- Economist's View: "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too" [ver a este propósito a última referencia desta nota]:
"The general theses can be simply stated. First, while conservatives toyed with laissez-faire, they quickly abandoned it in all important areas of policy-making. For them, it now serves as nothing more than an enabling myth, used to hide the true nature of our world. Ironically, only the progressive still takes the call for “market solutions” seriously, and this is the major barrier to formulating sensible policy.
Second, the “industrial state” has been replaced by a predator state, a coalition of relentless opponents of the very idea of a “public interest”, whose purpose is to master the state structure in order to empower a high plutocracy with nothing more than vile and rapacious goals.
Finally, the “corporate republic” created by the likes of Dick Cheney is highly unstable, a formula for national failure. Progressives must wrest control from the reactionaries before it is too late for restoration of America as the world’s financial anchor, technological leader, and promoter of collective security." ...
As Jamie argues, his father [John Kenneth Galbraith] admired Veblen but was most influenced by the New Deal, the mobilization during WWII, and the rise of the modern corporation that cooperated with government and labor to create the planned economy of the postwar period. Hence, Veblen’s opposition of the business enterprise versus the public interest was replaced by countervailing powers that compromised a largely acceptable truce.
Jamie insists that his father’s analysis was correct, however, it was already becoming outdated by the early 1970s as the Bretton Woods system fell apart. The free market reactionaries promised that some combination of monetarism, supply side economics, balanced budgets, and free trade was the solution to America’s woes. The mantra “free markets” provided an easy antidote to “planning” that was said to constrain recovery and growth. As each conservative policy was tried, however, it resulted in obvious and even spectacular failure. In truth, all economies are always and everywhere planned—for the simple reason that planning is the use of today’s resources to meet tomorrow’s needs, something that all societies must do if they are going to survive—so the only question is who is going to do the planning, and to whom are the benefits going to flow?
There are still a few true believers (principled conservatives that Jamie compares to noble savages in the political wilderness), but most conservatives realized that there is no conflict between “big government” and “the market” as they abandoned the myth but usurped the “free market” label. All we are left with is the liberal who embraces the myth out of fear of being exposed as a heretic, a socialist, or a fool. Thus, the liberal pines to “make the market work better”, never challenging the view (abandoned by all but the most foolish conservatives) that government is the problem.
Economic freedom is reduced to the freedom to shop, including the freedom to buy elections, and anything that interferes is a threat. “Market” means nothing more than “nonstate”, a negation of use of policy in the public interest. Jamie provides a careful analysis of the frontline battles on many of the most important issues--Social Security, health care, inequality, immigration, security after 9-11, trade and outsourcing, and global warming—showing how “market solutions” are designed to enrich a favored oligarchy through a spoils system administered through the state’s structure.
The policy “mistakes” in Iraq or New Orleans or at Bear-Stearns do not result from incompetence—indeed they only appear to be failures because we apply inappropriate measures of success. There is no common good, no public purpose, no shareholder’s interest; we are the prey and governments as well as corporations are run by and for predators. The “failures” enrich the proper beneficiaries even as they “prove” government is no solution. There is a way out, but it is not easy.
Historically, regulation and standards have required acceptance by progressive business—those firms that recognized they would lose in races to the bottom. Today, corporate and public policy alike are run by the most reactionary elements, well-paid rogues that suck capacity. Wherever one finds a sector that still operates reasonably well, one finds remnants of New Deal institutions that support, guarantee, regulate, and leverage private activities, in spheres as diverse as higher education, housing, pensions, healthcare, the military-industrial complex (and the prison-industrial complex). Naturally, even these sectors are endangered as they represent potential riches (witness subprimes, a privatization mess that Wall Street would love to repeat with Social Security). Still, Jamie is hopeful. The ideology of free markets is bankrupt, but the US is not. The path is clear: re-regulation, planning, standards (including wage controls), and coming to grips with the nation’s global responsibilities.
- Op-Ed Columnnist - Divided They Stand - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com (Paul Krugman):
"It is, in a way, almost appropriate that the final days of the struggle for the Democratic nomination have been marked by yet another fake Clinton scandal — the latest in a long line that goes all the way back to Whitewater." Hillary: Why I continue to run
"I am running because I still believe I can win on the merits. Because, with our economy in crisis, our nation at war, the stakes have never been higher - and the need for real leadership has never been greater - and I believe I can provide that leadership. I am not unaware of the challenges or the odds of my securing the nomination - but this race remains extraordinarily close, and hundreds of thousands of people in upcoming primaries are still waiting to vote. As I have said so many times over the course of this primary, if Sen. Obama wins the nomination, I will support him and work my heart out for him against John McCain. But that has not happened yet."She's in it to spin it Salon News:
"But what if -- for the sake of argument -- Clinton is merely doing what she always said that she intended to do, which is to scrap for every last delegate through the final primaries? What if she is actually moved by the you-go-girl enthusiasm she encounters hand-shaking her way along all the rope lines? What if she looks at the electoral map and broods about Obama's potential difficulties in November in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida (all states that Clinton carried in the primaries)?"Richard Cohen - Why She Fights On - washingtonpost.com:
"But in the end, when Obama is crowned king of the Democrats, Clinton will throw her arms around him and the music will swell and the crowds will cheer -- and everything will be forgotten. And when that happens, Hillary Clinton -- who will be only 65 in 2012 and four years after that still will be younger than McCain is now -- will be positioned to run for president, not as someone's wife, but as a gritty fighter who just would not quit."Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong
"Makes sense to me: Ezra Klein: A campaign without the 'gotchas': Gore was seen, in 2000, as a condescending, exaggeration-prone prig. But in the ensuing years, he stepped out of campaign journalism. He began sending his speeches out directly over MoveOn.org's e-mail list, made a movie that asked people to sit down and listen to him for the better part of two hours, and did his rounds on interview shows on which he could have fairly lengthy conversations with hosts. The result? A massive rehabilitation of his reputation, including in the eyes of the very political pundits who once spurned him.... Ask those pundits about the new Gore, of course, and they will sigh and search the heavens and moan that, oh, if he had only been this way when he was in politics, how different it all could have been.
But he was.... He was a substantive global-warming obsessive with a penchant for long disquisitions on meaty topics.... [H]is pipeline to the public was a gaffe-hungry media looking for ways to humiliate him, that didn't turn out so well. When he was able to speak directly to the public, those traits were considerably more attractive....
The problems for the media are structural.... [T]he shows are really run as a type of soap opera. Campaigns become ongoing stories with a cast of characters and a history that can be referred back to. That requires the daily construction of a story line. Characters need definition and catchphrases and frailties... clips that can be easily and endlessly replayed to remind viewers of what they're watching and what happened in past episodes... the media hunger for out-of-character gaffes and missteps -- those moments are crucial to the business model.
But politicians increasingly have alternatives.... And now the campaigns of Obama and McCain are broaching the idea of Lincoln-Douglas-style debates -- a series of unmoderated debates that would leverage the public interest in the campaign to force the media to cover debates without imposing their own narrative or needs on the structure. It's campaigning as politicians, rather than the media, would have it. Weird as it sounds, that might be better for the process. And, for the candidates, it certainly sounds like more fun. "Marie Cocco - Misogyny I Won't Miss - washingtonpost.com:
"There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for 'change.' But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture."
- Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted): Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill)
"America was built on the premise that hard work would be financially rewarded, but unfortunately, more than 37 million people are part of the growing ranks of the "working poor": people who work two or three jobs yet are unable to pay their living expenses. What's wrong with all these people that makes them unable to achieve even a modest amount of comfort in this Land of Opportunity where the streets are paved with gold?
In my experience, it doesn't take a genius to realize that the working poor are a by-product of America's increasingly stratified socioeconomic structure that punishes the middle class and the working poor by unfairly elevating the wealth of the rich to rarified heights. But I'm not the only one who has noticed this as you'll discover when you read David Cay Johnston's new book". Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill)
"Johnston opens his book by discussing how the pursuit of one's own self-interests can benefit all of a nation's citizens so long as these activities are limited by an invisible hand, as espoused by philosopher and father of capitalism, Adam Smith. The author points out that even though Smith was a capitalist, he frequently cautioned people about "the damage done when the government interferes in the market by guaranteeing profits or handing out gifts."
The author then goes on to reveal how the American government is selling out its birthright by providing financial gifts to corporations and individuals who are rich enough to qualify for them. Unfortunately, everyone is forced to finance these gifts through their taxes. In this book, Johnston explores some of the more egregious examples of who and how these injustices have been perpetrated on the American public and how they are rending the social fabric of this nation. All social relationships and interactions rely on a set of rules, and one of the functions of government is to write and enforce rules that regulate the economy so those the "have-nots" are not unfairly victimized by the "haves and have-mores". This is done primarily through taxation.
But unfortunately, during the past thirty years, America tax laws have been subtly rewritten by lawyers and lobbyists so that it is legal to either give away or sell public assets at bargain basement prices, and further, the government itself is increasingly abusing its constitutional power of eminent domain to seize private property so it can give it to someone else. Predictably, those "someone elses" are either rich individuals, such as George W. Bush (chapter 7), Barron Hilton, Paris Hilton's grandfather (chapter 16) and the owners of professional sports teams (chapter 6), or rich corporations, such as Enron (chapter 18), Wal-Mart (chapter 9) and that predatory health insurance company, Maxicare (chapter 22). The author explores the details of how those who seek to improve their situation with a college education are victimized by government-guaranteed loans that mysteriously charge inflated interest rates (chapter 14), how homeowner's title insurance has been corrupted into a costly and useless waste of money (chapter 13), and how home burglar alarm companies openly steal from the public to provide their services at the expense of public safety (chapter 12).
Since I have been sued repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) these past two years for unpaid medical bills, I was particularly interested to read the author's explanations of how American medical care was transformed from a basic human right into an expensive profit-driven business that is just not available to everyone -- like me -- and how this limited access harms the public health by increasing disease and even leads to needless, preventable deaths (chapters 21 & 22).
But this is not all; the author explains how, even though government spending is unchanged, funneling public monies into unfair subsidies destroys a free market economy and contributes to lower wages, unemployment, higher taxes, bankruptcy, crime. In this eye-opening book, Johnston inspires outrage by explaining how GW Bush's "have more" pals manipulate and intimidate the government into providing them with a free lunch of millions and millions of dollars at tax-payer expense while denying help to the poorest and most vulnerable among us. Mercifully, after getting everyone's panties into a twist, the author concludes with a chapter that suggests several interesting remedies for this situation. In 28 sections (introduction and conclusion and 26 chapters), Johnston explains the ephemeral American tax code in an accessible way without causing your eyes to glaze over. In doing so, he also provides a worrying glimpse into the inner machinations of our government. I recommend that every American citizen reads this informative book and that every library in this country has at least one copy available to the public."
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