Please Dems, not Hillary!

Not consistently: the Clinton presidency's record about economic policy, both at home and abroad, is very mixed indeed.

True. Most are unaware that Bill Clinton cut welfare and ramped up the drug war during his tenure. Most are also unaware that the Clinton's right-leaning Neo-Liberalism is actually *contrary* to the left (especially outside the US), the left which is better represented by Kucinich, Gravel, Edwards and Obama.

Some counter with Hillary's socialized medicine. Ok. But the exception proves the rule : look at her voting for the Iraq war (and being unapologetic about it), voting for approval of use of force wrt Iran, and her only advocating income tax increases for those earning $250,000+ / yr. (whereas the other Democrats support the tax hike for those earning considerably less than that, more in the $80,000-130,000 range).

Then there is the whole issue of establishment elitism dominating the USA for years, under the Bush-Clinton political family dynasty. Is there no option beyond 2 parties and 2 families ? Even small European/Scandinavian countries have 8-10 diverse parties to choose from and proportional representation (a direct correlation between the number of votes received and number of parliamentary seats given).

The US electoral system is corrupt, complicated, chaotic, elitist and non-transparent. It's more about purchasing the presidency. Maybe in the future, the local multi-billionaire will be declared the winner, with "Precision" e-voting machines (formerly "Diebold") declaring the biggest bank account the winner, with no paper trail and with no neutral/independent verfication of the tabulations.

Meanwhile, the US has a very high child povery rate, very high violent crime rates and the highest incarceration rate on earth ! Do you think that just MIGHT have something to do with the Neo-Conservative/Neo-Liberal Bush/Clinton monopoly ?

The USA and it's people should have the moral and legal right to a MUCH wider range of political alternatives than they have been given, imo.
 
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Hear, hear Arpyjee! You stated many of the things that I've been concerned about the Clintons. They are more establishment than the mainstream media and especially the right wing spin machine would have you believe. I think corporatists would much prefer Hillary to any of the other Democrats or even Mike Huckaby.

I was really hoping that after the U.S. experiment with unfettered neo-liberal, i.e. Friedman Chicago school economics, we were ready for a more progressive government. I feel so helpless in this electoral system. Since I live in Texas, my vote pretty much never counts. In the last two Presidential elections, it mattered not that I voted Democrat, my state was going W all the way. My individual vote disappeared into the ether as my states electoral votes went to W. My vote in the Democratic primary will probably not count for much either since we come so late in the primary season.

For the "greatest nation in the World", we sure have a lot of fooked up stuff. ;)
 
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If only the US had experimented with Friedman Chicago school economics. Friedman & co are respectable, sensible, and prudent conservatives. While I believe the neo-Keynesians could have done even better, Friedman's gang would never, ever have advocated economic policies that got America into the hole that's currently collapsing about its ears.

The problem is that the US didn't. It experimented with supply-side economics, which are to Friedman what Jim Jones was to Christianity. No serious economist would have advocated the "cut taxes and never mind the deficit, growth will be explosive and the Laffer curve will take care of it" policies that got you where you are now. Neocons are just supply-siders with guns.
 
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Indeed, let's hand the money to John Q Public! The masses show such good fiscal management that it's beyond obvious that they are most qualified to set policy. Those corporate fat cats move money and maintain profits all day long--what qualifications do they have to influence economic policy? :rolleyes:

Since our government is bought and sold these days, it should come as no surprise that the deficit continues to increase. Hucksters on both sides of the aisle hand out money as fast as they can manage it. Until John Q gets smart enough to realize where those handouts come from (and no, John Q, taking more from corporations via increased taxes isn't free, either), it won't get better. The baby boomers feel entitled enough to suck the nation dry and my generation is even worse. The thieves are going to control the vault, folks.
 
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I don't think most critics of the current system are as concerned about (the lack of) corporate taxation as they are about corporate welfare. The leftist American economists I've read (Krugman, Stiglitz) do not want a return to the 90% marginal tax rates of 1970 or so although they do want to increase progression somewhat and bring the income and capital gains tax rates closer together, increase infrastructure, research, and educational investment, provide better unemployment insurance and a single-payer health care system, and reduce agricultural and corporate subsidies. Among other things.

The interesting thing is that the distance between Milton Friedman and Paul Krugman is way shorter than most pundits you'd have you believe. The difference between either of these and Larry... ahem, Arthur Laffer is much bigger.
 
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Friedman & co are respectable, sensible, and prudent conservatives.

These are the guys that installed Pinochet in Chile, destroyed the economies of most of south and central America through their operatives in the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, and capitalized on both natural and man-made disasters after the tsunami and the war in Iraq.

Cutting taxes is exactly what neo-liberals suggest. They have imposed flat tax rates on those nations that have had to accept it after having to accept debt restructuring from those Chicago school bastions above, the World Bank and the WTO. Other experiments from these "respectable, sensible, and prudent conservatives" have been wholesale privatization, cuts to government programs (of course benefiting the poor), and any kinds of labor laws. Those countries are only now recovering from the disaster that was Friedman economics by embracing Keynesian style economics. Bravo for Chavez and Morales!
 
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These are the guys that installed Pinochet in Chile, destroyed the economies of most of south and central America through their operatives in the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, and capitalized on both natural and man-made disasters after the tsunami and the war in Iraq.

No, they're not. But people who trumpet their names did, so the confusion is understandable. The Washington Consensus emerged out of the financial institutions in Washington, D.C., not the schools where Friedman, Feldman et al. teach.

Cutting taxes is exactly what neo-liberals suggest. They have imposed flat tax rates on those nations that have had to accept it after having to accept debt restructuring from those Chicago school bastions above, the World Bank and the WTO. Other experiments from these "respectable, sensible, and prudent conservatives" have been wholesale privatization, cuts to government programs (of course benefiting the poor), and any kinds of labor laws. Those countries are only now recovering from the disaster that was Friedman economics by embracing Keynesian style economics. Bravo for Chavez and Morales!

You're right about the policies and their disastrous results, but you're mistaken about blaming Friedman's economics for them. The IMF's politics are not and never were based on sound economic theory; they were based on protecting the interests of creditors -- Western countries and banks -- at the expense of debtors. That's why they made inflation and fiscal discipline their cornerstones, never mind if unemployment goes through the roof.

There is a grain of truth in your outrage, though: the IMF and the neocons did often quote the Chicago school economists to defend their policies -- just like some religious nutcases quote the Bible/Qur'an/whatever. And the Chicago school certainly bears some of the blame for this perception, since they did not publicly disassociate themselves from these policies, and lent some political support to Reagan, GWB, and certain others.

But the fact remains that the economic policy you're upset about was driven by the supply-siders in the US, and by naked special interests in the IMF, rather than by sober analysis by the Chicago schoolers.

Finally, I think you'll admit yourself that it's slightly absurd to blame a university professor for Pinochet -- that was a pure "our bastard" Cold War power play.

Ick, and finally finally -- the neo-liberals are not the same people as the monetarists, although there is a connection of a sort between the two.

(Again, for the record, I believe that Friedman's monetarism has largely been discredited and the neo-Keynesians have both better models and better policies -- but that doesn't mean that Friedman et al. are the demons you make them out to be, nor that their critique of Keynesianism was without merit.)
 
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Well, I may be a bit brain-washed, but I'm getting quite a bit about what I'm stating from several books, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein, and Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran where you can see the experimenters policies in action.

I'm not saying Friedman caused the overthrow of Allende, the CIA did, but he was as influential for that "regime change" as William Randolph Hearst was for the Spanish-American war.

It's my understanding that supply-siders ARE neo-liberals for the most part. They're the ones that say that unregulated free markets will create enough wealth that a very small portion will "trickle" down to the peasants.
 
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Thanks for the book references, Elliaures. Very informative discussion going on here with some great posts. I can only agree with Arpyjee on his perception of the Clintons and the lack of choices available to American voters, and with you on how meaningless one's vote feels down here(Oklahoma)--I haven't seen a liberal in person for fifteen years. ;)

@dte--We baby boomers have been reviled since adolescence as hippy scum, then yuppie sell-outs and now the big drain on the social security system that will break everything, but I would like to say most of us have worked our entire lives, funded the retirement of our parents generation, and all the welfare programs now in place, so perhaps there's a reason we feel "entitled" to let somebody else do it for a change. :)
 
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Well, I may be a bit brain-washed, but I'm getting quite a bit about what I'm stating from several books, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein, and Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran where you can see the experimenters policies in action.

I'm not saying Friedman caused the overthrow of Allende, the CIA did, but he was as influential for that "regime change" as William Randolph Hearst was for the Spanish-American war.

It's my understanding that supply-siders ARE neo-liberals for the most part. They're the ones that say that unregulated free markets will create enough wealth that a very small portion will "trickle" down to the peasants.

I agree with you entirely about the neoliberals/market fundamentalists. All I'm sayin' is that it's not fair to equate them with Friedman and the Chicago school: a truer picture would be that the neoliberals looked for justifications for their policies in Friedman, rather than reading Friedman and deriving their policies from their models. So the relationship between the neoliberals/market fundamentalists/supply-siders with Friedman would be a bit like the relationship between the eugenics movement/nazis and Darwin.
 
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(Oklahoma)--I haven't seen a liberal in person for fifteen years. ;)
I knew there was a reason I liked living out there... ;)

@dte--We baby boomers have been reviled since adolescence as hippy scum, then yuppie sell-outs and now the big drain on the social security system that will break everything, but I would like to say most of us have worked our entire lives, funded the retirement of our parents generation, and all the welfare programs now in place, so perhaps there's a reason we feel "entitled" to let somebody else do it for a change. :)
As much as we've over-glorified "the greatest generation", nobody could say they didn't build and pass down wealth very well overall. Although the boomers have certainly done their time, I don't know that they've really built much wealth to pass along. What they've built, they plan to (whether by enjoying retirement or thru bad health) leave little behind. Then you've got the baby bubble (post-Vietnam mini boom) generation that's mostly digging a hole and assuming Mommy and Daddy will fill it.
 
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Moderate, measured, economic neo-liberal policies wouldn't be so bad if they were counterbalanced from the left and the right equally, but that is not the case in North America. In the USA, the only alternative to neo-liberalism is ultra-right neo-conservatism, and it is the same in Canada, though to a slightly lesser extent, due to the presence of their social-democratic NDP (which has never actually formed government, though).

The rightward drift of neo-liberalism is bound to happen when it's being constantly yanked to the right by prominent neo-cons Bush, Cheney, Rove and others. Republicans have had a substantial edge over the Democrats in forming the official federal government (65%:35% or so).

Now if the US had 3 parties :

-Center-Left Party/Green party (Kucinich, Nader)
-Democrats (Obama, Edwards, Clinton)
-Republicans (Romney, McCain, Huckabee)

...and they each were elected 33% of the time, and effectively held 33% of the power/vote, the neo-liberal agenda wouldn't be pulled to the right by the neo-cons so readily. It would be anchored and counterbalanced.
 
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As much as we've over-glorified "the greatest generation", nobody could say they didn't build and pass down wealth very well overall.

Well, they certainly didn't do a very good job of passing it down in my family. ;)

Although the boomers have certainly done their time, I don't know that they've really built much wealth to pass along.

This piqued my curiosity, and I googled off to Forbes.com where by painstaking
research(!)* I found that approximately 187.5 of the Forbes 400 wealthiest people in America, or a respectable almost-half, are baby boomers (born between 1946-1964). This includes guys like Bill Gates, Donald Trump and Steven Spielberg. About 25 are younger, another 100 or so are between 63-70, and the remainder are really really old, the rich bastards.

What they've built, they plan to (whether by enjoying retirement or thru bad health) leave little behind.

Bill, Donald and I are leaving more behind than we started with, ;) but yes, I'm probably going to need it all (such as it is) to survive before it's all said and done. I'm doing the best I can to spend it wisely before it disappears or the government finds a way to take it away from me. You'll have to figure out how to get your own, dude. :)

This may seem to be off topic, yet in a way, it chimes in with the rest of the economic discussion. I think it's at the heart of our fiscal irresponsibility, a direct result of our failure to hold government accountable, and it ought to be being prominently discussed in this election(somewhere besides here.)

Instead we've got a circus of personalities.

Where did all that money go? That is, all the billions in taxes paid by the largest generation in US history? Huge bureaucratic inefficient social service programs, ag subsidies, corporate siphoning, wars, supporting foreign regimes, I don't know. I think it goes without saying some of it probably ended up in the pockets of the 400 wealthiest Americans.(--note you can't even get on the list unless you're a billionaire.) Our government has certainly had their share from me. Unless we all begin working for change, you kids are going to inherit a nightmare. (I'll just sit on the porch and rock and eat my Alpo. :) )



(*list sorted by age and counted by page @ 25 per page-the monkey with a keyboard method)
 
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@Arpyjee, which neo-liberals are you talking about? There are more neos here than the Matrix, so it's getting a bit confusing.

At least from where I'm from, "neo-liberal" usually means something like "market fundamentalist" -- someone who took Friedman's noninterventionism and ran with it until they got very close to the anarcho-capitalist fringe. OTOH I've also seen it used about "Clinton liberals" -- people who believe that the state should take a more active role in promoting strategic industries, through subsidies or even tariffs.

It's confusing as hell, though; suddenly the neocons turn into neoliberals, the neo-Keynesians are at war with the *other* neoliberals, and the Keynesians are more like the paleoconservatives. Gaah!
 
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By neo-liberal, I'm referring to all those who are to the right of center in their economic policies !! *Including* Hillary (as opposed to those more traditional Liberals who are center to center-left) !! The new liberals have shifted far to the right in their economic policies (neverending tax cuts, globalism, free trade agreements, corporate welfare/sanctuary, foreign ownership, cheap labor, union busting, etc.) and are mimicking the neo-cons because the neo-cons have pulled the neo-liberals to the right, bringing about a paradigm shift !! Hopefully, the neo-liberals don't start mimicking the neo-con's domestic social policies and foreign policies as well !!

My view is based on the notion that extremism is bad !! I'm also mimicking Corwin's use of exclamations just for fun !!

(whew, that was exhausting)
 
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Right, I see what you mean. Still, that's a pretty broad definition, since there are very important differences within that group; you have a point, though, that the discourse has been seized by these people.

There's nothing inherently liberal -- neo or classical -- about free trade and globalization, though -- Keynes and his modern day followers are all for it. The problem is that free trade isn't really, and globalization has been managed in a completely lopsided way -- the rights of creditors over debtors, capital over labor, agriculture in the developed world over agriculture in the less developed world, and so on, with social and ecological costs not just neglected but completely left out of the equation.

I vote nay on the exclamation points. Perhaps you should try Acleacius's use of smileys?
 
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Now if the US had 3 parties :

-Center-Left Party/Green party (Kucinich, Nader)
-Democrats (Obama, Edwards, Clinton)
-Republicans (Romney, McCain, Huckabee)

...and they each were elected 33% of the time, and effectively held 33% of the power/vote, the neo-liberal agenda wouldn't be pulled to the right by the neo-cons so readily. It would be anchored and counterbalanced.

That's one possibility. The other possibility is that with the current atmosphere of polarization it would only deadlock the system -- if one party made an initiative, the other two would block it.

I'm a big fan of multi-party systems, but they do need a specific political climate to function, and the US today may not have that climate.
 
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Now if the US had 3 parties :

-Center-Left Party/Green party (Kucinich, Nader)
-Democrats (Obama, Edwards, Clinton)
-Republicans (Romney, McCain, Huckabee)

...and they each were elected 33% of the time, and effectively held 33% of the power/vote, the neo-liberal agenda wouldn't be pulled to the right by the neo-cons so readily. It would be anchored and counterbalanced.

Of course, that comes down to:
- Really liberal
- Liberal, but will bend to get elected
- Conservative, but will bend to get elected

If you wanted true parity, you would need a true ultra-conservative party - not a bunch of religious nutjobs, but people who believe in the tenets of personal initiative and states rights and so on. Then you would have 4 way parity, ... and as PJ says, absolute shrill gridlock.

I would be happy with a 20:30:30:20 mix there ... something to allow the centrists to flex power and stay true to themselves while allowing both ends some influence over the debate. Despite the opinions formed by the Bush crew in the heads of an overwhelming majority of people from all ends of the spectrum, no one group has a monopoly on 'rightness' by virtue of their fundamental political ideology.
 
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I'm not sure we've all got the true definition of neo-liberal here. Neo-liberal is a confusing term because you would be well within your rights to think it has something to do with the political ideology of liberalism. Neo-liberalism is in my opinion a conservative economic philosophy that espouses a return to the classic economics of Adam Smith. This certainly defines what conservatism is supposed to be about, a resistance to change and an almost unwavering support for tradition. To add even more confusion, neo-conservatives (a movement reacting to the "hippy" left movement of the 60's and 70's) mostly embrace the policies of neo-liberals.

To get back to the original premise, it was Bill Clinton with Robert Rubin that pushed trade liberalization and free trade policy. After seeing who Hillary's economic advisers are, I don't see that this will change with a new Clinton administration. Under Hillary we will most likely see more outsourcing, high drug prices, and more shoddy, dangerous goods coming from China.
 
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To get back to the original premise, it was Bill Clinton with Robert Rubin that pushed trade liberalization and free trade policy. After seeing who Hillary's economic advisers are, I don't see that this will change with a new Clinton administration. Under Hillary we will most likely see more outsourcing, high drug prices, and more shoddy, dangerous goods coming from China.

I take it you're against trade liberalization and free trade, then. If so, could you elaborate a bit on the alternatives? That is, which types of trade barriers would you like to see erected -- tariffs, regulation, subsidies, something else? --, who would you have erect them, and how would you go about avoiding international trade wars if they were erected?

I'm asking, 'cuz from where I'm at, you're barking up the wrong tree. The problem with the current international organization isn't that it's "too free" -- it's that the playing field isn't level, and that it doesn't factor in social and environmental costs.

So, for example, we have free capital markets. This makes it possible for capital-rich countries to cash in quickly anywhere in the world -- at the expense of creating an enormous amount of instability: when there's an opportunity, you get an enormous capital inflow; when there's a scare, the capital leaves as quickly as it arrived, leaving the country a shambles. (Cf. the 1997 Asian crash.)

Conversely, we have a heavily protected agricultural sector, which squeezes developing countries out of the market and even turns some of them into food importers. And let's not even talk about the labor market, which is pretty much completely walled-off between economic zones.

What I'd like to see is *more* globalization, not less -- but done differently than so far. For example:

* Kyoto/Bali with teeth. A climate treaty that sets up emissions targets for all adherents, divides up emissions targets of non-adherents between the adherents, institutes a carbon-trading market that rewards reforestation and preservation of forests (among other things), and enforces the targets through "carbon tariffs," equally on members and non-members of the treaty. The monies collected with the tariffs would then be spent among adherents on carbon sequestration and emissions reduction. We would need a global body to monitor the system, too. (The good news is this has been done before on a somewhat smaller scale -- we got rid of CFC's with a system very much like this.)

* Abolition of agricultural subsidies, with a possible exception made for small family farmers to preserve cultural values. For example, cap the subsidy at, say, $20,000 per farm -- enough to make a critical difference for the small family farmer, but small enough to effectively eliminate their current negative effects. This could be done gradually, and social programs might be needed to cushion the effects of the somewhat higher food prices on the poor. (The rise wouldn't be as big as you could think simply from the size of the subsidy, though, as imports from the developing world would replace the subsidized food from the developed world.)

* Abolition of corporate welfare, especially of the oil and extractive industries. Exxon is doing just fine without being subsidized by the state, IMO. Exceptions could be made to seed new industries -- but capitalizing small startups to give them a leg-up is a very different matter from funneling billions to the likes of Exxon-Mobil or Monsanto.

* Sensible controls on the capital market. Unlike hard goods, capital can be zapped around the world at the click of a button. This results in greater instability, not greater growth -- and, of course, makes it possible for illegal drug and arms dealers, terrorists, and dictators to easily hide their money. We need more transparency and something to slow down capital flows -- perhaps a "Tobin tax," or perhaps just adding a "throttle" that makes transferring billions of dollars slower than it is now. If the current system is like a shallow tray where capital sloshes around and causes all kinds of spills, we'd need to add something like a honeycomb structure that gets it to stay put a bit more.

* A redistribution of risk to where it belongs. Currently, the main function of institutions like the IMF, the World Bank -- and, incidentally, various quasi-governmental banks in the US -- is to protect creditors, not debtors. On the micro scale, a mortgage broker who knowingly or negligently sells a mortgage to a bad risk knows that he can walk away, with the taxpayer picking up the bill for an eventual default combined with a drop in the value of the house. On the macro scale, a Western lender knowingly or negligently lending a billion or two to a country known to be a bad risk can be confident that, when push comes to shove, the IMF will squeeze the money out of the debtor, even if it means selling off the debtor's means of production. Lenders must be made to carry more of the risk of their bad debts: the flip side of overborrowing is overlending, whether we're talking mortgages or national debt.

I could go on, but you get the picture. The problem isn't that we have more free trade: the problem is that the trade is unfair, benefiting corporate interests über alls, and rewarding asset-stripping, environmental degradation, predatory lending, and exploitation of labor.

Whew.
 
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