Author: Tony Wikrent Page 36 of 48

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 27, 2020

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-21-20]

https://twitter.com/molotics/status/1340738542469869568

It’s the economy ideology, stupid: 

What a Miserable 2020 Revealed About America

Paul Waldman, December 21, 2020 [The American Prospect]

It exposed an impotent political system, a deadly mythology of rugged individualism, and a Republican Party without shame….

Our individualism is deadly. In no other country were the simple public-health measures necessary to contain the coronavirus so quickly and easily politicized. Trump bears much of the blame, but it didn’t take much for him to convince people that wearing masks is a terrible imposition on their freedom, and that it could be a worthwhile emblem of political identity. So many of us have spent our lives steeping in the ideology of “rugged individualism,” learning that any government edict is inherently repressive and making a personal sacrifice for the good of your neighbors, even a tiny one, makes you weak. No quantity of dead Americans has managed to dissuade so many of us from believing this.

Yep, it’s definitely the ideology, stupid: 

“Neal Katyal and the Depravity of Big Law: The Democratic lawyer’s sickening defense of corporate immunity in a Supreme Court case reveals a growing moral rot in the legal community.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 20, 2020

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

America’s Survival Depends on Bankrupting the Republican Party
Thom Hartmann: [via LA Progressive 12-18-2020]

Large parts of the Republican base now join conspiracists in the misguided belief that vaccine manufacturers are participating in mind-control experiments and that public health measures like masks are “un-American,” while we’re being sickened and dying from the highest rates of COVID-19 infection and death in the developed world.

Republicans on the Supreme Court even say the founders of our republic and the framers of the Constitution would never go along with preventing churches and synagogues from holding superspreader events during a pandemic, but, like so many things GOP, it’s a lie.

In 1798, President John Adams signed the first public health care legislation—it was to pay for medical care and hospitalization not just for the Navy but also for civilian sailors. And both he and President George Washington had participated in quarantine events during epidemics in the summers of 1793 and 1798, and both promoted inoculation against smallpox.

From 1790 to 1800, Philadelphia was the nation’s capital. When the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 recurred in 1798, that city’s board of health, with no objections raised by President John Adams or any member of Congress, ordered a block-by-block evacuation of parts of Philadelphia….

Since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have damaged America more in 40 years than our worst enemies could have dreamed of by other means….

They have rigged elections by making it hard to vote, seditiously tried to overturn the 2020 election, promoted racial and religious bigotry and violence, destroyed our public school systems, gutted our unions, and rewritten our tax system to screw the middle class.

Click through to read Hartmann’s proposed six actions that can hasten the GOP’s exit from the stage of world history. 

These Six Steps Can Stop Republican Treason

[Thom Hartmann, December 16, 2020, YouTube]

LA Progressive

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-15-20]

Marianne Williamson
@marwilliamson
The more I learn about the current epidemic of white supremacist groups, the clearer it becomes: we’re losing these people as children. Despair among our youth breeds vulnerability to ideological capture by psychotic forces. If our love doesn’t claim them, hate will.
12:50 AM · Dec 15, 2020

“Chris Arnade: Dignity, Poverty, Faith, & Seeking Respect in Back Row America” (podcast)

[The Moral Imagination, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-16-20]

“In the second half of the conversation we discuss faith, redemption, and atonement, and how the front row’s empiricist, cold, secular rationalism scientific doesn’t do justice to the complexities of human life, suffering, and the desire for meaning, dignity, and respect. Arnade argues that ‘atheism is an intellectual luxury that is wrong’ and that ‘front row’ scientism lacks epistemic humility, and has a false view of science and certainty. Arnade shows that each person, no matter our state, is a subject, and not simply an object to be manipulated or problem to be solved. And that many of our deepest problems cannot be solved by technical means alone, but are philosophical and cultural problems—not of the poor—but of the elite.”

“How race politics liberated the elites”

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 13, 2020

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

An Ominous Sign: Americans Have Begun Stealing Food To Survive

[ZeroHedge, via Mike Norman Economics 12-11-20]

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

If you’ve been waiting for a sign that things are really bad economically in the United States, here it is. Americans who never would have contemplated shoplifting before are stealing food to survive…. I wrote the other day about how the response to the pandemic has destroyed the personal finances of American families. An area that deserves more attention is food insecurity…. More than 50 million people are suffering from food insecurity in the United States right now, a number that has leaped dramatically due to the response to the coronavirus….

Twenty percent of Americans are now turning to food banks to help keep their families fed. And according to a report in the Washington Post, the shoplifting of food and other essential items is increasing significantly….

The result is a growing subset of Americans who are stealing food to survive.

Shoplifting is up markedly since the pandemic began in the spring and at higher levels than in past economic downturns, according to interviews with more than a dozen retailers, security experts and police departments across the country. But what’s distinctive about this trend, experts say, is what’s being taken — more staples like bread, pasta and baby formula.

“We’re seeing an increase in low-impact crimes,” said Jeff Zisner, chief executive of workplace security firm Aegis. “It’s not a whole lot of people going in, grabbing TVs and running out the front door. It’s a very different kind of crime — it’s people stealing consumables and items associated with children and babies.” (source)

“Stealing to survive: More Americans are shoplifting food as aid runs out during the pandemic”

[Washington Post, via Zero Hedge 12-10-20]

“Alex graduated with a master’s degree in May and was immediately in a bind: no job, no money and, with much of the country still shut down, little hope that anything would change. She’d spent most of her $1,200 stimulus check on rent, and used what little she had left to buy groceries. Everything else — vitamins, moisturizer, body wash — she said she shoplifted from a Whole Foods Market a few miles from her apartment in Chicago. ‘It was like, I could spend $10 and get a couple of vegetables or I could spend $10 on just a box of tampons,’ said Alex, 27, who asked to be identified by her middle name to speak candidly. She has a job now, earning $15 an hour, but still struggles to make ends meet. She says she continues to shoplift — something she’d never done before the pandemic — every few weeks. She says she moves through the store mostly unnoticed. Usually, she said, she picks up a few bulky vegetables — a bunch of kale, maybe, or a few avocados — to disguise the pricier items she slips into her bag at the self checkout. ‘I don’t feel much guilt about it,” she said. ‘It’s been very frustrating to be part of a class of people who is losing so much right now. And then to have another class who is profiting from the pandemic — well, let’s just say I don’t feel too bad about taking $15 or $20 of stuff from Whole Foods when Jeff Bezos is the richest man on Earth.’”

U.S. Billionaire Wealth Surges Past $1 Trillion Since Beginning of Pandemic — Total Grows to $4 Trillion 

[Institute for Policy Studies, via Naked Capitalism 12-12-20]

Disrupting Mainstream Economics

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by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

“This Is a Revolution, Sir”

[Jacobin, via Naked Capitalism 12-2-20]

Workers in India last week launched a general strike that brought out an estimated 250 million people, arguably the largest in human history. Now, they’re joining hands with farmers to protest Narendra Modi’s pro-corporate, far-right agenda.

Anti-Populism with Thomas Frank (podcast)

[The Dig, via Naked Capitalism 11-30-20]

Lambert Strether: “…if you want to understand why Frank has been blackballed by liberal Democrats and won’t (at least as I heard him say on Useful Idiots) be writing on politics any more, this is the podcast episode for you.”

Transcript is at: Thomas Frank: How the Democratic Party Became a Vehicle of Aristocracy​​​​​​​

[ScheerPost, 12-4-2020]

And Martin Luther King actually knew this history. The reason he knew it–it’s not, you know, hard to figure out–there was a famous historian of the South back in those days, his name was C. Vann Woodward, who wrote about this. You know, he wrote book after book after book about this story. C. Vann Woodward was a classic Southern liberal, and for him populism was the only bright spot in Southern history between the end of the Civil War–or I should say the end of Reconstruction, and then the present day in the 1960s, when he was writing populism. Was the only moment when there was even a glimmer of hope that Blacks and whites could get together in some kind of common action.

And Martin Luther King knew this history pretty well. And so he’s at this triumphant moment in Montgomery, Alabama, and he’s giving this speech. And he does this amazing shoutout to the populist movement of the 1890s. And he talks about how it threatened the Bourbon Democrats of the South, and how they instituted Jim Crow as a response to populism. So, to reinforce this idea of white solidarity, so that they could go to the, you know, to the poor white farmer who had nothing–you know, who was basically starving, almost–and say to this guy, well, you know, at least you’re a white person. So you’re better than these other people. And it’s one of King’s great moments. You can watch the speech on YouTube. But he says–I don’t want to spoil it, but you should go and watch the speech, because it’s absolutely fantastic. And he says, you know, the poor white farmer, when his stomach growled and his family called out for food, “he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was,” he was still better than these other people. It’s one of his beautiful moments….

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 29, 2020

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

For What Are America’s Wealthy Thankful? A Worsening Culture War

Matt Taibbi, TK News, via Naked Capitalism 11-26-20]

….From the “vast right-wing conspiracy” through the “basket of deplorables” to now, the Democratic message increasingly focuses on the illegitimacy of the ordinary conservative voter’s opinion: ignorant, conspiratorial, and racist, so terrible that the only hope is mass-reprogramming by educated betters.

On the other hand, Republicans from Goldwater to Trump have warned that coalitions of “marauders” from the inner cities and “bad hombres” from across the border are plotting to use socialist politics to seize the hard-earned treasure of the small-town voter, with the aid of elitist traitors in the Democratic Party.

Spool these ideas endlessly and you get culture war. Any thought that it might abate once Trump left the scene looks naive now….

This is what happens when the very wealthy stop having a stake in the outcome of a country’s future. Having long ago stopped investing in ameliorative programs to keep cities and small towns alive, they stop bothering with unifying national legends, too, letting long-simmering divisions rise….

…we’re now back to corporate-sponsored tales of half against half. What’s always forgotten is who’s paying for these messages. We have two donor-fattened parties that across decades of incompetence have each run out of convincing pitches for how to improve the lives of ordinary people. So they’ve settled into a new propaganda line that blames voters for their problems, with each party directing its base to demonize the other’s followers. Essentially, in the wake of Trump, the political class is accepting the inevitability of culture war, and urging it on, as something preferable to populist revolt.

Divided Societies In Decline Use Scapegoats To Re-Unify

Ian Welsh, November 24, 2020

America is moving towards a cold, and perhaps hot war with the rising superpower and the last superpower (China and Russia). At home, passions are hot and at some point some groups are going to be chosen as the “bad Americans. The traitors.” Some part of the elite (a small part) will be thrown to the dogs, and so will many of the powerless.

This doesn’t happen in all great powers in decline, to be sure. But it’s common play and it has powerful people other than Thiel pushing it. They see America’s decline and its disunity and they are looking for a way to turn the decline around or at least distract Americans from the actual authors of the decline (that would be people like Thiel) towards scapegoats.

Know Your Enemies

Ian Welsh, November 23, 2020

An enemy is someone who means you harm and has the means to inflict it…. You must know who wants to harm you and has the means. Let’s start here:

“If America’s distribution of income had remained the same as it was in the 3 decades following the second world war… A low-income American earning $35K this year would be earning $61K. A college-educated worker now earning $72K would be earning $120K.”

Everyone responsible for this is your enemy, unless you’re in somewhere between the top 4% to top 10%….

So the people who are responsible have robbed you of a million or more dollars, and a good, prosperous life. These people had names. It started with with intellectuals like Milton Friedman and the oligarchs who funded economics departments to overturn the economic orthodoxy the old order ran on. It moved onto politicians, executive and CEOs. Margaret Thatcher, and Reagan; then Blair and Clinton, who made their victory complete. Thatcher understood that it was Blair who made her victorious, until Labour accepted “There Is No Alternative” they could have simply undone almost everything she did. Clinton, cutting welfare and smashing blacks and poor people in the face with punitive jail sentences, was Reagan’s heir more than George Bush Sr. ever was.(Biden, of course, was there for all of it and supported almost every shitty piece of it. Enemy. If you can’t manage “enemy, but perhaps not as bad an enemy as Trump, you can’t think.”)

Now, here’s another fact: wage theft is almost equal to ALL other theft combined, except (get this) it isn’t considered a crime. That’s right, when your boss steals from you, it’s a civil/regulatory matter! Who’s the enemy?

The Epidemic

Over 900 Mayo staff have gotten COVID-19 in past two weeks

[Post-Bulletin, via Naked Capitalism 11-23-20]

Does contact tracing work? Quasi-experimental evidence from an Excel error in England (PDF)

[CAGE Research Centre, via Naked Capitalism 11-25-20]

A natural experiment. From the Abstract: “Between September 25 and October 2, 2020, a total of 15,841 COVID-19 cases in England (around 15 to 20% of all cases) were not immediately referred to the contact tracing system due to a data processing error. Case information was truncated from an Excel spreadsheet after the row limit had been reached, which was discovered on October 3. There is substantial variation in the degree to which different parts of England areas were exposed – by chance – to delayed referrals of COVID-19 cases to to the contact tracing system. We show that more affected areas subsequently experienced a drastic rise in new COVID-19 infections and deaths alongside an increase in the positivity rate and the number of test performed, as well as a decline in the performance of the contact tracing system. Conservative estimates suggest that the failure of timely contact tracing due to the data glitch is associated with more than 125,000 additional infections and over 1,500 additional COVID-19- related deaths. Our findings provide strong quasi-experimental evidence for the effectiveness of contact tracing.”

Swedish Life Expectancy to Drop for First Time in Century Due to Covid-19 

[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 11-26-20]

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by Tony Wikrent

China Emerges Victorious in Trump’s Trade War

China scores victory as 15 Asian nations sign world’s biggest free-trade deal

[South China Morning Post, via Naked Capitalism 11-16-20]

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership accounts for about one-third of the world’s population and economy, but does not include the United States

East Asia Decouples from the United States: Trade War, COVID-19, and East Asia’s New Trade Blocs (PDF)

Petersen Institute for International Economics, via Naked Capitalism 11-20-20]

Lambert Strether: As Michael Pettis points out, the RCEP members are all net exporters. So who buys the goods?

KT Chong commented in the Weekend Wrap on Ian Welsh last week:

America has not yet realized: [with] the signing of the RCEP, China has effectively prevailed in — i.e., “won” — the open trade and economic war with the US.

With RCEP and the entire Asia Pacific as its economic and free trade sphere, China has maneuvered into an economic and strategic position in which it will have very little to fear from being decoupled or even sanctioned by the US. Now America and its Western allies will no longer be able to defeat China through trade, decoupling, sanctions or any economics means. With RCEP, China’s economic future is secured…. This will be the longest-lasting legacy of the Trump administration: starting and then losing the trade and economic war with China, in just three years, and now China’s rise to economic supremacy is all but certain.

RCEP set to supercharge the New Silk Roads

Pepe Escobar [Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism 11-16-20]

China looms as Biden’s biggest foreign policy challenge. Here’s where he stands

[CNN, via Naked Capitalism 11-16-20]

The Elements of the China Challenge (PDF) Policy Planning Staff, Office of the Secretary of State

[via Axios, via Naked Capitalism 11-20-20]

The Pandemic

“Lawsuit: Tyson managers bet money on how many workers would contract COVID-19”

[Iowa Capital Dispatch, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-19-20]

The lawsuit was recently amended and includes a number of new allegations against the company and plant officials. Among them:

• In mid-April, around the time Black Hawk County Sherriff Tony Thompson visited the plant and reported the working conditions there “shook [him] to the core,” plant manager Tom Hart organized a cash-buy-in, winner-take-all, betting pool for supervisors and managers to wager how many plant employees would test positive for COVID-19.

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 15, 2020

by Tony Wikrent

America is an undeveloping state

Trump Is Staging A Coup — Why Are Dems Not Sounding The Alarm?

David Sirota, November 10, 2020

Most ominously of all, Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona are already insinuating the results may be fraudulent, even though they haven’t produced any evidence of widespread fraud.

Why is public perception so important? Because as Ohio State University law professor Edward Foley shows in a frighteningly prescient 2019 article, legislatures could use the public perception of fraud to try to invoke their  constitutional power to ignore their states’ popular votes, reject certified election results and appoint slates of Trump electors.

Trump is attempting a coup in plain sight

Ezra Klein, November 7, 2020 [Vox]

[Twitter, via Heather Cox Richardson 11-9-2020]

The Empire Strikes Back

The Democrats Are Already Back on Their Bullshit: The party is back to what it does best: blaming the left for its failures.

Paul Blest, November 6, 2020 [discourseblog]

Rep. Jim Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House who represents deep-blue Charleston, SC, implied during the call that if the Democrats talk about Medicare for All or really anything that would remotely seem like the they might try to improve people’s lives once they’re in power, it would be disastrous in Georgia, where the party is trying to secure a Senate majority by taking two seats off Republicans in January runoffs.

This is despite the fact that most of the incumbent freshman members who co-sponsored Medicare for All—many of them not exactly self-described progressives, aside from Katie Porter, the most successful of the bunch—all won their races….

One thing centrist Democrats might consider is that in a lot of places, their brand is absolute garbage even if their policies are well-liked. How else do you explain a 23-point victory for a $15 minimum wage in Florida and a three-and-a-half point loss for Biden, who supported it? How do you square a 67% defeat of right-to-work in Missouri in 2018 along with a six-point loss for Claire McCaskill? What is the lesson from voters casting ballots for recreational weed in Montana and South Dakota, and medical weed in Mississippi, despite those states all going for Trump by double-digits? It’s not the fault of trans people, socialists, or Black Lives Matter.

The Democrats are struggling in these places for the same reason they’re beginning to get successfully primaried from the left, at the local, state, and federal level, in the urban centers they’ve ruled forever. They have not learned the lesson of why Bernie Sanders was such a force in the last two primaries even if he ultimately came up short, or the lesson of why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez resonates with so many people.

Corporate Democrats Are Attacking So-Called Far-Left Policies

Senator Bernie Sanders, November 11, 2020 [USA Today, via David Sirota’s Weekly Poster 11-13-2020]

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by Tony Wikrent

The 277 Policies for Which Biden Need Not Ask Permission

[The American Prospect, via Naked Capitalism 11-5-20]

FAST FACTS:

• We found 277 policies that can be enacted through executive branch powers in the Biden-Sanders unity task force document.
• 48 of the policies, or 17 percent, are rollbacks of Trump-era policy changes.
• Immigration (78 policies), Climate Change (54 policies), and the Economy (54 policies) have the most potential executive actions.

Strategic Political Economy

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 11-3-20]

Which is the Real “Working Class Party” Now?

Matt Taibbi, November 5, 2020

Defying years of muddle-headed media analyses, Trump underperformed with white men, but made gains with every other demographic. Some 26 percent of his votes came from nonwhite Americans, the highest percentage for a Republican since 1960. The politician who became instantly famous — and infamous — by saying of Mexican immigrants, “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists,” performed stunningly well with Latino voters.

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