[Peace-discuss] Mean Streets (2) (David Sirota on Populism, too)
E. Wayne Johnson
ewj at pigs.ag
Mon Apr 27 10:53:50 CDT 2009
One might wonder how much Krugman's Nobel Prize cost and where the money
to buy it came from but on the other hand part of it is sort of easy to
guess and we might not want to know the gory and sordid details of
every event. That could be too much information.
Paul Krugman is certainly an easy guy to dislike, as everyone agrees.
> Ben Bernanke's maiden Congressional testimony as chairman of the
> Federal Reserve was, everyone agrees, superb. He didn't put a foot
> wrong on monetary or fiscal policy.
LAURIE SOLOMON wrote:
>
> Of course, Pareto, along with Mosca and Schrumpeter, also had what can
> be described as elitist theories about the circulation of elites in
> Democracies which basically projects the Pareto principle onto
> politics as well as economics and holds that there would always be a
> small powerful elite that governs and democracies are nothing more
> than systems where there is a circulation of elites and among elites.
> Thus, there is no such thing as a representative democracy and maybe
> not even a democracy.
>
>
>
> *From:* peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
> [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] *On Behalf Of *Ricky
> Baldwin
> *Sent:* Monday, April 27, 2009 9:31 AM
> *To:* peace-discuss
> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] Mean Streets (2) (David Sirota on
> Populism, too)
>
>
>
> Sorry to have missed it, Carl, Wayne, all -
>
>
>
> Just a note about the Pareto principle below... Krugman, as usual,
> surprises you if you don't expect much from a liberal. Too bad he
> doesn't go into how these "power relations" work in this article, but
> he addresses it elsewhere. As I understand the principle, and I'm no
> expert, it describes a phenomenon that's worth discussing. Krugman
> takes issue with a common use of the term, and the economic process
> assumed to explain it.
>
>
>
> Krugman doesn't go this far, but it can't be said often enough: the
> so-called "free market" doesn't exist, and hasn't for at least 125
> years (I'd argue it never has, real capitalism being based as it
> always has been on theft and brutal violence), and not just
> because big business is always scurrying up under the wing of the
> "nanny state". What the Marxists, Leninists, and others have
> described as tendencies to centralization, concentration and
> monopolization have worked strongly against the "competitive" idea. I
> don't think we have to agree with them that this is a "progressive"
> trend that we should support to recognize that this trend is in fact a
> sort of economic juggernaut (and by the way that competition is not
> necessarily that great, either, but rather usually pretty destructive
> and wasteful) - not just a fad. It's like a ball rolling downhill.
> Bring interference from government, unions, or organized resistance in
> some form, this "oligarchy" is demonstrably the direction our economic
> system heads.
>
>
> Ricky
>
>
>
> "Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn
>
>
>
>
>
> http://select.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/opinion/27krugman.html?_r=2
>
>
>
> Graduates Versus Oligarchs
>
> By PAUL KRUGMAN
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
>
>
>
> Ben Bernanke's maiden Congressional testimony as chairman of the
> Federal Reserve was, everyone agrees, superb. He didn't put a foot
> wrong on monetary or fiscal policy.
>
>
>
> But Mr. Bernanke did stumble at one point. Responding to a question
> from Representative Barney Frank about income inequality, he declared
> that "the most important factor" in rising inequality "is the rising
> skill premium, the increased return to education."
>
>
>
> That's a fundamental misreading of what's happening to American
> society. What we're seeing isn't the rise of a fairly broad class of
> knowledge workers. Instead, we're seeing the rise of a narrow
> oligarchy: income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated in
> the hands of a small, privileged elite.
>
> I think of Mr. Bernanke's position, which one hears all the time, as
> the 80-20 fallacy. It's the notion that the winners in our
> increasingly unequal society are a fairly large group — that the 20
> percent or so of American workers who have the skills to take
> advantage of new technology and globalization are pulling away from
> the 80 percent who don't have these skills.
>
>
>
> The truth is quite different. Highly educated workers have done better
> than those with less education, but a college degree has hardly been a
> ticket to big income gains. The 2006 Economic Report of the President
> tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell
> more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. Over the longer stretch
> from 1975 to 2004 the average earnings of college graduates rose, but
> by less than 1 percent per year.
>
> So who are the winners from rising inequality? It's not the top 20
> percent, or even the top 10 percent. The big gains have gone to a much
> smaller, much richer group than that.
>
>
>
> A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of
> Northwestern University, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?,"
> gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of
> Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only
> 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10
> percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate,
> wasn't a ticket to big income gains.
>
> But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the
> 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th
> percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint.
>
>
>
> Just to give you a sense of who we're talking about: the nonpartisan
> Tax Policy Center estimates that this year the 99th percentile will
> correspond to an income of $402,306, and the 99.9th percentile to an
> income of $1,672,726. The center doesn't give a number for the 99.99th
> percentile, but it's probably well over $6 million a year.
>
>
>
> Why would someone as smart and well informed as Mr. Bernanke get the
> nature of growing inequality wrong? Because the fallacy he fell into
> tends to dominate polite discussion about income trends, not because
> it's true, but because it's comforting. The notion that it's all about
> returns to education suggests that nobody is to blame for rising
> inequality, that it's just a case of supply and demand at work. And it
> also suggests that the way to mitigate inequality is to improve our
> educational system — and better education is a value to which just
> about every politician in America pays at least lip service.
>
> The idea that we have a rising oligarchy is much more disturbing. It
> suggests that the growth of inequality may have as much to do with
> power relations as it does with market forces. Unfortunately, that's
> the real story.
>
>
>
> Should we be worried about the increasingly oligarchic nature of
> American society? Yes, and not just because a rising economic tide has
> failed to lift most boats. Both history and modern experience tell us
> that highly unequal societies also tend to be highly corrupt. There's
> an arrow of causation that runs from diverging income trends to Jack
> Abramoff and the K Street project.
>
>
>
> And I'm with Alan Greenspan, who — surprisingly, given his libertarian
> roots — has repeatedly warned that growing inequality poses a threat
> to "democratic society."
>
>
>
> It may take some time before we muster the political will to counter
> that threat. But the first step toward doing something about
> inequality is to abandon the 80-20 fallacy. It's time to face up to
> the fact that rising inequality is driven by the giant income gains of
> a tiny elite, not the modest gains of college graduates.
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
> *To:* Anthony Pomonis <apomonis at gmail.com>
> *Cc:* Morton K. Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu>; Stuart Levy
> <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu>; peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
> *Sent:* Sunday, April 26, 2009 9:14:14 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] Mean Streets (2) (David Sirota on
> Populism, too)
>
> With the help of Wayne Johnson, we discussed the Pareto principle (and
> the Gini coefficient) on News from Neptune (Fridays at 7pm, cable
> channel 6) two weeks ago. (If I ever get it together, these programs
> will be available though <newsfromneptune.com>. I'm prevented by my
> fecklessness.) --CGE
>
>
> Anthony Pomonis wrote:
> >
> > As "soft" as economic or political sciences /may/ /be,/ any move to
> dismiss their insights/ /might be too casual.
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
> >
> > Thank you to all for a lively discourse...
> >
> >
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