Bernie and socialism

Bernie Wants You to Own More of the Means of Production by Matt Bruenig

Bernie Sanders finally embraces socialism by Ryan Cooper

working class whisperers

Chris Arnade, Maximillian Alvarez, Sarah Smarsh, Hillbilly Elegy guy, New York Times reporters/ media people after Trump's election.

more Warren versus Bernie

Still lefties call for unity while the media goes banana over the news that Warren has pulled into first in Iowa. Meanwhile they ignore how Bernie is still doing well in other states.

It is complicated I agree. What is motivating Warren voters? Just as there is the idea that many Biden supporters are backing him out of fear over Trump - they feel he is the most electable and just want to beat Trump, the same could be said of some Warren voters. Bernie goes to far. Warren's "big structural change" is less ambitious than class war. Warren can get the anybody-but-Bernie voters.

Warren is better able to compromise. But is that a good thing. As Bernie repeatedly says, we need a political revolution in order to change things and beat the one percent.

The well-to-do big donors wanted Hillary who wouldn't change things but would defeat Trump. Turns out the votes wouldn't go for that. So the big donors back Biden who has moved a little to the left, and Warren who promises a little more. Wealth taxes, etc.

But Bernie promises "democratic socialism." This might require more confrontation, which the Warren voters don't want.

And yet despite her good plans, there keeps dribbling out news about how Warren is compromised. A charter school advocate on her staff? Knocking Bernie's housing plan. And now the anti-Bernie people coalesce around impeachment. Can't say that isn't ambitious and even divisive with Pelosi fearing it will fire up the Republican base.

Sanders vs. Warren

It's weird, over the past couple days there's a growing sense among both Warren and Bernie supporters that Warren might win the primary. The proximate cause is probably Biden dropping in the polls with Warren rising. But in some polls Sanders is still doing well. I guess I don't full understand the cause.

What could happen is that enough people want to block Bernie that they outnumber his organizing and name recognition advantages. I wouldn't say it's a given.

If this was 2008, 2012 or 2016 (minus Bernie) I'd be thrilled. But in 2020 it would just signal to me that the working class is still too much in disarray and the professional managerial class really suck shit.They believe the world can stay roughly the same as it has been and they can maintain their privilege b/c the common people can't be trusted to have their own movement.

Big structural change won't be big enough and maybe people become demobilized like after Obama. Or maybe not, who knows.

I guess it's possible that the DSA keeps growing and putting representatives in power. It's possible that Warren gets through a large wealth tax and public worker wage increases, etc. Maybe even workers on corporate boards. Packs the court. Ends the filibuster. That would all be great.

But what we really need for revolutionary reforms to stick is a broad base worker movement. Maybe one would develop under Warren, but her victory would mean we were so close but not quite there yet. And I would be more confident in the success of Sanders administration than a Warren one, but again who knows I could be very wrong.

(maybe the thinking is that currently Bernie is a little ahead of Warren, but if Biden drops out, a majority goes to Bernie. However enough goes to Warren that combined with the centrist supporters of the rest of the field, Warren edges Bernie out. Maybe YangGang decides the winner?)

Update: I forgot. This started when people started looking at the betting sites. PredictIt has Warren wining (but also has Trump winning in the general.) Could be their supporters have money to waste betting and tip the scales.

Update: As Biden sinks and Warren appears to gain momentum (is it real?) the corporate media has decided to give her a push with anti-Bernie outlets pushing a poll which finds that Warren has the most "broad-based metric" which sounds like a new metric they invented to block Bernie. Warren is being talked about as the "compromise" candidate.

Update: Warren supporters don't seem to want to argue about her differences with Bernie. I note that very anti-Bernie people from 2016 are now okay with Warren even though she is similar to Bernie policy-wise. Smells funny to me, but Warren supporters apparently genuinely believe that she is making "big structural change" more palatable to moderates and centrist by somehow "misleading" them. She's downplaying the radical nature of her plans. (sounds like what was said of Hillary and Obama. Sounds like wishful thinking. ) But if you want to motivate voters and energize the base you need to be ambitious. And granted some of Warren's plan are ambitious. That's why I don't think she's fooling anybody.

Update: there's a new poll which shows that Bernie is doing poorly among the elderly. Part of it is that working class and poor people die before they get old.

The Trouble with Capitalism by Chris Dillow

Do either Warren or Sanders need to drop out to defeat Biden? Not so fast. by Ryan Cooper

Update: Warren fans keep coming at me with the betting sites odds, but betting sights have proven to be useless.

Leonard Burman, Lizard Brain

The Tax Policy Center's dubious scholarship on who "deserves" welfare by Carl Beijer

A Cross-Atlantic Plan to Break Capital’s Control

A Cross-Atlantic Plan to Break Capital’s Control by Peter Gowan and Mathew Lawrence

interview with Tim Heidecker

interview with Tim Heidecker

BLVR: What’s a movie you’ve loved recently?

TH: They’re all the kids’ movies, because I have a five-year-old. I’m not kidding when I say that Paddington 2 is the best movie I’ve seen in a long time. It’s so clever and funny. I’m not kidding. Watch it. First of all, everyone in the movie is a great, accomplished actor. It looks like Wes Anderson, but without being so heavy-handed. I liked this way more than I liked Isle of Dogs, which I feel is so in on its own joke. Paddington 2 has great British humor; it’s unpretentious, genuinely funny. Emotional. Very emotional. And [the first] Paddington is also good, but this one is better. And I wept. 

‘Stop Sanders’ Democrats Are Agonizing Over His Momentum

‘Stop Sanders’ Democrats Are Agonizing Over His Momentum by Jonathan Martin (4.16.19)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/us/politics/bernie-sanders-democratic-party.html

Lil Nas X - Old Town Road (I Got My Horses in the Back)

Andrew Yang

538 piece on Yang

Some on the left HATE him. Why? b/c of the UBI? They pin everything on his alt right following. 

Yang is the only 2020 candidate thus far to put a universal income front and center, and his campaign says it’s been key to attracting support. But it’s probably not a strong enough issue to propel Yang to victory on its own. A Gallup poll from 2017 found the concept to be divisive — 48 percent supported a universal basic income, while 52 percent opposed it. Support was higher (65 percent) among Democrats, but not overwhelmingly so. That said, if Yang does indeed make the debate stage, he could succeed in making the issue a part of the national conversation.

We’d expect Yang to get a good deal of support from The Left; most Americans think providing a universal income is a socialist position (though it has conservative adherents as well), and Yang has taken progressive viewson a host of other issues...

MMT, campaigns and unions

MMT Takes Center Stage – and Orthodox Economists Freak by William Black

Warren is the MMT campaign and Sanders is the dem socialist one (even though Sanders hired Kelton for 2016. She's no longer advising Sanders).

If neoliberals want to define as “socialism” an effective government that produces markets in which honest people prosper and we imprison or at least drive from the markets the elite cheaters, then we are all socialists. An economic system without an effective rule of law and with massive negative externalities such as global climate change is a suicidal kleptocracy. If neoliberals want to define that as “capitalism,” they should get used to the public rejecting it as an ideology that is as economically illiterate as it is inhumane and unethical. Kleptocracy and plutocracy invariably corrupt and ruin democracy. The truth is that honest markets and governments are complements and that the most effective economies are ‘mixed-economies.’ Using ‘socialism’ or ‘capitalism’ as swear words is a pointless waste.

MMT doesn't sound like socialism to me.

We did not design this branch of our work, which began in 1984, to help any candidate. It is remarkable that Warren has not yet used this strand of MMT research to bolster her central policy positions.

Warren says she's a capitalist and believes in capitalism. She started as a Republican but her program (wealth tax, break up tech giants, housing, childcare, M4A, Green New Deal (vague)) is better than what we saw from Obama or Clinton.

She gave a bad answer on abolishing billionaires.

How is MMT on unions and the labor movement?

People's Republic of Walmart

bought the book today by authors Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski. 

The People's Republic of Walmart: how late-stage capitalism gives way to early-stage fully automated luxury communism by Cory Doctorow

Could Walmart Be a Model for a Socialist Future? by Peter Frase

We already live in a planned economy – we just need to take the steering wheel by
Laurie Macfarlane

MMT & foreign exchange markets

(more random thoughts sorry)

which reminds me of Mosler’s earlier comment above on ISLM – i.e. that it applies to a fixed exchange rate model)

Fixed exchange rate means what? Central bank will buy and sell to maintain rate of exchange.

Sterilize important concept. Central bank would "sterilize" gold inflows to maintain value of money relative to gold. 

Bond vigilantes. Chinese selling Treasury bonds which they bought to maintain exchange rates. Krugman and Baker regularly point out if they sell, makes currency cheaper, exports more competitive. Increases jobs and income and demand. Greece couldn't adjust b/c of euro.

inflation

(random thoughts sorry)

In reference to price-gouging, Bernie Sanders say drug companies raise price to "what the market will bear."

At a certain point, people will stop paying higher prices and other priorities for spending are put ahead of the new high price. Sanders want to move drug prices down to what people can afford.

Inflation as it relates to demand, businesses will raise price if they can or if they must. If there is more demand at a certain income, business will supply good and services at prices that the consumer will pay and business can survive on.

In the 50s and 60s teens had more money so they could spend on music or comics and this allowed artists to have careers.

cost push demand pull

childcare: Warren's plan and Family Fun Pack

Family Fun Pack by Matt Bruenig

Notes on Elizabeth Warren’s Child Care Proposal by Matt Bruenig

The Glaring Hole in Elizabeth Warren’s Childcare Plan by Bryce Covert

The inescapable problem with Elizabeth Warren's child-care plan by Ryan Cooper

Democrats for Family Values by Paul Krugman

Midnight City & socialism

Amazon pulls out of Queens

In reality it looked like Queens was going to renege on the original deal and Amazon decided it was all or nothing.

NYTimes reported on Feb. 5:

Mr. Gianaris has consistently rejected that characterization, adding that the letter said nothing about state subsidies. But he also said on Tuesday that, given Amazon officials’ recent comments that they would oppose unionization, he would not sign that letter again today. 

In response to arguments that the subsidies would be more than made up by the jobs that Amazon would create, Mr. Gianaris said only that previous state economic development projects have been “littered with overpromising and underdelivering.”

And from Feb. 10 in Financial Times:

Soon it was revealed that Amazon was having second thoughts about Queens. Executives have been riled by the local hostility they have encountered, which they had not anticipated and is in sharp contrast to the loving embrace they have received in Virginia, the location they selected for another satellite headquarters. 

They are particularly concerned, according to a person briefed on Amazon’s deliberations, about demands to allow its New York workers to unionise — something the company has refused elsewhere. 

“Amazon is a non-union company and did not realise this would have to change in New York,” this person said.

Green New Deal and corporate globalization

Free trade as idealized by those who successfully pushed in recent decades is a very good thing. It binds nations together making us all better off and less likely to go to war. It raises productivity as nations do what they are good etc. etc. etc. But even those who pushed free trade like Bill Clinton and Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong have admitted that it create losers. Academic and corporate pundits admitted there were downsides but little was done about it.

And so Trump could run against bad trade deals and demagogue immigrants and foreigners. Corporate free trade did not lead to rising living standards and a better world. It is here where the usual liberals blame Republicans and whitewash the actual arguments.

In order to work a Green New Deal will need to raise the living standards of everyone and make economic justice a reality. That's what the "New Deal" part is. That's what globalized trade didn't have. It was paired with reducing the welfare state and labor rights. If you want the Green New Deal to work and to evolve to a sustainable economy that will allow human civilization to survive that means no doing what was done with free trade. It means creating a new kind of economy that works for everyone while weening us from fossil fuels and stopping climate change.

This means government will have a large role to play.

Ready to Start