#economic debates

[coopsday]

About the UN Trade & Development and its 60th-anniversary events.

Today represents a milestone for UNCTAD, marking our rebranding as UN Trade & Development and the beginning of our 60th anniversary. We want our vision of the global economy to be understood and our voice heard in the global economic debates where decisions that affect developing countries are made.

Find out more

[justapotato89]

watch people score higher on psychopathic tests and score more and more left in political compass tests as the baseline average shifts towards people who'd do anything to achieve what they want but are also leftists, with consideration for society. Those two goals are not complimentary, but they are the only two lifelines that they have. Either they are considered as a part of the greater society which deserves equality and they will fight for it through anarchy as a unit, or they will oppose the government with anarchy being concentrated to the individual, the driving force being only survival.

[ivyclawthewolfski]

this man does NOT know what tariffs are!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[the-gro-goroth]

“I wake up sometimes to the horrifying images of heads of state, friends of mine, who died violent deaths because they refused to betray their people. Like Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, I try to scrub the blood from my hands. But the blood is merely a symptom.” HOLY SHIT THIS SPEECH IS GONNA GO SO INCREDIBLY HARD

[perplexed-penguin]

What plan? He only has concepts of a plan.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Craig Harrington at MMFA:

When Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump meet for the September 10 debate, the public will hopefully gain some perspective into both candidates’ plans to deploy the immense powers of the presidency. If the past nine years have been any indicator of what to expect from Trump, the disgraced ex-president will go off on a confusing tangent if pressed for a specific answer on any number of policy issues, and mainstream reporters covering the debate will meticulously parse Trump’s addled statements to divine meaning from the mess. This predictable process played out for all to see last week as mainstream news outlets struggled to cover Trump's September 5 appearance at The Economic Club of New York, which included a dangerously incoherent response to a simple question about child care policy that stunned many observers and attendees.

News outlets “sanewashed” Trump’s incoherent appearance at The Economic Club of New York

In their coverage of Trump’s appearance last week at The Economic Club of New York, the major broadcast evening news programs completely failed to inform viewers about the disgraced ex-president’s dangerously incoherent response to a simple question about child care policy.

There is a name for this type of sanitized coverage — “sanewashing” — and it’s a disservice to the public.

On September 5, Trump appeared at The Economic Club of New York for an event hosted by the group’s board and trustees. Over the course of more than an hour of often-confusing and disorganized remarks, Trump touched on various economic, tax, and trade policy talking points with a particular focus on making tariffs (taxes paid by consumers on imported goods) a centerpiece of his second term agenda. At the end of the event’s question and answer session, Trump was asked to name a “specific piece of legislation” he would champion as president “to make child care more affordable” and he proceeded to ramble for nearly 2 minutes.

[...]

In a September 4 column published in The New Republic, Parker Molloy pointed to sanitized mainstream news coverage just days earlier of a “rambling, insult-ladden, conspiracy-riddled wall of text” Trump had recently posted on his social media site:

[This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former—and potentially future—president.]

Donald Trump’s incoherent responses to policies must be a major focus of election coverage, and too many outlets fell for the “sanewashing” (termed by Parker Molloy) of Trump’s incoherentness.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 9, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 10, 2024

Last night, Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launched a new section of its website detailing her policy positions. Titling her plans “A New Way Forward,” Harris vows to build the American middle class through an “opportunity economy.” Her vision for the future, she says, “protects our fundamental freedoms, strengthens our democracy, and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead.” 

Harris’s economic plan builds on that of the Biden-Harris administration. This makes sense, since their focus on investing in the middle class has created the strongest economy in the world. Harris is emphasizing the need to bring down household costs of food, medicine, housing, healthcare, and childcare, all issues important to Americans.  

The website provides concrete economic actions she plans to take with a willing Congress. They include expanding the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, investing in more housing, and supporting the PRO Act, which protects the rights of workers to unionize, while continuing the crackdown on business consolidation that kills competition and rolling back the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

The biggest economic shift from the current administration is pegging a new capital gains tax for those earning more than a million dollars a year at 28%, significantly lower than the 39.6% President Joe Biden proposed in his 2025 budget. The plans also call for the first-ever national ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries (37 states already have such laws). 

Aside from strictly economic plans, the policy pages say Harris backs passing the bipartisan immigration bill that Republicans killed on Trump’s orders, protecting reproductive healthcare and restoring Roe v. Wade, and protecting the right to vote and ending partisan gerrymandering through the John Lewis Voting Rights and the Freedom to Vote Acts.

Republicans have charged that Harris has not offered specifics for her policies, but much of what is now clearly laid out is already in the public record. By the standards of American history, it is a strikingly moderate agenda that reflects the belief that the best way for the government to protect opportunity and nurture the economy is to make sure that the system is fair and that ordinary people have access to opportunity.

The “New Way Forward” in Harris’s plan seems to be less a new set of policies than a rejection of the politics of the past several decades. She and her running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz appear to be attempting to reshape the political landscape to bring Americans of all parties together to stand against Trump’s MAGA Republicans. The campaign has actively reached out to Republicans, several of whom spoke at the Democratic National Convention. On Saturday, Harris said she was “honored” to have the endorsement of former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) and former vice president Dick Cheney, both staunch Republicans. “People are exhausted about the division and the attempt to divide us as Americans,” she said. “We love our country and we have more in common than what separates us.” 

Trump’s website offers slogans rather than policies, so Harris’s website compares her policies to the comparable sections of Project 2025, the playbook for a second Trump term laid out by a number of right-wing institutions led by the Heritage Foundation. Trump and his campaign have tried to distance themselves from Project 2025, but at his rallies, he has offered the policies in it—like firing nonpartisan civil servants and replacing them with loyalists, and abolishing the Department of Education—as his top priorities. 

While Harris focused on policy, as critics have demanded, MAGA Republicans today spread slurs about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, claiming they are eating other people’s pets and local wildlife. Right-wing media figure Benny Johnson, who was one of the six commenters whose paychecks at now-disbanded Tenet Media were paid by Russia, was one of those pushing the false stories. So was X owner Elon Musk. 

The story was debunked almost immediately by the Springfield police, but Republican politicians ran with it. The X account for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee ran it; so did Texas senator Ted Cruz, who shared an image with two kittens saying: “PLEASE VOTE FOR TRUMP SO IMMIGRANTS DON’T EAT US.” And the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, posted: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country.” (The Haitians in Springfield are in the U.S. legally.)

Perhaps most significantly, Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, who is challenging Democratic Ohio senator Sherrod Brown, pushed the story. That Senate seat is crucial to the Republican attempt to take control of the Senate, and Moreno has just launched a $25 million ad campaign against Brown, accusing him of giving undocumented immigrants taxpayer-funded benefits. Today’s disinformation was well timed for that ad campaign. 

The Justice Department today announced  charges against two leaders of the white supremacist Terrorgram Collective, an international terrorist group that operates on the platform Telegram. Dallas Humber of California and Matthew Allison of Idaho have been charged with “soliciting hate crimes, soliciting the murder of federal officials, and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.” They “solicited murders and hate crimes based on the race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, and gender identity of others,” U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert said. They had a hit list of federal, state, and local officials, as well as corporate leaders, and they encouraged attacks on government infrastructure, including energy facilities. Their plan was to create a race war. 

“Hate crimes fueled by bigotry and white supremacy, and amplified by the weaponization of digital messaging platforms, are on the rise and have no place in our society,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said.

Congress is back in session today and must fund the government before October 1 or face a government shutdown. Although Congress negotiated spending levels for 2024 and 2025 back in June 2023, the House has been unable to pass appropriations bills because MAGA extremists either refuse to accept those levels or insist on inserting culture war poison pills into the bills. 

Now, Trump has demanded that a continuing resolution to fund the government must include a measure requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Since it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in elections for president or members of Congress and there is no evidence it is anything but vanishingly rare, the measure actually seems designed to suppress voting. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) went along and put the measure in the bill. He also designed for the measure to last until next March, making the budget so late a new president could write it, but also blowing through a January 1 deadline set in the June 2023 bill to require automatic cuts to spending.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote to his colleagues: “House Democrats have made it clear that we will find bipartisan common ground on any issue with our Republican colleagues wherever possible, while pushing back against MAGA extremism.” Jeffries called the Republican bill “unserious and unacceptable.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told House and Senate leaders that the cuts required by law if Congress pushes the budget into March would drastically affect the military. “The repercussions of Congress failing to pass regular appropriations legislation for the first half of [fiscal] 2025 would be devastating to our readiness and ability to execute the National Defense Strategy,” Austin wrote.

Meanwhile, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is back to his old trick of blocking a military promotion, this time of Lieutenant General Ronald Clark, one of Austin’s top aides. Tuberville says he placed the hold because he has concerns that Clark did not alert Biden when Austin had surgery. Biden has nominated Clark to become the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Pacific, a position currently held by General Charles A. Flynn, younger brother of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump’s first National Security Advisor who resigned after news broke that he had hidden conversations with Russian operatives. 

Today, ten retired senior military officials endorsed Harris, saying she “is the best—and only—presidential candidate in this race who is fit to serve as our commander-in-chief…. Frankly stated, Donald Trump is a danger to our national security and our democracy. His own former National Security Advisors, Defense Secretaries, and Chiefs of Staff have said so.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[ahalliance]

fighting for my life for dark-skinned heathcliff in this wuthering heights class

[nochd]

Leftist arguments that don't work

In Aotearoa we're seeing a bevy of conservative and reactionary bills coming down the parliamentary pipeline. I guess it's better than the last National-led government we had, who pushed bill after bill through under urgency to avoid having to consult the public.

(Actually the latest batch are all passing their submission deadlines this week, so this post is a bit late. My executive functioning strikes again.)

We have to make submissions to make our opinions known on these bills. We have to argue our case against the ideas these bills embody. And frankly, the last decade or two of online leftist discourse has not prepared us for this.

There are good reasons for not engaging the Right in debate on social media. There are excellent reasons for not getting bogged down explaining our ideas to people who aren't listening. And it certainly feels righteous to simply declare that certain principles are "not up for debate".

But submissions to Parliament are not social media. When you're writing a submission to Parliament, you have to debate. The place of te Tiriti o Waitangi in Aotearoa perhaps shouldn't be up for debate, but it is being debated whether it should be or not, and all we accomplish by declaring it "not up for debate" is to remove our own voices from the discussion.

Since the Glorious Revolution of Cathartic Violence doesn't seem to be ready to launch quite just yet, for the time being if we want to get anything done we have to talk to people who are also being talked to by our opponents, and who do not share our starting assumption that we are good and our opponents are bad. In order to convince those people to lean our way, we have to show them that our arguments are right and our opponents' arguments are wrong.

And I'm sorry -- there is no way around this -- that means we need to know what our opponents' beliefs actually are, as distinct from the straw-man versions that we pass around our own online communities for everyone to kick and spit on.

I was going to follow that immediately with some common talking points that won't get us anywhere outside of leftist circles, but explaining why they won't work turns out to be wordier than starting with a very, very short potted summary of capitalist theory. This is not going to be anything like complete, because if I try and do the subject justice this post will run to book length and be finished some time after the next election. I can elaborate on any specific point if someone asks.

Capitalist theory starts with the subjectivity of value. The value of a thing is how much someone is willing to pay for it, or to accept as payment for it. There is no "real" or "intrinsic" value to anything outside of that. Money is valueless on a desert island.

Whenever two people who each have something that the other wants more than they do, give each other the thing they have in exchange for the thing they want, they end up both having something they value more than what they had before. This is where value -- all value -- comes from. If one of them preferred the thing they already had to the thing offered in exchange, no (voluntary) trade would take place, and no value would be created.

Each person knows what their own needs and wants are better than anyone else does. Therefore, the best trades happen and the most value is created when people are acting in their own interests instead of trying to guess other people's.

This doesn't mean people have to be purely selfish. A parent trying to get insulin for their diabetic child is not selfish; but from the point of view of someone who isn't that diabetic child, it doesn't make much material difference whether the parent is acting on their own behalf or the behalf of a person they love. Either way they're going to do whatever they can to get that insulin.

A thing's value is whatever people think it is -- but talk is cheap. People can say they want to put an end to plastic pollution or animal cruelty or global warming, indeed they can say it very loudly; but if they then go on buying plastic-wrapped food and cage eggs and driving everywhere because it's cheap and convenient, then that shows they value the cheap goods and convenience over the environmental aspirations that they merely talk about.

Which isn't to scorn the people as hypocrites, but to conclude that, since people prefer the convenience to the environmental ideal and the only source of value is people's preferences, then the convenience really is better than the environmental ideal in the only sense that anything is ever better than anything else.

The alternative to voluntary trade is violence. A government taking people's money in taxes is intrinsically violent; if you don't pay your taxes you'll be fined, if you don't pay the fine you'll go to prison, if you try to escape from prison you'll be shot.

Again: the above is a tiny potted summary of the basis of capitalist theory, not a full account. I may well have worded some part of it clumsily, but picking holes in my wording is not going to accomplish anything.

Without further ado, here are some common talking points that aren't going to get us anywhere outside of leftist circles:

"Capitalists are greedy and selfish and take more than they need and only care about money." In capitalist theory the distinction between greed and need is an empty one; you don't second-guess why someone wants something, the only question is how much they're willing to pay for it, and the measure of that is money.

"Capitalists believe in objective value." No they don't. Next! Oh, all right. When you have a whole lot of buyers trying to buy cheap and a whole lot of sellers trying to sell dear, eventually they'll land on the price that the maximum possible number of people will accept. This is called its equilibrium price or market price, and it is the closest capitalist theory comes to affording anything an objectively "real" or "correct" value.

"Capitalism is when the owning class subjugates and exploits the working class." In capitalist theory, labour is a service like any other service, which workers sell, like any other seller, to employers, who buy it like any other buyer. Class doesn't exist.

"Employers pay workers far less for the goods they produce than the price those goods sell for. Profit is theft." In capitalist theory all value is generated by the disparity in value between buyer and seller. Without such a disparity, no trade takes place and no value is created.

"But that value rightfully belongs to the worker whose labour created it." They sold that labour. When you sell a thing it's not yours any more.

"Capitalists want us to do without healthcare / education / national parks / clean air and water / etc." No, they want us to buy those things from commercial sellers rather than take them, by government violence, from taxpayers.

Now just to reassure you that not all hope is lost, here are a couple of arguments that I have never seen a capitalist produce an answer to.

Capitalist theory is all based on a bunch of assumptions about human behaviour, where we're all rational agents motivated solely to increase the value we get out of every transaction. It's mathematically elegant and makes beautiful symmetrical graphs, but it doesn't make good predictions about real-world economics, it doesn't match people's actual behaviour, and it doesn't produce good outcomes in terms of wellbeing and happiness. I'm more interested in something that will actually work than something that makes pretty graphs.

People don't in fact act to maximize the value they get in transactions, simply as such; they act to maximize what is called the utility of those transactions. On an individual level this results in the same choices, but utility is about how much difference economic value makes to its recipients -- which is determined by how much they had already. A homeless person benefits vastly more from a gift of $100, in any terms worth wanting, than a billionaire benefits from a gain of $1,000. The goal of economic policy should be to maximize the total utility, rather than the total value, across the population; and that means taking value from the rich and giving it to the poor.

Labour, in the real world, is very different from any other good or service. In capitalist theory the last thing a seller would ever do would be sell more of their goods or services when the price went down, and less when it went up. But workers very often do exactly that -- work longer hours if their wage goes down, and shorter ones if it goes up -- because they are trying to make a minimum amount each day that will allow them to reach their goals. In these conditions, market logic does not work. Market logic assumes that sellers sell more as the price goes up and buyers buy more as it goes down, and at some point they meet in the middle. If instead sellers sell more as the price goes down, what you get is not an equilibrium in the middle but a race to the bottom. This could be remedied by a government-mandated minimum wage, or by a guaranteed livable unemployment benefit that employers would have to compete with, or by a strong union movement to set wages that employers would have to accept, or some combination of the three; but funnily enough, capitalists don't like minimum wages or unemployment benefits or unions.

You may be able to think of others. Once again, this is a very compact potted summary and I am here to answer questions if any of the details don't make sense.

[fromstarstuff]

first rule of college is to never have a favorite professor because inevitably there will come a semester where you can’t take a class with them and then you will feel like dying all the time

[rlyehtaxidermist]

I do think that any discussion of "real art" in the whole AI debate is like. actively harmful to legitimate criticisms of the technology and sociopolitical environment around it.

that last post really didn't need to bring up Marcel Duchamp. the point that most of it was making - "the problem isn't that it's not being creative or whatever, it's that it's yet another means of moving control from labour to capital" - is outright contradicted by taking a moment to step aside and talk about how ACTUALLY it's important to Be Creative and Make Decisions. i agree with most of your post (which is often why i reblog things) but buddy

[suuho]

every day i open twitter and read the dumbest take of a 4th gen stan imaginable. or a 3rd gen stan, for that matter.

[themangledmess]

challenging all policy debaters to not fearmonger war and extinction next year ( IMPOSSIBLE!! 99% FAIL!! )

[crimeronan]

life hack: if a random guy on youtube gets pissed at you in the comments section because you talked factually about a topic with which you're familiar, just reply that you're sorry but you don't debate with hysterical handwringers who are too emotional to accept cold hard facts. this will solve nothing but neither would an actual debate. and this will FEEL a-maz-ing.

[whinlatter]

Maybe you've answered this before but have you ever given writing Jily or some marauders Era fic thought? Would love for your to write something Canon-related for them. Imagine the bellbottoms! The big hoop earrings! The platform shoes!

This is the nicest thought (and I am such a sucker for the seventies cultural revival vibes atm, so this all sounds incred). I love reading a lot of Marauders and Jily stuff - some Wolfstar too (though not exclusively) but don’t tend to write it that much. It's partly because there so much quality Marauders and Jily writing out there that it’s really daunting, partly because there's just so much fandom lore that's built up around them now that I'd feel so overwhelmed trying to insert myself into, and partly because I just find all the Marauders arcs so so desperately sad I don’t know I could put myself through writing it, lol. I like writing Sirius and Remus in the lightning era through the trio and Ginny’s eyes because of all the ways their past haunts them in ways that can be glimpsed by those around them, and I do very very occasionally have a go at writing little Marauders vignettes. Maybe one day I might do something with them, but for now, no plans!