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 labor and especially 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. Clinton's creation
of the "New labor" (read neoliberal stooges of Wall Street masked as Democratic Party) was
based on explicit betrayal or workers (" they have nowhere to go") . And for several election
cycles that was true.
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 crisis of neoliberal ideology, much like Prague spring signified the crisis
of Communist ideology. While there was some level of harassment, individual beatings of banksters in
2008 were non-existent.
You stated, "Let's also ignore the fact that the sons and grandsons of the unionised
postwar generation for the most part subsequently rejected blue collar work no matter what
the pay. This is a sign of decadence I will grant you, and I am guilty as charged. "
This canard doesn't hold up in the face of empirical evidence. One example: 20,000 waiting
in line for lousy warehouse jobs at Amazon. The fact is, open borders and illegal immigration
are NeoLiberal tactics to promote wage arbitrage. In California, those impacted the most by
illegal immigration are African Americans. Whole sectors, such as hotel maintenance and
janitorial service, had been unionized, and had principally employed black workers whose
salaries enabled them to move into the middle class. The hotel industry welcomed the influx
of illegal immigrants willing to work for drastically lower wages. Black workers were
replaced and the union destroyed. Unfortunately, many in the US and globally have been so
propagandized about illegal immigration that even mentioning illegal immigration gets one
falsely labeled racist. in the US, Democrats use illegal immigration as a "demographic
strategy," which enables Democrats to remain in power while remaining wholly loyal to Wall
Street and doing nothing to ameliorate the misery of the bottom 90%.
The key factor here is that the USA is a neoliberal state which means profits before people
and outsourcing to area with lower labor cost. Like leopard can't change its spots, neoliberalism
can't change it "free movement of goods and labor" principles, or it stop being
neoliberalism.
No jobs will come back to the USA as financial oligarchy is transnational body that uses the
USA military as an enforcer for their gang. It does not care one bit about the common people in
the USA.
Pause on the sound and fury for necessary precision. Even if the Trump administration slaps
25% tariffs on all Chinese exports to the US, the IMF has projected that would trim just a
meager slither – 0.55% – off China's GDP. And America is unlikely to profit,
because the extra tariffs won't bring back manufacturing jobs to the US – something that
Steve Jobs told Barack Obama eons ago.
What happens is that global supply chains will be redirected to economies that offer
comparative advantages in relation to China, such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cambodia
and Laos. And this redirection is already happening anyway – including by Chinese
companies.
BRI represents a massive geopolitical and financial investment by China, as well as its
partners; over 130 states and territories have signed on. Beijing is using its immense pool of
capital to make its own transition towards a consumer-based economy while advancing the
necessary pan-Eurasian infrastructure development – with all those ports, high-speed
rail, fiber optics, electrical grids expanding to most Global South latitudes.
The end result, up to 2049 – BRI's time span – will be the advent of an
integrated market of no less than 4.5 billion people, by that time with access to a Chinese
supply chain of high-tech exports as well as more prosaic consumer goods.
Anyone who has followed the nuts and bolts of the Chinese miracle launched by Little
Helmsman Deng Xiaoping in 1978 knows that Beijing is essentially exporting the mechanism that
led China's own 800 million citizens to, in a flash, become members of a global middle
class.
As much as the Trump administration may bet on "maximum pressure" to restrict or even block
Chinese access to whole sectors of the US market, what really matters is BRI's advance will be
able to generate multiple, extra US markets over the next two decades.
We don't do
'win-win'
There are no illusions in the Zhongnanhai, as there are no illusions in Tehran or in the
Kremlin. These three top actors of Eurasian integration have exhaustively studied how
Washington, in the 1990s, devastated Russia's post-USSR economy (until Putin engineered a
recovery) and how Washington has been trying to utterly destroy Iran for four decades.
Beijing, as well as Moscow and Tehran, know everything there is to know about Hybrid War,
which is an American intel concept. They know the ultimate strategic target of Hybrid War,
whatever the tactics, is social chaos and regime change.
The case of Brazil – a BRICS member like China and Russia – was even more
sophisticated: a Hybrid War initially crafted by NSA spying evolved into lawfare and regime
change via the ballot box. But it ended with mission accomplished – Brazil has been
reduced to the lowly status of an American neo-colony.
Let's remember an ancient mariner, the legendary Chinese Muslim Admiral Zheng He, who for
three decades, from 1405 to 1433, led seven expeditions across the seas all the way to Arabia
and Eastern Africa, reaching Champa, Borneo, Java, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Calicut, Hormuz,
Aden, Jeddah, Mogadiscio, Mombasa, bringing tons of goods to trade (silk, porcelain, silver,
cotton, iron tools, leather utensils).
That was the original Maritime Silk Road, progressing in parallel to Emperor Yong Le
establishing a Pax Sinica in Asia – with no need for colonies and religious proselytism.
But then the Ming dynasty retreated – and China was back to its agricultural vocation of
looking at itself.
They won't make the same mistake again. Even knowing that the current hegemon does not do
"win-win". Get ready for the real hardcore yet to come.
The Swine fever is sweeping china hog farms and since the start of 2019 200+ millions hogs
have been culled. Chinese hog production is down from 2016 high of 700 million to below 420
million by the end of the year. The fever is not under control.
Soybeans from Ukraine are unloaded at the port in Nantong, in eastern China. Imports of
soy used to come from the US, but have slumped since the trade war began. Should point out
that the Ukraine soy production matures at a different time of the year than the US soybean.
The USA planting season starts in Late april, may and june. Because of the harvest time
differences worldwide the USA supplies 80% of the late maturing soybeans needed by
October/Nov and December.
Perhaps this is one of the "casualties" ( https://www.rt.com/news/459355-us-austria-embassy-mcdonalds/
) of economic war given the significance of China and just how important it is to the U.S. in
it's purchases of $USD to maintain the illusion of it's reserve currency status and
"vigor"...
Surprised this didn't happen first at the U.S. Embassies in Russia and China?... Obviously
Ronald McDonald has turned into a charity of sorts helping out Uncle $am in his ailing
"health" these dayz!...
SUPER SIZE ME!... Cause I'm not lovin it anymore!... I'm needin it!!!!
I've never understood this "jobs aren't coming back" argument. Do you really think that it
will stop tariffs? They're happening. Better start preparing.
Oh, right, tariffs WILL bring back American jobs! Then why didn't the Administration
impose them fully in 2017? Why negotiate at all; just impose all the tariffs!?! lol
Pepe is correct as usual. Even if America tariffs the world the jobs aren't coming back as
corporations will be unable to turn profits in such a highly taxed country like America would
be. What could happen however is America can form an internal free market again going
isolationist with new home grown manufacturing.
You VERY obviously have ZERO knowledge of Chinas history and its discoveries/inventions
etc USED BY THE WEST.
I suggest that you keep your eyes open for "History Erased-China" on Y Tube. The series
shows what would happen in todays world if countries and their contributions to the world did
not happen.
As is usual, the headline economic number is always the
rosiest number .
Wages for production and nonsupervisory workers accelerated to a 3.4 percent annual pace,
signaling gains for lower-paid employees.
That sounds pretty good. Except for the part where it is a lie. For starters, it doesn't account for
inflation .
Labor Department numbers released Wednesday show that real average hourly earnings, which
compare the nominal rise in wages with the cost of living, rose 1.7 percent in January on a
year-over-year basis.
1.7% is a lot less than 3.4%. While the financial news was bullish, the
actual professionals took the news differently.
Wage inflation was also muted with average hourly earnings rising six cents, or 0.2% in April
after rising by the same margin in March. Average hourly earnings "were disappointing," said Ian Lyngen, head of U.S. rates strategy at
BMO Capital Markets in New York.
Secondly, 1.7% is an average, not a median.
For instance, none of this applied to you if you are an
older
worker .
Weekly earnings for workers aged 55 to 64 were only 0.8% higher in the first quarter of 2019
than they were in the first quarter of 2007, after accounting for inflation, they found.
For comparison, earnings rose 4.7% during that same period for workers between the ages of 35
and 54.
On the other hand, if you worked for a
bank your wages went up at a rate far above average. This goes double if you are in
management.
Among the biggest standouts: commercial banks, which employ an estimated 1.3 million people in
the U.S. Since Trump took office in January 2017, they have increased their average hourly wage
at an annualized pace of almost 11 percent, compared with just 3.3 percent under Obama.
Finally, there is the reason for this incredibly small wage increase fo regular workers.
Hint: it wasn't because of capitalism and all the bullsh*t jobs it creates.
The tiny wage increase that the working class has seen is because of what the capitalists said
was a
terrible idea .
For Americans living in the 21 states where the federal minimum wage is binding, inflation
means that the minimum wage has lost 16 percent of its purchasing power.
But elsewhere, many workers and employers are experiencing a minimum wage well above 2009
levels. That's because state capitols and, to an unprecedented degree, city halls have become
far more active in setting their own minimum wages. ... Averaging across all of these federal, state and local minimum wage laws, the effective minimum
wage in the United States -- the average minimum wage binding each hour of minimum wage work --
will be $11.80 an hour in 2019. Adjusted for inflation, this is probably the highest minimum
wage in American history. The effective minimum wage has not only outpaced inflation in recent years, but it has also
grown faster than typical wages. We can see this from the Kaitz index, which compares the
minimum wage with median overall wages.
So if you are waiting for capitalism to trickle down on you, it's never going to happen.
span y gjohnsit on Fri, 05/03/2019 - 6:21pm
Thousands of South Carolina teachers rallied outside their state capitol Wednesday, demanding
pay raises, more planning time, increased school funding -- and, in a twist, more legal
protections for their freedom of speech SC for Ed, the grassroots activist group that organized Wednesday's demonstration, told CNN
that many teachers fear protesting or speaking up about education issues, worrying they'll
face retaliation at work. Saani Perry, a teacher in Fort Mill, S.C., told CNN that people in
his profession are "expected to sit in the classroom and stay quiet and not speak [their]
mind."
To address these concerns, SC for Ed is lobbying for the Teachers' Freedom of Speech Act,
which was introduced earlier this year in the state House of Representatives. The bill would
specify that "a public school district may not willfully transfer, terminate or fail to renew
the contract of a teacher because the teacher has publicly or privately supported a public
policy decision of any kind." If that happens, teachers would be able to sue for three times
their salary.
Teachers across the country are raising similar concerns about retaliation. Such fears
aren't unfounded: Lawmakers in some states that saw strikes last year have introduced bills
this year that would punish educators for skipping school to protest.
Millennial and generation Z workers are becoming increasingly miserable with their jobs and careers. Since we are told several
times a day by the media that the economy is booming, why are so many young workers so disastrously melancholy all the time?
"When you're struggling with your mental health it can be much harder to stay in work or manage your spending, while being
in debt can cause huge stress and anxiety – so the two issues feed off each other, creating a vicious cycle which can destroy
lives," said Helen Undy the institute's chief executive.
"Yet despite how connected these problems are, financial services rarely think about our mental health, and mental health
services rarely consider what is happening with our money."
So why are we constantly being told everything is fine? The mainstream media loves to say that the U.S. is nearly ten years into
one of the longest economic expansions in history, unemployment is the lowest it's been in almost half a century, and employees have
more job choices than they've had in years. But there's just one problem. That's not actual truthful when taking all of the data
into consideration. Sure, unemployment is low the way the government calculates it, but there's a reason for that.
102 million Americans are no longer "in the workforce" and therefore, unaccounted for.
When a working-age American does not have a job, the federal number crunchers put them into one of two different categories.
Either they are categorized as "unemployed" or they are categorized as "not in the labor force".
But you have to add both of those categories together to get the total number of Americans that are not working.
Over the last decade, the number of Americans that are in the "unemployed" category has been steadily going down, but the number
of Americans "not in the labor force" has been rapidly going up.
In both cases we are talking about Americans that do not have a job. It is just a matter of how the federal government chooses
to categorize those individuals. –
Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog
That could partially explain the misery some are feeling, but those who have jobs aren't happy either. They are often reeling
from student loan and credit card debt. Being depressed makes shopping feel like a solution, but when the bill comes, the depression
once again sets in making this a difficult cycle to break for so many just trying to scrape by.
Depression and suicide rates are rising sharply
and other than putting the blame on superficial issues, researchers are at a loss as to the real reason why. But could it possibly
be that as the elite globalists continue to take over the world and enslave mankind, people are realizing that they aren't meant
to be controlled or manipulated, but meant to be free?
There's something we are all missing all around the globe. Could it possibly be free will and a life of freedom from theft and
violent coercion and force that's missing?
When even your own article lies to everyone... so the modern person that does well are those who lie the best and are the best
con artists. Trump is an example. Low talent High con.
Example the US unemployment number.
Only the pool of unemployed that is Presently eligible for unemployment benefits is counted in the Unemployment number. That
means self employed, commissioned workers, contractors etc are not included in the pool of unemployment even if they are out of
work because they are unemployment ineligible.
Thus, over time, as unemployment benefits are lost, the unemployment pool shrinks. This is called a mathematical regression.
How far does it shrink? To the point of equilibrium which is roughly 4% in which new persons enter the work force to the same
extent of those losing benefits and being removed and become invisible.
Thus, Unemployment is a bogus number grossly understating truthful Unemployment. This method was first used under Obama and
persists today under the Orange poser.
Nepotism and Affirmative action
Why would this make people unhappy? Chronic underemployment. Advancement is mostly by nepotism or affirmative action the flip
side of the same coin. The incoming Harvard Class this year was 30% legacy student... and 30% affirmative action and the rest
be damned. Happy?
Feminism has gripped the workplace.
Men hate working for female bosses. They don't trust them, they don't trust their judgment which often looks political and
never logical. Men feel those women were promoted because of gender.
I saw this years ago in a clean room at National Semiconductor. A woman was put in charge of a team of roughly 30 white nerd
males. She was at them constantly for not locking doors behind them and other menial infractions. She could not comprehend the
complexity of the work or how inspiration operates but she would nag them and bully them.
At another facility there was a genius that would come to work and set up a sleeping bag and go to sleep under his desk. He
was a Unix programmer and system engineer. So when something went wrong they would wake him and he would get up, solve the problem
and go back to sleep.
Then the overstuffed string of pearls showed up as the new unit boss. She was infuriated that somebody would dare sleep on
the clock and so blatantly. So she would harass him and wake him. Then one day she got so mad she started kicking him while he
was sleeping. He grabbed his sleeping bag and briefcase and stormed out.
Ultimately the woman's boss took her to task and explained to her that it didn't matter if that employee slept under his desk
because when he worked to solve problems only he could solve he saved the company millions. She was fired. As a token stipulation
the sleeping genius came back and a sign was posted on his desk. "Kicking this employee is grounds for immediate dismissal."
Usually the nerd walks and just gets replaced by some diversity politician and string of pearls then sets the tone by making
the workplace ****. Women simply are not as intelligent as men and pretending they are just wrecks morale of the people who are
really intelligent. The rise of the shoulder padded woman string of pearls bully is a scourge to one and all.
Simple answer: because people are spineless and terrible negotiators.
Long answer: for years the adage has been "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" or "find a good job and
never leave" or "work your way to the top" or "be a hard worker, trust your leadership, keep your head down, and don't make waves."
********.
If you do what you love, you'll learn to hate it. Welcome to misery.
Upward mobility doesn't happen unless you leave. If you're a good little productive worker drone, management has no incentive
to give you more than 1-3% raises every year to keep you 'loyal.' Once you've wasted 20 or so years being a robot, welcome to
misery.
Nobody gets promoted unless you're a useless ***-kisser who fails to be productive and hasn't done anything egregious enough
to get canned. Once you've been passed by for that promotion you want enough times, welcome to misery.
The people making the decisions at the top are the useless ***-kissers that can't do what you do but they talk a good game.
Most of them are case studies in the Peter Principle. Once you realize that the 'top' consists of nothing but fuckwads, welcome
to misery.
The only way to get ahead and get what you want out of a career is to develop the skills you need and market yourself top someone
who'll pay you what you're worth.
Develop strong negotiation skills early, know your market value, and don't be afraid of change.
Employer loyalty is a farce; if you think your employer is loyal to you, I've got some oceanfront property in New Mexico to
sell you.
The New York Times has an
illuminating article today summarizing recent research on the gender effects of
mandatory overwork in professional jobs. Lawyers, people in finance and other
client-centered occupations are increasingly required to be available round-the-clock, with
50-60 or more hours of work per week the norm. Among other costs, the impact on wage inequality
between men and women is severe. Since women are largely saddled with primary responsibility
for child care, even when couples ostensibly embrace equality on a theoretical level, the
workaholic jobs are allocated to men. This shows up in dramatic differences between typical
male and female career paths. The article doesn't discuss comparable issues in working class
employment, but availability for last-minute changes in work schedules and similar demands are
likely to impact men and women differentially as well.
What the article doesn't point out is that the situation it describes is a classic prisoners
dilemma.* Consider law firms. They compete for clients, and clients prefer attorneys who are
available on call, always prepared and willing to adjust to whatever schedule the client throws
at them. Assume that most lawyers want sane, predictable work hours if they are offered without
a severe penalty in pay. If law firms care about the well-being of their employees but also
about profits, we have all the ingredients to construct a standard PD payoff matrix:
There is a penalty to unilateral cooperation, cutting work hours back to a work-life balance
level. If your firm does it and the others don't, you lose clients to them.
There is a benefit to unilateral defection. If everyone else is cutting hours but you don't,
you scoop up the lion's share of the clients.
Mutual cooperation is preferred to mutual defection. Law firms, we are assuming, would
prefer a world in which overwork was removed from the contest for competitive advantage. They
would compete for clients as before, but none would require their staff to put in soul-crushing
hours. The alternative equilibrium, in which competition is still on the basis of the quality
of work but everyone is on call 24/7 is inferior.
If the game is played once, mutual defection dominates. If it is played repeatedly there is
a possibility for mutual cooperation to establish itself, but only under favorable conditions
(which apparently don't exist in the world of NY law firms). The logical solution is some
form of binding regulation.
The reason for bringing this up is that it strengthens the case for collective action rather
than placing all the responsibility on individuals caught in the system, including for that
matter individual law firms. Or, the responsibility is political, to demand constraints on the
entire industry. One place to start would be something like France's
right-to-disconnect law .
*I haven't read the studies by economists and sociologists cited in the article, but I
suspect many of them make the same point I'm making here.
The neoliberal war on labor in the USA is real. And it is especially real for It folk over 50. No country for the old
men, so to speak...
Notable quotes:
"... Obviously you need a financial cushion to not be earning for months and to pay for the training courses. ..."
"... Yeah, people get set in their ways and resistant to make changes. Steve Jobs talked about people developing grooves in their brain and how important it is to force yourself out of these grooves.* ..."
"... Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them. ..."
"... The brain is like a muscle, it needs to be constantly worked to become strong. If you waste it watching football or looking at porn your brain will atrophy like the muscles of a person in a wheelchair. ..."
"... IBEW (licensed electricians) has no upper age limit for apprentices They have lots of American engineers who applied in their 30s after realizing most companies want diverse HI-B engineers. ..."
"... At 40+, I still can learn advanced mathematics as well as I ever did. In fact, I can still compete with the Chinese 20 year olds. The problem is not mental horsepower, it's time and energy. I rarely have time to concentrate these days (wife, kids, pets), which makes it hard to get the solid hours of prime mental time required to really push yourself at a hard pace and learn advanced material. ..."
"... That's a huge key and I discovered it when I was asked to tutor people who were failing chemistry. I quickly discovered that all it took for most of them to "get it" was to keep approaching the problem from different angles until a light came on for them and for me the challenge of finding the right approach was a great motivator. Invariably it was some minor issue and once they overcame that, it became easy for them. I'm still astonished at that to this day. ..."
"... Sorry man, English teaching is huge, and will remain so for some time to come. I'm heavily involved in the area and know plenty of ESL teachers. Spain for me, and the level of English here is still so dreadful and they all need it, the demand is staggering and their schools suck at teaching it themselves. ..."
"... You have to really dislike your circumstances in the US to leave and be willing to find some way to get by overseas. ..."
"... We already saw this in South Africa. Mandela took over, the country went down the tubes, the wealthy whites left and the Boers were left to die in refugee camps. They WANT to leave and a few went to Russia, but most developed countries don't want them. Not with the limited amount of money they have. ..."
"... Americans are mostly ignorant to the fact that they live in a 2nd world country except for blacks and rednecks I have met in the Philippines who were stationed there in the military and have a $1000 a month check. Many of them live in more dangerous and dirty internal third worlds in America than what they can have in Southeast Asia and a good many would be homeless. They are worldly enough to leave. ..."
" He's 28 years old getting too old and soft for the entry-level grunt work in the
skilled trades as well. What then?"
I know a UK guy (ex City type) who retrained as an electrician in his early 50s.
Competent guy. Obviously no one would take him on as an apprentice, so he wired up all his
outbuildings as his project to get his certificate. But he's getting work now, word gets
around if you're any good.
Obviously you need a financial cushion to not be earning for months and to pay for the
training courses.
Yeah, people get set in their ways and resistant to make changes. Steve Jobs talked about
people developing grooves in their brain and how important it is to force yourself out of
these grooves.*
I know a Haitian immigrant without a college degree who was working three jobs and then
dropped down to two jobs and went to school part time in his late 40's and earned his degree
in engineering and is a now an engineer in his early 50's.
*From Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Simon and Schuster, 2011), pp.330-331:
"It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something
amazing," Jobs said wistfully to the writer David Sheff, who published a long and intimate
interview in Playboy the month he turned thirty. "Of course, there are some people who are
innately curious, forever little kids in their awe of life, but they're rare." The
interview touched on many subjects, but Jobs's most poignant ruminations were about growing
old and facing the future:
Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really
etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like
grooves in a record, and they never get out of them.
I'll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I'll sort of
have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a
tapestry. There may be a few years when I'm not there, but I'll always come back. . .
.
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look
back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and
throw them away.
The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to
continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, "Bye. I have to
go. I'm going crazy and I'm getting out of here." And they go and hibernate somewhere.
Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently.
"fluid intelligence" starts crystallizing after your 20's". Nonsense, I had
a great deal of trouble learning anything from my teen years and 20's because I didn't know
how to learn. I went for 30 years and eventually figured out a learning style that worked for
me. I have learned more and mastered more skills in the past ten years ages 49-59 than I had
in the previous 30.
You can challenge yourself like I did and after a while of doing this (6 months) you will
find it a lot easier to learn and comprehend than you did previously. (This is true only if
you haven't damaged your brain from years of smoking and drinking). I constantly challenged
myself with trying to learn math that I had trouble with in school and eventually mastered
it.
The brain is like a muscle, it needs to be constantly worked to become strong. If you waste it watching football or looking at porn your brain will atrophy like the
muscles of a person in a wheelchair.
IBEW (licensed electricians) has no upper age limit for apprentices They have lots of
American engineers who applied in their 30s after realizing most companies want diverse HI-B
engineers.
Upper age limits for almost every occupation disappeared decades ago in America because of
age discrimination laws.
I can't see how any 28 year old could possibly be too soft to go into any kind of manual
labor job.
@anonymous
Yeah, there was a recent study showing that 70 year olds can form neural connections as
quickly as teenagers.
At 40+, I still can learn advanced mathematics as well as I ever did. In fact, I can still
compete with the Chinese 20 year olds. The problem is not mental horsepower, it's time and
energy. I rarely have time to concentrate these days (wife, kids, pets), which makes it hard
to get the solid hours of prime mental time required to really push yourself at a hard pace
and learn advanced material.
This is why the Chinese are basically out of date when they are 30, their companies assume
that they have kids and are not able to give 110% anymore.
eventually figured out a learning style that worked for me.
That's a huge key and I discovered it when I was asked to tutor people who were failing
chemistry. I quickly discovered that all it took for most of them to "get it" was to keep
approaching the problem from different angles until a light came on for them and for me the
challenge of finding the right approach was a great motivator. Invariably it was some minor
issue and once they overcame that, it became easy for them. I'm still astonished at that to
this day.
The brain is like a muscle, it needs to be constantly worked to become strong. If you
waste it watching football or looking at porn your brain will atrophy like the muscles of a
person in a wheelchair.
Yeah. He's 28 years old and apparently his chosen skillset is teaching
EASL in foreign countries. That sector is shrinking as English becomes the global lingua
franca and is taught in elementary schools worldwide. He's really too old and soft for his
Plan B (military), and getting too old and soft for the entry-level grunt work in the skilled
trades as well. What then?
do you know anything first hand about the teaching- english- as-a- second- language
hustle?
Asking sincerely – as I don't know anything about it. However I kinda suspect that
'native speakers' will be in demand in many parts of the globe for some time to come [as an
aside – and maybe Linh has written of this and I missed it – but last spring I
was in Saigon for a couple of weeks and, hanging out one day at the zoo & museum complex,
was startled to see about three groups of Vietnamese primary-school students being led around
by americans in their early 20s, narrating everything in american english . Apparently
private schools offering entirely english-language curriculum are the big hit with the middle
& upper class elite there. Perhaps more of the same elsewhere in the region?]
At any rate the young man in this interview has a lot more in the way of qualifications
and skill sets than I had when I left the States 35 years ago, and I've done just fine. I'd
advise any prospective expats to get that TEFL certificate as it's one extra thing to have in
your back pocket and who knows?
PS: "It really can't be overstated how blessed you are to have American citizenship"
– well, yes it can. Everyone knows that the best passport on earth is from Northwest Euroland, one of those places with free university education and free health care and where
teenage mothers don't daily keel over dead from heroin overdoses in Dollar Stores .. Also
more places visa-free
When
you left the States 35 years ago, the world was 3 billion people smaller. The labor market
has gotten a tad more competitive. I don't see any indication of a trade or other refined
skillset in this article.
People who teach EASL for a living are like people who drive cars for a living: you don't
do it because you're really good at teaching your native language, you do it because
you're not marketable at anything else.
I think being Australian is the best citizenry you can have. The country is far from
perfect, but any lower middle class American white like myself would prefer to be lower
middle class there than in Detroit or Phoenix, where being lower income means life around the
unfettered urban underclass that is paranoia inducing.
Being from the US is not as bad as being Bangladeshi, but if you had to be white and urban
and poor you'd be better off in Sydney than Flint.
The most patriotic Americans have never been anywhere, so they have no idea whether
Australia or Tokyo are better. They have never traveled.
Yeah. He's 28 years old and apparently his chosen skillset is teaching
EASL in foreign countries. That sector is shrinking as English becomes the global lingua
franca and is taught in elementary schools worldwide. He's really too old and soft for his
Plan B (military), and getting too old and soft for the entry-level grunt work in the skilled
trades as well. What then?
do you know anything first hand about the teaching- english- as-a- second- language
hustle?
Asking sincerely – as I don't know anything about it. However I kinda suspect that
'native speakers' will be in demand in many parts of the globe for some time to come [as an
aside – and maybe Linh has written of this and I missed it – but last spring I
was in Saigon for a couple of weeks and, hanging out one day at the zoo & museum complex,
was startled to see about three groups of Vietnamese primary-school students being led around
by americans in their early 20s, narrating everything in american english .
Apparently private schools offering entirely english-language curriculum are the big hit
with the middle & upper class elite there. Perhaps more of the same elsewhere in the
region?]
At any rate the young man in this interview has a lot more in the way of qualifications
and skill sets than I had when I left the States 35 years ago, and I've done just fine. I'd
advise any prospective expats to get that TEFL certificate as it's one extra thing to have in
your back pocket and who knows?
ps: "It really can't be overstated how blessed you are to have American citizenship"
– well, yes it can. Everyone knows that the best passport on earth is from Northwest
Euroland, one of those places with free university education and free health care and where
teenage mothers don't daily keel over dead from heroin overdoses in Dollar Stores ..
People who teach EASL for a living are like people who drive cars for a
living: you don't do it because you're really good at teaching your native language, you do
it because you're not marketable at anything else.
well that's the beauty of it: you don't have to be good at anything other than just being
a native speaker to succeed as an EASL teacher, and thousands more potential customers are
born every day. I'd definitely advise any potential expats to become accomplished, and, even
better, qualified, in as many trades as possible. But imho the real key to success as a long
term expat is your mindset: determination and will-power to survive no matter what. If you
really want to break out of the States and see the world, and don't have inherited wealth,
you will be forced to rely on your wits and good luck and seize the opportunities that arise,
whatever those opportunities may be.
Sorry man, English teaching is huge, and will remain so for some time to
come. I'm heavily involved in the area and know plenty of ESL teachers. Spain for me, and the
level of English here is still so dreadful and they all need it, the demand is staggering and
their schools suck at teaching it themselves.
You are one of those people who just like to shit on things:) and people make a lot of
money out of it, not everyone of course, like any area. But it's perfectly viable and good to
go for a long time yet. It's exactly that English is the lingua Franca that people need to be
at a high level of it. The Chinese market is still massive. The bag packer esl teachers are
the ones that give off this stigma, and 'bag packer' and 'traveller' are by now very much
regarded as dirty words in the ESL world.
Most Americans lack the initiative to move anywhere. Most will complain but will never
leave the street they were born on. Urban whites are used to adaptation being around other
cultures anyhow and being somewhat street smart, but the poor rural whites in the exurbs or
sticks whose live would really improve if they got the hell out of America will never move
anywhere.
You have to really dislike your circumstances in the US to leave and be willing to find
some way to get by overseas.
Lots of people will talk about leaving America without having a clue as to how hard this
is to actually do. Australia and New Zealand are not crying out for white proles with high
school education or GED. It is much more difficult to move overseas and stay overseas than
most Americans think.
Except of course for the ruling elite. And that is because five-star hotels look the same
everywhere and money is an international language.
We already saw this in South Africa. Mandela took over, the country went down the tubes,
the wealthy whites left and the Boers were left to die in refugee camps. They WANT to leave
and a few went to Russia, but most developed countries don't want them. Not with the limited
amount of money they have.
Australia and NZ would rather have refugees than white people in dire circumstances.
Even immigrating to Canada, a country that I worked in, is much much harder than anyone
imagines.
Americans are mostly ignorant to the fact that they live in a 2nd world country except for
blacks and rednecks I have met in the Philippines who were stationed there in the military
and have a $1000 a month check. Many of them live in more dangerous and dirty internal third
worlds in America than what they can have in Southeast Asia and a good many would be
homeless. They are worldly enough to leave.
But most Americans whose lives would be vastly improved overseas think they are living in
the greatest country on earth.
"... The divisions can always be jacked up. "My opponent is a white nationalist!" and so he doesn't just think you're lazy, he wants to kill you. Convince average Americans to vote against their own interests by manipulating them into opposing any program that might benefit black and brown equally or more than themselves. ..."
"... Listen for what's missing in the speeches about inequality and injustice. Whichever candidate admits that we've created an apartheid of dollars for all deserves your support. ..."
The birth lottery determines which of those three bands we'll sink or swim together in,
because there is precious little mobility. In that bottom band,
81 percent face flat or falling net worths (
40 percent of Americans make below $15
an hour) and so aren't going anywhere. Education, once a vehicle, is now mostly a tool for the
preservation of current statuses across
generations, to the point that it's worth paying bribes for. Class is sticky.
Money, not so much. Since the 9.9 percent have the most (except for the super wealthy at
least), they have the most to lose. At their
peak in the mid-1980s, the managers and technicians in this group held 35 percent of the
nation's wealth. Three decades later, that fell 12 percent,
exactly as much as the wealth of the 1 percent rose. A significant redistribution of wealth
-- upwards -- took place following the 2008 market collapse, as bailouts, shorts,
repossessions, and new laws helped the top end of the economy at cost to the bottom. What some
label hardships are to others business opportunities.
The people at the top are throwing nails off the back of the truck to make sure no one else
can catch up with them. There is a strong zero sum element to all this. The goal is to
eliminate the competition
. They'll have it all when society is down to two classes, the 1 percent and the 99 percent,
and at that point we'll all be effectively the same color. The CEO of JP Morgan
called it a bifurcated economy. Historians will recognize it as feudalism.
You'd think someone would sound a global climate change-level alarm about all this. Instead
we divide people into
tribes and make them afraid of each other by forcing competition for limited resources like
health care. Identity politics sharpens
the lines, recognizing increasingly smaller separations, like adding letters to LGBTQQIAAP.
Failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, herself with presidential ambitions,
is an example of the loud voices demanding
more division . Contrast that with early model Barack Obama at the 2004 Democratic National
Convention, who pleaded, "There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and
Asian America; there's the United States of America."
The divisions can always be jacked up. "My opponent is a white nationalist!" and so he
doesn't just think you're lazy, he wants to kill you. Convince average Americans to vote
against their own interests by manipulating them into opposing any program that might benefit
black and brown equally or more than themselves. Keep the groups fighting left and right and
they'll never notice the real discrimination is up and down, even as massive economic forces
consume all equally. Consumption becomes literal as Americans die from alcohol, drugs, and
suicide in record numbers
.
Meanwhile, no one has caught on to the fact that identity politics is a marketing tool for
votes, fruit flavored vape to bring in the kiddies. Keep that in mind as you listen to the
opening cries of the 2020 election. Listen for what's missing in the speeches about inequality
and injustice. Whichever candidate admits that we've created an apartheid of dollars for all
deserves your support.
** The author doesn't really drive for Uber but his conversation with the Spaniard was
real.
Mr Van Buren. This piece nails it. The Democrats made a huge mistake focusing on race and
LGBTQ instead of class. Their stated goal should be to replace race based affirmative action
with class-based programs.
If there is serious violence coming to America it will come during the next major
recession/financial crisis. The ARs will come out of the closet when, during the next
financial crisis, the elites are bailed out (again), yet the riff raff lose their homes and
pickups to foreclosure.
I am very pessimistic in this area. I believe the elites, in general, are agnostic to SJW
issues, abortion, job loss, BLM, religious liberty, and on and on. The look at the riff raff
with amusement, sparring over such trivial things. Meanwhile, the river of cash keeps flowing
to their bank accounts.
Imagine if the digital transfer of money was abolished. Imagine if everybody had to have
their money in a local bank instead of in an investment account of a major bank. Imagine if
Americans saw, day after day, armored vehicles showing up at local banks to offload sacks of
currency that went to only a few individual accounts held by the very rich.
Instead, the elites receive their financial statements showing an ever increasing hoard of
cash at their disposal. They see it, but nobody else does. However, if everybody saw the
river of wealth flowing to the elites, I believe things would change. Fast. Right now this
transfer of wealth is all digital, hidden from the view of 99.99% of Americans and the IRS.
And the elites, the banking industry, and the wealth management cabal prefer it that way.
It's easy to propose the ultimate goal of the elites is to have a utopian society to
themselves, where the only interaction they have with the riff raff is with subservient
technicians keeping it all running. Like the movie Elysium.
When feudalism comes to America, it will be justified by Libertarianism. With government
defined as the bad guy, there's nothing to stop the 1% from organizing everything to their
own benefit.
On the other side of the political spectrum, identity politics emphasizes people's
differences and tribal affiliations over their shared citizenship. This prevents them from
making common cause.
Fundamentally, these trends make the body politic so weak that it becomes susceptible to
takeover by authoritarians that represent narrow interests.
"His skin was clearly a few shades darker than mine, though he pointed out that was only
because my relatives came from the cold part of Europe and he came from the sunny part."
The Spanish in Europe got their color from the Moorish invasion, not the sun.
More of my annoying trivia that has little to do with the subject of an article.
Welp, the Democratic Party, by and large, believes all Americans regardless of class, race,
religion, and gender should have guaranteed equal access to affordable healthcare, a
substantial minimum wage, education and the rest.
Stacy Abrams wants these items too, along with equal access to the voting franchise.
"Until slavery was ended in the United States, human beings were legally considered
capital, just like owning stocks and bonds today. But the Spaniard knew enough about history
to wonder what reparations would be offered to the thousands of Chinese treated as animals to
build the railroads or the 8,000 Irish who died digging the New Basin Canal or the whole
families of Jews living on the Lower East Side of New York who were forced to employ their
children to make clothing for uptown "white" stores. Later in the same century, wages were
"voluntarily" cut to the bone at factories in Ohio to save jobs that disappeared anyway after
the owners had wrung out the last profits."
That would be an excellent point if your inner Spaniard concluded reparations should be
offered to the others as well, but ends up being merely tendentious if he contends that no
one gets reparations.
But will you like it if the Democratic Party makes that part of their platform too?
I was born in Middletown, Ohio alongside the elegiacal hillbillies, who, by the way,
didn't care for the blacks on the other side of the tracks anymore than my Armco-employed
grandfather did, and certainly the business owners who disappeared the jobs and cut wages
while voting for the so-called free traders were of the same ilk.
I didn't know any Democrats among any of my family's circle and, by the way, Middletown
might as well have been south of the Mason Dixon anyway for all the white Democrats in town
who gave not a crap about their fellow black citizens, certainly not the business owners who
disappeared the jobs while voting for the so-called free traders.
It was the Republican Party (Larry Kudlow, I'm gunning for you) who championed creative
destruction and the red tooth and claw of unfettered worldwide competition without asking, in
fact jumping for joy, what the unintended consequences would be because the consequences were
intended smash the unions for all, cut wages and benefits and hand the booty to shareholders,
move operations to lower-tax, lower wage, environmentally unregulated parts of the globe to
manufacture them thar high margin MAGA hats for the aggrieved.
What a beautiful grift!
Hello, Marianas.
That Democrats jumped on the bandwagon is no credit to them, especially while assuming the
prone position as the republican party frayed the safety net.
True, the republicans laid off everyone, regardless of race, gender, and class and then
cut everyone's benefits.
As the Spaniard rightly understood, one can look way back into our history and see that the
moneyed class has always used identity politics in economic control games to divide and
conquer. That the Republicans rail on this as some evil creation of the modern Democrat is
laughable at best. That the sheep who follow the party mouth pieces of the moneyed class in
this media age can still be so easily manipulated is rather pitiful. Making common cause for
the general welfare has never really sunk in as an American value.
Divide and conquer remains our true ethos. As the dole gets evermore paltry the only
seeming options remaining are common cause for a common good or greater violence. One
requires us to find a contentment beyond the delusional American dream of becoming that 1 to
10%. The other just requires continued anger, division and despair.
Ironically the view that race/culture isn't at all important and should be disregarded in
view of the class division (a "distraction"), is pretty much endorsing the classic Marxist
critique.
It's easy to notice divide and conquer when it's hate against those of the same class but are
of a different culture/race.
But what's *difficult* to notice is identifying with the elites of your race in a positive
way.
A lot of people, especially with the onset of realityTV, tend to think rich people are just
like them (albeit a little smarter). The methods and systems to keep power aren't considered.
They're made non-threatening. So many billionaires and politicians act effete today to stoke
this image.
" Whether your housing is subsidized via a mortgage tax deduction "
This jumped off the screen. I wonder how many people even realize that. Probably the same
number who still believe that social security is a "forced savings".
Not to put too fine a point on it but clearly we are wasting our time arguing. As long as the
current system of government remains in effect it will be same old same old.
Many changes are in order–starting with this archaic remnant of a bygone era called
"The Two Party System".
Spaniards are indeed Hispanic. The definition of Hispanic relates to a linguistic grouping
– that is, relating to Spain or Spanish speaking countries. Your friend would indeed
qualify for all sorts of preferences according to the definition.
As to being a POC, I could not locate any definition as to what threshold of skin tone
qualifies someone as a POC. I wager none yet exists but will be forthcoming.
Johann
As for the skin tone of Spaniards, many in the south have the Moorish influence,however,
in the rest of the country skin tones range from light beige to very fair. Rather similar to
Italians, actually.
First, kudos to Van Buren for getting a Seamless delivery while driving. That's not easy to
coordinate. Second, I look forward to more conservative policies addressing poverty, drug
addiction and access to health care. This article adds to the 10-year rant against what
Democrats have done or want to do.
Like nearly every Republican of the last 10 years, Van Buren offers none here. But I'm
sure once the complaining is out of his system, they will arrive.
Your Spaniard friend also has it all wrong. The real division line is between those willing
to initiate coercion for their own self-righteousness and those who refuse to. Anyone that
supports government is one-in-the-same, regardless of color or class.
Thirty years ago I'd be asking who printed the canned response pamphlet to give prepared
talking points to enable anyone to provide quick sharp tongued witty criticisms of anything
they may encounter that didn't tow the party line.
Now I gotta ask where do I download the Trollware to accomplish the same thing.
The Moors were a tiny class of invaders who left rather little imprint on the Spanish genome.
That was true of the Romans and the Goths as well. Spanish genes are mostly the genes of the
pre-Roman population: the Iberians in the south (who maybe migrated from North Africa), Celts
in the north, and the indigenous Basques along the Pyrenees.
What happened to "a rising tide lifts all boats"? We've been promised for decades that the
wealth generated by those at the very top would "trickle down." This was a cornerstone of
Reaganism that has been parroted ever since.
There have been naysayers who say that that theory was fantasy and that all we would have
is increased wealth disparity and greater national deficits.
"... Yang promises a universal entitlement, not dependent on income, that he calls a "freedom dividend." To be funded through a value added tax , Yang claims that it would reduce the strain on "health care, incarceration, homeless services, and the like" and actually save billions of dollars. Yang also notes that "current welfare and social program beneficiaries would be given a choice between their current benefits or $1,000 cash unconditionally." ..."
"... Yang is justifying the need for such a program because of automation . Again, VDARE.com has been exploring how automation may necessitate such a program for many years . Yang also discussed this problem on Tucker Carlson's show , which alone shows he is more open to real discussion than many progressive activists. ..."
"... Indeed, journalists, hall monitors that they are, have recognized that President Trump's online supporters are flocking to Yang, bringing him a powerful weapon in the meme wars. ..."
"... it is ominous for Trump that many of the more creative and dedicated people who formed his vanguard are giving up on him. ..."
Yang is a businessman who has worked in several fields, but was best known for founding
Venture for America , which helps college graduates become entrepreneurs.
However, he is now gaining recognition for his signature campaign promise -- $1,000 a month for every American.
Yang promises a
universal entitlement, not dependent on income, that he calls a "freedom dividend." To be funded through a
value added tax , Yang claims that it would
reduce the strain on "health care, incarceration, homeless services, and the like" and actually save billions of dollars. Yang also
notes
that "current welfare and social program beneficiaries would be given a choice between their current benefits or $1,000 cash unconditionally."
As Yang himself notes, this is not a new idea, nor one particularly tied to the Left. Indeed, it's been proposed by several prominent
libertarians because it would replace the far more inefficient welfare system.
Charles Murray called for
this policy in 2016. [ A
guaranteed income for every American, AEI, June 3, 2016]
Milton
Friedman suggested a similar policy in a 1968 interview with William F. Buckley, though
Friedman called it a
"negative income tax."
It's also been proposed by many nationalists, including, well, me. At the January 2013 VDARE.com Webinar, I
called for a "straight-up minimum income for citizens only" among other policies that would build a new nationalist majority
and deconstruct Leftist power. I've
retained that belief ever since and argued for it here for years.
However, I've also made the argument that it only works if it is for
citizens
only and is combined with a restrictive immigration policy. As I previously
argued in a piece attacking Jacobin'sdisingenuous
complaints about the "reserve army of the unemployed," you simply can't support high wages, workers' rights, and a universal
basic income while still demanding mass immigration.
Yang is also directly addressing the crises that the Trump Administration has seemly forgotten. Unlike Donald Trump himself, with
his endless boasting about "low black and Hispanic unemployment," Yang
has directly spoken about the demographic
collapse of white people because of "low birth rates and white men dying from
substance
abuse and suicide ."
Significantly, President Trump himself has never once specifically recognized the plight of white Americans.
...He wants to make
Puerto Rico a state . He
supports a path to citizenship for illegal
aliens, albeit with an 18-year waiting period and combined with
pledges to secure the border
and deport illegals who don't enroll in the citizenship program. He
wants to create a massive bureaucratic system to track
gun owners, restrict
gun ownership , and require various "training" programs for licenses. He wants to
subsidize local journalists with taxpayer
dollars...
... ... ...
Indeed, journalists, hall monitors that they are, have recognized that President Trump's online supporters are flocking to
Yang, bringing him a powerful weapon in the meme wars. (Sample meme at right.) And because many of these online activists are
"far right" by Main Stream Media standards, or at least Politically Incorrect, there is much hand-waving and wrist-flapping about
the need for Yang to decry "white nationalists." So of course, the candidate has dutifully done so, claiming "racism and white nationalism
[are] a threat to the core ideals of what it means to be an American". [
Presidential candidate
Andrew Yang has a meme problem, by Russell Brandom, The Verge, March 9, 2019]
But what does it mean to be an American? As more and more of American history is described as racist, and even national
symbols and the national anthem are targets for protest, "America" certainly doesn't seem like a real country with a real identity.
Increasingly, "America" resembles a continent-sized shopping mall, with nothing holding together the warring tribes that occupy it
except money.
President Trump, of course, was elected because many people thought he could reverse this process, especially by limiting mass
immigration and taking strong action in the culture wars, for example by promoting official English. Yet in recent weeks, he has
repeatedly endorsed more legal immigration. Rather than fighting, the president is content to brag about the economy and whine about
unfair press coverage and investigations. He already seems like a lame duck.
The worst part of all of this is that President Trump was elected as a response not just to the Left, but to the failed Conservative
Establishment. During the 2016 campaign, President Trump specifically
pledged to protect
entitlements , decried foreign wars, and argued for a massive infrastructure plan. However, once in office, his main legislative
accomplishment is a tax cut any other Republican president would have pushed. Similarly, his latest budget contains the kinds of
entitlement cuts that are guaranteed to provoke Democrat attack ads. [
Trump said he wouldn't cut Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare . His 2020 budget cuts all 3, by Tara
Golshan, Vox, March 12, 2019] And the president has already backed down on withdrawing all troops from Syria, never mind Afghanistan.
Conservatism Inc., having learned nothing from candidate Donald Trump's scorched-earth path to the Republican nomination, now
embraces Trump as a man but ignores his campaign message. Instead, the conservative movement is still promoting the same tired slogans
about "free markets" even as they have appear to have lost an
entire
generation to socialism. The most iconic moment was Charlie Kirk, head of the free market activist group Turning Point USA, desperately
trying to tell his followers not to cheer for Tucker Carlson because
Carlson had suggested a nation should be treated like a
family, not simply a marketplace .
Thus, especially because of his cowardice on immigration, many of President Trump's most fervent online supporters have turned
on him in recent weeks. And the embrace of Yang seems to come out of a great place of despair, a sense that the country really is
beyond saving.
Yang has Leftist policies on many issues, but many disillusioned Trump supporters feel like those policies are coming anyway.
If America is just an economy, and if everyone in the world is a simply an American-in-waiting, white Americans might as well get
something out of this System before the bones are picked clean.
National Review ' s Theodore Kupfer just claimed the main importance of Yang's candidacy is that it will prove meme-makers
ability to affect the vote count "has been overstated" [
Rise of the pink hats,
March 12, 2019].
Time will tell, but it is ominous for Trump that many of the more creative and dedicated people who formed his vanguard
are giving up on him.
"... Buying beautiful clothes at full retail price was not a part of my childhood and it is not a part of my life now. It felt more illicit and more pleasurable than buying drugs. It was like buying drugs and doing the drugs, simultaneously."" ..."
"... "Erie Locomotive Plant Workers Strike against Two-Tier" [ Labor Notes ]. "UE proposed keeping the terms of the existing collective bargaining agreement in place while negotiating a new contract, but Wabtec rejected that proposal. Instead it said it would impose a two-tier pay system that would pay new hires and recalled employees up to 38 percent less in wages, institute mandatory overtime, reorganize job classifications, and hire temporary workers for up to 20 percent of the plant's jobs. ..."
"... Workers voted on Saturday to authorize the strike." • Good. Two-tier is awful, wherever found (including Social Security). ..."
"[S]hopping with T was different. When she walked into a store, the employees greeted her by name and began to
pull items from the racks for her to try on. Riding her coattails, I was treated with the same consideration, which is how I
wound up owning a beautiful cashmere 3.1 Philip Lim sweater that I had no use for and rarely wore, and which was eventually
eaten by moths in my closet.
Buying beautiful clothes at full retail price was not a part of my childhood and it is not a part of my life now. It
felt more illicit and more pleasurable than buying drugs. It was like buying drugs and doing the drugs, simultaneously.""
"Erie Locomotive Plant Workers Strike against Two-Tier" [
Labor
Notes ]. "UE proposed keeping the terms of the existing collective bargaining agreement in
place while negotiating a new contract, but Wabtec rejected that proposal. Instead it said it
would impose a two-tier pay system that would pay new hires and recalled employees up to 38
percent less in wages, institute mandatory overtime, reorganize job classifications, and hire
temporary workers for up to 20 percent of the plant's jobs.
Workers voted on Saturday to
authorize the strike." • Good. Two-tier is awful, wherever found (including Social
Security).
The phrase 'hard-working families', a staple of New Labour and Conservative rhetoric for
about twenty years, fell by the wayside with the political upheavals of Jeremy Corbyn's
election as Labour leader in 2015 and the resignation of David Cameron the following summer.
(Theresa May initially hoped to refocus on 'JAMs' – Just About Managing families –
but lost all ideological confidence along with her parliamentary majority in June last year.)
The phrase was used as a way of signalling economic and moral commitment at the same time.
Gordon Brown – who liked to cloak redistributive policies in communitarian,
traditionalist rhetoric – is said to have been the first to use it, in 1995. The Blair,
Brown and Cameron governments all repeatedly claimed to be on the side of hard-working
families, tinkering with tax, benefits and public services as way of helping this opaque group
to 'get on'.
The full text of this book review is only available to subscribers of the
London Review of Books.
"... It would seem that many of the Trotskyites of the past have now become neocons favouring capitalism and imperialist military intervention under guise of "human rights" promotion, as have some other communists. ..."
@Commentator Mike
Today's system is a hybrid of a late finance-stage global capitalism and cultural–not
economic–Marxism. Instead of class struggle, we have identity politics. Instead of the
ownership of the means of production, we have tranny bathrooms.
So the right-wingers (like Peter Hitchens) who say that 'Marxism won' are half right
culturally, not economically. What causes all the confusion (among the libertarian types
especially) is that capitalism in reality does not in any way resemble how it ought to
work according to libertarian theories and never did. But when you point out to them
that capitalism never worked in practice to begin with, they answer: 'But true
capitalism has never even been tried!' And of course, they're right. 'True' capitalism (i.e.,
what libertarian theory calls capitalism) really never has been tried, and for exactly the
same reason that perpetual motion machines have never been tried either: they're
impossible.
None of which means I'm a 'pure' socialist. I'm open to mixed-economies and new
experiments. I usually characterize myself more as a national socialist, mostly to
differentiate myself from the 'world revolution' Trotskyite socialists who now predominate on
the far-left.
That means I also take some inspiration from some fascists and national-syndicalists,
although I don't regard any of them as holy writ, either.
In my opinion, the number one success factor for a civilization is not what theory
it professes, but rather who controls it. Theories will always have to be modified to
suit the circumstances; but the character of a people is much harder to change.
China's prospering because it's controlled by Chinese engineers; our civilization is
suffocating because it's controlled by Jew-bankers and Masonic lawyers. Get rid of them
first, and we can debate monetary theory till we're blue in the face.
I think that applying the old concepts of Marxism is no longer possible in the west since
there is hardly a genuine proletariat as a proper class any more with the deindustrialisation
and the transfer of major industries to China and other Asian and Latin American countries.
On the other hand the lumpenproletariat has grown and will grow further with greater
automation in industry.
Many more people are now unemployed, underemployed, in service industries, part-time and
temporary jobs, or ageing old age pensioners and retirees.
With the greater atomisation of the individual, break up of families, greater mobility,
the concept of classes rooted long-term in their communities seems less applicable. You could
say most of the global proletariat is now in China.
It would seem that many of the Trotskyites of the past have now become neocons favouring
capitalism and imperialist military intervention under guise of "human rights" promotion, as
have some other communists.
Paul Edward Gottfried's "The Strange Death of Marxism" seems to offer some explanations
but is not of much use in developing a new activism capable of taking on the system or
providing a more viable alternative.
classical concepts of socialism and capitalism, and left and right politics
The left/right concept is no longer valid. For one thing, of what use is a $15. minimum
wage (apparently a standard "left" plank) if there aren't any jobs? Take a look at Andrew
Yang. At least he is posing the right questions.
Andrew Yang's Pitch to America – We Must Evolve to a New Form of
Capitalism
Political ideologies appear to have contributed to inequality and disadvantage in Australia
in that time, he argues.
Fraser in large part blames "neoliberalism" and its influence on policymaking for the
"disconnect between Australia's impressive economic growth story and its failure on so many
markers to show progress towards a better, fairer society".
"Favouring the market system ahead of the state system, and individual interests ahead of
community interests, can lead to profoundly unfair social outcomes.
ss="rich-link"> More than three million Australians living in poverty, Acoss report
reveals Read more
"Those unable to afford access to decent standards of housing, healthcare, and other
essential services have to settle for inferior arrangements, or go without."
Fraser says charitable organisations see the effects of "real poverty" that result in
"misery, anxiety and loss of self-esteem of mothers unable to put food on the table for their
kids, of old and young homeless people, and the victims of domestic violence and drug
overdoses".
Fraser summarises the key thrusts of neoliberalism as "the pursuit of the lowest possible
rates of income and most other taxes and the maximum restraint on government interventions and
spending programs".
Evidence in Australia and overseas shows the influence of neoliberalism on fiscal policy
"and the misery and social polarisation that has come with it", he says.
The global financial crisis "should have" marked a tipping point, when the "idealised view
of financial markets being self-regulating" was shattered. While Australia "avoided the worst
traumas of the GFC" with prompt fiscal and monetary policy responses, in Europe "taxes were
increased and spending programs slashed", resulting in a further five or six years of severe
recession.
Fraser says that all political ideologies -- taken to extremes -- can be divisive and cause
damage, including an ideology "based on a state system".
But the former Reserve Bank governor focuses on neoliberalism because it "remains in vogue".
The Morrison government "continues to reaffirm its over-riding commitment to lower taxation,
and to assert that this is the best way to increase investment, jobs and economic growth" -
despite the lack of evidence to support the theory .
Although Fraser recognises that politics never can or should be taken out of policymaking,
he suggests the best course is to "hammer away" at flaws of particular approaches.
In a separate presentation Keating -- who headed PM&C from 1991 to 1996 -- warns the
government's promise to cap expenditure while simultaneously cutting taxes and returning the
budget to surplus is based on overly optimistic assumptions of growth in GDP, wages and
productivity.
ss="rich-link"> Why are stock markets falling and how far will they go? Read
more
According to Keating, the government must stop assuming there have been no structural
changes in the relationship between unemployment and the rate of wage increases.
He notes that predictions of a tightening labour market leading to higher wages are
predicated on assumptions of growth averaging 3% or as much as 3.5%.
He will also say a sustained return to past rates of economic growth will be impossible
unless we can ensure a reasonably equitable distribution of income, involving a faster rate of
wage increases, especially for the low-paid.
Excellent that neoliberalism is being put under the spotlight. To fully understand it,
and the root causes of its "thrusts", one need only refer to its history, helpfully
chronicled by economist Mason Gaffney in his little known but devastating 1994 work The
Corruption of Economics . It begins:
Neoclassical economics is the idiom of most economic discourse today. It is the paradigm
that bends the twigs of young minds. Then it confines the florescence of older ones, like
chicken-wire shaping a topiary.
It took form about a hundred years ago, when Henry George and his reform proposals were
a clear and present political danger and challenge to the landed and intellectual
establishments of the world.
Few people realize to what degree the founders of Neo-classical economics changed the
discipline for the express purpose of deflecting George and frustrating future students
seeking to follow his arguments.
It can be argued that the 20th century was a disastrous wrong-turn leading to the
subversion of a rising economic democracy for the benefit of rent-takers. Unnecessary
privation, war and destruction of the living world were it's necessary consequence, but it's
not to late to revisit the keen insights of a (deliberately) forgotten genius like Henry
George.
And you appear not to understand the difference between an "average" and a "median". The
median measure the mid-point, above and below which 50% of the sample population falls. The
average is just an average over all, and become increasingly different from the median, the
more the inequalities (i.e., skewness of the distribution) increase. This is precisely what
has happened in most western societies since the 1980s. The report mentions AVERAGE wealth,
but this hides a large spread, with large increases at the top, while the bottom 10 to 20% in
most western societies have almost nothing, and have not seen their new wealth increase for
decades. How can it, if you don't own a house and don't have shares/super, etc.?? I think you
are generalising too much from your own (probably limited) social circle and experiences.
Your welcome, yes its an informative site, I might add, Neo-liberalism is only half the
problem Globalisation goes hand in hand with it and both are supported if not controlled by
the IMF, with the aim of crushing the working people of third world nations, and the ALP
explicitly support Globalisation whilst emphatically deny involvement with Neoliberalism.
Wages have stagnated and corporate profits have soared! Privatisation of public assets and
corporatization in this capitalist system, is the biggest fail of all times for the majority
of our society! Back in my day, If there were two working, (Which there wasn't) my wage was
enough to own my own house in 2.8 years.
The system is defunct and fucked!
Neoliberalism seems to be a nice name, conjured up by a nasty think tank. given to a system
that enhances massive profits for the few. A system that allows public owned assets
(Infrastructure) to be sold at devalued prices and a system where people are to be considered
as a commodity, with those of no use to their system being skinned and left out to dry.
I have been hammering the same line for years now, it so good to have someone as articulate
and respected as Bernie Fraser damning neoliberalism for what it is as an economic cover
story for implementing right-wing ideology. Trickle down theory has been routinely assessed
as a failure to deliver equity and as a result the LNP are polarising society.
When neoliberalism is broken down, it's just the same old chestnut of socialism for the
privileged (via lobbying to create an environment best for rent seekers) and capitalism for
the rest of us where if we fail, too bad so sad.
Neoliberalism is fraud.
It is the speedo wound back, that 'glorious beachside situation' under water, a
pea-and-thimble trick to baffle and fleece the suckers.
Being the creation of Libertarians, it has their trademark ideological motivation, a visceral
loathing of government, in whatever form.
That determination to demonise and even dismantle govt is made plain by Neoliberalism's
numerous facilitating porkies, pushed as the unvarnished truth.
One example.
Neoliberal ideologues dogmatically insist the Commonwealth needs to somehow 'borrow' to fund
the deficit.
This assertion has no basis in reality.
It is a whopper designed to serve the needs of ideology, nothing more.
For Neoliberal ideologues, this piece of deceit kicks two significant goals.
First, it enables them to depict govt as so inherently inefficient, so inept, it cannot even
raise dollar one of the very currency which it is allegedly controls.
Down, down goes disgraced govt.
From where can it obtain the desperately-needed funds?
Here comes the second goal.
To fund the deficit, the C' wealth goes crawling, cap-in-hand, to the private sector.
Fearless, freedom-loving, shit-hot-and-shiny private sector !
But it's total myth.
The Commonwealth is a sovereign currency issuer.
Ergo sum, it always has its own money, AUD.
Saying it needs to borrow something it creates and controls-- and of which it has an infinite
supply-- only makes sense as a propaganda-driven porkie.
It's like claiming you need to borrow somebody else's piss.
Neoliberalism (ie rule market forces) is a binary system - it produces winners and losers.
The winners are those paid to lobby, write the legislation, secure the profits, get the
shares, run the corporations, the banks, the accountancies, the insurers etc.
The losers are the majority us who remain outside in the cold. The winners are not going
to change their ways and why should they - they hold the power and we the masses pose no
threat to them.
Its way past time that those who are not winning in this binary game started to threaten
the winners. This is what McManus is doing with her ACTU 'change the rules' campaign - it is
seriously threatening the neoliberal agenda.
The Wentworth by-election is threatening the Morrison neoliberal coalition with
annihilation and just might be the turning point for Australians to take back their democracy
and their economy from the thieves who hold power.
No. With a couple of exceptions the communities that delivered the highest Brexit vote tended
to have the least migrants.
I am advocating Social Democracy, a mixed economy where there is a private sector and a
state sector and more state intervention to stop communities being 'left behind'. Investment
in education & training and renationalisation of natural monopolies such as water and
rail is what's needed in the UK.
For far too long all the mainstream MSM including the BBC and this paper have acted as a
propaganda machine for the Neoliberal outsourcing of workers to undermine salaries while
putting money into the off shore accounts of fat cats.
Meanwhile the Mail, Sky & Sun (Murdoch) and Express, LBC radio have jumped on the
opportunity of a divided Britain to encourage hatred of the other.
I used to buy crap chinese marine ply, my new supplier has Australian made, high quality
marine ply for 2/3 the price. I always prefer to keep my money local.
2/3 of Australia isn't surviving, they're drowning, not waving.
It is about the 1% who think robbing the poor is good business. The strongest economy in
Australia was when wage growth was good. Businesses only look at their small picture and the
larger economy is none of their concern. Business has been able to buy politicians for their
own profit, not the good of the country.
Obviously, everything is horrible in Australia these days and is getting worse.
Even though Australia is ranked #3 on the Human Development Index out of some
192 countries and has an awesomely high per capita GDP. Australia is also among the
most respected, most reputable countries on the planet and has 3 cities in the top 10
of best cities in the world to live in. Other than that, it is horrible there.
"Favouring the market system ahead of the state system, and individual interests ahead of
community interests, can lead to profoundly unfair social outcomes"
Australians take note. Neoliberalism has led to the rise of the far right in the UK and
across EU countries. Doesn't help that people like Murdoch encourage finger pointing at
foreigners while supporting the right-wing economic policies creating the massive division
and job insecurity.
Neo-liberalism: low taxes to encourage employment; deregulation of labour market and business
"red-tape" and privatisation of public assets and utilities. You may also throw in an
unhealthy obsession with micro economics and interest rates.
All of which have been shown to have negligible impact on their stated goals (see lower
taxes) and have been terrible for consumers, workers and society.
Seventy years (give or take) have passed since the end of WW2.
In Europe, the first half of that period could broadly be described as social democracy,
the second as neo-liberal.
To your point Fox, let's see the data on a simple line chart:
Real individual wages per capita
GDP per capita
National indebtedness
Private indebtedness
I'm willing to be corrected but I'd bet you London to a brick that the social democratic
shits all over the neo-liberal from a great height when it comes to improvements in these
core data.
That's it.. the world moved to the right back in the mid to late 80's ..as the Soviet Union
collapsed ..and the wall came down.
Now both Russia and China are on the free market merry go round.. except that they keep
controls on certain aspects .. of the economy, an iron fist control, taking advantage and
abusing the free market to meet their own ends. Conservatism is about individualism ..
as put forward by Howard.. aspirational to achieve for yourself.. Nothing to do with your
community. That's why they hate the UN.. generally and particularly in regards to climate
change.. the world acting as one community for the benefit of all communities.. So they want
to build walls.. trade barriers... it's all characterized as impinging on the countries
sovereignty.. The interesting thing is ..that back in the 80's ..the left was all about
protectionism.. and isolationist policy. So to speak.. now Trump wants to turn back the
clock.. 40 years or so. It's a bit late for that.
So...never give conservatism a chance. Actually..the inevitable consequence of climate
change making the world re calibrate economics ..through sustainability, not greed first,
will put and end to conservatism. It's a high price to pay.. but I have no doubt it will
happen.
Income is important, but it has been the progressive concentration of wealth that is causing
the real damage and polarization. If we no longer belong in the same society, if we no longer
care for others as being our own, if we no longer look at other living things as our
relations, then we are looking into a catastrophic void.
Asked whether they have confidence in CEO Sundar Pichai and his management team to
"effectively lead in the future," 74 percent of employees responded "positive," as opposed to
"neutral" or "negative," in late 2018, down from 92 percent "positive" the year before. The
18-point drop left employee confidence at its lowest point in at least six years. The results
of the survey, known internally as Googlegeist, also showed a decline in employees'
satisfaction with their compensation, with 54 percent saying they were satisfied, compared with
64 percent the prior year.
The drop in employee sentiment helps explain why internal debate around compensation, pay
equity, and trust in executives has heated up in recent weeks -- and why an HR presentation
from 2016 went viral inside the company three years later.
The presentation, first reported by Bloomberg and
reviewed by WIRED, dates from July 2016, about a year after Google started an internal effort
to curb
spending . In the slide deck, Google's human-resources department presents potential ways
to cut the company's $20 billion compensation budget. Ideas include: promoting fewer people,
hiring proportionately more low-level employees, and conducting an audit to make sure Google is
paying benefits "(only) for the right people." In some cases, HR suggested ways to implement
changes while drawing little attention, or tips on how to sell the changes to Google employees.
Some of the suggestions were implemented, like eliminating the annual employee holiday gift;
most were not.
Another, more radical proposal floated inside the company around the same time didn't appear
in the deck. That suggested converting some full-time employees to contractors to save money. A
person familiar with the situation said this proposal was not implemented. In July,
Bloomberg
reported that, for the first time, more than 50 percent of Google's workforce were temps,
contractors, and vendors.
"... By Chris Becker. Originally published at MacroBusiness ..."
"... The problem with capitalism is when it is wedded to an ideology that has limited or perverted checks and balances. Inequality being the most dire and neglected outcome of perverting a system that does not punish the risk takers who fail. Witness the banking industry in the aftermath of the GFC. A properly tuned capitalistic system would have seen the majority of bankers incarcerated, there wealth confiscated by legal and just reparations and an overhaul of the financial sector. ..."
"... Make a system where the actors benefit by cheating and they will cheat – good people included. ..."
"... Sal si puedes. ..."
"... "This general irregularity must be placed within the irregular cycle of the working week (and indeed of the working year) which provoked so much lament from moralists and mercantilists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. ..."
"... A rhyme printed in 1639 gives us a satirical version: ..."
"... You know that Munday is Sundayes brother; Tuesday is such another; Wednesday you must go to Church and pray; Thursday is half-holiday; On Friday it is too late to begin to spin; The Saturday is half-holiday agen. John Houghton, in 1681, gives us the indignant version: ..."
"... "When the framework knitters or makers of silk stockings had a great price for their work, they have been observed seldom to work on Mondays and Tuesdays but to spend most of their time at the ale-house or nine-pins . . . The weavers, 'tis common with them to be drunk on Monday, have their head-ache on Tuesday, and their tools out of order on Wednesday. As for the shoemakers, they'll rather be hanged than not remember St. Crispin on Monday . . . and it commonly holds as long as they have a penny of money or pennyworth of credit." ..."
"... "If you're not willing to kill everybody who has a different idea than yourself, you cannot have Frederick Hayek's free market. You cannot have Alan Greenspan or the Chicago School, you cannot have the economic freedom that is freedom for the rentiers and the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sector to reduce the rest of the economy to serfdom." ..."
"... "In a libertarian society, there is no commons or public space. There are property lines, not borders. When it comes to real property and physical movement across such real property, there are owners, guests, licensees, business invitees and trespassers – not legal and illegal immigrants." ..."
"... "This is an outrageous betrayal of public trust -- but only what can be expected when private bankers are given a governing role in American monetary policy. In a sane world, private bankers would have no more voice than any other citizen in making that decision . It's time to throw these turkeys out of American monetary policy." ..."
"... "The "nation-state" as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state." ..."
"... "The Trilateralist Commission is international (and) is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests BY SEIZING CONTROL OF THE POLITICAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. The Trilateralist Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power – political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical." ..."
It's always interesting to hear mega-capitalists complain about the very
system that provides them opportunity to turn their talents into Scrooge McDuck size piles of
cash. Furthermore, it's usually the most successful that have the most liberal of views and Ray Dalio, head
of hedge fund Bridgewater, has weighed in again.
"Capitalism basically is not working for the majority of people. That's just the reality," Dalio said
at the 2018
Summit
conference in Los Angeles
in November. Monday, Dalio tweeted a video of his Summit talk.
"Today, the top one-tenth of 1 percent of the population's net worth is equal to the bottom 90 percent
combined. In other words, a big giant wealth gap. That was the same -- last time that happened was the
late '30s," Dalio said. (Indeed,
research
from Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman
of the National Bureau of Economic Research of wealth
inequality throughout the 20th century,
covered
by The Guardian
, bears this out.)
Further, Dalio points to a survey by the Federal Reserve showing that
40
percent of adults can't come up with $400
in the case of an emergency. "It gives you an idea of what
the polarity is," Dalio said. "That's a real world. That's an issue."
"We're in a situation when the economy is at a peak, we still have this very big tension. That's where
we are today," he said in November. "We're in a situation where, if you have a downturn, and we will have
a downturn, I believe that -- I worry that that polarity will become greater."
There is no actual problem with capitalism in and of itself. As a system, compared to other systems in
the past, it has provided the greatest gains to the greatest number of people in the last two centuries of
human development. To borrow a catchphrase, it's settled science, and in fact maybe one of the only theories
of economics that actually holds water, given that communism, socialism and other market structures have
failed time and time again.
The problem with capitalism is when it is wedded to an ideology that has limited or perverted checks
and balances. Inequality being the most dire and neglected outcome of perverting a system that does not
punish the risk takers who fail. Witness the banking industry in the aftermath of the GFC. A properly tuned
capitalistic system would have seen the majority of bankers incarcerated, there wealth confiscated by legal
and just reparations and an overhaul of the financial sector.
Captured regulatory authorities and legislative assemblies overturned the fundamental
cornerstone of capitalism – if you fail, you take a loss – and turned it into an even more perverse form of
socialism where the losers become winners and society bears the entire burden of their mistakes.
Dalio, like Buffet and Gates before him are pointing out the problems of extreme wealth, but this is not
a new phenomenon. History shows that when income and wealth inequality become widely disparate, the forces
of populism rise to shake the foundations. And inequality in the US and in the Western world is again
reaching those heady heights where "unbridled" (read:captured) capitalism resulted in the Great Depression:
The concentration of wealth by capturing the full yield of capitalism without distributing any seeds is
worse than ever as
The Economist
explains:
The 16,000 families making up the richest 0.01%, with an average net worth of $371m, now control 11.2%
of total wealth -- back to the 1916 share, which is the highest on record. Those down the distribution have
not done quite so well: the top 0.1% (consisting of 160,000 families worth $73m on average) hold 22% of
America's wealth, just shy of the 1929 peak -- and exactly the same share as the bottom 90% of the
population.
Dalio is right to point out that an unworkable capitalist system, where the majority of the gains are
kept by the few, creating an oligarchy that is inflexible to change, or risk, has not benefited the
majority.
Lost in the amazing advances in the developing world which has embraced versions of capitalism over the
last thirty years is that the average Westerner has gone nowhere in terms of wage growth and real wealth:
Similar forces have been in play in Australia:
Creating these instabilities, where it's extremely hard for someone to rise above the average wage, let
alone no wage, is going to cost the whole system eventually if it is not reformed and brought back to the
center where it belongs.
Capitalism "works" because it is a flawed system that steals from society.
Limited liability corporations protect profits and socialize losses.
Companies get society provided benefits for well well below cost, but spend zillions avoiding contributing
to their improvement (think infrastructure, public education, legal system).
Consumers over consume because they are not charged the full cost of their consumption. So we get pollution,
resource depletion and worker exploitation.
Capitalism is a wild stallion that can take you to places you would never get to on your own, but unharnessd
it will likely also take you into a ditch. Capitalism needs to be harnessed by society. It needs to serve
society. Society should not be serving capitalism.
The actions of the actors in a system can be predictable. Make a system where the actors benefit by cheating
and they will cheat – good people included. Make a system that encourages good behaviour and people will be
better.
The planet can not handle much more of capitalism's "success".
"To borrow a catchphrase, it's settled science, and in fact maybe one of the only theories of
economics that actually holds water, given that communism, socialism and other market structures have
failed time and time again."
Remember when capitalism started in earnest in the early Renaissance and the already established,
competing ideology tried to strangle it in its crib and destabilize any state, no matter how small,
that didn't hew to the orthodox economic and political hegemony? Oh right, me neither.
"Socialism didn't work" without acknowledging the entire resources of the European and American
"first world" attempted to put down the USSR from 1917-1921, and undeclared covert war on any state
with a constitution to the left of Harry Truman ever since is kind of a mitigating circumstance of
"capitalism > socialism"
Not true. See the uk revolution, the dutch revolution, and the French. Each one was an attempt
by capitalism to revolutionize a region and the feudal lords tried to strangle it.
But it slowly built basic accounting methods and legal social frameworks that ended up
dominating the world.
Just like socialism has created legal structures that have changed basic sense with 2 steps
forwards and 1 back. Who knows where it may go after a few more centuries of revolutions?
Make a system where the actors benefit by cheating and they will cheat – good people included.
That's the basic question in a nutshell. Can Capitalism
ever
be configured in such a way in
which that doesn't happen? The historical record says no, not for long, "cheating" being a relative term
anyway. Good capitalists will tell you they don't cheat, they simply redefine the legal meaning of the
word to benefit their own interests, the law and its makers being simply another commodity to be bought
and sold like any other.
This debate on "capitalism" feels like the black mirror discussion of MMT.
MMT = Good because it is a theory that runs contrary to norms that have produced bad results.
Capitalism = Bad because it is the widely accepted theory that has led to bad results.
Reality is they are both amoral concepts that need to be applied appropriately to produce the desired
results. Coming to consensus on what those results need to be is the issue.
Dalio is an interesting character. If he went public with this in November, you can bet he's been
modeling it for years, made piles of money on it and he sees it at the end of its cycle. What he's not
saying is how they've modeled it out for the next 5-10 years and what those outcomes entail, which is
unfortunate.
I disagree with the characterization of both MMT and capitalism. MMT is mostly not theoretical, but
descriptive. The system is operated as economists like Stephanie Kelton describe. What is not the "norm"
is the
open acknowledgement
of the way in which the monetary system operates. That
particular self-delusion is about 300 years old.
Capitalism is driven by the need to always expand. But what seems possible on the micro level is not
possible on the macro level, at least not forever.
Capitalism is based on two kinds of theft. Private ownership of the gifts of nature is theft from the
community. Appropriation of the surplus is theft from the workers.
This is the kind of lectures you will get when you bail out scoundrels. Scoundrels will blame capitalism
when in reality these scoundrels define capitalism as "privatize profits and socialize losses". The temerity
of these scoundrels is galling. These arsonists talk of capitalism. If capitalism had been allowed to do its
job, many of these scoundrels would have been languishing in jails and the companies they run would have
been dead and buried.
Capitalism doesn't prescribe right or wrong in moral terms, only profits. The idea that markets could
ever be self-policing is laughably misguided. We're living with that truth as we speak. Profits buy power
and influence, which are then used to change the rules of the game to enable even more profits in a
classic vicious cycle. Rinse and repeat until a clear winner emerges or the entire system collapses in a
mass of warring factions. Looks like we've got the latter to me.
It is the bailouts (in the guise of saving the common man from something unimaginably worse, mind
you) and the lack of accountability (no one going to jail, arsonists being asked to put out the fire
etc.) that is simply covering capitalism with the moral hazard muck to an extent that capitalism is
now unrecognizable. The rottenness of the system has been in the works since 1987 (Greenspan put) and
has taken this long to germinate into a monster. Let us see how it ends!
Gotta be real specific in our terminology here. When you say Capitalism it is like saying Religion. Just
as with Religion you have different flavours of it such as Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. you have
also different types of Capitalism as well. I suppose that you can best describe the type of Capitalism that
we have in place now as 'Crony Capitalism' though others may disagree. Another aspect of the type of
capitalism that has evolved is that it is built on the premise of expansion as it came of age during the
past two centuries when expansion was just the way it was.
Not only has this caused problems in a world of finite resources which we are pushing the envelope off but I
have no idea what would happen when the Age of Expansion ends and we instead go into the Age of Contraction
which will maybe last just as long. Another problem with our brand of Capitalism is that it never captures
all the costs associated with a venture. An example? All those toxic sites that fracking will leave behind?
The companies will never pay to clean that mess up but it will be done – maybe – by the taxpayer so of
course those companies never add those costs into their accounts. A more sustainable form of Capitalism
would be forced to calculate those costs into their accounts. Just because Capitalism is the way that it is
does not mean that that is the way that it has to be.
Looking back, it appears that when humans came out of Africa, they intermixed with Neaderthals,
acquiring some of the local immunity DNA, among others, and that gave them survival advantages.
And the hybridization has enabled them to overpopulate the planet, with commentators of all kinds,
including those wiser ones who are aware of the over-popluation problem and climate change.
So, in the same way, we should look to combining ideas and -isms.
Not just socialism all good, capitalism all bad, etc.
oh it's obvious to them too, but as Upton Sinclair said, it's impossible to get someone to understand
something when their paycheck depends on them not understanding it.
Correct. Without "restraint", unbridled capitalism cannot be sustained; it will eventually devour the
planet and render it uninhabitable. Unbridled capitalism is an animal uncaged. That uncaged animal today,
globally is devouring the commons. "Capitalism" is now, "off the rails".
"There is no actual problem with capitalism in and of itself. As a system, compared to other systems in
the past, it has provided the greatest gains to the greatest number of people in the last two centuries of
human development. To borrow a catchphrase, it's settled science, and in fact maybe one of the only theories
of economics that actually holds water, given that communism, socialism and other market structures have
failed time and time again."
Precisely wrong. Capitalism is a donut machine, doing its job, and spitting out donuts, it's working
exactly as it's supposed to. The externalities and corruption are part and parcel of the system. Saying that
"pure" capitalism wouldn't have the impurities we see in the system is the exact same arguement socialists
and communists could argue for their own systems. "Communism (or capitalism) (or socialism) failed because
it wasn't pure enough", essentially. Capitalism takes the worst aspects of human nature, promotes them as
virtues, then acts surprised when everyone starts acting like pirates and vampire squid.
capitalism assumes rational actors will balance out its flaws. He claims socialism fails but the new
deal had some elements of socialism which assuaged the winner take all nature of capitalism. Deregulation
basically is unmaking the rules and the result is global casino capitalism, and that's a disease just as
it would be in vegas or atlantic city. I am unsurprisingly not optimistic, we had a great chance to rein
it all in, twice with obama (i say twice because I was cajoled into voting for him a second time because
he was supposedly going to do something good in his second term when the poor man became unshackled from
the need to be re elected [irony alert: if obama had made any effort to help regular "folks" he wouldn't
have had any problem getting re elected and the dnc wouldn't have needed to cheat the voters and shove
her republican leaning highness down our collective throats]) and a third time with b sanders, so that's
12 years of active enrichment of the worst fackers in the world, and now this article makes it seem like
maybe they are worried but they won't do anything to rein in bezos, or fix student loans, or any of the
other crises facing the population. Self driving tech is going to increase traffic and consumption, who
here thinks waymo and uber will give up on the fantasy because they're worried about global warming?
They're worried about patents. They're worried someone else will get the mountainous payoff. It's all
about the self and there is no sign that hand wringing of the nature Mr Dalio is engaging in, as sensible
and reasoned as it may be, is going to lead to any changes that result in concrete material benefits
going to people who the upper class, for lack of a better word, hates. The only good mope is one with a
catalog of unpayable debts, who works to survive all the while paying into their social security account
so the worst fackers in the world can garnish it and put a bottom tranche on their greedy securitization
schemes.
My first thought was: climate change. If your system of producing goods and services leads to
environmental destruction that interferes with the ability of the planet to harbor human life, well .I'd
say that's a major problem with your system.
The one difference with the purity argument is that the communist apologists are pointing to the
impurity of the system. The tried systems were either too capitalist or too despotic or not despotic
enough or too reformist or etc.They posit that the solution is just that the system needs to have the
purity of the way their political theory describes a communist system.
The capitalist apologists, apropos, point to the impurity of the individual instead. The system cannot
fail, as they don't even see it as a system, it is simply "human nature." The morality of the individuals
at the top of the hierarchy determines all. If capitalism is failing, it is because of the bad choices of
those individuals.
"The morality of the individuals at the top of the hierarchy determines all. If capitalism is
failing, it is because of the bad choices of those individuals."
That's incorrect, though. The system favors those willing to exploit others and the system as
structured puts those people at the top of the pyramid. Anyone with morality cannot have outstanding
success in rising to the top of the economic hierarchy in this system due to their morality being a
major limitation, with the possible exception of being born into wealth.
From my background as an engineer, I have come to the conclusion that economics is not a science and
should be renamed as political economics as that is a much more descriptive.
All of the "isms" are constructs of the governing rules established by governing bodies (mostly
national governments) and agreements between governing bodies. All of the "isms" depend on a means to
enforce the rules. I know this is all obvious to anybody who has studied this stuff. It was not to me
until I started paying attention in the late 90's, and ignored all the BS we get bombarded with on a
daily basis.
The current set of rules (including the unwritten class rules where the rich and poor have different
rules) guarantees the end of a human inhabitable world. It seems to me that we need to re-write the rules
very quickly before we are overtaken by events.
>As a system, compared to other systems in the past, it has provided the greatest gains to the greatest
number of people in the last two centuries of human development.
How do we actually know that? What was, during the peak years, an "average" Aztec's quality of life, for
example? Let alone knowing what work/remuneration system he/she existed under. And in truth, the measurement
itself is capitalism's measurement. It's like ranking everybody in the country by how hard they can throw a
baseball. It's useful for winning at baseball, doesn't say anything about the country's metallurgical
capabilities. Capitalism is best at Capitalism! Yea!
I actually think the biggest contributor to what they claim as "the greatest gains to the greatest number
of people" is sewage treatment. Which I believe has been a government initiative, yes?
Now, I'm actually not comfortable kicking over the table. Universal Health Care and really high marginal
tax rates would, in my model of the world (which may be completely wrong) work well enough. We would have to
study not-so-Great Britain's problems when they tried the same thing, to be sure.
For me, the question is:
once capitalism is established, is it possible to rein it in? Will it not allways turn out to get out of
control, to become the „real existing" capitalism. Is a capitalism „with a human face" a stable possibilty.
Communism „with a human face" doesn't seem to be possible. Sytems have their own dynamics and tend to find a
stable equlibrium, and for each there are only a finite number of stable states, probably defined by human
nature. Power tends to concentrate.
In short: Is a capitalist system, in which the TBTF are allowed to fail, a realistic possibility?
"To borrow a catchphrase, it's settled science, and in fact maybe one of the only theories of economics
that actually holds water, given that communism, socialism and other market structures have failed time and
time again." Seems like the author is ignoring those successful socialistic countries like Denmark, Sweden,
etc.
Sorry, but the USA's biggest trading partner is a self declared Communist state. Anytime someone
brings up the Communist boogeyman this needs to be given right back to them. Vietnam isn't doing so bad
either. Of course what the Corporatists love is not the Communism but the Totalitarianism. You can still
be Communist and be involved in a market economy, and China has plenty of state involvement in it's
industry
Seemingly a significant portion of the folk desire more stuff, regardless of the consequences. Capitalism
provides more stuff for many of them, or can pretend to. Therefore they will continue to support it until it
collapses.
Sal si puedes.
Classical economics – observations and deductions from the world of small state, unregulated capitalism
around them
Neoclassical economics – Where did that come from?
Keynesian economics – observations, deductions and fixes for the problems of neoclassical economics
Neoclassical economics – Why is that back?
We thought small state, unregulated capitalism was something that it wasn't as our ideas came from
neoclassical economics, which has little connection with classical economics.
On bringing it back again, we had lost everything that had been learned in the 1930s, by which time it
had already demonstrated its flaws.
Let's find out what capitalism really is again by going back to the classical economists.
We really need to get the cost of living back into economics.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Cutting taxes but letting the cost of living soar has been a pointless neoliberal exercise.
Let's find out what real wealth creation is again as they worked out in the 1930s.
It's measured by GDP that excludes the transfer of existing assets like stocks and real estate as
inflating asset prices isn't creating real wealth. That fictitious financial wealth has a habit of
disappearing as they realised after 1929.
We need to remember the problem with the markets they discovered in the 1930s.
"This general irregularity must be placed within the irregular cycle of the working week (and indeed
of the working year) which provoked so much lament from moralists and mercantilists in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.
A rhyme printed in 1639 gives us a satirical version:
You know that Munday is Sundayes brother;
Tuesday is such another;
Wednesday you must go to Church and pray;
Thursday is half-holiday;
On Friday it is too late to begin to spin;
The Saturday is half-holiday agen.
John Houghton, in 1681, gives us the indignant version:
"When the framework knitters or makers of silk stockings had a great price for their work, they have
been observed seldom to work on Mondays and Tuesdays but to spend most of their time at the ale-house or
nine-pins . . .
The weavers, 'tis common with them to be drunk on Monday, have their head-ache on Tuesday, and their tools
out of order on Wednesday. As for the shoemakers, they'll rather be hanged than not remember St. Crispin on
Monday . . . and it commonly holds as long as they have a penny of money or pennyworth of credit."
Merrie England gave way to the dark satanic mills.
Maybe because they had plenty of time to think while they were weaving but historically, if you had an
active politically minded group, it was guaranteed that the weavers would be part of them. Until they got
industrialized that is. Certainly that was true in Scotland in the 19th century.
The article is interesting, but do we truly have to be lectured by Becker?:
To borrow a catchphrase, it's settled science, and in fact maybe one of the only theories of economics
that actually holds water, given that communism, socialism and other market structures have failed time
and time again.
In other words, capitalism is dogma that has defeated the Arians. Try going to Wikipedia, put in "Panic
of," and you will get fifteen major crashes in the U.S. economy from 1792 to 1930. That's fifteen crashes in
150 years. And this is a system that hasn't failed time and time again?
Mixed economies with strong government intervention and subsidies to the citizenry (the welfare state)
have done quite well. The Venetian republic used that economic model for some 1100 years. There are
alternatives to U.S. buccaneer capitalism and its endless slogans about its bestness.
They are never honest about socialism, "its been tried and it failed"
Never mention that any country that dares go socialist will immediately be economically attacked by
capitalist countries. Has it ever been given a chance where it wasn't?
I always thought it funny that capitalists always say socialism doesn't work but then why are they so
desperately afraid of it.
it's not clear that China's present system isn't also capitalism. Russia neither only it's also
particularly corrupt. It's a raw power contest with them and the U.S. government, not an ideological
one,
Russia has been capitalist since the wall fell, China since Deng Xiaopings reforms. Russia is just
a regular capitalist country at this point, whereas China is State Capitalism (in fact, the only major
extant example of such).
What I find so frustrating about this kind of analysis is that it takes as given that "capitalism" is a
thing, something actually existing in the real world. In reality, it's a sound we make with our mouths, and
nothing more. At most it's a rather vague concept whose definition there does not seem to be any real
agreement on. It's a shibboleth with no actual referent in the physical world.
I think words like "capitalism" and "socialism" get used as mental shorthand because most of us can't be
bothered with the nuance of reality. The policies, norms, and systems we have in place now are there because
they serve (or served) the interests of some person or group of people who had enough influence/power to get
them put in place. Sheldon Adelson demanding the Feds regulate on-line gambling is a perfect example.
Adelson doesn't give a rip whether having the gov't remove his competitors is "capitalism" or not. It's in
his interests, and if he can flex enough muscle to get the Feds to go along, he'll get his way. What label
you put on the outcome is irrelevant.
The strong take what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Seems like that's been true in every
large-scale society I'm familiar with, regardless of how they labled themselves.
A clear definition of capitalism is not to the advantage of capitalists, so we never hear one, except
"private ownership of the means of production" which is not it.
People have been taught to think of capitalism simply as "the source of all good things" so by
definition any alternative must be worse. No need to think about the details.
for leftists it seems it's often shorthand for the status quo, and the status quo economics and power
relationships. So sure that's a catch all for the water us fishes hardly know we swim in.
They aren't wrong on the fact that any system that uses more resources than the earth produces WILL
NOT and CAN NOT end well and that the only hope, if hope there is, is in reigning this in. And that
probably, or at least probably if it is to be humane in any sense and not just be mass extermination,
requires an economy geared toward human needs, not consumerism, not excess for anyone beyond what the
world can produce.
Sometimes this system we live in produces more or less inequality, how much depends on how much the
powerful are able to take, how much power they have to direct all wealth to themselves. Always it
produces wage slavery, deprived as wage slaves are of their own subsistence other than by selling their
labor. They might have more of less of a voice in the workplace, in the U.S. they have pretty much none.
So the U.S. status quo is a powerless vast mass of people that must work for a living whose lives are
dictated by economic powers beyond their control. And then there are the rentiers taking their cut from
everyone working for a living as well. The returns just from owning property etc. – almost all real
property being owned by a few large players.
The biggest failure of capitalism is environmental. In a system which everything is privatized except the
externalities which are dumped on public plate with no way to pursue public interest and which will bring us
down sooner than later. Inequality is at the core of the system, but it isn't the worst outcome. A system
that produces much more than needed and pollutes the environment, we find ourselves sitting on piles of
garbage and killing ourselves in the name of production efficiency. In a socialist system the public has
potentially control over resources and could potentially divert resources to less destructive production, or
make a conscious decision to stop altogether. Even if we, in this stage, distribute wealth equaly we won't
be able to avert the environmental catastrophe that awaits us.
Capitalism has been historically a system of exploitation of the Masses, and remains so today, even after
decades of attempts to reform it. Talk regarding the system has largely been of a circular and utopian
nature since the collapse of the U.S.S.R.. The Center-Left coalition has been searching for a way to make
Capitalism "work," i.e. make it palpable enough for the majority of people so as to keep the Owner Classes
feeling secure. You can't fix what something is by its very nature, though. Capitalism is a socio-economic
model for a Class based organizing of society; it's chief claim to progress was that it operated as a
universal (neither religiously or ethnically demarcated) organizational structure outside of the hereditary
based systems of feudalism that preceded it–though given projected trends for Wealth concentration one might
find the later claim to be somewhat specious.
The Keynesian economists tried to make Capitalism work and they were axed back in the 70's, along with
the older generations of the CED, the moment the owner classes felt secure again after the Great Crash.
Unions, Regulatory Bodies, and the promises of a Great Society where undermined and attacked, dismantled,
and largely turned into empty talking points. The triumph of Right Wing politics, aka the last four to five
decades, should be observed as nothing short of absolute failure on the part of the Center-Left,
Triangulationists (Neo-Liberals), and the Soft-Politics of Identity in providing substantive answers to
systemic questions of exploitation of the Many by the Few. The Liberal Theory of Reform has ultimately
proved to be very divergent from Reality, which has largely demonstrated that it takes both large scale
emergent catastrophes (Great Depression), a militant population (Socialists, Fascists, Organized Labor,
and/or Disgruntled Peasantry), and the acceptance or acquiescence of the Power Elites in order for Change to
place. The gradualism of reformist policy has largely been debunked thanks to over a century of sloppy and
mostly reactive implementation and subsequent repeal.
In the Western context, however, Capitalism is the softest form of Power enforcement, in that it is
largely an idea that most in the society at least tentatively accept as the deterministic apparatus for
"success" and "failure." Even intellectual debate is referred to as, "the Marketplace of Ideas." Once it is
gone as viable option, the Elites have one of two options: submit to egalitarianism or resort to older forms
of control.
To be more frank, we also need to start talking about actual material breaking points, rather than
pretending that abstract "polarization" will continue on.
For me the question is if the "system", broken as it is, is or isn't already repairable, and whether guys
like this are really ready for the necessary steps.
Capitalism works! The problem are all those brainwashed by neoliberal propaganda nonsense, that
capitalism is a system that will deliver to all and sundry, sort of market socialism.
Only a child could believe that?
That the minority of the elite that owns and control the means of production and not least the financial
institutions would have identical interests with common people?
Some people still not get that neoliberalism is and was a counter revolution, by the capitalist class, on
the postwar mixed economy that did spread economic growth to all and sundry. That it should generate welfare
to everybody was just a propaganda ploy. Everyone who didn't engage in self-deception did see that from the
beginning.
It have worked beyond any expectations, a total success for the few that owns this world. Some counter
counter revolution on this aren't even remotely visible on the horizon. And if it would come the few will
defend their progress with whatever it takes, if a bloodbath are required they won't hesitate.
A Benevolent Dictator will be needed to displace capitalism as the means for supplying the goods and
services needed for a survivable and sustainable society. A new enlightened elite conscious of rational
needs instead of marketers and self-promoters.
Millions of individuals are beginning to extricate themselves, the best way they can, from this corrupt
system. The die hard capitalists will be the last to notice that the world has changed around them. Climate
change will make this a necessity. People not working together to ensure their common survival will be dead.
Capitalism depends on various forms of exploitation to persist. When the world has been ground down to
such an extent that growth and exploitation cannot continue, those practiced in radical conservation have
the best chance for survival. I just don't see slave societies meeting that requirement. Slaves can always
sabotage the system if they don't fear for their lives. An elite spending their time and energies focused on
preventing slave revolts won't have the luxury of abundance to pursue their follies- they will be too busy
trying to survive themselves.
Maybe this has a silver lining. The future elite will be members of the community, not some sequestered
and pampered minority granted the privilege to live in this seclusion- it just won't be possible any more.
" .is going to cost the system eventually. " This is the reality .. Systems DO NOT reform themselves;
they can't because they don't know how to. Something new has to emerge to fill the vacumm they create when
they collapse.No one knows what that will be. So just be prepared . Hold to what you know to be true.
"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow
work for the benefit of us all." –J. M. Keynes
"If you're not willing to kill everybody who has a different idea than yourself, you cannot have
Frederick Hayek's free market. You cannot have Alan Greenspan or the Chicago School, you cannot have the
economic freedom that is freedom for the rentiers and the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sector to
reduce the rest of the economy to serfdom."
~ Michael Hudson
Neoliberalism is extreme capitalism, the libertarian purists' dream that, if left unabated, would
eliminate human rights, safety regulations and environmental protections. That's why they've taken Civics
out of the educational curriculum. Why should people learn about rights in a future world of no citizenship?
And forget about freedom to roam. There would be restricted zones, less car ownership, more mass transit,
less private property ownership. Why do you think the housing prices are so out of reach today?
"In a libertarian society, there is no commons or public space. There are property lines, not
borders. When it comes to real property and physical movement across such real property, there are owners,
guests, licensees, business invitees and trespassers – not legal and illegal immigrants."
~ Jeff Deist,
president of the Mises Institute
They've already tried their experiment of replacing nations with privately owned "charter cities" in
Honduras, but it didn't work, unsurprisingly. Co-ops must be restored in that region, which were very
successful.
Private bankers can't control BOTH forms of money creation – government issuance of new currency and
credit creation, but they do and have been in the US for the past 40 years now.
Gov't finance is being intentionally mismanaged because banks make money on loans (and deficits cut into
their profits), so they suppressed wages and shut off fiscal policy gov't investment in order to force the
nation to borrow credit. This has caused a massive private debt over the past 40 years, all dishonorably
accrued because it never had to have happened in the first place. It should all be cancelled.
We need to reclaim the State from the money lenders.
"The "nation-state" as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal
creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are
far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state."
~ Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, 1970
"The Trilateralist Commission is international (and) is intended to be the vehicle for multinational
consolidation of the commercial and banking interests BY SEIZING CONTROL OF THE POLITICAL GOVERNMENT OF THE
UNITED STATES. The Trilateralist Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and
consolidate the four centers of power – political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical."
~ Barry Goldwater, With No Apologies, 1979
"Uses and Abuses of Class Separatism" [ Verso ].
"[T]here are at least two necessary and sufficient elements in a relation of production.
There's a structural element and an individual element. The structural element is in the
relation itself (externally-facing), like a ratio, for example, and the individual element is
in how people experience and live the relation (internally-facing) .. The wage relation is a
paradigm case of a relation of production. It's got structural elements, like the exploitative
difference between amounts paid to workers compared to profits made by capitalists. It also has
experiential elements, like how workers live their wage relations depending on their race,
gender, nationality, sexuality, ability. Neither element is sufficient on its own for the
relation of production. Neither is dependent on the other. Neither is a function of the other.
Both are necessary and sufficient for the relation of production . Class separatists separate
out the structural element of relations of production, name it "class", and then distinguish
this element of relations of production from the individual elements, calling them "identity" .
However, class separatists make a big mistake (maybe their biggest) when they think that
structural elements cut across individual elements of relations of production. The way Black
women live unequal housing relations is different than indigenous men, queer immigrants, or a
straight white people. But class separatists go way too far and think that these individual
elements of relations of production (which they tragically call "identity" just like liberals
do) need not be foregrounded and given equal political weight in their thinking and organizing.
Of course structural elements of relations of production, like rent prices or mold, cut across
so many differences. But these elements don't cut across individual differences. The structural
elements are lived through the individual elements. The individual differences are muscles to
the structural bones in relations of production. If we try to cut across these muscles, we lose
our movement power." • This article is part of an extremely heatlthy on-going polemic on
the left, and well worth a read on that account (It's also written in English, and not dense
jargon. (I do think that "separatists" has the wrong tone.)
"Labor exploitation also happens close to home" [ Supply
Chain Dive ]. "Far too often, customers outsource their moral outrage, as well as their
manufacturing, to their top tier suppliers. Turning a blind eye to these tragedies may be the
easy choice, especially when the upstream supply chain is halfway around the world. But human
trafficking and exploitation are not reserved to low cost countries. We need to acknowledge
there are labor exploitations within our domestic supply chain. Knowingly or not, we use
suppliers who take advantage of employees, provide poor working conditions and low wages, and
purposefully violate laws and regulations. Where is the moral outrage of labor exploitation in
the United States?" More:
I remember the employees at a printed circuit board facility with holes in their clothes
and burns on their skin due to the acids they worked with. Employees in a small and crowded
break room that was crawling with roaches eating their lunch. Workers jammed shoulder to
shoulder on assembly benches without enough room to properly do their work. Machinists
lacking eye and hearing protection. Barbed wire surrounding an outside break area. Exposed
electrical wires and leaking pipes, and clean rooms that were far from clean.
Protectionist Measure to Help U.S. Corporations at the Expense of U.S. Workers Tops Trump
China Trade Agenda
By Dean Baker
Readers of this New York Times piece * on Robert Lighthizer, United States trade
representative, and his negotiations with China may have missed this point. The piece said
that one of Lighthizer's main goals was to stop China's practice of requiring that companies
like Boeing and GE, who set up operations in China, take Chinese companies as business
partners.
This is an effective way of requiring technology transfers, since the partners will become
familiar with the production techniques of the U.S. companies. This will enable them in
future years to be competitors with these companies.
If the U.S. government prohibits contracts that require this sort of technology transfer
it will make it more desirable to outsource some of their production to China. This will be
good for the profits of Boeing, GE, and other large companies but bad for U.S. workers. It
will also mean that we will be paying more for products in the future than would otherwise be
the case, since if Chinese companies would have been able to out-compete U.S. companies, it
presumably means that would be charging lower prices or selling a better product.
It is also worth noting that the basic concern expressed by Lighthizer and others assumes
that major U.S. corporations are unable to look out for themselves. They are not being forced
to enter in contracts with China. This problem arises because they decide to invest in China,
even with conditions requiring technology transfer.
We have a great story here where the government, and many analysts, think our largest
corporations lack the ability to look out for their best interest. By contrast, when it comes
to individual workers who are forced to sign away their right to have class action suits, or
individual investors who can be fleeced by the financial industry, the current position of
the government is that they can look out for themselves.
The NYT piece also does some inappropriate mind reading when it tells readers:
"Mr. Trump is increasingly eager to reach a deal that will help calm the markets, which he
views as a political electrocardiogram of his presidency."
The reporter/editor does not know that Trump is "increasingly eager" or that he "views"
the markets as "a political electrocardiogram of his presidency."
Good reporting says what politicians do and say. It does not report as fact their alleged
opinions.
As a people, we should look to the masters of mercantilism, Germany, and learn the lessons.
How are they dealing with the tendency of corporations to hire the gulag communists to
produce goods for sale in the advanced Western economies, like Germany and America.
Obviously, the communist government of China, which owns all production, has decided to not
buy from the capitalists, but prefers to sell to them, only. Whoops.
Why can't Krugman, an economist, clearly explain the destruction of the nation by neoliberals
destruction of economic theory, turning benefits into liabilities, and liabilities into
benefit, but only asymetricaly???
Hard core neoliberals cleverly attacked Adam Smith and Keynes so stealthily that even
Krugman rejects Adamm Smith and Keynes, and embraces free lunch economics.
No progressive today would support FDR or his advisors, including Eccles, who was much
smarter than anyone running the Fed since about 1970.
Hard core neoliberals want no money paid to workers, but they demand government ensure
consumers have lots of money to spend, far mote money than they earn. But, Hard core
neoliberals do not want government giving consumers money to spend to generate high profits
for Hard core neoliberals, but want the government to enable cHard core neoliberals get the
free money to rent to consumers, and then government punish consumers for not being able to
pay debt because they are not paid to work, because paying workers costs Hard core
neoliberals too much.
Just read a editorial from the anti government control of economy Heritage demanding a
branch of government, the Fed, control the economy, ie print more money, so businesses don't
have to pay consumers to buy stuff, ie, pay higher wages.
Free lunch economics is a total failure, yet hard core neoliberals argue its working
great, except [real] liberals keep pointing out its clear and obvious failures.
But hard core neoliberals should be thankful Krugman is not a liberal, but a free lunch
progressive in near total agreement with free lunch Hard core neoliberals.
"... "We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress. If you're a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn't talk to you. If you're a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you." ..."
"... "No single event has influenced the history of labor in Illinois, the United States, and even the world, more than the Chicago Haymarket Affair. It began with a rally on May 4, 1886, but the consequences are still being felt today. Although the rally is included in American history textbooks, very few present the event accurately or point out its significance." ..."
"... Chicago Haymarket Massacre ..."
"... Working for Inclusive, Just, and Equal Alternatives in Asia and Europe. AEPF11 tackled strategies on major themes or People's Visions, representing the hopes of citizens of the two regions. These are: ..."
"... Resource Justice, Land Rights, Equal Access to Water, and Participation – Going Beyond Extractivism ..."
"... Food Sovereignty/Food Security – Beyond zero hunger ..."
"... Climate Justice – Towards Sustainable Energy Production and Use, and Zero Waste ..."
"... Socially Just Trade, Production and Investment ..."
"... Social Justice – Social Protection for All, Decent Work and Sustainable Livelihoods, Tax Justice and other egalitarian Alternatives to Debt and Austerity ..."
"... Peace Building and Human Security – Responses to Migration, and Fundamentalism and Terrorism ..."
"... Participatory Democracy, Gender Equality and Minority Rights ..."
"... "We are increasingly experiencing corporate capture", whereby multinational and national corporations structure and determine our lives and livelihoods," ..."
It is indeed ironic that the US, where May Day has its origin, government has never
celebrated this day, but instead has declared it 'law and order day' since Eisenhower. This is
indicative of contempt for workers by a capitalist-controlled state and the resolve to prevent
labor from demanding a voice in public policy as it did in the 19 th century when it
confronted a violently hostile employer backed by the state. Today, many Republican and
Democrats openly and unapologetically acknowledge capitalist monopoly over public policy. Mick
Mulvaney, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, unashamedly invited 1,300 bank
executives to help him convert the agency that he heads into a pro-banking institution, more so
than it is currently, by contributing money to politicians favoring banking deregulation and
curbing consumer protection safeguards. "We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress. If
you're a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn't talk to you. If you're a lobbyist who gave
us money, I might talk to you."
An honest admission of the degree to which neoliberalism has triumphed, Mulvaney's speech
was indicative of the degree to which capital is now in an open politically-normalized war
against labor and society. This is no different than it was in the post-Civil War era when the
nascent labor movement in America confronted the combined forces of both employers and the
state in the struggle for living wages, safety, and varieties of employer abuses of workers,
including children and women. An estimated 35,000 workers, mostly Italian and Irish immigrants,
went on strike in Chicago on May 1, 1886 in what became known as the Haymarket Massacre. They
demanded an 8-hour workday, fair wages, work safety, abolition of child labor, and the end to
labor exploitation by management in the workplace. The response was the police striking workers
and government adopting harsh measures against any worker trying to organize in the aftermath.
William J Adelman, founder of the Illinois Labor History Society and Vice President, correctly
stated: "No single event has influenced the history of labor in Illinois, the United
States, and even the world, more than the Chicago Haymarket Affair. It began with a rally on
May 4, 1886, but the consequences are still being felt today. Although the rally is included in
American history textbooks, very few present the event accurately or point out its
significance."
As Adelman pointed out, American society is more anti-labor than many other advanced
capitalist countries, though anti-labor policies have spread globally under neoliberalism since
the 1980s. While the police are not out killing workers as they were in the 19 th
and early 20 th century, the contemporary neoliberal state has adopted policies
intended to crush organized labor and silence any voice of dissent to the corporate welfare
state. As a market-based institutional order impacting every aspect of society, including
personal identity, neoliberal corporate welfarism has replaced social welfare capitalism. The
neoliberal goal is to turn the clock back to the early stages of capitalist development when
labor had no rights and the state's role was to act as a conduit for private capital
accumulation. Although society's institutional evolution does not permit for a return to 19
th century social conditions, the trend is to erase as many of the vestiges of
social welfare as possible in order to accelerate capital accumulation.
Whether neoliberalism operates under the pluralist model where vestiges of social welfare
and diversity remain as part of the legal structure, or under the populist authoritarian model
intended to erase pluralism and social welfare, the goal is capital accumulation through
massive transfer of income from labor and the middle class to the richest tiny percentage in
the world. Employers had no difficulty convincing the government to crush the labor movement in
Chicago through violent means in the 1880s or to execute a number of labor leaders in the
aftermath, thus sending a strong message to the world about the absence of workers' rights,
civil rights, human rights and social justice. The infamous Chicago Haymarket Massacre
left a legacy of the class struggle with reverberations around the world, exposing the myth of
bourgeois democracy as representative of anyone outside the capitalist class. Anti-union and
anti-labor policies were characteristic of the US government from Haymarket until the Great
Depression when Roosevelt cleverly broadened the labor movement in order to co-opt if as part
of the Democratic party, thus deradicalizing workers and subordinating the class struggle to
capital, in return for a social welfare state.
Post-Vietnam War progressive opposition to the misanthropic neoliberal culture in most
countries has been co-opted by pluralist neoliberal political parties claiming to represent all
classes within the context of the existing social order. Every identity group, from minorities,
women, elderly, alternative lifestyle, environmental groups, etc. is represented under the
larger umbrella of a pluralist political party. Similarly, the conservative to rightwing
identity groups, religious, nationalist, militarist, xenophobic, racist, misogynist, etc. are
under the umbrella of the populist/authoritarian neoliberal political camp as in Trump's
Republican Party. The left representing the working class – lower middle class included
– has a very weak voice so marginalized a much in the historically anti-left America as
in most of the Western World. Instead of joining the progressive leftist camp, the labor
movement is itself co-opted by the neoliberal political parties of the pluralist or populist
variety, thus society operates under a totalitarian canopy within which the choices are between
the neoliberal pluralist or the populist pluralist parties, with variations in modalities,
considering inherent conflicts among the political and financial elites choosing different
camps. President Macron representing the pluralist neoliberal camp in France is just as
militaristic and anti-labor as Trump representing the populist neoliberal camp in the US.
Labor's representation in these governments is non-existent. Operating within the parliamentary
system, France has an anti-capitalist non-revolutionary party, though it has not been put to
the test and it has a very long way to go before it takes power.
In the neoliberal age that dominates life in all its aspects, the development of genuine
socialism seems unattainable and people become fatalistic or apathetic. However, the
contradictions of the neoliberal establishment, the countless of contradictions in the social
order will produce the foundations of a new social order built on the ashes of the one
decaying. The declarations of the Asia-Europe People's Forum in the last two decades point out
some of the structural problems of the neoliberal status quo, as articulated by heads of state.
However, these declarations remain mere rhetoric, as the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting Summit of
July 2016 illustrates.
Working for Inclusive, Just, and Equal Alternatives in Asia and Europe. AEPF11 tackled
strategies on major themes or People's Visions, representing the hopes of citizens of the two
regions. These are:
Resource Justice, Land Rights, Equal Access to Water, and Participation – Going
Beyond Extractivism
Food Sovereignty/Food Security – Beyond zero hunger
Climate Justice – Towards Sustainable Energy Production and Use, and Zero
Waste
Socially Just Trade, Production and Investment
Social Justice – Social Protection for All, Decent Work and Sustainable
Livelihoods, Tax Justice and other egalitarian Alternatives to Debt and Austerity
Peace Building and Human Security – Responses to Migration, and Fundamentalism
and Terrorism
Participatory Democracy, Gender Equality and Minority Rights
ASEM11 touches on some of the problems without analyzing their root causes, namely,
globalist neoliberal policies that the same heads of state as signatories are pursuing. While
agreeing on the interlocking nature of the crises of capitalism, and acknowledging such crises
are the cause of greater social polarization – poverty, inequality, joblessness, and
insecurity – they are not willing to abandon the very system that gives rise to the
crises. While they readily admit that "We are increasingly experiencing corporate capture",
whereby multinational and national corporations structure and determine our lives and
livelihoods," they are unwilling to do anything about it. No government is doing anything
to encourage genuine grassroots progressive movements, labor and social movements that would
become the foundation for a new social order rooted in social justice. On the contrary, the
goal is to prevent labor mobilization, progressive social organizations, unless of course they
are co-opted and subordinate to the goals of neoliberalism. That the US does not celebrate May
Day to honor workers is a reflection of the dominant culture's contempt for labor. For those
countries that officially celebrate May Day while pursuing neoliberal anti-labor policies, the
holiday has been reduced to about the same level of hypocrisy as any national Independence Day
– oppression remains a reality for workers, while equality and social justice are a
distant dream.
Jon V. Kofas , Ph.D. – Retired university professor of history – author of ten
academic books and two dozens scholarly articles. Specializing in International Political
economy, Kofas has taught courses and written on US diplomatic history, and the roles of the
World Bank and IMF in the world.
"... only 1 in 3 US citizen STEM graduates can actually find jobs these days. ..."
"... US citizen are left submitting their resumes into black holes because the tech firms have placed their HR function into bunkers with near zero accessibility to the professional community who wants to offer their services. ..."
"... many bright minds, in the prime of their lives, instead of contributing, are sitting around trying to figure out where they're going to get their next meal. ..."
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go,
I owe my soul to the company store.
Travis Merle wrote the song Sixteen Tons about working your life away in the coal mines and spending your whole paycheck–and then
some–at the company store. You had no other options in the corporate mining villages of the early twentieth century.
The most famous version of the song came from Tennessee Ernie Ford. Sixteen Tons was covered by many others, including Johnny
Cash, and even Elvis at some concerts though he never recorded it.
And South Park recently featured their own version in an episode called "Unfulfilled," about working for Amazon. Of course, South Park is a comedy cartoon series that parodies real-life events. They depicted Amazon fulfilment centers as the only available jobs in the small Colorado town. People worked in dangerous collaboration
with machines, and went home to spend their entire paycheck on Amazon.
Jeff Bezos was depicted as a telepathic villain . He would tune in to various
Alexa streams to gauge the mood of the town. And anyone who didn't do his bidding would have their Prime status revoked. Comparing Amazon to coal mines is funny because it exaggerates a fear in society. Everyone buys from Amazon, so the small businesses
go under. And everyone working for the small businesses goes to work for Amazon.
South Park did the same thing with a Walmart episode about a decade back. Walmart possessed some unknown power which compelled
people to shop there, they were powerless to resist. Even better if they could work there and get an employee discount despite the
low pay.
Just when American workers were getting comfortable and were delivering productivity improvements, "corporate America" dropped
the ball and started doing massive outsourcing and importation of H-1B workers. To such a severe extent that only 1 in 3 US citizen
STEM graduates can actually find jobs these days.
Even top grads from top schools are ignored while the red carpet is rolled out
to foreign national OPT and H-1B visa recipients. US citizen are left submitting their resumes into black holes because the tech
firms have placed their HR function into bunkers with near zero accessibility to the professional community who wants to offer their
services.
The loss to the economy due to such is enormous. So many bright minds, in the prime of their lives, instead of contributing, are
sitting around trying to figure out where they're going to get their next meal.
XXX
10 hours ago remove link
Being your own boss sounds great, but in fact most people are not 'wired' for that. Which is a good thing, because any hierarchal
organization requires that a few be leaders, with the majority being led. That's why tribes have one chief, nations have one King
or President. It's why there is one judge who presides over a trial, why there is one teacher to a classroom, and why we have many
times more soldiers than generals.
That is simply the reality. The folks who go on about how we should all become entrepreneurs and work for ourselves as a solution
to the noxious employment situation we find ourselves in are ignoring that reality. A world of 'all chiefs and no Indians' just doesn't
work, because most people are unable to function that way. That doesn't make them inferior, it doesn't make them suckers for working
for 'the man'...that this is not currently working out too well is a function of the incompetent way we've been handling the whole
employment-thing, not because too many are employed by others.
The ratio of leaders vs. followers is the way it is because that's what is needed for these systems to WORK. Furthermore, you
find this in ALL of nature as well...the pack has ONE leader, the hive has ONE Queen, even among single-celled organisms, the mitochondria
have assumed the leadership role and now control and direct all other cellular functions. We see this in the evolution of out own
bodies, which consist of many different systems all operating under the leadership of organized neural cells in the brain. You will
of course notice that these biological systems have something in common...they all work for the good of the WHOLE organism, not just
a few parts. This is a missing piece in most human-run systems, and is likely a reason most people tend to mistrust them and want
out.
There is nothing wrong with being a 'worker bee'! Not everyone in the church choir can sell a million albums...does that mean
everyone else should just say the hell with it and disband their choirs? When company A makes one guy the CEO, should all the other
employees quit in protest and go form their own companies? Then what is the CEO going to run? And who will work for all those new
companies?
Anyone who thinks Americans have some kind of problem with 'work' needs to examine the MESSAGING our society is sending about
work. I think the problem really lies there. Because competition without cooperation is just warfare. And boy, is THIS a society
at war with itself or what?
XXX 12 hours ago
All large systems are hierarchical. Feudalism was hierarchical. So in that sense they are similar, although in corporations there
are usually a lot more levels and a lot more people are 'not serfs', but something slightly higher up.
Hierarchies (as far as we know) are the only way to 'scale'. Look at any large system and you will see a hierarchy (roads, Internet,
vascular system, government, military, and yes, corporations).
Hierarchical systems may have undesirable elements for some e.g. inequality, but until someone comes up with a different way to
organize and run a large system, it is the only way. And, it was not 'designed', it is simply the natural outcome. As natural as
the blood flowing in your veins. To 'blame' natural systems for perceived drawbacks is like blaming 'math'.
XXX
14 hours ago (Edited) remove link
This article indicates that we live within a system built and controlled by others and that our only choice is how we respond
to that environment. Someone else writes the rules that favor them and the rest of us just have to live with it.
It's a political economy. Changing the rules changes the economy.
Metalredneck , 14 hours ago
I'm sure the resemblance to feudalism is a coincidence. /s
US "resistance" is as fake as it can be. It consists mainly of Clinton wing of DemoRats (in
pocket of Wall Street) and neoliberal presstitutes in MSM.
Macron is seen as a former Rothschild banker who had the idea that he could 'modernise'
France in the neoliberal Brussels way. According to the latest poll 61% of the French reject
Macron's policies.
In less than two months, the yellow vests (" gilets jaunes " ) movement in
France has reshaped the political landscape in Europe. For a seventh straight week,
demonstrations continued across the country even after concessions from a cowed President
Emmanuel Macron while inspiring a wave of similar gatherings in neighboring states like Belgium
and the Netherlands. Just as el uture EU designer was fortunate enough to have friends in high
places. Schuman's clemency was granted by none other than General Charles de Gaulle himself,
the leader of the resistance during the war and future French President. Instantly, Schuman's
turncoat reputation was rehabilitated and his wartime activity whitewashed. Even though he had
knowingly voted full authority to Pétain, the retention of his post in the Vichy
government was veneered to have occurred somehow without his knowledge or consent.
... ... ...
Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His work has appeared
in Counterpunch, Global Research, Dissident Voice, Greanville Post, OffGuardian, and more. Max
may be reached at [email protected]
Thierry Meyssan is reporting that Macron is more of a stooge for Henry Kravis (of the KKR
corporate raider firm) than for the Rothschilds. He also alleges that Kravis has been funding
ISIS/Daesh.
Rothschild made a comment the other day about the Italian government debt problem. French
banks have heavy exposure. France has troops in Syria; has the French army been leveraged
into a mercenary force for wealthy Zionists?
The article by Angela Nagle which is linked to is, however, absolutely excellent and I
thoroughly recommend reading it as a very powerful argument against unfettered
immigration.
Very perceptive to place "Resistance" between quotes. Resistance is non-existent in the
US. True resistance requires an educated working class; instead the US has a amassed one of
the most stupefied and brainwashed workers on the planet.
The Yellow Jackets movement isn't lost in the US, nor among those who support DJT. In
fact, until the Tea Party movement and the Occupy movement, both grass roots organized,
recognize they have a common enemy in the status quo, they will continue to conquered by
it.
The merge of fiscal and social responsibility is something the NWO wants to avoid at all
costs while they implement their global currency and totalitarian rule. Globalists want to
replace God with the state.
France and the US, like most nations, are controlled by the parasitical zionist central
bankers and their deep state apparatchiks. They continue to squeeze the native populations
into poverty and servitude, while destroying their culture with open borders, facilitating
3rd world immigration. The zionist controlled MSM won't cover the Yellow Vest movement in
hopes to keep awareness low. Many would like to see it gain a foothold in the US.
Unfortunately, Americans have been subject to fluoridation of their water supply, unlike
France, and thus are docile. The pharmaceuticals and vaccines have rendered them zombies.
"... Stocks have always been "a legal form of gambling". What is happening now however, is that a pair of treys can beat out your straight flush. Companies that have never turned a profit fetch huge prices on the stock market. ..."
"... The stock market suckered millions in before 2008 and then prices plummeted. Where did the money from grandpa's pension fund go? ..."
"... Abraham Lincoln said that the purpose of government is to do for people what they cannot do for themselves. Government also should serve to keep people from hurting themselves and to restrain man's greed, which otherwise cannot be self-controlled. Anyone who seeks to own productive power that they cannot or won't use for consumption are beggaring their neighbor––the equivalency of mass murder––the impact of concentrated capital ownership. ..."
"... family wealth" predicts outcomes for 10 to 15 generations. Those with extreme wealth owe it to events going back "300 to 450" years ago, according to research published by the New Republic – an era when it wasn't unusual for white Americans to benefit from an economy dependent upon widespread, unpaid black labor in the form of slavery. ..."
"... Correction: The average person in poverty in the U.S. does not live in the same abject, third world poverty as you might find in Honduras, Central African Republic, Cambodia, or the barrios of Sao Paulo. ..."
"... Since our poor don't live in abject poverty, I invite you to live as a family of four on less than $11,000 a year anywhere in the United States. If you qualify and can obtain subsidized housing you may have some of the accoutrements in your home that you seem to equate with living the high life. You know, running water, a fridge, a toilet, a stove. You would also likely have a phone (subsidized at that) so you might be able to participate (or attempt to participate) in the job market in an honest attempt to better your family's economic prospects and as is required to qualify for most assistance programs. ..."
"... So many dutiful neoliberals on here rushing to the defense of poor Capitalism. Clearly, these commentators are among those who are in the privileged position of reaping the true benefits of Capitalism - And, of course, there are many benefits to reap if you are lucky enough to be born into the right racial-socioeconomic context. ..."
"... Please walk us through how non-capitalist systems create wealth and allow their lowest class people propel themselves to the top in one generation. You will note that most socialist systems derive their technology and advancements from the more capitalistic systems. Pharmaceuticals, software, and robotics are a great example of this. I shutter to think of what the welfare of the average citizen of the world would be like without the advancements made via the capitalist countries. ..."
The poorest Americans have no realistic hope of achieving anything that approaches income equality. They still struggle
for access to the basics
... ... ...
The disparities in wealth that we term "income inequality" are no accident, and they can't be fixed by fiddling at the edges of
our current economic system. These disparities happened by design, and the system structurally disadvantages those at the bottom.
The poorest Americans have no realistic hope of achieving anything that approaches income equality; even their very chances for access
to the most basic tools of life are almost nil.
... ... ...
Too often, the answer by those who have hoarded everything is they will choose to "give back" in a manner of their choosing –
just look at Mark Zuckerberg and his much-derided plan to "give away" 99% of his Facebook stock. He is unlikely to help change inequality
or poverty any more than "giving away" of $100m helped children in Newark schools.
Allowing any of the 100 richest Americans to choose how they fix "income inequality" will not make the country more equal or even
guarantee more access to life. You can't take down the master's house with the master's tools, even when you're the master; but more
to the point, who would tear down his own house to distribute the bricks among so very many others?
mkenney63 5 Dec 2015 20:37
Excellent article. The problems we face are structural and can only be solved by making fundamental changes. We must bring
an end to "Citizens United", modern day "Jim Crow" and the military industrial complex in order to restore our democracy. Then
maybe, just maybe, we can have an economic system that will treat all with fairness and respect. Crony capitalism has had its
day, it has mutated into criminality.
Kencathedrus -> Marcedward 5 Dec 2015 20:23
In the pre-capitalist system people learnt crafts to keep themselves afloat. The Industrial Revolution changed all that. Now
we have the church of Education promising a better life if we get into debt to buy (sorry, earn) degrees.
The whole system is messed up and now we have millions of people on this planet who can't function even those with degrees.
Barbarians are howling at the gates of Europe. The USA is rotting from within. As Marx predicted the Capitalists are merely paying
their own grave diggers.
mkenney63 -> Bobishere 5 Dec 2015 20:17
I would suggest you read the economic and political history of the past 30 years. To help you in your study let me recommend
a couple of recent books: "Winner Take all Politics" by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson and "The Age of Acquiescence" by Steve Fraser.
It always amazes me that one can be so blind the facts of recent American history; it's not just "a statistical inequality", it's
been a well thought-out strategy over time to rig the system, a strategy engaged in by politicians and capitalists. Shine some
light on this issue by acquainting yourself with the facts.
Maharaja Brovinda -> Singh Jill Harrison 5 Dec 2015 19:42
We play out the prisoner's dilemma in life, in general, over and over in different circumstances, every day. And we always
choose the dominant - rational - solution. But the best solution is not based on rationality, but rather on trust and faith in
each other - rather ironically for our current, evidence based society!
Steven Palmer 5 Dec 2015 19:19
Like crack addicts the philanthropricks only seek to extend their individual glory, social image their primary goal, and yet
given the context they will burn in history. Philanthroptits should at least offset the immeasurable damage they have done through
their medieval wealth accumulation. Collaborative philanthropy for basic income is a good idea, but ye, masters tools.
BlairM -> Iconoclastick 5 Dec 2015 19:10
Well, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, capitalism is the worst possible economic system, except for all those other economic
systems that have been tried from time to time.
I'd rather just have the freedom to earn money as I please, and if that means inequality, it's a small price to pay for not
having some feudal lord or some party bureaucrat stomping on my humanity.
brusuz 5 Dec 2015 18:52
As long as wealth can be created by shuffling money from one place to another in the giant crap shoot we call our economy,
nothing will change. Until something takes place to make it advantageous for the investor capitalists to put that money to work
doing something that actually produces some benefit to the society as a whole, they will continue their extractive machinations.
I see nothing on the horizon that is going to change any of that, and to cast this as some sort of a racial issue is quite superficial.
We have all gotten the shaft, since there is no upward mobility available to anyone. Since the Bush crowd of neocons took power,
we have all been shackled with "individual solutions to societal created problems."
Jimi Del Duca 5 Dec 2015 18:31
Friends, Capitalism is structural exploitation of ALL WORKERS. Thinking about it as solely a race issue is divisive. What we
need is CLASS SOLIDARITY and ORGANIZATION. See iww.org We are the fighting union with no use for capitalists!
slightlynumb -> AmyInNH 5 Dec 2015 18:04
You'd be better off reading Marx if you want to understand capitalism. I think you are ascribing the word to what you think
it should be rather than what it is.
It is essentially a class structure rather than any defined economic system. Neoliberal is essentially laissez faire capitalism.
It is designed to suborn nation states to corporate benefit.
AmyInNH -> tommydog
They make $40 a month. Working 7 days a week. At least 12 hour days. Who's fed you that "we're doing them a favor" BS?
And I've news for you regarding "Those whose skills are less adaptable to doing so are seeing their earnings decline." We have
many people who have 3 masters degrees making less than minimum wage. We have top notch STEM students shunned so corporations
can hire captive/cheaper foreign labor, called H1-Bs, who then wait 10 years working for them waiting for their employment based
green card. Or "visiting" students here on J1 visas, so the employers can get out of paying: social security, federal unemployment
insurance, etc.
Wake up and smell the coffee tommydog. They've more than a thumb on the scale.
I am a socialist. I decided to read this piece to see if Mr. Thrasher could write about market savagery without propounding the
fiction that whites are somehow exempt from the effects of it.
No, he could not. I clicked on the link accompanying his assertion
that whites who are high school dropouts earn more than blacks with college degrees, and I read the linked piece in full. The
linked piece does not in fact compare income (i.e., yearly earnings) of white high school dropouts with those of black college
graduates, but it does compare family wealth across racial cohorts (though not educational ones), and the gap there is indeed
stark, with average white family wealth in the six figures (full disclosure, I am white, and my personal wealth is below zero,
as I owe more in student loans than I own, so perhaps I am not really white, or I do not fully partake of "whiteness," or whatever),
and average black family wealth in the four figures.
The reason for this likely has a lot to do with home ownership disparities, which in turn are linked in significant part to
racist redlining practices. So white dropouts often live in homes their parents or grandparents bought, while many black college
graduates whose parents were locked out of home ownership by institutional racism and, possibly, the withering of manufacturing
jobs just as the northward migration was beginning to bear some economic fruit for black families, are still struggling to become
homeowners. Thus, the higher average wealth for the dropout who lives in a family owned home.
But this is not what Mr. Thrasher wrote. He specifically used the words "earn more," creating the impression that some white
ignoramus is simply going to stumble his way into a higher salary than a cultivated, college educated black person. That is simply
not the case, and the difference does matter.
Why does it matter? Because I regularly see middle aged whites who are broken and homeless on the streets of the town where
I live, and I know they are simply the tip of a growing mountain of privation. Yeah, go ahead, call it white tears if you want,
but if you cannot see that millions (including, of course, not simply folks who are out and out homeless, but folks who are struggling
to get enough to eat and routinely go without needed medication and medical care) of people who have "white privilege" are indeed
oppressed by global capitalism then I would say that you are, at the end of the day, NO BETTER THAN THE WHITES YOU DISDAIN.
If you have read this far, then you realize that I am in no way denying the reality of structural racism. But an account of
economic savagery that entirely subsumes it into non-economic categories (race, gender, age), that refuses to acknowledge that
blacks can be exploiters and whites can be exploited, is simply conservatism by other means. One gets the sense that if we have
enough black millionaires and enough whites dying of things like a lack of medical care, then this might bring just a little bit
of warmth to the hearts of people like Mr. Thrasher.
Call it what you want, but don't call it progressive. Maybe it is historical karma. Which is understandable, as there is no
reason why globally privileged blacks in places like the U.S. or Great Britain should bear the burden of being any more selfless
or humane than globally privileged whites are or have been. The Steven Thrashers of humanity are certainly no worse than many
of the whites they cannot seem to recognize as fully human are.
But nor are they any better.
JohnLG 5 Dec 2015 17:23
I agree that the term "income inequality" is so vague that falls between useless and diversionary, but so too is most use of
the word "capitalism", or so it seems to me. Typically missing is a penetrating analysis of where the problem lies, a comprehensibly
supported remedy, or large-scale examples of anything except what's not working. "Income inequality" is pretty abstract until
we look specifically at the consequences for individuals and society, and take a comprehensive look at all that is unequal. What
does "capitalism" mean? Is capitalism the root of all this? Is capitalism any activity undertaken for profit, or substantial monopolization
of markets and power?
Power tends to corrupt. Money is a form of power, but there are others. The use of power to essentially cheat, oppress or kill
others is corrupt, whether that power is in the form of a weapon, wealth, the powers of the state, or all of the above. Power
is seductive and addictive. Even those with good intensions can be corrupted by an excess of power and insufficient accountability,
while predators are drawn to power like sharks to blood. Democracy involves dispersion of power, ideally throughout a whole society.
A constitutional democracy may offer protection even to minorities against a "tyranny of the majority" so long as a love of justice
prevails. Selective "liberty and justice" is not liberty and justice at all, but rather a tyranny of the many against the few,
as in racism, or of the few against the many, as by despots. Both forms reinforce each other in the same society, both are corrupt,
and any "ism" can be corrupted by narcissism. To what degree is any society a shining example of government of, for, and by the
people, and to what degree can one discover empirical evidence of corruption? What do we do about it?
AmyInNH -> CaptainGrey 5 Dec 2015 17:15
You're too funny. It's not "lifting billions out of poverty". It's moving malicious manufacturing practices to the other side
of the planet. To the lands of no labor laws. To hide it from consumers. To hide profits.
And it is dying. Legislatively they choke off their natural competition, which is an essential element of capitalism. Monopoly
isn't capitalism. And when they bribe legislators, we don't have democracy any more either.
Jeremiah2000 -> Teresa Trujillo 5 Dec 2015 16:53
Stocks have always been "a legal form of gambling". What is happening now however, is that a pair of treys can beat out
your straight flush. Companies that have never turned a profit fetch huge prices on the stock market.
The stock market suckered millions in before 2008 and then prices plummeted. Where did the money from grandpa's pension
fund go?
Gary Reber 5 Dec 2015 16:45
Abraham Lincoln said that the purpose of government is to do for people what they cannot do for themselves. Government
also should serve to keep people from hurting themselves and to restrain man's greed, which otherwise cannot be self-controlled.
Anyone who seeks to own productive power that they cannot or won't use for consumption are beggaring their neighbor––the equivalency
of mass murder––the impact of concentrated capital ownership.
The words "OWN" and "ASSETS" are the key descriptors of the definition of wealth. But these words are not well understood by
the vast majority of Americans or for that matter, global citizens. They are limited to the vocabulary used by the wealthy ownership
class and financial publications, which are not widely read, and not even taught in our colleges and universities.
The wealthy ownership class did not become wealthy because they are "three times as smart." Still there is a valid argument
that the vast majority of Americans do not pay particular attention to the financial world and educate themselves on wealth building
within the current system's limited past-savings paradigm. Significantly, the wealthy OWNERSHIP class use their political power
(power always follows property OWNERSHIP) to write the system rules to benefit and enhance their wealth. As such they have benefited
from forging trade policy agreements which further concentrate OWNERSHIP on a global scale, military-industrial complex subsidies
and government contracts, tax code provisions and loopholes and collective-bargaining rules – policy changes they've used their
wealth to champion.
Gary Reber 5 Dec 2015 16:44
Unfortunately, when it comes to recommendations for solutions to economic inequality, virtually every commentator, politician
and economist is stuck in viewing the world in one factor terms – human labor, in spite of their implied understanding that the
rich are rich because they OWN the non-human means of production – physical capital. The proposed variety of wealth-building programs,
like "universal savings accounts that might be subsidized for low-income savers," are not practical solutions because they rely
on savings (a denial of consumption which lessens demand in the economy), which the vast majority of Americans do not have, and
for those who can save their savings are modest and insignificant. Though, millions of Americans own diluted stock value through
the "stock market exchanges," purchased with their earnings as labor workers (savings), their stock holdings are relatively minuscule,
as are their dividend payments compared to the top 10 percent of capital owners. Pew Research found that 53 percent of Americans
own no stock at all, and out of the 47 percent who do, the richest 5 percent own two-thirds of that stock. And only 10 percent
of Americans have pensions, so stock market gains or losses don't affect the incomes of most retirees.
As for taxpayer-supported saving subsidies or other wage-boosting measures, those who have only their labor power and its precarious
value held up by coercive rigging and who desperately need capital ownership to enable them to be capital workers (their productive
assets applied in the economy) as well as labor workers to have a way to earn more income, cannot satisfy their unsatisfied needs
and wants and sufficiently provide for themselves and their families. With only access to labor wages, the 99 percenters will
continue, in desperation, to demand more and more pay for the same or less work, as their input is exponentially replaced by productive
capital.
As such, the vast majority of American consumers will continue to be strapped to mounting consumer debt bills, stagnant wages
and inflationary price pressures. As their ONLY source of income is through wage employment, economic insecurity for the 99 percent
majority of people means they cannot survive more than a week or two without a paycheck. Thus, the production side of the economy
is under-nourished and hobbled as a result, because there are fewer and fewer "customers with money." We thus need to free economic
growth from the slavery of past savings.
I mentioned that political power follows property OWNERSHIP because with concentrated capital asset OWNERSHIP our elected representatives
are far too often bought with the expectation that they protect and enhance the interests of the wealthiest Americans, the OWNERSHIP
class they too overwhelmingly belong to.
Many, including the author of this article, have concluded that with such a concentrated OWNERSHIP stronghold the wealthy have
on our politics, "it's hard to see where this cycle ends." The ONLY way to reverse this cycle and broaden capital asset OWNERSHIP
universally is a political revolution. (Bernie Sanders, are you listening?)
The political revolution must address the problem of lack of demand. To create demand, the FUTURE economy must be financed
in ways that create new capital OWNERS, who will benefit from the full earnings of the FUTURE productive capability of the American
economy, and without taking from those who already OWN. This means significantly slowing the further concentration of capital
asset wealth among those who are already wealthy and ensuring that the system is reformed to promote inclusive prosperity, inclusive
opportunity, and inclusive economic justice.
yamialwaysright 5 Dec 2015 16:13
I was interested and in agreement until I read about structured racism. Many black kidsin the US grow up without a father in
the house. They turn to anti-social behaviour and crime. Once you are poor it is hard to get out of being poor but Journalists
are not doing justice to a critique of US Society if they ignore the fact that some people behave in a self-destructive way. I
would imagine that if some black men in the US and the UK stuck with one woman and played a positive role in the life of their
kids, those kids would have a better chance at life. People of different racial and ethnic origin do this also but there does
seem to be a disproportionate problem with some black US men and some black UK men. Poverty is one problem but growing up in poverty
and without a father figure adds to the problem.
What the author writes applies to other countries not just the US in relation to the super wealthy being a small proportion
of the population yet having the same wealth as a high percentage of the population. This in not a black or latino issue but a
wealth distribution issue that affects everyone irrespective of race or ethnic origin. The top 1%, 5% or 10% having most of the
wealth is well-known in many countries.
nuthermerican4u 5 Dec 2015 15:59
Capitalism, especially the current vulture capitalism, is dog eat dog. Always was, always will be. My advice is that if you
are a capitalist that values your heirs, invest in getting off this soon-to-be slag heap and find other planets to pillage and
rape. Either go all out for capitalism or reign in this beast before it kills all of us.
soundofthesuburbs 5 Dec 2015 15:32
Our antiquated class structure demonstrates the trickle up of Capitalism and the need to counterbalance it with progressive
taxation.
In the 1960s/1970s we used high taxes on the wealthy to counter balance the trickle up of Capitalism and achieved much greater
equality.
Today we have low taxes on the wealthy and Capitalism's trickle up is widening the inequality gap.
We are cutting benefits for the disabled, poor and elderly so inequality can get wider and the idle rich can remain idle.
They have issued enough propaganda to make people think it's those at the bottom that don't work.
Every society since the dawn of civilization has had a Leisure Class at the top, in the UK we call them the Aristocracy and
they have been doing nothing for centuries.
The UK's aristocracy has seen social systems come and go, but they all provide a life of luxury and leisure and with someone
else doing all the work.
Feudalism - exploit the masses through land ownership
Capitalism - exploit the masses through wealth (Capital)
Today this is done through the parasitic, rentier trickle up of Capitalism:
a) Those with excess capital invest it and collect interest, dividends and rent.
b) Those with insufficient capital borrow money and pay interest and rent.
The system itself provides for the idle rich and always has done from the first civilisations right up to the 21st Century.
The rich taking from the poor is always built into the system, taxes and benefits are the counterbalance that needs to be applied
externally.
Iconoclastick 5 Dec 2015 15:31
I often chuckle when I read some of the right wing comments on articles such as this. Firstly, I question if readers actually
read the article references I've highlighted, before rushing to comment.
Secondly, the comments are generated by cifers who probably haven't set the world alight, haven't made a difference in their
local community, they'll have never created thousands of jobs in order to reward themselves with huge dividends having and as
a consequence enjoy spectacular asset/investment growth, at best they'll be chugging along, just about keeping their shit together
and yet they support a system that's broken, other than for the one percent, of the one percent.
A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies issued this week analyzed the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans
and found that "the wealthiest 100 households now own about as much wealth as the entire African American population in the
United States". That means that 100 families – most of whom are white – have as much wealth as the 41,000,000 black folks walking
around the country (and the million or so locked up) combined.
Similarly, the report also stated that "the wealthiest 186 members of the Forbes 400 own as much wealth as the entire Latino
population" of the nation. Here again, the breakdown in actual humans is broke down: 186 overwhelmingly white folks have more
money than that an astounding 55,000,000 Latino people.
family wealth" predicts outcomes for 10 to 15 generations. Those with extreme wealth owe it to events going back "300
to 450" years ago, according to research published by the New Republic – an era when it wasn't unusual for white Americans
to benefit from an economy dependent upon widespread, unpaid black labor in the form of slavery.
soundofthesuburbs -> soundofthesuburbs 5 Dec 2015 15:26
It is the 21st Century and most of the land in the UK is still owned by the descendants of feudal warlords that killed people
and stole their land and wealth.
When there is no land to build houses for generation rent, land ownership becomes an issue.
David Cameron is married into the aristocracy and George Osborne is a member of the aristocracy, they must both be well acquainted
with the Leisure Class.
I can't find any hard work going on looking at the Wikipedia page for David Cameron's father-in-law. His family have been on
their estate since the sixteenth century and judging by today's thinking, expect to be on it until the end of time.
George Osborne's aristocratic pedigree goes back to the Tudor era:
"he is an aristocrat with a pedigree stretching back to early in the Tudor era. His father, Sir Peter Osborne, is the
17th holder of a hereditary baronetcy that has been passed from father to son for 10 generations, and of which George is next
in line."
If we have people at the bottom who are not working the whole of civilisation will be turned on its head.
"The modern industrial society developed from the barbarian tribal society, which featured a leisure class supported
by subordinated working classes employed in economically productive occupations. The leisure class is composed of people exempted
from manual work and from practicing economically productive occupations, because they belong to the leisure class."
The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions, by Thorstein Veblen. It was written a long time ago but
much of it is as true today as it was then. The Wikipedia entry gives a good insight.
DBChas 5 Dec 2015 15:13
"income inequality" is best viewed as structural capitalism. It's not as if, did black and brown people and female people somehow
(miraculously) attain the economic status of the lower-paid, white, male person, the problem would be solved--simply by adjusting
pay scales. The problem is inherent to capitalism, which doesn't mean certain "types" of people aren't more disadvantaged for
their "type." No one is saying that. For capitalists, it's easier to rationalize the obscene unfairness (only rich people say,
"life's not fair") when their "type" is regarded as superior to a different "type," whether that be with respect to color or gender
or both.
Over time--a long time--the dominant party (white males since the Dark Ages, also the life-span of capitalism coincidentally
enough) came to dominance by various means, too many to try to list, or even know of. Why white males? BTW, just because most
in power and in money are white males does not mean ALL white males are in positions of power and wealth. Most are not, and these
facts help to fog the issue.
Indeed, "income inequality," is not an accident, nor can it be fixed, as the author notes, by tweaking (presumably he means
capitalism). And he's quite right too in saying, "You can't take down the master's house with the master's tools..." I take that
ALSO to mean, the problem can't be fixed by way of what Hedges has called a collapsing liberal establishment with its various
institutions, officially speaking. That is, it's not institutional racism that's collapsing, but that institution is not officially
recognized as such.
HOWEVER, it IS possible, even when burdened with an economics that is capitalism, to redistribute wealth, and I don't just
mean Mark Zuckerberg's. I mean all wealth in whatever form can be redistributed if/when government decides it can. And THIS TIME,
unlike the 1950s-60s, not only would taxes on the wealthy be the same as then but the wealth redistributed would be redistributed
to ALL, not just to white families, and perhaps in particular to red families, the oft forgotten ones.
This is a matter of political will. But, of course, if that means whites as the largest voting block insist on electing to
office those without the political will, nothing will change. In that case, other means have to be considered, and just a reminder:
If the government fails to serve the people, the Constitution gives to the people the right to depose that government. But again,
if whites as the largest voting block AND as the largest sub-group in the nation (and women are the largest part of that block,
often voting as their men vote--just the facts, please, however unpleasant) have little interest in seeing to making necessary
changes at least in voting booths, then...what? Bolshevism or what? No one seems to know and it's practically taboo even to talk
about possibilities. Americans did it once, but not inclusively and not even paid in many instances. When it happens again, it
has to happen with and for the participation of ALL. And it's worth noting that it will have to happen again, because capitalism
by its very nature cannot survive itself. That is, as Marx rightly noted, capitalism will eventually collapse by dint of its internal
contradictions.
mbidding Jeremiah2000 5 Dec 2015 15:08
Correction: The average person in poverty in the U.S. does not live in the same abject, third world poverty as you might
find in Honduras, Central African Republic, Cambodia, or the barrios of Sao Paulo.
Since our poor don't live in abject poverty, I invite you to live as a family of four on less than $11,000 a year anywhere
in the United States. If you qualify and can obtain subsidized housing you may have some of the accoutrements in your home that
you seem to equate with living the high life. You know, running water, a fridge, a toilet, a stove. You would also likely have
a phone (subsidized at that) so you might be able to participate (or attempt to participate) in the job market in an honest attempt
to better your family's economic prospects and as is required to qualify for most assistance programs.
Consider as well that you don't have transportation to get a job that would improve your circumstances. You earn too much to
qualify for meaningful levels of food support programs and fall into the insurance gap for subsidies because you live in a state
that for ideological reasons refuses to expand Medicaid coverage. Your local schools are a disgrace but you can't take advantage
of so-called school choice programs (vouchers, charters, and the like) as you don't have transportation or the time (given your
employer's refusal to set fixed working hours for minimum wage part time work) to get your kids to that fine choice school.
You may have a fridge and a stove, but you have no food to cook. You may have access to running water and electricity, but
you can't afford to pay the bills for such on account of having to choose between putting food in that fridge or flushing that
toilet. You can't be there reliably for your kids to help with school, etc, because you work constantly shifting hours for crap
pay.
Get back to me after six months to a year after living in such circumstances and then tell me again how Americans don't really
live in poverty simply because they have access to appliances.
Earl Shelton 5 Dec 2015 15:08
The Earned Income Tax Credit seems to me a good starting point for reform. It has been around since the 70s -- conceived by
Nixon/Moynihan -- and signed by socialist (kidding) Gerald Ford -- it already *redistributes* income (don't choke on the term,
O'Reilly) directly from tax revenue (which is still largely progressive) to the working poor, with kids.
That program should be massively expanded to tax the 1% -- and especially the top 1/10 of 1% (including a wealth tax) -- and
distribute the money to the bottom half of society, mostly in the form of work training, child care and other things that help
put them in and keep them in the middle class. It is a mechanism already in existence to correct the worst ravages of Capitalism.
Use it to build shared prosperity.
oKWJNRo 5 Dec 2015 14:40
So many dutiful neoliberals on here rushing to the defense of poor Capitalism. Clearly, these commentators are among those
who are in the privileged position of reaping the true benefits of Capitalism - And, of course, there are many benefits to reap
if you are lucky enough to be born into the right racial-socioeconomic context.
We can probably all agree that Capitalism has brought about widespread improvements in healthcare, education, living conditions,
for example, compared to the feudal system that preceded it... But it also disproportionately benefits the upper echelons of Capitalist
societies and is wholly unequal by design.
Capitalism depends upon the existence of a large underclass that can be exploited. This is part of the process of how surplus
value is created and wealth is extracted from labour. This much is indisputable. It is therefore obvious that capitalism isn't
an ideal system for most of us living on this planet.
As for the improvements in healthcare, education, living conditions etc that Capitalism has fostered... Most of these were
won through long struggles against the Capitalist hegemony by the masses. We would have certainly chosen to make these improvements
to our landscape sooner if Capitalism hadn't made every effort to stop us. The problem today is that Capitalism and its powerful
beneficiaries have successfully convinced us that there is no possible alternative. It won't give us the chance to try or even
permit us to believe there could be another, better way.
Martin Joseph -> realdoge 5 Dec 2015 14:33
Please walk us through how non-capitalist systems create wealth and allow their lowest class people propel themselves to
the top in one generation. You will note that most socialist systems derive their technology and advancements from the more capitalistic
systems. Pharmaceuticals, software, and robotics are a great example of this.
I shutter to think of what the welfare of the average citizen of the world would be like without the advancements made via
the capitalist countries.
VWFeature 5 Dec 2015 14:29
Markets, economies and tax systems are created by people, and based on rules they agree on. Those rules can favor general prosperity
or concentration of wealth. Destruction and predation are easier than creation and cooperation, so our rules have to favor cooperation
if we want to avoid predation and destructive conflicts.
In the 1930's the US changed many of those rules to favor general prosperity. Since then they've been gradually changed to
favor wealth concentration and predation. They can be changed back.
The trick is creating a system that encourages innovation while putting a safety net under the population so failure doesn't
end in starvation.
A large part of our current problems is the natural tendency for large companies to get larger and larger until their failure
would adversely affect too many others, so they're not allowed to fail. Tax law, not antitrust law, has to work against this.
If a company can reduce its tax rate by breaking into 20 smaller (still huge) companies, then competition is preserved and no
one company can dominate and control markets.
Robert Goldschmidt -> Jake321 5 Dec 2015 14:27
Bernie Sanders has it right on -- we can only heal our system by first having millions rise up and demand an end to the corruption
of the corporations controlling our elected representatives. Corporations are not people and money is not speech.
moonwrap02 5 Dec 2015 14:26
The effects of wealth distribution has far reaching consequences. It is not just about money, but creating a fair society -
one that is co-operative and cohesive. The present system has allowed an ever divide between the rich and poor, creating a two
tier society where neither the twain shall meet. The rich and poor are almost different species on the planet and no longer belong
to the same community. Commonality of interest is lost and so it's difficult to form community and to have good, friendly relationships
across class differences that are that large.
"If capitalism is to be seen to be fair, the same rules are to apply to the big guy as to the little guy,"
Sorry. I get it now. You actually think that because the Washington elite has repealed Glass-Steagel that we live in a unregulated
capitalistic system.
This is so far from the truth that I wasn't comprehending that anyone could think that. You can see the graph of pages published
in the Federal Register here. Unregulated capitalism? Wow.
Dodd Frank was passed in 2010 (without a single Republican vote). Originally it was 2,300 pages. It is STILL being written
by nameless bureaucrats and is over 20,000 pages. Unregulated capitalism? Really?
But the reality is that Goliath is conspiring with the government to regulate what size sling David can use and how many stones
and how many ounces.
So we need more government regulations? They will disallow David from anything but spitwads and only two of those.
neuronmaker -> AmyInNH 5 Dec 2015 14:16
Do you understand the concept of corporations which are products of capitalism?
The legal institutions within each capitalist corporations and nations are just that, they are capitalist and all about making
profits.
The law is made by the rich capitalists and for the rich capitalists. Each Legislation is a link in the chain of economic slavery
by capitalists.
Capitalism and the concept of money is a construction of the human mind, as it does not exist in the natural world. This construction
is all about using other human beings like blood suckers to sustain a cruel and evil life style - with blood and brutality as
the core ideology.
Marcedward -> MarjaE 5 Dec 2015 14:12
I would agree that our system of help for the less-well-off could be more accessible and more generous, but that doesn't negate
that point that there is a lot of help out there - the most important help being that totally free educational system. Think about
it, a free education, and to get the most out of it a student merely has to show up, obey the rules, do the homework and study
for tests. It's all laid out there for the kids like a helicopter mom laying out her kids clothes. How much easier can we make
it? If people can't be bothered to show up and put in effort, how is their failure based on racism
tommydog -> martinusher 5 Dec 2015 14:12
As you are referring to Carlos Slim, interestingly while he is Mexican by birth his parents were both Lebanese.
slightlynumb -> AmyInNH 5 Dec 2015 14:12
Why isn't that capitalism? It's raw capitalism on steroids.
Zara Von Fritz -> Toughspike 5 Dec 2015 14:12
It's an equal opportunity plantation now.
Robert Goldschmidt 5 Dec 2015 14:11
The key to repairing the system is to identify the causes of our problems.
Here is my list:
The information technology revolution which continues to destroy wages by enabling automation and outsourcing.
The reformation of monopolies which price gouge and block innovation.
Hitting ecological limits such as climate change, water shortages, unsustainable farming.
Then we can make meaningful changes such as regulation of the portion of corporate profit that are pay, enforcement of national
and regional antitrust laws and an escalating carbon tax.
Zara Von Fritz -> PostCorbyn 5 Dec 2015 14:11
If you can believe these quality of life or happiness indexes they put out so often, the winners tend to be places that have
nice environments and a higher socialist mix in their economy. Of course there are examples of poor countries that practice the
same but its not clear that their choice is causal rather than reactive.
We created this mess and we can fix it.
Zara Von Fritz -> dig4victory 5 Dec 2015 14:03
Yes Basic Income is possibly the mythical third way. It socialises wealth to a point but at the same time frees markets from
their obligation to perpetually grow and create jobs for the sake of jobs and also hereford reduces the subsequent need for governments
to attempt to control them beyond maintaining their health.
Zara Von Fritz 5 Dec 2015 13:48
As I understand it, you don't just fiddle with capitalism, you counteract it, or counterweight it. A level of capitalism, or
credit accumulation, and a level of socialism has always existed, including democracy which is a manifestation of socialism (1
vote each). So the project of capital accumulation seems to be out of control because larger accumulations become more powerful
and meanwhile the power of labour in the marketplace has become less so due to forces driving unemployment. The danger is that
capital's power to control the democratic system reaches a point of no return.
Jeremiah2000 -> bifess 5 Dec 2015 13:42
"I do not have the economic freedom to grow my own food because i do not have access to enough land to grow it and i do not
have the economic clout to buy a piece of land."
Economic freedom does NOT mean you get money for free. It means that means that if you grow food for personal use, the federal
government doesn't trash the Constitution by using the insterstate commerce clause to say that it can regulate how much you grow
on your own personal land.
Economic freedom means that if you have a widget, you can choose to set the price for $10 or $100 and that a buyer is free
to buy it from you or not buy it from you. It does NOT mean that you are entitled to "free" widgets.
"If capitalism has not managed to eradicate poverty in rich first world countries then just what chance if there of capitalism
eradicating poverty on a global scale?"
The average person in poverty in the U.S. doesn't live in poverty:
In fact, 80.9 percent of households below the poverty level have cell phones, and a healthy majority-58.2 percent-have computers.
Fully 96.1 percent of American households in "poverty" have a television to watch, and 83.2 percent of them have a video-recording
device in case they cannot get home in time to watch the football game or their favorite television show and they want to record
it for watching later.
Refrigerators (97.8 percent), gas or electric stoves (96.6 percent) and microwaves (93.2 percent) are standard equipment in
the homes of Americans in "poverty."
More than 83 percent have air-conditioning.
Interestingly, the appliances surveyed by the Census Bureau that households in poverty are least likely to own are dish washers
(44.9 percent) and food freezers (26.2 percent).
However, most Americans in "poverty" do not need to go to a laundromat. According to the Census Bureau, 68.7 percent of households
in poverty have a clothes washer and 65.3 percent have a clothes dryer.
"... By far the biggest act of wage slavery rebellion, don't buy shit. The less you buy, the less you need to earn. Holidays by far the minority of your life should not be a desperate escape from the majority of your life. Spend less, work less and actually really enjoy living more. ..."
"... How about don't shop at Walmart (they helped boost the Chinese economy while committing hari kari on the American Dream) and actually engaging in proper labour action? Calling in sick is just plain childish. ..."
"... I'm all for sticking it to "the man," but when you call into work for a stupid reason (and a hangover is a very stupid reason), it is selfish, and does more damage to the cause of worker's rights, not less. I don't know about where you work, but if I call in sick to my job, other people have to pick up my slack. I work for a public library, and we don't have a lot of funds, so we have the bear minimum of employees we can have and still work efficiently. As such, if anybody calls in, everyone else, up to and including the library director, have to take on more work. ..."
"Phoning in sick is a revolutionary act." I loved that slogan. It came to me, as so many good things did, from Housmans, the radical
bookshop in King's Cross. There you could rummage through all sorts of anarchist pamphlets and there I discovered, in the early 80s,
the wondrous little magazine Processed World. It told you basically how to screw up your workplace. It was smart and full of small
acts of random subversion. In many ways it was ahead of its time as it was coming out of San Francisco and prefiguring Silicon Valley.
It saw the machines coming. Jobs were increasingly boring and innately meaningless. Workers were "data slaves" working for IBM ("Intensely
Boring Machines").
What Processed World was doing was trying to disrupt the identification so many office workers were meant to feel with their management,
not through old-style union organising, but through small acts of subversion. The modern office, it stressed, has nothing to do with
human need. Its rebellion was about working as little as possible, disinformation and sabotage. It was making alienation fun. In
1981, it could not have known that a self-service till cannot ever phone in sick.
I was thinking of this today, as I wanted to do just that. I have made myself ill with a hangover. A hangover, I always feel,
is nature's way of telling you to have a day off. One can be macho about it and eat your way back to sentience via the medium of
bacon sandwiches and Maltesers. At work, one is dehydrated, irritable and only semi-present. Better, surely, though to let the day
fall through you and dream away.
Having worked in America, though, I can say for sure that they brook no excuses whatsoever. When I was late for work and said
things like, "My alarm clock did not go off", they would say that this was not a suitable explanation, which flummoxed me. I had
to make up others. This was just to work in a shop.
This model of working – long hours, very few holidays, few breaks, two incomes needed to raise kids, crazed loyalty demanded by
huge corporations, the American way – is where we're heading. Except now the model is even more punishing. It is China. We are expected
to compete with an economy whose workers are often closer to indentured slaves than anything else.
This is what striving is, then: dangerous, demoralising, often dirty work. Buckle down. It's the only way forward, apparently,
which is why our glorious leaders are sucking up to China, which is immoral, never mind ridiculously short-term thinking.
So again I must really speak up for the skivers. What we have to understand about austerity is its psychic effects. People must
have less. So they must have less leisure, too. The fact is life is about more than work and work is rapidly changing. Skiving in
China may get you killed but here it may be a small act of resistance, or it may just be that skivers remind us that there is meaning
outside wage-slavery.
Work is too often discussed by middle-class people in ways that are simply unrecognisable to anyone who has done crappy jobs.
Much work is not interesting and never has been. Now that we have a political and media elite who go from Oxbridge to working for
a newspaper or a politician, a lot of nonsense is spouted. These people have not cleaned urinals on a nightshift. They don't sit
lonely in petrol stations manning the till. They don't have to ask permission for a toilet break in a call centre. Instead, their
work provides their own special identity. It is very important.
Low-status jobs, like caring, are for others. The bottom-wipers of this world do it for the glory, I suppose. But when we talk
of the coming automation that will reduce employment, bottom-wiping will not be mechanised. Nor will it be romanticised, as old male
manual labour is. The mad idea of reopening the coal mines was part of the left's strange notion of the nobility of labour. Have
these people ever been down a coal mine? Would they want that life for their children?
Instead we need to talk about the dehumanising nature of work. Bertrand Russell and Keynes thought our goal should be less work,
that technology would mean fewer hours.
Far from work giving meaning to life, in some surveys 40% of us say that our jobs are meaningless. Nonetheless, the art of skiving
is verboten as we cram our children with ever longer hours of school and homework. All this striving is for what exactly? A soul-destroying
job?
Just as education is decided by those who loved school, discussions about work are had by those to whom it is about more than
income.
The parts of our lives that are not work – the places we dream or play or care, the space we may find creative – all these are
deemed outside the economy. All this time is unproductive. But who decides that?
Skiving work is bad only to those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
So go on: phone in sick. You know you want to.
friedad 23 Oct 2015 18:27
We now exist in a society in which the Fear Cloud is wrapped around each citizen. Our proud history of Union and Labor, fighting
for decent wages and living conditions for all citizens, and mostly achieving these aims, a history, which should be taught to
every child educated in every school in this country, now gradually but surely eroded by ruthless speculators in government, is
the future generations are inheriting. The workforce in fear of taking a sick day, the young looking for work in fear of speaking
out at diminishing rewards, definitely this 21st Century is the Century of Fear. And how is this fear denied, with mind blowing
drugs, regardless if it is is alcohol, description drugs, illicit drugs, a society in denial. We do not require a heavenly object
to destroy us, a few soulless monsters in our mist are masters of manipulators, getting closer and closer to accomplish their
aim of having zombies doing their beckoning. Need a kidney, no worries, zombie dishwasher, is handy for one. Oh wait that time
is already here.
Hemulen6 23 Oct 2015 15:06
Oh join the real world, Suzanne! Many companies now have a limit to how often you can be sick. In the case of the charity I
work for it's 9 days a year. I overstepped it, I was genuinely sick, and was hauled up in front of Occupational Health. That will
now go on my record and count against me. I work for a cancer care charity. Irony? Surely not.
AlexLeo -> rebel7 23 Oct 2015 13:34
Which is exactly my point. You compete on relevant job skills and quality of your product, not what school you have attended.
Yes, there are thousands, tens of thousands of folks here around San Jose who barely speak English, but are smart and hard
working as hell and it takes them a few years to get to 150-200K per year, Many of them get to 300-400K, if they come from strong
schools in their countries of origin, compared to the 10k or so where they came from, but probably more than the whining readership
here.
This is really difficult to swallow for the Brits back in Britain, isn't it. Those who have moved over have experiences the
type of social mobility unthinkable in Britain, but they have had to work hard and get to 300K-700K per year, much better than
the 50-100K their parents used to make back in GB. These are averages based on personal interactions with say 50 Brits in the
last 15 + years, all employed in the Silicon Valley in very different jobs and roles.
Todd Owens -> Scott W 23 Oct 2015 11:00
I get what you're saying and I agree with a lot of what you said. My only gripe is most employees do not see an operation from
a business owner or managerial / financial perspective. They don't understand the costs associated with their performance or lack
thereof. I've worked on a lot of projects that we're operating at a loss for a future payoff. When someone decides they don't
want to do the work they're contracted to perform that can have a cascading effect on the entire company.
All in all what's being described is for the most part misguided because most people are not in the position or even care to
evaluate the particulars. So saying you should do this to accomplish that is bullshit because it's rarely such a simple equation.
If anything this type of tactic will leaf to MORE loss and less money for payroll.
weematt -> Barry1858 23 Oct 2015 09:04
Sorry you just can't have a 'nicer' capitalism.
War ( business by other means) and unemployment ( you can't buck the market), are inevitable concomitants of capitalist competition
over markets, trade routes and spheres of interests. (Remember the war science of Nagasaki and Hiroshima from the 'good guys'
?)
"..capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt". (Marx)
You can't have full employment, or even the 'Right to Work'.
There is always ,even in boom times a reserve army of unemployed, to drive down wages. (If necessary they will inject inflation
into the economy)
Unemployment is currently 5.5 percent or 1,860,000 people. If their "equilibrium rate" of unemployment is 4% rather than 5% this
would still mean 1,352,000 "need be unemployed". The government don't want these people to find jobs as it would strengthen workers'
bargaining position over wages, but that doesn't stop them harassing them with useless and petty form-filling, reporting to the
so-called "job centre" just for the sake of it, calling them scroungers and now saying they are mentally defective.
Government is 'over' you not 'for' you.
Governments do not exist to ensure 'fair do's' but to manage social expectations with the minimum of dissent, commensurate
with the needs of capitalism in the interests of profit.
Worker participation amounts to self managing workers self exploitation for the maximum of profit for the capitalist class.
Exploitation takes place at the point of production.
" Instead of the conservative motto, 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!' they ought to inscribe on their banner the
revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wages system!'"
Karl Marx [Value, Price and Profit]
John Kellar 23 Oct 2015 07:19
Fortunately; as a retired veteran I don't have to worry about phoning in sick.However; during my Air Force days if you were
sick, you had to get yourself to the Base Medical Section and prove to a medical officer that you were sick. If you convinced
the medical officer of your sickness then you may have been luck to receive on or two days sick leave. For those who were very
sick or incapable of getting themselves to Base Medical an ambulance would be sent - promptly.
Rchrd Hrrcks -> wumpysmum 23 Oct 2015 04:17
The function of civil disobedience is to cause problems for the government. Let's imagine that we could get 100,000 people
to agree to phone in sick on a particular date in protest at austerity etc. Leaving aside the direct problems to the economy that
this would cause. It would also demonstrate a willingness to take action. It would demonstrate a capability to organise mass direct
action. It would demonstrate an ability to bring people together to fight injustice. In and of itself it might not have much impact,
but as a precedent set it could be the beginning of something massive, including further acts of civil disobedience.
wumpysmum Rchrd Hrrcks 23 Oct 2015 03:51
There's already a form of civil disobedience called industrial action, which the govt are currently attacking by attempting
to change statute. Random sickies as per my post above are certainly not the answer in the public sector at least, they make no
coherent political point just cause problems for colleagues. Sadly too in many sectors and with the advent of zero hours contracts
sickies put workers at risk of sanctions and lose them earnings.
Alyeska 22 Oct 2015 22:18
I'm American. I currently have two jobs and work about 70 hours a week, and I get no paid sick days. In fact, the last time
I had a job with a paid sick day was 2001. If I could afford a day off, you think I'd be working 70 hours a week?
I barely make rent most months, and yes... I have two college degrees. When I try to organize my coworkers to unionize for
decent pay and benefits, they all tell me not to bother.... they are too scared of getting on management's "bad side" and "getting
in trouble" (yes, even though the law says management can't retaliate.)
Unions are different in the USA than in the UK. The workforce has to take a vote to unionize the company workers; you can't
"just join" a union here. That's why our pay and working conditions have gotten worse, year after year.
rtb1961 22 Oct 2015 21:58
By far the biggest act of wage slavery rebellion, don't buy shit. The less you buy, the less you need to earn. Holidays
by far the minority of your life should not be a desperate escape from the majority of your life. Spend less, work less and actually
really enjoy living more.
Pay less attention to advertising and more attention to the enjoyable simplicity of life, of real direct human relationships,
all of them, the ones in passing where you wish a stranger well, chats with service staff to make their life better as well as
your own, exchange thoughts and ideas with others, be a human being and share humanity with other human beings.
Mkjaks 22 Oct 2015 20:35
How about don't shop at Walmart (they helped boost the Chinese economy while committing hari kari on the American Dream)
and actually engaging in proper labour action? Calling in sick is just plain childish.
toffee1 22 Oct 2015 19:13
It is only considered productive if it feeds the beast, that is, contribute to the accumulation of capital so that the beast
can have more power over us. The issue here is the wage labor. The 93 percent of the U.S. working population perform wage labor
(see BLS site). It is the highest proportion in any society ever came into history. Under the wage labor (employment) contract,
the worker gives up his/her decision making autonomy. The worker accepts the full command of his/her employer during the labor
process. The employer directs and commands the labor process to achieve the goals set by himself. Compare this, for example, self-employed
providing a service (for example, a plumber). In this case, the customer describes the problem to the service provider but the
service provider makes all the decisions on how to organize and apply his labor to solve the problem. Or compare it to a democratically
organized coop, where workers make all the decisions collectively, where, how and what to produce. Under the present economic
system, a great majority of us are condemned to work in large corporations performing wage labor. The system of wage labor stripping
us from autonomy on our own labor, creates all the misery in our present world through alienation. Men and women lose their humanity
alienated from their own labor. Outside the world of wage labor, labor can be a source self-realization and true freedom. Labor
can be the real fulfillment and love. Labor together our capacity to love make us human. Bourgeoisie dehumanized us steeling our
humanity. Bourgeoisie, who sold her soul to the beast, attempting to turn us into ever consuming machines for the accumulation
of capital.
patimac54 -> Zach Baker 22 Oct 2015 17:39
Well said. Most retail employers have cut staff to the minimum possible to keep the stores open so if anyone is off sick, it's
the devil's own job trying to just get customers served. Making your colleagues work even harder than they normally do because
you can't be bothered to act responsibly and show up is just plain selfish.
And sorry, Suzanne, skiving work is nothing more than an act of complete disrespect for those you work with. If you don't understand
that, try getting a proper job for a few months and learn how to exercise some self control.
TettyBlaBla -> FranzWilde 22 Oct 2015 17:25
It's quite the opposite in government jobs where I am in the US. As the fiscal year comes to a close, managers look at their
budgets and go on huge spending sprees, particularly for temp (zero hours in some countries) help and consultants. They fear if
they don't spend everything or even a bit more, their spending will be cut in the next budget. This results in people coming in
to do work on projects that have no point or usefulness, that will never be completed or even presented up the food chain of management,
and ends up costing taxpayers a small fortune.
I did this one year at an Air Quality Agency's IT department while the paid employees sat at their desks watching portable
televisions all day. It was truly demeaning.
oommph -> Michael John Jackson 22 Oct 2015 16:59
Thing is though, children - dependents to pay for - are the easiest way to keep yourself chained to work.
The homemaker model works as long as your spouse's employer retains them (and your spouse retains you in an era of 40% divorce).
You are just as dependent on an employer and "work" but far less in control of it now.
Zach Baker 22 Oct 2015 16:41
I'm all for sticking it to "the man," but when you call into work for a stupid reason (and a hangover is a very stupid
reason), it is selfish, and does more damage to the cause of worker's rights, not less. I don't know about where you work, but
if I call in sick to my job, other people have to pick up my slack. I work for a public library, and we don't have a lot of funds,
so we have the bear minimum of employees we can have and still work efficiently. As such, if anybody calls in, everyone else,
up to and including the library director, have to take on more work. If I found out one of my co-workers called in because
of a hangover, I'd be pissed. You made the choice to get drunk, knowing that you had to work the following morning. Putting it
into the same category of someone who is sick and may not have the luxury of taking off because of a bad employer is insulting.
I think the Internet and the infotech revolution in general have been largely negative in
their impact on the world. Ian Welsh has a blog post that largely sums up my views on the
issue.
Contrary to what many people say I think large organizations like governments and
corporations have significantly more power now than before and ordinary people have less
power. The Internet has made it easier to get information but you have to sift through tons
of junk to get to anything decent. For every website like Naked Capitalism there are
thousands pushing nonsense or trying to sell you stuff.
And even if you are more knowledgeable, so what? If you cannot put that knowledge to use
what good is it? At best it makes you more well-rounded, interesting and harder to fool but
in political terms knowing a lot of stuff doesn't make you more effective. In the past people
didn't have access to nearly as much information but they were more willing and able to
organize and fight against the powerful because it was easier to avoid detection/punishment
(that is where stuff like widespread surveillance tech comes in) and because they still had a
vibrant civic life and culture.
I actually think people are more atomized now than in the past and the Internet and other
technologies have probably fueled this process. Despite rising populism, the Arab Spring,
Occupy, the Yellow Jackets in France, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the DSA
this is all a drop in the bucket compared to just the massive social movements of the 1960s
much less earlier periods. Robert Putnam argued that television, the Internet and other
technologies likely helped to produce the collapse of civic life in the United States by
"individualizing" people's leisure time and personally I think Putnam is right. Civic life
today is very weak and I think the Internet is partially to blame.
And even if you are more knowledgeable, so what? If you cannot put that knowledge to use
what good is it?
Agreed. If anything these more knowledgeable people had a greater audience prior to the
internet. Whether you were a journalist, a great economist, a great author, or a great orator
you need to persist and show intellect and talent to have your message heard wide and
broad.
(This is probably a little idealistic, but I think there is truth there.)
Now you need very little of this. If your most famous asset is your attractive body you
can attract a greater audience than great scholars and politicians.
I can't speak much on authoritarianism since whatever form it takes on today is wildly
different from what it was in the past. Unfortunately, it is hard to convince many people
living in western societies that they are living in an authoritarian system because their
metal images are goose-stepping soldiers and Fraktur print posters.
I suppose the way I can assure myself that we are living in an authoritarian society is by
analyzing the endless propaganda spewed from countless, high-viewership media and
entertainment outlets. It is quite simple, if the media and entertainment narratives are
within a very narrow intellectual window (with lots of 600 lb. gorillas sitting in corners)
than the culture and politics are being defined by powerful people with a narrow range of
interests. This is not to say that forming public opinion or preferring particular political
views is a new thing in Western media and entertainment, just that its application, IMO, is
far more effective and subtle (and becoming more-so by the day) than it ever was in, say,
NAZI Germany or the Soviet Union.
I'd put my money down that most educated Germans during NAZI rule were well aware that
propaganda was being utilized to "manufacture consent" but they participated and accepted
this despite the content for pragmatic/selfish reasons. Much of the NAZI propaganda played on
existing German/European cultural narratives and prejudices. Leaveraging existing ideology
allowed the party to necessitate their existence by framing the German as juxtaposed against
the impure and unworthy. Again, ideologies that existed independent of the party not within
it. Goebbels and company were just good at utilizing the technology of the time to amplify
these monstrosities.
I question that being the case today. It is far more complicated. Technology is again the
primary tool for manipulation, but it is possible that current technology is allowing for
even greater leaps in reason and analysis. The windows for reflection and critical thought
close as soon as they are opened. Seems more like the ideology is manufactured on the fly.
For example, the anti-Russia narrative has some resonance with baby boomers, but how the hell
is it effective with my generation (millennial) and younger? The offhand references to Putin
and Russian operatives from my peers are completely from left field when considering our life
experience. People in my age group had little to say about Russia three years ago. It says
volumes on the subtle effectiveness of Western media machines if you can re-create the cold
war within two years for an entire generation.
In addition and related to above, the West's understanding of "Freedom of Speech" is dated
by about 100 years. Governments are no longer the sole source of speech suppression (more
like filtering and manipulation), and the supremacy of the free-market coupled with the
erroneously perceived black-and-white division between public and private have convinced the
public (with nearly religious conviction) that gigantic media and entertainment organizations
do not have to protect the free speech of citizens because they are not government.
Public/Private is now an enormous blob. With overlapping interests mixed in with any
antagonisms. It is ultimately dictated by capital and its power within both government and
business. Cracking this nut will be a nightmare.
Yes, this is an authoritarian world, if measured by the distance between the populace and
its governing powers, but it is an authoritarianism operating in ways that we have never seen
before and using tools that are terribly effective.
I agree Jilles, and with many other of the commenters.
Read enough to see that the article has many errors of fact and perception. It is bad
enough to suspect *propaganda* , but Brett is clearly not at that level.
An important point that you hint at is that the Brits were violently and manipulatively
forced to accept mass immigration for many years.
Yet strangely, to say anything about it only became acceptable when some numbers of the
immigrants were fellow Europeans from within the EU, and most having some compatibility with
existing ethnicity and previous culture.
Even people living far away notice such forced false consciousness.
As for Corbyn, he is nothing like the old left of old Labour. He tries to convey that
image, it is a lie.
He may not be Blairite-Zio New Labour, and received some influence from the more heavily
Marxist old Labour figures, but he is very much a creature of the post-worst-of-1968 and
dirty hippy new left, Frankfurt School and all that crap, doubt that he has actually read
much of it, but he has internalised it through his formal and political education.
By the way, the best translation of the name of North Korea's ruling party is 'Labour
Party'. While it is a true fact, I intend nothing from it but a small laugh.
The American labor market is increasingly unequal, characterized by extraordinary returns to
work at the top of the market but rising precarity and instability at the bottom of the market.
Research on precarious work and its consequences has overwhelmingly focused on the economic
dimension of precarity, epitomized by low and stagnant wages.
But, the rise in precarious work has also involved a major shift in the temporal dimension
of work such that many workers now experience routine instability in their work schedules. This
temporal instability represents a fundamental and under-appreciated manifestation of the risk
shift from firms to workers and their families.
To date, a lack of suitable existing data has precluded empirical investigation of how such
precarious scheduling practices affect the health and wellbeing of workers. We use an
innovative approach to collect survey data from a large and strategically selected segment of
the US workforce: hourly workers in the service sector. These data reveal relationships between
exposure to routine instability in work schedules and psychological distress, poor sleep
quality, and unhappiness.
While low wages are also associated with these outcomes, unstable and un-predictable
schedules are much more strongly associated. Further, while precarious schedules affect worker
wellbeing in part through the mediating influence of household economic insecurity, a much
larger proportion of the association is driven by work-life conflict. The temporal dimension of
work is central to the experience of precarity and an important social determinant of worker
wellbeing.
The evidence of social decay in America is becoming more visible. As other countries
continue to show increases in life expectancy, the US continues its deterioration.
Life expectancy in the US fell to 78.6 years in 2017, a o.1 year fall from 2016 and a 0.3
year decline from the peak.
Overdose deaths reached a new high in 2017, topping 70,000, while the suicide rate
increased by 3.7%, the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics reports.
Dr. Robert Redfield, CDC director, called the trend tragic and troubling. "Life expectancy
gives us a snapshot of the Nation's overall health and these sobering statistics are a wakeup
call that we are losing too many Americans, too early and too often, to conditions that are
preventable," he wrote in a statement.
While this assessment is technically correct, it is too superficial in seeing the rising
rate of what Angus Deaton and Ann Case called "deaths of despair" as a health problem, rather
than symptoms of much deeper societal ills. Americans take antidepressants at a higher rate
than any country in the world. The average job tenure is a mere 4.4 years. In my youth, if you
changed jobs in less than seven or eight years, you were seen as an opportunist or probably
poor performer. The near impossibility of getting a new job if you are over 40 and the fact
that outside hot fields, young people can also find it hard to get work commensurate with their
education and experience, means that those who do have jobs can be and are exploited by their
employers. Amazon is the most visible symbol of that, working warehouse workers at a deadly
pace, and regularly reducing even white collar males regularly to tears.
On top of that, nuclear families, weakened communities, plus the neoliberal expectation that
individuals be willing to move to find work means that many Americans have shallow personal
networks, and that means less support if one suffers career or financial setbacks.
But the big driver, which the mainstream press is unwilling to acknowledge, is that highly
unequal societies are unhealthy societies. We published this section from a Financial Times
comment by Michael Prowse in 2007, and it can't be
repeated often enough :
Those who would deny a link between health and inequality must first grapple with the
following paradox. There is a strong relationship between income and health within countries.
In any nation you will find that people on high incomes tend to live longer and have fewer
chronic illnesses than people on low incomes.
Yet, if you look for differences between countries, the relationship between income and
health largely disintegrates. Rich Americans, for instance, are healthier on average than
poor Americans, as measured by life expectancy. But, although the US is a much richer country
than, say, Greece, Americans on average have a lower life expectancy than Greeks. More
income, it seems, gives you a health advantage with respect to your fellow citizens, but not
with respect to people living in other countries .
Once a floor standard of living is attained, people tend to be healthier when three
conditions hold: they are valued and respected by others; they feel 'in control' in their
work and home lives; and they enjoy a dense network of social contacts. Economically unequal
societies tend to do poorly in all three respects: they tend to be characterised by big
status differences, by big differences in people's sense of control and by low levels of
civic participation .
Unequal societies, in other words, will remain unhealthy societies – and also
unhappy societies – no matter how wealthy they become. Their advocates – those
who see no reason whatever to curb ever-widening income differentials – have a lot of
explaining to do.
The stats first. They tell a clear story: Americans now live shorter lives than men and
women in most of the rest of the developed world. And that gap is growing.
Back in 1990, shouts
a new study published last week in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical
Association, the United States ranked just 20th on life expectancy among the world's 34
industrial nations. The United States now ranks 27th -- despite spending much more on health
care than any other nation.
Americans, notes an editorial the
journal ran to accompany the study, are losing ground globally "by every" health measure.
Why such poor performance? Media reports on last week's new
State of U.S. Health study hit all the usual suspects: poor diet, poor access to
affordable health care, poor personal health habits, and just plain poverty.
In the Wall Street Journal, for instance, a chief wellness officer in Ohio opined
that if Americans exercised more and ate and smoked less, the United States would surely
start moving up in the global health rankings.
But many epidemiologists -- scientists who study health outcomes -- have their doubts.
They point out that the United States ranked as one of the world's healthiest nations in the
1950s, a time when Americans smoked heavily, ate a diet that would horrify any 21st-century
nutritionist, and hardly ever exercised.
Poor Americans, then as now, had chronic problems accessing health care. But poverty,
epidemiologists note, can't explain why fully insured middle-income Americans today have
significantly worse health outcomes than middle-income people in other rich nations.
The University of Washington's Dr. Stephen Bezruchka
has been tracking these outcomes since the 1990s. The new research published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association, Bezruchka told Too Much last week, should worry
Americans at all income levels.
"Even if we are rich, college-educated, white-skinned, and practice all the right health
behaviors," he notes, "similar people in other rich nations will live longer."
A dozen years ago, Bezruchka
published in Newsweek the first mass-media commentary, at least in the United States, to
challenge the conventional take on poor U.S. global health rankings.
To really understand America's poor health standing globally, epidemiologists like
Bezruchka posit, we need to look at "the social determinants of health," those social and
economic realities that define our daily lives.
None of these determinants matter more, these researchers contend, than the level of a
society's economic inequality, the divide between the affluent and everyone else. Over 170
studies worldwide have so far linked income inequality to health outcomes. The more
unequal a society, the studies show, the more unhealthy most everyone in it -- and not the
poor alone.
Just how does inequality translate into unhealthy outcomes? Growing numbers of researchers
place the blame on stress. The more inequality in a society, the more stress on a daily
level. Chronic stress, over time, wears down our immune systems and leaves us more vulnerable
to disease.
Data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Thursday show life
expectancy fell by one-tenth of a year, to 78.6 years, pushed down by the sharpest annual
increase in suicides in nearly a decade and a continued rise in deaths from powerful opioid
drugs like fentanyl. Influenza, pneumonia and diabetes also factored into last year's
increase.
Economists and public-health experts consider life expectancy to be an important measure
of a nation's prosperity. The 2017 data paint a dark picture of health and well-being in the
U.S., reflecting the effects of addiction and despair, particularly among young and
middle-aged adults, as well as diseases plaguing an aging population and people with lower
access to health care
Life expectancy is 84.1 years in Japan and 83.7 years in Switzerland, first and second in
the most-recent ranking by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The
U.S. ranks 29th..
White men and women fared the worst, along with black men, all of whom experienced
increases in death rates. Death rates rose in particular for adults ages 25 to 44, and
suicide rates are highest among people in the nation's most rural areas. On the other hand,
deaths declined for black and Hispanic women, and remained the same for Hispanic men .
Earlier this century, the steady and robust decline in heart-disease deaths more than
offset the rising number from drugs and suicide, Dr. Anderson said. Now, "those declines
aren't there anymore," he said, and the drug and suicide deaths account for many years of
life lost because they occur mostly in young to middle-aged adults.
While progress against deaths from heart disease has stalled, cancer deaths -- the
nation's No. 2 killer -- are continuing a steady decline that began in the 1990s, Dr.
Anderson said. "That's kind of our saving grace," he said. "Without those declines, we'd see
a much bigger drop in life expectancy."
Suicides rose 3.7% in 2017, accelerating an increase in rates since 1999, the CDC said.
The gap in deaths by suicide widened starkly between cities and the most rural areas between
1999 and 2017, the data show. The rate is now far higher in rural areas. "There's a much
wider spread," Dr. Hedegaard said.
"This is extremely discouraging," Christine Moutier, chief medical officer of the American
Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said of the suicide-rate increase. Studies show that
traumas such as economic difficulties or natural disasters, along with access to lethal means
including guns and opioid drugs, and lack of access to care can affect suicide rates, she
said. More accurate recording of deaths may also have added to the numbers, she said.
Japan leads the pack in life expectancy and pretty much every other measure of social well
being. Yet when its financial bubbles were bigger than the ones in the US pre our crisis, and
it's on its way to having a lost three decades of growth. On top of that, Japan has one of the
worst demographic crunches in the world, in terms of the aging of its population. So how it is
that Japan is coping well with decline, while the US is getting sicker in many ways (mental
health, obesity, falling expectancy)?
It's easy to hand-wave by saying "Japanese culture," but I see the causes as more specific.
The Japanese have always given high employment top priority in their economic planning.
Entrepreneurs are revered for creating jobs, not for getting rich. Similarly, Japan was long
criticized by international economist types for having an inefficient retail sector (lots of
small local shops), when they missed the point: that was one way of increasing employment, plus
Japanese like having tight local communities.
After their crisis, Japanese companies went to considerable lengths to preserve jobs, such
as by having senior people taking pay cuts and longer term, lowering the already not that large
gap between entry and top level compensation. The adoption of second-class workers (long-term
temps called "freeters") was seen as less than ideal, since these workers would never become
true members of the company community, but it was better than further reducing employment.
Contrast that to our crisis response. We reported in 2013 that
the top 1% got 121% of the income gains after the crisis. The very top echelon did better
at the expense of everyone else. Longer term, lower-income earners have fallen behind. From a
2017 MarketWatch story, quoting a World Economic Forum report: "America has experienced 'a
complete collapse of the bottom 50 percent income share in the U.S. between 1978 to 2015.'"
There is a lot of other data that supports the same point: inequality continues to widen in
America. The areas that are taking the worst hits are states like West Virginia and Ohio that
have been hit hard by deindustrialization. But the elites are removed in their glamorous cities
and manage not to notice the conditions when they transit through the rest of America. They
should consider themselves lucky that America's downtrodden are taking out their misery more on
themselves than on their betters.
God, this is so depressing to read. The worse aspect of it is that it never had to be this
way but that these deaths were simply 'collateral damage' to the social and economic changes
in America since the 1970s – changes by choice. This seems to be a slow motion move to
replicate what Russia went through back in the 1990s which led to the unnecessary, premature
deaths of millions of its people. Dmitry Orlov has a lot to say about the subject of collapse
and there is a long page in which Orlov talks about how Russia got through these bad times
while comparing it with America as he lives there now. For those interested, it is at-
What gets me most is how these deaths are basically anonymous and are not really
remembered. When AIDS was ravishing the gay community decades ago, one way they got people to
appreciate the numbers of deaths was the AIDS Memorial Quilt which ended up weighing over 50
tons. It is a shame that there can not be an equivalent project for all these deaths of
despair.
There were pictures in the Wall Street Journal article I didn't pull over due to copyright
issues, but it did show people commemorating these deaths Captions:
People in Largo, Fla., hold candles at a vigil on Oct. 17 to remember the thousands who
succumbed to opioid abuse in their community.
More than 1,000 backpacks containing belongings of suicide victims and letters with
information about them are scattered across a lawn during a demonstration at the University
of Tennessee at Chattanooga on March 22.
But to your point, these seem isolated and are not getting press coverage at anywhere near
the level of the AIDS crisis.
It focuses too much on peak oil. As if the social collapse of the United States (and the
Soviet Union) was some kind of natural consequence of resources dryinf out instead of a
premeditated looting.
Orlov's posts on how Russians survived the collapse is a small masterpiece. I read it a
couple of years back and it affected me greatly. I just reread it, thanks, Rev Kev, and it
seems even more relevant now.
Small gems: Money becomes useless: items or services that can be swapped are paramount.
Bottles of alcohol, fresh homegrown veggies (and pot), I re-fashion your old suit and you fix
my broken window.
Social networks keep you alive. Know and be on good terms with your neighbors. Communal
gardens keep you fed.
War-hardened men (and the women who love them), who thrive on violence abound. They will
either be hired as security or rove about as free-lancers. A community is better able either
to hire them, or defend against them.
Our ancestors lived and thrived without: central heating, electric lights, hot and cold
running water, flush toilets, garbage collection, the Internet. We can too; it just takes
forethought and planning. Densely packed cities without these amenities are hell.
Cultivate an attitude of disdain for the 'normal' things that society values, especially
if you are a middle-aged male; career, large house and SUV, foreign vacations, a regular
salary. Enjoy contemplating nature. When the former disappear, you have the latter to fall
back upon. And consider a second career as a recycler of abandoned buildings, or a distiller
of potatoes. (Think of all the Medieval structures built from crumbling Roman edifices.)
Russians, in many ways, had more resilience built in to their system: housing was
State-owned, so there was less homelessness. Private automobiles were relatively rare, but
public transportation was wide-spread and remained in good-running order. Minimal universal
health care existed.
Cease from trying, futilely, to change the System. Ain't gonna happen. Instead, prepare to
survive, if only just, the coming dismantling.
> Once a floor standard of living is attained, people tend to be healthier when three
conditions hold: they are valued and respected by others; they feel 'in control' in their
work and home lives; and they enjoy a dense network of social contacts.
"Sapolsky: We belong to multiple hierarchies, and you may have the worst job in your
corporation and no autonomy and control and predictability, but you're the captain of the
company softball team that year and you'd better bet you are going to have all sorts of
psychological means to decide it's just a job, nine to five, that's not what the world is
about. What the world's about is softball. I'm the head of my team, people look up to me, and
you come out of that deciding you are on top of the hierarchy that matters to you."
iirc, there was a perspective of some economists that infinite groaf could be carried by
the creative, emergent, and infinite wants of homo sapiens. But that creates compounding
deprivations, never enough time, money, resources. With the 2:1 ratio of loss aversion, what
is compounded are bad affects.
That 'dense network of social contacts' means smaller groups with symmetric interactions. The multiple
dominance heirarchies is the healthy version of creative emergence, but supplying needs, not
creating wants.
I think that one of the most valuable tools used by government in the Great Depression was
the CCC, WPA, and TVA set of programs that provided jobs to people while they created
valuable infrastructure and art. How many of those people could go back to the dams or state
parks and tell their spouses and kids that "I helped build that." During a time of despair,
it was a way of making people believe they had value.
Today, it would be viewed as a waste of money that could be better spent on the military
or another tax cut for the wealthy.
I'd mentioned some wrongheaded policies of Sequoia NP of 90 years ago yesterday, and they
seem ridiculous in retrospect, and we no longer treat natural places as ad hoc zoos, where
everybody gets to see the dancing bears @ a given hour.
Our methodology as far as our rapport with fire was just as stupid, but we've really done
nothing to repair our relationship with trees and the forests they hang out in.
There's an abundance of physical labor needed to clear out the duff, the deadfalls and
assorted debris from huge swaths of guaranteed employment until the job is done, which could
take awhile.
There's really few graft possibilities though, we're talking chainsaws, Pulaskis, never
ending burn pile action and lots of sweat equity. If KBR wanted to be in charge of
backcountry camps housing crews, that'd be ok, they'd be doing something useful for a
change.
Yes, why do you think video games appeal so much to young males? Because of the pixels?
What these gamers are really after is the ability to excel in a niche hierarchy. It doesn't
(usually) appeal to females as much as more traditional kinds of success but it serves a
psychological need.
A traitorous ruling class that has sold out its workers in favor of foreign workers.
And it's very lucrative – the Walton's fortune was made by being an agent of
communist Chinese manufacturers. In direct competition with US manufacturers. Does this not
seem like treason to you?
The word 'communist' in relation to the Chinese government and party is void of content.
'Communist' in the current Chinese context is legacy branding, nothing more. Its use in this
comment is inflammatory, as is the too-loose bandying of 'treason'. The Waltons are loyal to
their class (however fierce their disputes may be with rival oligarch factions), and since
the state exists to serve the interests of their class, how can they be traitors to the
state?
"Communist" is what they call themselves. They're totalitarians. Which is what most people
think "communist" means – because all countries that called themselves communist used
authoritarian rule. Methinks you might be a marxist idealist. Offended by the misuse of your
ideal State word by totalitarians.
Similarly, I used "treason" in the sense of acting against the interests of the citizens,
not in the sense of a crime against the state. You clearly believe the state to be
representative of only the ruling class. And I don't disagree wrt the USA and its imperial
machine. Which would make the State treasonous, according to the sense of the word I
used.
One could always say communism is an end point developed through a process preceded by
socialism and before that capitalism which replaces feudalism. The idea being Chinese
Communists, the rich Chinese have bug out spots for a reason, believe Mao and the Soviets
moved too quickly skipping a Marxist historical epoch.
The Communist Party officially is always a vanguard for the future society not the
Communist society. Phrases such as "under communism" aren't Soviet features as much as they
are propaganda from the West.
When the Reds were the only game in town, the greedy class joined the CCP, but since 1991,
they skipped signing up, leaving believers in control. What the party congress believes is
probably important.
As far as branding goes, all Communists are branded because the are all vanguard parties,
not parties of blocs or even current populations. Star Trek is the only communist society.
The Soviet thinkers definitely wrote about what an Ideal society would look like, the nature
of work, and self and societal improvement.
Overthrowing a long established government shouldn't be done for light and transient
reasons, and Xi has seemed to be concerned with the demands of the party congress. The party
at large doesn't have a single voice to rally behind which makes it difficult to overthrow a
government.
the word is "communist". The gov't isn't anything of the sort these days. Isn't the
chinese gov't of today "fascist". just like the national socialists of the german stripe?
They are the state that may be lord over controller of private institutions, and ruler of
other state institutions, all intermixed into what is "the chinese economy". They allow the
private wealth creation in a controlled sense. that is state function serving private wealth.
and if you are a party loyal, private wealth may come to you some day too.
It is just another part of the world trend "everyone is turning into full fledged
fascists"
No wonder people in the states are dying earlier.. to get back on topic
Last night, my wife and I took our boys to meet Santa at my older son's school. Elementary
school in Mississippi. The town is an outer suburb of Memphis. A mile east of the town you
are in rural Mississippi. I noticed 2 or 3 parents with visible drug addiction issues. These
folks were still people. Want their kids to see Santa and have a better life. The country
doesn't care.
I'll guess that you're near Byhalia. Happy memories of visiting family there from late
forties through sixties. Wonder what its like now – how the economic changes have
affected it.
Byhalia is a little further down highway 78. Kids from Byhalia drive up to Olive Branch to
go to a McDonald's and other fast food. Things may be changing because they just completed an
outer interstate loop that passes close by Byhalia. Byhalia was just in news a couple months
ago because a kid died during a football game. People were up in arms about no doctor at game
and a 30 to 40 minute drive to closest hospital. There aren't any doctors offices in Byhalia.
Then toxicology report came back. Kid had cocaine in his system. Holly Springs and Byhalia
area are big drug smuggling area. Close to Memphis and it's distribution network, but across
state line in poor rural Mississippi. NBA players linked to this area and smuggling
networks.
I'm always amazed @ the suicide by gun numbers, as it strikes me as a not so fool proof
way of checking out, exacerbated by perhaps dying slowly in a painful way?
Oh, and bloody, very much so.
Fentanyl seems an easier way out, you just drift into the ether and leave a presentable
corpse for everybody you knew, who all wonder if they could have done something to stop it
from happening, posthaste.
It's cheap and fairly efficient, and the drug way out can be tricky. Silent film legend,
Lupe Valez, is the famed example of suicide by drugs gone wrong. She still died but not on
her own terms because the sleeping pills she took didn't react well with her last meal.
How many people have tried to check out and had it not work is something to consider.
The level of denial people are capable of can be daunting.
1). My dentist who I think is Republican told me when I brought up Medicare for all said
"I don't think we can afford Medicare for all." This was not an immediate response to my
raising the topic, but something he told me after several visits and having thought about
what I had said and around the time Sanders got media coverage introducing a Medicare for all
bill (I was getting a crown and required many visits). Talking to your dentist can be a one
sided conversation for obvious reasons, but I thought "don't you mean we can't afford NOT to
have Medicare for all?"
2). A co-worker of mine who is African American. When I said U.S. life expectancy is
falling, this is a sign of extreme policy failure and should affect how we rate the ACA (read
that here, of course!) replied "You're assuming health has an impact on life expectancy." I
was stunned and didn't know what to say for a second and finally said "yes, absolutely."
These are the types that are more than happy to hand the place over to the next Bolsonaro
if only to protect the status gap between themselves and those beneath them.
They also "hand the place over" when the Bolsonaro types tell everyone they have the
solution and the opposition party is tainted by austerity and corruption.
"You're assuming health has an impact on life expectancy"
I have absolutely no idea how I would respond to this either. Was this comment by this
person some kind of built in knee-jerk response to criticism of the ACA/Obama?
actually you are assuming health coverage, even if it was real coverage for what one
needed, has that much of an impact on life expectancy and from what I've read it probably
doesn't compared to things like poverty *regardless* of health coverage. Because the greatest
link to say heart attacks is with poverty (not diet etc.)
At this point though it doesn't even make sense to talk about the ACA circa now and say
it's Obama's ACA, it wasn't that great to begin with. But Trump has made it worse.
My dentist who I think is Republican told me when I brought up Medicare for all said
"I don't think we can afford Medicare for all."
When I brought up Medicare for All to my dentist, after listening to him describe some of
his ER work where he claims to routinely see people who have intentionally damaged their
teeth in order to obtain painkillers (which he is not allowed to proscribe to them
regardless), he said he would never want to have the kind of inferior health care they have
"in Europe." He seemed genuinely surprised when I reported that my wife had done most of a
pregnancy in Italy in the mid-90s and got pre-natal care that was better than anything she
ever got in this country.
My dentist is definitely a Repub. And he socializes with other medical professionals,
which I presume gives him a very distorted image of the health care system. I often hear him
railing against the idiotic dictates of insurance companies and he seems genuinely proud
that, unlike the inscrutable and BS pricing of hospitals, dentists have to have
straightforward pricing because many people do pay 100% out of pocket (so he says).
This is a part of the 10% that is going to be very hard to reach. But I tell him
socialists need dental care too and so he will always have work even after we take over.
Suicide can be a rational and sensible choice.
Bluntly, if the quality of your life is shitty and not going to improve why stick around?
That the reason so many people's lives are bad enough that they decide death is preferable to
life is societal doesn't change their circumstances.
If you are old and sick, barely surviving financially or in poor health and unable to afford
care suicide might look like your best alternative.
The "Hemlock Society" has been around for quite a while, that its membership is growing in
the short term says a great deal about America.
Suicide is never rational. It is arrogance that one could weigh the pros and cons of
suicide like they think the have all the pertinent information. The only truth is that we
have no idea what happens when we die or if there is some kind of experience that continues
in a form that might not be a personal consciousness. Also, why don't you see the decision to
die is made under duress and therefor invalid like signing a contract with a gun pointed at
your head? There were several times in my life that I determined "the quality of [my] life is
shitty and not going to improve [so] why stick around", but yet, I became better off going
through the struggle. As a result I have made others lives better with the understanding I
have gained going through the Shaman's journey.
By considering suicide you are considering trading a known (suffering) for an unknown
(Death). In what way can that be considered rational?
The sad fact is that we spend our whole lives avoiding suffering and never take the time
to understand it. Opioids, all drugs, are a route to avoid suffering, to avoid looking at our
trauma. Materialism is about avoiding our suffering. Suicide is materialistic because it
supposes there is a mind that we can stop.
But even in the Buddhist centers I visit it has turned away from the spiritual and people
go there not to understand their suffering, but rather only to escape it.
American society does not have an economic problem, it has a spiritual problem.
I respect your view that suicide is an arrogant act and that suffering is an unavoidable
part of life. I totally agree with the latter philosophy. You suffer, and you wade through it
and come out on the other side as a better person. Forged in fire, so to speak.
Plus, I am, by nature, an optimist. There is always something to look forward to, every
morning.
But, a few years ago, I suffered a cascade of bodily failures, whose symptoms were at
first ignored, then misdiagnosed, resulting in my taking medications that made me worse off.
At one point, for two months, I had constant nerve pain (comparable to having teeny barbed
wire wrapped around my torso and and being zapped by an electric charge every few seconds.)
Plus back pain. I could not eat, and when I did, I vomited. I lost 20 pounds. I could not
sleep for more than hour at a time, and that hour happened only once a day. I walked only
with the aid of two walking sticks. I was totally constipated for a month (gross, but this
condition just adds to one's misery.) There was no end in sight and my condition just kept
worsening with each round of new medication.
I did not seriously contemplate suicide. But I did give some thought to what I would do if
I had to face life without sleep, without food, without the ability to walk, and death came
up as one of the better solutions. Fortunately, I changed doctors.
I empathize with your struggles, and I have contemplated suicide myself, but contemplating
death is part of the shaman's journey. I do not think that suicide is arrogant, I think it is
a misunderstanding.
IMHO, medical doctors will disrupt this journey. They should be consulted but with the
understanding that they know very little about the balance of the body and what is needed to
heal.
Truth is, we will die. The greater the suffering the easier to find out "who" that is
suffering.
I get in fights with my therapist all the time about this. She is always advocating for ME
to change when I feel if she wants to help us all she should be helping us change the
system.
Well roles like therapist are part of what props up the system and they get paid for
precisely that.
I mean if we are just living our lives we see that things are both individual and
systematic. And some things are strongly systematic (economic problems), and others probably
have a significantly personal component (phobias etc.). And so we have to exist with both
being true, but if we are drowning in economic problems the rest doesn't matter. But
therapists have a specific role to individualize all problems. But if people are just doing
therapy to get stuff off their chest, who can blame them. Enough people are, although it's
not how therapists like to see their role.
The train goes right by Chester, Pa, and you can see decay along the tracks all along
BosWash. Except for Biden, a corrupt tool who hasn't figured out how to cash in, the elites
don't take the train.
Remember the Kingsman movie where the president was going to let all the dopers die? Think
Trump.
Not only is the WH response to the opioid problem merely cosmetic, they (and NIH) refuse
to link it to the economics of human obsolescence. How convenient. As jobs die, the workers
do too – less welfare burden. That is fascist thinking, and it is evident today.
Finally, let us recall that all public health leaders are Trump appointees – i.e.,
incompetent. CDC too refuses to link suicide to the economy. It's bad politics. They can do
this because there are no national standards for reporting deaths as suicides or even drug
overdoses. It is entirely up to the elected coroner. Thus 10s of thousands of suicides are
reported as natural or accidental either intentionally to ease the grief of family members or
because they lack the manpower to investigate suspicious deaths. Note the bump in accidental
deaths. Driving your car into a concrete abutment or over a cliff might be an accident, but
more often than not, the driver was pickled (Irish courage) and the death was
intentional.
So, until we do a better job of measuring the causes of death, the administration can
continue to blame the deaths on moral weakness rather than its cruel economic policies.
Sadly, I believe if suicide attempts were taken into account, the picture would even look
far bleaker, and likely include far more Metro areas. In those Metro areas there are likely
far less gun/rifle owners (reportedly the most successful method), far quicker ambulance
response times, and significant expenditures have been made, and actions taken, to thwart
attempts on transit lines and bridges, along with committing suicidal persons to locked down
psychiatric facilities (which then adds further financial burden, significant employment
issues, and possibly ugly, forced medication side effects); while doing absolutely nothing
whatsoever to address the causes.
What a sickening blotch on the US , with such wealth and power – sovereign in
its own currency – that it's citizens are increasingly attempting and committing
suicide because they can no longer afford to live in any manner that's considered humane.
That, while its Fourth Estate deliberately obscures the deadly problem – which
cannot be cured by forcing Pharma™, Therapy™, and Psychiatric Confinement™
at it, when a predatory crippling of economic stability is the entire cause – and
refuses to hold the Government and Elites accountable.
I would commend to all Beth Macy's riveting book "
Dopesick : Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America ."
Equal parts nicely written investigative reporting and painful personal stories. I'd
thought that the "opioid epidemic" meme was hyperbolic. I was wrong.
"... The original "New Deal," which included massive public works infrastructure projects, was introduced by Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s amid the Great Depression. Its purpose was to stave off a socialist revolution in America. It was a response to a militant upsurge of strikes and violent class battles, led by socialists who were inspired by the 1917 Russian Revolution ..."
"... Since the 2008 crash, first under Bush and Obama, and now Trump, the ruling elites have pursued a single-minded policy of enriching the wealthy, through free credit, corporate bailouts and tax cuts, while slashing spending on social services. ..."
"... To claim as does Ocasio-Cortez that American capitalism can provide a new "New Deal," of a green or any other variety, is to pfile:///F:/Private_html/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Neoliberalism/Historyromote an obvious political fiction." ..."
"The original "New Deal," which included massive public works infrastructure projects,
was introduced by Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s amid the Great
Depression. Its purpose was to stave off a socialist revolution in America. It was a response
to a militant upsurge of strikes and violent class battles, led by socialists who were
inspired by the 1917 Russian Revolution that had occurred less than two decades before.
American capitalism could afford to make such concessions because of its economic
dominance. The past forty years have been characterized by the continued decline of American
capitalism on a world stage relative to its major rivals. The ruling class has responded to
this crisis with a social counterrevolution to claw back all gains won by workers. This has
been carried out under both Democratic and Republican administrations and with the assistance
of the trade unions.
Since the 2008 crash, first under Bush and Obama, and now Trump, the ruling elites have
pursued a single-minded policy of enriching the wealthy, through free credit, corporate
bailouts and tax cuts, while slashing spending on social services.
To claim as does Ocasio-Cortez that American capitalism can provide a new "New Deal," of a
green or any other variety, is to pfile:///F:/Private_html/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Neoliberalism/Historyromote an obvious political fiction."
"... "As the heat of packed-together bodies fogged the windows, passengers beat on the walls and clawed at the doors in a scene from a real-life horror story," ..."
Spending time in Western Europe, as I have done the last several months, provides some
serious perspective on America's decline. In most European countries, like Germany for example,
public transportation works efficiently and there is a social safety net. While homelessness is
a problem, it's nowhere near as rampant as in the US and usually seems to be associated with
addiction. People in Europe are generally much healthier and happier, housing and food and
higher education are affordable and people don't spend all their time working – they are
able to take vacations and enjoy life in a way the vast majority of Americans are not.
Europeans are typically entitled to lengthy paid maternity leave, whereas in the US working
class women are forced to return to work in as little as
two weeks . Read more 130,000 homeless
children, empty food banks predicted this Christmas
Meanwhile, New York's Subway system is decaying due to disinvestment and corruption. Last
summer a train stalled, leaving passengers in the dark with no air conditioning for an hour.
"As the heat of packed-together bodies fogged the windows, passengers beat on the walls and
clawed at the doors in a scene from a real-life horror story,"reported
the New York Times. In Washington DC, the nation's capital, the Metro is always late and
totally unreliable, with train fires
becoming a regular occurrence while Amtrak trains experience routine derailments . These
are just some examples of infrastructure decay. The list goes on: bridges are crumbling,
schools are shuttered. In Baltimore dozens of schools had no heat
during record freezing temperatures this winter. The only thing America's leadership seems
capable of investing in is prisons and war.
In America, the old devour the young. Young Americans are struggling under the weight of
$1.4 trillion in student loan debt. But don't let that confuse you about the state of
America's elderly. They too aren't taken care of. In many European countries people are
entitled to pensions and they can retire comfortably. In the US some have to
work until they die as Social Security isn't enough to live on and Medicare doesn't quite
cover all of their medical needs. As for healthcare, as many as
45,000 people a year die because they cannot access it.
And then there is the issue of water. There are
over 3,000 counties across America whose water supplies have lead levels higher than in
Flint, Michigan, and nothing substantial is being done to address the problem.
Haves and
Have nots
All this is taking place in a nation where inequality continues to climb. There are counties
a few miles apart from one another where the life expectancy drops by 20 years.
Researchers say the life expectancy gap, as high as
20.1 years between rich and poor counties, resembles the gap seen between low-income
countries versus rich countries. In other words, there are pockets of the US that have the
characteristics of third world countries. It seems that the US in many ways, after having
destroyed other parts of the world, has turned inward on itself, sacrificing its most
vulnerable citizens at the altar of capitalism.
Bernie Sanders made an issue of this during his presidential bid, often noting in his stump
speeches the dramatic difference in lifespan in McDowell County, West Virginia, where men live
to about 64, and six hours away in Fairfax, Virginia, where the average lifespan shoots up to
82.
This makes for absolutely horrifying, chills-down-your-spine reading. A modern corporate horror story - worthy of a 'Black Mirror'
episode. Phenomenal reporting by Ariana Tobin and Peter Gosselin. Thank you for exposing this. I hope this puts an end to this
at IBM and makes every other company and industry doing this in covert and illegal ways think twice about continuing.
Agree..a well written expose'. I've been a victim of IBM's "PIP" (Performance Improvement Plan) strategy, not because of my real
performance mind you, but rather, I wasn't billing hours between projects and it was hurting my unit's bottom line. The way IBM
instructs management to structure the PIP, it's almost impossible to dig your way out, and it's intentional. If you have a PIP
on your record, nobody in IBM wants to touch you, so in effect you're already gone.
I see the PIP problem as its nearly impossible to take the fact that we know PIP is a scam to court. IBM will say its an issue
with you, your performance nose dived and your manager tried to fix that. You have to not only fight those simple statements,
but prove that PIP is actually systematic worker abuse.
Cindy, they've been doing this for at least 15-20 years, or even longer according to some of the previous comments. It is
in fact a modern corporate horror story; it's also life at a modern corporation, period.
After over 35 years working there, 19 of them as a manager sending out more of those notification letters than I care to remember,
I can vouch for the accuracy of this investigative work. It's an incredibly toxic and hostile environment and has been for the
last 5 or so years. One of the items I was appraised on annually was how many US jobs I moved offshore. It was a relief when I
received my notification letter after a two minute phone call telling me it was on the way. Sleeping at night and looking myself
in the mirror aren't as hard as they were when I worked there.
IBM will never regain any semblance of their former glory (or profit) until they begin to treat employees well again.
With all the offshoring and resource actions with no backfill over the last 10 years, so much is broken. Customers suffer almost
as much as the employees.
I don't know how in the world they ended up on that LinkedIn list. Based on my fairly recent experience there are a half dozen
happy employees in the US, and most of them are C level.
Well done. It squares well with my 18 years at IBM, watching resource action after resource action and hearing what my (unusually
honest) manager told me. Things got progressively worse from 2012 onward. I never realized how stressful it was to live under
the shadow of impending layoffs until I finally found the courage to leave in 2015. Best decision I've made.
IBM answers to its shareholders, period. Employees are an afterthought - simply a means to an end. It's shameful. (That's not
to say that individual people managers feel that way. I'm speaking about IBM executives.)
Well, they almost answer to their shareholders, but that's after the IBM executives take their share. Ginni's compensation is
tied to stock price (apparently not earnings) and buy backs maintain the stock price.
If the criteria for layoff is being allegedly overpaid and allegedly a poor performer, then it follows that Grinnin' Jenny should
have been let go long ago.
Just another fine example of how people become disposable.
And, when it comes to cost containment and profit maximization, there is no place for ethics in American business.
Businesses can lie just as well as politicians.
Millennials are smart to avoid this kind of problem by remaining loyal only to themselves. Companies certainly define anyone
as replaceable - even their over-paid CEO's.
The millennials saw what happen to their parents and grandparents getting screwed over after a life time of work and loyalty.
You can't blame them for not caring about so called traditional American work ethics and then they are attacked for not having
them when the business leaders threw away all those value decades ago.
Some of these IBM people have themselves to blame for cutting their own economic throats for fighting against unions, putting
in politicians who are pro-business and thinking that their education and high paying white collar STEM jobs will give them economic
immunity.
If America was more of a free market and free enterprise instead of being more of a close market of oligarchies and monopolies,
and strong government regulations, companies would think twice about treating their workforce badly because they know their workforce
would leave for other companies or start up their own companies without too much of a hassle.
Under the old IBM you could not get a union as workers were treated with dignity and respect - see the 3 core beliefs. Back
then a union would not have accomplished anything.
Doesn't matter if it was the old IBM or new IBM, you wonder how many still actually voted against their economic interests in
the political elections that in the long run undermine labor rights in this country.
So one shouldn't vote? Neither party cares about the average voter except at election time. Both sell out to Big Business - after
all, that's where the big campaign donations come from. If you believe only one party favors Big Business, then you have been
watching to much "fake news". Even the unions know they have been sold out by both and are wising up. How many of those jobs were
shipped overseas the past 25 years.
No, they should have been more active in voting for politicians who would look after the workers' rights in this country for the
last 38 years plus ensuring that Congressional people and the president would not be packing the court system with pro-business
judges. Sorry, but it is the Big Business that have been favoring the Republican Party for a long, long time and the jobs have
been shipped out for the last 38 years.
"... It's no coincidence whatsoever that Diane Gherson, mentioned prominently in the article, blasted out an all-employees email crowing about IBM being a great place to work according to (ahem) LinkedIn. I desperately want to post a link to this piece in the corporate Slack, but that would get me fired immediately instead of in a few months at the next "resource action." It's been a whole 11 months since our division had one, so I know one is coming soon. ..."
"... I used to say when I was there that: "After every defeat, they pin medals on the generals and shoot the soldiers". ..."
"... 1990 is also when H-1B visa rules were changed so that companies no longer had to even attempt to hire an American worker as long as the job paid $60,000, which hasn't changed since. This article doesn't even mention how our work visa system facilitated and even rewarded this abuse of Americans. ..."
"... Well, starting in the 1980s, the American management was allowed by Reagan to get rid of its workforce. ..."
"... It's all about making the numbers so the management can present a Potemkin Village of profits and ever-increasing growth sufficient to get bonuses. There is no relation to any sort of quality or technological advancement, just HR 3-card monte. They have installed air bearing in Old Man Watson's coffin as it has been spinning ever faster ..."
"... Corporate America executive management is all about stock price management. Their bonus's in the millions of dollars are based on stock performance. With IBM's poor revenue performance since Ginny took over, profits can only be maintained by cost reduction. Look at the IBM executive's bonus's throughout the last 20 years and you can see that all resource actions have been driven by Palmisano's and Rominetty's greed for extravagant bonus's. ..."
"... Also worth noting is that IBM drastically cut the cap on it's severance pay calculation. Almost enough to make me regret not having retired before that changed. ..."
"... Yeah, severance started out at 2 yrs pay, went to 1 yr, then to 6 mos. and is now 1 month. ..."
"... You need to investigate AT&T as well, as they did the same thing. I was 'sold' by IBM to AT&T as part of he Network Services operation. AT&T got rid of 4000 of the 8000 US employees sent to AT&T within 3 years. Nearly everyone of us was a 'senior' employee. ..."
dragonflap• 7
months ago I'm a 49-year-old SW engineer who started at IBM as part of an acquisition in 2000. I got laid off in 2002 when IBM
started sending reqs to Bangalore in batches of thousands. After various adventures, I rejoined IBM in 2015 as part of the "C" organization
referenced in the article.
It's no coincidence whatsoever that Diane Gherson, mentioned prominently in the article, blasted out an all-employees email
crowing about IBM being a great place to work according to (ahem) LinkedIn. I desperately want to post a link to this piece in the
corporate Slack, but that would get me fired immediately instead of in a few months at the next "resource action." It's been a whole
11 months since our division had one, so I know one is coming soon.
The lead-in to this piece makes it sound like IBM was forced into these practices by inescapable forces. I'd say not, rather
that it pursued them because a) the management was clueless about how to lead IBM in the new environment and new challenges so
b) it started to play with numbers to keep the (apparent) profits up....to keep the bonuses coming. I used to say when I was
there that: "After every defeat, they pin medals on the generals and shoot the soldiers".
And then there's the Pig with the Wooden Leg shaggy dog story that ends with the punch line, "A pig like that you don't eat
all at once", which has a lot of the flavor of how many of us saw our jobs as IBM die a slow death.
IBM is about to fall out of the sky, much as General Motors did. How could that happen? By endlessly beating the cow to get
more milk.
IBM was hiring right through the Great Depression such that It Did Not Pay Unemployment Insurance. Because it never laid people
off, Because until about 1990, your manager was responsible for making sure you had everything you needed to excel and grow....and
you would find people that had started on the loading dock and had become Senior Programmers. But then about 1990, IBM starting
paying unemployment insurance....just out of the goodness of its heart. Right.
1990 is also when H-1B visa rules were changed so that companies no longer had to even attempt to hire an American worker
as long as the job paid $60,000, which hasn't changed since. This article doesn't even mention how our work visa system facilitated
and even rewarded this abuse of Americans.
I found that other Ex-IBMer's respect other Ex-IBMer's work ethics, knowledge and initiative.
Other companies are happy to get them as a valueable resource. In '89 when our Palo Alto Datacenter moved, we were given two
options: 1.) to become a Programmer (w/training) 2.) move to Boulder or 3.) to leave.
I got my training with programming experience and left IBM in '92, when for 4 yrs IBM offerred really good incentives for leaving
the company. The Executives thought that the IBM Mainframe/MVS z/OS+ was on the way out and the Laptop (Small but Increasing Capacity)
Computer would take over everything.
It didn't. It did allow many skilled IBMers to succeed outside of IBM and help built up our customer skill sets. And like many,
when the opportunity arose to return I did. In '91 I was accidentally given a male co-workers paycheck and that was one of the
reasons for leaving. During my various Contract work outside, I bumped into other male IBMer's that had left too, some I had trained,
and when they disclosed that it was their salary (which was 20-40%) higher than mine was the reason they left, I knew I had made
the right decision.
Women tend to under-value themselves and their capabilities. Contracting also taught me that companies that had 70% employees
and 30% contractors, meant that contractors would be let go if they exceeded their quarterly expenditures.
I first contracted with IBM in '98 and when I decided to re-join IBM '01, I had (3) job offers and I took the most lucrative
exciting one to focus on fixing & improving DB2z Qry Parallelism. I developed a targeted L3 Technical Change Team to help L2 Support
reduce Customer problems reported and improve our product. The instability within IBM remained and I saw IBM try to eliminate
aging, salaried, benefited employees. The 1.) find a job within IBM ... to 2.) to leave ... was now standard.
While my salary had more than doubled since I left IBM the first time, it still wasn't near other male counterparts. The continual
rating competition based on salary ranged titles and timing a title raise after a round of layoffs, not before. I had another
advantage going and that was that my changed reduced retirement benefits helped me stay there. It all comes down to the numbers
that Mgmt is told to cut & save IBM. While much of this article implies others were hired, at our Silicon Valley Location and
other locations, they had no intent to backfill. So the already burdened employees were laden with more workloads & stress.
In the early to mid 2000's IBM setup a counter lab in China where they were paying 1/4th U.S. salaries and many SVL IBMers
went to CSDL to train our new world 24x7 support employees. But many were not IBM loyal and their attrition rates were very high,
so it fell to a wave of new-hires at SVL to help address it.
It's all about making the numbers so the management can present a Potemkin Village of profits and ever-increasing growth
sufficient to get bonuses. There is no relation to any sort of quality or technological advancement, just HR 3-card monte. They
have installed air bearing in Old Man Watson's coffin as it has been spinning ever faster
Corporate America executive management is all about stock price management. Their bonus's in the millions of dollars are
based on stock performance. With IBM's poor revenue performance since Ginny took over, profits can only be maintained by cost
reduction. Look at the IBM executive's bonus's throughout the last 20 years and you can see that all resource actions have been
driven by Palmisano's and Rominetty's greed for extravagant bonus's.
Bravo ProPublica for another "sock it to them" article - journalism in honor of the spirit of great newspapers everywhere that
the refuge of justice in hard times is with the press.
Also worth noting is that IBM drastically cut the cap on it's severance pay calculation. Almost enough to make me regret
not having retired before that changed.
You need to investigate AT&T as well, as they did the same thing. I was 'sold' by IBM to AT&T as part of he Network Services
operation. AT&T got rid of 4000 of the 8000 US employees sent to AT&T within 3 years. Nearly everyone of us was a 'senior' employee.
As a permanent old contractor and free-enterprise defender myself, I don't blame IBM a bit for wanting to cut the fat. But
for the outright *lies, deception and fraud* that they use to break laws, weasel out of obligations... really just makes me want
to shoot them... and I never even worked for them.
Where I worked, In Rochester,MN, people have known what is happening for years. My last years with IBM were the most depressing
time in my life.
I hear a rumor that IBM would love to close plants they no longer use but they are so environmentally polluted that it is cheaper
to maintain than to clean up and sell.
One of the biggest driving factors in age discrimination is health insurance costs, not salary. It can cost 4-5x as much to
insure and older employee vs. a younger one, and employers know this. THE #1 THING WE CAN DO TO STOP AGE DISCRIMINATION IS TO
MOVE AWAY FROM OUR EMPLOYER-PROVIDED INSURANCE SYSTEM. It could be single-payer, but it could also be a robust individual market
with enough pool diversification to make it viable. Freeing employers from this cost burden would allow them to pick the right
talent regardless of age.
The American business have constantly fought against single payer since the end of World War II and why should I feel sorry
for them when all of a sudden, they are complaining about health care costs? It is outrageous that workers have to face age discrimination;
however, the CEOs don't have to deal with that issue since they belong to a tiny group of people who can land a job anywhere else.
Single payer won't help. We have single payer in Canada and just as much age discrimination in employment. Society in general
does not like older people so unless you're a doctor, judge or pharmacist you will face age bias. It's even worse in popular culture
never mind in employment.
Thanks for the great article. I left IBM last year. USA based. 49. Product Manager in one of IBMs strategic initiatives, however
got told to relocate or leave. I found another job and left. I came to IBM from an acquisition. My only regret is, I wish I had
left this toxic environment earlier. It truely is a dreadful place to work.
The methodology has trickled down to smaller companies pursuing the same net results for headcount reduction. The similarities
to my experience were painful to read. The grief I felt after my job was "eliminated" 10 years ago while the Recession was at
its worst and shortly after my 50th birthday was coming back. I never have recovered financially but have started writing a murder
mystery. The first victim? The CEO who let me go. It's true. Revenge is best served cold.
Well written . people like me have experienced exactly what you wrote. IBM is a shadow of it's former greatness and I have
advised my children to stay away from IBM and companies like it as they start their careers. IBM is a corrupt company. Shame on
them !
I suspect someone will end up hunt them down with an axe at some point. That's the only way they'll probably learn. I don't
know about IBM specifically, but when Carly Fiorina ran HP, she travelled with and even went into engineering labs with an armed
security detail.
Was let go after 34 years of service. Mine Resource Action latter had additional lines after '...unless you are offered ...
position within IBM before that date.' , implying don't even try to look for a position. They lines were ' Additional business
controls are in effect to manage the business objectives of this resource action, therefore, job offers within (the name of division)
will be highly unlikely.'.
I've worked for a series of vendors for over thirty years. A job at IBM used to be the brass ring; nowadays, not so much.
I've heard persistent rumors from IBMers that U.S. headcount is below 25,000 nowadays. Given events like the recent downtime
of the internal systems used to order parts (5 or so days--website down because staff who maintained it were let go without replacements),
it's hard not to see the spiral continue down the drain.
What I can't figure out is whether Rometty and cronies know what they're doing or are just clueless. Either way, the result
is the same: destruction of a once-great company and brand. Tragic.
Well, none of these layoffs/ageist RIFs affect the execs, so they don't see the effects, or they see the effects but attribute
them to some other cause.
(I'm surprised the article doesn't address this part of the story; how many affected by layoffs are exec/senior management?
My bet is very few.)
I was a D-banded exec (Director-level) who was impacted and I know even some VPs who were affected as well, so they do spread
the pain, even in the exec ranks.
That's different than I have seen in companies I have worked for (like HP). There RIFs (Reduction In Force, their acronym for
layoff) went to the director level and no further up.
Under neoliberlaism the idea of loyalty between a corporation and an employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests.
Notable quotes:
"... Any expectation of "loyalty", that two-way relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking ..."
"... With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about people not having money to buy their goods and services plus what are they going to do with the surplus of labor ..."
"... This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing software, I will never again recommend IBM products ..."
"... The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The idea of loyalty between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests. ..."
"... The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980. ..."
I started at IBM 3 days out of college in 1979 and retired in 2017. I was satisfied with my choice and never felt mistreated because
I had no expectation of lifetime employment, especially after the pivotal period in the 1990's when IBM almost went out of business.
The company survived that period by dramatically restructuring both manufacturing costs and sales expense including the firing
of tens of thousands of employees. These actions were well documented in the business news of the time, the obvious alternative
was bankruptcy.
I told the authors that anyone working at IBM after 1993 should have had no expectation of a lifetime career. Downsizing, outsourcing,
movement of work around the globe was already commonplace at all such international companies. Any expectation of "loyalty",
that two-way relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking .
I was always prepared to be sent packing, without cause, at any time and always had my resume up-to-date. I stayed because
of interesting work, respectful supervisors, and adequate compensation.
The "resource action" that forced my decision to retire was no surprise, the company that hired me had been gone for decades.
With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about people not having money to buy
their goods and services plus what are they going to do with the surplus of labor
I had, more or less, the same experience at Cisco. They paid me to quit. Luckily, I was ready for it.
The article mentions IBMs 3 failures. So who was it that was responsible for not anticipating the transitions? It is hard enough
doing what you already know. Perhaps companies should be spending more on figuring out "what's next" and not continually playing
catch-up by dumping the older workers for the new.
I was laid off by IBM after 29 years and 4 months. I had received a division award in previous year, and my last PBC appraisal
was 2+ (high performer.) The company I left was not the company I started with. Top management--starting with Gerstner--has steadily
made IBM a less desirable place to work. They now treat employees as interchangeable assets and nothing more. I cannot/would not
recommend IBM as an employer to any young programmer.
Truly awesome work. I do want to add one thing, however--the entire rhetoric about "too many old white guys" that has become so
common absolutely contributes to the notion that this sort of behavior is not just acceptable but in some twisted way admirable
as well.
Is anyone surprised that so many young people don't think capitalism is a good system any more?
I ran a high technology electronic systems company for years. We ran it "the old way." If you worked hard, and tried, we would
bend over backwards to keep you. If technology or business conditions eliminated your job, we would try to train you for a new
one. Our people were loyal, not like IBMers today. I honestly think that's the best way to be profitable.
People afraid of being unjustly RIFFed will always lack vitality.
I'm glad someone is finally paying attention to age discrimination. IBM apparently is just one of many organizations that discriminate.
I'm in the middle of my own fight with the State University of New York (SUNY) over age discrimination. I was terminated by
a one of the technical colleges in the SUNY System. The EEOC/New York State Division of Human Rights (NYDHR) found that "PROBABLE
CAUSE (NYDHR's emphasis) exists to believe that the Respondent (Alfred State College - SUNY) has engaged in or is engaging in
the unlawful discriminatory practice complained of." Investigators for NYDHR interviewed several witnesses, who testified that
representatives of the college made statements such as "we need new faces", "three old men" attending a meeting, an older faculty
member described as an "albatross", and "we ought to get rid of the old white guys". Witnesses said these statements were made
by the Vice President of Academic Affairs and a dean at the college.
This saga at IBM is simply a microcosm of our overall economy. Older workers get ousted in favor of younger, cheaper workers;
way too many jobs get outsourced; and so many workers today [young and old] can barely land a full-time job. This is the behavior that our system incentivises (and gets away with) in this post Reagan Revolution era where deregulation is
lauded and unions have been undermined & demonized. We need to seriously re-work 'work', and in order to do this we need to purge
Republicans at every level, as they CLEARLY only serve corporate bottom-lines - not workers - by championing tax codes that reward
outsourcing, fight a livable minimum wage, eliminate pensions, bust unions, fight pay equity for women & family leave, stack the
Supreme Court with radical ideologues who blatantly rule for corporations over people all the time, etc. etc. ~35 years of basically
uninterrupted Conservative economic policy & ideology has proven disastrous for workers and our quality of life. As goes your
middle class, so goes your country.
I am a retired IBM manager having had to execute many of these resource reduction programs.. too many.. as a matter of fact. ProPUBLICA....You
nailed it!
IBM has always treated its customer-facing roles like Disney -- as cast members who need to match a part in a play. In the 60s
and 70s, it was the white-shirt, blue-suit white men whom IBM leaders thought looked like mainframe salesmen. Now, rather than
actually build a credible cloud to compete with Amazon and Microsoft, IBM changes the cast to look like cloud salespeople. (I
work for Microsoft. Commenting for myself alone.)
I am a survivor, the rare employee who has been at IBM for over 35 years. I have seen many, many layoff programs over 20 years
now. I have seen tens of thousands people let go from the Hudson Valley of N.Y. Those of us who have survived, know and lived
through what this article so accurately described. I currently work with 3 laid off/retired and rehired contractors. I have seen
age discrimination daily for over 15 years. It is not only limited to layoffs, it is rampant throughout the company. Promotions,
bonuses, transfers for opportunities, good reviews, etc... are gone if you are over 45. I have seen people under 30 given promotions
to levels that many people worked 25 years for. IBM knows that these younger employees see how they treat us so they think they
can buy them off. Come to think of it, I guess they actually are! They are ageist, there is no doubt, it is about time everyone
knew. Excellent article.
Nice article, but seriously this is old news. IBM has been at this for ...oh twenty years or more. I don't really have a problem with it in terms of a corporation trying to make money. But I do have a problem with how IBM also
likes to avoid layoffs by giving folks over 40 intentionally poor reviews, essentially trying to drive people out. Just have the
guts to tell people, we don't need you anymore, bye. But to string people along as the overseas workers come in...c'mon just be
honest with your workers. High tech over 40 is not easy...I suggest folks prep for a career change before 50. Then you can have the last laugh on a company
like IBM.
From pages 190-191 of my novel, Ordinary Man (Amazon):
Throughout
it all, layoffs became common, impacting mostly older employees with many years
of service. These job cuts were dribbled out in small numbers to conceal them
from the outside world, but employees could plainly see what was going on.
The laid off
employees were supplanted by offshoring work to low-costs countries and hiring
younger employees, often only on temporary contracts that offered low pay and
no benefits – a process pejoratively referred to by veteran employees as
"downsourcing." The recruitment of these younger workers was done under the
guise of bringing in fresh skills, but while many of the new hires brought new
abilities and vitality, they lacked the knowledge and perspective that comes
with experience.
Frequently,
an older more experienced worker would be asked to help educate newer
employees, only to be terminated shortly after completing the task. And the new
hires weren't fooled by what they witnessed and experienced at OpenSwitch,
perceiving very quickly that the company had no real interest in investing in
them for the long term. To the contrary, the objective was clearly to grind as
much work out of them as possible, without offering any hope of increased
reward or opportunity.
Most of the
young recruits left after only a year or two – which, again, was part of the
true agenda at the company. Senior management viewed employees not as talent,
but simply as cost, and didn't want anyone sticking around long enough to move
up the pay scale.
This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing software, I will never again recommend
IBM products. I love AIX and have worked with a lot if IBM products but not anymore. Good luck with the millennials though...
I worked for four major corporations (HP, Intel, Control Data Corporation, and Micron Semiconductor) before I was hired by IBM
as a rare (at that time) experienced new hire.
Even though I ended up working for IBM for 21 years, and retired in 2013, because
of my experiences at those other companies, I never considered IBM my "family."
The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck
from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything.
The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck
from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything.
The idea of loyalty between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests.
It is a business arrangement, not a love affair. Every individual needs to continually assess their skills and their value to
their employer. If they are not commensurate, it is the employee's responsibility to either acquire new skills or seek a new employer.
Your employer will not hesitate to lay you off if your skills are no longer needed, or if they can hire someone who can do your
job just as well for less pay. That is free enterprise, and it works for people willing to take advantage of it.
I basically agree. But why should it be OK for a company to fire you just to replace you with a younger you? If all that they
accomplish is lowering their health care costs (which is what this is really about). If the company is paying about the same for
the same work, why is firing older workers for being older OK?
Good question. The point I was trying to make is that people need to watch out for themselves and not expect their employer to
do what is "best" for the employee. I think that is true whatever age the employee happens to be.
Whether employers should be able to discriminate against (treat differently) their employees based on age, gender, race, religion,
etc. is a political question. Morally, I don't think they should discriminate. Politically, I think it is a slippery slope when
the government starts imposing regulations on free enterprise. Government almost always creates more problems than they fix.
Sorry, but when you deregulate the free enterprise, it created more problems than it fixes and that is a fact that has been proven
for the last 38 years.
That's just plain false. Deregulation creates competiiton. Competition for talented and skilled workers creates opportunities
for those that wish to be employed and for those that wish to start new ventures. For example, when Ma Bell was regulated and
had a monopoly on telecommunications there was no innovation in the telecom inudstry. However, when it was deregulated, cell phones,
internet, etc exploded ... creating billionaires and millionaires while also improving the quality of life.
No, it happens to be true. When Reagan deregulate the economy, a lot of those corporate raiders just took over the companies,
sold off the assets, and pocketed the money. What quality of life? Half of American lived near the poverty level and the wages
for the workers have been stagnant for the last 38 years compared to a well-regulated economy in places like Germany and the Scandinavian
countries where the workers have good wages and a far better standard of living than in the USA. Why do you think the Norwegians
told Trump that they will not be immigrating to the USA anytime soon?
What were the economic conditions before Regan? It was a nightmare before Regan. The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare
of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation.
And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980.
At least we had a manufacturing base in the USA, strong regulations of corporations, corporate scandals were far and few, businesses
did not go under so quickly, prices of goods and services did not go through the roof, people had pensions and could reasonably
live off them, and recessions did not last so long or go so deep until Reagan came into office. In Under Reagan, the jobs were
allowed to be send overseas, unions were busted up, pensions were reduced or eliminated, wages except those of the CEOs were staganent,
and the economic conditions under Bush, Senior and Bush, Jr. were no better except that Bush, Jr, was the first president to have
a net minus below zero growth, so every time we get a Republican Administration, the economy really turns into a nightmare. That
is a fact.
You have the Republicans in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin using Reaganomics and they are economic disaster areas.
You had an industrial base in the USA, lots of banks and savings and loans to choose from, lots of mom and pop stores, strong
government regulation of the economy, able to live off your pensions, strong unions and employment laws along with the court system
to back you up against corporate malfeasance. All that was gone when Reagan and the two Bushes came into office.
Amazingly accurate article. The once great IBM now a dishonest and unscrupulous corporation concerned more about earnings per
share than employees, customers, or social responsibility. In Global Services most likely 75% or more jobs are no longer in the
US - can't believe a word coming out of Armonk.
I'm not sure there was ever a paradise in employment. Yeah, you can say there was more job stability 50 or 60 years ago, but that
applied to a much smaller workforce than today (mostly white men). It is a drag, but there are also lot more of us old farts than
there used to be and we live a lot longer in retirement as well. I don't see any magic bullet fix either.
Great article. What's especially infuriating is that the industry continues to claim that there is a shortage of STEM workers.
For example, google "claim of 1.4 million computer science jobs with only 400,000 computer science graduates to fill them". If
companies would openly say, "we have plenty of young STEM workers and prefer them to most older STEM workers", we could at least
start addressing the problem. But they continue to promote the lie of there being a STEM shortage. They just want as big a labor
pool as possible, unemployed workers be damned.
I've worked there 17 years and have worried about being layed off for about 11 of them. Moral is in the toilet. Bonuses for the
rank and file are in the under 1% range while the CEO gets millions. Pay raises have been non existent or well under inflation
for years. Adjusting for inflation, I make $6K less than I did my first day. My group is a handful of people as at least 1/2 have
quit or retired. To support our customers, we used to have several people, now we have one or two and if someone is sick or on
vacation, our support structure is to hope nothing breaks. We can't keep millennials because of pay, benefits and the expectation
of being available 24/7 because we're shorthanded. As the unemployment rate drops, more leave to find a different job, leaving
the old people as they are less willing to start over with pay, vacation, moving, selling a house, pulling kids from school, etc.
The younger people are generally less likely to be willing to work as needed on off hours or to pull work from a busier colleague.
I honestly have no idea what the plan is when the people who know what they are doing start to retire, we are way top heavy with
30-40 year guys who are on their way out, very few of the 10-20 year guys due to hiring freezes and we can't keep new people past
2-3 years. It's like our support business model is designed to fail.
Make no mistake. The three and four letter acronyms and other mushy corporate speak may differ from firm to firm, but this is
going on in every large tech company old enough to have a large population of workers over 50. I hope others will now be exposed.
This article hits the nail right on the head, as I come up on my 1 year anniversary from being....ahem....'retired' from 23 years
at IBM....and I'll be damned if I give them the satisfaction of thinking this was like a 'death' to me. It was the greatest thing
that could have ever happened. Ginny and the board should be ashamed of themselves, but they won't be.
Starting around age 40 you start to see age discrimination. I think this is largely due to economics, like increased vacation
times, higher wages, but most of all the perception that older workers will run up the medical costs. You can pass all the age
related discrimination laws you want, but look how ineffective that has been.
If you contrast this with the German workforce, you see that they have more older workers with the skills and younger workers
without are having a difficult time getting in. So what's the difference? There are laws about how many vacation weeks that are
given and there is a national medical system that everyone pays, so discrimination isn't seen in the same light.
The US is the only hold out maybe with South Africa that doesn't have a good national medical insurance program for everyone.
Not only do we pay more than the rest of the world, but we also have discrimination because of it.
This is very good, and this is IBM. I know. I was plaintiff in Gundlach v. IBM Japan, 983 F.Supp.2d 389, which involved their
violating Japanese labor law when I worked in Japan. The New York federal judge purposely ignored key points of Japanese labor
law, and also refused to apply Title VII and Age Discrimination in Employment to the parent company in Westchester County. It
is a huge, self-described "global" company with little demonstrated loyalty to America and Americans. Pennsylvania is suing them
for $170 million on a botched upgrade of the state's unemployment system.
In early 2013 I was given a 3 PBC rating for my 2012 performance, the main reason cited by my manager being that my team lead
thought I "seemed distracted". Five months later I was included in a "resource action", and was gone by July. I was 20 months
shy of 55. Younger coworkers were retained. That was about two years after the product I worked on for over a decade was off-shored.
Through a fluke of someone from the old, disbanded team remembering me, I was rehired two years later - ironically in a customer
support position for the very product I helped develop.
While I appreciated my years of service, previous salary, and previous benefits being reinstated, a couple years into it I
realized I just wasn't cut out for the demands of the job - especially the significant 24x7 pager duty. Last June I received email
describing a "Transition to Retirement" plan I was eligible for, took it, and my last day will be June 30. I still dislike the
job, but that plan reclassified me as part time, thus ending pager duty for me. The job still sucks, but at least I no longer
have to despair over numerous week long 24x7 stints throughout the year.
A significant disappointment occurred a couple weeks ago. I was discussing healthcare options with another person leaving the
company who hadn't been resource-actioned as I had, and learned the hard way I lost over $30,000 in some sort of future medical
benefit account the company had established and funded at some point. I'm not sure I was ever even aware of it. That would have
funded several years of healthcare insurance during the 8 years until I'm eligible for Medicare. I wouldn't be surprised if their
not having to give me that had something to do with my seeming "distracted" to them. <rolls eyes="">
What's really painful is the history of that former account can still be viewed at Fidelity, where it associates my departure
date in 2013 with my having "forfeited" that money. Um, no. I did not forfeit that money, nor would I have. I had absolutely no
choice in the matter. I find the use of the word 'forfeited' to describe what happened as both disingenuous and offensive. That
said, I don't know whether's that's IBM's or Fidelity's terminology, though.
Jeff, You should call Fidelity. I recently received a letter from the US Department of Labor that they discovered that IBM was
"holding" funds that belonged to me that I was never told about. This might be similar or same story .
These practices are "interesting". And people still wonder why there are so many deadly amok
runs at US companies? What do they expect when they replace old and experienced workers with
inexperienced millenials, who often lack basic knowledge about their job? Better performance?
This will run US tech companies into the ground. This sort of "American" HR management is
gaining ground here in Germany as well, its troubling. And on top they have to compete against
foreign tech immigrants from middle eastern and asian companies. Sure fire recipe for social
unrest and people voting for right-wing parties.
I too was a victim of IBM's underhanded trickery to get rid of people...39 years with IBM,
a top performer. I never got a letter telling me to move to Raleigh. All i got was a phone
call asking me if i wanted to take the 6 month exception to consider it. Yet, after taking the
6 month exception, I was told I could no longer move, the colocation was closed. Either I find
another job, not in Marketing support (not even Marketing) or leave the company. I received no
letter from Ginni, nothing. I was under the impression I could show up in Raleigh after the
exception period. Not so. It was never explained....After 3 months I will begin contracting
with IBM. Not because I like them, because I need the money...thanks for the article.
dropped in 2013 after 22 years. IBM stopped leading in the late 1980's, afterwards it
implemented "market driven quality" which meant listen for the latest trends, see what other
people were doing, and then buy the competition or drive them out of business. "Innovation that
matters": it's only interesting if an IBM manager can see a way to monetize it.
That's a low standard. It's OK, there are other places that are doing better. In fact, the
best of the old experienced people went to work there. Newsflash: quality doesn't change with
generations, you either create it or you don't.
Sounds like IBM is building its product portfolio to match its desired workforce. And of
course, on every round of layoffs, the clear criterion was people who were compliant and
pliable - who's ready to follow orders ? Best of luck.
"... The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980. ..."
If anything, IBM is behind the curve. I was terminated along with my entire department from a
major IBM subcontractor, with all affected employees "coincidentally" being over 50. By
"eliminating the department" and forcing me to sign a waiver to receive my meager severance,
they avoided any legal repercussions. 18 months later on the dot (the minimum legal time
period), my workload was assigned to three new hires, all young. Interestingly, their
combined salaries are more than mine, and I could have picked up all their work for about
$200 in training (in social media posting, something I picked up on my own last year and am
doing quite well, thank you).
And my former colleagues are not alone. A lot of friends of mine have had similar
outcomes, and as the article states, no one will hire people my age willingly in my old
capacity. Luckily again, I've pivoted into copywriting--a discipline where age is still
associated with quality ("dang kids can't spell anymore!"). But I'm doing it freelance, with
the commensurate loss of security, benefits, and predictability of income.
So if IBM is doing this now, they are laggards. But because they're so big, there's a much
more obvious paper trail.
One of the most in-depth, thoughtful and enlightening pieces of journalism I've seen. Having
worked on Capitol Hill during the early 1980's for the House and Senate Aging Committees, we
worked hard to abolish the remnants of mandatory retirement and to strengthen the protections
under the ADEA. Sadly, the EEOC has become a toothless bureaucracy when it comes to age
discrimination cases and the employers, as evidenced by the IBM case, have become
sophisticated in hiding what they're doing to older workers. Peter's incredibly well
researched article lays the case out for all to see. Now the question is whether the
government will step up to its responsibilities and protect older workers from this kind of
discrimination in the future. Peter has done a great service in any case.
The US tech sector has mostly ignored US citizen applicants, of all ages, since the early
2000s. Instead, preferring to hire foreign nationals. The applications of top US citizen
grads are literally thrown in the garbage (or its electronic equivalent) while companies like
IBM have their hiring processes dominated by Indian nationals. IBM is absolutely a
poster-child for H-1B, L-1, and OPT visa abuse.
Bottom line is we have entered an era when there are only two classes who are protected in
our economy; the Investor Class and the Executive Class. With Wall Street's constant demand
for higher profits and increased shareholder value over all other business imperatives, rank
and file workers have been relegated to the class of expendable resource. I propose that all
of us over fifty who have been riffed out of Corporate America band together for the specific
purpose of beating the pants off them in the marketplace. The best revenge is whooping their
youngster butts at the customer negotiating table. By demonstrating we are still flexible and
nimble, yet with the experience to avoid the missteps of misspent youth, we prove we can
deliver value well beyond what narrow-minded bean counters can achieve.
I started at IBM 3 days out of college in 1979 and retired in 2017. I was satisfied with my
choice and never felt mistreated because I had no expectation of lifetime employment,
especially after the pivotal period in the 1990's when IBM almost went out of business. The
company survived that period by dramatically restructuring both manufacturing costs and sales
expense including the firing of tens of thousands of employees. These actions were well
documented in the business news of the time, the obvious alternative was bankruptcy.
I told the authors that anyone working at IBM after 1993 should have had no expectation of
a lifetime career. Downsizing, outsourcing, movement of work around the globe was already
commonplace at all such international companies. Any expectation of "loyalty", that two-way
relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking. I was always
prepared to be sent packing, without cause, at any time and always had my resume up-to-date.
I stayed because of interesting work, respectful supervisors, and adequate compensation. The
"resource action" that forced my decision to retire was no surprise, the company that hired
me had been gone for decades.
With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about
people not having money to buy their goods and services plus what are they going to do with
the surplus of labor
I had, more or less, the same experience at Cisco. They paid me to quit. Luckily, I was ready
for it.
The article mentions IBMs 3 failures. So who was it that was responsible for not
anticipating the transitions? It is hard enough doing what you already know. Perhaps
companies should be spending more on figuring out "what's next" and not continually playing
catch-up by dumping the older workers for the new.
I was laid off by IBM after 29 years and 4 months. I had received a division award in
previous year, and my last PBC appraisal was 2+ (high performer.) The company I left was not
the company I started with. Top management--starting with Gerstner--has steadily made IBM a
less desirable place to work. They now treat employees as interchangeable assets and nothing
more. I cannot/would not recommend IBM as an employer to any young programmer.
Truly awesome work. I do want to add one thing, however--the entire rhetoric about "too many
old white guys" that has become so common absolutely contributes to the notion that this sort
of behavior is not just acceptable but in some twisted way admirable as well.
Is anyone surprised that so many young people don't think capitalism is a good system any
more?
I ran a high technology electronic systems company for years. We ran it "the old way." If
you worked hard, and tried, we would bend over backwards to keep you. If technology or
business conditions eliminated your job, we would try to train you for a new one. Our people
were loyal, not like IBMers today. I honestly think that's the best way to be profitable.
People afraid of being unjustly RIFFed will always lack vitality.
I'm glad someone is finally paying attention to age discrimination. IBM apparently is just
one of many organizations that discriminate.
I'm in the middle of my own fight with the State University of New York (SUNY) over age
discrimination. I was terminated by a one of the technical colleges in the SUNY System. The
EEOC/New York State Division of Human Rights (NYDHR) found that "PROBABLE CAUSE (NYDHR's
emphasis) exists to believe that the Respondent (Alfred State College - SUNY) has engaged in
or is engaging in the unlawful discriminatory practice complained of." Investigators for
NYDHR interviewed several witnesses, who testified that representatives of the college made
statements such as "we need new faces", "three old men" attending a meeting, an older faculty
member described as an "albatross", and "we ought to get rid of the old white guys".
Witnesses said these statements were made by the Vice President of Academic Affairs and a
dean at the college.
This saga at IBM is simply a microcosm of our overall economy. Older workers get ousted in
favor of younger, cheaper workers; way too many jobs get outsourced; and so many workers
today [young and old] can barely land a full-time job.
This is the behavior that our system incentivises (and gets away with) in this post Reagan
Revolution era where deregulation is lauded and unions have been undermined & demonized.
We need to seriously re-work 'work', and in order to do this we need to purge Republicans at
every level, as they CLEARLY only serve corporate bottom-lines - not workers - by championing
tax codes that reward outsourcing, fight a livable minimum wage, eliminate pensions, bust
unions, fight pay equity for women & family leave, stack the Supreme Court with radical
ideologues who blatantly rule for corporations over people all the time, etc. etc. ~35 years
of basically uninterrupted Conservative economic policy & ideology has proven disastrous
for workers and our quality of life. As goes your middle class, so goes your country.
I am a retired IBM manager having had to execute many of these resource reduction programs..
too many.. as a matter of fact. ProPUBLICA....You nailed it!
IBM has always treated its customer-facing roles like Disney -- as cast members who need to
match a part in a play. In the 60s and 70s, it was the white-shirt, blue-suit white men whom
IBM leaders thought looked like mainframe salesmen. Now, rather than actually build a
credible cloud to compete with Amazon and Microsoft, IBM changes the cast to look like cloud
salespeople. (I work for Microsoft. Commenting for myself alone.)
I am a survivor, the rare employee who has been at IBM for over 35 years. I have seen many,
many layoff programs over 20 years now. I have seen tens of thousands people let go from the
Hudson Valley of N.Y. Those of us who have survived, know and lived through what this article
so accurately described. I currently work with 3 laid off/retired and rehired contractors. I
have seen age discrimination daily for over 15 years. It is not only limited to layoffs, it
is rampant throughout the company. Promotions, bonuses, transfers for opportunities, good
reviews, etc... are gone if you are over 45. I have seen people under 30 given promotions to
levels that many people worked 25 years for. IBM knows that these younger employees see how
they treat us so they think they can buy them off. Come to think of it, I guess they actually
are! They are ageist, there is no doubt, it is about time everyone knew. Excellent article.
Nice article, but seriously this is old news. IBM has been at this for ...oh twenty years or
more.
I don't really have a problem with it in terms of a corporation trying to make money. But I
do have a problem with how IBM also likes to avoid layoffs by giving folks over 40
intentionally poor reviews, essentially trying to drive people out. Just have the guts to
tell people, we don't need you anymore, bye. But to string people along as the overseas
workers come in...c'mon just be honest with your workers.
High tech over 40 is not easy...I suggest folks prep for a career change before 50. Then you
can have the last laugh on a company like IBM.
From pages 190-191 of my novel, Ordinary Man (Amazon):
Throughout
it all, layoffs became common, impacting mostly older employees with many years
of service. These job cuts were dribbled out in small numbers to conceal them
from the outside world, but employees could plainly see what was going on.
The laid off
employees were supplanted by offshoring work to low-costs countries and hiring
younger employees, often only on temporary contracts that offered low pay and
no benefits – a process pejoratively referred to by veteran employees as
"downsourcing." The recruitment of these younger workers was done under the
guise of bringing in fresh skills, but while many of the new hires brought new
abilities and vitality, they lacked the knowledge and perspective that comes
with experience.
Frequently,
an older more experienced worker would be asked to help educate newer
employees, only to be terminated shortly after completing the task. And the new
hires weren't fooled by what they witnessed and experienced at OpenSwitch,
perceiving very quickly that the company had no real interest in investing in
them for the long term. To the contrary, the objective was clearly to grind as
much work out of them as possible, without offering any hope of increased
reward or opportunity.
Most of the
young recruits left after only a year or two – which, again, was part of the
true agenda at the company. Senior management viewed employees not as talent,
but simply as cost, and didn't want anyone sticking around long enough to move
up the pay scale.
This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing
software, I will never again recommend IBM products. I love AIX and have worked with a lot if
IBM products but not anymore. Good luck with the millennials though...
I worked for four major corporations (HP, Intel, Control Data Corporation, and Micron
Semiconductor) before I was hired by IBM as a rare (at that time) experienced new hire. Even
though I ended up working for IBM for 21 years, and retired in 2013, because of my
experiences at those other companies, I never considered IBM my "family." The way I saw it,
every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost)
even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The idea of loyalty
between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a
motel and its guests. It is a business arrangement, not a love affair. Every individual needs
to continually assess their skills and their value to their employer. If they are not
commensurate, it is the employee's responsibility to either acquire new skills or seek a new
employer. Your employer will not hesitate to lay you off if your skills are no longer needed,
or if they can hire someone who can do your job just as well for less pay. That is free
enterprise, and it works for people willing to take advantage of it.
I basically agree. But why should it be OK for a company to fire you just to replace you with
a younger you? If all that they accomplish is lowering their health care costs (which is what
this is really about). If the company is paying about the same for the same work, why is
firing older workers for being older OK?
Good question. The point I was trying to make is that people need to watch out for themselves
and not expect their employer to do what is "best" for the employee. I think that is true
whatever age the employee happens to be.
Whether employers should be able to discriminate against (treat differently) their
employees based on age, gender, race, religion, etc. is a political question. Morally, I
don't think they should discriminate. Politically, I think it is a slippery slope when the
government starts imposing regulations on free enterprise. Government almost always creates
more problems than they fix.
Sorry, but when you deregulate the free enterprise, it created more problems than it fixes
and that is a fact that has been proven for the last 38 years.
That's just plain false. Deregulation creates competiiton. Competition for talented and
skilled workers creates opportunities for those that wish to be employed and for those that
wish to start new ventures. For example, when Ma Bell was regulated and had a monopoly on
telecommunications there was no innovation in the telecom inudstry. However, when it was
deregulated, cell phones, internet, etc exploded ... creating billionaires and millionaires
while also improving the quality of life.
No, it happens to be true. When Reagan deregulate the economy, a lot of those corporate
raiders just took over the companies, sold off the assets, and pocketed the money. What
quality of life? Half of American lived near the poverty level and the wages for the workers
have been stagnant for the last 38 years compared to a well-regulated economy in places like
Germany and the Scandinavian countries where the workers have good wages and a far better
standard of living than in the USA. Why do you think the Norwegians told Trump that they will
not be immigrating to the USA anytime soon?
What were the economic conditions before Regan? It was a nightmare before Regan.
The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The
economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined
low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And
the prime rate hit 20% by 1980.
At least we had a manufacturing base in the USA, strong regulations of corporations,
corporate scandals were far and few, businesses did not go under so quickly, prices of goods
and services did not go through the roof, people had pensions and could reasonably live off
them, and recessions did not last so long or go so deep until Reagan came into office. In
Under Reagan, the jobs were allowed to be send overseas, unions were busted up, pensions were
reduced or eliminated, wages except those of the CEOs were staganent, and the economic
conditions under Bush, Senior and Bush, Jr. were no better except that Bush, Jr, was the
first president to have a net minus below zero growth, so every time we get a Republican
Administration, the economy really turns into a nightmare. That is a fact.
You have the Republicans in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin using Reaganomics and they are
economic disaster areas.
You had an industrial base in the USA, lots of banks and savings and loans to choose from,
lots of mom and pop stores, strong government regulation of the economy, able to live off
your pensions, strong unions and employment laws along with the court system to back you up
against corporate malfeasance. All that was gone when Reagan and the two Bushes came into
office.
Amazingly accurate article. The once great IBM now a dishonest and unscrupulous corporation
concerned more about earnings per share than employees, customers, or social responsibility.
In Global Services most likely 75% or more jobs are no longer in the US - can't believe a
word coming out of Armonk.
I'm not sure there was ever a paradise in employment. Yeah, you can say there was more job
stability 50 or 60 years ago, but that applied to a much smaller workforce than today (mostly
white men). It is a drag, but there are also lot more of us old farts than there used to be
and we live a lot longer in retirement as well. I don't see any magic bullet fix either.
Great article. What's especially infuriating is that the industry continues to claim that
there is a shortage of STEM workers. For example, google "claim of 1.4 million computer
science jobs with only 400,000 computer science graduates to fill them". If companies would
openly say, "we have plenty of young STEM workers and prefer them to most older STEM
workers", we could at least start addressing the problem. But they continue to promote the
lie of there being a STEM shortage. They just want as big a labor pool as possible,
unemployed workers be damned.
I've worked there 17 years and have worried about being layed off for about 11 of them. Moral
is in the toilet. Bonuses for the rank and file are in the under 1% range while the CEO gets
millions. Pay raises have been non existent or well under inflation for years. Adjusting for
inflation, I make $6K less than I did my first day. My group is a handful of people as at
least 1/2 have quit or retired. To support our customers, we used to have several people, now
we have one or two and if someone is sick or on vacation, our support structure is to hope
nothing breaks. We can't keep millennials because of pay, benefits and the expectation of
being available 24/7 because we're shorthanded. As the unemployment rate drops, more leave to
find a different job, leaving the old people as they are less willing to start over with pay,
vacation, moving, selling a house, pulling kids from school, etc. The younger people are
generally less likely to be willing to work as needed on off hours or to pull work from a
busier colleague. I honestly have no idea what the plan is when the people who know what they
are doing start to retire, we are way top heavy with 30-40 year guys who are on their way
out, very few of the 10-20 year guys due to hiring freezes and we can't keep new people past
2-3 years. It's like our support business model is designed to fail.
Make no mistake. The three and four letter acronyms and other mushy corporate speak may
differ from firm to firm, but this is going on in every large tech company old enough to have
a large population of workers over 50. I hope others will now be exposed.
This article hits the nail right on the head, as I come up on my 1 year anniversary from
being....ahem....'retired' from 23 years at IBM....and I'll be damned if I give them the
satisfaction of thinking this was like a 'death' to me. It was the greatest thing that could
have ever happened. Ginny and the board should be ashamed of themselves, but they won't be.
Starting around age 40 you start to see age discrimination. I think this is largely due to
economics, like increased vacation times, higher wages, but most of all the perception that
older workers will run up the medical costs. You can pass all the age related discrimination
laws you want, but look how ineffective that has been.
If you contrast this with the German workforce, you see that they have more older workers
with the skills and younger workers without are having a difficult time getting in. So what's
the difference? There are laws about how many vacation weeks that are given and there is a
national medical system that everyone pays, so discrimination isn't seen in the same
light.
The US is the only hold out maybe with South Africa that doesn't have a good national
medical insurance program for everyone. Not only do we pay more than the rest of the world,
but we also have discrimination because of it.
This is very good, and this is IBM. I know. I was plaintiff in Gundlach v. IBM Japan, 983
F.Supp.2d 389, which involved their violating Japanese labor law when I worked in Japan. The
New York federal judge purposely ignored key points of Japanese labor law, and also refused
to apply Title VII and Age Discrimination in Employment to the parent company in Westchester
County. It is a huge, self-described "global" company with little demonstrated loyalty to
America and Americans. Pennsylvania is suing them for $170 million on a botched upgrade of
the state's unemployment system.
In early 2013 I was given a 3 PBC rating for my 2012 performance, the main reason cited by my
manager being that my team lead thought I "seemed distracted". Five months later I was
included in a "resource action", and was gone by July. I was 20 months shy of 55. Younger
coworkers were retained. That was about two years after the product I worked on for over a
decade was off-shored.
Through a fluke of someone from the old, disbanded team remembering me, I was rehired two
years later - ironically in a customer support position for the very product I helped
develop.
While I appreciated my years of service, previous salary, and previous benefits being
reinstated, a couple years into it I realized I just wasn't cut out for the demands of the
job - especially the significant 24x7 pager duty. Last June I received email describing a
"Transition to Retirement" plan I was eligible for, took it, and my last day will be June 30.
I still dislike the job, but that plan reclassified me as part time, thus ending pager duty
for me. The job still sucks, but at least I no longer have to despair over numerous week long
24x7 stints throughout the year.
A significant disappointment occurred a couple weeks ago. I was discussing healthcare
options with another person leaving the company who hadn't been resource-actioned as I had,
and learned the hard way I lost over $30,000 in some sort of future medical benefit account
the company had established and funded at some point. I'm not sure I was ever even aware of
it. That would have funded several years of healthcare insurance during the 8 years until I'm
eligible for Medicare. I wouldn't be surprised if their not having to give me that had
something to do with my seeming "distracted" to them. <rolls eyes="">
What's really painful is the history of that former account can still be viewed at
Fidelity, where it associates my departure date in 2013 with my having "forfeited" that
money. Um, no. I did not forfeit that money, nor would I have. I had absolutely no choice in
the matter. I find the use of the word 'forfeited' to describe what happened as both
disingenuous and offensive. That said, I don't know whether's that's IBM's or Fidelity's
terminology, though.
Jeff, You should call Fidelity. I recently received a letter from the US Department of Labor
that they discovered that IBM was "holding" funds that belonged to me that I was never told
about. This might be similar or same story.
Great article. And so so close to home. I worked at IBM for 23 years until I became yet
another statistic -- caught up in one of their many "RA's" -- Resource Actions. I also can
identify with the point about being encouraged to find a job internally yet hiring managers
told to not hire. We were encouraged to apply for jobs outside the US -- Europe mainly -- as
long as we were willing to move and work at the prevailing local wage rate. I was totally
fine with that as my wife had been itching for some time for a chance to live abroad. I
applied for several jobs across Europe using an internal system IBM set up just for that
purpose. Never heard a word. Phone calls and internal e-mails to managers posting jobs in the
internal system went unanswered. It turned out to be a total sham as far as I was concerned.
IBM has laid off hundreds of thousands in the last few decades. Think of the MILLIONS of
children, spouses, brothers/sisters, aunts/uncles, and other family members of laid-off
people that were affected. Those people are or will be business owners and in positions to
make technology decisions. How many of them will think "Yeah, right, hire IBM. They're the
company that screwed daddy/mommy". I fully expect -- and I fully hope -- that I live to see
IBM go out of business. Which they will, sooner or later, as they are living off of past
laurels -- billions in the bank, a big fat patent portfolio, and real estate that they
continue to sell off or rent out. If you do hire IBM, you should fully expect that they'll
send some 20-something out to your company a few weeks after you hire them, that person will
be reading "XYZ for Dummys" on the plane on the way to your offices and will show up as your
IBM 'expert'.
the next Trump, a Trump with the rough edges sanded off, is going to seize that issue and
run with it, and lock in Republican power for another generation (as soon as they can figure
out how to package Medicare for All as supporting the free market. Don't laugh).
The Republicans will sell this to America as making American business more competitive oin
world commerce by lowering costs. Healthcare costs have to be eat up a huge portion of
American companies employee costs. By dumping these costs onto the government, American
business becomes more cost competitive around the world. (Not believing most of this myself,
but it's the argument the GOP will make.)
I never understood why Bernie never made this appeal to the US Chamber of Commerce.
Because the chamber of commerce likes the fact that workers will take more crap, and work
for less, if they know their family will lose access to heathcare if they dont. It creates a
servile, frightened workforce. Just the way the oligarchs like it.
You could "package Medicare for All as supporting the free market" by pointing out that it
would allow small businesses to compete with big ones by eliminating their need to arrange
for health insurance for their employees -- something that is much easier and more cost
effective for big businesses.
This case has been made by many. Watch the free movie Fix It online made by an American
businessman re what providing even crappy insurance to his employees affects his bottom
line.
Also frame it as equalizing the cost of doing business internationally. Any kind of
National Health scheme is a subsidy for that nations business class. How much of the "lower
labour costs" touted in support of 'outsourcing' American jobs is paid for by the other
countries government's assumption of their domestic medical funding?
This brings up the question of which business group has more 'influence' on the political
parties and thus government, international trade or domestic production?
And Medicare for All is single payer, not single provider, right? Which means that there
will be competition among hospital conglomerates and less room for under-the-table deals like
the one here where the biggest hospital company bought the biggest insurance company in the
state, and nobody could do anything about the fact that the insurance company suddenly would
not pay for any doctor other than their own because the ACA had an antitrust waiver for
medical insurance companies.
The middle class in America has been declining for decades, and we continue to get even more
evidence of the catastrophic damage that has already been done.
According to the Social Security
Administration, the median yearly wage in the United States is just $30,533 at this point.
That means 50 percent of all American workers make at least that much per year, but that also
means that 50 percent of all American workers make that much or less per year. When you divide
$30,533 by 12, you get a median monthly wage of just over $2,500. But of course nobody can
provide a middle class standard of living for a family of four for just $2,500 a month, and we
will discuss this further below. So in most households at least two people are working, and in
many cases multiple jobs are being taken on by a single individual in a desperate attempt to
make ends meet. The American people are working harder than ever, and yet the middle class just
continues to erode .
The deeper we dig into the numbers provided by the Social Security Administration, the more
depressing they become. Here are just a few examples from their official website
-34 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year.
-48 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.
-59 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year.
-68 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year.
At this moment, the federal poverty level for a family of five is $29,420 , and yet about half the workers in
the entire country don't even make that much on a yearly basis.
So can someone please explain to me again why people are saying that the economy is "doing
well"?
Many will point to how well the stock market has been doing, but the stock market has not
been an accurate barometer for the overall economy in a very, very long time.
And the stock market has already fallen
nearly 1,500 points since the beginning of the month. The bull market appears to be over
and the bears are licking their chops.
No matter who has been in the White House, and no matter which political party has
controlled Congress, the U.S. middle class has been systematically eviscerated year after year.
Many that used to be thriving may still even call themselves "middle class", but that doesn't
make it true.
You would think that someone making "the median income" in a country as wealthy as the
United States would be doing quite well. But the truth is that $2,500 a month won't get you
very far these days.
First of all, your family is going to need somewhere to live. Especially on the east and
west coasts, it is really hard to find something habitable for under $1,000 a month in 2018.
If you live in the middle of the country or in a rural area, housing prices are significantly
cheaper. But for the vast majority of us, let's assume a minimum of $1,000 a month for
housing costs.
Secondly, you will also need to pay your utility bills and other home-related expenses.
These costs include power, water, phone, television, Internet, etc. I will be extremely
conservative and estimate that this total will be about $300 a month.
Thirdly, each income earner will need a vehicle in order to get to work. In this example
we will assume one income earner and a car payment of just $200 a month.
So now we are already up to $1,500 a month. The money is running out fast.
Next, insurance bills will have to be paid. Health insurance premiums have gotten
ridiculously expensive in recent years, and many family plans are now well over $1,000 a
month. But for this example let's assume a health insurance payment of just $450 a month and
a car insurance payment of just $50 a month.
Of course your family will have to eat, and I don't know anyone that can feed a family of
four for just $500 a month, but let's go with that number.
So now we have already spent the entire $2,500, and we don't have a single penny left over
for anything else.
But wait, we didn't even account for taxes yet. When you deduct taxes, our fictional
family of four is well into the red every month and will need plenty of government
assistance.
This is life in America today, and it isn't pretty.
In his most recent article, Charles Hugh Smith estimated that an income of at
least $106,000 is required to maintain a middle class lifestyle in America today. That
estimate may be a bit high, but not by too much.
Yes, there is a very limited sliver of the population that has been doing well in recent
years, but most of the country continues to barely scrape by from month to month. Out in
California, Silicon Valley has generated quite a few millionaires, but the state also has the
highest poverty in the entire nation. For every Silicon Valley millionaire, there are thousands
upon thousands of poor people living in towns such as
Huron, California
Nearly 40 percent of Huron residents -- and almost half of all children -- live below the
poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That's more than double the statewide rate
of 19 percent reported last month, which is the highest in the U.S. The national average is
12.3 percent.
"We're in the Appalachians of the West," Mayor Rey Leon said. "I don't think enough
urgency is being taken to resolve a problem that has existed for way too long."
Multiple families and boarders pack rundown homes, only about a quarter of residents have
high school diplomas and most lack adequate health care in an area plagued with diabetes and
high asthma rates in one the nation's most polluted air basins.
One recent study found that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is the largest that it
has been
since the 1920s , and America's once thriving middle class is evaporating right in front of
our eyes.
We could have made much different choices as a society, but we didn't, and now we are going
to have a great price to pay for our foolishness...
Sometimes things where I work feel like that. I'm the only admin at a school with 120 employees and 450 students. It's both
challenging, fun, and can be frustrating. The team I work with is very nice and supportive and on those rare occasions I need
help we have resources to get it (Juniper contract, a consulting firm helped me build out a redundant cluster and a SAN, etc).
I can see that if the environment wasn't so great I could feel similar to the way you did.
I'm glad you got out, and I'm glad you've been able to tell us that it can get better.
The truth is I actually like going to work; I think if you're in a position where you dread work you should probably work on
getting out of there. Good for you though sticking it out so long. You learned a lot and learned how to juggle things under pressure
and now you have a better gig partially because of it (I'm guessing).
WoW, just WOW. Glad you got out. Sounds like this ISP does not understand that the entire revenue stream is based on aging hardware.
If they are not willing to keep it updated, which means keeping the staff at full strength and old equipment replaced it will
all come to a halt. Your old boss sounds like she is a prime example of the Peter principle.
We do VoIP and I researched the Calix product line for ISP's after reading your post. Always wondered how they still supported
legacy TDM. Like the old Hank Williams song with a twist, "Us geeks will Survive". Cheers
TDM is still a big thing since the old switches used to cost 400k plus. Now that metaswitch is less than 200k, it's less of a
thing, but tdm for transport is rock solid and you can buy a ds3 from one co or headend to another for very cheap to transport
lines compared to the equivalent in data.
I talk to friends. Smart people I look up to and trust. The answer?
-the problem is you. Your expectations are too high
-no job is perfect. Be happy you have one and can support your family.
Oh man, this... I feel your pain. Only you know your situation, man (or woman). Trust your judgement, isolate emotional responses
and appraise objectively. Rarely, if ever, does anyone know better than you do.
It's true that no job is perfect, but there's a difference between "this one person in the office is kind of grumpy and annoys
me", "I have one coworker that's lazy and management doesn't see it", or "we have to support this really old computer, because
replacing the equipment that uses it is way too expensive" and "I get treated like shit every day, my working hours are too long,
and they won't get anyone to help me".
First I'd like to say. I have 4 kids and a wife. It was discussed during the interview that I work to live. And expect to work
40 hours unless it's an emergency.
For the first 6 months or so I'd work on weekdays after hours on simple improvements. This then stopped and shifted to working
on larger projects (via home labs) on the weekends (entire weekends lost) just to feel prepared to administer Linux kvm, or our
mpls Network (that I had zero prior experience on)
This started effecting my home life. I stopped working at home and discussed with my wife. Together we decided if the company
was willing to pay significantly more ($20k a year) I would invest the needed time after hours into the company.
I brought this to my boss and nothing happened. I got a 4% raise. This is when I capped the time I spent at home on NEEDED
things and only focused on what I wanted out of IT (network engineering) and started digging into GNS3 a bit more
Disappointed there was no mention of thenfirend who supported your decision, and kept telling you to get out!! Haha! Just playing
buddy! Glad you got out...and that place can fuck themselves!!
Really happy for you man! You deserve to be treated better!
I'm unemployed right now and the interviews have temporarily slowed down, but I'm determined not to take "just anything" to
get by, as doing so can adversely affect my future prospects.
I've been reading this whole thread and can relate, as I'm in a similar position. But wanted to comment, based on experience,
that you are correct about taking 'just anything' will adversely affect your future prospects. After moving to Central NY I was
unemployed for a while and took a helpdesk position (I was a Senior Systems Analyst/Microsoft Systems Administrator making good
money 18 years ago!) That stuck with me as they see it on my resume...and have only been offered entry level salaries every since.
That, and current management in a horrible company, ruined my career!! So be careful...
Congrats, but a 5 month gap on the resume won't fly for 99.9% of our perspective employers. There better be a damn good reason
other than complaining about burnout on the lined up interview. I resigned without another opportunity lined up and learned a
9 month lesson the hard way. Never jump ship without anything lined up. If not for you, then for your family.
SA's typically wear many hats at small or large organizations. Shoot, we even got a call from an employee asking IT if they can
jump start their car 😫.
It's a thankless job and resources are always lacking. The typical thinking is, IT does not make money for the company, they
spend it. This always put the dept. on the back burner until something breaks of course.
I've bee through 7 jobs in the last 12 years, I'm surprised people still hire me lol. I'm pretty comfortable where I am now though,
I also have a family.
These companies that think managed printer contracts are expensive are nuts. They are about even with toner replacement costs.
We buy our own xerox machines and have our local xerox rep manage them for us. Whoever had that hair brained idea needs slapped.
I had 12 years of what you had, OP. Same job, same shit you described on a daily basis... I can tell you right now it's not you
or your expectations too high... some companies are just sick from the top to the bottom and ISP's... well they are magnets both
for ppl who work too hard and for ppl who love to exploit the ones who work too hard in order to get their bonuses... After realising
that no matter how hard I worked, the ppl in charge would never change anything to make work better both for workers, company
and Customers... I quit my job, spent a year living off my savings... then started my own business and never looked back. You
truly deserve better!
Very much tiring! Lol. I'm at 40 hours a week unless we have an outage, or compromised server(or want to learn something on my
own time). I'm up front at my interviews that "i work to live" and family is the most important thing to me.
I do spend quite a bit of personal time playing. With Linux KVM, (Linux in general since I'm a windows guy) difference between
LVM block storage with different file systems, no lvm with image files. Backups (lvm snapshots) - front end management - which
ultimately evolved to using proxmox. Since I manage iptv I read books about the mpeg stream to understand the pieces of it better.
I was actually hired as a "network engineer" (even though I'm more of a systems guy) so I actually WANT more network experience.
Bgp, ospf, mpls, qos in mpls, multicast, pim sparse mode.
So I've made a GNS3 lab with our ALU hardware in attempts to build our network to get some hands on experience.
One day while trying to enable router guard (multicast related) - I broke the hell out of multicast by enabling it on the incoming
vlan for our largest service area. Felt like an idiot so I stopped touching production until I could learn it (and still not there!)
Good to hear the "I work to live". I'm also applying the same, family first, but it can sadly be hard for some to understand :-(
I feel like employers should have different expectations with employee that have family VS those that that don't. And even
then, I would completely understand a single person without family that enjoy life the more he can and doesn't want to work more
than what is on its contract since.
I really don't know how it works in employers mind.
The work load is high, but I've learned to deal with it. I ordered 7 servers about 9 months ago and they were just deployed last
month. Prioritizing is life!
What pushed me over the ledge was. Me spending my time trying to improve solutions to save time, and being told not gonna happen.
The light in the tunnel gets further and further away.
The international working classes are racists. They are misogynists. Xenophobic transphobes.
They do not think the way we want them to. Some of them actually still believe in God. And they are
white supremacists. Anti-Semites. Gun-toting, Confederate-flag-flying rednecks. Most of them
have never even heard of terms like "intersectionality," "TERF," and so on.
They do not respect the corporate media. They think that news sources like the Washington
Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and so on, are basically propaganda
outlets for the global corporations and oligarchs who own them, and thus are essentially no
different from FOX, whose pundits they believe every word of.
Their minds are so twisted by racism and xenophobia that they can't understand how global
capitalism, the graduated phase-out of national sovereignty, the privatization of virtually
everything, the debt-enslavement of nearly everyone, and the replacement of their so-called
"cultures" with an ubiquitous, smiley-faced, gender-neutral, non-oppressive,
corporate-friendly, Disney simulation of culture are actually wonderfully progressive steps
forward on the road to a more peaceful, less offensive world.
Now this has been proved in numerous studies with all kinds of charts and graphs and so on.
And not only by the corporate statisticians, and the corporate media, and liberal think tanks.
Why, just this week, Mehdi Hasan, in an exasperated
jeremiad in the pages of The Intercept , that bastion of fearless, adversarial journalism
owned by billionaire Pierre Omidyar, proved, once again, that Donald Trump was elected because
PEOPLE ARE GODDAMN RACISTS!
"... By cutting interest rates to near zero and pumping trillions -- yes, you read that right -- into the economy, the Federal Reserve essentially put a trampoline under the stock market. ..."
"... Only about half of American households have any exposure to the stock market, including 401(k)'s and retirement plans, and ownership of the shares of individual companies is clustered among upper-income families. ..."
Once a year or so, the economist Diane Swonk ventures into the basement of her 1891 Victorian house outside Chicago and opens
a plastic box containing the items that mean the most to her: awards, wedding pictures, the clothes she was wearing at the World
Trade Center on the day it was attacked. But what she seeks out again and again is a bound diary of the events of the financial crisis
and their aftermath.
"It's useful to go back and see what a chaotic time it was and how terrifying it was," she said. "That time is seared in my mind.
I looked at it again recently, and all the pain came flooding back."
A decade later, things are eerily calm. The economy, by nearly any official measure,
is robust . Wall Street is
flirting with new highs . And the housing market, the epicenter of the crash, has recovered in many places. But like the diary
stored in Ms. Swonk's basement, the scars of the financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession are still with us, just below the
surface.
The most profound of these is that the uneven nature of the recovery compounded a long-term imbalance in the accumulation of wealth.
As a consequence, what it means to be secure has changed. Wealth, real wealth, now comes from investment portfolios, not salaries.
Fortunes are made through an initial public offering, a grant of stock options, a buyout or another form of what high-net-worth individuals
call a liquidity event.
Data from the Federal Reserve show that over the last decade and a half, the proportion of family income from wages has dropped
from nearly 70 percent to just under 61 percent. It's an extraordinary shift, driven largely by the investment profits of the very
wealthy. In short, the people who possess tradable assets, especially stocks, have enjoyed a recovery that Americans dependent on
savings or income from their weekly paycheck have yet to see. Ten years after the financial crisis, getting ahead by going to work
every day seems quaint, akin to using the phone book to find a number or renting a video at Blockbuster.
The financial crisis didn't just kill the dream of getting rich from your day job. It also put an end to a fundamental belief
of the middle class: that owning a home was always a good idea because prices moved in only one direction -- up. The bubble, while
it lasted, gave millions in the middle class a sense of validation of their financial acumen, and made them feel as if they had done
the Right Thing.
In theory, if you lost your job, or suffered some other kind of financial setback, you could always sell into a real estate market
that was forever rising. Ever-higher home prices became a steam valve, and the "greater fool" theory substituted for any conventional
measure of value.
The kindling for the fire that consumed Wall Street and nearly the entire economy was mortgages that should never have been taken
out in the first place. Homeowners figured the more house the better, whether or not their income could support the monthly payment,
while greedy banks and middlemen were all too happy to encourage them.
When the bubble burst, the bedrock investment for many families was wiped out by a combination of falling home values and too
much debt. A decade after this debacle, the typical middle-class family's net worth is still more than $40,000 below where it was
in 2007, according to the Federal Reserve. The damage done to the middle-class psyche is impossible to price, of course, but no one
doubts that it was vast.
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Banks were hurt, too, but aside from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the pain proved transitory. Bankers themselves were never
punished for their sins. In one form or another -- the Troubled Asset Relief Program, quantitative easing, the Fed's discount window
-- the financial sector was supported in spectacular fashion.
Like the bankers, shareholders and investors were also bailed out. By cutting interest rates to near zero and pumping trillions
-- yes, you read that right -- into the economy, the Federal Reserve essentially put a trampoline under the stock market. The subsequent
bounce produced a windfall, but only for a limited group of beneficiaries. Only about half of American households have any exposure
to the stock market, including 401(k)'s and retirement plans, and ownership of the shares of individual companies is clustered among
upper-income families.
For homeowners, there wasn't much of a rescue package from Washington, and eight million succumbed to foreclosure. Sometimes,
eviction came in the form of marshals with court orders; in other cases, families quietly handed over the keys to the bank and just
walked away. Although home prices in hot markets have fully recovered, many homeowners are still underwater in the worst-hit states
like Florida, Arizona and Nevada. Meanwhile,
more Americans are renting and have little prospect of ever owning a home.
Worsening the picture, the post-crisis era has been marked by an increased disparity in wealth between white, Hispanic and African-American
members of the middle class. That's according to an analysis of Fed data by the Pew Research Center, which found that families in
the latter two groups were more dependent on housing as their principal form of investment. Not only were both minority groups harder
hit by foreclosures, but Hispanics were also twice as likely as other Americans to be living in Sun Belt states where the housing
crash was most severe.
In 2016, net worth among white middle-income families was 19 percent below 2007 levels, adjusted for inflation. But among blacks,
it was down 40 percent, and Hispanics saw a drop of 46 percent. For many, old-fashioned hard work has simply not been a viable path
out of this hole. After unemployment peaked in the fall of 2009, it took years for joblessness to return to pre-recession levels.
Slack in the labor market left the employed and unemployed alike with little leverage to demand raises, even as corporate profits
surged.
Maybe it was inevitable that when half the population watches its wages stagnate while the other half gets rich in the market,
the result is President Donald Trump and Brexit.
"It peeled away the facade and revealed an anger that had been building for decades," said Ms. Swonk, who is chief economist at
Grant Thornton in Chicago. "The crisis was horrific, but its legacy pushed us over the edge in terms of the discontent."
It also made inequality and the One Percent an urgent topic, and made
unlikely celebrities
of wonky intellectuals such as the economist Thomas Piketty. His best seller, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," published
in 2013, was 816 data-laden pages that laid out a grim diagnosis. Mr. Piketty argued that the decades after World War II, when the
divisions between the classes narrowed and opportunities to move up the economic ladder expanded -- that is, when the middle class
as we knew it was formed -- may actually have been an aberration. Society, Mr. Piketty wrote, risks a return to the historical norm
of a yawning gap between rich and poor.
Whether or not he is right, the concentration of wealth that is a legacy of the financial crisis will make itself felt far into
the future. Younger Americans, in particular, will be marked by the experience of 2008 much as the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression
haunted the generations who lived through it in the last century. Not only were they unable to accumulate assets in the lean years
of the early recovery, but they also missed out on the recent stock market rally that benefited their older and richer peers.
A recent study
by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that while all birth cohorts lost wealth during the Great Recession, Americans
born in the 1980s were at the "greatest risk for becoming a lost generation for wealth accumulation."
For those fortunate enough to still possess wealth after the crisis, the future looks very different. With the security provided
by assets, rather than just income, they and especially their children are on a glide path for a gilded financial future.
"Over and over, you see that family wealth is an important determinant of opportunity for the next generation, over and above
income," said Fabian T. Pfeffer, a sociologist at the University of Michigan. "Wealth serves as a private safety net that allows
you to behave differently and plan differently."
A wealthy person who loses a job can afford to be more choosy and wait for an opportunity suited to his or her skills and experience.
The risk of going to an expensive college and taking on debt is lower when there is parental wealth to fall back on.
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Timothy Smeeding, who teaches public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin, put it more bluntly. "You can see dynasties
starting to form," he said.
Ten years have passed since the trauma of 2008, the nerves are still raw, and the pain still has a way of flaring up. Every time
she goes down into the basement and peruses her diary, Diane Swonk feels it anew.
"It is the diary of an economist, as well as a mother and a human being," Ms. Swonk said. It includes her published writings for
clients, as well as her feelings, thoughts and fears as the crisis unfolded. She also recorded her impression of key figures she
met during those fateful months, including Lawrence H. Summers, a top White House economic official at the time, and Ben S. Bernanke,
then the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
"The financial crisis became a delineator," she said. "There were those who could recoup their losses and those who could not.
Some people have amnesia, but we are still living with the wounds."
Nelson D. Schwartz has covered economics since 2012. Previously, he wrote about Wall Street and banking, and
also served as European economic correspondent in Paris. He joined The Times in 2007 as a feature writer for the Sunday Business
section.
(theverge.com)Sanders' Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act
(abbreviated "Stop BEZOS") -- along with Khanna's House of Representatives counterpart, the
Corporate Responsibility and Taxpayer Protection Act --
would institute a 100 percent tax on government benefits that are granted to workers at large
companies . The bill's text characterizes this as a "corporate welfare tax," and it would
apply to corporations with 500 or more employees. If
workers are receiving government aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), national school lunch and breakfast programs, Section 8
housing subsidies, or Medicaid, employers will be taxed for the total cost of those benefits.
The bill applies to full-time and part-time employees, as well as independent contractors that
are de facto company employees.
"The alternative to driving for Uber is not a good job in a factory with a union wage or
working in a stable office job, it's slinging coffee at a Starbucks where you may or may not
get the hours you need," he said. "That is what people are shoring up. They're shoring up
getting enough hours, trying to make ends meet. Oftentimes, people talk about the gig economy
as 'supplementary income' ...
It's not supplemental if you need it to pay for your kids' braces, or food, or
rent."
Hyman argued that this phenomenon could be traced back to the legions of undocumented
migrant laborers who built early computers, before those manufacturing jobs moved
overseas.
This recovery has not been great for workers. They have seen modest real wage gains over
the last five years, but these gains have not come close to making up the ground lost in the
recession and the first years of the recovery.
Nonetheless, real wages have been growing for most of the last five years. The last month
has been an exception to this pattern, not because nominal wages have grown less, but because
we had a large jump in energy prices, which has depressed real wage growth. Here's picture for
the last five years.
... ... ...
As can be seen, there is a very modest acceleration in the rate of average hourly wage
growth over this period from just over 2.0 percent in the middle of 2013 to 2.7 percent in the
most recent data. Real wage growth, which is the difference between the rate of wage growth and
the rate of inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, has mostly been positive, with
the exception of a few months at the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017 and last month.
The explanation for the much larger variation in the real wage than the nominal wage is the
variation in the rate of inflation over this period which is in turn overwhelmingly a function
of changes in world oil prices. A sharp drop in world oil prices in 2014 translated into much
lower energy prices for consumers in the United States. This meant very low, and even negative
inflation rates, in 2015. The result was a much more rapid rate of real wage growth.
World oil prices have partially rebounded in the last two years, going from lows near $40 a
barrel to current levels that are near $70. This has added to the inflation rate, pushing down
real wage growth, and actually leading to short periods of negative growth.
The issue here is not that nominal wages have stopped growing, it is just that changes in
world energy prices had led to a temporary drag on real wage growth, just as they provided a
temporary boost to real wage growth in 2015.
This story is worth pointing out in the context of recent comments about real wages
stagnating. This is true, but the cause is the rise in world oil prices, not something bad that
happened to the labor market.
The folks who want to blame Trump for stagnant wages are off the mark, unless they think he
is responsible for the rise in world oil prices. If the argument is that the tax cuts have not
led to more rapid wage growth, this is true, but we really should not have expected to see much
effect just yet. The tax cut story is that it will lead to more investment, which will in turn
lead to higher productivity. Higher productivity will in turn lead to higher wages.
The key in this story is investment. And so far, there is nothing to show here , indicating
that the tax cuts are only paying off for shareholders, not workers.
Anyhow, the point is that it's a bit silly to blame slower real wage growth on Trump. I'm
not about to become a Trumper, but the guy does 1000 things every day for which he should be
chased out of office. Let's focus on the real items, we don't have to make stuff up.
This column originally appeared on Dean Baker's blog: Beat the Press.
"... By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website ..."
"... Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America ..."
"... You will not do as well as your parents ..."
"... Life is a struggle to keep up. Even if you achieve something, you will live in fear of losing it. America is not your land: it belongs to the ultra-rich. ..."
"... The Vanishing Middle Class ..."
"... Capital in the Twenty-First Century ..."
"... Global Wealth Report ..."
"... Professed as a right for individual freedom and empowerment, in reality it serves to suppress disobedience with shame. If you earn like shit -- it's gotta be because YOU are shit. Just try harder. Don't you see those OTHER kids that did well! ..."
"... I think one crucial thing that has to change is the culture of extreme individualisation. ..."
"... die Plutonomisten und Bolshewisten! ..."
"... That the article brings "fear of robots" into the discussion is a tell that the writer does not want to mention that it is the competition from others in the world wide labor force that depress USA wages. ..."
"... We have been commodified since before we were even born, to the point where opportunities for what Lave and Wenger would call "legitimate peripheral participation" in the kinds of work that yield real, humane, benefits to our communities are scant to nonexistent for most of us. Something has gone deeply awry in this core social function at the worst possible time in human history. ..."
"... That was a wonderful post, very moving, thank you. These kind of testimonies are very important because they show the real human cost of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is truly a death cult. Please find an alternative to alcohol. Music, art, nature, etc. ..."
"... At least you are self aware. Most people are not. As for the Ship of Status, let it sink. Find a lifeboat where you feel comfortable and batten down for the Roaring (20)40s yet to come. Once you find something to work for, the bad habits will lose much of their hold on you. As long as you don't slide into alcoholism, you have a chance. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, the economic policy that is private sector "free market" driven, giving the owners of capital free, unfettered reign. Created by libertarians like Fredrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, they sold it to the nation but failed to mention that little peccadillo about how privatization of government would usher in economic fascism. ..."
"... "An extreme form of laissez-faire individualism that developed in the writings of Hayek, Friedman and Nozick they are also referred to as libertarians. They draw on the natural rights tradition of John Locke and champion's full autonomy and freedom of the individual." ..."
"... What they meant was ECONOMIC freedom. They despise social freedom (democracy) because civil, labor, health, food safety, etc., rights and environmental protections put limits on their profits. ..."
"... The "maximizing shareholder value" myth turns people into psychopaths . The entire neoliberal economic policy of the past 40 years is based on the false assumption that self-interest is the driving evolution of humanity. We're not all psychopaths, turns out. We're social beings that have mainly used cooperation to get us through these thousands of years of existence. ..."
"... "If the IMF is to shake its image as an inward-looking, out-of-touch boys club, it needs to start taking the issue seriously. The effect of the male dominance in macroeconomics can be seen in the policy direction of the organisation: female economists are more likely to be in favour of Government-backed redistribution measures than their male counterparts. ..."
"... Of course, the parochial way in which economics is perceived by the IMF, as nothing more than the application of mathematical models, is nothing new. In fact, this is how mainstream economics frequently is taught in universities all over the world. Is it any wonder that the IMF has turned out as it is?" ..."
"... "Economics students are forced to spend so much time with this complex calculus so that they can go to work on Wall St. that there's no room in the course curriculum for the history of economic thought. ..."
"... So all they know about Adam Smith is what they hear on CNN news or other mass media that are a travesty of what these people really said and if you don't read the history of economic thought, you'd think there's only one way of looking at the world and that's the way the mass media promote things and it's a propagandistic, Orwellian way. ..."
"... The whole economic vocabulary is to cover up what's really happening and to make people think that the economy is getting richer while the reality is they're getting poorer and only the top is getting richer and they can only get rich as long as the middle class and the working class don't realize the scam that's being pulled off on them." ..."
"... "I often joke with my fellow country neighbors that it costs a hundred bucks to simply leave the house. It's not a joke anymore. At this point those still fighting for a paltry 15.00 should include a hundred dollar per day walk out your front door per diem." ..."
"... This is a stark and startling reality. This reality is outside the framework of understanding of economic struggle in America that is allowed by the corporate neoliberal culture/media. ..."
"... As the Precariat grows, having watched the .1% lie, cheat and steal – from them, they are more likely to also lie, cheat and steal in mortgage, employment and student loan applications and most importantly and sadly, in their dealings with each other. Everybody is turning into a hustler. ..."
"... Economics was always far too dangerous to be allowed to reveal the truth about the economy. ..."
"... "The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers." ..."
"... Capitalism had two sides, the productive side where people earned their income and the parasitic side where the rentiers lived off unearned income. The Classical Economists had shown that most at the top of society were just parasites feeding off the productive activity of everyone else. ..."
"... The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity in the economy by removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned" income and they conflated "land" with "capital". They took the focus off the cost of living that had been so important to the Classical Economists to hide the effects of rentier activity in the economy. ..."
"... The landowners, landlords and usurers were now just productive members of society again. It they left banks and debt out of economics no one would know the bankers created the money supply out of nothing. Otherwise, everyone would see how dangerous it was to let bankers do what they wanted if they knew the bankers created the money supply through their loans. ..."
"... The cost of living = housing costs + healthcare costs + student loan costs ..."
"... An unexpected consequence of globalization is that a lot of people see how thing are done, elsewhere. ..."
"... Part of me doesn't feel sorry at all for the plight of middle-class Americans. When times were good they were happy to throw poor and working-class people under the bus. I remember when the common answer to complaints about factory closings was "you should have gotten an education, dummy." Now that the white-collar middle class can see that they are next on the chopping block they are finding their populist soul. ..."
The children of America's white-collar middle class viewed life from their green lawns and
tidy urban flats as a field of opportunity. Blessed with quality schools, seaside vacations and
sleepover camp, they just knew that the American dream was theirs for the taking if they hit
the books, picked a thoughtful and fulfilling career, and just, well, showed up.
Until it wasn't.
While they were playing Twister and imagining a bright future, someone apparently decided
that they didn't really matter. Clouds began to gather -- a "dark shimmer of constantly
shifting precariousness," as journalist Alissa Quart describes in her timely new book "
Squeezed:
Why Our Families Can't Afford America ."
The things these kids considered their birthright -- reputable colleges, secure careers, and
attractive residences -- were no longer waiting for them in adulthood.
Today, with their incomes flat or falling, these Americans scramble to maintain a semblance
of what their parents enjoyed. They are moving from being dominant to being dominated. From
acting to acted upon. Trained to be educators, lawyers, librarians, and accountants, they do
work they can't stand to support families they rarely see. Petrified of being pushed aside by
robots, they rankle to see financial titans and tech gurus flaunting their obscene wealth at
every turn.
Headlines gush of a humming economy, but it doesn't feel like a party to them -- and they've
seen enough to know who will be holding the bag when the next bubble bursts.
The "Middle Precariats," as Quart terms them, are suffering death by a thousand
degradations. Their new reality: You will not do as well as your parents . Life is
a struggle to keep up. Even if you achieve something, you will live in fear of losing it.
America is not your land: it belongs to the ultra-rich.
Much of Quart's book highlights the mirror image of the downwardly mobile middle class Trump
voters from
economically strained regions like the Midwest who helped throw a monkey wrench into
politics-as-usual. In her tour of American frustration, she talks to urbanites who lean liberal
and didn't expect to find themselves drowning in debt and disappointment. Like the
falling-behind Trump voters, these people sense their status ripped away, their hopes
dashed.
If climbing up the ladder of success is the great American story, slipping down it is the
quintessential tragedy. It's hard not to take it personally: the ranks of the Middle Precariat
are filled with shame.
They are somebodies turning into nobodies.
And there signs that they are starting to revolt. If they do, they could make their own mark
on the country's political landscape.
The Broken Bourgeoisie
Quart's book takes a sobering look at the newly unstable bourgeoisie, illustrating what
happens when America's off-the-rails inequality blasts over those who always believed they
would end up winners.
There's the Virginia accountant who forks over nearly 90% of her take home pay on care for
her three kids; the Chicago adjunct professor with the disabled child who makes less than
$24,000 a year; and the California business reporter who once focused on the financial
hardships of others and now faces unemployment herself.
There are Uber-driving teachers and law school grads reviewing documents for $20 an hour --
or less. Ivy Leaguers who live on food stamps.
Lacking unions, church communities and nearby close relatives to support them, the Middle
Precariats are isolated and stranded. Their labor has sputtered into sporadic contingency: they
make do with short-term contracts or shift work. (Despite the much-trumpeted low unemployment
rate, the New York Times
reports that jobs are often subpar, featuring little stability and security). Once upon a
time, only the working poor took second jobs to stay afloat. Now the Middle Precariat has
joined them.
Quart documents the desperate measures taken by people trying to keep up appearances,
relying on 24/7 "extreme day care" to accommodate unpredictable schedules or cobbling together
co-living arrangements to cut household costs. They strain to provide things like academic
tutors and sports activities for their kids who must compete with the children of the wealthy.
Deep down, they know that they probably can't pass down the cultural and social class they once
took for granted.
Quart cites a litany of grim statistics that measure the quality of their lives, like the
fact that a middle-class existence is now 30% more expensive than it was twenty years ago, a
period in which the price of health care and the cost of a four-year degree at a public college
nearly doubled.
Squeezed is especially detailed on the plight of the female Middle Precariat, like
those who have the effrontery to procreate or grow older. With the extra burdens of care work,
pregnancy discrimination, inadequate family leave, and wage disparities, (not to mention sexual
harassment, a subject not covered), women get double squeezed. For women of color, often
lacking intergenerational wealth to ease the pain, make that a triple squeeze.
The Middle Precariat in middle age is not a pretty sight: without union protection or a
reliable safety net they endure lost jobs, dwindled savings, and shattered identities. In one
of the saddest chapters, Quart describes how the pluckiest try reinvent themselves in their 40s
or 50s, enrolling in professional courses and certification programs that promise another shot
at security, only to find that they've been scammed by greedy college marketers and deceptive
self-help mavens who leave them more desperate than before.
Quart notes that even those making decent salaries in the United States now see themselves
barred from the club of power and wealth. They may have illiquid assets like houses and
retirement accounts, but they still see themselves as financially struggling. Earning $100,000
sounds marvelous until you've forked over half to housing and 30% to childcare. Each day is one
bit of bad luck away from disaster.
"The spectacular success of the 0.1 percent, a tiny portion of society, shows just how
stranded, stagnant, and impotent the current social system has made the middle class -- even
the 10 percent who are upper-middle class," Quart writes.
Quart knows that the problems of those who seem relatively privileged compared many may not
garner immediate sympathy. But she rightly notes that their stresses are a barometer for the
concentration of extreme wealth in some American cities and the widening chasm between the very
wealthy and everybody else.
The Dual Economy
The donor-fed establishment of both political parties could or would not see this coming,
but some prescient economists have been sounding the alarm.
In his 2016 book The Vanishing Middle Class ,
MIT economist Peter Temin detailed how the U.S. has been
breaking up into a "dual economy" over the last several decades, moving toward a model that
is structured economically and politically more like a developing nation -- a far cry from the
post-war period when the American middle class thrived.
In dual economies, the rich and the rest part ways as the once-solid middle class begins to
disappear. People are divided into separate worlds in the kinds of jobs they hold, the schools
their kids attend, their health care, transportation, housing, and social networks -- you name
it. The tickets out of the bottom sector, like a diploma from a first-rate university, grow
scarce. The people of the two realms become strangers.
French economist Thomas Picketty provided a stark formula for what happens capitalism is
left unregulated in his 2015 bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First
Century . It goes like this: when the rate of return on the investments of the wealthy
exceeds the rate of growth in the overall economy, the rich get exponentially richer while
everyone becomes poorer. In more sensible times, like the decades following WWII, that rule was
mitigated by an American government that forced the rich pay their share of taxes, curbed the
worst predations of businesses, and saw to it that roads, bridges, public transit, and schools
were built and maintained.
But that's all a fading memory. Under the influence of political money, politicians no
longer seek a unified economy and society where the middle class can flourish. As Quart
observes, the U.S. is the richest and also the most unequal country in the world, featuring the
largest wealth inequality gap of the two hundred countries in the Global Wealth Report
of 2015.
Who is to Blame?
Over and over, the people Quart interviews tend to blame themselves for their situation --
if only they'd chosen a different career, lived in another city, maybe things wouldn't have
turned out this way. Sometimes they point the finger at robots and automation, though they
arguably have much
more to fear from the wealthy humans who own the robots.
But some are waking up to the fact it is the wealthy and their purchased politicians who
have systematically and deliberately stripped them of power. Deprivations like paltry employee
rights, inadequate childcare, ridiculously expensive health care, and non-existent retirement
security didn't just happen . Abstract words like deregulation and globalization
become concrete: somebody actually did this to you by promoting policies that leave you high
and dry.
As Quart indicates, understanding this is the first step to a change of consciousness, and
her book is part of this shift.
Out of this consciousness, many individuals and organizations are working furiously and
sometimes ingeniously to alter the negative trajectory of the Middle Precariat. Quart outlines
proposals and developments like small-scale debt consolidation, student debt forgiveness,
adequately subsidized day care, and non-traditional unions that could help.
America also has a track record of broad, fundamental solutions that have already proven to
work. Universal basic income may sound attractive, but we already have a program that could
improve the lot of the middle class if expanded: Social Security.
Right now, a worker stops having to pay Social Security tax on any earnings beyond $128,400
-- a number that is unreasonably low because the rich wish to keep it so. Just by raising that
cap, we could the lower the retirement age so that Americans in their 60s would not have greet
customers at Walmart. More opportunities would open up to younger workers.
The Middle Precariat could be forgiven for suspecting that the overlords of Silicon Valley
may have something other than altruism in mind when they tout universal basic income. Epic tax
evaders, they stand to benefit from pushing the responsibility for their low-paid workers and
the inadequate safety net and public services that they helped create onto ordinary
taxpayers.
Beyond basic income lies a basic fact: the American wealthy do not pay their share in taxes.
In fact, American workers pay
twice as much in taxes as wealthy investors. That's why infrastructure crumbles, schools
deteriorate, and sane health care and childcare are not available.
Most Americans realize that inequality has to be challenged through the tax code: a
2017 Gallup poll shows that the majority think that the wealthy and corporations don't pay
enough. Politicians, of course, ignore this to please their donors.
And so the Middle Precariat, like the Trump voters, is getting fed up with them.
From Depressed to Energized
Quart astutely points out that income inequality is being written into the law of the land.
Funded the efforts of billionaires like the Koch brothers, politicians have
altered laws and constitutions across the country to cement the dual economy through
everything from restricting voting rights to defunding public education.
Several Middle Precariats in Squeezed have turned to independent or renegade
candidates like Bernie Sanders who offer broad, substantial programs like debt-free college and
universal health care that address the fissures in their lives. They are listening to
candidates who are not afraid to say that markets should work for human beings, not the other
way around.
If Donald Trump's political rise "can be understood as an expression of the gulf between
middle-class citizens and America's ruling classes," as Quart observes, then the recent surge
of non-establishment Democratic candidates, especially democratic socialists, may be the next
phase of a middle class revolt.
Recent surprise victories in Pennsylvania and New York in the Democratic primaries by female
candidates openly embracing democratic socialism, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who
bested Democratic stalwart Joe Crowley by running for Congress on a platform of free Medicare
and public college tuition for all, may not be the blip that establishment Democrats hope. In
New York, democratic socialist Julia Salazar is looking to unseat long-time state senator
Martin Dilan. Actress
Cynthia Nixon , running against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, has just proclaimed herself
a democratic socialist and promises to raise taxes on the rich and boost funding for public
schools. Michelle Goldberg recently announced in the New York Times that "
The Millenial Socialists are Coming ," indicating the intense dislike of traditional
politics in urban centers. These young people do not think of things like debt-free college or
paid family leave as radical: they see it done elsewhere in the world and don't accept that it
can't be done in America.
Historically, the more affluent end of the middle class tends to identify with and support
the wealthy. After all, they might join their ranks one day. But when this dream dies, the
formerly secure may decide to throw their lot in with the rest of the Precariats. That's when
you have the chance for a real mass movement for change.
Of course, people have to recognize their common circumstances and fates. The urban denizens
of New York and San Francisco have to see what they have in common with middle class Trump
voters from the Rust Belt, as well as working class Americans and everybody else who is not
ultra-rich.
If the growing ranks of Precariats can work together, maybe it won't take a natural
catastrophe or a war or violent social upheaval to change America's unsustainable course of
gross inequality. Because eventually, something has to give.
I think one crucial thing that has to change is the culture of extreme
individualization.
Professed as a right for individual freedom and empowerment, in reality it serves to
suppress disobedience with shame. If you earn like shit -- it's gotta be because YOU are
shit. Just try harder. Don't you see those OTHER kids that did well!
Part of the blame is on New Age with it's quazi-buddhist narrative: basically, everything
is perfect, and if you don't feel it that way, it's because you are tainted with envy or
weakness.
Thus what is in fact a heavily one-sided battle -- is presented as a natural order of
things.
I believe we need a new framework. A sort of mix of Marx and Freud: study of the
subconscious of the social economy. The rich not just HAPPEN to be rich. They WANT to be
rich. Which means that in some way they NEED others to be poor.
Of course, I'm generalizing. And some rich are just really good at what they do. These
rich will indeed trickle down, they will increase the well-being of people. But there are
others. People working in insurance and finance. And as their role in the economy grows -- as
does their role in politics, their power. They want to have more, while others would have
less.
But behind it all are not rational thoughts, not efficiency, but psychological trauma,
pain of the soul. Without addressing these matters, we will not be able to change the
world.
I'm sorry if my thoughts are somewhat fragmented. It's just something I've been thinking
of a lot since I started reading NC, discovering MMT and heterodox approaches in general.
The problem is the perception the Democratic Party is reliable as a partner. The culture
wasn't a problem in 2008 when the Democratic candidate was perceived as wanting to raise
taxes, pass universal health care, and end the wars.
====Part of the blame is on New Age with it's quazi-buddhist narrative: basically,
everything is perfect, and if you don't feel it that way, it's because you are tainted with
envy or weakness.
That's where I first heard of this theoretical link. I think that it's flat out right and
post-WWII psycho-babble has seeped into society in pernicious ways (along with everything
else, breakdown of nuclear family, etc). Unfortunately, can't prove it like Euclid.
"A sort of mix of Marx and Freud"– the " Frankfurt School " is a start, with the
realization of "the culture industry" as force majeure in the "heavily one-sided
battle." And ditto recommendation of "The Century of the Self."
Responding to Sergey P: I think one crucial thing that has to change is the culture of extreme
individualisation.
There are really only two alternatives to individualism. There is Durkheim-ian "society,"
in which we are all in this together – interdependent. I think this is still an
appropriate lens for a lot of smaller cities and communities where people really do still
know each other and everyone wants the community to thrive. And, of course, it is the only
way to think about human society nested inside a finite Earth. But it can only work on a
larger scale through mediating "institutions" or "associations." All the evidence shows,
consistent with the piece, that precariousness by itself weakens social institutions –
people have less time and money to contribute to making them work well.
And then there is Marx-ian "class." Which is to say, we are not all individuals but we are
not all of one group. There are different groups with different interests and, not
infrequently, the interests of different groups are opposed – what is good for one is
bad for another – and if power is unequal between groups (either because some groups as
groups have more power than others or because individuals with more power all have the same
group affinity), then powerful groups will use that power to oppress others. In that case,
the only remedy is to try to systematically empower the weak and/or disempower the strong.
This also requires collective action – institutions, associations, government –
and it is again noted that our collective institutions, most notably unions, have been
seriously weakened in the last 40-60 years.
The real world doesn't always fit into neat categories. Trump's America First is an appeal
to the "society" of USAmerica. Maybe there will be some improvements for working people. But
the argument in the piece, perhaps not as clearly stated as I would like, is that the
interests of the (former) middle class – as a class – have diverged from the
interests of the upper class. Changing that equation requires collective action.
Naturally one must quote the great Frank Herbert from his novel Dune:
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them
free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
'We already have a program that could improve the lot of the middle class if expanded:
Social Security.'
Never mind expanding it -- even the existing Social Security program is less than 20%
funded, headed for zero in 2034 according to its trustees. Scandalously, these trustees owe
no fiduciary duty to beneficiaries. Old Frank wanted pensioners to be forever dependent on
his D party. How did that work out for us?
Take a look at the transmittal letter for the 2018 trustees report, released last month.
Two public trustee positions are "VACANT," just as they were in last year's transmittal
letter:
Just above these blank spaces is the signature of one Nancy Berryhill, "Acting
Commissioner of Social Security." But wait --
On March 6, 2018, the Government Accountability Office stated that as of November 17,
2017, Berryhill's status violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which limits the time a
position can be filled by an acting official; "[t]herefore Ms. Berryhill was not authorized
to continue serving using the title of Acting Commissioner after November 16." Berryhill
declared, "Moving forward, I will continue to lead the agency from my position of record,
Deputy Commissioner of Operations."
By June 5th, Berryhill was still impersonating the Acting Commissioner, legally or
not.
Summing up, even the trustees' one-page transmittal letter shows that Social Security is
treated as a total and complete Third World joke by the US federal government.
Yeah, yeah. Gubmint can't do nuthin' rite. How about we take our government back from the
plutocrats and set SS on solid footing again. There are no impediments other than the will of
the people to use our power. Now that the Boomers are moving off all sorts of things, like
'thinking', and 'logic', will become prevalent again.
Never mind expanding it -- even the existing Social Security program is less than 20%
funded, headed for zero in 2034 according to its trustees. Scandalously, these trustees owe
no fiduciary duty to beneficiaries. Old Frank wanted pensioners to be forever dependent on
his D party. How did that work out for us?
Correct, then the system will eventually be totally reliant on taxes coming in. According
to 2011 OASDI
Trustees Report
Beginning in 2023, trust fund assets will diminish until they become exhausted in 2036.
Non-interest income is projected to be sufficient to support expenditures at a level of 77
percent of scheduled benefits after trust fund exhaustion in 2036, and then to decline to
74 percent of scheduled benefits in 2085
The benefits are never going to go completely away, the benefits will decrease if nothing
is done. Things can be done to change this, such as an increasing the the cap on earnings,
raising new revenues, etc. This is not exactly an "end of the world" scenario for SSI.
Also, no one complained when the excess SSI tax collected "Social security trust fund" was
used to keep interest rates down by purchasing Government bonds.
The whole tax angle is a complete red herring. Raising the cap is not the answer.
FICA is "the most regressive tax" the country imposes. Eliminating FICA altogether, doing
away with the "trust fund" and the pretense that SS is not the government taking care of it's
elderly citizens but is workers taking care of themselves, is the answer. If the emphasis in
Quart's book on the rise of a new democratic socialism means anything, it means reconciling
with the notion that it is OK for the government to take measures to ensure the welfare of
the people. Pay-as-you-go SS can become simply the re-assumption of our collective
responsibility to take care of our own, as a society, not as individuals.
I would be fine with that if I could trust the Federal government to do the right thing.
The problem is that we have too many people invested in the system, and I don't trust the
Federal government to not screw people over in a new system. You know what will happen, they
will set up a two tiered system where people over a certain age will keep their benefits, and
the new people will get a system that is completely crapified or means tested.
Well-put The only way to eliminate the constant refrain of "but SS is (insert blithering
comment on entitlement spending), is to shift resources to people rather than armies for the
SuperRich.
So we should just ignore the fact that our own Govt has "borrowed" $2.8 Trillion, at
least, from the SS Trust Fund so far and can't (won't) pay it back?
This "borrowing" should be illegal and I believe that "Old Frank" would be rolling in his
grave if he knew that would happen.
And I sincerely doubt his intentions were to get SS on the books in order to keep us
beholden to the Dem Party. And if that were true it is obvious that his party doesn't agree.
If they did they wouldn't be assisting in gutting the program.
The whole concept of creating and maintaining a multi-trillion dollar "trust fund" was
irrevocably flawed. When the surplus payroll taxes were "invested" in government bonds, they
entered the government's general fund and were promptly spent. The money is gone. That's why
it's on the books as a debt owed to the Social Security administration. There are no actual
assets behind the fund. It's just one part of the government owing money to another part of
the government.
However, what would the alternative have been? Investing in the crap shoot known as the US
stock market? No thanks. Or setting the funds aside in a bank account, where they would cease
circulating through the economy? That wouldn't have worked either, as all dollars in
circulation would have eventually ended up there, causing massive deflation.
None of these are workable. We should have gone on a strictly pay-as-you-go basis. If
payroll taxes generated more revenue than was necessary, we should have cut payroll taxes
and/or raised benefits. And if they fall short, we should raise payroll taxes and/or cut
benefits.
Today, we cover about 95% of benefits with payroll taxes. The remainder comes from "trust
fund redemptions", where general fund monies are given to the SSA to cover the shortfall.
Given that our government is already running a deficit, this means more borrowing (or
money-printing, depending on how you look at things).
When the "trust fund" is depleted, but SSA will lack the legal authority to claim any more
general fund monies, but it would be quite easy for Congress to change the rules to simply
state that "any SSA shortfall will be covered by the general fund". And I predict they will
do so in 2034, as it would take less than a month of constituents complaining about reduced
benefits to force even the strictest of deficit hawks to cave.
Or maybe they'll get creative and instead raise rates on the interest that the trust fund
earns. Right now it's a 3% rate, but if Congress were to double or triple it, the trust fund
would last much longer. [As would the debt owed to the SSA.] Heck, if they multiplied the
interest rate by a factor of 11, then they could theoretically dispense with payroll taxes
entirely. Right?
Yes, SS has contributed NOT ONE PENNY to the deficit and the reason it accumulated a
surplus was so people could collect later. Now, they want to say that old surplus shouldn't
count. That's thievery.
tired old tripe and how much is the US military funded? I can answer that for you. It's
ZERO. 0% funded! Take your heterodox BS to a bunch of freshman impressionables – it is
only tolerated here because you are a fine writer and interesting as hell and know almost all
there is about economic liberalism.
Wow. So let's go full SSCodex for a bit and push this trend out to the limit.
While the unwashed masses remain a market for big Ag, big Pharma, big Auto, big (online)
Retail, and a few others, it seems like the predatory 'fund' segment of the FIRE elite has
moved on to devouring larger prey (capitalist autophagy?). The unbankable precariat are
beneath their notice now, like pennies on the sidewalk.
So in that case, the 1% of the 0.1% has evolved beyond 'exploitation' in any Marxist
sense. It is now indifferent to the very life or death of the precariat, at home or abroad,
still less their security or advancement. It needs them neither for consuming nor producing,
nor for building ziggurats.
(Just so long as the pitchforks aren't out – but that's what the credentialed minion
20% is for. And drones).
Here Disposables, have some more plastic and painkillers. Be assured the Alphas will be
live tweeting the Pandemic, or Chicxulub 2.0, from Elon's luxury robot-serviced survival
capsules (oh, you thought those were for use on Mars? Silly rabble!)
It's like that DKs mosh pit classic: "Uncounted millions whisked away / the rich will have
more room to play"
[I exaggerate, of course, for illustration. Slightly.]
I think you can extend this analysis to the current U.K. Conservative Party. Commentators
have started to notice that the Brexiteer wing of the party seems completely impervious to
claims Brexit will harm the economy. Are the Tories no longer the natural party of British
business, they ask?
Using your logic, we can say that a fund-interest-dominated Tory party simply has no
interest in or need for the "ordinary" bits of the British business community anymore. What
it wants are shorting and raiding opportunities, and from that vantage point a catastrophic
Brexit is very attractive. Put these interests in coalition with a voter base largely living
on guaranteed incomes and retirement funds of one sort or another and you have the surreal
spectacle of an entire governing party and its supporters who are no longer anchored to the
"real" economy at all. Yes, it's an exaggeration but it's an exaggeration that explains a few
things, I think.
You both need to read the 2005 leaked Citigroup "plutonomy memo", if you haven't yet. Very
bright minds called it a decade ago, that the global economy isn't even an economy any longer
in any traditional sense. This is part one: https://delong.typepad.com/plutonomy-1.pdf
Great link. From page one, Citigroup thinks the global imbalance is a great opportunity.
Nothing new here. For years I've been reading about stock and futures manipulations–and
vulture capitalists–that cause people to die or kill themselves. The rich don't care;
they see it as a way to make more money. And then you wonder why I've been talking revolution
for years as well?
Answer: Add the US wasting its blood and cash meddling in other countries' affairs.
"honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none." bueller ?
Ironic as multilateralist/globalist/fan of US interventions George Soros supposedly
provided some of the seed money for the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
I just want to not die earlier than necessary because I can't afford health care. I'd also
like to stop worrying that I'll spend my golden years homeless and starving because of some
disaster headed my way. I gave up on status a long time ago, and am one of those mentioned
who has little pity for the top 10%.
Sounds like a good book. I shall have to pick it up from my library, since buying new
books is a stretch.
Nearly all income growth in the United States since the 1970s has gone into income
obtained by the rich other than wages and salaries, like capital gains, stock options,
dividends, partnership distributions, etc. To capture overall economic growth to which the
entire society has contributed, Social Security benefits should be tied to economic growth,
smoothed for the business cycle. If people believe benefit increases require tax increases,
the tax should be applied to all earnings, not just salary/wages. Raising the $128,400 cap on
income subject to SS taxes would thus increase taxes on the lower rungs of the upper middle
class but not really address the problem.
I apologise in advance for being blunt and oversimplifying the matter, but at the end of
the day, (in my very humble and possibly uninformed opinion) nothing short of a mass
beheading would work. The 0.1% doesn't really seem, uh, willing to let go of their often
ill-gotten billions, and when they do (i.e. charities and such), they often end up being some
kind of scam. I refuse to believe that the Zuckerberg-types operate their foundations out of
genuine philanthropy. Acquisitions and mergers like Disney buying Fox or Bayer gobbling up
Monsanto don't contribute anything to the well-being of the 99% either, and I think that's
and understatement.
If there's going to be some kind of revolution, it needs to happen before the logical
conclusion of rampaging capitalism. the OCP-type megacorp with its own private army. And, if
there indeed is a revolution, what's next?
Case in point: as a public school teacher who has been opposing so-called education reform
for two decades, I can assure you that the "venture/vulture philanthropy" model that infests
the education world has absolutely nothing to do with improving education, and everything to
do with busting the teachers unions, privatizing the schools and turning them into drilling
grounds for training young people to accept the subordination, surveillance, tedium and
absurdity that awaits them in the workplace. For those lucky enough to have jobs.
As a result of this phenomena, I periodically suggest a new term on the education blogs I
post on: "Malanthropy:" the process of of using tax exempt, publicly subsidized entities to
directly and indirectly support your financial and political interests, but which are harmful
to the public good"
Clear and compelling analysis, although still a little MMT challenged. About to turn 70, I
vividly remember living through a sudden sea change in American capitalism. In the late
1970s/early 80s, whatever undercurrents of patriotism and humanitarianism that remained
within the postwar economy (and had opened the space for the middle class) evaporated, and
almost overnight we were living in a culture without any sense of balance or proportion, a
virulent and violent mindset that maxed out everything and knew not the meaning of enough.
Not only the business world but also the personal world was infected by this virus, as
ordinary people no longer dreamed of achieving a healthy and stable family life but rather
became hellbent to "succeed" and get rich. Empathy, compassion, and commitment to social
justice was no longer cool, giving way to self-interest and self-promotion as the new
"virtues." Men, of course, led the way in this devolution, but there was a time in the 90s
when almost every other woman I knew was a real estate agent. I touched upon a small
male-oriented piece of this social devolution in an essay I wrote several years ago: Would
Paladin Have Shot Bin Laden? For those who might be intrigued, here's the link:
What was needed was a Wyatt Earp, not a Paladin ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgvxu8QY01s
). His standard procedure in the old West was to use his Colt revolver to pistol-whip an
offender. Short, sharp and effective.
But then again there was no way that Bin Laden was ever going to be taken prisoner. That bit
on his resume as being a contractor for the CIA was a bit embarrassing after all.
I remember the 50's and even under the hue of bright eyes saw that people were just as
hell bent to 'get ahead' in their careers as now and that competing with 'the Joneses' in
every crude way imaginable was the rage.
Perhaps more precise to say that in the early '80s, Capitalism reached a tipping point
where gravity overcame thrust and virtues with latent vice became vices with the optics of
virtue. That and the fact that the right actors always seem available -as if out of thin air,
but in reality very much part of cause and effect – for a given state of entropy.
No doubt what was somewhat latent in postwar American capitalism became obscenely blatant
in or around the Reagan era. It was all there before, of course, in former times like the
Gilded Age. But in the midsize, now rustbelt city I grew up in and continue to live in, the
upper middle class of my childhood and youth–the doctors, lawyers, corporate exec's,
etc.–lived a few blocks away from my working class neighborhood, had nicer homes, drove
caddys instead of chevys, and so forth, but their kids went to school with us working class
kids, went to the same movies and dances, hung out in the same places, and all of us,
generally, young and old, lived in essentially the same world. For example, my uncle, a
lawyer, made maybe 3 times what my dad, a factory clerk, made. THAT was the split between the
middle and upper middle class back then, at least in a fairly typical Midwestern city. THAT
was what drastically and suddenly changed in the late 70s/early 80s and has only intensified
thereafter.
Terrific article, but with so many "missing" words (words left out)–too many to
list, gratis–you make it a serious challenge to consider sharing with literate friends
on social media. Seriously, doesn't anyone re-read their work before "posting?"
Well, at least the missing words in this piece don't make sentences unintelligible. I've
seen that happen before.
It's such a shame for authors to put so much work time and effort into their articles, but
then allow the lack of an editor or final read-through to tarnish the entire work.
One thing that strikes me – a generation ago the talking-point robots of the right
could decry "socialized medicine" and all those people supposedly dying while waiting for an
operation in foreign, "socialized medicine" places. And they could largely get away with it
because relatively few people had personal acquaintances outside their own area.
But now, anyone active in social media probably can interact freely with people all over
the world and appreciate how pathetic things really are in the US.
I read on a sports-related forum where an English guy had been watching Breaking Bad and
commented offhand that he was amazed at the cost of medical treatment for Mr. White. This
turned into a discussion between Brits and Yanks about the NHS. And person after person
chimed in "yeah, NHS is not perfect but this kind of thing could never happen here." And you
saw the Americans – "yeah, our health care system really is a disgrace."
I'm not a big fan of the social media Borg in general, but here at least seems to be a
good effect. It might over time enable more people to wake up as to how jacked up certain
things are here.
I'd like to declare us a completely divided, conquered people.
In the last few weeks I've visited with many old friends all of them suffering in silence.
Each and every one falling further behind, on the brink of disaster, if not already there. No
matter their credentials, many highly credentialed with multiple degrees and or highly
experienced in several fields. All with ridiculously high work ethics. All feel maintaining
personal integrity is costing them an ability to 'get ahead'.
Many of these friends have multiple jobs, no debt, no car payment, some have insurance
which is killing them, medical bills which bury them if they ever have so much as basic
health issues, and they are thrifty, from the clothes they wear to the amount of rent they
commit themselves. And yet 'staying afloat', is but a dream trumped by guilt and
isolationism.
I often joke with my fellow country neighbors that it costs a hundred bucks to simply
leave the house. It's not a joke anymore. At this point those still fighting for a paltry
15.00 should include a hundred dollar per day walk out your front door per diem.
A couple months back I gave my camper to an old acquaintance who had no record, found
himself homeless after being falsely accused of a crime and locked up for two months. And
another friend with full time management position, just gave up her apartment to move into a
tent in another friends back yard. Both of these people are bright, hard working, mid
forties, white, family peeps with great children. The very kind this article addresses.
The noose tightens and people are committing desperate acts. There is no solidarity. No
vision of a way out of this.
Watch a ten dollar parking ticket bring a grown man to terror in their eyes. And he
brought in a thousand bucks last week, but has been texting his landlord about past due rent
all afternoon.
I feel like I'm on the brink of a million episodes of " Falling Down ".
I don't think the 0.1% wanted to build a society like this, it is just the way the math
works. Somewhere around 1980 the integrity of the US was lost and it became possible for the
owning class to divorce themselves from their neighbors and arbitrage labor around the world.
Computers and telecommunications made it possible to manage a global supply chain and
Republicans changed the tax rules to make it easier to shut down businesses and move them
overseas.
A different way to view this: as the wealthy earn profits they can use some of their cash
to modify the rules to their benefit. Then they gain more cash which allows them to influence
voters and politicians to modify the rules even more in their favor.
If people organized they could change the rules in their favor, but that rarely happens.
We used to have unions (imperfect though they were) which lobbied for the working class.
I think the 1980s was when I found out my wealthy cousins, who owned a clothing factory in
Georgia, had moved it to–get ready for this–Borneo! And of course they are
Republicans.
The collective decisions to pull up the drawbridge, and a lot middle-class people have
supported these decisions are the major reason why there is a housing crisis and
higher-education is so expensive.
A lot of people, especially middle-class people, come out with pitchforks every time a new
housing development is proposed, screaming about how they don't want "those people" living
near them and will vehemently oppose anything that isn't single-family homes which has
resulted in the housing supply lagging behind demand, thus affordability issues.
These same people over the years have decided that tax-cuts are more important than
adequately funding higher education, so higher education has become a lot more expensive as
state support has dwindled.
As the saying goes you made you bed, now you get to sleep in it. Unfortunately so does the
younger generation who may not have anything to do with the horrible decision making of the
past.
The article stated Americans are "Petrified of being pushed aside by robots".
Maybe I associate with the wrong people, but I don't know any who fear being pushed aside
by robots.
But I do know of someone who was being laid off from a tech firm and was finding his job
moved overseas.
The deal management presented was, "you can leave now, with your severance package, or get
two more weeks pay by training your replacement who will be visiting from overseas."
He trained the new worker for the two weeks.
The American worker is being hit, not by robots, but by outsourcing to other countries and
by in-sourcing of labor from other countries.
Robots are expensive and will be avoided if a human can do the job cheaply enough.
That the article brings "fear of robots" into the discussion is a tell that the writer
does not want to mention that it is the competition from others in the world wide labor force
that depress USA wages.
In the USA, we are witnessing labor arbitrage encouraged by both parties and much of the
media as they push USA wages toward world wide levels.
But not for the elite wage earners who gain from this system.
Agreed. The kind of pink collar and barely white collar employees this piece was focused
on are not presently threatened by "robots". They are threatened by outsourcing and wage
arbitrage.
That the article brings "fear of robots" into the discussion is a tell that the writer
does not want to mention that it is the competition from others in the world wide labor force
that depress USA wages.
You may have a point there, and you are spot on that the vast bulk of job-loss is due to
job migration and import of cheaper labor. But regardless of the writer's intent or simple
laziness, don't be too fast to poo-poo the effect of Robots.
One problem is that we tend to measure job loss and gain without reference to the actual
job loosers and the fact that re-training for them may well be impossible or completely
ineffective or, at the very minimum, often extremely painful. So while automation may provide
as many new jobs as it takes away old ones, that is cold comfort indeed to the worker who
gets left behind.
Another, is that the fear of massive job loss to Robots is almost certainly warranted even
if not yet fully materialized.
When the "Steel Wave" of robot workers comes ashore, I'll be near the head of the queue to
join the "Robo Luddites." If the owners of the robot hordes won't pay a fair share of the
costs of their mechanominions worker displacement activities, then they should be made to pay
an equivalent share in heightened "Production Facility Security Costs." Ford Motors and the
River Rouge plant strike comes to mind.
See: http://98937119.weebly.com/strike-at-the-river-rouge-plant-1941.html
It'd be great to be right there with you on that fateful day, Ambrit :-) (And I've even
got my gun with the little white flag that pops out and has "Bang!" written on it, all oiled
up and ready to go). I suspect however that it will be a silent D Day that probably took
place some time ago.
Hard Briexit looks to be baked in the cake
Global Warming disaster looks to be baked in the cake
Water wars look to be baked in the cake.
Massive impoverishment in developed and so called third world nations alike and insane 'last
gasp' looting looks to be baked in the cake
[ ]
Why would all manner of robots, the ones too tiny to see along with human looking ones and
giant factories that are in reality themselves robots be the exception?
We'd be facing robots, so that flag would have to go "Bang" in binary code. (Might even
work. While they are trying to decipher the flag, we can switch their tubes of graphite
lubricant with tubes of carborundum.)
When the technologically capable humans have all died off, will the robots perish likewise
for lack of programmers?
"Robots" are software programs, do-it-yourself online appointments, voice recognition,
"press 1 now." What's the point of retraining? All you're good for is to make sure the plug
is in the wall.
The act of training the overseas replacement could become an act of sabotage. Think of the
ways that one could train the replacement to do the job incorrectly, more slowly than
necessary, or not at all.
In a lot of cases that doesn't require much 'intentional' effort. But the lure of cheap
labor seems to conquer all. I've seen software companies take loss after loss on off-shore
development team screw ups until they finally get it right. I even saw one such company go
out of business trying rather than just calling it quits and going back to what was left of
their core developers.
As I approach 40, having only realized in recent years that the constant soul-ache I've
lived with my whole life is not some inherent flaw in my being, but a symptom of a deeply ill
society, I desperately wish I could share in the glimmer of hope at the end of this post.
But I cannot. What drives me to despair is not the fragile, corrupt, and unsustainable
social/political/economic system we're inheriting; nor is it the poisoned and increasingly
harsh planet, nor the often silent epidemic of mental and emotional anguish that prevents so
many of us from becoming our best selves. I retain great faith in the resilience and
potential of the human spirit. And contrary to the stereotypes, I think my generation and
those who have come after are often more intellectually and emotionally mature than our
parents and grandparents. At the very least, we have a powerful sense of irony and highly
tuned BS detectors.
What drives me to despair is so pathetically prosaic that I want to laugh and cry all at
once as I type this. To put it as simply as I know how, a core function of all functional
human societies is apprenticeship, by which I mean the basic process whereby deep knowledge
and skills are transferred from the old to the young, where tensions between tradition and
change are contested and resolved, and where the fundamental human need to develop a sense of
oneself as a unique and valuable part of a community can flourish.
We have been commodified since before we were even born, to the point where opportunities
for what Lave and Wenger would call "legitimate peripheral participation" in the kinds of
work that yield real, humane, benefits to our communities are scant to nonexistent for most
of us. Something has gone deeply awry in this core social function at the worst possible time
in human history.
Sympathies from a fellow traveler – your experience sounds similar to mine. I'm a
little older and in my 20s I avoided getting a 'real' job for all the reasons you describe.
When I hit my 30s and saw what some of the guys who had been hanging out in the bar too long
looked like, and decided I ought to at least try it and see how it would go.
"Some quirk of my psychology means doing those things creates an irresistible urge in me
to slowly poison myself with alcohol and tobacco."
I think those things and drugs are conscience oblivators. Try gardening. Touch the earth.
Grow actual food. Not hemp. Back away from the education racket. Good luck. Quit the poison.
That was a wonderful post, very moving, thank you. These kind of testimonies are very
important because they show the real human cost of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is truly a
death cult. Please find an alternative to alcohol. Music, art, nature, etc.
Thank you for sharing your compelling story. As someone who could be your mother, it is
painful to me not only that this is your experience, but that you are so acutely aware of it.
No blinders. Hence, I guess, the need for alcohol.
You write beautifully. Hope is hard to come by sometimes.
At least you are self aware. Most people are not.
As for the Ship of Status, let it sink. Find a lifeboat where you feel comfortable and batten
down for the Roaring (20)40s yet to come. Once you find something to work for, the bad habits
will lose much of their hold on you. As long as you don't slide into alcoholism, you have a
chance.
Life was kinder just 40 years ago, not perfect but way more mellow than it is today. Kids
were listening to Peter Frampton and Stevie Wonder, not punk, grunge, rap and industrial
music. What changed? Neoliberalism, the economic policy that is private sector "free market"
driven, giving the owners of capital free, unfettered reign. Created by libertarians like Fredrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, they sold it to the nation but failed to mention that
little peccadillo about how privatization of government would usher in economic fascism.
"An extreme form of laissez-faire individualism that developed in the writings of
Hayek, Friedman and Nozick they are also referred to as libertarians. They draw on the
natural rights tradition of John Locke and champion's full autonomy and freedom of the
individual."
What they meant was ECONOMIC freedom. They despise social freedom (democracy) because
civil, labor, health, food safety, etc., rights and environmental protections put limits on
their profits.
The "maximizing shareholder value" myth turns people into psychopaths
. The entire neoliberal economic policy of the past 40 years is based on the false assumption
that self-interest is the driving evolution of humanity. We're not all psychopaths, turns
out. We're social beings that have mainly used cooperation to get us through these thousands
of years of existence.
There's nothing wrong with wanting government to protect the public sector from predatory
capitalists. Otherwise, society's value system turns upside down sick people are more valued
than healthy violent are more valued to fill up the prison factories war becomes a permanent
business a filthy, toxic planet is good for the oil industry a corporate governance with no
respect for rights or environmental protections is the best capitalism can offer?
Thanks, but no thanks.
The easily manipulated right are getting the full assault. "Run for your lives! The
democratic socialists want to use the government bank for everyone, not just the 1%!!
They understand how the
economy really works and see through our lies!! Before you know it, everyone will be
enjoying a better quality of life! AAAAGHHH!!"
"If the IMF is to shake its image as an inward-looking, out-of-touch boys club, it
needs to start taking the issue seriously. The effect of the male dominance in macroeconomics
can be seen in the policy direction of the organisation: female economists are more likely to
be in favour of Government-backed redistribution measures than their male
counterparts.
Of course, the parochial way in which economics is perceived by the IMF, as nothing
more than the application of mathematical models, is nothing new. In fact, this is how
mainstream economics frequently is taught in universities all over the world. Is it any
wonder that the IMF has turned out as it is?"
Michael Hudson, as usual, was right:
"Economics students are forced to spend so much time with this complex calculus so
that they can go to work on Wall St. that there's no room in the course curriculum for the
history of economic thought.
So all they know about Adam Smith is what they hear on CNN news or other mass media
that are a travesty of what these people really said and if you don't read the history of
economic thought, you'd think there's only one way of looking at the world and that's the way
the mass media promote things and it's a propagandistic, Orwellian way.
The whole economic vocabulary is to cover up what's really happening and to make
people think that the economy is getting richer while the reality is they're getting poorer
and only the top is getting richer and they can only get rich as long as the middle class and
the working class don't realize the scam that's being pulled off on them."
Unfettered Fire and funemployed: deeply appreciate your lengthy and heartfelt posts. It's
a terribly small thing, but I have a suggestion to make that always helps me to feel a bit
better about things or should I say to feel a bit better about the possibility of things. If
you're game, and haven't already done so, search for the following free online book:
"Equality" by Edward Bellamy. Then do no more than read the introduction and first chapter
(and slightly into the second) to absorb by far the finest Socratic dialogue ever written
about capitalism, socialism, and the only nonviolent way to move from the former to the
latter–a way wide open to us, theoretically, right now. I know that's a hell of a
qualifier.
Why do modern intellectuals insist on inventing euphemisms for already known definitions?
The middle precariat is merely another term for the petty bourgeoisie. While they may have
possessed economic benefits like pensions and owned minuscule amounts of financial assets
they were never the dominant ruling class. Their socioeconomic status was always closer in
their livelihoods to the working class. After the working class was effectively being
dismantled starting in the 1970s, it has become the petty bourgeoisie's turn to be
systematically impoverished.
This is the primary economic development of our era of late capitalism. The question is,
what does it mean to be American if this country is no longer a land of opportunity?
Because the 'known definitions' do not apply anymore.
The middle has more in common with those below than those above. And here is the scary
reason: everyone is to be preyed upon by the wealth extractors who dominate our
politics/economy -- everyone. There is no social or educational allegieance, there is only a
resource to be ruthlessly plundered, people and their ability to earn and secure.
The so-called precariat lacks any sense of class consciousness and as a consequence are
incapable of any kind of solidarity. Nor do they perceive any predatory behavior in the
economic system. If the article is to be believed they blame themselves for their plight.
These traits which include the admiration and imitation of the rich are the hallmarks of the
petty bourgeoisie.
This disagreement over semantics is an example of the shallowness and superficiality of
new ideas. Marx already predicted that they'd be unceremoniously thrown into the underclass
in later stages of economic development at any rate.
The BigMedia & BigPols ignore the Type 1 Overqualified Underemployed cohort. Perhaps
hopefully someone like the new Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will discuss it, her recently
being of this cohort as an economist by degree working as a bartender. Instead we have
examples of BigMedia/BigPol crying about "STEM worker shortage" where there already are
countless underemployed STEM workers working Uber-ish type McJobs.
Afaict the only occupations (mostly) immune to Type 1 Overqualified Underemployment risk
here in Murica are medical pros: physicians/dentists/pharmacists & possibly nurses.
Otherwise there are stories of PhD Uber drivers, MBA strippers, & lawyers working Apple
store retail, especially in the first few years post 2008-GFC but still present now. In other
words, the US labor market "new economy" is resembling "old economy" of Latin America or
Russia (proverbial physicist selling trinkets on the Trans-Siberia railway).
"I often joke with my fellow country neighbors that it costs a hundred bucks to simply
leave the house. It's not a joke anymore. At this point those still fighting for a paltry
15.00 should include a hundred dollar per day walk out your front door per diem."
This is a stark and startling reality. This reality is outside the framework of
understanding of economic struggle in America that is allowed by the corporate neoliberal
culture/media.
As the Precariat grows, having watched the .1% lie, cheat and steal – from them, they
are more likely to also lie, cheat and steal in mortgage, employment and student loan
applications and most importantly and sadly, in their dealings with each other.
Everybody is turning into a hustler.
As to dealings with institutions, this comment is apt.
I think this came from NC comments a couple of weeks ago. Apologies for not being able to
attribute it to its author:
"Why should the worker be subservient to the employer? Citizens owe NO LOYALTY, moral or
legal, to a someone else's money making enterprise. And that enterprise is strictly a product
of signed commercial legal documents. Commercial enterprise has no natural existence. It is a
man-made creation, and is a "privilege", not a "right"; just as a drivers license is a
privilege and not an absolute right."
Economics was always far too dangerous to be allowed to reveal the truth about the
economy. The Classical economist, Adam Smith, observed the world of small state, unregulated
capitalism around him.
"The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the
maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury
by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the
industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the
use of his money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no
landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers."
How does this tie in with the trickledown view we have today?
Somehow everything has been turned upside down.
The workers that did the work to produce the surplus lived a bare subsistence
existence. Those with land and money used it to live a life of luxury and leisure.
The bankers (usurers) created money out of nothing and charged interest on it. The bankers
got rich, and everyone else got into debt and over time lost what they had through defaults
on loans, and repossession of assets.
Capitalism had two sides, the productive side where people earned their income and the
parasitic side where the rentiers lived off unearned income. The Classical Economists had
shown that most at the top of society were just parasites feeding off the productive activity
of everyone else.
Economics was always far too dangerous to be allowed to reveal the truth about the
economy.
How can we protect those powerful vested interests at the top of society?
The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity in the economy by
removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned" income and they conflated "land" with
"capital". They took the focus off the cost of living that had been so important to the
Classical Economists to hide the effects of rentier activity in the economy.
The landowners, landlords and usurers were now just productive members of society
again. It they left banks and debt out of economics no one would know the bankers created the
money supply out of nothing. Otherwise, everyone would see how dangerous it was to let
bankers do what they wanted if they knew the bankers created the money supply through their
loans.
The powerful vested interests held sway and economics was corrupted. Now we know what's wrong with neoclassical economics we can put the cost of living back
in.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Employees want more disposable income (discretionary spending).
Employers want to pay lower wages for higher profits
The cost of living = housing costs + healthcare costs + student loan costs + food
+ other costs of living
The neoliberals obsessed about reducing taxes, but let the cost of living soar. The economists also ignore the debt that is papering over the cracks and maintaining
demand in the economy. This can never work in the longer term as you max. out on debt.
> These young people do not think of things like debt-free college or paid family leave
as radical: they see it done elsewhere in the world and don't accept that it can't be done in
America.
An unexpected consequence of globalization is that a lot of people see how thing are done,
elsewhere.
Part of me doesn't feel sorry at all for the plight of middle-class Americans. When times
were good they were happy to throw poor and working-class people under the bus. I remember
when the common answer to complaints about factory closings was "you should have gotten an
education, dummy." Now that the white-collar middle class can see that they are next on the
chopping block they are finding their populist soul.
At the end of the day we need to have solidarity between workers but this is a good
example of why you should never think that you are untouchable and why punching down is never
a good political strategy. There will always be somebody more powerful than you and after
they are done destroying the people at the bottom you will probably be next.
"... Sanders's support for the anti-Russia and anti-Wikileaks campaign is all the more telling because he was himself the victim of efforts by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party leadership to block his 2016 campaign. In June and July 2016, Wikileaks published internal Democratic emails in which officials ridiculed the Sanders campaign, forcing the DNC to issue a public apology: "On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email." ..."
"... In the aftermath of his election campaign, Sanders was elevated into a top-level position in the Democratic Party caucus in the US Senate. His first response to the inauguration of Trump was to declare his willingness to "work with" the president, closely tracking remarks of Obama that the election of Trump was part of an "intramural scrimmage" in which all sides were on the same team. As the campaign of the military-intelligence agencies intensifies, however, Sanders is toeing the line. ..."
"... The Sanders campaign did not push the Democrats to the left, but rather the state apparatus of the ruling class brought Sanders in to give a "left" veneer to a thoroughly right-wing party. ..."
"... There is no contradiction between the influx of military-intelligence candidates into the Democratic Party and the Democrats' making use of the services of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to give the party a "left" cover. Both the CIA Democrats and their pseudo-left "comrades" agree on the most important questions: the defense of the global interests of American imperialism and a more aggressive intervention in the Syrian civil war and other areas where Washington and Moscow are in conflict. ..."
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders appeared on the CBS interview program "Face the Nation"
Sunday and fully embraced the anti-Russia campaign of the US military-intelligence apparatus,
backed by the Democratic Party and much of the media.
In response to a question from CBS host Margaret Brennan, Sanders unleashed a torrent of
denunciations of Trump's meeting and press conference in Helsinki with Russian President
Vladimir Putin. A preliminary transcript reads:
SANDERS: "I will tell you that I was absolutely outraged by his behavior in Helsinki, where
he really sold the American people out. And it makes me think that either Trump doesn't
understand what Russia has done, not only to our elections, but through cyber attacks against
all parts of our infrastructure, either he doesn't understand it, or perhaps he is being
blackmailed by Russia, because they may have compromising information about him.
"Or perhaps also you have a president who really does have strong authoritarian tendencies.
And maybe he admires the kind of government that Putin is running in Russia. And I think all of
that is a disgrace and a disservice to the American people. And we have got to make sure that
Russia does not interfere, not only in our elections, but in other aspects of our lives."
These comments, which echo remarks he gave at a rally in Kansas late last week, signal
Sanders' full embrace of the right-wing campaign launched by the Democrats and backed by
dominant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus. Their opposition to Trump is centered
on issues of foreign policy, based on the concern that Trump, due to his own "America First"
brand of imperialist strategy, has run afoul of geostrategic imperatives that are considered
inviolable -- in particular, the conflict with Russia.
Sanders did not use his time on a national television program to condemn Trump's persecution
of immigrants and the separation of children from their parents, or to denounce his naming of
ultra-right jurist Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, or to attack the White House
declaration last week that the "war on poverty" had ended victoriously -- in order to justify
the destruction of social programs for impoverished working people. Nor did he seek to advance
his supposedly left-wing program on domestic issues like health care, jobs and education.
Sanders' embrace of the anti-Russia campaign is not surprising, but it is instructive. This
is, after all, an individual who presented himself as "left-wing," even a "socialist." During
the 2016 election campaign, he won the support of millions of people attracted to his call for
a "political revolution" against the "billionaire class." For Sanders, who has a long history
of opportunist and pro-imperialist politics in the orbit of the Democratic Party, the aim of
the campaign was always to direct social discontent into establishment channels, culminating in
his endorsement of the campaign of Hillary Clinton.
Sanders's support for the anti-Russia and anti-Wikileaks campaign is all the more
telling because he was himself the victim of efforts by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic
Party leadership to block his 2016 campaign. In June and July 2016, Wikileaks published
internal Democratic emails in which officials ridiculed the Sanders campaign, forcing the DNC
to issue a public apology: "On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and
sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the
inexcusable remarks made over email."
In the aftermath of his election campaign, Sanders was elevated into a top-level
position in the Democratic Party caucus in the US Senate. His first response to the
inauguration of Trump was to declare his willingness to "work with" the president, closely
tracking remarks of Obama that the election of Trump was part of an "intramural scrimmage" in
which all sides were on the same team. As the campaign of the military-intelligence agencies
intensifies, however, Sanders is toeing the line.
The experience is instructive not only in relation to Sanders, but to an entire social
milieu and the political perspective with which it is associated. This is what it means to work
within the Democratic Party. The Sanders campaign did not push the Democrats to the left,
but rather the state apparatus of the ruling class brought Sanders in to give a "left" veneer
to a thoroughly right-wing party.
New political figures, many associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are
being brought in for the same purpose. As Sanders gave his anti-Russia rant, Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez sat next to him nodding her agreement. The 28-year-old member of the DSA last
month won the Democratic nomination in New York's 14th Congressional District, unseating the
Democratic incumbent, Joseph Crowley, the fourth-ranking member of the Democratic leadership in
the House of Representatives.
Since then, Ocasio-Cortez has been given massive and largely uncritical publicity by the
corporate media, summed up in an editorial puff piece by the New York Times that
described her as "a bright light in the Democratic Party who has brought desperately needed
energy back to New York politics "
Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders were jointly interviewed from Kansas, where the two appeared
Friday at a campaign rally for James Thompson, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the
US House of Representatives from the Fourth Congressional District, based in Wichita, in an
August 7 primary election.
Thompson might appear to be an unusual ally for the "socialist" Sanders and the DSA member
Ocasio-Cortez. His campaign celebrates his role as an Army veteran, and his website opens under
the slogan "Join the Thompson Army," followed by pledges that the candidate will "Fight for
America." In an interview with the Associated Press, Thompson indicated that despite his
support for Sanders' call for "Medicare for all," and his own endorsement by the DSA, he was
wary of any association with socialism. "I don't like the term socialist, because people do
associate that with bad things in history," he said.
Such anticommunism fits right in with the anti-Russian campaign, which is the principal
theme of the Democratic Party in the 2018 elections. As the World Socialist Web
Site has pointed out for many months, the
real thrust of the Democratic Party campaign is demonstrated by its recruitment as
congressional candidates of dozens of former CIA and military intelligence agents, combat
commanders from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and war planners from the Pentagon, State
Department and White House.
There is no contradiction between the influx of military-intelligence candidates into
the Democratic Party and the Democrats' making use of the services of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez
to give the party a "left" cover. Both the CIA Democrats and their pseudo-left "comrades" agree
on the most important questions: the defense of the global interests of American imperialism
and a more aggressive intervention in the Syrian civil war and other areas where Washington and
Moscow are in conflict.
"... By Enrico Verga, a writer, consultant, and entrepreneur based in Milan. As a consultant, he concentrates on firms interested in opportunities in international and digital markets. His articles have appeared in Il Sole 24 Ore, Capo Horn, Longitude, Il Fatto Quotidiano, and many other publications. You can follow him on Twitter @enricoverga . ..."
"... Continuing flows of low-cost labor can be useful for cutting costs. West Germany successfully absorbed East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the dirty secret of this achievement is the exploitation of workers from the former East, as Reuters reports . ..."
"... The expansion of the EU to Poland (and the failed attempt to incorporate the Ukraine) has allowed many European businesses to shift local production to nations where the average cost of a blue or white collar worker is much lower ( by 60-70% on average ) than in Western European countries. ..."
"... The middle class is a silent mass that for many years has painfully digested globalization, while believing in the promises of globalist politicians," explains Luciano Ghelfi, a journalist of international affairs who has followed Lega from its beginnings. Ghelfi continues: ..."
"... I think unrestrained globalization has taken a hit. In Italy as well, as we have seen recently, businesses are relocating abroad. And the impoverished middle class finds itself forced to compete for state resources (subsidies) and jobs which can be threatened by an influx of economic migrants towards which enormous resources have been dedicated – just think of the 4.3 billion Euros that the last government allocated toward economic migrants. ..."
"... In all of this, migrants are more victims than willing actors, and they become an object on which the fatigue, fear, and in the most extreme cases, hatred of the middle class can easily focus. ..."
"... If for the last twenty years, with only occasional oscillation, the pro-globalization side has been dominant in the West, elections are starting to swing the balance in a new direction. ..."
"... "Klein analyzes a future (already here to some degree) in which multinational corporations freely fish from one market or another in an effort to find the most suitable (i.e. cheapest) labor force." ..."
"... never export their way out of poverty and misery ..."
By Enrico Verga,
a writer, consultant, and entrepreneur based in Milan. As a consultant, he
concentrates on firms interested in opportunities in international and digital markets. His
articles have appeared in Il Sole 24 Ore, Capo Horn, Longitude, Il Fatto Quotidiano, and many
other publications. You can follow him on Twitter @enricoverga .
International commerce, jobs, and economic migrants are propelled by a common force:
profit.
In recent times, the Western middle class (by which I mean in particular industrial workers
and office employees) has lost a large number of jobs and has seen its buying power fall. It
isn't true that migrants are the source of all evil in the world. However, under current
conditions, they become a locus for the exasperation of the population at twenty years of
pro-globalization politics. They are tragically placed in the role of the straw that breaks the
camel's back.
Western businesses have slipped jobs overseas to countries with low labor costs, while the
middle class has been pushed into debt in order to try to keep up. The Glass-Steagall law and
other brakes on American banks were abolished by a cheerleader for globalization, Bill Clinton,
and these banks subsequently lost all restraints in their enthusiasm to lend. The cherry on top
of the sundae was the real estate bubble and ensuing crash of 2008.
A damning picture of the results of 20 years of globalization is provided by
Forbes , capitalism's magazine par excellence. Already in 2016, the surprise victory of
Trump led to questions about whether the blond candidate's win was due in part to the straits
of the American middle class, impoverished as a result of the pro-globalization politics of
figures like Clinton and Obama.
Further support for this thesis is furnished by the
New York Times , describing the collapse of the stars-and-stripes middle class. Its
analysis is buttressed by lengthy research from the very mainstream
Pew Center , which agrees that the American middle class is vanishing.
And Europe? Although the European middle class has been squeezed less than its American
counterpart, for us as well the picture doesn't look good. See for example the
analysis of the Brookings Institute , which discusses not only the flagging economic
fortunes of the European middle class, but also the fear of prosperity collapsing that
currently grips Europe.
Migrants and the Shock Doctrine
What do economic migrants have to do with any of this?
Far be it from me to criticize large corporations, but clearly they – and their
managers and stockholders – benefit from higher margins. Profits (revenue minus costs and
expenses) can be maximized by reducing expenses. To this end, the costs of acquiring goods
(metals, agricultural products, energy, etc.) and services (labor) need to fall steadily.
In the quest to lower the cost of labor, the most desirable scenario is a sort of blank
slate: to erase ongoing arrangements with workers and start over from zero, building a new
"happy and productive" economy. This operation can be understood as a sort of "shock
doctrine."
The term "economic shock therapy" is based on an analogy with electroshock therapy for
mental patients. One important analysis of it comes from Naomi Klein , who became
famous explaining in 2000 the system of fashion production through subsidiaries that don't
adhere to the safety rules taken so seriously in Western countries (some of you may recall the
scandal of
Benetton and Rana Plaza , where more than a thousand workers at a Bangladesh factory
producing Benetton (and other) clothes were crushed under a collapsing building).
Klein analyzes a future (already here to some degree) in which multinational corporations
freely fish from one market or another in an effort to find the most suitable (i.e. cheapest)
labor force. Sometimes relocating from one nation to another is not possible, but if you can
bring the job market of other countries here in the form of a low-cost mass of people competing
for employment, then why bother?
The Doctrine in Practice
Continuing flows of low-cost labor can be useful for cutting costs. West Germany
successfully absorbed East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the dirty secret of
this achievement is the exploitation of workers
from the former East, as Reuters reports .
The expansion of the EU to Poland (and the failed attempt to incorporate the Ukraine) has
allowed many European businesses to
shift local production to nations where the average cost of a blue or white collar worker
is much lower (
by 60-70% on average ) than in Western European countries.
The migrant phenomenon is a perfect counterpoint to a threadbare middle class, given its
role as a success story within the narrative of globalization.
Economic migrants are eager to obtain wealth on the level of the Western middle class
– and this is of course a legitimate desire. However, to climb the social ladder, they
are willing to do anything: from accepting low albeit legal salaries to picking tomatoes
illegally (
as Alessandro Gassman, son of the famous actor, reminded us ).
The middle class is a silent mass that for many years has painfully digested globalization,
while believing in the promises of globalist politicians," explains Luciano Ghelfi, a
journalist of international affairs who has followed Lega from its beginnings. Ghelfi
continues:
This mirage has fallen under the blows it has received from the most serious economic
crisis since the Second World War. Foreign trade, easy credit (with the American real estate
bubble of 2008 as a direct consequence), peace missions in Libya (carried out by
pro-globalization French and English actors, with one motive being in my opinion the
diversion of energy resources away from [the Italian] ENI) were supposed to have created a
miracle; they have in reality created a climate of global instability.
Italy is of course not untouched by this phenomenon. It's easy enough to give an
explanation for the Five Stars getting votes from part of the southern electorate that is
financially in trouble and might hope for some sort of subsidy, but the North? The choice of
voting center right (with a majority leaning toward Lega) can be explained in only one way
– the herd (the middle class) has tried to rise up.
I asked him, "So in your opinion, is globalization in stasis? Or is it radically
changing?" He replied:
I think unrestrained globalization has taken a hit. In Italy as well, as we have seen
recently, businesses are relocating abroad. And the impoverished middle class finds itself
forced to compete for state resources (subsidies) and jobs which can be threatened by an
influx of economic migrants towards which enormous resources have been dedicated – just
think of the 4.3 billion Euros that the last government allocated toward economic
migrants.
This is an important element in the success of Lega: it is a force that has managed to
understand clearly the exhaustion of the impoverished middle class, and that has proposed a
way out, or has at least elaborated a vision opposing the rose-colored glasses of
globalization.
In all of this, migrants are more victims than willing actors, and they become an object on
which the fatigue, fear, and in the most extreme cases, hatred of the middle class can easily
focus.
What Conflicts Are Most Relevant Today?
At the same time, if we observe, for example in Italy, the positions taken by the
(pro-globalization?) Left, it becomes easier to understand why the middle class and also many
blue collar workers are abandoning it. Examples range from the unfortunate declarations of
deputy Lia Quartapelle on
the need to support the Muslim Brotherhood to the explanations of the former president of
the Chamber of Deputies, Laura Boldrini, on how the status of economic migrant should be seen as a model for the
lifestyle of all Italians . These remarks were perhaps uttered lightly (Quartapelle
subsequently took her post down and explained that she had made a mistake), but they are
symptomatic of a certain sort of pro-globalization cultural "Left" that finds talking to
potential voters less interesting than other matters.
From Italy to America (where
Hillary Clinton was rejected after promoting major international trade arrangements that
she claimed would benefit middle-class American workers) to the UK (where Brexit has been taken as a sort of
exhaust valve), the middle class no longer seems to be snoring.
We are currently seeing a political conflict between globalist and nationalist forces.
Globalists want more open borders and freer international trade. Nationalists want protection
for work and workers, a clamping down on economic migrants, and rules with teeth aimed at
controlling international trade.
If for the last twenty years, with only occasional oscillation, the pro-globalization side
has been dominant in the West, elections are starting to swing the balance in a new
direction.
Meanwhile, many who self-identify as on the Left seem utterly uninterested in the concerns
of ordinary people, at least in cases where these would conflict with the commitment to
globalization.
If the distinction between globalism and nationalism is in practice trumping other
differences, then we should not let ourselves be distracted by bright and shiny objects, and
keep our focus on what really matters.
From the Forbes link:
"The first downside of international trade that even proponents of freer trade must
acknowledge is that while the country as a whole gains some people do lose."
More accurate to say a tiny, tiny, TINY percentage gain.
Nice how they use the euphemism "country as a whole" for GDP. Yes, GDP goes up – but
that word that can never be uttered by American corporate media – DISTRIBUTION –
that essentially ALL gains in GDP have gone to the very top. AND THAT THIS IS A POLITICAL
DECISION, not like the waves of the ocean or natural selection. There is plenty that could be
done about it – BUT it STARTS with WANTING to do something effective about it .
Nice how they use the euphemism "country as a whole" for GDP.
Fresno Dan,
You have identified one of my pet peeves about economists and their fellow traveler
politicians. They hide behind platitudes, and the former are more obnoxious about that.
Economists will tell people that they just don't understand all that complexity, and that in
the name of efficiency, etc, free trade and the long slide toward neo-liberal hell must
continue.
I think the assertion that all economic gains have gone to the very top is not accurate.
According to 'Unintended Consequences' by Ed Conard, the 'composition of the work force has
shifted to demographics with lower incomes' between 1980 and 2005. If you held the workforce
of 1980 steady through 2005, wages would be up 30% in real terms, not including benefits.
I think the author has highlighted some home truths in the article. I once remember
several years ago just trying to raise the issue of immigration* and its impact on workers on
an Irish so-called socialist forum. Either I met silence or received a reply along the lines:
'that when socialists rule the EU we'll establish continental wide standards that will ensure
fairness for everyone'. Fairy dust stuff. I'm not anti immigrant in any degree but it seems
unwise not to understand and mitigate the negative aspects of policies on all workers. Those
chickens are coming home to roost by creating the type of political parties (new or
established) that now control the EU and many world economies.
During the same period many younger middle and upper middle class Irish extolled the
virtues, quite openly, of immigration as way of lowering the power and wages of existing
Irish workers so that the costs of building homes, labour intensive services and the like
would be concretely reduced; and that was supposed to be a good thing for the material well
being of these middle and upper middle classes. Sod manual labour.
One part of the working class was quite happy to thrown another part of the working class
under the bus and the Left**, such as it was and is, was content to let it happen. Then
established Leftist parties often facilitated the rightward economic process via a host of
policies, often against their own stated policies in election manifestos. The Left appeared
deceitful. The Irish Labour party is barely alive and subsisting on die-hard traditionalists
for their support by those who can somehow ignore the deceit of their party. Surreaslist
stuff from so-called working class parties,
And now the middle-middle classes are ailing and we're supposed to take notice. Hmmm. Yet,
as a Leftist, myself, it is incumbent upon us to address the situation and assist all
workers, whatever their own perceived status.
*I'm an immigrant in the UK currently, though that is about to change next year.
** Whether the "Left", such as the Irish Labour Party, was just confused or bamboozled
matters not a jot. After the financial crises that became an economic crisis, they zealously
implemented austerity policies that predominantly cleared the way for a right wing political
landscape to dominate throughout Europe. One could be forgiven for thinking that those who
called themselves Leftists secretly believed that only right wing, neo-liberal economic
policies were correct. And I suppose, being a bit cynical, that a few politicos were paid
handsomely for their services.
I think its easy to see why the more middle class elements of the left wing parties never
saw immigration as a problem – but harder to see why the Trade Unions also bought into
this. Partly I think it was a laudable and genuine attempt to ensure they didn't buy into
racism – when you look at much trade union history, its not always pleasant reading
when you see how nakedly racist some early trade union activists were, especially in the US.
But I think there was also a process whereby Unions increasingly represented relatively
protected trades and professions, while they lost ground in more vulnerable sectors, such as
in construction.
I think there was also an underestimation of the 'balancing' effect within Europe. I think
a lot of activists understimated the poverty in parts of Europe, and so didn't see the
expansion of the EU into eastern Europe as resulting in the same sort of labour arbitrage
thats occurred between the west and Asia. I remember the discussions over the enlargement of
the EU to cover eastern Europe and I recall that there seemed to be an inbuilt assumption
(certainly in the left), that rising general prosperity would ensure there would be no real
migration impact on local jobs. This proved to be entirely untrue.
Incidentally, in my constituency (Dublin Central) in past elections the local Labour party
was as guilty as any of pandering to the frequent racism encountered on the doorsteps in
working class areas. But it didn't do them much good. Interestingly, SF was the only party
who would consistently refuse to pander (At least in Dublin), making the distinction between
nationalist and internationalist minded left wingers even more confusing.
Yes, one has to praise the fact that the Unions didn't pander to racism – but that's
about all the (insert expletive of choice) did correctly.
Your other points, as ever, are relevant and valid but (and I must but) I tend to think
that parties like Labour were too far "breezy" about the repercussions about labour
arbitrage. But that's water under the bridge now.
Speaking about SF and the North West in general, they have aggressively canvassed recent
immigrants and have not tolerated racism among their ranks. Their simple reasoning was that
is unthinkable that SF could tolerate such behaviour amongst themselves when they has waged a
campaign against such attitudes and practices in the six counties. (SF are no saints, often
fumble the ball badly, and are certainly not the end-all-be-all, but this is something they
get right).
It has to be understood that much of immigration is occurring because of war, famine,
collapsing societies (mostly due to massive wealth inequality and corrupt governments).
Immigration is not the cause of the economic issues in the EU, it's a symptom (or a feature
if you're on top). If you don't correct the causes – neo-liberalism, kleptocracy,
rigged game – what ever you want to call it, then you too will become an immigrant in
your own country (and it will be a third world country by the time the crooks on top are
done).
Don't get caught up in the blame the other poor people game. It's a means to get the
powerless to fight among themselves. They are not in charge, they are victims just like
you.
Having spent a lot of time in the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan and Iraq I have to
say that rampant overpopulation plays a big part. Anyone who can get out is getting out. It
makes sense. And with modern communications they all know how life is in Europe or the US in
contrast to the grinding horror that surrounds them.
But Conan tells me that Haiti is a tropical paradise! (my brother too spent a lot of time
in Afghanistan and Iraq working with the locals during his deployments)
"Twitter liberalism" is doing itself by not recognizing that much of the developing world
IS a corrupt cesspool.
Instead of railing against Trump, the Twitter-sphere needs to rail against the bipartisan
policies that drive corruption, and economic dislocations and political dislocations. and
rail against religious fundamentalism that hinders family planning.
But if you actually do that, rail against bipartisan neoliberal policies on social media
and IRL, the conservatives are far less hostile than the die-hard Dems. This is especially
true now, with all the frothing at the mouth and bloodlust about Russia. Its raised their
"it's ALL *YOUR* FAULT"-ism by at least an order of magnitude.
Actually, that's been true since the 18th C., at least for the US. TV may make it more
vivid, and Europe has changed places, but most Americans have immigrant ancestors, most often
from Europe.
However, it does seem that the policy of the EU, especially under the influence of Mutti
Merkel, signalled a free-for-all immigration stance over the last several years, completely
ignoring the plight of existing workers (many of whom would be recent immigrants themselves
and the children of immigrants). That the so-called Left either sat idly by or jumped on
Mutti's band wagon didn't do them any favours with working people. Every country or customs
union has and needs to regulate its borders. It also makes some sense to monitor labour
markets when unfavourable conditions appear.
It appears that only the wealthy are largely reaping the rewards of the globalist
direction trade has taken. These issues need to be addressed by the emerging Left political
parties in the West. Failure to address these issues must, I would contend, play into the
hands of the more right wing parties whose job is to often enrich the local rich.
But, bottom line, your are correct workers do not come out well when blaming other workers
for economies that have been intentionally created to produce favourable conditions for the
few over the many.
It's a blade with two sides.
There are push factors like the wars and poor countries. However neither of these causes can
be fixed. Not possible. Europe can gnash their teeth all they want, not even when they did
the unthinkable and put the US under sanctions for their warcrimes would the US ever stop.
First there would be color revolutions in western europe.
As important as the push factors are the pull ones. 90% or so of all refugees 2015 went to
Germany. Some were sent to other countries by the EU, these too immediately moved to Germany
and didn't stay where they were assigned. So the EU has to clean up their act and would need
to put the last 10 or so US presidents and administrations before a judge in Den Haag for
continued war crimes and crimes against humanity (please let me my dreams). The EU would also
need to clean up their one sided trade treaties with Africa and generally reign in their own
corporations. All that is however not enough by far and at most only half the battle. Even
when the EU itself all did these things, the poverty would remain and therefore the biggest
push factor. Humans always migrate to the place where the economy is better.
The pull factors is however at least as big. The first thing to do is for Germany to fix
their laws to be in sync with the other EU countries. At this point, Germany is utterly
alone, at most some countries simply don't speak out against german policy since they want
concessions in other areas. Main one here is France with their proposed EU and Euro reforms
but not alone by far.
Nationalists want protection for work and workers, a clamping down on economic
migrants, and rules with teeth aimed at controlling international trade.
Socialism in one country is a Stalinist theory, and falling back upon it in fear of
international capital is not only regressive but (assuming we aren't intentionally ignoring
history) relective of a defensive mentality.
In other words, this kind of thinking is the thinking of the whipped dog cringing before
the next blow.
Or perhaps they want to regulate and control the power of capital in their country. Which
is an entirely impossible proposition considering that capital can flee any jurisdiction and
cross any border. After all, transnational capital flows which were leveraged to the hilt in
speculative assets played an oversized role in generating the financial crisis and subsequent
crash.
It wouldn't be the first time I've been called a Stalinist though.
And why would we care whether it's a "Stalinist" theory? For that matter, although worker
ownership would solve some of these problems, we needn't be talking about socialism, but
rather about more functional capitalism.
Quite a leap in that last sentence; you haven't actually established anything of the
sort.
Personally, I believe capitalism needs to go away, but for it, or any other economic
system, to work, we would need a fair, equal, just, enforced rule of law that
everyone would be under, wouldn't we?
Right now the blessed of our various nations do not want this, so they make so that one
set is unfair, unequal, unjust, harshly enforced on most of their country's population while
they get the gentle rules.
For a society to function long term, it needs to have a fair and just set of rules that
everyone understands and follow, although the rules don't have to equal; people will tolerate
different levels of punishments and strictness of the rules. The less that is the case the
more dysfunctional, and usually the more repressive it is. See the Western Roman Empire, the
fall of just about every Chinese dynasty, the Russian Empire, heck even the American War of
Independence, and the American Civil War. In example, people either actively worked to
destroy the system or did not care to support it.
Thank you for the article, a pretty lucid analysis of the recent electoral results in
Italy and trends elsewhere. Although I would have liked to read something about people voting
the way they do because they are xenophobe fascist baby-eating pedophile racist Putin
friends. Just for fun.
Funny how the author's company promotes "Daily international job vacancies in UNDP, FAO,
UN, UNCTAD, UNIDO and the other Governative Organization, Non Governative Organization,
Multinationals Corporations. Public Relations, Marketing, Business Development."
Precisely the sort of jobs that infuriates the impoverishing middle classes.
As recently as 2015, Bernie Sanders defended not only border security, but also national
sovereignty. Asked about expanded immigration, Sanders flipped the question into a critique
of open-borders libertarianism: "That's a Koch brothers proposal which says essentially there
is no United States."
Unfortunately the ethnic division of the campaign and Hillary's attack seems to have led him
to change his mind.
That's probably due to the fact that just about everybody can't seem to differentiate
between immigration and mass migration. The latter issue is a matter of distributing the pain
of a collapsing order. state failure, and climate change while the former is simply engaging
in the comfortable rhetoric of politics dominated by the American middle class.
1 people vote they like. im not updated if the voters eat babies but i'll check and let u
know.
2 My company is not dream job. It is a for free ( and not making a penny) daily bulleting
that using a fre soft (paper.li) collect international qualified job offers for whoever is
willing to work in these sector.
i'm not pro or contro migrants. i actually only reported simple fact collating differents
point :)
Economic migrants seek prosperity and are justified in doing so, yet they can also be
seen as pawns in an international strategy that destroys the negotiating leverage of
workers. The resulting contradictions potentially render conventional political
classifications obsolete.
This appears on the homepage, but not here.
In any case, the 10% also seek prosperity. They are said to be the enablers of the 1%.
Until the left alters its thinking to reflect the crucial information presented in this
video, information more clearly and comprehensively spelled out in "Reclaiming the State" by
Mitchell and Fazi, resurgent rightwing nationalism will be the only outlet for those who
reject global neoliberalism's race to the bottom. It's that simple and sad.
To paint this as two pro-globalisation (within which you place the left) and
pro-nationalism is simplistic and repositions the false dichotomy of left vs right with
something just as useless. We should instead seek to speak to the complexities of the modern
political spectrum. This is an example of poor journalism and analysis and shouldn't have
been posted here, sorry Yves.
Thanks for your opinion. Check the format of this place: articles selected for information
or provoking thoughts, in support of a general position of driving toward betterment of the
general welfare, writ large.
The political economy is at least as complex as the Krebs or citric acid cycle that
biology students and scientists try to master. There are so many moving parts and
intersecting and competing interests that in the few words that the format can accommodate,
regarding each link, it's a little unkind to expect some master work of explication and
rhetorical closure every time.
The Krebs cycle is basically driven by the homeostatic thrust, bred of billions of years
of refinement, to maintain the healthy functioning and prolong life of the organism. There's
a perceivable axis to all the many parts of respiration, digestion, energy flows and such,
all inter-related with a clear organizing principle at the level of the organism. On the
record, it's hardly clear that at the level of the political economy, and all the many parts
that make it up, there is sufficient cohesion around a set of organizing principles that
parallel the drive, at the society and species level, to regulate and promote the energy
flows and interactions that would keep things healthy and prolong the life of the larger
entity. Or that their is not maybe a death wish built into the "cultural DNA" of most of the
human population.
Looks a lot to me that we actually have been invested (in both the financial and military
senses of the word) by a bunch of different cancer processes, wild and unregulated
proliferation of ecnomic and political tumor tissues that have invaded and undermined the
healthy organs of the body politic. Not so clear what the treatments might be, or the
prognosis. It is a little hopeful, continuing the biological analogy, that the equivalents of
inflammation and immune system processes appear to be overcoming the sneaky tricks that
cancer genes and cells employ to evade being identified and rendered innocuous.
Yes, "invested in a bunch of cancer processes" is a good description of allowing excessive
levels of predatory wealth. Thus you end up with a bunch of Jay Gould hyper capitalists whose
guiding principle is: I can always pay one half of the working class to kill the other half.
Divide and conquer rules.
It's mostly simply wrong. This doesn't describe the political views of almost anyone near
power anywhere as far as I can tell:
"Globalists want more open borders and freer international trade. Nationalists want
protection for work and workers, "
Most of the nationalist forces are on the right and give @#$# all for workers rights.
Really they may be anti-immigrant but they are absolutely anti-worker.
The middle class does not really exist, it was a concept invented by capitalists to
distract the workers from their essential unity as fellow wage slaves. Some make more wages,
some make less wages but they all have their surplus value, the money left over after they
have enough to take care of themselves, taken by the capitalist and used for his ends even
though he may not have worked in the value creation process at all.
Economic migrants are members of the working class who have been driven from their home
country to somewhere else by the capitalist system. While the article does mention capitalist
shock doctrine methods for establishing imperialism and correctly notes that economic
migrants are victims, it then goes on to try to lay a weak and insidious argument against
them. The author goes on citing multiple different cases of worker wages being driven lower
or stagnating, many of these cases have differing and sometimes complex reasons for why this
happened. But migrants and globalization are to blame he says and that our struggle is
nationalism vs globalism. He refuses to see what is staring him in the face, workers produce
surplus value for society, more workers produce more surplus value. If society finds itself
wealthier with more workers then why do workers wage fall or stagnate? He does note correctly
that this is due to the workers now having a weaker bargaining position with the capitalist,
but he seems to conclude from this without stating outrightly that we should then reject the
economic migrants because of this.
However, we could instead conclude that if more workers produce more surplus value but yet
their wages fall because the capitalist takes a larger share of the overall pot, that the
problem is not more workers but instead the capitalist system itself which was rigged to
exploit workers everywhere. Plus the workers bargaining position only weakens with a greater
number of them if they are all just bargaining for themselves, but if they were to bargain
togather collectively then there bargaining position has actually only grown even
stronger.
Also he falsly equates democratic party policies with leftists, instead of correctly
noting that the democratic party represents capitalist interests from a centrist position and
not the left. The strength of global capitalism can only be fought by a global coalition of
the working class. The struggle of Mexican and American workers are interrelated to each
other and the same goes for that of European and Middle Eastern workers. The time has come
for the left to raise the rallying cry of its great and glorious past.
You claim, as if it were obvious, that "economic migrants are members of the working class
who have been driven from their home country to somewhere else by the capitalist system."
Are all economic migrants therefore bereft of agency?
If the borders of the US were abruptly left completely open, a huge number of people would
enter the country tomorrow, for economic reasons. Would they all have been "driven" here, or
would they have some choice in the matter?
When you say, "he refuses to say what is staring him in the face, that [ ] more workers
produce more surplus value," you are not only taking a gratuitously pedantic tone, you are
actually not making a coherent critique. If economic migrants move from one country to
another, the total pool of workers in the world has not increased; while according to your
logic, if all the workers in the world were to move to Rhode Island, Rhode Island would
suddenly be swimming in the richness of surplus value.
When you say, "we could instead conclude that [..] the problem is not more workers but
instead the capitalist system itself which was rigged to exploit workers everywhere," you are
straw-manning the author but also making a purely rhetorical argument. If you think the
capitalist system can be replaced with a better one within the near future, then you can work
toward that; but in the meanwhile, nations, assuming that they will continue to exist, will
either have open borders or something short of that, and these decisions do affect
the lives of workers.
When you say he "falsly equates democratic party policies with leftists," the false
equivalence is coming from you. The article barely touches on the Democratic Party, and
instead draws most of its examples from Europe, especially Italy. In Italy, the public
figures he mentions call themselves part of the sinistra and are generally referred
to that way. You might perhaps feel that they are not entitled to that name (and in fact, the
article sometimes places "left" in quotation marks), but you should at least read the article
and look them up before discussing the matter.
From the article: "Meanwhile, many who self-identify as on the Left seem utterly
uninterested in the concerns of ordinary people, at least in cases where these would conflict
with the commitment to globalization."
To Be Fair, Verga clearly is skeptical about those claims to be "on the Left," as he
should be. Nonetheless, his initial mention of Democratic exemplars of globalization triggers
American reflexes.
Something before this failed to post; was rejected as a double post.
In brief: corporate globalization is a conservative, Republican policy that Bill Clinton
imposed on the Dems, where it has since become doctrine, since it pays. It's ultimately the
reason I'm a Green, not a Democrat, and in a sense the reason there IS a Green Party in the
US.
The author points to stagnant middle class income in USA and Western Europe but fail to
look the big picture. Middle class income has increased sharply in the past decades in Asia
and Eastern Europe. Overall the gain huge, even though life is tougher in richer
countries.
Overall the gain huge, even thought life is tougher in richer countries.
Please accept my apologies for saying this. I don't mean to offend. I just have to point
out something.
Many in the Democratic Party, as well as the left, are pointing to other countries and
peoples as well as the American 9.9% and saying things are great, why are you complaining?
With the not so hidden implications, sometimes openly stated that those who do are losers and
deplorables.
Saying that middle class incomes are merely stagnant is a sick, sick joke as well as an
untruth. As an American, I do not really care about the middle classes in Asia and Eastern
Europe. Bleep the big picture. The huge gains comes with a commensurate increase in homeless
in the United States, and a falling standard of living for most the of the population,
especially in the "wealthy" states, like my state of California. Most of us are using
fingernails to stay alive and homed. If those gains had not been caused by the losses, I
would be very please to see them. As it is, I have to live under President Trump and worry
about surviving. Heck, worry about the rest of my family doing so.
"Saying that middle class incomes are merely stagnant is a sick, sick joke as well as an
untruth."
+10,000
I mean I actually do care somewhat about the people of the world, but we here in "rich
countries" are being driven to homelessness at this point and told the goddamn lie that we
live in a rich country, rather than the truth that we live in a plutocracy with levels of
inequality approaching truly 3rd world. We are literally killing ourselves because we have to
live in this plutocracy and our one existence itself is not even worth it anymore in this
economic system (and we are lacking even a few of the positives of many other 3rd world
countries). And those that aren't killing ourselves still can't find work, and even if we do,
it doesn't pay enough to meet the most basic necessities.
1. It is unfortunate that Verga raises the rising cost of material inputs but fails to
meaningfully address the issue. One of the drivers of migration, as mentioned in Comments
above, is the population volcano currently erupting. Labor is cheap and globalization
possible in large part because the world population has grown from 2 Billion to over 7
Billion in the past 60-odd years. This slow-growing mountain of human beings has created
stresses on material inputs which are having a negative impact on the benefits derived from
declining labor costs. This becomes a death-spiral as capital seeks to balance the rising
cost of raw materials and agricultural products by driving down the cost of labor ever
further.
2. Verga touches on the interplay of Nationalism and Racism in the responses of political
parties and institutions in Italy and elsewhere. Voters appear to be abandoning Left and
left-ish parties because the Left have been unable to come up with a definintion of national
sovereignty that protects worker rights largely due to the importance of anti-racism in
current Left-wing thought. Working people were briefly bought-off with cheap consumer goods
and easy credit, but they now realize that low-wage migrant and off-shore workers mean that
even these goodies are now out of reach. The only political alternative currently on offer is
a brand of Nationalism defined by Racism -- which becomes acceptable to voters when the
alternative is Third-World levels of poverty for those outside the 1% and their 9%
enablers.
I don't see any simple solutions. Things may get very ugly.
I certainly see that policies tampering down free trade, both of capital and labor, can
benefit workers within a particular country. However, especially in the context of said
policies in "Western" countries, this can tend towards a, protect the working class within
the borders, leave those outside of it in impoverished squalor. Which doesn't mesh well with
the leftist goal of global class consciousness. Much like the racially segregated labor
policies of yesteryear, it's playing a zero-sum game with the working class while the
ownership class gets the "rising tide lifts all boats" treatment.
So how do we protect workers within the sovereign, while not doing so at the cost of the
workers outside of it? Schwieckart has an interesting idea, that tariffs on imports are used
to fund non-profits/higher education/cooperatives in the country of export. However, I think
we'd need something a bit more fine-tuned than that.
It has always baffled me that governments enable this global musical chairs game with the
labor market. Nearly all Western governments allow tax dodging by those who benefit the most
from their Navies, Armies, Patents, and Customs enforcement systems. However, it is the
working class that carries the brunt of that cost while corporations off-shore their
profits.
A simple-minded fix might be to start taxing foreign profits commensurate with the cost of
enabling those overseas profits.
Interesting that a corporation is a person just like us mortals when it is to their
advantage, but unlike us humans, they can legally escape taxation on much of their income
whereas a human being who is a US citizen cannot. A human citizen is generally taxed by the
US on all income regardless of its source. OTOH, corporations (among other means) routinely
transfer intellectual property to a non tax jurisdiction and then pay artificial payments to
that entity for the rights to use such property. It is a scam akin to a human creating a tax
deduction by transferring money from one pocket to another. Yes, proper taxation of
corporations is a simple-minded fix which is absolutely not simple to legislate. Nice try
though. Something else to ponder: Taxation without representation was said to be a major
factor in our war of independence from Britain. Today no one seems to be concerned that we
have evolved into representation without taxation. Doesn't see right to me.
"Klein analyzes a future (already here to some degree) in which multinational
corporations freely fish from one market or another in an effort to find the most suitable
(i.e. cheapest) labor force."
FWIW I don't think it's productive to talk about things like immigration in (or to) the US
in terms of just the here – as in what should/could we be doing here
to fix the problem. It's just as much if not more about the there . If we
view the global economic order as an enriched center feeding off a developing periphery, then
fixing the periphery should be first aim. #Wall or #NoBorders are largely incendiary
extremes. Ending Original Sin and creating some
sort of supranational
IOU/credit system (not controlled by World Bank or IMF!) will end the economic imbalance
and allow countries who will never export their way out of poverty and misery a way
to become equal first world nation states. With this equality, there will be less economic
migration, less peripheral poverty and potentially less political unrest. It's a gargantuan
task to be sure, but with rising Socialist sentiment here and abroad, I'd like to think we
are at least moving in the right direction.
If the rich were properly taxed then social tensions would be greatly reduced and if the
revenue raised were used to help the poorest in society much distress could be
alleviated.
I worry that debate on migration/globalisation is being encouraged to distract attention
from this issue.
I may indeed have taken a gratuitously pedantic tone and could have chosen a better one,
for that i apologise. I do however believe that much of my critique still stands, I will try
to go through your points one by one.
"Are all economic migrants therefore bereft of agency?"
Not all but many are, especially the ones that most people are complaining about. Many of
them are being driven from their home countries not simply for a better life but so they can
have something approaching a life at all. While to fully prove this point would require an
analysis of all the different migrants and their home country conditions, I do feel that if
we are talking about Syrian refugees, migrants from Africa risking their lives crossing the
Mediteranian sea, or CentralAmerican refugees than yes i do think these people to an extent
have had their agency taken from them by global events. For Syrians, by being caught in an
imperialist power struggle which while the civil war may not have been caused by it, it
certainly has been prolonged because of it. Not too mention America played a very significant
role in creating the conditions for ISIS, and western European powers don't have completely
clean hands either due to their long history of brutal imperialism in the mideast. Africa of
course also has an extensive past of colonization and suffers from a present of colonization
and exploitation as well. For Central Americans there is of course the voracious american
drug market as well as our politicians consistent appetite for its criminalisation to blame.
There is also of course global climate change. Many of these contributing conditions are not
being dealt with and so i believe that the migrations we have witnessed these last few years
are only the first ining of perhaps even greater migrations to come. How we deal with it now,
could determine whether our era is defined by mass deaths or something better. So to the
extent that i believe many of these migrants have agency is similiar to how a person climbing
onto the roof of there house to escape a flood does.
If the borders of the US were left completely open then, yes, there would most likely be a
rush of people at first but over time they would migrate back and forth according to their
needs, through the opening of the border they would gain agency. People often think that a
country not permitting its citizens to leave is wrong and immoral, but if most countries
close their borders to the people of a country going through great suffering, then it seems
to me that is essentially the same even if the rhetoric may be different. The likeliness of
this is high if the rich countries close there borders, since if the rich countries like the
US and Italy feel they can not take them in, then its doubtful countries on the way that are
much poorer will be able to either.
At the begining of your article you stated that "International commerce, jobs, and
economic migrants are propelled by a common force: profit." This is the capitalist system,
which is a system built upon the accumulation of capital, which are profits invested in
instruments of labor, aka machines and various labor enhancements. Now Rhode island is quite
small so there are geographical limitations of course, but if that was not an issue then yes.
Wage workers in the capitalist system produce more value than they consume, if this was not
the case they would not be hired or be hired for long. So if Rhode Island did not have the
geographical limitations that it does, then with more workers the overall pot of valuable
products and services would increase per capita in relation to the population. If the workers
are divided and not unified into cohesive and responsive institutions to fight for there
right share of the overall pie, which I believe should be all of it, then most of the gain to
society will go to the capitalist as increased profits. So it is not the migrant workers who
take from the native but instead actually the capitalist who exploits and trys to magnify
there difference. So if the capitalist system through imperialism helped to contribute to the
underlying conditions driving mass migration, and then it exploits there gratitude and
willingness to work for less than native workers, than I believe it follows that they will
wish to drive native anger towards the migrants with the ultimate goal of allowing them to
exploit the migrant workers at an even more severe level. This could be true within the
country, such as the US right now where the overarching result of anti-immigrant policies has
been to not get rid of them but to drive there exploitation more into the shadows, or through
mass deportations back to their home country followed by investments to exploit their
desperation at super low wages that will then compete with the rich country workers, it is
also possible they will all just die and everyone will look away. Either way the result will
still be lower wages for rich country workers, it seems to me the only way out of the impass
is for the native workers to realize their unity with migrant workers as exploited workers
and instead of directing that energy of hostility at each other instead focus it upon the
real root which is the capitalists themselves. Without the capitalists, more workers, held
withing certain geographic limitations of course, would in fact only enrich each other.
So while nations may indeed continue to exist for awhile, the long term benefit of native
workers is better served by making common cause with migrants against their mutual oppressors
then allowing themselves to be stirred up against them. Making this argument to workers is
much harder, but its the most beneficial if it can be made successfully.
This last point i do agree i may have been unfair to you, historically I believe the left
generally referred to anarchists, socialists and communists. So I often dislike the way
modern commentators use the left to refer to anything from a center right democrat like
Hillary Clinton all the way to the most hard core communist, it can make understanding
political subtleties difficult since anarchists, socialists and communists have radically
different politics than liberals, much more so than can be expressed along a linear line. But
as you point out you used quotes which i admit i did not notice, and of course one must
generally use the jargon of the times in order to be understood.
Overall i think my main critique was that it seemed that throughout your article you were
referencing different negative symptoms of capitalism but was instead taking that evidence
for the negatives of globalism. I may come from a more radical tradition than you may be used
to, but i would consider globalism to be an inherent aspect of capitalism. Capitalism in its
algorithmic quest for ever increasing profits generally will not allow its self to be bound
for long by people, nations, or even the physical and environmental limitations of the earth.
While one country may be able to restrict it for a time unless it is overcome completely it
will eventually reach out globally again. The only way to stop it is a prolonged struggle of
the international working class cooperating with each other against capitalism in all its
exploitive forms. I would also say that what we are seeing is not so much globalism vs
nationalism but instead a rearrangement of the competing imperial powers, Russia, China, US,
Germany and perhaps the evolution of multiple competing imperialisms similiar in nature to
pre- world war times but that may have to wait for later.
A great deal of your article did indeed deal with Italy which I did not address but I felt
that your arguments surrounding migrants was essentially of a subtle right wing nature and it
needed to be balanced by a socialist counter narrative. I am very glad that you took the time
to respond to my critique I know that putting analysis out there can be very difficult and i
am thankful for your response which has allowed me to better express and understand my
viewpoint. Once again I apoligise if I used some overly aggressive language and i hope your
able to get something out of my response as well.
I appreciate the more reflective tone of this reply. I believe there are still some
misreadings of the article, which I will try to clarify.
For one thing, I am not the author of the article! Enrico Verga is the author. I merely
translated the article. Enrico is Italian, however, and so for time zone reasons will be
unable to respond to your comments for a while. I am happy to write a bit on this in the
meantime.
You make two arguments.
The first is that many or most migrants are fleeing desperate circumstances. The article
speaks however consistently of "economic migrants" – there are some overlapping issues
with refugees, but also significant differences. Clearly there are many people who are
economically comfortable in their home countries and who would still jump at a chance to get
US citizenship if they could (look up EB-5 fraud for one example). Saying this does not imply
some sort of subtle critique of such people, but they are not a myth.
I actually found your second argument more thought-provoking. As I understand you, you are
suggesting something like the following. You support completely open borders. You acknowledge
that this would lead at first to massive shifts in population, but in the long run you say
things would stabilize. You acknowledge that this will lead to "lower wages for rich country
workers," but say that we should focus on the fact that it is only within the capitalist
system that this causality holds. You also suggest that it would probably lead, under current
conditions, to workers having their anger misdirected at migrants and therefore supporting
more reactionary policies.
Given that the shift to immediate open borders would, by this analysis, be highly
detrimental to causes you support, why do you favor it? Your reasons appear to be (1) it's
the right thing to do and we should just do it, (2) yes, workers might react in the way
described, but they should not feel that way, and maybe we can convince them not to feel that
way, (3) things will work themselves out in the long run.
I am a bit surprised at the straightforwardly idealistic tone of (1) and (2). As for (3),
as Keynes said, in the long run we are all dead. He meant by this that phenomena that might
in theory equilibrate over a very long time can lead to significant chaos in the short run;
this chaos can meanwhile disrupt calculations about the "long term" and spawn other
significant negative consequences.
Anyone who is open to the idea of radically new economic arrangements faces the question
of how best to get there. You are perhaps suggesting that letting global capital
reign supreme, unhindered by the rules and restrictions of nation-states, will in the long
run allow workers to understand their oppression more clearly and so increase their openness
to uniting against it. If so, I am skeptical.
I will finally point out that a part of the tone of your response seems directed at the
impression that Enrico dislikes migrants, or wants other people to resent them. I see nothing
in the article that would suggest this, and there are on the other hand several passages in
which Enrico encourages the reader to empathize with migrants. When you suggest that his
arguments are "essentially of a subtle right wing nature," you are maybe reacting to this
misreading; in any case, I'm not really sure what you are getting at, since this phrase is so
analytically imprecise that it could mean all sorts of things. Please try to engage with the
article with arguments, not with vague epithets.
There is a bit of a dissonance here. Human rights has been persistently used by
neoliberals to destabilize other regions for their own ends for decades now with little
protest. And when the standard playbook of coups and stirring up trouble does not work its
war and total destruction as we have seen recently in Iraq, Libya and Syria for completely
fabricated reasons.
Since increased migration is the obvious first consequence when entire countries are
decimated and in disarray one would expect the countries doing the destruction to accept the
consequences of their actions but instead we have the same political forces who advocate
intervention on 'human rights grounds' now demonizing migrants and advocating openly racist
policies.
One can understand one mistake but 3 mistakes in a row! And apparently we are not capable
of learning. The bloodlust continues unabated for Iran. This will destabilize an already
destabilized region and cause even more migration to Europe. There seems to be a fundamental
contradiction here, that the citizens of countries that execute these actions and who who
protest about migrants must confront.
Maybe they should pay trillions of dollars of reparations for these intervention so these
countries can be rebuilt and made secure again so migrants can return to their homes. Maybe
the UN can introduce a new fund with any country considering destabilizing another country,
for instance Iran, to first deposit a trillion dollars upfront to deal with the human
fallout. Or maybe casually destabilizing and devastating entire countries, killing millions
of people and putting millions more in disarray should be considered crimes against humanity
and prosecuted so they are not repeated.
"... Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (2012), ..."
"... Note: If you are more of a visual or audio learner, then please scroll down to see our "Recommended Videos" list. That said, a certain degree of reading will be required for you to achieve a thorough understanding of Socialism as a concept, in addition to the means by which we are to reach a Socialist/Communist society. ..."
"... Socialism and the American Negro ..."
"... Martin Luther King, Jr., as Democratic Socialist ..."
"... Why Socialism? ..."
"... The Principles of Communism ..."
"... Manifesto of the Communist Party ..."
"... Critique of the Gotha Programme ..."
"... The Capitalist System ..."
"... Marx's Concept of Socialism ..."
"... Marx's Concept of Man, ..."
"... The 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' in Marx and Engels ..."
"... State Capitalism and Dictatorship ..."
"... The Black Church and Marxism: What Do They Have to Say to Each Other? ..."
"... The ABC's of Socialism ..."
"... Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State ..."
"... Reform or Revolution? ..."
"... The Mass Strike ..."
"... The Negro as Capitalist ..."
"... Marx's Concept of Man ..."
"... The 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' from Marx to Lenin ..."
"... Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center ..."
"... The Invention of the White Race: ..."
"... Statism and Anarchy ..."
"... Bakunin on Anarchy ..."
"... Black Marxism ..."
"... Black Reconstruction in America ..."
"... Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media ..."
"... participatory economy ..."
"... self-managed economy ..."
"... cooperative economy ..."
"... a mode of production (in German: Produktionsweise, meaning "the way of producing") is a specific combination of the following: ..."
"... Productive forces : these include human labour power and means of production (e.g. tools, productive machinery, commercial and industrial buildings, other infrastructure, technical knowledge, materials, plants, animals and exploitable land). ..."
"... Social and technical relations of production : these include the property, power and control relations governing society's productive assets (often codified in law), cooperative work relations and forms of association, relations between people and the objects of their work and the relations between social classes. ..."
"... By performing social surplus labour in a specific system of property relations, the labouring classes constantly reproduce the foundations of the social order. A mode of production normally shapes the mode of distribution, circulation and consumption and is regulated by the state . ..."
"... New productive forces will cause conflict in the current mode of production. When conflict arises, the modes of production can evolve within the current structure or cause a complete breakdown. ..."
"... www.polecom.org/ The Political Economy of Communication, Vol 1, No 2 (2013) Theorising and analysing digital labour: From global value chains to modes of production Christian Fuchs, University of Westminster ..."
Richard
Wolff remains important
in the continuing education of the left from the time when (for some of
us), it was actually not a big deal to think of entry points and an Ideological State Apparatus.
Labor
aristocracy
remains the dominant feature of capitalism even as there has been resistance in the
form of workers cooperatives. Could there be in the US context, more viable examples of workers'
self managing institutions, or
Workers Self Directed Enterprises (WSDEs)
to minimize the social divisions created by
capitalism.
This has been covered by others in ACM especially on Mondragon, but it is Summer, and revisiting
this is important for renewal as elections are coming, despite the usual villains. There perhaps
are those who have not had occasion to cover this material and perhaps there are some who would
like to augment their current state of understanding
certain
materialist philosophies
.
As daunting as the terminology might seem it does require us to
think about some basic ideas like embodied labor and living labor and the property relationships of
that labor. Wolff's video below is one of many resources essential to understand the problems of
stratified labor divisions, and the exploitation of value.
Contemporary capitalism no longer "delivers the goods" (which is understood as a rising
standard of real wages) to the majority of people. That classic defense of its instability (e.g.
recurrent bouts of unemployment), its deepening economic, political, and cultural inequalities,
and its attendant injustices is no longer plausible.
At a national scale, this is what Stephen Miller and Donald Trump are doing in Europe, when they
promote a coded racism in the discourse of immigration, as a dog whistle for US bigotry and social
division across classes, races, genders, and sexualities. This is the actual "culture war" where
the social justice warriors against diversity are those "very fine people" wearing implicit and
explicit icons for hatred and supremacy.
This is ugly.
Trump says that immigration is not "good for our country" because it is "changing the
culture."
pic.twitter.com/7zTXE9Miyh
As a piece in WaPo suggests "Trump's lies are not a defensive response to protect a political
legacy. Trump's lies are his legacy."
But the first step should be understanding that there are some specific historical modes of
production with the inevitable unevenness of development. " because human beings have a rational
interest in developing their capacities to control their interactions with external nature in order
to satisfy their wants, the historical tendency is strongly toward further development of these
capacities."
(Cohen)
Class struggle is made more complicated when
false consciousness
is enabled by a crony capitalism manipulating a labor aristocracy. Self
development gets thwarted and subjugation as wage slavery can be compared in the immigration
context to actual slavery as human trafficking occurs.
While living and working
conditions for workers in the "global North" have deteriorated sharply since the late 1960s, the
result has not been, for the most part, the growth of revolutionary consciousness. Instead we
have seen reactionary ideas – racism, sexism, homophobia, nativism, militarism – strengthened in
a significant sector of workers in the advanced capitalist countries. Since the late 1970s,
nearly one-third of U.S. voters in union households have voted for right-wing Republicans.
(1)
[...]
"Obviously, out of such
enormous super profits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists
squeeze out of the workers of their "own" country) it is possible to bribe their labor leaders
and an upper stratum of the labor aristocracy. And the capitalists of the "advanced" countries
do bribe them:
they bribe them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt
and covert."
Workers'
self-organization and self-activity in the workplace struggles is the starting point for
creating the material and ideological conditions for an effective challenge to working class
reformism and conservatism.
Clearly, militant workplace struggle is not a sufficient
condition for the development of radical and revolutionary consciousness among workers.
Struggles in working-class communities around housing, social welfare, transport and other
issues; and political struggles against racism and war are crucial elements in the political
self-transformation of the working class.
Successful workplace
struggles, however, are the necessary condition for the development of class consciousness.
Without the experience of such struggles, workers will continue to passively accept reformist
politics or, worse, embrace reactionary politics.
In
Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (2012),
Richard Wolff argues that global capitalism can no longer meet the needs of the world's
population. He goes onto note that socialism as it has been practiced during the twentieth
century cannot meet these needs either. His work is an attempt to construct a viable alternative
to global capitalism, centering on Marx's notion of surplus capital. Marx argued that one of the
most salient features of capitalism was that workers produce more than what they are paid for.
For instance, a worker may work eight hours a day but his labor in those eight hours may be
equivalent to twelve hours labor. It is the owners and managers that appropriate this surplus
labor, enrich themselves with it, and exploit the laborers in the process. What Wolff proposes
as an alternative are
Workers Self Directed Enterprises (WSDEs)
. In WSDEs,
workers, who produce surplus capital, are in charge of the profit, not owners, managers or
executives.
[...]
The last section of Wolff's work is an attempt to rethink the core
issue of the present; the massive inequality of wealth generated by global capitalism.
Here,Wolff articulates his vision of WSDEs. He claims that only WSDEs can actually be labeled
socialist because they represent the only instance in which surplus labor is appropriated by the
workers themselves. Wolff does not delve into specifics, such as the amount of property that
would need to be nationalized or at least held in collective control, or the degree of planning
needed.
His major question is the relationship between WSDE's, other capitalist
entities, and the government.
Wolff gives some insights as to the relationships that
may occur between these entities,,but does not speculate about interactions that cannot be known
in advance. He argues that just like any social advancement, the transition to WSDEs would not
be smooth or easy, and would be dictated in large part by the environment. Wolff does,however,
examine the possible social structures of WSDEs and their relation to surrounding communities.
WSDEs would be democratically controlled by workers,as well as the residents of the surrounding
community (since the decisions made by the workers would directly affect the community). In
addition, Wolff draws another distinction between producers and enablers. Producers actually
create surplus,while enablers, such as lawyers or janitors, allow producers to. Producers,
enablers, and members of the community all have a say in how the WSDE is run and how the surplus
is divided.
The problem as it always has been is the role of institutions like banks and the dilemma of
advanced technology. The interesting question is whether there could be a WSDE in Silicon Valley,
or WSDE schools.
The complex network of cycles of digital labour.(Fuchs)
Baltimore Worker co-op Red Emma's proves the power and potential for this model.
"From a founding group of seven, they�re up to 25 worker-owners, all earning a living
wage. The new location will allow for 10 more worker-owners � and they�re adding a
bar."
https://t.co/4GvTuNnVbu
� Black Socialists of America (@BlackSocialists)
June 11, 2018
(1/6)
"It's really only 'do ya got it?' or 'do ya not have it?'
And if ya have it, you can be the employer.
And if you don't, [then] ya can't [be the employer].
The fact that the employer who has it didn't produce it is a nagging problem we
prefer not to ask [about]."
(2/6)
"The logic would be, gee, the worker added the value; [they] SHOULD GET IT!
'CAUSE [THEY] GAVE IT!
[THEY] CREATED IT!
...
Do you think that happens in Capitalism?
No, you don't, do you?
We don't give the worker the value added... EVER, in Capitalism."
(3/6)
"[The Capitalist] has to rip the workers off...
[The Capitalist] has to STEAL from them part of what their labor added.
...
The condition of your employment is that you produce more by your labor than you get
paid.
Welcome to the capitalist system."
(4/6)
"The best way to describe your work in a capitalist enterprise is not that the
employer gives YOU a job; it's that you give your employer THE SURPLUS!
The 'giver' and the 'getter' are in reversed order from what the language suggests."
(5/6)
"What is 'Socialism,' given what I've described here?
...
The workers will still come to work ... but ... the surplus?
They get that.
...
What is the simple American phrase that captures this?
'Worker co-op.'
It's very old...
You don't need a new [theory]..."
(6/6)
It is time that Leftists come back to the essence of Scientific Socialism and, using
the method of dialectical materialism, truly evaluate the means by which we achieve
true "liberation" within the 21st century.
The revolution begins with us, and it begins in the workplace.
You can find the full lecture from Professor Wolff (
@profwolff
)
through the "Recommended Videos" section of our official resource guide linked below:
Note: If you are more of a visual or audio learner, then please
scroll down to see our "Recommended Videos" list. That said, a certain
degree of reading will be required for you to achieve a thorough
understanding of Socialism as a concept, in addition to the means by
which we are to reach a Socialist/Communist society.
The following list of readings are articles or excerpts from larger
works for those of you who may not feel like devoting hours out of each
day to diving deep into understanding Socialism. This reading list is
for people who may get the basic gist of why Capitalism is bad, but who
may not be too familiar with Socialism as a theory. Much of these works
deal with secondhand interpretations or explanations, so please make
sure to explore more fundamental works further down below.
With these readings, you'll have to think deeply, but maybe not as
long or hard as you would have to think when reading an entire book:
Most of these works are incredibly long and dense, so many of you
probably won't take the time to read through them, but Marxists.org has
plenty of content that summarizes and provides analyses on much of what
is shared here, and it also provides key excerpts.
These are works that are considered essential readings for
understanding the foundation upon which we base our socialist theory
and/or understanding today, in conjunction with historical records (in
other words:
this is some OG sh!t
):
An
economic system
consisting
of self-managed enterprises is sometimes referred to as a
participatory economy
,
self-managed economy
or
cooperative economy
. This economic model is a
major version of market socialism and decentralized planned economy, stemming from the
notion that people should be able to participate in making the decisions that affect
their well-being. The major proponents of self-managed market socialism in the 20th
century include the economists
Benjamin Ward
,
Jaroslav
Vanek
and Branko Horvat.
[5]
The Ward-Vanek model of self-management involves the diffusion of entrepreneurial roles
amongst all the partners of the enterprise.
Branko Horvat notes that participation is not simply more
desirable but also more economically viable than traditional hierarchical and
authoritarian management as demonstrated by econometric measurements, which indicate an
increase in efficiency with greater participation in decision-making. According to
Horvat, these developments are moving the world toward a self-governing socialistic
mode of organization.
[6]
In the economic theory of self-management,
workers are no longer employees but partners in the administration of their enterprise.
Management theories in favor of greater self-management and self-directed activity cite
the importance of autonomy for productivity in the firm, and economists in favor of
self-management argue that cooperatives are more efficient than centrally-managed firms
because every worker receives a portion of the profit, thereby directly tying their
productivity to their level of compensation.
Perhaps the best that can occur considering the entrenched hegemony of pre-capitalist
organization of universities and its constant attempt to make schools into factories, is
an
Online
Unversity of the Left.
A mode of production combines productive
forces and relations of production.
a
mode
of production
(in German: Produktionsweise, meaning "the way of producing") is a
specific combination of the following:
Productive forces
: these include human
labour
power
and
means of production
(e.g. tools, productive machinery, commercial and industrial
buildings, other infrastructure, technical knowledge, materials, plants, animals and
exploitable land).
Social and technical
relations of production
: these include the property, power and control relations
governing society's productive assets (often codified in law), cooperative work relations
and forms of association, relations between people and the objects of their work and the
relations between social classes.
By performing social
surplus
labour
in a specific system of property relations, the labouring classes constantly
reproduce
the foundations of the social order. A mode of production normally shapes the
mode of distribution, circulation and consumption and is regulated by the
state
.
New productive forces will cause conflict in the
current mode of production. When conflict arises, the modes of production can evolve within
the current structure or cause a complete breakdown.
www.polecom.org/
The Political Economy of Communication, Vol 1, No 2 (2013) Theorising
and analysing digital labour: From global value chains to modes of production Christian
Fuchs, University of Westminster
One problem is that state provided corporate structures are not useful (I wonder
why...). For example, here in Washington we have the "T-Corp" for worker coops ( as
opposed to C- and S-corps and LLCs) that suffer from the founders equity problem. In
Mondragon they solved this by taking the accumulated capital of out of the business as
pension investments in the coop bank, but in the T- Corp you have to leave the capital
in the business. This makes it impossible for the company to grow by attracting new
workers after some time has gone by because no one can buy in.
When I set up such a business about 20 years ago, we got around this by making an
S-Corp with custom bylaws. It cost about $1k back then, but it may be more now (and I'm
sure FL has its own special issues). But that is how to go about it IMHO.
Only problem is they don't exist where I live in Flawer'Duh. If I could start
one, I would. Sadly I don't have the capital necessary to do so.
@Hawkfish
of your first-hand experiences. You said you're in Washington
[state?]
I hear there are a few states that are more co-op friendly, like CA or VT
...
Here in SC the S-Corp with custom bylaws would be the route I would select, but I
was contemplating using another state ...
One problem is that state provided corporate structures are not useful (I
wonder why...). For example, here in Washington we have the "T-Corp" for worker
coops ( as opposed to C- and S-corps and LLCs) that suffer from the founders
equity problem. In Mondragon they solved this by taking the accumulated capital
of out of the business as pension investments in the coop bank, but in the T-
Corp you have to leave the capital in the business. This makes it impossible for
the company to grow by attracting new workers after some time has gone by because
no one can buy in.
When I set up such a business about 20 years ago, we got around this by making
an S-Corp with custom bylaws. It cost about $1k back then, but it may be more now
(and I'm sure FL has its own special issues). But that is how to go about it
IMHO.
So I don't remember much. But we required all workers (we only got up to
three) to be equal shareholders and paid out all earnings every year. But
unfortunately I don't even have the bylaws any more.
#1.2
of your first-hand experiences. You said you're in Washington
[state?]
I hear there are a few states that are more co-op friendly, like CA or VT
...
Here in SC the S-Corp with custom bylaws would be the route I would select,
but I was contemplating using another state ...
that is the problem, although it does suggest that more effort needs to be put into how
under neoliberal capitalism, entrepreneurship can be more inclusive of co-ops
and something people with investment money can create. Sadly most folks in the US can't
afford a $500 expense. However if people can jump into the gig economy...seems they could
jump into a coop economy. I know Dr. Wolff's org helps with grants and legal work. It
takes some motivation and a lot of dedication to swim up stream rather than just following
the path they create to the part-time wal-mart greeter, stocker, cashier non-career. We
live in the new world of slavery tied by the chains of debt and enforced with lives in
private prison....breathe the freedom of capitalism.
They provide both capital and (if necessary) business plans. To bootstrap the
process you need some of both from the original companies. But as you say most people's
can't afford the startup costs.
and something people with investment money can create. Sadly most folks in the US
can't afford a $500 expense. However if people can jump into the gig economy...seems
they could jump into a coop economy. I know Dr. Wolff's org helps with grants and
legal work. It takes some motivation and a lot of dedication to swim up stream
rather than just following the path they create to the part-time wal-mart greeter,
stocker, cashier non-career. We live in the new world of slavery tied by the chains
of debt and enforced with lives in private prison....breathe the freedom of
capitalism.
They provide both capital and (if necessary) business plans. To bootstrap the
process you need some of both from the original companies. But as you say most
people's can't afford the startup costs.
If this is true, then restructure all of your current enterprises into WSDE
cooperatives (Worker Self-Directed Enterprises).
Let the workers control the means of production in a democratic and environmentally
sound fashion.
https://t.co/sQwPVAx0GA
-- Black Socialists of America (@BlackSocialists)
June 16, 2018
By the way, I am actually a socialist.
Just not the kind that shifts resources from most productive to least productive,
pretending to do good, while actually causing harm. True socialism seeks greatest good
for all.
Bernie Town Hall Tonight: Changing The Narrative Again By Using His Platform To Give People's Stories A Chance to Be Heard
Where Corporate Media Utterly Fails
Mark from Queens on Mon, 07/16/2018 - 9:18pm This is gonna be quick. I just remembered that Bernie Sanders is holding another
one of his excellent town halls tonight. This one is called "CEO's vs. Workers."
Before the negativity comes in, let me say clearly that this isn't a Bernie is our savior bit or arguing for electoral salvation
or whatever. It's simply a recognition of someone with a platform putting in the time to make sure these stories are seen and documented
for posterity, despite whatever limitations inherent in the broadcast's reach. I see this as highly commendable - and potent.
The story here that made me turn on the computer and hit "new essay" was from a young woman working for Disneyland in Anaheim,
who tells of how brutal it is trying to survive on $12 an hour, having to cram roommates in to barely make the rent.
Then she mentions that some of her co-workers are living in their cars. Many have lost their homes and/or living in motels.
There's also a Tent City, which extends to a larger Orange County problem, where more Disney co-workers are living. One of here co-workers
was so ashamed of her situation that she told nobody that she was living in her car - and went missing and later found dead in it.
She then admits a great fear of losing her home, saying there are no resources to be found if you're in that position. (Her story
begins around the 18min mark).
Quite frankly, it's fucking heartbreaking and angering to listen to these people humbly tell their stories to the public without
shame.
People in this country are not hearing these stories . And because of it, are easily kept distracted by corporate media
manufactured controversy and divide and conquer by partisan ideologues. They're not having their own realities reflected back to
them; are instead bred to be in a constant state of fear about things that don't effect their everyday lives and led to believe relatively
inconsequential things are more important than fundamental ones that do effect their daily lives.
Every one of these Bernie townhalls (I've seen two others) have been riveting. This guy is single-handedly trying to give a platform
to marginalized and dispossessed voices. Nothing like this ever gets on tv. Anytime there's a corporate attempt to do something similar
it's a highly controlled, stilted affair. His are the opposite.
To me this is an example of how to change the narrative, which is the linchpin to everything. Why can't we get more people at
a quicker pace to align themselves in solidarity to what we think and espouse here? Because there isn't a forum for the downtrodden,
the castaways, the ripped off, the overworked and underpaid, the isolated, to tell their stories on a large scale. When people here
stories firsthand there is a much better chance of building the kid of empathy and compassion at the heart of forming coalitions
and/or support for those outside of one's life's station or class.
Of course it's all relative. And Bernie, despite being the most popular politician by far, doesn't have the reach of CNN. But
it is something. And if this could inspire more of these types of panel discussion that dignify the working class it could revolutionize
how narratives
get built.
This is the difference between people reading about this stuff and moving on, and having to look into the eyes of the afflicted
and being moved to act.
If this can't work on the American public to rile up indignation and compassion we're completely hopeless.
Simply put, firsthand stories are so potent. He's really onto something with these townhalls giving folks the opportunity to
speak their truth. No pundits, annoying talking heads, slick stage set.
No matter what you think of him, there's nobody in politics who comes close to what he's done to change the narrative. He continues
to impact and expand it to include the real issues of people's lives (lack of healthcare, joblessness, being underpaid and overworked,
etc.) that are completely ignored by the MSM.
Change The Narrative. Propaganda. What is the public corralled into talking about next? Almost always something to distract
from how bad things really are.
Simply put, firsthand stories are so potent. He's really onto something with these townhalls giving folks the opportunity to
speak their truth. No pundits, annoying talking heads, slick stage set.
No matter what you think of him, there's nobody in politics who comes close to what he's done to change the narrative. He continues
to impact and expand it to include the real issues of people's lives (lack of healthcare, joblessness, being underpaid and overworked,
etc.) that are completely ignored by the MSM.
Change The Narrative. Propaganda. What is the public corralled into talking about next? Almost always something to distract
from how bad things really are.
But Burnme is not.
Once again he refuses to broadcast the spectacle of american political corruption while laying the blame on russia.
Rather than make clear that interference in our elections is unacceptable, Trump instead accepted Putin's denials and cast
doubt on the conclusions of our intelligence community. This is not normal.
@Pricknick is the phrase "This is not normal." We are a fascist state, and it IS normal, just as the kidnapping and torturing
small children by Trump's Gestapo is normal. (We might want to do something about it?)
Ditto Trump's obsequious ass kissing of Putin in Helsinki, proving he is a Russian asset the same way Frank Burns (on MASH)
was a North Korean asset.
Bernie, however, points out the obvious (or what would be obvious if anyone cared to look), that even "blue states" hide an
economic hellscape. Obama's bailout of the banks and reinflation of the housing bubble enriched the One Percent but left everyone
else behind. Those who can't afford $750,000 crap shacks either end up homeless or get stuck with hours-long commutes to reach
their jobs. Here in Portland we have so many tent cities you would think you stepped back into the 1930s.
Welcome to Hell. Maybe Bernie and others can show us the way out. If only we listen this time.
But Burnme is not.
Once again he refuses to broadcast the spectacle of american political corruption while laying the blame on russia.
Rather than make clear that interference in our elections is unacceptable, Trump instead accepted Putin's denials and cast
doubt on the conclusions of our intelligence community. This is not normal.
@SancheLlewellyn
And PLEASE don't misunderstand me, I'm NOT dismissing their plight. I'm glad that someone is showing the desperation of people
whose problems are NOT from their life choices i.e. prison, drugs, dropping out of High School.
Move to the Midwest. Housing is expensive here too, but $750,000 is a mansion. In my Chicago Suburb there are still houses
under $150,000, usually small (1200-1500 sq ft) 1950's tract houses. There are 20 houses right now for sale between $250,000 and
$300,000, quite nice houses built in the last thirty years. There are even 14 houses between $400,000 and $500,000 that look so
upscale I can only dream about them (and dream of affording them). Illinois minimum wage is only $8.25 but even McDonald's is
paying $12.
Taxes are regressive and horrendous. And the Weather sucks big time. But it's better than trying to live on $12 an hour in California.
The coasts are now only for the elite and their servants.
The weather is better in the South, but society and politics are extremely conservative.
#2 is the phrase "This is not normal." We are a fascist state, and it IS normal, just as the kidnapping and torturing small
children by Trump's Gestapo is normal. (We might want to do something about it?)
Ditto Trump's obsequious ass kissing of Putin in Helsinki, proving he is a Russian asset the same way Frank Burns (on MASH)
was a North Korean asset.
Bernie, however, points out the obvious (or what would be obvious if anyone cared to look), that even "blue states" hide an
economic hellscape. Obama's bailout of the banks and reinflation of the housing bubble enriched the One Percent but left everyone
else behind. Those who can't afford $750,000 crap shacks either end up homeless or get stuck with hours-long commutes to reach
their jobs. Here in Portland we have so many tent cities you would think you stepped back into the 1930s.
Welcome to Hell. Maybe Bernie and others can show us the way out. If only we listen this time.
@SancheLlewellyn I'm sorry but come on now. As for this being normal you'd be correct but it surely wasn't only Trump
that normalized this, it's been normalized for a long damned time but most simply don't look at it, especially when it's a "Democrat"
at the helm with a pretty smiling face assuring us that everything will be fine as long as we play along with them.
Hell is already here but buying into that Russia crapola is a cop out - Russia didn't cut high end taxes repeatedly while the
rest of the country went to shit. Russia didn't bail out the banks at taxpayer expense and tell the taxpayers to pound sand and
STFU. Russia is not fighting wars for global domination all over the planet and it does not have almost 1000 foreign bases all
over the world.
Can Bernie save us? He'd best get off that Russia crap as even he knows good and damned well that our continued "defense" budgets
cannot continue alongside Medicare for All, etc, etc, etc. THAT is the elephant in the room that apparently even Bernie is simply
not willing to address.
#2 is the phrase "This is not normal." We are a fascist state, and it IS normal, just as the kidnapping and torturing small
children by Trump's Gestapo is normal. (We might want to do something about it?)
Ditto Trump's obsequious ass kissing of Putin in Helsinki, proving he is a Russian asset the same way Frank Burns (on MASH)
was a North Korean asset.
Bernie, however, points out the obvious (or what would be obvious if anyone cared to look), that even "blue states" hide an
economic hellscape. Obama's bailout of the banks and reinflation of the housing bubble enriched the One Percent but left everyone
else behind. Those who can't afford $750,000 crap shacks either end up homeless or get stuck with hours-long commutes to reach
their jobs. Here in Portland we have so many tent cities you would think you stepped back into the 1930s.
Welcome to Hell. Maybe Bernie and others can show us the way out. If only we listen this time.
@lizzyh7
That part is disputable but the rest is absolutely correct.
Remember, in politics, whether local or global, there doesn't have to be a good guy and a bad guy. Most often there are two
(or more) bad guys.
#2.1 I'm sorry but come on now. As for this being normal you'd be correct but it surely wasn't only Trump that normalized
this, it's been normalized for a long damned time but most simply don't look at it, especially when it's a "Democrat" at the helm
with a pretty smiling face assuring us that everything will be fine as long as we play along with them.
Hell is already here but buying into that Russia crapola is a cop out - Russia didn't cut high end taxes repeatedly while the
rest of the country went to shit. Russia didn't bail out the banks at taxpayer expense and tell the taxpayers to pound sand and
STFU. Russia is not fighting wars for global domination all over the planet and it does not have almost 1000 foreign bases all
over the world.
Can Bernie save us? He'd best get off that Russia crap as even he knows good and damned well that our continued "defense" budgets
cannot continue alongside Medicare for All, etc, etc, etc. THAT is the elephant in the room that apparently even Bernie is simply
not willing to address.
This comment is just another example of the trump hysteria that has taken over.
#2 is the phrase "This is not normal." We are a fascist state, and it IS normal, just as the kidnapping and torturing small
children by Trump's Gestapo is normal. (We might want to do something about it?)
Ditto Trump's obsequious ass kissing of Putin in Helsinki, proving he is a Russian asset the same way Frank Burns (on MASH)
was a North Korean asset.
Bernie, however, points out the obvious (or what would be obvious if anyone cared to look), that even "blue states" hide an
economic hellscape. Obama's bailout of the banks and reinflation of the housing bubble enriched the One Percent but left everyone
else behind. Those who can't afford $750,000 crap shacks either end up homeless or get stuck with hours-long commutes to reach
their jobs. Here in Portland we have so many tent cities you would think you stepped back into the 1930s.
Welcome to Hell. Maybe Bernie and others can show us the way out. If only we listen this time.
expressing what I also believe is Bernie's intent. The deep state might be able to keep him from being president, but they
have not yet silenced him. They ensure the msm doesn't cover his town halls, but they are found and spread far and wide anyway.
When I was a manager, I would tell my employees that if I didn't know something was broken, I couldn't fix it. Bernie continues
to publicize what is broken.
It is up to we, the people, to fix it through revolution. It's the only way.
I'm glad you posted this. Bernie is one of a handful of D.C. politicians that addresses the plight of the working poor. Most
Democrats talk about the difficulties of the middle class since that's a "safe" topic.
@karl pearson
Most of the working poor think they are lower middle class and not at all like welfare people. Often, they are the most conservative.
It's easy to have that outlook when things are always going against you. Most haven't caught on that the Democrats are no longer
their friends and haven't been for around half a century. Some realize that the Republicans never have been. Others think if one
side (D) has a black hat the other (R) must have a white hat. They actually think that Trump is their friend. "If he's Hillary's
enemy, he must be my friend."
Last month's Supreme Court ruling scrapping the 41-year-old ruling requiring non-union
government workers to pay into union tills was also a major blow to workers' collective
bargaining rights, and a big victory for the ultra-rich, far-right financiers who also backed
Trump. The court's decision came amid an ongoing wave of attacks on workers' rights --
including anti-union propaganda campaigns, litigation, and so-called "right-to-work" laws that
undermine workers' rights, grievance procedures, wages and benefits.
"The Janus decision can be understood as a reflection of the prevailing politics of the
time," Baraka observed.
"That is reflected in the make-up of the court and the relative weakness of organized labor
and the bipartisan understanding that the neoliberal project requires the containment of the
working class," he continued.
So the court as an instrument of class rule has been quite consistent."
A glance at the Judicial Branch's record shows the pivotal role it's played disempowering
the hard-fought protections won by U.S. workers. In O'Connor v Ortega [1987], the court
ruled that employees could be searched at
work as if they were suspected criminals. In Wards Cove Packing Co v
Atonio [1989] the court decided in favor of preventing discrimination claims from being
brought against employers, although this was eventually reversed. And in Hoffman Plastic
Compounds, Inc v NLRB [2002], the decision was made to strip undocumented workers of
their right to organize a union.
Invariably drawn from the top layers of U.S. society, the justices of the Supreme Court are
clearly bound to represent the class interests of the de facto aristocracy and capitalists who
hold a monopoly on political and social power in the United States. For critics, this belies
any attempt to depict the court as having ever been progressive.
"Line them up; until recently they were all male, WASP All of the judges are from Ivy League
universities and aside from Sotomayor, they have never known poor people – the Supreme
Court is already racist and fascist," Acuña said.
"Decisions favoring labor have been rare, social issues rarer – the problem is we are
delusional," he added.
Lifelong social movement organizer and historian Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author of An
Indigenous People's History of the United States , is likewise skeptical.
"It certainly seems unlikely that social justice movements can make use of the courts,"
Dunbar-Ortiz told MintPress News.
She continued:
I believe that since the 1950s, we have relied too much on the notion that the liberal
"living constitution" theory would prevail, but I always had doubts that it was a good idea,
rather than the more difficult route of building a progressive congress, electoral politics,
taking the easy way of the courts, giving lawyers central roles rather than politics in
command."
The last century began with few workers' rights and massive inequality. Two World Wars, an
economic depression, and the Cold War convinced the money class that their survival required
them to share.
We enter this century with workers' rights fading, freedom and democracy attacked, and
inequality growing.
They tell us that this time is different and the excesses of the past are not a threat. That
globalization, interconnectedness (human and electronic), and electronic commerce eliminate the
need for unions, Glass-Steagall, labor laws, limits on campaign finance, and even facts. That
concentration of wealth and power are in our collective best interests. That smaller government
will free us to realize our true potentials. That corporations know best and will serve us
better than governments ever could and do so at lower cost. That we should trust them. That
they are wiser. That they know how things truly work. That if we do not allow them to establish
a new order, then things will just get much worse.
And they are now dismantling the old order responsible for stable financial markets, livable
wages with benefits, upward economic mobility, human dignity, accountability from the power and
money classes, and respect for those not like ourselves. And if they are wrong which I believe
they are, then we are certain to endure a misery not even seen in the last century.
The trumpkins clearly choose not to consider the reality of a global supply chain and the
interconnected nature of manufacturing. A report in the auto section of the Chicago tribune
pointed out the Honda Odyssey is the second most American made vehicle based on here its parts
are sourced. We see tRump and his minions on TV touting all the false claims outlined by Dr. K.
The lies are easily fact checked against actual data but tRump and his minions fully understand
his base plus many more Republicans who should actually know better will lap up the lies and
keep cheering USA until they drive things off a cliff like the last Republican Administration.
We can only hope next time will not be worse.
Neoliberals are a flavor of Trotskyites and they will reach any depths to hang on to power.
Notable quotes:
"... Just as conservative Christian theology provides an excuse for sexism and homophobia, neoliberal language allows powerful groups to package their personal preferences as national interests – systematically cutting spending on their enemies and giving money to their friends. ..."
"... Nothing short of a grass roots campaign (such as that waged by GetUp!) will get rid for us of these modern let-them-eat-cake parasites who consider their divine duty to lord over us. ..."
Just as conservative Christian theology provides an excuse for sexism and homophobia, neoliberal language allows powerful
groups to package their personal preferences as national interests – systematically cutting spending on their enemies and giving
money to their friends.
And when the conservative "Christians" form a neoliberal government, the results are toxic for all, except themselves and their
coterie.
Nothing short of a grass roots campaign (such as that waged by GetUp!) will get rid for us of these modern let-them-eat-cake
parasites who consider their divine duty to lord over us.
"... For example, when a Republican talks about "freedom" they don't mean "freedom from want". They mean "freedom from government oppression", but only government oppression. ..."
"... Democrats act the same way about different things. When a Democrat says "diversity", they only mean diversity of race, gender, or sexual orientation. Diversity of ideas? Diversity of class? Not so much. When a Democrat says "privilege" it refers to "white" and "male". Privilege of wealth? (i.e. like the dictionary definition) That generally gets forgotten. ..."
"... -- Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW) ..."
"... @thanatokephaloides ..."
"... -- Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW) ..."
I've come to realize that there's a lot of confusion out there due to people using words with very specific definitions.
For example, when a Republican talks about "freedom" they don't mean "freedom from want".
They mean "freedom from government oppression", but only government oppression.
Private oppression? Republicans will either deny it exists, or justify it.
When a Republican is "pro-life" it only refers to birth.
Because those very same pro-life people are generally pro-war and pro-death penalty.
Democrats act the same way about different things.
When a Democrat says "diversity", they only mean diversity of race, gender, or sexual orientation.
Diversity of ideas? Diversity of class? Not so much.
When a Democrat says "privilege" it refers to "white" and "male".
Privilege of wealth? (i.e. like the dictionary definition) That generally gets forgotten.
And then there is the bipartisan misuse of words, which revolves around war and wealth.
When they say "humanitarian war" they mean, um, some contradictory concepts that are meaningless, but are designed to make you feel
a certain way.
When they say "socialism" they really mean "state oppression" regardless of the economic system.
As for the many version of socialism with minimal or non-existent central governments? Or when socialist programs work? No one talks
about them.
Let's not forget substituting or mixing up "middle class" for "working class".
"Working class" now equals "poor", which isn't right.
They use "working class" as a smear too.
When you say "working class" some people
automatically insert certain words in front of it, as if it's generally understood.
When many hear discussion of outreach to "working class" voters, they silently add the words "white" and "male" and all too often
imagine them working on a factory floor or in construction. They shouldn't. According to another analysis by CAP from late last
year, just under 6 in 10 members of the working class are white, and the group is almost half female (46 percent).
The topic of the needs and interests of the working class is usually race and gender neutral. Only the dishonest or indoctrinated
can't wrap their minds around that fact.This is important because working class values don't require a race or gender lens.
a new report released today by the Center for American Progress makes a convincing argument, using extensive polling data, that
this divide does not need to exist. As it turns out, in many cases, voters -- both college educated and working class, and of
all races -- are in favor of an economic agenda that would offer them broader protections whether it comes to work, sickness or
retirement.
"The polling shows that workers across race support similar views on economic policy issues," said David Madland, the co-author
of the report, entitled "The Working-Class Push for Progressive Economic Policies." "They support a higher minimum wage, higher
taxes on the wealthy, and more spending on healthcare and retirement. There is broad support among workers for progressive economic
policy."
This shows that it's possible to make economic issues front and center in a campaign platform in a way that doesn't just talk
to working class whites and dismisses the concerns of female and minority voters. It also shows that the oft-discussed dilemma
among Democrats -- whether to prioritize college educated voters or working class ones -- may be a false choice.
Propaganda is all about false choices. To accomplish this, the media has created a world in which the working class
exist only in the margins .
With the working class largely unrepresented in the media, or represented only in supporting roles, is it any wonder that people
begin to identify in ways other than their class? Which is exactly what the
ruling class
wants .
I can't believe I used to fall for this nonsense! It takes a stupendous level of cognitive dissonance to simultaneously celebrate
the fortunes of someone from a specific identity while looking past the vast sea of people from said identity who are stuck in
gut-wrenching poverty. We pop champagnes for the neo-gentry while disregarding our own tribulations. It's the most stunning form
of logical jujitsu establishment shills have successfully conditioned us to accept; instead of gauging the health of the economy
and the vitality of our nation based on the collective whole, we have been hoodwinked to accept the elevation of a few as success
for us all.
Diversity has become a scam and nothing more than a corporate bamboozle and a federated scheme that is used to hide the true nature
of crony capitalism. We have become a Potemkin society where tokens are put on the stage to represent equality while the vast
majority of Americans are enslaved by diminishing wages or kneecapped into dependency. The whole of our politics has been turned
into an identity-driven hustle. On both sides of the aisle and at every corner of the social divide are grievance whisperers and
demagogues who keep spewing fuel on the fire of tribalism. They use our pains and suffering to make millions only to turn their
backs on us the minute they attain riches and status.
It's only when you see an article written by the ruling elite, or one that identifies with the ruling elite, that you realize
just how out-of-touch they can be. The rich really
are different - they are sociopaths.
They've totally and completely bought into their own
righteousness,
merit and virtue .
Class ascendance led me to become what Susan Jacoby classifies in her recent New York Times Op-Ed "Stop Apologizing for Being
Elite" as an "elite": a vague description of a group of people who have received advanced degrees. Jacoby urges elites to reject
the shame that they have supposedly recently developed, a shame that somehow stems from failing to stop the working class from
embracing Trumpism. Jacoby laments that, following the 2016 election, these elites no longer take pride in their wealth, their
education, their social status, and posits that if only elites embraced their upward mobility, the working class would have something
to aspire to and thus discard their fondness for Trump and his promises to save them.
That level of condescension just blows my mind. It occurred to me some time ago that I have much more in common with a working
class slob in France, or Mexico, or Brazil, or Russia, than I do with the wealthy elite in my own country. Don't think that the wealthy
haven't figured that out too.
That is the only word you need pay attention to.
I am inferior therefore expendable.
How the lofty will fail. They will succumb to those who are lessor in their minds.
Nice post gjohn.
That is the only word you need pay attention to.
I am inferior therefore expendable.
How the lofty will fail. They will succumb to those who are lessor in their minds.
Nice post gjohn.
It occurred to me some time ago that I have much more in common with a working class slob in France, or Mexico, or Brazil,
or Russia, than a do with the wealthy elite in my own country.
Don't think that the wealthy haven't figured that out too.
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.
There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among
millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing
class, have all the good things of life.
-- Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW) source
@thanatokephaloides I have been a worker and an employer for most of my career. I associate with many of the same ilk.
None of us working / employer types can afford to hire the millions of under employed. Maybe a few here and there. We are not
wealthy, nor are we taking advantage of the poor. Try to put this lofty idealism into perspective.
It occurred to me some time ago that I have much more in common with a working class slob in France, or Mexico, or Brazil,
or Russia, than a do with the wealthy elite in my own country.
Don't think that the wealthy haven't figured that out too.
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.
There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among
millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing
class, have all the good things of life.
-- Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW) source
pay $125K per kid for college if you earn more than 125K. That makes zero sense. A parent has no legal obligation to a child
after age 18, but the 18 year old must include parental income if they apply for PELL. If they are included in their parents family,
then the family must be legally obligated to pay for college. 18 can legally die, go to war, be incarcerated, and contractually
bound, but they can't have a drink or be legally entitled to the same rights and benefits as everyone else.
Since the college-educated express less support at any price, it reeks of pettiness and tit for tat. "I paid for mine, you
pay for yours." It is no wonder there is so much resentment at all levels and an economic coalition can't be formed. Somebody
is always measuring who mom loves best. At no time did Bernie say a word about means testing a GD thing. It is why he was able
to transcend labels.
Since the college-educated express less support at any price, it reeks of pettiness and tit for tat. "I paid for mine, you
pay for yours."
Especially when one considers the chances of that being true are really quite small.
Contrary to the Randian beLIEf, they didn't build what they have all by themselves. Society carried quite a bit of the freight
here.
pay $125K per kid for college if you earn more than 125K. That makes zero sense. A parent has no legal obligation to a child
after age 18, but the 18 year old must include parental income if they apply for PELL. If they are included in their parents
family, then the family must be legally obligated to pay for college. 18 can legally die, go to war, be incarcerated, and contractually
bound, but they can't have a drink or be legally entitled to the same rights and benefits as everyone else.
Since the college-educated express less support at any price, it reeks of pettiness and tit for tat. "I paid for mine, you
pay for yours." It is no wonder there is so much resentment at all levels and an economic coalition can't be formed. Somebody
is always measuring who mom loves best. At no time did Bernie say a word about means testing a GD thing. It is why he was able
to transcend labels.
That starts out on disparities in housing, but rounds abouts to the "Elite Class" and the urban gentrification by corporatist
democrats. It points out how the democratic party caters to this elite wing, and how the NIMBY-ism of the elites blocks affordable
housing laws. It ends up with some observations:
"Taking it a step further, a Democratic Party based on urban cosmopolitan business liberalism runs the risk not only of leading
to the continued marginalization of the minority poor, but also -- as the policies of the Trump administration demonstrate --
to the continued neglect of the white working-class electorate that put Trump in the White House."
We really can't afford the wealthy parasite class anymore nor should we suffer their think tanks that make folks worship them
and their lifestyles of indulgence and greed!
I've come to realize that there's a lot of confusion out there due to people using words with very specific definitions.
For example, when a Republican talks about "freedom" they don't mean "freedom from want".
They mean "freedom from government oppression", but only government oppression.
Private oppression? Republicans will either deny it exists, or justify it.
When a Republican is "pro-life" it only refers to birth.
Because those very same pro-life people are generally pro-war and pro-death penalty.
Democrats act the same way about different things.
When a Democrat says "diversity", they only mean diversity of race, gender, or sexual orientation.
Diversity of ideas? Diversity of class? Not so much.
When a Democrat says "privilege" it refers to "white" and "male".
Privilege of wealth? (i.e. like the dictionary definition) That generally gets forgotten.
And then there is the bipartisan misuse of words, which revolves around war and wealth.
When they say "humanitarian war" they mean, um, some contradictory concepts that are meaningless, but are designed to make you feel
a certain way.
When they say "socialism" they really mean "state oppression" regardless of the economic system.
As for the many version of socialism with minimal or non-existent central governments? Or when socialist programs work? No one talks
about them.
Let's not forget substituting or mixing up "middle class" for "working class".
"Working class" now equals "poor", which isn't right.
They use "working class" as a smear too.
When you say "working class" some people
automatically insert certain words in front of it, as if it's generally understood.
When many hear discussion of outreach to "working class" voters, they silently add the words "white" and "male" and all too often
imagine them working on a factory floor or in construction. They shouldn't. According to another analysis by CAP from late last
year, just under 6 in 10 members of the working class are white, and the group is almost half female (46 percent).
The topic of the needs and interests of the working class is usually race and gender neutral. Only the dishonest or indoctrinated
can't wrap their minds around that fact.This is important because working class values don't require a race or gender lens.
a new report released today by the Center for American Progress makes a convincing argument, using extensive polling data, that
this divide does not need to exist. As it turns out, in many cases, voters -- both college educated and working class, and of
all races -- are in favor of an economic agenda that would offer them broader protections whether it comes to work, sickness or
retirement.
"The polling shows that workers across race support similar views on economic policy issues," said David Madland, the co-author
of the report, entitled "The Working-Class Push for Progressive Economic Policies." "They support a higher minimum wage, higher
taxes on the wealthy, and more spending on healthcare and retirement. There is broad support among workers for progressive economic
policy."
This shows that it's possible to make economic issues front and center in a campaign platform in a way that doesn't just talk
to working class whites and dismisses the concerns of female and minority voters. It also shows that the oft-discussed dilemma
among Democrats -- whether to prioritize college educated voters or working class ones -- may be a false choice.
Propaganda is all about false choices. To accomplish this, the media has created a world in which the working class
exist only in the margins .
With the working class largely unrepresented in the media, or represented only in supporting roles, is it any wonder that people
begin to identify in ways other than their class? Which is exactly what the
ruling class
wants .
I can't believe I used to fall for this nonsense! It takes a stupendous level of cognitive dissonance to simultaneously celebrate
the fortunes of someone from a specific identity while looking past the vast sea of people from said identity who are stuck in
gut-wrenching poverty. We pop champagnes for the neo-gentry while disregarding our own tribulations. It's the most stunning form
of logical jujitsu establishment shills have successfully conditioned us to accept; instead of gauging the health of the economy
and the vitality of our nation based on the collective whole, we have been hoodwinked to accept the elevation of a few as success
for us all.
Diversity has become a scam and nothing more than a corporate bamboozle and a federated scheme that is used to hide the true nature
of crony capitalism. We have become a Potemkin society where tokens are put on the stage to represent equality while the vast
majority of Americans are enslaved by diminishing wages or kneecapped into dependency. The whole of our politics has been turned
into an identity-driven hustle. On both sides of the aisle and at every corner of the social divide are grievance whisperers and
demagogues who keep spewing fuel on the fire of tribalism. They use our pains and suffering to make millions only to turn their
backs on us the minute they attain riches and status.
It's only when you see an article written by the ruling elite, or one that identifies with the ruling elite, that you realize
just how out-of-touch they can be. The rich really
are different - they are sociopaths.
They've totally and completely bought into their own
righteousness,
merit and virtue .
Class ascendance led me to become what Susan Jacoby classifies in her recent New York Times Op-Ed "Stop Apologizing for Being
Elite" as an "elite": a vague description of a group of people who have received advanced degrees. Jacoby urges elites to reject
the shame that they have supposedly recently developed, a shame that somehow stems from failing to stop the working class from
embracing Trumpism. Jacoby laments that, following the 2016 election, these elites no longer take pride in their wealth, their
education, their social status, and posits that if only elites embraced their upward mobility, the working class would have something
to aspire to and thus discard their fondness for Trump and his promises to save them.
That level of condescension just blows my mind. It occurred to me some time ago that I have much more in common with a working
class slob in France, or Mexico, or Brazil, or Russia, than I do with the wealthy elite in my own country. Don't think that the wealthy
haven't figured that out too.
That is the only word you need pay attention to.
I am inferior therefore expendable.
How the lofty will fail. They will succumb to those who are lessor in their minds.
Nice post gjohn.
That is the only word you need pay attention to.
I am inferior therefore expendable.
How the lofty will fail. They will succumb to those who are lessor in their minds.
Nice post gjohn.
It occurred to me some time ago that I have much more in common with a working class slob in France, or Mexico, or Brazil,
or Russia, than a do with the wealthy elite in my own country.
Don't think that the wealthy haven't figured that out too.
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.
There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among
millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing
class, have all the good things of life.
-- Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW) source
@thanatokephaloides I have been a worker and an employer for most of my career. I associate with many of the same ilk.
None of us working / employer types can afford to hire the millions of under employed. Maybe a few here and there. We are not
wealthy, nor are we taking advantage of the poor. Try to put this lofty idealism into perspective.
It occurred to me some time ago that I have much more in common with a working class slob in France, or Mexico, or Brazil,
or Russia, than a do with the wealthy elite in my own country.
Don't think that the wealthy haven't figured that out too.
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.
There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among
millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing
class, have all the good things of life.
-- Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW) source
pay $125K per kid for college if you earn more than 125K. That makes zero sense. A parent has no legal obligation to a child
after age 18, but the 18 year old must include parental income if they apply for PELL. If they are included in their parents family,
then the family must be legally obligated to pay for college. 18 can legally die, go to war, be incarcerated, and contractually
bound, but they can't have a drink or be legally entitled to the same rights and benefits as everyone else.
Since the college-educated express less support at any price, it reeks of pettiness and tit for tat. "I paid for mine, you
pay for yours." It is no wonder there is so much resentment at all levels and an economic coalition can't be formed. Somebody
is always measuring who mom loves best. At no time did Bernie say a word about means testing a GD thing. It is why he was able
to transcend labels.
Since the college-educated express less support at any price, it reeks of pettiness and tit for tat. "I paid for mine, you
pay for yours."
Especially when one considers the chances of that being true are really quite small.
Contrary to the Randian beLIEf, they didn't build what they have all by themselves. Society carried quite a bit of the freight
here.
pay $125K per kid for college if you earn more than 125K. That makes zero sense. A parent has no legal obligation to a child
after age 18, but the 18 year old must include parental income if they apply for PELL. If they are included in their parents
family, then the family must be legally obligated to pay for college. 18 can legally die, go to war, be incarcerated, and contractually
bound, but they can't have a drink or be legally entitled to the same rights and benefits as everyone else.
Since the college-educated express less support at any price, it reeks of pettiness and tit for tat. "I paid for mine, you
pay for yours." It is no wonder there is so much resentment at all levels and an economic coalition can't be formed. Somebody
is always measuring who mom loves best. At no time did Bernie say a word about means testing a GD thing. It is why he was able
to transcend labels.
That starts out on disparities in housing, but rounds abouts to the "Elite Class" and the urban gentrification by corporatist
democrats. It points out how the democratic party caters to this elite wing, and how the NIMBY-ism of the elites blocks affordable
housing laws. It ends up with some observations:
"Taking it a step further, a Democratic Party based on urban cosmopolitan business liberalism runs the risk not only of leading
to the continued marginalization of the minority poor, but also -- as the policies of the Trump administration demonstrate --
to the continued neglect of the white working-class electorate that put Trump in the White House."
We really can't afford the wealthy parasite class anymore nor should we suffer their think tanks that make folks worship them
and their lifestyles of indulgence and greed!
Domestic Work, Neoliberalism, and Transforming Labor Domestic Work, Neoliberalism, and Transforming Labor ... part-time
, and temporary work filled largely ... a global scale has intensified their exploitationand ...
When Exclusion Replaces
Exploitation : | nonsite.org When Exclusion Replaces Exploitation : ... and the politics pursued
during the decades following the rise of neoliberalism. ... youth, women, part-timeworkers , ...
Neoliberalism Thrhough
the Eyes of Women NEOLIBERALISM THRHOUGH THE EYES OF ... making women more vulnerable to possibilities of sexual
abuse and exploitation . ... And at the same time , the worker's ...
The continuing problems with
part-time jobs | Economic Policy ... The continuing problems with part-time jobs. by Jeffrey Wenger. While a handful
of recent studies have attempted to explain away the inequities between full- timeandpart-time work arrangements,
most research in the area of nonstandard work arrangements continues to find important differences in wages, benefits, and career
prospects between ...
An Exploited,
Dominated, and Oppressed Class? | The Public ... By S. D'Arcy. In the 19th century, European workers used to refer to themselves as an "oppressed
class," an expression that came to infuse the jargon of revolutionary socialists in that timeand place.
Neoliberalism - WikipediaPartof a series on the ... Exploitation : critics consider neoliberal economics to promote ... (less than two-thirds
the median wage for full- timeworkers ) ...
Neoliberalism Part 3 - James Paul
Gee
James Paul Gee Mary Lou Fulton ... disdain for evidence, and exploitationofworkers are all rampant. ... Neoliberalism
Part 6 (The End) June 14th, 2017.
Capitalism is a System of
Exploitation - CLEARNETExploitation . Capitalism is a system of ... workers get paid for only
a small partof what ... and over a third of the full time work force but receive only ...
The oppressed majority
| SocialistWorker.org The oppressed majority. ... a fight that each time ... While it's easy to recognize the
second partof this equation--the way violent repression is ...
The Good,
the Bad, and Wal-Mart - Workplace FairnessExploitationofWorkers . ... Workers claimed that the policy was designed
to force full- timeworkers to change to a part-time schedule, thereby saving Wal-Mart the ...
This Isn't Work, It's
Exploitation - Jacobin Under Neoliberalism, ... of work," from the gig economy to vouchers and the combination of school
with unpaid part-time work. ... Isn't Work, It's Exploitation .
Labor Rights
and Labor Movements - Global Policy Forum Labor Rights and Labor Movements. ... movement to strengthen workers' rights
- an essential partof the ... abused and exploited their workers . At the same time , ...
Neoliberalism as
concept: Economy and Society: Vol 44, No 2 Introduction. Neoliberalism is everywhere, but at the same time , nowhere. It is held to be the dominant
and pervasive economic policy agenda of our times , a powerful and expansive political agenda of class domination and exploitation
, the manifestation of 'capital resurgent', an overarching dystopian zeitgeist of late-capitalist excess.
Migrants at Risk: How U.S. Policies Facilitate Human ... A Continuum of Migrant Labor Exploitation . Trafficking into forced
labor exists on a continuum of exploitative labor practices. For many undocumented workers -- and some workers with temporary
work visas -- low pay, no pay, unsafe work conditions, job insecurity, and the absence of clear channels for redress are routine.
Editorials - Social Justice At the same time , improvements in ... global capitalism and neoliberalism as it affects workers in ...
for resisting the exploitationand alienation of workers .
Project MUSE - Sport and the Neoliberal University The contributors
to Sport and the Neoliberal University ... better partof 30 ... big- time " college football players as employees
who have a right ...
Labor Migration,
Self-reliance, and Neoliberal Government ... Labor Migration, Self-reliance, and Neoliberal Government Policy: Paint Factory Workers
in Shenzhen and Zhuhai, China Abstract This paper examines the effects that changes in the Chinese government's methods of labor
control have had
COSATU and NACTU memorandum on labour brokering ...
the working class in this country continues to reel under the pressure of neoliberalism ... of exploitationofworkers
. ... part-time employees from ...
Neoliberalism and
the Social Contract: A Historical ... (This is the first partof the essay. Two more will follow in the next few weeks)
Abstract Analyzing aspects of the tide of rightwing populism arising from the pluralistic-diversity model of neoliberalism, this
essay examines the evolving social contract that normalizes systemic exploitationand repression in the name
Neoliberal Capitalism
and Precarious Work Neoliberal Capitalism and Precarious Work; ... and often temporary and /or
part-time . ... Neoliberalism, Precarious Work and Remaking the Geography of Global Capitalism
neoliberalism | Political Research
Associates ... adopted the term "neoliberalism" as a pejorative to capture the policies of exploitation , ... work
to further affirm a neoliberal ... Part-Time /Adjunct ...
Neoliberalism
- investopedia.com he exact meaning and usage of the term has changed throughout time . In its
earliest sense, neoliberalism ... it may lead to workers ... can lead to exploitation ...
Temporary work - Wikipedia
Temporary workers may work full- time or part-time ... global processes of neoliberalism and market rule contributed
... which can lead to workerexploitation .
Fair Work Schedules:
The Next New Human Right ... rejection of neoliberalism. In China, workers' protests ... American
Prospect Co ... full- time to part-timeand back to full- time work ...
Farm
Workers & Immigration - : National Farm Worker Ministry Farm Workers & Immigration. Farm workers are the key to the U.S. food system, and
although our population relies on their labor to put food on the table, these workers lack basic rights, face exploitationand live in fear of reporting abuses.
Neoliberal
Globalization Africa´s Conflict Minerals the first time ever ... conclude the theoretical discussion with a look at the
rise of many alter neoliberal movements. The second partof ... the exploitation ...
Gig economy
is the mass exploitationof millennials Gig economy is the mass exploitationof ... the difference between a
young worker skipping meals to pay rent on time , ... and Strategy as partof The Youth Lab ...
What is neoliberalism?
- Blogger Neoliberalism (often also written ... enough last time " is always there.
The neoliberal pushers of the establishment know that pure ... to all of my work ...
Neoliberalism,
Political Economy and Africa - ROAPE Neoliberalism, Political Economy and Africa ... i.e. de Soto's work praising neoliberalism.
... call on underemployed workers , to whom they sub-contract partof the ...
What is neoliberalism?
/ Boing Boing What is neoliberalism? ... Where once the left said that the pollution and exploitationof industry were ... Any time someone starts talking about the planet's ...
Neoliberal Academia
and a Critique from Disability Studies ... This chapter addresses debilitating impacts of neoliberal academia and ways to resist it; and it does so through
critical analysis of disability studies. With insights of disability studies, it...
PDF UK employment
rights and the EU - TUC working people from exploitationand in combating discrimination. ... employment
rights settlement, ... these were part-time women workers ).
How does globalisation affect
women? How does globalisation affect women? ... exploitationand oppression. Women workers --the
... is raised timeand again by Indonesian workers is that ...
Has neoliberalism impacted men and women differently ... Extracts from this document... Introduction. Question: Has neoliberalism
impacted men and women differently? Even though all citizens in most of countries have equality rights on paper, they need to do
more much work to make also these equality rights a reality, for all people: men and women.
Neoliberalism - Counterfire The referendum is not a vote on whether we want to be 'partof ... workers are striking against
neoliberal ... time says James Meadway; Greek workers ...
Microcredit and
Women's Poverty | Dollars & Sense This ideology is partand parcel of neoliberalism. ... They either work parttime ,
or they combine paid and unpaid work by working at home. Microcredit encourages ...
More Neoliberal Art History
| nonsite.org More Neoliberal Art ... avoid -- the role that class conflict and exploitation plays in ... to readers
of Lee's earlier work, Chronophobia: On Time in the ...
Work Hours in Retail:
Room for Improvement Work Hours in Retail: Room for Improvement ... years, part-time work has spread to new
partsof retail and can entail very low guaranteed weekly
PDF Revised Laws of Mauritius
- MCCI Revised Laws of Mauritius E9B - 5 [Issue 5] "officer" means an officer designated by the Permanent Secretary;
" part-timeworker " means a worker whose normal hours of work are
PDF Reality
TV, or the secret theater of neoliberalism REALITY TV, OR THE SECRET THEATRE OF NEOLIBERALISM ... the division between work timeand
leisure time ... In the contemporary neoliberal economy workers are facing ...
Marxism
in the 21st Century: Alternative to Neoliberal ... The Marxist, XXVII 4, October-December 2011 Prakash Karat Marxism in the 21st
Century: Alternative to Neoliberal Capitalism and Imperialism* I Two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, the mood of capitalist
triumphalism that existed then, has vanished.
'Black part-time
jobs' exploit students - @JapanPress_wky Akahata editorial (excerpts) More and more college students work part-time under illegal working conditions,
the so-called "black part-time jobs", being burdened with excessive responsibilities and assigned quotas the same as permanent
employees.
Euphemisms
are dangerous - The Feministahood Euphemisms are dangerous ... These terms were first coined in the late 1970s and were taken up as partof a ... "Child sexual exploitation ...
How Liberal Democracy Promotes
Inequality - FPIF How Liberal Democracy Promotes Inequality. ... rise of neoliberalism in the North -- don't really
work when it comes to ... of a time we had ...
Works
Cited: On the "neoliberal rhetoric of harm" On the "neoliberal rhetoric of harm" ... people engaged in social justice work ... neoliberal
exploitation succeeds by ramping up and extending ...
Workers Quotes (54 quotes) - Goodreads
"Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal ... "During my time in high ... nitrogen and helium
gas as partof their daily work ...
What is exploitation
? - socialistworker.co.uk The term " exploitation " typically conjures up images ... Therefore the capitalist
is stealing from workers some of the value that ... it is partof the normal ...
Strategies for resistance under neoliberalism: lessons from ... This essay examines the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and the
Landless Workers' Movement and the ways that these movements have been able to persist for decades and surpass frequent limitations
of revolutionary action under neoliberalism.
Neoliberal
Globalization - Is There an Alternative to ... Is there an alternative to plundering the earth? Is there an alternative to making war? Is there
an alternative to destroying the planet? No one asks these questions because they seem absurd.
Neoliberalism has created a new political, economic, and cultural context through
deregulation, privatization, securitization, and the dismantling of the welfare state. These
changes have had a contradictory impact on women. Proponents of neoliberalism have praised the
benefits of an unfettered, market-driven economy, extolled the virtues of personal choice and
economic individualism as the keys to freedom, and argued that these ostensibly gender-blind
economic structures offer opportunities for the agency and empowerment of women. Women's human
rights have been part of the discursive and ideological justification for the implementation of
neoliberalism in many parts of the world. Some women, especially economically better-off,
educated women have benefitted from the dismantling of the old patriarchal order. However, as
many authors have argued, because neoliberalism promotes the idea of a rational individual
exercising free will while eroding social democracy, it has made life harder for most women and
has widened the race/class divide among women. I suggest that, despite the many negative
repercussions of neoliberal economic changes, these dramatic disruptions of the social order
may offer avenues for poor women's collective mobilization and progressive political
transformation.
Neoliberalism has reversed the benefits of social welfare citizenship that were a hallmark
of the twentieth-century Fordist state. Neoliberalism's dismantling of the economic safety net,
trend toward privatization, and rise of the security state have increased the burden on women.
The reduction or elimination of welfare benefits for the poor, cutback of social services,
reliance on market strategies, and mass incarceration have led to a crisis of social
reproduction and a corresponding increase in women's workloads. With a decline in social rights
and publicly-funded support services, women have access to fewer economic resources and must
either turn to the private sector or increase their own unpaid labor. In this way,
neoliberalism has intensified women's oppression and exploitation.
The rights of social citizenship instituted in the United States in the 1930s, however, were
far from egalitarian. They created and institutionalized a racialized and gendered hierarchy
with welfare policies that controlled and regulated women's behavior and reinforced the male
breadwinner/family wage model. Women were more likely to receive social benefits as dependents
rather than as independent individuals, and their benefits were stigmatized and less generous.
In addition, protective labor legislation excluded occupations such as agricultural, domestic,
part-time, and temporary work filled largely by women and people of color. These exclusions not
only left these workers in a precarious situation, but they circumscribed the very definition
of "work." Although some exclusions were eventually remedied, they had a long-lasting impact by
shaping Americans' notion of "real" work, which was most closely associated with the factory
floor, and excluded many women workers. And mainstream labor unions were only marginally
interested in organizing excluded sectors. The New Deal and other social reforms of the
mid-twentieth century naturalized a racial and gender hierarchy and established firm boundaries
for the rights of labor citizenship, which was tied to full-time, largely male employment.
Women and people of color were subordinated in this form of state-organized capitalism.
Despite its claims of race- and gender-neutrality, neoliberalism is replacing the old
hierarchies with new patterns of racism and sexism. There has been an increase in low-paid,
part-time contingent service sector and outsourced manufacturing work that relies
disproportionately on immigrant women of color. While women of color have always worked in
low-wage devalued occupations, the dramatic expansion of a low-wage service and manufacturing
sector on a global scale has intensified their exploitation and reshaped the labor market. This
has been coupled with new forms of discipline and control rooted in heightened xenophobia and
border control. These growing employment sectors tend to be without benefits or labor
protections, while full-time, well-paid, mostly male manufacturing jobs are on the decline.
This shift in the labor market has resulted in women increasingly carrying the burden of
financially supporting the family. The average American worker today is experiencing working
conditions similar to those experienced by workers excluded from the rights of labor
citizenship in the mid-twentieth century.
While the new political climate has made it more difficult for many women, it has also
generated activism among low-wage women workers at the grassroots level. The activism has been
most visible among immigrant day laborers, domestic workers, guest workers, farm workers, and
other sectors historically excluded from the protections of labor law. Neoliberalism's
dismantling of the New Deal's structured race/gender hierarchy has created an opening for
worker mobilization and may offer opportunities for rethinking work and justice. Because of
their exclusions, these workers out of necessity have developed innovative strategies for
organizing. I will draw on examples from domestic worker organizing to analyze how it offers
one model for grassroots, feminist labor organizing under neoliberalism.
New forms of domestic worker activism are flourishing outside the framework of the modern
welfare state. During the 1930s, domestic workers were excluded from New Deal social benefits
such as minimum wage, social security, unemployment compensation, and the right to organize and
bargain collectively. While they won certain of these benefits over the course of the twentieth
century, they still do not have the right to unionize and are not protected by civil rights and
occupational health and safety laws. Because they work in isolated settings in the privacy of
the home and often have multiple employers, domestic workers have generally been considered
"unorganizable."
The inability to organize into traditional unions has fostered alternative methods of
organizing. Domestic worker activists have organized by geography, rather than solely by
occupation; demanded state-based, rather than employer-based rights; developed democratic
grassroots political support, rather than relying on a union hierarchy and model of
representation and collective bargaining; and cultivated public support, rather than speaking
only to their constituency. They seek to revalue care work and regard it as legitimate work
that is entitled to the same rights and protections as other kinds of labor. Domestic worker
organizers employ an intersectional analysis that takes into account race, class, gender,
culture, and nationality that speaks to the particular needs of their immigrant, women-of-color
constituency. Through their organizing, domestic workers are challenging the neoliberal premise
of market fundamentalism and asserting the need for state regulation and protection of
labor.
In addition, domestic worker activists are modeling a notion of rights that is not
citizenship-based. Many social movements over the course of the twentieth century -- including
the civil rights and women's movements -- advocated inclusion in or expansion of the rights of
citizenship. Neoliberalism has led to population displacement and migration, and relies on
immigrant, especially undocumented immigrant, workers. These workers are usually denied
citizenship rights or state-based labor protections either because of their immigration status
or their occupation. Through organizing, however, they are pushing back against neoliberal
disciplinary mechanisms and offering new conceptualizations of justice outside the framework of
the nation-state. They seek state protections, but insist that these protections be extended
even to those outside the boundaries of state-based citizenship and, thus, may offer a way to
reconceptualize the role of the state. They organize both the documented and the undocumented
and make claims for these workers regardless of citizenship status. They have also developed
alliances with domestic workers in other parts of the world, further illustrating the way in
which their struggle is not solely a national one.
Neoliberalism's reversal of the social democratic gains of the mid-twentieth century has
created a need to consider the value of alternative strategies. As the state-protected benefits
of labor citizenship diminish, more traditional workers -- who are increasingly finding
themselves without a safety net -- are looking to previously excluded sectors as a possible
model of organizing. By breaking down the Fordist assumptions of gender and work, neoliberalism
is creating openings for a new feminist praxis and for new ways for thinking about gender,
justice, and social change.
There is no place on Earth where neo-liberalism has not poisoned. It has allowed a handful
of private interests to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize
personal profit. It has poisonous effects especially in the Third World, where imperial powers
continue to pirate natural and human resources to fill the pockets of transnational
capitalists. Initiated by Reagan and Thatcher, for the last two decades, neo-liberalism has
become the dominant economic and political trend for much of the leftist (so they identify
themselves) governments as well as the right.
However, as women fighting against global capitalism and its new phase, as women yearning
for a better world where we will not be exploited and abused, we must go a step further into
looking into this 'neo-liberalism' through the experiences of women. And it is not just about
how women linearly experience it - we must go into the depths to manifest how neo-liberalism
operates in a very gender-biased way.
WOMEN WORKERS AS SCAPEGOATS
In Korea, the process of being absorbed into global capitalism began earlier than the economic
crisis, during the economic 'hyper '-development era of military dictatorship of Park Jung-Hee,
with quite a bit of help from the US. Fluctuating together with global economic crises, the
Korean economy started to show signs of a recession from the early 90s, as rate of profit
decreased. Thus, capitalists started to adopt policies of introducing flexibility to the labour
market. It was 'experimented' on women workers first before taking full force on the entire
working class at the end of the millennium.
Jobs where women were predominant started to be transformed in the 1980s, beginning in the
form of dispatch labour and eventually expanding to generalisation of irregular labour.
However, this process was mainly targeted at women workers and the male-oriented labour
movement did not give much importance to it, even though women worker's movement consistently
called for the address of the issue.
Although the incorporation of Korean economy into the global capitalist system had already
started around a decade ago, Korean people came to experience its destructive nature during and
after the economic crisis of 1997. The structural adjustment program of the IMF shook the
labour market and massive lay-offs were implemented. In particular, women workers were laid off
first, and the working conditions of women workers fell to the ground.
The methods that the management used was subcontracting or abolishing those production lines
and business sectors where women were predominant. Women in these places were usually typists
or clerical assistants, who were considered not important and cumbersome, and thus provided the
logic and justification for the lay-offs. Many companies would lay-off these women, and instead
employ workers from dispatch companies - thus providing the management with ways in which to
decrease labour costs and evade provision of insurances and benefits. Or in the case of banks,
the same worker would be reemployed, but on a contract basis as irregular workers, again to
decrease labour costs. Another method of laying off women workers or transforming them into
irregular workers, was targeting foremost women who were married to someone in the same
workplace, and also those who were pregnant or were on their maternal leave. They provided the
management with strong justifications based on patriarchal values of 'women's place is at
home'. This process of unjust and discriminatory lay-offs at the onset of the economic crisis
saw the deterioration of maternal protection and women worker's rights in general. The
achievements that the women worker's movement had accomplished over the last couple of decades
were undermined.
"FLEXIBILITY" OF WOMEN WORKERS
The massive lay-offs that occurred after 1997 was obviously not 'inevitable' on the part of the
management, but was a calculated process of increasing the rate of profit through flexibility
of the labour market. Because the need for lay-offs did not come simply from decrease in
production, workers who were laid off were re-employed, but as irregular workers. And because
flexibility measures were implemented foremost on women, women were also absorbed again in
masses into the labour market, but this time as irregular workers with low wages and low
protection.
Attaining flexibility of women workers was backed up by the patriarchal ideology of 'male as
breadwinner' 1 . Through this ideology, women workers are considered not really as
workers, but as 'assistant income providers', the ideology that contributes to devaluation of
women's work. And this in turn provided the justification for the primary lay-offs of women and
transforming women's jobs into irregular jobs - a justification that quelled the possibility of
resistance from the working class. Recently, capitalist institutions and mainstream media
elaborate that the rate of women's employment is increasing faster that the rate of men. On one
hand, this is due to the increase in absolute number of jobs-irregular jobs for women, but also
due to the fact that women do not have much choice than take up highly unstable jobs without
any hesitation to earn a living, whereas men can afford to be more 'selective'.
Now, the percentage of irregular workers is risen to higher levels than regular workers. In
analyzing a census on the economically-active workforce implemented by the Korean Statistical
Office in August 2001, the Korea Labor & Society Institute (www.klsi.org) estimated the
number of irregular workers to be 7.37 million, constituting 55.7% of the total workforce
2 .According to studies made in 2000, out of entire irregular workers, the
percentage of women is higher than that of men at 53%, and within the entire women workforce
irregular workers take up 70%. These official statistics exclude specially employed labour (for
example, the type of jobs that capitalists characterise as self-employment) such as private
tutors, insurance sales, golf caddies etc., so if these jobs are included, the rate of
irregular women workers will definitely rocket.
Irregular work pertaining to capital's flexibility measures has brought deterioration of
working conditions and impoverishment for workers of both genders. But it has affected women
workers more severely. At the moment, most of irregular women workers are employed in small
enterprises of less than 10 employees. It has driven women's work into the ditches and has also
increased mental stress from lack of self-confidence and the fear of losing their jobs. One
feminist scholar was interviewing irregular women workers and told of how the interviewees were
in constant fear of being seen throughout the interview. Many social psychologists point out
that the increase of irregular work and the mental stress that comes from it is becoming a
serious social problem that is bound to affect the whole society.
Moreover, with the automation of production lines and transfer of factories in capital's
constant search for cheaper labour, many women workers who had originally constituted a large
proportion of the workforce in the manufacturing sector are now being absorbed into the service
sector - in areas such as the so-called 'entertainment' businesses and as domestic workers. The
service sector has rapidly expanded over the last few years in Korea, and many women are being
employed as narrator models, telemarketers, and as servers and entertainers in bars. These jobs
are not only unstable, low waged and physically strenuous, but they also enforce the use of
'femininity' and sexuality to raise sales, making women more vulnerable to possibilities of
sexual abuse and exploitation. Also, because the service sector has always shared a very thin
borderline with the sex industry, it is not very surprising that more and more women workers,
both young and aged, are being drawn into the sex industry. For example, many married women in
their 30's and 40's are employed in the so-called 'telephone rooms (jeon-hwa-bang)' and are
forced to have phone sex with men. Many other married women were employed as 'pager women', who
are paged to come to bars to 'entertain' men. This became a very heated issue when Daewoo
Motors unionists went to a bar, paged women, and came face to face with familiar faces. When
Daewoo workers were laid-off, the wives had to find jobs to sustain their families and the only
ones available were as 'pager women'. The ruling elite and the conservative media are
enthusiastically deploring the moral collapse of Korean women, but the reality is that it is
the capitalist system that is corrupting the people.
The situation is not much different on the international arena. Neo-liberal globalisation
has paved the way for increase in migrant women workers, international trafficking and enforced
sex work in the Third World. In Korea, many women from the Philippines and Russia come to Korea
as domestic workers and 'entertainers', and then are tricked into providing sexual services to
Korean men and the US military.
WIDENING GAP BETWEEN WOMEN
Neo-liberal globalisation has also impeded the widening of gap between different classes of
women. The living standard between women in the developed countries and those in the Third
World is now incomparable, as is the situation inside Korea. Rich women of the bourgeoisie can
afford to wear fur coats that cost tens of million won, shop in department stores in their
imported cars, buy US produced baby food, send their children to expensive private English
language schools so that they are reproduced as the minority elite who rule the world of
globalisation, and employ women from South-east Asia as housemaids. This is how the minority of
women in Korea live, and furthermore, they are not living on the wealth that they had
accumulated themselves, but on the wealth accumulated by their husbands. And this in turn is
the wealth accumulated from exploiting women workers in Korea and elsewhere in the Third World.
In contrast to the minority of women who enjoy the outcome of neo-liberal domination in a good
part of the world, majority of women cannot find a proper job no matter how hard they try, and
when they do find a job, it is an unstable job in slave-like conditions that can get snatched
away from them. They cannot afford domestic help or a nanny - they work for long tiring hours
outside and then come home to find piles of dishes to be washed and children to be fed. Also,
studies by women's organizations have found that domestic abuse has increased, as husbands and
fathers who have lost jobs turn to expressing their anger at their daughters and wives, and
resort to violence.
CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL BACKLASH
To quell mass resistance against economic globalisation that has brought about increase in
unemployment, decrement of public services, downfall in wages and deterioration of quality of
life, the ruling elite has manipulated cultural conservatism to solidify its dominance over
society. Cultural conservatism in Korea is represented by Confucian patriarchy. The economic
crisis of 1997 saw the rise of this ideology that came together with the capitalist form of
'male as breadwinner' model, and acted to cover up the oppression of women while highlighting
the need for women to make more sacrifices for the sake of saving the crumbling economy. In the
meanwhile, unemployment of men was highlighted as a serious social problem. Thus the role of
women was limited to that of 'comforting' the suffering man in the family, while the sufferings
of women both as wage workers and non-wage workers were ignored. The Korean mainstream media
and the conservative ruling elite alike have neglected the seriousness of women suffering from
sexual abuse on the basis that women should have perseverance, but has spotlighted those
desperate women who left home after losing all hopes as destructors of family values. Women who
had replaced their husbands as the breadwinners end up in the sex industry, after being
rejected from any other type of work, but then are stigmatised as being morally corrupt. The
severity of unemployment of male youths appear in the news everyday, whereas female students
are not only ignored but are blocked altogether from the labour market. Many right-wing
sociologists and economists actually suggested that marriage for women should be more
emphasized by the government so as to block women from entering the labour market - and thus
lowering the official unemployment rate. The media focuses evermore on the fantasies of
marriage, and the 'marriage business' is now enjoying its 'Belle Epoque'.
A CRITIQUE OF KIM DAE-JUNG'S POLICIES ON WOMEN
Kim Dae-Jung's government has been portrayed as being democratic and pro-feminist in and
outside of Korea. There were high hopes for this president with his long history of fighting
for democracy, and from the beginning, many civil and women's organizations decided to give him
'critical' support. However, his promise of establishing a ministry specific on women's issues
was replaced by the Special Committee On Women's Affairs with no legislative powers, much to
the disappointment of women's groups. As his presidential term is coming to an end, he did
launch the Ministry of Gender Equality during the first half of this year, with a prominent
figure from a major women NGO seated as the Minister. However, the policies that the Ministry
is adopting are those that will hardly benefit majority of women suffering at grassroot
levels.
This was recently manifested in the revisions that were made to the maternity clauses in the
Standard Labour Laws in June. The Ministry had announced that it will expand public childcare
so as to decrease the burden on working women. With support from major women NGOs 3
, the Ministry proposed revisions to maternity-related clauses in the Standard Labour Laws, and
the clauses were changed for the first time since 1953. There were basically two major
improvements - maternity leave was increased from the present 60 days to 90 days, and
prohibition on employment of women in hazardous workplaces was expanded. This may seem like a
big step, but the fact of the matter is, these laws came in exchange for further flexibility of
women's labour. In exchange for increase of maternal leave, the Ministry also agreed to abolish
the clauses restricting overtime work and night work, paid familycare leave and menstruation
leave.
In a situation where 70% (or perhaps even higher and ever increasing) of women workers are
irregular workers, how many women workers will actually benefit from the revision? The majority
of working class women are outside legal boundaries. The Ministry and women NGOs argue that
they will fight for the application of the laws to irregular workers, but without questioning
the neo-liberal characteristics behind the legislation, there is really no chance that this
will actually take place. Many women activists had fought hard for these laws for the last
decade and they are congratulating themselves in finally achieving their objective, but in the
meantime, a vast majority of women workers have fallen into the ditches of irregular work and
the demands of the majority have been neglected to benefit a few. Capitalists have learnt to
'sacrifice' a few laws for the sake of obtaining further flexibility. Despite the argument that
these revisions will open new opportunities for women, without questioning the essence of Kim's
government and its support for neo-liberalism, the revisions that were recently made will only
expedite the flexible usage of women workers and thus further deteriorate the working
conditions of irregular women workers. The Ministry and the NGOs do not realize that the laws,
along with others that were made during the recent years 4 , are all in compliance
with neo-liberalism.
It has only been one year since the Ministry of Gender Equality took off, but those
benefiting from it are middle-class, elite women, and only the minority of women workers who
are lucky enough to be in a regular job. The presidential elections take place next year.
Despite that the Ministry is conforming to neo-liberal policies and trying to confuse the
workers about the essence of its policies, it does have some significance amidst the severely
patriarchal political scene of Korea - which may well be undermined by any of the major
right-wing political parties that take office - including the ruling New Millenium Democratic
Party of Kim Dae-Jung, which still receive a lot of support from NGOs. This will merely lead to
more lack of hope for state-led labour policies.
FIGHTING AND ORGANISING
Neo-liberalism was not something that hit Korea suddenly in 1997, but is a historical
development of capitalism that has gradually taken form during the last few decades. It had
been women workers who had felt the effects of globalisation first and thus were the first ones
to resist. It was the women workers of Korea, who fought militantly during the 70s and early
80s for a democratic union and worker's rights. Women workers formed the foundation for the
modern labour movement, although this fact often tends to be forgotten. During the late 80's,
the Korean economy reconstructed itself into focusing on export-oriented heavy industries,
whose workers were predominantly men, and women workers were left behind.
The onslaught of neo-liberal globalisation and the impoverishment that came with it was also
felt first by women workers. Just after the economic crisis, the women worker's movement moved
a big step forward when independent women's trade unions began to beformed 5 . The
unions came out of the need to address the specific issues of women workers that could not be
properly dealt with in a general union -organising irregular workers, the unemployed, domestic
workers and those women who worked in small companies where there are no unions. The percentage
of women participating in unions still remain at a meagre 5%, due to the fact that general
unions do not accommodate workers who are not regular workers. It was only in 1997, when the
IMF enforced austerity measures and structural adjustment programs also affected male workers,
that the people's movement in Korea fully realised the destructive nature of neo-liberalism.
From then on, flexibility of labour has become the main target of struggle for the working
class. Spotlight was finally thrown on the fact that neo-liberalism attack women workers
foremost, but unfortunately the longtime demands and struggles of women workers are being put
aside, as the struggles against 'irregular labour' is again being organised in a male-oriented
fashion.
The establishments of these unions are very significant in the history of the Korean labour
movement and also in the women's movement. Just as the strategies of capitalists change, the
organisation of the working class also much change to resist effectively. The essence of
neo-liberalism and its gender-bias cannot be resisted through the traditional method of
organization concentrating on male, regular workers from big enterprises.
However, these newly formed women's unions still have further developments to make and many
obstacles to overcome, in their struggles against national and international capital. The
unions must question the role of neo-liberal globalisation and its strategy of incorporating
flexibility measures into the labour market, for a full understanding of the situation of women
workers and organizing of more radical struggles that go into the fundamental core. And at the
same time, the worker's movement of Korea must go through structural changes to accommodate the
ever increasing irregular workers, and must also make more effort into overcoming the
patriarchal values that are still prevalent inside people's movement. Many women activists and
unionists have started to address the issues of gender discrimination and sexual violence
inside the people's movement, which up until now had been covered up. Over the years, many
fervent and militant women activists have had to leave the movement because of discrimination
and violence. It was always considered women's fault, or victimized women were forced to
'forgive' for the 'greater cause'. Many women activists, workers and unionists are uniting
themselves and are calling upon the movement to tackle the problem of hierarchy, discrimination
and violence.
TOWARDS ORGANIZING GLOBAL RESISTANCE OF WOMEN
As we have seen, neo-liberal globalisation affects all areas of society, to attain flexibility
of the labour market solely for the interests of transnational capital. In the case of Korea,
this process of enforcing structural adjustment and flexibility has devastated the lives of the
people, especially women. Capitalist industrialisation has brought about the rise of the
women's proletariat and neo-liberal globalisation has further feminised the proletariat while
at the same time impoverishing the proletariat into the verge of slavery.
This is not a matter of women merely being affected 'more' - we must look at the mechanisms
of neo-liberalism that operate in a gender-biased way. Indeed, neo-liberal globalisation itself
feed upon gender discrimination and effectively use traditional patriarchal values to exploit
women further. Patriarchal ideologies act to crush any attempts of women to politicize and form
resistance.
However, the essence of neo-liberalism is slowly being manifested and women have begun to
fight back. Feminisation of labour and feminisation of poverty signify increased exploitation
of women, but precisely because of that, provide the possibility for organization and
resistance, nationally and internationally. Women must now go forth as subjects in uniting the
people in our fight against neo-liberal globalisation. Instead of being incorporated into a
ready-made movement of men or middle-class elite women, instead of taking the problems of
discrimination for granted, women workers, farmers, indigenous peoples, migrants and other
grassroot peoples of the Third World must form a broad solidarity. We must analyse
globalisation from women's perspective, plan strategies that conform with the particular needs
of women, propose alternatives that include women as equal subjects, keep to the principle of
internationalism, and unite with other oppressed groups in the mass resistance in the fight
against neo-liberalism - and go beyond in creating a world based on equality.
* Joo-Yeon Jeong & Seung-Min Choi are with the Policy & Information Center for
International Solidarity (PICIS), Korea. This paper was presented at the International South
Group Network (ISGN) Asian Workshop on Women and Globalisation, 22-24 November,
Manila.
[1] This is merely an 'ideology', because despite the fact that the state supports this
perspective, in reality many men had lost their jobs during the economic crisis and many women
are now the sole income providers in their families.
[2] The interesting thing is that government funded institutions analysed the same statistics
and came up with the percentage of 27-28%.
[3] This refers to Korea Women Associations United, an umbrella organization of women NGOs.
They identify themselves as being 'progressive' but after Kim Dae-Jung came into power, they
participated enthusiastically in his policies and have become more middle-class oriented than
ever.
[4] In Korea, already a whole series of revisions were made to the Standard Labour Laws after
the economic crisis, more than any other time in Korean history. The illegitimate passage by
ruling party members of the bill allowing layoffs and the introduction of transformational
working time system in December of 1997 was first in the series that forecasted massive
neo-liberal attacks on labour. The passage was so explicitly impudent that Korean workers went
on a massive general strike and militantly struggled throughout the winter. Now capitalists are
willing to throw a few carrots while pushing forth their interests. Then came the
maternity-related clauses, and now another revision is about to take place that will exchange
reduction of working hours for more deterioration of working conditions.
[5] Three unions were formed almost at the same time: Korean Women's Trade Union, Seoul Women's
Trade Union and Seoul Regional Women's Trade Union
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.
...he decline of marriage is upon us. Or, at least, that's what the zeitgeist would have us
believe.
In 2010, when Time magazine and the Pew Research Center famously
asked Americans whether they thought marriage was becoming obsolete, 39 percent said yes.
That was up from 28 percent when Time asked the question in 1978.
Also, since 2010,
the Census Bureau has reported
that married couples have made up less than half of all households; in 1950 they made up 78
percent.
Data such as these have led to much collective handwringing about the fate of the
embattled institution.
"... 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.
"... 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!
"... 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.
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.
"... 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 .
"... 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
"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.
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.
"... 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."
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...
@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.
"... 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.
"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!
"... 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.
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.
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.
" 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.
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 .
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.
"... "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.
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.
"... 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.
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.
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?
"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....
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.
"... 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?
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
It's Not Just Unfair: Inequality Is a Threat to Our
Governance
By ANGUS DEATON
THE CRISIS OF THE MIDDLE-CLASS CONSTITUTION
Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic
By Ganesh Sitaraman
President Obama labeled income inequality "the defining
challenge of our time." But why exactly? And why "our time"
especially? In part because we now know just how much goes to
the very top of the income distribution, and beyond that, we
know that recent economic growth, which has been anemic in
any case, has accrued mostly to those who were already
well-heeled, leaving stagnation or worse for many Americans.
But why is this a problem?
Why am I hurt if Mark Zuckerberg develops Facebook, and
gets rich on the proceeds? Some care about the unfairness of
income inequality itself, some care about the loss of upward
mobility and declining opportunities for our kids and some
care about how people get rich - hard work and innovation are
O.K., but theft, legal or otherwise, is not. Yet there is one
threat of inequality that is widely feared, and that has been
debated for thousands of years, which is that inequality can
undermine governance. In his fine book, both history and call
to arms, Ganesh Sitaraman argues that the contemporary
explosion of inequality will destroy the American
Constitution, which is and was premised on the existence of a
large and thriving middle class. He has done us all a great
service, taking an issue of overwhelming public importance,
delving into its history, helping understand how our
forebears handled it and building a platform to think about
it today.
As recognized since ancient times, the coexistence of very
rich and very poor leads to two possibilities, neither a
happy one. The rich can rule alone, disenfranchising or even
enslaving the poor, or the poor can rise up and confiscate
the wealth of the rich. The rich tend to see themselves as
better than the poor, a proclivity that is enhanced and even
socially sanctioned in modern meritocracies. The poor, with
little prospect of economic improvement and no access to
political power, "might turn to a demagogue who would
overthrow the government - only to become a tyrant. Oligarchy
or tyranny, economic inequality meant the end of the
republic."
Some constitutions were written to contain inequalities.
In Rome, the patricians ruled, but could be overruled by
plebeian tribunes whose role was to protect the poor. There
are constitutions with lords and commoners in separate
chambers, each with well-defined powers. Sitaraman calls
these "class warfare constitutions," and argues that the
founding fathers of the United States found another way, a
republic of equals. The middle classes, who according to
David Hume were obsessed neither with pleasure-seeking, as
were the rich, nor with meeting basic necessities, as were
the poor, and were thus amenable to reason, could be a firm
basis for a republic run in the public interest. There is
some sketchy evidence that income and wealth inequality was
indeed low in the 18th century, but the crucial point is that
early America was an agrarian society of cultivators with an
open frontier. No one needed to be poor when land was
available in the West.
The founders worried a good deal about people getting too
rich. Jefferson was proud of his achievement in abolishing
the entail and primogeniture in Virginia, writing the laws
that "laid the ax to the root of Pseudoaristocracy." He
called for progressive taxation and, like the other founders,
feared that the inheritance of wealth would lead to the
establishment of an aristocracy. (Contrast this with those
today who simultaneously advocate both equality of
opportunity and the abolition of estate taxes.) Madison tried
to calculate how long the frontier would last, and understood
the threat to the Constitution that industrialization would
bring; many of the founders thought of wage labor as little
better than slavery and hoped that America could remain an
agrarian society.
Of course, the fears about industrialization were
realized, and by the late 19th century, in the Gilded Age,
income inequality had reached levels comparable to those we
see today. In perhaps the most original part of his book,
Sitaraman, an associate professor of law at Vanderbilt Law
School, highlights the achievements of the Progressive
movement, one of whose aims was taming inequality, and which
successfully modified the Constitution. There were four
constitutional amendments in seven years - the direct
election of senators, the franchise for women, the
prohibition of alcohol and the income tax. To which I would
add another reform, the establishment of the Federal Reserve,
which provided a mechanism for handling financial crises
without the need for the government to be bailed out by rich
bankers, as well as the reduction in the tariff, which
favored ordinary people by bringing down the cost of
manufactures. Politics can respond to inequality, and the
Constitution is not set in stone.
What of today, when inequality is back in full force? I am
not persuaded that we can be saved by the return of a
rational and public-spirited middle class, even if I knew
exactly how to identify middle-class people, or to measure
how well they are doing. Nor is it clear, postelection,
whether the threat is an incipient oligarchy or an incipient
populist autocracy; our new president tweets from one to the
other. And European countries, without America's middle-class
Constitution, face some of the same threats, though more from
autocracy than from plutocracy, which their constitutions may
have helped them resist. Yet it is clear that we in the
United States face the looming threat of a takeover of
government by those who would use it to enrich themselves
together with a continuing disenfranchisement of large
segments of the population....
Angus Deaton, a professor emeritus at Princeton, was awarded
the Nobel in economic science in 2015.
As for ".. it is clear that we in the
United States face the looming threat of a takeover of
government by those who would use it to enrich themselves
together with a continuing disenfranchisement of large
segments of the population...."
that was accomplished in 1980 by Reagan. That's why we now
can speak about "a colony nation" within the USA which
encompasses the majority of population.
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.
'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.
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.
"... "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. ..."
"... 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. ..."
"... ...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. ..."
"... 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. ..."
"... 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. ..."
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.
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.
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.
"...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.
There was probably more than one movie about this topic - people not happy with their "peaceful"
but bland, boring, and intellectually stifling environment.
Not too far from Huxley's "Brave New World" actually.
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?
"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....
"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.
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.
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, 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.
"... 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.
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.
"... 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.
"... 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 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.
"... 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.
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 ===
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.
"... 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.
(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.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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130,000 homeless children, empty food banks predicted this Christmas
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 )
