Orderly Default in Greece

[from CNN Money on Sept. 19]
".....FORTUNE -- The opportunity for debt-troubled Europe to avoid a disaster is shrinking. Fast. Over the weekend, Greek leaders struggled to agree to a set of radical budget cuts as the country approaches an October deadline to qualify for $11 billion in aid without which it will certainly default on its growing debt......"

Sorry oh great "Fortune" pundits, but I don't even think "austerity" measures are a good idea in the first place. I don't believe in the budget-cutting thing. How radical of me.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/19/news/international/greece_orderly_default.fortune/index.htm?hpt=hp_t1

NYT as a Person; Volume Two

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In the blog of Sept. 14 we clammed on the NYT that it was one stuffed-to-the-hilt cultural upload-----for the reader to suck in. But what if it is for the "culture" of the owners and staff in N.Y? If not, then it is for the consumer-----the humble persons of the U. S. A?-----or maybe those suckers just eat the humble pie they source from "USA Today." There's one that is even more "humble"-----in not pretending to be anything but a consumer product. This clarifies that it is a question of who (or what) the NYT serves.
     Is the enterprise done for money? Or does it actually serve the public need for the "news"?

Another question: are "consumers" and "producers" the same person sometimes? Obviously, they are. But, I seem to feel strongly that it is useful to make some kind of conceptual distinction here. This is NOT to deny that there can be a unitary consumer-producer, when the N.Y.T. pressroom operator buys a bagel....etc.

That's the guy who operates the printing press. Where was I?  Oh yeah. This is major: Staying with the same line of reasoning as the day before yesterday, we begin to see the consumer as mere supplicant. So that is going to be the theme here today. OK? Does the "little guy" actually have, as we say in Chicago, "clout"?

     Does the consumer-supplicant have any clout at all? Does he have any power whatsoever? If nothing else, they are The People----as we say. In a democracy they should have some power. Hell, in any society. If nothing else, they are the people whom we allow to live. This is capitalism, not fascism. We don't kill them. We don't put them into the concentration camps, either.

     No, we let them clog up the streets. This is "capitalism," Virginia.

     But if "the people" do not really mandate the content of the NYT, or the USA Today, or anything else, then where exactly does that clout come in? Do they engage in a consumer "negotiation"? Do they engage in a consumer negotiation about price? In other words, do they order producers around, with "consumer demand," to get the prices or  the products they require? Well, in my thinking, I doubt it.
     In my version of economic theory, this has been brought into doubt. It is such an important matter, though! This because the neo-Classical theory says people are parties to some larger "Negotiation" (I capitalized it by accident --- but, I'm not tenured, so it doesn't matter) whereby they Negotiate their desires, through decisions closely related to either buying or not buying some specific product items that are on the market.

    That is supposed to be where their power is, but if this is wrong, what is right? If they do not negotiate prices, then how do they act as viable individual entities? How, in other words, do they act or behave?

     This is the question we need to ask. So this series of conceptualizations will have to continue....because, I think I have some idea of what the answer will be.

September 16, 2011 - What More Do You Want?

Let's talk about "growth" a little more. A Harvard Econ professor:  "...the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s."

Worse? What is it that is better or worse? Where does the idea of some kind of alarm come into this? Where do these values come from? Why the implication of a horrible downward slide? Why is money supposed to be all we want?

What exactly would so terrible about stabilizing at the wealth level of 1996?

In other words, why is there a value structure that comes into it? Why does 2011 have to be better or worse than 1996?

So we have "slipped" to 1996 ----- Wow. If we just stabilized there we as a country would be fine. Every additional item should be sent to countries where they actually need it. What is that? ----- elasticity or something?

The level of wealth needed to support a median family was achieved let us say in 1965. But let us suppose that we revert to, say 1975. That is fine. We don't need more that that. There is no problem. You cannot have an argument with this. Basic human needs (for this country) were satisfied by 1965 for sure.

     I think this Harvard economist is just jibber-jabbering back to the public what they programmed him with in the first place. (He stays on the same assumptive level he was programmed with. In the beginning he was supposed to talk about whether we are "better or worse" and that is what he does. He is like any serf; he just does what he's told.)

     If I could have peace on earth, I'd be perfectly willing to live at the level of 1996, or 1975, or even 1965. For you spoiled babies, I'll give you 1975. OK? Can you live with that?

Septermber 15, 2011

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As we move forward in time do things get better? There are two opinions. Opinion 1) is that: Nothing changes; 2) is that: Everything gets better.

File under 2) the notions that, politically, everyone gets more human rights and freedom and, economically, the standard of living increases. But neither of those things are happening for everyone. The truth is that they are only happening for a few. Unless these gains, those of human rights and of economics, are made for more persons, we are going to crash.
     And what will crash? It is capitalism, a form of life, that will crash.

Of course some of us enjoy more freedom; and, more leisure and/or comfort. But if we do not make a serious effort to share that with others, then what is it worth?

NYT as Person

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If the N.Y.T. were an actual person      and    not      a large compendium       of words and woodpulp that person would be very cultural--the individual would know every new performance, every new book and even every new item presented to the people of the world (or at least the New York world) by every new restaurant ----- the ones in New York City I mean. What a rich life that gal would live! But the rich cultural life implied by the NewYorkTimes is conjured only to benefit the Times, its staff, and owners and the purpose of all that culture is it is for the producers or the board. Now a word about our dear "consumer." Ah yes the consumer. Why, they are the ones that buy the product! How could I have forgotten them? Oh no, I was coming to it. Them consumers! Piping money like lavender music into the hands of the ... producers, board, the owners, and [insert  trumpet fanfare] the shareholders. Oh yes, the consumers. I was coming to it. They buy the product. Oh the product. The :news. ...produced by the "producers" ---- and I do not mean by that the B'way play, or the film, ...starring Zero Mostel. No. I just mean the producers. And once we talk about producers in capitalism we have to talk about consumers.

OK, but the important question is that of whether the paper is really produced for consumers, or whether on the other hand it is a cultural device for the producers, the staff, the shareholders? If the answer to that question is that the paper is produced for the later group, then it is produced for their culture, and not for the culture of others. What I think is happening is that this wonderful lady operates for the producers of the paper, for the owners, not for the consumers, the persons that read it...

Comments, anyone?

Baker, pt. 2

SO, the "framing" is that it is going from the losers to the winners. (Q: what? A: tax money; alt: assets, wealth) To wit:   "cnservatives like the market" ; "puts liberals in the position of..."
http://jacksgreatblog.blogspot.com/
wanting to requisition money from, or tax, in one specific direction: from the winners to the losers. The assertion is that they want to have money flow from losers to winners. Why do we call them "liberals"? The words "liberal" and "conservative" have good provenance. That (pro-venahns I mean) is a French word, meaning history or legitimacy. And these two words have been jumbled around the mulberry bush many times, but it is still better than throwing the words out altogether.

This framing the conservatives are being accused of is only a correct framing. Liberals do want to move assets from winners to losers. It is basically correct. And one more thing: I am not sure this is always a bad idea.

Just as an aside: the idea of human rights is that "losers" (another diablical "framing") are also HUMAN and HUMAN trumps LOSER.

So, the liberals want (alternatively: are accused of wanting) ----- they want or ought to want or are said to want to reward the losers. This is the problem here maybe.

So, where are we in all this? There are many actors in society, especially a big, democratic not to even mention "globalized" society. There are persons in the world, whose countries have been entered, penetrated by global trade, but whose populations have suffered from this rather than benefited. Or their crime was to have black skin, or to have a culture that was more slow to assimilate into global capitalism. Big deal. That doesn't make them bad people. (Or a "bad" ethnicity, like the Amazonian Indians, who get nothing at all out of international high finance.)

So move some wealth to the losers already. NOW~!!!!!!

Arguing with books I Haven't Read

There is a book called "The End of Loser Liberalism," by Baker, which seems to be advice as to how progressives can win more elections.

"   Progressives need a fundamentally new approach to politics. They have been losing not just because conservatives have so much more money and power, but also because they have accepted the conservatives’ framing of political debates.   "

     That is from book. Or at any rate from http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/books/the-end-of-loser-liberalism.  The webpage also says this:

"    The framing that conservatives like the market while liberals like the government puts liberals in the position of seeming to want to tax the winners to help the losers.   "

     First of all, no one knows what the word "market" signifies. Why do we always assume that we know what a word means, when we do not? Where is "the market?" Who is the "market"? I just do not find it so simple. I don't even know what the distinction is between "market" and "the market." I feel like such a loser. Because: if you don't know what "market" means you're a jerk. Right?
     But wait a minute. What about the transition when something is transformed from state of natural existence into a market condition or market existence? How does something become market? Was the coconut tree always part of the larger market?---of the universe?  If we send a satellite up to Saturn does Saturn then become part of the market when it was not, before? In the very first transition, when some piece of property goes from what is called "use value" (some terms I get) to "exchange value" (same as "surplus value," to me) when did that coconut tree or that piece of land (or chunk of gold?) become a market coconut tree or acre of land? Think about it for yourself.  I've been thinking about this shit for ten years.

     Why then are the conservatives not the "winners"? Whatever the market is, whatever the rules of the game are, face it, some persons are winners and some are losers. It seems to me like the wealthy conservatives did win. They got the gold, man! (I'm sounding like Louis Armstrong, now.) And guys like me are losers.

     Boo-Hoo.

p.s. his freaking book isn't even real; it's on virtual only. You need a Kindle, which, of course, is made by the wealthy conservatives (?)