Ian Welsh – Page 228 – The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Michael Hudson: America’s Neoliberal Financialization Policy vs. China’s Industrial Socialism
Michael Hudson, April 15, 2021 [Naked Capitalism]

US West prepares for possible 1st water shortage declaration

[Associated Press, via Mike Norman Economics, April 17, 2021]

The Pandemic

India’s health system has collapsed
[Hindustani Times, via Mike Norman Economics, April 16, 2021]

The Biden Transition and the Fight for Real Hope and Change This Time

Shifting Balance of Power?
Barry Ritholtz, April 16, 2021 [The Big Picture]

A massive shift is occurring in the labor market today, one that has been misinterpreted by economists of all stripes…. fear of the virus is a valid reason keeping people from low paying jobs requiring interaction with potentially deadly, infectious members of the public. “Who the hell wants to risk their lives for $8 an hour before taxes?”

….I suspect it is something broader, more than merely the economic recovery being impacted by Covid. Maybe more of a significant change, perhaps even a secular reversal of the longstanding power dynamic between capital and labor.

“Investors lament being frozen out of Biden infrastructure plan” [Financial Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 4-13-21] “President Joe Biden’s ‘American jobs plan’, unveiled last month, calls for $2tn of investment in highways, electrical grids and other basic infrastructure. At the same time, the White House put forward corporate tax reforms that it said would generate enough money to pay for the investment spree within 15 years. That has disappointed some investors and asset managers who once expected public-private partnerships would be a lucrative financing opportunity.”

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Open Thread

By Ian Welsh

On April 17, 2021

31 Comments

Use comments to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

What Can Taiwan Do to Protect Itself from China?

By Ian Welsh

On April 15, 2021

81 Comments

Article by Mark Pontin

Lyle Goldstein, research professor and founding director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College, in a YouTube video, claims, in the words of commenter someofparts ‘One clear fact that emerges is that China will be taking Taiwan back. It’s a question of when not if … if they have to use force,’ Professor Goldstein says, ‘Taiwan will be able to hold out about two weeks.’

One big factor Professor Goldstein is leaving out regarding Taiwan — for reasons to do with long-standing U.S. policy — is that no country that ever had a serious program to build nuclear fission weapons — A-bombs — ever failed to do so. South Africa developed them, for instance, though in 1989 de Klerk ensured they were dismantled before the handover to Mandela.

In fact, A-bombs such as were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are far simpler and easier to construct than most people realize. It’s a technology developed by people who listened to Benny Goodman on vacuum tube radios, after all. (For all that the scientists at Los Alamos represented, sadly, probably the greatest number of the most intelligent people gathered together for one project in history.)

H-bombs — fusion bombs aka staged thermonuclear weapons — which emerged with Ivy Mike in 1952 are a very different, more complex deal. In 2021, they’re what a nation-state seeking deterrence wants because — while Ivy Mike was the size of a very large locomotive engine, 20 feet high and weighing 140,000-plus lbs., with an additional 24,000 lbs. for its refrigeration equipment — they can be physically miniaturized to be put atop missiles and designed so the resulting explosion can be almost any size, shape, or radiation yield. Ted Thomas, the U.S.’s most talented bomb designer, even built a thermonuclear device so small he lit a cigarette with it.

To return to Taiwan: Simple fission-style A-bombs do require bomber aircraft (which can be knocked down by missiles in 2021) to deliver them — although trucks or boats will do in a pinch. But Taiwan could still build such weapons as stationary “mini-doomsday” devices, so that if China invades, the whole island goes up and large radioactive clouds sweep over the mainland. That would definitely be a deterrent.

The hardest part of building simple fission devices is accumulating enough enriched uranium and/or plutonium. Taiwan has six reactors so it has the nuclear material to enrich, to start with.

Enrichment is usually dependent on massive chains of centrifuges — which is why Iran currently is vulnerable to sabotage — but there’s a new high-tech alternative called laser isotope separation, or LIS, which can be carried out in a plant the size of a small warehouse or your local high-end auto dealer’s garage. Taiwan is, in one sense, the most technologically sophisticated country in the world, in that it has more microprocessor chip fabs than any other. Indeed, that’s another reason why mainland China shouldn’t invade in the next decade, until it’s built up its own fab plants: Global technological civilization would stagger to a halt without the chips Taiwan supplies the rest of the world, including China.

In any case, if Taiwan wants to enrich radioactive material via LIS, it can probably manage “nuclear breakout” both covertly and quickly.

So the fact that Taiwan could relatively easily gain nuclear deterrence is one factor Professor Goldstein isn’t bringing up.

And that’s because Japan and a number of other nations could achieve nuclear breakout very quickly, too. During the Cold War, the US deliberately extended its “nuclear umbrella” to allies to discourage them from having their own nuclear deterrent program. That way, proliferation was discouraged and US hegemony was preserved, in that the US nuclear umbrella also provided cover for US conventional forces to go in and flatten whomever Washington deemed should be flattened. (As in Iraq.)

Professor Goldstein isn’t talking about all this because he’s invested in maintaining US hegemony. Also, he’s at the US Naval War College and a potential scenario where China invades Taiwan with conventional forces is good promotion for the idea of naval force projection, and the Navy always wants more ships. I bet he doesn’t bring up the uselessness of aircraft carrier groups in such a scenario, however. If so, he’s being disingenuous on two counts.

Ian – this is by Mark Pontin, not me. I lifted it from comments with his permission. We’ll be talking a bit more about Taiwan (and the Ukraine) in the future. Thanks to Mark for agreeing.

If Biden Actually Withdraws Troops from Afghanistan by 9/11, He’ll Have Done Something Good

By Ian Welsh

On April 13, 2021

57 Comments

Sort of self-explanatory. We’ll see if he actually does. Trump had planned to withdraw by May 1st, after all, and spent most of his presidency talking about withdrawing without actually doing so.

But Biden saying there are no conditions for the withdrawal is a promising sign.

This does mean the Taliban will almost certainly wind up ruling the country again; the Kabul government is not going to stand without US and NATO support.

That’s unfortunate, but the Taliban is the natural ruling party of Afghanistan. That’s just how it is. Probably the US shouldn’t have supported Islamic hardliners even before the Russian invasion (under Carter), but that’s a long-ago decision.

Biden’s going to be under immense pressure from the military and much of the media to not withdraw. He needs to hold firm. It would be best to do this as quickly as possible.

And yeah, this means there will be a “fall of Saigon” moment some time after the US leaves.

So be it.

Good on Biden if he sticks to his (non-gun) on this.

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The Psychopathology of Human Leadership

By Ian Welsh

On April 13, 2021

21 Comments

All American Presidents in my lifetime have acted like psychopaths. Not one of them did not do things that killed people they had no true need to kill. (The only ones I think come close are Ford & Carter.) Noam Chomsky, back in 1990, looked at which post-war Presidents hadn’t done something that would have gotten them hanged at Nuremburg.

The weird thing is that most of these actions hurt the US more than they helped. Blowback is a bitch, and the US keeps interfering where they have no business, and it rarely works out well in the long run.

If the US mostly minded its own business, Americans would be better off. More countries would be democratic (America supports anti-democratic coups regularly), and more countries would have secular or enlightened religious views.

There was also no need for the US to immisserate its own working class so some rich people could make more money by helping China. China would have still industrialized, it would have taken a bit longer and we wouldn’t be cruising for Cold War 2.0.

A US that minded its own domestic affairs better (ie., hadn’t crushed the middle and working class) and managed every other nation’s affairs less, would be a better US in a better world.

Of course, what this really suggests is that the main problem in the US is the ruling class and the Americans who are foolish enough to support it.

The US ruling class kills and impoverishes people to make money, and since 1980 at least (really, about a decade earlier) that has included American people.

The US needs to be better — for its own sake and for the sake of others.

I’ll tell you a secret: In the not-very-long run (a generation), making other people richer and healthier is better for you than taking their stuff, hurting them, or killing them.

That’s a TRUTH.

For much of history, the standard mode was to kill people and take their land and stuff where possible and, where not, to conquer them and take their stuff.

But people with a boot on their neck don’t contribute as much as free people.

It’s time for us all to grow up.

Now this doesn’t just apply to the US, of course. I live in a colonial country based on genocide — just one that isn’t powerful.

Nor is this a “white” only thing, as the slightest perusal of history (including recent history) will show.

Europeans got a big advantage and used it. When the Mongols did, they did.

China is built on the Han exploiting an advantage for over 2k years. The Japanese industrialized first in their area of the world and went on a rampage. Etc…

This is a human problem.

That said, Americans and Europeans are descended from the most recent group to get a huge military advantage over a long period (about 500 years) and use it for mass conquest, and that has had effects on our culture, including on how we pick leaders.

Warlike leaders seem “good,” because for a long time it seemed like conquest and raiding was the easiest way to get rich, and people who were bad at fighting had real bad things happen to them.

But our current problems cannot be solved by war, raiding, and armed theft.

There are some who think otherwise; they want to reduce the world’s population to about a billion people.

Not only is that monstrous, the sort of war that would do would cause so much environmental and climate damage that it would cancel out, and then some.

If we want out of this we need to find a primary mode of being that isn’t “hurt or threaten other people so they do what you want.”

If we try to solve our problems with violence, and the threat of violence, this time, or with the deliberate immiseration of billions of people, the world at the other end (assuming humans survive at all) will be apocalyptically bad — even for the ruling class.

A good society is one in which everyone is prosperous. Healthy, happy people with enough stuff create good societies and good economies. Immiserating entire classes or countries may make a few people rich, but it is a negative sum game. We need to stop playing negative sum games, both with ourselves, and with the rest of life on Earth. Everyone: Plant, animal, human, and other life forms need to win on aggregate.

If they don’t, we are either going to drive ourselves and lot of other species to extinction, or create a world that is is much, much worse for everyone, though, alas, some of the second possibility is already locked in.

As humans we must change how we pick our leaders and how and why we make collective decisions. Nothing we have tried so far has worked, so we must be open to radical change.

All the content here is free but food and rent aren’t, sosubscriptions and donations do help, a lot

Making the Rich and Powerful Work for Everyone

By Ian Welsh

On April 12, 2021

35 Comments

The philosopher John Rawls suggested that the only ethical society is one which we design before we know what position we will hold in it. If you don’t know whether you’ll be born the child of janitor or a billionaire, black or white, you may view social justice differently than when you know that your parents both went to Harvard or Oxford.

Rawls’s point is just in the sense that though none of us choose our parents, very few of us are able to see the world except through our own eyes. What I am going to suggest is something different: A society works best if it treats people the same, no matter what position they hold. This is hardly a new position. The idea that everyone should be treated equally is ancient and many a war has been fought over it. But despite a fair bit of progress, we don’t really understand what equality means, how it works, and why it works.

Let’s have an example. Based on international testing, at the time of this writing, the Finnish education system is arguably the best in the world. Its students do better than those of any other nation.

What is interesting about the Finnish school system, though, is this: When they decided to change how it worked, they did not set out to try and make it the best in the world. Instead their goal was to make it so that everyone was treated the same. Their goal was not excellence, their goal was equality. Somehow, along the way, and very much to their surprise, it also became arguably the best school system in the world.

There are a number of reasons for this, the main one being a well-established fact: People who are treated as lesser don’t perform as well and are less healthy–even after you take into account other factors.

But another reason is that if you are rich or powerful, you can’t buy your child a better education. Testing results between schools are not made public and the very few private schools are not allowed to use selective admissions. In a system where your child will be treated the same as every other child, you must make sure that every child receives an excellent education, otherwise your child may not receive one.

Let’s engage in another thought experiment. In the United States, airport security is extremely intrusive. Recently, new procedures for physical examinations were put in place which include touching the genitals (I’ve personally experienced it and it definitely included genital contact, albeit with my clothing on.) Most security experts consider this to be security theatre, along with such things as taking your shoes off and the new 3D scanners. They believe that the two most important improvements in airline security were locked cockpit doors and passengers knowing that if they remain passive and allow hijacking, they could all wind up dead.

Coincidentally, the 2000s have seen an explosion in the use of private jets. The most powerful, rich, and important people no longer fly on the same airplanes as the hoi polloi and, as a result, they do not go through the same security screenings.

Do you think that if the most important people in the US had to endure the same security as ordinary Americans that it would be as intrusive as it is? How many billionaires would have to be groped before something was done?

While we’re on the subject of private jets, consider the following: A private jet still has to use a runway. If a private jet is using the same public airport you are, it takes up a take-off or landing slot. Next time you’re waiting for a take-off slot, or wondering why your flight is delayed, think on that. Less than ten people on a private jet are holding up over a hundred people on a passenger jet.

No part of society will continue to work properly if the powerful and rich have no interest in its doing so. There are three parts to this:

If there is a public system, there cannot also be a private system which can be used to opt out of the public system.
If there are limited resources, whether those are airplane flight slots at airports or medical care, then no one can be allowed to use either wealth or power to jump the queue, nor must they be allowed to use more resources than those without power or money.
Any part of the economy where there is a monopoly or an oligopoly must either be publicly run or must be heavily regulated for quality, level of profits, and reinvestment.

(Ian-a fundamental article, originally published March 31st, 2015. As it will be unfamiliar to most current readers, re-upped.)

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – April 11, 2021

By Tony Wikrent

On April 11, 2021

9 Comments

by Tony Wikrent

The Biden Transition and the Fight for Real Hope and Change This Time

Podcast: Are We Winning A New Political Era? (Exclusive for Subscribers) Discussion with Anand Giridharadas

David Sirota [Daily Poster April 5, 2021]

Grassroots pressure has forced Joe Biden to discard parts of his past record — and may finally be ending the Reagan Era.

Beginning at 21:20:

Having a debate about new bills, not being consumed by deficit anxiety… is a profound cultural turning point [that] augers en entirely different era…. We have to be mindful of how cultures change [and] hat it looks like when what you’ve been fighting for begins to bloom….

Four Ways of Looking at the Radicalism of Joe Biden

Ezra Klein [New York Times, April 8, 2021, via The American Prospect 4-9-2021]

Most discussions of the renewed ambitions of the Democratic Party focus on ideological trends on the left. The real starting point, however, is the institutional collapse of the right…. The long campaign against the ideological compromise that was the Affordable Care Act is central here, but so too was then-Speaker John Boehner’s inability to sell his members on the budget bargain he’d negotiated with President Barack Obama, followed by his refusal to allow so much as a vote in the House on the 2013 immigration bill. And it’s impossible to overstate the damage that Mitch McConnell’s stonewalling of Merrick Garland, followed by his swift action to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, did to the belief among Senate Democrats that McConnell was in any way, in any context, a good-faith actor. They gave up on him completely.
The result is that Obama, Biden, the key political strategists who advise Biden and almost the entire Democratic congressional caucus simply stopped believing Republicans would ever vote for major Democratic bills….
The backdrop for this administration is the failures of the past generation of economic advice. Fifteen years of financial crises, yawning inequality and repeated debt panics that never showed up in interest rates have taken the shine off economic expertise. But the core of this story is climate. “Many mainstream economists, even in the 1980s, recognized that the market wouldn’t cover everyone’s needs so you’d need some modest amount of public support to correct for that moderate market failure,” Felicia Wong, the president of the Roosevelt Institute, said. “But they never envisioned the climate crisis. This is not a failure of the market at the margins. This is the market incentivizing destruction.”
…. Even beyond climate, political risks weigh more heavily on the Biden administration than they did on past administrations. This is another lesson learned from the Obama years. The Obama team had real policy successes: They prevented another Great Depression, they re-regulated the financial sector, they expanded health insurance to more than 20 million people. But Democrats lost the House in 2010, effectively ending Obama’s legislative agenda, and then they lost the Senate in 2014, and then Donald Trump won the White House in 2016, and then Democrats lost the Supreme Court for a generation.…
Even when Biden was running as the moderate in the Democratic primary, his agenda had moved well to the left of anything he’d supported before. But then he did something unusual: Rather than swinging to the center in the general election, he went further left. And the same happened after winning the election. He’s moved away from work requirements and complex targeting in policy design. He’s emphasizing the irresponsibility of allowing social and economic problems to fester, as opposed to the irresponsibility of spending money on social and economic problems. His administration is defined by the fear that the government isn’t doing enough, not that it’s doing too much.

Biden Can Go Bigger and Not ‘Pay for It’ the Old Way

Stephanie Kelton [New York Times, April 7, 2021]

Last week, President Biden introduced a $2.2 trillion infrastructure plan in a speech, calling it “a once-in-a-generation investment in America.” And on Wednesday, he and the Treasury Department outlined many of the package’s details, including how to “pay for” it. A close look at those so-called pay-fors, however, shows Democrats are thinking about fiscal responsibility the wrong way. They could be on the verge of sparking some unpleasant short-term overheating of the economy, in which price increases accelerate and the purchasing power of our dollars falls somewhat. If the final legislation were to grow much larger — toward the $10 trillion level many progressives in Congress are pushing — it could send such inflation soaring….

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