June 02, 2007

• Why, yes. Yes it does. Thank you.
• I miss the days of the command economy. When men were men, and women queued for eight hours for a string bag of potatoes.
• It's the worst system I know of, except for all the others.
• We live in a society that is part socialism (post office, roads and bridges, army, food stamps, minimum wage, etc) and part capitalism. Many on the right seem to want to pretend that socialism is an evil word and that we will all become communists if we engage in social programs. I think that the balance in the US has been - in a large part - why the US has done so well financially and otherwise. I think that to shift the balance too far in the direction of either side would upset the balance and not be good for the country. Things of late seem to be shifting too far (in my opinion) to the capitalist side of things.
• It's the worst system I know of, except for all the others. This is a tired, not to mention lazy, old saw. Do you refer to capitalism, or corporate capitalism (what one of the books reviewed in the link refers to as managers' capitalism)?
• A little summary for those disinclined to RTFL: "Managers' capitalism," then, is Bogle's shorthand for a system of rules, practices, and standards of behavior designed to bring quick and sure rewards to a few at long-term cost to many. Executives are not the only suspects here, and shareholders are not the only victims.[*] Often, Bogle observes, workers and shareholders get defrauded together. That is obviously true when managers cook the books; it can also be true when they cook up dramatic "restructuring" plans entailing mass layoffs. As Uchitelle points out, these plans often generate smaller-than-anticipated savings and bigger-than-anticipated costs—in morale and trust, especially. The point of many recent layoffs has been to free up capital for the repayment of debt incurred in mergers and acquisitions; those deals have a notably bad track record of their own. To understand why so many mergers continue to occur—$3.79 trillion worth in 2006—Bogle suggests that we consider the consequences for the executives who arrange them: not just the bonuses and the increased pay and power, but the ability to "take huge writeoffs—largely ignored by market participants —and create 'cookie jar' reserves"—paper assets created through mergers —"available at the beck and call of management to inflate future earnings on demand." From their different vantage points, Uchitelle, LeRoy, and Bogle are writing about the breakdown of what some have called the postwar social contract, and about the rise of a new "money power" more daunting, in some ways, than that of the late 1800s and early 1900s. To gain their political ends, the robber barons and monopolists of the Gilded Age were content with corrupting officials and buying elections. Their modern counterparts have taken things a big step further, erecting a loose network of think tanks, corporate spokespeople, and friendly press commentators to shape the way Americans think about the economy. Much as corporate marketing directs our aspirations disproportionately toward commercial goods and services, the new communications apparatus wants us to believe that our economic wellbeing depends almost entirely on the so-called free market—a euphemism for letting the private sector set its own rules. The success of this great effort can be measured in the remarkable fact that, despite the corporate scandals and the social damage that these authors explore; despite three decades of deregulation and privatization and tax-and-benefit-slashing with, as the clearest single result, the relentless rise of economic inequality to levels so extreme that since 2001 "the economy" has racked up five straight years of impressive growth without producing any measurable income gains for most Americans—even now, discussions of solutions or alternatives can be stopped almost dead in their tracks by mention of the word government.
• I was reminded of a book I read twenty years ago call The Land of Lost Content, a reappraisal of the Luddite movement. Luddism became a byword for stick-in-the-mud, anti-progress and innovation, but the author shows that what was being resisted was the way change was being implemented rather than new technology as such. What was resented was the disruption of an economy of skilled independent craftsmen who were near social equals with their masters and proud of what they did. The new factories only needed hands; children's hands would do and you were instantly replaceable. Like Stanley Tools in the article, it wasn't that the "old ways" weren't working or could no longer compete. They kept hundreds of women and men employed in well-paid skilled jobs with independence, time flexibility and decent family lives. It was that more profit could be made for a smaller group of owners using the new machines. The machine-wrecking was a resistance to the imposition of this new arrangement, a desperate measure taken after numerous constitutional routes had proved fruitless, including hiring pricey lawyers to appear at Royal Commissions. Point of the above is that these questions come before those of socialism or capitalism for me, or rather thinking about them is what made what's broadly called socialism appeal. I thought the book "The Soul of Capitalism" was well-titled, because that's the question. What is economic activity for? Despite the moonjuice drinkers or liars who want to pretend that "this is the only way it could be, it's more efficient, it's a law of nature," that's not true. It's a human activity, not a hard science. There's always choices; there's always a framework that enables the corporate speculator, but not the guy who was a skilled airplane wing finisher now washing windows.
• Think before we act? Worry about more than the bottom line? Are you some kind of unAmerikan terrierist wacko? That is not The Way (to the bank) Call me a Luddite. How 'bout them quarterly oil company profits, eh? And the summer gouging hasn't really even started yet?
• I'd just like to point out that I own 34.6% of HawthorneWingo's shares, and he has great growth potential in all the key sectors. But we're going to have to make his arms redundant, and rebrand him HawthorneStumpy.
• Buy! Buy! Buy!
• John Keneth Galbraith, a leftleaning economist and wonderful writer said a number of years ago that we had Socialism for the corporations, esp. military places, and capitalism for the ordinary guy. The govt took care of corps and the little guy was on his own. Believe it? Well ask about your health care reductions, your minimum wage changes for the past 10 years, etc etc etc.
• great growth potential in all the key sectors That's what Mary Meeker said. Heh-heh.
• What's really irksome about some corporate layoffs is executives continuing to draw their salaries, bonuses and raises as if nothing's happened....not to mention the astronomical levels of some of those pay packets in the first place.
• nothing's happened She said that, too. Lotta pressure with a woman that powerful.
• UNHAPPY WITH THE SIZE OF YOUR HENRY BLODGET? GOOD NEWS! KNOCK DOWN WALLS WITH YOUR MANLY PAY PACKET! ADD SIX FIGURES IN TWO WEEKS! RESULTS GAURANTEED.