Global unequal exchange

[Chris Burford]

prices will tend to align with prices in the
most competitive parts of the area.

 From a passionately positive article about the benefits of the euro in
the Guardian today, mainly emphasising the increase in inward investment
in euroland by comparison with those EU countries that stayed out of the
euro. 


http://www.guardian.co.uk/euro/story/0,11306,728135,00.html



But I wanted to ask whether others agree with the statement above. It
appears self evident if there is mobility of information and transport of
commodities across a market. But in a deeper marxist sense is it
consistent with the law of value?

And most importantly, can it be applied on a world scale? 

Are the most competitive parts of the world market those with the highest
concentration of capital and therefore the most advanced means of
production? Do they set the bench mark for the value of all commodities?


Does that mean that all other areas using less advanced means of
production are trading unequally and there will be an unequal
exchange of value on a massive global scale, inherent in the very
fabric of the international market, which is self perpetuating and indeed
accelerating.

Chris Burford
 

Re: RE: Re:Forstater: Text File Capitalist Slavery/Race

[Waistline2]

In a message dated 5/29/02 1:11:46 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
 
>Chang, following Marx, also uses the Gemeinschaft vs.Gesellschaft distinction to >demonstrate that "a race or a racial groupcannot be a class in the strictly economic->relational sense of classes."  While, in the U.S. priorto the Civil War it was true that >all slaves were Black and allplantation-slave owners were white, it was not true that >all Blacks were slavesor that all whites were plantation-slave owners. In other >words, the class polarization is not directlytranslatable into the racial polarization >and the racial dichotomy is notdirectly translatable into the class distinction."
 
Reply
 
It was my intention to respond to the above, which was lost in a moment of passion. I believe the dichotomy of which Chang refers blurs the specific development of economic relations on the land mass - country, generally called America and lacks a certain historical perspective specific to continental America. Consequently, the actual social relations revolving around and riveted to the color factor is incorrectly viewed as a static polarity, i.e., black versus white. 
 
No one with a reasonable grasp of American history translates class polarization into racial polarization as a category. An interesting movie is playing on the Showtime network called Anne Rice’s  “The Feast of All Saints.” “The Feast” is the fictional story of early 19th century New Orleans and its “Biracial society.” New Orleans was a French colony and its color factor evolved different from that of the slave holding plantation belt of the South. 
 
In the general political and ideological sphere, the transition from a more than less patriarchal form of slavery to a system of slave labor production for the world market altered the politics of color in America. An American saying for betrayal is “being sold down the river,” or “you sold me down the river,” which is a slave expression for being sold to a master requiring transport down the Mississippi River to the areas of cotton and capitalist slavery. In these areas ones life span was 7-10 years of hardback breaking labor. The color factor – not race, and capitalism describes the Negro National Colonial Question. 
 
The case of Dred Scott may perhaps illustrate this point. 
 
Dred Scott was a Negro slave - meaning black skinned slave because I cannot ascertain the exact moment that the African American people emerged as a distinct people different from the Congolese or Ethiopian, who are different from one another. I can confidently state that this transition and formation of the Negro people took place during period of the transition from manufacture to industry on a world scale. 
 
Dred Scott was held in slavery in Missouri. In 1834 he was taken to Fort Snelling, Minnesota, in free territory and he remained there - in free territory meaning 'free" from slavery as an institution, for four years. In 1838, Scott was returned to Missouri and held again as a slave. That is the “branding in the black” called slavery in the South was imposed on him. Scott sued for his freedom and it went to the US Supreme Court. ChiefJ justice Roger B. Taney declared that Scott was not a citizen, but a slave. He ruled that Negroes were inferior to whites, that they could be justly reduced to slavery for their own benefit; that they "had no rights which a whiteman was bound to respect," and that they were not, and would not become part of the "Anglo-American" people, even when accorded the right to vote. 
 
Although, there were varying forms of slavery in some of the Northern states, these states did not evolve in our history as slave states-geographic economic units riveted to the production of products that entered the world market and underwent conversion into capital and its return in the money form. There were isolated cases of blacks in the North facing a level of isolation and destitution during this period of history, where some sold themselves and their family into slavery in the South for survival. Nevertheless, in the South as a region there were a small segment of free slaveholding blacks people and in the case of Louisiana a class of “light skinned”Negroes of the wealthier class. (Notice the words “light skinned” Negroes versus “light skinned blacks. With consideration one can grasp why I use the terms Negro, Colored, Blacks and African American to establish context and historical periods when describing the same people.)  Allow me to jump. 
 
During the early 1980s while residing in Atlanta Georgia - a border region financial center that in history is said to be to far North to be Southern and to far South to be Northern, there is a historically evolved small community of African Americans developed from free blacks or rather the light skinned Negroes. To this very day they are referred to as the Mulatto aristocracy in whispers of polite conversation. In Louisiana this “Mulatto aristocracy” is called the “Creole

Fri., 6/14: Turn Your Back on Bush! (Press Release)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

For Immediate Release
June 6, 2002
Columbus, OH, USA

Turn Your Back on Bush!

* OSU students, alumni, and community activists will Protest the 
Endless War, Defend Democracy, and Stand Up for Civil Liberties by 
holding a sunrise ceremony, a rally, street theater, and an 
alternative commencement.
* Graduates will decorate their mortarboards with Peace Signs and 
other symbols to express oppositions to the Bush administration's 
foreign and domestic policy.

Date: Friday, June 14
Time: From 6AM till the end of the OSU Spring Commencement
Location: Ohio Stadium (East Side Gates), 411 Woody Hayes Dr., Columbus, OH

More than 3,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in the US war on 
Afghanistan (Marc W. Herold, 
).  Over 1,000 
individuals of Muslim and Middle-Eastern backgrounds have been 
secretly detained by the US government; thousands more have been 
targeted for racial profiling.  Afghan and Arab combatants detained 
in Guantanamo have been kept in a legal limbo, denied the rights of 
prisoners of war.  In single-minded pursuit of vengeance, Washington 
has violated international law, disregarded human rights, and 
severely abridged civil liberties -- with no result useful for the 
investigation and prosecution of the crimes of 9.11 terrorists. 

The only individual who has been charged with involvement in the 9.11 
attack -- Zacarias Moussaoui -- was arrested in August last year, 
that is, before the 9.11 attack, not to mention the racist and 
militarist US government actions following the attack.  Still 
unfolding revelations of intelligence nonfeasance on the part of John 
Ashcroft and others prompted even conservative columnist William 
Safire to conclude, "They had the power to collect the intelligence, 
but lacked the intellect to analyze the data the agencies collected" 
(New York Times 3 June 2002), criticizing self-serving justification 
for massive expansion of police powers pursued by the George W. Bush 
administration.  In Afghanistan, Washington merely replaced the 
Taliban with worse warlords, while installing Hamid Karzai (former 
Unocal consultant, according to the Le Monde article "Hamid Karzaï, 
un Pachtoune nommé président" [13 Dec. 01] ) and others linked to the 
US oil industry -- not surprisingly, given the well documented Oil 
Connection maintained by Bush and Dick Cheney, made clearer now in 
the wake of the Enron scandal.

At the same time, US policy toward Israel/Palestine and 
India/Pakistan, aggravated in the "War on Terrorism," has brought 
both the Middle East and South Asia to the brink of (possibly 
nuclear) apocalypse.  The "second front" opened in the Philippines 
has alarmed Filipino activists who have long struggled to reclaim 
sovereignty of the Philippines from US military and political control 
of the nation (Walden Bello, "A 'Second Front' in the Philippines," 
The Nation 18 March 2002).  US support for the short-lived coup that 
overthrew the democratically elected government of Venezuela -- the 
coup condemned by "[a]ll the democratic nations, that is, except one" 
-- proved highly embarrassing: "President Chávez's comeback has . . . 
left Washington looking rather stupid," as Paul Krugman quotes BBC 
("Losing Latin America," New York Times 14 April 2002).  In Colombia, 
the alibi of the "war on drugs" is wearing thin; some of US military 
aid to the Colombian government will be explicitly dedicated to "to 
train, arm and provide air support for Colombian troops to defend the 
pipeline" (in part owned by Occidental Petroleum) as Bush requested 
this year (Karl Penhaul, "Protection for Oil Pipeline Raises US 
Profile in Colombia: New Policy Stirs Fears Bush Seeks to Widen War," 
San Francisco Chronicle 16 February 2002).

And yet, in a speech to West Point graduates, Bush said that the 
United States must be prepared to take the "War on Terror" to up to 
60 countries (James Doran, The Times [London] 3 June 2002)!

On domestic policy, the Bush administration's record is no better. 
Citizens for Tax Justice reports that 52.1% of the post-2002 Bush tax 
cuts goes to the best-off 1% of US taxpayers, whereas the measly 0.1% 
goes to the poorest 20%; altogether, the bottom 80 % of US taxpayers 
receive only 16.8% of the cuts (@ 
).  Outraging AFL-CIO, the Bush 
Labor Department has "delayed, canceled, or withheld from final 
implementation" worker safety measures, including the first ergonomic 
standards "to protect workers from repetitive strain" and other 
injuries; further, Bush used "his executive order power in several 
attacks on workers' rights and unions, including stripping federal 
workers of their union representation" (@ 
).  Add his 
assault on the rights of the disabled - "The Americans with 
Disabilities Act is 'not needed,' says Bush's nominee for the U.S. 
Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit" (@ 
) -- to

EU, US butter-oil prices threatens Indian dairy industry

[Ulhas Joglekar]

The Economic Times

 Tuesday, June 04, 2002

EU, US butter-oil prices threatens Indian dairy industry

PTI

NEW DELHI: A highly subsidised international trade in milk products covering
the European Union and the US can erode India's comparative advantage and
competitive strengths in the dairy sector.

Dairy industry feels urgent steps need to be undertaken to renegotiate the
bound rate of duty in WTO, for dairy products including butter oil to 75
from 40 per cent.

"There is a genuine threat to India's dairy industry from highly subsidised
and extremely unfair exports of milk products by the US and European Union.
This has resulted in prices falling to abysmal levels," Managing Director,
National Cooperative Dairy Federation, Ravi Shankar said.

He said world market prices for milk products, particularly butter,
butter-oil and skimmed milk dropped to their lowest levels after price falls
in Europe and the US.

Large imports of cheap butter oil bodes ill for the Indian industry,
production for which will become non-remunerative.

Shankar said if milk producers are made to receive a remunerative and viable
farm gate price of Rs 8.5 and Rs 11 per kg for cow and buffalo milk
respectively, they must be able to obtain a net realisation of at least Rs
90 per kg for ghee.

However, ghee prices will fall once butter oil is imported in large volumes
and sold locally at prices far below Rs 90 per kg. As a result milk
producers would be unable to fetch a viable farm gate price for milk.

In the past five years imports of butter oil into India has grown at an
alarmingly fast rate of 7.7 per cent annually, he added.

While the volume in imports of butter oil in absolute terms is not
significant, the trend has already had the effect of dampening the prices of
ghee due to large possible imports in future, Shankar said.

Imported butter oil can be used for adulteration with ghee and this impacts
the normal prices. Though customs duty on dairy products including butter
and butter oil has been increased to 40 per cent, it cannot be raised any
more due to WTO bindings.

At the current international price of butter and butter oil at $1150 and
$1375 per tonne, its estimated landed price based on various countries'
bound rate tariffs would be $2812-3402 a tonne (European Union), $2691-3357
(US), $9019-10,641 (Japan) compared to just $1550-1850 a tonne in India.

This is because quota-bound tariff for butter and butter-oil in these
countries is quite high at 134-144 per cent (US), 144-147 per cent(EU) and
298 per cent(Canada) and can erode India's competitive advantage.

Subsidies and refunds have now been raised several times in Europe and the
US and accelerated the falling trend in the world market prices.

Butter export subsidy by the European Union is at present at a five year
high and butter export refunds are now equivalent to 60 per cent of the EU
market price.

Between September 2001 and January 2002, a record 58,000 tonnes of butter
has gone into EU 'intervention' stores and export subsidies have ranged from
1500 Euros to 1750 Euros per tonne.

During 1998-2000, EU's export refunds for butter were 1700 Euro per tonne
and for skimmed milk powder 760-900 Euros a tonne. The US has also extended
its Dairy Export Incentive Programme (DEIP) through the current financial
year even as allocations under it for 2000-01 were 68,201 tonnes non-fat dry
milk and 21,097 tonnes butter fat.

The programme helps exporters meet prevailing world prices and develop
foreign markets.

Meanwhile, reform in EU's dairy policy which was originally planned to be
implemented in 2000-03 has ended up being postponed until 2004-08. At
present EU has far from fulfilled its obligations under the Marrakesh
agreement regarding reduction of export subsidies.

This makes it imperative for India to develop its own policy to facilitate
dairy development in the face of highly subsidised competition.

It has to negotiate for increasing WTO bound rate for the tariff line 0405
(which includes butter, butter oil, ghee and dairy spreads) to 75 per cent.

At present Indian tariff inclusive of special additional customs duty of
four per cent on the 0405 tariff line is 45.6 per cent.

Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.

Re: El Salvador's monopoly capitalism

[Sabri Oncu]

I said:

> I wonder if there are any Brazilians on
> this list who would care to comment on the
> below Stratfor articles.

Hey, I promise, I will not hold it against you because you beat
us 2-1 in the World Cup Finals on Monday. But that penalty was
unfair and you need to admit that. But, of course, it is the
fault of that Korean referee. Now, let us see what Koreans will
say to that.

Sabri

Re: El Salvador's monopoly capitalism

[Sabri Oncu]

Michael writes:

> So now we add El Salvador to the Turkey-Argentina
> nexus.  I wonder what it will take to reach a critical
> mass.  Brazil?

As far as I know, Brazil has not been doing that well recently. I
wonder if there are any Brazilians on this list who would care to
comment on the below Stratfor articles. By the way, I look
forward to hearing more from Frank on El Salvador.

Best,
Sabri

+

Politics, Currency Worries Create Vicious Cycle in Brazil
5 June 2002

Moody's Investor Services on June 4 cut its outlook for Brazil's
foreign currency debt rating from positive to stable, citing
concerns that the country will have trouble reducing its debt.
The same day, Brazil's currency, the real, hit a seven-month low

The currency slide is likely to continue through the year. The
Moody's cut signals to the markets -- which already are nervous
about a possible socialist victory in October's presidential
elections -- that Brazil's debt problems are a legitimate
concern. A sustained currency slide, in turn, will make the
servicing of foreign debt even more expensive.

The cycle of weakening currency and rising debt will put upward
pressure on interest rates and inflation, creating a drag on
Latin America's largest economy that will present an immediate
challenge for the next president.

The real has tumbled 13 percent in the past two months and is the
fifth-worst performing currency this year among 56 foreign
currencies tracked by Bloomberg. The decline is due partly to
uncertainty over the outcome of the coming presidential election.
Investors worry that the leading candidate, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da
Silva of the socialist Workers Party, will seek budget-busting
social spending hikes that would stoke inflation.

The latest survey by Brazilian pollster Vox Populi, published
June 3 by the Financial Times, shows that da Silva's main
challenger, Jose Serra of the governing Brazilian Social
Democracy Party (PSDB), may be gaining some ground. Support for
Serra was at 20 percent, up from 16 percent in mid-May, while da
Silva's share of the vote dropped from 42 to 40 percent. Unless
the slight gains turn into a strong trend, they will do nothing
to soothe concerns about a da Silva presidency, and currency
worries will continue.

It also is becoming clearer that a Serra victory would be no
silver bullet for Brazil's currency struggles, as the Moody's
rating indicates. No matter who wins the elections, Brazil's debt
load is still likely to climb as provincial governors and
Congress back away from the more austere policies imposed by
current President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The country's
foreign debt will add to the uncertainty over the real's future.

That future is of particular concern to Brazilian companies.
Total private sector debt in the country stood at $118 billion in
January, according to Finance Ministry figures. Around $4.8
billion of that will come due between June and August, Bloomberg
reports. Much of this debt is dollar-denominated, and companies
are concerned that the value of their domestic earnings will drop
along with the real, raising the true cost of servicing their
debt. This has led to a rapid flight to currency hedging
products; a Deutsche Bank representative in Sao Paulo said demand
for such products grew 50 percent in May.

Such hedging will become increasingly popular and more expensive
as concerns over the currency and debt loads raise questions
about Brazil's economic future -- no matter who wins the
presidency.

+

Brazil: Investors May Soon See Argentina-Level Problems
9 May 2002

Summary

Despite international investors' fears over the likelihood of a
socialist winning Brazil's next presidential election, the real
dangers to the country's economy will come from opposition and
intransigence by state governors and Congress toward whomever is
leading the country. Within 18 months Brazil could be following
Argentina into a lengthy economic recession and crippling
financial crisis.

Analysis

International lenders and financial markets have reacted
negatively to new polls showing that Brazil's socialist Workers
Party presidential candidate Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva holds a
substantial and growing lead five months prior to the October 6
elections. In the past two weeks, leading Wall Street investment
banks such as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Merrill Lynch
shifted their recommendations for Brazil from "overweight" to
"market weight," a signal to investors to stop increasing their
exposure in that county.

Brazilian Finance Minister Pedro Malan has said he believes some
foreign investment banks are suffering a case of nerves at the
sight of a socialist -- who has made strong statements condemning
U.S. dominance in the Americas -- leading the country's
presidential race. While Brazil is not at imminent risk of a
financial crisis, any sign of reduced international confidence
will translate immediately into higher interest rates and more
pressure on its cur

rich got richer in the 90s

[ravi]

i didnt see a mention of this before. sorry if its a repost.

--ravi


http://salon.com/tech/wire/2002/06/04/rich_richer/index.html

Rich got richer in 1990s
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Genaro C. Armas

June 4, 2002  |  WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economic prosperity of the 1990s
gave a financial boost to Americans who were already doing well,
producing fatter paychecks and more college degrees, Census 2000 figures
show.

Still, many less fortunate Americans were unable to escape poverty.

That's the message from the complete state-by-state data taken from
long-form questionnaires. The statistics show that poverty rates
remained highest in rural towns in the South and Midwest and incomes
stagnated in urban counties in California and the Northeast.

The figures released Tuesday also showed many industrial suburbs
struggling as residents left to get farther from cities and closer to
new jobs in sprawling office parks.

A suburb of Denver, Douglas County, Colo., was the fastest-growing
county by population over the 1990s. The county's median household
income of $82,929, more than $40,000 over the median income for all U.S.
households, topped the nation in 1999.

"I grew up on the East Coast and was ready for a change of lifestyle,"
said Justin Moore, who opened Jarre Creek Ranch Brewery in the thriving
suburb of Castle Rock, a part of Douglas County, in 1997. "The more
people there are, the more a business has a chance of surviving."

"It's pretty clear that, as always, growth occurred in places with the
most vibrant economies," said demographer Martha Farnsworth Riche, a
former head of the Census Bureau. "That is the character of our economy
-- people move where the jobs are."

National figures suggest that the prosperity before last year's
recession was enjoyed mostly by more affluent Americans, "modestly by
the middle class, and not very much by persons below the poverty line,"
said John Logan, a sociologist at the State University of New York at
Albany.

By Tuesday, all 50 states will have received their first wave of
detailed data from questions asked on the 2000 census long form, a
survey distributed to 20 million American households that covered topics
from income to education to commuting.

Data released last year covered questions asked of all Americans during
the last head count.

Some highlights from national data released Tuesday:

--The percentage of Americans living below poverty level decreased
slightly from 13.1 percent in 1989 to 12.4 percent in 1999, while the
median household income went up from an inflation-adjusted $39,008 to
$41,994 during the decade.

--The average one-way commuting time increased 3.1 minutes to 25.5
minutes. More people drove to work alone, and fewer people carpooled or
took public transportation.

--Nearly one in four Americans age 25 and older have at least a college
education, up from one in five in 1990.

The figures reaffirmed that better educated people typically make more
money. In Forsyth County, Ga., a booming suburb of Atlanta, the median
household income increased by over $21,000 to nearly $68,890 after
accounting for inflation. Eighty-six percent of residents there have a
high school diploma, and 35 percent are college graduates.

Meanwhile, more than half of the residents in rural Buffalo and Shannon
counties in South Dakota lived below poverty level -- the highest rates
in the nation.

In 1999 the poverty threshold for a family of four, including three
children, was $16,954.

Counties were poverty rates went up included the Queens borough of New
York City (11 percent to 15 percent) and Los Angeles County in
California (15 percent to 18 percent).

In Shannon County, S.D., the poverty rate decreased from 63 percent in
1989 to 52 percent in 1999. There, 17 percent of residents older than
age 15 were unemployed, and 12 percent of residents 25 and older were
college graduates.

"Everyone says they are going to move. There are no jobs that can
support their family," said Patricia Perkins of Wounded Knee, S.D. She
is a disabled veteran who helps run an outreach program on the Pine
Ridge Indian Reservation in Shannon County.

"Some of them do (leave), but others, because of prejudice in
neighboring towns, end up coming back," she said.

Logan, in his own analysis of the data, said New York and Los Angeles
lagged behind other metropolitan areas in economic growth, with median
income declining more than $3,000.

The biggest improvement came in urban centers in the South and Midwest,
especially Detroit. "Even Detroit's central city improved dramatically,
though it still suffers from high poverty and unemployment," Logan said.

--

Highlights from national-level Census 2000 data released Tuesday by the
Census Bureau. Poverty rates and median household income figures for
each census are from the previous calendar year. The 1990 census income
figure is adjusted to account for inflation.

Subject 1990 2000

Workers over age 15:

Percent who drove to work alone 7

[SAAN] *NEW* Petition to Vajpayee and Musharraf to stop march toNuclear Holocaust

[Diane Monaco]

Please sign the petition and forward this link. The intention is to
send
this to the two, and also to the press demanding that they pay attention
to the
voices for peace and rapproachement. Also please forward this link on
all
lists.

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ip2002/petition.html


To:  Prime Minister AB Vajpayee and President Pervez
Musharraf

Despite extremely dire reports of potential nuclear war with casualties
in
the tens of millions, it appears that the entire subcontinent is being
led
towards a holocaust of immense proportions by the leadership of both
India
and Pakistan.

Even a limited nuclear exchange will result in the destruction of tens
of
millions of lives and most of northern India and Pakistan will
become
uninhabitable.

Neither the people of Pakistan nor the people of India gave the right
to
their leaders to destroy their lives, and their two nations. 5000 years
of
history for this? We say NO!

Both you leaders have been pandering to extremists, as has been
witnessed
in the BJP's role in Gujarat, and the ISI's role in Kashmir. Effectively,
we
the people of India and Pakistan are being force marched like sheep to
a
slaughter by the maniacal agendas of fanatical extremists.

We can no longer remain silent spectators to the actions and agendas
of
the proponents of this brutal anti-people mentality.

We the people of India and Pakistan, as well as peace loving citizens
of
the world, DEMAND that you immediately:


1) State unequivocally that this current march towards a holocaust
of
horrific proportions MUST be stopped IMMEDIATELY.

2) March to the negotiating table with full sincerity. The baggage
of
colonialism must not lead us into total destruction. The great
freedom
fighters of our common land, gave their lives for a dream yet
unfulfilled.
Must we do to ourselves something infinitely worse than what
colonization
did to us?

3) Recognize the common humanity of ALL people of the subcontinent,
regardless of religion, caste or gender, and their RIGHT TO LIVE, and
to
enjoy a life of peace and security.

4) Desist from bravado and war talk. The common people of India and
Pakistan can teach you, dear leaders, that greatness comes from
self-control
and not from self destructive rage; the great Bhakti and Sufi saints
taught
this as did the Buddha.

5) Acknowedge that your primary duty as leaders is to protect and
embrace
the welfare of ALL your citizens regardless of whatever religion
they
practice.


The People of India-Pakistan.

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
_


SOUTH ASIANS AGAINST NUKES (SAAN):
An informal information platform for
activists & scholars concerned about
the dangers of Nuclearisation in South Asia

SAAN Mailing List:
To subscribe send a blank message to:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

SAAN Website:
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/NoNukes.html

SAAN Mailing List Archive :
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/

Male-female wage gap, managers

[Diane Monaco]

This is from the recent report "A New Look through the Glass Ceiling: Where 
are the Women?" by Representatives John D. Dingell (D-MI) and Carolyn 
Maloney (D-NY) that uses General Accounting Office data. The report finds 
clear evidence that the "glass ceiling hardened rather than shattered after 
1995."


INDUSTRY  2000 
  1995
Communications $0.73 
$0.86
Public 
Administration   $0.83  $0.80
Business and Repair 
Services  $0.76$0.82
Entertainment and Recreation Services $0.62$0.83
Other Professional 
Services $0.83$0.88
Educational 
Services   $0.91$0.86
Retail 
Trade $0.65 
  $0.69
Finance, Insurance and Real Estate  $0.68$0.76
Hospitals and Medical Services$0.85   $0.80
Professional Medical 
Services  $0.88   $0.90

Male-female wage gap, all industries

[Diane Monaco]

Census: Pay disparity remains between men, women but gap closing
Tuesday, June 4, 2002
DEBORAH BULKELEY, Associated Press Writer

Women in the United States earned only 73 cents for every dollar men were 
paid in 1999, though the gap narrowed during the 1990s, according to census 
figures.
Women gained roughly 7 cents on the dollar over the 10-year period, the 
figures released Tuesday said.
The figure does not necessarily mean that women are being paid less than 
men for doing the same job. Instead, the census looked at earnings in 1999 
for full-time workers in all industries and found that the national median 
income for men was $35,922 and $26,292 for women.
"I would say we have a long way to go toward closing the gap," said 
Marianne Hill, an economist for the Mississippi Institutions of Higher 
Learning.
Experts said the main reasons for the wage gap are that women often take 
time off to have children and lose experience and pay because of it; that 
women often choose lower-paying professions, such as teaching and social 
work; and that women are discriminated against when it comes to promotions 
and raises.
"I don't see it becoming equal until women become much more equal in terms 
of who's taking care of the kids at home and who's doing house work," Hill 
said.
Karen Nussbaum, assistant to the president of AFL-CIO in Washington, said a 
recent study by her group attributed about half of the wage gap to 
discrimination. One of the biggest reasons for the narrowing of the gap was 
that many high-paying manufacturing jobs held by men were lost as the 
industry declined in recent years, she said.
Colin Bennett, a labor economist for the Employment Policy Foundation, 
agreed that women face discrimination but said the gap is more complicated 
than bias. "A lot of demographic factors are involved," he said.
The disparity ranged from women earning 63 cents on the dollar in Wyoming, 
where the traditionally male mining and oil industries dominate, to 90 
cents on the dollar in Washington, D.C., where women are more likely than 
men to hold high-paying government jobs.
Bennett projected that the wage gap could close within 30 years as women 
continue entering high-paying jobs and child care becomes more evenly split 
between parents.
Nussbaum disagreed, pointing to a recent congressional study that said 
women professionals and managers had lost ground in the past five years.
"This is not steady progress in one direction," she said.

Re: RE: Estimating Surplus

[Ian Murray]

- Original Message -
From: "Eric Nilsson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 10:51 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:26603] RE: Estimating Surplus


> Ian wrote,
> > Households are suppliers/producers of labor power, no?
>
> Yes, but this does not mean that your economic theory must underline
(or
> start with) the role of "households."

==

Never meant to suggest that it should. There aren't any 'musts' in any
economic theories I've perused over the years.


> My starting point for understanding economic behavior in capitalism is
the
> process of surplus generation within the firm, the use of this
surplus, the
> economic/social/cultural/political consequences of the generation (and
> various uses) of the surplus, and the role of coercion and consent in
the
> extraction of the surplus.

==

Ok; but that's a choice and one way among many.I'm all for that
choice btw.


>
> One can certainly start with suppliers of various inputs (labor power
and
> other stuff) to generate a theory of the economy--this is neoclassical
> economics--but the sorts of issues that you find natural to discuss
within
> the resulting framework are not really that interesting to me.
>
> Eric

=

Well ignoring *the household* and it's changes under capitalism is a big
mistake imo.

Re: RE: Estimating Surplus

[ravi]

Sabri Oncu wrote:
> 
> How do you like my reformatting Eric? Apparently, I wrote some C
> programs. Don't like those object oriented languages though. I am
> yet too see their alleged advantage.
> 
> What do you say Ravi?
> 

i like to believe that they exist to protect the novices from the
sort of coding errors that veterans like us do not have to worry
about ;-).

the latest news from the computing world, that some of you might
not have heard of:

microsoft and the SEC have come to an agreement on the SEC's
charges against microsoft regarding shady accounting practices.
the agreement does not include a fine or any punishment. instead
microsoft has agreed not to do such things in the future. the
SEC spokesperson was elated at their "success" and opined that
this action should deter other companies from such practices.

in other news, jim allchin, VP at microsoft, famous for referring to 
free software as communist activity and against the american spirit,
testified that publishing microsoft APIs and such (as required by
some of the states in the ongoing anti-trust action) would pose a
security threat to the US govt and the army operations in
afghanistan.

lucent has appointed a review panel to examine the validity of
claims by bell labs researchers to have built a single molecule
transistor, after a steady stream of protests from various other
researchers at universities, pointing to suspicious similarities
in graphs and other such anomalies.

nissan.com war continues: mr. nissan, who owns the nissan.com
domain (and is also the big cheese at his company: nissan computer)
is being sued by nissan the automaker, despite the fact that
mr.nissan has produced a receipt from a datsun dealership (datsun
being the old name of nissan) made out to nissan foreign cars, the
latter being one of mr.nissan's various outfits.

napster files for bankruptcy.

--ravi

Re: El Salvador's monopoly capitalism

[Michael Perelman]

Thank you very much for this post.  I have to run to San Francisco to meet
up with my father, so I must be brief.  Usually, we only find out about
situations like this after they reach crisis proportions.  So now we add
El Salvador to the Turkey-Argentina nexus.  I wonder what it will take to
reach a critical mass.  Brazil?
 -- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

1,000 firms run the economy

[Eric Nilsson]

Well not quite...

But data I just put in my spiffy text is:

Number of firms with 1-99 employees in the US: 4,800,582 (or 98% of all
firms with employees)
Number of firms with 10,000 or more employees:   936 (or 0.002% of all
firms with employees)

Number of employees working in firms with 1-99 employees: 40,091,449 (or 36%
of employees)
Number of employees working in firms with 10,000 or more employees:
29,715,945 (or 27% of employees)

That is, fewer than 1,000 firms control the labor of more than 25% of all
employees in the US economy. These same firms, of course, control a large
part of the surplus generated within the US economy also. A large proportion
of workers, however, work for very small firms (less than 100 employees) but
none of these firms is really very important (economically, politically,
culturally, etc).

I would never argue a political strategy of pitting "small firms" again the
giant firms. Rather, I point out the role of these giant firms to underline
that way that the decisions of a relatively small number of firms (over what
to make, what sort of jobs to provide, what ad campaigns to run, etc) has a
really big impact on the whole economy.

Source http://www.census.gov/csd/susb/susb2.htm. US Census Bureau,
Statistics of US Businesses, 1999 data

Eric








>

El Salvador's monopoly capitalism

[F G]

Michael expressed some desire to hear from other people on the list who are 
familiar with the economic situation in other countries.  That said, I'll 
throw two cents in about the situation in El Salvador.
The concentration of wealth and investment flows has reached extraordinary 
levels- I don't have any reliable stats handy but the wealth concentration 
may in fact be higher than pre-insurgency period save for agriculture whose 
share in national production has sharply dropped anyway.  The new power base 
is the banking system in which 4 banks owned by the ruling class control 83% 
of the market.  Moreover they compete for the delivery of the massive 
remittances that flow in from abroad, these actually being the main income 
source of the country.  All other significant sectors, to my knowledge, are 
fully oligopolized or monopolized (cement and beer being notable- both are 
regularly protected in our "Free Trade Agreements").  In fact, the directive 
organ of the ruling neoliberalism-at-all-costs ARENA party has been DIRECTLY 
TAKEN OVER BY THE RULING CLASS.  Even founding members and certain political 
ideologues have been expelled. Actually the party president is also the 
president of the largest private bank in central america and replaced 
another prominent businessman who recently resigned.  These developments are 
most interesting.  Aside from this, the country is approaching unsustainable 
Argentine-style debt.  I attended a recent meeting of some leading 
economists which brought to my attention the gravity of the situation.  
Throw in the fact that the economy has been unconstitutionally dollarized 
(without a shred of consultation with the rest of the population) and you've 
got a recipe for default within a few years.  Actually the banks have 
apparantly bought a good deal of govt bonds since their returns are tax free 
(corporate taxes here are flat 25% annually- banks pay 11% average).  Also 
the pension system is in deep s*** though I know less about this.
Seems the oligarchy is aiming for a last-ditch-attempt at salvation (dunno 
how though) through the signing of a NAFTA-clone with the United States.  
Given the colossal trade defecit we already have it hardly seems that this 
would do any good.  But what the hell, they can always move their money to 
banks in Miami.
I'll throw in more later.

As a whole, the future hardly looks bright for Central America, I'm afraid 
to say.

-Frank G., San Salvador.

_
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.

Perot's unquestioned record of integrity

[Sabri Oncu]

Perot Systems Shares Down After Calif. Allegation
Wed Jun 5, 1:59 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California state senator has alleged
Perot Systems Corp. , which designed the computer systems for the
state's power exchanges, with showing power companies how to
exploit loopholes in those systems to inflate prices.

Shares of Perot Systems, founded in 1988 by former presidential
candidate H. Ross Perot, plunged in response to the allegation,
trading down more than 24 percent on Wednesday at $13.60 on the
New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites).

State Sen. Joseph Dunn, who chairs a committee investigating
price manipulation in California's energy markets, on Tuesday
released documents from a presentation that Plano, Texas-based
Perot allegedly made to Reliant Energy and other participants in
California's electricity markets.

That presentation, which mapped out a strategy for creating
congestion on the California electricity grid and driving up
prices, represented a clear conflict of interest and could open
Perot to civil and criminal liability, Dunn said, according to
the Los Angeles Times.

Perot Systems designed the computer systems for the now-defunct
California Power Exchange and the state's Independent System
Operator, which runs most of California's electric grid.

Perot Systems designs and maintains complex computer systems. H.
Ross Perot remains chairman of the board and his son, Ross Perot
Jr., is president and chief executive.

A staff member in Dunn's office confirmed the senator, a Democrat
who represents a district in Orange County south of Los Angeles,
had released the alleged presentation on Tuesday.

Copies of the documents were not immediately available. It was
not immediately clear when the alleged presentation had been made
or whether any of the companies that had seen it had acted on the
advice it contained.

A Perot Systems spokesman said: "While we have not had the
opportunity to review any documents, we are proud of the work we
have done for California consumers and even more proud of our
unquestioned record of integrity."

California opened its power markets to competition in 1998 and
two years later prices for electricity skyrocketed. The rise has
been attributed in part to a shortage linked to rising demand but
also drew allegations that power marketers were manipulating the
market.

Bankrupt energy giant Enron Corp. , in memos released by federal
regulators last month, outlined strategies with names such as
"Fat Boy" and "Death Star" through which they used California's
flawed deregulation model to reap huge profits.

The state's largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, a unit of
San Francisco-based PG&E Corp. , filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection in April 2001 after state regulators refused to allow
the company to fully pass on soaring power purchase costs to its
customers.

Full article:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020605/tc_nm/
tech_perotsystems_dc_1

RE: Re: RE: Estimating Surplus

[Eric Nilsson]

Doug wrote,

> Institutions and social structures like classes configure those
> people in arrangements that make possible surplus generation
> and distribution. But the start and end of any economic activity has to be
human
> beings doing stuff together.

True. But this do not imply you have to start with these folks in your
economic theory or trace all economic flows to these folks. Capitalist firms
drive the whole economy and, so, you should highlight surplus generation/use
by these firm from beginning to end in your economic theory.

You methodological individualist dog you.  ;>)

Eric

Re: RE: Estimating Surplus

[Doug Henwood]

Eric Nilsson wrote:

>Ian wrote,
>  > Households are suppliers/producers of labor power, no?
>
>Yes, but this does not mean that your economic theory must underline (or
>start with) the role of "households."

I just meant "households" as a synonym for people. Institutions and 
social structures like classes configure those people in arrangements 
that make possible surplus generation and distribution. But the start 
and end of any economic activity has to be human beings doing stuff 
together.

Doug

Odd message from Merrimack College?

[Eric Nilsson]

Doug wrote,

> virus checkers
> telling me an email I never sent to someone I don't know was
> infected. The identity of the real source is usually in the
> "X-Sender:" field; the address in the "From:" field is forged.

Checking all the internet headers of the message I got suggests that it
originally might have come from merrimack.edu, that is, Merrimack College,
instead of from the pen-l server.

A quick check of Merrimack's economics department reveals that Jack
Amariglio, who might be on pen-l, is there. Or maybe someone else on pen-l
is there. It might be that when a pen-l message was delivered to Merrimack a
virus/worm generated the message I got. Or maybe not.

Eric

RE: Estimating Surplus

[Eric Nilsson]

Ian wrote,
> Households are suppliers/producers of labor power, no?

Yes, but this does not mean that your economic theory must underline (or
start with) the role of "households."

My starting point for understanding economic behavior in capitalism is the
process of surplus generation within the firm, the use of this surplus, the
economic/social/cultural/political consequences of the generation (and
various uses) of the surplus, and the role of coercion and consent in the
extraction of the surplus.

One can certainly start with suppliers of various inputs (labor power and
other stuff) to generate a theory of the economy--this is neoclassical
economics--but the sorts of issues that you find natural to discuss within
the resulting framework are not really that interesting to me.

Eric

Re: Re: Michael -- odd message from your server

[Ann Li]

FYI, yes it was something and it damaged my email software



- Original Message -
From: "Michael Perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 12:24 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:26587] Re: Michael -- odd message from your server


> I don't think that it is on my computer.  I run both Norton and Macafee to
> be sure.  I just sent your message to the tech.
>
> On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 09:13:51PM +, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > Michael and others ---
> >
> > To be safe, update your antivirus software and scan your drives!
> >
> > I just got a message titled:
> > "Re: ALERT -  GroupShield ticket number OA131_1023248015_MEXCMBX01_3"
> > from the pen-l e-mail server. GroupShield is a server antivirus software
> > program.
> >
> > The full text of the message is below.
> >
> > The message indicates that my posting to pen-l had an executable file
attached
> > that was _removed_ by the e-mail antivirus software. No one is likely to
get
> > this file sent to them, therefore. I didn't attach such a file
(knowingly).
> >
> > I was replying to either a message from Doug or Jim D that might, or
might
> > not, have had this file attached (although no attachment was indicated
on
> > their messages). But why GroupShield would not have caught it I don't
know.
> >
> > I already had the most recent virus definitions from Norton--and my scan
of my
> > hard drive didn't reveal any virus. And a search of Norton's virus
> > encyclopedia didn't reveal any virus associated with the removed file.
> >
> > A search of the web didn't lead to any file named "andrea_sniffs_flowers
> > [1].exe" which was the file removed by GroupShield.
> >
> > I am using the web-based e-mail system from my school--perhaps something
on
> > their end is infected--I'll warn them.
> >
> > You might want to check into what happened on your end.
> >
> > Eric
> >
> > Text of message :
> > > Action Taken:
> > > The attachment was quarantined from the message and replaced with a
text
> > > file informing the recipient of the action taken.
> > >
> > > To:
> > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > >
> > > From:
> > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > >
> > > Sent:
> > > -487170048,29494337
> > >
> > > Subject:
> > > [PEN-L:26583] Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: RE: Estimating Surplus
> > >
> > > Attachment Details:-
> > >
> > > Attachment Name: andrea_sniffs_flowers[1].exe
> > > File: andrea_sniffs_flowers[1].exe
> > > Infected? No
> > > Repaired? No
> > > Blocked? Yes
> > > Deleted? No
> > > Virus Name:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
>
> Tel. 530-898-5321
> E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>

Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: RE: Estimating Surplus

[Ian Murray]

- Original Message -
From: "Eric Nilsson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 10:21 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:26600] RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: RE: Estimating
Surplus


> Doug wrote,
> >
> > I was just citing the convention of the NIPAs. Conceptually, the
> > people who make up households have to be the producers and
recipients
> > of everything, since corps are just legal fictions, no?
>
> It is a fiction that corporations are "quasi-persons." Regardless of
that,
> corporations are the major sites of surplus generation and
decision-making
> for what is to be done with the surplus in modern capitalist
economies. I
> wonder the extent to which the assertion that households have to be
> producers/recipients is due to the requirements of methodological
> individualism.
>
> eric

==

Households are suppliers/producers of labor power, no?

Ian

RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: RE: Estimating Surplus

[Eric Nilsson]

Doug wrote,
>
> I was just citing the convention of the NIPAs. Conceptually, the
> people who make up households have to be the producers and recipients
> of everything, since corps are just legal fictions, no?

It is a fiction that corporations are "quasi-persons." Regardless of that,
corporations are the major sites of surplus generation and decision-making
for what is to be done with the surplus in modern capitalist economies. I
wonder the extent to which the assertion that households have to be
producers/recipients is due to the requirements of methodological
individualism.

eric

JAMA: Don't believe everything you read

[ravi]

nothing to do with economics, but since this sort of stuff has come
up before on pen-l, i thought some of you might find this interesting:

JAMA: Don't believe everything you read

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) --One of the world's leading medical journals has 
put itself and its competitors under the microscope with research 
showing that published studies are sometimes misleading and frequently 
fail to mention weaknesses.

Some problems can be traced to biases and conflicts of interest among 
peer reviewers, who are outside scientists tapped by journal editors to 
help decide whether a research paper should be published, according to 
several articles in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Other problems originate in news releases some journals prepare to call 
attention to what they believe are newsworthy studies. The releases do 
not routinely mention study limitations or industry funding and may 
exaggerate the importance of findings, according to one JAMA study.

Wednesday's JAMA, devoted entirely to such issues, "is our attempt to 
police ourselves, to question ourselves and to look at better ways to 
make sure that we're honest and straightforward and maintain the 
integrity of the journals," said Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA's editor.

The articles "underscore that the findings presented in the press and 
medical journals are not always facts or as certain as they seem," said 
Rob Logan, director of the Science Journalism Center at the University 
of Missouri-Columbia.

DeAngelis said problems are most likely to occur in research funded by 
drug companies, which have a vested interest in findings that make their 
products look good.

Journal editors are concerned that manufacturers sometimes unduly 
influence how researchers report study results, and even suppress 
unfavorable findings.

Many top journals require researchers to disclose any ties to drug 
companies, and Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, editor of the New England Journal of 
Medicine, said editors rely on researchers to be truthful.

"I imagine that from time to time we screw up" and fail to adequately 
mention drug company ties, but that is infrequent, Drazen said.

Favoring favorable statistics

One JAMA report found that medical journal studies on new treatments 
often use only the most favorable statistic in reporting results, said 
author Dr. Jim Nuovo of the University of California at Davis.

His study reviewed 359 studies published between 1989 and 1998 in JAMA, 
The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, the British Medical 
Journal and Annals of Internal Medicine. Only 26 studies reported 
straightforward statistics that clearly assessed the effect on patients.

Most reported only the "relative risk reduction" linked to a specific 
treatment, which is the percentage difference between drug-treated 
patients and those in a placebo group. That figure is more misleading 
than the "absolute risk reduction," which measures the actual difference 
between the treatment results compared with the placebo group, Nuovo said.

For example, if 5.1 percent of placebo-treated patients had heart 
attacks compared with 3.7 percent of drug patients, the absolute risk 
reduction in the drug group would be 1.4 percent. But researchers could 
use the relative risk reduction to claim that the drug lowers the risk 
of a heart attack 27 percent -- which sounds a lot more impressive.

In another report, researchers from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center 
in White River Junction, Vermont, examined 127 news releases from seven 
journals: JAMA, The Lancet, Pediatrics, BMJ, Journal of the National 
Cancer Institute, Circulation and Annals of Internal Medicine. Few noted 
study limitations or drug company funding, said the authors, Drs. Steven 
Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz.

Releases were generally prepared by press officers, and the authors said 
better editorial oversight could improve the process.

In a third JAMA report, Dr. Richard Horton, The Lancet's editor, 
analyzed 10 research articles published in his journal in 2000 and found 
that some authors appeared to have censored critical comments from their 
co-authors. Disagreements among authors about a study's conclusions 
occurred frequently but often were not mentioned in the articles, he said.

Reforming the peer review process could address some problems, said 
Fiona Godlee of BioMed Central, an online medical journal publisher that 
asks peer reviewers to identify themselves in their reports.

Most print medical journals allow peer reviewers to remain anonymous. In 
another JAMA report, Godlee said requiring open review would make 
reviewers more accountable and might reveal any conflicts of interest.

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material 
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/06/04/medical.journals.ap/index.html

RE: Krugman's IQ drop..

[Ian Murray]

-Original Message-
From: Ian Murray
To: pen-l
Sent: 6/3/2002 10:32 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:26553] Krugman's IQ drop..

[Jim Devine, did PK ever take an ethics class? Or a political theory
class? Has he ever *worked* in a Fortune 500 firm?]


>>
I don't know what courses he took, while I doubt that he ever worked for
a F500 firm. I know he worked for the US Postal Service for awhile...

I don't see why the headline assertion "Krugman's IQ drops" applies.

=

Because I needed a quick title for the piece and thats what my blinkered
neurons came up with at 10:30pm ! :-)


>>
This column isn't dumber (or smarter) than usual. He's pointing to a
real change, but misinterpreting it. The fact is that old-style
corporations _were_ fatter and nicer than the new ones.



That's not necessarily so. David Gordon's "Fat & Mean" debunks alot of
those myths.



The difference was not that GM was "generous motors" though: back in the
1950s & 1960s, GM and its ilk had to deal with a much more powerful
labor movement, combined with lingering memories of 1929 and massive
class struggles. They used to follow a paternalistic strategy of giving
job security, real pensions, etc., as a way of getting employee
loyalty -- and thus encouraging production. That strategy is largely
dead. I don't know if it would be as profitable today as it was back in
the 1950s & 1960s because of the intensified competitive environment
corporations face. Back when GM acted the role of being "generous," it
was the dominant firm in an oligopolistic industry protected from most
foreign competition and thus could follow a long-term strategy (or take
advantage of its situation to rest on its laurels and let the future go
hang). Now it's hard to think of anything but the current quarter's
bottom line.

===

I think it's a mistake to see GM as a representative firm from the post
WWII 'golden age.' Nor could we by any means say with PK that that form
of corporate governance was akin to socialism. And for PK to assert that
the US is itself a corporation is just ridiculous. His take on the 80's
and 90's completely neglects the damage the predators did; perhaps he
should read chapter 6 of Doug's book?

BTW, after all these years of 'efficiency' improvements, it still takes
47,000 lbs of metals to make a 3,000 lb car.


>>
Of course, things could change as new oligopolies develop, not to
mention new class struggles and new financial collapses.

JD

=

Storm the boardrooms! :-)

Ian

FDI

[Ian Murray]

Foreign investment drops by 60 percent as merger mania subsides
MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer
Wednesday, June 5, 2002


URL:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/06/05/nat
ional1044EDT0621.DTL


(06-05) 07:44 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

Foreign investment in the United States, after hitting record highs for
three straight years, plunged by 60 percent in 2001, reflecting the U.S.
recession and a sharp slowdown in mergers and acquisitions.

The Commerce Department said that spending by foreigners to buy existing
U.S. companies or set up new operations fell to $132.9 billion in 2001,
down from an all-time high of $335.6 billion in 2000.

The department attributed the big decline to the recession in the United
States and economic weakness in many other major countries last year, as
well as the sharp slowdown in mergers and acquisitions, especially in
telecommunications and other high-tech industries which have seen their
stock values plummet since the spring of 2000.

Even with the big drop last year, the overall spending of $132.9 billion
was still higher than for any year prior to 1998, when the recent surge
in foreign investment began.

By industry, the largest investment outlays occurred to acquire finance
and insurance companies, a total outlay of $37.9 billion, followed
closely by manufacturing, where foreigners spent $35.6 billion to
acquire American companies or establish their own new operations in the
United States.

Within manufacturing, the biggest spending occurred in the food
category, where foreigners spent $11 billion, followed by computers and
electronic products, where $10.2 billion was invested.

By country, the biggest flow of investments came from Canada at $16.9
billion, followed closely by Britain, $16.6 billion. Other big
investment flows in Europe came from Switzerland, $15 billion; the
Netherlands, $13.2 billion; Germany, $12.8 billion, and France, $5
billion.

Outside of Europe, the biggest investment spending came from Australia,
$5 billion, followed by Japan at $3.8 billion. All of Asia and the
Pacific region accounted for $9.47 billion in spending.

Investment spending for countries outside of Canada in the Western
Hemisphere was put at $8.6 billion.

Re: Bono the useful idiot

[Rob Schaap]

Nice forward, Louis.  I am what has become the uncoolest of creatures, a
U2 fan of 22 years' standing, but I find that Marsh's article has given
true voice to the ache this whole drawn-out business has occasioned deep
in my expansive gut.  Felt a few twinges when Attanborough saved the
South Africans, and a few more when Swayze saved Calcutta, but it's
pestering me summat chronic these days ...

Ta,
Rob.

Re: Markets and Diversity

[Michael Best]

The issue of markets and diversity also evokes an old theme in the history
of economic thought that goes back at least to Adam Smith. The following
comments are not meant to detract from the themes about the effects of
corporate power on limiting product choice which are undoubtedly true (Fred
Hirsh’s The Social Limits to Growth developed some of these themes
as well). But there is related ‘diversity and markets’ theme that I, for
one, would not like to be ignored or left to the Chicago school’s interpretation.
This is not a comment on Rosen’s article, which I have not read, but
on a divergence between the Marshallian and the Walrasian strands within
the Chicago School that has broader implications. The Marshallian strand
is more concerned with wealth creation than optimum allocation of resources
and is firmly rooted in Smith. Wealth, for Smith, is created through a
process of increasing specialization and division of labor. Specialization
involves the decomposition of the commodity into an ever-greater number
of constituent activities; each activity, in turn, is targeted for a refinement
of skills and technique. Every increase in the extent of the market increases
the number of activities that are subject to ‘new improvements of art’.
(‘Art’ is Smith’s term for technology).
Notice that the wealth creation (or economic development) reading of
Smith offers a different (dynamic) adjustment process between supply and
demand than the optimum allocation reading. An increase in demand, in Smith’s
words:
“though in the beginning it may sometimes raise the price of goods,
never fails to lower it in the long run. It encourages production, and
thereby increases the competition of the producers, who, in order to undersell
one another, have recourse to new divisions of labor and new improvements
of art, which might never otherwise have been thought of.”
Note that the lower prices are a consequence of ‘new improvements of
art’. Thus technical change and increasing specialization are integral
to the wealth creation process. The idea of increasing specialization and
diversity of production activities is central to Marshall’s concept of
the industrial district (and its internal and external dynamics) and to
a concept of market in which competition is not simply about price but
about product design (a central theme of Schumpeter).
Textbook economics, as we all know, abstracts from technical change
and innovation as part of the market adjustment process. But any approaches
to economic development that ignore the concept of diversity in the sense
of increasing specialization within the production system will obscure
the dynamics of technological change as a key feature in the wealth creation
process. These dynamics were central to Marx’s interpretation of capitalism
as historically progressive. In contrast, the Marshallian strand within
the Chicago School has not developed the wealth creation reading of Smith
because it is inconsistent with the policy prescriptions of ‘free market
perspective’.
 
 
Michael Perelman wrote:
In his presidential address to the American Economic
Association,
Sherwin Rosen claimed that one of the benefits of the market is
its ability to provide diversity.  Yet in a number of areas,
diversity is shrinking.  Publishers resist printing books that
cannot sell at Barnes & Noble.  Radio stations are becoming
less
diverse -- unless you include Web broadcasting.  Cable does allow
for more diversity in some respects, but not insofar as politics
is concerned.  Broadcasting Chomsky for three minutes on CNN was
a big deal.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Bono the useful idiot

[Louis Proyect]

Counterpunch, June 4, 2002

Bono the Useful Idiot
Ballad of the Sun and the Moon
by Dave Marsh

I can pinpoint the nadir of rock music's first half-century: That 
wire service picture of Bono standing with U.S. Treasury Secretary 
Paul O'Neill, the two of them wearing local African costumes 
somewhere in Africa. Bono's idiocy is here complete, since the most 
benighted tourist with a skin full of rum would know better than to 
allow this shot to circulate. But tourists are, for the most part, 
innocent of much beyond blind pursuit of pleasure. With his African 
junket alongside O'Neill, Bono practices actual evil. The trip's 
purpose is to endorse the power of rich nations to control the fate 
of poor ones, so long as the occasional bone is thrown. 

The junket also enhances the image of one of the rottenest characters 
in the Bush regime. Next time he goes to Jamaica, Bono might take a 
jaunt around Jamaica to see firsthand the depredations of Alcoa's 
bauxite mining O'Neill ran Alcoa for 12 years. Before that he ran 
International Paper, devastating much of the Black Belt of the 
southern United States. That is, O'Neill played a major role in 
defiling the places where both the blues and reggae were born. 

Bono portrays himself as the latest in a line of rock daredevils 
trying to change the world. In reality, everything Bono does-starting 
with his support of the Irish and English governments-- attempts to 
*stabilize* the world, freezing the globe's poor into subservience. 
All the rockers who changed-and are changing-the world go about it 
differently. Instead of spending their time pretending not to suck up 
to power at its most loathsome, they make music that delves into 
their own lives and the lives of the people they love. Those who 
truly work for a different kind of world use their talent and fame to 
tell the stories that aren't being told anywhere else. They make 
records like Alejandro Escovedo's By the Hand of the Father (Texas 
Music Group). 

The album, based on a stage play Escovedo cowrote, offers beautiful, 
haunting music, using strings as well as guitars to offset rock 
riffs. Although a couple of the songs ("The Ballad of the Sun and the 
Moon," "With These Hands") appear on earlier Escovedo albums, much of 
the best music is either score, with cello as the lead instrument, or 
versions of specific Mexican idioms. ("Mexicano Americano" raves on 
regardless.) 

The first time I ever heard Alejandro, he sang Woody Guthrie's 
"Deportees," the great ballad of the migrant farmworker. By the Hand 
of the Father sometimes feels like a first-hand expansion of that 
story, but a lot of it is tied up in issues as quotidian as 
homesickness, the hope of romance and the agony when life ruins it. 
That is, it is the life of the migrant made nearly universal-so 
universal that the detailed differences glare unmistakably from the 
tapestry. 

Escovedo never stops noticing how poor these people-his people-are. 
That fact carries the weight of all his tales. But he puts his finger 
on the issue just once: "You see the wicked prowl across the border / 
They say death's the only peace the poor understand."

This is not anybody trying to "speak truth to power." It's a 
recognition that the powerful know the truth and that part of the 
truth is that nobody knows much at all about the poor as human 
individuals, and that if you're poor enough, making a living from one 
day to the next may come to constitute a legitimate triumph. Those 
two bare lines contain all the things you never learn sitting in 
conference rooms and traveling from town to town with a potentate's 
entourage. 

Alejandro Escovedo speaks the power OF truth. Rock music cannot tell 
all of it, but for millions, all of it cannot be told any longer 
without rock, and the music that came after it, and the music that 
came before it. It certainly cannot be told while standing in the 
shadows, smirking an implicit endorsement of the way things are. 


-- 
Louis Proyect, [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 06/05/2002

Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org

RE: Re: RE: RE: Estimating Surplus

[Devine, James]

Title: RE: [PEN-L:26584] Re: RE: RE: Estimating Surplus





 for a quick & dirty estimate of the surplus, use total property income (as a percentage of the private sector's product): interest plus profit plus rent. JD

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 6/4/2002 1:37 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:26584] Re: RE: RE: Estimating Surplus


Jim D wrote,
> Which you use would depend on what your purpose is. For 
> studying time series, most of D&L's estimates of the profit 
> rate mostly move together.


I am hoping to use it to provide students an estimate of the size of the


surplus. A quick and dirty estimate is all I want.


If I was going to use it for more serious purposes ("to make a
contribution to 
the literature" bla bla  ;>)  ) it would likely be a six month process
to 
figure out the "best" way to calculate the surplus.


I work slowly.


Eric

Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: RE: Estimating Surplus

[Doug Henwood]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

>Doug wrote,
>>  The concept is that households are
>>  the ultimate holder of business debts - financial institutions are
>>  just intermediaries.
>
>It depends on your theory, I guess. What you say above is reasonable from the
>point of view of some economists.

I was just citing the convention of the NIPAs. Conceptually, the 
people who make up households have to be the producers and recipients 
of everything, since corps are just legal fictions, no?

Doug

Re: Michael -- odd message from your server

[Doug Henwood]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

>Michael and others ---
>
>To be safe, update your antivirus software and scan your drives!
>
>I just got a message titled: 
>"Re: ALERT -  GroupShield ticket number OA131_1023248015_MEXCMBX01_3"
>from the pen-l e-mail server. GroupShield is a server antivirus software
>program.

The virus - or worm, or whatever name this cyberpest deserves - of 
the month is one that forges return addresses. I get several of the 
5-10 of these a day now, and one or two messages from virus checkers 
telling me an email I never sent to someone I don't know was 
infected. The identity of the real source is usually in the 
"X-Sender:" field; the address in the "From:" field is forged.

Doug

Surplus mysterious chatacter

[miychi]

On 2002.06.05 06:06 AM, "Max Sawicky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Part of properietors' income is really a quasi-wage, and part of
> wage & salary at the top is really a quasi-capital payment.
> I would say net interest paid (not personal interest received)
> and rent belong too.
>  In debating surplus value, we must review A. Smith,  Proudon, Ricardo, and
Marx. From starting with Smith, beginning category was focused into
commodity(Ricardo) then Marx, who succeed Ricardo, began with analysis of
social wealth from commodity. Below is how labor,surplus, profit have
mysterious character ,in which we are caught. Below is from Capital
MIYACHI TATSUO
Psychiatric Department
Komaki municipal hosipital
1-20.JOHBUHSHI
KOMAKI CITY
AICHI PREF.
486-0044
TEL:0568-76-4131
FAX 0568-76-4145
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

>It might seem as if a rational relation were expressed at least in "labour --
wages." But this is no more the case than with "land -- ground-rent." In so
far as labour is value-creating, and is manifested in the value of
commodities, it has nothing to do with the distribution of this value among
various categories. In so far as it has the specifically social character of
wage-labour, it is not value-creating. It has already been shown in general
that wages of labour, or price of labour, is but an irrational expression
for the value, or price of labour-power; and the specific social conditions,
under which this labour-power is sold, have nothing to do with labour as a
general agent in production. Labour is also materialised in that value
component of a commodity which as wages forms the price of labour-power; it
creates this portion just as much as the other portions of the product; but
it is materialised in this portion no more and no differently than in the
portions forming rent or profit. And, in general, when we establish labour
as value-creating, we do not consider it in its concrete form as a condition
of production, but in its social delimitation which differs from that of
wage-labour.



Landed property, capital and wage-labour are thus transformed from sources
of revenue -- in the sense that capital attracts to the capitalist, in the
form of profit, a portion of the surplus-value extracted by him from labour,
that monopoly in land attracts for the landlord another portion in the form
of rent; and that labour grants the labourer the remaining portion of value
in the form of wages -- from sources by means of which one portion of value
is transformed into the form of profit, another into the form of rent, and a
third into the form of wages -- into actual sources from which these value
portions and respective portions of the product in which they exist, or for
which they are exchangeable, arise themselves, and from which, therefore, in
the final analysis, the value of the product itself arises. [50]

Then the process of circulation intervenes, with its changes of substance
and form, on which all parts of capital, even agricultural capital, devolve
to the same degree that the specifically capitalist mode of production
develops. This is a sphere where the relations under which value is
originally produced are pushed completely into the background. In the direct
process of production the capitalist already acts simultaneously as producer
of commodities and manager of commodity-production. Hence this process of
production appears to him by no means simply as a process of producing
surplus-value. But whatever may be the surplus-value extorted by capital in
the actual production process and appearing in commodities, the value and
surplus-value contained in the commodities must first be realised in the
circulation process. And both the restitution of the values advanced in
production and, particularly, the surplus-value contained in the commodities
seem not merely to be realised in the circulation, but actually to arise
from it; an appearance which is especially reinforced by two circumstances:
first, the profit made in selling depends on cheating, deceit, inside
knowledge, skill and a thousand favourable market opportunities; and then by
the circumstance that added here to labour-time is a second determining
element -- time of circulation.

Fri., 6/14: Turn Your Back on Bush!

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Friday, June 14 (Protest & Alternative Commencement)
Turn Your Back on Bush!
6AM, Ohio Stadium (East Side Gates)
411 Woody Hayes Dr.
Columbus, OH
Downloadable flyer: .

[Graduates: Decorate Your Mortarboard with a Peace Sign!]

Turn Your Back on Bush and Take a Stand for

Peace
Democracy
Human Rights
International Law
Civil Rights & Liberties
Workers' Rights
Living Wages
Women's Rights
Indigenous Peoples' Rights
Disability Rights
The Environment

We'll Defend What Bush Wants to Destroy and Create Our Own Festive & 
Democratic Commencement!  Join us!

For more info, call 614-252-9255.




For info about parking, directions to the Ohio State University 
campus, etc., go to 
.

Campus Map: .

-- 
Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: 

* Anti-War Activist Resources: 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: RE: Estimating Surplus

[Davies, Daniel]

One would also want to put insurance premia paid back into the surplus (they
are typically subtracted from profits) in order to treat insurance
symmetrically with self-insurance ...

-Original Message-
From: Doug Henwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 05 June 2002 02:12
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:26582] Re: RE: Re: RE: RE: Estimating Surplus


Eric Nilsson wrote:

>Doug wrote,
>>  Net interest is figured as what biz pays to households, right? It's
>>  an expense for business and an income for households.
>
>Yes indeed that is the case. I guess such a number doesn't add to
capitalist
>surplus.

No but it's a subtraction from it. The concept is that households are 
the ultimate holder of business debts - financial institutions are 
just intermediaries.

Doug


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