Do peso do passado no presente

Um aparte a começar: num comentário a esta nota de Brad DeLong - que refere as consequências, hoje, da escravatura de há 150 anos - diz-se: "Maybe it's just a case of Tacitus having been right: "It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured." 

Indo ao cerne da questão, a nota em causa dá conta de um estudo sobre a virulência mais acentuada do racismo em condados do sul dos EUA que tinham antes de 1865 uma maior população escrava. Este estudo é mais um exemplo do fenómeno da prevalência de atitudes, instituições (no sentido lato do termo) e memes, no longo prazo - outros exemplos de estudos do mesmo tipo, serão, que me recorde, as diferenças societais, hoje, nos Balcãs entre os territórios aquém e além da antiga fronteira austro-húngara; aquelas entre os territórios no Peru, antes sujeitos ou não à instituição do recrutamento dos índios (mit'a) para as minas; o impacto no desenvolvimento das sociedades africanas de terem ou não sido sujeitas à exportação de escravos; a correlação entre a permanência do anti-semitismo mais acentuado, em sub-regiões alemães, e pogroms de judeus, nas mesmas zonas, durante a Idade Média.

Não nos deveríamos nunca esquecer de que o que fazemos se repercute no futuro, e de modo muito mais penetrante e extenso do que se pensava.

PS: Na mesma linha de estudos veja-se este: Origens of growth: How state institutions forged during the Protestant Reformation drove development, de Jeremiah Dittmar e Ralf R Meisenzahl, Vox: - "Throughout history, most states have functioned as kleptocracies and not as providers of public goods. This column analyses the diffusion of legal institutions that established Europe’s first large-scale experiments in mass public education. These institutions originated in Germany during the Protestant Reformation due to popular political mobilisation, but only in around half of Protestant cities. Cities that formalised these institutions grew faster over the next 200 years, both by attracting and by producing more highly skilled residents."

Jon Stewart sobre o momento político norte-americano e outras coisas

Vejam o vídeo: Jon Stewart com David Axelrod. Discussão inteligente e informativa, dura por vezes. Interessante o comentário sobre Hillary Clinton, que qualificaria com leitura da biografia de outro político norte-americano -  a de Franklin Roosevelt (a de James MacGregor Burns).

Jon Stewart is back with some strong words for "man-baby" Donald Trump

E ainda mais sobre as eleições norte-americanas

 De Krugman, citado no Economist View:

"Stripped down to its essence, the G.O.P. elite view is that working-class America faces a crisis, not of opportunity, but of values. ... And this crisis of values, they suggest, has been aided and abetted by social programs that make life too easy on slackers.

The problems with this diagnosis should be obvious. Tens of millions of people don’t suffer a collapse in values for no reason. Remember, several decades ago the sociologist William Julius Wilson argued that the social ills of America’s black community ... were the result of disappearing economic opportunity. If he was right, you would have expected declining opportunity to have the same effect on whites, and sure enough, that’s exactly what we’re seeing.

Meanwhile,... every other advanced country has a more generous social safety net than we do, yet the rise in mortality among middle-aged whites in America is unique: Everywhere else, it is continuing its historic decline."

Economist's View: Paul Krugman: Republican Elite’s Reign of Disdain

Três contributos para perceber o fenómeno Trump, via Brad DeLong. Um requisito básico para perceber os EUA é o de assumirmos, à partida, a consciência da complexidade da tarefa, e da impossibilidade de alcançarmos um nível suficiente de maestria do assunto, pelo menos no curto prazo, e na ausência de muito trabalho - muita boa gente lucraria imenso (lucraria a sua perceção do mundo em que vive) se percebesse isso.

• Martin Longman: What Really Made the Right Nuts
• Jamelle Bouie: How Donald Trump Happened: Racism Against Barack Obama.
• David Atkins: Donald Trump Is Bad. But Karl Rove And David Brooks Are Worse  

Qual é a normalidade do excecionalismo norte-americano?

O que vem abaixo é a crítica feita no Democracy Journal: There’s No Going Back : Democracy Journal, a um livro que aborda o The New Deal e as possibilidades dele ser recuperado nesta conjuntura política norte-americana: The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics by Jefferson Cowie • Princeton University Press • 2016 • 273 pages • $27.95.

A crítica é de leitura oportuna neste momento, e cruza com aquilo que se disse aqui: Notas III: O que é que a esquerda norte-americana, à esquerda do Partido Democrático, diz neste momento? Para já fala de revolução política. 

Oh, Santo Deus! Martine Le Pen, ofendida por ser comparada a Trump, e não é que a senhora tem razão.

Vale a pena ler o artigo donde retirei este excerto:

" Oh wait, Trump is even too fascist for Marine Le Pen:

Marine Le Pen, for example, has become a poster child for the modern European far right after leading the French National Front to unprecedented success over the past few years. Many see her as the most obvious European counterpart for Trump. And yet, despite their perceived kinship, Le Pen has personally criticized Trump’s proposal to ban almost all Muslims from entering the United States. “Seriously, have you ever heard me say something like that?” Le Pen said during one television interview, according to the New York Times. “I defend all the French people in France, regardless of their origin, regardless of their religion.”

So to all you people who said, “How dare you compare Trump to the National Front.”  I apologize—he’s worse."

TheMoneyIllusion » The GOP made a pact with the devil, and now may pay the price

E Trump?

A coisa está muito mais complicada do que me parecia à primeira vista - a mim, e a muitos outros: o meme de Trump ser o candidato ideal de direita,  para a esquerda, poderá não ter a tração definitiva que parecia ter (aliás, até agora validado pelas sondagens) - nas eleições primárias (há notícia disso) eleitores democráticos votam, estrategicamente, em Trump, na base desse raciocínio. Por outro lado, tenho uma réstia de dúvida se não há quem, da esquerda, que considere com bons olhos a possibilidade de Trump presidente como o enquadramento mais propício a uma radicalização à esquerda, a caminho da tal revolução política. Mas as dúvidas andam por aí.

Hoje, ouvi na CNN, Matt Taibbi lembrar a existência de sondagens em alguns estados dos EUA a propósito do vedar a entrada nos EUA a muçulmanos,  com taxas de concordância à volta dos 60%; a lembrar que Hillary Clinton poderá ser vulnerável a alguma da argumentação de Trump, a qual tem algumas convergências de tema com os cavalos de batalha de Bernie Sanders: repúdio dos acordos internacionais do comércio, deslocalização, falta de firmeza com os interesses das grandes empresa, Wall Street, etc.. 

Os candidatos democratas, qualquer deles, a solo com Trump, terão de se defender de um candidato perigoso, na altura mais ao centro, com um argumentação menos primária, mas mantendo uma base populista com forte apelo em todo o eleitorado.

Que tudo aponta para se ter em Novembro um Presidente democrata, mulher, sim, mas ...

O que é que a esquerda norte-americana, à esquerda do Partido Democrático, diz neste momento? Para já fala de revolução política.

O que alguns - da extrema-esquerda norte-americana - pensam sobre o atual momento político norte-americano é dado de modo cristalino no vídeo abaixo. Fala-se de revolução política e aposta-se que o exército dessa revolução está nos milhões de jovens mobilizados pela campanha de Bernie Sanders, e ainda mais, que essa mobilização permanecerá para além duma vitória presidencial de Hillary Clinton. Tenho as minhas sérias dúvidas - se assim sucedesse, seria uma primeira vez que tal se verificaria nos EUA. As revoadas de contestação política, muitas vezes bastante radicais, têm sido frequentes na história americana: o sistema tem sido, sempre, capaz de as canalizar, de interiorizar algumas das reivindicações, e de seguir em frente - as razões de queixa destes jovens norte-americanos, pelo menos algumas delas, são bastante precisas e delimitadas, caso das dívidas em que incorrem para frequentar a universidade, e seriam facilmente acomodadas. Existe, realmente, uma especificidade norte-americana no modo como o enraizamento duma alternativa "socialista" à escala do país nunca ocorreu - existem bibliotecas escritas sobre o tema (em Portugal, por exemplo, está traduzido "Por que não houve socialismo na América?" de Seymour Martin Lipset e Gary Marks, que é, até onde posso ver, bem articulado e informado).

Em todo o caso, dando de barato a correção do inventário feito por Bernie Sanders (e pela Hillary Clinton, num tom mais suave) das disfunções políticas e económicas da democracia (plutocracia) americana, não acompanho o primeiro quanto às soluções apontadas, à sua factibilidade, à sua adequação, e às suas consequências. Alguns defendem que há uma boa maneira de resolver as coisas à norte.americana. É a tese de Stephen S. Cohen e de Bradford DeLong, em Concrete Economics: The Hamilton Approach to Economic Growth and Policy (ver aqui). Pessoalmente, a coisa que não queria ver agora era uma revolução nos EUA. Fico-me bem pela senhora, que sabe da poda e conhece bem o sistema (e é preciso conhecer bem o sistema para se conseguir alguma coisa feita nos EUA, e há tanta coisa que todos nós necessitamos que sejam feitas daquele lado).

Sanders and His Supporters Should Now Call for a Real Political Revolution
 

A discussão sobre as razões do sucesso de Trump, ainda estão no adro

Em questões do foro sociológico não  aceito explicações mono-causais por muito significativas as possa considerar, e aquilo que é discutido neste artigo sobre o perfil psicológico dos denominados autoritários e o impacto que isso tem na política norte-americana, máxime no ascenso de Trump, é coberto por essa consideração. Agora, que há qualquer coisa nesta história, isso há.

The rise of American authoritarianism

Mayor Bill de Blasio e Paul Krugman falam de desigualdade, de programas de combate ao problema em NYC, de Bernie versus Hillary, e da continuação do combate ao racismo

Mayor Bill de Blasio e Paul Krugman falam sobre desigualdade em NYC e nos EUA. Bill de Blasio é um político impressivo e Krugman é Krugman. Os dois apoiam Hillary Cliton, mas não quem moderou a conversa. A partir dos 46 minutos a conversa incidiu sobre Bernie versus Hillary. Todo o vídeo merece ser visto.

Pois...

 

2016 SkS Weekly Digest #9

Comentário de Krugman a esta notícia: "It's a very strange world"

Justice Scalia spent his last hours with members of this secretive society of elite hunters

Indústrialização e globalização - algumas leituras

Fui colecionando, a este propósito, alguns artigos. São todos muito interessantes, e carreando muito material para reflexão: o bold é meu .

Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class - NYTimes.com

It is hard to estimate how much more it would cost to build iPhones in the United States. However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone’s expense. Since Apple’s profits are often hundreds of dollars per phone, building domestically, in theory, would still give the company a healthy reward. 

But such calculations are, in many respects, meaningless because building the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans — it would require transforming the national and global economies. Apple executives believe there simply aren’t enough American workers with the skills the company needs or factories with sufficient speed and flexibility. Other companies that work with Apple, like Corning, also say they must go abroad. [....]

Wages weren’t the major reason for the disparities. Rather it was costs like inventory and how long it took workers to finish a task. [....]

Making It in America - Magazine - The Atlantic

In the past decade, the flow of goods emerging from U.S. factories has risen by about a third. Factory employment has fallen by roughly the same fraction. The story of Standard Motor Products, a 92-year-old, family-run manufacturer based in Queens, sheds light on both phenomena. It’s a story of hustle, ingenuity, competitive success, and promise for America’s economy. It also illuminates why the jobs crisis will be so difficult to solve.

The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - The Myth of American Productivity

Politicians say we have the most productive workers in the world. They don't know what they're talking about. 

Alternatively, companies can cut costs by seeking out cheaper suppliers around the world—to use the business school term, they can engage in global supply chain management. A U.S.-based computer company can lower its costs by moving its customer call center from South Dakota to India. Walmart can shift its clothing purchases from a Chinese shirt manufacturer to a cheaper supplier in Vietnam. Apple can find a cheaper offshore supplier for its iPhone display screen. 

But here’s the rub: both of these corporate strategies— domestic productivity improvements and global supply chain management—show up as productivity gains in U.S. economic records. When federal statisticians calculate the nation’s economic output, what they are actually measuring is domestic “value added”—the dollar value of all sales minus the dollar value of all imports. “Productivity” is then calculated by dividing the quantity of value added by the number of American workers. American workers, however, often have little to do with the gains in productivity attributed to them. For instance, if Company A saves $250,000 simply by switching from a Japanese sprocket supplier to a much cheaper Chinese sprocket supplier, that change shows up as an increase in American productivity—just as if the company had saved $250,000 by making its warehouse operation in Chicago more efficient.[....]

Economist's View: Upward Redistribution

[....] David Ignatius is one of the people who works in this industry. His Post column today urges readers to contemplate the awful thought that, quoting Francis Fukuyama:"What if the further development of technology and globalization undermines the middle class and makes it impossible for more than a minority of citizens in an advanced society to achieve middle-class status?”It is very useful to the One Percent to pretend that their wealth and the near stagnation in living standards for everyone else is just the result of "the further development of technology and globalization." However this has nothing to do with reality. Globalization has hurt the living standards of the middle class... In the same vein it is not technology by itself that has made some people very rich. It is largely government granted patent and copyright monopolies that have made people rich. These polices are becoming increasingly inefficient mechanisms for supporting innovation and creative work. [....]

Why doesn't Britain make things any more? | Business | The Guardian: 

In the past 30 years, the UK's manufacturing sector has shrunk by two-thirds, the greatest de-industrialisation of any major nation. It was done in the name of economic modernisation – but what has replaced it? [....]

Preto sobre branco: a brutal verdade do capitalismo financeiro (norte-americano) actual

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs - NYTimes.com

A gravura acompanha o artigo, e como o artigo é brutal, e como o artigo quer ser brutal.

Fui encaminhado para este depoimento no NYT por este artigo do Económico (aqui).

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it. 

 

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for. 

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief. 

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied. 

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work. 

[continuar a ler:.... é obrigatório]

As diferenças entre o sistema de saúde norte-americano e o francês: leitura interessante!

France and U.S. Health Care: Twins Separated at Birth? - Megan McArdle - Business - The Atlantic

By way of introduction, I want to make clear that I have no particular expertise when it comes to healthcare policy. My knowledge is merely that of a layman who follows the news. I'm even well-aware that one of my esteemed co-guest bloggers is Avik Roy, who's one of the most talented health care wonks on the internet, whose work I avidly followed at his previous National Review digs. In fact, this post can be read as an invitation to Avik to enlighten me.

All that being said, from my outlook there's something that I haven't seen discussed and yet seems striking to me: how similar the French and U.S. healthcare systems are. 

On its face, this seems like a preposterous notion: whenever the two are mentioned together, it's to say that they're polar opposites. 

France has been called the best healthcare system in the world by the World Health Organization. And if there's something everyone in the US seems to agree on, it's that US healthcare, well, horribly sucks, although they strongly disagree about why and what to do about it. 

And yet, to me, the similarities are glaring

[continuar a ler, porque a partir daqui é que se torna mesmo interessante...]

A questão da moral nos EUA

Morals: Our great moral decline | The Economist

ASKED to explain his support for Rick Santorum in Michigan's primary, voter Sandy Munro said, "Now what we need is a strong political leader to do something to get us out of the moral slump that we’re in."

Mr Santorum would agree, having noted that "Satan has his sights on the United States of America." As would Mitt Romney, who has attacked the decay caused by Barack Obama's "secular agenda". Newt Gingrich has gone the furthest, stating, “A country that has been now since 1963 relentlessly in the courts driving God out of public life shouldn’t be surprised at all the problems we have."

But what are these problems? When considering America's moral decline, my first instinct was to look at the crime rate. If Satan is at work in America, he's probably nicking wallets and assaulting old ladies. But over the past several decades the crime rate has fallen dramatically, despite what you may think. The homicide rate has been cut in half since 1991; violent crime and property crime are also way down. Even those pesky kids are committing less crime. There are some caveats to these statistics, as my colleague points out, but I think we can conclude that crime is not the cause of America's moral decline. So let's look elsewhere. Abortion has returned as a hot-button issue, perhaps it is eating away at our moral fiber. Hmm, the abortion rate declined by 8% between 2000 and 2008. Increases in divorce and infidelity could be considered indicators of our moral decay. There's just one problem: according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the divorce rate is the lowest it has been since the early 1970s. This is in part due to the recession, but infidelity is down too.

Other areas that might indicate declining virtue are also going against the perceived trend. For example, charitable giving is up after a decline during the recession. The teenage pregnancy rate is at its lowest level in 40 years. And according to Education Week, "the nation’s graduation rate stands at 72 percent, the highest level of high school completion in more than two decades." So where is the evidence of this moral decline? 

[continua. e bastante interessante...]

O combate político do nosso tempo é este, mas anda tudo distraído, mesmo aqueles a quem o que se segue parece confirmar as suas percepções (estou a ser claro, não estou?)

We need to know who funds these thinktank lobbyists | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

Shocking, fascinating, entirely unsurprising: the leaked documents, if authentic, confirm what we suspected but could not prove. The Heartland Institute, which has helped lead the war against climate science in the United States, is funded among others by tobacco firms, fossil fuel companies and one of the billionaire Koch brothers.

It appears to have followed the script written by a consultant to the Republican party, Frank Luntz, in 2002. "Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate."Luntz's technique was pioneered by the tobacco companies and the creationists: teach the controversy. In other words, insist that the question of whether cigarettes cause lung cancer, natural selection drives evolution, or burning fossil fuels causes climate change, is still wide open, and that both sides of the "controversy" should be taught in schools and thrashed out in the media.

The leaked documents appear to show that, courtesy of its multimillionaire donors, the institute has commissioned a global warming curriculum for schools which teaches that "whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy" and "whether CO₂ is a pollutant is controversial".

É sobre o Irão, ou de como os EUA não aprenderam nada com o Iraque, ou uma questão de "plain and simple lunacy"

Congress Pushes Iran Regime Change Over Diplomacy « naked capitalism

Previsões - as mais convincentes que li até ao momento

BBC News - Three big questions for the eurozone

In a normal year predicting economics is like predicting the outcome of a card game: there are too many variables and the only certainty being that the suckers will lose and the stealthily self-interested will win. In 2012 however, the shape of the crisis is heavily predetermined: there are a series of crucial stages the eurocrisis has to go through and the way they're resolved will affect everything else. Starting from where we are now, there are three big questions:

• Is the ECB's unofficial money printing operation - a massively expanded bond-buying venture combined with unlimited provision of cash by global central banks - going to be enough to prevent a second credit crunch, centred on Italy?
• Does Greece spiral finally into default, social crisis and chaos, raising the prospect of the near-dictatorial economic policies needed if you have to exit the Euro?
• Do the French banks take so many losses on the sovereign debt of southern Europe that they have to be part nationalised, thus removing the country's AAA credit rating and the all-important financial parity between Germany and France that lies at the heart of the European system?

Right now my answers to these questions would be yes, yes and yes. [e continua ...]

Pois, mas a maioria não sonha assim ...

Cartoon of the Week | ThinkProgress

Não sabia disto, mas não fico surpreendido - é um dos afloramentos das "undercurrents" que tem vindo a definir a especificidade da "formação" social norte-americana

Business Plot - encyclopedia article about Business Plot

The Business Plot (also the Plot Against FDR and the White House Putsch) was an alleged political conspiracy in 1933. Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler claimed that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans' organization and use it in a coup d’état to overthrow United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Butler as leader of that organization. In 1934 Butler testified to the McCormack–Dickstein Congressional committee on these claims.^[1] In the opinion of the committee, these allegations were credible. One of the purported plotters, Gerald MacGuire, vehemently denied any such plot. In their report, the Congressional committee stated that it was able to confirm Butler's statements other than the proposal from MacGuire which it considered more or less confirmed by MacGuire's European reports.^[1] No one was prosecuted.

While historians have questioned whether or not a coup was actually close to execution, most agree that some sort of "wild scheme" was contemplated and discussed.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Contemporaneous media initially dismissed the plot, with a New York Times editorial characterizing it as a "gigantic hoax".^[7] When the committee's final report was released, the Times said the committee "purported to report that a two-month investigation had convinced it that General Butler's story of a Fascist march on Washington was alarmingly true" and "It also alleged that definite proof had been found that the much publicized Fascist march on Washington, which was to have been led by Major. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, retired, according to testimony at a hearing, was actually contemplated [continua ...]