tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post44161682931247571..comments2024-03-19T11:28:58.168-04:00Comments on History Unfolding: Our current crisis--another viewDavid Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-74179862809364477962019-01-24T21:03:06.609-05:002019-01-24T21:03:06.609-05:00forgot the link
https://adamtooze.com/2019/01/20/...forgot the link<br /><br />https://adamtooze.com/2019/01/20/framing-crashed-9-christophers-the-new-enclosure-crashed-and-the-problem-of-dirty-and-clean-histories-of-neoliberalism/Bruce Wilderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09631065564839959376noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-64342428962549190592019-01-24T21:02:07.091-05:002019-01-24T21:02:07.091-05:00Adam Tooze recently wrote a remarkable essay refle...Adam Tooze recently wrote a remarkable essay reflecting on Quinn Slobodian's <i>Globalists</i>,and Brett Christopher’s <i>The New Enclosure</i> in relation to his own <i>Crashed</i>. Apparently this is the ninth such blog essay he's written, re-considering the framing of his own book and it is remarkable in no small part because of his frank and critical self-assessment. Very much worth reading and considering, as he confronts "the sanitizing effect" of certain historiographical choices he himself made. <br /><br />Bruce Wilderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09631065564839959376noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-12668628640284269952019-01-05T23:59:06.819-05:002019-01-05T23:59:06.819-05:00Professor
Started The Deluge. Very good so far. It...Professor<br />Started The Deluge. Very good so far. It seemed an important book, maybe even more so than his current one.<br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-77500332949147675102019-01-05T11:51:27.257-05:002019-01-05T11:51:27.257-05:00I think history shows that inequality will grow no...<br /><br />I think history shows that inequality will grow no matter the system. The system only changes how much wealth is generated and who gets the wealth. I suggest you read a recent and highly researched book "The Great Leveler". The history of inequality shows that the only way to reduce it is revolution, war, or plague. There is no easy answer. The inequality of ability and striving for status cannot be legislated away. Inequality is not a unique consequence of capitalism.<br /><br />The Scandinavian answer of free markets and high taxes seems to be the only humane (as in not killing lots of people) answer, but there is a price to pay with that as well. The Swedes are slowly turning away from the most extreme parts of it. A 25% VAT and an almost flat income tax system with rates of 57% beginning at $75,000 of income are among the highest in the world. Would such tax rates fly here?James N. McClatcheyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17629838635171303772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-41982572722538982312018-12-31T09:10:16.659-05:002018-12-31T09:10:16.659-05:00David -
Your points - and Mr Tooze's - may b...David -<br /><br />Your points - and Mr Tooze's - may be correct, but Peter Theil's quote is taken out of context and Tim Cooke's might be. Peter Theil was saying that, as an investor, he looks for companies that have an intellectual property moat that protects them from competition. This is neither radical nor novel. The idea is embedded in our Constitution, after all.<br /><br />I can't easily get to the bottom of the EU - Apple tax battle (the source of the "political crap" comment), but it may in fact be based upon the Gilded Age mentality that bothers you. Again, intellectual property is at the heart of it, and it is the center of many abusive tax-avoidance schemes. The idea is to claim that corporate profit derives from patents that are domiciled in some unlikely zero-tax location - Jersey, the Bahamas, etc. Would Apple avail itself of them? You bet it would. Did it? I'm not sure that's what happened, but I'll try to chase it down. <br /><br />Tom CareyKoufaxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04600481468363624664noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-62569706710099113112018-12-30T17:31:56.913-05:002018-12-30T17:31:56.913-05:00Prorfessor
Fascinating array of books. i was struc...Prorfessor<br />Fascinating array of books. i was struck by the Tooze one, ordered it from the library. <br /><br />His pedigree, it seems, may turn out to be more interesting than his book, for me I fear. <br /><br />He dedicated one book to his grandparents, British communist Soviet spies, Wynn in fact a spymaster recruiter for Soviet espionage at Oxford. <br /><br />The mere fact that he made such a dedication must tell something....<br /><br />Krugman tried, just the other day, to try to make out that only conservative economists either were or could be sluts to ideology....<br /><br />All the best <br /><br /> Bozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-8392468049681269962018-12-30T13:03:35.398-05:002018-12-30T13:03:35.398-05:00Thank you all for these interesting comments.
C...Thank you all for these interesting comments. <br />Certainly, James McClatchey, every society has had inequality. The question is how much inequality do we want? Under capitalism inequality will grow and grow unless it is regulated by high taxes on upper incomes and other forms of regulation. Fifty years ago economic inequality was near an all-time low (at least in the modern era), now it's near an all-time high. None of this has anything to do with the defects of Communism.<br /><br />Elinor Garst, I have no idea how you found me here but I'm glad you did, because I really want this blog to be read by people of all political persuasions, and my normal center-left readership needs to be reminded of the people like you out there.<br /><br />Feryl, Turchin sounds very interesting.David Kaiserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-41224228092248605562018-12-29T16:19:14.111-05:002018-12-29T16:19:14.111-05:00
Inequality appears in all human and animal syst... <br /><br />Inequality appears in all human and animal systems. It is a consequence of the existence of hierarchies which form around anything considered of value and in the innate differences in ability of people. These hierarchies show up in all economic systems. It is a much worse problem than mere capitalism. Attempting to dismantle these hierarchies in an effort to assure equality led to the murder of millions in Soviet, Maoist,and Cambodian Communism. They make the Nazis look like pikers.<br /><br />The best that can be said of capitalism is that it generates more wealth than any other system we know of. A poor person is less poor in capitalism than any other system.James N. McClatcheyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17629838635171303772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-6512252194187896062018-12-29T15:36:56.828-05:002018-12-29T15:36:56.828-05:00I am now 85 years old, First 7 years of life were...I am now 85 years old, First 7 years of life were spent during the lingering Depression Era and then from 7-11 WW2.. Our families were "Byrd Democrats"..my father has turned over in his grave many times at what the Democratic Party has become. I have been a keen observer of politics and I did vote for Donald Trump and agree with most of his actions since becoming President...but, not the wall! Walls have never worked. I have also studied history and am fearful for our future. Have read Will and Ariel Durant's Civilization Series and see that we are following the path. What I observe now in the US sounds like the era before the French Revolution. I pray not!...by the way, Professor, what did you think of Madame Bovary?.....you didn't say.<br /><br /> Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03094085863846732233noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-30383852548046265492018-12-29T11:49:03.730-05:002018-12-29T11:49:03.730-05:00While I think it can be stated that Boomers have, ...While I think it can be stated that Boomers have, by their own hand, built this crisis to where it is now, we ought to be considerate of later generations. X-ers and Millennials feel alienated and let down by a system that never seemed to take care of it's own. The General Social Survey shows that X-ers and Millennials are more comfortable with the government reducing inequality than Silents and Boomers are. This makes sense; the economic changes of the 70's and 80's disproportionately have rewarded the mid-upper classes of older generations while leaving fewer and fewer opportunities to later generations and the lower classes. That older generations still, to this day, treat X-ers and Millennials like "defective products", annoyances who spoiled the party that Silents and Boomers started in 1968, is galling. And woe until elders who fail to mind the wishes of younger generations who have good reason to be angry.Ferylhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01336057631877941839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-35780125273555769622018-12-29T11:46:42.346-05:002018-12-29T11:46:42.346-05:00"There is for boomers, in effect, no original..."There is for boomers, in effect, no original sin, unlike for the missionary generation. The latter saw a destryed continent, knew what it took to repair, maintain it on a daily basis. Boomers had a perfect world, along with magical technology, government programs and global peace served to them on a platter. Life got better every year, decade in every sense."<br /><br />Well, Peter Turchin has studied, and written books, on the subject of what happens to America after several decades of peace, prosperity, and high harmony within the nation. And it's not pretty.<br /><br />Moral of the story: the 1940's-1960's were a time of tremendous worker/consumer security, and minimal levels of unnecessary competition between cultural/economic elites. But the generation born during this period took it all for granted, and instead of appreciating what their elders did, they started to foment hostility toward the "older generation" as they came of age in the 60's. Older adults, far from being congratulated on the economy and society they'd fine tuned to enable tremendous middle class prosperity and progress toward rationalism and away from superstition and toxic ideology, were instead castigated as "boring", "square", "conformist", "shallow", "bigoted", and "hypocritical". All generations in the 1970's agreed to "loosen up" the tight economic and cultural regulations of the 1940's-1960's. End result? Crime rates, the break down of the family, the weakening of organized labor, the nascent re-appearence of backward cultural and religious superstition (such as the idea that Satanists were forming cabals and steering the direction of institutions), all started to become moderate problems in the 70's, and became even worse in the 1980's. Gen X-ers, who had no cultural leverage whatsoever, were "asked" (forced) to be the child guinea pigs of the 1970's era of "experimentation", when adults indulged in reckless narcissism. As X-ers gained adulthood in the 80's and 90's, they found that boardrooms, schools, governments etc. were no longer being welcoming to young workers, as older generations began to bitterly fight over status.<br /><br />Turchin says that the top 20% or so of society sets the tone, always. And in the 70's they started to let us down. It's up to elites to rein in their own possibly destructive impulses. Failure to do so first wrecks the well-being of the underclass (as can be discerned by the major rise in the ranks of the homeless and incarcerated in the 70's and 80's), then the working/ lower middle class ("going postal" in the 90's). As you get to the 2010's, even the upper middle class has to a large extent devolved in it's sense of psychological and professional well-being. We've recently entered a nadir of modesty and professionalism among the top elites, as can be detected from the amount of lying and bad faith arguments emanating from elites that we've come to expect since the deception of Bush's foreign policy blunders. Paradoxically, the now undeniable collapse of credibility or our elites since the early 2000's has been accompanied by a growing sense of arrogance amongst said elites.Ferylhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01336057631877941839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-15920343021734321082018-12-29T06:28:00.847-05:002018-12-29T06:28:00.847-05:00Trying to parse the reason for the different appro...Trying to parse the reason for the different approaches in the two saecula, between miisonary and boomer approach, leads to an analysis of their respective starting positions and accompanying psychology. The Civil War was a catastrophe and wounds took long to heal, to make the country whole again. This is perhaps similar to the European situation after WWII. So introspection and sensitivity to other's needs were a big part of consideration in 1930s reforms. Also industrialization was relatively new. Half the country were farmers still, many more factory workers. Social welfare state was nonexistent. Unemployment benefits, social security, etc. Awere still to bd invented. Regulating agencies protecting food, workers, water, soil, etc. werenew or unthought of. Clearly rural people and labourers are generally more religious. City people less so. So the country as a whole was more rligious due to its rural, employment structure. Modern society has decoupled work from results and from morals and religion. Government regulations or programs might care for you from cradle to grave and family ties, community, moral behaviour(sexual promiscuity for example before birth control in tight knit rural communities) are not nearl as important. Every mother's son in the thirties understood the connection between hard physical work and a full belly. Nowadays desk jobs, cars, screenitis, obesity, agnosticism, relative morality are normative across all party affiliations. It is only a matter of degree to distinguish between right and left. Value posturing for the left is identity based, for the right is what I am doing right here. <br /><br />The second part is that the boomers awoke to a global empire of sorts with social justice, regulation all in place. Work and religious values, along with rural, farming lifestyles and factory and farmwork were year for year decreasing, all seen as primitive accoutrements of the past. Star Trek is a sort of prototype. Technology is supreme. Physical work is unknown. Food comes a synthesizer(like from supermarket, not omegrown), transport is automatic, communications limitless and happy end due to rational logic always occurs. <br /><br />There is for boomers, in effect, no original sin, unlike for the missionary generation. The latter saw a destryed continent, knew what it took to repair, maintain it on a daily basis. Boomers had a perfect world, along with magical technology, government programs and global peace served to them on a platter. Life got better every year, decade in every sense.<br /><br />So tightening belts, helping poor, awareness of others is unimportant. Times will always improve due to technology. We never did wrong, have no guilt. Quantitative easing, bank deregulation and war for profit are symptoms of this mindset. But there are limits to power as other nations climb from poverty. Also the US elite are walled off from poverty in a bubble. Technology also destroys the environment. Rural people, even hunters realize limits better than urbanites. Morality towards poor and nature means living amongst them. Technology secures us from contact. Like Ancien regime in France with its balls.Ed Boylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01753383765150492163noreply@blogger.com