What I said is that I don't care. Drop it. Don't bother the list with
old hat. I would rather than you engage in constructive dialogue.
On Fri, Aug 24, 2001 at 11:53:54AM -0700, Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
> Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
>
> > I don't care now about who did what when. The list was going quite well
> > until you revived this vituperation. It must cease immediately.
>
> Michael,
> since you are blaming me for the vituperation, you obviously do care who did
> what when. And you are wrong about who is to blame. Here are my July posts to
> which Sawicky never replied while heaping abuse on me for my putatively pure
> argumenative abilities [Barkley may be interested in the skepticism expressed
> in July by Ellen and me about the sharp devaluation of the dollar].
>
>
> Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend itfast as you can)
> by Rakesh Narpat Bhandari19 July 2001 00:39 UTC
>
> >Lind is not a nativist. He is a liberal
> >nationalist. He may be a Listian, but
> >to me that is not necessarily a Bad Thing.
> >The idea that he is a right-wing plant is
> >hallucinatory.
> >
> >mbs
>
> Check what he says about the need to control immigration in one of
> his books. Maybe I am hallucinating his nativist sentiment; I didn't
> buy the book, just glanced through it at a bookstore. If I am wrong,
> I will apologize profusely.
>
> Rakesh
>
> The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can) by Rakesh Narpat Bhandari
> 19 July 2001 16:05 UTC
>
>
> >Lind is not a nativist. He is a liberal
> >>nationalist. He may be a Listian, but
> >>to me that is not necessarily a Bad Thing.
> >>The idea that he is a right-wing plant is
> >>hallucinatory.
> >>
> >>mbs
>
> While what Pugliese downloaded [an article by Lind] includes reasonable
> criticisms of a neo bracero program, it soon became an assault on the poor
> Mexican immigrant. He uses the excuse of a neo bracero program to call for
> the exclusion of poor uneducated Mexicans as such instead of for the
> granting to them of worker and citzenship rights.
>
> The handling of complex studies on the job displacement effects of
> immigration (Bhagwati rung Borjas' clock in my opinion) and welfare
> burden of the poor Mexican immigrant (note Lind does not consider the
> sales taxes which even trabajadores sin papeles pay though they are
> probably in excess of any state benefits which they receive) is
> purely demagogic. Indeed Lind descends into the worst forms of
> scapegoating, and his prose becomes indistinguishable from the
> Brimelow's and Murray's who think a restrictive immigration policy is
> in the eugenic interests of the nation.
>
> >Already both LEGAL and illegal immigration from Mexico are
> >exacerbating America's social problems, because so many Mexican
> >immigrants are uneducated and poor. Mark Krikorian of the Center for
> >Immigration Studies -- a non-profit which advocates tightening
> >immigration laws -- claims that 31 percent of immigrants from Mexico
> >are dependent on at least one major federal welfare program. (my emphasis)
>
> And then he goes on about their criminal propensities.
>
>
> In the thrall of nationalist myth Lind does not consider why a
> tougher immigration policy (and Lind seems to want to limit
> immigration over and above eliminating guest worker programs) may not
> necessarily improve the competitive position of poor citizens, but
> Max would have to study Marx (the mascot of this list) to understand
> why as a result of its laws of motion, the capitalist system will
> create a reserve army of labor out of its valorization base, i.e.,
> its population base, no matter how limited by restrictive immigration
> policy. And taken over by nationalist myth Lind does not consider
> whether there are other more effective policies than restrictive
> nationalist immigration policy (Lind is not just after the neobracero
> program but-it seems to me--the immigration of poor Mexicans under
> any conditions) to improve the conditions of the citizen poor
> (assuming his interest is genuine). if Lind were truly concerned
> with the position of poor citizen workers rather than in Bell Curve
> fashion the putative dysgenic effects of poor Mexican immigration,
> wouldn't he would be giving other policy advice first and
> foremost--more pro union legislation, an expanded public sector,
> tougher anti anti black discrimination law, etc?
>
> On top of it, Lind seems to have written a book in defense of
> genocidal US policies in Vietnam--did I understand you, right,
> Pugliese? He has also called for a ban on the US import of third
> world goods on the basis of the most superficial arguments that this
> would be good for those poor third world people too. It would surely
> thrust many peoples into a holocaust of poverty.
>
> For Max to rise to the defense of Lind and call him a liberal
> nationalist indicates what a reactionary he is. I thought Max was
> only pulling toes; now I must conclude that it is actually much
> uglier.
>
> The insults will only increase from here, so Michael, I am unsubbing.
>
> Good luck to all you progressive economists which I insist is an oxymoron.
>
> Yours, Rakesh
>
> Re: the significance of global riots by Mr. Rakesh Narpat Bhandari
> 21 July 2001 16:47 UTC
>
>
>
>
> I tried to unsubscribe; perhaps Michael P will help me.
> Erased all the messages. Just checked through the archive.
>
> As to whether Lind's view of the job displacing and welfare using effects of
> the immigration of "poor, uneducated" Mexicans can be accurately characterized
> as demagogic racist scapegoating in the best tradition of the American nativism
> that gave us Prop 186 [sic] I shall let others decide. It seems to me clear
> that Lind is not only calling for an end to any guest worker program but for
> immigration restrictions aimed at poor Mexicans. Max is convinced that Lind is
> not a nativist as Lind himself defines the term. Max somewhere recognized that
> poor Mexican immigrants--whether they are here without papers or--are probably
> not parasites off the welfare system, but he didn't explain why the non
> nativist Lind characterized them that way. Let's not forget that anti black
> racism is not the only kind.
>
> As to whether I should be accused of hallucinating that Lind remains a right
> winger I shall let others decide as they review his views on Vietnam. That
> Alterman blundered in bringing Lind to the left by featuring him in The Nation
> is hardly surprising if one understands what kind of leftist Alterman (and
> evidently Max) is.
>
> But I want to make another point here. Max has argued that unionized American
> labor has the right through the use of trade sanctions to prevent the migration
> of industries to third world locales in which labor may not be unionized. I am
> not going to say this is wrong, but it is more complicated in the light of
> economic history. Before I raise that point, I shall quickly rehearse my
> criticism of the anti globalization goals.
>
> I think due to nationalist myth American labor has put too much focus on
> global outsourcing and foreign non unionized competition when the union busting
> outsourcing is more often domestic,that is where are the Seattle like orgies
> about this kind of outsourcing which is probably several more times important
> in magnitude; it is possible that to the extent American labor succeeds in
> protecting declining industry, it will raise the value of the dollar and cost
> jobs elsewhere, as Eisner noted; it strikes me as hypocritical that the
> American labor leaders are happy to view as an opportunity the FDI from
> unionized countries into American right to work states while fighting to
> prevent other poor third world countries from at least receiving some
> investment (that is American labor has not fought US domestic content laws and
> VERS as a way of encouraging investment into the US even when that investment
> happens in right to work states--US power to coerce investment within its
> borders is several times higher than that of even the biggest third world
> countries); I don't think the US should be in a unilateral position to
> determine whether the Core Conventions have been met (there is no way the ILO
> would have invoked article 33 against Cambodia for example); it is not clear to
> me trade restrictions will be applied on goods which are truly competitive
> with American production (there is no good evidence that African exports are
> competitive with American made goods yet the trade act with Africa was saddled
> with protectionist measures); it seems unfair to me apply trade sanctions on a
> whole country when the mnc which may be at least partially responsible can get
> up and flee and stick the burden on the people left behind; it also seems clear
> that trade sanctions cannot be defended in the name of the children whose lives
> were evidently at the least not on the whole improved by the Harkin Bill.
>
> But there is another point. What Max and Doug never ask themselves is why the
> First World has had a historic monopoly on industrial production that has
> allowed over time for the unionization of some workers. It is only in the last
> couple of decades that we have seen a substantial decline in the percentage of
> industry that is located in the West. It is obvious that the industrial working
> class will not have the same rights in places which are now only beginning to
> assert their some significant share of global industrial production. Should the
> underdevelopment of industrial worker rights then be a reason to slow down the
> weakening monopoly of the West over industrial production? Max confidently
> asserts that the answer is obvious. I don't think so.
>
>
> The US would not have been so quickly and successfully industrialized had
> India and China not been oppressed under colonial domination. That is, once we
> understand that the development of American industry which has raised living
> standards (with or without unionization) and indeed created the opportunities
> for worker organization was allowed by oppression of other peoples I think we
> should be a bit more reflective about the more global distribution of industry
> today. I think we should be more careful about protests and policies that will
> slow down a more even global distribution of industry.
>
> I'll just quote a little from Mike Davis' Late Victorian Holocausts, a book
> which I can't imagine Max would otherwise read:
>
> "Britain earned huge annual surpluses in her transactions with India and China
> that allowed her to sustain equally large deficits with the US, Germany and the
> white Dominions. True, Britain also enjoyed invisible earnings from shipping,
> insurance, banking and foreign investment but without Asia, which generated 73
> percent of British trade credit in 1910, Anthony Latham argues, Britain
> 'presumably would have been forced to abandon free trade' while her trading
> partners would have been forced to slow down their own rates of
> industrialization. The liberal world economy might otherwise have fragmented
> into autarkic trading blocs, as it did during the 1930s
>
> "'The US and industrial Europe, in particular Germany, were able to continue
> their policy of tariff protection only because of Britain's surplus with Asia.
> Without the Asian surplus, Britain would no longer have been able to subsidise
> their growth. So what emerges is that Asia in general, but India and China in
> particular, far from being peripheral to the evolution of the international
> economy at this time, were in fact crucial Without the surpluses which Britain
> was able to earn there, the whole pattern of international economic development
> would been been severely constrained.'
>
> "India, of course, was the greatest captive market in world history, rising rom
> third to first place among consumers of British exports in the quarter century
> after 1870. 'British rulers,' writes Marcello de Cecco in his study of the
> Victorian gold standard system, 'deliberately prevented Indians from becoming
> skilled mechanics, refused contracts to Indian firms which produced materials
> that could be got from Britain, and generally hindered the formation of an
> autonomous industrial structure in India.' Thanks to a 'government stores
> policy that reserved most govt purchases to British products and by the
> monopoly of British agency houses in organizing the import-export trade,' India
> was forced to absorb Britain's surplus of increasingly obsolescent and non
> competitive industrial exports. By 1910, this included 2/5ths of the UK's
> finished cotton goods and 3/5ths of its exports of electrical products, railway
> equipment, books and pharmaceuticals."
>
> As I have said to Max, I do think we do need to find ways to ensure that the
> Core Conventions are enforced everywhere as industrial production is dispersed,
> but I do not think the US should have the unilateral right to impose trade
> sanctions or import quota denials. Several means should be implemented before
> such trade restriction.
>
> Rakesh
>
>
>
>
>
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
