And should we re-open the debate on the "Anglo-Saxon" model...?

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Exactly the way I feel it.

The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)

It didn't win many elections, but it forced a national discussion of the effects of the inequality. This was backed by a strong social program in the press - the so called "muckrakers". These two movements managed to promote a reform agenda led by Teddy Roosevelt which brought us the anti-trust legislation, the clean food and drug laws, the right of labor to organize and the regulation of the stock market. In addition the establishment of the personal income tax and the estate tax did much to limit the amount of personal wealth that could be accumulated. At one point the top marginal tax rate was over 90%, for example.

Why those suffering a loss in their standard of living are so passive is one of the big mysteries of the age. Writers like Thomas Frank ("What's the Matter with Kansas") have tried to attribute it to a diversion from self-interested economics to "values" issues like abortion and gay marriage. But, while this may be a factor, it doesn't seem an adequate explanation. Being hit in the wallet usually gets a person's full attention.


Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

Defend France. Defend unions. Defend workers. Defend workers' rights. Defend government programmes (the liberal kind, not the horribly corrupt and wasteful Bush-Cheney kind). It's all part of the same ideological fight. It's all part of the same class war.

Yes.  YES.  YES!!!!

You know I just saw Tout va bien last night for the first time and it got me thinking about things.  Well, it got me thinking about how they just don't make films like that anymore, but it also got me thinking about how the French were in fact able to integrate a lot of the Mai '68 ideology into their government and culture and how the babyboomers of America rather threw up their hands after the 60's and took a "if you can beat 'em join 'em" attitutde.  Many exceptions in both cases but so interesting to see how all the "liberals" in Western world were on the same page in '68 and to see where Europe, specifically France, went and where America went.

And for those who don't know, though I bet you all do, most of you being older than I, Tout va bien is a political & satirical film about class warfare in France after May '68.  Good stuff.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

Second, I think a lot of folks think they are wealthier than they really are.  We think we have a higher standard of living than anywhere else in the world.  And, so long as we don't leave the US, this misinformation works.  And, we don't know any languages so if we do travel we can't really communicate with anyone who doesn't speak English.  I spent two weeks in Germany this summer and was surprised at the modernity.  The roads were so smooth as opposed to all the pot holes/uneven surface here in Ohio.  I travelled a bit by train and never saw any of the poverty or poor living conditions as I see here.

Somehow, the fundamentalist churches have gotten more press than the mainstream churches.  And, those folks have been convinced that abortion and gays are more important than anything else.  They are distrustful of Muslims, Democrats, Europeans, etc.  Evolution is anti-Christian.  Pat Robertson thinks he knows the mind of God.

Sometimes, I think I'm in a bad dream.

Peace

This is indeed class warfare, a term we're not supposed to even whisper.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

We've known that the average Western European is just as wealthy as the average American. This is not news. International corporations, mostly American now owned by Europeans, have moved their manufacturing base to China or Southeast Asia from America, and later Mexico, where wages, but the standard of living, is quite a bit lower.

What is amazing to me, is that many people here think that Europe is this poor, tiny little thing with little or no economic power. Well guess again. The EU, even back during the '60s and '70s when it was lots smaller, had an economic clout near or equal to the US.

You want to know how to "end inequality" in the US? Totally wreck the economies of India, China, Indonesia and the rest of southeast Asia by closing all those factories and bringing manufacturing back to the US.

You don't like my little plan? Neither do I.

However, the US has far less power than you think.

The distinction matters because the "winner take all" model suggests that American CEOs are earning their pay because info tech and globalization make good executive decisions much more valuable. But they are not. Japanese CEOs make no more relative to their average workers than their counterparts did 25 years ago. In the US that ratio has increased by a factor of 10 or more. Clearly something else is at work here.

That something else is the old "I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine" routine. Executives appoint boards of directors in the US, who then turn around and approve pay packages for those very same execs:

As a result, managers wield substantial influence over their own pay arrangements . . .  managerial influence might lead to substantially inefficient arrangements that produce weak or even perverse incentives.

The result is exorbitant salaries and option packages, golden parachutes, executive loans, and all the rest of it, with little if any link to corporate performance.

Another result is excessive attention to the share price and short-term profit, at the expense of worker well-being and long-term competitiveness. One aspect of this is downsizing, which has been shown by mainstream economists to be a key strategy in raising profits by forcing down wages and thus increasing inequality, and NOT a productivity booster.

The lesson here is that the way corporations are run matters. Social partnership is a must. Workers and local communities must be given voice in how large corporations operate - strong unions, codetermination, works councils, greater control over investment decisions, and so forth. Where they are already in place, efforts to eviscerate these institutions must be resisted (e.g. western Europe), and such institutions must be created where they are not (e.g. the United States).