tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34855674777407605842024-02-18T20:25:34.941-08:00Too Hot For JacobinThis blog is reserved for postings too boring or lazy even for my blogging at Jacobin. It was started mainly to please Mike Konczal. Posts will be short, slapdash, and ill thought-out.Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-3579136315111058802017-01-06T07:46:00.000-08:002017-01-06T08:01:07.630-08:00White Party ID in 2016Party identification (includes leaners) among non-Hispanic white registered voters in 2016 - from <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2016/09/13/2016-party-identification-detailed-tables-white-non-hispanic/" target="_blank">Pew</a>.<br />
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<br />Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-35819411887113568752016-10-18T19:19:00.003-07:002016-10-18T22:26:12.736-07:00Sympathy for the Devil?<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Vox</i>’s Dylan
Matthews <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/15/13286498/donald-trump-voters-race-economic-anxiety">wants</a>
the media to stop making excuses for Trump supporters. The Trump phenomenon isn’t
about “post-industrial decay,” he writes. It’s not happening because “neoliberal
capitalism is failing.” Such depictions, by Beltway media types on one side and
“leftists and social democrats” on the other, willfully ignore the obvious.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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“The press has gotten extremely comfortable with describing
a Trump electorate that simply doesn’t exist,” Matthews says. If you want to
know the Trump supporters’ concerns, you just have to look at what they’re
saying in polls: It’s about racial resentment. It’s about white nationalism. Matthews
has the data to prove it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For one thing, they’re not working class, or even
economically struggling; “Trump’s supporters are not the wretched of the earth.”
Matthews points out that at the national level the median income of Trump’s primary
voters was higher than Hillary Clinton’s. Support for Trump in polls was
“correlated with” higher income, even among whites. Yet, perversely, the media
has been pumping out feature stories about the fervor for Trump in
hard-scrabble places like <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-nation/2016/09/28/These-rural-Ohioans-identify-with-Trump-Pence-ticket/stories/201609280196">Leetonia,
Ohio</a>, or <a href="http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2016/10/02/people-place-yearn-made-great-rural-america/91328484/">Creston,
Iowa</a> -- places that, statistically, don’t even exist by Matthews’s
calculations. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s not that Matthews doesn’t care about real economic
suffering; he’s no conservative. He recognizes that globalization has been hard
on many Americans. He knows that there are poor whites in this country as well
as poor blacks and Latinos. “The government should help people who are
materially struggling,” he writes. “And Hillary Clinton, to her great credit, has
offered programs…that will leave millions of white Trump supporters much better
off.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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But for Matthews, the key point is this: “This isn’t worth
doing to win back their votes; it’s worth doing because it’s the right thing to
do.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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That’s a curious idea. If Matthews supports the Democratic
party’s agenda, why wouldn’t he want it to win back as many Trump votes it can?
How can the Democrats gain the kinds of majorities they need to push through
all the beneficent policies he cites if they fail to win votes away from the
other side? Isn’t that one of the ways parties win elections -- by taking votes
from the other side? In fact, isn’t that why Hillary Clinton’s campaign is now
wooing anti-Trump Republicans?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Obviously Matthews wouldn’t want Democrats to use racist appeals
to win Trump votes, and neither would I. But neither does he claim that
anyone’s calling for such a step. He certainly doesn’t cite anyone who is. <o:p></o:p></div>
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What he does complain about is the “unprecedented outpouring
of sympathy” for Trump voters that he sees in the media: the earnest pleas, often
written by conservatives or Beltway-pundit types, that we should listen to the
concerns of “<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/what-will-happen-to-the-trump-die-hards/504032/">the
millions of white voters living on the edges of the economy</a>,” the “<a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/08/02/listening-to-trump-voters/">decent,
sincere people who feel disregarded</a>,” and so on. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Matthews finds these stories exasperating. And you do have
to agree with him when he points out that there was never any comparable litany
of hand-wringing about the “concerns of Mitt Romney voters” or the “interests
of Hillary Clinton supporters.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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But then again, when I look at my Twitter feed, which is
full of elite media types, the main outpouring I see is just the opposite: a
flood of contempt and disgust for Trump supporters, not just for the
irresponsible votes they cast, but for their defective character as a group. Come
to think of it, that might help to explain the rash of sympathetic pieces.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Matthews’s admonition against trying to win back Trump voters
reminds me of one my favorite quotes from the ever-colorful Grover Norquist. In
a 2006 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Prospect</i> <a href="http://prospect.org/article/world-according-grover">roundtable</a>, the conservative
anti-tax impresario was asked about the gay rights issue -- at the time, he was
taking heat from fellow Republicans for his work with gay organizations:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I speak to the Log Cabin Republicans
and work with them on a whole host of issues … The Human Rights Campaign on
certain things … So I get trashed from time to time by some of my friends. I
think it’s a mistake to write off any group. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
I was in Romania, they’re having
elections in four weeks, and I was organizing the non-communists. And I had
them write on a blackboard: Who’s Voting for Us, Who’s Voting for Them. And
they had to list [the voter groups and] understand why everybody was [voting
that way]. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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They had the gypsies voting for the
Communists. And I said, “OK, I get why the Communists are voting for the
Communists, and the Army and the police and the guys with government jobs. But
why the gypsies?” If I were a gypsy I’d want to live outside [even] touchy-feely
U.S. law, much less harsher communist law. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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And they said, “Well, the
communists buy them liquor and then they vote for them.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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And I said, “We can do this. George
Washington did this, it’s OK.” And they said, “No, the gypsies are scum and we
won’t talk to them.” And I said, “OK, I guess you’re not getting the gypsy vote
then.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
In politics, you want to have as
few gypsies as possible, as few groups of people who are not voting for you
because you’re not talking to them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Maybe it’s not surprising that a conservative like Norquist
and a liberal outlet like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vox</i> would
have differing views of politics. What’s surprising is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vox</i>’s preference for the outlook of the Romanian right.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="text-align: center;"> ***</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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But aren’t the Trump voters inseparable from the racist
appeals of Trump himself? That’s what Matthews seems to argue, with the aid of
a raft of studies and data. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In doing so, he sheds useful light on the standard liberal
way of thinking about politics. Matthews seems to take individuals as the elementary
particles of political life. The individual is apparently endowed with a more
or less well-defined set of attitudes on all the major issues of the day. If
you sum up the aggregate of those opinions, what you get is “politics”: election
returns, opinion polls, legislative roll calls, all the quantitative mass
phenomena of national politics. These are just the sum of individual brains. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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As for how those opinions got manufactured and sorted into
all those brains, that’s a question for psychology, or history, or economics, not
politics.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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You can see this methodology at work in the studies Matthews
cites to make his case. Almost all of them follow the same approach. First, they
measure the attitudes expressed by Trump supporters in multiple-choice polling
questions. Then they compare them to the answers of non-Trump supporters. (Usually
they control for other factors as well.) Whichever issues most sharply distinguish
the Trumpist group from non-Trumpists are assumed to reveal the Trump
supporters’ innermost feelings, hopes, and fears – in short, their motivations.
Individual motivations, it’s assumed, can be inferred from group differences.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In summing up all the correlations and cross-tabs, Matthews
is very clear on this point: “Trump’s voters [are] <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">motivated</i> by genuine political disagreement about race”; “these
people [are] <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">motivated</i> by racial
resentment”; “Trump’s supporters are not, in fact, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">motivated</i> by economic marginalization.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ve seen most of the studies Matthews links to. As far as I
can tell, none analyzed polling questions that actually asked people what was “motivating”
them. Instead, they used standard polling questions like: What is your
household income? Do you approve of Obama? Should taxes be cut? Should
immigration be reduced? Is black poverty caused by a lack of effort? Actual motivations
were never recorded: they were inferred by researchers, using math, and then
imputed to Trump supporters <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">en bloc</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For example, one of the studies Matthews cites analyzed
questions from the 2016 <a href="http://www.electionstudies.org/studypages/anes_pilot_2016/anes_pilot_2016.htm">ANES
pilot survey</a>. According to Matthews, the study concluded that while “support
for Trump is correlated most strongly with party ID, the second biggest factor…was
racial resentment.” The study’s author <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/2/11833548/donald-trump-support-race-religion-economy">concluded</a>
that “Trump support isn’t about the economy.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Meanwhile, the same ANES survey had actually included a battery
of questions that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">did</i> try to ask
respondents about their motivations. It listed 21 different political issues
and asked: “Which of the following issues are the most important to you in
terms of choosing which political candidate you will support?” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Trump’s three signature racially-coded themes -- immigration,
terrorism, and crime – were among the possible choices; a third of Trump
supporters picked one of those as their top issue. Two-thirds did not. 51% chose
traditional kitchen-table issues like the economy, health care, Social Security,
taxes, or the national debt. Another 8% chose culture-war issues like abortion,
gay rights, or “morality.” And the remaining 8% chose “military strength,”
“foreign policy,” or gun control.<o:p></o:p></div>
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***<o:p></o:p></div>
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Let me be clear. All of the following are true: From the
start, Trump has put naked appeals to racism at the center of his campaign. In
the process, he has magnetized a congeries of alt-right eugenicists,
Confederate flag-wavers, and paranoid Mexican-haters to his cause. And then he went
on to win 52% of the Republican vote in the primaries; he’ll probably win at
least 40% of the popular vote in November. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Those facts aren’t in dispute. The question is what to make
of them. There’s no doubt that the nation’s “white nationalists” provide
disproportionate support to Trump’s racist campaign – and given the campaign’s
tone, it would be very strange if they didn’t. Presumably, the nation’s
socialists also provided “disproportionate” support to the Bernie Sanders
campaign. And that sort of effect seems to account for how all the studies Matthews
cites arrived at their findings, mathematically speaking. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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For example, Matthews points to a study by UCLA’s Michael
Tesler who found that “support for Trump in the primaries strongly correlated
with respondents' racial resentment,” and did so more strongly than McCain’s
support in 2008 or Romney’s in 2012. What that means concretely, if you look at
Tesler’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/08/01/trump-is-the-first-republican-in-modern-times-to-win-the-partys-nomination-on-anti-minority-sentiments/">charts</a>,
is that on the one hand Trump did a lot better than Romney and McCain among the
more racially-resentful half of Republicans; but on the other hand, he did equally
well as them among the less<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>racially-resentful
half. From eyeballing Tesler’s charts, it appears that the more racially-resentful
half of Republicans contributed a bit under 50% of Romney and McCain’s primary
support. For Trump, the number was about 60%. <o:p></o:p></div>
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If that difference doesn’t seem all that big, it’s because while
Trump has been very effective at mobilizing the most obsessively racist fraction
of Americans to his cause -- and great at winning Republican votes overall -- he
hasn’t been manufacturing more racists. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Indeed, amid the flood of “explainer” articles reporting the
findings of complicated regression studies on racist attitudes, it’s striking how
rarely you see simple aggregate numbers. The heated polarization of the Obama
and Tea Party era in particular gave rise to an outpouring of intricate studies
on the political correlates of “racial resentment” – dozens of which have been
reported in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vox</i>. Meanwhile, in a
co-authored academic <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/for.2016.14.issue-1/for-2016-0002/for-2016-0002.xml">article</a>
published this year, Donald Kinder, the University of Michigan social scientist
who first developed the concept of racial resentment, reported: “Racial
resentment is essentially stationary over the last quarter century, as measured
by the ANES or by the GSS. We detect no sign here that White Americans’ racial
resentments hardened during the Obama Presidency.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Likewise, Gallup regularly asks the question, “Should
immigration be kept at its present level, increased, or decreased?” Anti-immigration
sentiment has been in long-term decline among non-Hispanic whites. In 2002, those
wanting less immigration exceeded those wanting more by 43 percentage points.
This year that number was 22 percentage points.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And that seems to be the case all around the world. Take the
example of France, where the level of racism in political discourse seems to
reach new heights every week and the far-right has been on the ascendant for decades.
Yet, the percentage of the French who say there are “too many immigrants in
France” fell from 75% in 1988 to 50% in 2012. The percentage who think
immigration is a “source of cultural enrichment” rose from 44% in 1992 to 75%
in 2009. The percentage who agree that immigrant workers “should be seen as
being at home here, since they contribute to the French economy” rose from 66%
in 1992 to 84.5% in 2009. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
In one sense, these figures -- taken from a comprehensive
2013 <a href="https://www.amazon.fr/votes-voix-Mitterrand-%C3%A0-Hollande/dp/2353713599">study</a>
of long-run French public opinion by a team of political
sociologists led by Vincent Tiberj of the Center for European Studies at Sciences-Po
-- shouldn’t come as a surprise. As the authors note, it’s long been
understood that tolerance rises with education levels, and education levels
have been rising for decades. Older and less-educated groups, in turn, are
affected by the liberalizing cultural climate driven by younger and
more-educated cohorts, albeit with a lag. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thus, over the long run, each generation tends to express
more tolerant attitudes than the last, and each generation tends to get more tolerant
as it ages. “In all Western countries,” Tiberj says, “electorates are,
generally speaking, more open and more tolerant than they’ve ever been.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yet you’d never guess any of that from watching the reactionary
spiral of French political discourse. Tiberj <a href="http://www.liberation.fr/france/2013/11/22/s-il-y-a-droitisation-c-est-d-abord-du-debat-politique_961375">explains</a>
the “paradox” this way: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Historically, France has never been
more tolerant. Yet polarization on cultural values has never been as strong,
either. The explanation is simple: If there’s a rightward shift, it’s above all
a shift in the political debate. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
When Mitterrand was reelected in
1988, the electorate still voted according to its socio-economic values. To put
it simply, white-collar professionals voted for the right and workers voted for
the left. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Starting with Nicolas Sarkozy’s [hard-right]
2007 campaign, things changed: voters started to vote according to both their
socio-economic and their cultural values…. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
[And] while Nicolas Sarkozy didn’t
hesitate to assert a right-wing ideological narrative to push a wedge into the
debate, François Hollande has a lot more trouble with that….<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Generally speaking, political discourse
re-shapes the logic of voting: the rightward shift isn’t a demand coming from
the electorate, it’s a result of the political supply… Our study tends to
demonstrate the primordial importance of ideological combat.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sensational events like riots, scandals, or terrorist
attacks do cause short-run declines in tolerant attitudes, Tiberj finds. Eventually they're forgotten and tolerant attitudes resume their long-run rise. But in the meantime, they can have long-run effects on politics by altering the terms of political debate -- the ideological formulations offered by visible representatives of the left and the right. These are crucial in determining
the tenor of the political discourse. And that tenor, in turn, alters how
individuals understand their own relationship to politics, their own interests
-- even their own “motivations.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The same individual can simultaneously present dispositions
to tolerance and to prejudice,” write Tiberj and his co-authors, “with the prevalence
of the one over the other being strongly dependent on the environment, the
information received, and recent events that have made an impression on them.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.5in; text-indent: .5in;">
***<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In one of those journalistic forays to the struggling
pro-Trump hinterland that Matthews finds so annoying, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guardian’</i>s Paul Lewis and Tom Silverstone recently traveled to West Virginia for a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/oct/12/west-virginia-donald-trump-supporters-mcdowell-county-poverty-video">video
reportage</a> on the most pro-Trump county in the state's Republican primaries: McDowell County.
A former coal mining area that lost its mines, McDowell is about as destitute and decrepit as you
might expect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One man they spoke to, a poor and elderly former coal miner
of 26 years, was a life-long member of the United Mine Workers. “I voted for
that black guy two times,” he says with a laugh. Asked how he’ll vote in
November, he says he’ll vote for Trump. His reason is, “Donald’s going to put
all the coal mines back.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Historically, being a member of a union – especially a
combative union with an active internal life – is the most important instance of
the kind of external force that Tiberj points to as having the potential to transform how individuals translate their “dispositions to tolerance and to prejudice”
into their political outlook and behavior. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
West Virginia’s history is a fine example of this. In the
1920s, when the UMW was weak and declining, the state’s politics were
reactionary, dominated by ruthless coal operators and the Ku Klux Klan. But the
resurgence of the UMW in the 1930s on the back of militant mass strikes transformed
West Virginia politics, integrating its otherwise insular working class tightly
into a national labor-liberal New Deal coalition that depended for its survival
on black workers and black voters. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s why in 1964, four months after Lyndon Johnson signed
the Civil Rights Act, West Virginia voted for him against the anti-labor
Goldwater by the sixth-largest margin of any state. It’s why in 1968, when the
Democrat on the ticket was the labor-liberal Hubert Humphrey – a figure who for twenty years had been more visibly committed to the civil rights issue than any other national politician – West Virginia's vote for him was the seventh-largest in the country. (And its vote for George Wallace was far
lower than the other border states.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And remarkably, that union effect continues today, on a
smaller scale: in 2012 Barack Obama’s deficit among non-college whites in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">top half of the racial-resentment scale</i>
was 26 percentage points smaller among those who belonged to unions than those
in non-union households, according to data from the large-sample <a href="https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=hdl:1902.1/21447">Cooperative
Congress Election Study</a>. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What’s remarkable about this is that union
membership today is so often a lamentably low-intensity, low-commitment affair. It’s almost surprising to find it having any aggregate effect
at all. And yet by re-shaping the individual’s understanding of the stakes of
politics, being in a union still has a powerful effect on how “dispositions to tolerance and to prejudice” translate into political
behavior.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.5in; text-indent: .5in;">
***<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Trump’s voters in November will come in different
varieties. There will be McMansion-dwelling evangelicals in the Atlanta
suburbs. There will be owners of prosperous construction businesses in rural
California. And there will also be voters like that West Virginia ex-coal miner in
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guardian</i> report.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A charitable reading of Matthews’s piece is that he
merely wants us to keep those first two types in mind, lest we succumb to the
illusion that the Trump phenomenon was all about downtrodden coal miners. A
less charitable reading is that he wants us to forget that it <i>was</i> about that,
too.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="MsoNormal">
Given the long, slow slide in the Democrats’ performance in the House of Representatives, the governors’ mansions and the state legislatures, many will ask what the party could do to strengthen its position. As analysts sift through the returns, Trump’s eye-popping margins among non-college whites will generate a great deal of commentary. (In 2012, Obama lost even whites <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">with</i> a college
degree but without postgraduate training.) </div>
<br /></div>
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The numbers will be clear: downscale whites are a big pool of untapped votes. Yet if a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cordon sanitaire</i> is placed around that demographic
territory and hung with the notorious label, “Trump Vote,” the Democrats will be even more likely to let the party system drift down its current path: into the culture-war
politics of the reactionary Tammany-vs.-Klan 1920s, rather than the class-based politics that
followed.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-33176310008971170682016-01-14T03:38:00.002-08:002016-01-14T07:21:36.732-08:00An Open Letter to Riss, Care of The Internet (by Daniel Schneidermann)<h4>
<i>
On Thursday, the well known French media critic Daniel
Schneidermann, founder of the left-leaning media critique website "<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Arrêt Sur Images</span>," published <a href="http://www.arretsurimages.net/chroniques/2016-01-14/Lettre-a-Riss-aux-bons-soins-d-Internet-id8377" target="_blank">this column</a>
at the site.</i></h4>
<h4>
<i><br /></i></h4>
<h4>
<i>
It takes the form of an open letter to Riss, the <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Charlie Hebdo</span> cartoonist who drew the
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/13/a-new-charlie-hebdo-cartoon-portrays-dead-3-year-old-refugee-aylan-kurdi-as-a-sexual-attacker-in-germany/" target="_blank">already notorious cartoon</a> (published Wednesday) depicting Alan Kurdi, the
drowned Syrian refugee child, as an adult groping women in the street. <b>Below is a translation.</b></i></h4>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<o:p><u>An Open Letter to Riss, Care of The Internet</u></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
by Daniel Schneidermann</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hey Riss! Can I talk to you for a minute? We don’t know each
other, I don’t have your cell number, or even your publicity department’s. But
since <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">je suis Charlie</i>, I’ll allow
myself to address you as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tu</i>, and to
send you a letter, care of The Internet.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yesterday afternoon, the social networks, buzzing with
outrage as usual, were spreading around this drawing, apparently taken from the
latest <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Charlie Hebdo</i>, which had come
out that same morning.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The drawing did not especially disturb me. Nor did it make
me laugh. It only brought to mind the spirit of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hara-Kiri</i> [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CH’s anarchic
1960s forerunner</i>], the spirit of its Choron-Cavanna-Reiser era,
indiscriminately going after everything that moves -- the cops AND the
protestors, the generals AND the pacifists, the idiots, the government
bureaucrats, the fascists, the academics. And so, why not, the migrants
too, without giving all that much thought to whether we’re talking about the
migrants themselves, or the migrants as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">les
fachos</i> depict them. Throw it all in, it’s all good for ink.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yeah but, you see, here on staff, people didn’t take it that
way. The young members (practically zygotes), those for whom the great
Choron-Cavanna-Reiser go-after-everything-that-moves era is just something
they’ve read about in books — you know what? They totally saw a racist drawing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It should be said that yes, this is a generational issue.
What image do they have of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Charlie Hebdo</i>?
A journalistic oddball, the main debate about which is whether or not it’s made up
of Islamophobes. A paper whose content we’ve meticulously combed for traces (or
not) of Islamophpbia. And, recently, a paper known for stints by [Philippe] Val
and [Caroline] Fourest, footsolidiers of French Islamophobia, even though — I
know, I know — they haven’t been there for a while.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Seen from that point of view, nothing differentiates your
drawing, Riss, from a drawing that could be published in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Minute</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Valeurs Actuelles</i>
[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">publications aligned with the FN</i>].
Nothing. To see the difference between it and a drawing in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Minute</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Valeurs Actuelles</i>,
one would have to have a picture of the whole page or the whole issue it was
published in. I’m not going to show all the drawings from the issue. Above the
fateful doodle, another sketches Valls and Taubira [the prime minister and
justice minister]. Below, another mocks the cartoonists themselves. Just as
savagely, throughout the issue, sketches of Bowie, the imam-priest-rabbi trio,
God, Hollande, the cops, Johnny Halliday, Depardieu, the Dakar motor race,
Sarkozy, Juppé, Trump, a pedophile priest, etc., etc. I draw no conclusions.
But this is one of the elements that characterize the “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lieu d’énonciation</i>” [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a
semiotic term meaning, roughly, the context of the speech-act</i>], which is
important for anyone who wants to make their own judgment on the drawing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The problem is that this drawing, assiduously propagated by
the very people who want to denounce it, will reach audiences who will never
have access to the whole issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Charlie
Hebdo</i>. And the same goes for this letter that I’m sending you with my
meager weapons, my words, seeing as how I draw about as well as a saucepan.
It’s a huge problem. We talked about this with Luz [<i>former </i>Charlie<i> cartoonist and survivor of last year’s attack – video of
that interview is <a href="http://www.arretsurimages.net/emissions/2015-05-29/Luz-J-ai-mis-longtemps-a-comprendre-que-Charlie-etait-mondial-id7767" target="_blank">here</a></i>], this terrible risk of misunderstanding,
multipled a hundredfold by the social networks, when he came here to talk
about his lovely book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Catharsis</i> (and was left perplexed by one of your drawings, mashing up Boko Haram sex slaves
with child benefits).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The problem is still there. With no other solution than,
laughably, to patiently explain the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lieux
d’énonciation</i>, which I proposed recently in a little book. <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Patient-explanation-of-the-lieux-d’énonciation</span>.
Just writing those pompous words, I feel how laughable that solution is when
faced with the power of a drawing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are things that can be done, however. If you really
tried, you could find ways to signal that the message of your drawing (“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">don’t hassle me about Aylan, if he’d lived
he would have become a rapist like the others</i>”) does not express your
thought — the author’s — but that of a narrator who might be, for example, a
fat, ugly, racist Archie Bunker<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3485567477740760584#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
type. A talented and experienced cartoonist like you, if he really wants to, can always signal, if he really does want to do it, this distance between
author and narrator. But he still has think through this distance. And this
distance still has to exist. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Salutations
Charlie</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3485567477740760584#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> A
side note: The French word used here – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">beauf</i>
(short for <i>beau-frère</i>, or brother-in-law) – refers to a Drunk Uncle/Al
Bundy/Archie Bunker type. It was the name of a character made famous in the
1970s by the cartoonist Cabu, and is now an everyday word in informal French (to
the point that many French people use it without knowing where it came
from). Cabu was also killed last year in the attack on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Charlie Hebdo</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
</div>
Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-14517258662497019872015-10-26T18:14:00.002-07:002015-10-26T18:14:43.970-07:00Net Republican control of state governments, 1978-2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZKFZRlVJCca8Rec0Rg7ENHPQhQgbWHnfS9EG62yaPEpZuGZyhL7o8Dv2bW9u9QIfd4mTUoTQ4CyMhyaN4CjJj1bck8cGyB1Y1w285CUTJlr1ImNDLQfYINl-lieEv6GK7GRzwJv2BseII/s1600/state+party+control+1978-.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="434" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZKFZRlVJCca8Rec0Rg7ENHPQhQgbWHnfS9EG62yaPEpZuGZyhL7o8Dv2bW9u9QIfd4mTUoTQ4CyMhyaN4CjJj1bck8cGyB1Y1w285CUTJlr1ImNDLQfYINl-lieEv6GK7GRzwJv2BseII/s640/state+party+control+1978-.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-36806240846772360872015-07-25T02:17:00.000-07:002015-07-25T22:40:48.627-07:00I will take the bait<div class="MsoNormal">
Hillary Clinton is an astute campaigner. In a Facebook
Q&A the other day, she was asked about the Black Lives Matter protestors who
interrupted Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley. The moderator asked her the same
question those protestors had posed to her rivals: How would she “begin to
dismantle structural racism in the United States"? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Her answer was deft:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Black lives matter. Everyone in
this country should stand firmly behind that. We need to acknowledge some hard
truths about race and justice in this country, and one of those hard truths is
that that racial inequality is not merely a symptom of economic inequality. Black
people across America still experience racism every day.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like any good politician, Clinton knows what her audience
wants to hear. She also knows how to put her opponent on the back foot. Because
how could Bernie Sanders respond to that? What's he going to say -- racial
inequality <i>is</i> merely a symptom of
economic inequality? He's not going to say that. Nobody would. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, get ready for a hot take, ladies and gentlemen,
because that’s exactly what I’ll say here. Angry responses can be addressed to the
comments box at the bottom. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
***<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here’s my question to the angry commenters. If racial
inequality isn’t merely a symptom of economic inequality, what is it a symptom
of? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I already feel like I can hear the answer: it's a symptom of hundreds of years of slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow, and urban
apartheid.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes. But what were slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow, and urban
apartheid if not extreme forms of economic inequality? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What was the point of England’s colonization of Ireland if not to impose a lucrative “economic inequality” on its victims? Was the urban apartheid of Haussmann’s Paris not the “symptom”
of nineteenth century economic inequality? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And what exactly do you think all those African slaves were <i>doing </i>in the American South? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To quote Barbara Fields: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Probably a majority of American
historians think of slavery in the United States as primarily a system of race
relations—as though the chief business of slavery were the production of white
supremacy rather than the production of cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco. One
historian has gone so far as to call slavery ‘the ultimate segregator’. He does
not ask why Europeans seeking the ‘ultimate’ method of segregating Africans
would go to the trouble and expense of transporting them across the ocean for
that purpose, when they could have achieved the same end so much more simply by
leaving the Africans in Africa. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
No one dreams of analyzing the
struggle of the English against the Irish as a problem in race relations, even
though the rationale that the English developed for suppressing the ‘barbarous’
Irish later served nearly word for word as a rationale for suppressing Africans
and indigenous American Indians. Nor does anyone dream of analyzing serfdom in
Russia as primarily a problem of race relations, even though the Russian nobility
invented fictions of their innate, natural superiority over the serfs as
preposterous as any devised by American racists.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s true, of course, that racial inequality is due to hundreds
of years of slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow, and urban apartheid – to white
supremacy. But to say so is merely to recount how one particular form of economic
inequality came about. Just as the story of English imperialism is merely a
history of how Ireland, even fifty years after winning independence, still found itself the poorest country in all
of capitalist Europe. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
***<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What Hillary Clinton is really hinting at when she says that
racism can’t be reduced to “economic inequality” is <i>racial animosity</i>. I can’t think of what else she could mean. The
new generation of radicals on Twitter like to talk about “structural” racism or
“institutional” racism – but behind the verbal bravado, what they, too, are really
referring to is racial animosity. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So let’s talk about interpersonal animosity, because it’s
certainly not irrelevant here. That Texas trooper in the Sandra Bland video I
still can’t bring myself to watch – I would be shocked to learn that he’s not a
violent racist. Forget “structural” racism for a minute. Let’s talk about plain
old-fashioned racism. Let’s stipulate the obvious: the archetypal “hick Texas
bigot cop” really doesn’t like black people. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But can that explain why Sandra Bland ended up dead? I
doubt it, because there’s a <i>lot</i> of
people the archetypal hick Texas bigot cop doesn’t like. He hates the
nose-pierced vegans in Austin. He hates the liberal Jewish foundation executives
in New York. He hates the Harvard WASPs
who write about structural racism. He hates Nancy Pelosi. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But none of those groups is likely to turn up dead in his
jail cell – not as likely as a black man or a black woman. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If freedom means anything, it means the freedom to go about
your life without having to worry about all the people who hate you. Because
let’s be honest: lots of people hate each other. Yankees fans hate Red Sox fans. Brocialists hate identitarians. Nancy Pelosi probably hates
that Texas cop just as much he hates her. So do the nose-pierced vegan and the
Harvard WASP.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the Texas bigot doesn’t have to worry about ending up
dead because some people hate him. Blacks in this country don't enjoy the same luxury. If that’s not due to “economic inequality,” what is it
due to? What could possibly account for that difference? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Is it just a coincidence that the rate of incarceration for
blacks is six times the rate for whites – and
that the rate for whites who didn’t graduate high school is, likewise, six
times the rate for whites who did? Is that not due to economic inequality? Is it a coincidence that the white incarceration rate is almost four times greater in poor Idaho than in rich Connecticut? Or that so far <i>just this year</i>, cops in Oklahoma
(population: 3.9 million) have killed 29 people, 18 of whom were white – more than
the entire English police force (population: 53 million) has killed in the last
decade?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
***<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The connections between economic stratification and
ascriptive hierarchy, between social structure and subjective affect – these
issues are not new and, believe it or not, Twitter, they weren’t even born in the
antebellum American South. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here’s Karl Marx in 1870, advising an activist friend in
America about the Irish question:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
England now possesses a working
class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish
proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a
competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he
regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a
tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus
strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social,
and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is
much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the Negroes in the former slave
states of the U.S.A.. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own
money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of
the English rulers in Ireland.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
This antagonism is artificially
kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in
short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This <i>antagonism</i> is the secret of the<i> impotence of the English working class</i>,
despite its organization. It is the secret by which the capitalist class
maintains its power.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a social theorist, Marx unfortunately lacked the subtlety
of, say, a Hillary Clinton. His simplistic solution was for the Irish to free
themselves from their English landlords in Ireland -- and unite with the English
workers in England. <o:p></o:p></div>
Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-48898606894767757932015-07-13T14:06:00.000-07:002015-07-13T14:06:38.689-07:00Sophistry on Greece: An Anthology<br />
1. "The Problem Was That Greece Failed To Implement The Program."<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYVNOGcM0NbyL5yqR793seCCYkaw7Vy-SZeGYXwNRY9HzrEwcdDHhbsaaUF9-fV7qC_B_PDkZOSWZublgq26K8HIG52XDsTrMGkxTWohX6JYo98MT_XFNESu0MRtgKvxNnM2zqdSoI3vVh/s1600/1+%25282%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="460" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYVNOGcM0NbyL5yqR793seCCYkaw7Vy-SZeGYXwNRY9HzrEwcdDHhbsaaUF9-fV7qC_B_PDkZOSWZublgq26K8HIG52XDsTrMGkxTWohX6JYo98MT_XFNESu0MRtgKvxNnM2zqdSoI3vVh/s640/1+%25282%2529.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
2. "Greece Is Different. Public Debt Was Growing Even In The Good Years."<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR81JoeQpL_6vQyxTfig45aAIxQA8YgSTIUdHEJ5LqVMah6y3e7f7LC6wcn3mHOO5Pq4GIEa0Gh51D1MuDhIYly0BiRBkAPTBpf3M1p_RWqy4HZRb9NOgc8s7f_iNLELiTs_CMMiAxjAk3/s1600/2+%25282%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="467" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR81JoeQpL_6vQyxTfig45aAIxQA8YgSTIUdHEJ5LqVMah6y3e7f7LC6wcn3mHOO5Pq4GIEa0Gh51D1MuDhIYly0BiRBkAPTBpf3M1p_RWqy4HZRb9NOgc8s7f_iNLELiTs_CMMiAxjAk3/s640/2+%25282%2529.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
3. "But Look At How Much Greece Spends On Pensions."</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigQTCCrCgYWpjBSwCvvKyCc_Y-7aJy99HsqZ_fftN7wOBT7ui2zOaxqbw7ANRI2V7iXKglK7XAYOrbEQZIPzIDHdBQ9XHKDWEJFE63De79fD1pMYN4aRRpGcf74LF4VukVj3Mf8Qv54xER/s1600/3a.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="465" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigQTCCrCgYWpjBSwCvvKyCc_Y-7aJy99HsqZ_fftN7wOBT7ui2zOaxqbw7ANRI2V7iXKglK7XAYOrbEQZIPzIDHdBQ9XHKDWEJFE63De79fD1pMYN4aRRpGcf74LF4VukVj3Mf8Qv54xER/s640/3a.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfIQcqOyr9JGXLQ3lGly-15u7Y8XMsNqlPKWfCN42G5kj6FArD7_-lW9BEL8wzdhvAHFu7mGa_CRGPNJSue3nmYmPOJHYwfwSVfq77Es8Rpn1jKak95u5-9uX4JV-Q-aQOUu2tdDugrPDs/s1600/3b.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="457" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfIQcqOyr9JGXLQ3lGly-15u7Y8XMsNqlPKWfCN42G5kj6FArD7_-lW9BEL8wzdhvAHFu7mGa_CRGPNJSue3nmYmPOJHYwfwSVfq77Es8Rpn1jKak95u5-9uX4JV-Q-aQOUu2tdDugrPDs/s640/3b.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
4. "It's Not About Demand. Greece Doesn't Export."</div>
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiThtpOQ2RV4SEIzR-SMgrF1LvnQsok3y3n2oYSyd8qEdlo3xfRv55a1uxkQtX5B0UVq_J6f9-T8eTi-kSvFL4moZpNQkOoRt3BeIiEbuBrTJD2LYvm8Wv9HGy5x96BvJNreCWB5GlnDRbN/s1600/4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="465" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiThtpOQ2RV4SEIzR-SMgrF1LvnQsok3y3n2oYSyd8qEdlo3xfRv55a1uxkQtX5B0UVq_J6f9-T8eTi-kSvFL4moZpNQkOoRt3BeIiEbuBrTJD2LYvm8Wv9HGy5x96BvJNreCWB5GlnDRbN/s640/4.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-60739916826258952832015-07-05T03:24:00.000-07:002015-07-06T06:09:25.949-07:00Here’s my prediction of what happens if Greece votes No<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, it's not really a prediction, just my best guess about
both sides’ next moves and the considerations they’ll be taking into account. Like
most guesses about the future, it’s probably wrong, but hopefully illuminating.
(If there's a Yes vote, I have no idea what will happen, except that Varoufakis
will resign and the Eurogroup offer will be signed.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
***<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Immediately after the No vote, Greece demands that the ECB
restore full liquidity to the banking system (as any normal lender of last
resort is supposed to do). A threat is made -- either publicly stated or
implicit but communicated to the Eurozone authorities -- that if this doesn't happen,
Greece will immediately issue a parallel currency redeemable against future tax
payments.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At that point the ECB has to decide what to do. It won't
make the decision without clear guidance from the political authorities,
because the issuance of a parallel currency is a major step -- albeit
potentially reversible -- towards a Grexit. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So the EU will have to decide which outcome is least
unpalatable to it. Of course, neither is desirable from its point of view. If it complies
and restores ELA, the bank panic ends, cash controls can be lifted, and a calm
atmosphere can proceed in which Syriza can negotiate for a better deal -- now
armed with a democratic mandate and a public admission from the IMF that the
existing deal on the table was not sustainable.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Obviously that would be a terrible outcome from the EU's
perspective. It would be perceived (rightly) as a major political victory for Syriza.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So the EU might refuse to restore bank liquidity. In
that case Greece will issue the parallel currency.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In my view, the best way to do this is in the form of
tradable tax credits redeemable starting in, say, a year. (See <a href="http://www.voxeu.org/article/parallel-currency-greece-part-i" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.voxeu.org/article/parallel-currency-greece-part-ii" target="_blank">here</a>.)
A fresh batch of these would be allocated immediately to citizens and
firms. These credits are obviously worth something: every retailer can use them
to pay his VAT, every individual can use them to pay his payroll tax, etc. (Greek businesses have to pay VAT tax every three months, so these credits will come in handy.) Since they're tradable and valuable, Greeks will be willing to buy these credits for
euros, albeit at a discount, mainly reflecting the risk that the drachma will
be introduced at some point and the tax credits redenominated. As a result, the credits would be a form of money whose
supply would be under the Finance Ministry's control. The result, if it works
the way it's supposed to, would be Greece's ability to stimulate aggregate
demand and increase economic output, which it can't do as long as the ECB has a
monopoly over issuance of means of payment. In Milton Friedman’s terminology,
the tax credits would accelerate the velocity of euros inside the Greek banking
system.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There has been some talk about the technical and logistical
difficulties of quickly changing over Greece’s electronic payments system or distributing
currency to ATMs. But as I see it, no such complicated operations are needed.
Greece can mail every household a paper check worth, say, 600 euros of future
tax relief. Individuals can take the check to a currency exchange [<b>SEE UPDATE BELOW</b>], like the
ones at the airport, and exchange it for, say, a 300 euro check, which they can
then deposit at their bank. (Banks are closed for withdrawals but they’re happy
to take deposits!) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At that point, 300 real euros will be transferred in the usual
way, electronically, from the currency exchange’s (Greek) bank to the customer’s (Greek) bank, and 300 euros will be credited to the customer’s account. The individual can spend the money using a debit card -- debit cards are working normally for domestic transactions -- or make (limited) currency withdrawals. Afterward, the currency exchange can sell the tax credits to business and individuals. Again, the point is that the velocity of money is increased, which increases GDP. And Greece can print as many of these credits as it thinks prudent.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So the EU's decision about whether to comply with Syriza's
post-referendum threat will depend on how it views this parallel currency
scenario: is it better or worse, from its point of view, than the
Syriza-negotiating-triumph victory? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, the upside of the parallel currency for the EU is
that it doesn’t hand Syriza a major immediate victory. The obvious downside is
that it would clearly be a big step towards Grexit. Moreover, it's a step
that allows Syriza to keep its promise to voters not to take Greece
out of the eurozone: there would still be euros in Greek bank accounts and the
Bank of Greece would still be hooked up to the Eurosystem payments network. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The EU has put on a brave face about not really caring about
Grexit, but behind the scenes it is deeply divided. Many on the Right, in
Germany and Northern Europe generally, seem OK with the idea. (In fact,
Schaeuble himself recently mentioned the possibility of a parallel currency in
Greece.) But many others, on the center-left and in Southern Europe, privately
view the prospect with horror. Francois Hollande, in particular, is now
panicking. All along he assumed that Germany would never push things this far;
he thought that if he privately and politely urged Berlin to go easy it would listen
to him. Now the masks have come off and France is scrambling. God only knows
what Renzi et al are feeling. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So if the EU takes
this path -- if it denies Greece bank liquidity and forces it to introduce a parallel
currency -- the immediate outcome would be a political crisis within the
Franco-German core the likes of which haven't been seen in many decades.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even worse is what might happen after the immediate crisis.
If a major expansion of the effective Greek money supply does what one would
expect it to -- stimulates the Greek economy -- this would be a real nightmare
for the Eurozone, for reasons that are too obvious to explain. In many ways, it
would really be the worst of all possible worst-case scenarios, politically speaking. And economically speaking, there is the question of what the markets' reaction would be in Spain, Italy, et
al., which until now have weathered the Greek crisis OK.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, the eurozone could retaliate against Greece and
shut off its access to the payments network, or achieve the same thing by
drastically reducing ELA, thus kicking it out of the euro. Politically speaking, this
would presumably require a unanimous vote of the EU heads of state at the European
Council. (If the ECB took this step over clear French opposition, I think the
European project would be effectively over, at least for many years.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Obviously it would be terrible for Syriza (and the whole
country) if Greece were forced out of the euro. It would cause an appalling economic
collapse, a visible humanitarian crisis in a NATO country. But in a sense it
would also let Syriza off the hook: Hey, we tried our best to fight austerity within
the euro, the voters agreed with us, and then the evil Europeans kicked us out. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So a lot depends on three things, in ascending order of
importance: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
(1) how smoothly Greece can roll out the currency issuance;<br />
<br />
(2) how much it would stimulate the economy;<br />
<br />
(3) above all, the Europeans' <i>perceptions</i> of (1) and (2). </blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The risks are high for both sides, but I think Greece is in
a stronger position than most people think. Again, I’m probably wrong.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE: </b>Actually, this could be done without middlemen. Banks could accept and deal in the credits directly. </div>
Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-82407744994932013872015-06-24T21:02:00.000-07:002015-06-25T03:58:19.020-07:00Rise of the robots<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
[<b>UPDATE: </b>Despite what the chart title says, this actually shows employment in "industry," which includes mining, utilities, and transport along with manufacturing. Sorry for the slip.]</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNLAO5yodoKYKMgfTgJyi6G4WSlHvQDODtPOQudefBImIYSRNci1bA7CblgIqz6x9akC4lMZdBxGh7Ey_wSsoP3NSQ-vgrTWGzDM_sipSGJ4BsYGwLhx4HwBQG_-o-DDoUGTdRJj319De1/s1600/global+manufacturing+2.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNLAO5yodoKYKMgfTgJyi6G4WSlHvQDODtPOQudefBImIYSRNci1bA7CblgIqz6x9akC4lMZdBxGh7Ey_wSsoP3NSQ-vgrTWGzDM_sipSGJ4BsYGwLhx4HwBQG_-o-DDoUGTdRJj319De1/s640/global+manufacturing+2.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-1368445103031537252015-06-01T18:50:00.000-07:002015-06-02T15:07:07.628-07:00What are the most important issues for people of color?<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;">Luckily, we don't have to guess! For decades, Gallup has been asking
Americans this very question on a regular basis.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Here's
how it works. A Gallup interviewer asks a respondent: "What do you think
is the most important problem facing this country today?" The respondent volunteers up to three answers, and the interviewer records the responses
word-for-word. Then, the data wizards at Gallup group together all the
basically similar answers under a single heading (such as
"Ethical-Moral-Religious Decline") and count the results.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Got it?
Great! Let's see what the numbers say.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The most
recent Gallup poll asking this question was conducted on March 5-8, 2015. There
were 203 respondents who said they were something other than non-Hispanic
whites. Of these, 105 were non-Hispanic blacks and 61 were Hispanic, the rest
being Asian or something else. (For those who would point out the fairly small
size of this sample, I enthusiastically invite them to obtain a larger one by combining
several polls together -- and be sure to report what you find in the comments!) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">What
follows is the number of respondents of color who volunteered each issue as
their <i><u>first</u> </i>answer<b>***</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In
first place, by a pretty wide margin, we have "Unemployment/Jobs" (24
respondents). Then "Politicians" (17 respondents). In third place we
have what Gallup called "The Economy (General)" (17 respondents).
After that comes "Immigration/Illegal Aliens" (12 respondents, 5 of
whom were non-Hispanic blacks; the number of Latinos was not specifically
recorded). And in fifth place we've got "Health Care/Hospitals" (10 respondents).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I’d
like to point out three other noteworthy items: (1)"Race Relations,"
as Gallup terms it, was the most important issue for 6 respondents. (2) The
criminal justice system was most important for 5 respondents. And (3) elections
or election reform was most important for 3 respondents.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As you
might imagine, with such an open-ended question the total number of distinct
answers was large -- 34 in total, as recorded by Gallup. So to help make sense
of them all, I'm going to consolidate them into 10 larger categories of my own
design, ordered from biggest to smallest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">For no
particular reason, I'm going to call the first category <b>"Bernie Sanders
Issues."</b> And I'm going to place Race Relations + Criminal Justice +
Election Reform under the single heading, <b>"Race."</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt; line-height: 115%;">Behold:
the </span><b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Vox
populi!!</span></b><br />
<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b>
<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>[UPDATE: </b>Note that these are raw numbers, not percentages! The sample size is almost an even 200, so to get a percentage, just halve each number.]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV8vFuvwXFWHg-klePUbJxucmMnrbCa34kDIM-uuPM_PSFt1hCxV-CU6vk8Ppqe45QHw5yA9fIzuuz7IcZftIVyG4fx20zbrDvjKJXpkrEfJz93lF6RLeir3E6VTom4uKI_r-lcEjNA5b6/s1600/nonwhite+most+important.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV8vFuvwXFWHg-klePUbJxucmMnrbCa34kDIM-uuPM_PSFt1hCxV-CU6vk8Ppqe45QHw5yA9fIzuuz7IcZftIVyG4fx20zbrDvjKJXpkrEfJz93lF6RLeir3E6VTom4uKI_r-lcEjNA5b6/s1600/nonwhite+most+important.png" /></a></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%;"><b>*** </b>As for the second-choice responses, there's not much news there. 156 of the respondents declined to give a second choice, and the top answer, "Health Care/Hospitals" was chosen by only 5 respondents. Nobody gave a third choice.</span></div>
Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-50587656411103517952015-04-06T19:20:00.001-07:002015-04-06T19:23:47.562-07:00Uber deserves a fair chance in the marketplace<div class="MsoNormal">
A while back, you might remember, the formidable Mike
Konczal made a splash with a piece in the <i>Nation</i>
titled “<a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/192545/socialize-uber">Socialize
Uber</a>.” His argument was simple: most of the capital used by Uber – the cars,
the auto insurance – is paid for by the workers. Yet the workers don’t get any
of the profits. (Actually, Uber probably doesn’t make any profits yet, but it collects
something like $2 billion a year from drivers; it then blows most of that on
marketing and lobbying.) <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So the obvious answer is right there in the title: Socialize
Uber. The company should be run as a worker cooperative.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At that point, Joe Wiesenthal of <i>Business Insider</i> posted a comment to Mike’s Facebook wall asking a
reasonable question: “How do you go about turning Uber into a collective?” In
response, I offered this:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b>the simplest way to turn Uber into a collective is just for cities to
adopt regulatory codes for ridesharing that only permit ridesharing by
worker-owned firms. Uber would then seamlessly transition into becoming a
software provider.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why am I posting this now, months later? One reason is that Mike just asked me
to. But another reason is that I’d like to expand a little on the economics of
this idea. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Suppose you were to pitch this concept – municipal laws that
require ridesharing companies to be driver cooperatives – to Travis Kalanick, Uber’s
charming CEO. I’m guessing he’d be opposed to it. But it's hard to see on what grounds he could object. Uber has
always claimed that it doesn’t actually employ
its drivers. Rather, the drivers are simply plucky entrepreneurs, and Uber merely
sells a service that connects those entrepreneurs to customers via a
sophisticated proprietary software system. Uber promises investors that it
will soon be making mega-profits, but it also claims those profits merely represent a
return on its technology and risk-bearing. <i>Certainly
</i>the money doesn’t come from exploiting Uber’s <i>workers</i>. What workers? No, no – you see, the drivers are merely Uber’s
<i>business partners</i>, and you can't exploit your business partner.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, in that case Kalanick should have no objection to what
I’m proposing. Once these laws are passed, Uber can continue to sell its innovative
software services at whatever price the market will bear, a price it will obviously
set so as to ensure it is fully compensated for the technology and risk-bearing
it’s already supplied. (Or, at least, it will <i>hope</i> the market will bear that price.) Except that now, Uber will
be transacting with <i>genuine</i> business
partners – worker cooperatives who are free to purchase software and service
from the company (or one of its many competitors) in a free-market business
transaction. Now it will be the workers who democratically set their own fares, determine
their own work rules, and, of course, pocket any profits. And since Uber claims
it already sets fares with the best interest of drivers in mind, it should have
no reason to worry about losing its fare-setting control to them. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Marx famously <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm" target="_blank">wrote</a> that under capitalism, “the owner of
money must meet in the market with the free laborer, free in the double sense,
that as a free man he can dispose of his labor-power as his own commodity, and
that on the other hand he has no other commodity for sale, is short of
everything necessary for the realization of his labor-power.” Perhaps soon,
Uber, the owner of money, will have a taste of what it’s like to engage in that
sort of “free” transaction: in this case, meeting in the market with a
transactor who owns all the <i>labor-power</i>
necessary for that money’s realization. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or, to quote the Old Man again, this time <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/10/27.htm" target="_blank">addressing</a> an 1864
meeting of workers on the subject of labor cooperatives:</div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The value of these great social experiments cannot be overrated. By
deed instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale,
and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the
existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit,
the means of labor need not be monopolized as a means of dominion over, and of
extortion against, the laboring man himself; and that, like slave labor, like
serf labor, hired labor is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to
disappear before associated labor plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready
mind, and a joyous heart.</b></blockquote>
<br />
<b><i>P.S.:</i> </b><i>In case anyone was wondering, there are many precedents for laws excluding certain kinds of owners from particular industries. Many states forbid corporations from engaging in certain kinds of <a href="http://nationalaglawcenter.org/research-by-topic/corporate-farming-laws/" target="_blank">farming</a>; many exclude for-profit companies from certain kinds of <a href="http://www.gambling-law-us.com/Charitable-Gaming/" target="_blank">gambling</a> and <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRPT-109srpt55/html/CRPT-109srpt55.htm" target="_blank">credit counseling</a> businesses; and federal restrictions on <a href="https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33103.pdf" target="_blank">foreign ownership</a> exist in a wide range of industries. </i>Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-38530136184875012602015-02-05T12:03:00.001-08:002015-02-07T09:07:47.746-08:00Truly Too Hot For Jacobin!<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_4l181YdR67-6nIIiDXr_VYb8FjxgK8NZW4-Ki3mnWS3PbQ167_uHKoRu9WmBd3Jfqalo8tzV2Hyn3GX3ipT8v-qTg04LI0Ldl6k_NPqGgq0kVYc29SYdIp4E72f99128DCEi5TenAULr/s1600/caught.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_4l181YdR67-6nIIiDXr_VYb8FjxgK8NZW4-Ki3mnWS3PbQ167_uHKoRu9WmBd3Jfqalo8tzV2Hyn3GX3ipT8v-qTg04LI0Ldl6k_NPqGgq0kVYc29SYdIp4E72f99128DCEi5TenAULr/s1600/caught.gif" height="640" width="420" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The other day on Facebook, my <i>Jacobin</i> colleague
Connor Kilpatrick posted an excerpt from an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZJyXIv0z0w"><span style="color: blue;">interview</span></a> with
prison scholar Marie Gottschalk. Gottschalk has a new book out called <i>Caught:
The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics</i> that looks to
be very much worth reading.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">In the interview, she points out how, despite large racial
disparities in incarceration rates, even whites in America are imprisoned at
far higher rates than the populations of most other rich countries. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Gottschalk is right. </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Which
reminded me of something that came up during the <i>Charlie Hebdo</i> debate. Some people at the time were
circulating articles reporting that 60% or 70% of French prisoners are Muslims. In fact, these were basically guesses since France doesn't collect data on the
religious affiliations of detainees. (Which doesn't necessarily mean they're
wrong).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
The argument went that by comparing those stats with analogous U.S. figures it could be said that the "racial" bias against Muslims in the French criminal
justice system is even worse than the bias against blacks in the U.S. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 115%;">So I went
looking for actual stats on French prisoners, and compared them with U.S. data.
Here's what it looks like:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6NW7gb3IJK42av_3sO5vOx3xjvlbS116sDiT_zZsg4qLulkkQl-YXqCeqxjL6f7WRNBr88LDAv2nOl6OXYlwkjNjVF1OZUYC1JUU028wkyTC2wim8BmEQv30T8Y-kTVt9WVLXupY2KqHV/s1600/US+and+France.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6NW7gb3IJK42av_3sO5vOx3xjvlbS116sDiT_zZsg4qLulkkQl-YXqCeqxjL6f7WRNBr88LDAv2nOl6OXYlwkjNjVF1OZUYC1JUU028wkyTC2wim8BmEQv30T8Y-kTVt9WVLXupY2KqHV/s1600/US+and+France.PNG" height="465" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">It turns out it's true -- the black-white incarceration ratio in
the U.S. <i>is</i> lower than the North African immigrant-native ratio in
France. But that's only because so few native French are in prison. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Which
raises a larger issue. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">I remembered finding something surprising in the U.S. stats when I
looked at them a while ago. It turns out that the <i>smallest</i> racial
disparities in U.S. imprisonment rates are in the Deep South, while the largest
are in states like New Jersey and Connecticut. Not quite what you'd expect, right?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">What to make of that surprising fact? I have no problem believing that
the New Jersey and Connecticut justice systems are racist. What I
find hard to believe is that those in Alabama and Mississippi are far <i>less</i> racist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">So after looking at the French numbers, I decided to do a little
statistical analysis. I found that the degree of racial disparity in U.S.
states' incarceration rates is almost entirely a function of how <i>low</i> the
white rate is. It's completely unrelated to how <i>high</i> the black
rate is. (R-squared is 54% for the white rate, 5% for the black rate.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Racial disparity in overall incarceration, it seems, is a pretty
useless way to measure the bias of a criminal justice system. What seems to be
the case, rather, is that the more punitive a justice system gets, the more the
experience of incarceration starts to affect people <i>outside the very
lowest ranks of society</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The result is a paradox: the higher a state's overall
incarceration rate, the smaller the racial disparity. Here's what
that looks like:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzfW7Mfo7oVMCIF3a_G0vosG6KM2bQcZ72j5xIfrvnADsyhwLv6sXVxLO-Q9zsLn8mFxr23EdezyxO-M0eMSgN8UJD7eQCmIavf5XZB2Qroa7j0Don6GFt7sbJv8S23QHpGfQAloi2WYdP/s1600/US+totals.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzfW7Mfo7oVMCIF3a_G0vosG6KM2bQcZ72j5xIfrvnADsyhwLv6sXVxLO-Q9zsLn8mFxr23EdezyxO-M0eMSgN8UJD7eQCmIavf5XZB2Qroa7j0Don6GFt7sbJv8S23QHpGfQAloi2WYdP/s1600/US+totals.PNG" height="465" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">So suppose, tomorrow, the government were to blindly adopt an
across-the-board cut in statutory sentencing standards for every crime. The
result would surely be a massive drop in incarceration, for both blacks and
whites. </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">But also, it seems, a big increase in the level of racial <i>disparity</i>.
Food for thought.</span></div>
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Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-29420933970752139662015-01-15T10:07:00.000-08:002015-01-15T10:07:24.766-08:00"If Charlie Is Racist, Then I Am," by Zineb El-Rhazoui<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In December 2013, former </span></i><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Charlie Hebdo<i>
editor Olivier Cyran, who had left the magazine in 2001, published an article, “<a href="http://www.cercledesvolontaires.fr/2013/12/05/charlie-hebdo-pas-raciste-si-vous-le-dites-article11/">Charlie
Hebdo, Not Racist? If You Say So</a>,” on his website <a href="http://www.article11.info/?charlie-hebdo-pas-raciste-si-vous">Article11</a>.
<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Charlie
Hebdo<i>’s religion editor, Zineb el-Rhazoui,
<a href="http://www.cercledesvolontaires.fr/2013/12/22/si-charlie-hebdo-est-raciste-alors-je-le-suis-reponse-de-zineb-el-rhazoui-a-olivier-cyran/">replied</a>
in an essay published the same month. I’ve translated her essay below. When the
attack on the paper’s offices occurred, el-Rhazoui was traveling in Morocco. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"If <i>Charlie</i> Is
Racist, Then I Am"<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Zineb el-Rhazoui<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On
December 5th, I learned in the press that I have a terrible disease. The
diagnosis, by Olivier Cyran on the website Article 11, is definitive: I am racist.
Being of French citizenship, I was anxious to identify, before the malady could
advance any further, which races were likely to activate my white-woman
antibodies. My suspicions naturally gravitated to the descendants of those exotic
hordes who are said to be invading Old France to steal our bread, my bread. The
Chinese? I've received no Asian complaint on this score. The blacks of Africa
and elsewhere? That happens to be the color of the man I love. The drinkers of
vodka? I just came back from a year's exile in Slovenia and don't especially
remember being allergic to Slavic charms. Who then? "Whites"? I
wouldn't venture to think Olivier Cyran could adhere to the theory of
"anti-white racism." No. I didn't have to make it far into the piece
to be reassured that his diagnosis was more precise: my racism, thank God (that
idiot), is only aimed at Muslims, and I contracted
this dangerous syndrome from the editorial staff of <i>Charlie Hebdo</i>. An occupational illness, then. Since Olivier Cyran
is himself a veteran of the shop, though I never had the pleasure of meeting
him -- since he had the luck, and the balls, according to him, to get out
before the infection could spread through
the paper -- I've decided to address him as <i>tu</i>,
since we use <i>tu</i> among colleagues at
Charlie.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Olivier,
you start from the premise that the Muslims of Azerbaijan, of Bosnia, of
Malaysia, Egypt or Burkina Faso, represent a single whole that can be
designated as a "race." Well, it so happens that that's the one I belong
to. The fact that I'm an atheist, and proud of it? It makes no difference,
since you don't ask us what we think; you talk about racism, and therefore
race. I won't keep beating around the bush, since I don't doubt for a second
that, like me, you perfectly understand the distinction between a religion and
a race. If you make this lamentable conflation, it's because you engage in a
sociological fallacy whose origins lie in the demography of France: our Muslims
are most often those we call "Arabs." I'm sort of starting to
understand why you speak of racism. But let's try to be precise: we're not
talking about the Arabs of Lebanon, who are rarely encountered in the French
projects, nor the persecuted Arab Ahwazi minority of Iran, whom nobody in
France talks about, and certainly not the Arabs of Qatar who keep Louis Vuitton
in business. No, you're talking about the "Arabs" of North Africa --
and here again, it so happens that that is the "race" from which I
spring. Moreover, for your information, those "Arabs" aren't always
Arabs. The best-informed people in France know that they are Berbers, a word of
Greek origin, "Bearded," which refers to us <i>Amazighes</i>, <i>Imazighen</i> --
Free Men, as we like to call ourselves. I am thus triply qualified to dispel
the obvious confusion you manifest when you identify those you claim to be
defending: the Muslim race.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Muslim You Will Stay<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Among the
individuals that you assign to this racial category, there are militant
atheists like me, obviously secularist (<i>laïque</i>).
There are atheists who have other fish to fry, they are secularists too. There
are atheists who love <i>Charlie Hebdo</i>
and support it; others less so or not at all. There are agnostics, skeptics,
free-thinkers, deists; they are secularists as well. There are believers who are
non-practicing but politically Islamist, practicing but secularist, or even
those with "no opinion," whose daily lives do not suffer because of <i>Charlie Hebdo</i>. There are converts to
Christianity -- and oh, are they secularist, for they've endured the terrors of
theocracy in their countries of origin. And finally there are the
fundamentalists (<i>intégristes</i>), the
militant Islamists, the adherents of an identity defined above all by religion,
and those are the ones you have chosen to defend. Those are the ones who, given
the reality of French <i>laïcité</i>, have no other choice than to
cry racism, a tear in their eye and a hand on their heart, on the pretext that
their "religious feelings" have been mocked by a drawing in Charlie.
Among them you will find many who stand for <i>laïcité</i>
in France but vote <i>Ennahda</i> in
Tunisia, who do their shopping at a Parisian halal butcher but would cry
scandal if a misfit decided to open a charcuterie in Jeddah. Who are outraged
when a day care center fires a veiled employee but say nothing when someone
they know forces his daughter to wear the veil. They are a minority. But they
are the standard to which you have chosen to align the identity of all of us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Enough
generalities, which I didn't think a man of the pen needed to be reminded of.
If I've taken up mine to answer you, it is not solely to defend myself from
racism, but above all because in my journalist's memory I have rarely resented
an opinion column as much as I did yours. If you will allow an "Arab"
to address her own complaint, let me tell you that your rhetoric and arguments
are the most sophisticated variety of racism that exists in France. Rare are
those today who would risk shouting from the rooftops,"Ragheads Out!"
The extremists who would do so would immediately be jeered by you, by me, and
by a majority of the French people. First of all, you quote Bernard Maris,
Catherine, Charb, Caroline Fourest. What about me, what about me! You preferred
to omit my name, when it was <i>my</i> articles that you pointed to as
dangerously "Islamophobic," thus, according to you, necessarily
racist. Frankly, I wondered why , and I see only two options. Either you didn't
want to let <i>Charlie Hebdo</i>'s
detractors (who can only subscribe to your thinking if they never read the
paper) know that the author of these racist ravings belongs precisely to the
Muslim race. Or you simply didn't think that, as a person, I was worth naming,
since in a fascist rag like <i>Charlie</i> I
couldn't be anything but the house Arab. I must have been hired as an alibi, so
that <i>Charlie</i> could hit its diversity
quota, but you could never imagine that I could be brought on staff for the
same reasons that you were. An Olivier, of course, is hired for his
professional qualities; a Zineb is only hired by affirmative action. Or maybe you
"spared" me because in my case you have no personal scores to settle,
unlike a fair number of your former colleagues. In that case, I would have
readers seek the motives behind your article somewhere other than the realm of
ideas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Racism By Omission<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A Zineb
who spits on Islam, that's beyond you, isn't it? It disconcerts you so much
that you preferred not to name me, so as not to introduce any doubt as to the
veracity of your accusations against us, the journalists of <i>Charlie</i>. If the expression "spit on
Islam" shocks you, let me answer you on that too. Why the hell is a
"white person" who spits on Christianity an anticlerical, but an Arab
who spits on Islam is alienated, an alibi, a house Arab, an incoherence that
one would prefer not even to name? Why? Do you think that people of my race,
and myself, are congenitally sealed off from the universal ideas of atheism and
anticlericalism? Or is it that you think that unlike other peoples, our
identity is solely structured by religion? What is left of an Arab when he no
longer has Islam? To listen to you, a person like me must be some kind of <i>harki
</i>of the Koran, we are traitors so profoundly stricken by a racial complex
that we harbor a single regret, that of not being white. As for me, my
interactions with Muslims and Arabs did not begin with the [1983] <i>Marche des beurs</i>. I'm what is called a <i>blédarde</i>, born in Morocco to an
indigenous father and French mother. It's there that I was educated and began
my career as a journalist in a weekly paper that was shut down by the regime in
2010. My colleagues from the old country can explain to you how, in 2006, the
Moroccan police state, which had other scores to settle with us, organized a
fake demonstration of Islamists in front of the office of the <i>Journal Hebdo</i>,
which was accused of having published <i>Charlie</i>'s
caricatures. In reality, it was a photo of a random person seated at a café terrace
holding a copy of <i>Charlie Hebdo</i>. I
can also tell you that your piece in Article11 was posted on Moroccan websites,
the same kind of sites that would never dare to poke their noses into a
corruption scandal involving the King, for example. I won't hide from you that
on this one you managed to make not only the Islamists happy but also the
Moroccan dictatorship that forced me and several of my colleagues into exile,
and which continues to harass us as traitors to the nation, henchmen of foreign
powers hostile to Morocco, even to Islam. A piece like yours is worth its
weight in gold to the royalist police agents, who sponsored a
"dossier" against <i>Charlie</i>
published in a gutter newspaper in Casablanca. It informs readers that, among
other things, the Molotov cocktail attack on <i>Charlie</i>'s offices in November 2011 was an insurance fraud, and that
Charb drives a Ferrari thanks to all the dough we make. I don't know if you've
heard from Charb since you left the paper, but he still hasn't passed his
driving test. In another Moroccan article on <i>Charlie</i>, I learned I'd been hired because I had slept with Caroline
Fourest and that my reporting was financed by the Algerian, Spanish, Israeli
secret services. Clearly a raghead can't really be hired for the same reasons
as an Olivier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My friend,
I know you have nothing to do with the whole journalistic sewer that serves the
Mohammed VI dictatorship. I simply want to show you who <i>you're </i>making
happy, if my pieces on Islam might occasionally please a few members of the FN.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You see,
Olivier, as a <i>blédarde</i> born in the
Maghreb, assigned against my will to a religious pigeonhole, not only by you,
but above all by a theocratic state that does not allow me to choose my faith
and which governs my personal status by religious laws, I have always wondered
why guys like you lie down before Islamist propaganda. The laws of my country
do not grant me a quarter of the rights you acquired at birth, and if I were to
be attacked or raped in the streets of Casablanca by a <i>barbu</i>, as has
been promised in hundreds of emails -- never taken seriously by the Moroccan
police -- the websites that posted your article will definitely say I was
asking for it because I don't respect Islam. And you here in France, in a
secularist state, you rehash without grasping its implications this whole
moralizing discourse about how one must "respect Islam," as demanded
by the Islamists, who do not ask whether Islam respects other religions, or
other people. Why the hell should I respect Islam? Does it respect me? The day Islam shows the slightest bit of
consideration to women, first of all, and secondly to free-thinkers, I
promise you I will rethink my positions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The FN? Don't know them.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is in
order to see that day come that I fight alongside all the atheists of Morocco,
Tunisia, Egypt or Palestine, not to give pleasure to the FN as you explain in
your article. Because believe me, a lot of virulent atheists in the Arab world,
so virulent they regularly spend time in jail for blasphemy, have never heard
of Marine Le Pen, and could not possibly care if what they say pleases the
French far right, because they're busy fighting their own far right: Islamism.
If you will permit us, we "Islamophobes" of the Muslim race think the
liberation of our societies will necessarily come through emancipation from the
yoke of state religion. Since that is what Islam is more or less everywhere in
the so-called Arab countries, you'll also find there a strong opposition to
theocracy, which is fed not only by the universal idea of separation of church
and state but also by the skepticism and historicization of Islamic texts. We
permit ourselves just about anything, such as, for example, thinking that
Mohammed, and even Allah, are not unrepresentable. Caricatures, parodies of
Koranic verses or hadiths, you just have to look around on our internet forums
to see that Charlie was not the original source on this score.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You've got
to understand us, because you see, centuries after his death Mohammed is still
imposing his law. He is, in a manner of speaking, the head of state of this
Umma that deprives us of our freedom of thought, and which forbids me, for
example, to inherit property equally with my brothers or to marry a man of my
choosing. Why would you -- you, an anti-authoritarian -- want a man with as
much power as him to be exempt from critique? Because, when I speak to you of
laws, I am not referring to obsolete Koranic decrees but to the positive laws
in our countries, to the civil code that governs our marriages, divorces,
inheritances, child custody, etc. Yes, it's Mohammed, in the name of Allah, who
decides, and not us, free people who are equal to you. Let me tell you that for
all these reasons, it will not be the official representatives of the Islamic
denomination in Europe, whose platitudes you adopt, and who themselves take
good advantage of the joys of secularism, who will fix the limits of our freedom
of expression. Make no mistake, Olivier, because antiracism is on the side of <i>Charlie Hebdo</i>, which opens its pages to
people like me who cannot speak out in their own country under penalty of
prison or attack, and not on yours, you who agree to hand the entire
"Muslim race" over to its self-proclaimed clergy. <i>Charlie</i> is aware of the intellectual and
ideological ferment that is animating the Muslim world, it has understood that
a war is on between freedom and politico-Islamist dictatorship, whether you date
it to before or after the Arab Spring, and <i>Charlie</i>
has quite simply chosen its camp: ours, its -- that of the anticlericals. If
blasphemy is a right for the heirs of Christian civilization, why do you deny
it to Muslims? Why is an Islamic state acceptable in Tunisia or Egypt, but not
in France? Isn't that what racism is?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Art of Muzzling Criticism<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Far be it
from me to force this analysis on you. While it flows logically from your
reading, I wouldn't go so far as to say you would adopt it. I've tried to
uncover the reason you've fallen into such a trap, and I've found it in the
fallacy that serves to cement your argument: "Headscarves, high heels,
even a T-shirt made in Bangladesh, none of them matter to me when the person
underneath is deserving of respect," you say in your article. The
honorable philanthropic intention you demonstrate unfortunately conflates the
critique of ideas with the critique of persons. Let's remember that the basis
of all sound rhetoric is always to avoid the <i>argumentum ad hominem</i>.
Inversely, to abhor an idea must never lead to its personification. Critiquing
the headscarf is not the same as humiliating every woman who wears it, any more
than critiquing Islam amounts to jeering every Muslim. The veiled women in my
family are less sensitive than you on this score. Even though I do not hide my
aversion to the bit of fabric they wear on their heads, they understand that it
in no way detracts from the affection and respect that I have -- or don't have
-- for them, for simply human reasons. In committing this fallacy, you once
again adopt the arguments of the watchdogs of Islamophobia. Lacking the
religious laws that are their tool of power in Muslim countries, they seize on
antiracist laws in France to silence detractors of their beliefs. They are
dying to have us admit that critiquing the headscarf means denying dignity to
those who wear it, and therefore it's racism. Critiquing Mohammed means
humiliating every Muslim on an individual basis, and therefore it's racism.
That's their equation, and you, Olivier, you took the bait.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Not me.
Because the specter of racism that you fear -- so much so that you anoint the
arguments of the Islamic far right and throw stones at your former colleagues,
to escape all suspicion -- I do not fear it. It is so absurd to suspect me of
racism that even you prefer to suppress my name from your article, though you
mentioned all the others. As the Arab
whose name you preferred not to cite, I experienced your piece as racist
because you forced me, the Arab, to defend my colleagues, the whites. Why
should I have more legitimacy than them to advance these ideas? Why does your
article force me to bring up my name and my identity? I would have you think
about that. You deny me the right to critique the religion I studied as a
mandatory subject in school, from preschool to graduation, and which still
today forbids me from staying in the same hotel room as my boyfriend when I
want to spend a weekend in Marrakech, on the pretext that we don't have a
fornication certificate signed by Mohammed. As for my colleagues at <i>Charlie</i>, they clearly ought to shut up,
or draw Christmas trees every time they get the notion to criticize Islamic
dictatorship, on the grounds that they're white. Nice definition of antiracism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If you've
read nothing other than Malek Chebel, the most vulgarized exponent of
Islam-the-religion-of-peace-and-love, I strongly urge you to buy a Sira book
first, to get an idea of the teachings of Mohammed, and you tell me if you
still think it's disgusting to critique them. Otherwise, go take a tour of the
Salafist bookstores that are popping up everywhere in the Paris region, and
tell me if you still think that hatred is on the side of<i> Charlie Hebdo</i>. Furthermore, be aware that the increase in their
number over the past fifteen years or so -- the period when <i>Charlie</i>, you say, curiously started to
take an interest in them -- in no way corresponds to any demographic explosion
of Muslims in France, but rather to an ideological shift financed by
petrodollars, involving a radicalized minority of Muslims.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Enlightened Minds, Learn Islam!<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You will
find many pearls in these books, such as<i> le mariage de jouissance </i>(<i>Zawaj
al-Mut’a</i>). Practiced in times of war by Muslims, this unilateral marriage
contract -- since it's the conquering warrior who decides -- can last an hour,
two hours, or a few days, and is intended to allow Allah's fighters to drain their balls (sorry for the
vulgarity, but it's impossible to call it anything else) during their <i>razzias</i>.
It appears that this is what happened in Syria in this byzantine story of "sexual
jihad." In your article, you quoted a piece in <i>Charlie</i>, of which I was the author, which addressed this subject
and which you described as a "pseudo-investigation" based on an
abominable Islamophobic rumor. I concede that neither you nor I were on the
ground to witness the practice, given the difficult conditions of journalism in
Syria at the moment. But for you it was sufficient that [Saudi preacher] Mohamad
al-Arefe denied the fatwa that was attributed to him -- urging that the
jihadists be resupplied with women -- for all of this to be unfounded. Do you
think the FIS in Algeria, or Al-Qaeda everywhere else, had to wait for al-Arefe?
You also refer to another of my articles -- again without naming me -- and
quote the teaser to illustrate <i>Charlie
Hebdo</i>'s dangerous drift towards nationalism. In your opinion, this piece
about a group of Belgian Salafists was denouncing the threat of our Christian
West being invaded by barbarian Muslim hordes. "Will fries soon all be
halal?" I asked. You forgot to mention that the hapless hero of my piece
was a [white] Belgian convert named Jean-Louis, a.k.a. "<i>le soumis</i>." This is no issue of
racism, but rather of fundamentalism. Since the article came out, the tall
redhead was arrested over a recruitment cell for jihad in Syria. You would
think I wasn't totally wrong to take an interest in his case.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You see,
Olivier, this <i>Charlie Hebdo </i>that was
totally not racist when you were working there, but which inexorably became so after you left it, does
not need anti-racist lessons from you, and it's the Arab who's telling you so.
Personally, I never worked with [Philippe] Val and I don't know if I would have
been able, as you were, to listen to his encomiums to Israel, a racist and
colonial state, at every editorial meeting in order to keep my job. For me,
it's the pen of Charb, one of the most pro-Palestinian writers in the French
press, with which I find affinity. Charb,
because of this lynching to which you are contributing through the confusion of
your ideas, is today being threatened by al-Qaeda and lives under police
protection. So which side is hatred on?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Salutations collégiales</span></i><span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;">Zaynab
bint Mohammad ibn al-Mâatî al-Rhazwî al-Harîzî.</span></div>
Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-45530499894363163862014-10-30T05:03:00.000-07:002014-11-11T00:12:24.199-08:00Quick Service Data Journalism from Matt Yglesias<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
America’s favorite ill-informed neoliberal pundit, Matt
Yglesias, has unveiled a masterpiece.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Inspired by the New York Times’ excellent <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/business/international/living-wages-served-in-denmark-fast-food-restaurants.html" target="_blank">piece </a>about
Denmark’s high fast-food wages -- which are maintained by the power of the United
Federation of Danish Workers -- Yglesias responded with an <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/28/7083475/denmark-fast-food-wages" target="_blank">article </a>headlined, “$20
an hour minimum wage really would cost a lot of people their jobs.” The sage of
Vox believed he had spotted “the crucial fact buried in the 29th paragraph of
the article”: namely, that McDonalds has far fewer restaurants in Denmark
(relative to population) than we do in the U.S. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Conclusion? “Mandating high wages for fast food workers has
more or less the impact you would expect — low levels of fast food employment.”
(But also this ass-covering sentence: “Obviously this is not a slam-dunk proof
that forcing US McDonaldses to pay Danish wages would lead to the closure of
two-thirds of the McDonalds restaurants in the country.”)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Can you really reach that conclusion from a single data
point? Is this data journalism?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Times draws on research by Oren Ashenfelter and Stepan
Jurajda, who gathered data on McDonalds wages in a number of different
countries. As it happens, I noticed the study last year, and decided to look
into exactly this question -- how the wage levels found related to the number of McDonalds in each
country. It took me a couple hours. Since Vox is so fond of cheap labor, I’m
offering my findings free of charge if they want to use them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Ashenfelter and Jurajda show the “McWage” for a large number
of countries: the gross hourly wage in 2007 for McDonalds crew workers, not
including benefits or employer taxes. Unfortunately, they haven’t yet reported
the actual numbers in tabular form. They only show each country’s McWage as a
percentage of the U.S. McWage, and you have to read the figures off their
graph, which can be found on page 31 of <a href="http://www.sire.ac.uk/documents/visitors/Ashenfelter_2012.pdf" target="_blank">this</a>, or page 20 of <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/assets/richmedia/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/slides/20120228_1830_comparingRealWagesTheMcWageIndex_sl.pdf" target="_blank">this</a>. Fortunately,
this doesn’t present much of an obstacle. </div>
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<br /></div>
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As for the number of McDonalds
restaurants in each country, you can find those numbers for Europe <a href="http://www.mcdpressoffice.eu/downloads/Economic_footprint_Report_Exec_Summary.pdf" target="_blank">here</a> (page
6); the company reports the numbers for other countries on the websites of its
national affiliates.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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OK, how do the numbers compare? Here’s a graph:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqiJHYV9NARARfo9RUiHZvv5Kyx6ZvIt3dLkfszNlWkKLu268Uf8oxZlcU909xxIY3dXvLWnnzT0nqFvIj1syr11cYv6kUs13ac9eN1O2bVwM-uTctmlNxG3_ljc4ah_19mI0XK6vFcONB/s1600/graph1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqiJHYV9NARARfo9RUiHZvv5Kyx6ZvIt3dLkfszNlWkKLu268Uf8oxZlcU909xxIY3dXvLWnnzT0nqFvIj1syr11cYv6kUs13ac9eN1O2bVwM-uTctmlNxG3_ljc4ah_19mI0XK6vFcONB/s1600/graph1.PNG" height="464" width="640" /></a></div>
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I’ll just point out the obvious. There is no relationship. </div>
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The U.S. has a very high number of McDonalds, apparently because McDonalds is a
U.S. company -- not because it can pay low wages. Canada and Australia have similarly high numbers of McDonalds, despite wages at the same levels as European countries with far fewer McDonalds. Denmark has about the same number of McDonalds as Germany and the Netherlands, despite far higher wages. Etc.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Now let’s try to put some dollar figures on this. Assume
that the U.S. McWage was $7.93 in 2007. (That was the highest state minimum
wage in the country at the time: Washington state). Then the dollar figures
would look like this. (I've left the numbers in 2007 dollars; in today's dollars they would be 15% higher. Also note that in their graph, Ashenfelter and Jurajda compare
McWage ratios using market exchange rates, so these numbers reflect that):<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9H-MdOZIhqtArywzt4vUuVIkAw6gCQWHYNxynDQOxkSsnuMA_48tmT5W3gsFCJC6Hkd02M6SHdcQK1aLVzdXomxhL9LTuZYEx4xMD6xsY0g4-qR1Gd5Sf5h0DtgF-NUplCHuKUfhVssZo/s1600/graph2.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9H-MdOZIhqtArywzt4vUuVIkAw6gCQWHYNxynDQOxkSsnuMA_48tmT5W3gsFCJC6Hkd02M6SHdcQK1aLVzdXomxhL9LTuZYEx4xMD6xsY0g4-qR1Gd5Sf5h0DtgF-NUplCHuKUfhVssZo/s1600/graph2.PNG" height="460" width="640" /></a></div>
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Of course, wages are not the only source of labor costs for
an employer. There are also benefits and taxes. Let’s mark up the McWage by the
average employer payroll tax for a low-wage single worker (data from the OECD),
and call that the McLaborCost:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhEiyEAd2SeAjy5FHGwclGULAk_CgCkyP7AkJvEYwnU8UCOYMNNpdXX0Nm5qKQ58sbb0T-tr4B0lJi9CaTqGf5EeA0pmpsG0aYtvoszAZTZzgyNK21gKnsgtr5lhlPDoL7gSW-e-PSQTVp/s1600/graph3.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhEiyEAd2SeAjy5FHGwclGULAk_CgCkyP7AkJvEYwnU8UCOYMNNpdXX0Nm5qKQ58sbb0T-tr4B0lJi9CaTqGf5EeA0pmpsG0aYtvoszAZTZzgyNK21gKnsgtr5lhlPDoL7gSW-e-PSQTVp/s1600/graph3.PNG" height="460" width="640" /></a></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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But maybe these numbers are misleading, because market
exchange rates don’t always reflect the domestic price structure. So let’s take
a different tack. Let’s look at the hourly McWage in each country as a ratio of that
country’s hourly aggregate output, with both figures
denominated in the same currency. (Hourly output data from the <a href="https://www.conference-board.org/data/economydatabase/" target="_blank">Conference Board</a>.) Here are the ratios:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCyHCC0zM8fLeb-wi3qm_7bgRk6nhCFdc-ybV0Y5PSUTBghcDeNtRnurlilXkAqHWVD6HCwykecDCxdvX6dc4ZjNnDc1Y7bHZgB2NqO88x7zpiA0KCyrHMs60_CofbNixjpJv1nuGApY9Y/s1600/graph4.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCyHCC0zM8fLeb-wi3qm_7bgRk6nhCFdc-ybV0Y5PSUTBghcDeNtRnurlilXkAqHWVD6HCwykecDCxdvX6dc4ZjNnDc1Y7bHZgB2NqO88x7zpiA0KCyrHMs60_CofbNixjpJv1nuGApY9Y/s1600/graph4.PNG" height="467" width="640" /></a></div>
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And here’s the same comparison using McLaborCost, rather
than the McWage:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1FcFlXFlrimeUmqAZ0hsbCIUgkOTFt2YK5xmJ6EcWAwSepPARG-2bQdDMVAeNbLTtIIqDhp03OHWp3TBXwCyt4jXQO9MbNNhfy4gmtcFhjzilIkAF-dOH1-4jm9yCg8muwcazi6bzR2Qd/s1600/graph5.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1FcFlXFlrimeUmqAZ0hsbCIUgkOTFt2YK5xmJ6EcWAwSepPARG-2bQdDMVAeNbLTtIIqDhp03OHWp3TBXwCyt4jXQO9MbNNhfy4gmtcFhjzilIkAF-dOH1-4jm9yCg8muwcazi6bzR2Qd/s1600/graph5.PNG" height="459" width="640" /></a><br />
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So, no. High wages for fast food workers do not have “more
or less the impact” Matt Yglesias would expect. Vox should take down the
article.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-23567110133254189642014-09-20T16:17:00.000-07:002014-09-20T16:17:31.106-07:00Ideology in the Senate, 1959-64<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-NXk0XltrtBXYuaB_PYrI-9RN8lcZzfJRIaHHSf8M0-BxgadhCdqgh8lZAXmFjmvZiH3PRvx4WfbnY0EV1h6IruzkzCzFJO7RPv-8StH5NQi8dM0Nj-gwDyehGrTGZM0GMJJvo6bqebZy/s1600/ideology+in+the+senate+1959-64+-+S+NE+and+MT.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-NXk0XltrtBXYuaB_PYrI-9RN8lcZzfJRIaHHSf8M0-BxgadhCdqgh8lZAXmFjmvZiH3PRvx4WfbnY0EV1h6IruzkzCzFJO7RPv-8StH5NQi8dM0Nj-gwDyehGrTGZM0GMJJvo6bqebZy/s1600/ideology+in+the+senate+1959-64+-+S+NE+and+MT.PNG" height="398" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-65731491662102574382014-01-28T22:27:00.000-08:002014-01-28T22:27:08.359-08:00State of confusion<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>This started out as a comment for Freddie DeBoer's blog, in response to <a href="http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/01/28/commies-for-crude-associationism/" target="_blank">this</a> post -- hence the use of the second person. It got very long, so now it's on my blog too. </i></div>
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Freddie, the argument of my <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/?p=9743&preview=true" target="_blank">piece</a> was right at the top –
“let’s have a debate over the left and state, but not on the libertarians’
distorted terms.” I’m glad you wrote this response, because it represents just
the kind of debate I was calling for -- but also because it’s a good illustration
of what I meant by arguing on libertarians’ terms.<o:p></o:p></div>
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You write: “It’s like I said before: I’m left-wing like Fred
Hampton, not left-wing like Mayor Daley. I’m with the people who get hit with
nightsticks, not people who do the hitting.” That’s a fine sentiment, and I’m
100% behind it -- as long as we stipulate that it’s a bumper-sticker slogan and
not anything resembling a theory of the state. <o:p></o:p></div>
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You come closer to formulating a real argument when you say:
“A movement that prides itself for speaking for the dispossessed can’t run the
risk of romanticizing the state that might help them, as it is precisely that
same state that enforces the condition of their immiseration.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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I agree with that sentence too. It’s perfectly true as far
as it goes. But logically, you could flip it around
and it would still be true. In other words, you could also write: “A movement that
prides itself on speaking for the dispossessed can’t run the risk of
anathematizing the state that enforces the condition of their immiseration, as
it is precisely the same state that might help them.”</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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If the original statement is true, then the inverted version
can’t be any less true. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So we haven't gotten very far. That’s why I’d like to focus particular attention on the way
you – and Peter, I think -- use the term “anti-statism.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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You write: <o:p></o:p></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The anti-statist rhetoric that is the actual target
of…Ackerman’s essay…has a long, proud lineage on the radical left. Would
Ackerman lump the Black Panther party in with the Rand Pauls of the world?
Malcolm X? Eugene Debs? Each of these expressed anti-statist rhetoric so
intense that it would make Rand Paul blush.”</blockquote>
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Is that true? Would the Black Panthers’ anti-statist
rhetoric make Rand Paul blush? I guess it depends on what you mean by
anti-statism.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Let’s look at the Panthers’ 1966 <a href="http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/1966/10/15.htm" target="_blank">Ten Point Program</a>. Point
Two, the first programmatic point, after a general statement calling for black
self-determination, was: “We believe that the federal government is responsible
and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Point Four was a demand for the construction of housing
cooperatives, “so that our community, with government aid, can build and make
decent housing.” Another point demanded that the perceived promise made by the
Civil War-era Congress, of forty acres and a mule to all freed slaves, be
redeemed and paid out to black citizens in currency.***<o:p></o:p></div>
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So I agree with you: Rand Paul would certainly “blush” at
the Panthers’ type of “anti-statism.” But above all, he would vigorously deny
that it represents anti-statism of any kind.</div>
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And here is the crux of my argument: <i>he would be right, and
you would be wrong</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Anti-statism” is a term and a concept that rightly belongs
to Rand Paul. It’s useful to him and his ilk because they are trying to
promote a vision of politics in which the central question is “how much state?”
or “how big a role for government?” That vision of politics is, as I tried to
argue in my piece, an “irrelevant monomania at best,” and at worst a rhetorical
trap. I’m saying that you have fallen into the trap by accepting the
libertarians’ conceptual apparatus. <o:p></o:p></div>
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You perceive our disagreement, I think, as me being “less
anti-statist” whereas you’re “more anti-statist.” Is that really the case? I
can’t claim to know your opinions on every issue, but I suspect that on most
concrete questions we agree. Certainly we agree about NSA spying or whether
Edward Snowden should be sent to jail. Like you, I’m sure, I was one of those
people cheering on Snowden, hoping Russia would give him a visa, fretting he
was about to get handcuffed on a plane in Bolivia.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The real nature of our disagreement is more subtle. Unless
I’m wrong, it really stems from the fact that you have – erroneously in my
opinion – chosen to acquiesce in a vision of politics as being, in some
important way, about “good state” versus “bad state,” and perhaps therefore “more state” versus “less state.” In other words, you’ve accepted the framing of libertarians (and
some anarchists). </div>
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And that’s led you to think that there’s a great
“anti-statist” tradition on the left running from Debs to the Panthers to Glenn
Greenwald. Freddie, I certainly understand what you’re getting at when you say that, but
I don’t think that your formulation is the right one. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Go back to the Panthers’ program. In addition to calling for
a federal jobs-or-income guarantee and government housing aid, the program also
called for an end to police brutality, the freeing of black prisoners, and an
exemption for blacks from military service. In other words, it demanded both that
the state stop doing things that were oppressive and start doing things that were emancipatory. <o:p></o:p></div>
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You can call that “anti-statism” if you like. But you’d be rendering the term meaningless if you did. It can’t be true that an
“anti-statist” is someone who wants the state to do things they like and not do things they don’t like. If that were the case, almost everyone would be an
anti-statist. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Now, an anarcho-capitalist, or a “minarchist,” or a certain
type of anarchist -- or a libertarian – might be an “anti-statist.” That’s
because, in theory, those positions are supposed to be grounded in some
systematic opposition to all forms of state activity, some version of “that
government governs best which governs least.” Those are genuinely
“anti-statist” positions. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But my argument is that those positions have no basis in the
left -- or at least not in the socialist left. Now, there <i>is</i> a long socialist tradition of critiquing the class character of
the state. That tradition comes in many versions and all of them have pictured
the ruling class as having some privileged relationship to the state. While
some make that relationship simple and absolute (the state is “ultimately,” or
“at bottom,” nothing more than the instrument of the oppressors), others see
the relationship, while still privileged, as being much more qualified and
contradictory. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The point, though, is that none -- or at least only the
crudest -- have simply concluded “state = bad, less state = good.” That would be the
truly “anti-statist” position.</div>
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To me, you seem to be arguing for that mistaken anti-statist position. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve misread you, and it’s the
socialist tradition that better represents your thinking, not the “anti-statist”
one with its “more state vs. less state” framing. </div>
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In that case, all I’m trying
to say is that this difference is fundamental, not incidental, so that when we talk about the state -- and when we talk about various “anti-statists” -- you, we, should make that difference
clear.</div>
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That’s the kind of debate I’m talking about.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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*** Speaking of the Civil War, you might want to look up the incident Eric Foner has called the worst episode of racial violence in all of Reconstruction -- the Colfax Massacre. It was a battle over physical control of a county courthouse between the Louisiana state militia, controlled by black Union veterans, and white anti-incumbent insurgents. In other words, in that particular case I think that you, Freddie, would have been *against* the people getting hit by nightsticks, so to speak, and *for* the people doing the hitting.</div>
Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-16892701717387001642013-11-20T17:10:00.002-08:002013-11-20T22:37:03.506-08:00one more thing about thatUPDATE: Feel free to read this post, but disregard all its numbers and therefore possibly its conclusions. Commenter Erik Hetzner points out fatal problems with the way me and Matt used these data. Two problems: first, "net cost of attendance," the measure Matt used to indicate out of pocket tuition cost, is not the right number. The right number is net tuition. Second, I didn't realize that when the College Board divides families into quartiles they are not evenly sized quartiles, but rather based on arbitrary cutoffs that the CB makes up. This means the calculation I tried to do here is basically impossible with publicly available data, at least as far as I know. Conclusion for now:<i> de omnibus dubitandum.</i><br />
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<br />
Just a quick addendum. In that last post, I said you can't argue that making college free would be a windfall for rich kids, because it all depends on how it's paid for. That led to a back and forth in comments and on twitter about how progressive various kinds of state and federal taxes are.<br />
<br />
But let's make this simpler and ask: how progressive would a new free-college tax have to be (in a strict bean-counting sense) to make it a better deal for poor families than the status quo? And the answer is: <i>it wouldn't have to be progressive at all</i>.<br />
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That's because the status quo method of college financing, in which poor students have to pay for college but get a discount compared to rich kids, is itself highly regressive, notwithstanding the discount. Let me show you, using some calculations I've done based on Matt B. own numbers:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBvyab3i7BvHLRJ33Y-y2Oq6mEZKPY3YJF7PIY4_RaWjK9OtDb5xe99n-ogs9LTxI57e7sakEIOxb0p_OjZX3ZOjDD1pFuUG03zhaeJeV6yLMXONOUC7hFYodylLoXCdY9-jlmERBAt9sa/s1600/bruenig2.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="465" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBvyab3i7BvHLRJ33Y-y2Oq6mEZKPY3YJF7PIY4_RaWjK9OtDb5xe99n-ogs9LTxI57e7sakEIOxb0p_OjZX3ZOjDD1pFuUG03zhaeJeV6yLMXONOUC7hFYodylLoXCdY9-jlmERBAt9sa/s640/bruenig2.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
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As you can see, every income group except the richest -- including the poorest -- currently contributes a bigger share of out-of-pocket tuition than their share of total income. What that means is that even if tuition were eliminated and replaced by an <i>absolutely flat income tax levy</i> -- say, a flat 0.5% surcharge for everyone, or a figure slightly higher but with the poorest exempt -- it would still represent a more progressive financing system, in dollars-and-cents terms, than the status quo.<br />
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And, I would argue, a more progressive system in lots of other ways too.<br />
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<br />Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-23375668606668261252013-11-20T12:25:00.001-08:002013-11-20T14:42:53.934-08:00Let's not play hard hat versus hippie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Matt Bruenig has been on a jihad about free college. The
subject annoys him. I’m not going to speculate about his motives, even though
he does a lot of speculating about other people’s motives. His work is generally
great, and I think I actually sympathize with some of the basic impulses behind
his crusade.</div>
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I’m just going to point out as briefly as possible why he
is wrong on his central point. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I take Matt’s central point to be <a href="http://mattbruenig.com/2013/11/20/3-theses-on-higher-education/" target="_blank">this</a>:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If the class composition of college
will not change in response to college being free (which I think historical and
contemporary evidence suggests is the case), then making college free will
primarily be a windfall for the disproportionately rich kids who will still be
the ones in these college spots.</blockquote>
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My simple observation is this. Whether or not that claim is true depends entirely on how such a policy is paid for. Rich kids will undoubtedly get a disproportionate share of the free college seats, but they’ll also probably pay a disproportionate share of the taxes.<br />
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Let’s be specific. Here is Matt’s chart:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI_v8kr5_bSTCiUrA4VNEKIvqe0qOi3lqcsrLOhDhb_wwUVtPZUl0WirSV5wuDQzgBCz367b-PV-OjKVbUTzwIcsqEkHhv9Niv7w-cWYyd_m-Ni4SRS4p3TNNnyThLen9qEbvv0jUZ0-JO/s1600/bruenig.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI_v8kr5_bSTCiUrA4VNEKIvqe0qOi3lqcsrLOhDhb_wwUVtPZUl0WirSV5wuDQzgBCz367b-PV-OjKVbUTzwIcsqEkHhv9Niv7w-cWYyd_m-Ni4SRS4p3TNNnyThLen9qEbvv0jUZ0-JO/s400/bruenig.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
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The numbers are a little dated, but the reddish bars show college
attendance rates for the generation of kids that was college-aged around the
year 2000 (the “79-82” birth cohort). In that generation, 37% of kids from the
highest-income families (the top quarter) attended college, but only 13% of
those from the poorest families (the bottom quarter) did. In another chart, Matt shows that the net cost of college attendance is almost twice as high (1.85 times as high) for high-income students as for low-income students.</div>
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OK, so all of that definitely means if college were made free and there was no
change in relative attendance rates, higher-income kids would get a
disproportionate share of the benefits. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But what proportion of the costs would they pay?<o:p></o:p></div>
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The only source I know of that estimates the distribution of
tax burdens for all levels of government (federal, state, local) is Citizens
for Tax Justice. Here is their updated chart for 2013:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJrnFAbWT_j-gvj8xioTPqyZ_ya8SYUFGDJUMUX7cN5Zzq5hLURbBcszsEI3qe9Ex9Sn6QFmEmBArEAWl9OoEUT1SomKPfkrp1Vt3Z1xZIgk7FCbr5wVQhpwH6egPTkdCE-CAD-zTIBPL0/s1600/ctj.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJrnFAbWT_j-gvj8xioTPqyZ_ya8SYUFGDJUMUX7cN5Zzq5hLURbBcszsEI3qe9Ex9Sn6QFmEmBArEAWl9OoEUT1SomKPfkrp1Vt3Z1xZIgk7FCbr5wVQhpwH6egPTkdCE-CAD-zTIBPL0/s400/ctj.PNG" width="302" /></a><br />
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According to this chart, the highest-income quintile (the
top fifth) pays 65% of all taxes, while the lowest-income quintile (the bottom
fifth) pays 2%. (The numbers are about the same if you just look at federal tax
data from the better-known Tax Policy Center.) These numbers aren’t strictly
comparable with Matt’s college data since they divide the population into
fifths rather than fourths. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But it doesn’t really make any difference, because the conclusion is
clear. The total amount currently being paid out-of-pocket by the top quartile of college-going families is about five times the total amount currently being paid by the bottom quartile. But the top quintile is paying well over thirty times as much in taxes. (An apples-to-apples comparison of quartiles might knock that figure down to maybe 25 times.)<br />
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In other words, unless free college were paired with new taxes that were <i>far, far
</i> more regressive than the current tax
structure, it would represent a clear redistribution from rich to poor.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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But that wouldn’t be the only benefit of free college. In fact, the
reason I bring this up isn’t solely to cavil over statistics. The general style
of Matt’s approach leaves me cold. He has a tendency to strip every question
down to a single criterion: how many net consumption-units will the lowest
income group have relative to higher-income groups. That’s an important
question. But it’s only the <i>overriding </i>question when we're operating in the realm of an Internet Fantasy Policy game. <o:p></o:p></div>
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God knows I have nothing against talking about government
policy. But let's not forget that writing out a policy proposal to squeeze out the maximum
number of<i> </i>consumption-units for the
benefit of the poor doesn’t actually benefit the poor at all -- any more than
writing out a proposal for free college does, or, for that matter, having a Twitter
flame war about privilege. <o:p></o:p></div>
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If consumption-unit-maximization for the poor is what interests
you, the only way to get it is through a real-life politics in which the poor
can create some social power for themselves. It should be obvious that systematically casting
the interests and grievances of the poor in opposition to the interests and
grievances of everyone else is exactly the wrong way to accomplish that.<br />
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UPDATE: For some further important points about taxes, see the comment below and my reply.<br />
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Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485567477740760584.post-44549225120609499392013-09-18T19:10:00.000-07:002013-09-25T01:28:26.388-07:00Obamacare: Don't Believe What You Read (first in a series?)<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The liberal MSM would have the sheeple believe that Obamacare is, or will be, producing miraculous cost savings in health care. See a million slippery, suggestive blog posts like <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/21/this-is-why-controlling-health-care-costs-is-almost-impossible/">this</a> or <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/20/the-case-for-deficit-optimism/">this</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Now, it's true that health care costs have been rising more slowly than normal as of late. But it's not clear how Obamacare could possibly be the cause. Obamacare contains no serious cost control mechanism. And there's a simple reason why it doesn't.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">As Our President said countless times, the Obama-Heritage plan is rooted in the eternal verities of <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/07/statement-president">choice and competition</a>. Yet choice and competition are precisely why US health inflation is so high in the first place. Every other country uses some form of <a href="http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/22/3/89.full">price </a><a href="http://hushp.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/downloadable_files/IFHP%202012%20Comparative%20Price%20Report.pdf">control</a><a href="http://hushp.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/downloadable_files/IFHP%202012%20Comparative%20Price%20Report.pdf"> </a>to control costs. The uniquely American solution of the "Demo-plan" was concocted specifically to avoid that scenario.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Why? Because, as a senior Democrat involved in drafting the law <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/06/obamas-big-stick-healthcare-reform">explained</a>: “There was no way we had the votes in either the House or the Senate if PhRMA was opposed — period.” And the same went for the hospitals, the insurers, and so on.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The meta-theory behind Obamacare was that since a good law didn't have the votes, it was more realistic to pass a bad law and pretend it was good. Now we are engaged in a great experiment, testing whether that law, or any law so conceived, can long endure; we are met on a great battlefield of that experiment.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So anyway, it turns out that Obamacare did not control U.S. health care costs. As the chart below demonstrates, <i>it did way better than that: </i>it controlled health care costs in the U.S. and the rest of the world at the same time. And it started working before the law was even passed. (This is what is known as a <i>wonkblague.</i>)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">The remainder of this post consists of a graph. Please click on the graph for full enjoyment:</span></span><br />
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Seth Ackermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00125836393401623092noreply@blogger.com0