The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

You Can’t Stay in the EU or Single Market And Be For Labour’s Manifesto

So, 30 Labour MPs have signed a letter calling for Corbyn to stay in the EU’s single market as a member.

This is not possible IF Labour’s manifesto is meant seriously. EU single market law is explicitly neoliberal, it does not allow for things that Labour wants to do, like nationization.

Access to the single market is one thing, being a member is another. Corbyn cannot do it and keep his promises, it is that simple.

The EU is a barrier against horrible things the Tories want to do, but it is a roadblock against basic social-democratic policies that Corbyn wants.


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97 Comments

  1. The correct answer is “They can’t stay in in EU, and have Germany run your trade.” And there is a large difference between neoliberal and ultra-neoliberal. On the left: making nationalist demands should not be in the driver’s seat, and on the right: give way to another countries nationalist demands.

  2. Webstir

    Any thoughts on Corbyn’s strategy for dealing with the 30 MP’s, Ian?

    I say attack. Call them out as the hypocrites they are and immediately begin recruiting someone like this guy:
    https://mic.com/articles/180480/a-berniecrat-union-ironworker-challenging-paul-ryan-raised-dollar100k-in-the-first-day-of-his-campaign#.ut39o7l1h

    Our battle right now is with the neoliberal “left.” Two front battles are always lost. The focus needs to be taking out the neoliberals at the primaries first. The word hypocrite cannot be used enough.

    These 30 MP’s must go.

  3. Will

    Ah, that kinder, gentler neoliberalism that we hear so much about.

    To me that unicorn resembles very much the one where free trade is such a great concept but that we need to work on distribution of the gains a little better. I hate to be the one to break it to you but the only reason all of those very rich donors jumped behind the neoliberal project (and put all that funding into their coin operated economist employees and their research) was because they didn’t like the former distribution status quo and wanted to change it to their advantage. A greater slice of the pie for the very rich and powerful is a feature not a bug.

    That is neoliberalism’s raison d’&ecirctre.

    Will

  4. different clue

    Webstir brings a very hopeful development to our attention. Hopefully some of the millions of small Sanderdonors who sent millions of small doses of money to the Sanders campaign will figure out how to self-mass-organize to send millions of small doses of money to the Union Ironworker’s campaign. Enough early millions of dollars fast enough to the Ironworker might intimidate the Mainstream Clintocrats from even trying to mount a sabotage-challenge against the Union Ironworker. Even that would be a victory against Clintonism.

    And if the Ironworker could impose a Pyrrhic victory upon the Ryan, or even better defeat the Ryan completely, Representative Ironworker could be a securable beachhead from which to break out and conquer more territory from the Clintobamacrats. It could be a step towards the complete declintamination of the Democratic Party and the total purging, burning and expungement of every trace of Clintonite filth from the Democratic Party.

  5. > Ah, that kinder, gentler neoliberalism that we hear so much about.

    Better than Smoot-Hawley that you are preaching.

  6. Webstir

    Stirling:
    In regard to your Smoot-Hawley comment — It seems you tacitly assume trade is good. I’m not sure I’m willing to swallow that economic assumption.

    And while I’m at it — fuck any economist who thinks assumptions have any place in the “science” of economics anyway.

  7. different clue

    @Stirling Newberry,

    Many threads ago, you said that the Cambodians had a free choice about whether to be bombed or not during the Nixon-Kissinger period. ( I imagine with enough time and brute-force iron-butt research I could find your comment to that effect). I remember asking if you could explain to us what free choice the Cambodians had in being bombed. You never did get back to me on that.

    Do you suppose you could get back to me on that?

  8. different clue

    I don’t know anything about British politics, especially not down to the “cast of characters” level.

    Are the “30 Labor MPs” who signed that letter part of the “Labor Party” wing of the Labor Party?
    Or are they part of the “New Labor” wing of the Labor Party?

  9. Rusty SpikeFist

    Sorry but this is really misguided. In the context of southern Europe, anti-EU sentiment is absolutely justified and countries like Greece (and arguably Spain, Italy and possibly others) would almost certainly be better off outside.

    In the context of the UK, this is absrud. In practice there is no robust mechanism for EU diktats other than the Euro. The deal the UK was getting — keeping its sovereign currency while keeping access to the single market and freedom of movement — was a good one for the UK overall, and without the bias against working people that was inherent in the EU austerity regime.

    UK is absolutely the wrong test-case for the anti-EU movement and it will end up damaging it badly.

  10. Josh

    @different clue

    The MPs I recognize in the Independent article (Kendall, Umunna, Creasy, Bryant) are all on the far right of the party.

  11. Hugh

    This reminds me of Dani Rodrik’s trilemma.

    Sometimes simple and bold ideas help us see more clearly a complex reality that requires nuanced approaches. I have an “impossibility theorem” for the global economy that is like that. It says that democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration are mutually incompatible: we can combine any two of the three, but never have all three simultaneously and in full.

    http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/06/the-inescapable.html

    Basically, if you have deep economic integration within a nation-state context, Rodrik says you end up with something like a gold standard (or in the case of Europe, the Euro). If you have globalization and democracy, you would have world government something we are very far from. Rodrik himself favors national sovereignty and democracy or what he calls a Bretton Woods compromise.

    Personally, I think globalization is a deadend because the world is falling apart due to overpopulation, climate change, resource overuse, pollution, and increased political instability. We need to start repatriating our industrial base and supply chains and moving to general self-sustainability. It may seem silly now to worry that your underwear and socks come from China or your clothes from Vietnam or Bangladesh, but it will hit very close to home in a few decades when some of these countries functionally cease to exist or, as with China, will be caught up in their own sustainability issues.

  12. Webstir

    Hugh, you’re on the money.
    I especially like this “We need to start repatriating our industrial base and supply chains and moving to general self-sustainability.”
    Yes, we need economies of bioregional scale. Everything else is, and most certainly in a future of scarcity will be, a superfluous waste of resources.
    History repeatedly demonstrates collective responses to private profligacy. In their attempt to fly to the sun, our establishment masters are blinded to the fact that the masses are growing weary of paying the price for their voyage. Like a bank run, the two politically divided 49.5 %s will suddenly realize that the emperors truly wear no clothes, and for a short time, exert their populist power as the 99%.
    Pop some corn … it’ll be a riot.

  13. different clue

    OTB . . . since avoiding World War Three is always worth considering, here is an article about how the Clintonites are working their hardest to make World War Three happen. Maybe the rest of us can figure out how to run the Clintonite War Engine backwards . . .

    The first paragraph of the article goes like this . . .

    “This is your fault, Clinton Democrats. You created this, and if our species is plunged into a new world war or extinction via nuclear holocaust, it will be your fault. You knuckle-dragging, vagina hat-wearing McCarthyite morons made this happen.”

    And it just gets better from there.

    Here is the link. https://counterpropa.com/inches-new-world-war-clintonists-blame/

  14. Smoot-Hawley Smoot-Hawley Smoot-Hawley Smoot-Hawley Smoot-Hawley. Do neo-liberals have any better argument than a law passed in 1930 that had absolutely nothing to do with causing the Great Depression because exports were less than 7% of the U.S. economy in 1929?

    What caused the Great Depression was a collapse in the money supply due to risky lending on stocks, not Smoot-Hawley. Smoot-Hawley was irrelevant. Exports declined after Smoot-Hawley but by far less than economic activity in general declined. Yet neo-liberals haul it out like it means something every time you criticize their agenda of driving down wages for working people (and thus transferring working people’s wealth to the non-productive investor class that produces nothing, creates nothing, but owns everything) by exporting work to low-wage nations and importing low-wage workers.

    Smoot-Hawley Smoot-Hawley Smoot-Hawley Smoot-Hawley Smoot-Hawley Smoot-Hawley Smoot-Hawley Smoot-Hawley Smoot-Hawley. There. I just summed up the neo-liberal argument in a nutshell for you. What does it mean when the neo-liberal argument is utter bullshit? Well…. you know what it means. Duh.

  15. It was the last time you tried to repeal a basic law of economics – so yes we will use it again.

    You still have not refuted it…

  16. nihil obstet

    What’s the Smoot-Hawley basic law of economics? Inquiring minds want to know.

  17. Will

    There’s your problem.

    To paraphrase the inimitable Captain Barbossa “These economic laws are more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual laws.” :p

    Will

  18. No there actual “laws” – though I would use “principles”. As the people pass Brexit are finding out.

    Quoting a movie based on a ride does not do much for you.

  19. Willy

    By the time of Smoot-Hawley the economy had gone full emotional. What was needed were confidence-inspiring action of the part of leadership. Instead, they got economists and political leaders squabbling over Smoot-Hawley.

  20. Will

    Moreso than calling upon the supposed sanctity of imaginary “Laws of Economics” I would venture.

    You must understand that as a scientist I am not ridiculing the idea of economic law. I am ridiculing the idea that there has been sufficient examination, observation, and a proven history of repeated successful experimentation within the sphere of economics to deem any such hypotheses as law. There is nowhere near the track record of success needed to do any such thing.

    This isn’t a slight of economists and in no way implies that they aren’t smart enough or imaginative enough or hard working enough to do so. It is simply an acknowledgement of the fact that you cannot have scientific laws unless you have proven them again and again without fail AND that you have successfully defined the bounds within which they must be used.

    You have implied that there exist such economic law that has reached the threshold to be proclaimed scientific law. This is not the case.

    Will

  21. Will

    PS: Principles I could swallow. Laws? Not so much.

  22. > You must understand that as a scientist I am not ridiculing the idea of economic law. I am ridiculing the idea that there has been sufficient examination, observation, and a proven history of repeated successful experimentation within the sphere of economics to deem any such hypotheses as law. There is nowhere near the track record of success needed to do any such thing.

    You should start with Gödel – then get back to me. “I don’t believe” is your fault – not the disciplines.

  23. nihil obstet

    OK, what’s the Smoot-Hawley principle of economics? If I understand it correctly, it’s the belief that tariffs damage the national economy, and refers to the tariffs passed in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. My understanding is the same that Badtux pointed out above: tariffs in fact had very little to do with causing or intensifying the Depression, so invoking it is irrelevant.

    On tariffs generally, neither the U.S. nor virtually any other nation industrialized without the aid of tariffs. On how they work, I’ve been influenced by Ha-Joon Chang’s Bad Samaritans. Nor should the overall “economy” necessarily be the determining factor in making decisions on resource allocation. As Greece is the latest country to demonstrate, not having a certain amount of independence on necessities puts a country at great risk. Ian has written several posts on this. France, for example, is justified in maintaining the ability to feed its own population, regardless of what might be gained from living on cheap imported food. And there’s also the issue of who gains from tariffs. So as Dean Baker keeps pointing out, throwing the working class into competition with workers in third world countries while retaining so-called intellectual property laws and licensing requirements favoring native professionals is very good for the rich, but not so much for the rest of us. Overall, I suspect a country with a generally prosperous population is even economically better off than one with a destitute population ruled over by a small fabulously wealthy class.

  24. Will

    It’s not anyone’s fault Stirling, it is the nature of how the physical world works as opposed to the human realm.

    In many ways the hard sciences have it easy. We can construct experiments to duplicate conditions much more easily than someone in economics could ever dream of. The scale of economics is also a major problem compared to that of the physical sciences. The size of a large industrial economy and the number of variables is immense. And you have all those other industrial economies that are constantly changing and altering the playing field. And that is ignoring the fact that human motives can and do change behavior. Something that your average engineer or scientist doesn’t even have to consider.

    The actual construction of scientific law under such conditions is probably impossible.

    Will

  25. The Stephen Miller Band

    The size of a large industrial economy and the number of variables is immense.

    Not to mention the impossibility of identifying all those variables and the effects each variable has on every other respective variable unidentified and/or unidentified.

    Economics, for that reason, is mostly Guess Work based on Highly Debatable Assumptions.

    It’s Creative — I’ll give it that and it serves the purpose of legitimating this Crappy System that’s destroying the Planet. And like Religion, it cements you like glue to the Current System in that it portends that its theories collectively comprise all there is and can be and are therefore immutable & absolute.

    If you’re indoctrinated to believe that, and most if not all are, then sure, that’s all there ever will be if you’re the ones who elected yourselves The Creators and The Creative Class.

    Donald Trump is a perfect example. He thinks he’s Great, therefore he is and before long that belief will become immutable & absolute law and when it does, you’ll have no choice but to believe it too, or else suffer the consequences.

  26. > It’s not anyone’s fault Stirling, it is the nature of how the physical world works as opposed to the human realm.

    Again, I can not help if you don’t understand the math. It is your fault if you do not crack the books.

  27. realitychecker

    Very amusing to see those who can’t reconcile themselves to their inability to get perfect results attack someone who understands what a true science looks like.

  28. DMC

    “Supply and Demand” and “Economy of Scale” are as close to economic laws as the principles tend to get. There’s exceptions to both but not many. One could say that they had a very strong tendency to be true in any given case.

  29. Will

    Stirling: “Again, I can not help if you don’t understand the math. It is your fault if you do not crack the books.”

    OK….. Ummm, just for the sake of argument let’s assume that I have a decent enough grasp of math to where that’s not the underlying issue here. :p

    Could it possibly be, again just for the sake of argument, that one of us doesn’t really understand the full meaning and context of the term “scientific law”? That maybe one of us has a background where he hasn’t been exposed to the level of rigor that is mandatory for assigning this term?

    And understand that I even go back and forth on whether I even qualify as a true scientist or not. A true applied scientist yes. And at times a pure researcher. And even so I have to admit that the level of evidence needed to assign something to the position of “scientific law” is absolutely daunting.

    Stirling can you tell me how many times the 1st Law of Thermodynamics has been contradicted in a lab setting? Or the 2nd? Or even the 3rd?

    In all of my work in and around the lab I have never seen an instance where any of these laws have been violated. I’ve never even heard of such a case. Ever. As one of my old professors sagely told me, if it had ever been contradicted then it wouldn’t be a law now would it?

    I’m not sure that you understand what that term really encompasses in a scientific or engineering field.

    Will

  30. realitychecker

    Hard science vs. soft science. I’ve studied both, so I know it’s kinda like the difference between a hard penis and a soft one.

    (For those who can only think in metaphor, just trying to be helpful lol.)

  31. S Brennan

    Anytime somebody brings up Smoot-Hawley and implies and/or-directly-states it to be a meaningful factor in the ’29 depression you are talking to an/a; 1] idiot, 2] tool, 3] idiotic tool, this is particularly true if the guy is an economist* [which are the guys who didn’t have the chops to get into business school] or an indoctrinated fool of the satanic doctrine*.

    As badtux states above and I have shown in a lengthy comment here before, if Smoot-Hawley stopped 100% of trade it would have effected only 7% of the economy, however, by the numbers, Smoot-Hawley only could have effected 25%** of the 7% or 1.75% of GDP. And if there were such a thing as an honest economics profession, the decline of trade would be widely understood to be a decline in demand. Incidentally, the Chinese use high tariffs to steal whole industries, for example, the auto parts industry.

    ===========================

    *Economists, [who receive a Bachelor of Art degree, NOT Science] are as akin to science as astrologist are akin to astronomers. As proof of economists fraudulent practice, for decades economists petitioned the Nobel Committee for a Nobel Prize. These self serving economists were always turned away empty handed. Finally, after being rejected for the umpteenth time, the fraudulent doctrinaires created a “nobel prize” out of thin air to sell their fiendish dogma that has enslaved so much of humanity and despoiled our earth. There is no “Nobel Prize” in economics. Every one who claims to to have “won” a “Nobel Prize” in economics is a fraud.

    **Peter Temin an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology notes that “exports were 7 percent of GNP in 1929, they fell by 1.5 percent of 1929 GNP in the next two years, real GNP fell over 15 percent in these same years and the fall was offset by the increase in domestic demand from tariff. He concludes that contrary the popular argument, contractionary effect of the tariff was small. (Temin, P. 1989. Lessons from the Great Depression, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass)[18]”

    **Milton Friedman’s Smoot-Hawley Lie:
    http://www.magic-city-news.com/Paul_Streitz_67/Milton_Friedman_s_Smoot-Hawley_Lie_printer13239.shtml

  32. The Stephen Miller Band

    Economics, Meet Physics

    Even early economists like Adam Smith foresaw economic growth as a temporary phase lasting maybe a few hundred years, ultimately limited by land (which is where energy was obtained in that day). If humans are successful in the long term, it is clear that a steady-state economic theory will far outlive the transient growth-based economic frameworks of today. Forget Smith, Keynes, Friedman, and that lot. The economists who devise a functioning steady-state economic system stand to be remembered for a longer eternity than the growth dudes.

    No growth in fact requires the population to shrink one way or the other. Either we choose to have fewer children and train them better for the more technological jobs that will still exist, or the jobless underclass will A: starve, B: attack the upper class and destroy quite a lot of the infrastructure in the process. Current economic policy seems geared to letting A happen and keeping it out of sight of the privileged.

    Humanity, in its teenage years, has very hard time accepting the next stage, that of maturity. As a teenager, we certainly did grow 3″ taller last summer, and lacking the wisdom are concluding such growth will continue unabated hence on.

    Just as with a maturing person, growth must plateau – the gist of this post. With our daily binging on a foul mix of low grade Alberta booze, among all else, what could’ve been a long and prosperous plateau, may terminate suddenly with a Seneca Cliff all the way at Club 27. The question is now, in our frivolous youth, have we caused enough damage to have a shot at a good life as a grown-up species?

  33. Willy

    Do flaccid scientists write all those books to try and prove how hard they are?

  34. The Stephen Miller Band

    Economics Thinks It’s A Science
    Unlimited Growth Is Its Reliance
    Physics Doesn’t Matter
    Ur Wallet’s Getting Fatter
    Until Gaia Reconciles Ur Defiance

  35. > OK….. Ummm, just for the sake of argument let’s assume that I have a decent enough grasp of math to where that’s not the underlying issue here. :p

    OK just for the sake argument – what the proof of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem – in so simple even high student can do it.

  36. The Stephen Miller Band

    Donald Trump as POTUS is the proof of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. He’s a Particle.

    Anticipation — It’s Making Me Wait

  37. I find it interesting that a supposedly reputable economist would come here and a) launch a bunch of personal attacks, and b) do so without ever addressing the actual mathematical argument, which is that in the aftermath of Smoot-Hawley international trade declined far *less* than economic activity in toto, meaning that it’s absolutely mathematically impossible that Smoot-Hawley is responsible for the collapse in economic activity that typified 1930-1932. The only thing you can accurately say about Smoot-Hawley is that it did not end the Great Depression (because, duh). The numbers aren’t there to say that it made the Great Depression worse because trade didn’t collapse the way the rest of the economy did in the next two years, and furthermore, overall demand worldwide collapsed far faster than international trade did.

    Anybody who had a shred of integrity would at that point, having seen that simple arithmetic (hey, not even high school Algebra required!), back off from the notion that Smoot-Hawley somehow “caused” the Great Depression or even “worsened” the Great Depression. At best you can say “it didn’t cure the Great Depression”. Yet here we have supposedly reputable people who a) don’t address the numbers, and instead b) attack the people who bring up the numbers.

    Odd, how some people become so invested in their religious beliefs that they attack any data that contradicts those beliefs. Whether those people are creationists or neoliberal economists.

  38. Because the argument does hold up, because it is total demand that matters .

    Your judgment on me is, shall we, biased.

    Still waiting on proof on Gödel’s Incompleteness.

  39. realitychecker

    Or lefties or righties in general, for that matter.

  40. Will

    ~snort~

    I presented an observation that I had never seen the laws of thermodynamics contradicted in the lab. Never even heard of it. But studiously avoided making a statement that denied the possibility. Then I asserted that economics does not have the level of certainty to assign its theories to the scientific law category.

    And you bring up Goedel….

    This galactic scope of the irony of this leads me to believe one of two things is likely:

    1) You are a prankster of the 1st order and worthy of a tip of the hat.

    Or

    2) You are a drunk asshole who is trying to show off in order to divert attention from the fact that he has made assertions he cannot back up.

    Judging from the word salad of the post you addressed to me I’m going with door #2. And since I started this foray by making a movie quote I’m going to end it with another that this back and forth reminds me of:

    “Well, as a matter of fact I won’t because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social…”

    It fits you to a t Stirling. Carry on.

    Will

  41. Hugh

    Modern economics is propaganda, a con. Its purpose is to justify the rich and elites’ looting of everyone else.

    Modern economics is like voodoo. I do not need to read to umpteen books of voodoo to understand the concept. Reading umpteen books on voodoo is not going to change it into something else.

    I think invoking Gödel is funny because economic theory is so illogical. You see the economy is a subset of our society’s activities, and it can not be understood without reference to that society because that society not only determines what it is but also how ultimately it should be measured, that is in social, not economic terms. But modern economics blurs, fakes, or simply ignores this relationship. It treats the economy as an independent subject of investigation when it is no such thing. Even more, it massively oversimplifies the economy so that it can be modelled but so poorly that the models never conform to reality. Yet the blank arrogance of modern economics is such that when this happens, which is often, the failure is ascribed to reality and not the model.

    There are useful ways of measuring the economy in social terms. So I am not saying that economics is inherently false and dishonest, but the varieties peddled during the last 80 to 90 years certainly are. I have said before, but Aristotle 23 centuries ago in his Nicomachean Ethics was much nearer the mark in how he related the polis/society to ethics/morality and from there to the economy, or to put it another way: society, how we are to act in society, and the economy as one group of social activities.

  42. Hugh

    I should say that I studied both Maxwell’s equations and Gödel’s theorem in my misspent youth. Thermodynamics is statistical in nature so for any given population of particles some particles can be at wide variance from the statistical norm, and this is also true at the quantum level. As for Gödel, I always took the Incompleteness Theorem to be a study in self-referentiality where the argument turned on a set of statements, some of which referenced the nature of the set. So they were being used both structurally as members of a list and in terms of their logical content.

  43. Charlie

    @Stirling

    It was the last time you tried to repeal a basic law of economics – so yes we will use it again.

    You mean, like Say’s?

  44. Webstir

    I can’t believe all the “science of economics” chatter going on since I left, and not one mention of Steve Keen. My impression from watching Keen’s YouTube vids over the years now (for example see here: https://m.youtube.com/user/ProfSteveKeen) is that the heterodox science based research economists (only in our fucked up economic world could economists basing their theories on observed fact rather than assumption be labeled heterodox) are slowly but surely picking the neoliberal blowhards like Krugman to pieces.

    Sorry Stirling. A degree in neoclassical economics is a handicap not an asset. Soon to be seen as the mark of a dinosaur. Passé in two decades, tops.

  45. bruce wilder

    I really have little idea what Stirling Newberry is being so high-handed about. “the argument does hold up, because it is total demand that matters” Say what? What argument? Total demand matters to what? And over what domain is the total to be totalled?

    I would say Adam Smith came close to a basic economic truth when he identified the division of labor with productivity. It misses a lot, and misconstrued more than a bit, but the idea that we need social cooperation, specialisation and trade is there. Autarky is pretty much a non-starter.

    That said, the classical dogma that posits free trade as universal good for every country in every circumstance is rubbish. Ricardo? Rubbish.

    Here is the thing about Smoot-Hawley: The Republican Party coalition that had dominated U.S. national politics since the mid-1890’s had been built in large part on the success of protective tariffs. McKinley, elected President in 1896 was strongly identified with a protective tariff. They worked to the advantage of the U.S. and the disadvantage of the preceding dominant economic power, Britain. A protective tariff transferred economic rents from British industry to the U.S. government and American industry, helping to make America’s rapid industrialization financially feasible.

    By the 1920’s, the U.S. was the dominant manufacturing power, well ahead of even the advanced European economies in a broad range of emerging industries. The U.S. could not benefit from a protective tariff. It was a cargo cult mentality that pushed Smoot-Hawley in 1930, cargo cult combined with nostalgia for the policy success that had created a political alignment that was at that moment crashing.

    Smoot-Hawley would have no practical consequence as a policy, but it would have a huge consequence as a symbol and an object lesson in favor of a policy of expansive trade, led by a dominant and indeed hegemonic economic and financial power. A new political alignment would carry free trade and a managed currency and economy forward from 1930 as the earlier alignment carried protective tariffs and a gold standard from the 1890’s.

    Many prominent industrialists opposed Smoot-Hawley at the time, in 1930, recognizing that it made no sense in the circumstances of American industrial dominance.

    The first and last lesson in economics is that all depends on particular circumstances and context. There are no universal imperatives, or principles if you conceive of economic laws, so-called, as policy imperatives. Should policy attempt to run a deficit of accumulate a deficit? It depends. Should the minimum wage be increased? It depends.

  46. cripes

    Will:
    Stirling’s “word salad” could be the result, I believe, of a stroke he had not that long ago, at least if my memory of reading this site is correct. Maybe consider that forward.

    Hugh:
    “(economics) treats the economy as an independent subject of investigation when it is no such thing.”
    Because all economics is political economy, really. There is no objective reality, only the reality of a given time/place and power relations, which constantly shift.

    Stirling:
    Coming late to this, if you have a belief that international trade is always and everywhere good, and tariffs bad, we must ask for whom?
    Anyway, surely we can agree that even if “green energy” should make shipping bic pens and underwear 10,000 miles to market feasible, does anyone but some labor arbitragers benefit?
    And the free flow of capital internationally, in the face of an increasingly destitute working class incapable of paying a security deposit on an overpriced apartment in a mid-tier city, is indefensible in it’s current exploitative form.

    I don’t think we suffer from a lack of international trade, or capital, or the wars that go with them, nor will the world dig its way out by everyone being a net exporter.

  47. Hugh

    Charlie, Say’s law is a good example. It keeps showing up in some new incarnation or branding everytime reality debunks it: Say’s law, supply side economics, trickle down economics, Reaganomics, job creators, etc.

    Webstir, I have not read a lot of Steve Keen. He does a reasonably good job at what he does, but he does not seem to ask the larger questions about why have one kind of economy instead of another.

    Personally, I am glad that we have gotten this far in the discussion without anyone invoking a progressive economic cult like MMT.

  48. Will

    cripes: Thanks for the heads up, much appreciated. I don’t know why I let myself get drawn into these arguments. It was obvious after about my 2nd or 3rd post that nothing constructive was going to come of it. It is one thing to argue and listen and disagree, it is quite another to keep trying to do so in the face of this kind of thing. Waste of time.

    Hugh: I’ve seen this thing discussed a couple times, no more. Once when a mathematician stepped into a conversation to reprimand a couple of guys who were going after it hammer and tong, one of whom had used this as part of his argument. The math guy said he doubted the theorem had any useful applications outside of philosophy. I had to agree.

    Webstir: I am a big fan of Keen as well. He sure knows how to pick his fights. He did a piece a while back on the futility of “microfoundations” and the rational actor as they are used now. As a complete outsider it was the kind of thinking that I completely bought into. At least in my field when you try to run a model with too little sophistication it can have dire consequences. You make a model as complicated as it needs to be in order to produce accurate results. You don’t build one that doesn’t do so and then argue with reality over who is right.

    Anyway I am backing out of this one. I am not sure what the hell Goedel has to do with free trade (or practically anything else for that matter) but I’ll just add that to the list of things that has puzzled me lately. Sorry if my last remark ruffled any feathers, that was not my intent and I apologize for any hard feelings.

    Will

  49. Willy

    After more than forty years it’s obvious that the discussions inside neoliberal think tanks didn’t revolve around proof of concept. They revolved around strategy. Interesting how some people just ‘know’ they’re right, especially when the thing they’re supporting will benefit them first and most. Negative impacts for the majority get rationalized away.

    I know a few tech types who thought that way. At least until the H1B replaced them. Suddenly they wanted to ‘make America great again’.

  50. Webstir

    Hugh,
    My intent was to convey that the conventional neoclassical economic wisdom is being assailed from a variety of heterodox challenges at the intellectual level and losing ground fast. I’m not saying that the assailant have it all figured out. So yes, I agree with you. And I must say I’m loving the discussion about economics as a subset of sociology. Keen definitely does not take it that far. Nobody really seems to. Constanza, Farley, Daly, et al. definitely bring the objective science to the discussion, but it still doesn’t encompass the entire problem. I’m surprised, or maybe ignorant, that sociologists haven’t made a renewed push to take back a domain that should in all rights be theirs.

  51. Webstir

    Will, you said:
    “It was obvious after about my 2nd or 3rd post that nothing constructive was going to come of it.” Which is why my first reply to the Peter types always comes swinging for the jaw. After the shot he took on Ian’s last post, I don’t think he’ll come sniffing around my comments anytime soon.

  52. marku52

    I agree with Will. As a quite successful EE, every time I thought I had seen a violation of Ohm’s Law, I knew I had to keep looking, and of course it was always some type of measurement errror; phase shifts, ground plane inductance and the like.

    When I look at so-called “laws of economics” I can only look askance at the purveyors of such crap.

    For example, “rational expectations” supposedly guarantees that government deficit spending can’t be stimulative because consumers will “realize” that their taxes will rise to compensate.

    “Honey, I was going to buy that new refrigerator, but have you seen the deficit numbers this quarter?”

    How someone can peddle that BS with a straight face is astonishing.

  53. different clue

    @Badtux,

    Thank you for being able to point out the deceit involved in citing “Smoot-Hawley” as the cause of anything. I have long suspected that Smoot-Hawley is a bright shiny squirrel object which the Free Trade Hasbarists haul out to divert the argument. So thank you for having the background to demonstrate that fact.

    I remember a while ago here when proFESSor Stirling Newberry first stated that the Cambodians had a choice in whether to be bombed or not and they chose to be bombed. I (and someone else too) asked proFESSor Newberry to explain how the Cambodians did that. After he stayed silent, I recounted in briefest form the story that Kurt Vonnegut once wrote about Nobel Prize Winning physicist Irving Langmuir. Vonnegut wrote that Langmuir once said: “If you cannot explain what you are doing to a reasonably bright fourteen year old, you are a charlatan.” And then I asked proFESSor Newberry to treat me like a reasonably bright fourteen year old and exPLAIN to me how the Cambodians chose to be bombed. . . . if he wasn’t a charlatan. Since he has never offered such an explanation, I have come to believe that he is a knowingly self-aware charlatan.

    His Free Trade Hasbara blather up above gives me all the proof I need that proFESSor Newberry is a proudly self-aware charlatan. I suspect proFESSor Newberry to be one of the sort of Academic Economystics who have been analyzed and condemned at length over at Naked Capitalism.

    By the way, did South Knox Bubba ever resume blogging again somewhere?

  54. Peter

    I was content to move on past the overemotional outburst Web displayed in the last post but his delicate snowflake temperament drives him to continue to fear debate. It’s easy to see what type of web site or, heaven forbid, government this type of party apparatchik would allow.

    The question posed by Ian about the contradiction in Corbyn’s support for EU membership and no exit is a good one but the discussion has drifted to boring economics and some supposed hunt for neo-liberals who still control most everything.

    The fact that Trump is the only powerful agent to do anything to resist any aspect of neo-liberalism must be especially painful for people who promote faux, Clintonite party picked, progressives who can’t even get elected now to be able to fall in behind their neo-liberal masters.

  55. Hugh

    Peter

    “Trump is the only powerful agent to do anything to resist any aspect of neo-liberalism”

    Trump in Cedar Rapids, Iowa June 21, 2017:

    So somebody said, ‘Why did you appoint a rich person to be in charge of the economy? I said, ‘Because that’s the kind of thinking we want … because they’re representing the country. They don’t want the money. And I love all people – rich or poor – but in those particular positions, I just don’t want a poor person.

  56. Hugh

    Just wanted to second bruce wilder’s comment. Going into the Great Depression the US was a major exporter. In major downturns, exporters get hit a lot harder than importers. The importers have the benefit of the imports while the exporter is sitting on a lot of idle capacity and largely uncollectable debt. At the same time, the importer can stimulate domestic economic activity and capacity to make up for its prior reliance on imports. So Smoot-Hawley, while it did not make a lot of sense, also did not have a lot of impact.

  57. marku52

    First thing to know about trade wars: Don’t start one if you are running a trade surplus. You are shooting your own foot off.

    A large part of the horrible performance of the US economy for most of its participants (victims?) for the last 30 years or so is that the US has consistently run a trade deficit during that time. If the government doesn’t run an offsetting deficit at the same time, the private sector runs short of cash (demand). Of course, deficit hysteria like that from Nobelists like Reinhart and Rogoff, coupled with Ricardo’s thesis that all trade is wonderful, no matter the terms, means that nothing helpful can be done to fix the US’ chronic lack of demand.

    Thanks again, economists.

    When someone gets serious about fixing the US trade deficit (offsetting tariffs with chronic deficit nations, perhaps), then the US could think about getting back to an economy that works for most people.

  58. Peter

    @Hugh

    I think that Trump plans these non-PC but meaningless sound-bites to create the media feeding frenzies their interpreters usually produce. He didn’t call anyone retard or lazy lay-about he loves everyone but you do have to be choosy when filling high government positions, Duh!

    These trolling runs usually come before a major announcement or move so I expect something to happen soon.

  59. Hugh

    Yes, Peter, government of the rich for the rich can only be run by the rich. In Trump world, there are apparently only two kinds of people, those rich like him and the poor, no middle class. Still it is interesting the extents you are willing to go to gloss over his malevolent inanities, like Trump saying that the rich aren’t in it for the money. Or having run the economy off the cliff in the 2008 meltdown they just want to do what’s good for the country. I look on you as a kind of experiment in cognitve dissonance. At what point are Trump’s betrayal of his promises to you and yours eventually going to sink in? Or are you going to be one of those classic deadenders that can never admit that Trump played you?

  60. Peter

    @Hugh

    You shouldn’t project so much it’s not healthy especially when you demand your interpretation of the reign of Trump is accurate. Because Trump has kept so many of his campaign promises, as far as possible, some people are losing their marbles and screaming that some major change is not happening. The free traders, the Warmers and the criminal alien advocates certainly know that Trump is a change agent.

    I had no great expectations for Trump other than his defeating the Red Queen and I’m satisfied with that and much of the change he has accomplished especially with the rolling coup attempt a constant distraction.

  61. Hugh

    “Trump has kept so many of his campaign promises”

    More like that, please. When you make statements like that which are so obviously and violently divorced from reality, I don’t need to debunk you. You totally discredit yourself.

  62. Peter

    @Hugh

    Trump’s promised policy changes may not be what you want but denying they are real is a sore loser’s petulant posturing. I listed three major national and international changes that have the snowflakes gnashing teeth and rending garments.

    Someone at NC or ZH is positing that Trump’s criminal illegal alien roundup is driving gasoline prices down. They believe that the illegals are not driving because they fear the dragnet and that was enough to drive down demand. If true that means that Trump is giving everyone else a stimulus by keeping that promise.

    You seem to be clinging to the group that believes that fake news, lies and denial will drive Trump to behave like the political parasites they adore. Underestimating Trump has left the Clintonites with a dying party stuck in denial as their latest defeat in Georgia shows. Obama is being dragged out of retirement to save the party but it’s probably wise for the snowflakes to find safe spaces for the next few years.

  63. realitychecker

    Peter wins that round, IMO. 🙂

  64. Willy

    This is fascinating (provided Peter isn’t just here to provide amusement for regulars).

    What does Peter even stand for, besides hating the “red queen” and her “snowflakes”?

  65. realitychecker

    Try writing down what the word “freedom” means to you, if not the freedom to behave in ways that others disagree with?

    It’s a thought-door. 🙂

  66. Willy

    I was raised conservative. I worked in a business populated with many conservatives.

    But I learned the hard way that respect for freedom isn’t nearly enough. Not only can those expert at taking advantage of “freedom” ruin anybody they want, they usually know how to manipulate other ‘freedom lovers’ into ruining anybody who simply wants to be good at what they do.

    Does one fight the enablers of these ‘freedom-loving freedom-killers’? Or do they use their freedom to cut the head off the snake?

    If none of that makes any sense to you, then you have never worked in a large corporation or paid attention.

  67. different clue

    If Real Labor can finally drive the ToryCons out of power and then out of influence, and then tries to conduct any kind of Brexit at all, the NeoLiberal EU will try to undermine the British economy badly enough to abort Real Labor from applying any of its Manifesto.

    If Real Labor takes total command and tries to apply its Manifesto, it will have to do it against the very firmest opposition the EU and other supporters of Neo Liberal Free Traderism and Privatism can put in its way. The British peoples will have to craft some kind of Democratic War and Survival Socialism. They may even have to feed themselves in the teeth of a stealth blockade as near to the American blockade against Cuba which the Davos Man scum can get away with applying.

    In my purely amateur layman’s opinion.

  68. realitychecker

    You made one side of the argument, I suggested exploring the other side.

    Thought door means I opened it, up to you to explore what is inside.

  69. Hugh

    Peter’s list of Trump’s major accomplishments are the following:

    “The free traders, the Warmers and the criminal alien advocates certainly know that Trump is a change agent.”

    Almost no one on this site with the exception possibly of Stirling is pro-free trade. While Trump came out against the TPP, it was already dead in the Congress. He talked about making major changes to NAFTA. Now it appears any changes to it are more likely to be cosmetic. The Germans declared TTIP talks had collapsed back in August 2016 or a couple of months before the election. He promised to declare China a currency manipulator which would have opened it up to major trade penalties but then backed down on that. So really very little there there, and what there was was there before he got there.

    Only Peter would see Trump’s climate change denial idiocy as a plus. But with or without the Paris Agreement, coal is not coming back and the economy will continue moving away from fossil fuels, just not as fast which will equate to a loss, not a gain, in jobs.

    Hard to say what a “criminal alien” is in Peter’s demented view of the universe. Obama deported a lot more people than Trump. And Trump’s travel ban continues to languish in the courts and could well be shot down by the Supreme Court due to his own sabotage of it. Oh yes, and has anyone heard any talk of Trump’s much vaunted “Wall” recently? Me either.

  70. Willy

    But isn’t Hillary locked up, somewhere?

  71. different clue

    @Hugh,

    I can keep asking @Peter if he has bought oceanfront beachfront sea-level property in Florida yet till I am blue in the keyboard, and it has no effect. I wonder if he could ignore the question if you and a hundred other commenters ask him if he has bought land in Florida yet . . . every time he pretends the global isn’t warming and if it is that industrial man has nothing to do with it anyway.

    Because if he really believes that, he should act on it while there is money to be made.

  72. Ché Pasa

    Unleashing ICE and the military to do as they will has been a rip-roaring success at inspiring terror and rage in immigrant communities and leading to exponentially higher civilian death tolls in the ever-growing number of war-theaters.

    Sucking up to the Saudis and Israelis seems to be a success, too, as the guns of August become an ever-greater possibility in Gulf over the Qatar Thing.

    Police killings of civilians in this country are running a notch higher this year than last, so that’s got to be counted as a success, no?

    As the Russia Thing metastasizes — probably for no good reason except to keep the public distracted and the investigative community employed — the ability of Washington (elite or insurgent) to control the narrative diminishes. Chaos reigns…

    Oh yeah, so much winning.

  73. Peter

    @DC

    Florida isn’t in any immediate danger of being swamped and there is plenty of time to call in the Dutch dike builders who have been keeping the sea back in the Netherlands for a thousand years. You mentioned Louisiana as an example of sea level rise damage which shows you don’t have a clue because the problem there is mostly caused by land sinking on the coast because of the altered flow of the Mississippi river.

    Now that Trump has broken the back of the political GW agenda we should see less hysterical projections about future warming and its effects.

  74. Willy

    With pleasure cruises starting to do the Northwest Passage (those silly vacationing snowflakes will believe almost anything), Peter better act quick to invest in polar sea rescue services.

  75. Peter

    @Hugh

    A few days after being sworn in President Trump used his power to issue an executive order ending US participation in the TPP negotiations. This is a documented fact. Hugh wants us to believe the rumors and opinions fed to the public by the MSM based on the Kabuki chatter of our parasite politicians from months earlier. I would hope you could understand the difference between facts and opinions.

    Before the humiliating Clintonite defeat Obama had already announced he would be pushing this his final legacy through congress as soon as the Red Queen was selected. The republican leadership did then tell Obama not to bother coming to congress with carrots or sticks. It really doesn’t matter what people here or anywhere thought about the TPP they were treated like mushrooms.

    The big co2 emitters in Asia, China and India are spending huge amounts of money on solar and some people think this means they are moving away from fossil fuels. Actually at least in India the planned solar growth won’t even meet the new power demand from their growing economy. This means they are planning to build more coal fired power plants to meet that new demand and continue running all the old coal plants along with the new solar. Might be some work for US coal miners.

    If our economy ever improves and growth resumes we will face the same calculus along with every solar instillation needing a fossil fuel backup to generate power during the !7 hours a day that solar doesn’t generate any useable power.

    Trump won’t allow the unelected Eurocrats to gain control of our money demanded for the Warmers agenda and he won’t allow our Warmer bureaucrats/scientists to impose foreign energy policy mandates. Both of these are good policies unless you believe an unelected one world government is a progressive goal.

  76. different clue

    @Peter,

    Well then, you should be buying land in these places. Or at least investing in funds which invest in land in these places. That way, you or your descendants will be set to make a fortune when the rest of us realize we haven’t a clue, and hadn’t a clue all along, and decide we want to buy back in.

    You will then be in a position to name your price on that land you wisely bought as a contrarian investment, in your superior wisdom.

    So . . . have you bought land in coastal Florida yet?

  77. realitychecker

    @ dc

    I know it is fun to whip Peter, and sometimes he deserve it when he goes all uncritical on the libertarian mindset thingy, but in fairness, it is NOT fair to beat him up on the “buy coastal property” thingy unless everybody else here is being similarly urged to back up their beliefs by short-selling the many securities that are based on ownership of coastal properties.

    Are you doing that yet?

  78. realitychecker

    Perhaps it is my own unusual mind that leads me to perspectives that differ from most, but when scoring Trump’s performance successes, the three things I think he deserves the most credit for are:

    1.He has done more than anybody else to demonstrate and reveal the corrupt miasma that is our corporate-controlled media, an unreservedly great service to the Republic;

    2.He has set the out-of-control political correctness dogma back on its ass, where it deserves to be because it has brought so much that is so irrational and freedom-killing into our everyday lives;

    3.He is seen to be breaking down the strangle-hold our vicious duopoly parties have had on our country, and nobody else in sight could have or would have done that.

    Each one of these is major and necessary in and of itself; to be able to claim credit for all three is a yuuuuuge achievement to any fair-minded observer, IMO.

  79. Willy

    Are you sure he actually ‘did’ these things? It sure seems like he observed the direction the overall public mood was heading in, then took advantage for personal gain. Many would rather Bernie be there because of the integrity factor. But he fell into the martyr trap and was easily ‘removed’ in the way the PTB crucifies them today. Trump may have avoided that because he was a rich pop conman, with implied muscle.

    Seriously, was a rich pop conman the best we could do?

  80. realitychecker

    It doesn’t matter whether we like Trump, or whether he is a nice man, when we are in the process of evaluating the specific results I delineated.

    I think those results are clear to the open eye.

  81. Peter

    @RC

    Thanks for the comment and I accept the label you gave me but only if its refined to show I’m a Left-Libertarian/anarchist which is a much older philosophy than the recent right-libertarianism of people like Rand or the Paul’s.

    DC reminds me of an old drinking buddy who became addled and repetitive ad-nausium so there isn’t much hope for a rational exchange of ideas.

    Your short list of Trump’s yuuuuge achievements are what the snowflakes are stuck in denial about because they are partisan Statists who are terrified of any moves to dismantle their authoritarian administrative state from inside or any challenge to their PC culture outside of government.

  82. realitychecker

    @ Peter

    Political labels get confusing sometimes, they are crafted for effect rather than clarity, methinks.

    But, I fell in love with John Stuart Mill when I read On Liberty 45 years ago. 🙂

  83. Willy

    And what is political correctness anyways?

    Is it where evangelical conservatives must say “f$%k” instead of “fuck”, or “libtard” instead of “liberal”? Or where calling an african american a “nigger” is only cool if you are one yourself, preferably a gangsta thug, otherwise a crowd gathers to throw stones?

    Is it the excesses of PC (as it’s currently defined) that we’re talking about, beyond the rational desire for a free but civil society?

    The term itself was originally popularized by Stalinists as a positive behavior for their kind. Then American activists used the term “ironically, as a guard against their own orthodoxy in social change efforts” (Wikipedia). Then it became a negative term as a result of efforts of libertarians, and a few edgy hipster comedians.

    What exactly are we talking about, and how does this damage America?

  84. Willy

    What is a “Left-Libertarian/anarchist”?

    I remember Chomsky describing himself along those lines, and thinking that oxymoronic. Is he actually against any concentrations of power, because of who it is that an unchecked power game rewards?

    In a totalitarian Communist system, a psychopathic bank robber making the right moves can take over everything to then play with as his own personal toy. In a completely free libertarian society a psychopathic bank robber can (eventually) take over everything to then play with as his own personal toy.

    Are “Left-Libertarian/anarchist”s trying to check psychopathic power players? Would some new form of political correctness be required for a society to effectively check the psychopathic power player? Would this become an excess? So many questions.

  85. realitychecker

    It is the ridiculous excesses that are the practical problem.

    It is the inherent censorship that is the philosophical problem.

    Two separate evils, combining synergistically.

  86. Peter

    Some good news today as CNN had to remove their latest witch-hunt, smear, very fake news story about Trump and his associates. It didn’t meet their ‘standards’ and they apologized to the Trump associate they libeled.

    The real shocker is that this very fake news was exposed by the investigative reporting at Breitbart News while no one else even bothered.

    I had hoped that the Intercept would have developed into an honest news broker and produce some unbiased reporting but even Glen Greenwald has been silenced there. Their purpose now seems to be to create a criminal alien protection society and add to the fake news offering like most of the rest of the media.

  87. different clue

    @realitychecker,

    Of course I am “shorting” coastal property. My way of “shorting” it is to decide I will never buy a house or even a houselet near the coast, much as I might have wanted to retire there. Also, Peter is an active missionary for the No Global Warming To See Here myth. As long as a critical massload of people believe it, they can obstruct useful survival action to reduce it. So they threaten our survival, including my survival, so it is entirely fair to keep counter-missionising against Peter’s denialism whenever he keeps missionising for it.

  88. different clue

    @Willy,

    Trump destroyed the Republicans’ annointed Jeb Bush candidacy. He may have succeeded in driving the Bushes out of politics for a couple of decades at least.

    He also defeated the Democrats’ annointed Hillary Clinton candidacy. Since the Clintons are persistent little cockroaches, he can’t drive them out of our politics all by himself, but he has created an opportunity for the rest of us to set poison baits and traps all over everywhere, and perhaps drive the Clintons and all their Clintonites back into the sewage tar pits from which they emerged for perhaps a couple of decades.

  89. Peter

    I understand the need that control freaks display when they attempt to pigeon-hole and brand anyone who challenges their groupthink. It’s much like the attitudes and methods of the inquisition. Give the true believers power and they will quickly and efficiently bring the Deniers to heel.

    The snowflakes seem to be hogging most all of the denial today and the people described as GW Deniers seem to be denying their belief in the snowflakes version and hysterical vision of the future effects of GW. For years i dismissed the Deniers although I knew the Warmer hysterical projections about the near future were weak guesswork. I thought that the Warmers at NOAA, NASA and elsewhere had done an honest job decoding the massive amount of data already collected but Wikileaks showed that they manipulated that data to fit their projections so no sane person should any longer trust them.

    I didn’t picture DC as being in the upper leisure class with the means to buy beachfront property especially in Florida. Perhaps he wanted me to buy it so he could pick it up cheap at a flood sale when I panicked and pulled out.

  90. different clue

    @Peter,

    The opportunity is still there. You can plant the seeds of a future family fortune.

  91. different clue

    Oh! and . . . Peter . . . why would I want to be able to pick Florida land up cheap at a flood sale?
    After man made global warming has progressed far enough, my investment would be “underwater”, har dee har har. Why would I want to expose myself to that downside certainty?

  92. Willy

    “but Wikileaks showed that they manipulated that data to fit their projections so no sane person should any longer trust them.”

    Are you sure?
    http://www.factcheck.org/2017/02/no-data-manipulation-at-noaa/
    http://www.snopes.com/2017/02/08/noaa-scientists-climate-change-data/

    Eskimos claim to be living the change, watching it happen before their eyes. But I suppose that no sane person should trust the thawing of the Northwest Passage as evidence, either?
    https://skepticalscience.com/Inuit-Climate-Change.html

    You can provide links to ‘real experts’ like Alex Jones to counter, if you like.

  93. DMC

    I think Chomsky used the term Libertarian Socialist, which is a common enough term among Europeans but seems oxymoronic to Americans. It’s small L libertarianism as in “civil libertarian” and casts itself in distinction to “Right Socialism” or “State Socialism” ala’ the former USSR. The closest American equivalent is Anarcho-Syndicalism(think the IWW).

  94. Peter

    @W

    Being a Warmer true believer I doubt you can digest anything that conflicts with that warm feeling of belonging to that cause. That may be why you can’t get past the simplistic rhetoric used to separate the believers from the heretics.

    The Wikileaks release was about the corruption and manipulation of research in the UK but the NOAA whistleblower story shows how this corruption has spread. The IPCC finally admitted that there had been little or no GW during the first decade of this century which destroyed the hockey stick theory of constant linear leading to exponential temperature increases. Tom Karl’s K15 NOAA report was rushed through ignoring NOAA’s own rules and procedures to try to make the pause in GW disappear.

    John Bates the NOAA whistle blower, who was not the only NOAA climate scientist to question the K15 report was sandbagged when he tried to internally address the glairing problems with this report. Bates’ complete account and explanation for why he said the Tom Karl had his thumb on the scales while generating this report,has been published.

    The lame damage control links you rely on follow the usual meme of trying to discredit the whistle blower and divert attention onto the statements of some republicans. You even included an emotional account of a victim of GW to show your heart is in the right place even if your head is elsewhere.

  95. Willy

    Still no credible links? Strange, the IPCC I’ve heard of is as alarmist than ever.

    All I need is observing the history of the NW Passage. If Roald Amundsen took 3 years with his crew of hardy men, and now cruise ships are doing the passage in 8 days full of potentially lawyered up rich old vacationers, I don’t think I’ll be needing a bunch of US mayors to persuade me that something is going on:
    http://www.9and10news.com/story/35740713/conference-us-mayors-may-shape-national-climate-policy

    Wouldn’t it be easier to just accept the change but be skeptical of mandates? Isn’t that where the debate should be? Even your Dubya said as much.

  96. different clue

    I gather Chomsky also calls himself a “Syndico-Anarchalist” or some such thing.

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