Page 4 of 4 FirstFirst 1234
Results 61 to 70 of 70

Thread: If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism it will also be its grave

  1. #61
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
    Citizen

    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    13,065

    Default Re: If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism it will also be its grave

    Opinions and comments are welcome, insults are not.
    In fact , no one cares about some " libertarian evidences". The evidence that there is no structural racism, for example.
    Last edited by Ludicus; January 20, 2022 at 03:21 PM.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  2. #62
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
    Citizen

    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    13,065

    Default Re: If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism it will also be its grave

    News from Chile,Chile's president-elect names progressive, majority-women-The Guardian
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Gabriel Boric, 35, picks youthful team including at defence the granddaughter of Salvador Allende, who was deposed in a coup. Among the moderate voices is the former Socialist party politician and current central bank chief Mario Marcel, a 62-year-old educated at the University of Cambridge, who has been named finance minister


    If I’m allowed. The Reagan-Thatcher neoliberal revolution was the starting point of a dizzying rise in inequality within countries that continues to this day, read the W.I. Report 2022. Extreme inequality is not virtuous. The market doesn’t ensure that everyone gets what they deserve.

    Nobel Prize Krugman is a modest man. Let's hear what he says, with great humility. Back then in 2014, after reading Capital in the 21st Century, Krugman tells us (quoting Piketty) how the United States is becoming an oligarchy,”the very system our founders revolted against”, says Krugman.

    "Piketty tells us that we are on the road not just to highly unequal society but to a society of an oligarchy,a society of inherited wealth patrimonial capitalism and he does it with enormous amount of documentation, it’s a revelation.I mean even for someone like me its a revelation.Even in the title the first word is Capital. We stopped talking about capital, even people like me stopped talking about capital, because we thought it was all about human capital; we tough it was all about earnings, we thought the wealthy were people one way or another found a way to make a lot of money, and we knew that wasn’t always true, we knew that in the Gilded Age or in the Belle Epoque in Europe, high incomes were most the result of having lots and lots of assets, but we sort said well,that's not the ways things work anymore, and he says oh yeah,it turns out that you are wrong,we are rapidly moving towards a state were inherited wealth dominates. I didn’t know that, I should have known it.I should have thought about it, but I didn’t.
    The world is not as I saw it, the world in fact has moved on a long way in the last 25 years, and not in the direction you are gonna like, because we are seeing not only great disparities in wealth and income but we are seeing them get entrenched, we are seeing them become inequalities that will be transferred across the generations, e are becoming the kind of society we imagine we’re nothing like.
    Capital tends to produce real returns a 4-5% and economic growth is much slower.That means if you have a large fortune-suppose that our family has a large fortune-the inheritors of that large fortune can live extraordinary star living, and still put a large fraction aside and the fortune will grow faster than the economy, so that big dynastic fortunes tend to take a ever-growing share of total national wealth, they can pass on to the next generation even more and even higher share.You are talking about a situation in which dynasties come increasingly to dominate at the top of the spectrum, then a tiny spectrum of the population ends up very dominant.
    The other thing which I think is critically important he talks about more towards the end of the book is political economy.
    When you have a few people who are so wealthy that they can effectively buy the political system.The political system is going to serve their interests, and that is going to reinforce this shift of income and wealth towards the top. We are drifting toward oligarchy.Going through the Forbes 400 list * what you find is an awful lot of inherited wealth in there. Its not longer a list of self-made men, and of the self made men a lot of them are pretty elderly and those fortunes are going to be passed on to the next generation.The drift towards oligarchy is very visible but casual observation and in the numbers.He is telling us the history is already changing and its going to change more. By the year 2030 it will all be inherited. It can happen how you can have a society where the ideology is democratic, even though we claim that all men are equal, in practice, not a chance. Piketty makes the point:” wealth is so concentrated that a large segment of society is virtually unaware of its existence”.
    You will never any sense of what it is that they control, and most people have no idea just how far the commanding heights are from you and me”.

    Krugman then denounces the predictable hostility of the friends of big capital,

    "There is a level of harshness in our debates, mostly coming from the people who are actually doing very well, so we’ve had a parade of bilionaries whining about the incredible injustice that people are criticizing them and then comparing anyone who critizes them to nazis, its almost a tic that they have. This is very strange; it’s scary, because these are people that have a lot of influence because the amount of money they control. Piketty seems to argue for the much of the book that we only escaped from the old oligarchy for a while thanks to wars and depressions which disruptes the system

    * And because I have read Piketty, I can easily quote him on this subject. Self-made billionaries don’t prove Piketty wrong. Piketty argues,

    "People have the impression in the United States that wealthy people are mostly like Bill Gates - founders of enterprises rather than inheritors. When you take the top 50 or top 100 list, you have a lot of inheritors as well. The Walton family, the Koch brothers, etc.
    The wealth rankings of magazines are very much biased in favor of entrepreneurs. First, they are biased in an ideological sense. They have been created in order to celebrate the entrepreneur, although Steve Forbes himself is a grandson of the founder of Forbes. But in addition, the methodology is biased simply because it's much easier to spot large entrepreneurial wealth than large inherited wealth. Large inherited wealth typically takes the form of a more diversified portfolio, whereas large entrepreneurial wealth, when you have created a Microsoft or Facebook, it's difficult to hide.
    When people have a more diversified portfolio, it's harder to spot. When I’ve tried to see how the journalists at Forbes or in other magazines in Europe get their numbers, basically they make phone calls, and they try their best. They don't have any systematic registry from which to draw.
    I think they are missing the bigger part of top inherited wealth and top entrepreneurial wealth. To me, one of the main purposes of the wealth tax is that it should produce more information on wealth. I think even a wealth tax with a minimal tax rate would be a way toward more financial transparency. A minimal registration tax on assets, a minimum wealth tax is a way that we can produce more information on wealth, and then we'll see what happens in terms of tax rate. After all, maybe we'll discover that the Forbes rankings are just completely wrong, and that the top of the wealth distribution is not rising as fast as what we thought and that we don't need such a high tax rate on wealth. I wouldn't mind. Right now, the lack of financial transparency makes it very difficult to have a quiet political conversation and democratic debate about these things.
    To me, this is the main worry because people may turn against globalization, or may turn against foreigners, or may decide that Germany is responsible for the problem, or China is responsible for the problem just because we don't manage to have a quiet conversation about a proper tax system

    Now, I will go straight to the obvious point. As you all know, (or should know if you don't know yet) all colossal fortunes and corporations are autonomous centers of immense political power. In his last book Piketty writes, "On the Justification of Extreme Inequality"

    The world’s largest fortunes have grown since 1980 at even faster rates than the world’s top incomes. Great fortunes grew extremely rapidly in all parts of the world: among the leading beneficiaries were Russian oligarchs, Mexican magnates, Chinese billionaires, Indonesian financiers, Saudi investors, Indian industrialists, European rentiers, and wealthy Americans.In the period 1980–2018, large fortunes grew at rates three to four times the growth rate of the global economy. Such phenomenal growth cannot continue indefinitely, unless one is prepared to believe that nearly all global wealth is destined to end up in the hands of billionaires. The gap between top fortunes and the rest continued to grow even in the decade after the financial crisis of 2008 at virtually the same rate as in the two previous decades, which suggests that we may not yet have seen the end of a massive change in the structure of the world’s wealth.The move to a less progressive tax system in the 1980s played a large part in the unprecedented growth of inequality in the United States and United Kingdom between 1980 and 2018. The share of national income going to the bottom half of the income distribution collapsed, contributing perhaps to the feeling on the part of the middle and lower classes that they had been abandoned in addition to fueling the rise of xenophobia and identity politics in both countries. These developments came to a head in 2016, with the British vote to leave the European Union (Brexit) and the election of Donald Trump”.

    Later he commented in a more explicit way,

    What makes Trump possible today is this conflict between the elite and the fact that the Democratic Party in the US has become a party of the elite. And partly because the Democratic Party is not doing a lot to reduce inequality, and in the end is serving the interests of the educated elite, the children of the educated elite, with more attention, or at least as much attention, as it is serving the interests of the poor”.

    In a briefing published a few days ago, the Oxfam report says the men's wealth jumped from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion, at an average rate of $1.3 billion per day, during the pandemic. Two months ago, US Sen. Ron Wyden intruced a “billionaires tax”,targeting the ultra-rich.It didn't get far. "It's not complicated," says Scott Dyreng, a professor of accounting at Duke University. "It's just the magnitude of the wealth is so great that they're able to do things that you and I wouldn't be able to do." He is talking about the corporate capture of democratic governments.

    The World Inequality Report 2022 builds on the pionnering edition of 2018.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    Summary of report
    , https://wir2022.wid.world/www-site/u...22_English.pdf
    Full report, https://wir2022.wid.world/www-site/u...ull_Report.pdf
    Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez Gabriel Zucman
    Read:Chapter 2-Global inequality from 1820 to now: the persistence and mutation of extreme inequality; Chapter 4- Global wealth inequality: the rise of multimillionaires; Chapter 7- The road to redistributing wealth. Country sheets, pages 179-228. United States, page 224.


    World Inequality Report 2022
    "Wealth inequalities have increased at the very top of the distribution The rise in private wealth has also been unequal within countries and at the world level. Global multimillionaires have captured a disproportionate share of global wealth growth over the past several decades: the top 1% took 38% of all additional wealth accumulated since the mid-1990s, whereas the bottom 50% captured just 2% of it. This inequality stems from serious inequality in growth rates between the top and the bottom segments of the wealth distribution. The wealth of richest individuals on earth has grown at 6 to 9% per year since 1995, whereas average wealth has grown at 3.2% per year (Figure 9). Since 1995, the share of global wealth possessed by billionaires has risen from 1% to over 3%. This increase was exacerbated during the COVID pandemic. In fact, 2020 marked the steepest increase in global billionaires’ share of wealth on record"
    [/SPOILER]




    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    The elephant curve is fundamental because it explains why globalization is so politically controversial: for some observers the most striking fact is that the remarkable growth of certain less developed countries has so dramatically reduced global poverty and inequality while others deplore the sharp increase of inequality at the top due to the excesses of global hypercapitalism. Both sides have a point: inequality between the bottom and middle of the global income distribution has decreased, while inequality between the middle and top has increased. Both aspects of the globalization story are real. The point is not to deny either part of the story but rather to figure out how to retain the good features of globalization while getting rid of the bad. Here we see the importance of choosing the right terminology and conceptual framework. If we tried to describe inequality using a single indicator, such as the Gini coefficient,* we could easily deceive ourselves. Because we would then lack the means to perceive complex, multidimensional changes, we might think that nothing had changed at all: with a single indicator, several disparate phenomena can cancel one another out. For that reason, I avoid relying on any single “synthetic” index. I will always be careful to distinguish the various deciles and percentiles of the relevant wealth and income distributions (and thus the social groups to which they correspond).9 Some critics object that the elephant curve focuses too much attention on the top 1 or 0.1 percent of the global population, where the gains have been highest. It is foolish, they say, to arouse envy of such a tiny group rather than rejoice in the manifest growth at the lower end of the distribution. In fact, recent research confirms the importance of looking at top incomes; indeed, it shows that the gains at the top are even larger than the original elephant curve suggested. Between 1980 and 2018, the top 1 percent captured 27 percent of global income growth, versus just 12 percent for the bottom 50 percent (Fig. I.5). In other words, the tip of the pachyderm’s trunk may concern only a tiny segment of the population, but it has captured an elephant-sized portion of the world’s growth—its share is twice as large as that of the 3.5 billion individuals at the bottom end.10 In other words, a growth model only slightly less beneficial to those at the top would have permitted a much more rapid reduction in global poverty (and could still do so in the future). Although this type of data can clarify the issues, it cannot end the debate. Everything depends on the causes of inequality and how it is justified. How much can the growth of top incomes be justified by the benefits the wealthy contribute to the rest of society? If one believes that greater inequality always and everywhere leads to higher income and better living standards for the poorest 50 percent, can one justify the 27 percent of world income growth captured by the top 1 percent—or perhaps even at higher percentages—why not 40 or 60 or even 80 percent? The cases mentioned earlier—the United States versus Europe and India versus China—suggest that this is not a very persuasive argument, however, because the countries where top earners gained the most are not those where the poor reaped the largest benefits. Analysis of these cases suggests that the share going to the top 1 percent could have been reduced to 10 or 20 percent, or perhaps even less, while still allowing significant improvement in the living standards of the bottom 50 percent. These issues are important enough to call for more detailed investigation. In any case, the data suggest that there is no reason to believe that there is just one way to organize the global economy. There is no reason to believe that the top 1 percent must capture precisely 27 percent of income growth (versus 12 percent for the bottom 50). What the global growth figures reveal is that the distribution of gains is just as important as overall growth. Hence there is ample room for debate about the political and institutional choices that affect distribution.


    Amory Gethin is co-editor alongside Thomas Piketty and Clara Martinez-Toledano of a new book called Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities. A Study of 50 Democracies, 1948-2020. In some ways, this book is an extension of Piketty’s Capital and Ideology. It also explores the political divisions in party systems outside the United States and Western Europe.
    Here, Amory Gethin talks (and I know it, because I have read the book) about the changing structure of political conflict, the multi-elite party system between the Brahmin left and the merchant right,
    He says,
    "The focus on elite has an interesting advantage. It can be explained by the fact simply that elites have greater sway on political decisions, on party programs. If you look at party membership, party membership is often very skewed by education and income and political leaders themselves, members of parliament, usually most of them come from privileged backgrounds. So, the focus on elites is important because the fact that extremely educated voters support the left, well, it has necessarily an influence on the left-wing party’s programmatic decisions. And the shift towards issues that high educated voters prefer. Something that has to be taken into account too is the fact that the mobilizational capacities of low-income and lower educated voters have declined significantly over time. In the fifties and sixties unions played a big role in many countries. industrialization was high. They had the ability to conduct strikes, to mobilize, and to convince left-wing parties to defend their interests. And this is not the case anymore. Union membership has declined in nearly every single Western country. Deindustrialization and the rise of the service economy make things much more complicated for people working in part-time jobs in the service sector. And so all these reasons explain why these voters have lower political influence and the focus on elites reinforces these facts and can contribute to explaining why left-wing party’s programs have to some extent for many of them abandoned these classes on economic policy.
    In parliament within the United Kingdom, but this is true pretty much in a lot of different countries, that the members of parliament these days are almost exclusively people who have university educations and oftentimes advanced educations with master’s degrees, sometimes even doctorates. And what’s striking is that this representational inequality has increased. Countries like France or the UK in the fifties and sixties, you had a number of blue collars in parliaments.
    And so, these people had a voice, had a voice in political parties and they contributed to creating political programs and manifestos before elections. And this is less and less the case today. So, of course, there’s also a demographic effect.The fact that many people now have higher education and few people do not have university degrees and almost none have no high school degree especially in the younger generation. So, their demographic weight has decreased and so, their influence on politics has also decreased.
    But in terms of why low-income voters would vote for the right or the left, I think we also need to emphasize that many of them do not vote. There’s been a really strong decline in turnout in many Western democracies. And this decline has been concentrated among a new generation, among lower educated people, low-income people.
    And many of those who vote, vote because they are used to vote, but many of them are not convinced at all that whoever they will vote for will have any kind of influence on policy and on what matters for them.
    Regarding the high turnout in US presidential elections, part of the reason is maybe that people are fed up by a system which for decades have gradually abandoned many of them. And so, the dynamics of anger play a role in determining this vote. So, this has to be taken into account, especially the fact that political polarization in the US has reached extreme levels”.

    This is a must read, Political Cleavages in 21 Western Democracies 1948-2020, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2022
    "Drawing on nearly all electoral surveys ever conducted in these countries since the end of World War II, we assemble microdata on the individual determinants of the vote for over 300 elections held between 1948 and 2020. Together, these surveys provide unique insights into the evolution of voting preferences in Western democracies

    After reading the paper, a few key takeaways,
    -In the 1950s, left-wing parties were supported by both low-income and lower-educated voters. There has been a striking reversal of educational divides, leading to a separation between a "Brahmin left" and a "Merchant right".
    -This fact holds across nearly all Western democracies.
    -In the US, the Democratic Party does not find greater support among low-income voters anymore.





    The Disconnection of Income and Education Cleavages in Western Democracies
    In the 1960s, higher-educated and high-income voters were less likely to vote for left-wing (social democratic/socialist/communist/green/other left-wing) parties than were lower-educated and low-income voters by more than 10 percentage points. The left vote has gradually become associated with higher education voters, giving rising to a complete divergence of the effects of income and education on the vote. Figures correspond to five-year averages for Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. Estimates control for income/education, age, gender, religion, church attendance, rural/urban, region, race/ethnicity, employment status, and marital status (in country-years for which these variables are available). Data from World Political Cleavages and Inequality Database





    The divergence of income and educational divides is strongest in countries where polarization over socio-cultural issues is strong. It is weakest in countries where economic issues continue to dominate party politics.




    The educational cleavage by birth Cohort. Today's divides are not about "young" vs. "old". They primarily oppose more or less educated voters within new generations.





    The figure represents the average share of votes received by selected families of political parties in Western democracies between the 1940s and the 2010s. Communist parties saw their average scores collapse from 7% to less than 0.5%, while green and anti-immigration parties rose until reaching average vote shares of 8% and 11%, respectively. The dashed lines delimit the categorization of parties considered in the main specification (social democrats and affiliated, conservatives and affiliated, and other parties). Data from official election results.

    I hope this will help the inattentive readers of Picketty to better understand this subject. Many critics of Piketty have never read his books. It is easier for them to rush through some reviews on neoliberal websites.
    Last edited by Ludicus; January 22, 2022 at 07:07 AM.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  3. #63

    Default Re: If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism it will also be its grave

    Ludicus's post is too long and discombobulated to address, so here are some general pointers for those interested in macro-economic topics:

    • There are no longer "schools" of economics: economic orthodoxy today grew from the Neoclassical Synthesis in the 1950s-1970s, and resulted in Post-Keynesianism as the economic school that all successful countries follow, and is the economics that you learn in school.
    • As a strategy to efficiently allocate resources and promote growth, economics reduces and alleviates poverty to the extent politicians and the electorate follow good economic policies. Those policies are drawn from general expert consensus, and not a few random economists that support your priors.
    • Economic "inequality" is a difficult and normative topic, but broadly speaking, income equality has been going down overtime and is projected to continue doing so. The World Bank and IMF have the numbers on this.
    • Wealth inequality is indeed rising, part of which is due to rent seeking (such as land ownership), but part of it is also due to societies that can afford more debt than assets, which is a first-world privilege.
    • But most importantly, poverty is a far greater concern than inequality (my last post addresses both), and the leftist hyper-focus on inequality is a luxury concern.
    Last edited by Basilius; January 24, 2022 at 02:10 PM.

  4. #64

    Default Re: If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism it will also be its grave

    To be brutally frank, Chile is a small nation in the global south with a relatively tiny population. While it is true that Pinochet's regime was the originator of some aspects of neo-liberalism, this economic system spread around the world only after the Thatcherite and Reaganite economic "reforms", and only accelerated globally after the collapse of the USSR. While progressives all over would like nothing better than a small South American nation standing up as an example for progress along the world, if we look hard through the lens of reality, no "great power" today is moving away from the basic neo-liberal doctrine; Ludicus has rightly pointed out the extreme growth of inequality that is a stark pointer of this trend. As far as i can see, the two prevailing forces most influential in today's world are a) the immense accumulation of wealth (and power) into individual hands and b) the rise of popular resentment against this concentration. Even the most powerful government in the world, that of the USA, is plainly busy kowtowing to both these forces, bowing to billionaires and their MNCs in one instance, and trying to assuage popular resentment by trying to appease the gender-pronoun-confederate-monument-removing left radicals in another. Plainly, these are the forces that will shape the coming era; billionaire control and a diffused, confused, and ultimately violent resistance. In the face of this reality, where the hegemons of the planet show no inclination to de-neoliberalise, Chile seems unlikely to influence anything. Of course it is understandable that the country's president has made such grandiose statements at the moment of his electoral victory, but we have no obligation as neutral observers to take it at face value. Unfortunately, in my opinion, Chile under whatever government, will continue to be marginal to the world system, hardly even able to influence the rest of South America, much less the entire planet. The only way that Chile could expand it's influence would be to develop militarily (ala Cuba, or Israel). This seems impossible considering US influence over South America, and in any case such a move would require a strong and centralised government, whereas the ethos of the new Chilean regime seems to be exactly opposite. Some intriguing moves are afoot (like Chile buying 3 ex-RAF E-3D radar sentry planes recently), but frankly, at this pace there seems to be decades before Chile becomes a major military power. All said and done, perhaps both sides of the political spectrum should have less extravagant hopes from the Chilean government and economy.

  5. #65
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
    Citizen

    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    13,065

    Default Re: If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism it will also be its grave

    Quote Originally Posted by anant View Post
    While it is true that Pinochet's regime was the originator of some aspects of neo-liberalism, this economic system spread around the world only after the Thatcherite and Reaganite economic "reforms", and only accelerated globally after the collapse of the USSR.
    Absolutely correct, but Chile is often cited as a showcase for the success of neoliberalism.
    The Chilean October
    How could a mobilization that began with an increase of the metro fare by 30 pesos be the origin of a questioning of the economic model that transformed Chile into its principal laboratory? “It’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years,” the protesters have responded
    Quote Originally Posted by anant View Post
    Ludicus has rightly pointed out the extreme growth of inequality that is a stark pointer of this trend. As far as i can see, the two prevailing forces most influential in today's world are a) the immense accumulation of wealth (and power) into individual hands and b) the rise of popular resentment against this concentration... hegemons of the planet show no inclination to de-neoliberalise,
    Quite right!
    Against all odds, hope is the last to die.Social justice matters.Political Cleavages and Inequality 1950-2018

    In most Western democracies (except Portugal), higher educated voters have become increasingly likely to support socialist and social-democratic parties. This has given rise to ‘multiple elites party systems’, where economic redistribution and new social issues are progressively becoming crosscutting dimensions of political conflict.
    In fact, in this country, production workers still constitute a significant share of the electorate; this means that the socio-economic dimension of political competition, redistribution and the role of the state still remains the most salient (something that the euro crisis, and the Troika austerity measures from 2011 to 2013 may have even reinforced). That is why we do not have such an elitist left as in other countries. And that is why the Socialist Party won an overwhelming absolute majority in the elections a few days ago, because the people know well who defends their interests against uncontrolled, unregulated liberalism. Support for the PS grew from 36.7% in 2019 to 41.7% this time around.Budget measures that are likely to move forward include a increase in investment in the national health service and a increase in the national minimum wage, as well as higher pensions and public sector wages.This is the reason why Scholz congratulates Costa, “Congratulations on your great victory! I am very delighted that you will continue to serve Portugal as a true advocate of social justice. Let us take on the challenges of our time together and build a better and stronger Europe!”
    A great song, isn't it?
    Last edited by Ludicus; February 02, 2022 at 11:09 AM.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  6. #66

    Default Re: If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism it will also be its grave

    People that vote against their own interests aren't highly educated and supporting "democratic socialism" is against your interests, unless you are a billionaire or are a corrupt government official that directly benefits from welfare state gravy train.

  7. #67
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
    Citizen

    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    13,065

    Default Re: If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism it will also be its grave

    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    supporting "democratic socialism" is against your interests, unless you are a billionaire or are a corrupt government official that directly benefits from welfare state gravy train.
    The problem with you, guys, is the fact the populists claim to promote the interests of ordinary people versus the elites. However, populists are very heterogeneous when it comes to policy proposals, with economic platforms range from very redistributive and interventionist on the extreme left of the political spectrum, to rather conservative on the extreme right.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  8. #68

    Default Re: If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism it will also be its grave

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    The problem with you, guys, is the fact the populists claim to promote the interests of ordinary people versus the elites. However, populists are very heterogeneous when it comes to policy proposals, with economic platforms range from very redistributive and interventionist on the extreme left of the political spectrum, to rather conservative on the extreme right.
    Left-right dichotomy is silly and outright false. One can argue for deregulation without demanding subsidies and bailout for banks, just like opposition to federal reserve and archaic outdated central banking model doesn't mean you are automatically a marxist.

  9. #69
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
    Citizen

    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    13,065

    Default Re: If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism it will also be its grave

    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    supporting "democratic socialism" is against your interests
    A complete nonsense.
    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    People that vote against their own interests aren't highly educated
    Ok, populists vote against their own interests. Trump said, in 2016,”I love the poorly educated.” Who exactly is Trump’s base? white,working-class voters. Among whites, 64% of those without a college degree voted for Trump. Is that bad? why? not having a college degree doesn't mean someone is dumb.Some say that the possibility that education has become a fundamental divide in democracy with the educated on one side and the less educated on another is an alarming prospect.
    No, it’s not an alarming prospect. It is an elitist point of view. Right now in the US, college-educated voters are more likely to support workers’ parties, while non-college-educated ones tend to favor conservatives. But, is that bad? (well, it’s bad because Trump is billionaire authoritarian racist). Read Piketty attentively. He clearly states that the decline of class-based voting has long troubled the American left. See figures in the previous post. For this reason (among others) Republicans has fared much better in the era of class depolarization than it did in the preceding one, back in the 1950’s. It’s a fact.

    The fight against neoliberalism is nothing new in Europe. Eight years ago (2015), the secretary-general of Portugal's Socialist Party and Thomas Piketty, after a meeting in Lisbon, both rejected neo-austerity as a model for boosting competitiveness and reducing public debt. We need to understand that contemporary welfare states now exist within a world in which austerity as a broad set of ideas, encompasses the liberal (in a Hayekian sense) desire to shrink the (social welfare) state, deregulate labor and promote private markets as the driver of growth (Farnsworth and Irving, 2019). Until now, here, the fight against neo-austerity worked reasonable well. Once again, I repeat, on January 2022, after two years of Covid crisis, to the despair of the neoliberals and the populist far right in this country, people of different social classes had no doubt and gave a landslide victory to the Socialists, an outright majority in the Parliament. I confess, I’m ambivalent here; absolute power is always to be mistrusted.This result means that the remaining parties lose their supervisory capacity, and are destined to be completely irrelevant until the next elections.
    What really matters: as we know,historically speaking, the pact between capital and labor that had been in effect since the decade of 50's (in the United States and Europe) was later replaced by a new world order reminiscent of Hayek's ambition to make the capitalist world immune to the interventions of democratic politics; in fact, the most ideological governments in Europe and the US were those who proclaimed themselves to be beyond ideology and beyond left and right.The project of neoliberalization of Chile and the Chilean socio-economic "laboratory" was important for the subsequent adoption of neoliberal reforms in the US under the Reagan administration (Alexander Barden, 2013)

    In Chile,"People were in prison,” as the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano remarked wryly, “so that prices could be free”. The lesson of Chilean neoliberalism is that “economic freedom” requires a depoliticized society, and "fiscal discipline" requires a legal order that protects the market from the people.” “Chile Reborn”: Overturning Chile's neoliberal constitution
    Edward Galeano wrote the book “Open Veins of Latin America, five centuries of the Pillage”. This brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America.availabe as a free PDF in Academia.Edu.
    A little inequality is good for the economy,but when income inequality rises, economic growth falls. If the income share of the top 20% (the rich) increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term. Lots of inequality is bad.Even the IMF rejects (oh supreme irony) the idea that increased income inequality makes economies more dynamic. As they say- ”Raising the income share of the poor and ensuring that there is no hollowing-out of the middle class is good for growth”. But the IMF conveniently misses the fact that the current economic system is not working when it comes to solving the key problem we have to solve- the problem of rising inequality” (Piketty, 2107).
    Meritocracy is not a bad thing “per se”, but it is now part of our common-sense because it has been used consistently in the service of a right-wing neoliberal agenda. Nowadays, meritocracy is a neoliberal mantra.
    If I’m allowed, let’s talk a little bit about the Rise and the “fall” of meritocracy, “alma mater” of neoliberalism. The “Rise of Meritocracy", by Michael Young,first published in 1958, was rejected by 12 publishers before being accepted by Thames and Hudson. It’s a satire describing a dystopian society in a near future – year 2033. Young coined the term "meritocracy" to ridicule the tripartite term of education in the UK. The irony here lies in the fact that the term was immediately embraced by the meritocratic, elitist left. Forty-two years later, in 2001,Michael Young writes,highly disappointed,Down with meritocracy | Michael Young
    I have been sadly disappointed by my 1958 book, The Rise of the Meritocracy. I coined a word which has gone into general circulation, especially in the United States, and most recently found a prominent place in the speeches of Mr Blair.The book was a satire meant to be a warning (which needless to say has not been heeded) against what might happen to Britain between 1958 and the imagined final revolt against the meritocracy in 2033.Much that was predicted has already come about. It is highly unlikely the prime minister has read the book, but he has caught on to the word without realising the dangers of what he is advocating.It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others.The more controversial prediction and the warning followed from the historical analysis. I expected that the poor and the disadvantaged would be done down, and in fact they have been. If branded at school they are more vulnerable for later unemployment.
    It would help if Mr Blair would drop the word from his public vocabulary, or at least admit to the downside.
    Much to the contrary,the new Chancellor of Germany is a old fashioned Social democrat. He agrees and says,
    Michael Young described the rise of meritocracy as a dystopian satire of the year 2034, but it has turned out to be an almost prophetic description of the trends of our time. Why did Britain vote for Brexit if it was against its own interest? Why did America vote for Trump? I believe it is because people are experiencing deep social insecurities, and lack appreciation for what they do. Among certain professional classes, there is a meritocratic exuberance that has led people to believe their success is completely self-made. As a result, those who actually keep the show on the road don’t get the respect they deserve. That has to change. Merit in society must not be limited to top-earners.A security guard has merit too. Manual labourers don’t deserve less respect than academics. Recognize these other types of merit on the one hand, and pay better wages for those who are not appropriately compensated on the other. A higher minimum wage is important, as are better wages for carers and skilled workers
    A young Portuguese Socialist minister(Nuno Santos), widely recognized as Costa’s successor in a next political cycle,also presented himself (as the son of an industrialist linked to footwear in an Europe where the most common thing is to talk about the need for more meritocracy) to criticize the cult of meritocracy, "Have no gaspeadeiras merit? (gaspeadeiras are female shoe workers).Do CP (trains of Portugal) maintenance technicians have no merit? We will only be able to be a strong country if we respect what unites people with difficulties”.
    Although the racist, ultra nationalist far-right has made some gains here, that’s probably one of the reasons why the populist wind blowing across Europe seems not to be extraordinary high in this country.

    As we already know, the "Nordic model" is often presented as a solution to the dominance of neoliberalism. Well,these are also happy days for the Nordic anti-neoliberal left. For the first time since 2001, they are running all four big Nordic countries-all five, counting Iceland. France is an exception, the entire political landscape has moved too much to the right, even the old traditional right. (it’s related to the anti-Islamic rhetoric and migration issues).But soon or later,French left will come back, just as it did in Germany, Portugal, Spain and Nordic countries, and I am quite confident that the repayment of Covid debt is going to lead to the end of the tax privileges of the billionaires in many countries, including the US. For now, I think the news of the death of neoliberalism is greatly exaggerated Neoliberalism is dying – now we must replace it
    Last edited by Ludicus; February 03, 2022 at 02:41 PM.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  10. #70

    Default Re: If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism it will also be its grave

    Trump's platform which included tax cuts, end of outsourcing and better immigration policy was in the interest of working class, at least to a much higher margin then that of Democrats which includes traditional list of pro-corporate policies that include mass-immigration, forever wars, subsidies for corporations, higher taxes, gun control, outsourcing, etc.
    Telling workers that they are stupid for voting in their direct interest comes of as silly and neurotic, democratic socialists have nobody but themselves to blame for siding with neoliberal elites against working class on every important issue.

Page 4 of 4 FirstFirst 1234

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •