Re: Pat Buchanan attacks Reagan and Thatcher's legacy
Just a question, how much credence are we going to give Reagan and Thatcher's tax cuts for economic growth? I see those tax cuts as fueling the speculative commercial real estate and residential building boom that both countries experienced, rather than any increases in real investment. Any thoughts? -- Sam Pooley
Re: AEA cuts URPE and other heterodox sessions for 1999
Maggie Coleman's contribution, about attendance at AEA vs. heterodox sessions, does raise a point which hasn't been raised: the structure of our sessions themselves. I don't want to deflect from the quite appropriate criticism of AEA, and I have myself enjoyed being able to give a paper despite narrow interest (and small "audience") in the session's topic (or perhaps it was the time period, the competing sessions, or heaven forbit, the contributors to the session itself!), but I also think that we should be considering the structure of our sessions. Personally, and maybe this is just my prediliction, I more and more apprecite the roundtable type of discussions, rather than __just__ listening so someone drone on for 15 minutes. (I'm not opposed to the standard academic paper approach, but I think __more__ roundtables in the regular sessions would be useful. I've noticed the AFEE and ASE using these to their advantage.) Real discussion on current topics should generate more interest, not only amongst ourselves but also by the AEA types. After all, we're at an academic meeting. Part of our objective should be to sharpen our own arguments, but part should be to broaden our constituency. Similarly, retooling sessions are good ideas. And finally, a couple of years ago URPE panelists found "instructions" on how to run and participate in a session when they showed up in their assigned space. I think we would do well to consider __how__ we give our papers, how we chair the sessions, how we incorporate the "audience" into the discussion, etc. Maybe too many of us are too close to graduate school norms, but sometimes it's not obvious when you're in an URPE session compared to an AEA session except by the dress of the participants! Some good suggestions on presentation sent out to all panelists would be useful. Participatorily yours ... Sam Pooley Sam Pooley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the superiority of economics ...
Readers might equivalently enjoy the recent Journal of Economic Literature (September 1997) article by Gary Miller (Washington University) on the superiority of economics to political science: "The impact of economics on contemporary political science." To summarize: If it can be derived by logistics, it must be good. If it can be measured and correlated, it must be even better. Perhaps I protest too much, but after two economics departments (one masters), I doctored in political (economy) science and somehow didn't feel cheated by their (University of Hawaii, a tremendously eclectic department) approach to the world. And I can still make a living as an economist. But it is also true that many PoliSci departments are quantitatively oriented, and in those cases, it may well be that the analytic rigour of economics has made a major contribution to fuzzy-minded regressions and factor analyses. Sam Pooley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Honolulu, HI
Pontificating on the supply-side
Speaking of pontificating, the supply-side "revolution" has finally made it to Hawaii in the form of efforts to cut a whole range of business, corporate and upper-income taxes in order to stimulate "investment". All the usual characters are showing up. Can anyone send me some references to empirical studies of the actual effects of supply-side tax cuts, on both a macro and micro level? Including state level if possible. Thanks in advance. ... Response off-list would be fine. Sam Pooley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the Democrats are dead?
Perhaps some additional questions are, what is the theoretical structure the Republicans (Gingrich) will use in trying to turn Congress into an executive body (presumably the Cato Foundation and the Heritage Foundation have published on this topic), and what kind of political science framework do the Democrats have to reinvent themselves? Inquiring minds want to know but this mind doesn't know. Sam Pooley
Origins of the state
This replies to the recent inquiry by Brent McClintock concerning the "non"-origins of the state in Marxist theory. Jim Devine has already presented a similar response, so there is some redundancy here. I cannot recall precisely the work of Pitelis, but the idea that the initial development of the state is not contained in Marxist theory is rather bizarre, unless Pitelis is asserting that Karl Marx himself didn't elaborate the development of such states. (I will leave it to the archivists to disprove that assertion.) The "ex ante" attribution suggests a linear determination which of course doesn't fit into anything short of pure instrumentalism. In a more practical manner, the historical works of E.P. Thompson and Perry Anderson both illuminate the development of the state, as does the contemporary work of Nicos Poulantzas. In this there is a theory of the development of the state, as there has been in recent theoretical works (e.g., Jessop, inter. alia.). We could summarize the general Marxist argument very simply as suggesting that human society is an historical system in which the development of the capitalist class led to an adaptive response on the part of emergent fractions of capital to generate state structures congenial to their interests. While this state was neither strictly functional to capital in particular, nor determined precisely by the needs of capital, nor "nascent" in a micro-foundations manner, it was nonetheless explicable in terms of the historical conditions under which capitalism arose, the class boundaries, rivalries, and antagonism which are encumbent to class society, and the contingencies of its social structures. While most of this applies primarily to the __capitalist__ state, the same processes apply to previous class society. And of course, the capitalist state built on those pre-capitalist states. This explanation doesn't say much without it historical underpinnings, but then the development of institutions doesn't mean much without the historical relationships which compose them. \pit94a February 25, 1994 = I hope this is useful and would be interested in more on Pitelis' argument and the discussion in McClintock's class. --- Sam Pooley Honolulu, Hawaii [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Origins of the state
This replies to the recent inquiry by Brent McClintock concerning the "non"-origins of the state in Marxist theory. Jim Devine has already presented a similar response, so there is some redundancy here. I cannot recall precisely the work of Pitelis, but the idea that the initial development of the state is not contained in Marxist theory is rather bizarre, unless Pitelis is asserting that Karl Marx himself didn't elaborate the development of such states. (I will leave it to the archivists to disprove that assertion.) The "ex ante" attribution suggests a linear determination which of course doesn't fit into anything short of pure instrumentalism. In a more practical manner, the historical works of E.P. Thompson and Perry Anderson both illuminate the development of the state, as does the contemporary work of Nicos Poulantzas. In this there is a theory of the development of the state, as there has been in recent theoretical works (e.g., Jessop, inter. alia.). We could summarize the general Marxist argument very simply as suggesting that human society is an historical system in which the development of the capitalist class led to an adaptive response on the part of emergent fractions of capital to generate state structures congenial to their interests. While this state was neither strictly functional to capital in particular, nor determined precisely by the needs of capital, nor "nascent" in a micro-foundations manner, it was nonetheless explicable in terms of the historical conditions under which capitalism arose, the class boundaries, rivalries, and antagonism which are encumbent to class society, and the contingencies of its social structures. While most of this applies primarily to the __capitalist__ state, the same processes apply to previous class society. And of course, the capitalist state built on those pre-capitalist states. This explanation doesn't say much without it historical underpinnings, but then the development of institutions doesn't mean much without the historical relationships which compose them. \pit94a February 25, 1994 = I hope this is useful and would be interested in more on Pitelis' argument and the discussion in McClintock's class. --- Sam Pooley Honolulu, Hawaii [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
