>CB: Cutting taxes on multinationals, but not on workers ? Cutting wages or
>working class incomes , in part, by cutting social spending , this
>neo-liberalist austerity ?
yup.
>CB: Is it the pushing exports and the cutting taxes and wages that could
>lead to deepening world depresssion , or mainly the competing to push
>exports ? How does competing to push exports tend toward deepening world
>depression ? Is it that the competition cuts prices ( "deflationary
>effects " ?) and thereby incomes and profits of the competing neo-colonial
>, non- G-7 countries and their companies ?
both the cut in domestic consumption and the increase in exports encourage
world recession: they are complementary parts of the story.
The problem with pushing exports is that net exports (exports - imports)
adds up to zero on the world scale, while one country's exports are
another's imports. This means that you can't see _all_ countries increasing
exports at the same time.
it's both a matter of falling real production and falling prices. It's for
the whole world, except that the US has until recently acted as the
consumer of last resort.
>CB: So, any move in the direction of protectionism, as in godley model,
>due to aggravating current accounts deficit could aggravate a move of US
>to being less of a world consumer of last resort, combining with any
>recession in the U.S. in this tendency to be less of a world consumer of
>last resort, and stiffening the competition of neo-colonial companies and
>countries to sell imports ?
I can't talk about Godley, since I haven't read what Alex Izurieta wrote
about his views yet.
But raising tariffs is a bad idea in a recession. Instead of pushing
exports, it's a matter of cutting imports. It has the same world-wide effect.
>CB: Isn't this in part because a lot of the "imports" into the U.S. are
>from U.S controlled transnationals from their capital and production
>outside of the geographical U.S. ( the "U.S." still exporting capital
>muchly ) ?
I don't think that the identity of the company selling the products is
important economically. The products -- and the economic effects -- are the
same, no matter who produces them.
Politically, however, the fact that US imports are so often products of
US-based multinationals undermines the protectionist political coalition.
(On net these days, the US is _importing_ tremendous amounts of capital.)
>But as was just said elsewhere, there is no escape in this capital chasing
>its tail for, ultimately capital is its own chief barrier, i.e. Marx's
>critical insight that the chief barrier to capital is capital itself
>('Capital' vol 3 and the 'Grundrisse') and therfore, at a certain point,
>capital has to *attempt to escape its own laws of motion*. and "in fact,
>capital moved from its 'progressive' phase of free
>competition, free market, free trade etc to the imperilaist epoch, where
>it has to try to escape the law of value through interfering with all
>these things. It attempts to escape its own barriers through export of
>capital, monopoly, foreign trade, the division of the world into oppressed
>and oppressor nations, state intervention etc etc etc. This was an
>*objective* trend. One which is clearly still with us....
this is very abstract. I was talking on a much lower level of abstraction.
Currently, the US economy is not in a period of export of capital or
monopoly (though the latter is slowly reviving). Foreign trade is
increasingly with us, as is the division of the world into oppressed and
oppressor nations (though the nature of that division has changed). State
intervention is also a constant. It's always been part of capitalism's laws
of motion.
>And so at some point, might the U.S. hegmonic powers that be contradict
>their main tendency to adhere to and promote "free trade" and oppose
>tariffs in the U.S. ? Won't depression in the rest of the world ( the
>could be deepening world depression you mention above ) eventually cause
>political instability there, forcing the U.S. world hegmonic corporations
>to circle the wagons around the U.S. ? Or can the current balancing act be
>maintained for decades ?
I see the possible shift to US protectionism as more of a _result_ of a
crisis than a cause at this point. That is, it seems quite unlikely given
the current balance of political power, so that only if & when the
competitive austerity causes a world depression should we see a rise of
protectionism.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
