Re: Re: Maquiladoras not beneficial
Sabri Oncu wrote: I don't know what troll means but I happen to have some ideas about right wingers. I hold that a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for being a leftist is the recognition that the US is an imperialist state screwing most of the rest of the world. Don't forget the U.S.'s junior partners, like Canada, the EU, and Japan, who sometimes act as if they're above the imperial screwing even as they benefit from it. But - and maybe this is just a definitional problem - lots of leftists are indifferent to or quiet about imperial screwing, especially since both the welfare state or the planning environment are conceived in national terms. Left parties and unions around the world have often been quite anti-immigrant, to protect wage levels and the welfare state. So, like it or not, Brad is certainly within a social democratic tradition, though at the righter end. Doug
Re: Maquiladoras not beneficial
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/02/02 05:50PM Also, many of the maq's are shutting down as contractors flee to China and other low cost labor. Michael Perelman just released international labour organization report indicates 200,000 such jobs have shifted to china... michael hoover
RE: Re: Maquiladoras not beneficial
Title: RE: [PEN-L:32701] Re: Maquiladoras not beneficial to me, it doesn't matter that much whether deLong is a right-winger or not. I can filter out his right-wing opinions, just as I do with the New York TIMES or U.S. National Public Radio. Just as I filter out a lot of the crap that some left-wingers produce (e.g., conspiracy theories). The question is whether or not someone actually has something useful or interesting to say after the nonsense has been filtered out. I don't think we need deLong on pen-l, but some of his writings are useful from an academic/economics perspective, since he's smarter than the average troll. BTW, pen-l needs more economics discussions. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Sabri Oncu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 8:44 PM To: PEN-L Subject: [PEN-L:32701] Re: Maquiladoras not beneficial Michael wrote: I don't think that Brad DeLong is a right winger or a troll. Among economists, he would rank as a left liberal. I don't know what troll means but I happen to have some ideas about right wingers. I hold that a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for being a leftist is the recognition that the US is an imperialist state screwing most of the rest of the world. As far as I can see, Brad Delong does not satisfy my necessary condition. And, hence, I will have to agree with Lou that, unfortunately, Brad Delong is a right winger, at least, no less right winger than Tony Blair. Jim, how do you like my political football playing? Sabri
Re: Re: Maquiladoras not beneficial
A little while ago I discovered that Brad Delong has an article defending neoliberalism in Mexico on his website that originally appeared in Foreign Affairs: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Econ_Articles/themexicanpesocrisis.html It is very useful, even if totally wrong--especially when read in conjunction with Marty's MR article. Since I strongly identify with all efforts to allow peasants to maintain their traditional self-husbanding mode of production if this is *what they democratically decide*, I am especially sensitive to the outrageous claim made by Delong that: All but one of the arguments against NAFTA made us wince. The only argument against that we felt had force was the fear that NAFTA implementation would devastate Mexico's peasant agriculture: Iowa corn and North Dakota wheat seemed likely to swamp the Mexican market, leaving Mexico's small farmers with diminished market incomes. The political and social consequences for Mexico seemed dangerous. But the negotiators did recognize this danger: the implementation of NAFTA allows ten to fifteen years for agricultural adjustment, and the Mexican government has already begun substantial agricultural reform. This is blatant procapitalist propaganda. (When somebody operates in this kind of over-the-top mode, I would suggest that they can do little to foster a serious debate on a leftwing forum like pen-l. That is why a number of good people unsubbed in disgust with him, from Michael Keany to Michael Yates to Nestor Gorojovsky.) There are so many articles in Lexis-Nexis that challenge Delong's bland, Panglossian assurances that all will go well for Mexican farmers that one doesn't know which one to choose. (A search for Mexico Nafta Corn returned 593 articles.) Here is one off the top: The Houston Chronicle, October 20, 2002, Sunday 2 STAR EDITION Land and loss; CORN FARMERS IN MEXICO SAY NAFTA IS DRIVING THEM OUT OF BUSINESS JENALIA MORENO, Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau LOS RODRIGUEZ, Mexico - From the highway that cuts through the state of Guanajuato, it's easy to miss this village, much as progress has. The village's only road, a dirt path filled with potholes big enough to swallow a compact car, follows a tall, barbed-wire fence that surrounds the nearby General Motors plant. Old men share space on a burro's back with piles of grass they'll feed their livestock. Chickens and burros fill muddied front yards. For generations, this simple town of nearly 5,000 has depended on the ups and downs of corn. It's obvious that the corn business has been going downhill in Los Rodriguez. Farmers here, and in farming communities throughout the country, blame their struggles on the wave of cheap U.S. corn coming into Mexico since NAFTA went into effect eight years ago. More and more farmers are being finished off, said Jorge Rodriguez, 30, who is the fourth generation of his family to raise corn in this village named after his ancestors. The drafters of the North American Free Trade Agreement opened agricultural markets on both sides of the border to competition, changing the lives of farmers in each country. In terms of the rising trade in farm products, it's been a plus. NAFTA has generally had a positive effect, said Don Lipton, a spokesman with the American Farm Bureau, which has supported the agreement. The movement of farm products from the United States and from Mexico have both nearly doubled since the trade agreement went into effect, he said. As far as corn exports are concerned, Mexico is not one of the United States' biggest markets and according to U.S. government reports, NAFTA has had a moderate impact on corn exports to Mexico, he said. But this trade has been brutal for those who are not the low-cost producers. Most of those raising corn near this town are seeing this traditional way of life disappear. Back when his grandparents farmed this land, corn sales could support an entire family. Now, Rodriguez works as a police officer in the nearby town of Silao because he doesn't earn enough money selling cobs of corn to support his family of six. His father, also a farmer, works as a security guard. Now, necessity makes us work more, Rodriguez said as he stood among the rows of corn on the small piece of land he inherited from his grandfather. Rodriguez and many other farmers can't make money selling corn as cheaply as U.S. farmers can. The majority of Mexican farmers, like Rodriguez, have small plots of land just outside their front doors. They can't afford the expense of the land, machinery and fertilizers used by American farmers to maximize their yields and minimize their labor expense. Rodriguez plants and harvests everything by hand. Mexican farmers don't get subsidies the way most American farmers do. (clip) -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
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Lou is correct on several points. Brad typically supports neo-liberal policies abroad and, at least to my mind, he is more often than not wrong. Also, the 3 people he mentioned did leave in disgust about Brad's behavior. I thought that it would have been healthier to have dialogued with Brad, but he often did behave arrogantly. I also agree with Doug's earlier post. Brad is a social democrat, albeit a fairly conservative one. He probably represents the extreme respectable left within the world of economics. In many ways, I regret Brad leaving. He is bright and very well informed about the world of economics, but once he got on his high horse, he could be infuriating. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Michael Perelman wrote: Lou is correct on several points. Brad typically supports neo-liberal policies abroad and, at least to my mind, he is more often than not wrong. Also, the 3 people he mentioned did leave in disgust about Brad's behavior. I thought that it would have been healthier to have dialogued with Brad, but he often did behave arrogantly. True enough, but it's an odd model of dialogue that will admit only people in fundamental agreement with each other. I guess it's the left version of Richard Feinberg's wonderful comment that democracy only works when there's fundamental agreement on the nature of property. Doug
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- Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Don't forget the U.S.'s junior partners, like Canada, the EU, and Japan, who sometimes act as if they're above the imperial screwing even as they benefit from it. Doug Not long after 9-11 there was a town hall type meeting in Europe featuring a woman from the Council on Foreign Relations [if I remember correctly] that was broadcast on late night radio in Seattle. Anyway, she brought up the US as the world's cop [strange how the imperialists see their role] while the cost of doing so fell on US taxpayers, Europe, Japan Canada etc. reaped the benefits in terms of social safety net expenditures that didn't have to go to weapon systems. She asserted that over time, those countries standard of living would simply surpass the US, if they haven't already because the weapons systems etc. were only going to get more and more expensive and this could, in turn lead to a resentment on the part of US taxpayers vis a vis those countries and that when that day comes, watch out. Ian
Re: Maquiladoras not beneficial
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] this is the standard way that the US imperialists see it: the US provides international public goods from which the other countries -- including the totally dominated ones -- benefit. The countries that don't go along (e.g., deGaulle's France, Schroeder's Germany) are free riders. As in the usual public goods story, if the state (read: the US) doesn't get some payment from the beneficiaries (the other countries), the public good is not just under-produced but can go away altogether. So coercion (taxes) are justified. Jim Hence the current obsession by US weapons makers securing comparative advantage via interoperability harmonization on weapons systems procured by NATO countries. In the absence of the ability of the US to tax other states we demand that they make budget commitments, like Lithuania buying $34 million worth of Stingers that they don't need. Ian
RE: Re: Maquiladoras not beneficial
Title: RE: [PEN-L:32721] Re: Maquiladoras not beneficial I described: the standard way that the US imperialists see it: the US provides international public goods from which the other countries -- including the totally dominated ones -- benefit. The countries that don't go along (e.g., deGaulle's France, Schroeder's Germany) are free riders. As in the usual public goods story, if the state (read: the US) doesn't get some payment from the beneficiaries (the other countries), the public good is not just under-produced but can go away altogether. So coercion (taxes) are justified. Ian: Hence the current obsession by US weapons makers securing comparative advantage via interoperability harmonization on weapons systems procured by NATO countries. In the absence of the ability of the US to tax other states we demand that they make budget commitments, like Lithuania buying $34 million worth of Stingers that they don't need. Ian, Ian, Ian! you're getting too close to reality! the efforts by individual parts of the military-industrial complex (or the whole shebang) to gain advantage for themselves is part of the reality of imperialism. It's not the same as the self-perception and self-justification of imperialists that I described. Jim
Re: RE: Re: Maquiladoras not beneficial
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ian, Ian, Ian! you're getting too close to reality! the efforts by individual parts of the military-industrial complex (or the whole shebang) to gain advantage for themselves is part of the reality of imperialism. It's not the same as the self-perception and self-justification of imperialists that I described. Jim = Right, except that I think they're no longer worried about the fables of international public goods and the like which were previously seen as constituting the vocabulary of self-description and self-justification which served their goals. That's the difference between the Neoliberals and the Realists in IR discourse. The whole recent discussion emanating from the Beltway regarding imperialism is, to my mind, Realism's [and the Realists] coming to full self-consciousness regarding the terms of their self-description/self-justification. Ok, we're imperialists, we might as well get good at it and what are you going to do about it, beat us up type rhetoric is symptomatic of this self-consciousness. They see themselves as so powerful now they don't *care* whether they are seen as imperialists. Hobbes. Ian
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Dialogue requires a certain degree of courtesy that was often absent from his posts. On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 02:22:32PM -0500, Doug Henwood wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: Lou is correct on several points. Brad typically supports neo-liberal policies abroad and, at least to my mind, he is more often than not wrong. Also, the 3 people he mentioned did leave in disgust about Brad's behavior. I thought that it would have been healthier to have dialogued with Brad, but he often did behave arrogantly. True enough, but it's an odd model of dialogue that will admit only people in fundamental agreement with each other. I guess it's the left version of Richard Feinberg's wonderful comment that democracy only works when there's fundamental agreement on the nature of property. Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Title: RE: [PEN-L:32724] Re: RE: Re: Maquiladoras not beneficial I said: It's not the same as the self-perception and self-justification of imperialists that I described. Ian writes: Right, except that I think they're no longer worried about the fables of international public goods and the like which were previously seen as constituting the vocabulary of self-description and self-justification which served their goals. That's the difference between the Neoliberals and the Realists in IR discourse. The whole recent discussion emanating from the Beltway regarding imperialism is, to my mind, Realism's [and the Realists] coming to full self-consciousness regarding the terms of their self-description/self-justification. Ok, we're imperialists, we might as well get good at it and what are you going to do about it, beat us up type rhetoric is symptomatic of this self-consciousness. They see themselves as so powerful now they don't *care* whether they are seen as imperialists. Hobbes. all of what you said made total and utter sense except the last word. Hobbes is the one who presented the public goods argument first. He wasn't not the might makes right sort of the Bush administration. Instead, he saw the Leviathan as being good for everyone, by providing lawnorder, so people wouldn't grow up nasty, brutish, short. Jim
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Doug Henwood wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: True enough, but it's an odd model of dialogue that will admit only people in fundamental agreement with each other. I guess it's the left version of Richard Feinberg's wonderful comment that democracy only works when there's fundamental agreement on the nature of property. I have no objections to Brad on the list, and it is silly to call him a troll. (I would say the border between trolldom simple obnoxiousness is marked by Pugliese. Many of his fwds can have no purpose but to create disorder.) But you don't believe what you just wrote here. No one from Pericles, Protagoras, Plato, Aristotle to the present has believed it. It is very close to the first principle of rhetoric that one can only argue with someone on the basis of some fundamental premise shared in common. See for example Cornford's introuction (or note, I forget which) to the Socrates-Thrasymachus episode in the _Republic_. Plato of course cheats there. In writing dialogue for Thrasymachus he has Thrasymachus express the enemy's fundamental premise disguised as his fundamental premise. But in any case, if the divide is fundamental, there cannot be fruitful argument. Neither you nor Lou seems ever to have grasped this fact, hence the extent to which you are contually turning secondary disagreements into antagonistic ones and treating primary disagreements either as deliberare evil (Lou) or as secondary disagreements which should be discussable (you). Lou is continually turning friends (or potential friends) into enemies, and you are continually trying to treat enemies as friends. It fucks up conversation. (Incidentally, it is possible for political enemies to be personal friends -- at least under present circumstances, since we're quite a ways from actual civil war.) Brad is an enemy, but one can talk to him just as Chou tried to talk to Dulles one morning during the Geneva Conference. (They both arrived early one morning; Chou offered to shake hands, Dulles snubbed him.) In the present case Lou is playing a marxist version of Dulles's style, enhancing my belief that Lou is more a moralist than a Marxist.) If one does respond to a post by Brad, one should think of the reader not as Brad himself but of lurkers on the list. Lou's post treats those potential friends as enemies by the style of his attack on Brad. (If Brad ever does change his mind, he'll do it on his own, not on account of what anyone on this list might say. If you enjoy arguing with him, fine. I have nothing against having fun. If you think arguing with him will have a political impact on bystanders, fine. That is a fairly important tactic that can take many forms. But not even in theory (principle) does it make sense to argue with him in order to change his mind. Carrol Doug
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Carrol Cox: Brad is an enemy, but one can talk to him just as Chou tried to talk to Dulles one morning during the Geneva Conference. (They both arrived early one morning; Chou offered to shake hands, Dulles snubbed him.) In the present case Lou is playing a marxist version of Dulles's style, enhancing my belief that Lou is more a moralist than a Marxist.) That's true. Just an hour ago I went into the Macdonalds on 85th street and 3rd avenue and delivered a fiery sermon against cheeseburgers. If one does respond to a post by Brad, one should think of the reader not as Brad himself but of lurkers on the list. Lou's post treats those potential friends as enemies by the style of his attack on Brad. As I have often stated, my model is Charles Bukowski. That being the case, I could be less interested in friends. As a matter of fact, just last week after a fellow programmer invited me out to lunch, I stepped on his toe. (If Brad ever does change his mind, he'll do it on his own, not on account of what anyone on this list might say. If you enjoy arguing with him, fine. I have nothing against having fun. If you think arguing with him will have a political impact on bystanders, fine. That is a fairly important tactic that can take many forms. But not even in theory (principle) does it make sense to argue with him in order to change his mind. This is a very substantial post. It certainly helped to clarify my thinking on the plight of corn farmers in Mexico. But you should try to provide some footnotes next time. Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Maquiladoras not beneficial
At 01:04 PM 12/2/2002 -0500, Louis quoted: Maquiladora workers receive wages considerably below those paid to non-maquiladora manufacturing workers. What is it about the stats I've seen quoted by bourgeois economists that makes it possible for them to represent the opposite as true? Bill
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Bill Burgess wrote: At 01:04 PM 12/2/2002 -0500, Louis quoted: Maquiladora workers receive wages considerably below those paid to non-maquiladora manufacturing workers. What is it about the stats I've seen quoted by bourgeois economists that makes it possible for them to represent the opposite as true? Well, here's how one such bourgeois economist defended NAFTA and maquildoras on lbo-talk after somebody posted an EPI report on the impact of NAFTA on workers in the USA and Mexico. (This link came up when I did a google search on delong and maquiladoras--lbo-talk was not entered.) My comments are interspersed. In the United States, NAFTA eliminated over 766,000 job opportunities between 1994 and 2000, as the trade deficit between the U.S. and its northern and southern neighbors ballooned, according to U.S. author Robert Scott. And with Mexican labor productivity in tradeables about 1/3 that of the U.S., has created 2,298,000 job opportunities in Mexico? COMMENT: The real question is *net* job growth. For example, Enron might have had 250 million dollars in sales in its final year of doing business. So what? These figures are meaningless unless you factor in what the corporation owed. By the same token, unless you address the loss of self-employment in the farming sector. According to The Rural Migration News at U.C. Davis, up to 2 million jobs *per year* were lost between 1985 and 1995. With the changes introduced by NAFTA, it predicted that the number would double over the next ten years. Anybody who has seen the demographics behind dishwashing in NYC can probably confirm this. In Mexico, large trade surpluses with the United States have not been enough to overcome even larger trade deficits with the rest of the world. Wages and incomes in Mexico fell between 1991 and 1998; and with NAFTA, inequality has grown and job quality has deteriorated for most workers, according to Mexican author Carlos Salas. Naughty naughty! Keep your counterfactuals straight! You can't say that NAFTA was bad for the U.S. because demand for labor would have boomed even more without it and also say that NAFTA was bad for Mexico because demand for labor didn't keep up with the rapidly-growing labor force. COMMENT: Of course you can say that NAFTA was bad. NAFTA ruins the rural population, just as happened in 16th century Great Britain but it cannot replace them with manufacturing jobs. That's unless Mexico invades the USA, enslaves half of the US population and forces them to pick cotton in Puebla. Or something like that. - Since NAFTA took effect on January 1, 1994, exports to Mexico have grown by 147 percent and exports to Canada have grown by 66 percent. But imports from Mexico have grown much faster, by 248 percent; and imports from Canada have grown by 79 percent. How horrible that those Mexicans have to work to make all those products that they export to the United States! How much better off all those Mexicans would be if imports from Mexico had not grown at all! May I make one more fruitless plea for somebody, somewhere to raise the level of the debate? Brad DeLong COMMENT: Just because bourgeois economists like DeLong take NAFTA seriously, there's no reason to take them seriously. Thank god this rightwing troll is no longer on PEN-L. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
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What Louis quoted is true. What you may have seen is that the maq. wages are higher than the prevailing wage, since manufacturing jobs are scarce relative to the total job market. On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 10:22:17AM -0800, Bill Burgess wrote: At 01:04 PM 12/2/2002 -0500, Louis quoted: Maquiladora workers receive wages considerably below those paid to non-maquiladora manufacturing workers. What is it about the stats I've seen quoted by bourgeois economists that makes it possible for them to represent the opposite as true? Bill -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Maquiladoras not beneficial
Also, many of the maq's are shutting down as contractors flee to China and other low cost labor. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Maquiladoras not beneficial
Michael wrote: I don't think that Brad DeLong is a right winger or a troll. Among economists, he would rank as a left liberal. I don't know what troll means but I happen to have some ideas about right wingers. I hold that a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for being a leftist is the recognition that the US is an imperialist state screwing most of the rest of the world. As far as I can see, Brad Delong does not satisfy my necessary condition. And, hence, I will have to agree with Lou that, unfortunately, Brad Delong is a right winger, at least, no less right winger than Tony Blair. Jim, how do you like my political football playing? Sabri
