[PEN-L:11897] Re: Risk and Unequal Opportunity under cap
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 16:19:40 -0700 (PDT) Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tom Walker) Subject: [PEN-L:11893] Re: Risk and Unequal Opportunity under cap ulterior motivation of bureaucrats, politicians or voters. In other words, bureaucrats may sincerely believe it is better *public policy* to fail conventionally, not merely a career expedient. ;-) Obviously the probabilities of success have everything to do with the relative merits of going by convention or otherwise. By definition, convention would connote that which is more reliable, hence bureaucratic rationality follows for the slogan cited. The penalty side is also worth mentioning. The penalty for failing unconventionally would be higher than failing conventionally. (e.g., "You tried WHAT?!?") I worked in the Federal bureaucracy for a few years and the biggest secret I have to impart is that bureaucrats act entirely at the behest of elected officials. Every nook and cranny of the bureaucracy has a patron somewhere; otherwise it wouldn't be there. If you don't obey your patron, you're toast. Your only defense is information you have and they don't, but there is always some traitor among your peers willing to give you up, so information isn't that useful either. Hence *insofar* as voters get the politicians they deserve, they get the bureaucracy they deserve too. All of which doesn't seem without merit from a democratic standpoint. MBS == Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] Suite 1200 202-775-8810 (voice) 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 Opinions here do not necessarily represent the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute. ===
[PEN-L:11896] Mouthpiece For Dishonest-Minded Forces
This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. Send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for more info. --3838311F752F Pyongyang, August 18 (KCNA) -- William Taylor, vice-director of the U.S Centre for Strategic and International Studies, showed himself up here and there and said that north Korea is an unreliable regime and that any actions favourable for north Korea should not be done. Not content with this, he prattled that north Korea will collapse if the United States does not offer "assistance" to it. The ridiculous remarks made by him who turned his back on the political trend of the international community are an expression of his ignorance. We cannot but expose the true intention of his opposition to the "four-way talks" hailed by the world and his square attack on the Korea policy of the U.S. Administration. As all know, he visited the DPRK four times in the period from 1991 to 1994, calling for the promotion of understanding and the improvement of relations between the DPRK and the United States. In the course of this, he expressed full sympathy with the DPRK's will and stand to liquidate the abnormal relations with the U.S. Including the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula and even promised to do a lot of things for the improvement of the DPRK-U.S. relations. At that time, he was a scholar with principle and reasonable judgement. We do not think he made empty talk in order to line his own pocket. His current argument is just like that of the U.S. ultra-right forces and the south Korean puppets. It is obvious that he sold out his faith and principle as a scholar for some pennies given by them. The person, who styled himself a member of the think tank of the United States, turned out to be an idiot duped by dollars. That is why he does not sense the trend of the international community toward detente and confidence-building, the influence of the improvement of the DPRK-U.S. relations on world peace and stability and the invincibility and bright political future of our society. Taylor's political future is poor. He must realise his gloomy future and no longer resort to the anti-DPRK campaign. KCNA Shawgi Tell Graduate School of Education University at Buffalo [EMAIL PROTECTED] --3838311F752F--
[PEN-L:11895] Economics History
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 16:26:50 -0700 To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] From:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (anzalone/starbird) Subject:Economics History Two labor studies courses: Economics and California Labor History are offered Monday night at 4th and Mission. They are at room 318 and 319 respectively. Worth 3 units each the courses run each Monday night from 7 pm - 9:45 until December 15th. Both courses are transferable, and the Economics course satisfies a core requirement for a degree in Labor Studies. Currently both courses are underenrolled and will be closed if they do not attract four more students by Monday August 25th. If they do not make their enrollment cuota, the administration could wittle the six units out of the Labor studies program indefinately; making that much less education available for working class scholars and rank and file activists. Please help if you can! If you have always thought you would take a class someday, make it Monday. Financial aid and scholarships are available, please show up if you can enroll. If you are even mildly interested call: (415) 267-6550 and speak to Bill Shields.
[PEN-L:11894] Southern California Multipliers
Does anyone know where I can find multipliers for California or Southern California? AE multipliers, export multipliers, etc. Is this BEA stuff? or does the Anderson School have that? Many thanks. Larry Shute -- Laurence Shute Voice: 909-869-38500 Department of Economics FAX: 909-869-6987 California State Polytechnic University, Pomona 3801 West Temple Avenue Pomona, CA 91768-4070 USAe-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
[PEN-L:11892] Re: Risk and Unequal Opportunity under cap
Max Sawicky wrote, Yeah but every theory abstracts from something. Whether it's important or not is another way of saying whether you dig the theory. (I've started rereading the Beats.) I can dig that. A virtue of utilitarianism is that in its specificity it is more compelling than utter fuzziness, the edge of which you are skirting here. Maybe it's just my fetish for fuzzy-edged skirts showing. I agree that the specificity of utilitarianism may make it more "compelling" than utter fuzziness. What is at stake in Ellsberg's Paradox, however, is precisely what the rules are for specifying utility (under some, not all, conditions). If those rules are demonstrably wrong or incomplete then the admittedly compelling specificity of utilitarianism may be arbitrary. On the other hand, if we can specify the fuzziness (ambiguous information states), then the fuzziness may indeed turn out to be less "fuzzy" than the misplaced specificity of presumably unfuzzy utilitarianism. Or as Ellsberg put it: "(1) Certain information states can be meaningfully identified as highly ambiguous; (2) in these states, many reasonable people tend to violate the Savage axioms with respect to certain choices; (3) their behavior is deliberate and not readily reversed upon reflection; (4) certain patterns of 'violating' behavior can be distinguished and described in terms of a specified decision rule." Can you dig it? Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ knoW Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: HTTP://WWW.VCN.BC.CA/TIMEWORK/
[PEN-L:11891] Re: Risk and Unequal Opportunity under cap
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tom Walker) Subject: [PEN-L:11887] Re: Risk and Unequal Opportunity under cap I doubt that public choice right-wingers would have much use for Ellsberg's Paradox. If anything, the paradox presents an indictment against any kind of reductivism. As I understand "public choice", it is founded on one set of reductivist principles, in opposition to another set of reductivist principles. Public choice applies neo-classical welfare theory to the behavior of public officials and collective decision-making processes. The problem is not with the scale on which decisions are made but with the nature of the decisions -- "utility" abstracts from some difficult to define considerations in certain kinds of decision making. Thus Ellsberg contrasts Yeah but every theory abstracts from something. Whether it's important or not is another way of saying whether you dig the theory. (I've started rereading the Beats.) the decision situations in which his paradox prevails to those involved with familiar production processes or well-known random events (such as coin flipping). Aren't the right-wingers arguing -- in contrast to Ellsberg -- that there really is "no difference" between, say, personal consumption choices and public policy choices so that the market is an adequate model for either? No, I don't think that's right. First of all, public goods are different than private goods, and secondly collective decision-making is different from individual decision-making. The real application of the 'market' analogy lies in individual utility maximization, not in fantasizing the existence of organized markets. There is discussion of a market for political ideas or policies, but clearly the variety of electoral and other non-market processes are distinct from markets with buyers and sellers of non-public goods. I would venture to say that "ambiguity" arises often around ethical issues, so that any effort to repackage them in terms of "efficiency" is doomed on grounds of both ethics and efficiency. The solution is not to distribute the ethical choices and hope that millions of atomized, private *utilitarian* decisions will somehow add up to an ethical collective choice (or, at least, a choice "exempt" from criticism on ethical grounds). The privatization of welfare as voluntary charity and the kind of welfare reform that is promoted as "workfare" are two examples of suppressing the public ethical dimensions of issues in the name of a chimerical private ethics. By contrast, the Right, though this last is not necessarily implied by N-C or public choice theory, which allow for collective expressions of empathy or altruism. A virtue of utilitarianism is that in its specificity it is more compelling than utter fuzziness, the edge of which you are skirting here. ethical dimensions of the Vietnam war were suppressed in the name of an overriding (and ultimately venal) "national interest". What is needed instead is the foregrounding of the ethical dimensions of public issues and a spirited, informed public discussion around precisely those dimensions -- what used to be known as "democracy". Sounds good, maybe too good. MBS === Max B. SawickyEconomic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-8810 (voice) Ste. 1200 202-775-0819 (fax)Washington, DC 20036 http://epn.org/sawicky Opinions above do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute other than this writer. ===
[PEN-L:11889] FW: Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, AUGUST 18, 1997: In a comparison of nine industrial economies, only Germany and Japan had greater increases in manufacturing productivity than the United States in 1996, BLS reports. "U.S. productivity growth in 1996 resulted from a combination of a 2.7 percent increase in output and a 0.5 percent decline in labor input, as measured by hours worked," BLS said (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). The Washington Post's "Odd Jobs" feature (August 17, page H5) carries a Reuters item describing a study by two university economists that indicates employers are turning down many black applicants for jobs in sales and related occupations where they would have to deal with predominantly white customers. According to BLS data, black workers make up 10.7 percent of the labor force but only 7.9 percent of those employed in sales jobs. Moreover, said BLS economist Tom Hale, blacks tend to be "overrepresented" in the lowest-paying sales jobs. For example, 16.6 percent of whites in sales work as cashiers, compared with 38 percent of blacks. A typical white salesperson earns $652 per week; a black salesperson $417 per week, BLS figures showed. Negotiators for both sides say they are making process in their marathon talks to resolve the Teamsters strike against United Parcel Service. At the same time, as the strike enters its third week today, both sides are sending out signals that they are preparing to turn on the heat if a settlement isn't reached soon (The Wall Street Journal, page A3). The Wall Street Journal's "Tracking the Economy" feature (page A4) says that initial jobless claims for the week of August 16, to be released Thursday, are expected to reach 325,000, according to the Technical Data Consensus Forecast. Initial jobless claims totaled an actual 316,000 the previous week.
[PEN-L:11888] Why the UPS Win Matters
Why the Victory at UPS Matters -- Nathan Newman With last night's labor contract deal between UPS and the Teamsters agreed to, it appears that the Teamsters have scored a massive win against corporate America. Along with keeping control of their pension fund and winning increases for retirees, the Teamsters have won what appears to be a nearly 40% increase in wages for the average part-time worker and the creation of over 10,000 new full-time positions. In a time when many unions have had to fight to the death for modest gains or to just hold onto what they already have, this unprecendented gain for UPS workers is an inspiring win for UPS workers. But it is more than that. It was won with massive public support and the full backing of the AFL-CIO and, in its meaning for the future of labor and the progressive movement, it will likely be remembered as a crucial turning point for an upswing in activism and success. Why is the win at UPS so important? Start with the settlement itself. In a time when pensions are disappearing or companies are turning pensions into corporate piggybanks, the Teamsters have reaffirmed the principle of strong, worker-controlled pensions that are portable between jobs within an industry. In a time when part-time work is a tool for disempowering workers, the Teamsters have struck the first successful collective assault against corporation's abusive use of part-time work. In a time when average wages have fallen for twenty years, the Teamsters have won an unprecedented increase in wages. In all of this, they have signalled that lowered wages and benefits are not an "inevitable" aspect of the global economy but a result, at least partly, of corporate power and that such corporate power can be resisted and even defeated through collective action backed by a unified labor and community alliance. In a world where the message has been that the only way to avoid being screwed was to cut your own deal, scam your own individual training, fight for your own raise as others fell behind, the UPS deal is now there as a shining example that a whole workforce can rise together and see improvement in working conditions achieved through their own collective strength. Let's be clear. Everyone loves a winner and labor in now a winner through this action. The credibility of labor struggle as a method to fighting corporate power has been relegitimized. The fact that this struggle served lower-income and part-time workers has also relegitimized labor as a champion not just of elite manufacturing workers, pilots and baseball players (a recent media image) but of ordinary workers who everyone can easily identify with. The faces of the strikers were often mothers deciding whether they could afford Fruit Loops on their strike pay and everyone will be cheering that that mother or other struggling families will now have a pay increase and a shot at converting two or three part-time jobs into a solid full-time job at UPS. It is an image of labor that can be taken to workplaces and communities across the country by organizers saying, you could be that mother or that father improving your lot if you will only stand up with your fellow workers and form a union. You can win and you can gain. That is a message we have needed, especially after years of failed strikes in Deacateur, Detroit and earlier Hormel and PATCO. The UPS win is the new meaning of a revitalzed labor movement that will fight together for victory, With 55% of the population siding with the UPS strikers, it signals a new opportunity for labor to marshall public support and sympathy not just as the underdogs but as effective champions to challenge corporate power. Which is where the strike win gets its other significance, which is in the internal meaning for Labor. Start with Carey as leader of the Teamsters. As a rank-and-file leader, Carey had fought for decades against a corrupt Teamster leadership that signed go-along contracts that created the two-tier wage and part-time labor system at UPS in the first place. It was only the struggle for rank-and-file democracy within the Teamsters (led by left activists in Teamsters for a Democratic Union) that eventually catapulted Carey into leadership when the opportunity came in 1991. Against the odds and against internal corruption and the mob, Ron Carey and his TDU allies wrested back control of the largest private sector union in the country. With the federal government overseers draining money from the union as a terrific rate, Carey had to expend other resources cleaning up corrupt locals and dealing with the vestigal resistance of old-line locals living off the fat of members dues. Carey sold off the private jets and slashed his own salary but out of the struggle to reform the union, the Teamsters had emerged seemingly hobbled with an empty
[PEN-L:11884] Why they won: Random Thoughts on UPS
I think that we might take a few moments to consider why and how UPS won. So far, some of the obvious factors were: 1. The drivers had made a good impression on the public before the strike. The Wall Street Journal had an article a couple of years ago, describing the drivers as sex symbols to emphasize the auroa of the UPS people. 2. So they had public support. 3. How much of the public support comes from people being fed up with corporate abuses? 4. Given the importance of the personal relationship, hiring replacement workers would be trickier. 5. UPS had a tenuous hold on a virtual monopoly, making them more vulnerable to a strike. 6. How much of the public could identify with a Chicano strawberry picker. 7. I live in a semi-rural environment, but I have never seen an obviously "ethnic" UPS driver. The ones that I know are very clean, cut white middle class people. 8. The Teamsters had a lot of baggage to shed. The press never seemed to try to label them with thuggishness. Why was the media not more negative toward UPS, especially since some of the workers are relatively well off? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11880] Dissident Organizers in the Teamsters Union
Steve Kindred climbed onto a Greyhound bus in the Cleveland depot on a dreary April morning in 1975 with five pounds of Spanish peanuts, three pounds of raisins, and a list of Teamster activists in his pack. He had a ticket in his pocket entitling him to travel wherever Greyhound went for the next twenty-one days for the bargain price of $89. Kindred was on an excursion to recruit warehouse workers and over-the-road drivers, covered by the National Master Freight Agreement, for an ad hoc organization being formed to give the rank and file a voice in formulating demands in the next nationwide contract. The 1973 agreement had been a second-rate contract. The thirty-one-year-old Kindred, a product of the student antiwar movement in Chicago, had become a Teamster member, in the process combining his need to make a living and his idealist drive to transform American society into something better for the working class... Kindred's first stop was Columbus, just a couple of hours from Cleveland. He had telephoned ahead arranging to meet a warehouse worker, a PROD member, at the bus station. In a routine that was to be repeated time and again as he wandered through the Midwest into the South and Southwest, out to California and back across the country to Cleveland again, moving through the bus depots of twenty-two cities in the process, Kindred sat down to wait for his appointment. He passed the time reading, making a few notes in his journal, munching on peanuts and raisins, and drinking coffee. He had a couple of hours to wait. The warehouse worker suggested a sandwich when he arrived, an offer seized upon by Kindred, anticipating correctly that his Columbus host would pick up the tab. As a PROD member, the warehouse worker was well aware that dissident organizers like Kindred traveled with light wallets. The thirty-one-year-old Kindred betrayed his college education and background as a Methodist preacher's son in his speech and his aura of gentleness, but having been a taxi driver and a truck driver in Chicago and Cleveland, he had earned the right to be discussing their union in a seedy lunchroom in Columbus, Ohio. Kindred laid out his background, knowing that the red-baiters in the Teamster establishment would be doing it, anyhow. He told his new acquaintance that he was a member of a small group called the International Socialists, a tag that could frighten, enrage, or be passed off as understandable. Kindred reminded his hosts that in 1970, Bill Presser and Frank Fitzsimmons had called the wildcat strikers in Cleveland Communists when they marched in defiance of Presser's orders to return to work. The wildcat strikes, which spread across the country, had ended after three months with the proposed three-year-wage hike of $1.10 an hour boosted to $1.85 over thirty-nine months to bring peace to the trucking industry. Kindred continued: "I don't have to tell you the 1973 contract was a disaster." He told the warehouse worker that Teamsters from five cities had gotten together to organize a rank-and-file agenda for the upcoming 1976 national trucking negotiations. He asked the warehouse worker for his ideas: what he would want to see in the next master freight agreement. Then Kindred explained that he had been picked for his mission because he was laid off and available. His goal was to recruit as many rank and filers as possible to come to a meeting their group would be holding in Chicago on August 16. The idea was to influence the national negotiations by reaching a consensus on realistic demands, not a wish list. They were calling themselves Teamsters for A Decent Contract (TDC). (From chapter two of "Collision: How the Rank and File Took Back the Teamsters", Kenneth C. Crowe, Scribner, 1993. The chapter deals with the creation of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which was instrumental in the election of Ron Carey, the current president.) Louis Proyect
[PEN-L:11879] urpe update
hello all. for those of you going to the union for radical political economics summer conference, remember to bring your directions. directions can be found on the urpe homepage- http://economics.csusb.edu/orgs/URPE remember to bring bedding, flashlight, bathing suit, and some rain clothes just in case it rains!! (cross our fingers that it doesn't). i'm not on the pen-l list right now, so if you have questions, please write to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] susan fleck
[PEN-L:11881] Re: Risk and Unequal Opportunity under cap
On Mon, 18 Aug 1997, Max B. Sawicky wrote: If risk is seen as a friend and an equal opportunity for entrepreneurship, then inequality becomes just a reward system for those willing to take the risks that drive wealth creation. . . . This is interesting but perhaps a little too ingenious to attribute to popular debate. There is an individualist ideology which holds that people choose their risks and ought then to take the consequences of their choices, just as they are entitled to the rewards of a fortuitous choice. If your point is that the way this is viewed is politically important, I agree. It's a little more mundane than what I would think of as risk theory, however. I am not sure it is separate. In the last twenty years, we have seen usury laws repealed and a whole range of high-risk financial forms legalized based on expanded ideas of what risk can be managed safely -- the key point of much of Bernstein's conclusion. That idea that speculation is really just intelligent risk-taking which can be rewarded at usurous levels has permeated culture and created at least part of the reverse sentiment that those who do not risk deserve their poverty. My point in bringing up the psychological studies that Bernstein details is that even as he documents why risk became legitimized, he also explores why risk-taking is a more problematic endeavor for those without capital in the first place. Even when risk appears equivalent for rich and poor, he details why the poor will end up avoiding it. Our culture has massively absorbed the first lessons of risk management over the twenty years but hasn't even begun to link it to this second aspect. The Left may condemn the casino society but we haven't developed a full language to deal with the differential effects of risk for the rich versus the poor. This isn't necessarily a deep theoretical issue, but then many basic insights of risk management are not that hard to describe, just not always intuitive until you do the math or studies. both equitable. In the broadest speculations of socialist theory, have market socialists grappled with that balance? The market socialists devolve to welfare statism in this circumstance, which is perfectly well-taken in the context of that system. I would say you have to be a rather extreme leveller to argue against any scope for voluntary individual risk-taking, with its attendant rewards and losses, but I don't doubt that the more left among us would take exception since in their vision capital is more-or-less completely socialized. In some ways, the more interesting aspects of risk management are in the Grameen Bank and community banks around the US. Many of them socialize risk across multiple individuals, creating collective support to avoid both the fear of complete individual risktaking by the poor and create collective responsibility for loans.In those lending practices, there is direct acknowledgement that risk is too hard for individuals at that level of poverty, so some kind of collective support is required. This doesn't erase risk but collectivizes it in interesting ways, an important model for any form of market socialism that might have collective entrepreneurship by small enterprises or work groups. --Nathan Newman
[PEN-L:11883] Re: From the Ivory tower
At 01:58 PM 8/15/97 -0700, Jim Craven wrote: In other words, building Socialism in those countries--and elsewhere-- especially in the context of ongoing and very hostile imperialist encirclement, dealing with the legacies of the past, tyring to build a future and trying to balance myriad contradictions, contending interests, hatreds etc to preserve some kind of unity was/is no easy matter. I think that state socialist governments in Cuba, China, and Eastern Europe did a rather good job in overcoming thier countries backwardness underdevelopment created by the capitalist world system. I would even say that state socialism is probably THE best thing that ever happened in those parts of the world. But "rather good job" does not mean a "perfect job." In fact, there are areas wehere state socialist government should receive failing grades. The recognition of women's right and the environmental protection are two such issue that immediately come to mind. While its true that patriarchy was a legacy of the past, it is also true that these goverenments did not work as hard (to say the least) as they did in other areas (such as land reform, or eradication of capitalist private property) to overcome the legacy of the past. In fact, many argue that the paternalistic social policies confined women to the role of incubators -- for example the whole notion of a 'socialist family" was a patriarchal one: man as the breadwinner, woman as a care taker, and those role were generally written into social policies, eg. favouring families over single parents (almost always women) in providing assistance, did not allowing men to take paternity leaves; and -- most importantly- the strict seggregation of the labour market by gender. For example, several studies of the Polish labour market revealed that gender was the major factor accounting for pay ineqa;ities -- its effects being larger (in terms of mean differences) that those of education, industry or supervisiory position. The studies of social mobility reveal a similar picture, women were essentially downward mobile; Poland was particularly bad in that respect, worse than her neighbours -- not to mention the United States. The same patriarchal attitued wre also manifested regarding anything that had to do with sex. The informal sex industry for foreign visitors (not to mention governmwent and party offcials) was generally tolerated (if not quietly supported) by the authorities; according to reports I heard from Cuba, that is the attitude of the government there. At the same time, any public dispaly of anything that smacked of overt sexuality was prohibited. Not to mention the blatant discrimination of gays. So the bottom line is this: you cannot bl;ame the failure of state socialism in the area social policy on the past backwardness. That policy was itself backward -- born from a liaison of puritannical social work and paternalistic factory regimes introduced in the 19th century. cheers, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 POLITICS IS THE SHADOW CAST ON SOCIETY BY BIG BUSINESS. AND AS LONG AS THIS IS SO, THE ATTENUATI0N OF THE SHADOW WILL NOT CHANGE THE SUBSTANCE. - John Dewey
[PEN-L:11887] Re: Risk and Unequal Opportunity under cap
Nathan Newman wrote, Bernstein did highlight Ellsberg's work as a pioneer in risk theory but you gave a better summary than he did, since he quickly moved onto others. Have any of the public choice rightwingers or other game theorists working around government decision-making used Ellsberg in their work? It's interesting to hear that my two sentence summary of Ellsberg's work surpasses Bernstein's discussion of it. I'll have to have a look at his book. There is one mention of Ellsberg by a couple of B-school decision theorists that I don't have the citation for. I should qualify that it's been seven or eight years since I scoured the citations indexes for references to Ellsberg, so if there has been anything recent, I'm not aware of it. I doubt that public choice right-wingers would have much use for Ellsberg's Paradox. If anything, the paradox presents an indictment against any kind of reductivism. As I understand "public choice", it is founded on one set of reductivist principles, in opposition to another set of reductivist principles. The problem is not with the scale on which decisions are made but with the nature of the decisions -- "utility" abstracts from some difficult to define considerations in certain kinds of decision making. Thus Ellsberg contrasts the decision situations in which his paradox prevails to those involved with familiar production processes or well-known random events (such as coin flipping). Aren't the right-wingers arguing -- in contrast to Ellsberg -- that there really is "no difference" between, say, personal consumption choices and public policy choices so that the market is an adequate model for either? I would venture to say that "ambiguity" arises often around ethical issues, so that any effort to repackage them in terms of "efficiency" is doomed on grounds of both ethics and efficiency. The solution is not to distribute the ethical choices and hope that millions of atomized, private *utilitarian* decisions will somehow add up to an ethical collective choice (or, at least, a choice "exempt" from criticism on ethical grounds). The privatization of welfare as voluntary charity and the kind of welfare reform that is promoted as "workfare" are two examples of suppressing the public ethical dimensions of issues in the name of a chimerical private ethics. By contrast, the ethical dimensions of the Vietnam war were suppressed in the name of an overriding (and ultimately venal) "national interest". What is needed instead is the foregrounding of the ethical dimensions of public issues and a spirited, informed public discussion around precisely those dimensions -- what used to be known as "democracy". Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ knoW Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: HTTP://WWW.VCN.BC.CA/TIMEWORK/
[PEN-L:11890] FW: Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1997 A tentative agreement was reached late Monday in the 15-day-old strike by the Teamsters against United Parcel Service, both the company and the union said. UPS workers could return to their jobs as early as Wednesday, said a union spokesperson. Voting on the new deal will be conducted by mail, and will take up to a month. Details of the deal were not available, but one negotiator said that it was a 5-year contract that increases the base wage for part-timers but does not include a contentious pension proposal made by the company. Negotiators were spurred on by Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, who pressured them back to the table when talks broke off. She also sat in on some of the 80 hours of negotiations that took place almost non-stop since Thursday (The Washington Post, page 1; The New York Times, page 1). Average hourly earnings 1994 to the present from the BLS Current Employment Statistics program are shown in a page 1 graph from The Wall Street Journal. The Federal Open Market Committee is expected to announce its decision on whether or not the Fed will leave interest rates unchanged at 2:15 p.m. ET today, according to USA Today (page B1). The roller-coaster stock market gives the Fed one more reason to leave interest rates unchanged, says the Gannett newspaper.__John M. Berry, writing in The Washington Post (page C1), says policymakers give no sign of alarm on inflation.
