Enlighten Radio:The Raw Edition of the FIRST "No Name Yet" is HERE -- The 10.18.18 Show

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Post: The Raw Edition of the FIRST "No Name Yet" is HERE -- The 10.18.18 Show
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Paul Krugman: Are the Danes Melancholy? Are the Swedes Sad? [feedly]

Krugman's ratios of "defenses" as opposed to "assaults" on "socialism" (putting quotes around historically squishy terms) is getting larger. That's good. Since he is the most capable simplifier of complex economic science, and policy, around. While we socialists overlooked way too much complexity in the Day, PK's liberal escape routes from the decidedly Marxian trajectories of modern capitalism are vanishing. And he is shifting too.

Are the Danes Melancholy? Are the Swedes Sad?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/opinion/are-the-danes-melancholy-are-the-swedes-sad.html

Are the Danes Melancholy? Are the Swedes Sad? [feedly]

The recent report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers on the evils of socialism has drawn a great deal of ridicule, and rightly so. It boils down to something along the lines of "You want Medicare for All? But what about the terrible things that happened under Mao Zedong?" That's barely a caricature.

However, one issue raised by the report has drawn some sympathetic appreciation even from liberals: the discussion of the Nordic economies, which are widely seen by U.S. progressives as role models. The report points out that real gross domestic product per capita in these economies is lower than in the U.S., and argues that this shows the costs of an expansive welfare state.

But is a negative assessment of the Nordic economies really right? That's not at all clear. That lower G.D.P. number conceals two important points. First, by any measure people in the lower part of the income distribution are much better off in Nordic societies than their U.S. counterparts. That is, there is a lot less misery in Scandinavia — and because everyone has some chance of falling into low income, this reduces the risk of misery for a much larger share of the population.

Second, much of the gap in real G.D.P. represents a choice, not a cost. Nordic workers have much more vacation, much more time for family and leisure, than their counterparts in our "no vacation nation."  So I thought it might be useful to put together some information on how the Nordic economies actually compare to the U.S.   First of all, the Nordics really have made drastically different choices in public policy. They aren't "socialist," if that means government control of the means of production. They are, however, quite strongly social-democratic: as Exhibit 1 shows, they have high taxes, which finance much more generous social benefits than we have here. They also have policies on wages, working hours, and more that tilt the balance toward workers in a number of dimensions. 

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Exhibit 1CreditOECD

So how do these policy choices affect individual incomes? Exhibit 2, put together with the help of my Stone Center colleague Janet Gornick, shows how incomes at different percentiles of the income distribution in Denmark and Finland countries compare with the US. (These are "equivalized" household incomes adjusted for household size. Unfortunately, for bizarre legal reasons the LIS Center, the source of these data, doesn't have recent numbers for Sweden, but they presumably look similar.) Clearly, the Nordic economies are better for lower-income families — roughly the bottom 30 percent of the population.

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Exhibit 2CreditLIS data center

But this understates the case, because these data don't include "in kind" benefits like health care and education. All of the Nordic countries have universal health care — not just single-payer, but for the most part direct government provision (a.k.a. "socialized medicine.") This compares with the U.S. where — especially before the Affordable Care Act went into effect — lack of health insurance was common even for families near median income, and high deductibles are an obstacle to care even for many of the insured. 

Nordic education also lacks the glaring inequality in quality all too characteristic of the U.S. system.

Once you take these benefits into account, it's likely that at least half the Nordic population are better off materially than their U.S. counterparts. But what about the upper half?

As the CEA notes, real G.D.P. per capita is lower in the Nordics than in the U.S., and that's reflected in those lower incomes for the upper half of the income distribution. But it's worth looking at why G.D.P. is lower.

Exhibit 3 shows how real G.D.P. per capita in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden compares with the U.S., and the sources of that difference. It turns out that a large part of the difference — in the case of Denmark, more than all of it — comes from a lower number of hours worked annually per worker. This does notreflect mass underemployment. Instead, it reflects policy: all of the Nordic countries require that employers give workers a minimum of 25 days of paid vacation every year, while the U.S. has no leave policy at all.

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Exhibit 3CreditThe Conference Board

Once you take vacations into account, Denmark and Sweden basically look comparable in performance to the U.S. Finland looks worse, but this is something of a special case: the Finnish economy has been ailing for a number of years, not because of socialism, but because its two premier exports — Nokia and wood pulp — were hit hard by technological change, and membership in the euro has made adjustment difficult.

The point for welfare comparisons is that while Nordic families at, say, the 60th percentile of the income distribution have lower purchasing power than their American counterparts, they also have much more free time and an arguably better work-life balance. Are they really worse off? You can make a good case that taking all of this into account, the majority of Nordic citizens are actually better off than Americans.

And for what it's worth, they think so too. The O.E.C.D. publishes measures of self-reported "life satisfaction"; all of the Nordic nations rank above the U.S. Objective measures like life expectancy and mortality rates are also much better in Scandinavia.

The bottom line is that real G.D.P. per capita isn't everything, and you shouldn't uncritically use that measure to judge how social democracy is working in Scandinavia.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion)and Instagram, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography. @PaulKrugman

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Enlighten Radio:Jackson Browne -- ALL Day Bootlegs

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Post: Jackson Browne -- ALL Day Bootlegs
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What is to Be Done? Fifteen Authors in Search of a Solution. [feedly]

What is to Be Done? Fifteen Authors in Search of a Solution.
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/26/10/2018/what-be-done-fifteen-authors-search-solution

The Great Regression Edited by Heinrich Geiselberger. Wiley. 2017. 

In a slender volume edited by Heinrich Geisenberger "The Great Regression", fifteen, among  the most important left-wing social thinkers of today, ask the  following question:  what is the future of social-democracy now when global neoliberalism is crumbling and the forces of nationalism and xenophobia are on the rise? I would not be letting you in on a big secret, nor do I think I would undermine the book's appeal, if I say that they do not have an answer; neither individually, not collectively. The reason is simple: the answer, as of now, is elusive, and it might even seem that it does not exist.

The contributors to this very good volume which, as I said, gives an excellent insight into the intellectual thinking of the left are (in alphabetic order): Arjun  Appadurai, Zygmunt Bauman, Donatella della Porta, Nancy  Fraser, Eva Illouz, Ivan Krastev, Bruno Latour, Paul Mason, Pankaj Mishra, Robert Misik, Oliver Nachtwey, César Rendueles, Wolfgang Streeck, David Van Reybrouck and Slavoj Žižek.

Not all contributions are, in  my opinion, equally interesting, I find Zygmunt Bauman's writing, as always, very convoluted and difficult to read. Ivan Krastev seems like an odd man out among this group of writers: he disagrees with Trump and Brexit but from what seem fully certifiable neoliberal positions.

It would not surprise the reader that the names that are often mentioned in the volume are Polanyi and Gramsci, with Erich Fromm with his "Escape from Freedom" coming back from a long oblivion. Be ready to see Fromm quoted more and more.

I would like to highlight three contributions that seem most interesting to me. Nancy Fraser has written an excellent and bold essay on the ideological background to Trump's victory. She sees the main competitors to be "progressive neoliberals" and "reactionary populists". Progressive neoliberals are the creation of Clinton's "New Democrats" and his innumerable triangulations that eventually brought together "progressives" who cared about identity,  gender and racial equality, and sexual rights together with the most hard-nosed Wall Street types. This was, at the origin, an unlikely coalition: LBGTQ activists together with Goldman Sachs. But it worked.  The "progressives" enjoyed their newly-found influence. They got Goldman to pay lip service to equal rights, promote a few persons of "color" to top positions, and even realize the advantage, for its bottom-line, of being more open to diverse talent.* Goldman Sachs made the money. This is what in the 1990s and early 2000s went under the slogan of "socially liberal and fiscally conservative".

Who played the serpent to  this "progressive neoliberal" paradise? Those left out of  economic success, that is, losers of globalization, and those unable or unwilling to accept the new screeds of "progressivism". The alliance of progressives and financial-sector neoliberals created, almost by definitions, its counterpart among those who were maladjusted: either economically or socially, So long as "the maladjusted" accounted for 20% or so of the electorate  and made lots of noise with little political success ("The Tea Party"), they could be ignored by the winning coalition. It is one of the ironies of life that "the maladjusted" found in Donald Trump somebody who was able to express, and use that resentment.

But, as Nancy Fraser shows, this alignment of forces totally ignored the left. The left was co-opted by the Clintonite and Obama's grand coalition of sexual liberators and money bagmen, and whenever it threatened to get out of that coalition it was faced with the specter of terrible things to come. It became a hostage of progressive neoliberals. This completely neutered the left. It could not get out of Clintonite coalition without bringing racists and xenophobes to power, and it could not nudge the Clinton-Obama coalition left.

In this excellent analysis Fraser openly puts the responsibility for Trump's rise on the "unholy alliance of 'emancipation' with 'financialization'". What to do next?: "To reach out to the mass of Trump voters who are neither racists nor committed 'right-wingers' but the casualties of a 'rigged system'" (p.48).

Wolfgang Streeck analysis for Europe is very similar to Fraser's for the United States. The costs of "la pensée unique" adopted by social-democrats  across the continent are being paid now through the absence of a credible social-democratic alternative that could attract the votes of "malcontents" and consequently check the  rise of the right. In the opinion of "the progressive neoliberal" alliance, Streeck writes, "the fact that the Great Unwashed, who for so long had helped promote the progress of capitalism passing their time with the Facebook pages of Kim Kardashian…had now returned to the voting booth, appears to be a sign of an ominous regression" (p. 161).

Streeck is very critical of the use of the term of "populist".  He sees it, rightly in my opinion, as a useful shorthand to reject "en bloc" everybody who is against TINA ("There Is No Alternative").  The term of "populist" is useful to the "progressive-neoliberal alliance" because it makes no distinction between the left and the right, and because  both Trump and Sanders can be dismissed as populists who are providing "simple answers to a complex reality".  Everything but TINA is simple and wrong because that immeasurably complex reality is understood only by neoliberals.  "'Populism' is diagnosed in normal internationalist usage as a cognitive problem" (p. 163). In other words, questioning TINA is seen by the elites as a symptom of some deep cognitive issue. Not surprisingly , there are calls to ditch the universal franchise and replace it by "gnosocracy": vote given only to those who can show to be sufficiently smart. (Streeck quotes such instances).

Solution: None at the moment. We are in the Gramscian interregnum  when "familiar chains of cause and effect are no longer in force and unexpected, dangerous and grotesquely abnormal events may occur at any moment" (p. 166).

Paul Mason (whose excellent "Postcapitalism" I have reviewed here) has  penned a beautiful  essay that draws on his, and his father's, personal experiences. It is a story of the English working class, bound together in its contempt for the rich, swindlers and government, open to foreigners like themselves, and with strong social ties. All of that was, according to Mason, destroyed by Thatcherism. Companies went bust, coal mines were closed, work for which these people were prepared became hard to find, jobs got off-shored, social solidarity frayed, and atomization set in. Some left these now desolate places looking for better alternatives in the cities, others espoused the new dogma of financialization and easy money. Local rugby clubs folded. Instead of a rich social fabric, there was now a desert.

The description is strong and poignant. Mason wants things to go back to the way they were in the 1960s and 1970s. He is frank in stating that the left must undo globalization, bring back the jobs, forget about developing countries, and get rid of  East European immigrants. The latter come for a special critique, unlike the earlier African and Sub-Continental  immigrants because, through no fault of theirs, they came to the UK when the country was transiting from manufacturing to service economy: they thus could not be included into an essentially working-class ethos described by Mason because that world had by then ceased to exist. But Mason does not like them because he sees them also as being  too pliant to the demands of globalized capitalism and too acceptant of neoliberal dogmas. Forget about the blond Polish baristas, give us back a strong, beer-swelling Kenyan worker!

But what kind of leftism, one could ask, is that, so indistinguishable from Marine Le Pen's Front National?

The question left to the reader at the end of the book is, should the social-democratic left maintain its internationalism, in which case it would have to go back to Wall Street elites and ditch national policies of redistribution, or should it focus on domestic malcontents in which case it would move towards policies of national socialism? Or will be able to find a narrow path, between the two, that would combine internationalism with domestic redistribution?

 

* Fraser (p. 41) speak contemptuously of "corporate feminism focused on 'leaning in' and 'cracking the glass ceiling'".

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Is Trump leading the country toward fascism? [feedly]

I agree with Joe Sims on this. However I wonder about its implications for politics, and for many  formerly non-political dimensions of life: faith, family, friendship, culture, values, etc, as well.  How does it impact elections? Political allies and friends? Legal vs 'maybe illegal or semi-legal associations (with immigrant communities, and workforces, for example, etc)?

How will  this analysis affect relations with neighboring  nations, if they were in agreement with it?

Is Trump leading the country toward fascism?
http://www.peoplesworld.org/article/is-trump-leading-the-country-toward-fascism/

I've never been comfortable with the description of the Trump administration as "authoritarian." Why? One reason is that the concept, taken by itself, is classless. In today's world, governments as varied in outlook, social system and democratic practice as capitalist Turkey and socialist China are routinely called authoritarian.

In the not-too-distant, past Baby Doc's dictatorship in Haiti was authoritarian as was Mobutu's reign of terror in the Congo. But were they the same as the regimes of, Salazar in Portugal, or that of Pinochet in Chile?

Not really. One major difference is that the dictatorships in Europe and Latin America were fueled by racism, anti-Semitism and last, but not least, anti-communism. They also represented the capture of the state by specific sections of the ruling class.

Each of these elements is extremely important, but all three are given little attention in even the best analyses of the Trump administration. Marxists have always pointed to the emergence of fascism as a particular feature of capitalism's rule. They have drawn attention to the role of the banks in particular. Can we do less today?

The classic definition of fascism was offered by Georgi Dimitrov at the 7th World Congress of the Comintern in 1935: "Fascism is the open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary sections of finance capital," he said.

Here, Dimitrov was speaking of fascism full-blown, a situation not now present in the U.S., as many correctly point out. Some raise the point to dismiss the applicability of Dimitrov's analysis to our current circumstances. But it's the processes in motion that are important here. Imagine how Dimitrov would have responded if someone had said three years earlier, in 1932, that Hitler wasn't a fascist or that fascism wasn't a threat.

Both Trump's campaign and administration have direct ties to reactionary sections of finance capital.

Both Trump's campaign and his administration have direct ties to reactionary sections of finance capital, as witnessed by the support of the New York hedge fund Mercer family and Trump's appointment of their agent, Steve Bannon, first as his campaign CEO and later as his strategist-in-chief. Bannon, of course, remains a sort of prime minister of the so-called "alt-right" (read neo fascist) Breitbart news crowd.

Then there's the feature of white supremacy (or white nationalism, as it's commonly called these days). Even conservative Joe Scarborough admits that ruling class racism is a central organizing principle of the Trump administration.

Anti-socialism and anti-communism remain foundations of domestic and international policy.: Witness the recent red-baiting by Trump of even the Democratic Party – let's not forget that he was a protege of Roy Cohn. And then there's the recent news about attempts to intervene militarily in Venezuela.

Yale professor of philosophy Jason Stanley's recent book, How Fascism Works, points to some of its basic distinguishing features: the conjuring of a mythic past ("Make America Great Again"); sowing racial and national division; and an attack on the truth, in other words, the Big Lie. A deadly trifecta.

Stanley correctly points to the danger of normalizing these features, in other words, of folks getting used to it. A New York Times reviewer of his book writes, "By calling Trump a 'fascist' … Stanley is trying to spark public alarm. He doesn't want Americans to respond to Trump's racist, authoritarian offensives by moving their moral goal posts. The greater danger, he suggests, isn't hyperbole, it's normalization."

By using the "F" word, instead of "authoritarian", to describe Trump, the Yale professor is sounding the alarm. Luckily, others are striking that bell as well. Adele M. Stan, writing in the American Prospect an article entitled "Trump and the Rise of 21st Century Fascism" importantly points to some of the financial interests involved:

"With Rupert Murdoch's media empire (which owns Fox News) and the Koch brothers' donor network of private capitalists bought into the Trumpian project, you have another element of fascism: the promise of protection for capitalist elites, which in this administration is displayed in the massive deregulation project the White House has undertaken."

This is key, even with the Koch brothers most recent dissatisfaction with Trump.

If it walks like a dog and barks like a dog, it's a dog.

Thus, some things haven't changed, e.g., the location of emerging fascism's base among banking capital and sections of the lower middle class. Studies – both just after the election and more recently – have given lie to the notion of Trump's support being based mainly among economically distressed white workers.

As Anita Waters recently pointed out, authoritarianism is not a working-class characteristic. It is, however, a feature of class rule. Fascism, on the other hand, is clearly class rule, a horse of another color.

In the U.S., fascism is not fully formed, but it is present in the corporate boardrooms, in the mass rallies, in the online forums of Breitbart and Fox News, and in government. In New York, it was located in the Proud Boys beating of protestors on the upper East Side. The Proud Boys, by the way, were celebrating the anniversary of the murder of a Japanese socialist leader.

As the old saying goes, "If it walks like a dog and barks like a dog, it's a dog." And this dog's got teeth.

Some, looking to Germany as a universal model of fascism's rise to power, argue that in the U.S. there's no direct threat to capitalist rule. However, they seem to have forgotten that when Mussolini marched on Rome, capitalism was not under siege notwithstanding the Turin factory occupations. Rather, Italian fascism's rise was more of a preventative measure.

However, historically, there are no universal models of fascism, fit for every situation. Rather, there are trends, tendencies, patterns. What all have in common is capitalist crisis and attempts by ruling elements to manage it, some by "fair" means, others foul. In the U.S., one would do better by looking for this foulness in Birmingham in the '30s, instead of in Berlin.

Authoritarianism is a symptom. The disease is fascism, infecting a terminally ill patient: late-state monopoly capitalism and rule by the most reactionary elements of the .1 percent. Finance capital – that's what we're fighting.

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Enlighten Radio:Jazz All Day Til the SECOND "NO NAME YET" Dinner Out show

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Post: Jazz All Day Til the SECOND "NO NAME YET" Dinner Out show
Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2018/10/jazz-all-day-til-second-no-name-yet.html

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The Economic Consequences of Mr. Trump [feedly]

...a worthwhile discussion of economic variables in play

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Trump
https://www.project-syndicate.org/videos/the-economic-consequences-of-mr-trump

With unemployment at a 50-year low, wages starting to pick up, and the stock market booming, the US economy has defied expectations since the 2016 election. Nobel laureates Angus Deaton and Edmund Phelps, along with Barry Eichengreen, Rana Foroohar, and Glenn Hubbard, ask why, and whether what looks like a robust recovery is masking another crisis in the making.

** This film was created in collaboration with the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University during the Center's 16th annual conference. **

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