Why Explaining Internal Strife in the United States through “Russian influence” is Lazy and Unhelpful [feedly]

Why Explaining Internal Strife in the United States through "Russian influence" is Lazy and Unhelpful
http://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/21/08/2017/why-explaining-internal-strife-united-states-through-%E2%80%9Crussian-influence%E2%80%9D-lazy-and-un

When you find yourself doing the same thing Putin and his propaganda machine does, you're doing something wrong.

On 11-12 August, violent clashes erupted between the far-right Unite the Right movement and anti-fascist counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. One woman died when an alleged neo-Nazi sympathizer rammed a car into a crowd of counter-protesters. There were numerous injuries and a major national crisis erupted in the United States resulting from and inspired by the rapid rise of white nationalist, neo-Nazi and other similar sentiments far to the right of the political spectrum.

As it often happens these days, numerous people on Twitter immediately jumped in, pitching the so-called "hot takes" — rapid, hastily weaved together series of tweets with often outlandish theories of what really happened. These instant experts, who have come to prominence in the wake of the Trump presidency, have carved out a niche for themselves by taking the most tangential or non-existent connection to anything Russian and "connecting the dots" or "just asking questions". The most egregious example is Louise Mensch, a former UK conservative pundit (and sometime MP) now residing in the US. Mensch is the most extreme example of a Twitter-age conspiracy-mongering populist. But there are other people, with more credible credentials, who are also prone to demanding that "ties with Russia" (via individuals, events and institutions) be investigated.

Immediately following the events in Charlottesville, the writer and consultant Molly McKew and Jim Ludes of the Pell Center, among others, chimed in with their "hot takes", repeating each other almost word for word: "We need to closely examine the links between the American alt-right and Russia." These particular expressions ("links between X and Russia", "ties with Russia", "Russian connections" or "close to Putin/Russian government") are, essentially, weasel words, expressions so elastic that they could mean anything — from actively collaborating with senior Russian officials and secretly accepting large donations from to the vaguest, irrelevant connections mentioned simply for the sake of name-dropping Russia in an attempt to farm for more clicks.

Almost every person of Russian origin involved in the Trump drama is "Putin-connected", although in Russia that definition only applies to a tiny power circle of trusted aides and advisors, a select group of oligarchs running state-owned enterprises and close personal friends from before Putin's presidency. The exaggerated tone of reporting often suggests something more far-reaching, coordinated and sinister than a loose collection of unconnected factoids.

So, what do "links between the American alt-right and Russia" actually mean? Much of the allegations of American alt-right's "collusion" with Putin's regime rely on the fact that Richard Spencer, a divisive figure in this already quite loose movement, was once married to a woman of Russian origin, Nina Kupriyanova. Their current marital status is unclear and, frankly, irrelevant. Kupriyanova, a scholar of Russian and Soviet history with a PhD from the University of Toronto, is also a follower of Alexander Dugin, a larger-than-life figure in contemporary Russian media and politics. Because of Dugin's outsized presence in the western media where he is often, and quite erroneously, presented as "Putin's mastermind" or "Putin's Bannon", this connection is often enough to be declared the smoking gun in the crowdsourced investigation.

Dugin has been many things to many people over his decades-long, zig-zagging career as an underground occult practitioner in the Soviet years: philosopher, lecturer, one of the founding fathers of a radical movement, public intellectual, flamboyant media personality. But he is not a "Putin advisor" and never has been. Although Dugin is a vocal fan of the Russian president, has repeatedly professed his loyalty to Putin and has orbited the halls of Russian power for more than a decade, he hasn't accumulated enough influence to even keep a stable job.

In 2014, Dugin was fired from his position as a guest lecturer at the department of sociology of Moscow State University. Students and academic staff had complained for years about the "anti-scientific, obscurantist" atmosphere Dugin had created within the department (one petition filed by the students mentions Dugin "performing extrasensory experiments" on them during lectures). But the final straw was Dugin's interview where he agitated to "kill, kill, kill" Ukrainians in June 2014 — the early stages of Russia's war campaign in Ukraine. Both Dugin and his patron, the dean of the sociology department, were promptly fired after a major media scandal.

Later, Dugin was quite unceremoniously removed from his position as a host on Tsargrad TV — a right-wing, reactionary private network funded by "Orthodox oligarch" Konstantin Malofeyev and launched with the help of a former Fox News executive. All mentions of Dugin's show on Tsargrad simply disappeared from the network's website.

Although Richard Spencer's own writings for his Radix Journal do have visible Dugin inspirations, it's inconceivable that Dugin has any significant influence on the American right. His teachings are just too eclectic, esoteric and over-intellectualised for an average American neo-Nazi who just wants to see more white faces around him. In fact, Dugin's overarching idea of "Eurasianism" goes against the grain of "keeping America white and ethnically pure": at its core is an obscure early 20th century Orientalist school of thought which accentuated Russia's civilisational continuity with Mongolian and Turkic ancestors, as opposed to the spiritually alien West.

Russia's conservatives of all shades of right have indeed been long cultivating links with their brethren to the west of Moscow — well before Putin appeared on the scene. These have been well documented by scholars of the far right such as Anton Shekhovtsov. After Putin's onslaught in Ukraine, Russia, in dire need of new allies, intensified efforts to strengthen those links.

A trove of leaked emails released by the hacker group Shaltai Boltai ("Humpty Dumpty") in December 2014 did indeed uncover a sinister plot to place Russia in the centre of a wide-ranging alliance of right-wing, far-right, pro-life, pro-"family-values", hardcore Christian and other similar organisations in Europe and both Americas. But there's little evidence that anything resembling the coveted "Black International" ever came to fruition. Only temporary, tactical alliances have been more or less successful, aimed at promoting shared common interests — such as Italy's pro-Kremlin Lega Nord party lobbying for lifting EU's sanctions against Russia — or values.

In the latter case, the dynamic is reversed: it's not Russia influencing the West and exporting its values, but vice versa. It's Russia's parliamentary ultra-conservatives like Yelena Mizulina (now a senator) who have been inspired and supported by the American religious right.

Russia's last public attempt to unite the European and American far-right ended in a major media scandal in early 2015 when the "International Russian Conservative Forum" in Saint Petersburg was widely criticised in the press. The forum's Russian official supporters from the "traditionalist" Rodina (Motherland) party allied with the ruling United Russia were forced to withdraw their endorsement, and no further attempts to organise the forum have been made. Propaganda outlets like RT are quietly shedding commentators with far-right sympathies like Manuel Ochsenreiter or Richard Spencer mentioned above in an attempt to cleanse their image as a safe haven for Holocaust deniers and white power enthusiasts. Only a couple of days after Charlottesville, Russian authorities banned The Daily Stormer, a virulently anti-Semitic "alt-right" website, which had temporarily sought refuge on Russian web space after having been refused service in the US.

There is little to no evidence that any of the above had anything to do with the tragic events in Charlottesville. The resurgence of murderous, hateful ideologies in the United States is a home-grown issue. Young men with identical haircuts and matching, uniform-like attires chanting "Blood and soil!" in the streets of American cities are inspired and influenced by many things, but a bearded Russian mystic is hardly one of them. Attempting to explain internal strife in your country by "Russian influences", hastily put together disjointed and exaggerated phenomena, is intellectually lazy. It distracts from getting to the root of the problem by offering quick, easy answers to complicated questions.

Ironically, it's also a very Putin thing to do. Explaining Russia's internal issues by blaming the West's machinations is the Russian president's shtick. When you find yourself doing the same thing Putin and his propaganda machine does, you're doing it wrong.

 

 

Alexey Kovalev is an independent journalist living and working in Moscow. Follow him on Twitter: @Alexey__Kovalev. This post first appeared on:

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Vast number of Americans live paycheck to paycheck

By AIMEE PICCHI MONEYWATCH August 24, 2017, 12:01 AM

Last Updated Aug 24, 2017 1:46 PM EDT

With unemployment in the U.S. at its lowest level in 16 years, experts are prone to talk about the economy as if it has fully recovered from the housing crash. But other measures of how Americans are doing reveal a darker picture.

Almost 8 out of 10 American workers say they live paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet, according to a new survey from CareerBuilder. That can force people to take on debt or otherwise struggle when an unexpected bill arises. It also raises questions about the stability of the broader economy given that consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of activity. 

The survey highlights a troubling trend in household finances: More than eight years since the end of the recession, the share of Americans who are living on the financial edge is growing, said Mike Erwin, a spokesman for CareerBuilder. While some may want to blame Americans' spendthrift ways, Erwin pointed to two trends that continue to put financial stress on households: stagnant wages and the rising cost of everything from education to many consumer goods. 

"Living paycheck to paycheck is the new way of life for U.S. workers," he said. "It's not just one salary range. It's pretty much across the board, and it's trending in the wrong direction."

A year ago, about 75 percent of U.S. workers said they were living from payday to payday, a number that has grown to 78 percent this year. The study, conducted by Harris Poll, surveyed nearly 2,400 hiring and human resource managers and 3,500 adult employees who worked full-time in May and June. 

With the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting about 122 million full-time workers, the poll suggests 95 million of those adults could be living paycheck to paycheck. Through July, average hourly earnings were up 2.5 percent, according to labor data -- that's still below the 3 percent to 4 percent gains seen before the recession. 

Inflation stood at 1.7 percent last month. That means workers' "real" wages were running only slightly ahead of inflation, another obstacle to putting money away.  

Not only less affluent people are struggling. Almost one of 10 workers who earn more than six figures annually said they are living paycheck to paycheck, according to CareerBuilder. That may seem surprising, but families who live in regions with a high cost of living may feel almost as strapped as lower-income households. 

Play VIDEO

These American workers haven't seen a raise in 16 years

The findings add to research about the fragile state of household finances. When the Pew Charitable Trusts recently asked Americans whether they'd rather have more income or economic stability, 9 of 10 chose stability. 

Weak wage growth is partly to blame for the financial stress felt by many Americans. Median household income is still stuck in low gear, with the U.S. Census reporting only one year of income gains since 2007, the year the recession officially started. 

The end result: American households are still earning 2.4 percent below what they brought home at their income peaks in 1999. At the same time, expenses for food, fuel, education, housing and other costs have risen. 

"Jobs have come back, but we haven't seen salaries rebound," Erwin said. "Right now we are in a time when the cost of living is way outpacing the amount of money that people are getting through raises."

Meanwhle, the labor market is increasingly rewarding workers with higher levels of education and skills, which is borne out in CareerBuilder's survey and other recent research. 

About 40 percent of adults with a high school degree or less said they are scrambling to keep afloat, or more than twice the number of Americans with at least a college degree, according to the Federal Reserve. CareerBuilder found that about half of workers who earn less than $50,000 per year are always living paycheck-to-paycheck, compared with 28 percent of those earning between $50,000 to $100,000. 

Aside from the insecurity of living without a financial cushion, the phenomenon has another downside: It hampers Americans' ability to save for retirement, CareerBuilder noted. About 18 percent of workers said they cut back on their 401k contributions or personal savings in the last year, and more than one-third don't put away money for retirement, the survey found. 

"That should concern a lot of people," Erwin said. "If you don't put money away now, you will rely more on government programs" in retirement. 

Personal responsibility does play a role in Americans' financial problems, with the survey finding that only a third of workers stick to a budget. Asked what spending items they wouldn't give up, more than half said they'd never cut back on their internet connection or mobile devices. 

That might seem like an extravagance to some, yet the truth is many Americans can't work effectively without internet service at home or a smartphone, with employers increasingly expecting workers to check their email while they're out of the office or be available for a call. 

"We need all of those things," Erwin noted. Yet there are ways to pare spending on those essentials, such as renegotiating contracts with mobile carriers. 

He added, "Everything is negotiable."

© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

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John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

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How the Humble Potato fuelled the Rise of Liberal Capitalism [feedly]

How the Humble Potato fuelled the Rise of Liberal Capitalism
http://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/24/08/2017/how-humble-potato-fuelled-rise-liberal-capitalism

What we eat matters to us – but we're not sure whether it ought to matter to anyone else. We generally insist that our diets are our business and resent being told to eat more fruit, consume less alcohol and generally pull our socks up when it comes to dinner.

The efforts in 2012-13 by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to ban the sale of extra large soft drinks failed precisely because critics viewed it as an intrusion into the individual's right to make their own dietary choices. "New Yorkers need a mayor, not a nanny," shouted a full-page advert in the New York Times. And when a school near Rotherham in northern England eliminated Turkey Twizzlers and fizzy drinks from its canteen, outraged mothers rose in protest, insisting that their children had the right to eat unhealthy food.

At the same time, many Britons are troubled by reports that as a nation their fondness for sugar and disdain for exercise will eventually bankrupt the NHS; there is considerable support for the idea that very overweight people should be required to lose weight before being treated. We agree that our poor dietary choices affect everyone, but at the same time we're certain that we have a right to eat what we want.

The story about how we started to think this way about food is closely linked to the rise of the potato as a national starch. Britain's love for the potato is bound up with notions of the utilitarian value of a good diet and how a healthy citizenry is the engine room of a strong economy. To find out more about that, we need to go back to the 18th century.

Enlightened eating

Today's somewhat uneasy marriage of public health and individual choice is the result of new ideas that emerged during the Enlightenment. During the 18th century, states across Europe began to rethink the bases of national wealth and strength. At the heart of these new ideas was a new appreciation of what we would now call public health. Whereas in earlier centuries rulers wished to prevent famines that might cause public unrest, in the 18th century, politicians became increasingly convinced that national strength and economic prowess required more than an obedient population disinclined to riot.

They believed it required a healthy, vigorous, energetic workforce of soldiers and labourers. This alone would ensure the success of industry. "The true foundations of riches and power," affirmed 18th-century philanthropist Jonas Hanway, "is the number of working poor." For this reason, he concluded:

… every rational proposal for the augmentation of them merits our regard. The number of the people is confessedly the national stock: the estate, which has no body to work it, is so far good for nothing; and the same rule extends to a whole country or nation.

"There is not a single politician," agreed the Spanish thinker Joaquin Xavier de Uriz, writing in 1801, "who does not accept the clear fact that the greatest possible number of law-abiding and hard-working men constitutes the happiness, strength and wealth of any state". Statesmen and public-spirited individuals therefore devoted attention to building this healthy population. It was the productivity puzzle of the 18th century.

Clearly, to do this required an ample supply of nourishing, healthy food. There was a growing consensus across Europe that much of the population was crippling itself with poorly chosen eating habits. For instance, the renowned Scottish physician William Buchan argued this in his 1797 book Observations Concerning the Diet of the Common People. Buchan believed that most "common people" ate too much meat and white bread, and drank too much beer. They did not eat enough vegetables. The inevitable result, he stated, was ill health, with diseases such as scurvy wreaking havoc in the bodies of working men, women and children. This, in turn, undermined British trade and weakened the nation.

Feeble soldiers did not provide a reliable bulwark against attack, and sickly workers did not enable flourishing commerce. Philosophers, political economists, doctors, bureaucrats and others began to insist that strong, secure states were inconceivable without significant changes in the dietary practices of the population as a whole. But how to ensure that people were well-nourished? What sorts of food would provide a better nutritional base than beer and white bread? Buchan encouraged a diet based largely on whole grains and root vegetables – which he insisted were not only cheaper than the alternatives, but infinitely more healthful.

He was particularly enthusiastic about potatoes. "What a treasure is a milch cow and a potatoe garden, to a poor man with a large family!" he exclaimed. The potato provided ideal nourishment. "Some of the stoutest men we know, are brought up on milk and potatoes," he reported. Buchan maintained that once people understood the advantages they would personally derive from a potato diet, they would happily, of their own free will, embrace the potato.

The benefits would accrue both to the individual workers and their families, whose healthy bodies would be full of vigour, and to the state and economy overall. Everyone would win. Simply enabling everyone to pursue their own self-interest would lead to a better-functioning body politic and a more productive economy.

The marvellous spud

Buchan was one of a vast number of 18th-century potato enthusiasts. Local clubs in Finland sponsored competitions aimed at encouraging peasants to grow more potatoes, Spanish newspapers explained how to boil potatoes in the Irish fashion, Italian doctors penned entire treatises on the "marvellous potato" and monarchs across Europe issued edicts encouraging everyone to grow and eat more potatoes.

In 1794, the Tuileries Gardens in Paris were dug up and turned into a potato plot. The point is that there were an awful lot of public-spirited individuals in the 18th century who were convinced that well-being and happiness, both personal and public, could be found in the humble potato.

These potato-fanciers never suggested, however, the people should be obliged to eat potatoes. Rather, they explained, patiently, in pamphlets, public lectures, sermons and advertisements, that potatoes were a nourishing, healthy food that you, personally, would eat with enjoyment. There was no need to sacrifice one's own well-being in order to ensure the well-being of the nation as a whole, since potatoes were perfectly delicious. Individual choice and public benefit were in perfect harmony. Potatoes were good for you, and they were good for the body politic.

This, of course, is more or less the approach we take to public health and healthy eating these days. We tend to favour exhortation – reduce fat! exercise more! – over outright intervention of the sort that has seen Mexico impose a 10% tax on sugary drinks, or indeed Bloomberg's soda ban.

Our hope is that public education campaigns will help people choose to eat more healthily. No one is protesting against Public Health England's Eatwell Guide, which provides advice on healthy eating, because it's useful and we're perfectly free to ignore it. Our hope is that everyone, of their own free will, will choose to adopt a more healthy diet, and that this confluence of individual good choices will lead to a stronger and more healthy nation overall. But our modern belief that a confluence of individual self-interested choices will lead to a stronger and more healthy nation originated in the new, 18th-century ideas reflected in the works of Buchan and others.

It is no coincidence that this faith in a wonderful confluence of individual choice and public good emerged at exactly the moment the tenets of modern classical economics were being developed. As Adam Smith famously argued, a well-functioning economy was the result of everyone being allowed to pursue their own self-interest. He wrote in 1776:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

The result of each person pursuing their own interest was a well-functioning economic system. As he asserted in his Theory Of Moral Sentiments:

Every individual … neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it … he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

Strong men and beautiful women

The best way to ensure a strong national economy, in the view of classical economists such as Adam Smith, is to let each person look after their own well-being. The worst thing the state could do was to try to intervene in the market. Interventions in the food market were seen as particularly pernicious, and likely to provoke the very shortages that they aimed to prevent. This rather novel idea began to be expressed in the early 18th century and became increasingly common as the Enlightenment progressed. As we know, faith in the free market has now become a cornerstone of modern capitalism. These ideas have profoundly shaped our world.

It was perhaps inevitable that Adam Smith should particularly recommend potatoes. His idea of the free market was premised on the conviction that national wealth was possible only when people were happy and pursued their own self-interest. Happiness and comfort, in turn, required a plentiful supply of pleasant and nutritious food – and this is what potatoes offered, in Smith's view. Not only was the potato far more productive than wheat – Smith calculated this carefully – but it was also incredibly nourishing. As he noted, "the strongest men and the most beautiful women" in Britain lived on potatoes. "No food can afford a more decisive proof of its nourishing quality, or of its being peculiarly suitable to the health of the human constitution," he concluded.

Smith linked the personal benefits individuals would derive from a greater consumption of potatoes to a greater flourishing of the economy. If planted with potatoes, agricultural land would support a larger population, and "the labourers being generally fed with potatoes" would produce a greater surplus, to the benefit of themselves, landlords and the overall economy. In Smith's vision, as in that of William Buchan and countless other potato advocates, if individuals chose to eat more potatoes, the benefits would accrue to everyone. Better input of potatoes would result in better economic outputs.

In keeping with the individualism that underpinned Smith's model of political economy, he did not recommend that people be obliged to grow and eat potatoes. His emphasis rather was on the natural confluence of individual and national interest. Indeed, potential tensions between personal and public interest were addressed directly by 18th-century potato enthusiasts, concerned precisely to see off any suggestion that they were subordinating individual freedom to collective well-being.

John Sinclair, president of the British Board of Agriculture in the 1790s, observed that some people might imagine farmers should be left to make their own decisions about whether to grow more potatoes. He conceded that: "If the public were to dictate to the farmer how he was to cultivate his grounds", this might "be the source of infinite mischief".

Providing information to inform individual choice, "instead of being mischievous, must be attended with the happiest consequences". Advice and information, rather than legislation, indeed remain the preferred techniques for transforming national food systems for most policy makers. Nutritional guidelines, not soda bans.

The 18th century thus witnessed the birth of ideas that continue to be immensely influential today. The conviction that everyone pursuing their own economic and dietary interests would lead to an overall increase in the wealth and health of nations lies at the heart of the new, 18th-century model of thinking about the economy and the state.

Potato politics

It's this idea – that private gain can lead to public benefits – that underpins the 18th-century interest in the potato as an engine for national growth. It also explains why during the 20th century, states and educational institutions across Europe established official potato research institutes, funded scientific expeditions to the Andes aimed at discovering new, more productive varieties of potato, and generally promoted potato consumption.

The British Commonwealth Potato Collection, like the German Groß Lüsewitz Potato Collection, or the Russian N.I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry, are reminders of this longer history linking potatoes, personal eating habits, and national well-being.

These connections between potatoes, political economy and a strong state moreover explain the current Chinese government's obsession with potatoes. China is now the world's leading producer of potatoes, which arrived in China in the 17th century but which have long been viewed as a food of the poor, while rice remains the prestige starch. For some decades, the Chinese state has been working to increase potato consumption and since 2014 there has been a particularly big push. There has been a great deal of pro-potato propaganda as regards both the cultivation and the consumption of the tuber.

Just as was the case in 18th-century Europe, this new Chinese potato promotion is motivated by concerns about the broader needs of the state, but it is framed in terms of how individuals will benefit from eating more potatoes. State television programmes disseminate recipes and encourage public discussion about the tastiest ways of preparing potato dishes. Cookbooks don't just describe how potatoes can help China achieve food security – they also explain that they are delicious and can cure cancer.

As in the 18th century, in today's China the idea is that everyone – you, the state, the population as a whole – benefits from these healthy eating campaigns. If everyone pursued their own self-interest, potato advocates past and present have argued, everyone would eat more potatoes and the population as a whole would be healthier. These healthier people would be able to work harder, the economy would grow and the state would be stronger. Everyone would benefit, if only everyone just followed their own individual self-interest.

The 18th century saw the emergence of a new way of thinking about the nature of the wealth and strength of the nation. These new ideas emphasised the close links between the health and economic success of individuals, and the wealth and economic strength of the state. What people ate, just like what they accomplished in the world of work, has an impact on everyone else.

At the same time, this new commercial, capitalist model was premised fundamentally on the idea of choice. Individuals should be left to pursue their own interests, whether economic or dietary. If provided sufficient latitude to do this, the theory runs, people will in the end choose an outcome that benefits everyone.

A small history of the potato allows us to see the long-term continuities that unite political economy and individual diets into a broader liberal model of the state. It also helps explain the vogue for the potato in contemporary China, itself undergoing a significant reorientation towards a market economy.

The connections between everyday life, individualism and the state forged in the late 18th century continue to shape today's debates about how to balance personal dietary freedom with the health of the body politic. The seductive promise that, collectively and individually, we can somehow eat our way to health and economic well-being remains a powerful component of our neoliberal world.

 

 

Rebecca Earle, Professor of HIstory, University of Warwick. This post first appeared on:wsfeed

Media's Biased Reporting on China Serves Only the Rich and Powerful [feedly]

Media's Biased Reporting on China Serves Only the Rich and Powerful
http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/media-s-biased-reporting-on-china-serves-only-the-rich-and-powerful

Media's Biased Reporting on China Serves Only the Rich and Powerful

Dean Baker
The Hill, August 20, 2017

See article on original site

This month, a leading newspaper ran a column bashing China by two former U.S. intelligence officials. The piece claimed that the United States loses $600 billion a year due to "intellectual property theft" and that "China accounts for most of that loss."

This was striking for two reasons. First, the number is obviously absurd. Reputable news outlets usually make writers provide some backup for the numbers they use. That doesn't seem to have been the case here. Second, if the number were plausible, the implications for policy on intellectual property and inequality would be enormous.

Starting with the absurdity of the $600 billion figure, this is more than 25 percent of the value of all U.S. exports. It's more than one-third of all after-tax corporate profits in America. Does anyone really want to argue that corporate profits in the U.S. would be one third higher if companies were paid for intellectual property that was stolen from them?

While the piece gave no source, industry groups have produced such outlandish numbers in the past by assuming that all unauthorized versions of their product would sell at the retail price in the United States. This means that if the retail price of Windows and the Microsoft Office Suite is $100, and a hundred million unauthorized copies are in use in China, they would count this as $10 billion.

Or to take another example, the Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi has a list price in the U.S. of $84,000. A high quality generic version is available in India for $300. If a million people use the Indian generic, this would count this as $84 billion of stolen property. Of course, Microsoft and Gilead Sciences (the maker of Sovaldi) would never see anything like this revenue. If the users of the allegedly stolen intellectual property (the rules are not clear) had to pay the retail price in the United States, almost none of them would buy it.

This point should be pretty obvious to anyone with even the most basic understanding of economics, so how does such an absurd number find its way into a major newspaper? It's hard not to see a pretty serious class bias problem. While many major news outlets have run pieces ridiculing efforts to reduce the trade deficit in manufacturing jobs, they are prepared to push nonsense arguments to promote the interests of the pharmaceutical industry, the software industry and the entertainment industry in trade deals.

Needless to say, all the condescending arguments made against the people pushing for more balance in manufacturing trade would apply at least as strongly in the case of their intellectual property claims. Think of how much more money developing countries would have to spend on our cutting edge manufactured products if they didn't have to pay so much money to Microsoft for its software and Pfizer for its drugs?

We also keep hearing about integrated supply chains and how they make things so complicated. Well, if we could get cheaper solar panels from Chinese manufacturers who "steal" intellectual property from companies here (according to their claims), then there will be more jobs in the U.S. for people installing solar panels here. How about some condescending news stories explaining this to the whiners pushing for stronger intellectual property rules who are too dumb to understand the simple economics?

While the double standard at work here is striking, it is worth asking for a moment what it would mean if this absurd $600 billion figure was real. If our companies are losing $600 billion to stolen intellectual property each year, then the total value of patents and copyrights and related protections in the U.S. must be at least three or four times this amount. That would put it in the neighborhood of $1.8 trillion to $2.4 trillion.

This is roughly twice the annual wage income of the bottom 50 percent of workers. It is equal to the full amount of the upward redistribution to the richest one percent over the last four decades. In other words, this is a huge amount of money. If this figure is accurate, then where were all the debates over the steps taken in the last four decades to make patents, copyrights, and related protections longer and stronger?

These protections are supposed to boost growth by providing incentives for innovation and creative work. We know that they increase inequality, since no poor person is collecting royalties or licensing fees. Bill Gates collects a lot of money this way. If we think there is so much money at stake, we should have been debating whether patent and copyright protections were leading to gains in growth that warranted the resulting increase in inequality. We didn't.

Not highlighting the distributional aspects of our policy on intellectual property is an enormous failure of the media even using the real numbers. The failure would be of gargantuan proportions if the numbers the numbers that appeared in this column bashing China were real. The media's neglect in this area serves the interests of the rich and powerful. It is not responsible reporting.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Higher Ed Funding Down in Nearly Every State Over Past Decade [feedly]

Higher Ed Funding Down in Nearly Every State Over Past Decade
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/higher-ed-funding-down-in-nearly-every-state-over-past-decade

A decade since the Great Recession hit, state spending on public colleges and universities remains well below historic levels, despite recent increases, our major new report details.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

New Report Shows Cassidy-Graham Bill Would Deeply Cut Health Coverage Funding for West Virginia [feedly]

New Report Shows Cassidy-Graham Bill Would Deeply Cut Health Coverage Funding for West Virginia
http://www.wvpolicy.org/new-report-shows-cassidy-graham-bill-would-deeply-cut-health-coverage-funding-for-west-virginia/

For Immediate Release
Media Contact: Caitlin Cook, 304.720.8682

(Charleston, WV) – A new ACA repeal bill would cut West Virginia's federal funding for health coverage by $284 million by 2026, according to a report released today by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Congressional Republicans' efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have failed in recent months in large part because a vast majority of Americans oppose taking coverage from millions of people, raising costs for millions more, gutting Medicaid and undermining consumer protections.

This has opened the door to another path: a transparent, bipartisan effort to strengthen our health care system without taking people's coverage away or gutting Medicaid. The public supports this approach and bipartisan Senate hearings slated for September offer a first step forward.

Senators Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham are reportedly working with the White House to block this emerging, bipartisan path and instead revive the ACA repeal effort by pushing their own version of a repeal bill, the Cassidy-Graham proposal.

"Despite claims to the contrary, the Cassidy-Graham plan is just another ACA repeal bill and would have the same devastating effects on West Virginia as the previous, failed GOP repeal bills," said Sean O'Leary of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. "Like every other ACA repeal bill, it would take coverage from thousands of West Virginians and tens of millions nationwide."

The plan would eliminate the ACA Medicaid expansion, which covers 170,000 West Virginians. It would also eliminate tax credits that help 25,841 moderate-income West Virginians afford marketplace coverage and subsidies that help low-income West Virginians with out-of-pocket health costs like copays.

A far smaller block grant would replace both Medicaid expansion funding and marketplace subsidies, and the plan would also cap and deeply cut the rest of the Medicaid program just like previous Senate and House repeal bills. And, after 2026, the block grant would disappear entirely leaving West Virginians high and dry.

"The public, experts across the political spectrum, and groups representing patients, hospitals, physicians, seniors, people with disabilities and others have forcefully and repeatedly rejected this misguided approach, said O'Leary. "It's time to focus on bipartisan solutions that strengthen – rather than weaken — our health care system."

The West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy is a public policy research organization that is nonpartisan, nonprofit, and statewide. The Center focuses on how policy decisions affect all West Virginians, especially low- and moderate-income fam

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Simon Wren-Lews: Brexit remains an exercise in deception [feedly]

Simon Wren Lewis makes an interesting observation  at the end of this post. I think the intuition of many -- including on the 'Left' -- is indeed that not only "economic theory" is "just opinion, not science". This is a product of economic issues being the major subject of most politics--the field where all interests are in contention. The same intuition that can't buy "economic science" completely disregards "political science".

One of the unfortunate ideological consequences of this "gulf in economic knowledge" is that the same intuition begins to suspect that the real economy, not just the study of it, is also just  a matter of opinion, subjectivity, and arbitrarily under the direction of whoever is most powerful, or rich. 

Let me put it this way: except in extraordinary historical moments, economic systems choose YOU. You don't choose them. It's not a buffet.

Brexit remains an exercise in deception

Simon Wren-Lewis

http://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2017/08/brexit-remains-exercise-in-deception.html

I talkedlast week about how the Leave campaign involved lies at its centre. Not the occasional exaggerations of the Remain campaign, but claiming things that were the opposite of the truth. Like there will be more money for the NHS, when in fact there will be less. That particular lie probably swung the result, accordingto the man who organised the Leave campaign.

Labour people tell me that public opinion on Brexit will turn once these lies become apparent, and at that point Labour can safely take up the Remain cause. What this overlooks is that the managing of information characterised by the Brexit campaign continues. The Tory tabloids continue to distort the truth, and the Telegraph acts in a very similar fashion. The UK government appears more interested in saying stuff to pleaseits UK audience than actually negotiating with the EU, and its studies of the impactof Brexit remain secret [1].

Meanwhile the opposition give no hint of the costs that Brexit will involve, and by designor conflicted confusion are just a tiny bit less pro-Brexit than the government. The broadcast media, and particularly the BBC, appear hopeless at questioning the facade that both main parties and supporting think tanks have erected. I have never heard a politician pulled up for saying we must retain access to the Single Market: all countries have access to that market! (Thisis the kind of journalism we should be seeing.) Individual MPs are intimidatedinto silence by the power of the Tory tabloids.

When I talk to Leave voters, all they tell me is how the economic 'catastrophe' predicted by Remain did not come to pass, or other Leave nonsense talking points like the exchange rate was overvalued anyway. They are often unaware that falling real wages are the direct result of the Brexit depreciation, and as a result the economy hardly grew in the first half of this year. They, and many people who voted Remain, do not realise that the government's position papers are largelyfantasy and that the EU is in a position to dictate terms. This is not because these voters minds are closed. They just get their information from sources that go along with the government's Brexit fantasy, unless they are fortunate enough to read the Financial Times. No wonder there has been no majorchange in public opinion since the referendum.

Those in the Labour party should realise more than most how the media can present a one-sided reality which many non-political voters accept, until they see for themselves the other side during a general election campaign. The problem with a 'wait and see' attitude to Brexit is that its major economic cost will not become apparent until years after we actually leave the Single Market. Few realise that the original Treasury study, with the central estimate of an average annual cost of £4,300 per household (6.2% of GDP) was not some piece of Remain spin but a perfectly reputable study, which economists at the LSE saidwas "overly cautious". Instead we get nonsense like thisreported by the BBC. [2]

Some time ago I calculated a conservative estimate for the cost of austerity, and it was £4,000 per household. Ironically it was based on OBR estimates that the MSM largely ignored, just as they ignore the OBR's estimates for the short term cost of Brexit. But my austerity cost estimate was a total cost, over all the years of austerity. The Treasury estimate is a cost each year. There is therefore a strong liklihood that Brexit will be far far worse than austerity in terms of lost resources, and unlike austerity there is no way of avoiding these costs once we are outside the Single Market.

For Labour party members and MPs I would put it this way. Imagine winning the next election but having to accept continuing austerity. Winning an election after leaving the Single Market will probably be much worse, and of course the media and voters will blame it all not on Brexit but on Labour's 'far left' policies. Winning an election after Brexit is a poisoned chalice.

[1] Hereis Mike Galsworthy on this and the earlier 'Balance of Competences' reviews that the government kept very quiet about before and during the referendum.

[2] I've talked to people at the BBC, including their economics editor, about why they cannot apply the BBC Trust's recommendationson science coverage to economics. (The Trust's conclusion, in summary, is that in controversial areas the BBC should go with the overwhelming scientific consensus. In other words recognise scientific knowledge, and not treat it as just an opinion.) I think a summary of their response to my question is that economics should not be regarded as a science: there is no economic knowledge, just opinions. What that attitude means in practice is that the public do not hear from the many experts in international trade we have in the UK (and there are many), but instead they hear from Patrick Minford.

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