You’re simply mistaken, Lafayette. And I’m not much of a fan of ketchup either.
And I don’t take kindly to patronizing remarks concerning “typical Americans” as
usually doled out by typical Europeans, evidently lacking in knowledge of their
history. Your remark was uncalled for, if not bigoted.

Now, let’s see about your ignorance. (How’s it feel to be on the receiving end?)

Social democracy as practiced in Europe is not socialism, never was and never
will be. It’s mitigated capitalism, albeit a more desirable form of capitalism, but
capitalism nonetheless and obviously. To call it socialism is to completely
misunderstand the nature of socialism, which—still as Marx and Engels
theorized—is ownership of the means of production by producers, usually
labor, and not by private parties (capitalist-captains of industry) who profit by
theft of surplus labor per Marx’s Labor Theory of Value. Europe’s brand of
social democracy is exploitative as America’s brand of capitalist democracy.
Where it differs somewhat is in redistribution of income and wealth. But that
difference hardly amounts to socialism, let alone communism, which is absurdly
claimed by the Chinese, who know nothing of it. Anyone can call themselves
anything they like, but that don’t make it true.

I maintain that wherever socialism has been attempted in serious fashion, it has
been stamped out in and by a capitalist universe, not least beginning with
Whites vs. Reds on the heels of the Russian Revolution. A war in which the U.S.
was also a major participant on the side of the Whites.

In the case of Europe, its various national communist parties all sold out post-
WWII, becoming about as radical thinking as America’s current Democratic
Party. Thus, Bader-Meinhoff, among others, no doubt “terrorist,” like the U.S.‘s
Weather underground. So much for post-WWII socialism.

In the pre-war or interwar period Europe was locking up socialists when not
murdering them, Gramsci the most notable example of one locked up,
Luxemburg of one murdered.

Understand that I far prefer Europe’s democratic capitalism to America’s far
more pretend brand, with it’s winner-take-all elections, absurdly so-called
“right-to-work” laws, and income disparity that ought cause a Carl Icahn to
blush, but to call European governments socialism, even by preceding that term
with “democratic” (something of give-away, when socialism is democratic by
definition) is slightly more than mistaking catsup for anything at all.

Trust me, sir, my concept of collective is old and innate to this American and
oft-stated here on many occasions. (No one has to agree with it, but they sure
can’t question my sincerity or understanding of it.) I’m a firm devote of social
being before individual being, of social collective as the only soil from which
the seed of the authentic individual can sprout. While what is called the
“individual” in the U.S. is no more than a representative of conformist
individualism,
through and through nothing more than part and parcel of an extremist
capitalist ideology. More and more shared by Europeans just by the way.

As for Roubini’s remark re Marx, nowhere did Marx put down a blue-print, as
he knew better than to attempt that, just as he knew better than to call himself
a Marxist. Roubini typically qualifies any possible praise, as necessary. The
failure of an authentic socialism is our own, not Marx’s.

Amusing as it is to take the piss out of Krugman for his alien invasion analogy,
it’s Roubini who is making excursions into the Twilight Zone.

The things he’s calling for could only happen in the imagination of a hollywood
screenwriter. His proposals completely ignore the irresistible gravitational force
that binds all capital: greed. It’s not as if this hole we are in happened by
accident to a society that is working in unison toward the best possible
outcome for the most people. No, it is the result of several generations of
exalted Masters of the Universe and powerful corporations relentlessly seeking
ways to game the system to their advantage.

Roubini is correct when he admits (grudgingly of course) that Karl Marx had a
point about capitalism.

“So Karl Marx, it seems, was partly right in arguing that globalization, financial
intermediation run amok, and redistribution of income and wealth from labor to
capital could lead capitalism to self-destruct”

Marxist economists have been warning of the inherent dangers of globalization
and financialization for some time, but the idea that anyone important would or
could be listening in the middle of our pecuniary orgy is childishly naive. As
long as there remains a cheap labor pool under a gov’t that turns its back on
labor rights, as long as some baby-faced quant can devise another complex
financial instrument to bet on, as long as there remains a congress for sale to
the highest bidder, there will be no meaningful change.

Even then, with so few in economic and political circles interpreting events
through the lens of basic cause and effect, it’s dubious that Roubini’s
prescriptions would be followed. We’ve seen for ourselves how the right—
willfully disregarding the plain evidence that Chicago School economic policy
has brought us widespread unemployment and historically high economic
disparity—has actually doubled down on its bet, calling for even less
regulation, tax concessions to oligarchs (oops, I meant to write “job creators”),
and for more corporate empowerment. The Tea Party has transformed congress
into a depraved ideological circle-jerk.

Democrats are no better. They may still mouth the words of progressive policy,
but for many of them, especially the ones we tend to put in the Oval Office, that
is pure expediency. After Obama’s recent Oscar-worthy performance as the
“poor old bullied Potus”, can anyone doubt that they are just as beholden to the
forces of economic gravity as the right.

Given this predicament, it seems the most likely scenario is that the elite will
continue to squeeze, until they have excised the last drops of blood from the
carcass of corporatocracy, and the economy will continue to decline. Some may
take to the streets, but as long as it’s only the poor, as was the case in the
recent London riots, any resistance will be dismissed as “aspirational looting”,
or racial unrest, anything but a demand for economic justice.

This malaise could continue for some time, perhaps even years. Historically, it’s
only when the white collar/merchant/entrepreneurial classes have nothing left
to lose that serious change occurs. And that may mean things will have to get
much worse before it gets any better at all. If we are lucky, some new bubble
will come along to make us forget. I’d say don’t bet on it, but right now, it’s the
only play in the house.

Why does everyone pretend it was all a mistake? It wasn’t a mistake, it was done deliberately. The purposes of globalization couldn’t be clearer. To send jobs that actually create wealth (manufacturing) overseas so that the ruling elite can pay people $1 a day to do the work. To create fake jobs and fake wealth via ‘financialization’ and if the economy falls, oh well, they still get to keep THEIR money while the most vulnerable businesses and workers go to the wall. And finally, to create a global jobs market in which every worker will be competing with the lowest paid workers in the world, thereby stripping workers of wages and of rights and protections that people fought and died for over hundreds of years.

Robespierre, if you think you can get ‘income fairness’ out of a system that is fundamentally unfair I don’t know where you were during the eighties when Thatcher and Reagan showed exactly how interested they were in income fairness.

“Inevitably the market would be glutted with goods which the workers could not afford to buy and then would follow panics and crises of overproduction…The extension of foreign markets to find new outlets for goods could only lead to an international rivalry which would reduce all wages to the lowest figure.’ (p. 364-365, American Political Thought, Alan Pendleton Grimes).

But that, of course, is the entire purpose of the exercise. Capitalism and socialism have been successfully combined in the system called social democracy which was prevalent in Europe, Britain and Scandinavia until Europe and Britain got bitten by the economic ‘rationalism’ bug too. Who’s sorry now? The moneyed elites that created this unjust and self-destructive ideology are now just standing by fiddling while Rome burns so that they can make money out of the reconstruction.

My use of the term ‘great’ is somewhat ironic.  I don’t believe in the physical existence of race, as the word is usually defined, so I can’t believe that races differ as to their thirst to be led.

I find it curious that people are so unwilling to even try to take charge of their lives, so ready to surrender themselves to leaders who in general are no more able or moral than those they lead, contrary to elementary reason and common sense.  This habit or instinct, whatever it is, has had frightful consequences.  Not only does it preclude much further progress in our social order, but it threatens further and greater catastrophes in the future.

As I say, I don’t know whether the problem, the tendency, is cultural or genetic.  It seems to be fairly universally distributed regardless of ancestral lineage, location, political affiliation, religion, and so on, so one would think it was genetic; but this would leave the existence of numerous rebels, dissidents, cranks, free-thinkers, and criminals unexplained.

people are culturally, perhaps genetically, unable to make the
subjective part of the changeover  So are you suggesting some
races are better at making a changeover than others because of
genetic differences?  Do you have any references or bibliography
that has shown any scientific validity to that view?

Perhaps primitives had need for leaders that had more to do with
organized survival, but why would the leaders have to be great for
any group?  No doubt from the savannah savage onward there have
been a large number of mediocre leaders.  Just imagining the tribal
phase and how many tribes and leaders there have been among all races. 
Surely some leaders were better than others. For instance,
while there is some debate as to how many there really are depending
on when the counting started running from 51 men to 43 (Cleveland
counted once holding the office twice) holding the office, for all tense
and purposes, this country has had 43 men hold the office of president,
and the constitutional republic has apparently had a need for a leader,
but not all 43 have been great.  Your thesis sounds seriously racist and
elitist as well.

Capitalism is regulated.  However, it is a dynamic system, so it’s going to keep doing different things, some of which will be highly unpleasant for many of its participants.  For the capitalists, regulation is a problem to be solved, so they solve it, usually by capturing the mechanism of regulation.  Then the system is back where it started.

There have been various attempts to get the good part without the bad part.  None of these seem to work very well.  Moreover, the state power necessary to even attempt the restraint of capitalists and the diversion of some of their products to palliation (Welfare) is evidently very easily diverted into a permanent policy of imperial aggression, as witness recent American history.  (For other similar associations see Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Britain.)

There is nothing materially unreasonable about the prospects of autonomy and socialism, but people are culturally, perhaps genetically, unable to make the subjective part of the changeover.  They still require great leaders.  That is the problem.

SOCIAL JUSTICE

CJ: Roubini’s quite wrong about socialism, which most everywhere it’s been attempted has been stamped out in short order, or in long order in the case of a Cuba.

Not at all. The above is a statement typical of Americans who could not differentiate Socialism from ketchup. Why?

Because America has very little concept of Collective Well-being. That is, the notion of both its collective identity and thus destiny. I can assure you that what you think is “socialism” is presently alive and well in Europe under the name of Social Democracy. Even the most hardened European socialists believe in democracy.

Talk about “collective” in the US and people are dumbfounded. They don’t know what you mean. And yet they live and work in that collective every day of their lives.

The collective is constituted at the level of one’s community (which most people understand), but exists at the level of a country, a state and finally the nation. The collective is all of us working and thus producing the common wealth which we all then share, enjoy and which nurtures our families. Such is the Collective Well-Being.

However, when it comes to assuring the Collective Well-Being ... well, that’s an altogether different manner. On that level, it’s winner-take-all. Not the slightest bit of common concern for one another’s well-being. What ever happened to that sort of solidarity by which the pioneers set out in Conestoga wagons to civilize the American frontiers? Lost in transition?

Something called “individualism” or maybe the “pioneer spirit” born of the 19th century where we all coped and were expected to look after ourselves. To this day, that attitude is maintained. Michele Bachmann said this week that she would have let GM fail because that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Which means survival of the fittest and the rest be damned.

What mindless nonsense! What’s good for my neighbor’s family is good for mine as well. (What goes around, comes around.) If getting rid of inept management and refunding a company will save jobs, then a government should do it. And that notion has worked.

We must be concerned for the common well-being of all of us, which is the heart of Social Justice. We learned in the last century that we cannot arrange our economy such that all people are treated equally as Marx would have had. We’ve have yet to learn, however, in this century that we can manage our economy so that it provides for all of us equitably. That is, not equally but fairly, justly and thus honorably.

This translates into Economic Policies that:
* Foster Universal Health Care for the nation.
* Provides the means for all with the initiative to achieve the highest level of schooling, be it vocational or educational.
* Provides that all maintain their skills in a world where skills are quickly out-of-date.
* Provides for government sponsored initiatives where private industry is not up to the task.
* Protects us in the workplace from arbitrariness or abuse.
* Requires that the rewards of our work are also shared justly and not selectively by only a comparative few.
* Requires also that those who are compensated more are also expected to contribute more to the pursuit of the above objectives.
* Etc., etc., etc.

Our objectives of Common Well-being can and should be determined by a healthy dose of Government Management, because if we leave it to whimsy of industry alone it will fail miserably by furthering the interests of only a select few.

As it always has done throughout our history as a nation up to this day.

Roubini offers little that’s new, except to the extremist right wing that thinks
that now is as it always was. His argument is about how to salvage capitalism,
and from that standpoint he’s quite right. It’s a technical argument, wherein he
evens praises—in back-handed fashion—Karl Marx. (Roubini’s quite wrong
about socialism, which most everywhere it’s been attempted has been stamped
out in short order, or in long order in the case of a Cuba. Wherever serious
socialism has been attempted, capitalist states have made sure to impose
sanctions or blockades; wage wars, overt or covert, as in Chile and Guatemala;
kill leaders, as in Latin America in general, Iran and Congo; etc.; etc.; etc. Castro couldn’t be got but
U.S.-imposed economic ruin over decades worked a lot better anyway.

It’s just ridiculous for Roubini to ignore this history and then claim that
socialism doesn’t work. How would he know? How would anyone know?
Recently, after finally being ignored largely by the U.S., Latin America is where
it’s been happening, and that’s been socialist, albeit one would prefer socialism
sans charismatic leaders, who are always risky no matter the kind of political-economy. (Meritocracy is not an answer.)

But capitalism is still what we’re stuck with and one has to deal with reality as it
is and not as one wishes it were. (And it’s not as though there were ever a good
capitalism; there never was and never will be. It’s always been destructive, the
only question being one of degree. Not to say it’s never been constructive too,
but at what cost?)

The left is dismissed on and by Wall Street, which regards socialist thought as
so much pie in the sky. When, that is, not fearing socialism—indeed a
preposterous fear, but real enough to see to stamping it out wherever it’s reared its head. (Those who still think the Soviet Union and/or China were socialist still don’t get it.)

Here we have Roubini talking some socialism, whether he directly says so or
not, and which is most interesting. He DOES get it, I think? First, capitalism as
the Ouroboros it really is. It will eat itself all up eventually; there is no chance of
salvation. (Which is the part Marx really got right.)

In the meantime, and in answer to Lenin, SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE! What
Roubini proposes is in fact what has to be done. He’s right to offer up some
socialist policy, which some of us can only hope leads eventually to the
complete real deal. In fact, there’s really no alternative other than complete
redistribution, which would involve some expropriation. Well, there’s one other
option—a lotta prematurely dead people. Not so outrageous an idea as it would
seem after taking into account what I’ll call the “Rapturists,” in league with some
officials in Israel. It’s almost too absurd to mention, but there they are, wishing
and hoping for the REALLY BIG FINALE, and here’s this guy, Perry, gov of Texas, along with
other assorted nut-jobs being taken seriously by big media. Hell, big media’s
promoting them, not just reporting on them. And the crazies have plenty of
supporters otherwise, for whom the very worst thing you can call someone is a
“socialist.” One wonders if it’s McCarthy who’s still afoot and not Elvis.

We know what happened to and in Germany not that long ago. The
necrophiliacs gained power—via election. That was capitalism at its most
desperate.

Wall Street has to make a choice—disappear now or disappear later (a little like apartheid in South Africa. Sooner would be better). Blind governments
follow blind capitalists. It’s gotten really, really bad out there due to blindness—willful or not.

Roubini is influential on Wall Street and so maybe a few will pay attention to
what must be done in the meantime, assuming life is still valued. Even if it is,
it’s looking cheaper and cheaper with each passing day. Wall Street and its political lackeys had best get to it PDQ.

What we refer to as capitalism today is, since the industrial revolution, a system of state intervention in a market economy. Genuine markets don’t exist. No exploitative system has ever come about by the action of a free market. Let monopoly capitalism crash and burn. Good riddance.

”I ask: Who needs millions upon hundreds of millions upon
billions of dollars? Just how many Ferraris can you drive? How
many yachts? How many palatial homes around the globe does
one need?”

How many graves?

Another “economist” who can’t tell the difference between a crooked, slave-oriented “global economy” and real American jobs.

How sad. What a loser.

Oh yes, Warren Buffett said it most eloquently and when it
was announced yesterday on the news that he had taken the
time to publish it in the NYT, it was given a nanosecond of
news time.  Those of us who get the NYT couldn’t miss it.

Like it or not though, the television news is the pipeline to the
general public.  That is what they hear and that is on what they
base their opinions, and most importantly who they vote for. 

His call for more taxes falls on the deaf ears of the dogmatically
indoctrinated members of the Republican Party.  The liberal
Democrats have tried to invoke more taxes only to be dramatically
refused by the Republican politicians who are lock step in
opposition.  Their solidified mantra anchors their entire platform to
win the complete power of the government from the Presidency to
both houses in Congress and is No Taxes New or Reformed period. 
Fix that problem and the problem gets fixed.  It is a simple
tautology.

Finance has now taken on a permanent black eye of the practice
of ‘betting’ that has gotten unstoppably out of control.  It is like
gambling addiction, a sickness, a disease, and the need to acquire
more and more money with an insatiable appetite and absolutely
no sense of care beyond personal greed.  The evil lies in the very
basis of Wall Street and all the various kinds of financial marketing
shenanigans that it represents.  Finance ought to work as stated, to
assist in the implementation as capital investment for development
of business whatever form of business it is.  Somehow, if there is
to be a prevention of this eternal quest for infinite wealth that has
put a morbid pall on the entire population of the world, some
curing safeguards need to be invented to permanently interrupt
the gluttony.  Regulation is the only way, but regulation is resisted
by the rich and supported by the Republican politicians.  Attached
to the state of being rich is power.  A revolution is required but it
will take extraordinary intelligence and clever minds and will power
to collectively puzzle it out.  It is one thing to notice what is the
case, and another thing to see what ought to be the case, and yet
another to do something about the case. 

This malaise is mainly about the very wealthy who have used
the financial institutions to accumulate incredibly vast amounts of
money, shifted around the world banks and investment companies
to hide the unbelievable amounts.  But the Republican Party’s
shortsightedness colludes with the rich and powerful and they
have the power of the Congress. 

Buffett is right and he needs to do something more than write a
column about it.  He could give all his money save enough to live
on comfortably to the government and get his wealthy colleagues
to do the same.  But we know that will not happen.  So what is
the next best feasible thing?  He must convince the Republican
members of that Committee of 12 to include a healthy dose of
taxes on the rich.  And use some of his money to convince voters
to remove the intrenched Republicans from government. He has a
little more than a year to do it.

Robe: Read Bakunin and Rosa Luxemburg.

Oh, come off it. The Red Rumpelstiltskin just come out of the closet?

Been there, done that - didn’t work. A centrally planned economy, where all assets belong to the state, is for the birds. A state that suppresses personal initiative is diabolical and counterproductive to its own best interests - that is, those of its people.

Rather, let’s milk the Cash Cow of Capitalism and assure its distribution to bring Income Fairness to our nation.

THE NEW ECONOMY

Economist and New York University professor Nouriel Roubini explains that globalization, reckless lending and borrowing, and the redirection of income and wealth from industries dependent upon human labor and well-being to those composed mainly of capital, such as the global derivatives market, are undermining the social structures that capitalism relies upon to function.

Wow, that’s a mouthful even for Nouriel.

Some comments:
* Globalization is nothing more than the natural extension of mankind ever since it quit nomadic existence and settled into a sedentary life style. It hit upon the specialization of labor, which produced for a community a surplus of goods – which they bartered with others in exchange for goods. It’s been going on since time immemorial and globalization is it latest manifestation.
* As for the “redirection of income and wealth”, this too is a very simple economic phenomenon as we transit from the Industrial to the Information Age, thus evolving the New Economy. The developed economies are changing from product to service industries. Meaning that brains have become more important than brawn.
* In that transformation, America, having lapsed in its mission to develop workforce skill sets that correspond to the New Economy, has seen un- and semi-skilled jobs in manufacturing industries dislocate to the Far East. As well they should. The iPad was conceived, designed and developed in the US. It is now manufactured in the Far East. And that is the way it should be.

Nourini is nonetheless very right about the reckless manner in which the Finance Industry has developed its business acumen - it generates 40% of ALL PROFITS in America today. It has been done by shysters and hucksters, with fraudulence and crime. All for the sake of greed and BigBonuses.

And the only adequate remedy there to that dishonesty is Tax Increases on incomes above $250K that are progressively more severe at each increasing level of income. We must absolutely undo the damage that Reckless Ronnie brought upon the nation. He opened Pandora’s Box of Ills when he and Congress brought down the Marginal Income Tax from the heights of 70% to 30% during his tenure.

Which is the origin of the selfish cupidity that motivates, creates and nourishes our present Plutocrat Class in America.

MY POINT

I ask: Who needs millions upon hundreds of millions upon billions of dollars? Just how many Ferraris can you drive? How many yachts? How many palatial homes around the globe does one need?

POST SCRIPTUM

In case you missed it – Warren Buffet on “coddling the rich” here .

Finance used to refer to capital investment in support of real development. It was a necessary element, after planning, of project implementation. That development could be new infrastructure, etc, or expansion of industry or development of a new idea. Finance was therefore an integral cog in the provision of goods and therefore jobs, an essential part of making the world go round.
When finance began taking on a life of its own, independent of development of any kind, developing “instruments” of purely financial derivation, is when it ceased serving a function to society beyond that of the casino.
Reagan instituted an economic model in which, rather than creating and selling each other various kinds of widgets, we were to take in each other’s laundry.
The more modern model is betting on when there will cease being any more laundry to take in.

The idea of an anarchistic world is fantasy, but not ordinary
fantasy, it is sheer fantasy. Utopian anarchy could never be
reality even if a million people attempted it. There are 6 billion
people in the world. And more than 300 million in the USA is
simply just that, simple. The hoi polloi have nary a thought
of what anarchism is.  It is an intellectualism and untenable. 
It has never worked on anything more than a small scale.
Besides even socialism, which is really quite antithetical to
anarchism, won’t work either.  Besides there are too many
very very very wealthy capitalists in America. and also in the
world.  Besides what would the Arabs do without Las Vegas?
Capitalism will never be “smashed.”  Affected?  Maybe.  Roubini
declares, “Soon enough, they will be raising taxes.”  Let’s hope
they do!  I am for redistribution of the wealth.  On the incomes
$250,000+/year and reduce the wage tax for the working class.
So if Roubini clearly understands when he says capitalism is going
to tank, but that Marx’s “view that socialism would be better has
proven wrong,” then he should be able to provide a better system. 
But he doesn’t.  And he observes, it would mean “moving away
from both the Anglo-Saxon model of laissez-faire and voodoo
economics and the continental European model of deficit-driven
welfare states. Both are broken.”

So between no capitalism and no socialism what does Roubini leave
as an economic system?  The final paragraph gives hardly a whisper
of a clue.

“Over time, advanced economies will need to invest in human
capital, skills and social safety nets to increase productivity and
enable workers to compete, be flexible and thrive in a globalized
economy. The alternative is – like in the 1930s - unending
stagnation, depression, currency and trade wars, capital controls,
financial crisis, sovereign insolvencies, and massive social and
political instability.” 

His prediction of doom and gloom does not exactly describe what
an advanced economy would be, especially if they are no longer
under a system of capitalism nor socialism.

The notion that the world of 6 billion or America of 310 million
would ever break up into the small collectives of the kind that was
in Howard Zinn’s mind is a case of ignus fatuus.

It seems fairly academic.  A synthesis of the two economic systems
into socialized capitalism is the likely answer.  But what would that
look like?  There are a few extraordinary economists who have
dealt rationally with the idea.

Capitalism needs to be smashed. Read Bakunin and Rosa Luxemburg.