I'll be in Cincinnati, another of my adopted hometowns, Wednesday through Sunday for the Books by the Banks festival, signing my mystery, The Pain Nurse. In the meantime, enjoy the archives.
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You'll be missed, Mr. Talton.
Meanwhile, I thought that instead of dead air, users might post brief information of interest or entertainment value, along with hyperlinks so that those who are interested can investigate in greater detail. I'll start the ball rolling:
(1) Michael Moore's new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, references a leaked (2005) 35-page Citigroup memo/report, describing its concept of the United States as a plutonomy (an economy controlled by the wealthy).
Background and excerpts:
http://www.rbguy.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/4/789523/-Citigroups-Shocking-Plutonomy-Reportsh-t-Michael-Moore
The 35 page 2005 memo itself (apparently):
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6674234/Citigroup-Oct-16-2005-Plutonomy-Report-Part-1
(2) A great Dilbert cartoon:
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-10-14/
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | October 14, 2009 at 11:59 AM
Alright Mr. Pulsifer, I think I'll go see Moore's new film tonight! Thanks for the info.
Posted by: Joanna | October 15, 2009 at 12:22 PM
To most of those who read the rogue columnist, "Capitalism: A Love Story," will contain nothing new.
As for myself, a history lover, I did not know about FDR's "second bill of rights."
http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/globalrights/econrights/fdr-econbill.html
A little over a year ago, I believe, Mr. Pulsifer posted an item about there being no new ideology on the horizon that could replace any of our current system(s) of ideas. Has that changed?
Mr. Moore suggests that all "join" him in changing our relationship with capitalism. However, he gives no plan for action. Too bad.
Posted by: Joanna | October 16, 2009 at 07:54 AM
Joanna,
I haven't seen Michael Moore's new movie yet, so I can't comment on it.
I don't remember the year-old comment which you refer to, offhand. A hyperlink?
I'll try to address your point about new ideas shortly. In the meantime, here are some old ideas (social democracy) which seem to be working well for some, and which would be a welcome and needed transition into even more progressive forms of political economy.
The following is a copy of an email I recently sent to two student writers for Arizona State University's "The State Press". It's a bit long and so will never see the light of day as a letter to the editor, and since there is nothing to be ashamed of and nothing private about it, I share it here with you:
* * *
Dear Sirs,
It was with considerable interest that I read the point/counterpoint columns published in the October 13th edition of The State Press, dealing with Michael Moore's new film and the message behind it. I particularly enjoyed the fact that two opposing viewpoints were contrasted on equal terms: it seems to me that The State Press has been taken over by conservative ideologues, and that Christopher Ogino, stout fellow though he is, has become the paper's token liberal.
The real subject of the face-off wasn't Michael Moore, but the role of government in the economic life of successful countries. Mr. Barrett, like so many who have no real concept of other forms of government and who seem to obtain their worldviews from talk-radio and other parochial media sources, argues that government is a parasite and challenges readers to provide even one example of successful social democracy in action.
Norway is one country which Mr. Barrett might, however erroneously, characterize as "socialist", inasmuch as 1/3 of its publicly listed companies are state owned, and the state has large ownership positions in key industrial sectors (energy, telecommunications, banking, merchant fleet shipping, and natural resources like minerals, fishing, and timber). The Labour Party has controlled the government there for most of the time since WW II. Taxes are higher there than in the United States.
And yet, Norway enjoys the second or third highest (depending on which measure is used) per capita income in the world (above the United States). Norway held first place in the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Index for 7 of the last 9 years (since 2001), including 2009. Norway has universal healthcare, subsidized higher education, and a comprehensive social security system. Hourly wages and productivity levels are among the highest in the world, yet the difference between the incomes of CEOs and the lowest paid workers is among the lowest in the developed world. Foreign Policy magazine (those Communists!) judged Norway to be the world's most well-functioning and stable country in 2009. Norway's sovereign wealth fund, a government pension fund for the general public, is among the most highly capitalized in the world, and helps even out the boom and bust cycle associated with Norway's economy. Recently, Norway's pension fund was the largest in Europe and has been one of the largest capital funds in the world. giving Norway a very high savings rate. Investment of the fund is governed by ethical guidelines and this, as well as many other aspects of Norway's government, are highly transparent both to its citizens and to international researchers. Norway weathered the current economic crisis quite well, and currently has an unemployment rate of just 3 percent (in 2007 it was just 1.3 percent). Though it exports oil and gas in large quantities, Norway's own generation of electrical power is more than 98 percent hydroelectric. Norway runs a 7 percent state budget surplus and is the only Western country to do so as of July 2009. This year, Norway held parliamentary elections in which the "Red-Green" socialist/environmentalist) ruling coalition gained seats.
The conservative response to Norway is to claim that it is riding high on its revenues from oil and natural gas exports, which it distributes to its citizens as a kind of lucky largesse. Yet, these exports constitute only about 1/5 of Norway's GDP: and the real question is how well these resources are managed. Nigeria has large oil resources, but has squandered them rather than manage them for the public weal, as Norway has since the 1960s. Regardless of its sources of income, the conservative argument that government can't manage public wealth efficiently for public benefit simply doesn't apply to Norway.
Mr. Barrett, I urge you to become educated and stop being a pawn to capitalist exploiters. Mr. Ogino, a raised-fist salute to you!
Sincerely,
Emil Pulsifer (a non-student reader of The State Press)
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | October 16, 2009 at 06:17 PM
Joanna,
Thanks for that link to FDR's "Second Bill of Rights". This kind of thinking goes back to the Founding Fathers and the origins of America, believe it or not. Social-democracy is as American as apple-pie. At the risk of repeating myself, here's a comment on the subject which I recently posted to a Phoenix New Times blog. I reproduce it here not to toot my own horn but to offer a counterweight to the tea-baggers, who offer right-wing propaganda without nuance or historical perspective in arguing against a progressive agenda:
* * *
I'm always amazed by the ignorance and dogma of libertarian types who spend so much time citing the Founding Fathers on the Constitution, but who have no realistic idea of the breadth of opinion among those founders.
Here's a quote from "Jet", a commenter in a recent thread, which reveals the typical mindset:
"This government is illegitimate because at every turn, they fail to recognize the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights. Never forget: Government = Force and Taxation = Theft."
Though of course rich plantation owners such as Madison and Jefferson were opposed to the general redistribution of income, once they had accomplished a bourgeois revolution in which the property of the King of England had been wrested from him by force and theft and they were free to sit back and enjoy the proceeds of the work of their slaves (a form of theft, with work extracted by force), there was quite a range of opinion on constitutional matters and with respect to the powers of government. Alexander Hamilton is, of course, one of the best known founders with strong Federalist views contrary to those of Madison.
But one of the most interesting of the revolutionary founders is Thomas Paine, who was not a landowner and slaveholder -- indeed, fervently opposing slavery but without the hypocrisy of Jefferson -- but an ordinary, working-class person (e.g., excise officer, school teacher, civil engineer).
Paine is known for his monograph Common Sense, which deals with the yoke of royalist tyranny in advocating American independence, but a later work, Agrarian Justice, fleshes out his ideals for the new American republic -- what he hoped would become the fruits of the revolution.
The premise of Agrarian Justice is that "the earth, in its natural uncultivated state...was the common property of the human race" and that private ownership of land arose as a consequence of agricultural development. Paine argued that the privilege of holding private property (he had in mind large agricultural estates that brought great wealth to their owners) gives those owners an obligation to provide for the needs of the public from whom they have taken the land.
These large agricultural estates were at the time the means of production (a marxist term unused by Paine, to be sure, but a useful one nonetheless); and Paine argued that these owners should make payment to the general (non-property holding) public in exchange for being allowed to own large tracts of arable land for their personal benefit.
The means proposed by Paine of securing this payment was a system of progressive taxation of estate owners. The redistributed funds were to be used to give every person 21 years and older a minimum annual income; to give pension payments to every person over 50; and also to provide for the lame and blind:
"I have already established the principle, namely, that the earth, in its natural uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race; that in that state, every person would have been born to property; and that the system of landed property, by its inseparable connection with cultivation, and with what is called civilized life, has absorbed the property of all those whom it dispossessed, without providing, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss. . . .
"In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity . . . [Government must] create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property. And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.
". . . it is justice, and not charity, that is the principle of the plan. In all great cases it is necessary to have a principle more universally active than charity; and, with respect to justice, it ought not to be left to the choice of detached individuals whether they will do justice or not. Considering, then, the plan on the ground of justice, it ought to be the act of the whole growing spontaneously out of the principles of the revolution, and the reputation of it ought to be national and not individual.
". . . Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.
"This is putting the matter on a general principle, and perhaps it is best to do so; for if we examine the case minutely it will be found that the accumulation of personal property is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labor that produced it; the consequence of which is that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence."
(Of course, those figures were according to the conditions and monetary value prevailing in the 1790s.)
Here's the complete text online:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | October 16, 2009 at 06:36 PM
Emil,
I can't seem to find your year-old post that centered around the lack of new ideology. Can't remember if it was before or after a discussion we had on the Hiss case in September '08, but I'll keep looking.
Posted by: Joanna | October 17, 2009 at 10:09 AM
Joanna,
I can't find any record of a "discussion" we had about Alger Hiss (never of personal interest to me, though you mentioned something about a screenplay treatment and I wished you luck with this, in early October, 2008). At the time you wrote:
"It seems communists have been hiding out in the open. I find myself nauseous."
Far be it from me to disagree with you, my dear. Has the script been finished? As for casting, I think Wilford Brimley would make a marvelous Hiss; and at this point in his career he would probably work on spec.
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | October 17, 2009 at 02:46 PM
Emil,
No, the script is not finished. Research has been extensive, to say the least. I'm reluctant to publicly discuss my approach to the story. However, I will tell you that I'm in touch with the Chambers family and have gotten positive feedback from an A list screenwriter on a partial draft.
Posted by: Joanna | October 17, 2009 at 03:15 PM