|
2-July-2016
Weekend Roundup
Started this more than a week ago, but things dragged out, making
me late, or perhaps now I should say early?
After last week's referendum when 52% of the UK's voters decided to
chuck it all and take Britain out of the European Union, David Eversall
sent me this clipping from the Financial Times, adding "Probably has
relevance for the Presidential election especially the last point."
A quick note on the first three tragedies. Firstly, it was the working
classes who voted for us to leave because they were economically
disregarded and it is they who will suffer the most in the short term
from the dearth of jobs and investment. They have merely swapped one
distant and unreachable elite for another one. Secondly, the younger
generation has lost the right to live and work in 27 other countries.
We will never know the full extent of the lost opportunities, friendships,
marriages and experiences we will be denied. Freedom of movement was taken
away by our parents, uncles, and grandparents in a parting blow to a
generation that was already drowning in the debts of our predecessors.
Thirdly and perhaps most significantly, we now live in a post-factual
democracy. When the facts met the myths they were as useless as bullets
bouncing off the bodies of aliens in a HG Wells novel. When Micahel Gove
said 'the British are sick of experts' he was right. But can anybody
tell me the last time a prevailing culture of anti-intellectualism has
lead to anything other than bigotry?
Aside from the quibble that I suspect it's bigotry that leads to
anti-intellectualism rather than the other way around, my reaction
to the third point was "welcome to my world." Politics in America went
counterfactual in the 1980s when Reagan came up with his "Morning in
America" con (more on that at the end).
I'm afraid I didn't know much about Brexit before plodding through
the links below. Let me try to summarize what I've learned:
Many in England never liked Europe, or thought of themselves as
being part of Europe. They grew up on stories of how Britain won the
great European wars of the last two centuries and built the largest
empire the world has seen, and they never got over the loss of that
empire or of their exceptional status in the world. They never lost
their righteousness or their racism. They skew right -- always have --
and they formed the core of the Leave block, as they always would
be. The EU was originally a center-left concept, intent on erasing
borders, on entangling the many separate nations of a rather small
continent into a cohesive entity that would render impossible the
myriad wars of recent centuries. This entity would be built on basic
human rights and would advance political and economic equality. But
this idea was repeatedly corrupted by business interests, knee-jerk
appeals to nationalism, and the parallel cloak of war known as NATO --
which since 2001 has mostly served to exacerbate the divides between
north and south, west and east, Crusader (for lack of a better term)
and Muslim. One result was that the core for Remain was tepid and in
many cases disillusioned. In the 1980s Thatcher laid waste to industrial Britain while
opening Europe to British capital, and later Blair delivered Labour
to the financiers while committing the UK to Bush's disastrous "terror"
wars. Britain hasn't had a credible leftist government since Wilson's
in the 1970s (if not Attlee's in the 1940s), so Britain's experience
of the EU has skewed horribly right. The EU's bravest policy was the insistence on labor mobility.
This didn't have a huge impact as long as the national economies were
rich and relatively equal, but the EU was easily pressured to expand
into less developed countries, and transfers to rebalance the economies
have never been adequate. When this happened capital flowed out while
cheaper labor flowed in -- the latter easily scapegoated by the right
for depressed areas actually caused by capital flight. One result has
been the growth of racist right-wing parties throughout Europe (like
the anti-EU UKIP in Britain). The rise of the right, both in Europe and in the US, has pushed
immigrants and minorities into the hands of the left-center parties,
often becoming significant stakeholders in those parties. This has
tended to defocus the traditional class-schism between left and right --
perhaps more so in the US, where Democrats have few qualms about shafting
labor in favor of liberal businesses, knowing that minorities have no
choice but to vote for them. As this happens, older/whiter workers can
lash back against the left-center. Conversely, liberals tend to focus
on opposing racism and xenophobia rather than actually working for more
equitable prosperity. After the global finance bubble burst in 2008, the bankers and
their politicians conspired to save themselves at the expense of everyone
else. They controlled the EU, which ceased to be a reform movement and
became an instrument for denying democracy and imposing austerity across
the entire continent. This was perhaps worse in the Eurozone, but the
UK, which had the flexibility of its own currency, followed suit with a
crippling austerity program benefitting no one but the London banks. The
right, which had caused most of this pain, found it easy to blame Europe,
and many (even some on the left) readily bought that line. Then there was sheer political opportunism. Tory leader Cameron
promised to hold a referendum on leaving the EU during the last elections
in a crass move to prevent conservative voters from defecting to UKIP.
He assumed a referendum would be harmless, as all three major parties
were committed to staying in the EU. Still, the Conservatives had long
had a sizable anti-EU core, and Labour had recently revolted against
the Blairites and elected leftist Jeremy Corbyn as party leader (who
post-facto was charged as ineffective, possibly even uncommitted to
the Remain cause). One result was that the campaign for Remain spanned
the entire ideological spectrum without having any coherent vision or
much commitment. (As I note below, "remain" itself is a remarkably
passive and for that matter nonchalant verb.) Another was that it was
practically defenseless against misleading and often ridiculous charges,
the stock-in-trade of the right-wing tabloid press. After the vote, the markets panicked, as markets tend to do.
Still, nothing has happened yet, and separation will by all accounts
take at least two years from whenever it starts, which isn't now
because Cameron resigned and Parliament isn't actually required to
pull the suicide trigger. Most likely there will be new elections
and prolonged negotiations while nothing much actually happens --
other than continuation of the current rot -- and the folks who pull
strings behind curtains get their ducks lined up. One thing that's little commented on is the pernicious effect
of NATO on Europe. Through NATO, the US sucked Europe into its Global
War on Terror (most specifically its parochial war against Islam in
Afghanistan), and also into its rekindled Cold War against Russia.
The EU expanded aggressively into Eastern Europe, thereby unbalancing
the equality of member states, mostly because NATO led the way. NATO
aggression in North Africa and the Middle East then triggered a refuge
crisis on top of Europe's previous immigration problem. One terrible
result is that Europe has become targeted by ISIS-affiliated (a very
loose definition) terrorists, which mostly serves to provoke hatred
and backlash. The right builds on this, even though you'd think that
anyone who frets over sovereignty worry more about the US/NATO. I suspect that eventually we'll find that the EU has spun such
a thick institutional web that it will prove impossible to disentangle
it all. That is to say, the core nations are stuck with it, regardless
of whether their people understand why. Still, movements to exit and
hoist up renewed national borders will continue until the EU reforms
into something that actually benefits most of the people pretty much
everywhere, and their failure will continue to embarrass leaders of
all parties but the most fringe. To do this, the EU needs to move left,
if anything out ahead of the national parties. And it needs to do this
not just to deliver on its original concept but to give people all
across the continent reason to support it, and through it each other.
These are things your center-right neo-liberals, dedicated as they
are to making the rich richer and otherwise letting the chips land
where they might, just can't do. Unfortunately, the center-left isn't
able to either, especially when faced with the sort of "scorched earth"
opposition the Republicans excel at in the US. One last point: I cite several anti-EU leftists below, who are
right to blame the US/NATO and who are not wrong to see the referendum
as a broad rejection of neoliberal consensus. It's not clear that they
also believe that the UK is more likely to move left without the EU
than within, but I imagine they can make a fair case to that effect --
just now sure if that's because recession will make voters more desperate,
because a nation not in the EU has more options, or both. Still, I can't
share their enthusiasm for Brexit. I just can't see how a retreat into
narrow-minded prejudice advances a more equitable society and a more
humane economy.
In what follows, it may be tempting, sobering, even chilling to think
of Leave as Trump and Remain as Clinton. I think that's probably why we
often take away the notion that Leave was primarily racist/xenophobic
and Remain as liberal/integrationist, even though there were many more
nuances to each. But working that angle out should really be another
exercise. I suspect we'll find many more angles there too (with Trump
it's hard to think of anything as a nuance).
Some Brexit links:
Post-Brexit global equity loss of over $2 trillion -- worst ever.
Anne Applebaum: What the media gets wrong about Brexit: "The leave
campaign does not have a common vision and does not have a common plan
because its members wouldn't be able to agree on one."
Torsten Bell: The referendum, living standards and inequality: Several
charts show that recent changes to income have little bearing on the vote.
Rather, look at 1980s Thatcherism: "The legacy of increased national
inequality in the 1980s, the heavy concentration of those costs in certain
areas, and our collective failure to address it has more to say about what
happened last night than shorter term considerations from the financial
crisis or changed migration flows."
Mike Carter: I walked from Liverpool to London. Brexit was no surprise:
"Thatcherism devastated communities throughout industrial England that have
never recovered. Their pain explains why people voted to leave in the EU
referendum."
John Cassidy: Why the Remain Campaign Lost the Brexit Vote: Cites,
and agrees with, Torsten Bell (above). Then notes how uninspiring the
Remain campaign, backed lamely by leaders of all three major political
parties, was: "The Remain side argued, in effect, that while the E.U.
isn't great, Britain would be even worse off without it. That turned
out to be a losing story." It occurs to me that "remain" is probably
the most passive word in the English language. Why would anyone pick
it as a slogan? In 2004, when the Iraq War had gone sour, Bush (or
Rove or whoever) didn't campaign to Remain in Iraq. They opted for
Stay, or more often Stay the Course, suggesting that there is a plan
that will eventually pan out if only we don't lose our will. European
Union, frankly, was a lot more promising idea than the Iraq War ever
was, yet its so-called defenders seem to have lost faith in it or
understanding of it and are left with nothing more to offer than the
threat that if we fail to accept the status quo, things will only get
worse.
Cassidy also wrote
Why Brexit Might Not Happen at All and
Sunderland and the Brexit Tragedy. I don't find the former very
convincing, although I wouldn't be surprised if somehow the Leave win
gets circumvented. There are a number of ways Britain's elites might
go about ignoring the referendum results, with Cameron's resignation
a first step, and Boris Johnson's reluctance to replace him a second.
The former shipbuilding city Sunderland is another example: industry
was shut down there during the Thatcher years, depressing the region
to the point where the EU actually helps out, they still voted Leave.
"Unless the Brexit vote is somehow reversed, the residents of places
like Sunderland will most likely be left to fly the Union Jack and
fester."
Amy Davidson: Brexit Should Be a Warning About Donald Trump: In
particular, it reminds us that there are people who will vote for
Trump not because of who Trump is but because of their own jaundiced
worldview. I know a Trump supporter whose only explanation is "chaos" --
I suspect he'd vote for Charles Manson if given the chance. After all,
what is Brexit other than a vote for chaos? Davidson quotes Hillary's
response: "This time of uncertainty only underscores the need for calm,
steady, experienced leadership in the White House." And she thinks
that's a winning argument against a clown who promises unpredictable
entertainment?
Tom Ewing: Obsolete Units Surrounded by Hail: "An A to Z of Brexit.
Cathartic fragments, pessimistic conjectures." Encyclopedic, but let's
single out: "David Cameron is the worst post-war Prime Minister, a gambler
without even the spine to bet his reputation (and the country's economy)
on something he believed in."
Tony Karon: It's the end of the world as we know it -- again: "The
Brexit result -- a vote of no-confidence in the elites of London and
Brussels by an English working class that has been steadily marginalised
over three decades -- underscores the peril that the system that has
aggrandised those elites now faces through its failure to deliver
economic security and dignity to millions of citizens." He mentions
that economists have largely turned against austerity, and notes some
opportunities for fruitful spending like the $3.6 trillion needed "to
restore and modernise crumbling infrastructure [in the US] by 2020,"
adding that "Hillary Clinton proposes an infrastructure spend less
than 10 per cent of what the Civil Engineers recommend; Mr Trump has
offered no plan."
Paul Krugman: Brexit: The Morning After: "It seems clear that the
European project -- the whole effort to promote peace and growing political
union through economic integration -- is in deep, deep trouble." Also:
The Macroeconomics of Brexit: Motivated Reasoning? "Economists have
very good reasons to believe that Brexit will do bad things in the long
run, but are strongly tempted to sex up their arguments by making very
dubious claims about the short run." Still, Dean Baker has some quibbles
about Krugman's claims (see
Paul Krugman, Brexit, and Bubbles): namely, he suspects London is
enjoying a real estate bubble that Brexit is likely to
pop . . . and, well, you know how that goes.
Alex Massie: Is Brexit the beginning of the End of Britain?: Focuses
mostly on Scotland, which voted against independence when threatened
with exile from the UE, and voted heavily to remain in the EU. There
are also similar feelings in Northern Ireland (where unification with
Ireland would keep them in the EU) and even in Wales. But breaking up
the UK may not be the only way out for Scotland; see
Nicola Sturgeon: Scottish parliament could block Brexit.
Chris Patten: A British Tragedy in One Act: Quotes Churchill: "The
trouble with committing political suicide is that you live to regret
it."
John Pilger: A Blow for Peace and Democracy: Why the British Said No to
Europe: "The majority vote by Britons to leave the European Union was
an act of raw democracy. Millions of ordinary people refused to be bullied,
intimidated and dismissed with open contempt by their presumed betters in
the major parties, the leaders of the business and banking oligarchy and
the media." Depends on your point of view, but when you say no to the
entire establishment, you're not necessarily just voting for a narrow
flag-waving anti-immigrant platform (although Pilger ignores those who
did just that).
Norman Pollack: Fissures in World Capitalism: The British Vote:
"The elephant in the room is NATO. Obviously, the EU is its economic
counterpart, and was never conceived in isolation as a mere trading
bloc. With Britain out, hopefully others will follow, the EU will
tighten its ship as an economic union and NATO, now presently at
Russia's borders, will be forced to rethink its dangerous course."
A referendum on British membership in NATO would have been more
interesting, and indeed might have started a dissolution of an
organization that these days serves mostly to entangle Europe in
America's post-imperial wars. But my initial reaction was opposite
of Pollack's: Brexit will push Britain even more into the US orbit,
increasing its stake in subduing the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
One might hope that "old Europe" would respond by ditching NATO,
but the EU has already followed NATO deep into "new Europe" and
the latter are keen on poking the Russian Bear.
Randeep Ramesh: Racism is spreading like arsenic in the water supply:
"The far right preys on the weakest members of society and by letting
anti-immigrant rhetoric bed in we are eroding civil rights not strengthening
them." I.e., a spike in such incidents led to
Cameron condemns xenophobic and racist abuse after Brexit vote.
Jeffrey D Sachs: The Meaning of Brexit: "In Europe, the call to punish
Britain pour encourager les autres -- to warn those contemplating
the same -- is already rising. This is European politics at its stupidest
(also very much on display vis-à-vis Greece)." Also, he points out that
US foreign policy viz. Syria and Ukraine are much to blame for the crisis,
and just falls short of pointing out that NATO is what Europe should be
exiting. For more on "stupidest" politics, see
European leaders rule out informal Brexit talks before article 50 is
triggered.
George Soros: Brexit and the Future of Europe: "Now the catastrophic
scenario that many feared has materialized, making the disintegration of
the EU practically irreversible."
Andre Vltchek: Brexit -- Let the UK Screw Itself!: "Almost no
commentator bothered to notice what was truly shocking about the
entire referendum process: an absolute lack of progressive ideology,
of internationalism and concern for the world as a whole. Both sides
(and were there really two sides there) presented a fireworks of
shallow selfishness and of pettiness. The profound moral corruption
of the West was clearly exposed."
Paul Woodward: Who gets democracy?: A number of interesting points
here. One that especially struck me: "Last Thursday, 2.7 million people
who have made Britain their home were not allowed to vote because although
they are EU citizens resident in an EU country, they are not British
citizens." Don't you think people who are so affected by a vote should
get to vote? Good chance that bloc would have swung the election. (FWIW,
I also think that immigrants, at least the ones with legal jobs, should
be able to vote in US elections: if you live and work somewhere, you are
part of the public, and therefore a stake holder.)
Simon Wren-Lewis: The triumph of the tabloids: "Of course we should
blame Johnson and Farage and the rest: the UK has paid a very high price
to facilitate political ambition. Of course we should blame Cameron and
Osborne for taking the referendum gamble and stoking anger with austerity.
But a few politicians alone are not capable of fooling the electorate so
consistently. To do that they need to control the means of communicating
information."
Meanwhile, some short links on other subjects:
Patrick Cockburn: An Endless Cycle of Indecisive Wars: Tom Engelhardt's
introduction cites a statistic that should help you understand Brexit: "If
you want a single figure that catches the grim spirit of our moment, it's
65 million. That's the record-setting number of people that the Office of
the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates were displaced in 2015 by
'conflict and persecution,' one of every 113 inhabitants of the planet."
Most of them result from the US/NATO wars against Islam, and I include
Syria in that list, and as Cockburn shows, they keep getting worse because
the US/NATO can't manage to bring them to any sort of conclusion, diplomatic
or otherwise. And yes, here's another Brexit quote, restating what should
by now be obvious:
The reasons why a narrow majority of Britons voted for Brexit have parallels
with the Middle East: the free-market economic policies pursued by governments
since Margaret Thatcher was prime minister have widened the gap between rich
and poor and between wealthy cities and much of the rest of the country.
Britain might be doing well, but millions of Britons did not share in the
prosperity. The referendum about continued membership in the European Union,
the option almost universally advocated by the British establishment, became
the catalyst for protest against the status quo. The anger of the "Leave"
voters has much in common with that of Donald Trump supporters in the United
States.
Donald Cohen: The History of Privatization: Part 1 (of 4).
Thomas Frank: Worshipping Money in DC: Author of the best political
book of 2016, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of
the People, although you might consider holding off until after you
vote for Hillary in November -- it offers few inducements to support her
now, but will help you understand what went wrong after she's inaugurated.
This piece is more on lobbying -- the principal subject of Frank's equally
worthy 2008 book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, and
of the newsletter Influence, extensively cited here. Conclusion:
"This is not an industry, Influence's upbeat and name-dropping
style suggests. It is a community -- a community of corruption, perhaps,
but a community nevertheless: happy, prosperous, and joyously oblivious
to the plight of the country once known as the land of the middle class."
I'll add that American politicians have always been easy to bribe, because
they've never been very skeptical of hustlers out to make money -- that's
just part of America's boom ethic. The only thing that's changed is the
scale of the graft and how systematic it's become, plus how our campaign
system selects for the best moneygrubbers.
Henry Grabar: Kansas' Insane Right-Wing Experiment Is About to Destroy
Its Roads: Well, it is true that Kansas has been raiding the highway
fund ever since Brownback blew a hole in the budget with his massive tax
giveaways, and consequently new roads aren't being built and old roads
aren't being maintained -- at least not at prudent levels. This is the
sort of short-sighted policy that doesn't fully impact you right away:
it takes time for weather and wear to break down those roads, but the
toll accumulates until it does become catastrophic, at which point debt
will make it even harder to address.
John Feffer: Donald Trump and America B: Actually, starts with recent
elections in Poland which brought the reactionary PiS to power, arguing
that shows a backlash by those left behind ("Poland B") by the urban
neoliberals who have dominated Polish politics ("Poland A") -- a dynamic
that is sweeping across Europe and finds an analog in the Trump bandwagon
here. I don't know about Poland, but in the US I doubt Trump's supporters
are that poor -- I've seen surveys that show them averaging about $20K
above average US family income (whereas Sanders and Clinton run about
even). This also ignores the growth of leftist parties in non-ex-communist
states, especially ones crushed by austerity measures like Greece and
Spain (but also within left-center parties, like Corbyn in the UK and
Sanders in the US).
Elizabeth Kolbert: Drawing the Line: On gerrymandering old and new,
especially the REDMAP project which was so successful for Republicans
in 2010, as detailed in David Daley's Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind
the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy. "In House races in
2012, 1.7 million more votes were cast for Democrats than for Republicans.
And still, thanks to the way those votes were packed and cracked,
Republicans came away with thirty-three more congressional seats."
Elizabeth Kolbert: Fort McMurray and the Fires of Climate Change:
Piece from May 5 -- a lot more burnt since then. More generally: "In
Canada, and also in the United States and much of the rest of the world,
higher temperatures have been extending the wildfire season. Last year,
wildfires consumed ten million acres in the U.S., which was the largest
area of any year on record."
Evan Osnos: Making a Killing: Useful brief history of (as the sub
puts it) the business and politics of selling guns.
More American civilians have died by gunfire in the past decade than all
the Americans who were killed in combat in the Second World War. When an
off-duty security guard named Omar Mateen, armed with a Sig Sauer
semiautomatic rifle and a Glock 17 pistol, killed forty-nine people at
a gay club in Orlando, on June 12th, it was historic in some respects
and commonplace in others -- the largest mass shooting in American
history and, by one count, the hundred-and-thirtieth mass shooting so
far this year. High-profile massacres can summon our attention, and
galvanize demands for change, but in 2015 fatalities from mass shootings
amounted to just two per cent of all gun deaths. Most of the time, when
Americans shoot one another, it is impulsive, up close, and apolitical.
None of that has hurt the gun business. In recent years, in response
to three kinds of events -- mass shootings, terrorist attacks, and talk
of additional gun control -- gun sales have broken records. "You know
that every time a bomb goes off somewhere, every time there's a shooting
somewhere, sales spike like crazy," Paul Jannuzzo, a former chief of
American operations for Glock, the Austrian gun company, told me.
Jeffrey Toobin: Clarence Thomas Has His Own Constitution: "The
abortion dissent explains why Thomas is so cut off on the Court, even
from his fellow-conservatives. He doesn't respect the Court's precedents.
He is so convinced of the wisdom of his approach to the law that he
rejects practically the whole canon of constitutional law." Toobin
also quotes Scalia on how his judicial philosophy differed from
Thomas's: "I'm an originalist," Scalia said, "but I'm not a nut."
Paul Waldman: Trump's response to terrorism is both weak and barbaric:
"It seems that nothing is more horrifying to Donald Trump than the idea
that somebody might be laughing at us, or more specifically, at him." Too
much after that trying to cast GW Bush as an enlightened alternative ("a
fatherly reassurance that their president would keep them safe"), but it's
a measure of Trump's instability that makes such comparisons possible.
Julia Carrie Wong/Danny Yadron: Hillary Clinton proposes student debt
deferral for startup founders: Worst faux pas (of its type) since
Paul Ryan took
Labor Day as an occasion to tout "America's job creators" deprecating
the people who actually do the work to keep everything running. What
was she thinking? That the people most able to repay their debts should
be spared? That tomorrow's business leader should get a head start on
sucking the public tit? That the people should subsidize MBA programs
that teach young people to become sociopaths? Or just that, to agree
with Ryan and Ayn Rand, entrepreneurs are so much better than everyone
else? Surely she can't imagine that this will be a universal benefit,
that it will lead to a world where everyone is an entrepreneur and no
one actually has to do any work? Or maybe she just sees it as a cheap
sop, as a way of shaming all those poor sods who went to college just
to learn a trade, or worse still to learn liberal arts, to become more
knowledgeable citizens, to contribute a little something to what we
used to call civilization?
The authors quote Hillary: "I disagree with free college for everybody.
I don't think taxpayers should be paying to send Donald Trump's kids to
college." Well, maybe Trump's kids should go to college -- especially if
college meant something other than rubberstamping credentials (like, you
know, learning how to get along and now just how to get ahead). And maybe
if the public paid for it, Trump wouldn't be so motivated to grab money
for his own personal aggrandizement (or if he still was, we'd be less
relucatant to tax it back). A world where everyone, regardless of how
rich or poor they start out, has the same opportunity to learn as much
as they can would likely be much better than the one we live in now.
For more, see
Rana Foroohar: Why Hillary Clinton's Student Debt Idea Is Smart,
one of those pieces that exposes how ridiculous Clinton's program is
by assuming it's brilliant. In particular:
Start-ups are a key driver of productivity. But the birthrate of
startups has been in decline since the 1970s. Since then, it has
dovetailed with a shift in how the financial sector business model
works -- it no longer invests primarily in new business, but rather
buys up and trades existing assets, and funding for small and
mid-sized start ups is still scarce (while increasing monopoly
power on the part of large firms squashes new ones, as Robert
Reich and others have recently written.)
And how exactly is a modest tax incentive (debt deferral) going
to fix these problems? If monopoly power is the problem (and it's
certainly a big one), the classic remedy is antitrust enforcement,
and I'd add that it's also important to open up ways to provide
financing and build capital that bypass the exclusive control of
predatory financiers. You also need to look hard at what finance
does, and undercut the rewards of bad short-term behavior even if
you can't figure out how to reward long-term productive investment --
as it is the financial sector is sucking up far too much money, so
you need to both that less likely and tax it away when it happens.
Also, another thing that has been driving productivity down "since
the 1970s" has been the decline of worker control, so that, too, is
something to direct policy at promoting. Clinton's proposal hardly
even amounts to a gesture against these problems. Rather, it hints
that she's still in thrall to the high-tech is going to save the
world from endemic corruption. This is actually a common myth in
New Democratic circles -- a major theme in Thomas Frank's Listen,
Liberal.
Meanwhile, the evidence on using tax incentives to influence business
behavior is pretty damning. This came as no surprise to me. From the
beginning I thought that every "incentive" was a distortion leading
to warped thought. In 1984 I was looking for a job. I recall driving
up I-93 from Boston with a headhunter who pointed out Compugraphic's
various buildings along the route and explained the tax advantages of
each. When I arrived at corporate headquarters I found that most of
the managers actually lived in "tax-free New Hampshire," and several
explained that matters most isn't income, it's after-tax profits. I
knew then the company was doomed, and indeed it was. But they were
spouting "truths" that were clichés at the time, spread hither and
yon by the business press, so my judgment wasn't just limited to this
one company: I figured the whole economy was doomed, if not to the
tragedy of the Great Depression then at least to the farce we've
lived through ever since the 1980s, occasionally propped up then
blown apart by increasingly desperate bubbles.
Ask a question, or send a comment.
|
