RE: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
. . . As we have had most graphically demonstrated over the past two decades, economic growth is not a means to enable the nations to afford better housing, social programs and a more equitable distribution of income. Economic growth is an ideological program offered as a substitute for democracy, equality and social justice. FUCK GROWTH. Tom Walker Truly digmatic poetic. It's going on my wall, next to my Allan Ginsburg postcard. mbs
Re: RE: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
you don't really want to go to war. America it's them bad Russians. Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians. The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages. Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers' Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta tions. That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help. America this is quite serious. America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set. America is this correct? I'd better get right down to the job. It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway. America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel. Allen Ginsberg, Berkeley, January 17, 1956 - Original Message - From: Max Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 9:23 AM Subject: [PEN-L:15466] RE: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can) . . . As we have had most graphically demonstrated over the past two decades, economic growth is not a means to enable the nations to afford better housing, social programs and a more equitable distribution of income. Economic growth is an ideological program offered as a substitute for democracy, equality and social justice. FUCK GROWTH. Tom Walker Truly digmatic poetic. It's going on my wall, next to my Allan Ginsburg postcard. mbs
Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
G'day Seth, Tom and Mark, Tom Walker wrote regarding the false hope of re-starting economic growth: Difficult to sell to the mainstream? Tom, do you mean selling the growth is the problem, not the solution to what ails us message to the news media or to the general population? By the way, I think that the latter is open to your anti- growth message. I agree. And one could do worse than quote those fierce lefties at *The Economist*, who, in 1998, explained the contradiction between use value and exchange value (and destroyed the notions of GDP and 'economic growth' to boot) all in one sentence: a country that cut down all its trees, sold them as wood chips and then gambled the money away playing tiddly-winks would appear from its national accounts to have got richer. Discussions about how to get growth back on track (seemingly an objective shared by many on pen-l) is actually discussion about how to turn the gas even higher. 'Shareholder value' has effectively become the end of all means. Never has that simple little definition of 'instrumental rationality', as an exclusive focus on means in the absence of any critical reflection on ends, been easier to grasp. You point at the day's newspaper (*any* day's newspaper) and quote Thoreau on the technocratic society bent on 'improved means to unimproved ends'. Then you ask whether the rentier class is really the best end that might be imagined. Lesson over, I reckon. How many times does the shit have to hit the fan before the fan-gazers notice there are feces all over their faces? It seems, alas, we must wait for the fan (of the neoliberal pipedream) to hit the shit. Shouldn't be long now ... albeit likely too long ... What is necessary is a transitional strategy that can buffer some of the worst dislocations of the recession-cum-implosion while resisting the imperative of restarting growth. Difficult to sell to the mainstream? You bet. Finessing my own particular policy preference -- which I'm sure most on this list know by now -- what is necessary is the delinking of the necessities of life from the vagaries of the market. There are various ways to approach this but they all entail some kind of direct political guarantee not indirect interventionsthat are intended to achieve the same objectives through the medium of growth. Which is why we should all be pushing the old Polanyi line right now, I reckon. Do we want a market-embedded society or a socially embedded market? I realise the Marxists here (and on this count I am most definitely one such) would argue that capitalism is by definition the former arrangement, but Mark is right: right now the job is one of avoiding disaster via appeals to extant ideals, institutions and imaginations. Liberal democracy is up to that, if we can convince people its formal guarantees are at risk from its assumed companion, capitalism du jour. The idea is already out there, even in the US -where mcuh of the right (like McCain) and the 'left (like Nader) got ovations every time they brought aspects of this contradiction up. The people knew it inside; they just needed someone famous to say it for them. Now they need that idea enlarged and linked to the likes of Genoa. Economic growth is an ideological program offered as a substitute for democracy, equality and social justice. Just so. FUCK GROWTH. Well, let's just fuck what's come to be called 'economic growth' ... we might point to the silliness of counting as 'growth' a rapidly rising Bangladeshi or Tongan demand for snorkels and flippers, or Delhi or Mexico City demand for gas masks, or Iraq or Syria for bottled water ... Cheers, Rob.
Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
Lind is not a nativist. He is a liberal nationalist. He may be a Listian, but to me that is not necessarily a Bad Thing. The idea that he is a right-wing plant is hallucinatory. mbs While what Pugliese downloaded includes reasonable criticisms of a neo bracero program, it soon became an assault on the poor Mexican immigrant. He uses the excuse of a neo bracero program to call for the exclusion of poor uneducated Mexicans as such instead of for the granting to them of worker and citzenship rights. The handling of complex studies on the job displacement effects of immigration (Bhagwati rung Borjas' clock in my opinion) and welfare burden of the poor Mexican immigrant (note Lind does not consider the sales taxes which even trabajadores sin papeles pay though they are probably in excess of any state benefits which they receive) is purely demagogic. Indeed Lind descends into the worst forms of scapegoating, and his prose becomes indistinguishable from the Brimelow's and Murray's who think a restrictive immigration policy is in the eugenic interests of the nation. Already both LEGAL and illegal immigration from Mexico are exacerbating America's social problems, because so many Mexican immigrants are uneducated and poor. Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies -- a non-profit which advocates tightening immigration laws -- claims that 31 percent of immigrants from Mexico are dependent on at least one major federal welfare program. (my emphasis) And then he goes on about their criminal propensities. In the thrall of nationalist myth Lind does not consider why a tougher immigration policy (and Lind seems to want to limit immigration over and above eliminating guest worker programs) may not necessarily improve the competitive position of poor citizens, but Max would have to study Marx (the mascot of this list) to understand why as a result of its laws of motion, the capitalist system will create a reserve army of labor out of its valorization base, i.e., its population base, no matter how limited by restrictive immigration policy. And taken over by nationalist myth Lind does not consider whether there are other more effective policies than restrictive nationalist immigration policy (Lind is not just after the neobracero program but-it seems to me--the immigration of poor Mexicans under any conditions) to improve the conditions of the citizen poor (assuming his interest is genuine). And if Lind were truly concerned with the position of poor citizen workers rather than in Bell Curve fashion the putative dysgenic effects of poor Mexican immigration, wouldn't he would be giving other policy advice first and foremost--more pro union legislation, an expanded public sector, tougher anti anti black discrimination law, etc? On top of it, Lind seems to have written a book in defense of genocidal US policies in Vietnam--did I understand you, right, Pugliese? He has also called for a ban on the US import of third world goods on the basis of the most superficial arguments that this would be good for those poor third world people too. It would surely thrust many peoples into a holocaust of poverty. For Max to rise to the defense of Lind and call him a liberal nationalist indicates what a reactionary he is. I thought Max was only pulling toes; now I must conclude that it is actually much uglier. The insults will only increase from here, so Michael, I am unsubbing. Good luck to all you progressive economists which I insist is an oxymoron. Yours, Rakesh
Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
strategy Lind envisions would have offered it. The South Vietnamese, let us recall, were well aware of the despotic nature of the northern regime, and yet precious few of them could bring themselves to take the war seriously as anything but a for-profit operation designed to squeeze money out of their rich but foolish sponsors. There is no way to win a war when the people you are defending do not care to be defended. There is no excuse for defending one purely on the basis of its alleged symbolic value-particularly when that symbolism is hardly evident to anyone but yourself. Eric Alterman is a Nation columnist and author of Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy, Who Speaks for America?: Why Democracy Matters in Foreign Policy, and It Ain't No Sin to Be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen. DISSENT /WINTER 2000 /VOLUME 47, NUMBER 1 - Original Message - From: Rakesh Narpat Bhandari [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 8:57 AM Subject: [PEN-L:15343] Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can) Lind is not a nativist. He is a liberal nationalist. He may be a Listian, but to me that is not necessarily a Bad Thing. The idea that he is a right-wing plant is hallucinatory. mbs While what Pugliese downloaded includes reasonable criticisms of a neo bracero program, it soon became an assault on the poor Mexican immigrant. He uses the excuse of a neo bracero program to call for the exclusion of poor uneducated Mexicans as such instead of for the granting to them of worker and citzenship rights. The handling of complex studies on the job displacement effects of immigration (Bhagwati rung Borjas' clock in my opinion) and welfare burden of the poor Mexican immigrant (note Lind does not consider the sales taxes which even trabajadores sin papeles pay though they are probably in excess of any state benefits which they receive) is purely demagogic. Indeed Lind descends into the worst forms of scapegoating, and his prose becomes indistinguishable from the Brimelow's and Murray's who think a restrictive immigration policy is in the eugenic interests of the nation. Already both LEGAL and illegal immigration from Mexico are exacerbating America's social problems, because so many Mexican immigrants are uneducated and poor. Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies -- a non-profit which advocates tightening immigration laws -- claims that 31 percent of immigrants from Mexico are dependent on at least one major federal welfare program. (my emphasis) And then he goes on about their criminal propensities. In the thrall of nationalist myth Lind does not consider why a tougher immigration policy (and Lind seems to want to limit immigration over and above eliminating guest worker programs) may not necessarily improve the competitive position of poor citizens, but Max would have to study Marx (the mascot of this list) to understand why as a result of its laws of motion, the capitalist system will create a reserve army of labor out of its valorization base, i.e., its population base, no matter how limited by restrictive immigration policy. And taken over by nationalist myth Lind does not consider whether there are other more effective policies than restrictive nationalist immigration policy (Lind is not just after the neobracero program but-it seems to me--the immigration of poor Mexicans under any conditions) to improve the conditions of the citizen poor (assuming his interest is genuine). And if Lind were truly concerned with the position of poor citizen workers rather than in Bell Curve fashion the putative dysgenic effects of poor Mexican immigration, wouldn't he would be giving other policy advice first and foremost--more pro union legislation, an expanded public sector, tougher anti anti black discrimination law, etc? On top of it, Lind seems to have written a book in defense of genocidal US policies in Vietnam--did I understand you, right, Pugliese? He has also called for a ban on the US import of third world goods on the basis of the most superficial arguments that this would be good for those poor third world people too. It would surely thrust many peoples into a holocaust of poverty. For Max to rise to the defense of Lind and call him a liberal nationalist indicates what a reactionary he is. I thought Max was only pulling toes; now I must conclude that it is actually much uglier. The insults will only increase from here, so Michael, I am unsubbing. Good luck to all you progressive economists which I insist is an oxymoron. Yours, Rakesh
RE: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
Under this form of class solidarity, there would be no trade unions worthy of the name. Real class solidarity means you protect union jobs. If you aren't in a union, you protect them towards the day when you can be in one, which protecting furthers. In a strike situation, calling for all to be employed is an empty gesture. General or mass strike would be different, but those are not routine events in labor history. The labor movement is not bad on the full employment issue, and it's getting better on immigration. But it is not going to call for its own dissolution. That's a bit too progressive. Indifference to the use of any non-union workers to undercut union wages would be equivalent to organizational suicide. Then you would see some *real* nativism. mbs The defense of labor is best executed by class solidarity, regardless of nationality, immigration status, etc., not by nativist attempts to monopolize jobs by excluding aliens, which are in the end futile. When nativists scab by breaking class solidarity, that is, by excluding aliens, aliens naturally can scab back in retaliation. If you don't think of them as class brothers sisters, whey should they honor the picket lines when you go on strike? Yoshie P.S. to Carrol When you come back to PEN-l, check out Ellen's posts on dollarization + related threads.
Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
If protecting union jobs is the only point, anti-immigrant pro-protectionist nativism is patently pointless. New immigrant workers are more pro-union than native-born workers -- hence the AFL-CIO's new stance. To survive, organized labor has to sign up as many as it can, native or immigrant, legal or illegal. Many foreign nations have higher rates of unionization than the USA also. Since most trade investment flow within the circle of rich nations, one might say that it is the USA that is bringing down labor standards of Japan Western Europe by its cheap un-organized labor. The best way to protect union jobs is to sign up make all union members. Yoshie is thinking long-term, while it seems that Max is thinking short-term: one reason why the US labor movement is in such poor shape is that the AFL-CIO didn't try very hard at organizing the US South (at the same time that the leadership allied with the government against more militant unionists, who often turned out to be Communist Party members or other kinds of leftists). One reason why the late César Chavez should be admired is that he made the effort to organize the undocumented. It seems to me, finally, that even in the heat of a strike, unions must reach out to find as many allies as possible. Teachers must reach out to parents, etc. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
At 02:05 PM 7/19/01 -0400, you wrote: Jim Devine says: Michael wrote: It may be that intellectual property laws may be the most effective form of protectionism devised so far. except that it's not the kind of thing that's called protectionism. It protects individual corporations or other property-holders, not the domestic markets of countries. It's an extension of normal property rights like patents, copyrights, trade marks, etc. The owners of intellectual property can easily take their property and move to another country. The decline of protectionism + the rise of intellectual property (among other things) = Kautsky's story of 'ultra-imperialism' (the rich capitalist powers unified against the world)...without the positive connotations that Kautsky saw (the ending of the anarchy of production)? Instead of the _equation_ of the decline of protectionism (etc.) with ultra-imperialism (UI), I'd say that the former is the result of the latter. The rise of UI started after World War II, when the US became the hegemonic power in the capitalist sphere. The US power was cemented by elite fear of the USSR and of various popular revolutions, from Cuba (1960) to Portugal (1975) and beyond. US hegemony, along with fear of a return to a new Depression at the end of WW II, encouraged the creation of GATT and other efforts to unify the world market. In the early phases, US-based industry was dominant economically, so that they wanted to gain access to other countries' markets, so the US supported GATT. Over the years, the superiority of US-based industry has faded, but the generally pro-trade MNCs have gained much more clout. The US-led system of UI has changed a lot over the years, partly due to the disappearance of the USSR. There's a lot more emphasis on solidarity of the trilateral powers. Even though there are a lot of stresses within the UI coalition (cf. Kyoto), we see nothing similar to the aggressive competition amongst nation-states that prevailed before WW II. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
RE: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
If protecting union jobs is the only point, anti-immigrant pro-protectionist nativism is patently pointless. New immigrant workers are more pro-union than native-born workers -- hence the AFL-CIO's new stance. To survive, organized labor has to sign up as many as it can, native or immigrant, legal or illegal. Many foreign nations have higher rates of unionization than the USA also. Since most trade investment flow within the circle of rich nations, one might say that it is the USA that is bringing down labor standards of Japan Western Europe by its cheap un-organized labor. The best way to protect union jobs is to sign up make all union members. Yoshie That's exactly what they are doing. And you are going to see those new union members shoulder to shoulder with the old, calling for the protection of their jobs and wages against cheap foreign labor. mbs
RE: Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
I'm thinking about how to get from here to there, and Yoshie is talking about getting from there to here. mbs Yoshie is thinking long-term, while it seems that Max is thinking short-term . . .
RE: Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
Oy vey indeed. Reading Rakesh makes me forget what I actually said about Lind. I'm sure I didn't say he was my leader. I'm about 2/3rds thru The Next American Nation. I've said the analysis of race and class history in the book is very persuasive. It's good populism. I'm on his elaboration and defense of 'liberal nationalism' now. We were talking about whether Lind was a *nativist,* and Rakesh goes off on a bender about Vietnam. Obviously you can be a liberal internationalist and support the Vietnam war. In fact, those were the dudes that started it, not 'nativists.' When I was a small shaver, I remember seeing American Legion guys petitioning against the war at a county fair. Later on LBJ set them straight, of course. Once he's torqued off there is no talking to him. You have to argue with two people at once -- him and the person he makes you out to be. Way too exhausting. mbs Rakesh (here and gone again...) On top of it, Lind seems to have written a book in defense of genocidal US policies in Vietnam--did I understand you, right, Pugliese?
RE: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
I doubt that the majority of Mexican residents Mexican-Americans in the USA are against trade with, investment in, immigration from Mexico. . . . Yoshie Neither am I. mbs
Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
Yoshie writes: There's nothing on the political horizon to replace US hegemony -- therefore Ellen's dissertation on dollarization holds up, I think, despite the alarms sounded by Wynne Godley who writes as if the USA had already entered into the same twilight of the empire that the UK had earlier. I still haven't read his article on the subject, but I agree that this twilight is far away. Can US hegemony be too strong, in the sense that you discuss in The Causes of the 1929-33 Great Collapse: A Marxian Interpretation at http://clawww.lmu.edu/faculty/jdevine/subpages/depr/d4.html? it's quite possible. By driving down wages/benefits relative to labor productivity around the world, and by encouraging competitive export-promotion, the Washington consensus implies that the what the world needs now is ... the US as the consumer of last resort. But the US is falling down on that job, destabilizing the world. We live in interesting times... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
At 02:24 PM 7/19/01 -0700, you wrote: The premise only supports the conclusion on the condition that hegemony is a zero-sum game. US drops ball; someone else picks it up. Uh-uh. Much more dangerous possibilities have presented in the past, such as during roughly the first half of the last century. In the hegemony sweepstakes nothing is something too. The USA entered into the twilight of empire between 1968 and 1974. Any semblances of glory since then have been mirages sustained by the obsequiousness of USA's partners and the relentlessness of the public relations campaign. you really think that we're could be moving toward a period such as 1910-45, in which nation-state contention among the rich capitalist powers led to trade wars and hot wars? do you have evidence? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Sounds like a great diss. Did you ever publish an article summarizing it? If not, what school did you do it at? Thanks, Michael. Unfortunately I did not. The official dollar role has been over since 1973. The US has run current account deficit in every single year since then, deficits that grow each year You're right. The balance of trade has been negative virtually every year, but current account has been up and down (mostly down though) since Reagan. I think the commerce dept has all the payments accounts up on the web. Best, Ellen I thought that we'd run a trade deficit every year since then, but that the current account didn't go into deficit until Reagan. Am I misremembering? Is there good URL to see a summary of these annual numbers for the last 30 years? Michael __ Michael PollakNew York [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
Actually, I don't overlook this. In fact I wrote my dissertation on this and looked into the role of historical inertia quite closely and it doesn't hold up. Sounds like a great diss. Did you ever publish an article summarizing it? If not, what school did you do it at? The official dollar role has been over since 1973. The US has run current account deficit in every single year since then, deficits that grow each year I thought that we'd run a trade deficit every year since then, but that the current account didn't go into deficit until Reagan. And the size of the CAD (and trade deficit) is not correlated with the value of the dollar; if it were there would be some reason to expect Tom W's scenario of an imminent mass dumping of dollars. Why does there seem to be no correlation? Ellen's analysis seems to provide an answer. Another point: For many the rising trade deficit indicated the loss of American competitiveness, but the picture has always been more complicated if one considers sales from foreign subsidiaries and the US surplus in high tech goods (see Scherer). Another point: Brenner makes the dollar devaluation the key to regained US competitiveness, but the US has been sitting pretty with a relatively high dollar for years now. Is that because the high dollar encourages capital inflow, thus reducing interest rates and encouraging a high level of investment in capital goods in which technological progress has been embodied? Rakesh
Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
It may be that intellectual property laws may be the most effective form of protectionism devised so far. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
Michael Lind (The Next American Nation) makes the point that patents, IP, and professional licensure (i.e., tenure!) are the upper-class (white overclass) variant of protectionism. Consistent free-traders should be willing to do away with those barriers to trade as well. How do laissez faire econ profs justify tenure? mbs It may be that intellectual property laws may be the most effective form of protectionism devised so far. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
Rakesh Narpat Bhandari wrote, And the size of the CAD (and trade deficit) is not correlated with the value of the dollar; if it were there would be some reason to expect Tom W's scenario of an imminent mass dumping of dollars. Why does there seem to be no correlation? Ellen's analysis seems to provide an answer. The tag line spend it fast as you can was meant to allude to the line in the song, I don't give a damn about a greenback dollar, spend it fast as I can not to any conviction of mine that the demise of the dollar is imminent. If... IF... there is a mass dumping of dollars, the precipitating event will most likely NOT be the fundamentals of the dollar itself. My guess is it will probably not even be a financial event. in mad money susan strange raises the possibility of Japanese flight from the dollar because of need to refurbish capital base of Japanese banks in accordance with Basel requirements. Strange's is the most plausible guess as to what will be the trigger for global depression, I think. rb
Re: Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
Michael wrote: It may be that intellectual property laws may be the most effective form of protectionism devised so far. except that it's not the kind of thing that's called protectionism. It protects individual corporations or other property-holders, not the domestic markets of countries. It's an extension of normal property rights like patents, copyrights, trade marks, etc. The owners of intellectual property can easily take their property and move to another country. max writes:Michael Lind (The Next American Nation) makes the point that patents, IP, and professional licensure (i.e., tenure!) are the upper-class (white overclass) variant of protectionism.Consistent free-traders should be willing to do away with those barriers to trade as well. How do laissez faire econ profs justify tenure? professional licensure is definitely a form of protectionism as the word is usually used. BTW, I used to have a colleague who wanted to reject tenure on the basis on laissez-faire principles. The college said: either take tenure or leave. He stayed, eventually ending up in the administration. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
Lind is not a nativist. He is a liberal nationalist. He may be a Listian, but to me that is not necessarily a Bad Thing. The idea that he is a right-wing plant is hallucinatory. mbs . . . Michael told me not to insult anyone, so I will hold back my comments on the neo-nativist and self-proclaimed Listian Lind, who was hidden in a trojan horse offered to the left by Buckley and co. But once it was brought within the gates, I for one was not surprised that out came another faux intellectual windbag like Jim Sleeper whose good friend he is. Yours, Rakesh
