I'll take your word for it (not being snarky)
I'm in my 40's and find it hard to believe that this isn't unprecedented. I'll do some reading tho!
Current Affairs Donald Trump POS: Judgement cometh and that right soon
- Thread starter kithnou
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I'm in my 40's and find it hard to believe that this isn't unprecedented. I'll do some reading tho!
#thanksObama
BirkenheadBlue
Player Valuation: £70m
Naturally.
Gah. I knew that was wrong. Strunk is how to write clearly. Like I ever read any of that.
This is huge: Justice Kennedy to retire, Trump will get to appoint replacement.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who provided key votes for same sex-marriage, abortion access and affirmative action, will retire from the Supreme Court.
Anthony Kennedy didn't save the liberals
The retirement is effective July 31, Kennedy said in a letter to President Donald Trump on Wednesday.
Kennedy's decision to step down could transform the Supreme Court for generations. Trump will have his second opportunity to nominate a justice and will likely replace Kennedy with a young, conservative jurist. That would create a bloc of five staunch conservative justices who could move the court further to the right and cement a conservative majority for the foreseeable future.
CNN Story on Kennedy
Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who provided key votes for same sex-marriage, abortion access and affirmative action, will retire from the Supreme Court.
Anthony Kennedy didn't save the liberals
The retirement is effective July 31, Kennedy said in a letter to President Donald Trump on Wednesday.
Kennedy's decision to step down could transform the Supreme Court for generations. Trump will have his second opportunity to nominate a justice and will likely replace Kennedy with a young, conservative jurist. That would create a bloc of five staunch conservative justices who could move the court further to the right and cement a conservative majority for the foreseeable future.
CNN Story on Kennedy
In 2012 a baker refused to serve Joe Biden. In reward for his "incivility" he was asked to introduce Paul Ryan at a political rally. But that is conveniently forgotten by the hypocritical party of the faux-aggrieved who endorse child-abuse.
@TX Bill How do you feel about the child separation issue?
abelard
Player Valuation: £35m
Tariffs are the Wrong Response to China
https://www.barrons.com/articles/tariffs-are-the-wrong-response-to-china-1529670600
The trade conflict between the U.S. and China is escalating. After repeatedly accusing the Chinese government of “economic aggression,” the U.S. government is considering imposing tariffs on as much as $450 billion of goods imported from China. China cannot respond symmetrically—it imports too little from the U.S.—but it could easily devalue its exchange rate or use discriminatory regulations to harm the profitability of American multinationals.
American anger is justified: Chinese policies have systematically distorted the world economy at the expense of U.S. workers. But tariffs are the wrong response. They will penalize regular Americans while doing little to address China’s harmful practices. Those practices have caused at least as much harm to ordinary Chinese as they have to the rest of the world.
China’s economic policies are a product of the Communist Party’s intolerance of alternative centers of power. After the pro-democracy movement met its violent end in 1989, Deng Xiaoping’s program of “reform and opening up” was modified so that party elites could capture as much of China’s new wealth for themselves as possible.
The result is that China is now one of the most unequal societies in the world. Between 1980 and 2010, the share of income officially earned by the top 1% of Chinese households rose by about nine percentage points.
This likely understates the gains of the elite because it does not count their control of the corporate sector, which benefits from the authoritarian government’s hostility to collective bargaining. In most countries, nonfinancial corporations pay their employees about two-thirds of the value of what they produce. In China, however, workers get only 40%.
Unlike most other countries, taxes and government benefits in China do not transfer spending power from the rich to poor. Disposable household income is only about 45% of China’s gross domestic product. The personal income-tax system collects only about 1% of GDP, while taxes on consumption and forced social security “contributions” take in about 14% of GDP.
The perverse result is that low earners pay effective tax rates around 35%, while higher earners pay rates as little as 10%. Meanwhile, the Chinese government limits health care, pensions, education, and unemployment insurance through the so-called hukou system of household registration. Hundreds of millions of migrants who moved from the countryside for jobs in cities are ineligible to receive government benefits even when they have paid for them, because they are not officially residents of the city where they live.
The Chinese financial system is also rigged against ordinary households for the benefit of politically connected elites. Most Chinese have few investment alternatives to bank deposits and real estate, while the four big party-controlled banks pay interest rates on deposits far below the cost of capital and pass along the savings to favored corporations in the form of cheap loans. Private businesses have to fight for financing and savers get stuck with inadequate returns, but the “vested interests”—Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s term—can borrow at preposterously low rates.
Since Chinese households cannot depend on the government to cover health expenses or retirement, the rational response to low interest rates is to save even more than they otherwise would to compensate for the lack of compounding.
This deliberate concentration of wealth has crushed household consumption. The share of China’s national income spent by households on goods and services collapsed from about 52% in the early 1980s to less than 36% by 2010. The flip side of this was the meteoric rise in China’s national savings rate from about 32% to more than 50%. While things have marginally improved in the past few years, household consumption in China is still less than 40% of GDP. The world average is about 60%.
While much of the wealth transferred from Chinese workers is spent on construction projects and other forms of fixed investment, a large chunk is used to buy financial assets abroad, often from the U.S. The Chinese government alone has spent about $4 trillion acquiring foreign assets since 2000. Rich Chinese households and private businesses have spent another $3 trillion on top of that, according to official data, although the true number could be even higher after accounting for surreptitious capital outflows.
China’s repressed consumption and state-sponsored capital outflows have their counterpart in massive trade surpluses. China exports almost $1 trillion more in manufactured goods than it imports, for example, a surplus worth more than 1% of the world’s GDP. China may be the workshop of the world, but the Chinese people cannot afford to buy what they produce. Instead, foreigners buy Chinese goods with money stolen from Chinese households by the Chinese government. Foreign workers are also victims of this arrangement, because their cheap goods come at the price of lost jobs and rising debt.
The trade conflict between the U.S. and China is therefore a consequence of China’s internal class conflict. Tariffs will not fix anything as long as China’s elites remain committed to extracting as much as they can from Chinese workers. The better approach would be to hit those elites where it hurts: Western governments should coordinate to ban Chinese investment in their countries, starting with housing. The U.S. and its allies should also become the champions of Chinese workers, especially rural migrants deprived of basic government benefits.
While Chinese rebalancing is ultimately a choice for the Chinese people, the rest of the world can help by refusing to tolerate the negative spillovers of China’s harmful domestic policies.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/tariffs-are-the-wrong-response-to-china-1529670600
The trade conflict between the U.S. and China is escalating. After repeatedly accusing the Chinese government of “economic aggression,” the U.S. government is considering imposing tariffs on as much as $450 billion of goods imported from China. China cannot respond symmetrically—it imports too little from the U.S.—but it could easily devalue its exchange rate or use discriminatory regulations to harm the profitability of American multinationals.
American anger is justified: Chinese policies have systematically distorted the world economy at the expense of U.S. workers. But tariffs are the wrong response. They will penalize regular Americans while doing little to address China’s harmful practices. Those practices have caused at least as much harm to ordinary Chinese as they have to the rest of the world.
China’s economic policies are a product of the Communist Party’s intolerance of alternative centers of power. After the pro-democracy movement met its violent end in 1989, Deng Xiaoping’s program of “reform and opening up” was modified so that party elites could capture as much of China’s new wealth for themselves as possible.
The result is that China is now one of the most unequal societies in the world. Between 1980 and 2010, the share of income officially earned by the top 1% of Chinese households rose by about nine percentage points.
This likely understates the gains of the elite because it does not count their control of the corporate sector, which benefits from the authoritarian government’s hostility to collective bargaining. In most countries, nonfinancial corporations pay their employees about two-thirds of the value of what they produce. In China, however, workers get only 40%.
Unlike most other countries, taxes and government benefits in China do not transfer spending power from the rich to poor. Disposable household income is only about 45% of China’s gross domestic product. The personal income-tax system collects only about 1% of GDP, while taxes on consumption and forced social security “contributions” take in about 14% of GDP.
The perverse result is that low earners pay effective tax rates around 35%, while higher earners pay rates as little as 10%. Meanwhile, the Chinese government limits health care, pensions, education, and unemployment insurance through the so-called hukou system of household registration. Hundreds of millions of migrants who moved from the countryside for jobs in cities are ineligible to receive government benefits even when they have paid for them, because they are not officially residents of the city where they live.
The Chinese financial system is also rigged against ordinary households for the benefit of politically connected elites. Most Chinese have few investment alternatives to bank deposits and real estate, while the four big party-controlled banks pay interest rates on deposits far below the cost of capital and pass along the savings to favored corporations in the form of cheap loans. Private businesses have to fight for financing and savers get stuck with inadequate returns, but the “vested interests”—Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s term—can borrow at preposterously low rates.
Since Chinese households cannot depend on the government to cover health expenses or retirement, the rational response to low interest rates is to save even more than they otherwise would to compensate for the lack of compounding.
This deliberate concentration of wealth has crushed household consumption. The share of China’s national income spent by households on goods and services collapsed from about 52% in the early 1980s to less than 36% by 2010. The flip side of this was the meteoric rise in China’s national savings rate from about 32% to more than 50%. While things have marginally improved in the past few years, household consumption in China is still less than 40% of GDP. The world average is about 60%.
While much of the wealth transferred from Chinese workers is spent on construction projects and other forms of fixed investment, a large chunk is used to buy financial assets abroad, often from the U.S. The Chinese government alone has spent about $4 trillion acquiring foreign assets since 2000. Rich Chinese households and private businesses have spent another $3 trillion on top of that, according to official data, although the true number could be even higher after accounting for surreptitious capital outflows.
China’s repressed consumption and state-sponsored capital outflows have their counterpart in massive trade surpluses. China exports almost $1 trillion more in manufactured goods than it imports, for example, a surplus worth more than 1% of the world’s GDP. China may be the workshop of the world, but the Chinese people cannot afford to buy what they produce. Instead, foreigners buy Chinese goods with money stolen from Chinese households by the Chinese government. Foreign workers are also victims of this arrangement, because their cheap goods come at the price of lost jobs and rising debt.
The trade conflict between the U.S. and China is therefore a consequence of China’s internal class conflict. Tariffs will not fix anything as long as China’s elites remain committed to extracting as much as they can from Chinese workers. The better approach would be to hit those elites where it hurts: Western governments should coordinate to ban Chinese investment in their countries, starting with housing. The U.S. and its allies should also become the champions of Chinese workers, especially rural migrants deprived of basic government benefits.
While Chinese rebalancing is ultimately a choice for the Chinese people, the rest of the world can help by refusing to tolerate the negative spillovers of China’s harmful domestic policies.
abelard
Player Valuation: £35m
Class Inequality and the Sino-American Balance of Payments
https://adamtooze.com/2018/06/25/no...n-balance-of-payments-prompted-by-matt-klein/
“The trade conflict between the U.S. and China is … a consequence of China’s internal class conflict. Tariffs will not fix anything as long as China’s elites remain committed to extracting as much as they can from Chinese workers.”
These rather striking lines come from a new column by Matt Klein at Barron’s.
Matt’s argument is that since wealth inequality and capital “flight” are the true drivers of the Chinese balance of payments, slapping tariffs on industrial exports will not make much difference. Instead, he argues the United States should target Chinese capital inflows, especially those that look like flight capital e.g. into luxurious real estate. Cutting off the money flow will hit the Chinese regime where it hurts and possibly cause a change in behavior.
The point is a good one. The capital control suggestion is intriguing.
It is linked to a historical diagnosis which argues that 1989 was a turning point in the political economy of modern China:
“After the pro-democracy movement met its violent end in 1989, Deng Xiaoping’s program of “reform and opening up” was modified so that party elites could capture as much of China’s new wealth for themselves as possible.
The result is that China is now one of the most unequal societies in the world. Between 1980 and 2010, the share of income officially earned by the top 1% of Chinese households rose by about nine percentage points.”
Matt then goes on to point out some of the peculiarities of China’s tax and welfare regime, which levies virtually no income tax, thus imposing a heavy regressive burden via indirect taxes on consumption.
Matt’s points about the political economy of China could be expanded by reference to Alvaredo et al’s data, which characterized the inequality regime in China as one which did indeed see huge increases in income for those at the top, but also produced income growth for those at the bottom of the income pyramid. This is clearly crucial for the mass legitimacy of the regime.
Alvaredo et al contrasted the Chinese inequality regime with that of several other countries including, of course, the US. Since the 1970s what the US has witnessed is a surge in incomes at the top with very little income growth for those at the bottom.
What this points to is a significant gap left by Matt’s analysis: the need to integrate an account of inequality and class struggle in the United States.
If it is true that “The trade conflict between the U.S. and China is … a consequence of China’s internal class conflict.” The same is surely true of the United States.
This point can hardly be lost on Matt. So I suspect that he does not point to it for two reasons:
There is every reason to doubt that at key moments in American policy-making the common good is the main criterion for decision making. Remember Buffett: ‘There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
In fact, at a first approximation, a symmetrical class analysis would suggest that the strategy of China’s elite is entirely complementary to that of their American counterparts.
Imports of repressed Chinese savings help to fund the astonishingly lopsided reengineering of America’s political economy driven by the Republicans in successive phases of tax cuts.
For the Democrats Chinese inflows were more than helpful in coping with the fiscal aftermath of the global financial crisis, a crisis that was resolved highly successfully to the benefit of another wing of the US elite.
Meanwhile, US corporations as investors have done extremely well out of China’s lopsided economic growth miracle, by investing in China and spreading their supply chains to East Asia. “Designed in California, made in China.”
The benefit to ordinary Americans comes not through jobs but cheap manufactured imports that help to sustain a sense of mass affluence despite stagnating incomes.
Furthermore, the Chinese capital when it enters the US flows not just into Treasurys. It flows into circuits and property markets, which are key sites of accumulation, for factions of the American elite.
At the current moment, there is good reason to suspect that POTUS and his family are examples of precisely this transnational, oligarchic logic in play.
So if class and inequality help to explain the Chinese side of the Sino-American imbalance, they most certainly help to explain the American side too.
This is not to say that political regime does not matter. It shapes the way in which power and money work. As citizens we have an existential stake in the freedoms the West offers. But we should not allow this to blind us to basic structural parallels in political economy.
A book that I highly recommend, which applies this kind of symmetrical class analysis to all sides of global political economy is Herman M. Schwartz, Subprime Nation American Power, Global Capital, and the Housing Bubble.
https://adamtooze.com/2018/06/25/no...n-balance-of-payments-prompted-by-matt-klein/
“The trade conflict between the U.S. and China is … a consequence of China’s internal class conflict. Tariffs will not fix anything as long as China’s elites remain committed to extracting as much as they can from Chinese workers.”
These rather striking lines come from a new column by Matt Klein at Barron’s.
Matt’s argument is that since wealth inequality and capital “flight” are the true drivers of the Chinese balance of payments, slapping tariffs on industrial exports will not make much difference. Instead, he argues the United States should target Chinese capital inflows, especially those that look like flight capital e.g. into luxurious real estate. Cutting off the money flow will hit the Chinese regime where it hurts and possibly cause a change in behavior.
The point is a good one. The capital control suggestion is intriguing.
It is linked to a historical diagnosis which argues that 1989 was a turning point in the political economy of modern China:
“After the pro-democracy movement met its violent end in 1989, Deng Xiaoping’s program of “reform and opening up” was modified so that party elites could capture as much of China’s new wealth for themselves as possible.
The result is that China is now one of the most unequal societies in the world. Between 1980 and 2010, the share of income officially earned by the top 1% of Chinese households rose by about nine percentage points.”
Matt then goes on to point out some of the peculiarities of China’s tax and welfare regime, which levies virtually no income tax, thus imposing a heavy regressive burden via indirect taxes on consumption.
Matt’s points about the political economy of China could be expanded by reference to Alvaredo et al’s data, which characterized the inequality regime in China as one which did indeed see huge increases in income for those at the top, but also produced income growth for those at the bottom of the income pyramid. This is clearly crucial for the mass legitimacy of the regime.
Alvaredo et al contrasted the Chinese inequality regime with that of several other countries including, of course, the US. Since the 1970s what the US has witnessed is a surge in incomes at the top with very little income growth for those at the bottom.
What this points to is a significant gap left by Matt’s analysis: the need to integrate an account of inequality and class struggle in the United States.
If it is true that “The trade conflict between the U.S. and China is … a consequence of China’s internal class conflict.” The same is surely true of the United States.
This point can hardly be lost on Matt. So I suspect that he does not point to it for two reasons:
- It is not just social regimes but political regimes that are at stake in Matt’s article. The passage I quoted above actually reads like this: “China’s economic policies are a product of the Communist Party’s intolerance of alternative centers of power. After the pro-democracy movement met its violent end in 1989, Deng Xiaoping’s program of “reform and opening up” was modified so that party elites could capture as much of China’s new wealth for themselves as possible.” And, since I guess Matt is assuming that the United States is a pluralist democracy, it cannot have an analogous problem. It is China’s class and political system that are in question, not America’s.
- Matt’s purpose in the essay is to address American policy makers and to suggest a new approach for their consideration. Speaking to those policy makers about alternative policy options presumes that they will be open to new ideas that might actually be good for working-class Americans, unlike the Chinese elite who are bent on pursuing their strategy of wealth maximization, or are simply caught up in an intolerant and monolithic regime.
There is every reason to doubt that at key moments in American policy-making the common good is the main criterion for decision making. Remember Buffett: ‘There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
In fact, at a first approximation, a symmetrical class analysis would suggest that the strategy of China’s elite is entirely complementary to that of their American counterparts.
Imports of repressed Chinese savings help to fund the astonishingly lopsided reengineering of America’s political economy driven by the Republicans in successive phases of tax cuts.
For the Democrats Chinese inflows were more than helpful in coping with the fiscal aftermath of the global financial crisis, a crisis that was resolved highly successfully to the benefit of another wing of the US elite.
Meanwhile, US corporations as investors have done extremely well out of China’s lopsided economic growth miracle, by investing in China and spreading their supply chains to East Asia. “Designed in California, made in China.”
The benefit to ordinary Americans comes not through jobs but cheap manufactured imports that help to sustain a sense of mass affluence despite stagnating incomes.
Furthermore, the Chinese capital when it enters the US flows not just into Treasurys. It flows into circuits and property markets, which are key sites of accumulation, for factions of the American elite.
At the current moment, there is good reason to suspect that POTUS and his family are examples of precisely this transnational, oligarchic logic in play.
So if class and inequality help to explain the Chinese side of the Sino-American imbalance, they most certainly help to explain the American side too.
This is not to say that political regime does not matter. It shapes the way in which power and money work. As citizens we have an existential stake in the freedoms the West offers. But we should not allow this to blind us to basic structural parallels in political economy.
A book that I highly recommend, which applies this kind of symmetrical class analysis to all sides of global political economy is Herman M. Schwartz, Subprime Nation American Power, Global Capital, and the Housing Bubble.
Is there no limit to Trump's disgusting leadership? Why can he not manage even brief moments of humanity?
Every flash point is designed to hate and divide. To think he now has the opportunity to bend the constitution on a matter that, put very simply, restricts women's right to choose and is couched in terms of the Christian Right (supremely arrogant and ridiculous given Trump's complete ungodliness) is sickening.
Every week goes by and we see more and more self-aggrandisement and wanton hatred and everyone stands around waiting for things to get better.. It won't without strong opposition
Every flash point is designed to hate and divide. To think he now has the opportunity to bend the constitution on a matter that, put very simply, restricts women's right to choose and is couched in terms of the Christian Right (supremely arrogant and ridiculous given Trump's complete ungodliness) is sickening.
Every week goes by and we see more and more self-aggrandisement and wanton hatred and everyone stands around waiting for things to get better.. It won't without strong opposition
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
Strong opposition is what is required, but the fact that the US is in the mess its in should tell everyone that they do not have strong opposition and have not for decades. That abortion rights was left as a SC decision just shows the truth of that.
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