>From memory: Federal spending on AFDC, supplemental
social security and food stamps COMBINED amounts
to 3.4 percent of the Federal budget for FY 1995.
Medicaid is around another 6 percent, Medicare nearly
12 percent, Social Security 22 percent, military and
veterans 20.4 percent.
--Peter
[EMAIL
I can't recall the details now, but there was recently
a huge scandal in Britain after hundreds of thousands
of people lost money on private pension plans which
had been sold to them by shady investment "advisors".
I believe there was some kind of public inquiry which
recommended that the whole pr
Eugene, I think the answer to this is: refuse to
sell the stocks back to the so-and-sos. Indeed,
the government would presumably need to hold on
to the stocks in order to generate the dividend
income needed for paying social security benefits.
Also, why not levy some hefty taxes on the
ex-capital
Now, I KNOW it won't turn out this way, but in
principle, couldn't allowing social security
funds to be used to buy up common stocks in U.S.
companies be a way of gradually socializing the
means of production? (I am assuming of course that
the funds would be collectively invested and managed
by
Folks,
There is a very interesting review article in the
latest issue of Monthly Review (okay, I know it's
not JPKE, RRPE, or even AER). It is by Michael
D. Yates, economics professor at Univ. of Pittsburgh
at Johnstown. The review article covers 3 books:
Card and Krueger, MYTH AND MEASUREMEN
Actually I think my translation is pretty accurate,
Jerry--I meant it to be colloquial--so the Latin's alright.
But I admit I couldn't get the source, even though I did
read Caesar's Gallic Wars in high school. The only thing I
remember from it is something about Gaul being divided into
3 par
What is it with the American voter? I ask
after reading this quote from one of them
in the latest issue of Time:
"Both Clinton and Dole are just career
politicians--business as usual. Forbes
is trying to offer something to help the
little guy."
Still, at least the Washingtoon cartoon
was its
>
> Who said the following, where, and to whom (allegedly)?
>
> "Nemo mecum sine se pernicie' contendit."
>
> Jerry
>
Since it means, roughly, "no-one fucks with me and lives",
I'd say, lots of people have said it in lots of places to
lots of other people--especially in the pubs of my home
cit
Had you all stumped, eh. Well, I did say it was a tough
one. The answer is: St Ambrose. A lot more good
stuff in similar vein can be found in Charles Avila,
OWNERSHIP: EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITINGS (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 1983)--PBsj
> "Not from your own do you bestow upon the poor man,
> but
Sorry, Jim, I didn't pay your original post the
attention I should have. Now how about this one:
"Not from your own do you bestow upon the poor man,
but you make return from what is his. For what has
been given as common for the use of all, you appropriate
for yourself alone. The earth belongs
Dear Pen-lers, a fellow Scots Jesuit now working in Zimbabwe,
Joseph Hampson SJ, sent me an interesting request for help
with the theory of co-ops. Please email him ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
with any suggestions you can think of.
Thanks
Peter Burns SJ
Forwarded message:
> From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed J
In response to Ken Hanly on papal social teaching:
(I tried sending a post on this before but it didn't appear).
Laborem exercens does represent something of a highwater
mark of left-leaning progressivism in papal social teaching.
Sollicitudo rei socialis (1987) was okay too, though not
quite as
A few of you may be interested in looking at pope John
Paul II's 1982 encyclical "Laborem exercens", which
stresses the primacy and priority of labor over capital,
and while criticizing Soviet style state ownership,
indicates approval for what JP calls an "authentic
socialization" of the means o
I basically concur with Justin Schwartz's post on these
topics, but I would add 3 other comments to make it simple
and effective against right-wing libertarians:
1) Whether my freedom is reduced/constrained/restricted
by another's intentional interference seems to me to be
fairly a question abou
Could someone here give me a quick figure *plus source* for
the percentage of the Federal Budget taken up by defense
(and perhaps closely related, eg "National Security") spending.
I think I've seen various figures given in left publications,
ranging from 18-25%. Thanks.
Peter
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Howzabout:
"Secretary Reich, you are always going on about the need for more
and better job training and education. But what if there is
insufficient demand in the economy as a whole? Doesn't the
existence of a large reserve army of labor mean that those in work will
always be cowed into acc
That should have read, "it amazing how hard *they defend* the right
of their employers to profit from their labor"--Peter
I wonder if the numbers have been a bit skewed, Doug, by
the use of the phrase "income from *investment*".
"Investment" is one of those positive, feel-good words.
Bill Clinton is forever going on about "investing in
our children" (not as lucrative as cattle futures, though).
I leave others to th
On Mon, 15 Jan 1996, S. Charusheela and Colin Danby wrote:
> If we may
> respectfully take issue with Peter Burns' thoughtful essay, the
> expansion of the urban informal sector in much of the third world is
> not caused by the magnetic draw of urban culture, but by events which
> have den
Don't forget that some of the countries with the highest unemployment
in the EC are also those with relatively low wages and benefits--e.g.
Spain and Ireland. And France has lower wages and higher unemployment
than Germany while in Britain the official unemployment figures are a
bloody lie! The
Heard on the radio, Republican congressman saying that
the battle over reducing the public sector is now worldwide.
New Zealand has done it, quoth he, and other countries are
doing it, and if the US doesn't do it, we'll be left behind
Yeah, left behind in the race to the bottom.
Uugh!!
Pete
In a previous post I was not attempting a review of Shiva's book,
Staying Alive. It is several years since I read it, and I do not
have it to hand. From memory, though, the faults which made me
think it the worst book I have ever read were:
1) its astounding repetitiousness
2) appalling style a
Not being a professional economist, I have always been a bit puzzled by
the crowding-out-of-private-investment argument in relation to government
budget deficits. I'd like some help here.
As I see it, the interest rate paid on government securities must be equal
to the lowest acceptable
I once had to read a book by Vandana Shiva, _Staying
Alive: Women, Ecology and Development_. It is the
worst book-length piece of writing I have ever had to
read. I'm afraid that this kind of rubbish gives both
feminism and environmentalism a bad name.
Peter Burns SJ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The problems in France re financing the welfare state essentially
boil down, IMO, to the following:
1) More than a decade of austerity and financial orthodoxy--
"franc fort" and would-be Bundesbankism--produced vast increases
in unemployment and poverty, as well as anaemic growth rates.
Natu
Doug, I think you'll find that there has been
a large and increasing amount of emigration of
young people from Ireland to Britain, other
European countries, and of course, the USA
during the period you cite. Ireland is also
a recipient of a relatively large per capita
EC subsidies and aid of
One book I looked at briefly when back in
Britain this summer was: M. Perczynski,
J. Kregel, and E. Matzner , AFTER
THE MARKET SHOCK . It was generally critical of
East European "reform", but I can't remember
any of the detailed arguments.
Peter Burns SJ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
I just want to clear something up. My original
post on this subject reported the NYT as saying
that the growth rate in Poland was relatively
strong "DESPITE" the "lack of progress" on the
privatization front. In other words, even USING
IMF-style criteria for economic success such as the
brute
Laura Bell asks:
> Peter, I have a relevant question from a journalist who writes about
> economics. Running at 6.5% -- that tells me little. Annually, for the
> last quarter, two quarters?
I am assuming the 6.5% figure represents an _annualized rate of
growth_. As to _how long_ the gro
I read in today's New York Times that economic growth
in Poland is now running at 6.5 percent, "despite"
the fact that the privatization program there is very
incomplete and slow. Does anyone on this list have
good information about the empirical facts concerning
privatization and the record o
Meeropol rightly rages:
> him that lots do in fact have children just to get the money (despite the
> evidence that there's no difference in out of wedlock births between states
> with wildly different benefit levels).
Amazing how people internalize others' stereotypes of them, even negative one
John Gulick is right to warn of the dangers of
a progressive left/labor agenda simply dissolving
into US economic nationalism, or worse, outright
Buchananism . But I think *some* folks in the US labor
movement *do* recognize the need for a different
strategy, one based on a renewed labor interna
In the midst of the current Republican savagery
against the poor and working classes of America,
I am haunted by a nagging worry. It goes like this:
Suppose the socially callous budget-cutters do
succeed in substantially reducing the deficit.
Will that, as they claim, really result in
signific
Market socialists are NOT against planning things like water,
sanitation, education or health care. Nor are they against
planning in the areas of energy provision, transportation
systems, or environmental protection. Nor are they against
economic planning more generally, especially to combat
une
Louis,
I am not a professor and I'm not an economist, so if your
young groupies still want to debate market socialists,
feel free to send them my way.
Peter Burns SJ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sorry, the table needs correcting.
In the corporate tax rates segment, read
Ireland 38%
Belgium 39%
Germany 45%
Peter Burns SJ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Did anyone else out there find the article in today
New York Times business section on foreign investment in
Britain as crazy as I did? Included with the article is
a statistical table which I reproduce below. What I want
to know is how come the authors can get away with such
brazen disregar
Louis said:
> Bukharin was an important foe of Stalin's bureaucratic policies
> and he maintained his integrity until the very end.
Bukharin sided with Stalin against Trotsky and the Left Opposition.
Peter Burns SJ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Louis Proyect is one of those people who keep saying
the same thing over and over even after they have
been corrected. I'll try one more time:
Louis, listen carefully--MARKET SOCIALISTS ARE *NOT*
AGAINST PLANNING. THEY GENERALLY FAVOR DEMOCRATICALLY
ACCOUNTABLE FORMS OF STRATEGIC PLANNING. WHA
Among many British academics the Conservative Party is often
referred to as the Stupid Party--perhaps this has some historical
link to the quote below, but I don't know. The last poll I saw
on the subject put voting support among university lecturers
for the Tories in the single figures.
Peter B
Another market- and private sector-glorifying
advertizing supplement in today's <23 Sept>
New York Times, this one on Saudi Arabia, has this
to say:
"Privatization has become a cult word in current
government policy..."
Then this heading:
"Private investors clamor for equity"--no wonder, becau
Let me quote from David Schweickart's article in
*Science and Society* , 'Economic
Democracy: A Worthy Socialism that Would Really
Work' . Believing that God gives almost
all people equal intellectual potential, potential blocked by
conditions of unequal power, and dismayed that not a single
work
Response to Carla Orcutt, Ph.D
>
> Peter Burns SJ wrote:
> >The evidence is that worker-controlled enterprises have
> >better levels of productivity and motivation _and_
> >greater internal equality of income on average than
> >do comparable capitalist firms.
> >
> Do you have any recent referen
I am listening to NPR right now, and there's an item
on the record number of people in Britain going to prison for
non-payment of fines because they're too poor, up
to 23,000 of them. The scumbag Tory government hailed
the record jail numbers until the detail was pointed
out. The non-payers, it
The evidence is that worker-controlled enterprises have
better levels of productivity and motivation _and_
greater internal equality of income on average than
do comparable capitalist firms.
Peter Burns SJ
Michael Etchison said:
>
> Tom Walker passes on, 9/19, Michael Belzer's summary whi
A few weeks ago, did something appear on this list
giving some references to the role of economic planning
in South Korean development? If so, I would be very
grateful if someone could post them on to me again.
Thanks
Peter Burns SJ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Forwarded message:
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 1995 11:42:20 -0600
Reply-To: LEFT-L - Building a Democratic Left Movement
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sender: LEFT-L - Building a Democratic Left Movement
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: Talmadge Wright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: EP
Devine and Schettino might want to look at:
T. Persson and G. Tabellini, 'Is Inequality Harmful
for Growth?' _American Economic Review_ vol. 84/3
(June 1994), 600-621
and
World Bank, _World Development Report 1991_, especially
page 137.
Cheers,
Peter Burns SJ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Here's an excerpt from today's Los Angeles Times "Column
Left" article by Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh, entitled
"Living Well at Workers' Expense". The authors are fellows
at the Institute for Policy Studies.
BEGIN EXCERPT:
Mexico's currency crisis has created a windfall for U.S.
companies t
Doug Henwood provides some figures on income inequality
and poverty rates. However, I am a little concerned
about the dates for those figures. Britain experienced a
whopping recession in 1980-1981, and by the mid 80s was having
a fairly rapid recovery. But there was another helluva recession
Jeff writes:
> I may have been wrong. The rate of growth may have been higher in Britian
> but real earnings for all UK workers rose and the real pay of those at the
> bottom grew. From 1979 to 1989 the lower decile in the US saw a drop of 11
> to 17 percent compared to an increase of 12 percen
You could well be right, Jeff. I was relying
on a British publication of a couple of months
ago reporting on the findings of the Rowntree
study. Since then I saw that E. Wolff
of NYU has produced a study which was reported
in the New York Times. A couple of questions,
though, if it's that stud
Jim said:
> Plus: Susan George and Fabrizio Sabelli have published FAITH AND
> CREDIT: THE WORLD BANK'S SECULAR EMPIRE. (Westview Press, 1994)
> They argue that the WB is a religious institution. As the
> Roman Catholic Church was to feudalism, so the WB is to
> global capitalism. Right, Peter B
Here's the Rowntree reference I promised:
_Income and Wealth_
which is available from:
Joseph Rowntree Foundation
The Homestead
40 Water End
York, YO3 6LP
England, UK
price 9 pounds sterling
A 5 page free summary is also available apparently.
Another free market disaster area of course is Ch
Ellen Dannin and others who haven't seen it
should take a look at the transcript of
the CBC program "Ideas" on New Zealand which
is available in the pen-l archives. It's very
long, so one should probably download it, and
print it out. In NZ they have tried being
even more Thatcherite than Thatc
I'm from Scotland, currently living in Los Angeles--don't
know if that counts as being a Brit. However I will be
spending the summer back home in Glasgow, and in Cambridge,
England.
Last summer I published a short article called "Global
Thatcherism in the Light of the British Experience"
; amo
Does anyone out there know if any cross-country studies
have been made of the correlations or lack of them between
levels of real wages and benefits , and levels
of unemployment? I doubt if there is a correlation, but
has anything of interest been observed in this matter--
we hear so much from
This is on Bill's reply to my reply:
>
> Peter said:
>
> >I am all for asceticism, frugality, "more soul" and such
> >for the well-to-do folks
> >as you know , but doesn't a solution based on
> >getting people to adopt moral consumption patterns
> >presuppose the myth of consumer sovereignty?
Bill,
I am all for asceticism, frugality, "more soul" and such
for the well-to-do folks
as you know , but doesn't a solution based on
getting people to adopt moral consumption patterns
presuppose the myth of consumer sovereignty? Or
are all those billions spent on marketing just a waste
of mo
I am enjoying the discussion on this topic because
a) the issue is absolutely central to the future of
left politics and progressive economics, and b)
because Cockshott and Selden have made a fine
start in formulating the issues.
Are people acquainted with a recent
book by J. Brecher and T. Cost
Sorry, Dale WHARTON, not Thornton!!
Apologies,
PBsj
In Schweickart's book the capital assets tax
REPLACES interest . Just having an assets
tax in a capitalist economy, however, IN ADDITION to
interest, might well lead to strategic bashing
of the working class, and capital flight.
Still, I am sympathetic to an assets tax, perhaps set
at a modest r
Anny Schaefer wonders about self-employment's relation
to being a "worker". Although I don't entirely agree
with it--the author uses anti-socialist and anti-Marxist
rhetoric--there is a book by David Ellerman called
PROPERTY AND CONTRACT IN ECONOMICS: THE CASE FOR
ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY which has as
>
> Hi. I have been reading quite a few student papers from the ecofeminist
> perspective in the last few weeks -- from a particularly spiritual
> ecofeminist point of view. These students, I think, could benefit from
> a Marxist primer on the environmental crisis, but I don't know the
> literatu
Re: "worker"
Good question!
As used in Schweickart's work I think it means anyone who
has to rely on paid employment--other than senior managerial
employment--for the bulk of her/his income, and not on
ownerhip and/or control of private capital.
This leaves open, as S would definitel
Just received this and found it interesting given recent pen-l
discussions.
PBsj
Forwarded message:
> From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sat Apr 15 17:27:38 1995
> From: Herbert Shore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: dsanet: lost message two
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 17:06:23 -0700 (P
At the end of my first post, I mentioned that I endorse
strongly David Schweickart's excellent book, AGAINST
CAPITALISM , and I
asked if other list members had read it and formed an
opinion. My sense is that this work, like Schweickart's
earlier gem CAPITALISM OR WORKER CONTROL? ,
has not had the
A question to Bill Mitchell:
When anti-socialists start listing all the crimes of "socialism",
you know, the Gulag, the purges, the appalling inefficiency,
the destruction of the environment, the lies, the lack of freedom,
the famines, the brutal, corrupt, stupid dictators, its "never
having work
Patrick,
I heartily agree with you that religious-minded people
need to give up their illusions in capitalism--that's
one reason I am writing the book. My point was and
remains, simply, that having a religious faith-based
commitment to social justice is quite compatible with
a class-based approa
Patrick Bond wrote
> your proposed alliance with the religious social justice crew
> (or interest-free money or Grameen Banking or the like) has less
> appeal than grounding a critique of finance in class conflict. Here I
> would start with corporate campaigns (highlighting financial control
> of
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