Kerry's Tax Cut Makes Me Wanna Ralph

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

*   March 29, 2004
KERRY'S TAX CUT MAKES ME WANNA RALPH
. . . I do not look forward to a restoration of the economic policy
of Robert Rubin, but the release of Kerry's first major economic
proposal promises exactly that. The personnel are certainly falling
into place - Roger Altman and Gene Sperling, for two, both veteran
Clintonoids.
Kerry is foregrounding his corporate tax reform as a jobs measure.
Right from the jump, he is mixing up the difference between an
anti-recession, counter-cyclical policy, and a long-run structural
one. His proposal is structural. As such, whatever its merits, it
glosses over the fundamental issue of fiscal policy - deficits and
monetary expansion. The implication is that the latter run on
automatic pilot. In other words, Kerry has no short-term fiscal
policy. Insofar as Kerry fails to distinguish between the harm from
long- as opposed to short-term deficits, his fiscal policy stance is
perverse.
To its credit, the campaign has commissioned a memo from Harvard
wunderkind Lawrence Katz, who testifies that 4.1 percent unemployment
is a reasonable goal. This statement is much welcomed, but Dr. Katz
offers nothing to support the claim that Kerry's proposals could get
us to 4.1. Perhaps worse, Katz presents the 4.1 goal as something
other than a counter-cyclical goal -- a goal to be reached over four
years. The implication is that we need structural measures to get to
4.1, not a more effective counter-cyclical policy.
In this vein, some bloggers' claims

that 10 million jobs would be gained under normal circumstances are
exaggerated, though they are not completely out of the ballpark.
150,000 jobs a month for four years get you over seven million, which
is almost three-quarters of the way to ten. Getting 'normal' might
not prove to be so easy.
At the same time, Katz's memo suggests that ten million would be
gained by reaching 4.1 percent unemployment. In general, Kerry's
commitment is not quite as great as it may look, but if it means
getting to 4.1 percent unemployment, that would be all that MaxSpeak
could ask for in the vein of fiscal policy.
If only Kerry had a fiscal policy.

What about the tax measure as structural policy? The notion that this
proposal would be decisive in bringing ten million jobs (compared to
what?) could not be more ridiculous. Whether it's worthwhile in and
of itself is another mtter. There are three main pieces which have
little to do with each other, as far as economics goes.
One is the elimination of special treatment of repatriated foreign
earnings of U.S. corporations. This might have the multiple merits of
simplifying the corporate tax code and raising revenue. The
anti-off-shoring part is iffy, since firms don't necessarily
outsource for tax reasons.
The measure would have little expected impact in the big ten million
jobs plan. We're talking about $12 billion in corporate tax revenue a
year, out of about $200 billion. A problem is that Kerry proposes to
distinguish foreign earnings that are required to serve foreign
markets - they would continue to enjoy a tax preference - from the
other, bad kind. Good luck writing the regulations for this baby.
Will there be more money for more IRS corporate auditors?
The second piece is the proposed cut in the corporate tax rate. That
this would have any impact on U.S. jobs is to be doubted
. In and of itself, it's
a revenue loser. It embodies a rotten principle. If cutting the rate
2.5 percentage points is good, why not ten percent? Why have a
corporate income tax at all? What's the trade-off here - on one side,
a revenue loss that could have financed spending, deficit reduction,
or progressive tax cuts, and on the other, some potential increase in
investment and economic growth.
This is the essence of Clinto-Rubinomics. Propose a tiny change that
fails to roil the base and embodies a fundamentally bad notion, then
step back and let the Right practice one-upmanship with the bad idea.
The third piece is a payroll tax credit for new job creation in
"manufacturing." Nothing simplifying came come of any exercise of
this type. I would also question the cost estimates. Job turnover
means a continuous cycling of jobs from taxed to tax-favored status
for the favored categories. Jobs that would have been created in any
event - it's got to start happening sooner or later - would enjoy the
credit. And what happens to the Trust Funds?
On the positive side, we could expect workers to see some part of the
tax cut, since less tax allows the employer to offer higher wages.
MaxSpeak is committed to payroll tax relief
, albeit of our own particular
sort . Our own could
have a similar impact on hiring, though we would not tout it on the
basis of short-term fiscal policy, nor as a significant long-run
boost to emp

Monday April 12: David Barkin on Alternative Approaches to Globalization

[Ruth Indeck]

To NYC-area URPE Members and Friends:
  
  David Barkin will speak on
  
  "Alternative Approaches to Globalization"
  
  Monday April 12
  6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
  
  New School University
  80 Fifth Avenue (at 14th Street), Room 529
   
  In this era when opportunities for dignified work and rising standards
of  living seem unattainable for millions of workers and peasants in the
Third  World, they are developing their own strategies to retain some measure
of  control of their lives, their communities and their environments.  The
lecture  will suggest a different behavioral model including their own conception
of accumulation, based on partial insertion into the proletarian labor force,
 following the dictates of communal decision-making and collective responsibilities.
  
  
  David Barkin, of the Xochimilco Campus of the Universidad Autónoma  Metropolitana
 in México City, received his doctorate from Yale University and  was awarded
 the National Prize in Political Economics for his analysis of inflation
 in Mexico. He is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. His most
recent  books include: Wealth, Poverty and Sustainable Development and  Mexican
Innovations  in Water Management. His work on unequal development  leads
him to develop  alternative strategies for the sustainable management of
 resources in collaboration  with local communities. David is a long-time
URPE member.
  
  
    

Olive oil

[joanna bujes]

I ordered four tins. Olive oil is good. Helping Palestinians is good.

Joanna

Sending you a tin can of olive oil from Jayyous to your door step
anywhere in the United States or Europe takes less than 4 weeks.   By
buying from the farmers of Jayyous, the first to suffer from the wall,
you help them at a crucial moment.  Hundreds of Palestinian families
will benefit from your choice of using their  quality oil .
To buy just click on the link below

http://pcwf.org/artifacts/oliveoil/oliveoil.htm

and please tell in the message that you want the oil to come from
Jayyous. To learn more about Jayyous please click and read and learn and
support the struggle of the people of Jayyous.
http://www.jayyousonline.org/english.HTM
(among other things full text of Avnery speech "The Wall Will Fall")
---

Outsourcing?

[Louis Proyect]

"Four American civilian contractors were killed in the Iraqi city of 
Fallujah Wednesday in an attack that left their vehicles in flames, and 
afterward at least three of the burned bodies were mutilated, dragged 
through the streets and suspended from a bridge while a group of Iraqis 
danced in the streets. Separately, in nearby Ramadi, five U.S. soldiers 
died after their armored vehicle hit a roadside bomb...

"The four contractors were U.S. citizens, the State Department said. 
Early evidence indicated they were employed by Blackwater Security 
Consulting of Moyock, N.C., a company that hires former military special 
forces and law enforcement personnel from the United States and other 
countries to provide security services and training, the company said in 
a statement."

Washington Post, March 31

===

From Blackwater Security home page (http://www.blackwaterusa.com/):

"Blackwater Training Center was founded in 1996 to fulfill the 
anticipated demand for government outsourcing of firearms and related 
security training. Located on over 6000 acres in Moyock, North Carolina 
(just south of the Virginia border), Blackwater has the finest private 
firearms training facility in the U.S. Blackwater has set a new standard 
for firearms and security training and is recognized as the industry 
leader in providing government outsource solutions in training, 
security, canine services, aviation support services, range construction 
and steel target equipment. Since its inception, Blackwater has trained 
over 50,000 military and law enforcement personnel and provided 
solutions to hundreds of satisfied customers."

From the staff page:

Gary Jackson
President
Gary served 23 years in the U. S. Navy as a SEAL, and worked through the 
ranks to earn a commission in 1989, retiring as a Chief Warrant 
Officer-4. His last job in the TEAM's was a 24-month tour as platoon 
commander of a Counter-Drug Platoon in the Caribbean. His leadership, 
diverse experience in planning and logistics, and incredible energy are 
the core of the Blackwater USA experience. "Our TEAM concept on the 
staff allows for each professional who trains at Blackwater to maximize 
his or her experience"

Jim Sierawski [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Director of Training
Jim has both a military and law enforcement background. He spent 22 
years as a Navy SEAL, and retired as a Chief Warrant Officer-3 from SEAL 
Team EIGHT. Ten of those years were spent with an elite 
counter-terrorist unit. During his tour, he earned several decorations 
and awards. After retiring, Jim became a police officer with the City of 
Virginia Beach, Virginia. Jim was assigned to patrol division where he 
spent four years before joining Blackwater USA’s team. His diverse 
experience in the fields of special operations, law enforcement, and 
security clearly qualify him to lead the Blackwater Training Center. 
“This is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. We create 
customized and complete training packages that allow our customers to 
train harder and more efficiently and become better prepared for today’s 
ever-changing world. When you come to Blackwater, come ready to work.”

Jim Dehart [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Director of Facilities and Chief Design Officer
Jim Dehart is responsible for all physical assets at Blackwater USA. He 
spent 15 years designing, building, and managing the U.S. Navy's most 
comprehensive and sophisticated small-arms ranges at SEAL Team SIX and 
Naval Special Warfare Development Group. Jim retired after 20 years as a 
Chief Gunner’s Mate. Today, he is a leader at Blackwater USA because of 
his unwavering work ethic, creativity, and ability to execute. Jim heads 
up research and development for Blackwater Target Systems and designs 
complete range systems for our customers worldwide.

Brian Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Director of Blackwater Security Consulting
Brian has field experience that spans nearly 30 years in not only 
special operations as a Navy SEAL, but commercial and government 
security operations as well. Brian retired as a Master Chief Engineman 
after 21 years in the Navy. As a plank owner and twelve-year veteran of 
SEAL Team SIX, Brian was instrumental in developing and executing the 
spectrum of sensitive field operations in the Middle East, and in 
Central and South America. His commercial experience includes the 
personal and site physical security for the Counter-drug Radar System in 
South America, Department Of Energy Vulnerability Assessments, and 
Tactical Information Warfare Operations. Recent government employment 
includes risk analysis and risk reduction/mitigation efforts as a 
Project Officer to the Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD) on Special 
Access Programs. Brian carry’s the BSC philosophy of rapid, sustained, 
high performance of security operations based on time-sensitive or 
site-critical needs with superior resources delivered to the field. “All 
BSC needs is your requirements and we can build you a solution.”

Chris Ta

Re: utopianism

[Tom Walker]

ted winslow wrote:

> This provides a basis for critique of Marx's own account of these means.
The
> architects and builders socialism requires can't be created in the way he
> posits.
>
> A more scientific socialism would have to reconstruct this part of the
> analysis.
>
> For instance, it might want to pay a lot more attention to the possibility
> of reducing the work day both as an end in itself and as a means to other
> ends.

Of course I agree wholeheartedly with what Ted is saying. Not only would
such a reconstruction lead to a more scientific socialism, it would also
reveal compatible strivings with several important non-socialist visions of
the good life. And I believe it does matter to point out that today's
"ruling ideas" reject not only socialism but also repudiate the very best of
bourgeois thought and aspiration.

I think Postone's _Time, Labor and Social Domination_ is a step in the
direction of that reconstruction as is Michael Lebowitz's _Beyond Capital_.
Paradoxically, I think it is necessary to also take a 'step back' in order
to take a few steps forward -- the step back being the pamphlet Marx cited
in the passage from the Grundrisse that Ted quoted.

I have it on good authority (the editor) that Routledge will be coming out
later this year with a 10 volume set of early British socialist and utopian
pamphlets and it will include "The Source and Remedy." Meanwhile, I have
prepared a fairly clean -- it needs one or two more proof-readings --
transcription of it.

How far that pamphlet's author's opinions concur with Marx's (or with Ted's
or Mike's or Postone's or mine) "I dare not hazard a conjecture, but as many
of them are uncommon, they may, as Hume says, 'repay some cost to understand
them. [because]...if they are true, they have most important consequences.'"

One of those consequences, as I read it, is that reducing the work day needs
to be firmly grasped as both a worthy end of economic policy and a necessary
[but not itself sufficient] means of social and cultural progress. The
tactic used against the reduction of work time throughout the 20th century
was to characterize it as an ineffective means to the presumed end of
reducing unemployment. It is then argued that economic growth offers a
"better" way to expand employment because it also increases wealth --
assuming, of course, that wealth is nothing more than monetary value of
industrial production. As the pamphlet exclaimed: "From all the works I have
read on the subject, the richest nations are those where the greatest
revenue is or can be raised; as if the power of compelling or inducing men
to labour twice as much at the mills of Gaza for the enjoyment of the
Philistines, were a proof of any thing but a tyranny or an ignorance twice
as powerful."

The pamphlet contrasts that standard of the greatest revenue (GDP to us)
with a definition of wealth as "adding to the facilities of living": "so
that wealth is liberty--liberty to seek recreation--liberty to enjoy
life--liberty to improve the mind: it is disposable time and nothing more."

The development from an earlier ascetic, morally-grounded utopianism to
productivist socialism in the 19th century perhaps covered some pretty
ambiguous territory in a recklessly unambiguous way. The notion that
socialism could meet and defeat capitalism on its own grounds of efficiency,
rationality and output may have done a lot to ultimately validate
instrumental rationality above all else. It would be a mistake, though, to
fall back on asceticism and moralism.

As commendable as it might otherwise be, curing unemployment strikes me by
comparison as a fundamentally moral and intrinsically ascetic goal -- the
old work ethic asceticism. What about the Dadaist old demand for
"progressive unemployment through comprehensive mechanization of every field
of activity. Only by unemployment does it become possible for the individual
to achieve certainty as to the truth of life and finally become accustomed
to experience;" Admittedly that demand is formulated to epater les bourgeois
just a bit. "Liberty to seek recreation--liberty to enjoy life--liberty to
improve the mind" sounds pretty hedonistic to me -- a cheerful, healthy
hedonism, to boot.

I am thinking about the juxtaposition between necessary and superfluous
labour time and Marx's comment in the Grundrisse about the superfluous
becoming, under capital, a condition for the necessary: "Capital itself is
the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a
minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and
source of wealth. Hence it diminishes labour time in the necessary form so
as to increase it in the superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in
growing measure as a condition -- question of life or death -- for the
necessary." The alternative -- and the challenge -- is not to simply do away
with the superfluous as frivolous, excessive, degrading but to transform it
into the free and creative _u

Re: U.S.- Led Colaition Shuts Down Iraqi Newspaper

[Sabri Oncu]

DMS:

> Last time I checked, I was classified as an
> American, as are thousands, hundreds of thousands,
> maybe millions who demonstrate their complete
> opposition to US military and economic occupation,
> and the possibilities of proxy occupation.

Well! I have always felt sorry for Americans because
of this. Also, because of this, I refuse to become a
citizen of the US. Being a citizen of Turkey is
already very difficult, so why should I make it more
difficult by becoming a US citizen is my reasoning.

> What's the point of reproducing national/patriotic
> obfuscation from the "left?"

Well. Firstly, words such as obfuscation are beyond my
limited english vocabulary. So, I don't know what you
mean by that but I know one thing.

I don't like you and this has nothing to do with that
you are an American.

I just don't like your personality.

Best,

Sabri

Global warming spirals upwards...

[Mike Ballard]

Is it time to defrost the tundra, Shrub?

Regards,
Mike B)

from the London Independent:
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
28 March 2004

Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have jumped
abruptly, raising fears that global warming may be
accelerating out of control.

Measurements by US government scientists show that
concentrations of the gas, the main cause of the
climate exchange, rose by a record amount over the
past 12 months. It is the third successive year in
which they have increased sharply, marking an
unprecedented triennial surge.

Scientists are at a loss to explain why the rapid rise
has taken place, but fear that it could show the first
signs that global warming is feeding on itself, with
rising temperatures causing increases in carbon
dioxide, which then go on to drive the thermometer
even higher. That would be a deeply alarming
development, suggesting that this self-reinforcing
heating could spiral upwards beyond the reach of any
attempts to combat it.

The development comes as official figures show that
Britain's emissions of the gas soared by three per
cent last year, twice as fast as the year before. The
increase - caused by rising energy use and by burning
less gas and more coal in power stations - jeopardises
the Government's target of reducing emissions by 19
per cent by 2010.

It also coincides with a new bid to break the log jam
over the Kyoto treaty headed by Stephen Byers, the
former transport secretary, who remains close to Tony
Blair.

Mr Byers is co-chairing with US Republican Senator
Olympia Snowe a new taskforce, run by the Institute of
Public Policy Research and US and Australian think
tanks, which is charged with devising proposals that
could resolve the stalemate caused by President Bush's
hostility to the treaty.

The carbon dioxide measurements have been taken from
the 11,400ft summit of Hawaii's Mauna Loa, whose
enormous dome makes it the most substantial mountain
on earth, by scientists working for the US
government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.

They have been taking the readings from the peak -
effectively breathalysing the planet - for the past 46
years. It is an ideal site for the exercise, 2,000
miles from the nearest land and protected by freak
climatic conditions from pollution from Hawaii, more
than two miles below.

The latest measurements, taken a week ago, showed that
carbon dioxide had reached about 379 parts per million
(ppm), up from about 376ppm the year before, from
373ppm in 2002 and about 371ppm in 2001. These
represent three of the four biggest increases on
record (the other was in 1998), creating an
unprecedented sequence. They add up to a 64 per cent
rise over the average rate of growth over the past
decade, of 1.8ppm a year.

The US scientists have yet to analyse the figures and
stress that they could be just a remarkable blip.
Professor Ralph Keeling - whose father Charles Keeling
first set up the measurements from Mauna Loa -
said:"We are moving into a warmer world".

http://www.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=505798&host=3&dir=507

=
1844 Paris Manuscripts,
Marx makes a major point
of the relationship between
the sexes: "The infinite
degradation in which man
exists for himself is expressed
in this relation to the woman,"

http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html

Re: decline of civilization (part III)

[Devine, James]

Typo: it 
should be "Our" meat, not "Out" meat.
 
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine 

  -Original Message-From: Devine, James 
  Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 9:29 AMTo: 
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: [PEN-L] decline of civilization 
  (part III)
  1. Due to the decline and 
  fall of public education and medical care funding (and therefore quality) in 
  California, both Santa Monica college and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center are 
  using advertising on Public Radio to cite this collapse -- in order to brag 
  about how _they're_ getting better. Will Pacifica Radio start advertising that 
  at least _they're_ not kicking Bob Edwards upstairs? 
   
  2. Meanwhile, here 
  in Los Angeles county, the sheriff is releasing those in jail for misdemeanors 
  (theft, etc.) because of budgetary problems arising from the recession and 
  California's state government's problems. How long will it be before a 
  faith-based yet cost-effective 
  solution is found, i.e., cutting off the thief's hands?
   
  3. It used to be that the 
  Culver City Meat Company, whose slogan is "You Can't Beat Out Meat," used to 
  drive its trucks all the way to Hermosa Beach (at great expense), so that they 
  could be washed at the "Hand Job" carwash. But now they don't do it any more, 
  since the latter has changed its name to "Hands On." 
   
  [Only the third story is 
  fictional. None of the names or slogans have been changed, 
  however.]
   
  Jim Devine

Re: Chalabi's road to the Prime Ministership in June?

[Devine, James]

Hey, Chalabi may be an SOB, but he's _our_ SOB.


Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine


> -Original Message-
> From: Michael Pollak [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 9:50 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L] Chalabi's road to the Prime Ministership in June?
> 
> 
>   [So even Arnaud de Borchgrave knows the cold war is over?]
> 
>URL: http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=20040329-094918-2616r
> 
>Commentary: Chalabi's road to victory
> 
>By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
>UPI Editor at Large
>Published 3/29/2004 12:24 PM
> 
>WASHINGTON, March 29 (UPI) -- With only three months to go 
> before L.
>Paul Bremer trades in his Iraqi pro-consul baton for 
> beachwear and a
>hard-earned vacation, the country's most controversial 
> politician is
>already well positioned to become prime minister.
> 
>Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon's heartthrob and the State Department's
>and CIA's heartbreak, has taken the lead in a yearlong political
>marathon. Temporary constitutional arrangements are 
> structured to give
>the future prime minister more power than the president. 
> The role of
>the president will be limited because his decisions will have to be
>ratified by two deputy presidents, or vice presidents. Key 
> ministries,
>such as Defense and Interior, will be taking orders from the prime
>

Re: absolute advantage redux

[Max B. Sawicky]

My view of free trade is jaundiced, but I think Roberts
is wrong on some of this.

Noam Scheiber made this point in TNR.  For comparative
advantage to be eliminated, there must be full mobility
of factors of production.  Then production proceeds
according to absolute advantage.  This does not invalidate
the notion of gains from trade, since mobility of
factors requires free trade in its own right.  With no
comparative advantage, there are still "gains from trade."

Roberts is also wrong that autarchy somehow involves
an absence of "labor arbitrage."

There is also the bankrupt premise of gains abstracted
from distribution.

I wonder why Roberts thinks free markets are fine within
the U.S., with all that that implies for some things he
mentions (like family incomes), but bad otherwise.

mbs






Economists call this wrenching adjustment "short-run friction." But when the
loss of jobs leaves people with less income but the same mortgages and
debts, upward mobility collapses. Income distribution becomes more
polarized, the tax base is lost, and the ability to maintain infrastructure,
entitlements, and public commitments is reduced. Nor is this adjustment just
short-run. The huge excess supplies of labor in India and China mean that
American wages will fall a lot faster than Asian wages will rise for a long
time.

Until recently, First World countries retained their capital, labor, and
technology. Foreign investment occurred, but it worked differently from
outsourcing. Foreign investment was confined mainly to the First World.
Its purpose was to avoid shipping costs, tariffs, and quotas, and thus sell
more cheaply in the foreign market. The purpose of foreign investment was
not offshore production with cheap foreign labor for the home market.

When Ricardo developed the doctrine of comparative advantage, climate and
geography were important variables in the economy. The assumption that
factors of production were immobile internationally was realistic.
Since there were inherent differences in climate and geography, the
assumption that different countries would have different relative costs of
producing tradable goods was also realistic.

Today, acquired knowledge is the basis for most tradable goods and services,
making the Ricardian assumptions unrealistic. Indeed, it is not clear where
there is a basis for comparative advantage when production rests on acquired
knowledge. Modern production functions operate the same way regardless of
their locations. There is no necessary reason for the relative costs of
producing manufactured goods to vary from one country to another. Yet
without different internal cost ratios, there is no basis for comparative
advantage.

Outsourcing is driven by absolute advantage. Asia has an absolute advantage
because of its vast excess supply of skilled and educated labor. With First
World capital, technology, and business knowhow, this labor can be just as
productive as First World labor, but workers can be hired for much less
money. Thus, the capitalist incentive to seek the lowest cost and most
profit will seek to substitute cheap labor for expensive labor. India and
China are gaining, and the First World is losing.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Treasury Secretary in the Reagan
Administration and a former BusinessWeek columnist. [He's also a pillar of
so-called "supply-side economics."]


Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Conference on UN and Internaitonal Power Politics

[Craven, Jim]

IHRAAMRoundtableEWUlatest.pdf
Description: IHRAAMRoundtableEWUlatest.pdf

Fewer Visa Applicants, Higher Visa Rejection Rates

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

*   Even if their applications are rejected, citizens of
developing nations must pay $100 for a non-immigrant visa to the
United States. . . .
The unfairness is obvious: people should not be charged for something
- in this case, a visa to the United States - that they do not
receive. And $100 is a huge sum in nations like India, with an annual
per capita income estimated at $2,600 in 2002, or even Poland, where
it is $9,700. . . .
From October 2000 to September 2001, 6.3 million people applied to
travel to the United States for business, pleasure or medical
treatment from developing nations. (These include any nations that do
not have a reciprocal visa waiver agreement with the United States.)
That number dropped to 3.7 million for the 2003 fiscal year.
Applications for student visas fell by almost 100,000 over the same
two years.
Despite the decline in applications, visa rejection rates have risen.
The rate for "cultural exchange" visas, for example - used by many
medical students - was 5.1 percent for the 2001 fiscal year; two
years later it was 7.8 percent.
(Steven C. Clemons, "Land of the Free?" _New York Times_, March 31,
2004, )   *
*   On June 1, the State Department is expected to start charging
applicants a long-planned fee to pay for the system's operation.
College officials worry that the $100 fee will add yet another
complicated step to an already complex interagency process and deter
even more international students from applying.
To pay the fee, applicants will have to use U.S. dollars through an
American bank, which would then mail them a paper receipt to present
at the visa interview. Mail service in many countries is slow and
unreliable, says Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for
government affairs at the American Council on Education, and paper
receipts can be lost, stolen, or counterfeited.
(Michael Arnone, "Security at Home Creates Insecurity Abroad," _The
Chronicle of Higher Education_, March 12, 2004,
)   *
*At 90 percent of American colleges and universities,
applications from international students for fall 2004 are down,
according to a survey by the Council of Graduate Schools that was
released earlier this month. According to a recent article in The
Chronicle of Higher Education, applications from China have fallen by
76 percent, while those from India have dropped by 58 percent.
Applications to research universities from prospective international
graduate students are down by at least 25 percent overall; here at
Texas A&M, international student applications have fallen by 38
percent from last year.
Not surprisingly, universities in Australia, Britain, France and
elsewhere are taking advantage of our barriers and are aggressively
recruiting these students. According to the Chronicle, foreign
student enrollment in Australia is up 16.5 percent over last year;
Chinese enrollment there has risen by 20 percent.
(Robert M. Gates, "International Relations 101," _New York Times_,
March 31, 2004,
)   *
*   The Chronicle of Higher Education
Thursday, March 4, 2004
New Survey Confirms Sharp Drop in Applications to U.S. Colleges From
Foreign Graduate Students
By MICHAEL ARNONE
More than 90 percent of American colleges and universities have seen
a drop in applications from international graduate students for the
fall 2004 term, and the number of submissions has fallen 32 percent
from last year, according to a survey released by the Council of
Graduate Schools on Tuesday.
The findings support a similar survey released last week that found a
sharp decline in the number of applications from graduate students
from overseas, and a smaller drop in the number from undergraduates.
That survey was jointly conducted by the graduate-schools council,
the American Council on Education, the Association of American
Universities, Nafsa: Association of International Educators, and the
National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges.
The new study, which focuses on graduate students only, found the
largest drop in applications from countries that usually send the
most applications. Applications from students in China declined by 76
percent, those from India fell 58 percent. Students in the Middle
East sent 31 percent fewer applications, and even Western Europe had
a 30-percent decline. The drop crossed all fields of study as well,
with an 80-percent plunge in applications to engineering programs and
a 65-percent reduction in those to physical-sciences programs.
The results among the 32 research universities with the largest
international enrollments were much worse. Thirty-one of those
institutions (97 percent) saw declines, 90 percent reported fewer
applications from China, and 72 percent reported fewer from India.
More than 90 percent saw drops in engineering applications, and 80
percent saw fewer f

Re: utopianism

[Mike Ballard]

--- Ted Winslow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>
> It seems to me what distinguishes "utopian" from
> "scientific" socialism
> is that the former pays no attention to the means
> through which the
> better society is to be brought into existence.

*

What a utopian that Marx was!  To think and write as
if socialism had something to do with free time and
with freedom from the necessities imposed by the wages
system.  And then, his cheerleading of the Paris
Commune and calling it an example of his "dictatorship
of the proletariat".  And who can forget his naive
critique of political-economy in the first chapter of
the first volume of CAPITAL and the implications
therein--an association of free producers owning the
means of production in common and producing wealth
without commodity production, indeed!

Good-night Citizen Weston, wherever you are

Mike B)



=
1844 Paris Manuscripts,
Marx makes a major point
of the relationship between
the sexes: "The infinite
degradation in which man
exists for himself is expressed
in this relation to the woman,"

http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html

absolute advantage redux

[Devine, James]

[strange bedfellows department.]

MARCH 22, 2004

SPECIAL REPORT -- WHERE ARE THE JOBS?
By Paul Craig Roberts

Guest Commentary: The Harsh Truth About Outsourcing

It's not a mutually beneficial trade practice -- it's outright labor
arbitrage

Economists are blind to the loss of American industries and occupations
because they believe these results reflect the beneficial workings of
free trade. Whatever is being lost, they think, is being replaced by
something as good or better. This thinking is rooted in the doctrine of
comparative advantage put forth by economist David Ricardo in 1817.

It states that, even if a country is a high-cost producer of most
things, it can still enjoy an advantage, since it will produce some
goods at lower relative cost than its trading partners.

Today's economists can't identify what the new industries and
occupations might be that will replace those that are lost, but they're
certain that those jobs and sectors are out there somewhere. What does
not occur to them is that the same incentive that causes the loss of one
tradable good or service -- cheap, skilled foreign labor -- applies to
all tradable goods and services. There is no reason that the
"replacement" industry or job, if it exists, won't follow its
predecessor offshore.

For comparative advantage to work, a country's labor, capital, and
technology must not move offshore. This international immobility is
necessary to prevent a business from seeking an absolute advantage by
going abroad. The internal cost ratios that determine comparative
advantage reflect the quantity and quality of the country's technology
and capital. If these factors move abroad to where cheap labor makes
them more productive, absolute advantage takes over from comparative
advantage.

This is what is wrong with today's debate about outsourcing and offshore
production. It's not really about trade but about labor arbitrage.
Companies producing for U.S. markets are substituting cheap labor for
expensive U.S. labor. The U.S. loses jobs and also the capital and
technology that move offshore to employ the cheaper foreign labor.
Economists argue that this loss of capital does not result in
unemployment but rather a reduction in wages. The remaining capital is
spread more thinly among workers, while the foreign workers whose
country gains the money become more productive and are better paid.

Economists call this wrenching adjustment "short-run friction." But when
the loss of jobs leaves people with less income but the same mortgages
and debts, upward mobility collapses. Income distribution becomes more
polarized, the tax base is lost, and the ability to maintain
infrastructure, entitlements, and public commitments is reduced. Nor is
this adjustment just short-run. The huge excess supplies of labor in
India and China mean that American wages will fall a lot faster than
Asian wages will rise for a long time.

Until recently, First World countries retained their capital, labor, and
technology. Foreign investment occurred, but it worked differently from
outsourcing. Foreign investment was confined mainly to the First World.
Its purpose was to avoid shipping costs, tariffs, and quotas, and thus
sell more cheaply in the foreign market. The purpose of foreign
investment was not offshore production with cheap foreign labor for the
home market.

When Ricardo developed the doctrine of comparative advantage, climate
and geography were important variables in the economy. The assumption
that factors of production were immobile internationally was realistic.
Since there were inherent differences in climate and geography, the
assumption that different countries would have different relative costs
of producing tradable goods was also realistic.

Today, acquired knowledge is the basis for most tradable goods and
services, making the Ricardian assumptions unrealistic. Indeed, it is
not clear where there is a basis for comparative advantage when
production rests on acquired knowledge. Modern production functions
operate the same way regardless of their locations. There is no
necessary reason for the relative costs of producing manufactured goods
to vary from one country to another. Yet without different internal cost
ratios, there is no basis for comparative advantage.

Outsourcing is driven by absolute advantage. Asia has an absolute
advantage because of its vast excess supply of skilled and educated
labor. With First World capital, technology, and business knowhow, this
labor can be just as productive as First World labor, but workers can be
hired for much less money. Thus, the capitalist incentive to seek the
lowest cost and most profit will seek to substitute cheap labor for
expensive labor. India and China are gaining, and the First World is
losing.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Treasury Secretary in the
Reagan Administration and a former BusinessWeek columnist. [He's also a
pillar of so-called "supply-side economics."] 


Jim Devin

Chalabi's road to the Prime Ministership in June?

[Michael Pollak]

  [So even Arnaud de Borchgrave knows the cold war is over?]

   URL: http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=20040329-094918-2616r

   Commentary: Chalabi's road to victory

   By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
   UPI Editor at Large
   Published 3/29/2004 12:24 PM

   WASHINGTON, March 29 (UPI) -- With only three months to go before L.
   Paul Bremer trades in his Iraqi pro-consul baton for beachwear and a
   hard-earned vacation, the country's most controversial politician is
   already well positioned to become prime minister.

   Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon's heartthrob and the State Department's
   and CIA's heartbreak, has taken the lead in a yearlong political
   marathon. Temporary constitutional arrangements are structured to give
   the future prime minister more power than the president. The role of
   the president will be limited because his decisions will have to be
   ratified by two deputy presidents, or vice presidents. Key ministries,
   such as Defense and Interior, will be taking orders from the prime
   minister.

   Chalabi holds the ultimate weapons -- several dozen tons of documents
   and individual files seized by his Iraqi National Congress from Saddam
   Hussein's secret security apparatus. Coupled with his position as head
   of the de-Baathification commission, Chalabi, barely a year since he
   returned to his homeland after 45 years of exile, has emerged as the
   power behind a vacant throne. He also appears to have impressive
   amounts of cash at his disposal and a say in which companies get the
   nod for some of the $18.4 billion earmarked for reconstruction. One
   company executive who asked that both his and the company's name be
   withheld said, "The commission was steep even by Middle Eastern
   standards."

   Chalabi is still on the Defense Intelligence Agency's budget for a
   secret stipend of $340,000 a month. The $40 million the INC has
   received since 1994 from the U.S. government also covered the expenses
   of Iraqi military defectors' stories about weapons of mass destruction
   and the Iraqi regime's links with al-Qaida, which provided President
   Bush with a casus belli for the war on Iraq.

   When Chalabi established the Petra Bank in Amman, Jordan, in the
   1980s, he favored small loans to military officers, non-commissioned
   officers, royal guards and intelligence officers. He developed a close
   rapport with then Crown Price Hassan who borrowed a total of $20
   million. After Petra went belly up with a loss of $300 million at the
   end of the decade, Chalabi escaped to Syria in a car supplied by
   Hassan -- minutes ahead of the officers who had come to arrest him for
   embezzling his own bank. The Petra fiasco debacle left him sufficient
   funds to launch INC a few days later.

   Today, the MIT-trained mathematician says he has the documents that
   will prove he was framed by two Husseins -- Saddam and the late king
   of Jordan -- who wanted to put an end to his anti-Iraqi activities.
   Jordan used to get most of its oil needs from Iraq free or heavily
   discounted, which explains why King Hussein declined to join the
   anti-Iraq coalition in the first Gulf War.

   Sentenced in Jordan, in absentia, to 22 years hard labor for massive
   bank fraud, Chalabi hints he also has incriminating evidence of a
   close "subsidiary" relationship between Jordan's King Abdullah and
   Saddam's depraved, sadistic elder son, Uday, killed last year in a
   shootout with U.S. troops.

   Potentially embarrassing for prominent U.S. citizens, Chalabi's aides
   hint his treasure trove of Mukhabarat documents includes names of
   American "agents of influence" on Saddam's payroll, as well as a
   number of Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV news reporters who were working
   for Iraqi intelligence.

   The final selection for prime minister will need the assent of the
   president and his two deputies -- representing the country's three
   principal ethnic and religious groupings. Standard-bearer for Iraq's
   60 percent Shiite majority and free Iraq's first president will be
   Abdulaziz Hakim. He is the brother of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir
   al-Hakim, killed last year with 90 worshippers when a car bomb rocked
   the country's holiest Shiite shrine in Najaf. With an Islamic green
   light from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Hakim will almost certainly
   opt for fellow Shiite Chalabi as prime minister.

   Slated for one of the two vice presidential slots is Adnan Pachachi, a
   Sunni octogenarian with a secular liberal outlook. He served as
   foreign minister and ambassador to the United Nations before the
   Baathists seized power in a military coup in 1968. Pachachi's nod may
   also go to Chalabi.

   For the third leg of the troika, rival Kurdish parties have agreed to
   unite behind Jalal Talabani, chief of the Patriotic Union of
   Kurdistan. His vote, now believed to be favorable, would make it three
   out of three for Chalabi.

   Referring to Chalabi, a fo

decline of civilization (part III)

[Devine, James]

1. Due to the decline and 
fall of public education and medical care funding (and therefore quality) in 
California, both Santa Monica college and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center are 
using advertising on Public Radio to cite this collapse -- in order to brag 
about how _they're_ getting better. Will Pacifica Radio start advertising that 
at least _they're_ not kicking Bob Edwards upstairs? 
 
2. Meanwhile, here 
in Los Angeles county, the sheriff is releasing those in jail for misdemeanors 
(theft, etc.) because of budgetary problems arising from the recession and 
California's state government's problems. How long will it be before a 
faith-based yet cost-effective 
solution is found, i.e., cutting off the thief's hands?
 
3. It used to be that the 
Culver City Meat Company, whose slogan is "You Can't Beat Out Meat," used to 
drive its trucks all the way to Hermosa Beach (at great expense), so that they 
could be washed at the "Hand Job" carwash. But now they don't do it any more, 
since the latter has changed its name to "Hands On." 
 
[Only the third story is 
fictional. None of the names or slogans have been changed, 
however.]
 
Jim Devine

Re: air america radio

[Devine, James]

does it mean anything that "Air America" has the same name as the old CIA-sponsored 
"independent" airline in Southeast Asia (involved in war and drug smuggling)? 


Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine




> -Original Message-
> From: ravi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 7:51 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L] air america radio
> 
> 
> 
> 
> on today.
> 
> --ravi
> 

Re: utopianism

[Ted Winslow]

Jim wrote:

The big criticism of utopianism was tactical and strategic: it doesn't 
do much good to show people a diagram of how socialism should be 
organized (as the Socialist Labor Party used to do) and do nothing 
else, ignoring the possibilities generated by the contradictions of 
capitalism.
It seems to me what distinguishes "utopian" from "scientific" socialism 
is that the former pays no attention to the means through which the 
better society is to be brought into existence.

I think it's a mistake to interpret the difference as dismissive of any 
need to pay attention to the nature of a better society.  As Marx 
points out, the end determines the means with the "rigidity of a law," 
so you can't determine the latter without knowing the former.  This is 
particularly so in the case of socialism because its nature is such 
that it can only be constructed by architects and builders who 
construct it in the mind before building it in reality (this, according 
to Marx, being the defining feature of human labour).

This provides a basis for critique of Marx's own account of these 
means.  The architects and builders socialism requires can't be created 
in the way he posits.

A more scientific socialism would have to reconstruct this part of the 
analysis.

For instance, it might want to pay a lot more attention to the 
possibility of reducing the work day both as an end in itself and as a 
means to other ends.

This would require examination of what our ends ought to be.

I think Marx adopts as the ultimate end the "realm of freedom" - a 
community of universally developed individuals creating and 
appropriating beauty and truth within relations of mutual recognition.

This requires "free time" i.e. time free from instrumental labour.  
This is time both for the activities which are ends in themselves and 
for the individual development these activities require.  This 
individual development would also work to expand free time because it 
would improve productivity - "efficiency" - in the realm of necessity.

These ideas serve to tie together Marx's various definitions of wealth. 
 In particular, it connects wealth as universal development to wealth 
as free time.

"What is wealth other than the universality of individual needs, 
capacities, pleasures, productive forces etc., created through 
universal exchange?  The full development of human mastery over the 
forces of nature, those of so-called nature as well as of humanity's 
own nature?  The absolute working out of his creative potentialities, 
with no presupposition other than the previous historic development, 
which makes this totality of development, i.e. the development of all 
human powers as such the end in itself, not as measured on a 
predetermined yardstick?  Where he does not reproduce himself in one 
specificity, but produces his totality? Strives not to remain something 
he has become, but is in the absolute movement of becoming?  In 
bourgeois economics - and in the epoch of production to which it 
corresponds - this complete working-out of the human content appears as 
a complete emptying out, this universal objectification as total 
alienation, and the tearing-down of all limited, one-sided aims as 
sacrifice of the human end-in-itself to an entirely external end. " 
Grundrisse p. 488

"The real wealth of society and the possibility of a constant expansion 
of its reproduction process does not depend on the length of surplus 
labour but rather on its productivity and on the more or less plentiful 
conditions of production in which it is performed. The realm of freedom 
really begins only where labour determined by necessity and external 
expediency ends; it lies by its very nature beyond the sphere of 
material production proper ... The true realm of freedom, the 
development of human powers as an end in itself, begins beyond it [the 
"realm of necessity"], though it can only flourish with this realm of 
necessity as its basis. The reduction of the working day is the basic 
prerequisite." Capital vol. 3 pp. 958-9

"The theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based, 
appears a miserable foundation in face of this new one, created by 
large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct form has 
ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and 
must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to 
be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the masshas ceased 
to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the 
non-labour of the few,for the development of the general powers of the 
human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, 
and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of 
[706] penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities, 
and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit 
surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary 
labour of society

Re: dksfajdfsjkdfsjsda

[dmschanoes]

Pretend I'm slow. What's the subject?
- Original Message -
From: "Michael Perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 10:08 AM
Subject: [PEN-L] dksfajdfsjkdfsjsda


ignore pen-l [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Dr. Laura, the Bible and Social Policy

[Craven, Jim]

Title: Message



doctor laura and the bible


















  
  

   
  


  
Dr. Laura 
Schlessinger is a radio personality who dispensesadvice to 
people who call in to her radio show. Recently,she said that, as 
an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexualityis an abomination 
according to Leviticus 18:22 and cannot becondoned under any 
circumstance. The following is an openletter to Dr. Laura penned 
by a east coast resident, whichwas posted on the Internet. It's 
funny, as well as informative:Dear Dr. Laura:Thank 
you for doing so much to educate people regardingGod's Law. I 
have learned a great deal from your show, andtry to share that 
knowledge with as many people as I can.When someone tries to 
defend the homosexual lifestyle, forexample, I simply remind 
them that Leviticus 18:22 clearlystates it to be an abomination. 
End of debate. I do needsome advice from you, however, regarding 
some of the otherspecific laws and how to follow 
them:When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know 
itcreates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The 
problemis my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to 
them. Should I smite 
them?I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as 
sanctionedin Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think 
wouldbe a fair price for her?I know that I am allowed no 
contact with a woman while sheis in her period of menstrual 
unseemliness - Lev.15:19- 24.The problem is, how do I tell? I 
have tried asking, but mostwomen take offense.Lev. 25:44 
states that I may indeed possess slaves, bothmale and female, 
provided they are purchased fromneighboring nations. A friend of 
mine claims that thisapplies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can 
you clarify? Whycan't I own Canadians?I have a neighbor 
who insists on working on the Sabbath.Exodus 35:2 clearly states 
he should be put to death. Am Imorally obligated to kill him 
myself?A friend of mine feels that even though eating 
shellfish isan abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser 
abomination thanhomosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle 
this?Lev. 21:20 states 
that I may not approach the altar of Godif I have a defect in my 
sight. I have to admit that I wearreading glasses. Does my 
vision have to be 20, or isthere some wiggle room 
here?Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, 
includingthe hair around their temples, even though this is 
expresslyforbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?I 
know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pigmakes 
me unclean, but may I still play football if I 
weargloves?My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19 by 
planting twodifferent crops in the same field, as does his wife 
bywearing garments made of two different kinds of 
thread(cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse 
andblaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to 
allthe trouble of getting the whole town together to 
stonethem? - Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death 
ata private family affair like we do with people who 
sleepwith their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)I know you have 
studied these things extensively, so I amconfident you can help. 
Thank you again for reminding usthat God's word is eternal and 
unchanging.Eric 
Maddox[EMAIL PROTECTED]"If religion is the 
opiate of the masses, then religious zealots must be the 
crackheads."   
-Dennis 
Miller_
  
 
James M. Craven
Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi
Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business 
Division Chair
Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin 
Blvd.
Vancouver, WA. USA 98663
Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 
992-2863
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5
Employer has no 
association with private/protected opinion
"Who controls the past 
controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George 
Orwell)
"...every anticipation of 
results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, 
"Grundrisse")
FREE LEONARD 
PELTIER!!
 
 

air america radio

[ravi]

on today.

--ravi

Working like dogs (was Job flight)

[Charles Brown]

We need a New May Day 
!
It's winter in 
socialism , now, but May Day is on it's way.
Charles
 
***
From: Tom Walker 
Subject: Re: d-squared wrote:
 
> but one argument that I
> always think ought to get more traction is that
> capitalism has singularly failed to shorten the 
working
> day. A lot of people intuitively realise that there 
is
> something wrong here; we were promised robot slaves 
and
> unlimited leisure time in the comic books, and now 
the
> space age is here and we're still working like 
dogs.
Broken record, here. Yes, it's uncanny how the argument doesn't 
get more
traction. I mentioned yesterday in a post on this thread that a 
reduction of
U.S. annual hours to approximately European standards could be 
expected to
generate (or preserve) around 10 million jobs, the same number 
John Kerry
claims (with less supporting argument) his economic policies 
would produce
in four years. Kerry's 10 million estimate comes from a memo 
from Lawrence
Katz who projects that number from the lowering of the 
unemployment rate to
4.1%. Sounds to me like a tautology: if the unemployment rate 
drops while
the labour force grows, jobs will be created. That's right up 
there with
Calvin Coolidge's "When a great many people are unable to find 
work,
unemployment results."
That same Katz commented some years ago on a Brookings Institute 
paper about
hours reduction as work sharing. He made a number of sensible 
background
points but his main point and emphasis was utterly 
unsubstantiated. He even
produced a pseudo-algebraic 'model' ("the best case scenario for 
advocates
of work-sharing") that only pertains if one assumes that the 
given hours of
work are optimal for maximizing output, a condition that has 
been clearly
demonstrated to be contrary to theory. And, of course, he just 
had to frame
his discussion with a recital of the "lump-of-output fallacy," 
Richard
Layard's lame attempt to lend greater terminological precision 
to the
utterly fraudulent claim of a "lump-of-labour 
fallacy".
The bottom line for Katz was the conclusion that "there are a 
number of good
reasons to believe that mandated work-sharing is unlikely to 
produce much of
a reduction in unemployment." One of those "good reasons" being 
his
theoretically bankrupt model and the other being the allegedly 
fallacious
assumption "implicit" in arguments for work-sharing. That, I'm 
afraid is
what passes for the conventional wisdom in economics on the 
hours of labour.
 
Tom Walker

Re: utopianism

[Louis Proyect]

Devine, James wrote:
>Respect for utopian ideas didn't fit with the growing scientism of
Kautsky, Hilferding, and their ilk. Worse, utopian thinking implied an
obvious critique of Stalinist regimes, and was so _verboten_. In the
end, Engels' SOCIALISM: UTOPIAN AND SCIENTIFIC was interpreted as being
"Utopian _versus_ Scientific."<
(Speaking of utopian, would it be too much to ask Jim Devine to clip
extraneous text that he is replying to? Or to configure his mailer so
that the text wraps properly? Everytime I respond to one of his
messages, I have to reformat it like Chris Doss's.)
On to the substance.

Utopian socialism of the 19th century was a living movement. Engels had
high regard for David Owen because his utopianism was engaged with
political action that made a difference in the lives of working people:
"Banished from official society, with a conspiracy of silence against
him in the press, ruined by his unsuccessful Communist experiments in
America, in which he sacrificed all his fortune, he turned directly to
the working-class and continued working in their midst for 30 years.
Every social movement, every real advance in England on behalf of the
workers links itself on to the name of Robert Owen. He forced through in
1819, after five years' fighting, the first law limiting the hours of
labor of women and children in factories. He was president of the first
Congress at which all the Trade Unions of England united in a single
great trade association. He introduced as transition measures to the
complete communistic organization of society, on the one hand,
cooperative societies for retail trade and production. These have since
that time, at least, given practical proof that the merchant and the
manufacturer are socially quite unnecessary. On the other hand, he
introduced labor bazaars for the exchange of the products of labor
through the medium of labor-notes, whose unit was a single hour of work;
institutions necessarily doomed to failure, but completely anticipating
Proudhon's bank of exchange of a much later period, and differing
entirely from this in that it did not claim to be the panacea for all
social ills, but only a first step towards a much more radical
revolution of society."
Utopian socialism today has nothing to do with this. It is marked
primarily by anti-Communism. It states that the USSR was a failure
because it operated on the basis of a faulty blueprint and offers an
alternative blueprint. That is the whole basis of Michael Albert's
Parecon. It is also reflected in John Roemer's coupon-based market
socialism. You can find the same type of thinking in Murray Bookchin and
other anarcho-communists. It is basically intellectualizing about future
societies and a complete waste of time since future societies will be
shaped by the relationship of class forces and objective economic
conditions rather than ideas.
The one thing that utopian socialism of the 19th century and that of
today have in common, in fact, is that they are both forms of *idealist*
thinking. Completely harmless, but ineffectual. If I had a son who was
embarking on a career and was trying to decide between writing books
like Michael Albert's "Parecon" or going into corporate law, I'd have no
problem recommending the former.
--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

dksfajdfsjkdfsjsda

[Michael Perelman]

ignore pen-l [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Rick Perlstein on outsourcing

[Louis Proyect]

Village Voice, March 30th, 2004 11:25 AM
The Jobs of the Future Are a Thing of the Past
by Rick Perlstein
WHEATON, ILLINOIS—"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce 
man—brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the 
timid join him. For then it costs nothing to be a patriot." That's the 
epigram by which the leader of the Rescue American Jobs Foundation, 
created last June to fight the exporting of service jobs overseas and 
the importing of foreign workers to do service jobs here, signs off her 
e-mails, and by that standard, the people meeting at this suburban 
coffee shop are patriots indeed.

Nine people are present by the time the head of Rescue American Jobs' 
Illinois chapter, Charlene Clingman, brings up an idea inspired by the 
example of Mothers Against Drunk Driving many years ago: grassroots 
lobbying of state politicians. "We would research the problem and come 
up with a solution," she suggests. "So if anyone is interested in 
volunteering, we need volunteers."

You wonder who she's asking. Of the nine people present, six are 
representatives of the press. Char has just taken some of them on a 
driving tour of the grandiloquently named "Illinois Research & 
Development Corridor"—gleaming office parks whose construction was 
subsidized by the state but which now, years after the waning of the 
technology boom, are emptying out. Char used to work in one of those 
office parks as a communications technician for AT&T; she was laid off 
two and a half years ago. Since then she has applied for over 1,000 
positions.

"These people have sent all our jobs out of the country," she says, as 
the two other people actually attending the meeting as participants nod 
along. One is her husband, who still works at AT&T; another is one of 
her former co-workers.

You may have read about the outsourcing issue, the great X-factor in 
American politics today, in cover articles in Time, Wired, Business 
Week. The numbers can be hard to fix. According to Time, outsourcing to 
India "accounts for less than 10 percent of the 2.3 million jobs lost in 
the U.S. over the past three years." Wired, drawing on research from 
Gartner analysts, says one in 10 U.S. tech jobs will have left by the 
end of this year.

It is here, in rooms like this one, that the movement against 
outsourcing is revealed in full metaphoric flower. The media observe the 
efforts obsessively for signs the timid might soon be joining in 
torrents. But when the victims get together, they don't know what to say.

The outsourcing of white-collar jobs overseas began in earnest during 
the personnel shortage caused by the run-up to Y2K. In a sense, it grew 
directly from a parallel phenomenon, generally ignored. Call it 
"in-sourcing." Averting the catastrophe of a nation of computers 
suddenly partying one New Year's morning like it was 1899 gave Congress 
a reasonable excuse to raise the cap on the number of H-1B visas, which 
are issued to allow companies to sponsor specialized foreign workers in 
cases of a demonstrable labor shortage.

On the other side of the world, the Y2K panic catalyzed India, which was 
dismantling the protectionist components of its own quasi-socialist 
economy, to bid for all kinds of service work to be done there—thanks to 
its relatively large, educated, English-speaking middle class and a 
providential 10.5-hour time shift that lets Indian researchers crunch 
numbers on behalf of sleeping American financial analysts on the East 
Coast.

Importing labor, exporting jobs: These are the two sides of the coin. 
According to the regnant economic theories, the sides are inseparable: 
capital scouring the world to find labor at the cheapest price, supply 
meeting demand, each dollar being spent at its greatest point of 
efficiency. A fat lot of comfort that is if you're on the receiving end 
of the regnant economic theories. Capital does the scouring a lot more 
aggressively these days than it used to—even to the point of 
systematically abusing the law.

Some of the worst abuses are the "body shops," made possible by another 
kind of temporary work visa: the L-1. This permit is tailored even more 
narrowly; it was designed to allow companies to fill short-term 
vacancies with transfers only from their overseas branches. And since it 
was intended to be of such limited application, Congress didn't bother 
setting ceilings on their issuance. This proved a loophole big enough to 
fly a 747 through: Indian consulting companies set up U.S. branches, 
imported Indian computer programmers en masse, and rented them as cheap 
replacement parts to cost-conscious third-party companies in the U.S.

full: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0413/perlstein.php

--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: utopianism

[Devine, James]

Rather, it seems to be the Achilles heel of various organized and self-styled 
"official" Marxisms. But reading Hal Draper's book, KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION 
(an annotated and analyzed collection of quotes from Marx and Engels on political 
issues), Karl and Fred were very interested in utopian thinking and saw discussion of 
utopias as useful to working-class self-education. The big criticism of utopianism was 
tactical and strategic: it doesn't do much good to show people a diagram of how 
socialism should be organized (as the Socialist Labor Party used to do) and do nothing 
else, ignoring the possibilities generated by the contradictions of capitalism. 
 
Respect for utopian ideas didn't fit with the growing scientism of Kautsky, 
Hilferding, and their ilk. Worse, utopian thinking implied an obvious critique of 
Stalinist regimes, and was so _verboten_. In the end, Engels' SOCIALISM: UTOPIAN AND 
SCIENTIFIC was interpreted as being "Utopian _versus_ Scientific." 
Jim Devine

-Original Message- 
From: Robert Scott Gassler [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wed 3/31/2004 12:36 AM 
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] utopianism



You're not kidding. I call that the Achilles heel of Marxism.

At 22:39 30/03/04 -0800, Mike Ballard wrote:
>Thatcher's TINA is the opposite side of the utopian
>coin.
>Commies have to know what they want as well as what
>they want to leave behind in history's dustbin.
>
>Regards,
>Mike B)
>
>=
>1844 Paris Manuscripts,
>Marx makes a major point
>of the relationship between
>the sexes: "The infinite
>degradation in which man
>exists for himself is expressed
>in this relation to the woman,"
>
>http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal
>
>__
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
>http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html

Robert Scott Gassler
Professor of Economics
Vesalius College of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Pleinlaan 2
B-1050 Brussels
Belgium

32.2.629.27.15

Confronting the liberal virus

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, March 31, 2004
Reason to Run? Nader Argues He Has Plenty
By TODD S. PURDUM
WASHINGTON, March 30 — Ralph Nader knows all the arguments against him. 
He can recite, word for importuning word, the letters from old friends 
urging him not to run for president — "all individually written, all 
stunningly similar" — and he does so with the theatrical relish of a man 
whose public life has been one long, unyielding argument with the world.

"Here's how it started," he said, his soft voice taking on mock 
oratorical tones over dinner with a group of aides in Charlotte, N.C., 
last week: "For years, I've thought of you as one of our heroes." He 
rolled his eyes. "The achievements you've attained are monumental, in 
consumer, environmental, etc., etc." He paused for effect. "But this 
time, I must express my profound disappointment at indications that you 
are going to run."

"And the more I got of these," Mr. Nader said, "the more I realized that 
we are confronting a virus, a liberal virus. And the characteristic of a 
virus is when it takes hold of the individual, it's the same virus, 
individual letters all written in uncannily the same sequence. Here's 
another characteristic of the virus: Not one I can recall ever said, 
'What are your arguments for running?' "

So ask him already. He is bursting with answers.

No, he says, he is neither a nut nor a narcissist. Yes, he agrees with 
his sharpest Democratic critics that defeating President Bush is 
essential. In the end, he believes, out-of-power Democrats will rally 
around John Kerry, and Mr. Nader will take votes from disaffected 
Republicans and independents. He is running as an independent, but might 
accept the endorsement of the Green Party, which nominated him four 
years ago, though not if doing so means refraining from campaigning in 
swing states, as some in the party insist.

His goal is to raise $15 million to $20 million ("Very tough to do," he 
said, noting, "We had $8 million last time.") He aspires to get on the 
ballot in all 50 states, a daunting task demanding tens of thousands of 
signatures in each state. He vows to conduct a creative campaign, 
"opening up new areas in August, September and October as the two 
parties zero in on five issues and beat them to a vapid pulp." He has 
asked for a meeting with Mr. Kerry next month to make his case that he 
can offer fresh ideas "field-tested by a second front," and Kerry aides 
say a session is being arranged.

"We are going to focus on defeating George Bush and showing the 
Democrats, if they're smart enough to pick up on it, how to take apart 
George Bush," Mr. Nader told a rally of a couple of hundred students at 
North Carolina State University in Raleigh last Thursday, his shoulders 
no more slumped and his chest no less concave at 70 than when he began 
addressing another generation almost 40 years ago. "Things have gotten 
so bad in this country, you look back at Richard Nixon with nostalgia."

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/politics/campaign/31NADE.html

--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper

[Charles Brown]

 
From: Doug Henwood 
Who opposes U.S. withdrawal from Iraq? 
^^^
Charles: Is this 
unanimous ? Madamechair I support the motion . Call for unanimous consent. 
Any objection ? Hearing none ..
 
 
 
 
The position of the Communist
Workers Party - and apparently that of many Iraqis - is for a 
UN
force without the U.S. to replace the U.S.
And if Iraqis had overthrown Saddam, that would have 
their
undertaking, not that of a foreign power, which destroyed the 
state
and most other institutions of Iraqi society.
Doug

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper

[dmschanoes]

"Follow your own path, let the Americans talk!"

Sabri


Last time I checked, I was classified as an American, as are thousands,
hundreds of thousands, maybe millions who demonstrate their complete
opposition to US military and economic occupation, and the possibilities
of proxy occupation.

What's the point of reproducing national/patriotic obfuscation from the
"left?"

Be that as it may, those who think there is a humanitarian reason for a
continued occupation of Iraq have to confront, and accept responsibility
for, the necessity of armed force against Iraqi resistance.

You cannot and will not have any occupation, "peacekeeping," etc.
without continued armed attacks on the occupiers, peacekeepers, etc.  In
those real conditions the peacekeeping requires aggressive military
action.  And the nature of such military actions is quite similar to the
nature of terrorism-- i.e. indiscriminate attacks against the general
population.

So if you're against "terror," "disorder," etc. the only rational
position is to agitate for the immediate withdrawal of occupying forces,
the payment of reparations, the release of all political/military
prisoners including Hussein.


dms

Re: utopianism

[Robert Scott Gassler]

You're not kidding. I call that the Achilles heel of Marxism.

At 22:39 30/03/04 -0800, Mike Ballard wrote:
Thatcher's TINA is the opposite side of the utopian
coin.
Commies have to know what they want as well as what
they want to leave behind in history's dustbin.
Regards,
Mike B)
=
1844 Paris Manuscripts,
Marx makes a major point
of the relationship between
the sexes: "The infinite
degradation in which man
exists for himself is expressed
in this relation to the woman,"
http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
Robert Scott Gassler
Professor of Economics
Vesalius College of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Pleinlaan 2
B-1050 Brussels
Belgium
32.2.629.27.15

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper

[Sabri Oncu]

> How many troops does the Arab League have and
> how many of them can they afford to send to Iraq?
> And who is going to pay for them?
> --
> Yoshie


Yoshie,

As an old saying goes:

"Follow your own path, let the Americans talk!"

Sabri