May 12, 2016

Best article in a long time. A global "New Deal" for labor to fight global corporations.

Thanks for finding and posting this, eridani.

May 5, 2016

Trump is simply a 'new and improved' version of Buchanan but a better demagogue than Pat was.

He also opposes the Kyoto Protocol. Buchanan proposes economic nationalism based on the principles of the American School. He says that "the country comes before the economy; and the economy exists for the people." A critic of free trade, he supports repealing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and raising tariffs on imported goods to provide tax relief to domestic industry. Arguing that "you need imports to pay the taxes," he sees tariffs as a vehicle for allowing for tax relief for domestically made products, making them more competitive.

Buchanan argues that the United States' ability to control its own affairs is under siege due to free trade ideology, globalism, globalization and other issues, discussed below. He once remarked, "we love the old republic, and when we hear phrases like 'new world order,' we release the safety catches on our revolvers."

Buchanan once suggested that the U.S. remove the United Nations headquarters from New York City and send in the Marines to "help pack." He supports withdrawal from the Rome Treaty and most of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He also suggests that foreign aid be rolled back and that all US troops pull out of Europe.

He is in favor of ending treaties that he believes do not protect the interests of the United States, such as one-way defense treaties where the US must militarily come to the defense of another country, but not vice versa. For example, he believes that the U.S. no longer has any legitimate reason to be a member of NATO ever since the fall of the Soviet Union and he strongly opposed American intervention in the Yugoslav Wars.

Buchanan is also a Euroskeptic and opposed the 2005 EU “New Europe” constitution ... He complains of an “atheist-socialist superstate rising in Europe”,[113] which is "the prototype of the World Government to come." He also states that the "Mother Continent" is endangered by falling birthrates, so that it risks becoming “Islamicized” by immigrants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Pat_Buchanan#Trade

As far as I can tell there is little of Pat Buchanan's economic and foreign policy views that Trump does not share. It is not too surprising that Pat would endorse Trump.

May 5, 2016

"FDR was an internationalist in an isolationist age."

PBS' The Roosevelt's Episode 5:

FDR at the 1936 Democratic convention:

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Governments can err. Presidents do make mistakes. But the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales.

Better the occasional fault of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omission of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

Always interesting how history repeats itself. Once again we have economic royalists who complain "that we seek to take away their power". Once again we have an isolationist "America First" republican to run against. Once again we have extremely high income inequality and insecurity.

May 3, 2016

FDR: International cooperation on which enduring peace must be based is not a one-way street.

FDR's 1945 State of the Union address

Peace can be made and kept only by the united determination of free and peace-loving peoples who are willing to work together- willing to help one another—willing to respect and tolerate and try to understand one another's opinions and feelings.

The nearer we come to vanquishing our enemies the more we inevitably become conscious of differences among the victors. We must not let those differences divide us and blind us to our more important common and continuing interests in winning the war and building the peace.

International cooperation on which enduring peace must be based is not a one-way street. Nations like individuals do not always see alike or think alike, and international cooperation and progress are not helped by any Nation assuming that it has a monopoly of wisdom or of virtue.

Perfectionism, no less than isolationism or imperialism or power politics, may obstruct the paths to international peace. Let us not forget that the retreat to isolationism a quarter of a century ago was started not by a direct attack against international cooperation but against the alleged imperfections of the peace.

In our disillusionment after the last war we preferred international anarchy to international cooperation with Nations which did not see and think exactly as we did. We gave up the hope of gradually achieving a better peace because we had not the courage to fulfill our responsibilities in an admittedly imperfect world.

It is our purpose to help the peace-loving peoples of Europe to live together as good neighbors, to recognize their common interests and not to nurse their traditional grievances against one another.

But we must not permit the many specific and immediate problems of adjustment connected with the liberation of Europe to delay the establishment of permanent machinery for the maintenance of peace. Under the threat of a common danger, the United Nations joined together in war to preserve their independence and their freedom. They must now join together to make secure the independence and freedom of all peace-loving states, so that never again shall tyranny be able to divide and conquer.

We and the other United Nations are going forward, with vigor and resolution, in our efforts to create such a system by providing for it strong and flexible institutions of joint and cooperative action.

We support the greatest possible freedom of trade and commerce.

We Americans have always believed in freedom of opportunity, and equality of opportunity remains one of the principal objectives of our national life. What we believe in for individuals, we believe in also for Nations. We are opposed to restrictions, whether by public act or private arrangement, which distort and impair commerce, transit, and trade.

We have house-cleaning of our own to do in this regard. But it is our hope, not only in the interest of our own prosperity but in the interest of the prosperity of the world, that trade and commerce and access to materials and markets may be freer after this war than ever before in the history of the world.

Most important of all—1945 can and must see the substantial beginning of the organization of world peace. This organization must be the fulfillment of the promise for which men have fought and died in this war. It must be the justification of all the sacrifices that have been made- of all the dreadful misery that this world has endured.

We Americans of today, together with our allies, are making history- and I hope it will be better history than ever has been made before.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16595

May 3, 2016

FDR's "Four Freedoms" speech emphasized that the freedoms were for "everywhere in the world".

Harry Hopkins (FDR adviser and an architect of the New Deal) interrupted FDR while he was dictating the speech and told FDR that he should not say "everywhere in the world because Americans are not going to give a damn about people in Java".

FDR replied, "Well Harry. They are going to have to give a damn about people in Java from now on."

The speech delivered by President Roosevelt incorporated the following text, known as the "Four Freedoms":

"In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb."—Franklin D. Roosevelt, excerpted from the State of the Union Address to the Congress, January 6, 1941

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms

April 29, 2016

Historically, income inequality goes down during recessions/depressions and rises coming out of them

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1390437-income-inequality-the-reasons-the-consequences/

The percent of total income earned by the 1% hit its historic high at 24% in 1928 just before the stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression. It fell to 15.5% by 1932 even before FDR was inaugurated because of the Great Depression.

Then income inequality rose for the first 4 years of FDR's presidency by a little less than 4% peaking at 19.3% in 1936. While the economy was recovering and the middle class was doing better than in the 1920's the rich gained more than I would have expected in those first 4 years of FDR. After 1936 income inequality started a long and fairly steady decline thanks to New Deal policies until 1978 when its low of under 9% of income going to the top 1%.

The onset of the Great Recession saw income inequality go down (largely due to the dive in the stock market and its effect on the 1%) more than 5% from 23% in 2007 to 18% in 2009 of total income going to the top 1%. Coming out of the Great Recession income inequality increased by a little over 4% in the first 4 years of Obama's presidency from 18.1% to 22.5%.

I suspect that most of this improvement in income inequality going into recessions/depressions is caused by declines in the values of stocks owned by the 1%. And the initial increase in income inequality coming out of recessions/depressions is caused by increases in the value of those stocks. The real value of the New Deal was that it continued to lower income inequality for decades after 1936 when there were no great depressions or great recessions. And then, of course, we largely abandoned New Deal policies.

April 28, 2016

How exactly would keeping China out of the trade organization that the rest of the world belongs to

have helped? Would keeping it out have kept it a poor, agrarian country isolated from the rest of the world? Apparently the Chinese army and 'hardliners' thought so and thought such a country would be easier for them to control.

Maybe instead of allowing China to join the WTO we should have gone really 'liberal' on them and imposed a Cuba-style trade embargo on those 'lousy communists'. Maybe republicans were right all these years about the value of trade embargoes. I think not.

And are we to believe that the same WTO that we mistakenly allowed China to join was going to 'protect' us from those dreaded poor Mexican workers if only we had not enacted NAFTA?

And the 'international trade as the cause of all our problems' boogeyman has to explain the fact that our level of trade is 1/2 that of Sweden and 1/3 that of Germany. The problems in Sweden and Germany should be 2 to 3 times worse than they are here if international trade is to blame. They are not. Why not?

April 25, 2016

Great to hear Bernie praise Krugman and Stiglitz so highly. They would be great cabinet members. n/t

April 21, 2016

TPP may indeed be bad but imports are a small part of our economy compared to Scandinavian countries

which import 2 to 3 times as much as we do. Bernie has said that he will renegotiate NAFTA (and presumably other free trade agreements). I have not heard the specifics of his renegotiation but I hope it includes labor rights, environmental standards and business regulation.

And our overall trade deficit in 2015 is $736 billion. We do about 40% (39.5%) of our trade with "FTA partners". 24% of our trade deficit is with them. Our trade deficit is worse with non-"FTA partners" than it is with those 20 partners.

April 19, 2016

This Bernie supporter won't be 'assimilated' but neither will I hand the country over to Trump/Cruz

and their ideological brethren in a fit of self-destructive pique.

If Syria cannot have a functioning democracy, I can acknowledge that Bashar Assad is the 'lesser of two evils' in Syria. If Bernie does not win the Democratic nomination, I can acknowledge that Hillary is the 'lesser of two evils' in the US. I may not be thrilled in either case, but life is not always about being thrilled with your choices.