I’m stoked John brought Freddie on board. I think the pity-charity liberalism / redistributive liberalism discussion is fascinating. I don’t think you can over-estimate how badly the cause of the social welfare project has been harmed by the erosion of organized labor in this country.
For a long time I believed that you could basically have a strong market economy alongside a strong welfare state and it would work. I’ve come more and more to the belief that that’s not sustainable. Without worker organization that dynamic can’t last. That’s why you have such an effective welfare apparatus in a place like Sweden. Sweden has free markets, a robust social safety net, and upwards of 70% of the population unionized, including much of the white-collar workforce. When you have that much of the population involved in the political and economic process, you get better laws. And you get a better balance between worker and corporate influence.
I’ll have more to say on this soon, but for now check out this piece in The Nation by Corey Robin. Lots to think about.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
There’s a truth no matter what the political and economic structure. The question is what conditions are required for that to work. And, considering how much businesses fight against it, your descriptions might be the correct one.
chopper
ah, i love the decemberists.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
“I think the pity-charity liberalism / redistributive liberalism discussion is fascinating.” Your premise, like Freddie, Mike K and MattY, is that pity/charity/redistributive liberalism CAUSED the decline of labor. This is more freemarket fuckery, as people pointed out on Freddies thread.
You are all sneering at PCL and say that it is “indifferent” or “hostile” to organized labor.
Show us the data.
There is no reason social justice solutions cant be used to augment failed free market solutions.
I propose renaming pity/charity liberalism to social justice liberalism.
And fuck you very much.
MattMinus
Truly, this post is one of the clearest examples of progressive racism that I’ve ever seen. Go back to San Francisco, bigot!
SteveinSC
It’s hard to get your arms around what has happened in the last 40 years. I pretty much agree with the belief that when we had a robust manufacturing economy, steel, autos, aircraft, hardware, textiles, it appeared that we developing a regulated, but pretty wide open economy, a safety net, and a healthy labor voice. Then came the growth of services and diminished manufacturing. Jobs went overseas and the labor-movement leg of this three legged stool fell off. People are still working these days, just not making anything. They sit in cubicles and don’t feel like workers on an assembly line. They don’t have, or really seem to think they need organized labor. Hence the counter force to industry and the money-churners has nearly collapsed. We are in a predatory environment with no militia to call to for aid. The Huns are inside the gates.
E.D. Kain
@MattMinus: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
E.D. Kain
@SteveinSC: pretty much.
And just to be clear, I think the pity-charity aspect of liberalism is important. I am not arguing against the social safety net.
What I am suggesting is that the net itself won’t last without a mobilized, organized working/middle class.
What’s happened over the years? Unions have eroded badly. And now we start to see the real assault on entitlements. This is not a coincidence.
E.D. Kain
@chopper: ditto.
Mandramas
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Saalam alayki. I secounded that. I know that it not your point, EDK, but a person that receives a Safety Net benefit has the same right to this as a person that is help by a policeman when he was victim of a crime. It is not a gift, it is not charity; it is their right as a citizen, to be protected by the government of crime, poverty, sickness and foreign invasion.
chopper
i predict this thread is going to include 30 posts by matoko referencing some form or another of pie.
Punchy
Ya know what Democracy in America(TM) looks like? It’s when a voter initiative passes by a comfortable margin, deftly and conclusively allowing the will of the voters to have their way…..
…until the state legy goes back and reverses the whole thing. So glad Republicans respect the process. Or not.
"Serious" Superluminar
@ED Kain
Well I was pondering the nature of free markets the other day, and I thought an ideal metaphor might be that it’s like a forest. I wonder if you would like to expand on this a bit, say by doing a blog post about it, as certain commenters may be interested in this idea…
"Serious" Superluminar
@HGW
I don’t know if you bother reading LoOG anymore, but I think you should give ED some credit for slapping down a monumentally stupid anti-Muslim post there yesterday. I know it’s OT, but ED thankyou for writing that, it really needed saying and the original post was really beyond the pale IMO.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Mark this day on your calendar, Ed’s said something I agree with. Clearly a sign of the apocalypse. Ain’t the next end of the world coming soon? That might ‘splain things.
And it’s been the plan of the Republican Party since the day St Ronnie took the oath of office. We’re simply seeing the culmination of the 30 year war on the New Deal and Great Society come to fruition.
Of course I seem to be the only white blogger around who finds the Decemberists as blah as most other hipster bands so touted by Insufferable Music Snobs.
Mandramas
EDK: I think that the reason Sweden works well is because they don’t have their monetary success drive as American does. This is a way to get national power, but also national unfairness.
Dave
So here’s a question: where was the tipping point? We used to have a robust union membership rate and a solid social safety net. I know the off-the-cuff answer is “the Reagan era”. But why was the country ready to accept that? It can’t just be about stagflation and Carter and Iran. That’s seems too facile an answer.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Mandramas: shukran jazeelan, brother.
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
They sukk. Wannabe-hipsterism is a pathetic and crude attempt by conservative/libertarian/liberaltarian/glibertaian/neoliberal pompous puds to connect with pop culture.
Connect this, you effete disaffected pansyass gliberatian
geg6
@chopper:
Me, too.
Personally, I’m curious to hear more about Fred’s ideas, many of which are those to which I subscribe, but he pretty much lost me with his “I am too liberal to vote for Obama” thing. I’ve had it up to here with the purity ponies.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
do you see the title?
Pity charity.
That is what EDK really believes in….sneering at social justice.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@geg6: He retracted. ;)
geg6
@Dave:
Well, I can’t speak for what killed unionism as a whole. But I can tell you what killed here in Western PA/Pittsburgh. The death of manufacturing as an economic force, specifically the steel industry, and of USAir. Once all those tens of thousands of union jobs were gone and people had to take shitty jobs with no union, they started hating on all the people who were still lucky enough to have union jobs. Envy makes it easy to demonize unions.
LGRooney
I am having trouble tying the union issue to the social safety net issue in terms of pity charity. Yes, social safety net and unions are indelibly linked in a productive factor of the economy. Pity charity seems to be a means of attacking the unproductive side of the economy. And, for me, this has been the problem with pity charity for a long time. Throwing money at the problem doesn’t work, regardless of the conservative trope that charity creates reliance on itself. People want to work, want to be productive, they don’t – with some exceptions, of course – want hand outs. Pity charity must be a short-term solution while more money and effort is placed on jobs and training programs.
My apologies if this has been either stated before, tossed to the trash heap of stupidity with arguments I don’t see, or seems off topic. I’ve been out of it the past few days on allergy meds – first time in my life after 40+ years I have suffered with allergies.
geg6
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Ah, must have missed that.
Dr. Squid
Why the assumption that worker organization and “free market” don’t mix?
Unions are a necessary part of a free market.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dave: A very short and superficial answer to you would be this: People who were helped by the social safety net and unions became complacent and took those benefits for granted. At the same time, those have have always opposed the safety net preyed on resentments, prejudices, and simple ignorance to get the complacent people to concentrate on other matters while they worked to dismantle progress.
Lesson to be learned: Even after a battle is won, it is not over. We must not just fight for progress, but also fight to defend it.
geg6
@Dr. Squid:
Yes, exactly. Everywhere but here in the Randian States of Merika, of course.
"Serious" Superluminar
@Dave: I think a large part of it was the decline of blue collar jobs due to increased competition from Asia from the ’70s onward, as well as several decades of corruption among the top union officials that just made people cynical. As a non-American, I’ll point out that exactly the same things happened in West Europe at pretty much the same time, the US experience is certainly not unique. What’s to be done is the more interesting question, IMO.
Dave
@geg6: Hmmm…so could it be that, unlike Sweden or a similar country, we never unionized white-collar/non-manufacturing jobs at a large enough level to maintain union representation in society? And if so, why?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Mandramas:
lol. In Sweden they are so-cialists. And proud of it.
There is a moment in the Steig Larson trilogy where the good guys are trying to unravel the Section, and one says how could the [bad guys] have kept this secret?
And the lead of the investigators says, well it was before we had a so-cial-ist government.
In America, so-cial-ism is the Great Shaitan.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
ratz moderation.
See my brother? In America you cannot even say the s-word.
"Serious" Superluminar
Also agree with everything Omnes Omnibus just wrote – the right certainly did demagogue the fuck out of problems with unions in order to win political battles. And as to progress: you don’t just get there and it’s fine, you always have to fucking fight for it, even to stop the small gains you’ve made from disappearing. Sad but true.
SteveinSC
@geg6:
Apropros, Here in SC back in the 50’s and 60’s we were stealing industry (chemical and textiles) from the North–Right-to-Work, you know. There was a robust, not-too-racist Democratic Party and a burgeoning labor movement. The Upstate was sending liberal-moderates to congress. Then industry took off for Japan (some might remember the laws requiring labels for Japanese-made goods.*) After that industry took off for Taiwan, China, Korea….. The labor movement evaporated, relative prosperity disappeared, the roads started to fall apart and so began the march backward to the sad shape SC is in now . To paraphrase the old line “If they will steal jobs for you, they will steal jobs from you.”
* How quaint that now seems
chopper
@Dave:
early 70’s was when everything started to shit the bed. elizabeth warren did a lecture on the subject, you can google it. she shows that the economic outlook for blue-collar families basically peaked in the early 70’s and it’s all been downhill since.
unions were strong back then too.
geg6
@Dave:
I’d have to say you are correct about not organizing white collars in numbers enough to keep the union movement strong. As to why that is, I’m not well-versed enough in European unionism and its origins to be able to compare and contrast it with unionism here in America.
And that gives me a sad. At one point in college, I was interested in specializing in labor and unions (I was a poli-sci major). This was at the very start of the Reagan era. I was discouraged from doing so by my academic advisor who pushed me toward a specialization in the Soviet Union. He thought it was a growth area in the field. That’s how I ended up in a major focused on the Soviet Union and a minor in Russian/Soviet history. Jeebus, what a shitty advisor he was.
Dr. Squid
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: That’s because the middle 6 letters of the s-word coincide with the name of a certain 48-hour boner pill that trips the spam filter.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Mandramas: lol. In Sweden they are s-wordists. And proud of it.
There is a moment in the Steig Larson trilogy where the good guys are trying to unravel the Section, and one says how could the [bad guys] have kept this secret?
And the lead of the investigators says, well it was before we had a s-word-ist government.
In America, s-wordism is the Great Shaitan.
Dave
@geg6: I have the same story. Poli-Sci major, but luckily I picked East Asia. That should stay relevant for a little while yet…
Dave
@chopper: Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll check it out.
Dennis SGMM
@Omnes Omnibus:
Now that Social Security has become part of the “problem” you couldn’t be more right. Although Congress still doesn’t have to appropriate money for SS (And has in fact sucked up Trust Fund surpluses for years) even Obama mentioned it as a component of the deficit in his speech yesterday. The integrity of the social safety net will be threatened as long as there is one Republican still breathing.
GregB
Capitalism!
Letting air traffic controllers sleep on the job for 30 years running because paying two people to cover a shift is inefficient and costly!
Also too, unions suck.
Mandramas
@LGRooney: A social safety net should be designed together with job insertion programs.
The problem is, those safety nets are working mostly in recessions, but in recessions you have a lousy labor market, and job insertion is impossible. In any case, the fact that the jobless can still maintains a minimal lifestyle helps to get out of the recessions.
In any case,
Why do you state this don’t work? I think it worked pretty well, saving a lot of peoples of dire condition. How this could have worked for you? Erasing poverty for memory?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@chopper: but….wouldn’t you rather have dessert?
geg6
@Dave:
Well, we’ve always been at war with East Asia. ;-)
Mandramas
@geg6: Are you in a unionless job? Simply start a new Union! Or, what, is there a law against new unions?
BC
But unionization has to have support across the board in a community to thrive. I remember listening to a report on a strike against grocery stores in Northern California in the 90s and a manager of one of the stores said the strike would not last long because consumers in San Francisco would not cross the picket lines to shop. I imagine that is one of the last places to honor picket lines.
Dennis SGMM
@Dave:
Speaking strictly from my own experience as someone who worked blue collar jobs for a few decades, the reason white collar workers didn’t unionize was because they didn’t think that they needed to. They were the smart, indispensable ones. Those of us on the shop floor were just grunts. And only grunts needed the protection of a union.
Lawnguylander
I’m stoked at the idea of a blog with decent sized readership paying attention to labor issues beyond situations like Wisconsin. But having visited the guy’s blog, would prefer someone who’s not such a self absorbed gasbag and who has some knowledge of the subject. Also, one who doesn’t use idiotic terms like “pity charity.”
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@geg6:
This. Sheesh, we don’t get enough FDL purity sock puppets in the comments? Now we have another member of the St Purity Brigade on the masthead?
LGRooney
@Mandramas: I guess I’m thinking about the longer-term. I also spent a good deal of time in international business/development and saw the horrible results of throwing money or commodities at nations rather than “teaching them to fish.” For short-term problems or for the long-term infirm or when faced with a legislature preferring cat-food solutions, I see the benefit of tax-sponsored charity. If not for the latter, job insertion programs may not work because of a tight supply for jobs but make-work programs can be beneficial for public investment and as a jobs-training effort. Hell, the military made this a successful part of its model until the privatizers came in and trashed the place.
Dave
@Lawnguylander: To be fair to ED, he is using that phrase because Freddie used it to talk about the issue originally.
Jeffreywwilton
Touch magic device test 123
Mandramas
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: The funny think is soc1alist parties are considered reformist, Keynesian and center-left, generally. America has a country has a conservative bias.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandramas: Simply throwing money at the problem, i.e., just giving cash assistance to those in need, does serve the purpose of helping people to survive. It does not, however, address the condition that created the need in the first place. Quality education, jobs programs, subsidized day care, decent public transportation, and related programs would help people in need do more than just survive until the next government check arrives. Until those things are in place, cash assistance is, of course necessary. Once those things are in place, cash assistance will still have a place, but it will hopefully be a temporary solution to help those in transition.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@geg6:
You pretty much describe much of Missouri as well, particularly in the trades. And the trade unions are starting to cut corners in terms of how they hire so as to freeze out other trade unions for jobs, this from the husband of a total wingnut whackjob secretary here in the office. He votes Dem because he has half a brain. She votes in her single issue ghetto, Zygote Protection, and can’t understand how her and her moranic family’s voting patterns have led to her electrician husband being unemployed for upwards of a year.
Lawnguylander
@Dave:
I know. Freddie is who I was referring to.
Dennis SGMM
@Mandramas:
There are a number of obstacles to just unionizing a workplace – let alone to starting a new union. Back in the early Eighties, I worked for a large, prosperous California company. The Steelworkers sent their organizers around and the manufacturing side voted in the union. The union negotiated a modest increase in wages and the company signed the contract.
A year later the company fired everyone but the front office and moved to Texas. All perfectly legal. Only the fact that offshoring had just begun kept our jobs from going to Taiwan instead of Texas.
Mandramas
@LGRooney:
”
In my experience as a citizen of a country that were given “money or commodities” a lot of times in the history, the money given was never a gift, but a loan coupled with a lot of request like “please let me install my bases near your countries’ bigger oil fields”, “please sign a nice contract with my friend’s company”, “please destroy your free educative system and replace it with a privatized version”, “please destroy your industrial capacity and become dependent of our export”, “please kill all those communist hidden on the jungles”, and a long etc.
If you believe that charity was a factor on international relations, you are either naive or a brainwashed pawn.
bystander
Agree, E.D. And, I’m grateful to John for the introduction to Freddie and L’Hôte. Pity-charity liberalism is going to be a tough sell to most who claim the mantle “progressive.” The notion – in as much as I understand it – is evokative of King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail, to me. As well, a throw away line from a William Raspberry column that has stuck in my craw for decades. I’m not sure anyone would call Raspberry a friend to those who are differently-abled, but there was an element of truth to his assertion that those of us who served them had fallen in love with the missing leg.
Anything given can be taken away. That’s just a fact. And, many want to believe that our current “troubles” can be dealt effectively with the existing institutional arrangements we have. I no longer believe that’s true. And, I think organized labor is essential for the institutional shift that is required.
I’m not sure why the obstacles to organizing labor in the so-called creative class and the professions are so formidable. I suspect there is a psychological disconnect between labor and profession that comes into play, but doubtless it’s complex.
Thanks for the tip to Corey Robin. I’ve only skimmed it, but it looks like a worthy read.
jeffreyw
Touch magic test
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Dennis SGMM:
This.
The IT folks thought (and still think) this way. Imagine their surprise when all those white collar jobs were shipped to India or indentured servants brought in under the H1B visa program because big corporations claimed there weren’t enough American workers to fill those jobs? But by that time, most of the IT bubbas had been listening to 20 years of Reagnomic propaganda to realize they were getting screwed by their apathy toward organized labor.
Flash forward another ten years and now it’s the right’s next middle-class target, public sector workers. Some unionization but not a lot and much of it toothless. And there’s the rub, what happens if you have a union but it’s worthless? Combine that with the same attitude of “I’m white collar and needed” and it’s no wonder public sector folks got up one morning and found out that after being underpaid for 30 years, they’re now suddenly, somehow Top Dawg Workers and thus, must be destroyed.
JGabriel
E. D. Kain:
Yes, but also: Sweden, like most West European social democracies, also has a parliamentary system and a tax system that is somewhat more regressive — due to the VAT — than we have in the US. I suspect those may be a factor as well.
Krugman on VAT (from his blog):
The whole post (it’s short!) is worth a read. I’m not big on VAT, because I really dislike regressive taxation. That said, Krugman’s conclusion makes a good point that has me rethinking it a bit:
.
E.D. Kain
@ “Serious” Superluminar – thanks. It was a fun post to smack down. Sometimes beyond the pale stuff is good because it gives you an opportunity to point out why it’s beyond the pale in the first place.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@JGabriel: dude. swedes are soc1alists. And proud of it.
Is that what EDK is advocating?
E.D. Kain
@JGabriel: Yes, a VAT is almost certainly a prerequisite for the kind of welfare state achieved in parts of Europe. I don’t like the regressive nature of it either, which is why I suggest we couple it with progressive corporate and capital gains taxes as well as more top-end income brackets. VATs are useful in recessions as well.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain: LOL wow that was an epic lie.
People shud read the post.
A Walk in EDK’s Free Market Fantasy Forest.
E.D. Kain
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: I would be absolutely perfectly happy with the brand of Swedish socialism if we could replicate it here. Yes.
Dennis SGMM
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
I noticed that same “I’m indispensable,” attitude from a lot of IT folks. This was back in 2000 and IBM’s Tivoli was just starting to pick up a good-sized installed base. One of the IT folks was extolling the virtues of being able to remotely administer just about everything (Apparently they weren’t teaching telnet when he got his MCSE) and I asked him, “So you could administer the whole works from, say, India – right?”
He didn’t get it. I bet he does now.
E.D. Kain
@Dave: I think you need to trace the death of the American union back to two points. The first is the Wagner Act and Taft-Hartley which hobbled unionism and made it much more complacent to management and much more legally tied down. The second is the rise of the New Left in the 60’s and 70’s. (And the third would be what’s happening now in Wisconsin and elsewhere.)
p.a.
@BC:
There’s been a change among Americans; there used to be a general feeling of ‘look what those people (fought for and) got- I want that too, and am willing to organize to get it. Now? “I don’t have that benefit. Why the fuck should they!!??” We were on strike in 1989 for 15 weeks against NYNEX (remember them?) because they wanted health care copays, while they were making $$$ without even trying. In general, we had strong public support. If we went out now on the same issue, I know the prevailing sentiment would be, “I pay. So should they.”
Obviously strong unions did and can serve as a counterbalance to corporate plutocracy. But another counterbalance would be if the poor just fucking voted. They don’t, and haven’t since long before Republican vote suppression efforts. I have no answer how to politically energize them.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Mandramas:
hahaha!
truedat.
Can you say what country, my brother?
And I think you missed an important part.
“Muslims, you must now democratically vote for a system of government that is against your faith. Or else we will prop a secular dictator on you or drone/decimate you into submission.”
Cat
You keep using these words “free market” and you change their meaning to mean anything you want.
To claim Sweden has free markets displays your ignorance of Economics and Sweden. You of course will say you didn’t mean all the markets in Sweden were free, just some. Or you will say some markets are now free that didn’t used to be free and thats what you meant.
You are so dishonest.
Montysano
As I noted on the original Freddie post, the frequent use of “redistribution” (5-6 times IIRC) was immediately off-putting. It’s a nonsense term (if you have any tax system, you’re redistributing) that’s evolved into a handy pejorative for the Galtians and Teahadists.
E.D. Kain
@bystander:
That’s key, I think. There’s nothing wrong with the social safety net. Contrary to some comments here, I’m not arguing against the social justice inherent in the welfare state. I’m saying it’s unsustainable without organization.
And now that the Democrats are almost as corporate as the GOP, that’s a problem. The less the D’s rely on union support, the less they’re likely to advocate middle and working class policies.
Xboxershorts
A free market might be beneficial to the citizens of this great nation. It’s just a damn crying shame we haven’t had a free market in America since well before the civil war.
The existence of mega-too-big-to-fail corporate entities also has the net effect of manipulating markets (and Congress) away from anything even remotely resembling “free”.
That train left the station a long long time ago.
The growth of the unionized workforce was, IMHO, a direct result of the abuses of mega-to-big-to-fail market manipulators manipulating the labor markets.
I would also like to go on record as not appreciating the term Charity/Redistributive liberalism. Government DOES have a role in protecting the citizenry from abuses. Including the abuses of mega-too-big-to-fail market manipulators. And this role is plainly spelled out in short words in the commerce clause of the constitution. Johnson’s “Great Society” was never intended to be charity, however, due to the century plus of injustices, it needed to be, by nature, redistributive. Those that had “stuff” needed to be forced to give up some “stuff” in order to help raise those without “stuff”…out of systemic poverty.
Raising the perennially impoverished out of poverty and into societal productivity requires the investment of assets. That investment of assets in the perennially poor never comes from the “haves” because the profit margin is slim or the return on investment is far off in the future.
Therefor, that kind of investment MUST be derived through government policy in the form of tax policy and regulatory policy.
Tax policy by nature, is redistributive. It can be used to create balance, it can be set to redistribute upwards, or it can be set to redistribute to the base of the social pyramid. Using the term redistributive in this context, along with charity, is derogatory. It is how those assets are used that makes the difference.
Johnson’s great society welfare state was more of a charity, lets make up for hundreds of years of oppression, type of welfare state. But reforms carried out in the Clinton’s administration were more in the direction of hand up and not handout.
To continue to refer to today’s welfare state as some kind of charity effort is just wrong. Reagan’s welfare queens were a tiny minority at the time, and after the Clinton reforms, even tinier. So, please, stop with the derogatory references to some kind of charity state.
Those who merely survive at the bottom of the social pyramid are mired there, not because they like it. But because tax and regulatory policy of the last 15 years has ensured that opportunity to rise out of poverty for those at the bottom has been severely curtailed due to those policies redistributing wealth back to the top of the pyramid.
And again, IMHO, the vast majority of bigotry I see, here in bible belt Potter County, PA comes from “the haves” looking down their noses at “the have nots”. When the wealth disparity between the haves and have nots begins to recede, all of society benefits more. And the resentment inherent in bigotry will also recede.
Market based policies that rely on some form of profit would never invest in such a cause. The ROI is much less tangible and too far out on the horizon.
I don’t know, I’m just not happy with the use of the word Charity in this context. Why would the word Charity not be used in describing how the 1%’s grew their wealth exponentially over the last 1/2 century?
Padraig
I think it’s a little unfortunate that the phrase being tossed around is “pity-charity” to talk about the social welfare state. But only a little. The critique of this model is what’s important: that by relying on the Democratic party to do for us, instead of organizing to do for ourselves, we end up at the mercy of an institution that will never be as responsive to our needs as to the needs of Wall Street. We can talk about that as being a need for greater organization of Labor, and that’s certainly true. We can talk about it as a need for greater organization among black and PoC Americans, and greater representation of same in Leftist orgs generally, and that is also true. But the crucial thing is that we need to organize.
In a way, the adverse reaction by some commenters above to the use of the term “pity-Charity” is misdirected, because the term itself is misapplied a little. The social welfare state is not the problem, nor did it cause the drop off in social capital and organization that we’re seeing. But the social welfare state in the absence of organization mutates into the “Pity-Charity” model. Without organization to grow and sustain pride and efficacy, individuals on public assistance get treated (and may even begin to see themselves) as charity cases. This isn’t either or – either social welfare or Unions. BOTH are necessary. Now, more than ever.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain: hahaha when pigs fly.
How can you worship the market god if you are a redistributionist?
Liar.
E.D. Kain
@Cat: Actually Sweden and Denmark and most of northern Europe do have very free markets. Pretty much everyone agrees on this point. How am I being dishonest? How am I twisting free market to mean whatever I want it to mean? Something like 75% of Danish people are pro-free-market. They also have massive unionization, universal healthcare, and a very high standard of living. Why is this a bad thing?
E.D. Kain
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Markets and redistribution have nothing to do with one another in my opinion. I’m serious, go study northern Europe or Germany. Super high levels of redistribution, very free markets. The problem is that American conservatives and libertarians want you to think that free markets = low taxes and no welfare. That’s poppycock.
E.D. Kain
@Padraig: Yes, this. That’s exactly what I’m saying. If it’s just the economic elites handing out social welfare at their leisure, that’s a problem. You need active, organized involvement of the working and middle classes to make it sustainable.
E.D. Kain
@Dr. Squid: Quite right.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Cat: I agree, he basically dishonest. He is a panderer, he will say anything to win his audience. Redefine soc1alism, redefine free markets, same same.
@Padraig: I think this is a good point, but what I violently object to is the Freddie/Konczal/mistermix calumny here.
That is bullshit. Social justice is not antipathic to strong organized labor.
Its 50 years of “free market solutions” that are eroding organized labor.
That position is just so dishonest it makes my ears bleed.
Mandramas
@Omnes Omnibus:
Social nets are not designed to address the condition that the created the need. The rest of the government should work on this, because the source of the needs is historically recessions, so, their should use their economical tools to pass the recessions. If you implements a strong safety needs but your economics policies favors off shoring, you are in auto-inflicted pain.
LGRooney
@Mandramas: I’ll go with naive since your experience seems to trump all of mine and you can see that there might be more motive than just namby-pamby niceness involved in foreign assistance. Thanks for bringing that to light.
…back to reality
More often than not the failed “throw money at them and go away plan” was more based on your last option than anything else. As long as the leader said the right things about commies, we’d throw money their way. The Soviets did the same damned thing. It’s one of the hallmarks of empire to expand and one of the hallmarks of small nations to throw bones at the imperialists. The model changed after the Soviets left the stage although rational-market theory eventually supplanted that model to everyone’s joy.
In any event, there’s a lot more public charity than USAID. The Marshall Plan taught people how to fish. The Peace Corps has been a mixture of teaching and giving. USAID has gone through multiple stages and mixes and matches depending on who is running the country programs and what the situation in the country is. There is also a lot of NGO giving that may or may not be coordinated with official channels.
…
But, then again, I have to bow to your superiority and just learn. What do you think, dear?
JGabriel
E.D. Kain:
Cerainly? I don’t think there’s enough evidence to support that. I’m not entirely sold on the concept. But there’s enough to give it a try.
The intriguing thing is the idea, and research suggesting, that “in the United States, because we don’t have a national sales tax, politics ends up being about tax brackets … while in Europe you have broad-based taxes, and politics ends up being about who gets helped, which matters much more, especially for the less fortunate.”
If a VAT can help us get there, then let’s give it a try — although if the underlying assumption is true, it says some pretty horrific things about human nature and our upper classes; i.e., that, if taxed, the upper classes will always turn the political dialogue into a whingefest about their petty financial grievances over the very real suffering of others.
.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain: no the problem is that you and the rest of the freemarketeers can’t bear to admit that free market solutions have nearly wrecked this country. Free market solutions like deregulation and NCLB caused the econopalypse and Americas brutally poor standing in science and math. Free market solutions caused the health care industry crisis. Free market solutions caused the BP spill and Fukushima and offshoring.
Free market solutions do. not. work. to address inequality, and other social justice issues.
And you want a do over, you want to give it a twist and do it all again and it will surely work this time.
/spit
LGRooney
@Mandramas: Yet, if the intent is to help someone, regardless of other peripheral motives since we know altruism is never pure, I’ll call it charity. Your superior knowledge might re-define away my explanation, however.
themann1086
John Rawls actually makes a similar point in Justice As Fairness when he compares the ideal political state (difference principle, least advantaged) with capitalist welfare states. I don’t have the book on me at the moment but it’s a very good argument.
Cat
@E.D. Kain:
A free market is a market where it is unencumbered by government intervention/regulations except to enforce contracts.
http://www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Work/
Sweden requires permits for some professions, has anti-discrimination laws, Swedish version of OSHA, etc. Yet Swedish markets are free even though almost everyone participating in the production and management of the goods have highly regulated interactions?
When the government sets the conditions of the labor the government effects the cost of the goods for the market or even if those goods can be produced due to the risks involved in making them.
Like I said, you have a funny definition of a free market.
Xboxershorts
@E.D. Kain:
ACORN used to be a perfect example of just such organizing at the grass roots empowering those who needed help the most.
It’s a shame so many Democrats voted along with the fascists to kill this marvelous organization under false pretenses.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandramas: Did you read my entire comment? I basically said what you are saying. A social safety net is a necessary, but not sufficient, factor for a healthy country.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@LGRooney: but what about my hypoth?
That it is the clueless attempt to impose missionary democracy that is costing 100 million dollars a day in A-stan and Iraq?
;)
LGRooney
@Cat: Because definitions never change or because words/expressions never have more than one meaning or because your definition is always the right one?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Cat:
Its fluid. The liquidity of the market.
JGabriel
@p.a.:
Maybe not so much as you think. Certainly conservatives, Republicans, and the media (triply redundant, I know) want you to think that.
But look at Wisconsin. While there are people critical of the unions, there were also hundreds of thousands who turned out to support them, and polls showed millions more in support across the state.
.
LGRooney
Oh please, charity was nothing more than a selling point to cover for the oil, revenge, and empire fantasies of a bunch of small-dicked Napoleon wannabes.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@LGRooney: no because EDK is a fucking panderbot that will say anything.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@LGRooney:
and WEC democracy missionaries.
Cat
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: And his shining example of ‘free market’ had huge growth after it socia1ized some of the countries largest banks because they caused a huge crisis in the 90’s. Sweden also had dozens of government monopolies which it just recently privatized so its just recently caught the ‘free market’ bug while being a very socialist for the last several decades.
But they still have some of the best worker protection and labor union laws around, when they start wiping those off the books because the “time of the labor union is past” we’ll know they have caught the “free market” bug.
E.D. Kain
@JGabriel: “Certainly” may be a bit too strident, but I think it’s likely. I think single-payer healthcare is also likely.
E.D. Kain
@Cat: I think a lot of people actually define free market outside the libertarian-definition. Why else would countries like Denmark and Sweden have such strong support for free markets?
P.S. I think “free trade agreements” are almost always bullshit.
E.D. Kain
@Xboxershorts: yes, ACORN is a great example. Hence, a great target for conservatives.
Cat
@LGRooney: “free market” is a term of art in Economics. It would be like a one doctor calling your heart your spleen and another doctor calling it a kidney.
Since we are discussing economic paradigms he doesn’t get to define “free market” to mean whatever he wants.
"Serious" Superluminar
@97
where’s your evidence? You keep saying this but you don’t back it up.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cat: Yes, free market is a term of art in economics, and everyone who goes beyond Economics 101 knows that this free market is a construct which exists is a society in which the participants in the market may rely on courts to enforce their contracts and other government agencies to provide various services. This free market does not exist in a vacuum except in the minds of libertarian loons.
Edited slightly for improved coherence. YMMV
NonyNony
@Dennis SGMM:
There’s one group of white collar workers that gets a lot of the benefits of unionization without actually calling it a union – accountants. They’re the smartest of the lot among white collar workers. They have their professional organization that maintains high standards for accounting programs that keeps the supply of accountants low and so keeps salaries relatively high.
IT people (a group I belonged to for years) could never see the benefit of even a simple professional organization that could set standards and keep the supply of IT workers low. Instead it was all “I’m an IT god and I’m indispensible” right up until the point where their jobs were sent overseas.
E.D. Kain
Also, the ‘free market as forest’ post that Hermione keeps linking to was basically a post saying that purely free markets are impossible because of the natural need for stability within a society. I think “free” is a guiding principle, not a matter of total purity. You want to have markets as free as possible while maintaining important regulations for safety and economic stability. You want to avoid bailing out big companies that have mismanaged their finances. You want to avoid picking favorites if possible. You can’t have a purely free market, I agree, but I’m not suggesting that either.
Mandramas
@LGRooney: I’m not trying to be unpolite. Your thoughts are so valid as mine, it is just a matter of POV. I apologize if my previous comment was rude.
E.D. Kain
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes. This. Even a free market exists within the framework set up by society and the state, including regulations and laws and contracts, etc.
It is distinct from other economic approaches such as command economies, etc. You can be a socialist state like Sweden and have free markets. Sweden purposefully avoided the command economy model of the USSR with excellent results.
4jkb4ia
“Pity charity liberalism” originated with Mike Konczal and I recognized exactly what he was talking about from the public option debate. The public option would have taken power away from insurers and that was the main reason to support it. Certainly the version we would have gotten would not have done much to hold down costs. But certainly Nate and others argued that you had to support the bill because of the many concrete people it would help. You are helping people despite the lack of real reform and the open question of empowering them, because many of the people that are being helped are going on Medicaid. They won’t use the exchanges and Republican state legislatures can gut them. I bought this argument and expressed it to Rep. Clay–told him to vote for anything the Senate gave him to sign.
You might also say that if you have strong unions, you have good health care where they exist. A public option gives the union more leverage to raise wages.
Pesach is frighteningly around the corner. It’s been interpreted to talk about both personal freedom, one’s private Egypt (which I should know a lot about from two different blogs) and the public Egypt that was imposed by Pharaoh.
Pesach represents a transition from a free person to a free people that have obligations. Freely choosing an obligation is one way of breaking the personal power of Pharaoh whether he has legal power over you or not. Thomas Sowell might sneer at it but defining the left is the unwillingness to say, “Life isn’t fair but the majority of people want things that aren’t fair”. Instead you have the willingness to say “Freedom is important because it helps make things fair”.
Mandramas
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah. I was expanding your idea, not rebuffing it.
LGRooney
@NonyNony: God help the accountants, CPAs, and lawyers should we ever simplify the tax system in this country. There will be so many superfluous numbers weenies in this country my salary will drop like a stone.
geg6
@Mandramas:
Yes, I am not a union employee since I am considered middle management. And I already went through the whole rigamarole of trying to get a union to organize at my level at another institution (where I was basically at the same level). There aren’t any unions for people like me and the ones that do exist aren’t interested.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain: oh bullshit. that is not at all what it said. spinner.
Then it is no longer a free market. It is a REGULATED market. Not a Free Market Plus, or an Enhanced Free Market. IT IS SOMETHING ELSE.
NO YOU CANNOT.
Like Cat and various other commenters have pointed out on this very blog, there is definition of a free market
4jkb4ia
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
NCLB has actually done decent as far as math proficiency for 4th and 8th graders. Figuring out how to teach people anything is a hard problem.
And it’s not technically true that NCLB is a free market solution. NCLB didn’t even have a voucher provision, for the sake of all that is holy.
Thank you, Evil Inclination, for getting me into a fight with m_c. I am very grateful.
LGRooney
@E.D. Kain: They also have the great advantage of a rather homogeneous population that developed the system following lessons learned in the great conflagration mid-century last. We’ll see how well it holds up as their demographics become much more diverse. Yes, even the Swedes of our Utopian fantasies are subject to human nature and may feel less public charity is needed should their economy become seriously strained while the scales of their population exhibit more heterogeneity.
Not excusing, just observing…
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandramas: Okay. That wasn’t clear to me from your original comment. Thank you for clarifying.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain: oh bullshit. people should read the post.
You said that. That makes you a fantasist.
Then it is no longer a free market. It is a REGULATED market. Not a Free Market Plus, or an Enhanced Free Market. IT IS SOMETHING ELSE.
NO YOU CANNOT.
Like Cat and various other commenters like Chuck Butcher and Mandramas have pointed out on this very blog, there is a fixed definition of a free market, and none have ever actually existed.
Now, it seems to me that EDK is defending the idea of “free market solutions”, policies based on the theoretical principles of a “free market”, if one could exist.
Wanna get me off your case, EDK? Give me an empirical example of a free market solution that worked.
E.D. Kain
@4jkb4ia: NCLB is awful.
4jkb4ia
“Personal power of Pharaoh” was a lousy way to put it. “Internalized slavery” is the correct way to put it, so that you have a Pharaoh in your own head getting you to think and behave the way you did when you were a slave.
Cat
@Omnes Omnibus: @E.D. Kain:
Strangely nobody every uses the terms that actually more closely hew to what countries like Sweden does. Free market fantasists like EDK can’t bear to admit that an economic success like Sweden is using a mixed/regulated market model so they redefine what a free market is until it looks like a mixed/regulated market.
His post at 109 is a perfect example of the free market fantasists and their dodges. There are command economies , some other economic paradigms that daren’t be named, and market economies.
If you regulate the markets by dictating how workers are paid and treated, or how the enviroment is treated, you aren’t blending a market economy and a command economy to make something thats not either one, you acutally have a market economy with bonus features!
Omnes Omnibus
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Have you taken an economics course beyond an intro course?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@4jkb4ia: In NCLB schools receive funding based on standardized test scores. This causes teaching to the test. The rest of the world does not take the same test, so America has fallen to 25th in math and 20th in science. You are correct that vouchers are one kind of free market solution.
Ryan is proposing them for healthcare, right?
4jkb4ia
@E.D. Kain:
Do not confuse the usual pedantry of that post with my opinion of NCLB. I agree it’s awful. I have been to schools where they are, in documents posted on the wall, confusing “reading behaviors” with reading, because of NCLB.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain: but it is a free market solution, non?
;)
Stillwater
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: That is what EDK really believes in….sneering at social justice.
This is an example of one of the ridiculous ‘inflexible beliefs’ you were wondering about yesterday.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Omnes Omnibus: why dont you and Hall Monitor Allan form a club with suzanne? then you can vet everyones credentials.
;)
MattR
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
And yet most casual observers would refer to the United States as a free market economy and there would be no objections.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Stillwater: prove me wrong then Stil.
What DOES EDK believe?
Here, take my crysknife.
Yours is chipped.
4jkb4ia
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
But you can also get funding because you are a failing school. Jonathan Mahler wrote about this in the NYT Magazine last weekend–the principal was able to turn his school around but needed substitutes for sources of funding that he could get from being a failing school.
Essentially, public schools are not a free market. Giving marketlike incentives to government entities is not a free market. A Sunstein/Thaler-like setup where the government provides the incentives to individuals that the market would is a little closer.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@MattR:
Omnes Omnibus
@Cat: For accuracy’s sake, it would probably be better for Kain to use a term like “market-based” rather than “free market” for much of what he is discussing. It is, I think, better suited to getting his point across without running into arguments about whether or not a truly free market can exist.
(N.B. FWIW I tend not agree with Kain on many of his posts, so I am just trying to defuse this particular semantic question.)
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@4jkb4ia: My two points.
1. NCLB causes teaching to the test, which makes America’s student’s fail other tests they have not been taught.
2. NCLB is a free market solution THAT FAILED.
E.D. Kain
@Cat: of course it’s mixed/regulated. Who is saying it isn’t? Most people think of liberal economic models as examples of free market systems, regardless of regulatory framework, etc. You are playing into the hands of libertarians who say that only a dismantling of the state can result in a free market.
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: No, NCLB is not at all a “free market” solution. What about it is in any way a market solution? Frankly, I don’t think market solutions apply to public schools, but NCLB is hardly that to begin with.
Re: your question, “when have free market solutions worked?” – this is an impossible question to answer, since we are using different definitions of the term. Any answer I give you will respond to by saying that isn’t actually a free market. Ironically, this is very similar to arguing with libertarians who insist on the same rigid definition.
MattR
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: It is much like the vagina/vulva pedantry that soemone brought up in a thread several days ago. You may be technically right about the use of the word, but 90%+ of the commentariat know what the intended meaning is.
@E.D. Kain: To be as pedantic as HDW and to use the term that Omnes Omnibus broke out a few comments ago, I believe she means to say it is a “market based solution” since it obviously cannot be a “free market solution” since it involves government regulations.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: I was asking because your understanding of economics, at least as expressed here, appears rather superficial.
E.D. Kain
@Omnes Omnibus: Fine – “market-based” is fine.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@MattR: that is part of my point. sorry for snarking. It is important to differentiate for the purposes of this discussion the difference between the utopian free market and “free market solutions” which are attempts to put free market principles into practice and policy.
4jkb4ia
@E.D. Kain:
Once again, I tried to write a heartfelt post, and it sucked. I’m going to try to be clearer. If freedom isn’t about fairness, then you can’t expect the government to take your part. You can expect the government to treat you as one group to balance against the others.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain: too late.
@Omnes Omnibus: form a club. I’m sure Hall Monitor Allan can draft the rules.
Omnes Omnibus
@E.D. Kain:Just trying to move things along so that Hermione_chan can get back to accusing you of pandering.
E.D. Kain
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: I don’t believe in a free market utopia. I think free market ideas can work at times, but certainly not always. Most privatization of public services is just rent-seeking.
E.D. Kain
@4jkb4ia: I think that’s true.
@Omnes Omnibus: I know. It’s cool.
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: If you want to have an honest discussion about these things, I’m more than willing to engage you. Playing “gotcha” and semantics is not an honest discussion. I am more than willing to give you the benefit of the doubt going forward, but you need to give people room to actually have a conversation.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain: Schools get funding dependent on standardized test results. Fixing schools.
Vouchers are a free market solution. Fixing schools.
Merit pay is a free market solution. Fixing teachers.
Standardized accreditation is a free market solution. Fixing teachers.
As opposed to social justice solutions, which would address the real causes.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain:
Changed your mind?
example please.
MattR
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: That clarification/distinction has been made and it seems that everybody but you has accepted it.
@E.D. Kain: Please use “market based” going forward. I don’t think it changes the meaning of your posts one whit and it will give HGW fits if she has no windmill to tilt at.
E.D. Kain
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: I am anti-NCLB, and anti-all-those-other-things-you-mention, but really NCLB says nothing at all about vouchers. It’s a testing regime, that’s all. It’s completely wrong-headed, but it doesn’t really delve into the school-choice question much (though the two are certainly related in other ways). School-choice is a free-market solution. It’s also the wrong solution for public schools.
I believe in a public sphere and a private sphere. Free or market-based markets for the private sphere work pretty damn well most of the time. They don’t work very well for public services like schools.
@MattR: market-based it is!
Xboxershorts
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
I always viewed this as an incentivized market solution. (Some government or corporate entity provides incentive for obtaining the desired results…passing standardized tests)
I see school vouchers as a market based solution.
Stillwater
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: prove me wrong then Stil.
The ‘proof’ would be having you read EDK’s many recent posts without pre-supposing that it’s all a head-fake. But I can’t do that for you. All I can do is point out examples: eg., that in a recent post EDK criticized the Democrats compromise over the budget for being too generous to the GOP free-marketeers. In this post, he’s arguing that pity charity is not enough for the preservation of a functioning domestic economy. These positions are the opposite of the view you attribute to him.
Omnes Omnibus
@E.D. Kain: WINNING!
/Charlie Sheen
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain: oh please. now I’m the dishonest one for calling out your freeform bullshit?
I got a lab to go to.
adieu
E.D. Kain
@Omnes Omnibus: Tiger blood is the trick.
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: I’m pretty sure you don’t even read what I write except to cherry-pick quotes you think you can use against me. You quote me constantly in the “I believe in free markets” post in which I explain that I don’t think free markets can actually work the way that libertarians present them. I am critiquing libertarianism in that post, and explaining that human nature makes it impossible to have a purely free market.
Stillwater
Winning!
E.D. Kain
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: For example:
This is me trying to say that you can still appreciate market economies while also advocating for the welfare state. It’s a critique of libertarian absolutism.
SteveinSC
@E.D. Kain: Sweden has national industries and trades/competes without restrictions with other EU countries. Wouldn’t that make Sweden socialist and free market at the same time?
Fuck the moderation shit.
E.D. Kain
@SteveinSC: Yes! It’s free-market socialism.
MattR
@E.D. Kain: For some reason this scene from Animal House pops into mind as I listen to HGW rant (this song title too)
Xboxershorts
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
If our minds are not open, we cannot see.
Kirk Spencer
@p.a.:
The poor don’t vote for several reasons, some physical, some psychological.
Let’s take the simple act of getting to the polling station. Set aside the question of transportation, let’s look at work. Yes, the laws make it so they can’t get fired for going to the poll instead of work — theoretically. Practically – nagahapen. Miss some hours, make management have to do the quick-fill shuffle, and management will remember. Besides, it means you miss a chunk of paycheck — and if you’re living at the edge, ANY loss of pay is potentially catastrophic.
There’s also the discouragement factor. The poor tend to be fatalistic; pessimistic about the ability to change things. (The majority of revolutions, especially successful revolutions, are driven not by the poor but by the middle and low-upper classes. Worth remembering.) It is tied to the exhaustion of constant labor just to keep from going under with nothing left for improving one’s situation.
It’s a bit of a catch 22. Increasing the lot of the poor would increase their involvement in things like voting. However, that probably isn’t going to increase until they start voting.
Xboxershorts
@E.D. Kain:
And to think that a FOX News post called E.D. Kain a liberal blogger for Forbes…I guess that wasn’t a good enough indictment of E.D. from the fascist right for HGW.
Labels are used by people who refuse to see things for themselves. Labels are an excuse to maintain a closed mind.
E.D. Kain
@Xboxershorts: Really? I didn’t see that…
E.D. Kain
@MattR: more WINNING.
SteveinSC
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Hope the fecalemia test comes out o.k. for you.
Xboxershorts
@E.D. Kain:
My bad, it was The Atlantic Wire…
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2010/04/dems-financial-reform-test-vote-fails/24684/
End of Scott Brown? Liberal blogger E.D. Kain predicts doom for the newly minted Republican Senator from Massachusetts.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Xboxershorts: dude, that is how EDK got the Forbes gig. By being a panderbot here.
Sully pimped him as a “sane”conservative, then he jumps to Forbes to be their token libruul.
They totally dig his freeform freemarket flow of consciousness.
I am saying free market solutions as opposed to social justice solutions.
Like I said to MattR, free market solutions are attempts to put THEORETICAL free market attributes into practice and policy.
And EDK is still unable to come up with an empirical example?
now i relly must go.
fiammanullah
brantl
Treat any country as a feedback system, and you’ll see that what is wrong with the United States is the feedback system. Our politics are driven by corporate money, and since they’ve gotten rid of the fairness doctrine, our news is, too. Corporate money is now the circulatory system of American body-politic. Corporate-managed news is now the sensory nervous system. What difference does it make what kind of brain the american body-politic has, if you control the circulation and the sensory nervous system?
You have a very blinkered vision of how things can work, E.D.. As do a lot of other people. The rich (and especially corporations) should not be allowed the advantage that they have in throwing their money around, in a way that the poorer classes can’t. Once you get rid of “rich money” representing small population interests disproportionately, you don’t need the unions to constantly struggle in opposition to that, they can just serve their members.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Xboxershorts: ima send this post to my frenemy AllahP.
Maybe i can get EDK fired.
I’m hypothesizing Forbes doesn’t dig teh soc1alism much.
Xboxershorts
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
That would make you one spiteful person.
Correct me if I’m wrong because my sarcasmotron is broken.
E.D. Kain
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: dude, read what I’m writing at Forbes.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@SteveinSC: if you disagree with me you really should just call me a racist like EDK and suzanne do.
More efficient.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Xboxershorts: what do you think, EDK fanboi?
FlipYrWhig
Is there anyone on the left who _doesn’t_ think that empowering workers is a good idea? Is there anyone on the left who thinks that “pity” and “charity” are enough, so we should, nay, must, stop there? I truly don’t understand who or what is being argued against in these posts. It seems like a weird caricature of the “limousine liberal.”
Stillwater
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Maybe i can get EDK fired.
WTF? Can’t quite come up with the words to describe how repulsive this sentiment is. The hypocrisy, the deluded visions of grandeur, the simple meanness and sociopathology expressed. But I will say this: sentiments like you just expressed make me – an otherwise non-violent person – want to beat the shit outa people.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@FlipYrWhig: Nice catch. And its flipping too. The glibertarians want to blame liberals for the degeneration of organized labor like they blamed liberals for Dr. Tiller’s death.
Bend over America, here come the
freemarketmarket-based capitalists again, and Freddie and EDK are going to hold the vaseline jar for them.Stillwater
@FlipYrWhig: The suggestion is to refocus on labor rights and CB bargaining power. To make labor a central plank in the platform, for principled as well as pragmatic reasons. It doesn’t mean other issues get discarded.
But look, do you agree or disagree that Democrats have recently (in the last 30 or so years) abandoned labor as a core political issue?
Stillwater
@FlipYrWhig: Is there anyone on the left who doesn’t think that empowering workers is a good idea?
Yes. Almost the entirety of Democratic CCers.
dollared
@E.D. Kain: This. What Wisconsin really demonstrates is what I’ve always heard at my hoity-toity Democratic funraisers: “Democrats donate. Republicans invest.” Well, unions invest. They have a direct, monetary interest in who controls government. So they organize and work at that. So do Republicans, because for the average family with $250K in AGI, $2-3,000 in every election cycle for Republicans translates into $10,000/year in lower taxes. And for the Kochs, well, buy a chemical company for $2B, spend $1M in bogus think tanks and direct bribery to get rid of some key regulation, and the company is suddenly worth $2.5B That’s why Freddie’s “pity charity liberalism” is so spot on. There is no one to organize,advocate and vote for it.
Paul in KY
@SteveinSC: IMO, what happened was the rise of giant 500,000 ton container vessels that could cheaply move lots of crap from the PRC. The one thing Mr. Smith never imagined was shipping halfway around the world being cheaper than having locals (in US/England) make the stuff.
dollared
@FlipYrWhig: We talked about this yesterday, and you still don’t get it. Liberals support good policy and good ideas. They may write $100 checks to politicians. They may even write clever Facebook posts about what they think. Liberals are just being correct on policy and nice to their fellow citizens in need, and that wins……nothing. Damned few push 500 doorbells every election cycle, make 250 phone calls. Unions do. Organization wins, and the Republicans are organized because everything they do has a financial return for the big boys and they can use careerism and wingnut welfare to keep them all motivated. Unions are the muscle of liberalism for three simple reasons: 1) they have direct financial motivation 2) they have a daily social connection and organization and 3) they can generate funds and legwork and use them both in a high impact way.
Paul in KY
@geg6: Did the same thing geg6. Was a poliSci major with emphasis on USSR. Thought we’d have them to kick around forever.
After I got out of USAF, I started COBOL programming.
Mandramas
@Kirk Spencer: I think that it is a perfectly engineer Catch 22. Check the voting system of other countries.
Mandramas
@FlipYrWhig: Your questions have to many words. It should be: “Is there anyone on the left?”
Because, you know, Dems are not in the Left.
Paul in KY
@E.D. Kain: I am glad you are now engaging her. Makes me think better of you FWIW.
FlipYrWhig
@dollared: Yes, those are all true things. Union involvement is excellent. How is this controversial? Who doesn’t know that? Are there really a bunch of posh liberals thinking to themselves, “I say, these _labor_ fellows are rather distasteful”? Freddie’s post’s point of departure implied that this was a widespread problem. I’m not sure where that comes from.
Yes, unions should be counted as a vital part of the coalition that constitutes “the left.” Of course, issue by issue, unions might disagree with other constituent parts of the left, and then that will all have to be hashed out.
@Stillwater:
Ah, but I thought we were talking about liberals. :P
FlipYrWhig
@Stillwater:
OK, let’s do it. Problem solved.
I agree. I don’t know who wouldn’t agree. That’s why I don’t follow why these are supposed to be eye-opening suggestions. It would be nice to see Democrats do more on any number of subjects. There’s a lot of big-money influence in the Democratic party that warps its priorities and its stances on issues.
But shouldn’t the subsequent discussion be “how do we change that for the better?” not “is this really a problem?” Of course it’s a problem.
dollared
@FlipYrWhig: I’ll keep trying. Gliberal free marketers think unions are a good thing, that probably will go away, and while that’s too bad, the Market Gods Have Decreed It Be So. Again, Ezra, Yglesias, Jokeline, people like this, think this way, and their solution is 1)spend more on education, 2) job retraining, 3) social welfare spending.
The problem is that there is no political power behind the request for 1), 2) and 3) once you remove unions. With a certain accuracy, Republicans position this as asking for charity, and they win due to their superior organization and motivation.
And yes, there are a helluva lot of liberals who think “I think those union guys are distasteful.” Feminist intellectuals are #1 on that list, but the college-educated/ traditional professions gang is not sure they want to identify with labor, and gay activists are uncomfortable with their, uh, “traditional” viewpoints. And of course, the super-smart wonks who really, really want to believe in Market-Based Solutions based on My Sophisticated Understanding of Economics. Oh, and the international development types like JMN who think exporting our jobs will raise the bottom 2 billion out of poverty. And did I leave out passionate environmentalists who hate factories and ignore that their actions just move the problem to Asia while costing themselves political support for Cap n Trade because unemployed people deprioritize long run environmental goals?
So, yeah – I think that less than 50% of the people that voted for Obama think unions are important. I know that has changed in Wisconsin, but that’s only a first step in fixing the problem.
Stillwater
@FlipYrWhig: But shouldn’t the subsequent discussion be “how do we change that for the better?” not “is this really a problem?” Of course it’s a problem.
Of course the subsequent discussion proceeds along those lines. But that discussion can’t happen when people aren’t even interested in the issue. That’s what Freddie’s post focused on, that’s what EDK is saying here. The first thing is get liberals on board with revitalizing labor rights as a policy priority. You may already agree with this, but most liberal pundits and CCers certainly don’t agree.
Wolfdaughter
@Omnes Omnibus:
OO:
Yes, there’s a glibertarian who posts over at Salon. Young guy, I’m pretty sure, judging by the sheer ignorance. Anyway, he sees no reason for the continued existence of unions because we have 40-hr weeks, safety regs for people on the job, etc. He is also unwilling to admit that unions did a great deal to make work life better for most if not all Americans.
There are a lot of rights we’ve taken for granted for years, now currently under attack. I just don’t understand what motivates people who want to strip us of such rights.
Paul in KY
@Stillwater: Unfortunately, most of them are not ‘Left’.
FlipYrWhig
@dollared:
Well, reciprocally, even in your list you point out faultlines between labor, sex/gender activists, and enviros. It’s a coalition.
ISTM that there are at least two tracks in these recent discussions.
(1) Labor should be better acknowledged and supported as part of the left/liberal coalition. Or, if you want to spin it another direction, issues of class should not be overlooked.
This seems to be a wholly unexceptionable statement. Everyone should be represented, everyone should have a seat at the table, no one should feel like their issues are being continually silenced or deferred.
(2) Labor and class should be _primary_ in the left/liberal coalition.
Should it? I dunno. _That’s_ where the fight is going to happen.
Stillwater
@Paul in KY: Yeah, Mandramas made the same point. But how does that trivial observation refute or even contribute to the overall discussion of whether a revitalized labor movement is beneficial to society and if so, how do we proceed in making that a reality?
Wolfdaughter
@LGRooney:
“Teaching them to fish” sounds fine in theory. My problem with it is that this theory blithely assumes that there are fish out there to be caught. That’s when charity, private or governmental, is needed, as a bridge until more fish are available.
Here in the U.S., a second WPA would be workable. Lord knows we have plenty of crumbling infrastructure to be repaired.
Stillwater
@FlipYrWhig:
And I think this subtle move
(as elegant as it was) is insightful. The question you asked pertained to ‘the left’, and then was pared down to ‘liberals’. Fact is, the left, broadly construed, is completely agnostic on, if not down right hostile to, labor issues. Since Clinton (and Ronuldus, of course), the left (broadly understood) has accepted that neoliberal principles won the day at the expense of labor rights. Bieng able to cite yourself or a few others doesn’t change the fact that the left has abandoned labor as a political priority.
dollared
@FlipYrWhig: Actually, I’m pretty clear where I stand: without class as an orgaizing function, there is no Democratic coalition. There is just the “Party of Non-Republicans”
Stillwater
@dollared: without class as an orgaizing function, there is no Democratic coalition. There is just the “Party of Non-Republicans”
Completely agree. Failing to make class distinctions a central feature of a political party reduces it to the merely accepting an economic status quo ultimately determined by class interests (and the status is NOT quo, btw).
Don’t know why this is so hard for Flip to understand.
Stillwater
@dollared: without class as an orgaizing function, there is no Democratic coalition. There is just the “Party of Non-Republicans”
Completely agree. Failing to make class distinctions a central feature of a political party reduces it to the merely accepting an economic status quo ultimately determined by class interests (and the status is NOT quo, btw).
Don’t know why this is so hard for Flip to understand.
Stillwater
{{Whoops! Some double post/moderation shenanigans going on here}}
sneezy
That dude can’t sing.
Mandramas
@Stillwater: Maybe, to start a new political party leftier that Dems? Ok, it is impossible, but no more impossible that any other proposal we could have in this thread.
Sane democracy needs a active political party ecosystem.
Stillwater
@Mandramas: I don’t think it necessarily requires a new party. Just a retooling of the current party. Just a refocus on labor-rights, broadly understood. I mean, it can’t be any more difficult than electing a KenyanMuslimUsurper to the presidency, can it?
Paul in KY
@Stillwater: It doesn’t. To revitalize the unions, you have to get back the manufacturing jobs, revoke ‘right to work’ laws, repeal Taft-Hartley, etc. There are more.
Very hard, unless you have overwhelming majorities of CCs who believe in that sort of stuff.
Mandramas
@Stillwater: It don’t need to be a political, elective party. It could be just a something akin to a leftier Tea Party.
(Juice Party sounds like a nice name)
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandramas: In addition to what Stillwater said, there is a lot of institutional loyalty to the Democratic Party.
FlipYrWhig
@Stillwater:
That depends on whether it’s supposed to be one of several policy priorities, or _the_ policy priority. For instance, fossil-fuel state Democrats tend to gravitate towards protecting jobs in dirty industries. Accordingly, they’re skeptical about environmental protection efforts. Is Freddie’s point that when issues like that crop up, our first priority should be to see through the eyes of labor rather than through the eyes of environmentalists? Because that’s not an easy call.
Angry Lurker
@chopper:
Five hours in, and we’re up to 37 posts by matoko under her new Harry Potter handle.
Clearly you have underestimated the stamina of BJ’s most annoying stalker/obsessive! :D
Angry Lurker
@EDK–
Just because you are a reasonable guy doesn’t mean that you will make any headway in your attempts to dialog with Matoko aka Hermione…. in the immortal words of Barney Frank “conversation with [matoko] would be like arguing with a dining room table”
FlipYrWhig
@Stillwater: I understand it, but I also understand that other groups can make similar claims. For instance, environmentalists can say that without putting ecology first, we won’t even have a habitable planet in the first place. Thus all liberal politics should be oriented around green issues. And feminists say that organizing around class leaves issues of gender unaddressed. I don’t see that labor is the killer app.
@dollared:
But does that mean that race, gender, sexuality, and/or green issues all have to be subordinated to class? I really do think that Democrats are the coalition motivated by sympathy for outsiders and the powerless, a coalition that has enormous fissures on the matter of how to translate that sympathy into policy. I think it’s deceptively easy to say, “class has primacy now, we totally decided.”
I’m not saying anything new, I realize. These are all the old disputes that heated up in the “cultural left.” That’s where the work has to go, not in confronting the pro-globalization professional-class liberals (that’s an easy debate to win, IMHO, because they’re obnoxious) but in bridge-building between labor, environmental, and “identity politics” groups (a much taller order).
Stillwater
@FlipYrWhig: I don’t see that labor is the killer app.
How about this (to use some of the examples you’ve provided): the suggestion is for liberals to take labor rights as seriously as and with the same broad consensus as environmental issues, civil rights issues, etc. It’s the view that labor issues ought to be embraced by liberals as a fully general end worth advocating for, promoted by our votes and activism, in the same way as those other issues (which then get balanced and prioritized according to situational contexts).
FlipYrWhig
@Stillwater: Yes, that’s what you’re saying, but that’s not what Freddie or dollared are saying. They say (as far as I can tell) labor should trump all other claims.
Stillwater
@FlipYrWhig: Then respond to my suggestion.
ETA: That wasn’t, like, an order or anything. I’m just trying to narrow the focus a bit.
FlipYrWhig
@Stillwater: I think it’s a wonderful and humane suggestion that huge swathes of liberals would happily endorse. Everyone remembers the “blue-green” dynamic of the Seattle WTO protests. Labor and class issues deserve to be on par with other prominent issues and segments of the liberal-left and among Democrats. Where push comes to shove, though–like environment vs. labor, or race-based vs. class-based affirmative action–it’s always going to be tempestuous hashing out whose perspective should emerge victorious.
dollared
Good conversation, and I appreciate your thoughts. I do think that labor should have pride of place for two reasons: 1) organized labor is more effective in politics than other groups and 2)Americans in distress are not going to support minority rights and costly environmental initiatives.
We must take the pressure off working people, or progress will stall.
(there is a great argument that “sustainability” has inherent in it the concept of a limits on mindless consumption, a living wage and fair treatment of all citizens. It could be the ultimate alignment point between green and blue. But that is pretty abstract for a true political discussion)
Ija
@FlipYrWhig:
Based on what Freddie wrote in his own blogs, liberals like Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein apparently. Although I don’t really understand how Klein fits into this. He’s not a “big-picture, let’s argue from first-principle and theory” kinda guy. He writes about specific policies and bills, effects,consequences, numbers etc etc. I don’t think he’s all that interested in arguments about how to define liberalism or what kind of liberalism we should be fighting for etc etc. With Yglesias, I think his obsession with the barber licensing thing lead some people to believe he is more libertarian than he actually is.