[PEN-L:12716] World's wealthiest 16 percent uses 80 percent of naturalresources
This is one of the stories about imperialism. Useful to have an update of the statistics. Chris Burford London World's wealthiest 16 percent uses 80 percent of natural resources October 12, 1999 From CNN Correspondent Garrick Utley NEW YORK (CNN) -- As scientists note the arrival of the six billionth human being on the planet, they also are warning that 16 percent of the world's population is consuming some 80 percent of its natural resources. That's the estimated toll the wealthiest populations on the globe -- the United States, Europe and Japan -- are taking from the earth's natural bounty to sustain their way of life. In the U.S. alone, says Emily Matthews of the World Resources Institute, every man, woman and child is responsible for the consumption of about 25 tons of raw materials each year. Americans, while making up only four percent of the world's population, operate one third of its automobiles. U.S. citizens consume one quarter of the world's global energy supply. Perhaps a more graphic example is that of the lowly quarter-pound hamburger. To produce just one requires 1.2 pounds of grain to feed the cattle, and 100 gallons of water -- part of the hidden cost consumers never see. Resources -- at least in the Western Hemisphere -- do not appear to be immediately threatened, leading some experts to reason that the real danger is not scarcity. "We are really working our way through the ocean's harvest," says Matthews. "And I don't think we will run out of fish. We will substitute fish-farming for ocean fisheries." And as other parts of the world continue to grow and develop -- Matthews believes projections of a global population of nine billion in 50 years are not unreasonable -- the pressures will become even greater. Scientists believe during that period demand for energy will triple. So will manufacturing and, unless changes in the current way of doing things are made, so will pollution. This may be the most serious problem facing the planet -- not how much is being taken away from it, but how much is being dumped back into it.
[PEN-L:12715] PA Governor Signs Mumia Abu-Jamal Death Warrant [fwd]
** The following message is forwarded to you by Paul Zarembka, supporting RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka On 10/13/99, 05:20 PM, Subject: PA Governor Signs Mumia Abu-Jamal Death Warrant, "C. Clark Kissinger" [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: PA Governor Signs Mumia Abu Jamal's Death Warrant Despite Expected Habeus Corpus Petition Citing New Evidence of Innocence, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Racial Bias Abu Jamal's Legal Team to File Habeus Corpus Petition Friday, October 15 At 10:00 a.m. at the Federal District Court in Philadelphia, PA Press Conference Will Follow at 11:00 a.m. at the American Friends Services Committee, 15th and Cherry Street Rush to Execute Violates Defendant's Basic Legal Rights and Opposes Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Bar Associations' Recent Call for a Moratorium on Executions PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Governor Ridge of Pennsylvania today signed the death warrant of Mumia Abu Jamal, despite an expected habeus corpus petition from the defendant's lawyers citing: fabrication and suppression of evidence; racial bias in selecting jurors; and denial of the right to self- representation, among other arguments. This is the 171st death warrant Governor Ridge has signed since 1994 -- five times the number signed by his predecessors over a 25-year period. Ninety-nine percent of those warrants signed by Ridge were done while the inmates still had time to appeal. Aside from not waiting for the habeus corpus petition -- a process that all defendants are legally entitled to -- Governor Ridge also decided to sign Jamal's warrant despite the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Bar Associations' recent call for a moratorium on all executions until the death penalty system is proven just. One of the system's infirmities, acknowledged by the bar associations, has to do with racial prejudice. While nine percent of Pennsylvania's total population is African-American, for example, the percentage on death row is nearly seven times that amount (62%). This is the largest racial disparity of any state in the United States. In addition, a 1998 study by Professor Baldus at the University of Iowa found that a young African-American man growing up in Philadelphia is 11.5 times more likely to end up on death row than in Georgia or Alabama. ``Ridge is rushing to execute before all the evidence has been presented,'' said Leonard Weinglass, Jamal's lead attorney. ``Since when does one man's political motivations override another's right to a fair trial, especially when a human life is in question?'' Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 81 people have been exonerated. Rushing executions assures that people who are on death row as a result of errors in process or issues of actual innocence will not be saved through the appellate process. The habeus corpus petition, which Governor Ridge knew was being filed for federal review, contains more than 29 separate issues of Constitutional violations that occurred in Jamal's trial and appeal. It is more than 150 pages, and contains more than 600 paragraphs of factual allegations pertinent to the case. ``Several arguments will be raised in the petition demonstrating that Jamal never received a meaningful trial and that compelling evidence of innocence was ignored by the state courts of Pennsylvania,'' said Daniel Williams, co- counsel. ``Above and beyond the issue of innocence -- which is paramount in this case -- are the transcendent issues of whether or not in the 1990's someone ought to be executed when the trial attorney admits he interviewed no witnesses and conducted no investigation; when 11 African-American jurors were removed on the basis of race; and when the prosecution wrongly used a teenager's political statements to give the death penalty to an adult 12 years later,'' said Weinglass. In addition to the defending attorneys, those working to ensure a fair trial for Jamal include: Amnesty International, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the European Parliament, Reverend Jesse Jackson and many others. SOURCE: Leonard Weinglass, Esq. - -- End of forwarded message -
[PEN-L:12714] Re: Re: materialism
Rod Hay wrote: With consciousness, it is true that many higher functions can be explained by chemical changes in the brain, but it has also been shown that ideas, behaviour, attitudes, etc., can affect the underlying chemistry. "Explain" and "affect" are misleading here. Chemical changes in the brain don't exactly "explain" anything. If they did we could read someone's mind with an EEG. In fact it is difficult to know what the correct verb would be to connect "chemical change" and "thought." And "affect"is much too weak to describe the relation of an attitude to chemical change. "Is" would probably be better in both cases -- but would still be misleading. An explanation of how the firing of neurons "is" a thought is precisely what we don't have. That is, we know that to think or feel or perceive takes the physical form of chemical action in the brain, but that merely names what needs to be explained. The link, identity, whatever is most dramatic of course in cases of malfunction. When I had to shift anti-depressants about 14 years ago, there came a Tuesday afternoon when I had to dismiss a class because my voice ran down like a primitive windup record player -- the words spacing out and stopping. The next morning (I had upped the dosage of the new anti-depressant 5 days earlier) I was sitting in my office at 8:55 wondering how I could teach my 9:00 class when with an almost audible click my "mind" came back. I could think.You just can't separate chemistry and thought in terms of one "explains" or "affects" the other. Carrol Re emergent properties. If you take (say) 20 dynamos and attach each to an electric clock, every clock will run at a slightly different speed, some slower, some faster, than they should. If you connect all 20 together, so one can draw power from another, they will all run at the same speed. It's called a "virtual governor." There is no "thing" there but the system works as though there were a governor regulating speed. That's an emergent property, but it isn't all that clear that thought can be so described. In fact "emergent property" might just be another case of substituting the name of a problem for a solution to the problem.
[PEN-L:12717] Sen and where's the beef
this bounced from Wayne From: "Mathew Forstater" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:12655] Re: Where's the Beef? Date sent:Wed, 13 Oct 1999 09:48:40 -0500 Send reply to:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Max- Aren't there some alternative indicators of basic human needs formulated by or inspired by Amartya Sen? I can try to dig them up. Mat WN: Sen was the inspiration for the UNDPs Human Development Index (HDI), the latest of which was published in UN Development Program, Human Development Report 1999 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). WN: I critique HDI and other measures of average economic welfare in Nafziger, The Economics of Developing Countries, 3rd ed.(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997), pp. 9-45. Other development texts also evaluate HDI, GDP per capita, etc. None of these is the last word. WN: I am also looking forward to reading Sen's Development and Freedom, recommended by Jim Craven. E. Wayne Nafziger Kansas State University http://www.ksu.edu/economics/nafwayne/ Michael, this message was rejected so I am sending this to your e-mail. Wayne E. Wayne Nafziger, University Distinguished Professor Department of Economics 327 Waters Hall Kansas State University Manhattan, KS 66506-4001, USA -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:12708] Re: Re: RE: Where's the Beef?
Henwood discovers class! James M. Blaut wrote: Don't try to slither out from under by pointing fingers at the bad old sheiks. Yes, they do interfere with a model of good vs. evil, don't they? But I guess if class processes don't matter much in the core countries, they don't matter much in the periphery either. Doug Jim --- Internet Header Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Received: from galaxy.csuchico.edu (galaxy.CSUChico.EDU [132.241.82.21]) by spamgaaf.compuserve.com (8.9.3/8.9.3/SUN-1.7) with ESMTP id WAA12689; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 22:50:26 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by galaxy.csuchico.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id TAA02009; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 19:57:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail1.panix.com (mail1.panix.com [166.84.0.212]) by galaxy.csuchico.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id TAA01994 for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 19:56:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [166.84.250.86] (dhenwood.dialup.access.net [166.84.250.86]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BB67A30F0C for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 22:49:19 -0400 (EDT) Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-Id: v0421014eb42af528e836@[166.84.250.86] In-Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] References: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 22:50:07 -0400 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:12707] Re: Re: RE: Where's the Beef? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.2.08 -- ListProc(tm) by CREN
[PEN-L:12693] Re: Re: materialism
At 08:36 13/10/99 -0700, you wrote: It's good that we agree on this issue. But my point was not about this kind of materialism but that Marx and Engels were pushing a different _kind_ of materialism. I don't know, BTW, if saying that ideas are "just chemicals in the brain" is a good way of saying it. I would restate the issue as follows: if the brain and its chemicals are like hardware, then ideas are like software. Every analogy has its limits, of course: the complexity of the brain's biology and its chemicals mean that ideas are much more complex and unpredictable than software. (People aren't computers.) We just need the concept of emergent properties. Fits quite well with some aspects of the dialectical principle of quantitative changes sometimes leading to qualitative ones. Chris Burford London
[PEN-L:12722] Agriculture 8
Here G picks up some of the sources of growth that are "associated with the agricultural revolution", to argue that those sources were always there, ready to be used depending on market opportunities: if "these opportunities contracted, as they did in northern Europe after 1300 and around Paris for about 80 years after 1660, productivity tended to fall off" I am going to be elaborating on this in my next post on Brenner (who not only asked me to cc him, but mentioned to me that he is confused with Bucky Brenner all the time), but this question of capitalist agriculture being a sine qua non for capitalism overall is extremely problematic in light of the examples of modern Germany and Japan. In the very first paragraph of Arno Mayer's "Persistence of the Old Regime" he draws attention to the fact that precapitalist agriculture predominated continental Europe in the early 1900s, especially Germany. Fred Haliday's "Political History of Modern Japan" points out that the Meiji restoration "land reform" retained feudalist obligations. In either case, large farming units based on wage labor did not obtain. More detail to follow. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:12729] BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1999: Today's News Release: "U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes -- September 1999" indicates that the U.S. Import Price Index increased 0.7 percent in September. The increase followed gains of 1.0 percent and 0.5 percent in the previous 2 months, and was largely attributable to the continued increase in prices for imported petroleum. U.S. export prices were up 0.2 percent in September, following a 0.3 percent increase in August. As the economy continues to grow and suburban jobless rats remain at record low levels, seasonal employees have become such rare finds that retailers warn that this holiday season promises to be the most difficult ever, says The Washington Post (page E1). While the labor shortage is giving retailers headaches, it also is forcing them to be more creative. Big chains began recruiting holiday help in the midst of a sizzling August rather than wait until the fall. Said one spokeswoman, "We're not necessarily looking for job seekers but for people like retirees who might not otherwise be looking for a job." Long-term interest rates leapt to their highest levels in 2 years Wednesday, threatening consumers and businesses with higher borrowing costs. Rates are expected to keep rising, experts predict, as bond traders brace for a batch of inflation data due Friday and Tuesday that is expected to show a big jump in the prices of wholesale and consumer goods in September. Friday's producer price report for September is expected to show an increase of 0.5 percent. Even excluding volatile food and energy prices, producer prices still rose 0.5 percent experts estimate (USA Today, page B1). New Census data show the number of uninsured Americans is climbing, in the face of an extraordinary boom. The cost of health insurance, after a few years of stability, is rising as well. The page 1 article of The New York Times (October 10) "Week in Review" section includes a graph that shows the percent of uninsured by age, race/ethnicity, education, work experience, and place of birth. Robert A. Mundell, Columbia University economics teacher, whose work 4 decades ago created the intellectual basis for what this year became the common European currency known as the euro, has won the Nobel Prize for Economics. The work of Mundell, a Canadian, has been most visibly translated into the real world in Europe, but his conclusions about the role of floating exchange rates in strengthening the hand of monetary authorities is now the accepted gospel of policymakers through the developed world (The Washington Post, page E3; The New York Times, page C1), application/ms-tnef
[PEN-L:12730] Re: BLS Daily Report
At 04:59 PM 10/14/99 -0400, Dave Richardson forwarded: BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1999: ... As the economy continues to grow and suburban jobless rats remain at record low levels, seasonal employees have become such rare finds that retailers warn that this holiday season promises to be the most difficult ever, says The Washington Post (page E1). ... If these jobless rats want to work for my employer, they should contact me. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine
[PEN-L:12731] Re: Re: materialism
At 09:49 14/10/99 PDT, Rod wrote: Carrol. I can not disagree with anything that you said. (except that EEG's measure electric fields not chemical changes.) There is much ignorance about the subject (I read somewhere that there are over one hundred message bearing chemicals in the brain and scientist understand the purpose of five or six) and a lot of what is said even by the experts is pure guesswork. It is clear that the "materialist" purely chemical explanation leaves a lot to be desired. There is something more there than chemistry but we don't yet know what it is. (And, No! I am not a dualist.) Not a mere hundred, a *thousand* chemical neurotransmitters have been identified in the brain. These are the chemicals released in tiny pulses across the synapses to stimulate or destimulate the likelihood of a depolarisation spreading to the next neurone. And of those neurochemical transmitters that have been studied in detail such as serotonin and dopamine they have each half a dozen of sub-types of receptor. Emergent properties are well modelled in complexity theory, but they do have to have simple processes of interaction between the component cells for an emergent property to occur. I am not sure that the example of mechanical electrical clocks wired together is really analogous with nature. In the marxian critique of classical economics value is an emergent property of the interaction of millions of commodity exchanges. Marx did not use the word emergent, he just analysed the dynamic at both the cellular and the macro level. A recent paper in Nature has an intriguing bridge between the cellular level of brain function and the dynamic level of mind function in the analysis of magnetic imaging in relation to the perception of objects. All that has to be predicated is that the perception of an object makes the perception of one of its related attributes more likely. And that applies equally well if the object is an object or, as in the usage of object relations theory, a human being with whom one has an important emotional investment. "Object Relations" is the terminology deriving from Freud's usage of the internal representation of important relationships with people. Unfortunately in English the word object implies something that is not human. The following study published in Nature this month, October 1999, gives an intriguing account of how physical objects may be attended to by the physical brain as whole objects. This is through attention to one attribute of an object enhancing the attention to other attributes. Assuming this is replicable, it would apply to any objects from a glass, to a haystack, to a tin of tuna fish. But interestingly one of the objects the experimenters chose was a face, a representation of what could be an object in the Freudian internalised sense. And the mechanism could well fit that too like a glove. The mechanism there is described here at the level of organisation of the brain, could also be described at the level of the mind. Indeed to form a cartesian split between the brain and the mind, with these examples is quite unnecessary. Chris Burford London _ fMRI evidence for objects as the units of attentional selection KATHLEEN M. O'CRAVEN, PAUL E. DOWNING NANCY KANWISHER Contrasting theories of visual attention emphasize selection by spatial location, visual features (such as motion or colour) or whole objects. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test key predictions of the object-based theory, which proposes that pre-attentive mechanisms segment the visual array into discrete objects, groups, or surfaces, which serve as targets for visual attention. Subjects viewed stimuli consisting of a face transparently superimposed on a house, with one moving and the other stationary. In different conditions, subjects attended to the face, the house or the motion. The magnetic resonance signal from each subject's fusiform face area, parahippocampal place area and area MT/MST provided a measure of the processing of faces, houses and visual motion, respectively. Although all three attributes occupied the same location, attending to one attribute of an object (such as the motion of a moving face) enhanced the neural representation not only of that attribute but also of the other attribute of the same object (for example, the face), compared with attributes of the other object (for example, the house). These results cannot be explained by models in which attention selects locations or features, and provide physiological evidence that whole objects are selected even when only one visual attribute is relevant. - - - --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
[PEN-L:12734] Michael Moore in Seattle
Since Michael P. has asked a couple of times for elaboration on Seattle's encounter with the WTO's MM, I'll try to be as reliable a witness to the proceedings that took place Friday afternoon, October 1, 1999, at 4:30 pm at the University of Washington. Apologies in advance for any perceptual or emotional biases that may come through in the course of narrative as well as memory lapses [been running on 5 hours of sleep a night since we got word the WTO is coming to town]! Here goes: There were approximately 400 people in attendance. In addition to Moore and the WTO's lead economist Peter Lowe [can any NZ folks on the list give us his scoop, at least I'm pretty sure he's an NZ native], there were 6 other panelists; representing the UW faculty, women's health [PATH], labor and environmental [can we replace that word in the next millennium please] interests. Moore opened the session with a pretty canned speech, giving highlights in the history of Int'l Trade, economics, diplomacy, war, poverty etc. He stated that if most folks got the transparency they asked for, the most likely outcome would be that they would fall asleep! Trade review symposia are boring to the average person in his view. He gave a quick overview of the WTO's internal structure and it's relationship to other multilateral institutions. After he gave his speech the floor was opened up for questions from the panelists. The first was Patty Goldman, a Seattle attorney at EarthJustice. She took major exception to Moore's interpretation of WTO cases that have had negative impacts on US laws--the infamous Sea Turtle case and the Venezuelan gasoline case. It was her contention that the US went out of it's way to be non-discriminatory with regards to the writing and implementation of those laws [she helped write part of the Sea Turtle provisions of the MMPA]. Her rebuttal of Moore won a hefty round of applause from the audience. The next was Rich Feldman from the King County Labor Council. He stated in no uncertain terms that unionists in the US considered the WTO's blindness to labor rights a glaring stain on the WTO's legitimacy. This was put in the context of subsidies. To paraphrase: "why are price supports for small farmers WTO illegal, yet the subsidizing of military intervention in union busting activity or the refusal to consider unions legal, not considered illegal subsidies by the WTO. The holding of a gun to a workers head in a sweatshop is a subsidy." Additionally "why can we protect property rights but not labor rights, the WTO in this sense is a protectionist institution." Needless to say this caught Moore off guard and his response was thoroughly laughable and forgettable [I've since put those dendrites to other uses, sorry]. The crowd basically booed Moore's response [in a civil manner, mind you]. Richard Moxon, who teaches Strategy and International Management at UW went next. I almost totally forget what he said. If I remember correctly what little I do, he seemed very ambivalent about the WTO's guidelines for competition policy. Moore responded in a very indirect way and veered off into a discussion of the perils of people having a too Northern centered view of concerns about the WTO; that it exists and has substantive provisions for addressing the problems of The Global South, and that minimal sacrifices on the part of Northern countries [the US in particular] would have enormous benefits to The South--at which point someone from the audience yelled out "forgive the debt". When Moore asked "what"? because he didn't hear, the crowd, who did hear, joined in unison "forgive the debt!" [this was very moving actually]. Moore adamantly agreed! "Yes, yes, we should forgive the debt". The place erupted with applause [he fell for the trap, it was great--mind you, all this is on film]. Next was Jay Hair, former Prez. of the NWF who complained about the lack of transparency. Moore gave the reply of people would be bored as well as "the WTO is no more/less secretive than a meeting of the US cabinet." Next was Margaret Morrow, who is VP of PATH [Program for Appropriate Technology and Health]. She pointed out the gender bias of the WTO's agenda for the ministerial and also criticized the WTO's lack of transparency. Finally, Desmond O'Rourke, a Washington State Univ. professor of agricultural economics spoke about the benefits of free trade to consumers with regard to food prices. He cited statistics based on his research and also stated that the WTO wasn't moving fast enough on liberalizaion of agricultural policy--"my calculations indicate that if the present pace of reform continues, we'll achieve the goal of free trade in 2072" [that stuck to my neurons]. Moore and the audience got a good laugh out of that. That's all for now, tomorrow or over the weekend I'll type up the Audience dialog with Moore which was fascinating and really went to the core of the issues involved in the future of economic
[PEN-L:12733] Pessimism of the intellect...
"Hello. My name is Brad DeLong. I'm the parent of two kids at Burton Valley. I'm volunteering tonight to call people to ask for their support for Measure E, the parcel tax measure for local Lafayette schools." Note the words parent, volunteer, local. I'm not Washington calling: I'm your neighbor. This isn't big government: this is volunteerism. This isn't for some federal construction boondoggle: this is for the school in your neighborhood. This isn't the high politics I used to do: "Yes, Mr. Congressman. Your Republican opponent next year will say that you voted to raise taxes. But did you know that only 3,246 (estimated) households in your district will pay those higher income tax rates? And that 13,245 (estimated) households in your district will benefit from the enhanced Earned Income Tax Credit?" This isn't the long-range politics that I try to do: trying to become one of the "academic scribblers" to whom "madmen in authority" are listening when they hear their voices in the air. This is low politics. "The parcel tax is already on the books, but by law it must be renewed by the voters every eight years. It needs a 2/3 majority. It is worth $800,000 per year for the schools. Election day is November 2. May I please count on your support?" God damn Howard Jarvis to all eternity. What business does the state have, anyway, telling us how we govern ourselves--that we need a 2/3 majority vote to spend a little bit more money on our schools? It turns what is a slam-dunk into a vote too close to be taken for granted. "Would you like us to send you more information to help you make up your mind?" Oh, we are going to win anyway. Parents of kids in school--and of kids who used to be in school--vote and vote yes. People who don't have kids in school can be persuaded to vote yes in large numbers by pointing out that $150,000 of their house's value is the reputation of the school district, and that reputation would be easily lost by a couple of school funding rejections at the polls. "Thank you very much for your time. Be sure to vote on November 2nd. It's your most important right." And voter apathy is our friend. We're not at all interested in arguing with "no" voters. We're not very interested in convincing "undecided" voters. We're interested in turning out "yes" voters. In an odd-numbered year voter participation will be perhaps 55% (instead of the 80%+ of a presidential election year). There is much to be gained by energizing the base--and much to be lost by energizing the anti-base. But it takes energy. Ten people on the phone bank. Two-hour shifts each night for a month and a half. Almost all the voting households in the school district will be contacted. Perhaps a person-year of political energy and effort will be devoted to ensure an extra $6,400,000 investment over the next eight years in education for the children of the upper-middle-class citizens fo Lafayette, California. I look around at the other earnest parents--school board candidates--school administrators--staffing the phones. And I think: here we have ten people who have paid an extra $150,000 each to have a house in this school district. How many people who could be potential PTA leaders in other communities do we have crammed into this room? They care about the quality of the schools where they live, and about the quality of the schools their children attend. But the most straightforward--and easiest--way to achieve these--limited--goals is to vote-with-your-feet for an upper-middle-class community where you can turn out 80% voting majorities for local school taxes. And that is what we have done. But there is no doubt that the structure sucks. Two decades after Proposition 13, the dead hand of Howard Jarvis continues to rule. It has cast us in the role of Sisyphus, trying over and over again to roll the same small boulder up the hill while all around us the landslide washes the mountain itself into the sea. For there is a much better alternative possible world that we have lost. It is a world in which it only takes 1/2, not 2/3, of votes to pass a local school tax. It is a world in which California schools are much better funded and California teachers better paid. It is a world in which the ten of us on this phone bank are spread out over more communities making a difference in school funding, rather than huddled in one town where a critical mass has achieved political dominance. It is a world in which the schools are better on average, and in which there is a somewhat more convincing simulacrum of equality of opportunity.
[PEN-L:12732] Re: Re: materialism
Maybe I misunderstood the concept of "emergent properties." I'm trying to avoid reductionism. Macro cannot simply be explained by micro, as indicated by such phenomena as the "paradox of thrift." Lewontin Levins' book THE DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST has good stuff on this: (1) parts make whole: the aggregate level is made up of and is to a large extent (but not totally) determined by the characteristics of the parts. Despite the paradox of thrift and similar examples of the fallacy of composition, we can't ignore the fact that capitalism has a large number of capitalists jockeying for power with each other via aggressive accumulation of advantage. (2) whole makes parts: the aggregate level, which cannot be reduced to its parts, feeds back to affect the character and behavior of the parts. When the aggregate average rate of profit is low, for example, that discourages accumulation by individual capitalists, just as a high aggregate unemployment rate affects the behavior of individual workers (as Rod points out). (3) The bidirectional causation does not settle down into the kind of equilibrium that neoclassical economists reify. Parts make whole and whole makes parts as part of a dynamic process (one that's path-dependent and hard to reverse, BTW). Rod wrote: ... The question of emergent properties is important, but the reductionist approach hinted at by same suggests that even those emergent properties can be explained by the underlying science. In economics that would mean that all macroeconomic relations can be explained by microeconomics. It is still an open question whether this is true or not. The sticking point at present is when macroeconomic variables affect microeconomic decisions. For instance if people in the labour market take the rate of unemployment into consideration in decision making, you could have an indeterminant system. I which case you could not explain the rate of unemployment by means of individual decisions. With consciousness, it is true that many higher functions can be explained by chemical changes in the brain, but it has also been shown that ideas, behaviour, attitudes, etc., can affect the underlying chemistry. The most common example is the plasticity of the brain in response to early childhood experience. For instance, light stimulation or lack of it can permanently affect sight. The two way relationship between the brain and language experience has also be demonstrated. These would suggest that thoughts, ideas, moods, perception cannot be completely explained by the underlying chemistry. The best book I have read on this subject is Terrence Deacon's The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of the brain and language. Very highly recommended. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
[PEN-L:12728] (Fwd) FW: CAW Unstrike at Starbucks in B.C.
--- Forwarded Message Follows --- From: Donald_Swartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] ubject: FW: CAW Unstrike at Starbucks in B.C. Date sent: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:24:15 -0400 Subject: CAW Unstrike at Starbucks in B.C. CAW Canada Local 3000 - Starbucks UnStrike October 7th, 1999 Send Starbucks A Message Dear Friends: We need your help to win our CAW UnStrike against Starbucks Coffee which started October 4th, 1999. At the end of this leaflet are sites to contact both ourselves and Starbucks' CEO Howard Schultz - Please Send Starbucks A Message.Thank you for reading this leaflet and for taking the time to Send Starbucks A Message. We are 120 members of the Canadian Auto Workers Local 3000. We work at 12 unionized Starbucks stores: 11 in Vancouver and 1 in Westbank, British Columbia. Our 12 unionized stores are the only unionized units out of Starbucks' some 2,200 stores worldwide. Our economic impact within the Starbucks empire is obviously limited. But with your help our public relations impact can be significant. We are truly in a David and Goliath battle for the hearts and minds of the public in our dispute with the worlds' largest coffee retailer. That's why we are UnStriking at this time. The issues on the bargaining table are very basic: fair wages, earned sick leave, scheduling of work and training procedures. What the heck is an UnStrike? By now most of you are asking 'what the heck is an UnStrike?'. Well...while legally meeting the definition of a strike under provincial labour law, unlike a traditional strike, in an UnStrike we continue to work, get paid and provide service to our customers, but with a difference. In order to draw attention to our dispute we are refusing to adhere to the Starbucks dress code. Instead we are wearing what we please, including one member who served customers wearing a dressing gown and bedroom slippers, others with brilliantly coloured hair, tatoos and more. And 'wearing what we please' includes our 'Warbucks Coffee' buttons and t-shirts. The buttons and the shirt front bear the 'Warbucks Coffee' logo in the top right of this letter. The shirt backs bear red lettering that reads "I didn't have any sick leave so I phoned in dead. Now my boss wants a Coroners' Certificate before I come back to work". We think a little humour goes a long way. As well we are handing out leaflets to the public, in the stores and on the streets, similar in tone to this letter, with an addressed and postage paid tear-off addressed to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz which says: Dear Mr. Schultz: I am writing to let you know that I support the members of CAW Local 3000 in their UnStrike against Starbucks Coffee Corporation to achieve a renewed collective agreement inclusive of fair wages and earned sick leave. Your corporate success depends on your employees. Please show you care. Sincerely, We achieved our historic first collective in July 1997 and made some significant gains in the areas of seniority as a key factor in scheduling of hours of work and vacations, language to maximize the length of shifts through the work week, anti-harassment language, a grievance-arbitration procedure and across the board wage increases that totaled $1.00 over the life of the agreement. Starbucks' response after our historic agreement was to extend the monetary gains to all non-union stores in Canada to undermine employee interest in unionizing - 'all the gain without the pain', or so Starbucks would have people believe. Starbucks is again resisting union gains at the bargaining table this time round as we bargain our second collective agreement. They want to avoid having to give improvements to non-union stores 1) because they don't want to have to pay, and 2) they don't want to give the union additional credibility in the eyes of non-union Baristas. They fear that if they do more Baristas will see the sense in building a stronger base of strength to bargain against Starbucks. In effect we are having to bargain for all Starbucks Baristas, union and non-union alike, on the strength of our 12 units. It a tough struggle but one we feel is worth fighting, but we need your help. A Living Wage Not "Nickels and Dimes" Starbucks has offered "nickels and dimes" in wages - less than the rate of inflation. Despite Starbucks' carefully constructed public image of 'the-small-L-liberal- enlightened-employer', what we see at the bargaining table is a heavy dose of good old fashioned corporate arrogance and greed. Our income is far from 'enlightened' or 'liberal'. Most of us work part-time, average around $ 8.60 per hour and take home less than $ 800 per month. Even our highest paid members, Shift Supervisors, take home about $ 1,000.00 per month. We need a living wage
[PEN-L:12727] [Fwd: [BRC-NEWS] U.S. Supreme Court: Dealing Justice a Lethal Blow]
* News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International * News Service: 192/99 AI INDEX: AMR 51/166/99 13 October 1999 PUBLIC STATEMENT US Supreme Court: dealing justice a lethal blow Amnesty International is appalled by yesterday's US Supreme Court rejection of an appeal by an indigent, learning disabled, death row inmate who was forced -- through poverty -- to appear at an earlier appeal hearing without a lawyer. On 12 September 1996, Exzavious Lee Gibson, an African American with an IQ of between 76 and 82, stood in a Georgia courtroom at a state post-conviction (habeas corpus) hearing into his conviction and sentence. The hearing went ahead despite the fact that he had no representation as he was too poor to afford a lawyer. He attempted to represent himself, but a transcript of the hearing shows that he was clearly out of his depth. He offered no evidence, examined no witnesses, and made no objections. The court dismissed his appeal. His subsequent appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court was rejected in early 1999. Three of the seven supreme court judges dissented, saying that Gibson's plight was one 'that no just government should countenance'. However, the majority ruled that he had no constitutional right to a lawyer at the 1996 hearing. Yesterday, the US Supreme Court, without comment, let that majority decision stand, and moved Exzavious Gibson one step closer to execution. If such a blatant denial of a defendant's internationally-recognized rights were to occur in another country, the USA would likely be among the first to condemn it. International standards demand that anyone facing the death penalty must have access to adequate legal representation at all stages of proceedings. The US Supreme Court has once more demonstrated the USA's continuing contempt for such standards. Exzavious Gibson's death sentence itself violates international law. He was convicted of a murder committed when he was 17 years old. International law forbids the use of the death penalty for crimes committed by under 18-year-olds. The importance of proper legal representation for capital defendants is demonstrated by the fact that more than 80 death row inmates have been released in the USA since 1973 after evidence of their innocence emerged. Many had been sentenced to death after being represented at trial by lawyers inexperienced in the immense complexities of US capital proceedings. Evidence of their wrongful conviction only came to light with the help of dedicated lawyers and others. Over 90 per cent of those on death row in the USA are indigent. Many are mentally impaired. More than 70 people are on death row for crimes committed when they were children. Background Safeguard 5 of the Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty, adopted by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 1984, states that the capital process must provide all possible safeguards to ensure a fair trial, "including the right... to adequate legal assistance at all stages of the proceedings." In 1989 ECOSOC recommended that UN member states further strengthen the rights of those facing the death penalty including by affording "adequate counsel at every stage of proceedings, above and beyond the protection afforded in non-capital cases." Exzavious Gibson was convicted of the 1990 murder of Douglas Coley in Eastman, Georgia. After he exhausted his direct appeals, he filed a petition for habeas corpus, a civil proceeding at which death row inmates can challenge the legality of the conviction and sentence. His case is believed to be the first in which an capital defendant has been forced to appear at his habeas hearing without a lawyer since the US Supreme Court resumed judicial killing in 1977. This decision follows a pattern of attacks on death row inmates' right to meaningful legal representation. In 1995, the US Congress removed the funding for all of the Post Conviction Defender Associations (commonly known as Death Penalty Resource Centers). Attorneys at the Centers represented almost half of the country's condemned prisoners. Such attorneys had been highly successful in exposing the shortcomings of numerous death penalty trials, obtaining some form of relief for their clients in approximately 40 per cent of cases. As one attorney put it shortly before his office closed: "we have been victimised because of our own success." The damage caused by the lack of adequate legal representation has been exacerbated by the implementation of the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, signed into law by President Clinton in 1996. The Act severely limits the federal courts' ability to override the findings and decisions of state courts. ENDS.../ Amnesty International, International Secretariat, 1 Easton Street, WC1X 8DJ, London, United Kingdom You may repost this
[PEN-L:12726] FW: Racist article in the Boston Herald
James Craven Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663 (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 *My Employer Has No Association With My Private/Protected Opinion* -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, October 14, 1999 9:12 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Racist article in the Boston Herald Dear Relatives, The following article appeared recently in the Boston Herald. I would hardly consider this rag a newspaper, it frequently publishes racist articles and columns, this is just the latest in a long line. The article can be accessed at the website below and feedback sent to the writer. http://www.bostonherald.com/bostonherald/colm/feder10061999.htm Robette Smithsonian scalps Western values by Don Feder Wednesday, October 6, 1999 By the shores of the Potomac, near the shining big-sea water, will stand the contentious wigwam of the Smithsonian - its National Museum of the American Indian, to be precise. Last week, while the Senate was cutting funds for the Brooklyn Museum of Art for its painting of a dung-smeared Virgin Mary, a more far-reaching assault on American values went largely unnoticed. Construction was begun on the Smithsonian's Indian museum on the Mall in Washington, D.C. The $110 million project (two-thirds paid by the taxpayer) is expected to attract 6 million visitors a year. The New York Times noted that the museum ``will not only celebrate and display continuing tribal cultures but work to set the record straight.'' The museum's director, Richard West, said the institution would be dedicated to ``presenting the Indian perspective.'' By ``Indian perspective,'' West means the fulminations of activists who think Columbus was the father of genocide and the 7th Cavalry was the Nazi S.S. on horseback. To emphasize the point, those attending the ceremony sang the anthem of the American Indian Movement, a militant gang best known for its terrorist action at the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975, which left two FBI agents dead. The Smithsonian has passionately embraced the multiculturalist agenda. It sees all of history in the reflected light of the PC trinity - race, gender and class. This dogmatism was most conspicuous in a 1995 exhibit on the end of World War II in the Pacific and the Hiroshima bombing. The original script (revised after protests by veterans) described the conflict as ``a war of revenge against the Japanese,'' who were ``fighting to preserve their culture against imperialism.'' It was as if the rape of Nanking, Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, ``comfort women'' and other atrocities by the Imperial Army had never happened. Even art isn't safe from the Smithsonian's revisionists. A 1991 exhibit (``The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920'') was described by a writer for The Washington Post as ``reducing the saga of America's Western pioneers to little more than victimization, disillusionment and environmental rape.'' Scientists complained that the exhibit ``Science in American Life'' could have been scripted by the Unabomber. Joan Shields, a professor of chemistry at Long Island University, called it a ``revisionist historical display of science as a litany of moral debacles, environmental catastrophes, social injustices and destruction by radiation.'' The Smithsonian's latest editing of history is its book ``Timelines of the Ancient World - A Visual Chronology From the Origins of Life to A.D. 1500.'' While major events in the development of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam are meticulously detailed, the book moves from B.C. to A.D. without acknowledging the birth of Jesus. The spiritual revolution wrought by the Jewish people is similarly ignored. The Smithsonian was established in 1846 for the ``increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.'' Today, it exists to exhort. History becomes a self-criticism session, where the sins of the West, evils of capitalism and the toxicity of the Judeo-Christian tradition are confessed and atoned. Shortly, the Smithsonian will take to the warpath again. Its National Museum of the American Indian no doubt will attack the legitimacy of our founding and westward expansion. From Plymouth Rock to the closing of the frontier, it will present the ``Indian perspective.'' But you the taxpayer will get to pay for it. The complex story of America's native cultures should be told without bias or belligerence. Instead, the museum will subject visitors to a sanitized, one-sided history and victim-group mythology. Will this effort to ``set the record straight'' include celebrations of ritual cannibalism practiced by the Mohawks and Chippewas, torture techniques perfected by the Apaches, the quaint custom of scalping or the degraded status of women in most Indian tribes? America may be the only nation in history to subsidize its own destruction. When the multiculturalists,
[PEN-L:12725] Re: materialism
Carrol. I can not disagree with anything that you said. (except that EEG's measure electric fields not chemical changes.) There is much ignorance about the subject (I read somewhere that there are over one hundred message bearing chemicals in the brain and scientist understand the purpose of five or six) and a lot of what is said even by the experts is pure guesswork. It is clear that the "materialist" purely chemical explanation leaves a lot to be desired. There is something more there than chemistry but we don't yet know what it is. (And, No! I am not a dualist.) Original Message Follows From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Explain" and "affect" are misleading here. Chemical changes in the brain don't exactly "explain" anything. If they did we could read someone's mind with an EEG. In fact it is difficult to know what the correct verb would be to connect "chemical change" and "thought." And "affect"is much too weak to describe the relation of an attitude to chemical change. "Is" would probably be better in both cases -- but would still be misleading. An explanation of how the firing of neurons "is" a thought is precisely what we don't have. That is, we know that to think or feel or perceive takes the physical form of chemical action in the brain, but that merely names what needs to be explained. The link, identity, whatever is most dramatic of course in cases of malfunction. When I had to shift anti-depressants about 14 years ago, there came a Tuesday afternoon when I had to dismiss a class because my voice ran down like a primitive windup record player -- the words spacing out and stopping. The next morning (I had upped the dosage of the new anti-depressant 5 days earlier) I was sitting in my office at 8:55 wondering how I could teach my 9:00 class when with an almost audible click my "mind" came back. I could think.You just can't separate chemistry and thought in terms of one "explains" or "affects" the other. Carrol Re emergent properties. If you take (say) 20 dynamos and attach each to an electric clock, every clock will run at a slightly different speed, some slower, some faster, than they should. If you connect all 20 together, so one can draw power from another, they will all run at the same speed. It's called a "virtual governor." There is no "thing" there but the system works as though there were a governor regulating speed. That's an emergent property, but it isn't all that clear that thought can be so described. In fact "emergent property" might just be another case of substituting the name of a problem for a solution to the problem. __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
[PEN-L:12724] Agriculture 8
Here G picks up some of the sources of growth that are "associated with the agricultural revolution", to argue that those sources were always there, ready to be used depending on market opportunities: if "these opportunities contracted, as they did in northern Europe after 1300 and around Paris for about 80 years after 1660, productivity tended to fall off" I am going to be elaborating on this in my next post on Brenner (who not only asked me to cc him, but mentioned to me that he is confused with Bucky Brenner all the time), but this question of capitalist agriculture being a sine qua non for capitalism overall is extremely problematic in light of the examples of modern Germany and Japan. Yes, when all is said and done, the basic message behind Brenner's work is that capitalism was not a system waiting to expand the moment the market was given free reign - as Grantham and so many others, including those who advocated a cold shower for the East - have imagined. If Smith had argued that to exchange one thing for another 'comes naturally', Brenner starts from the opposite assumption: market exchange is unnatural, the peasant must be "obliged" to enter the market. As long as peasants have possession of a plot of land, they "would not, normally, freely choose to make themselves dependent upon exchange for their reproduction" (1989, 288). I dont' accept this view entirely because 1) Brenner underestimates the dynamic nature of markets prior to the development of full - wage labor - capitalism; 2) his argument on enclosures is not consistent with the evidence; 3) he never escapes the Smithian line; 4) his conception of the dynamic of feudal society is more Weberian than Marxist.
[PEN-L:12723] FW: Israeli Spy Cover-up Crumbles
James Craven Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663 (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 *My Employer Has No Association With My Private/Protected Opinion* -Original Message- From: Consortiumnews.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, October 14, 1999 6:39 AM To: List Member Subject: Israeli Spy Cover-up Crumbles Consortiumnews.com - http://www.consortiumnews.com New disclosures from a legendary Israeli spymaster have added key support to longstanding allegations against the Reagan-Bush administrations. According to a recent book, Rafi Eitan -- the Israeli spy who captured Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann -- corroborates claims made by another Israeli intelligence officer, Ari Ben-Menashe, whom Eitan depicted as one of his proteges. In the early 1990s, Ben-Menashe implicated then-President Bush in a series of intelligence abuses. Ben-Menashe fingered Bush as a participant in a secret Republican effort to sabotage President Carter's Iran-hostage negotiations in 1980 and ensure Ronald Reagan's election. Ben-Menashe also described a clandestine Reagan-Bush policy to arm both Iran and Iraq in their eight-year war. Then-President Bush angrily denied the charges and official Washington accepted him at his word. Now, however, spymaster Eitan has added new weight to Ben-Menashe's credibility and reopened the question of whether Bush got away with a cover-up of these secret, criminal operations. The full story is at http://www.consortiumnews.com Consortiumnews.com is a free Web site, but we urge those who wish to support our investigative journalism to help us in one of the following ways: --Subscribe to the print publication, iF Magazine, for $25 a year (six issues). Or buy Robert Parry's important new book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press 'Project Truth' for $19.95. Or get both for a discount price of $35. Orders can be made with Visa/Mastercard by calling 1-800-738-1812 or 703-920-1802 or by check to The Media Consortium, 2200 Wilson Blvd., Suite 102-231, Arlington, VA 22201. --Or make a tax-deductible donation to The Consortium for Independent Journalism, Inc., which helps finance journalism training and research. Checks should be sent to The Consortium for Independent Journalism, Inc., 2200 Wilson Blvd., Suite 102-231, Arlington, VA 22201. __ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/
[PEN-L:12720] Re: international dynamics
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/13/99 04:45PM Second, as has been widely pointed out, Brenner focuses on capitalist competition as the primary cause of capitalism's post 1970s profit squeeze and growth slowdown. To what extent is the global merger movement a response to this competition and how successful do people think this movement will be in regaining control over markets and overproduction. Would we look to price movements as an indicator of MNC success? Jim Devine: The profit squeeze Brenner sees starts in the late 1960s. It seems to me that the global merger wave is largely a result of the process you mention. However, I don't think the MNCs have gotten things back to the "good old days" of the Big 3 in US auto of the 1950s and early 1960s. That will take awhile, don't you think? I don't know how price movements indicate MNC success. ( Charles: Does Brenner attribute the late 60's profit squeeze to class struggle ? or mainly capitalist competition ? Where does class struggle within the iimperialist nation-states come in in his analysis of this period, as it is , evidently, his claim to superior theory in the debate over the historical origins and development of capitalism ? Capitalist competition is not the same thing as class struggle between the capitalists and the working class. Back to the U.S. Big Three ? Daimler just bought Chrysler. Not much "good ole" nation-state based competition in that. Furthermore, after 1917 up to and including the late 1960's period of the Brenner profit squeeze, there was a steady growth in nation-states which were withdrawn from the imperialist world economic system by socialist and nationa liberation revolutions. This was also a form of class struggle that impacted this profit squeeze and all other dynamics of the imperialist world economy. In other words, does Brenner take account of the existence of not only the "Third" World, but the "Second" World in analyzing the "First" World economy ? The return of the "Second" World to become a part of the First World's sources of colonial surplus value is a candidate for explaining the current First World, especially U.S., long boom, or the relief of Brenner's profit squeeze, allowing the intra-capitalist competition to be lessened. This is a fuller class anlaysis than an analysis confined to the class relations internal to the imperialist nation states. The complete class analysis recognizes the colonizer/colonized relationship as a class relationship ever bit as much as the capitalist/worker relationship within nation states. Lenin , in uniting this fuller class theory with practice, modified the slogan "Workers of all countries, unite" to "Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite ." It is not those who confine their analysis to internal nation-state competition who can claim the class analysis in their debate with those who integrate analysis of internal nation-state (class) competition with analysis of external nation-state class competition. Third, how should we understand the WTO in light of this analysis and the current instabilities and crises. Assuming that the worst comes true, we get the MAI, the Government Procurement Agreement, etc., will this intensify competition and thus tensions, or will it enable MNCs to stamp out contenders and consolidate their strategic position? Any thoughts greatly appreciated. Jim Devine: Brenner doesn't draw out the implications of his analysis. His story is one of nation-state competition leading to a 25-year period of stagnation (at least for the majority of the population). I would add that this competition also meant the end of the nation-state-centered process of capitalist accumlation (Bukharin's "national capitals"). Thus, Brenner's story implies the end of the process he describes. I don't think the nation-state has been thrown into the dust-bin of history, but nowadays almost all of the nation-states, including the rich ones, seem committed to promoting domestic prosperity only by catering to transnational capital. ))) Charles: I agree with Jim Devine. The imperialist nation states' response to the existence and struggle of the socialist nation-states was to substantially abate the fierce inter-imperialist nation state rivalry which characterized it from the late 1800's through the Second "World" (i.e. imperialist nation state) War. The imperialist nation states unified to compete with the Second World and wage a Cold War on that Second World. With the defeat of the Second World by through that war, the imperialist nation states have retained their unity, which objectively means they have negated their own condition as fully independent or sovereign nation-states and are transforming the imperialist system to a transnational or supernation-state system, with such organs as the IMF, World Bank, WTO, new GATT, NAFTA, UN, NATO, U.S. Treasury, U.S. Military. in short , an
[PEN-L:12721] Agriculture 8
Grantham: 7. We now have two excellent studies of large-scale farming around Paris (J.-M. Moriceu, Les fermiers de l'Ile de France, and J-M. Moricea and G. Postel-Vinay, Ferme, entreprise, famille), which reveal the extent to which a growing market opportunity could induce productivity growth among the farms that served it. The sources of this growth are multiple: rearrangement of plots--often by sub- letting and exchanges--in order to reduce the time required to plough and sow; increased investment in carts and weagons; new barns and hangars; increased sales of by-products like straw to urban and noble stables; multiplied ploughing, and sowing more legumes. All of these are associated with the agricultural revolution. What is interesting is that the same responses have been detected in medieval accounts on farms subject to the same kind of market opportunity. The time series indicate that when these opportunities contracted, as they did in northern Europe after 1300 and around Paris for about 80 years after 1660, productivity tended to fall off. Here G picks up some of the sources of growth that are "associated with the agricultural revolution", to argue that those sources were always there, ready to be used depending on market opportunities: if "these opportunities contracted, as they did in northern Europe after 1300 and around Paris for about 80 years after 1660, productivity tended to fall off" Again, I think Grantham does not quite understand the nature of agrarian change in pre-industrial Europe (though I would hesitate saying this to him in the open as he might very well put me in my place!). Yes, early on in the medieval period (perhaps as far back as the 9th century in some estates) we can already detect a triennial system of rotation in which cereals are sown along with leguminous plants. But we must not underestimate the fact that the variety and quantity of these plants increases with time, that farmers gradually learn how to cultivate new fodder crops, and how to alternate different crops in new rotations. Even if there is evidence that "clover was being sown in the Rhineland" by the 13th century (point 2), it was only in the seventeenth century, that it was used on a large scale *alongside the cultivation of turnips* - that is, my point is that it is not simply the cultivation of this or that fodder but how many types of such crops were being sown and in what system of rotation.
[PEN-L:12719] BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1999 Business economists say that demand for their firms' products and services remained strong in the third quarter, and exports posted their best performance in 2 years, the National Association of Business Economists reports. ... At the same time, material and wage costs rose for the quarter, and profit margins narrowed, the survey found. ... Material costs rose at 36 percent of the firms, up from 32 percent in the second quarter, and were unchanged at 49 percent of the firms. ... Pricing power, which gained significantly in the second quarter, also advanced in the third. Employment growth was strong for the quarter. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-4). __Low-income workers are less likely to enroll in employer-sponsored health insurance plans than those with higher incomes and, thus, are more likely to be uninsured, according to a study by the Center for Studying Health System Change. The Washington, D.C., research group found that 5 percent of individuals with access to health insurance through their employers declined coverage and, as a result, are uninsured. This represents 7.3 million uninsured persons, or 20 percent of the nation's total uninsured population, HSC said. Among households earning below the poverty level, 19 percent are uninsured, compared with 2 percent of those earning three times the poverty level, according to the study. Low-wage workers pay a larger percentage of their income for insurance premiums. In addition, the actual cost of the premium for low-wage workers is more than for those with higher incomes, because firms that employ a large number of low-wage workers are generally small and cannot afford to offer the same contributions as large firms. Those most likely to reject insurance plans include young adults, racial and ethnic minorities, and those in poor health, because these groups tend to include more low-income individuals. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-6). __One in five uninsured Americans is offered employer-sponsored health coverage but turns it down. The main reason is cost. ... Low-income workers often pay much more to get health coverage on the job than their higher-income counterparts. For example, employees at companies where the typical wage was $7 an hour faced monthly premiums of about $130 for the least-expensive family coverage. But workers at firms where the typical wage was $15 an hour could buy family coverage for $84 a month. ... Regardless, 78 percent of workers at firms typically paying $7 an hour participate in the company health insurance program, compared with 87 percent at companies paying twice that. ... (Wall Street Journal, page A10). The AFL-CIO is force-feeding union leaders a heavy dose of bad news: that job growth is fastest in industries where unions are weakest while job losses are greatest in industries where unions are strongest. ... A study commissioned by the AFL-CIO indicates that the fastest-growing metropolitan areas, such as Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and Phoenix, tend to have the lowest percentage of workers in unions. And the slowest-growing metropolitan areas, including Chicago and New York, tended to have the highest percentage of workers in unions. ... The percent of workers in unions has plunged to 13.9 percent today, from 35 percent 4 decades ago. Labor's bargaining influence has atrophied, making it easier for employers to hold down wages not just for unionized workers, but for nonunion ones, too. The study found that, from 1984 to 1997, the 30 fastest-growing sectors of the economy, including hotels, child-care, finance, retail trade, and airlines, added 26 million new jobs, but only 1 in 20 of workers in those industries joined unions. The study also showed that in eight industries with the greatest job loss, including steel and automobile manufacturing, four-fifths of the 2.1 million jobs lost belonged to union members. Those jobs were often lost because of competition from imports and because managers moved operations overseas to take advantage of lower-cost labor. ... (The New York Times, page A19). DUE OUT TOMORROW: U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes -- September 1999 application/ms-tnef
[PEN-L:12718] Re: What is progress
Brads Journal of Economic Perspectives just published a series of articles on Africa. The first World Bank oriented article is a raving right wing job. Hmmm. I read it somewhat differently--as mostly an argument for the power of human agency and against those like Jeffrey Sachs (and David Landes) who stress geographic disadvantages as barriers to development in Africa... I think that I sent something from Deaton's article already. The final article of the symposium sounded very much like Max and Brad. It is full of all sorts of positive indicators -- some like the spread of education and health do make a strong case for progress. Although I do have a feeling that John Sender, reacting against Collier and company, overstated progress... Brad, as an editor of this symposium, where can we look to get a feel for those who are left behind? I think that the UN _Human Development Report_ generally does about as good a job as can be done, given its limited space and the lousy, lousy quality of the statistics. But my copy appears to have grown legs and walked away from its place... Brad DeLong
