Kasztanka, Polish Marshal Józef Piłsudski's favorite combat mare, was stuffed upon her death in 1927 and after World War II was destroyed, allegedly on the orders of Piłsudski's enemy, Marshal Michał Rola-Żymierski.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Interview with Ha-Joon Chang
Above: 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism: Pt 1
Ha-Joon Chang: "We do not live in a post-industrial age."
I will admit I know nothing about Chang apart from these clips from his interview with The Real News. His book sounds interesting, although I have tentative misgivings about his assertion that most people make too much money. But maybe I need to hear his argument fleshed out and offered in context to better understand it.
As is often the case with Slate, the article has 2 titles. It's also called:
"Continental Divide: Europeans are starting to realize that their governments are too big. Will Americans catch on next?"
Anne Applebaum discusses various austerity and privatization efforts afoot in some European countries.
It's saying too much to call it a pattern, and it may well not be a permanent change: I'm sure there are plenty of European politicians who won't survive their next encounter with the voters. But there is something in the air. It almost seems as if at least a few Europeans have actually drawn some lessons from the recent recession and accompanying turbulence in the bond markets. They have realized, or are about to realize, that their state sectors are too big. They are about to discover that their public spending, which seemed justified in good economic times, has to be cut. The middle class knows in its heart of hearts that its subsidies, whether for mortgages, university tuition, or even health care, can't last. Some voters even know that their pay-as-you go pension systems aren't sustainable in the long term, either.
I've described this mood swing before, but two American economists, Douglas Besharov and Douglas Call, recently substantiated it in the Wilson Quarterly. They write that most developed countries in Europe and Asia—not some, most—are moving, "however hesitantly," toward market-based government pension and health care systems, at least for the middle class. Most now fund future pensions with investment funds and stock holdings, either instead of or in addition to pay-as-you-go plans. Even countries historically suspicious of the free market—such as Italy, Sweden, and Poland—now use such schemes.
At one point she mentions last week's riots in London, but dismisses them as insignificant and suggests the current UK government is popular at home, and suggests by extension, so are the austerity measures. I don't know how to evaluate this. [Applebaum provides this link]
But I'm suspicious, partly because I remember the last time I discussed Applebaum,in 2009, per a condescending article she wrote that summer, practically channeling Kipling regarding the Afghan election. At any rate, the current item is heavy on insinuation and it's not really clear that the austerity measures are in fact popular with the European public, although she suggests this. (I somehow doubt it. It sounds like the IMF/Global banking thugs who pushed the US bailout program through in 2008 is working their voodoo in the EU.)
The austerity programs are definitely favored by Applebaum, who also throws in a dig at the US Post office and Obamacare. Actually it doesn't sound like she understands the healthcare reform law, unless that is by design. Likewise she doesn't understand why US healthcare costs are so much higher than in other Western countries. She does admit they're higher, but suggests it's because US spending on healthcare is somehow shielded from market forces(!?) because most Americans don't pay for their healthcare directly-- as opposed to, say, because of the added costs incurred by insurance companies' overhead and profit margins, or the lack of cost controls on drugs compared to the more restrictive laws in other industrialized countries.
Anyway, here are two items from the comments regarding Applebaum's current article:
Joe Miller: Deeply misleading on health care costs. While Americans pay only 13% DIRECTLY, they pay through the nose INDIRECTLY. The per capita cost of health care in the U.S. is about $7000, as compared to an average of around $3500 in the rest of the OECD. That means about $1,000,000,000,000 a year is wasted/stolen/skimmed off the top by the appallingly bad U.S. system, which does NOT provide universal coverage. It isn't brutally expensive because of "lack of market mechanisms". It's brutally expensive because certain players in the health care "game", such as Florida's newly elected criminal governor, Rick Scott, have rigged it to be.
The Post Office, BTW, is a govt.-supervised but not wholly owned corporation. Part of the reason it runs a deficit is that it has to put up billions every year in advance for future pension payments. Privatize it, and watch what happens to postal service to rural and generally less-populated areas.
and,
Michael Streiffert: Employer provided health insurance is part of the overall compensation package workers receive for their labor. Will the author next argue that I don't pay my rent because I use my employer provided wages to do so? I earn my health insurance just like I earn my wages and my retirement. I don't pay only 13 percent of my health insurance coverage, I pay 100 percent. Just as the money I use to buy my car insurance ultimately comes from my employer through wages, the money that pays for my health insurance is the same thing.
Other than that, this is a silly article. "Europeans are starting to realize that their governments are too big." is followed by "It's saying too much to call it a pattern..." It's saying too much to call it a pattern and that's why the title of the article calls is a pattern. Okay. Sure.
"The Real News Network has been on the ground in Toronto covering the G20 this past weekend as well as the ongoing repercussions. We have produced multiple original stories, including REAL NEWS JOURNALIST ATTACKED AT G20 and TORONTO G-20 - THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME[above. JV].
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The Real News: "G20: Doves on finance reform, hawks on austerity" Rob Johnson: Real cause of massive debt was caused by finance sector, not people's social programs .....................................
Russia Today June 25, 2010 : Hundreds of protesters have gathered in one of Toronto's public parks to march against the G-8 and G-20 summits. RT's Lauren Lyster reports from the scene. ..................................................
AFP: Thousands of Canadian police threw a tight security net over eastern Ontario province Thursday as world leaders began arriving for key summits focused on economic recovery and development. Leaders from the Group of Eight leading economies will meet Friday in Huntsville, before joining up with other officials from the Group of 20 developed and emerging nations in Toronto on Saturday and Sunday.
"These criminals rely on the anonymity of hiding in a larger group of the curious and the naive," he said. At least four police cars went up in flames and smoke during hours of confrontation. Protesters left behind broken windows and graffiti. [Bill]Blair said police used tear gas after warning a group of protesters "engaged in acts of destruction" Saturday.
However, not all encounters between police and protesters were hostile. At one intersection, the crowd danced and chanted, "You're sexy, you're cute, take off your riot suit!"
More aggressive groups of demonstrators moved from intersection to intersection, trying to circumvent police and get to the security fence protecting the summit meeting."The fence is a symbol that they can build a fence and spend a billion dollars on their agenda. Everywhere the protesters went, police were waiting to head them off, in some cases with individual blasts of pepper spray, tear gas and bean bag pellets, according to the summit's security unit.
OK, so they burned four police cars. The video actually makes it seem like they torched just one car, which doesn't strike me as a big deal if nobody was hurt, and naturally one hopes that was indeed the case. I'm guessing the bill for just the hors d'ouerves at the summit would be enough to pay for one or even as many as four Toronto P.D. squad cars, easy. The cameraman seemed less interested in the shirtless guy we glimpse briefly, who looks like he's bleeding, and I note cameraman chose a vantage point behind another person partially blocking the line of sight. (Although to be fair that may have been per police restriction. Maybe the girl standing between the camera and the guy on the ground is also with the authorities.)
I hope you are digging these creative titles. As you may have noticed, I finally put the new revised blogroll up. It's still a work in progress, as I decided to put the "non-blog blogs" like Black Agenda Report and Counterpunch in a separate second category, which I anticipate I'll be adding more to eventually. If I misspelled your name or your title, let me know. Also, I'm sure I left somebody out while not meaning to, etc.
Speaking of Counterpunch, you should definitely go read "A Hell of Their Own Creation:Does the Ruling Class Really Want to Commit Suicide?" by Charles M. Young. Young deftly connects the rape of the environment by capital to the general societal decline and sense of corruption of the elites many of us have been fumbling about and trying to express. An excerpt:
The panel discussion I most wanted to see (out of 300 or so) was called “The Crisis That Gives the Capitalist Class Nightmares,” because Michael Hudson was speaking. Whenever Hudson writes something, I read it, because he’s one of a tiny number of economists with academic credentials who predicted the present debt crisis. (Apparently not predicting crises is necessary for tenure in most economic departments these days.) At the panel, he explained that when labor is squeezed to the point that it can’t purchase anything, the capitalist is left with nothing to invest in, except more debt, and so we end up with Wall Street creating ever more complicated, ever more leveraged, ever more worthless junk for its gambling habit. When this collapses, as it must, half the hospitals in Latvia (which Hudson advises) have to shut down for lack of funds.
That's from the beginning. The last part of the essay is so darkly poetic I want to travel back in time and space and steal it from him, although I probably shouldn't.
Even US Central Command commander General David “I'm always positioning myself to 2012” Petraeus has been forced to publicly admit that US strategic ally Israel - because of the non-stop colonization of Palestine and the blockade it is enforcing in Gaza - has become an immense burden for US strategic designs.
Russia on the other hand supports the new Turkey, Syria and Iran politico-economic axis. […] Russia - just like Turkey - also wants a fully denuclearized Middle East, which implies a non-nuclear Israel. This will be discussed at the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency.
Thus, essentially, Israel fears the new Turkey, Syria and Iran as much as it fears Russian support for it. A new Middle East is being born - and there seems to be only one place for Israel: isolation.
Israel's "mad dog" strategy - conceived by former military leader Moshe Dayan - is not exactly an exercise in fitting in. Even centrist Middle East analyst Anthony Cordesman, an establishment icon at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote an essay under the title "Israel as a Strategic Liability?"
I realize most of you have already browsed through the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2009(which, apparently, is still pending in '10.). But if you are a dunderheaded sort like me and haven't heard, Fedex discusses it at their site, brownbailout.com.
If you go there and give it a cursory once-over, you'll come away with the idea that UPS is lobbying for a government bailout. (see below)
But if you poke around a bit, you'll get to a page on the site, "buried bailout" in which they (sort of) admit that what they're calling a bailout is actually legislation that would make the regulations governing Fedex and UPS more uniform, although this is expressed in deliberately deceptive verbiage that suggests that UPS is less-efficient, suffering the presumptive ill-effects of being "a 100 year old trucking company"(this phrase, along with "bailout," is used several times throughout the site.):
The bailout bottom-line is this: What’s the difference between a 100-year-old trucking company and a modern airline that flies packages around the world every night? Answer: everything. Yes, both carry parcels and packages, but how they do it is obviously and vastly different.
UPS’ bailout would shoehorn FedEx Express – an airline created in 1971 focused on next-day delivery of essential goods and documents around the world – into the same operating rules as a 100-year-old trucking company. FedEx Express and other airlines operate just fine under airline regulations, but UPS doesn’t like competition. Keep in mind, UPS chose to form as a separate trucking company for its pickup and delivery operations.
So “Big Brown” is throwing around its political weight and seeking a bailout from Congress, so that it can saddle its only remaining U.S. competitor with the effects of its own decisions. And at the end of the day, all of us who rely on overnight-deliveries – medicines, paychecks, critical replacement parts, essential inventory, and the like – pay the cost.
According to Business Week, which isn't generally regarded as a hotbed of radicalism, Fedex objects to the legislation in question because it would make it easier for their employees to unionize. They also note that Obama has gone out of his way to praise Fedex's CEO, Frederick "Winkie" Smith for bold, innovative, blah blah blah. Actually, I don't remember what Obama praised him for, because after a certain point, even in print, Obama's I-never-met-a-Reaganite-I-didn't-like blather gets to be too much for me. But then again, maybe I just don't fully appreciate how bold and forward-thinking our president and his jet-setting friends are.
