Bibliographic References
Waring, Counting for Nothing
Daly and Cobb, For the Common Good
(No author given) _Parecon
Alperovitz, America Beyond Capitalism
Hawken, Natural Capital
Greider, The Soul of Capitalism
Bell, Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
(No author given) The Predatory Economy
P. W. Anderson, K. Arrow, D. Pines, The Economy as an Evolving Complex System
G. Cowan, D. Pines, and D. Meltzer, Complexity: Metaphors, Models, and Reality
M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
John L. Casti, Complexification: Explaining a Paradoxical World Through the Science of Surprise
James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science
Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead
Note: The following were posted as subscription-only links. I have moved them into the 'paper-media' section:
The New Ownership Society, The Nation, June 27 2005
Taking the Offensive on Wealth, The Nation, Feb 21 2005
Tax the Plutocrats!, The Nation, Jan 27 2003
Web Links
EuroTrib
Germany's Industrial Relations System at Risk?
Germany's Industrial Relations System at Risk, Part II: The Coming Employer Offensive
Is the Euro Area Really Worse On Jobs Than the US?"
Euroland's Secret Success Story"
What's really wrong with the Eurozone labour market?
Way of the Leprechaun?
What's Really at the End of the Rainbow
Rebuilding confidence in our economy
Other Links
World Values Survey
Alternatives to GNP"
Where Should BEA Go on Non-Market and Near-Market Accounts?
Nature's Numbers: Expanding the National Economic Accounts to Include the Environment
Beyond the Market: Designing Nonmarket Accounts for the United States
The Soul of Capitalism, The Nation, Sep 29 2003
Calling All Keynesians, The Nation, Sep 29 2003
The New Colossus, The Nation, Feb 28 2005
Riding Into the Sunset, The Nation, June 27 2005
The Last Farm Crisis, The Nation, Nov 20, 2000
Shopping Till We Drop, The Nation, April 10 2000
Time to Rein in Global Finance, The Nation, April 24 2000
America Beyond Capitalism, Dollars and Sense, Nov/Dec 2004
A Refutation of Republican Economic Talking Points [Note: this is a dKos blog and has a limited life span, IIRC.]
Post-Autistic Economies
I found this definition of "development" on the UN Development Program website http://hdr.undp.org/hd/
Who Owns the Sky? Reviving the Commons By David Bollier, In These Times, Feb 27 2004
Understanding the Commons by Friends of the Commons
Websites
Steve Keen author of Debunking Economics.
Paul Omerond (Death of Economics, Butterfly Economics)".
Issues
Notes: These are drastically edited with only the first sentence, or so, included. See orginal diary for complete explication. Also, some comments will be cross-indexed.
Natural Resources:
Will someone please tell me how to "increase economic growth" without further drawdown of limited resources...?
I think a sustained effort to transform the economy can in itself generate more jobs (and GDP growth), including a sustained effort to get a self-sustaining economy, one not living off fast depleting fossil resources.
but clearly identifying what we really want to focus on first. Sustainable economy. What?
Communication:
we have to figure out how to talk about this effectively, so people won't reject it out of hand as being anti-business or "kooky".
Right, and we might add "as being anti-jobs". The notion that if we don't have growth we don't have jobs, is now deeply ingrained into most people's mind
yes, this is a fundamental issue. We must redefine "growth" as doing the same with fewer resources, i.e. focus on efficiency and not on total output
I think a new leftist economic manifesto should argue hotly against the current productivity fetishism ... the current productivity fetishism results in a lot of totally silly decisions even from an economic point of view.
The second issue is: what number do we consider the measure of progress? What if we somehow add the change in value of life in general to GDP?
I fully agree on the need for a redefinition of some of the most basic numbers we use to measure "progress". GDP is one of those.
how do we create something that "Joe Europe" can understand and get behind
Regulation:
We should fight hidden or implicit subsidies, and regulate eternalities.
Now, consider ... 'big new technologies' ... were successful not on their own on a free market, but benefitted from heavy pushing by the state, or other communal instances.
The other thing that we need to focus on is REGULATION, i.e. enforcement by the government of rules that apply to public goods and externalities. Thus the State must police the use of public goods, must measure their use or abuse, and must enforce the rules that apply (i.e. make people or corporates follow the rules and pay the requisite fee/fine for use/abuse of public good) RUTHLESSLY.
I am personally favorable to an elimination of corporate taxes, and a simplification of personal taxes via a flat tax with a high deductible
Queries in Original:
1. Which countries to research that have successfully reformed their economies while maintaining their policies of social justice and responsibility?
I think this would be a wrong approach. On one hand, we are progressives, thus we don't need past examples - our proposals could (and in my personal opinion, should) be of something new.
You must also decide whether you are embarking on a nationalistic project to improve the economies of Europe ... at the expense of the third world, or are trying to solve the problems of both
Which countries are having "success" in Europe, and which are having a "success" after experiencing a downturn, and still supporting social justice?
I think we can have the freedom here of looking at parts of systems that are effective, not necessarily having to take whole political and social systems of a given country. In fact, I think we need to have a simple "manifesto" that could be applied independently by different coutnries, according to their needs.
2. What specific methods should be considered to increase economic growth?
I will treat 2) and 3) together. If a big new technology goes economical, it will create a lot of jobs and growth, until 'the market is saturated'. In capitalism (but to some degree in an idealised socialism too), from this point on, companies can try marketing, product improvements - and rationalisation of production, which inexorably leads to loss of jobs.
[Alternative Energy]... wouldn't only replace fossil fuel wasting electricity production ... the end result would be a highly decentralised, but strongly interdependent system. ... the rural population would regain importance, and much of the third world would gain something that benefits the domestic population and can be sold to the North without a situation of exploitation and depletion.
I think a sustained effort to transform the economy can in itself generate more jobs (and GDP growth), including a sustained effort to get a self-sustaining economy, one not living off fast depleting fossil resources.
I agree that [German Alternative Energy Policy] has been a great way to kick start the industry, but we are getting now to the point where it is becoming slightly counter-productive as it creates rents for some green producers and encourages the exploitation of sub-optimal wind sites. I would recommend the Spanish regulatory framework, which has proven to be just as effective (including to help build a domestic manufacturign capacity) and which has fewer negative side effects
I strongly agree with your point of dectralizing the energy production, although it has to be applied differently wrt to rural and urban areas
on productivity, I am not sure that it is right ot fight that concept. we should focus productivity towards increasing efficiency instead of towards increasing output
We certainly do want to increase labor productivity, but people (especially in rich countries) don't necessarily need to enjoy the increase in the form of more material goods and services.
we do need to focus on value added, and we should probably adopt some of the more sensible rules of corporate accounting for public accounts and "wealth"-like statistics like GDP: depreciation of public assets, accounting of off-balance sheet liabilities, counting some activities as costs and not as value creation.
I think that localization should be applied to production more strongly.
The basic purpose of development is to enlarge people's choices. In principle, these choices can be infinite and can change over time. The objective of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives.
3. What specific methods to improve employment?
that we should not focus only on increasing the productivity of labor, but rather on increasing the productivity of capital, and even more the productivity of "rent",
The gradual expansion of the co-operatives is reflected in the growth of socios. a system of worker investment appears to carry more benefits than risks; rewarded by group profit more than the average, non-co-op employee, it is in the interest of each worker-owner to labor harder. To anyone who has slogged through a wage-slave job or had a domineering boss, a collectively run cooperative sounds like a workers' paradise. the profits, instead of enriching one or two individuals, are returned to all the worker-owners
4. What about the social safety net? What exists and is working?
[No Posts were directed to this issue.]
International
a number of these ideas run against the fact that they are useless if only applied in one country
without strong trade barriers, one requirement of the project is that the resulting system must be able to compete with China, India, and the Americas.
And not only compete with the world, but wrestle with the question of building European wealth by the exploitation of the third world poor.
Meta
[Discussion needs to] clearly identifying what we really want to focus on first. Sustainable economy. What? Energy. Okay, that's one. What else
It is time and past time for us, the Left, to move into the 21st Century and junk the intellectual stagnation from the bloody-be-damned fixation with the 19th Century.
whether we'll survive our infatuation with the 19th century is another matter -- its tropes and memes seem to have such a hold on our imagination that we are, literally, willing to die rather than let go of them
