Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. Arizona seizes migrants' remittancesA follow-up to our coverage (1,2) of Arizona's attempt to finance its border wall with a tax on money wired abroad: In These Times reports that the state is now simply seizing the money, on the suspicion that everyone who wires money to another country is a drug trafficker.Technorati Tags: immigration, remittance tax, border fence Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Florida was built on free enterpriseIn another Rethinking Schools article that is not online, University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen tells us, "One way to measure the fears of people in power is by the intensity of their quest for certainty and control ovr knowledge. ...The members of the Florida Legislature marked themselves as ... terrified of history.. when earlier this year they took bold action to ... outlaw historical interpretation in public schools. ...Florida has officially ... outlawed critical thinking."The legislation, Jensen reports, has declared that "American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed." That factual history, the law states, shall be viewed as knowable, teachable, and testable." Jensen goes on to point out cases in which the facts of history are known but the story that they tell is in dispute. It's storytelling, not dry facts, and the tension between competing interpretations, that makes history an interesting subject. But don't go saying that in a Florida public school. But the law not only robs history of its flavor by outlawing thought, it also dictates a few interpretations that teachers must apply to the facts they teach. Jensen writes, "The law dictates instruction to students on ... 'the sacrifices that veterans have made in serving our country and protecting democratic values worldwide'" and "'the nature and importance of free enterprise to the United States economy.'" [Jensen's emphasis]. So if you find yourself in a Florida public school, don't mention the New Deal and all its impositions on (and collaborations with) business. Don't speak of the Populist movement. And don't breathe a word about labor unions. Those historical facts contradict the importance of free enterprise—so we'll assume they're no longer facts in Florida. Technorati Tags: economics education Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). The psychology (and economics and marketing) of overeatingWhile we recover from holiday #1, Salon.com's Katharine Mieszkowski interviews Brian Wansink, author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, about the psychology of overeating, and they come up with some economic and marketing insights. Since the observations that you'll eat more from a larger plate (or a larger bag of chips) and that labeling a fast-food item "healthy" is the "kiss of death" are a bit old hat, this one was our favorite:We did a survey of over 1,000 people, and 40 percent of their favorite comfort foods ended up being things that are reasonably healthy for you—meal-related foods, like soup, pasta, steak, casseroles—as opposed to candy, cakes, chips and ice cream. But one thing is that men tend to prefer those meal foods. ... They said: "When I eat meal-related foods, I really feel cared for, I feel like I'm important, I feel like I'm the center of attention." And when we asked women about those same foods, women said: "Yeah, we like them, they just don't really give us that much comfort, because when we think of these foods we think of the fact that we're probably going to have to make them, we're probably going to have to clean up after them." And so women prefer pre-made snack foods. Thanks to Glenn Wright for the link. Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Teaching globalization in high schoolsAt Dollars & Sense, we're often asked if any of the readers in our book catalog are particularly geared toward high school students. The answer, sadly, is no. But for all of you who have asked, the current issue of Rethinking Schools offers high school teachers a good globalization course outline by Berkeley High School's Jody Sokolower. The article, "Bringing Globalization Home," is not online, but here's an excerpt from Sokolower's description of a family survey she assigned to her students (12th grade English language learners):My expectations for this activity were modest. I figured we'd gather some information about natural resources and industry ... and collect data on why people migrate. ...but I expected many question marks on the surveys. ...I was amazed at the depth of information we received and the time that parents and other relatives spent in sharing a wealth of experience and knowledge. ...One pattern that emerged was how often families are separated by migration. Another was the career sacrifices parents make: Beza's father had been a principal in Ethiopia but works as a teacher's aide here; Maria's father was an engineer in Pakistan, but here he does clerical work. ...We got great information on resources, public and private ownership, changes in the economy—everything. As an engineer, Maria's father had a professional's understanding of energy resources. Jose's cousin knew firsthand about NAFTA and how he and his family were forced off their land in Mexico when the price of corn fell year after year. Every family had personal stories and ... information that contributed to the global picture we were creating. ...This project made me realize what a mistake it is to ignore fmailies as resources. This is especially true for immigrant students, who sometimes feel that they must leave their family and culture behind to "make it" in the United States. You can get a copy of the article or issue from Rethinking Schools. Technorati Tags: globalization, economics education Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Houston janitors' strike ends in contractOn November 20, The Washington Post reportsAfter a month-long strike featuring local, national, and international demonstrations, Houston janitors reached an agreement with five major cleaning contractors that will double their income and provide them with health insurance by 2009. The 5,300 mostly female, mostly Latino janitors represented by the Service Employees International Union will see their wages rise from $5.30 per hour on average to $7.75 by Jan. 1, 2009. Their shifts will also lengthen to six hours, as opposed to four hours or less, over the next three years, according to the agreement. They will be offered [employer-subsidized] health coverage in 2009. ... [The] announcement marked the first victory in the right-to-work South for SEIU's long-running Justice for Janitors campaign. ... "If Houston janitors can win by standing together, then workers anywhere can win by standing together," said SEIU spokesperson Lynda Tran. Houston's ABC station's blog offers a few more details of the agreement as well as a sigh of relief that Houstonians will suffer "No more random traffic jams in the Galleria or Downtown!" (Most of the blog readers' comments are a little less tongue-in-cheek.) Also pay a visit to the janitors' website. Technorati Tags: Houston janitors, organized labor Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). A little economics can be a dangerous thingFirst in a series: The Dollars & Sense Blog Recovers from the Holiday On November 16, arch free-marketeer and Nobel laureate in economics Milton Friedman died. Almost as if in memoriam, In These Times featured Christopher Hayes's reaction to his foray into an introductory economics course at Friedman's own University of Chicago:
But, as a public policy PhD candidate at Chicago reminded Hayes, "A little economics can be a dangerous thing. An intro econ course is necessarily going to be superficial.[*] You deal with highly stylized models that are robbed of context, that take place in a world unmediated by norms and institutions. Much of the most interesting work in economics right now calls into question the Econ 101 assumptions of rationality, individualism, maximizing behavior, etc. But, of course, if you don't go any further than Econ 101, you won't know that the textbook models are not the way the world really works, and that there are tons of empirical studies out there that demonstrate this." [*]—Less so, of course, if the professor supplements the main text with Dollars & Sense readers. Hayes goes on to observe that, for mst of the course, Sanderson enjoys great moral authority in the classroom, and that this comes in part from his careful portrayal of political neutrality. Every Republican joke is followed by a jab at the Democrats. But when the class begins discussing trade theory
Read the rest here. Technorati Tags: Milton Friedman, globalization, free trade, economics education Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Econamici: The Plague Before ThanksgivingI remember, in the fourth grade, snipping colored feathers from construction paper to make my Indian bonnet. That was for the annual First Thanksgiving pageant. Dressed up as Indians and Pilgrims, we paraded around a table loaded with pies and a paper-maché turkey. We recited how the Pilgrims had landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. And how after a year of hardship, helped by an English-speaking Indian named Squanto, they celebrated a harvest and invited the Indians to dinner. Then we held hands and sang, "We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing." What's wrong with this picture? In the year 1000, Leif Ericson landed in what was probably Newfoundland. The Norse made several attempts to settle, but attacks by the native "Skraelings" eventually forced them to give up. Apart from the Norse, the Pilgrims weren't the first European settlers on the North American continent. A Spanish colony with African slaves settled in South Carolina in 1526; the slaves revolted, killed their masters and fled to join the Indians. By 1600, there were scattered Spanish colonies in Florida and across the southwest. The first British colony, set up at Jamestown Virginia in 1607, disintegrated due to poor leadership and conflict with Indians. People don't usually give up their land willingly. Masses of Chinese peasants today risk their lives to protest confiscation of their land for development. Throughout history, any war you can name, even if ostensibly about religion, boils down to a fight over resources and territory. So why did the Pilgrims face no opposition? Something terrible happened between Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. The New England Indians had lived in settled farming communities with populations probably in the millions. They planted corn, beans and squash on garden mounds--an agriculture no less sophisticated than that of contemporary Europeans. Meanwhile, for decades before 1620, British ships had fished for cod off New England, going ashore for water, wood, and sometimes Indian slaves. (That's how Squanto learned English.) Perhaps due to this contact, a plague--of a type still in dispute--spread through the native populations. In 1347, the Black Death had killed one quarter to a third the European population; in 1617-1618, the Indian Plague wiped out over 90 percent of the New England population. Back in England, King James I gave thanks to "Almighty God in his great goodness and bounty towards us" for sending "this wonderful plague among the salvages [sic]." The Pilgrims, planning their journey, took note. They may even have selected their destination knowing they would find abandoned fields, ready for cultivation. Even so, they had to depend on the few remaining Indians to train them in agriculture, hunting and fishing. As more settlers joined the Massachusetts Bay Colony, smallpox decimated the last Indian populations. In 1634 Governor John Winthrop wrote to a friend in England, "But for the natives in these parts, God has so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection…" The plague story is detailed James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, debunking the feel-good myths purveyed by high school American history textbooks. According to Loewen, "These epidemics probably constituted the most important geopolitical event of the early seventeenth century. Their net result was that the British, for their first fifty years in New England, would face no real Indian challenge." In the preceding century, plagues of Old World disease had enabled a handful of Spanish conquistadors to capture the Aztec and Inca empires. So devastating were these epidemics that the Caribbean sugar planters ran out of native slaves, forcing them to import Africans. In the southern British colonies, cotton planters followed suit. But the stony terrain of the northern colonies, including what became Canada, was better suited to small wheat farms than to plantations. It may be that the democratic beginnings we celebrate at Thanksgiving became possible precisely because white settlers had no need to control a subordinate native population. Polly Cleveland www.polly@mcleveland.org More Econamici I send Econamici--occasional emails with interesting attachments or links--to friends who are economists or care about economic issues. If you can't follow a link, I can send you the actual article. Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Econamici: Benefits of Military SpendingNovember 12, 2006As Kevin Phillips recorded in Wealth and Democracy (2002), war has created the opportunity for many great fortunes. Thus the frenzied looting--and disregard for the lives of both US soldiers and corporate employees--displayed in Robert Greenwald's new film Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers. One small example: drivers shuttle empty mail trucks up and down But, how did we get here? It's hardly news that powerful nations meddle in the affairs of weaker ones, to the benefit of both their own nationals, and of cooperative local clients. In Imperialism (1902), John A. Hobson blamed such activity on the capitalist drive for markets. Other critics have been content to chalk foreign adventuring up to "greed." Mason Gaffney offers a more sophisticated and chilling dynamic. In 1972, during the Vietnam war, he presented a conference paper on "Benefits of Military Spending," --which the editor deemed "too controversial" to publish. Gaffney starts with the cooperative locals, or "caciques." Among other benefits, caciques gain protection of US military and relief from expense of self-defense. In 1972, a notable example was Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu; a more recent cacique was Saddam Hussein--until he overstepped his bounds in Kuwait. Today there's Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, corrupt and brutal president of oil-rich Kazakhstan, recently in the US to visit with Papa and Junior Bush. What do caciques do for friendly US corporations? No, they don't give them markets, or minerals per se. They give contracts. Contracts of course include oil exploration rights, water supply projects, pipeline rights of way, fishing rights, prime locations for processing plants... The easiest to give are those that needn't be taken from anyone--such as the telecommunications franchise Chile gave ITT before Salvador Allende was elected. Here's part one of Gaffney's dynamic: a contract with "a shaky sheik" isn't worth much more than the paper it's written on. Until, that is, the contracting corporation hollers "property rights" and the US cavalry or navy races to the rescue. Or that's the way it used to be; we've grown a little more subtle. All of a sudden, that contract is gold, an entitlement to a growing stream of "economic rent." Among many examples, Gaffney cites Aramco. Organized in 1933 with a capital of $100,000, in 1947 it was worth, $250 million--an appreciation of $2500 percent over 14 years. By the time the Saudis demanded a share in 1972, it was worth billions. And now part two of the dynamic: A cartel can greatly enhance the value of stock in oil or other international resource companies. Thus OPEC and its cooperating multinationals restrict supply to keep up prices. That means, especially with a widely-distributed resource like oil, oil companies (or nations) must grab up potential new sources of supply before someone else gets them. And in turn, that means companies must aggressively seek contracts in turbulent corners of the world like western Sudan and the jungles of Colombia--potentially dragging the US into further conflicts. Well, don't US citizens, as citizens, get something out of this--a secure if over-priced oil supply, for example? Or military jobs? Doesn't military spending at least perk up the economy? Remember the textbook macroeconomic formula: Y = C + I + G? More G (government spending) means more Y (national income). In reality, the contribution of G to national income depends on how it's spent (and how it's financed). An investment in gaining and holding onto overseas contracts yields a very low and drawn-out return, creating relatively little net income and employment. And it comes at the expense of high-return investments, notably in the health, education and genuine security of US citizens. Polly Cleveland More Econamici I send Econamici--occasional emails with interesting attachments or links--to friends who are economists or care about economic issues. If you can't follow a link, I can send you the actual article. Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Econ-Atrocity: Will it matter if the Democrats win?Will it matter if the Democrats win?By Gerald Friedman, CPE Staff Economist November 3, 2006 An Econ-Atrocity, brought to you by the Center for Popular Economics. As I write this, it appears likely that after 12 years in the wilderness, the Democrats will capture a majority in the House of Representatives and will make substantial gains in the Senate. (My favorite objective source gives the Democrats a 225-208 lead in the House and a gain of 4 Senate seats to move to 49-51 in the upper body.) After 6 years of almost uninterrupted one-party rule, and the worst government this country has endured since the 1850s, we can only rejoice at Democratic gains as, if nothing else, a sign of a return to sanity after the trauma of September 11, 2001. But, beyond this, what can we expect from the Democrats? Can we anticipate a reversal of Bushism, and a renewed push for social progress? Alas, the short answer is ‘no’. That said, we should all hope for a Democratic win. A Democratic victory would bring welcome changes in Congress. A Democratic majority would install John Conyers of Michigan as chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Sponsor of a Bush impeachment resolution, a dedicated opponent of the use of torture, and a defender of civil rights and civil liberties, Conyers would replace the reprehensible F. James Sensenbrenner. Charles Rangel of New York, a liberal with a nearly perfect labor voting record, would become chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means, replacing William (Cal) Thomas, a dedicated opponent of social security and progressive income taxation whose lifetime AFL-CIO voting record is 12% right, 88% wrong. Holocaust-survivor and Iraq-war critic Tom Lantos would replace right-wing ideologue Henry Hyde at International Relations. Without exception, a Democratic majority would install committee chairs preferable to the Republicans’; and we can confidently anticipate that with the new committee structure, the new Democratic majority would not endorse torture, repeal Habeas Corpus, tie a minimum-wage increase to repeal of the Estate Tax, or privatize social security. And there may even be more to gain from a Democratic victory. After six years of virtual free ride, the Bush-Cheney Administration will finally be subject to meaningful oversight. And Bush’s reign of error provides abundant opportunities for serious investigation! Still, even if the Democrats capture control of the Senate as well as the House, we should not expect that the new Democratic majority will be able to do much more than to limit the damage that Bush-Cheney can do. The structures of government power will still largely be in Republican hands. First, the Republicans will retain the White House, of course, with all of its newly accrued power, control of the Federal bureaucracy, the right to interpret and reinterpret legislation, and the power to veto congressional legislation. Republican minorities in Congress will fight the Democrats at every turn. And, outside of Congress, the Republicans retain the infrastructure of the Conservative Revolution, including an arsenal of right-wing think tanks, media outlets, and corporate funding. Nor have the Democrats prepared the ground to reverse Bush-Cheney. Instead of campaigning to win a mandate for economic renewal and a reborn democracy, they have fought to attract moderate and conservative voters by emphasizing the Administration’s failures of execution, such as its mismanagement of the Iraq war and the Federal deficit. To show their moderation, Democrats have emphasized their military links, the large number of Iraq-war veterans they have nominated. As a result, any Democratic majority will be installed by the election of relatively conservative Democrats from districts with a history of supporting Bush and other Republicans. As if to seal the deal with conservatives and to slam the door on significant social reform, the Democrats have nominated for the Virginia Senate seat a life-long Republican, Jim Webb, Naval Academy graduate, Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War, and Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Corporations have understood the message the Democrats have been sending; the New York Times reports (October 28, 2006) that rather than donating more to the Republicans to try to stop a Democratic victory they have been shifting their campaign contributions dramatically towards the Democrats to ensure continued access to congressional leadership. Without a mandate for single-payer health insurance, for renewed regulation, for new environmental initiatives, or even for a withdrawal from Iraq, it is hard to see how a new Democratic Congressional majority will be able to do much more than to slow the bleeding. This is a worthwhile goal. More, it is just about all that we could ever expect from political action by itself. Every major legislative reform - from slave emancipation in the 1860s through the anti-trust activity of the Progressive Era, the New Deal’s Social Security Act, and the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s - was the result of popular pressure from below. In each case, politicians voted social reforms to catch up with popular pressure and to appease militants. Congress did not create the Civil Rights movement by passing the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965; instead, those acts ratified and institutionalized the gains made by the popular movements of the 1950s and 1960s. Whatever happens on November 7, our task is clear: to build a popular democratic movement that will not only slow Bush-Cheney but will reverse their works and rollback the neoliberal program of the 1980s and 1990s. Our model should be successful movements like the New Deal, the Civil Rights campaign, and the Conservatives of the 1970s and 1980s: each built from the ground up, beginning with an ideological campaign both to critique the prevailing wisdom and to support a new vision. Each of these campaigns was helped by friendly politicians; but they learned that the best way to make political friends is to build people power. We should remember that as we head to the polls to vote Democratic November 7. Sources: Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933-1941. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People’s Movements: Why they Succeed, how they Fail. New York, Vintage, 1979. © 2006 Center for Popular Economics Econ-Atrocities are the work of their authors and reflect their author's opinions and analyses. CPE does not necessarily endorse any particular idea expressed in these articles. The Center for Popular Economics is a collective of political economists based in Amherst, Massachusetts. CPE works to demystify economics by providing workshops and educational materials to activists throughout the United States and around the world. If you would like more information about CPE please visit our website. If you would like to automatically receive CPE’s Econ-Atrocities by email, subscribe (or unsubscribe) by going here. Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Thank you, Book Liberation Front!The books are moved. All three tons of them.Big thanks to all the new members of the Book Liberation Front: Dan and Chris from the Dollars & Sense staff, our work study student Jason, Paulie Peña and Jessamin Yu, and Tom Bozeman, who showed up because he read about it on the blog. (Exciting!) Also, I'm told, Liv Gold of the D&S collective, plus the friends she recruited. Chris says their timing was impeccable—showing up five minutes after the last carton was put away and just before the pizza was delivered. (Jessamin and I were out fulfilling the beer part of the deal when it happened.) We love Liv anyway. Over pizza and beer, we admired the tidy stacks of cartons and had a good conversation about the world of non-profit publishing and about progressive organizations in Boston. Again: huge, huge thanks to the BLF! Esther Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). |
