I am reprinting this article from Physicians for a National Healthcare Program to reitterate what has become a burning desire in my heart to see my family in the US recieve the same incredible healthcare i get here in Sweden. You see in the US, single payer is already utilized for medicare. Sweden spends approximately 10% of its GNP for healthcare, the US spends 22%. The infant mortality rates and overall lifespan of US citizens compared to other western industiralized countries infuriates me. Why does the private insurance industry have any place in human health? I am writing my representative very frequently on behalf of my family in the US.
http://www.amsa.org/uhc/SinglePayer101.pdf
Insurance industry is intimidating lawmakers
By Dr. John BenzigerKennebec Journal / Morning SentinelFeb. 19, 2009
Under pressure from the insurance industry, Obama's health-care reform is poised to completely exclude a single-payer "improved Medicare for all" option. Such a program would save enough money to provide comprehensive benefits for all Americans.
Yet opposition from insurance and drug industry giants continues to intimidate lawmakers. Only the voice of the people, our voices, can fortify our leaders to stand up for the health of the American people rather than the wealth of our richest firms.
Every other developed nation sees health care as a "right" and has some form of national health insurance (NHI). Plus, most spend less than half what we do per person.
Nearly a third of U.S. health-care spending is wasted on administration. In their drive to enroll healthy, profitable patients and screen out the sick, private insurers consume vast sums of money that sustain profits, enrich CEOs and divert resources from patient care. The paperwork they inflict on doctors and hospitals costs billions more each year. This "profit first" mentality has broken our health-care system and led the world into financial crisis.
Only single-payer NHI can fix this broken system and save thousands of lives each year. The concept is popular with the American people and enjoys the support of most doctors.
Right now, "improved Medicare for all" bills are taking shape in the U.S. House and Senate and in the Maine Legislature. Our leaders need to hear from you.
Contact them. Voice your support.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Vigilance
Here is a rant by an economist i read fairly often, Dean Baker, this is not any pressing emergency, he just mentioned something that i know is important to all of us, and in the spirit of being ever vigilant i thought i should pass it on.
I think the author is a bit emotional, he is concerned that the long term plan of a rich and powerful person is to dismantle what little social insurance exists in the US to disabled or elderly, and so his writing style here was a bit hard to follow, essentially the article is written in two halves.
The first half is to let you know this fellow, Peter Peterson is bad news in his opinion, very rich and powerful to boot. He has a long history of attacking Social security and medicare and has the media to help him out, so we will have to read articles about these subjects extra carefully (as always of course)
The second half is to warn you about a campaign he is launching to convince young people that their standard of living will be less that their parents or grandparents, and what he can convince them to do after they believe it.
'With his billion dollars, Peterson could convince a huge number of gullible young people to tax advantage of the intergenerational equity tax credit'
Yes this is Dean Bakers Opinion.
http://www.truthout.org/022309A
I think the author is a bit emotional, he is concerned that the long term plan of a rich and powerful person is to dismantle what little social insurance exists in the US to disabled or elderly, and so his writing style here was a bit hard to follow, essentially the article is written in two halves.
The first half is to let you know this fellow, Peter Peterson is bad news in his opinion, very rich and powerful to boot. He has a long history of attacking Social security and medicare and has the media to help him out, so we will have to read articles about these subjects extra carefully (as always of course)
The second half is to warn you about a campaign he is launching to convince young people that their standard of living will be less that their parents or grandparents, and what he can convince them to do after they believe it.
'With his billion dollars, Peterson could convince a huge number of gullible young people to tax advantage of the intergenerational equity tax credit'
Yes this is Dean Bakers Opinion.
http://www.truthout.org/022309A
Making You Tube Better for Us All
YOU TUBE
'We killed their ad channel'
This is amazing, You Tube, we love it, and follow wonderful debates on it and have come to admire the intellect of some great people. This lawyer defended a person who's account was suspended, after he protested the obnoxious advertising channel that started to appear over our Video Titles. Here is his letter to You Tube, and i just want you to notice what is happening and support when WE THE PEOPLE can take a stand and defend the wonderful resource that You tube is, or it will become the wasteland of advertisements that Television and Radio have become.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3RlkBBi4cw
Now what shall we do about how terrible GOOGLE has become lately? I have moved to another search engine, i am using Alta Vista now.
'We killed their ad channel'
This is amazing, You Tube, we love it, and follow wonderful debates on it and have come to admire the intellect of some great people. This lawyer defended a person who's account was suspended, after he protested the obnoxious advertising channel that started to appear over our Video Titles. Here is his letter to You Tube, and i just want you to notice what is happening and support when WE THE PEOPLE can take a stand and defend the wonderful resource that You tube is, or it will become the wasteland of advertisements that Television and Radio have become.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3RlkBBi4cw
Now what shall we do about how terrible GOOGLE has become lately? I have moved to another search engine, i am using Alta Vista now.
Hiram Revels, First US Black Senator
More Great words that should never be forgotten, lest we misunderstand the methods that were employed by our government to manipulate elections in the past. We cannot forget our history and how these tricks are still used and even perfected in the information age. Gerrymandering is an exquisite art employed even today by both Democrats and Republicans for example. We must be vigilant!
From RECONSTRUCTION IN MISSISSIPPI
BY JAMES WILFORD GARNER, PH.M.
page 399-400
Four days after the election, ex-United States SenatorRevels wrote a long letter to the President, in which he gave his views on the course of Governor Ames, and the reasons for the defeat of the Republican party. The letter was widely published at the time, and was the subject of not a little comment throughout the Union.2
HOLLY SPRINGS, MISS., November 6, 1875.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY, U. S. GRANT, President of the United States:
. . . Since reconstruction, the masses of my people have been, as it were, enslaved in mind by unprincipled adventurers, who, caring nothing for country, were willing to stoop to anything no matter how infamous, to secure power to themselves, and perpetuate it. My people are naturally Republicans, and always will be, but as they grow older in freedom so do they in wisdom. A great portion of them have learned that they were being used as mere tools, and, as in the late election, not being able to correct existing evils among themselves, they determined by casting their ballots against these unprincipled adventurers, to overthrow them. . . .My people have been told by these schemers, when men have been placed on the ticket who were notoriously corrupt and dishonest,that they must vote for them; that the salvation of the party depended upon it; that the man who scratched a ticket was not a Republican. This is only one of the many means these unprincipled demagogues have devised to perpetuate the intellectual bondage of my people. To defeat this policy, at the late election men, irrespective of race, color, or party affiliation, united, and voted together against men known to be incompetent and dishonest. I cannot recognize, nor do the mass of my people who read, recognize the majority of the officials who have been in power for the past two years as Republicans. . . .
The great mass of the white people have abandoned their hostility to the general government and Republican principles,
and to-day accept as a fact that all men are born free and equal,and I believe are ready to guarantee to my people every right and privilege guaranteed to an American citizen. The bitterness and hate created by the late civil strife has, in my opinion, been obliterated in this state, except perhaps in some localities, and would have long since been entirely obliterated, were it not for some unprincipled men who would keep alive the bitterness of the past, and inculcate a hatred between the races, in order that they may aggrandize themselves by office, and its emoluments, to control my people, the effect of which is to degrade them. As an evidence that party lines in this state have been obliterated, men were supported without regard to their party affiliations, their birth, or their color, by those who heretofore have acted with the Democratic party, by this course giving an evidence of their sincerity that they have abandoned the political issues of the past,and were only desirous of inaugurating an honest state government, and restoring a mutual confidence between the races. I give you my opinion, that had our state adhered to Republican principles, and stood by the platform upon which it was elected, the state to-day would have been upon the highway of prosperity. Peace would have prevailed within her borders, and the Republican party would have embraced within her folds thousands of the best and purest citizens of which Mississippi can boast,and the election just passed would have been a Republican victory of not less than eighty to a hundred thousand majority; but the dishonest course which has been pursued has forced into silence and retirement nearly all of the leading Republicans who organized, and have heretofore led the party to victory. A few who have been bold enough to stand by Republican principle, and condemn dishonesty, corruption, and incompetency have been supported and elected by overwhelming majorities. If the state administration had adhered to Republican principles, advanced patriotic measures, appointed only honest and competent men to office, and sought to restore confidence between the races, bloodshed would have been unknown, peace would have prevailed, Federal interference been unthought of; harmony, friendship, and mutual confidence would have taken the place of the bayonet. . . .
H. R. REVELS.
Other notable letters written to the President by prominent Republicans shortly after the election, and which, like that of Senator Revels's, received much attention at the time, were those of Attorney General Harris and Ham Carter. In each of these letters, the responsibility for the Republican defeat was placed upon Governor Ames. No Democrat ever arraigned his administration with such severity as did these three Republicans, two of whom were colored men. Ex-Attorney
____________________
1
Testimony of Judge W. B. Cunningham, Boutwell Report, p. 844.
2
The letter was first published in the Jackson Daily Times in November,1875. In June, 1876, Mr. Revels testified before the Boutwell committee, and declared that he still stood by that letter. He said: "I believed then, as I do now, that certain imprudent men who called themselves Republicans had broken our party down, and after the defeat they rushed to Washington and were trying to mislead the President and throw the blame on the pure Republican party and the innocent old white Republicans, both of whom I felt it my duty as a Christian man to defend." In this connection it is but fair to state that Mr. Revels was likely prompted in some degree by personal prejudice, the governor having removed him from the presidency of Alcorn University.
From RECONSTRUCTION IN MISSISSIPPI
BY JAMES WILFORD GARNER, PH.M.
page 399-400
Four days after the election, ex-United States SenatorRevels wrote a long letter to the President, in which he gave his views on the course of Governor Ames, and the reasons for the defeat of the Republican party. The letter was widely published at the time, and was the subject of not a little comment throughout the Union.2
HOLLY SPRINGS, MISS., November 6, 1875.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY, U. S. GRANT, President of the United States:
. . . Since reconstruction, the masses of my people have been, as it were, enslaved in mind by unprincipled adventurers, who, caring nothing for country, were willing to stoop to anything no matter how infamous, to secure power to themselves, and perpetuate it. My people are naturally Republicans, and always will be, but as they grow older in freedom so do they in wisdom. A great portion of them have learned that they were being used as mere tools, and, as in the late election, not being able to correct existing evils among themselves, they determined by casting their ballots against these unprincipled adventurers, to overthrow them. . . .My people have been told by these schemers, when men have been placed on the ticket who were notoriously corrupt and dishonest,that they must vote for them; that the salvation of the party depended upon it; that the man who scratched a ticket was not a Republican. This is only one of the many means these unprincipled demagogues have devised to perpetuate the intellectual bondage of my people. To defeat this policy, at the late election men, irrespective of race, color, or party affiliation, united, and voted together against men known to be incompetent and dishonest. I cannot recognize, nor do the mass of my people who read, recognize the majority of the officials who have been in power for the past two years as Republicans. . . .
The great mass of the white people have abandoned their hostility to the general government and Republican principles,
and to-day accept as a fact that all men are born free and equal,and I believe are ready to guarantee to my people every right and privilege guaranteed to an American citizen. The bitterness and hate created by the late civil strife has, in my opinion, been obliterated in this state, except perhaps in some localities, and would have long since been entirely obliterated, were it not for some unprincipled men who would keep alive the bitterness of the past, and inculcate a hatred between the races, in order that they may aggrandize themselves by office, and its emoluments, to control my people, the effect of which is to degrade them. As an evidence that party lines in this state have been obliterated, men were supported without regard to their party affiliations, their birth, or their color, by those who heretofore have acted with the Democratic party, by this course giving an evidence of their sincerity that they have abandoned the political issues of the past,and were only desirous of inaugurating an honest state government, and restoring a mutual confidence between the races. I give you my opinion, that had our state adhered to Republican principles, and stood by the platform upon which it was elected, the state to-day would have been upon the highway of prosperity. Peace would have prevailed within her borders, and the Republican party would have embraced within her folds thousands of the best and purest citizens of which Mississippi can boast,and the election just passed would have been a Republican victory of not less than eighty to a hundred thousand majority; but the dishonest course which has been pursued has forced into silence and retirement nearly all of the leading Republicans who organized, and have heretofore led the party to victory. A few who have been bold enough to stand by Republican principle, and condemn dishonesty, corruption, and incompetency have been supported and elected by overwhelming majorities. If the state administration had adhered to Republican principles, advanced patriotic measures, appointed only honest and competent men to office, and sought to restore confidence between the races, bloodshed would have been unknown, peace would have prevailed, Federal interference been unthought of; harmony, friendship, and mutual confidence would have taken the place of the bayonet. . . .
H. R. REVELS.
Other notable letters written to the President by prominent Republicans shortly after the election, and which, like that of Senator Revels's, received much attention at the time, were those of Attorney General Harris and Ham Carter. In each of these letters, the responsibility for the Republican defeat was placed upon Governor Ames. No Democrat ever arraigned his administration with such severity as did these three Republicans, two of whom were colored men. Ex-Attorney
____________________
1
Testimony of Judge W. B. Cunningham, Boutwell Report, p. 844.
2
The letter was first published in the Jackson Daily Times in November,1875. In June, 1876, Mr. Revels testified before the Boutwell committee, and declared that he still stood by that letter. He said: "I believed then, as I do now, that certain imprudent men who called themselves Republicans had broken our party down, and after the defeat they rushed to Washington and were trying to mislead the President and throw the blame on the pure Republican party and the innocent old white Republicans, both of whom I felt it my duty as a Christian man to defend." In this connection it is but fair to state that Mr. Revels was likely prompted in some degree by personal prejudice, the governor having removed him from the presidency of Alcorn University.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Noam Chomsky, Future Government
In 1970, in a coffee shop in NY, a linquistics professor from MIT named Noam Chomsky speculated what future Governments might look like.
Before there were neo-conservatives, there was discussion and concern that democracy was in danger and would result in government that was not reflecting the needs of the people. I can't believe how it came about anyway. So I hope you will take time to read this exerpt from his talk, for I am convinced that we will need to ignore alot of corporate sponsored media and seek out real education.
John Dewey asserted that full democracy was to be obtained not just by extending voting rights, but also by ensuring there exists a fully-formed public opinion, accomplished by effective communication among citizens, experts, and politicians, with the latter being held accountable for the policies they adopt. So its up to us to hold Obama accountable.(Ouch the word accountable hurts me)
I mailed Obama this quote from George Washington"It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn.".
Anyway check out this from 1970, its wordy but well worth it
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
There are perfectly obvious processes of centralization of control taking place in both the political and the industrial system. As far as the political system is concerned in every parliamentary democracy, not only ours, the role of parliament in policy formation has been declining in the years since WWII as everyone knows and political commentators repeatedly point out. The executive, in other words, become increasingly powerful as the planning functions of the state become more significant. The house Armed Services Commitee a couple of years ago described the role of Congress as that of a sometimes querulous but essentially kindly uncle, who complains while furiously puffing on his pipe, but who finally, as everyone expects, gives in and hands over the allowance. And careful studies of civil military decisions since WWII show that this is quite an accurate perception. Senator Vandenberg 20 years ago expressed his fear that the American chief executive would become "the number one warlord of the earth". That has since occurred. The clearest decision is the decision to escalate in Vietnam in February 1965 in cynical disregard of the expressed will of the electorate. This incident reveals I think with perfect clarity the role of the public in decisions about peace and war. The role of the public in decisions about the main lines about public policy in general, and it also suggests the irrelevance of electoral politics to major decisions of national policy. [40:13]
Unfortunately you can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place. [applause] The corporate executives and the corporation lawyers and so on who overwhelmingly staff the executive, assisted increasingly by a university based mandarin class, these people remain in power no matter whom you elect and furthermore it is interesting to note that this ruling elite is pretty clear about its social role. [40:37]
As an example take Robert MacNamara, who is the person widely praised in liberal circles for his humanity, his technical brilliance and his campaign to control the military. His views of social organisation, I think, are quite illuminating. He says vital decision making in policy matters as well as bussiness must remain at the top, that is partly though not completely, what the top is for, and he goes on to suggest that this is apparently a divine imperative. [laughter] I quote: "God is clearly democratic. He distributes brain power universally, but he quite justifiably expects us to do something efficient and constructive with that priceless gift. That's what management is all about. [laughter] Management in the end is the most creative of all the arts for its medium is human talent itself. The real threat to democracy comes from undermanagement. The undermanagement of a society is not the respect of liberty. It is simply to let some force other than reason shape reality. If it is not reason that rules man, then man falls short of his potential." So reason, then, is to be identified as the centralization of decision-making at the top in the hands of management. Popular involvement in decision making is a threat to liberty, a violation of reason. Reason is embodied in autocratic tightly managed institutions. Strengthening these institutions within which man can function most efficiently is in his words "the great human adventure of our times." Now all of this has a faintly familiar ring to it and it is the authentic voice of the technical intelligensia, the liberal intelligensia of the technocratic corporate elite in a modern society. [42:16]
There is a parallel process of centralization in economic life. There is a recent FTC report which notes that the 200 largest manufacturing corporations now control about two thirds of all manufacturing assets. At the beginning of WWII the same amount of power was spread over a thousand corporations. I quote the report. It says: "a small industrial elite of huge conglomerate companies is gobbling up American bussiness and largely destroying competitive free enterprise." Furthermore it says "these two hundred corporations are partially linked with each other and with other corporations in ways that may prevent or discourage independent behaviour in market decisions." What is novel about such observations is only their source: the FTC. They are familiar to the point of cliche among left-liberal commentators on American society. [43:05]
The centralization of power also has an international dimension. It has been pointed out that, I am quoting from "Foreign Affairs", "on the basis of the gross value of their output, US enterprises abroad in the aggregate comprised the third largest country in the world, with a gross product greater than that of any country except the United States and the Soviet Union. American firms control over half the automobile industry in England, almost 40% of petroleum in Germany, over 40% of the telegraphic, telephone, electronic and business equipment in France, 75% of the computers. Within a decade, given present trends, more than half of the British exports will be from American owned companies". And furthermore, these are highly concentrated investments: 40% of direct investment in Germany, France and Britain is by three firms, American firms. [44:01]
George Ball has explained that the project of constructing an integrated world economy dominated by American capital, an empire in other words, is no idealistic pipe dream, but a hard headed prediction. It's a role, he says, into which we are being pushed by the imperatives of our own economy. The major instrument being the multinational corporation which George Ball describes as follows: "in its modern form the multinational corporation, or one with worldwide operations and markets, is a distinctly American development. Through such corporations it has become possible for the first time to use the world's resources with maximum efficiency, but there must be greater unification of the world economy to give full play to the benefits of multinational corporations." These multinational corporations are the beneficiary of the mobilization of resources by the federal government and its worldwide operations and markets are backed ultimately by American military force, now based in dozens of countries. It is not difficult to guess who will reap the benefits from the integrated world economy, which is the domain of operation of these American based international economic institutions. [45:04]
Well, at this stage in the discussion one has to mention the specter of communism. What is the threat of communism to this system ? For a clear and cogent answer, one can turn to an extensive study of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and National Planning Association called the "Political Economy of American Foreign Policy", a very important book. It was compiled by a representative segment of the tiny elite that largely sets public policy for whoever is technically in office. In effect, it's as close as you can come to a manifesto of the American ruling class. Here they define the primary threat of communism as "the economic transformation of the communist powers in ways which reduce their willingness or ability to complement the industrial economies of the West." That is the primary threat of communism. Communism, in short, reduces the willingness and ability of underdeveloped countries to function in the world capitalist economy in the manner of for example the Philippines, which has developed a colonial economy of a classic type after 75 years of American tutelage and domination. It's this doctrine which explains why the British economist Joan Robinson describes the American crusade against communism as a crusade against development. [46:23]
The cold war ideology and the international communist conspiracy function in an important way, as essentially a propaganda device, to mobilize support at a particular historical moment for this long time imperial enterprise. In fact, I believe that this is probably the main function of cold war. It serves as a useful device for the managers of the American society and their counterparts in the Soviet Union to control their own populations and their own respective imperial systems. I think that the persistence of the cold war can be in part explained by its utility for the managers of the two great world systems. [46:52]
Well, there is one final element that has to be added to this picture, namely the ongoing militarization of American society. How does this enter in ? To see, one has to look back at WWII and to recall that prior to WWII of course we were deep in the depression. WWII taught an important economic lesson. It taught the lesson that government induced production in a carefully controlled economy, centrally controlled, could overcome the effects of the depression. I think that is what Charles E. Wilson had in mind at the end of 1944 when he proposed that we have a permanent war economy in the postwar world. Of course the trouble is that in a capitalist economy there are only a number of ways in which government intervention can take place. It can't be competitive with the private empires for example, which is to say that there can't be any useful production. In fact it has to be the production of luxury goods. Goods, not capital, not useful commodities, which would be competitive. And unfortunately there is only one category of luxury goods that can be produced endlessly with rapid obsolescence, quickly wasting and no limit on how many of them you can use. We all know what that is. [48:01]
This whole matter is described pretty well by the business historian Alfred Chandler. He describes the economic lessons of WWII as follows: "The government spent far more than the most enthusiastic New Dealer had ever proposed. Most of the output of the expenditures was destroyed or left on the battlefields of Europe and Asia, but the resulting increased demand sent the nation into a period of prosperity, the like of which had never before been seen. Moreover, the supplying of huge armies and navies fighting the most massive war of all time required a tight centralized control of national economy. This effort brought corporate managers to Washington to carry out one of the most complex pieces of economic planning in history. That experience lessened the ideological fears over the government's role in stabilizing the economy." (This is a conservative commentator, I might point out.) It may be added that the ensuing cold war carried further the de-politicization of the American society and created the kind of psychological environment in which the government is able to intervene in part through fiscal policies and in part through public work and public services, but very largely of course through defense spending. [49:16]
In this way, to use Alfred Chandler's words, "the government acts as a coordinator of last resort when managers are unable to maintain a high level of aggregate demand." As another conservative business historian, Joseph Monson, writes, "enlightened corporate managers, far from fearing government intervention in the economy, view the new economics as a technique for increasing corporate viability." Of course, the most cynical use of these ideas is by the managers of the publicly subsidized war industries. There was a remarkable series in the Washington Post about this about an year ago, by Bernard Nossiter. For example he quoted Samuel Downer, financial vice president of LTV Aerospace, one of the big new conglomerates, who explained why the postwar world must be bolstered by military orders. He said: "It's basic." "Its selling appeal is the defense of the home. This is one of the greatest appeals the politicians have to adjusting the system. If you're the president and you need a control factor in the economy, and you need to sell this factor, you can't sell Harlem and Watts, but you can sell self-preservation, a new environment. We are going to increase defense budgets as long as those bastards in Russia are ahead of us. The American people understand this." Of course, those bastards aren't exactly ahead of us in this deadly and cynical game, but that is only a minor embarrassment to the thesis. In times of need we can always follow Dean Rusk, Hubert Humphrey and other luminaries and appeal to the billion Chinese armed with to the teeth and setting out on world conquest. [laughter] [50:43]
Again I want to emphasize the role in this system of the Cold War as a technique of domestic control, a technique for developing the psychological climate of paranoia and psychosis in which the tax payer will be willing to provide an enormous, endless subsidy to the technologically advanced sectors of the American industry and the corporations that dominate this increasingly centralized system.
Before there were neo-conservatives, there was discussion and concern that democracy was in danger and would result in government that was not reflecting the needs of the people. I can't believe how it came about anyway. So I hope you will take time to read this exerpt from his talk, for I am convinced that we will need to ignore alot of corporate sponsored media and seek out real education.
John Dewey asserted that full democracy was to be obtained not just by extending voting rights, but also by ensuring there exists a fully-formed public opinion, accomplished by effective communication among citizens, experts, and politicians, with the latter being held accountable for the policies they adopt. So its up to us to hold Obama accountable.(Ouch the word accountable hurts me)
I mailed Obama this quote from George Washington"It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn.".
Anyway check out this from 1970, its wordy but well worth it
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
There are perfectly obvious processes of centralization of control taking place in both the political and the industrial system. As far as the political system is concerned in every parliamentary democracy, not only ours, the role of parliament in policy formation has been declining in the years since WWII as everyone knows and political commentators repeatedly point out. The executive, in other words, become increasingly powerful as the planning functions of the state become more significant. The house Armed Services Commitee a couple of years ago described the role of Congress as that of a sometimes querulous but essentially kindly uncle, who complains while furiously puffing on his pipe, but who finally, as everyone expects, gives in and hands over the allowance. And careful studies of civil military decisions since WWII show that this is quite an accurate perception. Senator Vandenberg 20 years ago expressed his fear that the American chief executive would become "the number one warlord of the earth". That has since occurred. The clearest decision is the decision to escalate in Vietnam in February 1965 in cynical disregard of the expressed will of the electorate. This incident reveals I think with perfect clarity the role of the public in decisions about peace and war. The role of the public in decisions about the main lines about public policy in general, and it also suggests the irrelevance of electoral politics to major decisions of national policy. [40:13]
Unfortunately you can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place. [applause] The corporate executives and the corporation lawyers and so on who overwhelmingly staff the executive, assisted increasingly by a university based mandarin class, these people remain in power no matter whom you elect and furthermore it is interesting to note that this ruling elite is pretty clear about its social role. [40:37]
As an example take Robert MacNamara, who is the person widely praised in liberal circles for his humanity, his technical brilliance and his campaign to control the military. His views of social organisation, I think, are quite illuminating. He says vital decision making in policy matters as well as bussiness must remain at the top, that is partly though not completely, what the top is for, and he goes on to suggest that this is apparently a divine imperative. [laughter] I quote: "God is clearly democratic. He distributes brain power universally, but he quite justifiably expects us to do something efficient and constructive with that priceless gift. That's what management is all about. [laughter] Management in the end is the most creative of all the arts for its medium is human talent itself. The real threat to democracy comes from undermanagement. The undermanagement of a society is not the respect of liberty. It is simply to let some force other than reason shape reality. If it is not reason that rules man, then man falls short of his potential." So reason, then, is to be identified as the centralization of decision-making at the top in the hands of management. Popular involvement in decision making is a threat to liberty, a violation of reason. Reason is embodied in autocratic tightly managed institutions. Strengthening these institutions within which man can function most efficiently is in his words "the great human adventure of our times." Now all of this has a faintly familiar ring to it and it is the authentic voice of the technical intelligensia, the liberal intelligensia of the technocratic corporate elite in a modern society. [42:16]
There is a parallel process of centralization in economic life. There is a recent FTC report which notes that the 200 largest manufacturing corporations now control about two thirds of all manufacturing assets. At the beginning of WWII the same amount of power was spread over a thousand corporations. I quote the report. It says: "a small industrial elite of huge conglomerate companies is gobbling up American bussiness and largely destroying competitive free enterprise." Furthermore it says "these two hundred corporations are partially linked with each other and with other corporations in ways that may prevent or discourage independent behaviour in market decisions." What is novel about such observations is only their source: the FTC. They are familiar to the point of cliche among left-liberal commentators on American society. [43:05]
The centralization of power also has an international dimension. It has been pointed out that, I am quoting from "Foreign Affairs", "on the basis of the gross value of their output, US enterprises abroad in the aggregate comprised the third largest country in the world, with a gross product greater than that of any country except the United States and the Soviet Union. American firms control over half the automobile industry in England, almost 40% of petroleum in Germany, over 40% of the telegraphic, telephone, electronic and business equipment in France, 75% of the computers. Within a decade, given present trends, more than half of the British exports will be from American owned companies". And furthermore, these are highly concentrated investments: 40% of direct investment in Germany, France and Britain is by three firms, American firms. [44:01]
George Ball has explained that the project of constructing an integrated world economy dominated by American capital, an empire in other words, is no idealistic pipe dream, but a hard headed prediction. It's a role, he says, into which we are being pushed by the imperatives of our own economy. The major instrument being the multinational corporation which George Ball describes as follows: "in its modern form the multinational corporation, or one with worldwide operations and markets, is a distinctly American development. Through such corporations it has become possible for the first time to use the world's resources with maximum efficiency, but there must be greater unification of the world economy to give full play to the benefits of multinational corporations." These multinational corporations are the beneficiary of the mobilization of resources by the federal government and its worldwide operations and markets are backed ultimately by American military force, now based in dozens of countries. It is not difficult to guess who will reap the benefits from the integrated world economy, which is the domain of operation of these American based international economic institutions. [45:04]
Well, at this stage in the discussion one has to mention the specter of communism. What is the threat of communism to this system ? For a clear and cogent answer, one can turn to an extensive study of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and National Planning Association called the "Political Economy of American Foreign Policy", a very important book. It was compiled by a representative segment of the tiny elite that largely sets public policy for whoever is technically in office. In effect, it's as close as you can come to a manifesto of the American ruling class. Here they define the primary threat of communism as "the economic transformation of the communist powers in ways which reduce their willingness or ability to complement the industrial economies of the West." That is the primary threat of communism. Communism, in short, reduces the willingness and ability of underdeveloped countries to function in the world capitalist economy in the manner of for example the Philippines, which has developed a colonial economy of a classic type after 75 years of American tutelage and domination. It's this doctrine which explains why the British economist Joan Robinson describes the American crusade against communism as a crusade against development. [46:23]
The cold war ideology and the international communist conspiracy function in an important way, as essentially a propaganda device, to mobilize support at a particular historical moment for this long time imperial enterprise. In fact, I believe that this is probably the main function of cold war. It serves as a useful device for the managers of the American society and their counterparts in the Soviet Union to control their own populations and their own respective imperial systems. I think that the persistence of the cold war can be in part explained by its utility for the managers of the two great world systems. [46:52]
Well, there is one final element that has to be added to this picture, namely the ongoing militarization of American society. How does this enter in ? To see, one has to look back at WWII and to recall that prior to WWII of course we were deep in the depression. WWII taught an important economic lesson. It taught the lesson that government induced production in a carefully controlled economy, centrally controlled, could overcome the effects of the depression. I think that is what Charles E. Wilson had in mind at the end of 1944 when he proposed that we have a permanent war economy in the postwar world. Of course the trouble is that in a capitalist economy there are only a number of ways in which government intervention can take place. It can't be competitive with the private empires for example, which is to say that there can't be any useful production. In fact it has to be the production of luxury goods. Goods, not capital, not useful commodities, which would be competitive. And unfortunately there is only one category of luxury goods that can be produced endlessly with rapid obsolescence, quickly wasting and no limit on how many of them you can use. We all know what that is. [48:01]
This whole matter is described pretty well by the business historian Alfred Chandler. He describes the economic lessons of WWII as follows: "The government spent far more than the most enthusiastic New Dealer had ever proposed. Most of the output of the expenditures was destroyed or left on the battlefields of Europe and Asia, but the resulting increased demand sent the nation into a period of prosperity, the like of which had never before been seen. Moreover, the supplying of huge armies and navies fighting the most massive war of all time required a tight centralized control of national economy. This effort brought corporate managers to Washington to carry out one of the most complex pieces of economic planning in history. That experience lessened the ideological fears over the government's role in stabilizing the economy." (This is a conservative commentator, I might point out.) It may be added that the ensuing cold war carried further the de-politicization of the American society and created the kind of psychological environment in which the government is able to intervene in part through fiscal policies and in part through public work and public services, but very largely of course through defense spending. [49:16]
In this way, to use Alfred Chandler's words, "the government acts as a coordinator of last resort when managers are unable to maintain a high level of aggregate demand." As another conservative business historian, Joseph Monson, writes, "enlightened corporate managers, far from fearing government intervention in the economy, view the new economics as a technique for increasing corporate viability." Of course, the most cynical use of these ideas is by the managers of the publicly subsidized war industries. There was a remarkable series in the Washington Post about this about an year ago, by Bernard Nossiter. For example he quoted Samuel Downer, financial vice president of LTV Aerospace, one of the big new conglomerates, who explained why the postwar world must be bolstered by military orders. He said: "It's basic." "Its selling appeal is the defense of the home. This is one of the greatest appeals the politicians have to adjusting the system. If you're the president and you need a control factor in the economy, and you need to sell this factor, you can't sell Harlem and Watts, but you can sell self-preservation, a new environment. We are going to increase defense budgets as long as those bastards in Russia are ahead of us. The American people understand this." Of course, those bastards aren't exactly ahead of us in this deadly and cynical game, but that is only a minor embarrassment to the thesis. In times of need we can always follow Dean Rusk, Hubert Humphrey and other luminaries and appeal to the billion Chinese armed with to the teeth and setting out on world conquest. [laughter] [50:43]
Again I want to emphasize the role in this system of the Cold War as a technique of domestic control, a technique for developing the psychological climate of paranoia and psychosis in which the tax payer will be willing to provide an enormous, endless subsidy to the technologically advanced sectors of the American industry and the corporations that dominate this increasingly centralized system.
Monday, February 16, 2009
John Maynard Keynes, 'National Self-Sufficiency,'
My Next Few Posts will be clips of history and the voices that said what we should never forget. Here is the economist, John Maynard Keynes, speaking in the wake of the great depression. It is deja vu. The free market ideal was questioned severely. Keynes recommended that governments experiment, and take different approaches to establish self sufficiency. We see this all over the world in how governments infuse socialism in careful controlled ways and likewise carefully control capitalism with regulation. Well we see what happens when we don't.
June 1933
I was brought up, like most Englishmen, to respect free trade not only as an economic doctrine which a rational and instructed person could not doubt, but almost as a part of the moral law. I regarded ordinary departures from it as being at the same time an imbecility and an outrage. I thought England's unshakable free trade convictions, maintained for nearly a hundred years, to be both the explanation before man and the justification before Heaven of her economic supremacy. As lately as 1923 I was writing that free trade was based on fundamental "truths" which, stated with their due qualifications, no one can dispute who is capable of understanding the meaning of the words."
Looking again to-day at the statements of these fundarmental truths which I then gave, I do not find myself disputing them. Yet the orientation of my mind is changed; and I share this change of mind with many others. Partly, indeed my background of economic theory is modified; I should not charge Mr. Baldwin, as I did then, with being "a victim of the Protectionist fallacy in its crudest form" because he believed that, in the existing conditions, a tariff might do something to diminish British unemployment. But mainly I attribute my change of outlook to something else--to my hopes and fears and preoccupations, along with those of many or most, I believe, of this generation throughout the world, being different from what they were. It is a long business to shuffle out of the mental habits of the prewar nineteenth-century world. It is astonishing what a bundle of obsolete habiliments one's mind drags round even after the centre of consciousness has been shifted. But to-day at last, one-third of the way through the twentieth century, we are most of us escaping from the nineteenth; and by the time we reach its mid point, it may be that our habits of mind and what we care about will be as different from nineteenth-century methods and values as each other century's has been from its predecessor's.
It miy be useful, therefore, to attempt some sort of a stocktaking, of an analysis, of a diagnosis to discover in what this change of mind essentially consists, and finally to inquire whether, in the confusion of mind which still envelops this new-found enthusiasm of change, we may not be running an unnecessary risk of pouring out with the slops and the swill some pearls of characteristic nineteenth century wisdom.
What did the nineteenth-century free traders, who were among the most idealistic and disinterested of men, believe that they were accomplishing?
They believed--and perhaps it is fair to put this first--that they were being perfectly sensible, that they alone of men were clear-sighted, and that the policies which sought to interfere with the ideal international division of labor were always the offspring of ignorance out of self-interest.
In the second place, they believed that they were solving the problem of poverty, and solving it for the world as a whole, by putting to their best uses, like a good housekeeper, the world's resources and abilities.
They believed, further, that they were serving, not merely the survival of the economically fittest, but the great cause of liberty, of freedom for personal initiative and individual gift, the cause of inventive art and the glorious fertility of the untrammelled mind against the forces of privilege and monopoly and obsolescence.
They believed, finally, that they were the friends and assurers of peace and international concord and economic justice between nations and the diffusers of the benefits of progress.
And if to the poet of that age there sometimes came strange desires to wander far away where never comes the trader and catch the wild goat by the hair, there came also with full assurance the comfortable reaction--
I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!
What fault have we to find with this? Taking it at its surface value--none. Yet we are not, many of us, content with it as a working political theory. What is wrong? We shall discover the source of our doubts, I think, not through a frontal attack, but by perambulation--by wandering round a different way to find the place of our political heart's desire.
To begin with the question of peace. We are pacifist today with so much strength of conviction that, if the econornic internationalist could win this point, he would soon recapture our support. But it does not now seem obvious that a great concentration of national effort on the capture of foreign trade, that the penetration of a country's economic structure by the resources and the influence of foreign capitalists, and that a close dependence of our own economic life on the fluctuating economic policies of foreign countries are safeguards and assurances of international peace. It is easier, in the light of experience and foresight, to argue quite the contrary. The protection of a country's existing foreign interests, the capture of new markets, the progress of economic imperialism--these are a scarcely avoidable part of a scheme of things which aims at the maximum of international specialization and at the maximum geographical diffusion of capital wherever its seat of ownership. Advisable domestic policies might often be easier to compass, if the phenomenon known as "the flight of capital" could be ruled out. The divorce between ownership and the real responsibility of management is serious within a country, when, as a result of joint stock enterprise, ownership is broken up among innumerable individuals who buy their interest to-day and sell it to-morrow and lack altogether both knowledge and responsibility towards what they momentarily own. But when the same principle is applied internationally, it is, in times of stress, intolerable--I am irresponsible towards what I own and those who operate what I own are irresponsible towards me. There may be some financial calculation which shows it to be advantageous that my savings should be invested in whatever quarter of the habitable globe shows the greatest marginal efficiency of capital or the highest rate of interest. But experience is accumulating that remoteness between ownership and operation is an evil in the relations among men, likely or certain in the long run to set up strains and enmities which will bring to nought the financial calculation.
I sympathize, therefore, with those who would minimize, rather than with those who would maximize, economic entanglement among nations. Ideas, knowledge, science, hospitality, travel--these are the things which should of their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible, and, above all, let finance be primarily national. Yet, at the same time, those who seek to disembarrass a country of its entanglements should be very slow and wary. It should not be a matter of tearing up roots but of slowly training a plant to grow in a different direction.
For these strong reasons, therefore, I am inclined to the belief that, after the transition is accomplished, a greater measure of national self-sufficiency and economic isolation among countries than existed in 1914 may tend to serve the cause of peace, rather than otherwise. At any rate, the age of economic internationalism was not particularly successful in avoiding war; and if its friends retort, that the imperfection of its success never gave it a fair chance, it is reasonable to point out that a greater success is scarcely probable in the coming years.
Let us turn from these questions of doubtful judgment, where each of us will remain entitled to his own opinion, to a matter more purely economic. In the nineteenth century the economic internationalist could probably claim with justice that his policy was tending to the world's great enrichrnent, that it was promoting economic progress, and that its reversal would have seriously impoverished both ourselves and our neighbors. This raises a question of balance between economic and non-economic advantage which is never easily decided. Poverty is a great evil; and economic advantage is a real good, not to be sacrificed to alternative real goods unless it is clearly of an inferior weight. I am ready to believe that in the nineteenth century two sets of conditions existed which caused the advantages of economic internationalism to outweigh disadvantages of a different kind. At a time when wholesale migrations were populating new continents, it was natural that the men should carry with them into the New Worlds the material fruits of the technique of the Old, embodying the savings of those who were sending them. The investment of British savings in rails and rolling stock to be installed by British engineers to carry British emigrants to new fields and pastures, the fruits of which they would return in due proportion to those whose frugality had made these things possible, was not economic internationalism remotely resembling in its essence the part ownership of a German corporation by a speculator in Chicago, or of the municipal improvements of Rio Janeiro by an English spinster. Yet it was the type of organization necessary to facilitate the former which has eventually ended up in the latter. In the second place, at a time when there were enormous differences in degree in the industrialization and opportunities for technical training in different countries, the advantages of a high degree of national specialization were very considerable.
But I am not persuaded that the economic advantages of the international division of labor to-day are at all comparable with what they were. I must not be understood to carry my argument beyond a certain point. A considerable degree of international specialization is necessary in a rational world in all cases where it is dictated by wide differences of climate, natural resources, native aptitudes, level of culture and density of population. But over an increasingly wide range of industrial products, and perhaps of agricultural products also, I have become doubtful whether the economic loss of national self-sufficiency is great enough to outweigh the other advantages of gradually bringing the product and the consumer within the ambit of the same national, economic, and financial organization. Experience accumulates to prove that most modem processes of mass production can be performed in most countries and climates with almost equal efficiency. Moreover, with greater wealth, both primary and manufactured products play a smaller relative part in the national economy compared with houses, personal services, and local amenities, which are not equally available for international exchange; with the result that a moderate increase in the real cost of primary and manufactured products consequent on greater national self-sufficiency may cease to be of serious consequence when weighed in the balance against advantages of a different kind. National self-sufficiency, in short, though it costs something, may be becoming a luxury which we can afford, if we happen to want it.
Are there sufficient good reasons why we may happen to want it? There are many friends of mine, nurtured in the old school and reasonably offended by the waste and economic loss attendant on contemporary economic nationalism in being, to whom the tendency of these remarks will be pain and grief. Yet let me try to indicate to them in term's with which they may sympathize the reasons which I think I see.
The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war, is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous--and it doesn't deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.
Each year it becomes more obvious that the world is embarking on a variety of politico-economic experiments, and that different types of experiment appeal to different national temperaments and historical environments. The nineteenth-century free trader's economic internationalism assumed that the whole world was, or would be, organized on a basis of private competitive capitalism and of the freedom of private contract inviolably protected by the sanctions of law--in various phases, of course, of complexity and development, but conforming to a uniform type which it would be the general object to perfect and certainly not to destroy. Nineteenth-century protectionism was a blot upon the efficiency and good sense of this scheme of things, but it did not modify the general presumption as to the fundamental characteristics of economic society.
But to-day one country after another abandons these presumptions. Russia is still alone in her particular experimerit, but no longer alone in her abandonment of the old presumptions. Italy, Ireland, Germany have cast their eyes, or are casting them, towards new modes of political econamy. Many more countries after them, I predict, will seek, one by one, after new economic gods. Even countries such as Great Britain and the United States, which still conform par excellence to the old model, are striving, under the surface, after a new economic plan. We do not know what will be the outcome. We are--all of us, I expect--about to make many mistakes. No one can tell which of the new systems will prove itself best.
But the point for my present discussion is this. We each have our own fancy. Not believing that we are saved already, we each should like to have a try at working out our own salvation. We do not wish, therefore, to be at the mercy of world forces working out, or trying to work out, some uniform equilibrium according to the ideal principles, if they can be called such, of laissez-faire capitalism. There are still those who cling to the old ideas, but in no country of the world to-day can they be reckoned as a serious force. We wish--for the time at least and so long as the present transitional, experimental phase endures--to be our own masters, and to be as free as we can make ourselves from the interferences of the outside world.
Thus, regarded from this point of view, the policy of an increased national self-sufficiency is to be considered, not as an ideal in itself, but as directed to the creation of an environment in which other ideals can be safely and conveniently pursued.
Let me give as dry an illustration of this as I can devise, chosen because it is connected with ideas with which recently my own mind has been largely preoccupied. In matters of economic detail, as distinct from the central controls, I am in favor of retaining as much private judgment and initiative and enterprise as possible. But I have become convinced that the retention of the structure of private enterprise is incompatible with that degree of material well-being to which our technical advancement entitles us, unless the rate of interest falls to a much lower figure than is likely to come about by natural forces operating on the old lines. Indeed, the transformation of society, which I preferably envisage, may require a reduction in the rate of interest towards vanishing point within the next thirty years. But under a system by which the rate of interest finds a uniform level, after allowing for risk and the like, throughout the world under the operation of normal financial forces, this is most unlikely to occur. Thus for a complexity of reasons, which I cannot elaborate in this place, economic internationalism embracing the free movement of capital and of loanable funds as well as of traded goods may condemn my own country for a generation to come to a much lower degree of material prosperity than could be attained under a different system.
But this is merely an illustration. It is my central contention that there is no prospect for the next generation of a uniformity of economic system throughout the world, such as existed, broadly speaking, during the nineteenth century; that we all need to be as free as possible of interference from economic changes elsewhere, in order to make our own favorite experiments towards the ideal social republic of the future; and that a deliberate movement towards greater national self-sufficiency and economic isolation will make our task easier, in so far as it can be accomplished without excessive economic cost.
There is one more explanation, I think, of the re-orientation of our minds. The nineteenth century carried to extravagant lengths the criterion of what one can call for short "the financial results," as a test of the advisability of any course of action sponsored by private or by collective action. The whole conduct of life was made into a sort of parody of an accountant's nightmare. Instead of using their vastly increased material and technical resources to build a wonder city, the men of the nineteenth century built slums; and they thought it right and advisable to build slums because slums, on the test of private enterprise, "paid," whereas the wonder city would, they thought, have been an act of foolish extravagance, which would, in the imbecile idiom of the financial fashion, have "mortgaged the future"--though how the construction to-day of great and glorious works can impoverish the future, no man can see until his mind is beset by false analogies from an irrelevant accountancy. Even to-day I spend my time--half vainly, but also, I must admit, half successfully--in trying to persuade my countrymen that the nation as a whole will assuredly be richer if unemployed men and machines are used to build much needed houses than if they are supported in idleness. For the minds of this generation are still so beclouded by bogus calculations that they distrust conclusions which should be obvious, out of a reliance on a system of financial accounting which casts doubt on whether such an operation will "pay." We have to remain poor because it does not "pay" to be rich. We have to live in hovels, not because we cannot build palaces but because we cannot "afford" them.
The same rule of self-destructive financial calculation governs every walk of life. We destroy the beauty of the countryside because the unappropriated splendors of nature have no economic value. We are capable of shutting off the sun and the stars because they do not pay a dividend. London is one of the richest cities in the history of civilization, but it cannot "afford" the highest standards of achievement of which its own living citizens are capable, because they do not "pay."
If I had the power to-day, I should most deliberately set out to endow our capital cities with all the appurtenances of art and civilization on the highest standards of which the citizens of each were individually capable, convinced that what I could create, I could afford--and believing that money thus spent not only would be better than any dole but would make unnecessary any dole. For with what we have spent on the dole in England since the war we could have made our cities the greatest works of man in the world.
Or again, we have until recently conceived it a moral duty to ruin the tillers of the soil and destroy the age-long human traditions attendant on husbandry, if we could get a loaf of bread thereby a tenth of a penny cheaper. There was nothing which it was not our duty to sacrifice to this Moloch and Mammon in one; for we faithfully believed that the worship of these monsters would overcome the evil of poverty and lead the next generation safely and comfortably, on the back of compound interest, into economic peace.
To-day we suffer disillusion, not because we are poorer than we were--on the contrary, even to-day we enjoy, in Great Britain at least, a higher standard of life than at any previous period--but because other values seem to have been sacrificed and because they seem to have been sacrificed unnecessarily, inasmuch as our economic system is not, in fact, enabling us to exploit to the utmost the possibilities for economic wealth afforded by the progress of our technique, but falls far short of this, leading us to feel that we might as well have used up the margin in more satisfying ways.
But once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the test of an accountant's profit, we have begun to change our civilization. And we need to do so very warily, cautiously, and self-consciously. For there is a wide field of human activity where we shall be wise to retain the usual pecuniary tests. It is the state, rather than the individual, which needs to change its criterion. It is the conception of the Secretary of the Treasury as the chairman of a sort of joint stock company which has to be discarded. Now, if the functions and purposes of the state are to be thus enlarged, the decision as to what, broadly speaking, shall be produced within the nation and what shall be exchanged with abroad, must stand high among the objects of policy.
From these reflections on the proper purposes of the state, I return to the world of contemporary politics. Having sought to understand and to do full justice to the ideas which underlie the urge felt by so many countries to-day towards greater national self-sufficiency, we have to consider with care whether in practice we are not too easily discarding much of value which the nineteenth century achieved. In those countries where the advocates of national self sufficiency have attained power, it appears to my judgment that, without exception, many foolish things are being done. Mussolini, perhaps, is acquiring wisdom teeth. But Russia to-day exhibits the worst example which the world, perhaps, has ever seen, of administrative incompetence and of the sacrifice of almost everything that makes life worth living to wooden heads. Germany is at the mercy of unchained irresponsibles--though it is too soon to judge her. The Irish Free State, a unit much too small for a high degree of national self-sufficiency except at great economic cost, is discussing plans which might, if they were carried out, be ruinous.
Meanwhile those countries which maintain or are adopting straightforward protectionism of the old-fashioned type, refurbished with the addition of a few of the new plan quotas, are doing many things incapable of rational defense. Thus, if the World Economic Conference achieves a mutual reduction of tariffs and prepares the way for regional agreements, it will be matter for sincere applause. For I must not be supposed to be endorsing all those things which are being done in the political world to-day in the name of economic nationalism. Far from it. But I bring my criticisms to bear, as one whose heart is friendly and sympathetic to the desperate experiments of the contemporary world, who wishes them well and would like them to succeed, who has his own experiments in view, and who in the last resort prefers anything on earth to what the financial reports are wont to call "the best opinion in Wall Street." And I seek to point out that the world towards which we are uneasily moving is quite different from the ideal economic internationalism of our fathers, and that contemporary policies must not be judged on the maxims of that former faith.
I see three outstanding dangers in economic nationalism and in the movements towards national self-sufficiency, imperilling their success.
The first is Silliness--the silliness of the doctrinaire. It is nothing strange to discover this in movements which have passed somewhat suddenly from the phase of midnight high-flown talk into the field of action. We do not distinguish, at first, between the color of the rhetoric with which we have won a people's assent and the dull substance of the truth of our message. There is nothing insincere in the transition. Words ought to be a little wild--for they are the assault of thoughts upon the unthinking. But when the seats of power and authority have been attained, there should be no more poetic license.
We have, therefore, to count the cost down to the penny which our rhetoric has despised. An experimental society has need to be far more efficient than an old-established one, if it is to survive safely. It will need all its economic margin for its own proper purposes, and can afford to give nothing away to soft-headedness or doctrinaire impracticability. When a doctrinaire proceeds to action, he must, so to speak, forget his doctrine. For those who in action remember the letter will probably lose what they are seeking.
The second danger--and a worse danger than silliness--is Haste. Paul Valery's aphorism is worth quoting: "Political conflicts distort and disturb the people's sense of distinction between matters of importance and matters of urgency." The economic transition of a society is a thing to be accomplished slowly. What I have been discussing is not a sudden revolution, but the direction of secular trend. We have a fearful example in Russia to-day of the evils of insane and unnecessary haste. The sacrifices and losses of transition will be vastly greater if the pace is forced. I do not believe in the inevitability of gradualness, but I do believe in gradualness. This is, above all, true of a transition towards greater national self-sufficiency and a planned domestic economy. For it is of the nature of economic processes to be rooted in time. A rapid transition will involve so much pure destruction of wealth that the new state of affairs will be, at first, far worse than the old; and the
grand experiment will be discredited. For men judge remorselessly by results, and by early results, too.
The third risk, and the worst risk of all three, is Intolerance and the stifling of instructed criticism. The new movements have usually come into power through a phase of violence or quasi-violence. They have not convinced their opponents; they have downed them. It is the modern method--but very disastrous, I am still old-fashioned enough to believe--to depend on propaganda and to seize the organs of opinion; it is thought to be clever and useful to fossilize thought and to use all the forces of authority to paralyze the play of mind on mind. For those who have found it necessary to employ all methods whatever to attain power, it is a serious temptation to continue to use for the task of construction the same dangerous tools which wrought the preliminary housebreaking.
Russia, again furnishes us with an example of the crushing blunders which a régime makes when it has exempted itself from criticism. The explanation of the incompetence with which wars are always conducted on both sides may be found in the comparative exemption from criticism which the military hierarchy affords to the high command. I have no excessive admiration for politicians, but, brought up as they are in the very breath of criticism, how much superior they are to the soldiers! Revolutions only succeed because they are conducted by politicians against soldiers. Paradox though it be--who ever heard of a successful revolution conducted by soldiers against politicians? But we all hate criticism. Nothing but rooted principle will cause us willingly to expose ourselves to it.
Yet the new economic modes, towards which we are blundering, are, in the essence of their nature, experiments. We have no clear idea laid up in our minds beforehand of exactly what we want. We shall discover it as we move along, and we shall have to mould our material in accordance with our experience. Now for this process bold, free, and remorseless criticism is a sine qua non of ultimate success. We heed the collaboration of all the bright spirits of he age. Stalin has eliminated every independent, critical mnd, even those sympathetic in general outlook. He has produced an environment in which the processes of mind are atrophied. The soft convolutions of the brain are turned to wood. The multiplied bray of the loud-speaker replaces the soft inflections of the human voice. The bleat of propaganda bores even the birds and the beasts of the field into stupefaction. Let Stalin be a terrifying example to all who seek to make experiments. If not, I, at any rate, will soon be back again in my old nineteenth-century ideals, where the play of mind on mind created for us the inheritance we to-day, enriched by what our fathers procured for us, are seeking to divert to our own appropriate purposes.
June 1933
I was brought up, like most Englishmen, to respect free trade not only as an economic doctrine which a rational and instructed person could not doubt, but almost as a part of the moral law. I regarded ordinary departures from it as being at the same time an imbecility and an outrage. I thought England's unshakable free trade convictions, maintained for nearly a hundred years, to be both the explanation before man and the justification before Heaven of her economic supremacy. As lately as 1923 I was writing that free trade was based on fundamental "truths" which, stated with their due qualifications, no one can dispute who is capable of understanding the meaning of the words."
Looking again to-day at the statements of these fundarmental truths which I then gave, I do not find myself disputing them. Yet the orientation of my mind is changed; and I share this change of mind with many others. Partly, indeed my background of economic theory is modified; I should not charge Mr. Baldwin, as I did then, with being "a victim of the Protectionist fallacy in its crudest form" because he believed that, in the existing conditions, a tariff might do something to diminish British unemployment. But mainly I attribute my change of outlook to something else--to my hopes and fears and preoccupations, along with those of many or most, I believe, of this generation throughout the world, being different from what they were. It is a long business to shuffle out of the mental habits of the prewar nineteenth-century world. It is astonishing what a bundle of obsolete habiliments one's mind drags round even after the centre of consciousness has been shifted. But to-day at last, one-third of the way through the twentieth century, we are most of us escaping from the nineteenth; and by the time we reach its mid point, it may be that our habits of mind and what we care about will be as different from nineteenth-century methods and values as each other century's has been from its predecessor's.
It miy be useful, therefore, to attempt some sort of a stocktaking, of an analysis, of a diagnosis to discover in what this change of mind essentially consists, and finally to inquire whether, in the confusion of mind which still envelops this new-found enthusiasm of change, we may not be running an unnecessary risk of pouring out with the slops and the swill some pearls of characteristic nineteenth century wisdom.
What did the nineteenth-century free traders, who were among the most idealistic and disinterested of men, believe that they were accomplishing?
They believed--and perhaps it is fair to put this first--that they were being perfectly sensible, that they alone of men were clear-sighted, and that the policies which sought to interfere with the ideal international division of labor were always the offspring of ignorance out of self-interest.
In the second place, they believed that they were solving the problem of poverty, and solving it for the world as a whole, by putting to their best uses, like a good housekeeper, the world's resources and abilities.
They believed, further, that they were serving, not merely the survival of the economically fittest, but the great cause of liberty, of freedom for personal initiative and individual gift, the cause of inventive art and the glorious fertility of the untrammelled mind against the forces of privilege and monopoly and obsolescence.
They believed, finally, that they were the friends and assurers of peace and international concord and economic justice between nations and the diffusers of the benefits of progress.
And if to the poet of that age there sometimes came strange desires to wander far away where never comes the trader and catch the wild goat by the hair, there came also with full assurance the comfortable reaction--
I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!
What fault have we to find with this? Taking it at its surface value--none. Yet we are not, many of us, content with it as a working political theory. What is wrong? We shall discover the source of our doubts, I think, not through a frontal attack, but by perambulation--by wandering round a different way to find the place of our political heart's desire.
To begin with the question of peace. We are pacifist today with so much strength of conviction that, if the econornic internationalist could win this point, he would soon recapture our support. But it does not now seem obvious that a great concentration of national effort on the capture of foreign trade, that the penetration of a country's economic structure by the resources and the influence of foreign capitalists, and that a close dependence of our own economic life on the fluctuating economic policies of foreign countries are safeguards and assurances of international peace. It is easier, in the light of experience and foresight, to argue quite the contrary. The protection of a country's existing foreign interests, the capture of new markets, the progress of economic imperialism--these are a scarcely avoidable part of a scheme of things which aims at the maximum of international specialization and at the maximum geographical diffusion of capital wherever its seat of ownership. Advisable domestic policies might often be easier to compass, if the phenomenon known as "the flight of capital" could be ruled out. The divorce between ownership and the real responsibility of management is serious within a country, when, as a result of joint stock enterprise, ownership is broken up among innumerable individuals who buy their interest to-day and sell it to-morrow and lack altogether both knowledge and responsibility towards what they momentarily own. But when the same principle is applied internationally, it is, in times of stress, intolerable--I am irresponsible towards what I own and those who operate what I own are irresponsible towards me. There may be some financial calculation which shows it to be advantageous that my savings should be invested in whatever quarter of the habitable globe shows the greatest marginal efficiency of capital or the highest rate of interest. But experience is accumulating that remoteness between ownership and operation is an evil in the relations among men, likely or certain in the long run to set up strains and enmities which will bring to nought the financial calculation.
I sympathize, therefore, with those who would minimize, rather than with those who would maximize, economic entanglement among nations. Ideas, knowledge, science, hospitality, travel--these are the things which should of their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible, and, above all, let finance be primarily national. Yet, at the same time, those who seek to disembarrass a country of its entanglements should be very slow and wary. It should not be a matter of tearing up roots but of slowly training a plant to grow in a different direction.
For these strong reasons, therefore, I am inclined to the belief that, after the transition is accomplished, a greater measure of national self-sufficiency and economic isolation among countries than existed in 1914 may tend to serve the cause of peace, rather than otherwise. At any rate, the age of economic internationalism was not particularly successful in avoiding war; and if its friends retort, that the imperfection of its success never gave it a fair chance, it is reasonable to point out that a greater success is scarcely probable in the coming years.
Let us turn from these questions of doubtful judgment, where each of us will remain entitled to his own opinion, to a matter more purely economic. In the nineteenth century the economic internationalist could probably claim with justice that his policy was tending to the world's great enrichrnent, that it was promoting economic progress, and that its reversal would have seriously impoverished both ourselves and our neighbors. This raises a question of balance between economic and non-economic advantage which is never easily decided. Poverty is a great evil; and economic advantage is a real good, not to be sacrificed to alternative real goods unless it is clearly of an inferior weight. I am ready to believe that in the nineteenth century two sets of conditions existed which caused the advantages of economic internationalism to outweigh disadvantages of a different kind. At a time when wholesale migrations were populating new continents, it was natural that the men should carry with them into the New Worlds the material fruits of the technique of the Old, embodying the savings of those who were sending them. The investment of British savings in rails and rolling stock to be installed by British engineers to carry British emigrants to new fields and pastures, the fruits of which they would return in due proportion to those whose frugality had made these things possible, was not economic internationalism remotely resembling in its essence the part ownership of a German corporation by a speculator in Chicago, or of the municipal improvements of Rio Janeiro by an English spinster. Yet it was the type of organization necessary to facilitate the former which has eventually ended up in the latter. In the second place, at a time when there were enormous differences in degree in the industrialization and opportunities for technical training in different countries, the advantages of a high degree of national specialization were very considerable.
But I am not persuaded that the economic advantages of the international division of labor to-day are at all comparable with what they were. I must not be understood to carry my argument beyond a certain point. A considerable degree of international specialization is necessary in a rational world in all cases where it is dictated by wide differences of climate, natural resources, native aptitudes, level of culture and density of population. But over an increasingly wide range of industrial products, and perhaps of agricultural products also, I have become doubtful whether the economic loss of national self-sufficiency is great enough to outweigh the other advantages of gradually bringing the product and the consumer within the ambit of the same national, economic, and financial organization. Experience accumulates to prove that most modem processes of mass production can be performed in most countries and climates with almost equal efficiency. Moreover, with greater wealth, both primary and manufactured products play a smaller relative part in the national economy compared with houses, personal services, and local amenities, which are not equally available for international exchange; with the result that a moderate increase in the real cost of primary and manufactured products consequent on greater national self-sufficiency may cease to be of serious consequence when weighed in the balance against advantages of a different kind. National self-sufficiency, in short, though it costs something, may be becoming a luxury which we can afford, if we happen to want it.
Are there sufficient good reasons why we may happen to want it? There are many friends of mine, nurtured in the old school and reasonably offended by the waste and economic loss attendant on contemporary economic nationalism in being, to whom the tendency of these remarks will be pain and grief. Yet let me try to indicate to them in term's with which they may sympathize the reasons which I think I see.
The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war, is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous--and it doesn't deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.
Each year it becomes more obvious that the world is embarking on a variety of politico-economic experiments, and that different types of experiment appeal to different national temperaments and historical environments. The nineteenth-century free trader's economic internationalism assumed that the whole world was, or would be, organized on a basis of private competitive capitalism and of the freedom of private contract inviolably protected by the sanctions of law--in various phases, of course, of complexity and development, but conforming to a uniform type which it would be the general object to perfect and certainly not to destroy. Nineteenth-century protectionism was a blot upon the efficiency and good sense of this scheme of things, but it did not modify the general presumption as to the fundamental characteristics of economic society.
But to-day one country after another abandons these presumptions. Russia is still alone in her particular experimerit, but no longer alone in her abandonment of the old presumptions. Italy, Ireland, Germany have cast their eyes, or are casting them, towards new modes of political econamy. Many more countries after them, I predict, will seek, one by one, after new economic gods. Even countries such as Great Britain and the United States, which still conform par excellence to the old model, are striving, under the surface, after a new economic plan. We do not know what will be the outcome. We are--all of us, I expect--about to make many mistakes. No one can tell which of the new systems will prove itself best.
But the point for my present discussion is this. We each have our own fancy. Not believing that we are saved already, we each should like to have a try at working out our own salvation. We do not wish, therefore, to be at the mercy of world forces working out, or trying to work out, some uniform equilibrium according to the ideal principles, if they can be called such, of laissez-faire capitalism. There are still those who cling to the old ideas, but in no country of the world to-day can they be reckoned as a serious force. We wish--for the time at least and so long as the present transitional, experimental phase endures--to be our own masters, and to be as free as we can make ourselves from the interferences of the outside world.
Thus, regarded from this point of view, the policy of an increased national self-sufficiency is to be considered, not as an ideal in itself, but as directed to the creation of an environment in which other ideals can be safely and conveniently pursued.
Let me give as dry an illustration of this as I can devise, chosen because it is connected with ideas with which recently my own mind has been largely preoccupied. In matters of economic detail, as distinct from the central controls, I am in favor of retaining as much private judgment and initiative and enterprise as possible. But I have become convinced that the retention of the structure of private enterprise is incompatible with that degree of material well-being to which our technical advancement entitles us, unless the rate of interest falls to a much lower figure than is likely to come about by natural forces operating on the old lines. Indeed, the transformation of society, which I preferably envisage, may require a reduction in the rate of interest towards vanishing point within the next thirty years. But under a system by which the rate of interest finds a uniform level, after allowing for risk and the like, throughout the world under the operation of normal financial forces, this is most unlikely to occur. Thus for a complexity of reasons, which I cannot elaborate in this place, economic internationalism embracing the free movement of capital and of loanable funds as well as of traded goods may condemn my own country for a generation to come to a much lower degree of material prosperity than could be attained under a different system.
But this is merely an illustration. It is my central contention that there is no prospect for the next generation of a uniformity of economic system throughout the world, such as existed, broadly speaking, during the nineteenth century; that we all need to be as free as possible of interference from economic changes elsewhere, in order to make our own favorite experiments towards the ideal social republic of the future; and that a deliberate movement towards greater national self-sufficiency and economic isolation will make our task easier, in so far as it can be accomplished without excessive economic cost.
There is one more explanation, I think, of the re-orientation of our minds. The nineteenth century carried to extravagant lengths the criterion of what one can call for short "the financial results," as a test of the advisability of any course of action sponsored by private or by collective action. The whole conduct of life was made into a sort of parody of an accountant's nightmare. Instead of using their vastly increased material and technical resources to build a wonder city, the men of the nineteenth century built slums; and they thought it right and advisable to build slums because slums, on the test of private enterprise, "paid," whereas the wonder city would, they thought, have been an act of foolish extravagance, which would, in the imbecile idiom of the financial fashion, have "mortgaged the future"--though how the construction to-day of great and glorious works can impoverish the future, no man can see until his mind is beset by false analogies from an irrelevant accountancy. Even to-day I spend my time--half vainly, but also, I must admit, half successfully--in trying to persuade my countrymen that the nation as a whole will assuredly be richer if unemployed men and machines are used to build much needed houses than if they are supported in idleness. For the minds of this generation are still so beclouded by bogus calculations that they distrust conclusions which should be obvious, out of a reliance on a system of financial accounting which casts doubt on whether such an operation will "pay." We have to remain poor because it does not "pay" to be rich. We have to live in hovels, not because we cannot build palaces but because we cannot "afford" them.
The same rule of self-destructive financial calculation governs every walk of life. We destroy the beauty of the countryside because the unappropriated splendors of nature have no economic value. We are capable of shutting off the sun and the stars because they do not pay a dividend. London is one of the richest cities in the history of civilization, but it cannot "afford" the highest standards of achievement of which its own living citizens are capable, because they do not "pay."
If I had the power to-day, I should most deliberately set out to endow our capital cities with all the appurtenances of art and civilization on the highest standards of which the citizens of each were individually capable, convinced that what I could create, I could afford--and believing that money thus spent not only would be better than any dole but would make unnecessary any dole. For with what we have spent on the dole in England since the war we could have made our cities the greatest works of man in the world.
Or again, we have until recently conceived it a moral duty to ruin the tillers of the soil and destroy the age-long human traditions attendant on husbandry, if we could get a loaf of bread thereby a tenth of a penny cheaper. There was nothing which it was not our duty to sacrifice to this Moloch and Mammon in one; for we faithfully believed that the worship of these monsters would overcome the evil of poverty and lead the next generation safely and comfortably, on the back of compound interest, into economic peace.
To-day we suffer disillusion, not because we are poorer than we were--on the contrary, even to-day we enjoy, in Great Britain at least, a higher standard of life than at any previous period--but because other values seem to have been sacrificed and because they seem to have been sacrificed unnecessarily, inasmuch as our economic system is not, in fact, enabling us to exploit to the utmost the possibilities for economic wealth afforded by the progress of our technique, but falls far short of this, leading us to feel that we might as well have used up the margin in more satisfying ways.
But once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the test of an accountant's profit, we have begun to change our civilization. And we need to do so very warily, cautiously, and self-consciously. For there is a wide field of human activity where we shall be wise to retain the usual pecuniary tests. It is the state, rather than the individual, which needs to change its criterion. It is the conception of the Secretary of the Treasury as the chairman of a sort of joint stock company which has to be discarded. Now, if the functions and purposes of the state are to be thus enlarged, the decision as to what, broadly speaking, shall be produced within the nation and what shall be exchanged with abroad, must stand high among the objects of policy.
From these reflections on the proper purposes of the state, I return to the world of contemporary politics. Having sought to understand and to do full justice to the ideas which underlie the urge felt by so many countries to-day towards greater national self-sufficiency, we have to consider with care whether in practice we are not too easily discarding much of value which the nineteenth century achieved. In those countries where the advocates of national self sufficiency have attained power, it appears to my judgment that, without exception, many foolish things are being done. Mussolini, perhaps, is acquiring wisdom teeth. But Russia to-day exhibits the worst example which the world, perhaps, has ever seen, of administrative incompetence and of the sacrifice of almost everything that makes life worth living to wooden heads. Germany is at the mercy of unchained irresponsibles--though it is too soon to judge her. The Irish Free State, a unit much too small for a high degree of national self-sufficiency except at great economic cost, is discussing plans which might, if they were carried out, be ruinous.
Meanwhile those countries which maintain or are adopting straightforward protectionism of the old-fashioned type, refurbished with the addition of a few of the new plan quotas, are doing many things incapable of rational defense. Thus, if the World Economic Conference achieves a mutual reduction of tariffs and prepares the way for regional agreements, it will be matter for sincere applause. For I must not be supposed to be endorsing all those things which are being done in the political world to-day in the name of economic nationalism. Far from it. But I bring my criticisms to bear, as one whose heart is friendly and sympathetic to the desperate experiments of the contemporary world, who wishes them well and would like them to succeed, who has his own experiments in view, and who in the last resort prefers anything on earth to what the financial reports are wont to call "the best opinion in Wall Street." And I seek to point out that the world towards which we are uneasily moving is quite different from the ideal economic internationalism of our fathers, and that contemporary policies must not be judged on the maxims of that former faith.
I see three outstanding dangers in economic nationalism and in the movements towards national self-sufficiency, imperilling their success.
The first is Silliness--the silliness of the doctrinaire. It is nothing strange to discover this in movements which have passed somewhat suddenly from the phase of midnight high-flown talk into the field of action. We do not distinguish, at first, between the color of the rhetoric with which we have won a people's assent and the dull substance of the truth of our message. There is nothing insincere in the transition. Words ought to be a little wild--for they are the assault of thoughts upon the unthinking. But when the seats of power and authority have been attained, there should be no more poetic license.
We have, therefore, to count the cost down to the penny which our rhetoric has despised. An experimental society has need to be far more efficient than an old-established one, if it is to survive safely. It will need all its economic margin for its own proper purposes, and can afford to give nothing away to soft-headedness or doctrinaire impracticability. When a doctrinaire proceeds to action, he must, so to speak, forget his doctrine. For those who in action remember the letter will probably lose what they are seeking.
The second danger--and a worse danger than silliness--is Haste. Paul Valery's aphorism is worth quoting: "Political conflicts distort and disturb the people's sense of distinction between matters of importance and matters of urgency." The economic transition of a society is a thing to be accomplished slowly. What I have been discussing is not a sudden revolution, but the direction of secular trend. We have a fearful example in Russia to-day of the evils of insane and unnecessary haste. The sacrifices and losses of transition will be vastly greater if the pace is forced. I do not believe in the inevitability of gradualness, but I do believe in gradualness. This is, above all, true of a transition towards greater national self-sufficiency and a planned domestic economy. For it is of the nature of economic processes to be rooted in time. A rapid transition will involve so much pure destruction of wealth that the new state of affairs will be, at first, far worse than the old; and the
grand experiment will be discredited. For men judge remorselessly by results, and by early results, too.
The third risk, and the worst risk of all three, is Intolerance and the stifling of instructed criticism. The new movements have usually come into power through a phase of violence or quasi-violence. They have not convinced their opponents; they have downed them. It is the modern method--but very disastrous, I am still old-fashioned enough to believe--to depend on propaganda and to seize the organs of opinion; it is thought to be clever and useful to fossilize thought and to use all the forces of authority to paralyze the play of mind on mind. For those who have found it necessary to employ all methods whatever to attain power, it is a serious temptation to continue to use for the task of construction the same dangerous tools which wrought the preliminary housebreaking.
Russia, again furnishes us with an example of the crushing blunders which a régime makes when it has exempted itself from criticism. The explanation of the incompetence with which wars are always conducted on both sides may be found in the comparative exemption from criticism which the military hierarchy affords to the high command. I have no excessive admiration for politicians, but, brought up as they are in the very breath of criticism, how much superior they are to the soldiers! Revolutions only succeed because they are conducted by politicians against soldiers. Paradox though it be--who ever heard of a successful revolution conducted by soldiers against politicians? But we all hate criticism. Nothing but rooted principle will cause us willingly to expose ourselves to it.
Yet the new economic modes, towards which we are blundering, are, in the essence of their nature, experiments. We have no clear idea laid up in our minds beforehand of exactly what we want. We shall discover it as we move along, and we shall have to mould our material in accordance with our experience. Now for this process bold, free, and remorseless criticism is a sine qua non of ultimate success. We heed the collaboration of all the bright spirits of he age. Stalin has eliminated every independent, critical mnd, even those sympathetic in general outlook. He has produced an environment in which the processes of mind are atrophied. The soft convolutions of the brain are turned to wood. The multiplied bray of the loud-speaker replaces the soft inflections of the human voice. The bleat of propaganda bores even the birds and the beasts of the field into stupefaction. Let Stalin be a terrifying example to all who seek to make experiments. If not, I, at any rate, will soon be back again in my old nineteenth-century ideals, where the play of mind on mind created for us the inheritance we to-day, enriched by what our fathers procured for us, are seeking to divert to our own appropriate purposes.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Mazariner
These little almond tarts are baked in crimped metal forms here in Sweden. They are made in two parts, a crust and a filling, with a powdered sugar glaze on top. Makes 12-16 tarts
Crust
1 1/2 cups of flour
3 tablespoons of sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
slightly less than 1/2 cup margarine
1 egg
Filling
1 1/4 cup almond paste
1/4 teaspoon bitter almond extract
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup melted margarine
2 large eggs
Press the crust into tart forms. Dip your fingers into water and the dough will not stick to you. Fill the crusts and bake the tarts at 350 degrees for about 15-18 minutes. When they are cool, pour powdered sugar glaze over them, a cup of powdered sugar stirred with a couple tablespoons of cold water. Enjoy!
Why I Oppose HR645
Here is a great resource to keep up with bills in Congress and respond easily, just click on the plus sign in the corner and contact your representatives in the House or Senate.
http://thomas.loc.gov/
Here is a particular one I have seen causing fear and stirring up gun sales, and my letter to my Senator .
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.645.IH:
Senator Eric Cantor:
I oppose `National Emergency Centers Establishment Act' HR645, as it is being used to distribute fear propoganda which the American public does not need in this time of economic crisis. I have considered if gun manufacturers allow the fear to proliferate among citizens that their government will become a military/police dictatorship with no respect for civil liberty. I ask that if you must act on behalf of the American people to give effective security during times of national disaster, then coordinate your efforts and money with State and Local citizen homeguard forces and schools. These buildings are easy to locate and exist already. During times of economic slowdown as now, you can go right to work training ordinary citizens to help rescue teams and cleanup crews. You can pay the people who volunteer to attend CPR classes, fire safety, communication technology, and gun safety.
I am NOT agreeing that this much money be appopriated to centralized FEDERAL establishments. I approve Decentralization of this effort. Strengthen our local communities and help the failing economy with this effort or use the $180,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2009 and 2010 to create real assets that benefit society. How about education to create sustainable systems?
http://thomas.loc.gov/
Here is a particular one I have seen causing fear and stirring up gun sales, and my letter to my Senator .
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.645.IH:
Senator Eric Cantor:
I oppose `National Emergency Centers Establishment Act' HR645, as it is being used to distribute fear propoganda which the American public does not need in this time of economic crisis. I have considered if gun manufacturers allow the fear to proliferate among citizens that their government will become a military/police dictatorship with no respect for civil liberty. I ask that if you must act on behalf of the American people to give effective security during times of national disaster, then coordinate your efforts and money with State and Local citizen homeguard forces and schools. These buildings are easy to locate and exist already. During times of economic slowdown as now, you can go right to work training ordinary citizens to help rescue teams and cleanup crews. You can pay the people who volunteer to attend CPR classes, fire safety, communication technology, and gun safety.
I am NOT agreeing that this much money be appopriated to centralized FEDERAL establishments. I approve Decentralization of this effort. Strengthen our local communities and help the failing economy with this effort or use the $180,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2009 and 2010 to create real assets that benefit society. How about education to create sustainable systems?
Monday, February 9, 2009
Thoughts About Unions
Every May 1, Sweden celebrates the Haymarket Martyrs in Chicago. It was the beginning of the real organization of labor in the US and eventually lead to us all getting a 8 hour workday, it had been longer. The United States does not celebrate this holiday, at least not in my lifetime. You can read about it here http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/haymkmon.htm
If you eat in a restaurant in Sweden, you do not leave a tip, its considered demeaning, and your waiter makes a decent wage. (I don't mean McDonalds or the local family owned pizza joint!) Also in Sweden there is no minimum wage. Why? Unions. Your salary is bargained for collectively, and the unemployment office here recommends you to join a union when you work as soon as possible. This article appeared in the Los Angeles Times and i think it's important. I really wish the people who work in IT and computer support would look into forming a union, personally. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-reich26-2009jan26,0,1124419.story
Here is the Name of the Bill in Congress that Obama and Biden have said would be one of the first orders of business, if you want to write your representatives and remind them :)
H.R.800 Title: To amend the National Labor Relations Act to establish an efficient system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes.
If you eat in a restaurant in Sweden, you do not leave a tip, its considered demeaning, and your waiter makes a decent wage. (I don't mean McDonalds or the local family owned pizza joint!) Also in Sweden there is no minimum wage. Why? Unions. Your salary is bargained for collectively, and the unemployment office here recommends you to join a union when you work as soon as possible. This article appeared in the Los Angeles Times and i think it's important. I really wish the people who work in IT and computer support would look into forming a union, personally. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-reich26-2009jan26,0,1124419.story
Here is the Name of the Bill in Congress that Obama and Biden have said would be one of the first orders of business, if you want to write your representatives and remind them :)
H.R.800 Title: To amend the National Labor Relations Act to establish an efficient system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes.
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