club to bat away
white cries for help. Meanwhile, the rate of rural white suicides and overdoses skyrockets. Shit,
at least politicians act like they care about the inner cities."
And the rural folk are called a "basket of deplorables" and other names. If you want to fight
racism, a battle that is Noble and Honorable, you have to understand the nuances between racism
and hopelessness. The wizard-wannabe idiots are a tiny fringe. The "deplorables" are a huge part
of rural America. If you alienate them, you're helping the idiots mentioned above.
"... "Class first" amongst men of the left has always signaled "ME first." What else could it mean? ..."
"... So "Black Lives Matter" actually means "Black Lives Matter First". Got it. So damn tired of identity politics. ..."
"... Meanwhile, in the usual way of such things, #BlackLivesMatter hashtag activism became fashionable, as the usual suspects were elevated to celebrity status by elites. Nothing, of course, was changed in policy, and so in a year or so, matters began to bubble on the ground again. ..."
"... I'm not tired of identity politics. I'm just tired of some identity-groups accusing other identity-groups of "identity-politics". I speak in particular of the Identity Left. ..."
"... Identity politics, any identity, is going to automatically split voters into camps and force people to 'pick' a side. ..."
"... The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton, I and many other writers argued that the bourgeois feminism Clinton represents works against the interests of the vast majority of women. This has turned out to be even more true than we anticipated. That branding of feminism has delivered to us the most sexist and racist president in recent history: Donald Trump. ..."
"... Hillary spoke to the million-dollar feminists-of-privilege who identified with her multi-million dollar self and her efforts to break her own Tiffany Glass ceiling. And she worked to get many other women with nothing to gain to identify with Hillary's own breaking of Hillary's own Tiffany Glass ceiling. ..."
"... For me (at least) the essence of the "Left" is justice. When we speak of Class we are putting focus on issues of economic justice. Class is the material expression of economic (and therefore political) stratification. Class is the template for analysing the power dynamics at play in such stratification. ..."
"... in the absence of economic justice, it's very difficult to obtain ANY kind of justice - whether such justice be of race, gender, legal, religious or sexual orientation. ..."
"... I find it indicative that the 1% (now) simply don't care one way or another about race or gender etc, PROVIDED it benefits or, has no negative effects on their economic/political interests. ..."
"... "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." ..."
"... In ship sinking incidents, where a lot of people are dumped in the water, many adopt the strategy of trying to use others as flotation devices, pushing them under while the "rich class" tootle off in the lifeboats. Sounds like a winner, all right. ..."
"... The rich class has enlisted the white indentured servants as their Praetorian Guard. The same play as after Bacon's Rebellion. ..."
"... Is what is actually occurring another Kristallnacht, or the irreducible susurrus of meanness and idiocy that is part of every collection of humans? It would be nice not to get suckered into elevating the painful minima over the importance of getting ordinary people to agree on a real common enemy, and organizing to claim and protect. ..."
"... If even one single banker had gone to jail for the mess (fed by Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II) that blew up in 2008, we would be having a different conversation. We are in a huge legitimacy crisis, in part because justice was never served on those who made tens of millions via fraud. ..."
"... The Malignant Overlords - the King or Queen, the Financial Masters of the Universe,, the tribal witch doctor- live by grazing on the wealth of the natural world and the productivity of their underlings. There are only a few thousand of them but they control finance and the Money system, propaganda organizations (in the USA called the Media) land and agriculture, "educational" institutions and entire armies of Homeland Insecurity police. ..."
"... Under them there are the sycophants– generals and officers, war profiteers and corporate CEO's, the intelligentsia, journalists, fake economists, and entertainment and sports heroes who grow fat feasting on the morsels left over after the .0001% have fed. And far below the Overlords are the millions of professional Bureaucrats whose job security requires unquestioning servitude. ..."
"... Race, gender identity, religion, etc. are the false dichotomies by which the oligarchs divide us. Saudi princes, African American millionaires, gay millionaires etc. are generally treated the same by the oligarchs as wasp millionaires. The true dichotomy is class, that is the dichotomy which dare not speak its name. ..."
"... For Trump it was so easy. He just says something that could be thought of as racist and then his supporters watch as the media morphs his words, removes context, or just ignores any possible non-racist motivations for his words. ..."
"... Just read the actual Mexican- rapists quote. Completely different then reported by the media. Fifteen years ago my native born Mexican friend said almost exactlly the same thing. ..."
"... whilst his GOP colleagues publicly recoiled in horror, there is no question that Trump was merely making explicit what Republicans had been doing for decades – since the days of Nixon in 1968. The dog whistle was merely replaced by a bull horn. ..."
"... Yes, class identity can be a bond that unites. However, in the US the sense of class identity remains underdeveloped. In fact, it is only with the Sanders campaign that large swaths of the American public have had practical and sustained exposure to the concept of class as a political force. For most of the electorate, the language of class is still rather alien, particularly since the "equality of opportunity" narrative even now is not completely overthrown. ..."
"... It seems inevitable that populist sentiment, which both Sanders and Trump have used to electoral advantage, will spill over into a variety of economic nationalism. ..."
"... Obama was a perfect identity candidate, i.e., not only capable of getting the dem nomination, but the presidency and than not jailing banksters NO MATTER WHAT THEY DID, OR WILL DO… ..."
"... One truism about immigration, to pick a topical item, is that uncontrolled immigration leads to overwhelming an area whether city, state or country. Regardless of how one feels about the other aspects of immigration, there are some real, unacknowledged limits to the viability of the various systems that must accommodate arrivals, particularly in the short term. Too much of a perceived ..."
"... There is an entrenched royal court, not unlike Versailles in some respects, where the sinecures, access to the White House tennis court (remember Jimmy Carter and his forest for the trees issues) or to paid "lunches in Georgetown" or similar trappings. Inflow of populist or other foreign ideas behind the veil of media and class secrecy represents a threat to overwhelm, downgrade (Sayeth Yogi Berra: It is so popular that nobody goes there anymore) or remove those perks, and to cause some financial, psychic or other pain to the hangers-on. ..."
"... Pretty soon, word filters out through WikiLeaks, or just on the front page of a newspaper in the case of the real and present corruption (What do you mean nobody went to jail for the frauds?). In those instances, the tendency of a populace to remain aloof with their bread and circuses and reality shows and such gets strained. ..."
"... Some people began noticing and the cognitive dissonance became to great to ignore no matter how many times the messages were delivered from on high. That led to many apparent outbursts of rational behavior ..."
if poor whites were being shot by cops at the rate urban blacks are, they would be screaming
too. blm is not a corporate front to divide us, any more than acorn was a scam to help election
fraud.
It's lazy analysis to suggest Race was a contributing factor. On the fringes, Trump supporters
may have racial overtones, but this election was all about class. I applaud sites like NC in continually
educating me. What you do is a valuable service.
"We won't need a majority of the dying "white working class" in our present and future feminine,
multiracial American working class. Just a minority."
Indeed, this site has featured links to articles elaborating the demographic composition of
today's "working class". And yet we still have people insisting that appeals to the working class,
and policies directed thereof, must "transcend" race and gender.
And, of course this "class first" orientation became a bone of contention between some loud
mouthed "men of the left" during the D-Party primary and "everyone else" and that's why the "Bernie
Bro" label stuck. It didn't help the Sanders campaign either.
"Class first" amongst men of the left has always signaled "ME first." What else could it
mean?
This is, actually, complicated. It's a reasonable position that black lives don't
matter because they keep getting whacked by cops and the cops are never held accountable. Nobody
else did anything, so people on the ground stood up, asserted themselves, and as part
of that created #BlackLivesMatter as an online gathering point; all entirely reasonable. #AllLivesMatter
was created, mostly as deflection/distraction, by people who either didn't like the movement,
or supported cops, and of course if all lives did matter to this crowd, they would have
done something about all the police killings in the first place.
Meanwhile, in the usual way of such things, #BlackLivesMatter hashtag activism became fashionable,
as the usual suspects were elevated to celebrity status by elites. Nothing, of course, was changed
in policy, and so in a year or so, matters began to bubble on the ground again.
Activist time (we might say) is often slower than electoral time. But sometimes it's faster;
see today's Water Cooler on the #AllOfUs people who occupied Schumer's office (and high time,
too). To me, that's a very hopefully sign. Hopefully, not a bundle of groups still siloed by identity
(and if that's to happen, I bet that will happen by working together. Nothing abstract).
I'm not tired of identity politics. I'm just tired of some identity-groups accusing other
identity-groups of "identity-politics". I speak in particular of the Identity Left.
"We won't need a majority of the dying "white working class" in our present and future
feminine, multiracial American working class. Just a minority."
That statement is as myopic a vision as the current political class is today. The statement
offends another minority, or even a possible majority. Identity politics, any identity, is
going to automatically split voters into camps and force people to 'pick' a side.
In False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton, I and many other writers
argued that the bourgeois feminism Clinton represents works against the interests of the vast
majority of women. This has turned out to be even more true than we anticipated. That branding
of feminism has delivered to us the most sexist and racist president in recent history: Donald
Trump.
I wonder if there is an even simpler more colorful way to say that. Hillary spoke to the
million-dollar feminists-of-privilege who identified with her multi-million dollar self and her
efforts to break her own Tiffany Glass ceiling. And she worked to get many other women with nothing
to gain to identify with Hillary's own breaking of Hillary's own Tiffany Glass ceiling.
If the phrase "Tiffany Glass ceiling" seems good enough to re-use, feel free to re-use it one
and all.
For me (at least) the essence of the "Left" is justice. When we speak of Class we are putting
focus on issues of economic justice. Class is the material expression of economic (and therefore
political) stratification. Class is the template for analysing the power dynamics at play in such
stratification.
Class is the primary political issue because it not only affects everyone, but in the absence
of economic justice, it's very difficult to obtain ANY kind of justice - whether such justice
be of race, gender, legal, religious or sexual orientation.
I find it indicative that the 1% (now) simply don't care one way or another about race or gender
etc, PROVIDED it benefits or, has no negative effects on their economic/political interests.
"Just how large a spike in hate crime there has been remains uncertain, however. Several reports
have been proven false, and Potok cautioned that most incidents reported to the Southern Poverty
Law Center did not amount to hate crime.
All us ordinary people are insecure. Planet is becoming less habitable, war everywhere, ISDS
whether we want it or not, group sentiments driving mass behaviors with extra weapons from our
masters, soil depletion, water becoming a Nestle subsidiary, all that. But let us focus on maintaining
our favored position as more insecure than others, with a "Yes, but" response to what seems to
me the fundamental strategic scene:
"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war,
and we're winning."
Those mostly white guys, but a lot of women too, the "rich classs," are ORGANIZED, they have
a pretty simple organizing principle ("Everything belong us") that leads to straightforward strategies
and tactics to control all the levers and fulcrums of power. The senators in Oregon are "on the
right side" of a couple of social issues, but they both are all in for "trade deals" and other
big pieces of the "rich class's" ground game. In ship sinking incidents, where a lot of people
are dumped in the water, many adopt the strategy of trying to use others as flotation devices,
pushing them under while the "rich class" tootle off in the lifeboats. Sounds like a winner, all
right.
The comparison with 9/11 is instructive. That is not minimizing hate crimes. Within days after
9/11, my Sikh neighbor was assaulted and called a "terrorist". He finally decided to stop wearing
a turban, cut his hair, and dress "American". My neighborhood was not ethnically tense, but it is ethnically diverse, and my neighbor had
never seen his assailant before.
Yes, the rich classes are organized…organized to fleece us with unending wars. But don't minimize
other people's experience of what constitutes a hate crime.
In 1875, the first step toward the assassination of a black, "scalawag", or "carpetbagger"
public official in the South was a friendly visit from prominent people asking him to resign,
the second was night riders with torches, the third was night riders who killed the public official.
Jury nullification (surprise, surprise) made sure that no one was punished at the time. In 1876,
the restoration of "home rule' in Southern states elected in a bargain Rutherford B. Hayes, who
ended Reconstruction and the South entered a period that cleansed "Negroes, carpetbaggers, and
scalawags" from their state governments and put the Confederate generals and former plantation
owners back in charge. That was then called The Restoration. Coincidence that that is the name
of David Horowitz's conference where Donna Brazile was hobnobbing with James O'Keefe?
The rich class has enlisted the white indentured servants as their Praetorian Guard. The
same play as after Bacon's Rebellion.
Not minimizing - my very peaches-and-cream Scots-English daughter is married to a gentleman
from Ghana whose skin tones are about as dark as possible.
the have three beautiful children, and are fortunate to live in an area that is a hotbed of
"tolerance." I have many anecdotes too.
Do anecdotes = reality in all its complexity? Do anecdotes = policy? Is what is
actually occurring another Kristallnacht, or the irreducible susurrus of meanness and idiocy
that is part of every collection of humans? It would be nice not to get suckered into
elevating the painful minima over the importance of getting ordinary people to agree on a real
common enemy, and organizing to claim and protect.
If even one single banker had gone to jail for the mess (fed by Bush I, Clinton, and Bush
II) that blew up in 2008, we would be having a different conversation. We are in a huge legitimacy
crisis, in part because justice was never served on those who made tens of millions via fraud.
When there's no justice, its as if the society's immune system is not functioning.
Expect more strange things to appear, almost all of them aimed at sucking the remaining resources
out of the system with the knowledge that they'll never face consequences for looting. The fact
that they're killing the host does not bother them.
Corruption is both cause & effect of gross wealth inequities. Of course to the 1% it's not
corruption so much as merely what is owed as of a right to the privileged. (Thus, the most fundamental
basis of liberal democracy turns malignant: that ALL, even rulers & law makers are EQUALLY bound
by the Law).
The Malignant Overlords - the King or Queen, the Financial Masters of the Universe,, the
tribal witch doctor- live by grazing on the wealth of the natural world and the productivity of
their underlings. There are only a few thousand of them but they control finance and the Money
system, propaganda organizations (in the USA called the Media) land and agriculture, "educational"
institutions and entire armies of Homeland Insecurity police.
Under them there are the sycophants– generals and officers, war profiteers and corporate
CEO's, the intelligentsia, journalists, fake economists, and entertainment and sports heroes who
grow fat feasting on the morsels left over after the .0001% have fed. And far below the Overlords
are the millions of professional Bureaucrats whose job security requires unquestioning servitude.
Once upon a time there was what was known as the Middle Class who taught school or built things
in factories, made mortgage payments on a home, and bought a new Ford every other year. But they
now are renters, moving from one insecure job in one state to an insecure one across the country.
How else are they to maintain their sense of self-worth except by identifying a tribe that is
under them? If the members of the inferior tribe look just like you they might actually be more
successful and not a proper object of scorn. But if they have a black or brown skin and speak
differently they are the perfect target to make you feel that your life is not a total failure.
It's either that or go home and kick the dog or beat the wife. Or join the Army where you can
go kill a few foreigners and will always know your place in the hierarchy.
Class "trumps" race, but racial prejudice has its roots far back in human social history as
a tribal species where the "other" was always a threat to the tribe's existence.
Anyone who thinks it is only class and not also race is wearing some very strange blinders
No one with any sense is saying that, Katharine, and constantly bringing it up as some kind
of necessary argument (which, you may recall, was done as a way of trying to persuade people of
color Sanders wasn't working for them in the face of his entire history) perpetuates the falsehood
dichotomy that it has to be one or the other.
I can understand the desire to reduce the problems to a single issue that can then be subjected
to our total focus, but that's what's been done for the last fifty years; it doesn't work. Life
is too complex and messy to be fixed using magic pills, and Trump's success because those who've
given up hope of a cure are still enormously vulnerable to snake oil.
Race, gender identity, religion, etc. are the false dichotomies by which the oligarchs divide
us. Saudi princes, African American millionaires, gay millionaires etc. are generally treated
the same by the oligarchs as wasp millionaires. The true dichotomy is class, that is the dichotomy
which dare not speak its name.
yes, racism still exist, but the Democrats want to make it the primary issue of every election
because it is costs them nothing. I've never liked the idea of race based reparations because
they seem like another form of racism.
However, if the neolibs really believe racial disparity
and gender issues are the primary problems, why don't they ever support reparations or a large
tax on rich white people to pay the victims of racism and sexism and all the other isms?
Perhaps
its because that would actually cost them something. I think what bothers most of the Trumpets
out here in rural America is not race but the elevation of race to the top of the political todo
list.
For Trump it was so easy. He just says something that could be thought of as racist and
then his supporters watch as the media morphs his words, removes context, or just ignores any
possible non-racist motivations for his words.
Just read the actual Mexican- rapists quote. Completely
different then reported by the media. Fifteen years ago my native born Mexican friend said almost exactlly the same thing. Its a trap the media walks right into. I think most poor people of whiteness
do see racism as a sin, just not the only or most awful sin. As for Trump being a racist, I think
he would have to be human first.
… whilst his GOP colleagues publicly recoiled in horror, there is no question that Trump
was merely making explicit what Republicans had been doing for decades – since the days of Nixon
in 1968. The dog whistle was merely replaced by a bull horn.
Spot-on statement. Was watching Fareed Zakaria (yeah, I know, but he makes legit points from
time to time) and was pleasantly surprised that he called Bret Stephens, who was strongly opposed
to Trump, out on this. To see Stephens squirm like a worm on a hook was priceless.
"…what divides people rather than what unites people…"
Yes, class identity can be a bond that unites. However, in the US the sense of class identity
remains underdeveloped. In fact, it is only with the Sanders campaign that large swaths of the
American public have had practical and sustained exposure to the concept of class as a political
force. For most of the electorate, the language of class is still rather alien, particularly since
the "equality of opportunity" narrative even now is not completely overthrown.
Sanders and others on an ascendant left in the Democratic Party - and outside the Party - will
continue to do the important work of building a sense of class consciousness. But more is needed,
if the left wants to transform education into political power. Of course, organizing and electing
candidates at the local and state level is enormously important both to leverage control of local
institutions and - even more important - train and create leaders who can effectively use the
tools of political power. But besides this practical requirement, the left also needs to address
- or co-opt, if you will - the language of economic populism, which sounds a lot like economic
nationalism.
It seems inevitable that populist sentiment, which both Sanders and Trump have used to
electoral advantage, will spill over into a variety of economic nationalism. Nationalist
sentiment is the single most powerful unifying principle available, certainly more so than the
concept of class, at least in America. I don't see that changing anytime soon, and I do see the
Alt-Right using nationalism as a lever to try to coax the white working class into their brand
of identity politics. But America's assimilationist, "melting pot" narrative continues to be attractive
to most people, even if it is under assault in some quarters. So I think moving from nationalism
to white identity politics will not so easy for the Alt-Right. On the other hand, picking up the
thread of economic nationalism can provide the left with a powerful tool for bringing together
women, minorities and all who are struggling in this economy. This becomes particularly important
if it is the case that technology already makes the ideal of full (or nearly full) employment
nothing more than a chimera, thus forcing the question of a guaranteed annual income. Establishing
that kind of permanent safety net will only be possible in a polity where there are firm bonds
between citizens and a marked sense of responsibility for the welfare of all.
And if the Democratic Party is honest, it will have to concede that even the popular incumbent
President has played a huge role in contributing to the overall sense of despair that drove people
to seek a radical outlet such as Trump. The Obama Administration rapidly broke with its Hope and
"Change you can believe in" the minute he appointed some of the architects of the 2008 crisis
as his main economic advisors, who in turn and gave us a Wall Street friendly bank bailout that
effectively restored the status quo ante (and refused to jail one single banker, even though many
were engaged in explicitly criminal activity).
====================================================================
For those who think its just Hillary, its not. There is no way there will ever be any acknowledgement
of Obama;s real failures – he will no more be viewed honestly by dems than he could be viewed
honestly by repubs. Obama was a perfect identity candidate, i.e., not only capable of getting
the dem nomination, but the presidency and than not jailing banksters NO MATTER WHAT THEY DID,
OR WILL DO…
I imagine Trump will be one term, and I imagine we return in short order to our nominally different
parties squabbling but in lock step with regard to their wall street masters…
Democrats seem to be the more visible or clumsy in their attempts to govern themselves and
the populace, let alone understand their world. By way of illustration, consider the following.
One truism about immigration, to pick a topical item, is that uncontrolled immigration leads to
overwhelming an area whether city, state or country. Regardless of how one feels about the other
aspects of immigration, there are some real, unacknowledged limits to the viability of the various
systems that must accommodate arrivals, particularly in the short term. Too much of a perceived
good thing may be hazardous to one's health. Too much free stuff exhausts the producers,
infrastructure and support networks.
To extend and torture that concept further, just because, consider the immigration of populist
ideas to Washington. There is an entrenched royal court, not unlike Versailles in some respects,
where the sinecures, access to the White House tennis court (remember Jimmy Carter and his forest
for the trees issues) or to paid "lunches in Georgetown" or similar trappings. Inflow of populist
or other foreign ideas behind the veil of media and class secrecy represents a threat to overwhelm,
downgrade (Sayeth Yogi Berra: It is so popular that nobody goes there anymore) or remove those
perks, and to cause some financial, psychic or other pain to the hangers-on.
Pretty soon, word filters out through WikiLeaks, or just on the front page of a newspaper in
the case of the real and present corruption (What do you mean nobody went to jail for the frauds?).
In those instances, the tendency of a populace to remain aloof with their bread and circuses and
reality shows and such gets strained.
Some people began noticing and the cognitive dissonance
became to great to ignore no matter how many times the messages were delivered from on high. That
led to many apparent outbursts of rational behavior (What, you sold my family and me out and reduced
our prospects, so why should we vote for a party that takes us for granted, at best), which would
be counter-intuitive by some in our media.
"... The funny thing is that they've so learned to love the smell of their own farts (or propaganda) that they internalized an image of enlightened progressivism for themselves. This Trump election was probably the first clue that their self image is faulty and not widely shared by others. They are not taking it well. ..."
NYTimes still blames race on Trump's winning over Obama supporters in Iowa:
Trump clearly sensed the fragility of the coalition that Obama put
together - that the president's support in heavily white areas was built not
on racial egalitarianism but on a feeling of self-interest. Many white
Americans were no longer feeling that belonging to this coalition benefited
them.
Racial egalitarianism wasn't the reason for white support for Obama in 2008
and 2012 in Iowa. It reflected racial egalitarianism, but that support had to
do with perceived economic self-interest, just as the switch to Trump in 2016
did.
And what on earth is wrong with self-interest as a reason for voting?
Right. These corporatists use identity politics as a stalking horse to
rob the public blind, and then they spew invectives about racism and
mysogony wherever the public stops buying the bullcrap.
The funny thing is that they've so learned to love the smell of their own
farts (or propaganda) that they internalized an image of enlightened
progressivism for themselves. This Trump election was probably the first
clue that their self image is faulty and not widely shared by others. They
are not taking it well.
"... Judging by the volume of complaints from Clinton sycophants insisting that people did not get behind Clinton or that it was purely her gender, they won't. Why would anyone get behind Clinton save the 1%? Her policies were pro-war, pro-Wall Street, and at odds with what the American people needed. Also, we should judge based on policy, not gender and Clinton comes way short of Sanders in that regard – in many regards, she is the antithesis of Sanders. ..."
"... "Establishment Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one. The only question is whether or not they are willing to take responsibility" I disagree. In my view, it is not a question at all. They have never taken responsibility for anything, and they never will. ..."
"... What would make Democrats focus on the working class? Nothing. They have lost and brought about destruction of the the Unions, which was the Democratic Base, and have become beholden to the money. The have noting in common with the working class, and no sympathy for their situation, either. ..."
"... What does Bill Clinton, who drive much of the policy in the '90s, and spent his early years running away form the rural poor in Arkansas (Law School, Rhodes Scholarship), have in common with working class people anywhere? ..."
"... Iron law of institutions applies. Position in the D apparatus is more important than political power – because with power come blame. ..."
"... I notice Obama worked hard to lose majorities in the house and Senate so he could point to the Republicans and say "it was their fault" except when he actually wanted something, and made it happen (such as TPP). ..."
"... Agreed with the first but not the second. It's typical liberal identity politics guilt tripping. That won't get you too far on the "white side" of Youngstown Ohio. ..."
"... Also suspect that the working-class, Rust-Belt Trump supporters will soon be thrown under the bus by their Standard Bearer, if the Transition Team appointments are any indicator: e.g. Privateers at SSA. ..."
"... My wife teaches primary grades in an inner city school. She has made it clear to me over the years that the challenges her children are facing are related to poverty, not race. She sees a big correlation between the financial status of a family and its family structure (one or more parents not present or on drugs) and the kids' success in school. Race is a minor factor. ..."
"... The problem with running on a class based platform in America is, well, it's America; and in good ol' America, we are taught that anyone can become a successful squillionare – ya know, hard work, nose-to-the-grindstone, blah, blah, blah. ..."
"... The rags to riches American success fable is so ingrained that ideas like taxing the rich a bit more fall flat because everyone thinks "that could be me someday. Just a few house flips, a clever new app, that ten-bagger (or winning lottery ticket) and I'm there" ("there" being part of the 1%). ..."
"... The idea that anyone can be successful (i.e. rich) is constantly promoted. ..."
"... I think this fantasy is beginning to fade a bit but the "wealth = success" idea is so deeply rooted in the American psyche I don't think it will ever fade completely away. ..."
"... If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy - which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog - you will come to an awful realization. It wasn't Beijing. It wasn't even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn't immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn't any of that. ..."
"... Nothing happened to them. There wasn't some awful disaster. There wasn't a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence - and the incomprehensible malice - of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain't what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down. ..."
"... The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump's speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. ..."
"... White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America ..."
"... Poor or Poorer whites have been demonised since the founding of the original Colonies, and were continuously pushed west to the frontiers by the ruling elites of New England and the South as a way of ridding themselves of "undesirables", who were then left to their own resources, and clung together for mutual assistance. ..."
"... White trash is a central, if disturbing, thread in our national narrative. The very existence of such people – both in their visibility and invisibility – is proof that American society obsesses over the mutable labels we give to the neighbors we wish not to notice. "They are not who we are". But they are who we are and have been a fundamental part of our history, whether we like it or not". ..."
"... "To be sure, Donald Trump did make a strong appeal to racists, homophobes, and misogynists " ..."
"... working class white women ..."
"... Obama is personally likeable ..."
"... History tells us the party establishment will move further right after election losses. And among the activist class there are identity purity battles going on. ..."
"... Watch as this happens yet again: "In most elections, U.S. politicians of both parties pretend to be concerned about their issues, then conveniently ignore them when they reach power and implement policies from the same Washington Consensus that has dominated the past 40 years." That is why we need a strong third party, a reformed election system with public support of campaigns and no private money, and free and fair media coverage. But it ain't gonna happen. ..."
"... Obviously, if the Democrats nominate yet another Clintonite Obamacrat all over again, I may have to vote for Trump all over again . . . to stop the next Clintonite before it kills again. ..."
Ultimately the Establishment Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one. The
only question is whether or not they are willing to take responsibility for what happened.
Judging by the volume of complaints from Clinton sycophants insisting that people did not
get behind Clinton or that it was purely her gender, they won't. Why would anyone get behind Clinton
save the 1%? Her policies were pro-war, pro-Wall Street, and at odds with what the American people
needed. Also, we should judge based on policy, not gender and Clinton comes way short of Sanders
in that regard – in many regards, she is the antithesis of Sanders.
Class trumps race, to make a pun. If the left doesn't take the Democratic Party back and clean
house, I expect that there is a high probability that 2020's election will look at lot like the
2004 elections.
I'd recommend someone like Sanders to run. Amongst the current crop, maybe Tulsi Gabbard or
Nina Turner seem like the best candidates.
"Establishment Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one. The only question
is whether or not they are willing to take responsibility" I disagree. In my view, it is not a
question at all. They have never taken responsibility for anything, and they never will.
What would make Democrats focus on the working class? Nothing. They have lost and brought
about destruction of the the Unions, which was the Democratic Base, and have become beholden to
the money. The have noting in common with the working class, and no sympathy for their situation,
either.
What does Bill Clinton, who drive much of the policy in the '90s, and spent his early years
running away form the rural poor in Arkansas (Law School, Rhodes Scholarship), have in common
with working class people anywhere?
The same question applies to Hillary, to Trump and the remainder of our "representatives" in
Congress.
Without Unions, how are US Representatives from the working class elected?
What we are seeing is a shift in the US for the Republicans to become the populist party. They
already have the churches, and with Trump they can gain the working class – although I do not
underestimate the contempt help by our elected leaders for the Working Class and poor.
The have forgotten, if they ever believed: "There, but for the grace of God, go I".
Iron law of institutions applies. Position in the D apparatus is more important than political
power – because with power come blame.
I notice Obama worked hard to lose majorities in the house and Senate so he could point
to the Republicans and say "it was their fault" except when he actually wanted something, and
made it happen (such as TPP).
We know that class and economic insecurity drove many white people to vote for Trump. That's
understandable. And now we are seeing a rise in hate incidents inspired by his victory. So obviously
there is a race component in his support as well. So, if you, white person, didn't vote for Trump
out of white supremacy, would you consider making a statement that disavows the acts of extremist
whites? Do you vow to stand up and help if you see people being victimized? Do you vow not to
stay silent when you encounter Trump supporters who ARE obviously in thrall to the white supremacist
siren call?
Agreed with the first but not the second. It's typical liberal identity politics guilt
tripping. That won't get you too far on the "white side" of Youngstown Ohio.
And I wouldn't worry about it. When I worked at the at the USX Fairless works in Levittown
PA in 1988, I was befriended by one steelworker who was a clear raving white supremacist racist.
(Actually rather nonchalant about about it). However he was the only one I encountered who was
like this, and eventually I figured out that he befriended a "newbie" like me because he had no
friends among the other workers, including the whites. He was not popular at all.
I've always thought that Class, not Race, was the Third Rail of American Politics, and that
the US was fast-tracking to a more shiny, happy feudalism.
Also suspect that the working-class, Rust-Belt Trump supporters will soon be thrown under
the bus by their Standard Bearer, if the Transition Team appointments are any indicator: e.g.
Privateers at SSA.
My wife teaches primary grades in an inner city school. She has made it clear to me over
the years that the challenges her children are facing are related to poverty, not race. She sees
a big correlation between the financial status of a family and its family structure (one or more
parents not present or on drugs) and the kids' success in school. Race is a minor factor.
She also makes it clear to me that the Somali/Syrian/Iraqi etc. immigrant kids are going to
do very well even though they come in without a word of English because they are working their
butts off and they have the full support of their parents and community. These people left bad
places and came to their future and they are determined to grab it with both hands. 40% of her
class this year is ENL (English as a non-native language). Since it is an inner city school, they
don't have teacher's aides in the class, so it is just one teacher in a class of 26-28 kids, of
which a dozen struggle to understand English. Surprisingly, the class typically falls short of
the "standards" that the state sets for the standardized exams. Yet many of the immigrant kids
end up going to university after high school through sheer effort.
Bullying and extreme misbehavior (teachers are actually getting injured by violent elementary
kids) is largely done by kids born in the US. The immigrant kids tend to be fairly well-behaved.
On a side note, the CSA at our local farmer's market said they couldn't find people to pick
the last of their fall crops (it is in a rural community so a car is needed to get there). So
the food bank was going out this week to pick produce like squash, onions etc. and we were told
we could come out and pick what we wanted. Full employment?
The problem with running on a class based platform in America is, well, it's America; and
in good ol' America, we are taught that anyone can become a successful squillionare – ya know,
hard work, nose-to-the-grindstone, blah, blah, blah.
The rags to riches American success fable is so ingrained that ideas like taxing the rich
a bit more fall flat because everyone thinks "that could be me someday. Just a few house flips,
a clever new app, that ten-bagger (or winning lottery ticket) and I'm there" ("there" being part
of the 1%).
The idea that anyone can be successful (i.e. rich) is constantly promoted.
I think this fantasy is beginning to fade a bit but the "wealth = success" idea is so deeply
rooted in the American psyche I don't think it will ever fade completely away.
I'm recalling (too lazy to find the link) a poll a couple years ago that showed the number
of American's identifying as "working class" increased, and the number as "middle class" decreased.
It is both. And it is a deliberate mechanism of class division to preserve power. Bill Cecil-Fronsman,
Common Whites: Class and Culture in Antebellum North Carolina identifies nine classes
in the class structure of a state that mixed modern capitalist practice (plantations), agrarian
YOYO independence (the non-slaveowning subsistence farms), town economies, and subsistence (farm
labor). Those classes were typed racially and had certain economic, power, and social relations
associated with them. For both credit and wages, few escaped the plantation economy and being
subservient to the planter capitalists locally.
Moreover, ethnic identity was embedded in the law as a class marker. This system was developed
independently or exported through imitation in various ways to the states outside North Carolina
and the slave-owning states. The abolition of slavery meant free labor in multiple senses and
the capitalist use of ethnic minorities and immigrants as scabs integrated them into an ethnic-class
system, where it was broad ethnicity and not just skin-color that defined classes. Other ethnic
groups, except Latinos and Muslim adherents, now have earned their "whiteness".
One suspects that every settler colonial society develops this combined ethnic-class structure
in which the indigenous ("Indians" in colonial law) occupy one group of classes and imported laborers
or slaves or intermixtures ("Indian", "Cape Colored" in South Africa) occupy another group of
classes available for employment in production. Once employed, the relationship is exactly that
of the slaveowner to the slave no matter how nicely the harsh labor management techniques of 17th
century Barbados and Jamaica have been made kinder and gentler. But outside the workplace (and
often still inside) the broader class structure applies even contrary to the laws trying to restrict
the relationship to boss and worker.
Blacks are not singling themselves out to police; police are shooting unarmed black people
without punishment. The race of the cop does not matter, but the institution of impunity makes
it open season on a certain class of victims.
It is complicated because every legal and often managerial attempt has been made to reduce
the class structure of previous economies to the pure capitalism demanded by current politics.
So when in a post Joe McCarthy, post-Cold War propaganda society, someone wants to protest
the domination of capitalism, attacking who they perceive as de facto scabs to their higher incomes
(true or not) is the chosen mode of political attack. Not standing up for the political rights
of the victims of ethnically-marked violence and discrimination allows the future depression of
wages and salaries by their selective use as a threat in firms. And at the individual firm and
interpersonal level even this gets complicated because in spite of the pressure to just be businesslike,
people do still care for each other.
This is a perennial mistake. In the 1930s Southern Textile Strike, some organizing was of both
black and white workers; the unions outside the South rarely stood in solidarity with those efforts
because they were excluding ethnic minorities from their unions; indeed, some locals were organized
by ethnicity. That attitude also carried over to solidarity with white workers in the textile
mills. And those white workers who went out on a limb to organize a union never forgot that failure
in their labor struggle. It is the former textile areas of the South that are most into Trump's
politics and not so much the now minority-majority plantation areas.
It still is race in the inner ring suburbs of ethnically diverse cities like St. Louis that
hold the political lock on a lot of states. Because Ferguson to them seems like an invasion of
the lower class. Class politics, of cultural status, based on ethnicity. Still called by that
19h century scientific racism terminology that now has been debunked - race - Caucasoid, Mongoloid,
Negroid. Indigenous, at least in the Americas, got stuck under Mongoloid.
You go organize the black, Latino, and white working class to form unions and gain power, and
it will happen. It is why Smithfield Foods in North Carolina had to negotiate a contract. Race
can be transcended in action.
Pretending the ethnic discrimination and even segregation does not exist and have its own problems
is political suicide in the emerging demographics. Might not be a majority, but it is an important
segment of the vote. Which is why the GOP suppressed minority voters through a variety of legal
and shady electoral techniques. Why Trump wants to deport up to 12 million potential US citizens
and some millions of already birthright minor citizens. And why we are likely to see the National
Labor Review Board gutted of what little power it retains from 70 years of attack. Interesting
what the now celebrated white working class was not offered in this election, likely because they
would vote it down quicker because, you know, socialism.
Your comment reminded me of an episode in Seattle's history.
Link . The
unions realized they were getting beat in their strikes, by scabs, who were black. The trick was
for the unions to bring the blacks into the union. This was a breakthrough, and it worked in Seattle,
in 1934. There is a cool mural the union commissioned by,
Pablo O'Higgins , to
celebrate the accomplishment.
Speaking of class, and class contempt , one must recall the infamous screed published
by National Review columnist Kevin Williamson early this year, writing about marginalised white
people here is a choice excerpt:
If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my
own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and
alcohol addiction, the family anarchy - which is to say, the whelping of human children with
all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog - you will come to an awful realization. It wasn't
Beijing. It wasn't even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn't immigrants from
Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn't any of that.
Nothing happened to them. There wasn't some awful disaster. There wasn't a war or a famine
or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very
little to explain the dysfunction and negligence - and the incomprehensible malice - of poor
white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain't what it used to be. There is more to
life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the
factories down.
The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die.
Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap
theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory
towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your
goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American
underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used
heroin needles. Donald Trump's speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.
Now it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination to state that Williamson's animus can
be replicated amongst many of the moneyed elite currently pushing and shoving their way into a
position within the incoming Trump Administration. The Trump campaign has openly and cynically
courted and won the votes of white people similar to those mentioned in Williamson's article,
and who – doubtlessly – will be stiffed by policies vigourously opposed to their welfare that
will be enacted during the Trump years. The truly intriguing aspect of the Trump election is:
what will be the consequences of further degradation of the "lower orders' " quality of life by
such actions? Wholesale retreat from electoral politics? Further embitterment and anger NOT toward
those in Washington responsible for their lot but directed against ethnic and racial minorities
"stealing their jawbs" and "getting welfare while we scrounge for a living"? I sincerely doubt
whether the current or a reconstructed Democratic Party can at all rally this large chunk of white
America by posing as their "champions" the class divide in the US is as profound as the racial
chasm, and neither major party – because of internal contradictions – can offer a credible answer.
[In addition to the growing inequality and concomitant wage stagnation for the middle and working
classes, 9/11 and its aftermath has certainly has contributed to it as well, as, making PEOPLE
LONG FOR the the Golden Age of Managerial Capitalism of the post-WWII era,]
Oh yeah, I noticed a big ol' hankerin' for that from the electorate. What definition could
the author be using for Managerial Capitalism that could make it the opposite of inequality? The
fight for power between administration and shareholders does not lead to equality for workers.
[So this gave force to the idea that the government was nothing but a viper's nest full of
crony capitalist enablers,]
I don't think it's an 'idea' that the govt is crony capitalists and enablers. Ds need to get
away from emotive descriptions. Being under/unemployed, houseless, homeless, unable to pay for
rent, utilities, food . aren't feelings/ideas. When that type of language is used, it comes across
as hand waving. There needs to be a shift of talking to rather than talking about.
If crony capitalism is an idea, it's simply a matter for Ds to identify a group (workers),
create a hierarchy (elite!) and come up with a propaganda campaign (celebrities and musicians
spending time in flyover country-think hanging out in coffee shops in a flannel shirt) to get
votes. Promise to toss them a couple of crumbs with transfer payments (retraining!) or a couple
of regulations (mandatory 3 week severance!) and bring out the obligatory D fall back- it would
be better than the Rs would give them. On the other hand, if it's factual, the cronies need to
be stripped of power and kicked out or the nature of the capitalist structure needs to be changed.
It's laughable to imagine liberals or progressives would be open to changing the power and nature
of the corporate charter (it makes me smile to think of the gasps).
The author admits that politicians lie and continue the march to the right yet uses the ACA,
a march to the right, as a connection to Obama's (bombing, spying, shrinking middle class) likability.
[[But emphasizing class-based policies, rather than gender or race-based solutions, will achieve
more for the broad swathe of voters, who comprehensively rejected the "neo-liberal lite" identity
politics]
Oops. I got a little lost with the neo-liberal lite identity politics. Financialized identity
politics? Privatized identity politics?
I believe women and poc have lost ground (economic and rights) so I would like examples of
successful gender and race-based (liberal identity politics) solutions that would demonstrate
that identity politics targeting is going to work on the working class.
If workers have lost power, to balance that structure, you give workers more power (I predict
that will fail as unions fall under the generic definition of corporatist and the power does not
rest with the members but with the CEOs of the unions – an example is a union that block the members
from voting to endorse a candidate, go against the member preference and endorse the corporatist
candidate), or you remove power from the corporation. Libs/progs can't merely propose something
like vesting more power with shareholders to remove executives as an ameliorating maneuver which
fails to address the power imbalance.
[This is likely only to accelerate the disintegration of the political system and economic
system until the elephant in the room – class – is honestly and comprehensively addressed.]
For a thorough exposition of lower-class white America from the inception of the Republic to
today, a must-read is Nancy Isenberg's White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in
America . Poor or Poorer whites have been demonised since the founding of the original
Colonies, and were continuously pushed west to the frontiers by the ruling elites of New England
and the South as a way of ridding themselves of "undesirables", who were then left to their own
resources, and clung together for mutual assistance.
Thus became the economic and cultural subset of "crackers", "hillbillies", "rednecks", and
later, "Okies", a source of contempt and scorn by more economically and culturally endowed whites.
The anti-bellum white Southern aristocracy cynically used poor whites as cheap tenant farming,
all the while laying down race-based distinctions between them and black slaves – there is always
someone lower on the totem pole, and that distinction remains in place today. Post-Reconstruction,
the South maintained the cult of white superiority, all the while preserving the status of upper-class
whites, and, by race-based public policies, assured lower-class whites that such "superiority"
would be maintained by denying the black populations access to education, commerce, the vote,
etc. And today, "white trash", or "trailer trash", or poorer whites in general are ubiquitous
and as American as apple pie, in the North, the Midwest, and the West, not just the South. Let
me quote Isenberg's final paragraph of her book:
White trash is a central, if disturbing, thread in our national narrative. The very
existence of such people – both in their visibility and invisibility – is proof that American
society obsesses over the mutable labels we give to the neighbors we wish not to notice. "They
are not who we are". But they are who we are and have been a fundamental part of our history,
whether we like it or not".
Presenting a plan for the future, which has a chance to be supported by the electorate, must
start with scrupulous, unwavering honesty and a willingness to acknowledge inconvenient facts.
The missing topic from the 2016 campaigns was declining energy surpluses and their pervasive,
negative impact on the prosperity to which we feel entitled. Because of the energy cost of producing
oil, a barrel today represents a declining fraction of a barrel in terms of net energy. This is
the major factor in sluggish economic performance. Failing to make this case and, at the same
time, offering glib and vacuous promises of growth and economic revival, are just cynical exercises
in pandering.
Our only option is to mange the coming decline in a way that does not descend into chaos and
anarchy. This can only be done with a clear vision of causes and effects and the wisdom and courage
to accept facts. The alternative is yet more delusions and wishful thinking, whose shelf life
is getting shorter.
To be fair to the article, Marshall did in fact say:
"To be sure, Donald Trump did make a strong appeal to racists, homophobes, and misogynists
"
IMO the point Marshall is making that race was not the primary reason #DJT
won. And I concur.
This is borne out by the vote tallies which show that the number of R voters from 2012 to 2016
was pretty much on the level (final counts pending):
2016 R Vote: 60,925,616
2012 R Vote: 60,934,407
(Source:
US Election Atlas )
Stop and think about this for a minute. Every hard core racist had their guy this
time around; and yet, the R's could barely muster the same amount of votes as Mittens
in 2012. This is huge, and supports the case that other things contributed far more than just
race.
Class played in several ways:
Indifference/apathy/fatigue: Lambert posted some data from Carl Beijer on this yesterday in his
Clinton Myths piece yesterday.
Anger: #HRC could not convince many people who voted for Bernie that she was interested in his
outreach to the working class. More importantly, #HRC could not convince working class white
women that she had anything other than her gender and Trump's boorishness as a counterpoint
to offer.
Outsider v Insider: Working class people skeptical of political insiders rejected #HRC.
If black workers were losing ground and white workers were gaining, one could indeed claim
that racism is a problem. However, both black and white workers are losing ground – racism simply
cannot be the major issue here. It's not racism, it's class war.
The fixation on race, the corporate funding of screaming 'black lives matter' agitators, the
crude attempts to tie Donald Trump to the KKK (really? really?) are just divide and conquer, all
over again.
Whatever his other faults, Donald Trump has been vigorous in trying to reach out to working
class blacks, even though he knew he wouldn't get much of their vote and he knew that the media
mostly would not cover it. Last I heard, he was continuing to try and reach out, despite the black
'leadership' class demanding that he is a racist. Because as was so well pointed out here, the
one thing the super-rich fear is a united working class.
Divide and conquer. It's an old trick, but a powerful one.
Suggestion: if (and it's a big if) Trump really does enact policies that help working class
blacks, and the Republicans peel away a significant fraction of the black vote, that would set
the elites' hair on fire. Because it would mean that the black vote would be in play, and the
Neoliberal Democrats couldn't just take their votes for granted. And wouldn't that be a thing.
that was good for 2016. I will look to see if he has stats for other years. i certainly agree
that poor whites are more likely to be shot; executions of homeless people by police are one example.
the kind of system that was imposed on the people of ferguson has often been imposed on poor whites,
too. i do object to the characterization of black lives matter protestors as "screaming agitators";
that's all too reminiscent of the meme of "outside agitators" riling up the local peaceful black
people to stand up for their rights that was characteristically used to smear the civil rights
movement in the 60's.
I might not have much in common at all with certain minorities, but it's highly likely that
we share class status.
That's why the status quo allows identity politics and suppresses class politics.
Having been around for sometime, I often wonder what The Guardian is going on about in the
UK as it is supposed to be our left wing broadsheet.
It isn't a left I even recognised, what was it?
I do read it to try and find out what nonsense it is these people think.
Having been confused for many a year, I think I have just understood this identity based politics
as it is about to disappear.
I now think it was a cunning ploy to split the electorate in a different way, to leave the
UK working class with no political outlet.
Being more traditional left I often commented on our privately educated elite and private schools
but the Guardian readership were firmly in favour of them.
How is this left?
Thank god this is now failing, get back to the old left, the working class and those lower
down the scale.
It was clever while it lasted in enabling neoliberalism and a neglect of the working class,
but clever in a cunning, nasty and underhand way.
Thinking about it, so many of these recent elections have been nearly 50% / 50% splits, has
there been a careful analysis of who neoliberalism disadvantages and what minorities need to be
bought into the fold to make it work in a democracy.
Women are not a minority, but obviously that is a big chunk if you can get them under your
wing. The black vote is another big group when split away and so on.
Brexit nearly 50/50; Austria nearly 50/50; US election nearly 50/50.
So, 85% of Blacks vote Hillary against Sanders (left) and 92% vote Hillary against Trump (right),
but is no race. It's the class issue that sends them to the Clintons. Kindly explain how.
Funny think about likeability, likeable people can be real sh*ts. So I started looking into
hanging out with less likeable people. I found that they can be considerably more appreciative
of friendship and loyalty, maybe because they don't have such easy access to it.
Entertainment media has cautiously explored some aspect so fthis, but in politics, "nice" is
still disproportionately values, and not appreciated as a possible flag.
Watch out buddy. They are onto you. I have seen some comments on democratic party sites claiming
the use of class to explain Hillary's loss is racist. The democratic party is a goner. History
tells us the party establishment will move further right after election losses. And among the
activist class there are identity purity battles going on.
Watch as this happens yet again: "In most elections, U.S. politicians of both parties pretend
to be concerned about their issues, then conveniently ignore them when they reach power and implement
policies from the same Washington Consensus that has dominated the past 40 years." That is why
we need a strong third party, a reformed election system with public support of campaigns and
no private money, and free and fair media coverage. But it ain't gonna happen.
Well it certainly won't happen by itself. People are going to have to make it happen. Here
in Michigan we have a tiny new party called Working Class Party running 3 people here and there.
I voted for two of them. If the Democrats run somebody no worse than Trump next time, I will be
free to vote Working Class Party to see what happens.
Obviously, if the Democrats nominate yet another Clintonite Obamacrat all over again, I
may have to vote for Trump all over again . . . to stop the next Clintonite before it kills again.
"... when "capitalism" failed to remedy class inequity, in fact worked to cause it, propaganda took over and focused on all sorts of things that float around the edges of class like race, opportunity, civil rights, etc – but not a word about money. ..."
"... "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." ..."
"... "The reason the elites don't like class politics is that the class division that forms against their class, once organized, is large enough to take them on." ..."
"... Class divides the 99% from the small elite who lead both political parties. That makes it an explosive threat. I'm speaking of actual economic class, not the media BS of pork rinds and NASCAR versus brie and art museums. ..."
"... I've always maintained that Class is the real third rail of American politics, and the US is fast tracking to a shiny, prettified version of feudalism. ..."
"... There are two elephants in the room, class and technology. Both are distorted by those in power in order to ensure their continued rule. It seems to me the technology adopted by a society determines its class structure. ..."
"... Add to that HRC's neocon foreign policy instincts ..."
"... This goes beyond corruption. It is one thing to be selling public infrastructure construction contracts to crony capitalist contributors (in the Clintons' case do we call them philanthropists?) – entirely another to be selling guns and bombs used by Middle Eastern despots to grind down (IOW blow up, murder) opposition to their corrupt regimes. ..."
"... In fact, most of Western Civilization (sic?) seems to be happy with the status quo of a 'post-industrial' America as the "exceptional nation" whose only two functions are consuming the world's wealth and employing military Keynesianism to maintain a global social order based on money created ex nihilo by US and international bankers and financiers. ..."
"... What we are witnessing is a political crisis because the system is geared against the citizen. ..."
"... And journalists/media are complicit. Where is the cutting investigative journalism? There is none – the headlines should be screaming it. Thanks God (or whoever) for blogs like these. ..."
"... Sooo, they spent a generation telling the white worker that he was a racist, sexist bigot, mocking his religion, making his kids read "Heather Has Two Mommies" in school, and blaming him for economic woes caused in New York and DC. ..."
"... Tryng lately to get my terminology straight, and I think the policies you itemized should be labeled neoliberal, not liberal/progressive. Neoliberalism seems to be the one that combines the worst features of the private sector with the worst features of the public sector, without the good points of either one. ..."
when "capitalism" failed to remedy class inequity, in fact worked to cause
it, propaganda took over and focused on all sorts of things that float around
the edges of class like race, opportunity, civil rights, etc – but not a
word about money.
That's why Hillary was so irrelevant and boring. If class
itself (money) becomes a topic of discussion, the free-market orgy will be
seen as a last ditch effort to keep the elite in a class by themselves by
"trading" stuff that can just as easily be made domestically, and just not
worth the effort anymore.
Identity politics divides just as well as class politics. It simply divides
into smaller (less powerful) groups. The reason the elites don't like class politics is that the class division that forms against their
class, once organized, is large enough to take them on.
"The reason the elites don't like class politics is that the class
division that forms against their class, once organized, is large enough
to take them on."
I believe there is another aspect to the shift we are seeing, and it
is demographics.
Specifically deplorable demographics.
It should be noted that the deplorable generation, gen x, are very much a mixed racial cohort.
They have not participated in politics much because they have been under attack since they were
children. They have been ignored up to now.
Deplorable means wretched, poor.
This non participation is what has begun to change, and will accelerate for the next 20 years
and beyond.
Demographically speaking, with analysis of the numbers right now are approximately…
GEN GI and Silent Gen – 22,265,021
Baby Boomers 50,854,027
Gen X 90,010,283
Millenials 62,649,947 18 Years to 34
25,630,521 (12-17 Years old)
Total 88,280,468
Artist Gen 48,820,896 and growing…
* Using the Fourth Turning Cultural Demographic Measurement vs. the politically convenient,
MSM supported, propaganda demographics. They would NEVER do such a thing right? Sure.
Class divides the 99% from the small elite who lead both political parties.
That makes it an explosive threat. I'm speaking of actual economic class, not the media BS of pork rinds and NASCAR versus brie and
art museums.
Hi Yves – great post!
I've always maintained that Class is the real third rail
of American politics, and the US is fast tracking to a shiny, prettified version
of feudalism.
I suspect that the working-class Trump voters in the Rust Belt will eventually disappointed in their
standard bearer, Transition Team staffing is any indication: e.g. Privateers back at SSA.
In the post-Reconstruction South poor whites and blacks alike were the victims
of political and legal institutions designed to create a divided and disenfranchised
work force for the benefit of landlords, capitalists and corporations. Poor whites
as well as poor blacks were ensnared in a system of sharecropping and debt peonage.
Poll taxes, literacy tests and other voter restrictions disenfranchised blacks
and almost all poor whites creating an electorate dominated by a white southern
gentry class.
Martin Luther King, Jr. clarified this at the end of his address at the conclusion of the Selma March
on March 25, 1965.
…You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in
the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied
with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro
slaves and pay him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low.
Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. That is what was known
as the Populist Movement. The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses and the
former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not
only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses into a voting bloc that threatened to drive
the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.
To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated
society…. If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro
Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and
gave the poor white man Jim Crow. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for
the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him
that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. And he ate
Jim Crow. And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could
not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in
the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, their last outpost of psychological
oblivion.
Thus, the threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike resulted
in the establishment of a segregated society. They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they
segregated southern mores from the rich whites; they segregated southern churches from Christianity;
they segregated southern minds from honest thinking; and they segregated the Negro from everything.
That's what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great
society: a society of justice where none would prey upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty
where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the
dignity and worth of human personality.
There are two elephants in the room, class and technology. Both are distorted
by those in power in order to ensure their continued rule. It seems to me the technology
adopted by a society determines its class structure.
So much of todays discussion revolves around justifying the inappropriate use of
technology, it seems inevitable that only a major breakdown of essential technological
systems will afford the necessary space to address growing social problems.
E.F. Schumacher addressed all this in the 70's with his work on appropriate technologies. Revisiting
the ideas of human scale systems offers a way to actively and effectively deal with todays needs while
simultaneously trying to change larger perspectives and understanding of the citizenry. While Schumacher's
work was directed at developing countries, the impoverishment of the working class makes it relevant
in the US today.
Addressing our technology question honestly will lead to more productive changes in class structure
than taking on the class issue directly. Direct class confrontation is violent. Adopting human scale
technology is peaceful. In the end what stands for a good life will win out. I'm working for human scale.
Thought experiment: If you opposed Clarence Thomas and Sarah Palin does that
make you a racist and a sexist?
Or, is it only when someone votes against a supposed liberal? And when Hillary
supported Cuomo over Teachout for NY Governor, none of her supporters labeled her
a Cuomobros.
Hillary received millions fewer votes than Obama because she was a seriously flawed candidate who
could not muster any excitement. The only reason she received 60 million is because she was running
against Trump. The play on identity politics was pure desperation.
"So this gave force to the idea that
the government was nothing but a viper's nest full
of crony capitalist enablers
, which in turn helped to unleash populism on the right (the
Left being marginalised or co-opted by their Wall Street/Silicon Valley donor class). And this
gave us Trump.
Add to that HRC's neocon foreign policy instincts
, which could have got
us in a war with Russia and maybe the American electorate wasn't so dumb after all."
I voted for Hillary, but it was not easy.
I agree that identity politics of the DNC variety have passed their pull date. Good riddance.
Here's another thought experiment: were voters who chose Obama over Hillary
in the 2008 primary sexists? Were Hillary's voters racists?
I don't think you give the Democratic establishment enough credit for obtuseness by characterizing
their identity politics play as "desperation". I have several sisters who were sucked in by Hillary's
"woman" card, and it made them less than receptive to hearing about her record of pay-for-play, proxy
warmongering, and baseless Russia-bashing.
And it turned people like me – who would choose a woman over a man, other things being equal –
into sexists for not backing Hillary (I voted for Stein).
Yes. If Hillary had been elected I felt like we would have been played by someone
who is corrupt and with no real interest in the working/middle class. We would
have slogged through another 4 years with someone who arrogantly had both a private
and public position and had no real interest in climate change (she was very pro
fracking), financial change (giving hour long $250,000 speeches to banks) or health
care (she laughed at the idea of single payer although that's what most people
want).
Sanders had opposite views on these 3 issues and would have been an advocate of real change which
is why he was so actively opposed by the establishment and very popular with the people as evidenced
by his huge rallies.
Trump was seen by many as the only real hope for some change. As mentioned previously we've already
seen 2 very beneficial outcomes of his being elected by things calming down with Syria and Russia and
with TPP apparently being dead in the water.
Another positive could be a change in the DOJ to go after white collar criminals of which we have
a lot.
Climate change is I think an important blind spot but he has shown the capacity to be flexible and
not as much of an ideologue as some. It's possible that as he sees some of his golf courses go under
water he could change his mind. It can be helpful if someone in power changes his mind on an important
issue as this can relate better to other doubters to come to the same conclusion.
Getting back to class I watched the 2003 movie Seabiscuit a few days ago. This film was set in the
depression period and had clips of FDR putting people back to work. It emphasized the dignity that this
restored to them. It's a tall order but I think that's what much of Trump's base is looking for.
Whilst I agree with the points made, there is a BIG miss for me.
Unless I missed it – where are the comments on corruption? This is not a partisan point of view,
but to make the issue entirely focussed on class misses the point that the game is rigged.
Holder, an Obama pick, unless I am mistaken, looked the other way when it came to investigating and
prosecuting miscreants on Wall Street. The next in line for that job was meeting Bill behind closed
so that Hillary could be kept safe. Outrageous.
The Democratic party's attempts to make this an issue about race is so obviously a crass attempt
at manipulation that only the hard of thinking could swallow it.
The vote for Trump was a vote against corrupt insiders. Maybe he will turn out to be the same.
To your point; dumbfounded that a country that proposes to be waging a "War on Drugs" pardons
home grown banking entities that laundered money for drug dealers.
If you or I attempted such foolishness – we'd be incarcerate in a heartbeat.
Monty Python (big fan), at it's most silly and sophomoric – could not write this stuff…
Yep – para 7. A bit of a passing reference to the embedded corruption
and payola for congress and the writing of laws by lobbyists.
And yes, war on drugs is pretty much a diversionary tactic to give the impression that the
rule of law is still in force. It is for you an me……. for the connected, corrupt, not so much!
This goes beyond corruption. It is one thing to be selling public infrastructure
construction contracts to crony capitalist contributors (in the Clintons' case
do we call them philanthropists?) – entirely another to be selling guns and
bombs used by Middle Eastern despots to grind down (IOW blow up, murder) opposition
to their corrupt regimes.
In fact, most of Western Civilization (sic?) seems
to be happy with the status quo of a 'post-industrial' America as the "exceptional
nation" whose only two functions are consuming the world's wealth and employing
military Keynesianism to maintain a global social order based on money created
ex nihilo by US and international bankers and financiers.
This conspiracy has emerged from the Podesta emails. It was Clinton conspiring with mainstream
media to elevate Trump and then tear him down. We have to now look at all the media who endorsed
Hillary as simply corrupt. Simultaneously, Hillary said that Bernie had to be ground down to the
pulp. Further leaked emails showed how the Democratic National Committee sabotaged Sanders' presidential
campaign. It was Hillary manipulating the entire media for her personal gain. She obviously did
not want a fair election because she was too corrupt.
What is very clear putting all the emails together, the rise of Donald Trump was orchestrated
by Hillary herself conspiring with mainstream media, and they they sought to burn him to the ground.
Their strategy backfired and now this is why she has not come out to to speak against the violence
she has manipulated and inspired.
It seems to be clear the Democratic Party needs to purge itself of the Clinton – Obama influence.
Is Sanders' suggestion for the DNC head a good start or do we need to look elsewhere?
What are are getting now are attempts by the Dems (and let me state here I am not fan of the
Repubs – the distinction is a false one) to point to anything other than the problem that is right
in front of them.
What we are witnessing is a political crisis because the system is geared against the citizen.
And journalists/media are complicit. Where is the cutting investigative journalism? There is
none – the headlines should be screaming it. Thanks God (or whoever) for blogs like these.
There has been a coup I believe. The cooperation and melding of corporate and political power,
and the interchange of power players between the two has left the ordinary person nowhere to go.
This is not a left vs right, Dem vs Repub argument. Those are distinctions are there to keep us
busy and to provide the illusion.
Chris Hedges likend politics to American Pro Wrestling – that is what we are watching!
The idea that a guy who ran casinos in New Jersey, and whose background was
too murky to get a casino license in Nevada, will be the one to clean up corruption
in DC is a level of gullibility beyond my comprehension.
a lot of people out there need 10 baggers. I sure do.
Why work? I mean really. It sucks but what's your choice? The free market solution is to kill yourself
- that's what slaves could have done. If you don't like slavery, then just kill yourself! Why complain?
You're your own boss of "You Incorporated" and you can choose who to work for! Even nobody.
the 10-bagger should be just for billionaires. Even a millionaire has a hard time because there's
only so much you can lose before you're not a millionaire. Then you might have to work!
If most jobs didn't suck work wouldn't be so bad. That's the main thing, make jobs that don't suck
so you don't drown yourself in tattoos and drugs. It's amazing how many people have tattoos. Drugs are
less "deplorable" haha. Some are good - like alcohol, Xanax, Tylenol, red wine, beer, caffeine, sugar,
donuts, cake, cookies, chocolate. Some are bad, like the shlt stringy haired meth freaks take. If they
had good jobs it might give them something better to do,
How do you get good jobs and not shlt jobs? That's not entirely self evident. In the meantime, the
10 bagger at least gets you some breathing room so you can think about it. Even if you think for free,
it's OK since you don't have to work. Working gets in the way of a lot of stuff that you'd rather be
doing. Like nothing,
The amazing thing is this: no matter how much we whinge, whine, bitch moan, complain, rant, rail,
fulminate, gripe, huarrange (that mght be speled wrong), incite, joculate, kriticize, lambaste, malign,
naysay, prevaricate, query, ridicule, syllogize, temporize, ululate (even Baudelaire did that I red
on the internet), yell and (what can "Z" be? I don't want to have to look something up I'm too lazy,
how about "zenophobiasize" hahahahahahahah,
The amazing thing is: million of fkkkers want to come here and - get this! - THEY WON'T COMPLAIN
ABOUT ANY OF THE SHT WE DO!
""By making him aware he has more in common with the black steel workers by
being a worker, than with the boss by being white."
Sooo, they spent a generation telling the white worker that he was a racist, sexist bigot, mocking
his religion, making his kids read "Heather Has Two Mommies" in school, and blaming him for economic
woes caused in New York and DC.
Actually, too many white workers are racist, sexist, and think everyone is
a rabid Christian just like them. I ought to know because I live in red rural
Pennsylvania. I'm not mocking you folks, but I am greatly pissed off that you
just don't mind your own damn business and stop trying to force your beliefs
on others. And I don't want to hear that liberals are forcing their beliefs
on others; we're just asking you follow our laws and our Constitution when it
comes to liberty and justice for all.
And for every school that might have copies of "Heather Has Two Mommies," I can give you a giant
list of schools that want to ban a ton of titles because some parent is offended. One example is
the classic "Brave New World" by Aldus Huxley. "Challenged in an Advanced Placement language composition
class at Cape Henlopen High School in Lewes, Del. (2014). Two school board members contend that while
the book has long been a staple in high school classrooms, students can now grasp the sexual and
drug-related references through a quick Internet search." Source: Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom,
May 2014, p. 80.
Quick internet search, my ass. Too many conservatives won't even use the internet to find real
facts because that would counter the right-wing meme.
And for every school that might have copies of "Heather Has Two Mommies,"
I can give you a giant list of schools that want to ban a ton of titles
because some parent is offended.
And for every liberal/progressive politician, I can give a you basket of shitty policies, such
as charter schools, shipping jobs overseas, cutting social security, austerity, the grand bargain,
Obamacare, drones, etc.
Great. So the library has a copy of "Heather Has Two Mommies." Or not. Who cares? The United
Colors of Benetton worldview doesn't matter a fig when I'm trying to pay for rising health care,
rent, College education, retirement costs, etc.
Tryng lately to get my terminology straight, and I think the policies
you itemized should be labeled neoliberal, not liberal/progressive. Neoliberalism
seems to be the one that combines the worst features of the private sector
with the worst features of the public sector, without the good points
of either one.
It seems to me that you're referencing a certain historical model
of "liberal" that doesn't, nay, cannot exist anymore. A No-True-Scotsman
fallacy, as I see it.
We can only deal with what we have in play, not some pure historical
abstraction.
But for the sake of argument, let's say that a distinction can be made between neoliberal
and "real" liberalism. Both entities, however you want to differentiate/describe them, serve
as managers to capital. In other words, they just want to manage things, to fiddle with
the levers at the margin.
We need a transfer of power, not a new set of smart managers.
The right has spent a generation supporting rabidly bigoted media like Rush
Limbaugh and Fox News making sure the white working class blame all their ills
on immigrants, minorities, feminists and stirring up a Foaming Outrage of the
Week at what some sociology professor said at a tiny college somewhere.
Kiss up, kick down authoritarianism. It's never the fault of the people with all the money and
all the power who control their economic lives.
"... The affluent and rich voted for Clinton by a much broader margin than they had voted for the Democratic candidate in 2012. Among those with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000, Clinton benefited from a 9-point Democratic swing. Voters with family incomes above $250,000 swung toward Clinton by 11 percentage points. The number of Democratic voters amongst the wealthiest voting block increased from 2.16 million in 2012 to 3.46 million in 2016-a jump of 60 percent. ..."
"... Clinton's electoral defeat is bound up with the nature of the Democratic Party, an alliance of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus with privileged sections of the upper-middle class based on the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation ..."
"... Over the course of the last forty years, the Democratic Party has abandoned all pretenses of social reform, a process escalated under Obama. Working with the Republican Party and the trade unions, it is responsible for enacting social policies that have impoverished vast sections of the working class, regardless of race or gender. ..."
The elections saw a massive shift in party support among the poorest and wealthiest voters. The share
of votes for the Republicans amongst the most impoverished section of workers, those with family
incomes under $30,000, increased by 10 percentage points from 2012. In several key Midwestern states,
the swing of the poorest voters toward Trump was even larger: Wisconsin (17-point swing), Iowa (20
points), Indiana (19 points) and Pennsylvania (18 points).
The swing to Republicans among the $30,000 to $50,000 family income range was 6 percentage points.
Those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 swung away from the Republicans compared to 2012
by 2 points.
The affluent and rich voted for Clinton by a much broader margin than they had voted for the
Democratic candidate in 2012. Among those with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000, Clinton benefited
from a 9-point Democratic swing. Voters with family incomes above $250,000 swung toward Clinton by
11 percentage points. The number of Democratic voters amongst the wealthiest voting block increased
from 2.16 million in 2012 to 3.46 million in 2016-a jump of 60 percent.
Clinton was unable to make up for the vote decline among women (2.1 million), African Americans
(3.2 million), and youth (1.2 million), who came overwhelmingly from the poor and working class,
with the increase among the rich (1.3 million).
Clinton's electoral defeat is bound up with the nature of the Democratic Party, an alliance
of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus with privileged sections of the upper-middle
class based on the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation.
Over the course of the last forty years, the Democratic Party has abandoned all pretenses
of social reform, a process escalated under Obama. Working with the Republican Party and the trade
unions, it is responsible for enacting social policies that have impoverished vast sections of the
working class, regardless of race or gender.
"... Because the following talking points prevent a (vulgar) identity politics -dominated Democrat Party from owning its loss, debunking them is then important beyond winning your Twitter wars. I'm trying to spike the Blame Cannons! ..."
"... Remember, Trump won Wisconsin by a whisker. So for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that black voters stayed home because they were racist, costing Clinton Wisconsin. ..."
"... These former Obama strongholds sealed the election for Trump. Of the nearly 700 counties that twice sent Obama to the White House, a stunning one-third flipped to support Trump . ..."
"... The Obama-Trump counties were critical in delivering electoral victories for Trump. Many of them fall in states that supported Obama in 2012, but Trump in 2016. In all, these flipped states accounted for 83 electoral votes. (Michigan and New Hampshire could add to this total, but their results were not finalized as of 4 p.m. Wednesday.) ..."
"... And so, for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that counties who voted for the black man in 2012 were racist because they didn't vote for the white women in 2016. Bringing me, I suppose, to sexism. ..."
"... These are resilient women, often working two or three jobs, for whom boorish men are an occasional occupational hazard, not an existential threat. They rolled their eyes over Trump's unmitigated coarseness, but still bought into his spiel that he'd be the greatest job producer who ever lived. Oh, and they wondered why his behaviour was any worse than Bill's. ..."
"... pink slips have hit entire neighbourhoods, and towns. The angry white working class men who voted in such strength for Trump do not live in an emotional vacuum. They are loved by white working class women – their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers, who participate in their remaindered pain. I t is everywhere in the interviews. "My dad lost his business", "My husband hasn't been the same since his job at the factory went away" . ..."
"... So, for this talking point to be true, you have to believe that sexism simultaneously increased the male vote for Trump, yet did not increase the female vote for Clinton. Shouldn't they move in opposite directions? ..."
"... First, even assuming that the author's happy but unconscious conflation of credentials with education is correct, it wasn't the "dunces" who lost two wars, butchered the health care system, caused the financial system to collapse through accounting control fraud, or invented the neoliberal ideology that was kept real wages flat for forty years and turned the industrial heartland into a wasteland. That is solely, solely down to - only some , to be fair - college-educated voters. It is totally and 100% not down to the "dunces"; they didn't have the political or financial power to achieve debacles on the grand scale. ..."
"... Second, the "dunces" were an important part of Obama's victories ..."
"... Not only has polling repeatedly underplayed the importance of white voters without college degrees, it's underplayed their importance to the Obama coalition: They were one-third of Obama votes in 2012. They filled the gap between upper-class whites and working-class nonwhites. Trump gained roughly 15 percentage points with them compared to Romney in 2012. ..."
"... "No, you are ignorant! You threw away the vote and put Trump in charge." Please, it will be important to know what derogatory camp you belong in when the blame game swings into full gear. *snark ..."
"... 'Stupid' was the word I got very tired of in my social net. Two variant targets: ..."
"... 1) Blacks for not voting their interests. The responses included 'we know who our enemies are' and 'don't tell me what to think.' ..."
"... Mostly it was vs rural, non-college educated. iirc, it was the Secretary of Agriculture, pleading for funds, who said the rural areas were where military recruits came from. A young fella I know, elite football player on elite non-urban HS team, said most of his teammates had enlisted. So they are the ones getting shot at, having relatives and friends come back missing pieces of body and self. ..."
"... My guy in the Reserves said the consensus was that if HRC got elected, they were going to war with Russia. Not enthused. Infantry IQ is supposedly average-80, but they know who Yossarian says the enemy is, e'en if they hant read the book. ..."
This post is not an explainer about why and how Clinton lost (and Trump won). I think we're going
to be sorting that out for awhile. Rather, it's a simple debunking of common talking points by Clinton
loyalists and Democrat Establishment operatives; the sort of talking point you might hear on Twitter,
entirely shorn of caveats and context. For each of the three talking points, I'll present an especially
egregious version of the myth, followed by a rebuttals.
How Trump won the presidency with razor-thin margins in swing states
Of the more than 120 million votes cast in the 2016 election, 107,000 votes in three states
[Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania] effectively decided the election.
Of course, America's first-past-the-post system and the electoral college amplify small margins
into decisive results. And it was the job of the Clinton campaign to find those 107,000 votes and
win them;
the Clinton operation turned out to be weaker than anyone would have imagined when
it counted . However, because Trump has what might be called an institutional mandate - both
the executive and legislative branches and soon, perhaps, the judicial - the narrowness of his margin
means he doesn't have a popular mandate. Trump has captured the state, but by no means civil society;
therefore, the opposition that seeks to delegitimize him is in a stronger position than it may realize.
Hence the necessity for reflection; seeking truth from facts, as the saying goes. Because
the following talking points prevent a
(vulgar) identity politics -dominated Democrat Party from owning its loss, debunking them is
then important beyond winning your Twitter wars. I'm trying to spike the Blame Cannons!
Trump's win is a reminder of the incredible, unbeatable power of racism
The subtext here is usually that if you don't chime in with vehement agreement, you're a racist
yourself, and possibly a racist Trump supporter. There are two reasons this talking point is false.
First, voter caring levels dropped from 2012 to 2016, especially among black Democrats
.
Carl
Beijer :
From 2012 to 2016, both men and women went from caring about the outcome to not caring.
Among Democratic men and women, as well as Republican women, care levels dropped about 3-4
points; Republican men cared a little less too, but only by one point. Across the board, in
any case, the plurality of voters simply didn't care.
Beijer includes the following chart (based on Edison exit polling cross-referenced with total
population numbers from the US Census):
Beijer interprets:
White voters cared even less in 2016 then in 2012, when they also didn't care; most of that
apathy came from white Republicans compared to white Democrats, who dropped off a little less.
Voters of color, in contrast, continued to care – but their care levels dropped even more,
by 8 points (compared to the 6 point drop-off among white voters). Incredibly, that drop was
driven entirely by a 9 point drop among Democratic voters of color which left Democrats
with only slim majority 51% support; Republicans, meanwhile, actually gained support
among people of color.
Urban areas, where black and Hispanic voters are concentrated along with college-educated
voters, already leaned toward the Democrats, but Clinton did not get the turnout from these
groups that she needed. For instance, black voters did not show up in the same numbers they
did for Barack Obama, the first black president, in 2008 and 2012.
Remember, Trump won Wisconsin by a whisker. So for this talking point to be true, we have to
believe that black voters stayed home because they were racist, costing Clinton Wisconsin.
Second, counties that voted for Obama in 2012 voted for Trump in 2016 .
The Washington Post :
These former Obama strongholds sealed the election for Trump. Of the nearly 700 counties that twice sent Obama to the White House,
a stunning one-third flipped to support Trump
.
The Obama-Trump counties were critical in delivering electoral victories for Trump. Many
of them fall in states that supported Obama in 2012, but Trump in 2016. In all, these flipped
states accounted for 83 electoral votes. (Michigan and New Hampshire could add to this total,
but their results were not finalized as of 4 p.m. Wednesday.)
Here's the chart:
And so, for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that counties who voted for the
black man in 2012 were racist because they didn't vote for the white women in 2016. Bringing me,
I suppose, to sexism.
Talking Point: Clinton was Defeated by Sexism
Here's an article showing the talking point from
Newsweek :
This often vitriolic campaign was a national referendum on women and power.
(The subtext here is usually that if you don't join the consensus cluster, you're a sexist
yourself, and possibly a sexist Trump supporter). And if you only look at the averages this claim
might seem true :
On Election Day, women responded accordingly, as Clinton beat Trump among women 54 percent
to 42 percent. They were voting not so much for her as against him and what he brought to the
surface during his campaign: quotidian misogyny.
There are two reasons this talking point is not true. First, averages conceal, and what
they conceal is class . As you read further into the article, you can see it fall apart:
In fact, Trump beat Clinton among white women 53 percent to 43 percent, with
white women without college degrees going for [Trump]
two to one .
So, taking lack of a college degree as a proxy for being working class, for Newsweek's claim
to be true, you have to believe that working class women don't get a vote in their referendum,
and for the talking point to be true, you have to believe that working class women are sexist.
Which leads me to ask: Who died and left the bourgeois feminists in Clinton's base in charge of
the definition of sexism, or feminism? Class traitor
Tina Brown is worth repeating:
Here's my own beef. Liberal feminists, young and old, need to question the role they played
in Hillary's demise. The two weeks of media hyperventilation over grab-her-by-the-pussygate,
when the airwaves were saturated with aghast liberal women equating Trump's gross comments
with sexual assault, had the opposite effect on multiple women voters in the Heartland.
These are resilient women, often working two or three jobs, for whom boorish men are an
occasional occupational hazard, not an existential threat. They rolled their eyes over Trump's
unmitigated coarseness, but still bought into his spiel that he'd be the greatest job producer
who ever lived. Oh, and they wondered why his behaviour was any worse than Bill's.
Missing this pragmatic response by so many women was another mistake of Robbie Mook's campaign
data nerds. They computed that America's women would all be as outraged as the ones they came
home to at night. But pink slips have hit entire neighbourhoods, and towns. The angry white
working class men who voted in such strength for Trump do not live in an emotional vacuum.
They are loved by white working class women – their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers,
who participate in their remaindered pain. I t is
everywhere in the interviews. "My dad lost his business", "My husband hasn't been the same
since his job at the factory went away" .
Second, Clinton in 2016 did no better than Obama in 2008 with women (although she did
better than Obama in 2012). From
the New York Times analysis of the exit polls, this chart...
So, for this talking point to be true, you have to believe that sexism simultaneously increased
the male vote for Trump, yet did not increase the female vote for Clinton. Shouldn't they move
in opposite directions?
Talking Point: Clinton was Defeated by Stupidity
Here's an example of this talking point from
Foreign Policy , the heart of The Blob. The headline:
Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant, Literally
And the lead:
OK, so that just happened. Donald Trump always enjoyed massive support from uneducated,
low-information white people. As Bloomberg Politics reported back in August, Hillary Clinton
was enjoying a giant 25 percentage-point lead among college-educated voters going into the
election. (Whether that trend held up remains to be seen.) In contrast, in the 2012 election,
college-educated voters just barely favored Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. Last night we saw
something historic: the dance of the dunces. Never have educated voters so uniformly rejected
a candidate. But never before have the lesser-educated so uniformly supported a candidate.
The subtext here is usually that if you don't accept nod your head vigorously, you're stupid,
and possibly a stupid Trump supporter. There are two reasons this talking point is not true.
First, even assuming that the author's happy but unconscious conflation of credentials with
education is correct, it wasn't the "dunces" who lost two wars, butchered the health care
system, caused the financial system to collapse through accounting control fraud, or invented
the neoliberal ideology that was kept real wages flat for forty years and turned the industrial
heartland into a wasteland. That is solely, solely down to - only some , to be fair
- college-educated voters. It is totally and 100% not down to the "dunces"; they didn't have the
political or financial power to achieve debacles on the grand scale.
Second, the "dunces" were an important part of Obama's victories. From
The Week :
Not only has polling repeatedly underplayed the importance of white voters without college
degrees, it's underplayed their importance to the Obama coalition: They were one-third of Obama
votes in 2012. They filled the gap between upper-class whites and working-class nonwhites.
Trump gained roughly 15 percentage points with them compared to Romney in 2012.
So, to believe this talking point, you have to believe that voters who were smart when they
voted for Obama suddenly became stupid when it came time to vote for Clinton. You also have to
believe that credentialed policy makers have an unblemished record of success, and that only they
are worth paying attention to.
By just about every metric imaginable, Hillary Clinton led one of the worst presidential campaigns
in modern history. It was a profoundly reactionary campaign, built entirely on rolling back the
horizons of the politically possible, fracturing left solidarity, undermining longstanding left
priorities like universal healthcare, pandering to Wall Street oligarchs, fomenting nationalism
against Denmark and Russia, and rehabilitating some of history's greatest monsters – from Bush
I to Kissinger. It was a grossly unprincipled campaign that belligerently violated FEC Super PAC
coordination rules and conspired with party officials on everything from political attacks to
debate questions. It was an obscenely stupid campaign that all but ignored Wisconsin during the
general election, that pitched Clinton to Latino voters as their abuela, that centered an entire
high-profile speech over the national menace of a few thousand anime nazis on Twitter, and that
repeatedly deployed Lena Dunham as a media surrogate.
Which is rather like running a David Letterman ad in a Pennsylvania steel town. It must have seemed
like a good idea in Brooklyn. After all, they had so many celebrities to choose from.
* * *
All three talking points oversimplify. I'm not saying racism is not powerful; of course it is.
I'm not saying that sexism is not powerful; of course it is. But monocausal explanations in an election
this close - and in a country this vast - are foolish. And narratives that ignore economics and erase
class are worse than foolish; buying into them will cause us to make the same mistakes over and over
and over again.[1] The trick will be to integrate multiple causes, and that's down to the left; identity
politics liberals don't merely not want to do this; they actively oppose it. Ditto their opposite
numbers in America's neoliberal fun house mirror, the conservatives.
NOTES
[1] For some, that's not a bug. It's a feature.
NOTE
You will have noticed that I haven't covered economics (class), or election fraud at all. More
myths are coming.
Lambert Strether has been blogging, managing online communities, and doing system administration
24/7 since 2003, in Drupal and WordPress. Besides political economy and the political scene, he blogs
about rhetoric, software engineering, permaculture, history, literature, local politics, international
travel, food, and fixing stuff around the house. The nom de plume "Lambert Strether" comes from Henry
James's The Ambassadors: "Live all you can. It's a mistake not to." You can follow him on Twitter
at @lambertstrether. http://www.correntewire.com
"No, you are ignorant! You threw away the vote and put Trump in charge." Please, it will be
important to know what derogatory camp you belong in when the blame game swings into full gear.
*snark
'Stupid' was the word I got very tired of in my social net. Two variant targets:
1) Blacks
for not voting their interests. The responses included 'we know who our enemies are' and 'don't
tell me what to think.'
2) Mostly it was vs rural, non-college educated. iirc, it was the Secretary of Agriculture,
pleading for funds, who said the rural areas were where military recruits came from. A young fella
I know, elite football player on elite non-urban HS team, said most of his teammates had enlisted.
So they are the ones getting shot at, having relatives and friends come back missing pieces of
body and self.
My guy in the Reserves said the consensus was that if HRC got elected, they were going
to war with Russia. Not enthused. Infantry IQ is supposedly average-80, but they know who Yossarian
says the enemy is, e'en if they hant read the book.
President-elect Donald J. Trump, who campaigned against the corrupt power of special interests,
is filling his transition team with some of the very sort of people who he has complained have
too much clout in Washington: corporate consultants and lobbyists.
Jeffrey Eisenach, a consultant who has worked for years on behalf of Verizon and other telecommunications
clients, is the head of the team that is helping to pick staff members at the Federal Communications
Commission.
Michael Catanzaro, a lobbyist whose clients include Devon Energy and Encana Oil and Gas, holds
the "energy independence" portfolio.
Michael Torrey, a lobbyist who runs a firm that has earned millions of dollars helping food
industry players such as the American Beverage Association and the dairy giant Dean Foods, is
helping set up the new team at the Department of Agriculture.
What? No steelworker? No auto-plant worker? Not even a family farmer? Might y'all have been
had ?
Who'd a thunk?
Bernie and Elizabeth to the rescue.
Now, please . Now .
But, hey, white blue collar folks: You get what you vote for. The problem for me is that I
get what you vote for. I said roughly 540 times here at AB in the last year: Trump isn't conquering
the Republican Party; he's the Republican Party's Trojan Horse. What was that y'all were saying about
wanting change so badly? Here it is.
Welcome to the concept of
industry regulatory capture
. Perfected to a science, and jaw-droppingly brazen.
LOL . Funny, but Bernie talked about this. Some of you listened. Then. Elizabeth Warren has talked
about it, a lot. Some of you listened. Back then. But she wasn't running for president. Hillary Clinton
was, instead. And
she couldn't talk about it because she had needed all those speaking fees , all the way up to
about a minute before she announced her candidacy.
Aaaaand, here come the judges. And of course the justices. Industry regulatory capture of the
judicial-branch variety.
I called this one right, in the title of
this post yesterday . I mean, why even wait until the body is buried? No reason at all.
So he thinks. But what if he's wrong?
Anyway can't wait for the political cartoons showing Trump on Ryan's lap, with Ryan's arm showing
reaching up under Trump's suit jacket.
It's effing asinine . Everyone's entitled to their little personal delusions, but why the
obsessiveness about this patent silliness? What is exactly is the emotional hold that Hillary Clinton
holds on these people? It's climate-change-denial-like.
Elizabeth Warren would have beaten Donald Trump in a landslide. So would have Bernie Sanders.
And brought in a Democratic-controlled Senate and House. Because both would have run a remarkably
campaign, under normal standards, not a special low bar.
An
organizational chart of Trump's transition team shows it to be crawling with corporate lobbyists,
representing such clients as Altria, Visa, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Verizon, HSBC, Pfizer,
Dow Chemical, and Duke Energy. And K Street is
positively
salivating over all the new opportunities they'll have to deliver goodies to their clients
in the Trump era. Who could possibly have predicted such a thing?
The answer is, anyone who was paying attention. Look at the people Trump is
considering
for his cabinet, and you won't find any outside-the-box thinkers burning to work for the little
guy. It's a collection of Republican politicians and corporate plutocrats - not much different
from who you'd find in any Republican administration.
And from reader EMichael in the Comments thread to this post about 35 minutes ago:
OH, it will be worse than that, much worse.
Bank regulation will go back to the "glory days" of the housing bubble, and Warren's CFPB will
be toast.
Buddy of mine works HR for a large bank. He has been flooded with resumes from current employees
of the CFPB the last couple of days.
Yup. HSBC ain't in that list for nothing. But, not to worry. Trump's kids will pick up lots of
real estate on the (real) cheap, after the crash. Their dad will give them all the tips, from experience.
And the breaking news this afternoon is that Pence–uh-ha;
this Mike Pence –has
replaced Christie as transition team head. Wanna bet that Comey told Trump today that Christie is
likely to be indicted in Bridgegate?
Next up, although down the road a few months: rumors that a grand jury has been convened to try
to learn how, exactly, Giuliani got all that info from inside the FBI two weeks ago. Once the FBI
inspector general completes his investigation. Or once New York's attorney general, Eric Schneiderman,
begins looking into violations of NY state criminal law.
"... my equation of Neoliberalism (or Post-Capitalism) = Wall Street + Identity Politics generated by the dematerialization of Capital. CDO's are nothing but words on paper or bytes in the stream; and identity politics has much less to do with the Body than the culture and language. Trumpists were interpellated as White by the Democrats and became ideological. Capital is Language. ..."
"... "Sanders and Trump inflamed their audiences with searing critiques of Capitalism's unfairness. Then what? Then Trump's response to what he has genuinely seen is, analytically speaking, word salad. Trump is sound and fury and garble. Yet - and this is key - the noise in his message increases the apparent value of what's clear about it. The ways he's right seem more powerful, somehow, in relief against the ways he's blabbing." ..."
"... But Trump's people don't use suffering as a metric of virtue. They want fairness of a sort, but mainly they seek freedom from shame. Civil rights and feminism aren't just about the law after all, they are about manners, and emotions too: those "interest groups" get right in there and reject what feels like people's spontaneous, ingrained responses. People get shamed, or lose their jobs, for example, when they're just having a little fun making fun. Anti-PC means "I feel unfree. ..."
"... The Trump Emotion Machine is delivering feeling ok, acting free. Being ok with one's internal noise, and saying it, and demanding that it matter. Internal Noise Matters. " my emp ..."
I thought someone above talked about Trump's rhetoric
1) Tom Ferguson at Real News Network post at Naked Capitalism says (and said in 2014) that
the Democratic coalition of Wall Street (Silicon Valley) + Identity Politics is imploding, because
it can't deliver populist goodies without losing part of it's core base.
Noted no for that, but for my equation of Neoliberalism (or Post-Capitalism) = Wall Street
+ Identity Politics generated by the dematerialization of Capital. CDO's are nothing but words
on paper or bytes in the stream; and identity politics has much less to do with the Body than
the culture and language. Trumpists were interpellated as White by the Democrats and became ideological.
Capital is Language.
2) Consider the above an intro to
Lauren
Berlant at the New Inquiry "Trump or Political Emotions" which I think is smart. Just a phrase
cloud that stood out for me. All following from Berlant, except parenthetical
It is a scene where structural antagonisms - genuinely conflicting interests - are described
in rhetoric that intensifies fantasy.
People would like to feel free. They would like the world to have a generous cushion for all
their aggression and inclination. They would like there to be a general plane of okayness governing
social relations
( Safe Space defined as the site where being nasty to those not inside is admired and approved.
We all have them, we all want them, we create our communities and identities for this purpose.)
"Sanders and Trump inflamed their audiences with searing critiques of Capitalism's unfairness.
Then what? Then Trump's response to what he has genuinely seen is, analytically speaking, word
salad. Trump is sound and fury and garble. Yet - and this is key - the noise in his message
increases the apparent value of what's clear about it. The ways he's right seem more powerful,
somehow, in relief against the ways he's blabbing."
(Wonderful, and a comprehension of New Media I rarely see. Cybernetics? Does noise increase
the value of signal? The grammatically correct tight argument crowd will not get this. A problem
I have with CT's new policy)
"You watch him calculating, yet not seeming to care about the consequences of what he says,
and you listen to his supporters enjoying the feel of his freedom. "
(If "civil speech" is socially approved signal, then noise = freedom and feeling. Every two
year old and teenage guitarist understands)
"But Trump's people don't use suffering as a metric of virtue. They want fairness of a
sort, but mainly they seek freedom from shame. Civil rights and feminism aren't just about the
law after all, they are about manners, and emotions too: those "interest groups" get right in
there and reject what feels like people's spontaneous, ingrained responses. People get shamed,
or lose their jobs, for example, when they're just having a little fun making fun. Anti-PC means
"I feel unfree."
The Trump Emotion Machine is delivering feeling ok, acting free. Being ok with one's internal
noise, and saying it, and demanding that it matter. Internal Noise Matters. " my emp
Noise again. Berlant worth reading, and thinking about.
What's bought [sic] us to this stage is a policy – whether it's been intentional
or unintentional or a mixture of both – of divide and rule, where society is broken down into
neat little boxes and were told how to behave towards the contents of each one rather than,
say, just behaving well towards all of them.
And this right here is why neoliberalism = identity politics and why both ought to be crushed
ruthlessly.
President-elect Donald J. Trump, who campaigned against the corrupt power of special interests,
is filling his transition team with some of the very sort of people who he has complained have
too much clout in Washington: corporate consultants and lobbyists.
Jeffrey Eisenach, a consultant who has worked for years on behalf of Verizon and other telecommunications
clients, is the head of the team that is helping to pick staff members at the Federal Communications
Commission.
Michael Catanzaro, a lobbyist whose clients include Devon Energy and Encana Oil and Gas, holds
the "energy independence" portfolio.
Michael Torrey, a lobbyist who runs a firm that has earned millions of dollars helping food
industry players such as the American Beverage Association and the dairy giant Dean Foods, is
helping set up the new team at the Department of Agriculture.
What? No steelworker? No auto-plant worker? Not even a family farmer? Might y'all have been
had ?
Who'd a thunk?
Bernie and Elizabeth to the rescue.
Now, please . Now .
But, hey, white blue collar folks: You get what you vote for. The problem for me is that I
get what you vote for. I said roughly 540 times here at AB in the last year: Trump isn't conquering
the Republican Party; he's the Republican Party's Trojan Horse. What was that y'all were saying about
wanting change so badly? Here it is.
Welcome to the concept of
industry regulatory capture
. Perfected to a science, and jaw-droppingly brazen.
LOL . Funny, but Bernie talked about this. Some of you listened. Then. Elizabeth Warren has talked
about it, a lot. Some of you listened. Back then. But she wasn't running for president. Hillary Clinton
was, instead. And
she couldn't talk about it because she had needed all those speaking fees , all the way up to
about a minute before she announced her candidacy.
Aaaaand, here come the judges. And of course the justices. Industry regulatory capture of the
judicial-branch variety.
I called this one right, in the title of
this post yesterday . I mean, why even wait until the body is buried? No reason at all.
So he thinks. But what if he's wrong?
Anyway … can't wait for the political cartoons showing Trump on Ryan's lap, with Ryan's arm showing
reaching up under Trump's suit jacket.
It's effing asinine . Everyone's entitled to their little personal delusions, but why the
obsessiveness about this patent silliness? What is exactly is the emotional hold that Hillary Clinton
holds on these people? It's climate-change-denial-like.
Elizabeth Warren would have beaten Donald Trump in a landslide. So would have Bernie Sanders.
And brought in a Democratic-controlled Senate and House. Because both would have run a remarkably
campaign, under normal standards, not a special low bar.
An
organizational chart of Trump's transition team shows it to be crawling with corporate lobbyists,
representing such clients as Altria, Visa, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Verizon, HSBC, Pfizer,
Dow Chemical, and Duke Energy. And K Street is
positively
salivating over all the new opportunities they'll have to deliver goodies to their clients
in the Trump era. Who could possibly have predicted such a thing?
The answer is, anyone who was paying attention. Look at the people Trump is
considering
for his cabinet, and you won't find any outside-the-box thinkers burning to work for the little
guy. It's a collection of Republican politicians and corporate plutocrats - not much different
from who you'd find in any Republican administration.
And from reader EMichael in the Comments thread to this post about 35 minutes ago:
OH, it will be worse than that, much worse.
Bank regulation will go back to the "glory days" of the housing bubble, and Warren's CFPB will
be toast.
Buddy of mine works HR for a large bank. He has been flooded with resumes from current employees
of the CFPB the last couple of days.
Yup. HSBC ain't in that list for nothing. But, not to worry. Trump's kids will pick up lots of
real estate on the (real) cheap, after the crash. Their dad will give them all the tips, from experience.
And the breaking news this afternoon is that Pence–uh-ha;
this Mike Pence –has
replaced Christie as transition team head. Wanna bet that Comey told Trump today that Christie is
likely to be indicted in Bridgegate?
Next up, although down the road a few months: rumors that a grand jury has been convened to try
to learn how, exactly, Giuliani got all that info from inside the FBI two weeks ago. Once the FBI
inspector general completes his investigation. Or once New York's attorney general, Eric Schneiderman,
begins looking into violations of NY state criminal law.
"... fundamentally antiracism and other identitarian programs are not only the left wing of neoliberalism
but active agencies in its imposition of a notion of the boundaries of the politically thinkable " ..."
"... Feminism…? gender discrimination….? racial equality ? …. racism ? Yes, OK, looks good, let's
see what works best for us…. ..."
"... There is still the issue that some professions are more prestigious or lucrative than others
and attract many individuals with a skill set that would better serve other functions. ..."
"... Valuing people for who they are and integrating them into the social order implies that they
have something to contribute and that they have a responsibility for making things better for others,
not just making themselves more comfortable in public. ..."
"... The idea that we have progressed past prior barbarisms … we have forgotten that "the past is
prologue" among other things. ..."
"... This label of progressivism is just so coy and unconvincing in the face of neoliberalism's
full spectrum dominance of all facets of society and culture. ..."
"... I know Reagan was no conservative and Thatcher lost all moorings as an enlightened Tory as
the "project" became all consuming to the detriment of all else. The Tory today isn't conservative –
far from it – a real ideolgical zealot for the promotion of "me, myself and (at most) my class" in most
cases. ..."
"... Is Progressivism just a balm for those who want to feel good about themselves but don't want
to do think about anything in particular? In fact, it is just a cover for I'm ok, screw you pal when
the chips are down? ..."
"These responses [show] how fundamentally antiracism and other identitarian programs
are not only the left wing of neoliberalism but active agencies in its imposition of a notion
of the boundaries of the politically thinkable "
Yes: there we have it.
Neoliberalism (unlike conservatism, often mistaken for each other) has NO social/cultural
values…or, perhaps, more precisely, it has ANY social/cultural values which directly/indirectly
advance the 0.1%'s Will to wealth & power. (Likely, "wealth" is redundant, as it's a manifestation
of power). Neoliberalism is powerful, like all great "evils" because it is completely protean.
( It makes the Nazi's look child-like & naive: after all, the Nazi's actually "believed"
in certain things… [ evil nonsense, but that's not the point at the moment].
Feminism…? gender discrimination….? racial equality ? …. racism ? Yes, OK, looks good,
let's see what works best for us….
I often wonder if liberalism goes hand in hand with the availability of energy and resources…
shrink these and witness a surge in all types of discrimination.
You will notice that genocides are closely tied to the availability and distribution of
resources… we humans seem to be masters at inventing all kinds of reasons to explain why we deserve
the loot and not others.
There is still the issue that some professions are more prestigious or lucrative than others
and attract many individuals with a skill set that would better serve other functions. And
we do this under the guise that we can do whatever we want if we try hard enough.
There is a difference between PC and truly valuing every individual in society no matter their
job or profession.
There is a difference between PC and truly valuing every individual in society no matter
their job or profession.
This.
Mere inclusiveness, while not in itself a bad thing–being aware of other people's circumstances
is simply polite–it doesn't really get you much further past where you already are and in large
part can be satisfied with better rhetoric (or better PR, if you insist on being cynical about
such things), all the while capitalism goes on its merry way, because no real pressure to change
has been applied. Valuing people for who they are and integrating them into the social order
implies that they have something to contribute and that they have a responsibility for making
things better for others, not just making themselves more comfortable in public.
What so often gets lost in these conversations about safe spaces and what have you is that
we should have a sense of shared responsibility, responding TO others' circumstances while also
being responsible FOR the conditions that oppress us all to greater and lesser degrees.
In other words, it's about checking your privilege AND seizing the means of production, because
without the second one, the first just ends up being mere window dressing.
EATF – I really like these. I'll be sad when they conclude!
The idea that we have progressed past prior barbarisms … we have forgotten that "the past
is prologue" among other things. Progressives think that if we completely forget the past,
then the memes that created the sins of the past will become unthinkable, that like interrupted
family violence, a chain will be broken and we can heal. Such people don't believe in the existence
of Evil.
As a socialist, what I miss is the conservative (small c) conversation in our daily affairs.
This label of progressivism is just so coy and unconvincing in the face of neoliberalism's
full spectrum dominance of all facets of society and culture. The conservative gave voice
and depth to our internal doubts about how the future was all brite and new – at least the few
conservatives I knew.
I wonder would a conservative voice (seemingly non-existent any more) have argued for a more
instructive change from industrialisation into what we've now become – might they have mitigated
the course and provided pointers to alternatives?
Maybe they did and I wasn't listening.
I know Reagan was no conservative and Thatcher lost all moorings as an enlightened Tory
as the "project" became all consuming to the detriment of all else. The Tory today isn't conservative
– far from it – a real ideolgical zealot for the promotion of "me, myself and (at most) my class"
in most cases.
Is Progressivism just a balm for those who want to feel good about themselves but don't
want to do think about anything in particular? In fact, it is just a cover for I'm ok, screw you
pal when the chips are down?
I never really liked Disney films as a kid and I certainly don't like them now – but each to
their own.
I'm glad you're making these points. The arc of the story mirrors a number of conversations
I've been having lately with people from poor, white, rural backgrounds. The insistence by good
liberals of making a show of their concern for, and outrage over, both major and minor affronts
to people of color, women, LGBTQI people, etc., while at the same time making jokes about toothless,
inbred trailer-trash, is starting to really piss some people off. These are not conservative people.
These are people to the left of Chomsky.
For some reason, you can slander and shame poor white folks all you want…oh yeah, it's because
they're deplorable racist, fundamentalist Christians who vote for evil Republicans and probably
don't even have a GED, much less a college degree…so f- 'em. The good liberals, on the other hand,
are highly-educated, fundamentalist secular humanists, who've been to college and vote for evil
Democrats…which makes them God's chosen people, apparently. The rest are blasphemers, barely even
human, and deserve whatever they get.
Until we make a real commitment to both listening to everyone's suffering and then to doing
practical things, now, to remedy that suffering, we'll be doomed to Dollary Clump elections and
divide-and-conquer tactics forever after. Let's not go down that road, how about? How's about
let's try treating each other with respect and compassion for once, just to see how it goes? Every
other way lies damnation, imho.
Sorry: I'm not buying this episode: For instance, maybe the reason for the stress on smartness
is plain old class warfare.
The U.S. slavishly follows English fashions, and one of the fashions in England (with which
we have that Special Relationship) is that the upper classes made sure that their kids got into
Eton, Cambridge, Oxford–the whole self-perpetuating educational system of the Pythonesque English
"smart" twit.
So the U S of A has imitated its betters in producing a lot of Tony Blairs. Exhibit A: Chelsea
Clinton.
This has little to do with smartness. It is all about class privilege. (Which has little
to do with postmodernism and its supposed piercing insights.)
The title- Neoliberalisms Boarder Guard" – and this quote:
"Looking now at the other two principles – postmodernism and suffering – Wendy Brown
foretold that, as foci, they would be unable to coexist. Since the time of her prediction,
the balance between the two has shifted dramatically, and it has become clear that Brown was
rooting for the losing side. "
combine to make me wonder. Does liberalism simply accommodate itself to the prevailing ruling
power structure, regardless of that structure's philosophy? Is liberalism today a philosophy or
a social emollient? Desirable social traits do not challenge the ruling neoliberal philosophy,
although they make create a nice space within neoliberalism.
Not buying this episode: "High profile instances of genocide and torture don't appear every
day, and commitment flags without regular stimulation. And so we have taken seriously at least
one idea from postmodernism, the fascination with slight conceptual nuances, and the faith or
fear that these nuances can produce enormously consequential effects."
Oh really?
This sentence is on the order of, Who speaks of the Armenians?
Guantanamo is high profile. Homan Square is high profile. Yemen is genocide. What are the Dakota
Pipeline protests about? Genocide. Your bourgeois eyeglasses just don't allow you to look. It
has nothing to do with micro-aggressions.
The success of [civil rights and anti-apartheid] movements did not end racism, but drove
it underground, allowing neoliberals to exploit racist and tribalist political support while
pursuing the interests of wealth and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white)
poor.
That coalition has now been replaced by one in which the tribalists and racists are dominant.
For the moment at least, [hard] neoliberals continue to support the parties they formerly controlled,
with the result that the balance of political forces between the right and the opposing coalition
of soft neoliberals and the left has not changed significantly.
There's an ambiguity in this narrative and in the three-party analysis.
Do we acknowledge that the soft neoliberals in control of the coalition that includes the inchoate
left also "exploit racist and tribalist political support while pursuing the interests of wealth
and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white) poor."? They do it with a different
style and maybe with some concession to economic melioration, as well as supporting anti-racist
and feminist policy to keep the inchoate left on board, but . . .
The new politics of the right has lost faith in the hard neoliberalism that formerly furnished
its policy agenda of tax cuts for the rich, war in the Middle East and so on, leaving the impure
resentment ungoverned and unfocused, as you say.
The soft neoliberals, it seems to me, are using anti-racism to discredit economic populism
and its motivations, using the new politics of the right as a foil.
The problem of how to oppose racism and tribalism effectively is now entangled with soft neoliberal
control of the remaining party coalition, which is to say with the credibility of the left party
as a vehicle for economic populism and the credibility of economic populism as an antidote for
racism or sexism. (cf js. @ 1,2)
The form of tribalism used to mobilize the left entails denying that an agenda of economic
populism is relevant to the problems of sexism and racism, because the deplorables must be deplored
to get out the vote. And, because the (soft) neoliberals in charge must keep economic populism
under control to deliver the goods to their donor base.
"... Grenville regards understanding the opposition to globalization by the Trump constituency as essential. If we are discussing America, we do not need to look to illegal immigration, or undocumented workers to find hostility to out-group immigrants along religious and ethnic lines. ..."
"... These tendencies are thrown into sharper relief when this hostility is directed towards successfully assimilated immigrants of a different color who threaten the current occupants of a space – witness the open racism and hostility displayed towards Japanese immigrants on the west coast 1900-1924, or so. A similar level of hostility is sometimes/often displayed towards Koreans. The out-grouping in Japan is tiered and extends to ethnicity and language of groups within the larger Japanese community, as it does in the UK, although not as commonly along religious lines as it does elsewhere. ..."
"... European workers have done much better in the new global economy.(The problems in Europe center around mass migration of people who resist assimilation and adoption of a Humanistic world view.) The answer is simple and horrifying. ..."
"... A large percentage of American workers consistently vote against their own interest which has allowed the republican party in service to a powerful elite billionaire class ..."
"... The combination of these reliable cadre of deplorables , controlled by faux news and hate radio , and the lack of political engagement by the low income Americans , has essentially turned power over to the billionaire class. ..."
I read an interesting piece in the Nikkei, hardly an left-leaning publication citing Arlie
Hochschild's "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right."
Doubtless some here would like to see more misery heaped upon those who do not look to the
Democratic party as saviors, but Hochschild is rarely regarded as a defender of the American right.
Few dispute that a significant subset of any given population is going to regard in-group/out-group
distinctions along the highly imprecise lines of 'race' and ethnicity, or religion. The question,
for some, is what percentage?
The Nikkei article by Stephen Grenville concludes: Over the longer term, the constituency for
globalization has to be rebuilt, the methodology for multilateral trade agreements has to be revived…"
Grenville regards understanding the opposition to globalization by the Trump constituency
as essential. If we are discussing America, we do not need to look to illegal immigration, or
undocumented workers to find hostility to out-group immigrants along religious and ethnic lines.
These tendencies are thrown into sharper relief when this hostility is directed towards
successfully assimilated immigrants of a different color who threaten the current occupants of
a space – witness the open racism and hostility displayed towards Japanese immigrants on the west
coast 1900-1924, or so. A similar level of hostility is sometimes/often displayed towards Koreans.
The out-grouping in Japan is tiered and extends to ethnicity and language of groups within
the larger Japanese community, as it does in the UK, although not as commonly along religious
lines as it does elsewhere.
Generally, I think John is right. The term 'racist' no longer carries any of the stigma
it once held in part because the term is deployed so cynically and freely as to render it practically
meaningless. HRC and Bill and their supporters (including me, at one time) are racists for as
long as its convenient and politically expedient to call them racists. Once that moment has passed,
the term 'racist' is withdrawn and replaced with something like Secretary of State, or some other
such title.
I've no clear 'solution' other than to support a more exact and thoughtful discussion of the
causes of fear and anxiety that compels people to bind together into in-groups and out-groups,
and to encourage the fearful to take a few risks now and again.
I've no clear 'solution' other than to support a more exact and thoughtful discussion of the causes
of fear and anxiety that compels people to bind together into in-groups and out-groups, and to
encourage the fearful to take a few risks now and again.
Here's my take on this. The question
to ask is why has this happened? European workers have done much better in the new global
economy.(The problems in Europe center around mass migration of people who resist assimilation
and adoption of a Humanistic world view.) The answer is simple and horrifying.
A large percentage of American workers consistently vote against their own interest which
has allowed the republican party in service to a powerful elite billionaire class form a
reliable cadre of highly visible and highly vocal deplorables which even though slightly less
than half the population of those who bother to vote have virtually shut down democratic safeguards
which could have mitigated what has happened due to globalization. The combination of these
reliable cadre of deplorables , controlled by faux news and hate radio , and the lack of political
engagement by the low income Americans , has essentially turned power over to the billionaire
class.
... ... ...
Alesis 10.30.16 at 12:13 pm
A strategy that doesn't work inside the tent is DOA outside it. As it stands many liberals (largely
white and this is an important distinction) share with the right a deep discomfort with acknowledging
the centrality of racism to American politics.
Race is the foundational organizing principle
of American life and it represents a considerable strain to keep it in focus. Donald Trump will
win the majority of white voters as the racial resentment coalition has since the 1930s. An effective
strategy for the long term is focused on breaking that near century long hold.
I'd suggest the direct approach. Call racism what it is and ask white voters directly what
good it has done for them lately. Did railing against Mexican rapists brings any jobs back?
Or the racism of the middle class. People are tribal and arguably it is baked into our DNA.
That doesn't excuse the mental laziness of trafficking in stereotypes but one could make a case
that racism is as much a matter of ignorance as of evil character.
Obama with his "bitter clingers" and HIllary with her "deplorables" are talking about people
about whom they probably know almost nothing.
One of the long ago arguments for school integration was that propinquity fosters mutual understanding.
This met with a lot of resistance. And for people like our Pres and would be Pres a broader view
of the electorate would be inconvenient.
Identity politics provides cover for, and diversion from, class rule and from the deeper structures
of class, race, gender, empire, and eco-cide that haunt American and global life today – structures
that place children of liberal white North Side Chicago professionals in posh 40 th -story
apartments overlooking scenic Lake Michigan while consigning children of felony-branded Black custodians
and fast food workers to cramped apartments in crime-ridden South Side neighborhoods where nearly
half the kids are growing up at less than half the federal government's notoriously inadequate poverty
level. Most of the Black kids in deeply impoverished and hyper-segregated neighborhoods like Woodlawn
and Englewood (South Side) or North Lawndale and Garfield Park (West Side) can forget not only about
going to a World Series game but even about watching one on television. Their parents don't have
cable and the Fox Sports 1 channel. There's few if any local restaurants and taverns with big-screen
televisions in safe walking distance from their homes. Major League Baseball ticket prices being
what they are, few of the South Side kids have even seen the White Sox – Chicago's South Side American
League team, whose ballpark lacks the affluent white and gentrified surroundings of Wrigley Field.
(Thanks in no small part to the urban social geography of race and class in Chicago, the White Sox
winning the World Series in 2005 – thei
... ... ...
There is, yes, I know, the problem of Democrats in the White House functioning to stifle social movements
and especially peace activism (the antiwar movement has still yet to recover from the Obama experience).
But there's more good news here about a Hillary presidency. Not all Democratic presidents are equally
good at shutting progressive activism down. As the likely Green Party presidential candidate Jill
Stein (for whom I took five minutes to early vote in a "contested state" three weeks ago) noted in
an interview with me last April (when the White Sox still held first place in their division), Hillary
Clinton will have considerably less capacity to deceive and bamboozle progressive and young workers
and citizens than Barack Obama enjoyed in 2007-08 . "Obama," Stein noted, was fairly new on the
scene. Hillary," by contrast, "has been a warmonger who never found a war she didn't love forever!"
Hillary's corporatist track record – ably documented in Doug Henwood's book
My
Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency (her imperial track record receives equally
impressive treatment in Diana Johnstone's volume
Queen of Chaos:
The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton ) – is also long and transparently bad. All that and
Mrs. Clinton's remarkable lacks of charisma and trustworthiness could be useful for left activism
and politics in coming years.
For what it's worth, the first and most urgent place to restore such activism and politics
is in the area where Barack Obama has been most deadening: foreign policy, also known (when conducted
by the U.S.) as imperialism. When it comes to prospects for World War III, it is by no means clear
that the saber-rattling, regime-changing, NATO-expanding, and Russia-baiting Hillary Clinton is the
"lesser evil" compared to the preposterous Trump. That's no small matter. During a friend's birthday
party the night the Cubs clinched the National League pennant, I asked fellow celebrants and inebriates
if they were prepared for the fundamental realignment of the space-time continuum that was coming
when the North Siders won the league championship. That was a joke, of course, but there's nothing
funny about the heightened chances of a real downward existential adjustment resulting from war between
nuclear superpowers when the "lying neoliberal warmonger" Hillary Clinton gets into office and insists
on recklessly imposing a so-called no-fly zone over Russia-allied Syria.
"... In two party politics, generally political parties are mediating institutions, which moderate the claims of the interest groups composing them. However, when it switches to immutable characteristics, political parties become the vehicles of extremism, as each party tries to the "outbid" the other party in claims for dominance for its members. Further, each victory by the rival party spurs fears and polarization by the losers. Generally, you see de-stablization and violence in its wake. Its a good way to destroy a democracy. ..."
Then comes the final punchline, "Lives That Matter." Obviously, the answer to the question
is "black." But Doug has "a lot to say about this." Which suggests that he doesn't think the answer
is that simple. Perhaps he thinks "all lives matter," or that "blue lives matter," the phrasing
used by those who defend the status quo of policing and criminal justice. Either way, this puts
him in direct conflict with the black people he's befriended. As viewers, we know that "Black
Lives Matter" is a movement against police violence, for the essential safety and security of
black Americans. It's a demand for fair and equal treatment as citizens, as opposed to a pervasive
assumption of criminality.
Thompson, Zamata, and Jones might see a lot to like in Doug, but if he can't sign on to the
fact that black Americans face unique challenges and dangers, then that's the end of the game.
Tucked into this six-minute sketch is a subtle and sophisticated analysis of American politics.
It's not that working blacks and working whites are unable to see the things they have in common;
it's that the material interests of the former-freedom from unfair scrutiny, unfair detention,
and unjust killings-are in direct tension with the identity politics of the latter (as represented
in the sketch by the Trump hat). And in fact, if Hanks' character is a Trump supporter, then all
the personal goodwill in the world doesn't change the fact that his political preferences are
a direct threat to the lives and livelihoods of his new friends, a fact they recognize.
What Bouie doesn't seem to get is that black identity politics and the preferences of those who
espouse them are a direct threat to the livelihoods and interests of many whites - and even, at times,
their lives (
hello, Brian Ogle! ).
Consider this insanity from Michigan State University, pointed out by a reader this morning. It's
the Facebook page of Which Side
Are You On? , radical student organization whose stated purpose is:
Michigan State University has chosen to remain silent on the issue of racial injustice and
police brutality. We demand that the administration release a statement in support of the Movement
for Black Lives; and, in doing so, affirms the value of the lives of its students, alumni, and
future Spartans of color while recognizing the alienation and oppression that they face on campus.
In the absence of open support, MSU is taking the side of the oppressor.
Got that? Either 100 percent agree with them, or you are a racist oppressor. It's fanatical, and
it's an example of bullying. But as we have seen over the past year, year and a half, Black Lives
Matter and related identity politics movements (Which Side Are You On? says it is not affiliated
with BLM) are by no means only about police brutality. If they were, this wouldn't be a hard call.
No decent person of any race supports police brutality. To use Bouie's terms, the material interests
of non-progressive white people are often in direct tension with the identity politics of many blacks
and their progressive non-black allies. This is true beyond racial identity politics. It's true of
LGBT identity politics also. But progressives can't see that, because to them, what they do is not
identity politics; it's just politics.
You cannot practice and extol identity politics for groups favored by progressives without
implicitly legitimizing identity politics for groups disfavored by progressives.
Some of my best friends are supporters of police brutality.
In all seriousness, if one's identity preference is for dominance by your group, then obviously,
a member of your group dominating the other group isn't going to bother you. Nor, on the other
side, will you be troubled if your group shoots perceived agents of the other side. But note,
the justification for racial primacy or racial supremacy is always rhetorically made by asserting
claims or the threat of racial primacy or racial supremacy by the Other. Further, racial tensions
are always caused by the behavior of the Other, and your groups actions are always "self defense".
Of course, your actions are always portrayed as "aggression" by the Other, and lead to ratcheting
up of anti-social behavior, but hey.
I sort of assume that is not how most whites feel, but the reality is whether it is or not,
if you turn the political question from legal equality for blacks to legal primacy or dominance,
then you will push whites into taking the adversary position.
In two party politics, generally political parties are mediating institutions, which moderate
the claims of the interest groups composing them. However, when it switches to immutable characteristics,
political parties become the vehicles of extremism, as each party tries to the "outbid" the other
party in claims for dominance for its members. Further, each victory by the rival party spurs
fears and polarization by the losers. Generally, you see de-stablization and violence in its wake.
Its a good way to destroy a democracy.
I love "Black Lives Matter" as a slogan, because it is ambiguous enough to be either a claim
for dominance or primacy. Obviously, whether a BLM will support the assertion "All Lives Matter"
is a litmus test for whether they are asserting racial supremacy or racial primacy. But plausible
deniability is baked in.
I don't mind identity politics, by which I assume you mean people appealing to voters to vote
for their pet interest because it will help people with a particular set of characteristics or
"identity". This is just people looking out for and lobbying the voting public on their interests,
which is what democracy is all about.
What I don't like is the stunning illogic and flawed reasoning behind some of the appeals,
such as the "you're either with BLM or against black people" arguments, the policing of miniscule
variations in speech (eg pronouns) as signs of haaaaaaaate, and the labeling of all white people
as "white supremacists" unless they self-flagellate and take personal blame for all the police
shootings. And, I think these people know that the reasoning is flawed. It's just that they also
know that if you repeat it long and loud enough and have enough leaders behind you willing to
fire or otherwise silence anyone who points out the flaws in your arguments, then you can convince
everyone that it all makes sense.
I think what is being lost is really the underlying logic of morality itself. Kids are being
taught that it doesn't matter what your intention is, it doesn't matter what your reasoning is,
it doesn't even matter whether an outcome is predictable from your action. What matters is how
the people in identity groups feel about your action. It's consequentialism run amok.
It's as if someone took Catholic reasoning on morality (grave matter, full knowledge, deliberate
consent, don't do wrong things in order to achieve good ends, principle of double effect), reversed
it, and then decided that this upside-down reasoning will be our new publicly mandated morality.
It's fascinating to watch but I feel a bit frightened for my children, because they will have
to deal with this new and deeply flawed public morality.
"Let me explain something to you. Are you sitting down? Because this is going to come as a shock.
Ready? We have been steadily moving away from white identity politics. A lot of people fought
and died to end white supremacy. Replacing it with a form of politics that treats blacks as some
sort of chosen people because of the color of their skin is regress, and puts that progress towards
equal justice for all, regardless of their skin color, in jeopardy."
For the most part, probably a fair observation. And it only took a couple of hundred years
(or more, depending on where you chose to say "white identity politics" started and when (or if)
you chose to say it ended).
Low long have black identity politics had any influence?
How long does it take, and at what "price" to atone for the past? Haven't we been grappling
with that since Lincoln's second inaugural address?
Will black identity politics be around longer than that? And when will white identity politics
end? Not to mention all of the other identity politics in society. But, identity politics always
takes at least two sides. You can never have identity politics without "the other." Black identity
politics wouldn't last without white identity politics, and vice versa. So too for feminism identity
politics, religious identity politics…and…so…on… Each has its counterpart on the other side.
In a perfect world, identity politics would not exist, but in the real world, they have existed
for as long as politics.
Not that I don't see some hope. By and large, the younger generation gives me every hope that,
some day, we might get over this, but probably not until a few score more generational replacements
happen. But that too, might be a source of reassurance. A few score generations isn't really that
long a time, after all.
How in the blue blazes do you possibly do you go from folks having confidence in the police
to them ALSO NOT being bothered by police brutality? How are those two things linked in your mind?
Can you not possibly fathom that another human being could have confidence in an institution (or
a group) while ALSO condemning the bad actors in that institution (or group)? Or in your mind
do a few bad actors condemn an entire group?
Here is your "logic" re-written in another way. Does it help you see my point?
61% of non-white people have either "very little" or a "no" of confidence in the police. I'm not
saying all 61% of those people are OK with attacking or murdering the police, but they seem not
to be that bothered by it.
Now possibly I am the only who finds your thought process disturbing and wonders how many other
folks make the same leap of absurdity.
In reply the religious liberty comments, I think almost everyone who supports BLM would say that
it is about giving African Americans basic human rights in the United States. You might not agree
with that, but that's how things stand from their point of view. To many liberals, religious liberty
seems like special pleading, even though to you it seems like the advancement of a universal principal.
"Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing
another." Karl Marx
"All that is not race in this world is trash… All historical events… are only the expression
of the race's instinct of self-preservation." Adolf Hitler
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly
and applying the wrong remedies." Groucho Marx
I do not think that all politics is "identity" politics.
The Populists going after the gold standard, or the New Dealers attempting to deal with the
problems of labor and capital, where not primarily about identity politics.
Certainly, there was lots of identity politics on the state level, whether in the South, or
in states like NY, in the battle between upstate WASPs and ethnic political machines in NYC.
Today we are increasingly nationalizing identity politics. Moreover, we are mainstreaming a
slogan based on racial primacy /supremacy, e.g. "Black Lives Matter". You are seeing increasing
attacks on traditional American symbols and calls for their replacement with "diverse" symbols.
This is not just identity politics, it is ethnopolitics.
The reality is that the political symbol is in the heart of the people a promise that they'll
be treated preferentially. I think that is part of the racial tension post-Obama. We elected an
African-American, who appointed a lot of African-Americans, but on the street, he hasn't done
$#!+ to help Blacks.
Now, if I thought that whites would just lay down and not resist racial subjugation and discrimination,
I wouldn't be concerned. But I doubt whites are seriously going to go gracefully into that good
night as the bottom rung of a racial caste system.
"Virtue signaling" is very different from "virtue"–you can't tell a white nationalist from
a white liberal based on their housing or dating preferences.
If whites collectively grow to FEAR other groups politically, say due to demographic displacement
and claims by minorities for primacy/supremacy, they will change teams overnight. All this anti-racism
rhetoric presupposes white noblese oblige and security.
Any serious movement from equality to some claim of primacy or supremacy is likely to trigger
a counter-movement toward a claim of primacy or supremacy by the other group. Moreover, once you
polarize racially, the political process encourages extremism, not moderation.
One reason not to worship the U.S. Constitution is the limited understanding of factionalism
by Madison, who accounted for interest group factions (which can break up or wax and wane) but
failed to consider identity group factions based on immutable characteristics. It is these identity-based
factions which frequently destroy attempts to create liberal democracy the world over.
The reality is that representative democracy is only an effective system in ethnically homogeneous
societies with a strong ethic of individualism (rooted in Protestant ancestors). While Korea and
Japan get along politically, their political systems are "different" from a Western perspective,
mostly due to lower levels of individualism.
China is probably a better model for most countries than liberal democracy, because multiethnic
societies generally degenerate into authoritarianism anyway.
This is why, given multiculturalism and secularism, the likelihood of a serious institutional
transformation in America seems increasingly a certain bet.
Here's the brutal truth. We created Black Lives Matter.
We did it with 400 years of brutal policies, physical violence, economic apartheid and ill
conceived do gooder nonsense that could not even begin to counter the former impacts.
In the 1950's and 1960's you had one branch of the Federal Government - the Federal Housing
Authority– both building low income housing in the decaying neighborhoods that were the result
of FHA red-lining polices that were was causing the decay - total madness. The black community
has yet to recover from that by the way - trillions in lost equity in today's dollars.
We are incredibly lucky to JUST have Black Lives Matter. It's a miracle that the black community
hasn't amassed in force and burned large swaths of this country to the ground peppering us with
automatic weapons fire along the way for good measure.
It's a testament to their fortitude, generosity and patience as a people. That they have formed
this group is inevitable.
To lump BLM in with the white coddled SJW ignores their unique history and context. BLM has
no obligation whatsoever to be rational, or contrite, or forgiving, or magnanimous.
What has that ever gotten them in this country? Here's a hint, f%$k all. That's what it's gotten
them.
[NFR: Well, BLM can behave however it wants to, but don't be surprised if being irrational
and bullying gets you nowhere, except on campus run by noodle-spined administrators. - RD]
On the other hand, the notion of color-blind standards is a joke.
If you belong to a group that has an average IQ of 100 in economic competition with a group
that has an average IQ of 85, and you believe that hiring/firing be based on merit, you are promoting
a standard that benefits your group over the other guys.
Likewise, if you are from the second group, you are arguing for proportional representation
in the work force (and especially the elite), and you are promoting a standard that benefits your
group over the other guys.
If you look at Anglo-Saxons v. Blacks, Anglo-Saxons always want meritocracy.
However, if you look at elite admissions in the early 20th Century, when Anglo-Saxons were
competing against Jews, they implemented a quota system that benefited Anglo-Saxons. They also
generated a lot of Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories blaming their failures on Jewish nepotism,
rather than say Jews just being smarter.
The problem for America is someone will decide on a standard, and that decision will privilege
one group over another. Always.
The more groups, the more divisive and polarizing each decision becomes, until democracy stops
being capable of functioning, e.g. making decisions, even bad ones.
You can have "racial equality", but not "racial equality" in accordance with a definition that
all groups will ever agree upon. Further, many persons in all groups will secretly desire supremacy
no matter the rhetoric, so will work to undermine and limit nominal "equality" every political
chance they get.
" A lot of people fought and died to end white supremacy"
And what has it done? American social capital has been destroyed, our society is slowly turning
into an atomized hell, and our politics will increasingly resemble tribal warfare. The fiction
that we could make race irrelevant needs to die, group differences are real and ethnic tribalism
is hardwired into humans by our DNA. Our founders chose to limit citizenship to whites of good
character for a reason, just as Japan seeks to remain Japanese for a reason. Diversity + close
proximity = war
All politics is not identity politics. America has a rich tradition in positions of relative privilege
taking on the political cause of disenfranchised groups.
Given how many well off white people, including men, are Democrats, I really don't see why
progressives would even make that argument.
This article showed me how many people in the US live a completely different life than I do. Not
only did it change my understanding of race relations and prompt a great deal more study but it
made me more aware, generally, of how little I know of how the other 99.9% live.
Lots of hypocrites in this comment thread commenting that "identity politics is just politics,
period." Okay, white nationalism it is, then! Time to bring David Duke back out from whatever
rock he's been under and put him at the top of the ticket. Maybe Louis Farrakhan can run for something,
too. After all, why would anti-semitism ever go out of fashion, anyway! Isnt' that just identity
politics which is just regular politics, like marginal tax cuts and subsidies for electric cars?
-I don't think it's that difficult to understand the anger, stridency, and even vitriol coming
from SJW/BLM supporters. With BLM, it's a mostly righteous indignation over a long history of
abusive police tactics and laws, exploded by multiple recent captured instances of police abuse.
As for LGBTQ-issues, I think many advocates–especially those in the vanguard–view themselves
as participants in the Second Civil Rights Movement–that the laws and cultural attitudes they
are fighting against are analogous to Jim Crow and racism. There is some degree of truth to this.
The danger comes with the disturbingly common–or at least effective–practice of refusing to
grant their opponents *any* goodwill. Like racists, opponents of full legal and cultural inclusion–if
not acceptance–are deemed to be totally devoid of any redeeming features, and thus ought to be
opposed relentlessly and by any means necessary. The same goes for those who aren't indulgent
or repentant enough. We can partly thank the poisonous legacy of Marcuse's "tolerance" for this.
We can also thank old-fashioned lust for power–especially to take down "the elite" or to take
revenge–and the intoxicating feeling of being on the cutting edge of righteousness.
How do you deal with this? As KD suggested above, if one group sees itself as against others
and acts accordingly, then those others will fall into the "tribal struggle" mindset as well.
If extremist social justice advocates (SJAs) define themselves in opposition to other attitudes,
values, etc–and more importantly, if they refuse to engage in respectful dialogue and are not
willing to compromise–then those who endorse those attitudes, values, etc will inevitably see
themselves as being defined through opposition to SJAs. Thus the poison of identity politics–it
exacerbates, rather than seeks to contain Us vs Them antagonism.
The only ways I see out of it are direct, full-throated defenses of SJA's targets–such as last
year's "Coddling of the American Mind" and U Chicago's defense of free expression and respectful
challenging debate. Ignoring it–as many seem wont to do by dismissals of "oh, they're just stupid
college kids, they'll grow out of it"–isn't viable because though many will, some will pursue
positions of power and influence. Besides, the less challenged, the more the extreme views will
be seen as respectable if not correct.
-The debate over which groups are or are not practicing identity politics: In (academic) political
theory, "identity politics" narrowly refers to a style of politics based on the self-organization
of *oppressed* groups and pursuit of policy changes to their advantage. Identity comes to the
forefront of members of oppressed groups' consciousness because it is that defining characteristic
that puts them in an inferior position.
The way some have described it here suggests it's more like practicing politics in a way meant
to provide benefits for oneself–but that's just self-interest. A better broad view of identity
politics would focus on the deliberate and open advocacy of benefits for a particular group one
is a member of, when that group is defined by a specific and fundamental trait relevant to one's
sense of self. In other words, if the phrase "As a (adjective) (personal-characteristic noun),
I believe/support/oppose X" is central to your approach to politics, you're practicing identity
politics.
JWJ, you are missing the entire point of identity politics.
The morality inheres in the identity, not in the behavior.
If brutality occurs, it is not a behavior, it is an identity ("Police"). If you are confident
in "Police" you are thus confident in "brutality" because the behavior is not separable from the
identity. And for similar reasons, your confidence in brutes means that you, too are a brute (of
course this goes double if you are white, since all whites are brutes, for similar reasons).
Identity politics is the refusal to separate identity from acts. Whiteness *is* slaveowning,
blackness *is* victimhood, and so on, regardless of whether one has ever owned or been a slave;
these things are irrelevant; they inhere in the identity.
How long does it take, and at what "price" to atone for the past? Haven't we been grappling
with that since Lincoln's second inaugural address?
But here's the problem. It's not like the whites who are supporting Trump got fat, rich and
happy during their period of "white identity." Whatever privilege attaches to whiteness it hasn't
exactly trickled down (even in a Trumped-up fashion) to Trump voters. No doubt Mr. Bonner is either
upper middle class or high status (academic, journalist or government employee). But low status
whites see the world a bit differently. This is the real tragedy (or, if you're a fat cat, the
beauty) of the situation. The lower classes will always fight among themselves for scraps, the
high status (but often low pay) elites would scold the various parties for their various thoughtcrimes
and the fat cats will high five and do the truffle shuffle, bouncing their greased bellies against
each other. Thanks for doing your part.
"Now, you can try to make an argument that they are wrong, that they *are* getting equal treatment
from law enforcement and that this is all in their heads. You can try, but in all fairness, the
anecdotal and empirical evidence seem not to be on your side."
No, when correcting for crime rates, there is no racial discrepancy in police killings. In
fact, blacks are underrepresented and whites overrepresent, given the underlying proportion of
criminality in the communities.
"Replacing it with a form of politics that treats blacks as some sort of chosen people because
of the color of their skin is regress,
Who, exactly, is making this argument? Not BLM and not the mainstream liberal political establishment.
"
Uh, Hilary "whites must listen" Clinton. And lots more.
"However, if you look at elite admissions in the early 20th Century, when Anglo-Saxons were competing
against Jews, they implemented a quota system that benefited Anglo-Saxons. "
Why shouldn't the people who, you know, built the universities remain in charge of them? No
one asks Brandeis to become a WASP bastion.
"In the 1950's and 1960's you had one branch of the Federal Government - the Federal Housing Authority–
both building low income housing in the decaying neighborhoods that were the result of FHA red-lining
polices that were was causing the decay - total madness. The black community has yet to recover
from that by the way - trillions in lost equity in today's dollars"
LOL, someone's been drinking the TNC Kool-aid (purple, I imagine). It causes people to reverse
causality.
The neighborhoods were redlined because they were poor risk. They were poor risk because of
their demographic composition.
"It's a miracle that the black community hasn't amassed in force and burned large swaths of this
country to the ground peppering us with automatic weapons fire along the way for good measure."
There's not one word in the BLM guiding principles page about the police. Not one word. If you
go to their home pager and click on "what we believe" this is what you get.
If we would look into how much blacks have been killed by the police last year, the figure will
be about few hundred at maximum. If we would look into the same category for whites, the result
will be few thouthands, minimum. If we look into the statistics abut the main cause of death for
the same period, it will be black on black homicide for blacks and car accident for whites. Also,
blacks are about 13% of the American population or so, but make at least as much homicides as
whites do. And most homicides are comitted within offenders race group.
If anything, whites become targets of poluce brutality much more often. And yet, BLM are out
there preching, as if police is hunting them for no reason. That's everything you need to know
about BLM and their so called care about black lives.
That's the main problems with such groups. They don't really want to improve the lot of the
groups they are supposedly fighting for. They are just exaggerating the problem and imitating
fighting for something important, because they'll get money and recognition for it. Without real
risk to boot.
The BLM radical movement is built on a lie. Blacks are 12% of the population yet commit 53% of
murders and 70% of gun crime. In this era of cell phones, know the number of black people who
have dubious interactions with police, thanks to the scandalous behavior of the news media. We
can be sure police brutality is not an epidemic because the examples offered as evidence are,at
best , dubious. Each example given, eg Ferguson Missouri or Trayvon Martin, are at best arguably
due to the bad behavior by the black person. The real epidemic is black crime, black fatherlessness,
and too many people indulging this "I'm a victim" culture. Shame on you Mr. Dreher for delineation
this into a black and white cipher in this article. The entire country suffers from this epidemic
of black crime and the false narrative that black people are mistreated by society. This is just
another example of the madness on the political left the radical extreme hateful positions that
are exposed on that side it seems solely.
"What Bouie doesn't seem to get is that black identity politics and the preferences of those who
espouse them are a direct threat to the livelihoods and interests of many whites - and even, at
times, their lives (hello, Brian Ogle!)."
OK, livelihoods and interests I can understand even if there's the fact that if you're an average
white dude, an international student, a student with a soccer scholarship, an out of state student,
or a a legacy admission is just as likely to knock you out of your preferred school as a non-white
student is.
However, can you point me to the radio host, politician, TV commentator, or even popular Twitter
celebrity who says the people who killed Brian Ogle should go free?
Because on the other hand, there's plenty of politicians, TV commentators, writers, radio hosts,
etc. who think the police are doing a great job and that police brutality is just a liberal myth.
But in general, the whole paragraph is why for the most part, black Americans will never trust
white conservatives – you seem to imply that black Americans want carte blanche to kill white
people while in reality, black people just want to be treated as well as a confirmed mass murderer
was treated by police – to be fed some Burger King like Dylan Roof perhaps.
A moderate, peaceful, and democratic form of white identity politics that was widely representative
of the white population would be acceptable as far as I am concerned. The problem is that white
nationalists can't go two seconds without demonizing Jews, denying the holocaust, trying to justify
the Confederacy, attacking the basic assumptions of liberal democracy, and admiring various obscure
mid-20th century fascist/pseudo-fascist far right intellectuals. In that sense, white nationalists
are the equivalent of the New Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam, as opposed to the NAACP
or BLM. That does not mean that BLM and the NAACP are not harmful to the interests of whites,
but they do not advocate a separate black ethnostate, antisemitism, or ethnic cleansing of whites.
Just watched the SNL skit. Best thing they have done all election season. It's important we understand
the motivations behind Trump's rise instead of pushing them under the surface where they fester.
I hate the term "identity politics." Identity politics are politics. Straight white people, even
liberals (hello Bernie bros), often try to exclude themselves from the definition by casting their
own thoughts as neutral while casting everyone with a marked "identity" as practicing identity
politics. People are always speaking from a point of view, and in politics they are usually advocating
to change things that negatively impact a group they are associated with.
How is the fight for "religious liberty" different from BLM? How is it not a form of identity
politics?
I agree that certain groups, especially at the university level, take into a totalitarian direction,
but casting some activism as "identity politics" while excluding other forms of special pleading
makes no sense to me.
I agree that *all* identity politics are a moral poison, white, black, Christian, Muslim, or anything
else. It is a sad fact of human nature that we are tribal and care more for people like ourselves.
This reminds me of the parable of the Good Samaritan. If we are to follow the parable, then
we are to treat others of different religions and different countries exactly as if they our neighbors,
meaning as if they are in our tribe. This is quite the opposite of identity politics.
"freedom from unfair scrutiny, unfair detention, and unjust killings" for blacks…. are a
direct threat to the livelihoods and interests of many whites.
I've moved things around a bit but in essence this is correct.
If I've got this wrong Rod, kindly let me know how.
Huh.
I didn't realize that oppressing blacks was such a huge industry for white people.
It seems somehow relevant in the context of this discussion.
I'm amazed. Truly and utterly amazed. The demand of blacks to be treated like citizens deserving
the respect and protection of the law and agents of the law like everyone else is "a direct threat
to the livelihoods and interests of many whites."
I mean, I know that white supremacy is a thing in the U.S., but is it really that ingrained
and tenacious? Really?
form of white identity politics that was widely representative of the white population
That's an oxymoron. No form of "white identity" politics would be or could be "widely representative
of the white population."
A lot of the black rhetoric we're getting lately is belated recognition that "black people"
don't really have enduring common interests that bind them all, and the defensive necessity to
provide safety for each other in the face of vicious and pervasive persecution just isn't really
strong enough to maintain a tenuous identity or unity much longer. As Jesse B. Semple remarked
when his "white boss" asked "What does The Negro want now?" … there are fifty eleven different
kinds of Negroes in the USA. That's even more true of "whites," always has been, and the hue an
cry that a bit of affirmative action is tantamount to creating a massive common race interest
is just nonsense.
How is the fight for "religious liberty" different from BLM? How is it not a form of identity
politics?
Because religion is a search for truth, and religious liberty affirms that there are lots of
different searches going on, which are neither binding upon nonbelievers, nor to be suppressed
by the skeptical or powerful?
It is nice to see America can laugh about things this year!
While we can be complain about SJWs and BLMs, doesn't the conservative movement need the same
exact lecture here? What was the speech that made Trump popular with Republicans? It was "Mexicans
are rapist" speech that originally made 35 – 40% of the party support him the summer of 2015.
(And Donald's speeches to African-Americans is not the way to win their votes either!)
I almost think the best thing for the Republican Party this year is for Trump to lose Texas
so the Party learns to better respect Hispanic-Americans. (Unlikely to happen though and Texas
is not turning blue long term.)
Jesse: "However, can you point me to the radio host, politician, TV commentator, or even popular
Twitter celebrity who says the people who killed Brian Ogle should go free?
Because on the other hand, there's plenty of politicians, TV commentators, writers, radio hosts,
etc. who think the police are doing a great job and that police brutality is just a liberal myth….
But in general, the whole paragraph is why for the most part, black Americans will never trust
white conservatives – you seem to imply that black Americans want carte blanche to kill white
people while in reality, black people just want to be treated as well as a confirmed mass murderer
was treated by police – to be fed some Burger King like Dylan Roof perhaps."
+1,000.
I'd add that there are commentators, politicians, writers, etc. who seem to think that police
brutality is justified because of crime rates, as though the Constitution, not to mention just
basic fairness and protection against needless violence, applies only to the law-abiding.
"That does not mean that BLM and the NAACP are not harmful to the interests of whites, but they
do not advocate a separate black ethnostate, "
If they did, they'd be working for the interests of whites.
[NFR: You longtime readers know that I reject M_Young's white identity politics. I want
to take this opportunity to remind you all that when you cheer on left-wing, racial and sexual
identity politics, you implicitly cheer on his. - RD]
There is a literature on the collective behavior of groups in cooperation/competition models.
Groups (even artificial ones created by randomly assigning college undergraduates) will compete
to maximize their relative power against other groups, even if it leads to collectively a lower
standard of living (in other words, they would rather be relatively richer in a poorer world than
than relatively poorer in a richer world).
In interest group politics, say labor v. capital, you have groups which, while fighting each
other for power, are permeable. People move from one group or the other, and even if they don't,
it is possible to move.
Identity groups are based on putatively immutable characteristics. In identity politics, identity
groups struggle against each other for dominance. Claims can be of three varieties: equality ("All
Lives Matter"), primacy ("Black Lives Matter"), and dominance ("Only Black Lives Matter").
When political parties are defined on identity grounds, elections become censuses rather than
"free" elections. You vote for the party that represents your group, because you are afraid of
dominance by the other group. Further, you justify claims for primacy or dominance based on fears
about the relative power of the other group.
Political systems that polarize on identity end up in a census election where the winning coalition
of groups dominates the other groups, and the group in the electoral minority has no possibility
of exercising power. Because elections are censuses, and you don't have the numbers. What typically
happens is that minorities turn to violence, and often racial unrest results in military rule.
It is pretty clear that multiculturalism is precipitating the resurgence of identity politics,
and if we believe the polls, that trend is about to accelerate. Further, ethnic polarization of
one political party always triggers ethnic polarization in other parties, even over elite objections,
as it becomes necessary to appeal to voters.
This is why some version the Alt-Right represents the future of Conservative politics, even
if the Conservative Establishment doesn't like the Alt-Right. It is structural, and you see the
same type of political dynamic in Nigeria, Sri Lanka, post-Independence India, as well as places
like the Ottoman Empire or Germany.
What is fueling the Alt-Right is the policies around immigration and non-assimilation/multiculturalism,
combined with demands for racial primacy and racial dominance by minorities (e.g. safe spaces
where others are forcibly excluded).
It could be halted today, but instead we are doubling down on the root causes of ethnic anxieties.
Further, I don't know what would be "Left-Wing" about pushing whites into a white ethnic voting
block intended to subordinate opponents, given their majority status for a few decades, and even
as a plurality, they would have the largest plurality.
Much as many people desire "racial equality", when one group argues for "primacy", politically,
you are never going to get "equality" unless a rival group claims primacy for itself. This is
basic bargaining theory. Hence, the inevitability of white with egalitarian preferences going
over toward white nationalism. Unfortunately, the most probable result will be greater polarization,
not compromise.
P.S. Yes, I understand "racial primacy" for certain racial groups means "racial equality",
just as "war is peace".
"I hate the term "identity politics." Identity politics are politics. Straight white people,
even liberals (hello Bernie bros), often try to exclude themselves from the definition by casting
their own thoughts as neutral while casting everyone with a marked "identity" as practicing identity
politics. People are always speaking from a point of view, and in politics they are usually advocating
to change things that negatively impact a group they are associated with.
How is the fight for "religious liberty" different from BLM? How is it not a form of identity
politics?"
Exactly.
The phrase "identity politics" is meant to render illegitimate the concerns of the person who
is accused of practicing them. Thus, people don't have to grapple with the actual issue and see
whether or not there's a legitimate problem that needs to be addressed. Rod spends a lot of time
here complaining about the failings of Black Lives Matter, and very little acknowledging that
they have a very legitimate issue that they are pushing to solve.
Religious liberty is not strictly identity politics, because religious affiliations in American
society are voluntary. However, religious preferences are pretty inelastic, so you have approximate
features of identity politics.
However, LGBT ideology claims "sexual orientation" is an immutable characteristic. So LGBT
is identity politics.
In some Islamic societies, apostacy is punished by death, so Islam is pretty immutable. So
in a strict Muslim society seeking to crack down on alcohol sales, the crack down would be an
exercise in identity politics, even if alcohol vendors weren't an identity group.
How is the fight for "religious liberty" different from BLM? How is it not a form of identity
politics?
Religious liberty is a universal freedom and it applies to all, including atheists and agnostics.
(and, contrary to the narrative, being itself a civic right, it doesn't impinge on other "civil
rights")
Identity politics, on the other hand, is the fostering of tribalism. It's a degrading thing: it
considers humans as dogs that have to bite at each other to get a greater share of the kibble
bowl.
If you look at politics post-independence in Trinidad and Guyana, or Sri Lanka, you see the emergence
of ethnic identity politics converting Communist and Socialist parties, and their leaders, from
universalist political programs to ethnic-based programs, depending on what ethnic groups they
derived more political support from.
Although, I suppose some people think that because America is majority white, the same kind
of political trends won't play out here. I think human nature is human nature, and identity politics
is identity politics, and the result is never good for someone.
"No decent person of any race supports police brutality"
I've known FAR too many "decent" middle and upper-middle class burb-dwellers who are perfectly
comfortable with police brutality. They believe that citizens get the policing they deserve. Rodney
King? "If you saw the entire tape, not just the excerpt on the evening news, you'd understand
why the officers acted that way". Black Lives Matter? "All they have to do is follow the law and
not disrespect the police". Unarmed, non-threatening, law-abiding minority killed by police? "There
must be more to the story".
moral blindness? all politics is identity politics. the fact that white, Christian, property-owning,
heterosexual, males looked out for their interests for the first 200+ years of the plutocracy
was identity politics in spades. the push-back from BLM, NOW, the LGBT community, and even Trump
supporters are as well. I had a very good History professor in the 80's. he taught politics is
merely a group or individual looking out for its vested, economic interests. the Karl Marx vs.
Adam Smith stuff (ideology) is merely a demographic extension of this. what you call identity
politics is more about the relationship between wealth and power, than left or right.
It is certainly a peculiar advance that in a country founded on identity color politics those
who have benefited and manipulated color politics to their advantage in every way --
are finding logical flaws in the very system they have created for themselves.
On its face - should raise serious doubts about the veracity of the complaint.
"No decent person of any race supports police brutality." Explain what you mean by "decent" person.
This is a term similar to the term "elites" be bandied about in this election without anyone saying
who they include in that group. All I get in response to my inquiries are quotations from dictionaries.
So, please explain what is meant by "decent person."
[NFR: If you believe it's okay for the police to brutalize people because of their race,
or to brutalize anyone, you are not a decent person, in my view. - RD]
This bit is much better than everything else SNL has commented on the 2016 election. I still think
SNL caters way too much to African American chauvinism though.
How much traction would BLM have if it were not funded by George Soros?, or any other identity
group if they had not been funded by billionaires with an interest in destabilizing the American
polity??
BTW, although it is not necessarily identity politics, the political principle that groups maximize
their relative power over say the welfare of the totality also explains the problem of elites.
All elites want to maximize their relative power over other groups, and so it is really competition
(e.g. fear of revolution or being conquered) that keeps them "honest", otherwise they will grind
the common man down to subsidence if they have the chance.
All of American history includes the strong presence of white identity politics.
Stop pretending otherwise. What else explains racialized chattel slavery and Jim crow and redlining
and so forth?
[NFR: Let me explain something to you. Are you sitting down? Because this is going to come
as a shock. Ready? We have been steadily moving away from white identity politics. A lot of
people fought and died to end white supremacy. Replacing it with a form of politics that treats
blacks as some sort of chosen people because of the color of their skin is regress, and puts that
progress towards equal justice for all, regardless of their skin color, in jeopardy. - RD]
…to be fed some Burger King like Dylan Roof perhaps.
You're either ignorant of the context of that situation, or you're deliberately taking it out
of context. Roof was arrested by a tiny police department and held until the FBI showed up. He
was arrested after 10pm and had not eaten for a while. The police department didn't even have
the facilities to prepare a meal. Instead of automatically being suspicious, maybe you should
consider that the police were making sure to not do something that could harm the prosecution
in such an important case.
But that's how it's done, huh? Exaggerate things to the extreme, and then wonder why white
people don't understand.
"Black Lives Matter and related identity politics movements (Which Side Are You On? says it is
not affiliated with BLM) are by no means only about police brutality."
Yep. It's also about Israeli "genocide" of Palestinians, if you haven't heard:
http://bit.ly/2eJeXDZ
I remember libertarians complaining in the aughts that it was almost impossible to partake
in antiwar demonstrations with the left because it was never about MERELY war. Environmental degradation,
environmental racism (yes, that's a thing), and all manner of other unrelated items were seen
as a mandatory part of what naive libertarians thought was the goal of simply extracting the US
military from the Middle East.
Ideology is a helluva thing. It's an all-encompassing worldview that looks bizarre to people
who aren't already steeped in one.
[NFR: Let me explain something to you. Are you sitting down? Because this is going to come as
a shock. Ready? We have been steadily moving away from white identity politics. A lot of people
fought and died to end white supremacy. Replacing it with a form of politics that treats blacks
as some sort of chosen people because of the color of their skin is regress, and puts that progress
towards equal justice for all, regardless of their skin color, in jeopardy. - RD]
Let me explain something to you too! I'd ask you to sit down, but you're probably already in
your fainting couch!
We have, sort of, in some parts of the country, in some ways moved away from white identity
politics! Just because white identity politics doesn't look like lynching doesn't mean it doesn't
exist.
All politics is identity politics! Why wouldn't it be? We create visions of the good and we
view it through our prism of identity. The fact that in our nation the axis about race doesn't
change that it does exist.
And no one is asking for 'blacks' to be treated as some chosen people – at even the most exaggerated,
most 'blacks' are asking for some acknowledgement that racial damage was done and it's going to
take racially conscious solutions (and some people like reparations!).
But also, here's the reality – the damage to large groups of people in this country was explicitly
because of who they were. Why would the solutions necessarily be universal?
If we both could have had 5, but then I was allowed to unfairly steal 4 from you, it wouldn't
then be fair if my solution to the problem was to give both of us 5 again.
Quote: Taken all in all, though, I am proud to call myself a philosemite, and even at low
points like the Spectator affair still, at the very least, an anti-antisemite. I recall the numberless
kindnesses I have received at the hands of Jews, friendships I treasure and lessons I have learnt.
I cherish those recollections.
"We have been steadily moving away from white identity politics."
The word 'steadily' is doing quite a lot of heavy lifting here. It seems the distance from
full on Jim Crow to 'young bucks eating T bone steaks' is vanishingly small in historical time.
If we could quantify and graph the prevalence of white identity politics, would that graph be
pointing up or down?
The comment made above is entirely correct: identity politics is just ordinary politics. Anyone
who tells you differently is selling something.
"Thompson, Zamata, and Jones might see a lot to like in Doug, but if he can't sign on to the fact
that black Americans face unique challenges and dangers,"
There's the BS right there. Doug might well admit that and accept it and still think that BLM
is full of crap. That's my position. Bouie doesn't get to own the conversation like that and neither
does BLM.
Just like the NRA doesn't get to claim that anyone who fails to bow to its agenda and policies
hates safety.
Just because I disagree with the Sierra Clubs position on zero-cut goals on public land do
they get to say I hate the earth?
"So the desire to be treated fairly is framed as identity politics?"
So black people want to be killed more often by police?
There's at least one famous study famously made famous in the NYT, by a really great black
economist from Harvard, indicating that black people are killed LESS often in interactions with
cops.
Yep. That data is limited and incomplete. But so is the data you prefer.
"We have been steadily moving away from white identity politics. A lot of people fought and died
to end white supremacy… RD"
In fact, the idea of a biologically-based white supremacy never held the political or social
field to itself during the last two centuries in either Europe or America.
This was because it was contested by important currents of both Christian and liberal thought
on human equality. These ideas of Christian and liberal equality were powerful enough to sustain
the successful 60 year international campaign of the world's leading 19th century Empire. the
British, to abolish slavery and were as well a significant factor behind the U.S. civil war.
Any serious reading of the history of the late 19th and early 20th century reveals how ethnic
and "racial" conflicts were created and manipulated by unscrupulous politicians of that time and
how these "identities" contributed to the radical destabilization and destruction of domestic
and international peace.
The 20th century Nazis represented the apogee of "white" supremacy and their European and American
opponents in World War II repudiated with extreme force their odious race "science."
Contemporary identity politics seeks to reassert and re-legitimize a supposed biological basis
for political conflict. The historical evidence is clear that this is not a story that can in
any way end well.
Replacing it with a form of politics that treats blacks as some sort of chosen people..
Chosen people that are still more likely to be the victims of police brutality. I'm pretty
sure they'd rather pass on being chosen and get on with being treated like everyone else.
You act as if "identity politics" only happens on the left. Small-o "orthodox Christians" are
a tribe who practice "identity politics." All politics is local, Tip O'Neill taught us. A corollary
of that is "all politics are tribal."
I (and other liberals) get dismissed as being nonsensical for wanting to be respected on the
basis of our identity, but the minute a Christian baker has to do business equally with a gay
person, it's tyranny.
What is the Benedict Option, if not Christian identity politics put into maximum effect?
The thing that infuriates me (and people like me) is the assumption that we are the "other"
and the view expressed here is the "default." As I see it, it's our tribe against yours. Your
right to lead is no more evident than mine. We fight for the right to lead. Someone wins, and
someone loses.
I realize this a conservative blog, but try approaching the other side as moral equals, instead
of with an a priori assumption that the left is tribal, and the right has the voice of G-d Himself
as their trumpeter of all that is good and true.
In any given society, the dominant majority defines the norm – in every area of life and culture
– by using themselves as the yardstick. They are normal, everybody different (and their different
stuff) is abnormal.
This is all perfectly natural. It's why there's pretty much no such thing as "white music"
or "white food" in America – whatever was traditional to whites was just called music and food.
If it comes from white culture, it doesn't get a special name, and it doesn't get widely recognized
as something specific to white people. It's just the norm.
This is why white identity politics isn't usually called white identity politics, yet any politics
arising out of a nonwhite experience is defined as abnormal and gets a special name.
Seen from any perspective other than the traditionally dominant one, it's rather clear that
the driving force on the American right has long been white identity politics. The Republican
Party didn't get over 90% white by accident. Some people may have the privilege of calling their
own politics the norm and assigning a name to the rest, but it's all identity politics whether
they want to see it or not.
Then comes the final punchline, "Lives That Matter." Obviously, the answer to the question
is "black." But Doug has "a lot to say about this."
The beautiful thing about the skit is that it left all this hanging… it didn't try to write
the final outcome, but left a range of variables and a variety of possible outcomes to the viewer's
imagination.
The problem with over-analysis is that it erases this well done ending, by trying to pin down
exactly what the outcome is or was or would have been or should have been. Of course, each analysis
erases many possibilities, which is a form of vandalism.
In a small way, this reminds me of when I heard a woman state during Bible study that she likes
the New International Version because it makes everything clear. This cemented my late in life
preference for the King James Version, because by trying to make "everything clear," many nuances
and layers of meaning are erased. The KJV is sufficiently poetic, and sufficiently archaic, that
sometimes there may be five or ten or twenty layers of meaning there, and perhaps that is exactly
what God intended.
(Dain, the term "identity politics" was "coined" as much by Nigel Farage, who openly espouses
it, as it was by "the campus left.")
Environmental degradation, environmental racism (yes, that's a thing), and all manner of
other unrelated items were seen as a mandatory part…
This is a mislocation coined by the campus left… more precisely, by 1970s would-be Marxists,
who latched onto the fuzzy notion that Marxism explains everything and that culture is all a "superstructure"
resting on an economic "base." They then promulgated, spontaneously, not with much thought, that
whatever your pet issue is, Marxism will deliver the desired result. And the Maoist slogan "unite
the many to defeat the few" was best served by including everyone's favorite issue in one big
happy family of agendas. There was even a short-lived "Lavender and Red League." It doesn't work,
Marx and Mao may both be turning in their graves over such petty horse manure, Lenin would certainly
call it an infantile disorder, but nobody every accused the post-1970 would-be leftists of professionalism,
or profound strategic thinking, or even ability to articulate a coherent working class demand.
Joe the Plutocrat: "moral blindness? all politics is identity politics."
No, it can and should be a contest of universal principles and ideas. The Marxian idea that
such is just "false consciousness" is bunk and commits the genetic fallacy.
I want to take this opportunity to remind you all that when you cheer on left-wing, racial
and sexual identity politics, you implicitly cheer on his.
Yeppers. Because if "people of color" can have their "safe spaces," off limits to white people,
then white people are utterly and completely justified in seeking "white spaces," off limits to
people of color.
The assertion is that since people of color have historically been oppressed, they now have
additional rights to request accommodations that would never be granted to their historic oppressors.
Nope. Don't work that way. What's good for the goose is indeed good for the gander – no matter
how many "microagressions' the geese detect.
"We have been steadily moving away from white identity politics."
Right… because both political parties in America are just so diverse. Oh wait, one's the white
people party and one is everyone else. In short, the everyone else party isn't the divisive one…
[NFR: It is in the nature of progressive protest movements that they portray all things
as having gotten no better, because if things *have* improved, it's harder for them to hold on
to power and raise money. That's what's happening here. Anybody who doesn't think white supremacy
and the identity politics that supported it is vastly weaker today than it was in 1960 is either
a fool, or willfully blind. - RD]
The original sin of conservatism is not giving "the other" equal rights and privileges. Whether
it is blacks getting shot by police, the war on drugs (that disproportionately affects the poor),
jim crow like immigration laws, not letting gays marry, not giving equal funding to poor school
districts or any of the other many inequalities conservatives want to perpetuate.
Nobody is "the chosen people" just because they gain some kind of right or privilege white
middle class straight people already have.
Thanks for the clarification. I had just assumed that the Narrative - the cops being buddy
buddy with Roof and getting him some BK in the middle of the day on the way back to Charleston
- was correct. I should have known better.
As an interesting comparison, look at the treatment of one Trenton Trenton (I kid you not)
Lovell, killer of LA Sheriff Deputy Steve Owen. Shot himself, he was patched up by paramedics,
sent to the hospital where he was treated at taxpayer expense, and when fit enough for trial,
arraigned.
Good luck getting anyone on the left to recognize the fallacy of special pleading when it's
right in front of their eyes.
This special pleading, I do not think it means what you think it does. BLM is not asking to
that African Americans be treated in a different fashion than anyone else. Rather, their argument
is that they are disproportionately burdened by the manner in which police interact with them
and that they are asking that they be just be treated the same as the majority of the country.
A basic argument for fairness and equality, in other words.
Now, you can try to make an argument that they are wrong, that they *are* getting equal treatment
from law enforcement and that this is all in their heads. You can try, but in all fairness, the
anecdotal and empirical evidence seem not to be on your side.
Replacing it with a form of politics that treats blacks as some sort of chosen people because
of the color of their skin is regress,
Who, exactly, is making this argument? Not BLM and not the mainstream liberal political establishment.
I'm sorry, but I appear to have missed the mainstreaming of black nationalism.
That's explains vicious campaign by neoliberal MSM against Trump and swiping under the carpet all
criminal deeds of Clinton family. They feel the threat...
Notable quotes:
"... It should be remembered that fascism does not succeed in the real world as a crusade by race-obsessed lumpen. It succeeds when fascists are co-opted by capitalists, as was unambiguously the case in Nazi Germany and Italy. And big business supported fascism because it feared the alternatives: socialism and communism. ..."
"... That's because there is no more effective counter to class consciousness than race consciousness. That's one reason why, in my opinion, socialism hasn't done a better job of catching on in the United States. The contradictions between black and white labor formed a ready-made wedge. ..."
It should be remembered that fascism does not succeed in the real world as a crusade by
race-obsessed lumpen. It succeeds when fascists are co-opted by capitalists, as was unambiguously
the case in Nazi Germany and Italy. And big business supported fascism because it feared the alternatives:
socialism and communism.
That's because there is no more effective counter to class consciousness than race consciousness.
That's one reason why, in my opinion, socialism hasn't done a better job of catching on in the
United States. The contradictions between black and white labor formed a ready-made wedge.
The North's abhorrence at the spread of slavery into the American West before the Civil War
had more to do a desire to preserve these new realms for "free" labor-"free" in one context, from
the competition of slave labor-than egalitarian principle.[…]
There is more to Clintonism, I think, than simply playing the "identity politics" card to
screw Bernie Sanders or discombobulate the Trump campaign. "Identity politics" is near the core
of the Clintonian agenda as a bulwark against any class/populist upheaval that might threaten
her brand of billionaire-friendly liberalism.
In other words it's all part of a grand plan when the Clintonoids aren't busy debating the finer
points of her marketing and "mark"–a term normally applied to the graphic logo on a commercial product.
"... Hillary Clinton's nomination and the euphoria in the press (one NPR female reporter said she has seen women weeping over the possibility of Hillary becoming president) eclipses any discussion about the real issues facing the country. ..."
"... Notice how the term "women's issues" is used by the media and certain politicians to suggest that there is only one acceptable position for females on any given topic. To the left, women's issues appear to mean abortion rights, same-sex marriage, higher taxes, bigger government and electing more women who favor such things. ..."
"... As the husband of a successful woman with a master's degree and accomplished daughters and granddaughters, that's how we feel about Hillary Clinton. We're all for a female president, just not this one. ..."
Have you heard that Hillary Clinton is the "first woman" ever to be nominated for president by a
major political party? Of course you have. The media have repeated the line so often it is broken
news.
Hillary Clinton's nomination and the euphoria in the press (one NPR female reporter said
she has seen women weeping over the possibility of Hillary becoming president) eclipses any discussion
about the real issues facing the country.
To quote Clinton in another context, "what difference does it make" that she is a woman? A liberal
is a liberal, regardless of gender, race or ethnicity.
Must we go through an entire list of "firsts" before we get to someone who can solve our collective
problems, instead of making them worse? Many of those cheering this supposed progress in American
culture, which follows the historic election of the "first African-American president," are insincere,
if not disingenuous. Otherwise, they would have applauded the advancement of African-Americans like
Gen. Colin Powell, Justice Clarence Thomas, former one-term Rep. Allen West (R-FL), Sen. Tim Scott
(R-SC) and conservative women like Sarah Palin, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), former presidential
candidate Carly Fiorina, Rep. Mia Love (R-UT) and many others.
Immigrants who entered the country legally and became citizens are virtually ignored by the media.
They champion instead illegal immigrants and the liberals who support them.
The reason for this disparity in attitude and coverage is that conservative blacks, women and
Hispanics hold positions anathema to the left. Conservative African-Americans have been called all
kinds of derogatory names in an effort to get them to convert to liberal orthodoxy, and they're ostracized
if they don't convert. If conservative, a female is likely to be labeled a traitor to her gender,
or worse.
Notice how the term "women's issues" is used by the media and certain politicians to suggest
that there is only one acceptable position for females on any given topic. To the left, women's issues
appear to mean abortion rights, same-sex marriage, higher taxes, bigger government and electing more
women who favor such things.
When it comes to accomplished conservative female leaders, one of the greatest and smartest of
our time was the late Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ronald Reagan's consequential U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations. As Jay Nordlinger wrote in his review of Peter Collier's book "Political Woman" for National
Review, "In a saner world, Jeane Kirkpatrick would have been lionized by feminists. She had risen
from the oil patch to the commanding heights of U.S. foreign policy. But her views were 'wrong.'"
Collier writes that Kirkpatrick, who was a Democrat most of her life, recalled feminist icon Gloria
Steinem once referring to her as "a female impersonator." Author Naomi Wolf called her "a woman without
a uterus" and claimed that she had been "unaffected by the experiences of the female body." Kirkpatrick
responded, "I have three kids, while she, when she made this comment had none."
The left gets away with these kinds of smears because they largely control the media and the message.
No Republican could escape shunning, or worse, if such language were employed against a female Democrat.
Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, born in Philadelphia to Philippine citizens, has written
about some of the printable things she's been called -- "race traitor," "white man's puppet," "Tokyo
Rose," "Aunt Tomasina."
As the cliche goes, if liberals didn't have a double standard, they would have no standards at
all.
There's an old joke about a woman with five children who was asked if she had it to do over again
would she have five kids. "Yes," she replied, "just not these five."
As the husband of a successful woman with a master's degree and accomplished daughters and
granddaughters, that's how we feel about Hillary Clinton. We're all for a female president, just
not this one.
"... I think race-specific programs are a dead end as they will create great resentment, but universal programs and ESPECIALLY a job guarantee would be tremendously helpful in improving the U.S. racial situation. ..."
"... And it prevents the constant attacks on recipients of benefits as being unworthy, criminal, drug-taking, undeserving folk who should be drug-tested, monitored, controlled, suspected. ..."
"... Privileges like the selection of judges or the creation of special loopholes in the tax law, or other privileges only a political donation of the right amount might purchase. And it should be plain that some of the privileges described are not privileges at all but basic rights of human kind borne within any notion of the just. ..."
"... I think race-specific programs are a dead end as they will create great resentment, but universal programs and ESPECIALLY a job guarantee would be tremendously helpful in improving the U.S. racial situation. ..."
"... When the BLM (I think) asked Bernie about reparations, he said he didn't think it was a good idea, that free college etc would help everyone. ..."
PlutoniumKun is 100% on-target. Moreover, non-universal benefits have tremendous overhead cost
in terms of paperwork, qualifications, etc., while a universal benefit can be minimally bureaucratic.
I think race-specific programs are a dead end as they will create great resentment, but
universal programs and ESPECIALLY a job guarantee would be tremendously helpful in improving the
U.S. racial situation.
On the baby bonds, it's foolish to have a "$50 endowment for a child of Bill Gates". Instead
it would be better to just provide $50,000 to ALL babies including Bill Gates' child, and tax
Bill Gates more.
As the saying goes, "programs for the poor are poor programs." Bill Gates' child should be
allowed to use the same public libraries, go to the same (free) public universities, etc. etc.
I doubt Bill Gates' child will need to take up the guaranteed job, but if he needs or wants to
(perhaps because of a quarrel with his parent) he should be able to.
And it prevents the constant attacks on recipients of benefits as being unworthy, criminal,
drug-taking, undeserving folk who should be drug-tested, monitored, controlled, suspected.
Universality removes many of the privileges the rich enjoy - $50K for all babies including
Bill Gates child - and as privileges are dismantled in this way the remaining privileges of the
rich will stand all the more glaring for their unfairness - to all. Privileges like the selection
of judges or the creation of special loopholes in the tax law, or other privileges only a political
donation of the right amount might purchase. And it should be plain that some of the privileges
described are not privileges at all but basic rights of human kind borne within any notion of
the just.
I think race-specific programs are a dead end as they will create great resentment,
but universal programs and ESPECIALLY a job guarantee would be tremendously helpful in improving
the U.S. racial situation.
I've been thinking about this bit a lot. When the BLM (I think) asked Bernie about reparations,
he said he didn't think it was a good idea, that free college etc would help everyone.
I don't recall any elaboration on his part, but I wondered at the time, how would they be allocated?
Full black, one-half black, one quarter, quadroon, octoroon, mulatto, 'yaller'? That's wholly
back to Jim Crow, or worse. I refer, of course to the
artificial division
of Huttus and Tutsis which, you may recall,
did not work out so well
. Barack Obama, would he qualify? None of his ancestors were slaves.
I am looking forward to the book by Darity and Muller, but they would have to do a lot of persuading
to get me to get comfy with reparations.
The country that gives every expecting mother a new baby package is Finland. They started the
practice in the 1930's when their infant mortality rate was at ten percent. Now they have one
of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world.
Its from World Socialist Web Site by thier analysys
does contain some valid points. Especially about betrayal of nomenklatura, and, especially, KGB nomenklatura,which was wholesale bought
by the USA for cash.
Note that the author is unable or unwilling to use the tterm "neoliberalism". Looks like orthodox Marxism has problem with this
notion as it contradict Marxism dogma that capitalism as an economic doctrine is final stage before arrival of socialism. Looks like
it is not the final ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... Russia Since 1980 ..."
"... History reveals that the grandsons of the Bolshevik coup d'état didn't destroy the Soviet Union in a valiant effort to advance the cause of communist prosperity or even to return to their common European home; instead, it transformed Soviet managers and ministers into roving bandits (asset-grabbing privateers) with a tacit presidential charter to privatize the people's assets and revenues to themselves under the new Muscovite rule of men ..."
"... The scale of this plunder was astounding. It not only bankrupted the Soviet Union, forcing Russian President Boris Yeltsin to appeal to the G-7 for $6 billion of assistance on December 6, 1991, but triggered a free fall in aggregate production commencing in 1990, aptly known as catastroika. ..."
"... In retrospect, the Soviet economy didn't collapse because the liberalized command economy devised after 1953 was marked for death. The system was inefficient, corrupt and reprehensible in a myriad of ways, but sustainable, as the CIA and most Sovietologists maintained. It was destroyed by Gorbachev's tolerance and complicity in allowing privateers to misappropriate state revenues, pilfer materials, spontaneously privatize, and hotwire their ill-gotten gains abroad, all of which disorganized production. ..."
"... The rapid growth and increasing complexity of the Soviet economy required access to the resources of the world economy. ..."
"... For the Soviet bureaucracy, a parasitic social caste committed to the defense of its privileges and terrified of the working class, the revolutionary solution to the contradictions of the Soviet economy was absolutely unthinkable. The only course that it could contemplate was the second-capitulation to imperialism. ..."
"... In other words, the integration of the USSR into the structure of the world capitalist economy on a capitalist basis means not the slow development of a backward national economy, but the rapid destruction of one which has sustained living conditions which are, at least for the working class, far closer to those that exist in the advanced countries than in the third world. ..."
"... The Fourth International ..."
"... The End of the USSR, ..."
"... The report related the destruction of the USSR by the ruling bureaucracy to a broader international phenomenon. The smashing up of the USSR was mirrored in the United States by the destruction of the trade unions as even partial instruments of working-class defense. ..."
"... Millions of people are going to see imperialism for what it really is. The democratic mask is going to be torn off. The idea that imperialism is compatible with peace is going to be exposed. The very elements which drove masses into revolutionary struggle in the past are once again present. The workers of Russia and the Ukraine are going to be reminded why they made a revolution in the first place. The American workers are going to be reminded why they themselves in an earlier period engaged in the most massive struggles against the corporations. The workers of Europe are going to be reminded why their continent was the birthplace of socialism and Karl Marx. [p. 25] ..."
This analysis has been vindicated by scholarly investigations into the causes of the Soviet economic collapse that facilitated
the bureaucracy's dissolution of the USSR. In Russia Since 1980, published in 2008 by Cambridge University Press, Professors
Steven Rosefielde and Stefan Hedlund present evidence that Gorbachev introduced measures that appear, in retrospect, to have been
aimed at sabotaging the Soviet economy. "Gorbachev and his entourage," they write, "seem to have had a venal hidden agenda that caused
things to get out of hand quickly." [p. 38] In a devastating appraisal of Gorbachev's policies, Rosefielde and Hedlund state:
History reveals that the grandsons of the Bolshevik coup d'état didn't destroy the Soviet Union in a valiant effort to advance
the cause of communist prosperity or even to return to their common European home; instead, it transformed Soviet managers and ministers
into roving bandits (asset-grabbing privateers) with a tacit presidential charter to privatize the people's assets and revenues to
themselves under the new Muscovite rule of men. [p. 40]
Instead of displaying due diligence over personal use of state revenues, materials and property, inculcated in every Bolshevik
since 1917, Gorbachev winked at a counterrevolution from below opening Pandora's Box. He allowed enterprises and others not only
to profit maximize for the state in various ways, which was beneficial, but also to misappropriate state assets, and export the proceeds
abroad. In the process, red directors disregarded state contracts and obligations, disorganizing inter-industrial intermediate input
flows, and triggering a depression from which the Soviet Union never recovered and Russia has barely emerged. [p. 47]
Given all the heated debates that would later ensue about how Yeltsin and his shock therapy engendered mass plunder, it should
be noted that the looting began under Gorbachev's watch. It was his malign neglect that transformed the rhetoric of Market Communism
into the pillage of the nation's assets.
The scale of this plunder was astounding. It not only bankrupted the Soviet Union, forcing Russian President Boris Yeltsin
to appeal to the G-7 for $6 billion of assistance on December 6, 1991, but triggered a free fall in aggregate production commencing
in 1990, aptly known as catastroika.
In retrospect, the Soviet economy didn't collapse because the liberalized command economy devised after 1953 was marked for
death. The system was inefficient, corrupt and reprehensible in a myriad of ways, but sustainable, as the CIA and most Sovietologists
maintained. It was destroyed by Gorbachev's tolerance and complicity in allowing privateers to misappropriate state revenues, pilfer
materials, spontaneously privatize, and hotwire their ill-gotten gains abroad, all of which disorganized production. [p. 49]
The analysis of Rosefielde and Hedlund, while accurate in its assessment of Gorbachev's actions, is simplistic. Gorbachev's policies
can be understood only within the framework of more fundamental political and socioeconomic factors. First, and most important, the
real objective crisis of the Soviet economy (which existed and preceded by many decades the accession of Gorbachev to power) developed
out of the contradictions of the autarkic nationalist policies pursued by the Soviet regime since Stalin and Bukharin introduced
the program of "socialism in one country" in 1924. The rapid growth and increasing complexity of the Soviet economy required
access to the resources of the world economy. This access could be achieved only in one of two ways: either through the spread
of socialist revolution into the advanced capitalist countries, or through the counterrevolutionary integration of the USSR into
the economic structures of world capitalism.
For the Soviet bureaucracy, a parasitic social caste committed to the defense of its privileges and terrified of the working
class, the revolutionary solution to the contradictions of the Soviet economy was absolutely unthinkable. The only course that it
could contemplate was the second-capitulation to imperialism. This second course, moreover, opened for the leading sections
of the bureaucracy the possibility of permanently securing their privileges and vastly expanding their wealth. The privileged caste
would become a ruling class. The corruption of Gorbachev, Yeltsin and their associates was merely the necessary means employed by
the bureaucracy to achieve this utterly reactionary and immensely destructive outcome.
On October 3, 1991, less than three months before the dissolution of the USSR, I delivered a lecture in Kiev in which I challenged
the argument-which was widely propagated by the Stalinist regime-that the restoration of capitalism would bring immense benefits
to the people. I stated:
In this country, capitalist restoration can only take place on the basis of the widespread destruction of the already existing
productive forces and the social- cultural institutions that depended upon them. In other words, the integration of the USSR
into the structure of the world capitalist economy on a capitalist basis means not the slow development of a backward national economy,
but the rapid destruction of one which has sustained living conditions which are, at least for the working class, far closer to those
that exist in the advanced countries than in the third world. When one examines the various schemes hatched by proponents of
capitalist restoration, one cannot but conclude that they are no less ignorant than Stalin of the real workings of the world capitalist
economy. And they are preparing the ground for a social tragedy that will eclipse that produced by the pragmatic and nationalistic
policies of Stalin. ["Soviet Union at the Crossroads," published in The Fourth International (Fall- Winter 1992, Volume
19, No. 1, p. 109), Emphasis in the original.]
Almost exactly 20 years ago, on January 4, 1992, the Workers League held a party membership meeting in Detroit to consider the
historical, political and social implications of the dissolution of the USSR. Rereading this report so many years later, I believe
that it has stood the test of time. It stated that the dissolution of the USSR "represents the juridical liquidation of the workers'
state and its replacement with regimes that are openly and unequivocally devoted to the destruction of the remnants of the national
economy and the planning system that issued from the October Revolution. To define the CIS [Confederation of Independent States]
or its independent republics as workers states would be to completely separate the definition from the concrete content which it
expressed during the previous period." [David North, The End of the USSR, Labor Publications, 1992, p. 6]
The report continued:
"A revolutionary party must face reality and state what is. The Soviet working class has suffered a serious defeat. The bureaucracy
has devoured the workers state before the working class was able to clean out the bureaucracy. This fact, however unpleasant, does
not refute the perspective of the Fourth International. Since it was founded in 1938, our movement has repeatedly said that if the
working class was not able to destroy this bureaucracy, then the Soviet Union would suffer a shipwreck. Trotsky did not call for
political revolution as some sort of exaggerated response to this or that act of bureaucratic malfeasance. He said that a political
revolution was necessary because only in that way could the Soviet Union, as a workers state, be defended against imperialism." [p.
6]
I sought to explain why the Soviet working class had failed to rise up in opposition to the bureaucracy's liquidation of the Soviet
Union. How was it possible that the destruction of the Soviet Union-having survived the horrors of the Nazi invasion-could be carried
out "by a miserable group of petty gangsters, acting in the interests of the scum of Soviet society?" I offered the following answer:
We must reply to these questions by stressing the implications of the massive destruction of revolutionary cadre carried out within
the Soviet Union by the Stalinist regime. Virtually all the human representatives of the revolutionary tradition who consciously
prepared and led that revolution were wiped out. And along with the political leaders of the revolution, the most creative representatives
of the intelligentsia who had flourished in the early years of the Soviet state were also annihilated or terrorized into silence.
Furthermore, we must point to the deep-going alienation of the working class itself from state property. Property belonged to
the state, but the state "belonged" to the bureaucracy, as Trotsky noted. The fundamental distinction between state property and
bourgeois property-however important from a theoretical standpoint-became less and less relevant from a practical standpoint. It
is true that capitalist exploitation did not exist in the scientific sense of the term, but that did not alter the fact that the
day-to-day conditions of life in factories and mines and other workplaces were as miserable as are to be found in any of the advanced
capitalist countries, and, in many cases, far worse.
Finally, we must consider the consequences of the protracted decay of the international socialist movement...
Especially during the past decade, the collapse of effective working class resistance in any part of the world to the bourgeois
offensive had a demoralizing effect on Soviet workers. Capitalism assumed an aura of "invincibility," although this aura was merely
the illusory reflection of the spinelessness of the labor bureaucracies all over the world, which have on every occasion betrayed
the workers and capitulated to the bourgeoisie. What the Soviet workers saw was not the bitter resistance of sections of workers
to the international offensive of capital, but defeats and their consequences. [p. 13-14]
The report related the destruction of the USSR by the ruling bureaucracy to a broader international phenomenon. The smashing
up of the USSR was mirrored in the United States by the destruction of the trade unions as even partial instruments of working-class
defense.
In every part of the world, including the advanced countries, the workers are discovering that their own parties and their own
trade union organizations are engaged in the related task of systematically lowering and impoverishing the working class. [p. 22]
Finally, the report dismissed any notion that the dissolution of the USSR signified a new era of progressive capitalist development.
Millions of people are going to see imperialism for what it really is. The democratic mask is going to be torn off. The idea
that imperialism is compatible with peace is going to be exposed. The very elements which drove masses into revolutionary struggle
in the past are once again present. The workers of Russia and the Ukraine are going to be reminded why they made a revolution in
the first place. The American workers are going to be reminded why they themselves in an earlier period engaged in the most massive
struggles against the corporations. The workers of Europe are going to be reminded why their continent was the birthplace of socialism
and Karl Marx. [p. 25]
The aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR: 20 years of economic crisis, social decay, and political reaction
According to liberal theory, the dissolution of the Soviet Union ought to have produced a new flowering of democracy. Of course,
nothing of the sort occurred-not in the former USSR or, for that matter, in the United States. Moreover, the breakup of the Soviet
Union-the so-called defeat of communism-was not followed by a triumphant resurgence of its irreconcilable enemies in the international
workers' movement, the social democratic and reformist trade unions and political parties. The opposite occurred. All these organizations
experienced, in the aftermath of the breakup of the USSR, a devastating and even terminal crisis. In the United States, the trade
union movement-whose principal preoccupation during the entire Cold War had been the defeat of Communism-has all but collapsed. During
the two decades that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the AFL-CIO lost a substantial portion of its membership, was reduced
to a state of utter impotence, and ceased to exist as a workers' organization in any socially significant sense of the term. At the
same time, everywhere in the world, the social position of the working class-from the standpoint of its influence on the direction
of state policy and its ability to increase its share of the surplus value produced by its own labor-deteriorated dramatically.
Certain important conclusions flow from this fact. First, the breakup of the Soviet Union did not flow from the supposed failure
of Marxism and socialism. If that had been the case, the anti-Marxist and antisocialist labor organizations should have thrived in
the post-Soviet era. The fact that these organizations experienced ignominious failure compels one to uncover the common feature
in the program and orientation of all the so-called labor organizations, "communist" and anticommunist alike. What was the common
element in the political DNA of all these organization? The answer is that regardless of their names, conflicting political alignments
and superficial ideological differences, the large labor organizations of the post-World War II period pursued essentially nationalist
policies. They tied the fate of the working class to one or another nation-state. This left them incapable of responding to the increasing
integration of the world economy. The emergence of transnational corporations and the associated phenomena of capitalist globalization
shattered all labor organizations that based themselves on a nationalist program.
The second conclusion is that the improvement of conditions of the international working class was linked, to one degree or another,
to the existence of the Soviet Union. Despite the treachery and crimes of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the existence of the USSR, a
state that arose on the basis of a socialist revolution, imposed upon American and European imperialism certain political and social
restraints that would otherwise have been unacceptable. The political environment of the past two decades-characterized by unrestrained
imperialist militarism, the violations of international law, and the repudiation of essential principles of bourgeois democracy-is
the direct outcome of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The breakup of the USSR was, for the great masses of its former citizens, an unmitigated disaster. Twenty years after the October
Revolution, despite all the political crimes of the Stalinist regime, the new property relations established in the aftermath of
the October Revolution made possible an extraordinary social transformation of backward Russia. And even after suffering horrifying
losses during the four years of war with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union experienced in the 20 years that followed the war a stupendous
growth of its economy, which was accompanied by advances in science and culture that astonished the entire world.
But what is the verdict on the post-Soviet experience of the Russian people? First and foremost, the dissolution of the USSR set
into motion a demographic catastrophe. Ten years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russian population was shrinking at an
annual rate of 750,000. Between 1983 and 2001, the number of annual births dropped by one half. 75 percent of pregnant women in Russia
suffered some form of illness that endangered their unborn child. Only one quarter of infants were born healthy.
The overall health of the Russian people deteriorated dramatically after the restoration of capitalism. There was a staggering
rise in alcoholism, heart disease, cancer and sexually transmitted diseases. All this occurred against the backdrop of a catastrophic
breakdown of the economy of the former USSR and a dramatic rise in mass poverty.
As for democracy, the post-Soviet system was consolidated on the basis of mass murder. For more than 70 years, the Bolshevik regime's
dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918-an event that did not entail the loss of a single life-was trumpeted as an
unforgettable and unforgivable violation of democratic principles. But in October 1993, having lost a majority in the popularly elected
parliament, the Yeltsin regime ordered the bombardment of the White House-the seat of the Russian parliament-located in the middle
of Moscow. Estimates of the number of people who were killed in the military assault run as high as 2,000. On the basis of this carnage,
the Yeltsin regime was effectively transformed into a dictatorship, based on the military and security forces. The regime of Putin-Medvedev
continues along the same dictatorial lines. The assault on the White House was supported by the Clinton administration. Unlike the
dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the bombardment of the Russian parliament is an event that has been all but forgotten.
What is there to be said of post-Soviet Russian culture? As always, there are talented people who do their best to produce serious
work. But the general picture is one of desolation. The words that have emerged from the breakup of the USSR and that define modern
Russian culture, or what is left of it, are "mafia," "biznessman" and "oligarch."
What has occurred in Russia is only an extreme expression of a social and cultural breakdown that is to be observed in all capitalist
countries. Can it even be said with certainty that the economic system devised in Russia is more corrupt that that which exists in
Britain or the United States? The Russian oligarchs are probably cruder and more vulgar in the methods they employ. However, the
argument could be plausibly made that their methods of plunder are less efficient than those employed by their counterparts in the
summits of American finance. After all, the American financial oligarchs, whose speculative operations brought about the near-collapse
of the US and global economy in the autumn of 2008, were able to orchestrate, within a matter of days, the transfer of the full burden
of their losses to the public.
It is undoubtedly true that the dissolution of the USSR at the end of 1991 opened up endless opportunities for the use of American
power-in the Balkans, the Middle East and Central Asia. But the eruption of American militarism was, in the final analysis, the expression
of a more profound and historically significant tendency-the long-term decline of the economic position of American capitalism. This
tendency was not reversed by the breakup of the USSR. The history of American capitalism during the past two decades has been one
of decay. The brief episodes of economic growth have been based on reckless and unsustainable speculation. The Clinton boom of the
1990s was fueled by the "irrational exuberance" of Wall Street speculation, the so-called dot.com bubble. The great corporate icons
of the decade-of which Enron was the shining symbol-were assigned staggering valuations on the basis of thoroughly criminal operations.
It all collapsed in 2000-2001. The subsequent revival was fueled by frenzied speculation in housing. And, finally, the collapse in
2008, from which there has been no recovery.
When historians begin to recover from their intellectual stupor, they will see the collapse of the USSR and the protracted decline
of American capitalism as interrelated episodes of a global crisis, arising from the inability to develop the massive productive
forces developed by mankind on the basis of private ownership of the means of production and within the framework of the nation-state
system.
"... Clinton says publically she believes that. Meanwhile supposedly smart economists like Tyler Cowen say they don't. Boston Fed President Rosengren says there are too many jobs. We need more unemployed. I'm Fed Up with regional Fed Presidents like him. ..."
"... Class issues are now a tough nut to crack, partly I think because the Democrats and some liberals take demands for economic fairness and try to give us identity politics instead, ..."
"... The meritocratic class who Krugman speaks for and centrist politicians like Clinton will slow-walk class issues like how Tim Geithner slow-walked financial reform. It's part of their job description and milieu. ..."
"... It's funny when neo-liberals/libertarians hate an activity engaged in by workers in what is clearly the product of a free market -- exercising the right of free association and organizing to do collective bargaining -- while think it is perfectly OK -- indeed, so "natural" that any question wouldn't even occur to them -- for owners of capital to organize themselves under the special protections of the state-created corporation. ..."
"... It's understandable, though, that they would consider the corporation to be ordained by natural law: the Founding Fathers, after all, were dedicated to the proposition that all men and corporations are endowed with certain unalienable rights by their Creator. (Never mind that the creator of the corporations is the state.) ..."
I liked how Hillary said in the third debate that she was for raising the minimum wage because
people who work full time shouldn't live in poverty. And "Donald" is against it. That's why people
are voting for her.
That's an ethical or moral notion, combined with "morally neutral" economics. People who work
hard full time, play by the rules and pay their dues shouldn't live in poverty.
Clinton says publically she believes that. Meanwhile supposedly smart economists like Tyler
Cowen say they don't. Boston Fed President Rosengren says there are too many jobs. We need more
unemployed. I'm Fed Up with regional Fed Presidents like him.
Think about the debate between the centrists and progressives over Trump supporters. The centrists
argue Trump supporters (nor anyone else besides a few) aren't suffering from economic anxiety
- that it's racism all of the way down. Matt Yglesias. Dylan Matthews. Krugman. Meyerson. Etc.
The progressives admit there's racism, but there's a wider context. The Nazis were racists,
but there was also the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression. And Germany got better in
the decades after the war just as the American South is better than it once was. Steve Randy Waldman
and James Kwak discussed in blog post how the wider context should be taken into consideration.
On some "non-economic issues" there has been progress even though the recent decades haven't
been as booming as the post-WWII decades were with rising living standards for all.
A black President. Legalized gay marriage. Legalized pot. I wouldn't have thought these things
as likely to happen when I was a teenager because of the bigoted authoritarian nature of many
voters and elites. During the Progressive era and when the New Deal was enacted, racism and sexism
and bigotry and anti-science thinking was virulent. Yet economic progress was made on the class
front.
Class issues are now a tough nut to crack, partly I think because the Democrats and some
liberals take demands for economic fairness and try to give us identity politics instead,
not that the latter isn't worthwhile. Partly b/c of what Mike Konczal discussed in his recent
Medium piece.
If we can just apply the morality and politics of electing a black President and legalizing
gay marriage and pot, to class issues. The meritocratic class who Krugman speaks for and centrist
politicians like Clinton will slow-walk class issues like how Tim Geithner slow-walked financial
reform. It's part of their job description and milieu.
But Clinton did talk to it during the third debate when she said she'd raise the minimum wage
because people who work full time shouldn't live in poverty. That is a morale issue as the new
Pope has been talking about.
Hillary should have joked last night about what God's Catholic representative here on Earth
had to say about Trump.
urban legend said...
It's funny when neo-liberals/libertarians hate an activity engaged in by workers in what is
clearly the product of a free market -- exercising the right of free association and organizing
to do collective bargaining -- while think it is perfectly OK -- indeed, so "natural" that any
question wouldn't even occur to them -- for owners of capital to organize themselves under the
special protections of the state-created corporation.
It's understandable, though, that they would consider the corporation to be ordained by
natural law: the Founding Fathers, after all, were dedicated to the proposition that all men and
corporations are endowed with certain unalienable rights by their Creator. (Never mind that the
creator of the corporations is the state.)
"... As I have tirelessly explained, the U.S. economy is not just neoliberal (the code word for
maximizing private gain by any means available, including theft, fraud, embezzlement, political fixing,
price-fixing, and so on)--it is neofeudal , meaning that it is structurally an updated version of Medieval
feudalism in which a top layer of financial-political nobility owns the engines of wealth and governs
the marginalized debt-serfs who toil to pay student loans, auto loans, credit cards, mortgages and taxes--all
of which benefit the financiers and political grifters. ..."
"... The media is in a self-referential frenzy to convince us the decision of the century is between
unrivaled political grifter Hillary Clinton and financier-cowboy Donald Trump. Both belong to the privileged
ruling Elite: both have access to cheap credit, insider information ( information asymmetry ) and political
influence. ..."
"... If you exit the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, etc. at a cushy managerial rank with a fat pension and
lifetime benefits and are hired at a fat salary the next day by a private "defense" contractor--the
famous revolving door between a bloated state and a bloated defense industry--the system works great.
..."
Brimming with hubris and self-importance, the ruling Elite and mainstream media cannot believe
they have lost the consent of the governed.
Every ruling Elite needs the consent of the governed: even autocracies, dictatorships and corporatocracies
ultimately rule with the consent, however grudging, of the governed.
The American ruling Elite has lost the consent of the governed. This reality is being masked by
the mainstream media, mouthpiece of the ruling class, which is ceaselessly promoting two false narratives:
The "great divide" in American politics is between left and right, Democrat/Republican
The ruling Elite has delivered "prosperity" not just to the privileged few but to the unprivileged
many they govern.
Both of these assertions are false. The Great Divide in America is between the ruling Elite and
the governed that the Elite has stripmined. The ruling Elite is privileged and protected, the governed
are unprivileged and unprotected. That's the divide that counts and the divide that is finally becoming
visible to the marginalized, unprivileged class of debt-serfs.
The "prosperity" of the 21st century has flowed solely to the ruling Elite and its army of technocrat
toadies, factotums, flunkies, apparatchiks and apologists. The Elite's army of technocrats and its
media apologists have engineered and promoted an endless spew of ginned-up phony statistics (the
super-low unemployment rate, etc.) to create the illusion of "growth" and "prosperity" that benefit
everyone rather than just the top 5%. The media is 100% committed to promoting these two false narratives
because the jig is up once the bottom 95% wake up to the reality that the ruling Elite has been stripmining
them for decades.
As I have tirelessly explained, the U.S. economy is not just neoliberal (the code word
for maximizing private gain by any means available, including theft, fraud, embezzlement, political
fixing, price-fixing, and so on)--it is neofeudal , meaning that it is structurally an updated
version of Medieval feudalism in which a top layer of financial-political nobility owns the engines
of wealth and governs the marginalized debt-serfs who toil to pay student loans, auto loans, credit
cards, mortgages and taxes--all of which benefit the financiers and political grifters.
The media is in a self-referential frenzy to convince us the decision of the century is between
unrivaled political grifter Hillary Clinton and financier-cowboy Donald Trump. Both belong to the
privileged ruling Elite: both have access to cheap credit, insider information ( information asymmetry
) and political influence.
The cold truth is the ruling Elite has shredded the social contract by skimming the income/wealth
of the unprivileged. The fake-"progressive" pandering apologists of the ruling Elite--Robert Reich,
Paul Krugman and the rest of the Keynesian Cargo Cultists--turn a blind eye to the suppression of
dissent and the looting the bottom 95% because they have cushy, protected positions as tenured faculty
(or equivalent). They cheerlead for more state-funded bread and circuses for the marginalized
rather than demand an end to exploitive privileges of the sort they themselves enjoy.
Consider just three of the unsustainably costly broken systems that enrich the privileged Elite
by stripmining the unprivileged:
healthcare (a.k.a. sickcare because sickness is profitable, prevention is unprofitable),
higher education
Imperial over-reach (the National Security State and its partner the privately owned Military-Industrial
Complex).
While the unprivileged and unprotected watch their healthcare premiums and co-pays soar year after
year, the CEOs of various sickcare cartels skim off tens of millions of dollars annually in pay and
stock options. The system works great if you get a $20 million paycheck. If you get a 30% increase
in monthly premiums for fewer actual healthcare services--the system is broken.
If you're skimming $250,000 as under-assistant dean to the provost for student services (or equivalent)
plus gold-plated benefits, higher education is working great. If you're a student burdened with tens
of thousands of dollars in student loan debt who is receiving a low-quality, essentially worthless
"education" from poorly paid graduate students ("adjuncts") and a handful of online courses that
you could get for free or for a low cost outside the university cartel--the system is broken.
If you exit the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, etc. at a cushy managerial rank with a fat pension and
lifetime benefits and are hired at a fat salary the next day by a private "defense" contractor--the
famous revolving door between a bloated state and a bloated defense industry--the system works great.
If you joined the Armed Forces to escape rural poverty and served at the point of the spear somewhere
in the Imperial Project--your perspective may well be considerably different.
Unfortunately for the ruling Elite and their army of engorged enablers and apologists, they have
already lost the consent of the governed.
They have bamboozled, conned and misled the bottom 95% for decades, but their phony facade of
political legitimacy and "the rising tide raises all boats" has cracked wide open, and the machinery
of oppression, looting and propaganda is now visible to everyone who isn't being paid to cover their
eyes. Brimming with hubris and self-importance, the ruling Elite and mainstream media cannot believe
they have lost the consent of the governed. The disillusioned governed have not fully absorbed this
epochal shift of the tides yet, either. They are aware of their own disillusionment and their own
declining financial security, but they have yet to grasp that they have, beneath the surface of everyday
life, already withdrawn their consent from a self-serving, predatory, parasitic, greedy and ultimately
self-destructive ruling Elite.
"... At bottom, the success of despotic governments and Big Brother societies hinges upon a certain
number of political, financial, and cultural developments. The first of which is an unwillingness in
the general populace to secure and defend their own freedoms, making them completely reliant on corrupt
establishment leadership. For totalitarianism to take hold, the masses must not only neglect the plight
of their country, and the plight of others, but also be completely uninformed of the inherent indirect
threats to their personal safety. ..."
"... The prevalence of apathy and ignorance sets the stage for the slow and highly deliberate process
of centralization. ..."
"... People who are easily frightened are easily dominated. This is not just a law of political
will, but a law of nature. Many wrongly assume that a tyrant's power comes purely from the application
of force. In fact, despotic regimes that rely solely on extreme violence are often very unsuccessful,
and easily overthrown. ..."
"... They instill apprehension in the public; a fear of the unknown, or a fear of the possible consequences
for standing against the state. They let our imaginations run wild until we see death around every corner,
whether it's actually there or not. When the masses are so blinded by the fear of reprisal that they
forget their fear of slavery, and take no action whatsoever to undo it, then they have been sufficiently
culled. ..."
"... The bread and circus lifestyle of the average westerner alone is enough to distract us from
connecting with each other in any meaningful fashion, but people still sometimes find ways to seek out
organized forms of activism. ..."
"... In more advanced forms of despotism, even fake organizations are disbanded. Curfews are enforced.
Normal communications are diminished or monitored. Compulsory paperwork is required. Checkpoints are
instituted. Free speech is punished. Existing groups are influenced to distrust each other or to disintegrate
entirely out of dread of being discovered. All of these measures are taken by tyrants primarily to prevent
ANY citizens from gathering and finding mutual support. People who work together and organize of their
own volition are unpredictable, and therefore, a potential risk to the state. ..."
"... Destitution leads not just to hunger, but also to crime (private and government). Crime leads
to anger, hatred, and fear. Fear leads to desperation. Desperation leads to the acceptance of anything
resembling a solution, even despotism. ..."
"... Autocracies pretend to cut through the dilemmas of economic dysfunction (usually while demanding
liberties be relinquished), however, behind the scenes they actually seek to maintain a proscribed level
of indigence and deprivation. The constant peril of homelessness and starvation keeps the masses thoroughly
distracted from such things as protest or dissent, while simultaneously chaining them to the idea that
their only chance is to cling to the very government out to end them. ..."
"... When law enforcement officials are no longer servants of the people, but agents of a government
concerned only with its own supremacy, serious crises emerge. Checks and balances are removed. The guidelines
that once reigned in police disappear, and suddenly, a philosophy of superiority emerges; an arrogant
exclusivity that breeds separation between law enforcement and the rest of the public. Finally, police
no longer see themselves as protectors of citizens, but prison guards out to keep us subdued and docile.
..."
"... Tyrants are generally men who have squelched their own consciences. They have no reservations
in using any means at their disposal to wipe out opposition. But, in the early stages of their ascent
to power, they must give the populace a reason for their ruthlessness, or risk being exposed, and instigating
even more dissent. The propaganda machine thus goes into overdrive, and any person or group that dares
to question the authority or the validity of the state is demonized in the minds of the masses. ..."
"... Tyrannical power structures cannot function without scapegoats. There must always be an elusive
boogie man under the bed of every citizen, otherwise, those citizens may turn their attention, and their
anger, towards the real culprit behind their troubles. By scapegoating stewards of the truth, such governments
are able to kill two birds with one stone. ..."
"... Citizen spying is almost always branded as a civic duty; an act of heroism and bravery. Citizen
spies are offered accolades and awards, and showered with praise from the upper echelons of their communities.
..."
"... Tyrannies are less concerned with dominating how we live, so much as dominating how we think
..."
"... Lies become "necessary" in protecting the safety of the state. War becomes a tool for "peace".
Torture becomes an ugly but "useful" method for gleaning important information. Police brutality is
sold as a "natural reaction" to increased crime. Rendition becomes normal, but only for those labeled
as "terrorists". Assassination is justified as a means for "saving lives". Genocide is done discretely,
but most everyone knows it is taking place. They simply don't discuss it. ..."
As we look back on the horrors of the dictatorships and autocracies of the past, one particular
question consistently arises; how was it possible for the common men of these eras to NOT notice
what was happening around them? How could they have stood as statues unaware or uncaring as their
cultures were overrun by fascism, communism, collectivism, and elitism? Of course, we have the advantage
of hindsight, and are able to research and examine the misdeeds of the past at our leisure. Unfortunately,
such hindsight does not necessarily shield us from the long cast shadow of tyranny in our own day.
For that, the increasingly uncommon gift of foresight is required…
At bottom, the success of despotic governments and Big Brother societies hinges upon a certain
number of political, financial, and cultural developments. The first of which is an unwillingness
in the general populace to secure and defend their own freedoms, making them completely reliant on
corrupt establishment leadership. For totalitarianism to take hold, the masses must not only neglect
the plight of their country, and the plight of others, but also be completely uninformed of the inherent
indirect threats to their personal safety. They must abandon all responsibility for their destinies,
and lose all respect for their own humanity. They must, indeed, become domesticated and mindless
herd animals without regard for anything except their fleeting momentary desires for entertainment
and short term survival. For a lumbering bloodthirsty behemoth to actually sneak up on you, you have
to be pretty damnably oblivious.
The prevalence of apathy and ignorance sets the stage for the slow and highly deliberate process
of centralization. Once dishonest governments accomplish an atmosphere of inaction and condition
a sense of frailty within the citizenry, the sky is truly the limit. However, a murderous power-monger's
day is never quite done. In my recent article
'The
Essential Rules of Liberty' we explored the fundamentally unassailable actions and mental preparations
required to ensure the continuance of a free society. In this article, let's examine the frequently
wielded tools of tyrants in their invariably insane quests for total control…
People who are easily frightened are easily dominated. This is not just a law of political
will, but a law of nature. Many wrongly assume that a tyrant's power comes purely from the application
of force. In fact, despotic regimes that rely solely on extreme violence are often very unsuccessful,
and easily overthrown. Brute strength is calculable. It can be analyzed, and thus, eventually
confronted and defeated.
Thriving tyrants instead utilize not just harm, but the imminent THREAT of harm. They instill
apprehension in the public; a fear of the unknown, or a fear of the possible consequences for
standing against the state. They let our imaginations run wild until we see death around every
corner, whether it's actually there or not. When the masses are so blinded by the fear of reprisal
that they forget their fear of slavery, and take no action whatsoever to undo it, then they have
been sufficiently culled.
In other cases, our fear is evoked and directed towards engineered enemies. Another race, another
religion, another political ideology, a "hidden" and ominous villain created out of thin air.
Autocrats assert that we "need them" in order to remain safe and secure from these illusory monsters
bent on our destruction. As always, this development is followed by the claim that all steps taken,
even those that dissolve our freedoms, are "for the greater good". Frightened people tend to shirk
their sense of independence and run towards the comfort of the collective, even if that collective
is built on immoral and unconscionable foundations. Once a society takes on a hive-mind mentality
almost any evil can be rationalized, and any injustice against the individual is simply overlooked
for the sake of the group.
In the past, elitist governments would often legislate and enforce severe penalties for public
gatherings, because defusing the ability of the citizenry to organize or to communicate was paramount
to control. In our technological era, such isolation is still used, but in far more advanced forms.
The bread and circus lifestyle of the average westerner alone is enough to distract us from connecting
with each other in any meaningful fashion, but people still sometimes find ways to seek out organized
forms of activism.
Through co-option, modern day tyrant's can direct and manipulate opposition movements. By creating
and administrating groups which oppose each other, elites can then micromanage all aspects of
a nation on the verge of revolution. These "false paradigms" give us the illusion of proactive
organization, and the false hope of changing the system, while at the same time preventing us
from seeking understanding in one another. All our energies are then muted and dispersed into
meaningless battles over "left and right", or "Democrat versus Republican", for example. Only
movements that cast aside such empty labels and concern themselves with the ultimate truth of
their country, regardless of what that truth might reveal, are able to enact real solutions to
the disasters wrought by tyranny.
In more advanced forms of despotism, even fake organizations are disbanded. Curfews are
enforced. Normal communications are diminished or monitored. Compulsory paperwork is required.
Checkpoints are instituted. Free speech is punished. Existing groups are influenced to distrust
each other or to disintegrate entirely out of dread of being discovered. All of these measures
are taken by tyrants primarily to prevent ANY citizens from gathering and finding mutual support.
People who work together and organize of their own volition are unpredictable, and therefore,
a potential risk to the state.
You'll find in nearly every instance of cultural descent into autocracy, the offending government
gained favor after the onset of economic collapse. Make the necessities of root survival an uncertainty,
and people without knowledge of self sustainability and without solid core principles will gladly
hand over their freedom, even for mere scraps from the tables of the same men who unleashed famine
upon them. Financial calamities are not dangerous because of the poverty they leave in their wake;
they are dangerous because of the doors to malevolence that they leave open.
Destitution leads not just to hunger, but also to crime (private and government). Crime
leads to anger, hatred, and fear. Fear leads to desperation. Desperation leads to the acceptance
of anything resembling a solution, even despotism.
Autocracies pretend to cut through the dilemmas of economic dysfunction (usually while
demanding liberties be relinquished), however, behind the scenes they actually seek to maintain
a proscribed level of indigence and deprivation. The constant peril of homelessness and starvation
keeps the masses thoroughly distracted from such things as protest or dissent, while simultaneously
chaining them to the idea that their only chance is to cling to the very government out to end
them.
This is the main symptom often associated with totalitarianism. So much so that our preconceived
notions of what a fascist government looks like prevent us from seeing other forms of tyranny
right under our noses. Some Americans believe that if the jackbooted thugs are not knocking on
every door, then we MUST still live in a free country. Obviously, this is a rather naďve position.
Admittedly, though, goon squads and secret police do eventually become prominent in every failed
nation, usually while the public is mesmerized by visions of war, depression, hyperinflation,
terrorism, etc.
When law enforcement officials are no longer servants of the people, but agents of a government
concerned only with its own supremacy, serious crises emerge. Checks and balances are removed.
The guidelines that once reigned in police disappear, and suddenly, a philosophy of superiority
emerges; an arrogant exclusivity that breeds separation between law enforcement and the rest of
the public. Finally, police no longer see themselves as protectors of citizens, but prison guards
out to keep us subdued and docile.
As tyranny grows, this behavior is encouraged. Good men are filtered out of the system, and
small (minded and hearted) men are promoted.
At its pinnacle, a police state will hide the identities of most of its agents and officers,
behind masks or behind red tape, because their crimes in the name of the state become so numerous
and so sadistic that personal vengeance on the part of their victims will become a daily concern.
Tyrants are generally men who have squelched their own consciences. They have no reservations
in using any means at their disposal to wipe out opposition. But, in the early stages of their
ascent to power, they must give the populace a reason for their ruthlessness, or risk being exposed,
and instigating even more dissent. The propaganda machine thus goes into overdrive, and any person
or group that dares to question the authority or the validity of the state is demonized in the
minds of the masses.
All disasters, all violent crimes, all the ills of the world, are hoisted upon the shoulders
of activist groups and political rivals. They are falsely associated with fringe elements already
disliked by society (racists, terrorists, etc). A bogus consensus is created through puppet media
in an attempt to make the public believe that "everyone else" must have the same exact views,
and those who express contrary positions must be "crazy", or "extremist". Events are even engineered
by the corrupt system and pinned on those demanding transparency and liberty. The goal is to drive
anti-totalitarian organizations into self censorship. That is to say, instead of silencing them
directly, the state causes activists to silence themselves.
Tyrannical power structures cannot function without scapegoats. There must always be an
elusive boogie man under the bed of every citizen, otherwise, those citizens may turn their attention,
and their anger, towards the real culprit behind their troubles. By scapegoating stewards of the
truth, such governments are able to kill two birds with one stone.
Ultimately, the life of a totalitarian government is not prolonged by the government itself,
but by the very people it subjugates. Citizen spies are the glue of any police state, and our
propensity for sticking our noses into other peoples business is highly valued by Big Brother
bureaucracies around the globe.
There are a number of reasons why people participate in this repulsive activity. Some are addicted
to the feeling of being a part of the collective, and "service" to this collective, sadly, is
the only way they are able to give their pathetic lives meaning. Some are vindictive, cold, and
soulless, and actually get enjoyment from ruining others. And still, like elites, some long for
power, even petty power, and are willing to do anything to fulfill their vile need to dictate
the destinies of perfect strangers.
Citizen spying is almost always branded as a civic duty; an act of heroism and bravery.
Citizen spies are offered accolades and awards, and showered with praise from the upper echelons
of their communities. People who lean towards citizen spying are often outwardly and inwardly
unimpressive; physically and mentally inept. For the average moral and emotional weakling with
persistent feelings of inadequacy, the allure of finally being given fifteen minutes of fame and
a hero's status (even if that status is based on a lie) is simply too much to resist. They begin
to see "extremists" and "terrorists" everywhere. Soon, people afraid of open ears everywhere start
to watch what they say at the supermarket, in their own backyards, or even to family members.
Free speech is effectively neutralized.
In the end, it is not enough for a government fueled by the putrid sludge of iniquity to lord
over us. At some point, it must also influence us to forsake our most valued principles. Tyrannies
are less concerned with dominating how we live, so much as dominating how we think. If they
can mold our very morality, they can exist unopposed indefinitely. Of course, the elements of
conscience are inborn, and not subject to environmental duress as long as a man is self aware.
However, conscience can be manipulated if a person has no sense of identity, and has never put
in the effort to explore his own strengths and failings. There are many people like this in America
today.
Lies become "necessary" in protecting the safety of the state. War becomes a tool for "peace".
Torture becomes an ugly but "useful" method for gleaning important information. Police brutality
is sold as a "natural reaction" to increased crime. Rendition becomes normal, but only for those
labeled as "terrorists". Assassination is justified as a means for "saving lives". Genocide is
done discretely, but most everyone knows it is taking place. They simply don't discuss it.
All tyrannical systems depend on the apathy and moral relativism of the inhabitants within
their borders. Without the cooperation of the public, these systems cannot function. The real
question is, how many of the above steps will be taken before we finally refuse to conform? At
what point will each man and woman decide to break free from the dark path blazed before us and
take measures to ensure their independence? Who will have the courage to develop their own communities,
their own alternative economies, their own organizations for mutual defense outside of establishment
constructs, and who will break under the pressure to bow like cowards? How many will hold the
line, and how many will flee?
For every American, for every human being across the planet who chooses to stand immovable
in the face of the very worst in mankind, we come that much closer to breathing life once again
into the very best in us all.
"... With polling data being quantized and plugged into sophisticated computer models allowing Clinton
to tailor her message for each region and for each venue. ..."
"... As I said before, this is likely something that is being fed to her by her no doubt well paid
consultants. ..."
"... Still, I have made an interesting observation that I wonder if you noticed. You presented two
charts, one with holding corporations accountable placed at the top, and the other placing decline in
manufacturing jobs at the top in the same position. ..."
"... They are the same network; point by point. I even compared them using paint and found them
to be a perfect match. The only difference is that one is negative and the other is positive. ..."
"... This completely misunderstand Clinton's approach to the Vulgar people of the United States,
which is: Insectionality, not intersectionality, that is the Vulgar People are treated as Insects. ..."
"... The only Intersection understood by Hilarity Clinton is the one between herself, money and
power. All else is irrelevant. ..."
"... Hillary is an intersectional feminist? ..."
"... As another untrained clown in intersectional feminism, I'm skeptical about Clinton, especially
reading Thomas Frank's description of the International Women's Day event at the Clinton Foundation
one year ago: ..."
"... Microlending is a perfect expression of Clintonism, since it brings together wealthy financial
interests with rhetoric that sounds outrageously idealistic. Microlending permits all manner of networking,
posturing, and profit taking among the lenders while doing nothing to change actual power relations-the
ultimate win-win." ..."
"... Wait a minute that tangle of buzz phrases connected helter-skelter by lines is a REAL post
from the Clinton campaign? Until I read the whole piece I thought it was well done satire. I guess The
Onion being bought out doesn't really matter much. In modern American politics satire now seems roughly
as difficult a task as exceeding the speed of light in a vacuum or measuring the position and velocity
of an electron simultaneously. ..."
DFA = Democracy for America. This was Howard Dean's organization and part of his 50 state strategies.
During non-campaign seasons, he sent campaign organizers touring the country giving short classes
on how to organize and manage a political campaign. They came to Wichita and it was something
to see, a lot of local Democratic office holders, some even in the State House had signed up.
One guy had held his house seat for 8 years and much of the information they were bringing was
completely new to him. Yes, a state level Democrat had won 4 election cycles without even knowing
the basics. This was the state of the Democratic Party back then – and is largely that way now.
Now I am going from memory here, but Clinton's "intersectional" was covered in these classes,
with at least the basic idea. The idea was to consider how different elements within your campaign
plank are connected. And where those connections are poor, to build up a rhetorical foundation
on how to address the contradictions. As I said, the idea is not to build connections between
different parts of the planks, but how to present separate planks to the voter as being relevant.
It's a good exercise, a way of organizing your issues and thinking how they all might fit together.
Now Clintion's hairball – good word by the way – likely takes it to the absurd degree.
With polling data being quantized and plugged into sophisticated computer models allowing Clinton
to tailor her message for each region and for each venue.
–KACHING- As I said before, this is likely something that is being fed to her by her no
doubt well paid consultants.
Still, I have made an interesting observation that I wonder if you noticed. You presented
two charts, one with holding corporations accountable placed at the top, and the other placing
decline in manufacturing jobs at the top in the same position.
They are the same network; point by point. I even compared them using paint and found them
to be a perfect match. The only difference is that one is negative and the other is positive.
This completely misunderstand Clinton's approach to the Vulgar people of the United States,
which is: Insectionality, not intersectionality, that is the Vulgar People are treated as Insects.
The only Intersection understood by Hilarity Clinton is the one between herself, money
and power. All else is irrelevant.
As another untrained clown in intersectional feminism, I'm skeptical about Clinton, especially
reading Thomas Frank's description of the International Women's Day event at the Clinton Foundation
one year ago:
"What this lineup suggested is that there is a kind of naturally occurring solidarity between
the millions of women at the bottom of the world's pyramid and the tiny handful of women at its
very top The mystic bond between high-achieving American professionals and the planet's most victimized
people is a recurring theme in [Hillary Clinton's] life and work What the spectacle had to offer
ordinary working American women was another story.
She enshrined a version of feminism in which liberation is, in part, a matter of taking out
loans from banks in order to become an entrepreneur the theology of microfinance Merely by providing
impoverished individuals with a tiny loan of fifty or a hundred dollars, it was thought, you could
put them on the road to entrepreneurial self-sufficiency, you could make entire countries prosper,
you could bring about economic development itself What was most attractive about microlending
was what it was not, what it made unnecessary: any sort of collective action by poor people coming
together in governments or unions The key to development was not doing something to limit the
grasp of Western banks, in other words; it was extending Western banking methods to encompass
every last individual on earth.
Microlending is a perfect expression of Clintonism, since it brings together wealthy financial
interests with rhetoric that sounds outrageously idealistic. Microlending permits all manner of
networking, posturing, and profit taking among the lenders while doing nothing to change actual
power relations-the ultimate win-win."
I'm too confused with all of this, but it sounds to me like a concept called "interlocking
systems of oppression" and your figure two seems to provide useful diagrammatic example.
The diagram offers no understanding of the intersectional dynamics of oppression, carefully
cropping out the oppressors - most of whom are Hillary backers - along with the oppressed, who
are all affected differently in their lived experiences by their particular relationship
to oppressive conditions.
Lumping these focus-tested ill conditions together with a rat's nest of undistinguished connections
misleadingly equates the interests of persons with their set of group memberships (Fascism is
Italian for bundle-ism) and sets the stage for those conditions to be traded off and weighed against
each other on net in the future. I believe this is the essence of what is called "triangulation".
Wait a minute that tangle of buzz phrases connected helter-skelter by lines is a REAL post
from the Clinton campaign? Until I read the whole piece I thought it was well done satire. I guess
The Onion being bought out doesn't really matter much. In modern American politics satire now
seems roughly as difficult a task as exceeding the speed of light in a vacuum or measuring the
position and velocity of an electron simultaneously.
What is amazing is that such column was published is such a sycophantic for Hillary and openly anti-Trump
rag as NYT. In foreign policy Hillary is the second incarnation of Cheney... Neocons rules NYT coverage
of Presidential race and, of course, they all favor Hillary. Of course chances that some on neocons
who so enthusiastically support her, crossing Party lines are drafted, get M16 and send to kill brown
people for Wall Street interests now is close to zero. Everything is outsourced now. But still, it is
simply amazing that even a lonely voice against neocon campaign of demonization of Trump got published
in NYT ...
MSM shilling for Hillary is simply overwhelming, so why this was in NYT is a mystery to me. But
this article of Maureen Dowd in on spot. Simply amazing how she manage to publish it !!!
Notable quotes:
"... Hillary will keep the establishment safe. Who is more of an establishment figure, after all? Her husband was president, and he repealed Glass-Steagall, signed the Defense of Marriage Act and got rid of those pesky welfare queens. ..."
"... Hillary often seems more Republican than the Gotham bling king, who used to be a Democrat and donor to Democratic candidates before he jumped the turnstile. ..."
"... Hillary is a reliable creature of Wall Street. Her tax return showed the Clintons made $10.6 million last year, and like other superrich families, they incorporated with the Clinton Executive Services Corporation (which was billed for the infamous server). Trump has started holding up goofy charts at rallies showing Hillary has gotten $48,500,000 in contributions from hedge funders, compared to his $19,000. ..."
"... Unlike Trump, she hasn't been trashing leading Republicans. You know that her pals John McCain and Lindsey Graham are secretly rooting for her. There is a cascade of prominent Republicans endorsing Hillary, donating to Hillary, appearing in Hillary ads, talking up Hillary's charms. ..."
"... Robert Kagan, a former Reagan State Department aide, adviser to the McCain and Mitt Romney campaigns and Iraq war booster, headlined a Hillary fund-raiser this summer. Another neocon, James Kirchick, keened in The Daily Beast , "Hillary Clinton is the one person standing between America and the abyss." ..."
"... The Democratic nominee put out an ad featuring Trump-bashing Michael Hayden, an N.S.A. and CIA chief under W. who was deemed "incongruent" by the Senate when he testified about torture methods. And she earned an endorsement from John Negroponte, a Reagan hand linked to American-trained death squads in Latin America. ..."
"... Politico reports that the Clinton team sent out feelers to see if Kissinger, the Voldemort of Vietnam, and Condi Rice, the conjurer of Saddam's apocalyptic mushroom cloud, would back Hillary. ..."
"... The Hillary team seems giddy over its windfall of Republicans and neocons running from the Trump sharknado. But as David Weigel wrote in The Washington Post, the specter of Kissinger, the man who advised Nixon to prolong the Vietnam War to help with his re-election, fed a perception that "the Democratic nominee has returned to her old, hawkish ways and is again taking progressives for granted." ..."
"... Hillary is a safer bet in many ways for conservatives. Trump likes to say he is flexible. What if he returns to his liberal New York positions on gun control and abortion rights? ..."
"... Trump is far too incendiary in his manner of speaking, throwing around dangerous and self-destructive taunts about "Second Amendment people" taking out Hillary, or President Obama and Hillary being the founders of ISIS ..."
"... Hillary, on the other hand, understands her way around political language and Washington rituals. Of course you do favors for wealthy donors. And if you want to do something incredibly damaging to the country, like enabling George W. Bush to make the worst foreign policy blunder in U.S. history, don't shout inflammatory and fabricated taunts from a microphone. ..."
"... You must walk up to the microphone calmly, as Hillary did on the Senate floor the day of the Iraq war vote, and accuse Saddam of giving "aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda," repeating the Bush administration's phony case for war. If you want to carry the GOP banner, your fabrications have to be more sneaky. ..."
"... "You must walk up to the microphone calmly, as Hillary did on the Senate floor the day of the Iraq war vote, and accuse Saddam of giving "aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda," repeating the Bush administration's phony case for war." ..."
"... Anyone who believes Bill Clinton didn't know exactly what was going on is just kidding themselves. One clue, for example. They moved the WMD 'intelligence" investigation to the DOD under Paul Wolfowitz. LOL! ..."
"... Thomas Frank, the author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and "Listen Liberal: Or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?" echoes Ms. Dowd's sentiments. In a recent column Frank says that with Trump certain to lose, you can forget about a progressive Clinton. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/13/trump-clinton-elec... ..."
"... "America's two-party system itself has temporarily become a one-party system. And within that one party, the political process bears a striking resemblance to dynastic succession. Come November, Clinton will have won her great victory – not as a champion of working people's concerns, but as the greatest moderate of them all." ..."
"... We've also managed to select one of biggest dissemblers, enablers, war hawks, fungible flip-floppers, pay for play con artists, scandal mongerers candidates since Tricky Dicky. Congratulations America! We did it. As Alexis de Tocqueville said, "Wet get the government we deserve." ..."
"... The reaction by many to Ms Dowd's column clearly shows that the "save the world" "lesser evil" argument only works is one is willing to suspend belief on the demonstrated evil of Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... Clinton could well take us to war against Russia. In Syria, Clinton is spoiling to give Russia a punch in the nose, on the theory that Russia will back down and the US will have a free hand there. She advocates a a no-fly zone for Russian jets in Syria. The idea there is to create a confrontation, shoot down a couple of Russian jets and teach them a lesson. There is also the CIA and Pentagon "Plan B" for the Syrian negotiations. ..."
"... It's always wonderful to see when the truth comes out in the end: Hillary is the perfect Repulican candidate and this is also prove of the fact that on finance and economic issues Democrats and old mainstream Republicans have been in in the same pocket...even under Obama. ..."
"... One night after the election on the Carson show Goldwater quipped that he didn't know how unpopular a president he would have been until Johnson adopted his policies... ..."
"... All the things you say about Hillary are true. She is an establishment favorite. She did indeed vote to support Bush and his insane desire to invade Iraq. ..."
"... Did we all forget the millions who went for Bernie and his direct and aggressive confrontation of Hillary's Wall Street/corporate ties? That was a contest between what used to be the Dem party of the people and the corporate friendly Dem party of today. We understood then that Hillary represented the Right; why the surprise now? (The right pointing arrow on the "H" logo is so appropriate.) ..."
"... There are reasons Hillary is disliked and distrusted by nearly a majority of us. My reasons are she is of and for the oligarchs and deceitful enough to run as a populist. ..."
"... America tried to liberalize in the 1960's and the response was swift and violent as three of the greatest liberal lions and voices the country has ever known - JFK, MLK and RFK - were gunned down. ..."
"... While one can endlessly argue the specific details of those ghastly assassinations of America's liberal superstars, in my view, all three of those murders rest on the violent, nefarious right-wing shoulders and fumes of moneyed American 'conservatism' that couldn't stand to share the profits of their economic parasitism with society. ..."
"... I truly believe that Congressional Republicans in the House are already drafting articles of impeachment should Hillary become President. Dowd may claim that Republicans are in lock step with her, but don't be surprised when the talk of impeachment starts soon after Jan 20, 2017. ..."
"... We need a multi party system. With 2 parties dominating the politics, its like having a monopoly of liberalism or conservatism which just does not represent the width and depth of views our citizens resonate with. Having voted democrat all my life, to me Hillary does not represent my choice (Bernie does). ..."
"... This annoys me..."like enabling George W. Bush to make the worst foreign policy blunder in U.S. history" Maureen is talking about Hillary, but she might as well be talking about her own newspaper. Hillary got it wrong, but so did the New York Times editorial board. ..."
"... The Bush Administration hinted that the anti-war people were traitors and terrorist sympathizers and everybody got steamrolled. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/22/opinion/culture-war-with-b-2-s.html ..."
"... HRC couldn't have asked for a better opponent if she'd constructed him out of a six-foot pile of mildewed straw. By running against Trump, the whole Trump and nothing but the Trump, and openly courting neocon war criminals and "establishment" Republicans, she's outrageously giving CPR to what should have been a rotting corpse of a political party by now. ..."
"... By giving new life to the pathocrats who made Trump possible, Clinton is only making her own party weaker and more right-wing, only making it easier for down-ticket Republicans to slither their way back into power.... the better to triangulate with during the Clinton restoration. Grand Bargain, here we come. TPP, (just waiting for that fig leaf of meager aid for displaced American workers) here we come. Bombs away. ..."
"... She'll have to stop hoarding her campaign cash and share it with the down-ticket Democrats running against the same well-heeled GOPers she is now courting with such naked abandon. ..."
"... The Empress needs some new clothes to hide that inner Goldwater Girl. ..."
All these woebegone Republicans whining that they can't rally behind their flawed candidate is
crazy. The G.O.P. angst, the gnashing and wailing and searching for last-minute substitutes and exit
strategies, is getting old. They already have a 1-percenter who will be totally fine in the Oval
Office, someone they can trust to help Wall Street, boost the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, cuddle with
hedge funds, secure the trade deals beloved by corporate America, seek guidance from Henry Kissinger
and hawk it up - unleashing hell on Syria and heaven knows where else.
The Republicans have their candidate: It's Hillary. They can't go with Donald Trump. He's too
volatile and unhinged. The erstwhile Goldwater Girl and Goldman Sachs busker can be counted on to
do the normal political things, not the abnormal haywire things. Trump's propounding could drag us
into war, plunge us into a recession and shatter Washington into a thousand tiny bits.
Hillary will keep the establishment safe. Who is more of an establishment figure, after all?
Her husband was president, and he repealed Glass-Steagall, signed the Defense of Marriage Act and
got rid of those pesky welfare queens.
Pushing her Midwestern Methodist roots, taking advantage of primogeniture, Hillary often seems
more Republican than the Gotham bling king, who used to be a Democrat and donor to Democratic candidates
before he jumped the turnstile.
Hillary is a reliable creature of Wall Street. Her tax return showed the Clintons made $10.6
million last year, and like other superrich families, they incorporated with the Clinton Executive
Services Corporation (which was billed for the infamous server). Trump has started holding up goofy
charts at rallies showing Hillary has gotten $48,500,000 in contributions from hedge funders, compared
to his $19,000.
Unlike Trump, she hasn't been trashing leading Republicans. You know that her pals John McCain
and Lindsey Graham are secretly rooting for her. There is a cascade of prominent Republicans endorsing
Hillary, donating to Hillary, appearing in Hillary ads, talking up Hillary's charms.
Robert Kagan, a former Reagan State Department aide, adviser to the McCain and Mitt Romney
campaigns and Iraq war booster, headlined a Hillary fund-raiser this summer. Another neocon, James
Kirchick,
keened in The Daily Beast , "Hillary Clinton is the one person standing between America and the
abyss."
She has finally stirred up some emotion in women, even if it is just moderate suburban Republican
women palpitating to leave their own nominee, who has the retro air of a guy who just left the dim
recesses of a Playboy bunny club.
The Democratic nominee put out an ad featuring Trump-bashing Michael Hayden, an N.S.A. and
CIA chief under W. who was deemed "incongruent" by the Senate when he testified about torture
methods. And she earned an endorsement from John Negroponte, a Reagan hand linked to American-trained
death squads in Latin America.
Politico reports that the Clinton team sent out feelers to see if Kissinger, the Voldemort
of Vietnam, and Condi Rice, the conjurer of Saddam's apocalyptic mushroom cloud, would back Hillary.
Hillary has written that Kissinger is an "idealistic" friend whose counsel she valued as secretary
of state, drawing a rebuke from Bernie Sanders during the primaries: "I'm proud to say Henry Kissinger
is not my friend."
The Hillary team seems giddy over its windfall of Republicans and neocons running from the
Trump sharknado. But as
David Weigel wrote in The Washington Post, the specter of Kissinger, the man who advised Nixon
to prolong the Vietnam War to help with his re-election, fed a perception that "the Democratic nominee
has returned to her old, hawkish ways and is again taking progressives for granted."
And
Isaac Chotiner wrote in Slate, "The prospect of Kissinger having influence in a Clinton White
House is downright scary."
Hillary is a safer bet in many ways for conservatives. Trump likes to say he is flexible.
What if he returns to his liberal New York positions on gun control and abortion rights?
Trump is far too incendiary in his manner of speaking, throwing around dangerous and self-destructive
taunts about "Second Amendment people" taking out Hillary, or President Obama and Hillary being the
founders of ISIS. And he still blindly follows his ego, failing to understand the fundamentals
of a campaign. "I don't know that we need to get out the vote," he told Fox News Thursday. "I think
people that really wanna vote are gonna get out and they're gonna vote for Trump."
Hillary, on the other hand, understands her way around political language and Washington rituals.
Of course you do favors for wealthy donors. And if you want to do something incredibly damaging to
the country, like enabling George W. Bush to make the worst foreign policy blunder in U.S. history,
don't shout inflammatory and fabricated taunts from a microphone.
You must walk up to the microphone calmly, as Hillary did on the Senate floor the day of the
Iraq war vote, and accuse Saddam of giving "aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al
Qaeda," repeating the Bush administration's phony case for war. If you want to carry the GOP banner,
your fabrications have to be more sneaky.
As
Republican strategist Steve Schmidt noted on MSNBC, "the candidate in the race most like George
W. Bush and Dick Cheney from a foreign policy perspective is in fact Hillary Clinton, not the Republican
nominee."
And that's how Republicans prefer their crazy - not like Trump, but like Cheney.
JohnNJ, New jersey August 14, 2016
For me, this is her strongest point:
"You must walk up to the microphone calmly, as Hillary did on the Senate floor the day
of the Iraq war vote, and accuse Saddam of giving "aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including
Al Qaeda," repeating the Bush administration's phony case for war."
There are still people who believe her excuse that she only voted for authorization, blah,
blah, blah.
Anyone who believes Bill Clinton didn't know exactly what was going on is just kidding
themselves. One clue, for example. They moved the WMD 'intelligence" investigation to the DOD
under Paul Wolfowitz. LOL!
Red_Dog , Denver CO August 14, 2016
Thomas Frank, the author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and "Listen Liberal: Or What
Ever Happened to the Party of the People?" echoes Ms. Dowd's sentiments. In a recent column Frank
says that with Trump certain to lose, you can forget about a progressive Clinton.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/13/trump-clinton-elec...
"America's two-party system itself has temporarily become a one-party system. And within
that one party, the political process bears a striking resemblance to dynastic succession. Come
November, Clinton will have won her great victory – not as a champion of working people's concerns,
but as the greatest moderate of them all."
And great populist uprising of our times will be gone --- probably for many years.
FDR Liberal , Sparks, NV August 14, 2016
Spot on column Ms. Dowd.
As Americans we are to blame that these two major party candidates are the only viable ones
seeking the presidency. Yes, fellow citizens we are to blame because in the end we are the ones
that voted for them in various primaries and caucuses. And if you didn't attend a caucus or vote
in a primary, you are also part of problem.
In short, it is not the media's fault, nor is it the top .1%, 1% or 10% fault, nor your kids'
fault, nor your parents' fault, nor your neighbors' fault, etc.
It is our fault because we did this together. Yes, we managed y to select a narcissist, xenophobe,
anti-Muslim, racist, misogynist, and dare I say buffoon to the GOP ticket.
We've also managed to select one of biggest dissemblers, enablers, war hawks, fungible
flip-floppers, pay for play con artists, scandal mongerers candidates since Tricky Dicky. Congratulations
America! We did it. As Alexis de Tocqueville said, "Wet get the government we deserve."
Martin Brod, NYC August 14, 2016
The reaction by many to Ms Dowd's column clearly shows that the "save the world" "lesser
evil" argument only works is one is willing to suspend belief on the demonstrated evil of Hillary
Clinton.
The Green Party and Libertarian parties provide sane alternatives to the two most distrusted
candidates of the major parties. As debate participants they
would offer an alternative to evil at a time when the planets count-down clock is racing to mid-night.
pathenry, berkeley August 14, 2016
Clinton could well take us to war against Russia. In Syria, Clinton is spoiling to give
Russia a punch in the nose, on the theory that Russia will back down and the US will have a free
hand there. She advocates a a no-fly zone for Russian jets in Syria. The idea there is to create
a confrontation, shoot down a couple of Russian jets and teach them a lesson. There is also the
CIA and Pentagon "Plan B" for the Syrian negotiations.
If the negotiations fail, give stingers to our "vetted allies". Who will those stingers be
used against? Russia. At least the ones not smuggled to Brussels. And then there is the plan being
bandied about by our best and brightest to organize, arm and lead our "vetted allies" in attacks
on Russian bases in Syria. A Bay of Pigs in the desert. A dime to a dollar, Clinton is supportive
of these plans.
All of this is dangerous brinksmanship which is how you go to war.
Mike A. , East Providence, RI August 14, 2016
The second Pulitzer quality piece from the NYT op-ed columnists in less than a month (see Charles
Blow's "Incandescent With Rage" for the first).
heinrich zwahlen , brooklyn August 14, 2016
It's always wonderful to see when the truth comes out in the end: Hillary is the perfect
Repulican candidate and this is also prove of the fact that on finance and economic issues Democrats
and old mainstream Republicans have been in in the same pocket...even under Obama.
For real progressives it's useless to vote for her and high time to start a new party. Cultural
issues are not the main issues that pain America, it's all about the money stupid.
JohnD, New York August 14, 2016
... One night after the election on the Carson show Goldwater quipped that he didn't know
how unpopular a president he would have been until Johnson adopted his policies...
Lee Elliott , Rochester August 14, 2016
You've written the most depressing column I've read lately. All the things you say about
Hillary are true. She is an establishment favorite. She did indeed vote to support Bush and his
insane desire to invade Iraq. But it was that vote kept her from being president in 2008.
Perhaps that will convince her to keep the establishment a little more at arm's length. When there
is no other behind for them to kiss, then you can afford to be a little hard to get.
As for Trump, he is proving to be too much like Ross Perot. He looks great at first but begins
to fade when his underlying lunacy begins to bubble to the surface.
Speaking of Perot, I find it an interesting coincidence that Bill Clinton and now Hillary Clinton
will depend on the ravings of an apparent lunatic in order to get elected.
citizen vox, San Francisco August 14, 2016
Why the vitriol against Dowd? Did we all forget the millions who went for Bernie and his
direct and aggressive confrontation of Hillary's Wall Street/corporate ties? That was a contest
between what used to be the Dem party of the people and the corporate friendly Dem party of today.
We understood then that Hillary represented the Right; why the surprise now? (The right pointing
arrow on the "H" logo is so appropriate.)
Last week's article on how Hillary came to love money was horrifying; because Bill lost a Governor's
race, Hillary felt so insecure she called all her wealthy friends for donations. Huh?! Two Harvard
trained lawyers asking for financial help?! And never getting enough money to feel secure?! GIVE
ME A BREAK (to coin a phrase).
There are reasons Hillary is disliked and distrusted by nearly a majority of us. My reasons
are she is of and for the oligarchs and deceitful enough to run as a populist.
If readers bemoan anything, let it be that the populist movement of the Dem party was put down
by the Dem establishment. We have a choice between a crazy candidate of no particular persuasion
and a cold, calculating Republican. How discouraging.
Thanks, Maureen Dowd.
Chris, Louisville August 14, 2016
Maureen please don't ever give up on Hillary bashing. It needs to be done before someone accidentally
elects her as President. She is most like Angela Merkel of Germany. Take a look what's happening
there. That is enough never to vote for Hillary.
Susan e, AZ August 14, 2016
I recall the outrage I, a peace loving liberal who despised W and Cheney, felt while watching
the made for TV "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq. I recall how the"liberal Democrats" who supported
that disaster with a vote for the IRW could never quite bring themselves to admit their mistake
- and I realized that many, like Hillary, didn't feel it was a mistake. Not really. It was necessary
for their political careers.
For me, its not a vote for Hillary, its a vote for a candidate that sees killing innocent people
in Syria (or Libya, or Gaza, etc.) as the only way to be viewed as a serious candidate for CIC.
I'm old enough to remember another endless war, as the old Vietnam anti-war ballad went: "I ain't
gonna vote for war no more."
John, Switzerland August 14, 2016
Maureen Dowd is not being nasty, but rather accurate. It is nasty to support and start wars
throughout the ME. It is nasty to say (on mic) "We came, we saw, he died" referring to the gruesome
torture-murder of Qaddafi.
Will Hillary start a war against Syria? Yes or no? That is the the "six trillion dollar" question.
Socrates , is a trusted commenter Downtown Verona, NJ August 13, 2016
It's hard to a find a good liberal in these United States, not because there's anything wrong
with liberalism or progressivism, but because Americans have been taught, hypnotized and beaten
by a powerfully insidious and filthy rich right-wing to think that liberalism, progressivism and
socialism is a form of fatal cancer.
America tried to liberalize in the 1960's and the response was swift and violent as three
of the greatest liberal lions and voices the country has ever known - JFK, MLK and RFK - were
gunned down.
While one can endlessly argue the specific details of those ghastly assassinations of America's
liberal superstars, in my view, all three of those murders rest on the violent, nefarious right-wing
shoulders and fumes of moneyed American 'conservatism' that couldn't stand to share the profits
of their economic parasitism with society.
The end result is that political liberals are forced to triangulate for their survival in right-wing
America, and you wind up with Presidents like Bill Clinton and (soon) Hillary Clinton who know
how to survive in a pool of right-wing knives, assassins and psychopaths lurking everywhere representing
Grand Old Profit.
... ... ...
Dotconnector, New York August 14, 2016
The trickery deep within the dark art of Clintonism is triangulation. By breeding a nominal
Democratic donkey with a de facto Republican elephant, what you get is a corporatist chameleon.
There's precious little solace in knowing that this cynical political hybrid is only slightly
less risky than Trumpenstein.
And the fact that Henry Kissinger still has a seat at the table ought to chill the spine of
anyone who considers human lives -- those of U.S. service members and foreign noncombatants alike
-- to have greater value than pawns in a global chess game.
Bj, is a trusted commenter Washington,dc August 13, 2016
I truly believe that Congressional Republicans in the House are already drafting articles
of impeachment should Hillary become President. Dowd may claim that Republicans are in lock step
with her, but don't be surprised when the talk of impeachment starts soon after Jan 20, 2017.
They didn't succeed with Bill. And they were chomping at the bit to try to impeach Obama
over his use of executive orders and his decision not to defend an early same sex marriage case.
They are just waiting for inauguration to start this process all over again - another circus and
waste of taxpayer money.
petey tonei, Massachusetts August 14, 2016
Two party system is not enough for a country this big, with such a wide spectrum of political
beliefs. We need a multi party system. With 2 parties dominating the politics, its like having
a monopoly of liberalism or conservatism which just does not represent the width and depth of
views our citizens resonate with. Having voted democrat all my life, to me Hillary does not represent
my choice (Bernie does). Heard on NPR just today from on the ground reporters in Terre Haute,
Indiana, the bellwether of presidential elections, the 2 names that were most heard were Trump
and Bernie Sanders, not Hillary. Sadly, Bernie is not even the nominee but he truly represents
the guts, soul of mid America
Schrodinger, is a trusted commenter Northern California August 14, 2016
This annoys me..."like enabling George W. Bush to make the worst foreign policy blunder
in U.S. history" Maureen is talking about Hillary, but she might as well be talking about her
own newspaper. Hillary got it wrong, but so did the New York Times editorial board.
What about Ms Dowd herself? Of the four columns she wrote before the vote on October 11th,
2002, only two mentioned the war vote, and one of those was mostly about Hillary. Dowd said of
Hillary that, "Whatever doubts she may have privately about the war, she is not articulating her
angst as loudly as some of her Democratic colleagues. She knows that any woman who hopes to be
elected president cannot have love beads in her jewelry case."
In her column 'Culture war with B-2's', Dowd comes out as mildly anti-war. "Don't feel bad
if you have the uneasy feeling that you're being steamrolled", Dowd writes, "You are not alone."
Fourteen years later that column still looks good, and I link to it at the bottom. However, Dowd
could and should have done a lot more. I don't think that anybody who draws a paycheck from the
New York Times has a right to get on their high horse and lecture Hillary about her vote. They
ignored the antiwar protests just like they ignored Bernie Sanders' large crowds.
Karen Garcia , is a trusted commenter New Paltz, NY August 13, 2016
HRC couldn't have asked for a better opponent if she'd constructed him out of a six-foot
pile of mildewed straw. By running against Trump, the whole Trump and nothing but the Trump, and
openly courting neocon war criminals and "establishment" Republicans, she's outrageously giving
CPR to what should have been a rotting corpse of a political party by now.
By giving new life to the pathocrats who made Trump possible, Clinton is only making her
own party weaker and more right-wing, only making it easier for down-ticket Republicans to slither
their way back into power.... the better to triangulate with during the Clinton restoration. Grand
Bargain, here we come. TPP, (just waiting for that fig leaf of meager aid for displaced American
workers) here we come. Bombs away.
With three months to go before this grotesque circus ends, Trump is giving every indication
that he wants out, getting more reckless by the day. And that's a good thing, because with her
rise in the polls, Hillary will now have to do more on the stump than inform us she is not Trump.
She'll have to ditch the fear factor. She'll have to start sending emails and Tweets with something
other than "OMG! Did you hear what Trump just said?!?" on them to convince voters.
She'll have to stop hoarding her campaign cash and share it with the down-ticket Democrats
running against the same well-heeled GOPers she is now courting with such naked abandon.
The Empress needs some new clothes to hide that inner Goldwater Girl.
The content should be familiar to AngryBear
readers. A majority of Americans are alarmed by high and increasing inequality and support government
action to reduce inequality. However, none of the important 2016 candidates has expressed any willingness
to raise taxes on the rich. The Republicans want to cut them and Clinton (and a spokesperson) dodge
the question.
Rich individuals (who are willing to be interviewed) also express concern about inequality but
generally oppose using higher taxes on the rich to fight it. Scheiber is very willing to bluntly
state his guess (and everyone's) that candidates are eager to please the rich, because they spend
much of their time begging the rich for contributions.
No suprise to anyone who has been paying attention except for the fact that it is on the front
page of www.nytimes.com and the article is printed in the business section not the opinion section.
Do click the link - it is brief, to the point, solid, alarming and a must read.
I clicked one of the links and found weaker evidence than I expected for Scheiber's view (which
of course I share
"By contrast, more than half of Americans and three-quarters of Democrats believe the "government
should redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich," according to a
Gallup poll of about 1,000 adults in April 2013."
It is a small majority 52% favor and 47% oppose. This 52% is noticeably smaller than the solid
majorities who have been telling Gallup that high income individuals pay less than their fair share
of taxes (click
and search for gallup on the page).
I guess this isn't really surprising - the word "heavy" is heavy maaaan and "redistribute" evokes
the dreaded welfare (and conservatives have devoted gigantic effort to giving it pejorative connotations).
The 52% majority is remarkable given the phrasing of the question. But it isn't enough to win elections,
since it is 52% of adults which corresponds to well under 52% of actual voters.
My reading is that it is important for egalitarians to stress the tax cuts for the non rich and
that higher taxes on the rich are, unfortunately, necessary if we are to have lower taxes on the
non rich without huge budget deficits. This is exactly Obama's approach.
"... Clinton bigotry against working with inconvenient facts. Read applicable US code one for security, one for federal records, Clinton gets away with calling law that protect security as 'spin'. ..."
The burgeoning neolib dog whistle "alt-right" is short for "a$$hole who thinks Clinton should
go to jail for 1000 times the misconduct that would get that a$$hole 10 years hard time".
Neoliberals use the term "alt-right" as shorthand for those who don't drink the Clinton neocon
Kool-Aid.
The bigotry of warmongering neoliberals against anyone who disagrees. There isn't enough fascism
going around?
Clinton bigotry against working with inconvenient facts. Read applicable US code one for security,
one for federal records, Clinton gets away with calling law that protect security as 'spin'.
ilsm -> Paine... , -1
The 'soft bigotry of GLBT and war for fascist allies' types criticizing racists' morals.
ilsm -> anne... , -1
In the same category as Brooks and Friedman. I regard Dowd better!
"... The Elites have successfully revolted against the political and economic constraints on their wealth and power, and now the unprivileged, unprotected non-Elites are rebelling in the only way left open to them: voting for anyone who claims to be outside the privileged Elites that dominate our society and economy. ..."
The Elites have successfully revolted against the political and economic constraints on their
wealth and power.
Ours is an
Age of Fracture (the 2011 book by Daniel Rodgers) in which "earlier notions of history and society
that stressed solidity, collective institutions, and social circumstances gave way to a more individualized
human nature that emphasized choice, agency, performance, and desire."
A society that is fragmenting into cultural groups that are themselves fracturing into smaller
units of temporary and highly contingent solidarity is ideal for Elites bent on maintaining political
and financial control.
A society that has fragmented into a media-fed cultural war of hot-button identity-gender-religious
politics is a society that is incapable of resisting concentrations of power and wealth in the hands
of the few at the expense of the many.
If we set aside the authentic desire of individuals for equal rights and cultural liberation and
examine the political and financial ramifications of social fragmentation, we come face to face with
Christopher Lasch's insightful analysis on
The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (1996 book).
"The new elites, the professional classes in particular, regard the masses with mingled scorn
and apprehension.... Middle Americans, as they appear to the makers of educated opinion, are hopelessly
shabby, unfashionable, and provincial, ill informed about changes in taste or intellectual trends,
addicted to trashy novels of romance and adventure, and stupefied by prolonged exposure to television.
They are at once absurd and vaguely menacing."
Extreme concentrations of wealth and power are incompatible with democracy, as Elites buy political
influence and promote cultural narratives that distract the citizenry with emotionally charged issues.
A focus on individual liberation from all constraints precludes an awareness of common economic-political
interests beyond the narrow boundaries of fragmenting culturally defined identities.
In a society stripped of broad-based social contracts and narratives that focus on the structural
forces dismantling democracy and social mobility, the Elites have a free hand to consolidate their
own personal wealth and power and use those tools to further fragment any potential political resistance
to their dominance.
The Elites have successfully revolted against the political and economic constraints on their
wealth and power, and now the unprivileged, unprotected non-Elites are rebelling in the only way
left open to them: voting for anyone who claims to be outside the privileged Elites that dominate
our society and economy.
"... "Trump is a racist and his followers are racist and that's all you need to know" is a narrative thesis, like the narrative thesis that Trump is Putin's stooge, very convenient to Clinton's candidacy, but ultimately corrosive to American politics and political discourse. ..."
"... The Clinton campaign has whipped up a high dudgeon about racism and Putin and how unsuited Trump is, to be President. I don't disagree about the core conclusion: Trump does not seem to me to be suited to be President. That's hardly a difficult judgment: an impulsive, self-promoting reality teevee star with no experience of public office - hmmm, let me think about that for two seconds. But, the high dudgeon serves other purposes, to which I object strongly. ..."
"... People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea. ..."
"... Everything should not be about electing Clinton. ..."
"... Pundits like Josh Marshall of TPM or Ezra Klein of Vox are betraying their public trust by carrying Clinton's water so slavishly. ..."
"... People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea ..."
"... Or, as Ian Welsh points out, her position on Syria. She seems to have advocated for a no-fly zone in Syria after Russia came in, which would presumably put us in the position of shooting down Russian warplanes or having a good chance of doing so. Maybe if she does take on Kissinger as an advisor he'll tell her that superpower conflicts have to be done through proxies or they're too dangerous. ..."
"... This is what 40 years of two-party neoliberalism gives us: an unhinged demagogue or the point person for Democratic policies that have systematically gutted the middle class, screwed the poor, increase inequality, slowed productivity, caused multiple wars, and made them personally rich. ..."
"... The moral righteousness of identity politics adds in an element that goes way beyond the lazy failure to hold politicians accountable or the tendency to explain away their more Machiavellian maneuvers. There's both an actual blindness to the reactionary conservatism of equal opportunity exploitation and a peremptory challenge to any other claim or analysis. If police practices and procedures are trending in an authoritarian direction, they can only be challenged on grounds of racist effect or intent. The authoritarianism cannot be challenged on its own merit, so the building of the authoritarian state goes on unimpeded, since the principle that is challenged is not authoritarianism, but a particular claim of racism or sexism. ..."
"... As for LFC, he finished up his not a counter with "Assad and Putin are authoritarians (plus in Assad's case especially being a murderous thug), but I don't recall b.w. being too exercised about their authoritarianism." That's perfectly familiar [line] too: I well remember it from the GWB Iraq War days. Do you oppose the Iraq War? Well I never heard of you being very exercised about Saddam Hussein being a murderous thug. You must really support Saddam, or not really care about authoritarianism. The people who liked to say this were called the "Decents", a word like many other political words that was perfect because it meant exactly the opposite of what it sounded like. ..."
"... What's being critiqued is the idea that nothing but racism matters. What's being critiqued is the idea that it's useful or even correct to do mind-reading and to confidently pronounce that people who disagree with you do so because they're stupid and evil – excuse me, because they're racists. What I find illuminating here is the graphic evidence of why this approach is so toxic. People get furious and hostile when you call them bigots. It's an insult, not an invitation to dialog – because it doubles as a character judgment and as a personal attack. ..."
"... I am also saying, worry that the charge of racism may be all we have left that is capable of getting reforms. And, worry that charges of racism, without useful nuance, may not get the political reaction and reform one ought to desire. ..."
"... Police misconduct is not a problem solely and originally about race and racism ..."
I think all you've really shown is that blue-collar, less-educated people tend
to not know much about politics and to have the political attitudes of authoritarian followers
and Trump is willing to be demagogic enough to attract their attention as an alternative to the
status quo candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
"Trump is a racist and his followers are racist and that's all you need to know" is a narrative
thesis, like the narrative thesis that Trump is Putin's stooge, very convenient to Clinton's candidacy,
but ultimately corrosive to American politics and political discourse. It isn't a question
of whether statistics suggest racism is an efficient instrumental variable. It is a question of
whether this politics of invective and distraction is going anywhere good, could go anywhere good.
No one in these comment threads has been defending Trump or the political ignorance and resentments
of his supporters. Some of us have questioned the wisdom of a political tactic of treating them
as pariahs and dismissing their concerns and economic distress as fake or illegitimate.
The Clinton campaign has whipped up a high dudgeon about racism and Putin and how unsuited
Trump is, to be President. I don't disagree about the core conclusion: Trump does not seem to
me to be suited to be President. That's hardly a difficult judgment: an impulsive, self-promoting
reality teevee star with no experience of public office - hmmm, let me think about that for two
seconds. But, the high dudgeon serves other purposes, to which I object strongly.
Even though, and especially because Clinton is very likely to become President, her suitability
ought to be scrutinized. Not just boxed away as, "well, she is obviously better than Trump
so let's not even trouble our beautiful minds", when by the way it is not so obvious as
all that, as several commenters have tried to point out. People, who argue Trump might start
a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine
Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion
or the South China Sea.
Everything should not be about electing Clinton. Clinton's election is pretty much
assured, despite her deep flaws as a candidate of the center-left (to wit, her war-mongering and
epic corruption and economic conservatism). Pundits like Josh Marshall of TPM or Ezra Klein
of Vox are betraying their public trust by carrying Clinton's water so slavishly. Ezra may
be gaining all important access to the Clinton White House comparable to what he had in Obama's
White House, but he spent his credibility with his readers to get it. And, he's deprived his readers
of the opportunity to learn about issues of vital importance, like the TPP and corporate business
power, or NATO expansion and the relationship with Russia, or the swirling vortex forming in the
Middle East where American Empire is going down the drain of failed invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan
and ill-conceived "alliances" with fundamentally hostile powers like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
I don't think these comment threads are a good place to campaign or advocate on the behalf
of any candidate. A modicum of advocacy might be welcome for the fodder it provides for reflective
rumination, but mirroring the Clinton campaign's themes seems to require systematic misreadings
of counter-argument and that has become disruptive. (RNB's volume and habitual tendentiousness
puts RNB into a special category in this regard.)
There ought to be room in this discussions to move the conversation to more of a meta-level,
where we consider trends and dynamics without the partisan's hyper-narrow focus.
BW: "People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he
insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and
positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea."
Or, as Ian Welsh points out, her position on Syria. She seems to have advocated for a no-fly
zone in Syria after Russia came in, which would presumably put us in the position of shooting
down Russian warplanes or having a good chance of doing so. Maybe if she does take on Kissinger
as an advisor he'll tell her that superpower conflicts have to be done through proxies or they're
too dangerous.
For the larger question of whether these comment threads are a good place to campaign or advocate,
I sort of come down in a different place than you do. If these comment threads were about good-faith
argument, then sure this kind of advocacy might be bad, but I don't think that most people here
are capable of good-faith argument even if they were attempting it (most of the time they aren't
attempting it). In that case the comment threads serve an alternate purpose of seeing what kinds
of beliefs are out there, at least among the limited group of people likely to comment on CT threads.
Of course people can be kicked out if they habitually make the threads too difficult to moderate
(or really, for whatever other reason an OP decides on), but the well has long since been poisoned
and one more drop isn't really going to do much more damage.
There's a reason the electorate hates both Trump and Clinton. This is what 40 years of
two-party neoliberalism gives us: an unhinged demagogue or the point person for Democratic policies
that have systematically gutted the middle class, screwed the poor, increase inequality, slowed
productivity, caused multiple wars, and made them personally rich.
Let's not forget the Clintons were the Democratic Party point people in causing the vast incarceration
of black men while simultaneously gutting welfare for black mothers and their children. (Yay 3rd
Way!) They were the point people for letting 300 million Chinese workers compete with American
workers. They deregulated the banks. And was there a war she didn't like?
So Layman finds that the 80% of the Evangelicals that support Trump are racist. And so are
the white voters in manufacturing regions. (Excuse me. "Principally" racist.) And Layman's exact
counterpart on some unnamed right-wing site thinks all the blacks voting for HRC are in it for
the welfare and affirmative action. (Yes, your exact counterpart. Oh, and they, like you, would
say blacks are "principally" scammers cause, you know, there are other minor reasons to vote HRC.)
I take a different view. I think most voters are going to have the taste of vomit in the their
mouths when they pull the lever.
If there's a populist politics in our future, it will have to have a
much sharper edge. It can talk about growth, but it has to mean smashing the rich and taking their
stuff. There's very rapidly going to come a point where there's no other option, other than just
accepting cramdown by the authoritarian surveillance state built by the neoliberals. that's a
much taller order than Sanders or Trump have been offering.
Fit for inscription (keeps me smashingly awake after hundreds of comments :-))
The moral righteousness of identity politics adds in an element that goes way beyond
the lazy failure to hold politicians accountable or the tendency to explain away their more
Machiavellian maneuvers. There's both an actual blindness to the reactionary conservatism of
equal opportunity exploitation and a peremptory challenge to any other claim or analysis. If
police practices and procedures are trending in an authoritarian direction, they can only be
challenged on grounds of racist effect or intent. The authoritarianism cannot be challenged
on its own merit, so the building of the authoritarian state goes on unimpeded, since the principle
that is challenged is not authoritarianism, but a particular claim of racism or sexism.
So in the same week that the Justice Department report on the Baltimore police force comes
out, showing systematic police discrimination - e.g. lots of people stopped in black neighborhoods,
esp. two in particular, for petty reasons or no reason, versus very few people stopped in other
neighborhoods - bruce wilder informs us that identity politics somehow prevents us from criticizing
police behavior on grounds of authoritarianism, that it can only be criticized on grounds of racism
(or subconscious racial bias) - of course, that wd appear to be a main problem w police behavior
in Baltimore and some other places.
"Rich where is the evidence people can no longer criticize police for broad authoritarianism?"
The last time I talked about this with faustusnotes, he told me that it was entirely understandable
and indeed good that Obama and the Democratic Party were passing laws to make non-violent protestors
even more likely to be arrested, because Obama was black and there was a scary white protestor
holding an assault rifle at a town meeting somewhere.
As for LFC, he finished up his not a counter with "Assad and Putin are authoritarians (plus
in Assad's case especially being a murderous thug), but I don't recall b.w. being too exercised
about their authoritarianism." That's perfectly familiar [line] too: I well remember it from the
GWB Iraq War days. Do you oppose the Iraq War? Well I never heard of you being very exercised
about Saddam Hussein being a murderous thug. You must really support Saddam, or not really care
about authoritarianism. The people who liked to say this were called the "Decents", a word like
many other political words that was perfect because it meant exactly the opposite of what it sounded
like.
Marc 08.14.16 at 2:09 am
What's being critiqued is the idea that nothing but racism matters. What's being critiqued
is the idea that it's useful or even correct to do mind-reading and to confidently pronounce that
people who disagree with you do so because they're stupid and evil – excuse me, because they're
racists.
What I find illuminating here is the graphic evidence of why this approach is so toxic. People
get furious and hostile when you call them bigots. It's an insult, not an invitation to dialog
– because it doubles as a character judgment and as a personal attack.
Now, when someone actually says something bigoted that's one thing. But that's not what's going
on, and that's why the pushback is so serious.
And – faustnotes – you're minimizing the real suffering of people by claiming that the mortality
rise in lower income US whites isn't real, and it certainly isn't important to you. I'm getting
zero sense of empathy from you towards the plight of these people – the real important thing is
to tell them why they're racist scum.
I think that the left has a moral obligation to try and build a decent society even for people
that don't like the left much. I think that working class voters across the Western world are
susceptible to racial appeals not because they're scum, but because they've been screwed by the
system and the left has nothing to offer them but moral lectures. And that's a failure that we
can address, and it starts with listening to people with respect. You can stand for your principles
without assuming bad faith, without mind-reading, and without the stereotyping.
For me at least, those are the grounds of debate, and they're very different in kind from pretending
that there is no such thing as racism.
I am aware that the claim of racism is potent and where it can be made to effect reform,
I am all in favor. Take what you can get, I say.
I am also saying, worry that the charge of racism may be all we have left that is capable
of getting reforms. And, worry that charges of racism, without useful nuance, may not get the
political reaction and reform one ought to desire.
Police misconduct is not a problem solely and originally about race and racism. I
hope Baltimore gets useful and effective reform.
"... "Trump is a racist and his followers are racist and that's all you need to know" is a narrative thesis, like the narrative thesis that Trump is Putin's stooge, very convenient to Clinton's candidacy, but ultimately corrosive to American politics and political discourse. ..."
"... Not just boxed away as, "well, she is obviously better than Trump so let's not even trouble our beautiful minds", when by the way it is not so obvious as all that, as several commenters have tried to point out. People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea. ..."
"... Everything should not be about electing Clinton. Clinton's election is pretty much assured, despite her deep flaws as a candidate of the center-left (to wit, her war-mongering and epic corruption and economic conservatism). Pundits like Josh Marshall of TPM or Ezra Klein of Vox are betraying their public trust by carrying Clinton's water so slavishly. ..."
"... People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea ..."
"... Let's not forget the Clintons were the Democratic Party point people in causing the vast incarceration of black men while simultaneously gutting welfare for black mothers and their children. (Yay 3rd Way!) They were the point people for letting 300 million Chinese workers compete with American workers. They deregulated the banks. And was there a war she didn't like? ..."
"... If there's a populist politics in our future, it will have to have a much sharper edge. It can talk about growth, but it has to mean smashing the rich and taking their stuff. There's very rapidly going to come a point where there's no other option, other than just accepting cramdown by the authoritarian surveillance state built by the neoliberals. that's a much taller order than Sanders or Trump have been offering. ..."
I think all you've really shown is that blue-collar, less-educated people tend
to not know much about politics and to have the political attitudes of authoritarian followers
and Trump is willing to be demagogic enough to attract their attention as an alternative to the
status quo candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
"Trump is a racist and his followers are racist and that's all you need to know" is a narrative
thesis, like the narrative thesis that Trump is Putin's stooge, very convenient to Clinton's candidacy,
but ultimately corrosive to American politics and political discourse. It isn't a question
of whether statistics suggest racism is an efficient instrumental variable. It is a question of
whether this politics of invective and distraction is going anywhere good, could go anywhere good.
No one in these comment threads has been defending Trump or the political ignorance and resentments
of his supporters. Some of us have questioned the wisdom of a political tactic of treating them
as pariahs and dismissing their concerns and economic distress as fake or illegitimate.
The Clinton campaign has whipped up a high dudgeon about racism and Putin and how unsuited
Trump is, to be President. I don't disagree about the core conclusion: Trump does not seem to
me to be suited to be President. That's hardly a difficult judgment: an impulsive, self-promoting
reality teevee star with no experience of public office - hmmm, let me think about that for two
seconds. But, the high dudgeon serves other purposes, to which I object strongly.
Even though, and especially because Clinton is very likely to become President, her suitability
ought to be scrutinized. Not just boxed away as, "well, she is obviously better than
Trump so let's not even trouble our beautiful minds", when by the way it is not so obvious
as all that, as several commenters have tried to point out. People, who argue Trump might start
a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine
Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion
or the South China Sea.
Everything should not be about electing Clinton. Clinton's election is pretty much assured,
despite her deep flaws as a candidate of the center-left (to wit, her war-mongering and epic corruption
and economic conservatism). Pundits like Josh Marshall of TPM or Ezra Klein of Vox are betraying
their public trust by carrying Clinton's water so slavishly. Ezra may be gaining all important
access to the Clinton White House comparable to what he had in Obama's White House, but he spent
his credibility with his readers to get it. And, he's deprived his readers of the opportunity
to learn about issues of vital importance, like the TPP and corporate business power, or NATO
expansion and the relationship with Russia, or the swirling vortex forming in the Middle East
where American Empire is going down the drain of failed invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and
ill-conceived "alliances" with fundamentally hostile powers like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
I don't think these comment threads are a good place to campaign or advocate on the behalf
of any candidate. A modicum of advocacy might be welcome for the fodder it provides for reflective
rumination, but mirroring the Clinton campaign's themes seems to require systematic misreadings
of counter-argument and that has become disruptive. (RNB's volume and habitual tendentiousness
puts RNB into a special category in this regard.) There ought to be room in this discussions to
move the conversation to more of a meta-level, where we consider trends and dynamics without the
partisan's hyper-narrow focus.
@ 793 Hi Rich, that's a fair question. If memory serves, there were several very close calls under
Nixon more from errors in the 'fail safe' system. Nixon is a complicated amoral actor fairly obviously
guilty of some extremely serious crimes. He was not the only nasty actor at the time, however.
In the specific case you're describing, I don't think any president would have handled things
much differently. Russian missiles 90 miles from US soil during the cold war was unacceptable.
Many of our students have absolutely no idea of what life was like during the 20th century.
It's literally another world. The one we share today seems infinitely safer and more tolerant.
Cheers.
BW: "People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults
people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions
on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea."
Or, as Ian Welsh
points out, her position on Syria. She seems to have advocated for a no-fly zone in Syria after
Russia came in, which would presumably put us in the position of shooting down Russian warplanes
or having a good chance of doing so. Maybe if she does take on Kissinger as an advisor he'll tell
her that superpower conflicts have to be done through proxies or they're too dangerous.
For the larger question of whether these comment threads are a good place to campaign or advocate,
I sort of come down in a different place than you do. If these comment threads were about good-faith
argument, then sure this kind of advocacy might be bad, but I don't think that most people here
are capable of good-faith argument even if they were attempting it (most of the time they aren't
attempting it). In that case the comment threads serve an alternate purpose of seeing what kinds
of beliefs are out there, at least among the limited group of people likely to comment on CT threads.
Of course people can be kicked out if they habitually make the threads too difficult to moderate
(or really, for whatever other reason an OP decides on), but the well has long since been poisoned
and one more drop isn't really going to do much more damage.
T 08.13.16 at 9:13 pm
BW@798
Amen.
There's a reason the electorate hates both Trump and Clinton. This is what 40 years of two-party
neoliberism gives us: an unhinged demagogue or the point person for Democratic policies that have
systematically gutted the middle class, screwed the poor, increase inequality, slowed productivity,
caused multiple wars, and made them personally rich.
Let's not forget the Clintons were the Democratic Party point people in causing the vast
incarceration of black men while simultaneously gutting welfare for black mothers and their children.
(Yay 3rd Way!) They were the point people for letting 300 million Chinese workers compete with
American workers. They deregulated the banks. And was there a war she didn't like?
So Layman finds that the 80% of the Evangelicals that support Trump are racist. And so are
the white voters in manufacturing regions. (Excuse me. "Principally" racist.) And Layman's exact
counterpart on some unnamed right-wing site thinks all the blacks voting for HRC are in it for
the welfare and affirmative action. (Yes, your exact counterpart. Oh, and they, like you, would
say blacks are "principally" scammers cause, you know, there are other minor reasons to vote HRC.)
I take a different view. I think most voters are going to have the taste of vomit in the their
mouths when they pull the lever.
If there's a populist politics in our future, it will have to have a much sharper edge.
It can talk about growth, but it has to mean smashing the rich and taking their stuff. There's
very rapidly going to come a point where there's no other option, other than just accepting cramdown
by the authoritarian surveillance state built by the neoliberals. that's a much taller order than
Sanders or Trump have been offering.
Fit for inscription (keeps me smashingly awake after hundreds of comments :-))
The moral righteousness of identity politics adds in an element that goes
way beyond the lazy failure to hold politicians accountable or the tendency to explain away their
more Machiavellian maneuvers. There's both an actual blindness to the reactionary conservatism
of equal opportunity exploitation and a peremptory challenge to any other claim or analysis. If
police practices and procedures are trending in an authoritarian direction, they can only be challenged
on grounds of racist effect or intent. The authoritarianism cannot be challenged on its own merit,
so the building of the authoritarian state goes on unimpeded, since the principle that is challenged
is not authoritarianism, but a particular claim of racism or sexism.
So in the same week that the Justice Department report on the Baltimore police force comes
out, showing systematic police discrimination - e.g. lots of people stopped in black neighborhoods,
esp. two in particular, for petty reasons or no reason, versus very few people stopped in other
neighborhoods - bruce wilder informs us that identity politics somehow prevents us from criticizing
police behavior on grounds of authoritarianism, that it can only be criticized on grounds of racism
(or subconscious racial bias) - of course, that wd appear to be a main problem w police behavior
in Baltimore and some other places.
"... But if the alternative is to try and elect leaders from the centre who will do nothing to confront these great issues, and will instead cut spending, accept stagnation and wait for the next financial crisis, is it any wonder that many people would rather take their chance with someone different? ... ..."
"... Rather than celebrating the enthusiasm and interest of the many young people that have recently joined (even if they regard some of their aspirations as naive), and who will be vital in future election campaigns, this overtly anti-Corbyn group seem to regard them as a threat. ... ..."
We have not met, but I have talked to your former colleague Gordon a few times and I did some
academic work on his 5 tests for Euro entry. I saw a
report that you were mystified by the popularity of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders. I have
an
article today in The Independent that might help you understand your puzzle.
I know you find it strange that people that appear to you like those your predecessor Neil
Kinnock did battle with over the future of the Labour Party in the 1980s are now running the party.
It must also seem strange that in the US where socialism once seemed to be regarded as a perversion,
large numbers should be supporting a socialist candidate. You suggest some explanations, but you
do not mention the power of finance, inequality and the senselessness of austerity. You say that
these new leaders will not be electable. But if the alternative is to try and elect leaders
from the centre who will do nothing to confront these great issues, and will instead cut spending,
accept stagnation and wait for the next financial crisis, is it any wonder that many people would
rather take their chance with someone different? ...
There are many Labour MPs and left leaning journalists who seem to share your puzzlement, and
have decided that they have to fight again the battles of the 1980s by doing everything to undermine
their new Labour leadership. ...
Rather than celebrating the enthusiasm and interest of the many
young people that have recently joined (even if they regard some of their aspirations as naive),
and who will be vital in future election campaigns, this overtly anti-Corbyn group seem to regard
them as a threat. ...
Please tell them to stop. I fear they need someone they respect like you to point out the foolishness
of their actions.
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building a strike fund in advance. As we have seen recently from the West Virginia teachers strike, there is no substitute for militancy and organization. Strike headquarters was in Jesse Jenkins's saloon in Tascosa. Jenkins was sympathetic to the Greenback movement in Texas that eventually led to the formation of a party committed to a farmer-labor alliance that challenged the two-party system. As has generally been the case with militant labor struggles, the bourgeois press regarded the cowboys in much the same way that the West Virginia press viewed the teachers. The Las Vegas Gazette harrumphed that the strikers were "using unlawful means to compel their employers to grant their request" and added that the strikes "always result in evil and no good".
(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics )
For the last couple of years, employment growth has been falling on trend, by both measures. But currently, establishment-survey employment is growing at 1.6% per year, and household survey employment is growing at 1.0% per year. The latter number is a lot closer to 0.8%. The establishment survey is what it says - a survey of establishments. The household survey is a survey of people. The advantages of the establishment survey are that it covers a significant fraction of all establishments, and reporting errors are less likely - firms generally have a good idea how many people are on their payrolls. But, the household survey has broader coverage (includes the self-employed for example) of the population, and it's collected in a manner consistent with the unemployment and labor force participation data - that's all from the same survey. There's greater potential for measurement error in the household survey, as people can be confused by the questions they're asked. You can see that in the noise in the growth rate data in the chart.
This chart looks at the ratio of household-survey employment to establishment-survey employment. Over long periods of time, these two measures don't grow at the same rate, due to changes over time in the fraction of workers who are in establishments vs. those who are not. For long-run employment growth rates, you should put more weight on the household survey number (as this is a survey of the whole working-age population), provided of course that some measurement bias isn't creeping into the household survey numbers over time. Note that, since the recession, establishment-survey employment has been growing at a significantly higher rate than household-survey employment.
Here, focus on the last year. LFPR is little changed, increasing from 62.9% to 63.0%, and the same is true for EPOP, which increased from 59.8% to 60.0%. That looks like a labor market that has settled down, or is close to it.
So, by this measure the labor market is at its tightest since 2001. Job openings are plentiful relative to would-be workers.
In the chart, U3 is the conventional unemployment rate, and U6 includes marginally attached workers (those not in the labor force who may be receptive to working) and those employed part-time for economic reasons. The U3 measure is not so far, at 4.7%, from its previous trough of 4.4% in March 2007, while the gap between current U6, at 9.2% and its previous trough, at 7.9% in December 2006, is larger. Two caveats here: (i) How seriously we want to take U6 as a measure of unemployment is an open question. There are problems even with conventional unemployment measures, in that we do not measure the intensity of search - one person's unemployment is different from another's - and survey participants' understanding of the questions they are asked is problematic. The first issue is no worse a problem for U6 than for U3, but the second issue is assuredly worse. For example, it's not clear what "employed part time for economic reasons" means to the survey respondent, or what it should mean to the average economist. Active search, as measured in U3, has a clearer meaning from an economic point of view, than an expressed desire for something one does not have - non-satiation is ubiquitous in economic systems, and removing it is just not feasible. (ii) What's a normal level for U6? Maybe the U6 measure in December 2006 was undesirably low, due to what was going on in housing and mortgage markets.
This measure is still somewhat elevated relative to pre-recession times. However, if we look at short term unemployment (5 weeks or less), this is unusually low:
As well, the insured unemployment rate (those receiving unemployment insurance as a percentage of the labor force) is very low:
To collect UI requires having worked recently, so this reflects the fact that few people are being laid off - transitions from employment to unemployment are low.
According to standard Friedman Phillips-curve logic, we should see a negative correlation in the chart, but the correlation is essentially zero.
1 comment:
Avraam J Dectis March 21, 2017 at 7:58 AM
Eamonn Fingleton is an expert on America's trade problems and is the author of In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity (Houghton Mifflin, Boston). A version of this article appeared in the Dublin Ireland Sunday Business Post.
