> On Feb 18, 2016, at 11:54 AM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 1:17 PM, Marv Gandall <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > it would be helpful if, for example, you could specify what regulations you > would impose on the financial or energy industries -and, in particular, why > would these would be politically more capable of realization than public > ownership? > > > This is an interesting, but purely technocratic question. I think the > following would go a long way: > - Financial firms: regulate CDSes as a form of insurance and require loss > reserves. Institute a Tobin tax. Bring back criminal prosecution of execs for > securities law violations. Bring back usury laws for credit card rates and > car loans. Reform the bankruptcy code. > - Pharma: Price controls and a cap on profit rates on drugs under patent. > - Energy: A carbon tax and windfall profits tax in time for the next oil > price bubble. > > These are actually pretty close to Sanders’ campaign promises I believe and > these are easy to defend on technocratic grounds without having to get into > arguments over socialism.
Which, incidentally, begs the question as to why Sanders, in fact, is defending these measures as “socialism” against your better advice and without much noticeable effect on his campaign. That aside, I’d welcome these reforms if they proved as easy to defend and implement, as you seem to believe. The Marxist criticism of left Keynesian solutions is that the leading firms in these industries, overburdened with regulations, would be undercut by foreign competition in a global market, face capital flight from bond and shareholders, and would inevitably leave the state with the choice of bailing them out or nationalizing them. If for no other reason, in an ideal world, I’d love to see a Corbyn or Sanders government pass these measures and then be confronted with this choice if, as you say, that’s the best we can presently hope for.
_______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
