Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Dean Baker: Trump agenda: more of the same

Trump agenda looks like more of the same

By Dean Baker

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington and the author of "Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better bargain for Working People," and "The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive." The views expressed are his own.

(CNN)Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gave his first major economic address on Monday. Most of the speech was devoted to putting forward a more or less standard set of Republican policies -- Trump promised large tax cuts that would primarily benefit higher-income taxpayers, ending the Affordable Care Act and curtailing government regulation. But he also broke with Republican orthodoxy, rejecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, proposing renegotiating NAFTA, and vowing to take a firmer stance on currency management and other issues with our trading partners.

What would some of this mean in practice?

Dean Baker

The proposal for tax cuts would put in place a system with three tax brackets of 12%, 25%, and 33%. Trump didn't indicate the cutoffs for the brackets, so it's not possible to determine how much the different groups would save. However, it is certain that the highest-income taxpayers would save under the Trump plan.

Currently, high-income taxpayers pay a 39.6% tax rate on income over $415,000 for a single individual. If a high-level executive or Wall Street trader makes $2.4 million a year (roughly the average for the richest 1%), they would save $120,000 from their tax bill just on the reduction in the top tax bracket. For the richest 0.1%, the savings would average almost $700,000 a year.

Trump also called for large cuts in the corporate tax rate. Currently, corporations pay on averagea bit more than 25% of their profits in taxes. Trump committed to a tax code in which no corporation would pay more than 15% of its profits in taxes. This implies a reduction in revenue from the corporate income tax of more than 25%, or a loss in revenue of close to $100 billion a year.

What Clinton and Trump are ignoring (Opinion)

These tax cuts are virtually certain to lead to large deficits, as occurred with previous tax cuts under President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush. Trump has also proposed a substantial boost to infrastructure spending (although, while more spending on infrastructure is badly needed, this will further boost the deficit).

Trump has suggested he will address the deficit by reducing waste, but presidents from both parties have promised to reduce waste for decades. Unless he is prepared to make large cuts to programs like Social Security, Medicare, or the military, it is inevitable that his tax cuts will hugely increase the budget deficit.

Some increase in the deficit would actually be a good thing, because the economy has not yet replaced the demand lost when the housing bubble burst. However, Trump's plan almost certainly goes too far and will lead to high interest rates and/or serious problems with inflation.

Trump's attack on government regulations, meanwhile, are an illusion. While some regulations surely are wasteful, the vast majority serve important purposes, like keeping lead out of the water our children drink. The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill has been a particular target of Trumpand other Republicans, yet small businesses report that credit has never been easier to get.

Meanwhile, the Affordable Care Act, which Trump promises to repeal, has given insurance to millions of people. And contrary to Trump's claims, there is no evidence it has cost jobs. In fact, job growth accelerated after the ACA took effect.

Arguably, though, Trump's position on trade is the most interesting of the policies he has outlined. We would benefit from having more balanced trade, which could create millions of jobs, mostly in manufacturing. However it is not clear that Trump knows how to get there.

Join us on Facebook.com/CNNOpinion.

He complained about countries not honoring our copyrights and patents. However, more royalties for copyrights and patents are a tradeoff for a larger trade deficit in manufactured goods. In other words, if we make China and Brazil pay more money to Microsoft for Windows and to Pfizer for its drugs, then they will have less money to buy our manufactured goods. Trump does not seem to appreciate this trade-off and is promising that everyone will get more.

On the whole, the Trump agenda looks like the Republican agenda that we have seen many times before: It centers on large tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, something that has not worked in the past to create either strong growth or rising living standards for working people. And while Trump does offer a qualitatively different perspective on trade, it is too contradictory to be able to determine if it will actually benefit ordinary workers.

John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

The Winners and Losers Radio Show

7-9 AM Weekdays, WSHC-Listen Live, Shepherd University

Check out Socialist Economics.

Robert Gordon: Can Clinton or Trump Restore Growth?

Can Clinton or Trump Recapture Robust American Growth?

By ROBERT J. GORDONAUG. 8, 2016

The party conventions were rightly characterized as either relentlessly downbeat (Republican) or fervently optimistic (Democratic). The Republican view rests in part on poll numbers that show a solid majority of Americans think that the country is headed in the wrong direction. What has caused this malaise?

Perhaps it's the country's dismal economic growth rate: From 1947 to 2007, the economy grew at 3.4 percent per year. But over the last four years, gross domestic product expanded at only a sluggish 2.0 percent. In 2016, G.D.P.has barely reached 1 percent growth.

In the 2012 election, voters credited President Obama with the recovery from a calamitous recession. But they are now right to ask, "Is this all there is?" In 2016, voters expect Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump to provide solutions to the economy's languid growth.

Yet the widespread unease goes beyond slow growth and the accompanying wage stagnation. Underlying deep-seated voter anxiety follows trends that are decades in the making, including fears of insecurity that plague millions of Americans.

Some of these problems can be tackled with bold presidential policies. But there are limits, and other problems may lie beyond the realm of feasible solutions.

Start with the paltry G.D.P. expansion of the past few years. As modest as it has been, it can't proceed at the same rate for much longer, because it has depended in large part on rapidly increasing hours of work as theunemployment rate dropped from 10 percent in late 2009 to 4.9 percent now. With unemployment at close to its minimum feasible, or "natural," rate, further economic growth will be limited by a shortage of skilled workers.

People waiting in line at a job fair in 2014. CreditShannon Stapleton/Reuters

Presidential candidates who promise faster growth will have to face up to the labor-force constraint. In the 1970s and 1980s, millions of women entered the labor force. Since the mid-1990s, however, female participation has leveled off, and baby boomers are retiring. This labor-force reversal by itself shaves about one percentage point from the growth that is realistic over the next decade compared with the last quarter of the 20th century.

Any economic growth beyond the limited increase in workers will depend on the expansion of output per hour, known as labor productivity. But that, too, has also slowed. From 1995 to 2004, productivity per hour grew at 3.1 percent each year, but at only 1.3 percent since 2004, and an even slower 0.5 percent over the past six years.

Why the decline in productivity?

Rapid productivity growth in the dot-com era of the late 1990s originated in computer manufacturing — information and communication technology equipment — but this manufacturing has vanished since almost all suchequipment is now imported.

This effect of that new technology was another important source of growth. Out went typewriters and calculating machines, replaced by personal computers, spreadsheet and word-processing software, web browsers and e-commerce. Productivity also boomed in retailing, as Walmart and other "big box" stores revolutionized retail selection, layout and supply chain management.

But by 2004, the digital revolution had achieved most of its transition in business methods. Not much has changed in offices and at retail stores since then.

Slow productivity growth feeds directly into voter discontent by limiting wage increases. But as slow as productivity growth has been, wages have risen even less. In fact, real inflation-adjusted median wages have risen more slowly than productivity for most of the past 40 years. There are several reasons for this: Corporate profits have increased their share of the total pie at the expense of a lower share for employee compensation; the rising cost of medical care means that health insurance coverage is taking a bigger bite out of paychecks; and most important, rising inequality has siphoned off much of the extra income produced by productivity gains into the pockets of the top 1 percent.

Voter unease reflects more than the impact of wage stagnation. Globalization and automation have hollowed out manufacturing, eliminating millions of middle-income blue-collar jobs. Roughly six million workers who want full-time jobs hold part-time positions that lack employer-paid medical insurance and force them to juggle irregular schedules. An "atomization" of the workplace has led to the increased use of temporary and on-call workers like Uber drivers and episodic forms of employment that don't offer traditional benefits. Medical insurance with high deductibles and co-payments threatens families with unpredictable financial setbacks in case of a medical emergency.

Furthermore, over the past generation, defined-benefit retirement plans paying a pension have been replaced by defined-contribution plans. These subject retirement savings to the vagaries of the stock market, and many people in their 40s and 50s have not yet recovered the level of real stock market or home equity wealth they had before the Great Recession. With the decline of marriage, there are fewer two-earner families. Young people are emerging from college with a debt burden that in many cases causes them to live with their parents delaying household formation, marriage and children.

Unfortunately for the candidates and the country's prospects, the depth and breadth of these problems go beyond the reach of policies that might nudge the economy's overall output growth rate up by a few tenths of a percentage point. The slow pace of growth has also squeezed tax revenues, restricting the scope of potential government programs.

Policy changes can help: Imposing higher taxes on the superrich and eliminating tax loopholes and deductions that primarily benefit higher-income taxpayers would make some headway both against rising inequality and flagging tax revenue. Minimum wage increases directly attack inequality, because the wage boost to those who retain their low-income jobs substantially exceeds the extent of any resulting job losses.

The tax revenues from a superrich tax surcharge and from loophole-busting tax reform would provide the funds for a huge program of investment following the example of the Interstate Highway System, which is generally regarded as a prime source of robust productivity growth in the 1960s. Mrs. Clinton's proposals thus far include substantial infrastructure spending, and this is an area, along with tax reform, where she has the potential to gain bipartisan approval.

Breaking with most Republicans, Mr. Trump has also recently signaled an openness to a robust infrastructure-spending package.

Yet there are limits to individual policies. A better direction is to follow other nations like Canada, Australia and the Nordic countries. In those countries, insecurity is less acute because government institutions are more robust. Americans look abroad and wonder why we cannot enjoy the benefits of single-payer medical care, paid parental leave, lower-cost college education and uniform income-contingent college debt repayment.

John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

The Winners and Losers Radio Show

7-9 AM Weekdays, WSHC-Listen Live, Shepherd University

Check out Socialist Economics.

China's economy growing 5 times as fast as US' [feedly]

----
China's economy growing 5 times as fast as US'
// Socialist Economic Bulletin

By John Ross

During the last year some international financial media, with Bloomberg playing a particularly active role, attempted to present a picture of the world economy that the U.S. is growing strongly while the rest of the world, including China, is relatively weak. Publication of new U.S. GDP data confirms the truth is the exact opposite: The U.S. economy has slowed drastically with China growing far more rapidly than the U.S. Indeed, the U.S. in the last year has grown more slowly even than the EU.

Total GDP growth

The wise Chinese dictum says "seek truth from facts." To establish the facts regarding the global economy, Figure 1 therefore shows the last year's growth, up to the latest available data, in the three largest centers of the world economy - the U.S., China and the EU. The pattern is unequivocal. In the year to the 2nd quarter of 2016 China's economy grew by 6.7 percent, the EU by 1.8 percent and the U.S. by 1.2 percent. The U.S. is therefore the most slowly growing major part of the world economy. Making a bilateral comparison, China's economy grew more than five times as fast as the U.S.' during the last year.

These three major economic centers together account for 61 percent of the world's GDP at market exchange rates. No other economies have remotely the same impact on the global economy. Therefore, there is no doubt that in the last year it is the U.S. which has been the biggest drag on the world economy.

Figure 1

Per capita GDP growth

The situation in terms of per capita GDP growth shows an even more dramatic advantage for China. Population growth in China and the U.S. is rather stable - at 0.5 percent a year in China and 0.8 percent in the U.S. China's and America's per capita GDP growth in the year to the 2nd quarter of 2016 is therefore easily calculated - 6.2 percent in China and 0.4 percent in the U.S.

An element of uncertainty, however, exists regarding the EU's population due to the refugee influx. Two estimates for the EU population are therefore used for calculation. One ("EU low population") assumes there has been an influx of 1 million refugees over and above the EU's 2015 0.3 percent population growth. The second ("EU high population") assumes a refugee influx of 2 million.

These assumptions regarding the EU population naturally affect its own per capita GDP growth rate - producing rates of increase of per capita GDP of 1.4 percent or 1.2 percent depending on which population assumption is made. But either assumption confirms the EU's superior per capita growth rate compared with the U.S. - in either case the EU's per capita GDP growth rate is much higher than the 0.4 percent in the U.S.

It is also clear that U.S. per capita GDP growth, at only 0.4 percent, was extremely stagnant. During the last year, EU per capita growth was approximately three times as fast as the U.S. But China's per capita GDP growth entirely outperformed both. China's per capita GDP growth was more than 14 times as fast as the U.S.!

Figure 2

U.S. economic deceleration

It may be argued against these factual trends that future revisions to the U.S. may raise its estimated growth rate. This is a factual question which requires watching future data releases - it is also possible future data will revise U.S. growth downwards. U.S. GDP growth is sufficiently close to the EU's, with a 0.6 percent gap, that is not impossible that U.S. GDP growth will be seen to be faster than the EU - although of course U.S. GDP growth will remain far slower than China. However, it may easily be demonstrated that huge revisions of the U.S. data would be required to alter the pattern that it is the U.S. economic slowing which has been the main cause of the downward trend in world economic growth.

To demonstrate this, Figure 3 shows year on year growth in China, the EU and U.S. for successive quarters since the beginning of 2015. The changes over that period are clear. The EU has maintained relatively consistent GDP growth of 1.8 percent. China's GDP has slowed slightly from 7.0 percent to 6.7 percent. U.S. GDP growth however fell sharply from 3.3 percent to 1.2 percent.

Compared to the beginning of 2015, EU GDP growth has not fallen at all, China's declined by a mild 0.3 percent but the U.S. decelerated by 2.1 percent. By far the most severe slowdown in the world economy has therefore been in the U.S. Only huge, and therefore highly implausible, revisions in U.S. data would be required to alter this pattern.

Figure 3

Conclusion

What therefore is the conclusion of the examination of the actual factual trends in the world economy?

· China continues to be by far the most rapidly growing of the major international economic centers. China's total GDP in the last year grew over five times as fast as the U.S., and China's per capita GDP growth was over 14 times as fast as the U.S.

· The chief cause of the slowing of the world economy in the last year is the slowdown in the U.S.

· The EU and above all China have outgrown the U.S. in terms of total GDP increase.

· U.S. per capita GDP growth, 0.4 percent on the latest data, is extremely slow.

· During the last year China and the EU have undergone either no or only mild economic slowdown while the U.S. has suffered a severe economic deceleration.

The factual situation of the world economy is therefore that not only has China been growing far more rapidly than the U.S. but even the EU has been growing more rapidly than the U.S.

Gross inaccuracy in international financial media regarding China is not unusual - they have, of course, been regularly predicting the "collapse of China" and a "China hard landing" for several decades. But the picture presented that the pattern of growth of the global economy has been strong growth in the U.S. and weak growth in China is therefore entirely false - it was the U.S. which showed to the weakest growth. Titles from Bloomberg this year such as "Fed Leaves China Only Tough Choices," "Why China's Economy Will Be So Hard to Fix," and "Soros Says China's Hard Landing Will Deepen the Rout in Stocks," coupled with claims of the strong performance of the U.S. economy, are shown by the data to be simply inaccurate.

But international and Chinese companies, as well as the Chinese authorities, require strictly objective information - not claims which are the opposite of the facts. Perhaps the wise Chinese dictum should be modified to read "seek truth from facts - not from Bloomberg."

The above article is reprinted from China.org.cn
----

Shared via my feedly newsfeed

Monday, August 8, 2016

Jared Bernstein: Size of gov’t and growth–not what you’d expect (if you expect a negative correlation) [feedly]

Size of gov't and growth–not what you'd expect (if you expect a negative correlation)

Jared Bernstein

http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/size-of-govt-and-growth-not-what-youd-expect-if-you-expect-a-negative-correlation/

I'm willing to accept that, at least for now, I've got an illness that causes me to see everything through the lens of the presidential election. However, much in the way some bacteria protect you from getting sick, in this case my illness is arguably useful in clarifying a seriously erroneous point that conservatives constantly tout despite much evidence to the contrary.

Let me telegraph the punchline: While overall growth has slowed in the United States in recent decades, it has also slowed in most other advanced economies. And governments in these economies have very different policy footprints, including taxes, social policy, and where they draw the line between the public and private sectors. This suggests there's little in the way of correlation between the size of government and growth. So, when you hear the conservative mantras about "job-killing taxes" and "government spending that's killing growth," often with President Obama's name sprinkled in there somewhere, be aware that it's an ideological, not an empirical, claim.

We begin with a figure from Saturday in the New York Times, showing slowing real per-capita GDP growth across these advanced economies: the United States, the euro area and Japan (the figure shows annualized 10-year average growth rates).

Source: New York Times

Most people's first question upon looking at such a figure is "Why?!" That's a good question (and the subject of the article; see link above) about which I'll say a word or two later. But the point here is that it's happening in the United States, where government spending is below average; in Japan, where it's a few percentage points of GDP higher; and in the euro area, where it's considerably higher.

An important new book, "How big should our government be?," goes deep into this question of government footprint and growth. The figure on the left below plots real GDP growth (per capita, which is the right way to do this), against the change in tax revenue as a share of GDP. The "growing-tax-burden-kills-growth" mantra predicts a negative slope. The actual slope, as you see, is positive.

Source: "How big should our government be," Bakija et al.

The figure on the right, tax revenue as a share of GDP, shows how low we are relative to these other countries, some of which do better than we do on growth per capita. The authors of the book, using data on 12 advanced economies starting all the way back in 1870, conclude:

"In the century and a half since then, government expenditures as a share of GDP have risen sharply in these countries. Yet they didn't experience a slowdown in their longrun economic growth rates. The fact that economic growth has been so stable over this lengthy period, despite huge increases in the size of government, suggests that government size probably has had little or no impact on growth."

Their measured conclusion is warranted. That positive slope in the figure on the left above could easily be a function of reverse causality: As economies grow, their citizens demand more from them. So we're in the realm of correlations here, not causation. But the conclusion holds: Claims that more government crushes growth are simply not supported by the data.

Once reason that's true, and this bit is clearly causal, is that government investments in public goods such as public infrastructure, human capital and poverty prevention have long been found to be pro-growth. By definition, the private sector will underinvest in such goods because they can't easily profit from them.

Getting back to the first figure above (which shows long-term slower growth rates at times of slack in the economy), such investments can also play a key stimulative roll, replacing inadequate investment and labor demand that's not forthcoming from the private sector. While the figure above is obviously telling a long-term story, I'd suggest that the lack of such public investments, recently sacrificed at the altar of budget austerity, is one culprit.

This implies that, contrary to the claim that the size of government is the problem, smart government investment would be a solution right now (and, yes, there's also wasteful government investment; I'm not talking about "bridges to nowhere").

But my main point is that when you hear people make blatant references to "job-killing taxes and regulations," they're blowing smoke. Don't inhale, and quickly leave the area.

-- via my feedly newsfeed

Sunday, August 7, 2016

Marxism, Leninism and a new language of revolution (and evolution)

I recently witnessed a extended, actually recurring, dispute between two trends running simultaneously through several Left parties/orgs. I won't name them because it will only distract from an underlying thematic unity (or perhaps thematic discord) I hope to illuminate.

The left trends were roughly -- not neatly, but roughly -- divided between those favoring Bernie, or favoring Hillary in the Democratic presidential primary.

The ones that favored Hillary, like not a few African-American, Latino, labor and women voters, mainly did so out of insufficient knowledge about Bernie Sanders. To anyone who has been around the "Left" for long, there are a lot of loudmouthed, capable agitators, but not many with any actual governing experience or demonstrated legislative ability. So its not unnatural or perverse to expect many to withhold judgement in a campaign where the democratic and basic economic stakes are so high. Bernies numbers improved in all areas, but especially among youth, as people got to know him better. But skepticism remained that he was "too left" to be the effective leadership of the "anti-right" coalition, a concept also drenched in a long US Marxist theoretical history.

Some in this trend expected Sanders to do a Nader and split the anti-Trump vote. There are plenty of Left trends that would gladly do that; and some Sanders supporters who are nearly in mourning, shocked over Sanders endorsement of Clinton. But the latter was no surprise to anyone who knew or worked with Bernie Sanders over the years. Nor was the seriousness and tenacity of his campaign a surprise. Bernie runs to win, not make some loser statement or strike a pose. He understands governing. He understands majorities. And he has been utterly loyal to his working class base and values for his entire political career. But not everyone knew these things.

On the other hand there are those, thankfully dwindling in number, who, at the first sign of support for Clinton, start dragging out 100, or 150, year old phrases from Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, or from the catalog of "Marxism", or "Leninism", in rants against bourgeois political parties, compromises with IMperialism and Wall Street, and so-called "lesser-evilism". For these folks, the perfect is very often the enemy of the good. They adopt "principled" postures and then wash their hands of the contest between the Clinton Coalition and the Trump fascist excrescence, or damn her with faint praise while passing on garbage from the right wing lie machine, as if there was nothing really important at stake. Maybe not for them (there is a hint of privilege in that "posture") -- but the latter sentiment is not a working class unity perspective, strategy or tactic.

Soon a debate of contrasting phrases and concepts that stretch over the length of socialist history in the United States and the world for a century and a half are trotted out again and again to bolster one tendency or another. Should we look in Lenin's State and Revolution, or Left wing Communism? Should we consult Marx's The Manifesto, or the debate with utopian socialism in the Gotha Program? I know of only one participant in all the recent debates along these themes, on several socialist listservs, and webinars, that bothered to provide the ACTUAL HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXT for his review of Lenin's concerns on how non-Russians might easily misunderstand Russian revolutionary politics and apply tactics, especially in the more advanced capitalist countries, in very dangerous and inappropriate ways. Providing that context took some time, and preparation -- because it relates circumstances that are light years away from listeners in 2016 in the US.

Was that presentation enlightening and useful? Yes. If you take the time to immerse yourself in the context, a study of Lenin and/or Marx will yield many rewards. But is there not a shorter, less conflicted and less remote, path to a set of values and objectives that can do what Bernie has done -- without dogma of any kind -- for working class unity in reversing austerity? The lions share of "Marxist" or "Leninist", phrase-making is without such foundations as provided by my learned friend.. And thus, on balance, the transition of a debate into "Marxist" terms, is often a transition toward confusion and further division, not clarity, politically. It is a vocabulary of disunity, in part because there is no credible way to attach the terms and concepts to immediate experience without a staggering measure of interpretation. Shared experience is the heartbeat of shared humanity, and the fountain of understanding.

Listening to the debates in "Marxist" vocabulary (I put the term in quotes to suggest a sharp distinction between the ism, and Marx), the entire example and meaning of Sanders historic campaign --- WHICH WAS DOGMA FREE -- and remained focused on higher wages, the 99% and equality, can be easily lost forever in an ensuing debate about what the "Leninist", or "Marxist" authoritative answer to the 2016 US Democratic primary might be.

The vocabulary of revolutionary and evolutionary struggles to raise and advance the interests of working people can and must be reframed in exclusively democratic terms, to be of use in uniting working class and all democratic forces to reverse austerity and bring globalization under broader, multipolar and democratic control. Most socialists actually picture socialism as a perfected democracy, with or without any capitalists still around, but a society in line with a "perfect union". Working on perfecting democracy gets all of us where we want to go.

So a new theory of democracy must also be advanced alongside these struggles. I have been reading and re-reading with great interest and pleasure the Schumpeterians (a student of Marx), and there is a lot of economic heterodox theory that is more useful than classical theory as the pace of technological change (and the economic and social and financial structure changes/cycles associated) increases.

While we see a lot of ideological work in social and economic sciences, the meaning of an "economic democracy" that can still grow to satisfy human wants is still very imprecise and far from comprehensive. This includes what mix of public and private works aligns best with a particular society, culture, geography. These questions are burning for longer range sustainable answers, but remain not well defined, despite being critically important to understand at every level of government, including ward or community leadership.

We need not just a political theory, but a list simple values, perhaps, indeed, commandments for leadership (which in a perfected democracy includes every citizen) that, if emboldened and made sacred by example, summarize the humanity of the democratic quest: simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, stewardship We will need warriors too, while imperfections remain to threaten, so we will have to add to the values of strength, sacrifice and solidarity with those who do the work of the world..

This point of this post is easy to summarize

To "Marxist" Sanders supporters: Be like Bernie: drop the dogma.

To "Marxist" Clinton supporters: Be like Bernie. drop the dogma.

John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

The Winners and Losers Radio Show

7-9 AM Weekdays, WSHC-Listen Live, Shepherd University

Check out Socialist Economics.

Half the Population lives in the shaded areas

John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

The Winners and Losers Radio Show

7-9 AM Weekdays, WSHC-Listen Live, Shepherd University

Check out Socialist Economics.

Re: [CCDS Members] Fareed Zakaria: The unbearable stench of trump

John Case writes:

Harry Frankfurt concludes that liars and truth-tellers are both acutely aware of facts and truths. They are just choosing to play on opposite sides of the same game to serve their own ends. The B.S. artist, however, has lost all connection with reality. He pays no attention to the truth. "By virtue of this," Frankfurt writes, "bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are."

A friend of mine was once an assistant DA in a California city. He was amazed at how cops would lie on the witness stand. He told me they had it perfected: Just lie about a few things and change everything.

So one could argue that an obvious bullshit artist is not worse than a devious liar. Especially when the deep state is on the devious liar's side.

Per Fagereng

From: John Case

Sent: Sunday, August 7, 2016 7:53 AM

To: Socialist Economics ; jcase4218.lightanddark@blogger.com ; CCDS-Members

Subject: [CCDS Members] Fareed Zakaria: The unbearable stench of trump

The unbearable stench of Trump's B.S.

Fareed Zakaria

A few days ago, I was asked on CNN to make sense of one more case in which Donald Trump had said something demonstrably false and then explained it away with a caustic tweet and an indignant interview. I repliedthat there was a pattern here and a term for a person who did this kind of thing: a "bullshit artist." I got cheers and boos for the comment from partisans on both sides, but I was not using that label casually. Trump is many things, some of them dark and dangerous, but at his core, he is a B.S. artist.

Harry Frankfurt, an eminent moral philosopher and former professor at Princeton, wrote a brilliant essay in 1986 called "On Bullshit." (Frankfurt himself wrote about Trump in this vein, as have Jeet Heer and Eldar Sarajlic.) In the essay, Frankfurt distinguishes crucially between lies and B.S.: "Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point. . . . In order to invent a lie at all, [the teller of a lie] must think he knows what is true."

But someone engaging in B.S., Frankfurt says, "is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all . . . except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says." Frankfurt writes that the B.S.-er's "focus is panoramic rather than particular" and that he has "more spacious opportunities for improvisation, color, and imaginative play. This is less a matter of craft than of art. Hence the familiar notion of the 'bullshit artist.' "

This has been Trump's mode all his life. He boasts — and boasts and boasts — about his business, his buildings, his books, his wives. Much of it is a concoction of hyperbole and falsehoods. And when he's found out, he's like that guy we have all met at a bar who makes wild claims but when confronted with the truth, quickly responds, "I knew that!"

Take, for instance, the most extraordinary example, his non-relationship with Vladimir Putin. In May 2014, addressing the National Press Club, Trump said, "I was in Russia, I was in Moscow recently and I spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not have been nicer." In November 2015, at a Fox Business debate, he said of Putin, "I got to know him very well because we were both on '60 Minutes.' "

Did Trump really believe that you could say something like that on live TV and no one would check? Did he think that no one would notice that the "60 Minutes" show consisted of two separate prerecorded interviews, with Putin in Moscow and Trump in New York? (By that logic, I have gotten to know Franklin Roosevelt very well because I have run some clips of him on my television show.)

In fact, Trump was bullshitting. He sees himself as important, a global celebrity, the kind of man who should or could have met Putin. Why does it matter that they did not actually meet?

Or look at the issue that fueled his political rise, birtherism. Trump said in 2011 that he had sent investigators to Hawaii and that "they cannot believe what they're finding." For weeks, he continued to imply that there were huge findings to be released. He hinted to George Stephanopoulos, "We're going to see what happens." That was five years ago, in April 2011. Nothing happened.

In fact, it appears highly unlikely that Trump ever sent any investigators to Hawaii. In 2011, Salon asked Trump attorney Michael Cohen for details about the investigators. Cohen said that it was all very secret, naturally. Trump has said the same about his plan to defeat the Islamic State, which he can't reveal. He has boasted that he has a strategy to win solidly Democratic states this fall, but he won't reveal which ones. (Even by Trump's standards, this one is a head-scratcher. Won't we notice when he campaigns in these places? Or will it be so secret that even the voters won't know?) Of course, these are not secret strategies. It's just B.S.

We see the consequences. As the crazy talk continues, standard rules of fact, truth and reality have disappeared in this campaign. Donald Trump has piled such vast quantities of his trademark product into the political arena that the stench is now overwhelming and unbearable.

John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

The Winners and Losers Radio Show

7-9 AM Weekdays, WSHC-Listen Live, Shepherd University

Check out Socialist Economics.

_______________________________________________
CCDS Members mailing list

CCDS website: http://www.cc-ds.org

CCDS welcomes and encourages the full participation of our members in
this list serve. It is intended for discussion of issues of concern to
our organization and its members, for building our community, for
respectfully expressing our different points of view, all in keeping
with our commitment to building a democratic and socialist society. To
those ends, free and honest discussion of issues and ideas is
encouraged. However, personal attacks on named individuals, carrying on
old vendettas, excessive posts and, especially, statements that are
racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-semitic and/or anti-working class are not
appropriate.

Repeated failure to respect those principles of discussion
may result in exclusion from the list.
Please respect each other and our organization.

Any member of the list who objects to a posting on the list or the
behavior of a particular member should send email describing his or her
concerns to members-owner@lists.cc-ds.org

Post: Members@lists.cc-ds.org
List info and archives: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/members
To Unsubscribe, send email to:
Members-unsubscribe@lists.cc-ds.org
To Unsubscribe, change your email address, your password or your preferences:
visit: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/options/members/phantom%40hevanet.com

You are subscribed as: phantom@hevanet.com