Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 23, 2020

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 23, 2020
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

Strategic Political Economy

The Oligarch Stage of the American Disease: Bloomberg Edition

[Ian Welsh, February 18, 2020]

The thing about Trump was always that he was a symptom of a disease. It’s hard to say exactly when the disease started, but serious symptoms started showing up after the elections of Reagan and Thatcher.  Rates of wage increases collapsed, stock markets and other asset prices rose much faster than inflation, regulations were gutted, people were thrown in jail at a ferocious rate and unions were smashed.

Inequality took off, and over time multiple billionaires were created. They used their money to buy politicians, and thru politicians to buy policy. Tax rates on corporations and rich people and estates and so on were slashed to the bone. Subsidies for the rich were increased, while subsidies for the poor and middle class were, in relative terms, cut.

The Federal Reserve (all of whose governors are political appointees), acted aggressively to keep wage increases at or under inflation, and targeted inflation rather than job growth. Good working class and many middle class jobs were off-shored and outsourced....

So the oligarchs, aided by the huge concentration of companies into oligopolies, have come to have or control vast amounts of wealth. They got money defined as free speech, and now that the political class has proven incapable of handling a left wing populist, an oligarch is stepping directly in because his class’s lackeys, like Biden and Buttigieg and indeed most of the field, are incompetent.

“Frederick Douglass Railed Against Economic Inequality” 

[Jacobin, via Naked Capitalism 2-21-20]

Douglass: “The Spartan lawgiver who discouraged the accumulation of wealth, because of its tendency to impair the liberties of his country, was fully justified in the extreme measures he adopted, by the universal experience of nations, and the fate of his own country; the fall of Spartan liberties dating from the introduction of wealth and consequent luxury of her citizens. His aim to exterminate wealth and refinement entirely, was, perhaps, not wise; it is not wealth of itself that produces the dreaded effects, but its accumulation in the hands of a few — creating an aristocracy of wealth, ready to be the tool of an aggressive tyranny, or to become aggressive upon its own account. With an increase of wealth comes an increase of selfishness, devotion to private affairs, and a contempt of public — unless politics can be made to minister to the all absorbing selfishness of the individual.”

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 16, 2019

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 16, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

Strategic Political Economy

“The U.S. Military Is Not Ready for a Constitutional Crisis” 

[The Atlantic, via Naked Capitalism 2-13-20] 

I spent nine years on active duty in the U.S. Navy. I served as an aircraft commander, led combat reconnaissance crews, and taught naval history. But the first thing I did upon joining the military, the act that solemnized my obligation, was swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution. How strange, then, that despite all of my training, the millions of taxpayer dollars devoted to teaching me how to fly, lead, and teach, not once did I receive meaningful instruction on the document to which I had pledged my life....

I had left the Navy and was in law school when news of the torture memo broke. This was the George W. Bush administration’s attempt to offer a legal justification for “enhanced interrogation.” I had been through Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) school, the military’s interrogation training program, from which these techniques had been adopted. I understood the “enhanced” methods described by the Bush-administration lawyers for what they were: torture.

At the time, I found it unconscionable that legal scholars would be complicit in underwriting our government’s disregard for the Geneva Conventions. But with the benefit of hindsight, though I still find the torture memo appalling, I can at least acknowledge that the Bush administration cared enough about the law to offer the pretense of legality. 

The current administration is not even trying. President Donald Trump openly flouts laws at home, while threatening to destroy cultural sites abroad (a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions).

How State Capacity Drives Industrialization
[Palladium, 2-12-20, via reader of RealEconomics]

These “tools that make the tools” are a crucial piece of modern supply chains, and most advanced manufacturing would be impossible without them. The ability to produce machine tools domestically is one of the foundations of a deep industrial base. Recognizing this, the South Korean state encouraged Hyundai, a chaebol which built the first all-Korean automobile in 1975, to begin making machine tools for the growing domestic market. Since then, the South Korean machine tool industry has grown steadily alongside the Korean economy as a whole. Production today is slightly larger than the machine tool industry of the United States, a country more than six times as populous....

Korea’s story may be more extreme than most, but this type of state-led economic development is how every wealthy country on Earth has industrialized. The sole exception is Britain during the original Industrial Revolution.... Only the state can coordinate many different industries to produce a transformation at the scale of industrialization. 

Interesting: even some leading libertarians are beginning to admit society needs government to actively promote the general welfare, though of course, they won't use such terms. Probably, the spectre of China building a 1,000 bed hospital in ten days has scared the living crap out of them. The USA, by contrast, and thanks in no small part to the popularization of libertarian ideology, can't even maintain the infrastructure it already has. 

Thy Neighbor’s Solar Panels: When our peers take actions to preserve the planet, we’re more likely to follow suit. How the human instinct to conform could help us address the climate crisis.
[The Atlantic, via The Big Picture 2-12-20]

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 9, 2019

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 9, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

Strategic Political Economy

Altruistic food sharing behavior by human infants after a hunger manipulation
[Science, via Naked Capitalism 2-5-20]

From the abstract: “In a nonverbal test, 19-month-old human infants repeatedly and spontaneously transferred high-value, nutritious natural food to a stranger (Experiment 1) and more critically, did so after an experimental manipulation that imposed a feeding delay (Experiment 2), which increased their own motivation to eat the food. Social experience variables moderated the expression of this infant altruistic behavior, suggesting malleability.” dk asks: “But were the test subjects the babies of elites? At 19 months, some patterns may have already been acquired…”

The Carnage of Establishment Neoliberal Economics

WEALTH INEQUALITY: The richest 1% controls more wealth now than at any time in more than 50 years
[Twitter and Yourtube below, via Naked Capitalism 2-2-20]

CBS This Morning

@CBSThisMorning

WEALTH INEQUALITY: The richest 1% controls more wealth now than at any time in more than 50 years. But what does wealth inequality really look like?

@TonyDokoupil

turned America’s economic pie into a real one and asked people a simple question: Who gets what?

Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior
[PNAS, via Naked Capitalism 2-4-20]

Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals. Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 2, 2019

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 2, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

Strategic Political Economy

“Minimum wage would be $33 today if it grew like Wall Street bonuses have” 
[CBS, via Naked Capitalism 1-30-20]

“Wall Street employees saw their typical annual bonus slip by 17 percent last year to $153,700, according to new data from the New York State Comptroller. But don’t feel sorry for the banking set just yet — even including down years like 2018, bankers’ bonuses have jumped by 1,000 percent since 1985. By comparison, the federal minimum wage has increased about 116 percent during the same period, according to an analysis from the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning research center that used the comptroller’s latest data. If the minimum wage had grown at the same pace as Wall Street bonuses, fast-food workers and other low-wage workers would earn a baseline wage of $33.51 an hour, the group said.”

The Carnage of Establishment Neoliberal Economics

[Twitter below, via Naked Capitalism  -20]

Sarah Abdallah @sahouraxo

Oh, look.

More enormous anti-government protests in #Paris, #France, today.

But still barely a word from the corporate media. #YellowVests #GiletsJaunes #greve24janvier

4,104

5:02 PM - Jan 24, 2020

France’s Anti-Neoliberal Protesters Get Their Second Wind
[Real News Network 1-31-20]

The strikers protesting President Macron’s pension reform are expanding their target to the whole neoliberal system. They’re gathering their forces for a new wave of opposition, says Le Monde Diplomatique’s Renaud Lambert.