By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 16th, 2011 
Thursday, I considered President Obama’s speech, informed by William Milberg’s analysis of Senator Ryan’s budget proposal. My conclusion: the terms of the political debate for the 2012 elections are being set to the President’s strong advantage. I am pleased, but even more pleased because two serious opposing views of America and its public good will be debated. A rational discussion about this seems likely. There will be smoke and mirrors to be sure, but this is a time for grand politics in the sense of Alexis de Tocqueville and a grand political contest we will get.
This is especially important given the present state of affairs in the United States and abroad. But Presidential leadership will not solve all problems. Indeed, much of the politically significant action occurs off the central political stage, in what I refer to as “the politics of small things.” This dimension of politics has been on our minds this week in the form of three very different cases: the Tea Party in the United States, and The Freedom Theatre and the International Solidarity Committee in occupied Palestine.
The Tea Party is a looming presence in American politics. But it is in a sense “no thing”, as Gary Alan Fine puts it. It is a social movement that emerged in response to major changes associated with the election and early administration of Barack Obama, and a response to the global economic crisis. Fine and I disagree in our judgment of the “Tea Party patriots.” Indeed, I, along with Iris, am not sure how rational they are, but that is actually a political matter. As an objective observer of the human comedy, i.e. as a sociologist, I am particularly intrigued by the no thing qualities of the Tea Party which Fine considers.
A media performance occurs. An agitated announcer denounces policies said to be supporting losers, calling for a new tea party demonstration. People, who can’t take it anymore, come together in small groups all around the country, using . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Ryan’s Budget, the President’s Speech and the Tea Party between Two Assassinations
By William Milberg, April 12th, 2011 
The headlines this week were devoted to the high-stakes drama in D.C. that led to (literally) an 11th hour deal to avert a federal government shutdown and an $38 billion spending cut for 2011-2012. But the real news was that the 2012 Presidential election was effectively thrown to the Democratic incumbent (who also announced the launch of his campaign this week) when the leading fiscal policy visionary on the Republican side issued his long-term plan for the role of government over the next ten years. Congressman Ryan’s plan is so extreme in its proposed cutbacks on health insurance coverage and so regressive in its proposed reform of income and corporate taxes that it leaves most of the American political spectrum open to President Obama for the taking. He will no doubt begin the journey to this vast expanse of political turf with his speech on Wednesday.
Ryan’s plan has been much discussed in the press. It calls for a privatization of Medicare, with drastic reductions in funding. The key will be in how this funding reduction is distributed, and there is no indication that it would be done in a progressive way. This the major fault line of the plan, that it would put an even greater burden on the poor and middle class in accessing health care than is the case today. The plan calls for reducing the income tax on the richest individuals and corporations to the extremely low level of 25%. Finally, the projected effect of the plan on budget deficits hinges on wildly unrealistic assumptions that have already been questioned by the Congressional Budget Office.
We are in such a moment of political frenzy over the fiscal deficits that we often forget two basic economic fundamentals about deficits. The first is that deficits are not a function simply of spending levels but mainly of economic growth rates, since it is these that largely determine revenues. The second is that shrinking deficits generally reduce the economic growth rate and slow the creation of jobs.
. . .
Read more: Obama Wins!!
By Sergio Tavolaro, March 22nd, 2011 
Sergio Tavolaro is a sociology professor at the University of Brasília. He presents today his account of Barack Obama’s recent visit to his country. -Jeff
It is nearly impossible to speak of one Brazilian approach to the United States, given Brazil’s domestic diversity and complexity. Indifference, suspicion, admiration, anger and interest can all be found among Brazilian citizens when invited to reflect upon the North American giant partner. Yet, by and large, it is fair to say that President Obama’s first visit to Brazil was widely welcomed. More than a mere encounter of two heads of states simply complying with protocol obligations, the meeting had a great deal of symbolic charge. To be sure, the historical importance of Obama’s rise to the presidency was greatly appreciated by Brazilians from the very beginning. As the rhetoric tone of his campaign was closely followed by the local media, a significant portion of Brazil’s public opinion shared the excitement experienced by Americans when Obama was sworn in.
But many additional ingredients contributed to the success of this diplomatic event. To begin with, as President Dilma Rousseff herself highlighted, one should not underestimate the privilege of witnessing the encounter between the first US Afro-American president and the first Brazilian woman president – especially if one remembers how filled with racial problems both societies are and the subordinate status of women in Brazil.
National Congress of Brazil, Brasília © Rob Sinclair | Wikimedia Commons
Besides, there are signs indicating that Brazil – US relations are now changing in a positive way, in comparison with the recent past. One ramification of President Lula’s independent and bold foreign policy was a distancing between the two countries on a varied set of issues. The divergence over the recent political crisis in Honduras was just one manifestation of mounting diplomatic rifts, which also included different views regarding Venezuela, Bolivia and, for sure, Iran’s nuclear policies. The US reluctance to . . .
Read more: President Obama in Brazil: A View from Brazil
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, March 18th, 2011 
“I believe that intellectuals have played crucial roles in the making of democracy and in the ongoing practices of democratic life.” With this sentence, I opened my book Civility and Subversion. Motivating the writing of that book was a developing misinformed (to my mind) consensus that intellectuals played an important role in the democratic opposition to the Communist order, but they would be relatively unimportant for the post Communist making and running of democracy. I thought that this was a terrible mistake, and I tried to show that in the book. In short, my argument was that intellectuals play a democratic role, not when they purport to provide the answers to a society’s problems, but when they facilitate deliberate discussion. Intellectuals are talk provokers. Discussions at Deliberately Considered over the past week demonstrate my point. We have considered and opened discussion about important problems.
On Monday, Vince Carducci introduced and analyzed the photography of John Ganis, art that confronts the damage we do to our environment, showing beauty that displays destruction. Carducci observes that “Ganis describes himself as a ‘witness’ rather than an activist. And yet his subject matter and its treatment clearly indicate where the artist’s loyalties lie.” But it is the ambiguity of the work, its internal tension that provokes and doesn’t answer political questions that facilitated a discussion between Felipe Pait and Carducci, comparing the destruction of the BP oil spill with the devastation in Japan. This could inform serious discussion about my reflections on man versus nature. We are present. We have our needs. How does it look when we satisfy them? What are the consequences? I think that this reveals that the power of the witness can sometimes be more significant than that of the activist. Carducci and I have an ongoing discussion about the value of agit prop. He likes it. I abhor it. I think Ganis’ work, with Carducci’s analysis of it, as the devastation in Japan was unfolding, supports my position.
![]() DC Week in Review: Art, My Town, and Japan
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, March 16th, 2011 
Yesterday, I opened my report on budget problems at my local community center. I showed that our local concerns were very much connected to global problems. Now I turn to how people took responsibility for the problems, or more accurately did not directly confront them, revealing a seamy side of politics as usual in America. The key figure is Town Supervisor Paul Feiner.
The supervisor was passionate about only one issue: the fact that there were inaccuracies on the unsigned flier announcing the meeting about proposed budget cuts of the Theodore D. Young Community Center. In Feiner’s response to the A&P closings in the primarily African American surrounding community and when it came to the budget of the center, he was the cool bureaucrat. He denounced the anonymous author of the flier, revealing real anger. On the defensive, he declared that the rumor that the center would close was absolutely not true. I was relieved. But when it came to details about the center’s budget, he was evasive, without passion, using clichés to deflect responsibility, stoking the anger of the community.
Feiner and the Town Board’s basic position: because of revenue short falls, the town was faced with a choice, there had to be either significant tax increases or program cuts to balance the budget. In order to rationally meet the challenge, the board was asking all the relevant commissioners to outline possible ways to cut programs. I am sure there was a target provided, but from the public discussion I didn’t catch it. The impact of proposed cuts would be weighed against their impact on programs by the board in the fall. Feiner emphasized that no program was being targeted and that the goal was to deliver lean and efficient good governance. Strikingly, he used procedure to evade answering any question about specific programs.
The seniors were particularly concerned about their group trips. The swim teams emphasized how important swimming was to them. A former director of . . .
Read more: Institutionalized Racism?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, March 15th, 2011 
Recently, I went to a meeting concerning the budget of the Theodore D. Young Community Center. It revealed the tragedy of the cult of fiscal austerity during a prolonged economic downturn and high unemployment.
The Center is a special place for me. I swim there three or four times a week. I chat with my friends, most of whom I came to know during Barack Obama’s campaign to be President. The staff of the center and the community they serve are primarily African American, although there is a diverse cliental. I was the white guy who first canvassed the place for Obama, when most people at the center were still skeptical. For me, it’s a happy place, where I satisfy my exercise addiction, and where I can see the America that I imagine is emergent, multi-racial, multi-cultural, where people of different classes pursue happiness together, from the kids who go to after school programs and summer day camp to the senior citizens playing bingo, to teens roller skating and playing basketball, to the members of the Asian culture club, to the swimmers such as myself. It’s my American dream come true. Of course, as with all dreams, American and otherwise, there are disrupting realities that often force us to wake up. Such was the case with the budget meeting. I present my reflections on the meeting in two posts. First, this afternoon, I reflect on the context as I approached the meeting and as it opened. Tomorrow, I will report on the discussion about the community center, and its implications. I went to the meeting concerned. I left dismayed.
I read a flier announcing the event urging attendance. It warned of program cuts, highlighting many of the most popular, including the pool. Rumors were flying that the center was slated to be closed, which weren’t true. But in the age of government deficits and fiscal austerity, cuts sadly and irrationally seem inevitable.
I say irrationally because I know that this is not the time for spending cuts, despite the cutting frenzy in Washington D.C. and across the nation. It . . .
Read more: Community Center Cuts and the Closing of an A&P
On the occasion of International Women’s Day, contributing editor Esther Kreider-Verhalle reflects on some problems of daily life in New York City that she and many women (and men) face in our changing times. -Jeff
A couple of weeks ago, Jeff wrote how change is all around us, but doesn’t necessarily have an effect on the underlying realities of the human condition. The original French saying he used, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” the more things change, the more they stay the same, has been on my mind as I have been introduced into the rituals of applying for preschool in New York City. During this process, it was another saying that started haunting me: “the only thing constant is change.”
Next school year, my son will be eligible for preschool. Since the end of the 90s, New York State has offered free, voluntary pre-kindergarten classes for children age 4 and 5. While children are not required to attend school here until they are six, for many working parents, sending their kids to daycare, a nursery, preschool, or kindergarten is the logical thing to do.
Our parents, particularly my parents back in the Netherlands, may not relate to our issues. The dads worked while the moms stayed at home, caring for the kids. By the time we turned four, our mothers dropped us off at one of the local schools. There was no tuition or it was nominal. For sure, a lot less than the ten thousand dollars that is the yearly tuition at the private school in my neighborhood – and which preferably is prepaid before the beginning of the school year (ten percent off if you pay it well in advance!)
A generation ago, the school day also tended to be a longer, maybe not a full day, but certainly not the meager two and a half hours that NYC public preschools now offer. Who will pick up children after a couple of hours in one school, to chaperone them to another daycare facility, where the working parents can pick them up . . .
Read more: Things Change: Preschool in New York
By William Milberg, February 24th, 2011 
The current economic slowdown constitutes a breakdown for advanced capitalism. Its means of allocating capital – financial markets – froze up and would have collapsed completely if governments had not intervened on a massive scale. The rates of growth of output and employment in most industrialized countries are anemic and persistent. Does not the breakdown of capitalism require some fundamental rethinking of its explanation system, aka economic theory? Today’s troubles and the failure of most economists to predict them have given rise to a lively debate within the discipline about the sources of failure of economic theory and the ways in which it should be reformed. This is a good sign. But the current debate among economists is shallow and confined to a tweaking of its existing toolkit. There is no indication that this debate will produce the intellectual revolution needed to respond to the theoretical and policy challenges facing industrialized countries.
The discipline of economics has been no stranger to methodological controversy. The Methodenstreit (debate over method) among German social scientists in the 1880s, the Keynesian revolution in the 1930s, the ‘F-twist’ debate in the 1960s over the importance of realism of assumptions, and the ‘Cambridge controversy’ over the meaning of capital in the 1970s are some of the most notable debates. But not all methodological discussions are created equal. Some are profound—questioning the very structure of the reigning methodology—while others are more superficial, aiming at incremental reform or merely cosmetic change. We find that the current discussion is for the most part quite shallow, and will remain so unless certain voices in the debate are given more emphasis.
The central problem is that almost nobody dares to rethink the nature of economic life and the proper scope of economic thinking. This deeper approach is precisely what we find in the Methodenstreit and in Keynes’ innovations. On its surface the Methodenstreit was a debate over whether concrete historical analysis or mathematical modeling was better suited to explain economics. But this question ultimately rested on the question of what the realm of political . . .
Read more: Waiting for the New Keynes
By William Milberg, January 21st, 2011 
As Hu Jintao and President Obama gather in Washington for their summit meeting, it is a good time to take another look at U.S.-Chinese economic relations. China has become the lightning rod for Americans on the left and right who find an obstacle to the U.S. recovery from its economic woes. From Niall Ferguson on the right to Bernie Sanders on the left and to many the politicians and economists in the middle, the problem with China is that its high rate of saving and its undervalued exchange rate have resulted in high unemployment in the US and brought about an unsustainable American trade deficit. Some economists have even argued that this deficit was a major cause of the economic crisis in the first place.
There are at least three problems with the prevailing view.
The first problem is that renminbi revaluation is not likely to help much in reducing the U.S. trade deficit. For one thing, U.S. importers in the major deficit industries (apparel, electronics, toys) will simply shift to other low-cost countries, and Chinese imports from the U.S. are not particularly price sensitive. Second, appreciation of the Chinese currency will lead U.S. corporate profits to suffer due to higher costs for imported inputs.
These limits of the policy effectiveness of renminbi revaluation are well known but largely ignored in the popular debate. Presidents Bush and Obama both spoke out loudly on the need for currency adjustment, but neither of them ever pushed hard in negotiations with the Chinese. It should be no surprise that the Obama administration revealed that this week it is going to back off on the currency question and focus instead on intellectual property rights infringement. There is simply too much disagreement within the U.S. business community on the issue.
The second problem is that excessive Chinese saving is not the entire story behind the U.S.- China imbalance. Low levels of U.S. household saving, and U.S. business strategies have also contributed. Household borrowing is clearly going through an adjustment, as home foreclosures continue at record levels and . . .
Read more: America’s China Problem: Another View
By Vince Carducci, January 7th, 2011 
“Austerity” is a watchword in the media these days in both domestic and international economic news. The recent downturn, the story goes, has meant that governments can no longer sustain entitlement obligations or take on any more debt. So too must citizens reduce their expectations and assume more personal responsibility, accepting less in return.
In her book Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, economist and sociologist Juliet B. Schor presents a different narrative, one that suggests the current environment is an opportunity to live a more satisfactory, which is to say richer, life. She offers a solution to the “work-and-spend” dilemma of modern consumerism she initially described in her 1992 bestseller “The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure” and continued in the follow up “The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need” of 1999. Her thesis rests on four principles: freeing up time by reducing work hours outside the home, shifting that free time to more self-provisioning, developing low cost, low impact but high satisfaction consumption, and reinvesting in community and other forms of social capital.
Why “Business As Usual” No Longer Works
One of Schor’s main assertions is that we must find another way to define wealth and well-being because, in a phrase, there is no alternative. The supposedly endless cycle of material expansion that fueled economic growth as part of what historian Lizabeth Cohen calls the “consumers’ republic” of the postwar era has been exhausted in America at least. Double-digit unemployment, evaporating home equity, and eroding pension balances have taken the gloss off the consumer spending that accounted for between two-thirds and 70 percent of the US economy in recent years.
But more than that, business as usual (or as Schor refers to it “BAU”) has run into another, less malleable barrier: the environment. Mainstream economics has by and large failed to account for the environmental effects (so-called externalities) of growth, a charge many progressives will no doubt find familiar. In particular, Schor debunks the Environmental Kuznets Curve that projects a bell-shaped ratio of . . .
Read more: Juliet B. Schor’s Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth
|
A sample text widget
Etiam pulvinar consectetur dolor sed malesuada. Ut convallis
euismod dolor nec pretium. Nunc ut tristique massa.
Nam sodales mi vitae dolor ullamcorper et vulputate enim accumsan.
Morbi orci magna, tincidunt vitae molestie nec, molestie at mi. Nulla nulla lorem,
suscipit in posuere in, interdum non magna.
|
Blogroll
On the Left
On the Right
|
DC Week in Review: Art, My Town, and Japan