Isn't UBI a neoliberal idea? In the sense that it's a market-based solution to poverty because the whole point is to require as little government interference as possible.
Maybe we should hash out what exactly counts as neoliberal in a long discussion?
Or I could make this an online dating thread, heebz!
Milton Friedman would be fine with either as long as a government bureaucrat didn't choose.
Thanks, Heebie for posting and thank you very much for adding a coherent summary of the linked article. I'm embarrassed by the fact that I completely failed to actually explain what they were talking about before adding my own musings.
Is the dating discussion in question more of a squeal of delight or a question to debate? I'd say squeal of delight is worth doing here, question could get its own thread if you're game. Or go in an old thread.
True story: At first I wrote squee of delight, but then I suspected that phrase would be nauseating. to people. who.
comment.
here.
you know?
7: I could do either, but mostly I was just joking about long threads because of your neoliberalism comment.
To me the classic neoliberal move is to replace AFDC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aid_to_Families_with_Dependent_Children
with EITC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit
look at this graph:
http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/eitc-range.gif
EITC gives almost no money to the very poor. If you want to help poor children this is insane. But if you want to avoid republicans being pissed at you it is great.
One alternative would be to give a fixed amount to everyone with kids. That wouldn't be "means tested" but it would be paid for by taxes so whatever.
The other alternative would be to bring back something like AFDC.
Temporary Only Because Life Is Short Assistance to Needy Families. TOBLISANF.
1 & 9 are why I characterize the conversation as being between two neoliberals. Also, I think Heebie-Geebie is correct, in the OP, that Bob Greenstein seems knowledgeable about anti-poverty programs and genuinely concerned about working for greater government assistance and also somebody who has spent so much time working within the US political system that he takes it's constraints for granted.
Actually, that last phrase isn't quite right, I don't know that he takes them for granted, but he is explicitly interested in explaining, to other liberals, the directions in which he thinks the grain of American Politics runs, and why and how he thinks it's better to work with the grain rather than against it. Which is interesting and useful.
One alternative would be to give a fixed amount to everyone with kids.
9: Well, there is a $500/head child tax credit that is, I believe, refundable, and not tied to anything else. So the question is whether that arose independent of the AFDC/EITC swap or if it was intended to be part of the exchange*.
That doesn't change the shape of the curves in the linked graph, which you correctly identify as insane in the absence of other, non-temporary programs.
*well, AFDC and EITC aren't actually linked at all--the latter was expanded in '90, '93, and '01, but not '96 when AFDC was killed--but in terms of the broader welfare reform package
neoliberal vision too limiting
Even where successful, using market-means to achieve social ends means having to participate in markets as a consumer for some basic necessities of life, which is unpleasant. I don't want to be empowered to buy health insurance on a exchange via tax credits and market regulation. I just want to go to a doctor and get care.
Right, but a UBI was designed to be not-that. It's supposed to reconcile welfare with the market by saying "here's about what you need to live, now go forth and buy stuff in the marketplace as you will and don't come crying to us with the consequences."
It's also never been implemented anywhere.
Thinking a bit more, I realize what's been chewing away at my brain this election cycle. You see two claims made by people on the left:
First that there has been a dominant, neoliberal, "Washington Consensus" which is now starting to break down* and that contributes to the success of non-establishment candidates on both the Left and Right.
Secondly that the success of Bernie Sanders shows that there is the potential for a new energized explicitly progressive political movement which people on the left should support.
Personally, I have been skeptical that the support for Bernie Sanders is, itself, a movement. But, at the same time, I'm interested in the argument because if I'm wrong, and there is a political re-alignment happening that's a big deal.
But this also raises some obvious questions
1) If, as has been claimed, some form of neoliberalism has been the dominant political ideology since the mid 70s -- 40 years -- then, I wonder, what model do we have for a leftist alternative look like as a sizable political coalition (rather than just an critique and opposition), and what would that look like?
1a) What lessons, if any, should a progressive movement take from left-neoliberalism? If the past 40 years have revealed various weaknesses and failures, what strengths have been revealed as well?
2) What is the motivating political force for a possible progressive movement (and, regarding the interview in the OP, I think that, "give money to poor people without jobs" may be a good idea but is not likely to be a motivating political force).
Those are, obviously, gigantic, difficult questions, but that's what I find myself thinking about whenever we go around on neoliberalism, and why I want to keep talking about it.
* For example, Timothy Burke, "The general problem is that the modern liberal nation-state and its characteristic institutions are simply no longer capable of delivering on their baseline promises and possibilities to any national population anywhere. Even in nations that appear by most measures to be successful, the state withers due its lack of vision."
I don't want to be empowered to buy health insurance on a exchange via tax credits and market regulation. I just want to go to a doctor and get care.
Would that require building something like the NHS? Even under a "Medicare-for-all" model you'd still need to deal with insurance and the market.
17- I think there are a lot of possible answers to that. I would like to push for better regulation of market failures, along with greater provision of public goods. It really bugs me that everything is deliberately made hard or impossible to repair for example. In addition to repairing our infrastructure new mothers could get a box of useful items etc.
New mothers are probably too tired to repair much.
However, I would love to see commercials for backhoes, bulldozers, and the like start with "As a busy mom...."
I'm waiting for the UBI people to come around to the notion that the best way to fund UBI is to have the state own the means of production.
I would like to push for better regulation of market failures, along with greater provision of public goods.
Isn't that fundamentally the left-neoliberal position? I mean, "regulation of market failure" is basically the goal of left neoliberalism. And I don't think there's any reason why something like the Finnish baby box couldn't happen in America; if there was a political advantage or constituency pushing for it -- that is to say that I assume that Democrats who would object would be doing so because they thought it was bad optics and would just seem "weird" to the typical voter, not because they objected on philosophical grounds.
Nobody puts baby in a box.
If the past 40 years have revealed various weaknesses and failures, what strengths have been revealed as well?
Superficially (but I think not trivially): customer service. Rude or arrogant or unhelpful staff, offices closed for 3 hours in the middle of the day, whatever. Those things give the state a bad name unnecessarily, and I think can lead middle-class people to voting against their economic best interest.
17
Economic populism becomes increasingly easy to pull off as wealth/income becomes concentrated into the elite. You just get people to vote their interest. FDR and LBJ were just some dudes. It happened before and can happen again.
18
In Canada they just give you a card and then you go to the doctor
"Superficially (but I think not trivially): customer service. Rude or arrogant or unhelpful staff, offices closed for 3 hours in the middle of the day, whatever. Those things give the state a bad name unnecessarily, and I think can lead middle-class people to voting against their economic best interest."
This is a good point. Some DMVs are run pretty well- it can make a difference.
27.2: If you're over 50 and male, the card says "Warning: Doctor will want to put his hand up your butt."
If only my actual political philosophy classes had been like this.
It occurs to me that civil service protections on some level militate against good civil service: a patronage hack needs to keep voters happy with his boss or he'll lose his job when the next boss comes in. A civil service hire doesn't really have any motivation other than the common good or civic pride or whatever.
Now, as someone who married a bureaucrat, I don't think that's inherently an inadequate motivation, but I'm not sure how you make it uniform. ISTM that it's a matter of leadership and morale, and those aren't exactly in ready supply in government.
Mind you, I'm not suggesting here that private industry is full of motivated, productive worker bees, just that the carrot/stick structure is a lot more clear.
24- What kind of neoliberalism are you against? What have you got?
My definition probably isn't the same as anyone else's but I tend to think of neoliberalism as being about handing more things over to the market. Bush's plan to privatize social security or ObamaCare are good examples of neoliberalism as are selling off the concession for parking meters or making public roads into toll roads.
How was ObamaCare handing things over to the market?
It was market-oriented, but it's not like something that existed previously was privatized.
37
Obamacare did actually mandate an increase in revenue to insurance companies and did allow the private sector to continue handling things that it had demonstrated for decades that it was very bad at handling from a cost-control perspective.
37- Both the individual mandate and the subsidies end up giving a lot of money to insurance markets that they wouldn't get without it, or with medicare for all.
But the increased money was to cover people who were largely not covered before, not to substitute as a substitute for government-provided care.
it's a matter of leadership and morale, and those aren't exactly in ready supply in government
True, but not necessarily so. An adequately resourced government will get things done, gain respect, attract better recruits, etc. I'm reminded of Republicans, breaking government by starving it of funds on the grounds that it's broken. Self-fulfilling prophecies.
Was the ACA Goldberg machine design born of conviction or the limits of political possibility?
The limits of political possibility.
41- That's true, and the Finnish box for new moms is gonna have to buy from private companies, but I feel like neoliberal describes a tendency rather than being a hard and fast rule.
To the extent that the subsidies help people who otherwise would have paid full price for insurance ObamaCare isn't entirely neoliberal.
Obamacare was a huge net transfer to the poorest 20% of the U.S. An really inefficient one, but still.
44.2: It's not that they would have paid full price. Nearly all of them could not have paid full price. Even those who were not extremely poor. Health insurance disconnected from employment was unaffordable or nearly so at even median incomes.
Except for those over 65 or for kids.
45- I think that is probably true. I don't think neoliberal is code for pure evil. I think it is more like inappropriate deference to markets.
On the other hand it is only a transfer to poor households if they get their moneys worth out of the insurance, which many of them will not.
That's kind of the logic on which insurance works.
There's positive value to being insured, full stop. Actually using health insurance (for anything other than a wellness check) is basically a net loss compared to not needing it, but a gain compared to needing it and not having it.
But it's really, really wrong to say that health insurance is only worthwhile if you get more in benefits than the annual cost of premiums. Being able to go mountain biking, or climb up a ladder, or operate a power tool, or even wash a glass by hand, without worrying that you're risking bankruptcy is a benefit.
44-46: But were the poor and indigent receiving health-care before the ACA, or has there been a drastic decrease in death and disease rates in the last decade. If, or to the extent the poor were receiving health services, from county hospitals for instance, Obamacare is a change in the funding of indigent care, from local or state property taxes to taxes on income for instance.
I find the focus on insurance baffling.
Neoliberalism is liberal compromise with market-oriented conservatives. (It's actually more fundamentally liberalism that has been infested with free-market economic thinking.) It works ok as a genuine compromise but is terrible as a starting point for the liberal position, much less as a fundamental pillar animating the liberal vision. Neoliberals want better regulation to curb abuse in private prisons rather than abolishing the industry entirely. They want to write some rules to require the banks to play more fairly instead of breaking them apart. Neoliberals support trade deals that crush the working class on the hope/assumption that tax-and-transfer payments can magically materialize later and more than compensate for the losses. Etc.
Did I miss a thread where this was already discussed?
Lots of the country doesn't have county hospitals anymore. It's charity care from Catholics or nothing.
Anyway, aside from previously-expressed skepticism about the usefulness of the term, the problem with discourse that treats neoliberalism as an evil full stop--and note above that a policy that provides a good to citizens but as a byproduct enriches private companies apparently qualifies--doesn't grapple with the existence of markets in a serious way.
There's no reason for the government to manufacture paperclips, even though the government needs paperclips. By the same token, there's no reason to involve markets in Social Security. Somewhere in between is a line. I'll agree with roger that neoliberalism is the principle that the line should be as close as possible to the latter, and I agree that we should push back. But I think a bit more thought and positive program--pace 22--is needed beyond "neoliberal HRC is just as bad as neofascist Trump".
In general I share Charlie Pierce's calls for a revival of the concept of commonwealth (speaking of terms with very different meanings depending on one's orientation to the Atlantic), that we are all fellow citizens engaged in a common purpose, from which it's relatively easy to say things like "public provision of public services", getting around completely fuzzy talk of "neoliberalism".
55.1 is missing an "is that" or something.
I'm sure waiting until you are sick enough that an ER can't legally not treat you is just the same as being able to get care when you feel bad.
57-Having insurance of some kind doesn't mean you meet the latter condition.
There's no reason for the government to manufacture paperclips, even though the government needs paperclips.
The government should pay a fair price for paperclips. If for some reason it can't do that on the open market, then it *should* manufacture paperclips itself.
It really does come much, much, much closer to it.
I thought this interview was very interesting, and Heebie's take (in the OP) is spot on.
The interesting question to me is whether Greenstein's judgment of political possibilities is the right one. He says he's been at this game since, IIRC, 1980. Over the 1980-2016 period, it has made total sense for someone on the left (very broadly defined -- say, to the left of Arnold Schwarzenegger) to be focused on political limitations and on not creating openings for retrenchment of the welfare state. So it is a good thing that Greenstein has been in what's been called a liberal defensive crouch.
But is this still true? I think there's at least some reason to think that there are possibilities today that haven't been open in RG's professional lifetime. Sometimes we might be better off having the Young Turks decide how aggressive to be than the old grizzled veterans who are still fighting the last war (though of course that can go wrong as well).
60- I really don't think it makes much difference if your deductible is more than the margin between homeless and not homeless, or starving and not starving.
Not that that will be most peoples' experience.
24- What kind of neoliberalism are you against? What have you got?
FWIW, I'm not necessarily against neoliberalism; I sympathize with the left-critique, but my gut political impulses are closer to, say, Brad DeLong.
Similarly, I think Timothy Burke is incorrect in the post that I linked to above about the nature of the crisis.
Economic populism becomes increasingly easy to pull off as wealth/income becomes concentrated into the elite.
And yet, I'm not convinced that economic populism is the driving force between either the Trump or Sanders' campaigns (it's more important in the case of Sanders, obviously, but I'm skeptical that it's the most important part of his appeal).
I'm not convinced that economic populism is the driving force between either the Trump or Sanders' campaigns
What do you think then, for Sanders?
61- I really hope 61-3 is true, but even if conditions haven't changed that much I'd be for a bolder liberalism that gave people something to hope for, something to believe in, rather than pretty much what the Republicans are offering, just a bit less of it.
I'd rather lose trying for something good, than win the opportunity to sell my birthright for a slightly bigger mess of pottage.
16: Yes, it has. Article is about a fascinating 5-year experiment in Canada in the 1970s. Project was killed when Conservative government came to power.
(I say this as a UBI skeptic.)
64: Young Dems/leftists always vote for the liberal insurgent, and there are more young Dems/leftists than there've been at any time in American history?
I'm not saying that's 100% of it, but I think that swamps any other single factor.
Over the 1980-2016 period, it has made total sense for someone on the left ... to be focused on political limitations
Musing out loud about 1980 as a turning point. Carter proposed after the Iranian Revolution and oil shock that America build a synthetic oil industry for energy independence. It didn't go anywhere, but what if it had? Massive technocratic centrally planned project, revolutionizing whole regions; a second TVA, if not New Deal. Less drastically, what if Carter (or some Democrat) had just been a good enough politician to beat Reagan? Democrats would have picked up all the credit for the 1980s boom and the Soviet collapse, almost none of which had anything to do with Reagan or his ideology.
61, 65: Dems started to come out of the defensive crouch after winning on Social Security in '05, but '10 and '14 knocked them back on their heels. I think they surely took some wrong lessons from those losses, but in general the party, as an institution and as a set of elected officials, has been moving left and crouching less.
None of that is to disagree with 61.3 & 65, it's just to add more context.
Arguably Sanders' greatest service was to demonstrate just how loud & left a Dem could be and still get a great deal of support (and from a demo that isn't going anywhere). If we fear Trump leading to many little Trumps in the future, it's reasonable to hope for many little Sanders as well.
On a separate note, I've mentioned before that I think explicitly liberal mayors are in some sense the young turks the party needs, being full-throated supporters of liberal politics while delivering successful policies on the ground. No guarantees, but it looks to me like a viable path. Meanwhile, the crash-and-burn of Rahm is a useful illustration of the failures of, sure, why not, neoliberalism. TBH, I think he's just an egomaniacal asshole with precious little ideology, but the path he's followed is clearly DLC-friendly, and being able to definitively bury that strain while promoting a positive vision would be extremely helpful to the larger project of moving the party left.
67: makes sense. Obama, after all.
68: I think Krugman (or Drum?) suggested recently that, as more time has passed, it's looked more and more like the entire economic narrative about the '70s really comes down to the two oil shocks: take those away, and it's basically a normal decade, and all of the lessons about stagflation and wage-price spirals and unions and and and basically go away.
What do you think then, for Sanders?
I don't feel like I'm a good judge; because I was slightly cynical about him from the beginning. But I might point to this fivethirtyeight article.
Indeed, views of socialism are highly correlated with a voter's age. According to a May 2015 YouGov poll, conducted just before Sanders launched his campaign, a plurality of voters aged 18 to 29 had a favorable view of socialism. But among voters 65 and older, just 15 percent viewed socialism favorably, to 70 percent unfavorably.
That doesn't mean America is undergoing a leftist or revolutionary awakening, however. The biennial General Social Survey has a long-standing question about wealth redistribution, asking Americans whether the "government in Washington ought to reduce the income differences between the rich and the poor ... perhaps by raising the taxes of wealthy families or by giving income assistance to the poor." .... [T]hey haven't changed much over time. In 1996, 20 years ago, the average response among all Americans was a 54, and the average among Americans aged 18-29 was a 59, almost exactly the same as now. It's possible that Sanders will trigger a shift toward more support for economic redistribution in the future, but there hasn't been one yet.
...
What's distinctive about both the Sanders and Ron Paul coalitions is that they consist mostly of people who do not feel fully at home in the two-party system but are not part of historically underprivileged groups.
70: And Dean, and Nader, and Brown, and Jackson, all the way back to McGovern (and I guess RFK before him).
"government in Washington ought to reduce the income differences between the rich and the poor ... perhaps by raising the taxes of wealthy families or by giving income assistance to the poor." .... [T]hey haven't changed much over time. In 1996, 20 years ago, the average response among all Americans was a 54, and the average among Americans aged 18-29 was a 59,
How is this not economic populism? (Just nitpicking here; don't have any position myself.)
How is this not economic populism? (Just nitpicking here; don't have any position myself.)
That is economic populism, but the article was pointing out that, even though young people disproportionately supported Sanders, they didn't respond any more favorably to that statement (they were a couple of points more favorable than older voters, but not much, and not any more favorable than previous generations of young voters).
63:
For the basis of Trump's appeal, consider Tim Burke's most recent post, which is a graceful and beautiful way of confronting resentment, and questioning ourselves about our partial responsibility for it.
68 - Carter was a conservative Democrat who had already begun substantial deregulation of the US economy (airline deregulation happened under Carter; ICC and telecom deregulation got started under him; the change in antitrust policy also pre-dated the Reagan revolution though it was certainly accelerated by it).
The interesting case (to me) is France, where Mitterand was elected in 1981 on an explicitly nationalize-tons-of-stuff platform and a coalition with the far left. And Mitterand for-real did try to nationalize tons of stuff and impose a much more socialist-style socialism on a major Western economy. Within two years that was abandoned almost entirely by the same left-wing government that had begun it. And that wasn't just because of nefarious American pressure, or something. And while France both was in 1981 and is in 2016 substantially more social-democratic than the United States, it has been buffeted by similar growth in inequality, declines of an industrial middle class, substantial increases in precarity, substantial increases in difficulties in financing its welfare state, etc etc. etc.
71: the 70s were also the inflection point where the post-depression/war catch-up growth was over. It looked worse than the late 40s, 50s, or 60s, but compared to more recent times productivity was growing at a reasonable pace.
"questioning ourselves about our partial responsibility for it."
I do enough bad things that I am actually responsible for that I don't feel the need to make stuff up.
"In 1996, 20 years ago, the average response among all Americans was a 54, and the average among Americans aged 18-29 was a 59, almost exactly the same as now."
There has always been poplar support for redistribution so there currently isn't support for redistribution?
82: No, it means Sanders neither changed things nor was the embodiment of change already happening. Today is exactly as socialist as 1996 was.
I understand the point you were trying to make, JRoth. You can trust me. I'm not like the others.
83- There are more of those young socialists than before though, and narrative matters too. If the dogma of unfettered free markets has been discredited then redistribution stands a better chance than it did before even if demographics/polls don't show that right now.
Maybe I should look for a good book about Mitterand. It really is pretty interesting. Looking for your alternative-history anti-Reagan, anti-Thatcher? There he is, in all his nationalizing, socializing glory.
But then it mostly doesn't work and the results are, while better in some ways than the US or Britain (starting from very different baselines) not all that much to write home about and still end up facing the same set of policy choices and constraints as other Western countries in the 80s-90s.
Probably not OK to keep "nationalizing" and "socializing" so close to each other in that comment. Thanks, Hitler!
Nader said plenty of Sanders-like things, but redistribution and public goods were not really his metier, as I recall.
Petition circulators that were paid by the Republican party were more his thing.
Probably not OK to keep "nationalizing" and "socializing" so close to each other
One part of the Neoliberal Consensus I have bought is that nationalized industries are bad as a rule. How good the actual evidence is there IDK.
airline deregulation happened under Carter; ICC and telecom deregulation got started under him
I thought those are generally considered cases of successful (as in, good for normal people) deregulation. Anti-trust policy obviously not.
I think the latest wave of airline consolidation is making some people rethink the conventional wisdom that deregulation was a success. And the US telecom industry is a notorious quasi-monopolistic mess. It's true that most of this could probably be addressed through better anti-trust policy.
I'm not sure it wouldn't be salutary to nationalize Verizon pour encourager les autres.
I think the abandonment of anti-trust policy has been one of the big hidden contributors to inequality and inefficiency. Airlines are borderline, but cable companies, media, and even tech could benefit from robust antitrust prosecution.
I think both telcom and airlines were probably net beneficial regulatory reform, though the case is closer than sometimes stated. But both are core examples of "market oriented" reformism, so if that's what you mean by neoliberal you can'tsay that didn't start under Carter. As always it's generally unclear what people are talking about in these discussions or what their alternatives are.
On antitrust, it's hard to overstate how messed up the system was in the 60s and early 70s. It's since swung way too far to the other side of the penduluum (as is often the case in common law systems, there are problems and then overcorrections that go way too far).
I did a lot of driving last week and listened to some of James K. Galbraith's The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too. Galbraith's thesis is that liberals have been alternatively arguing with and trying to legitimate their policies before the ghosts of Reagan-era ideology about the virtues of free markets that Republicans don't even actually believe*. This has led to a counterproductive desire to be cautious with government spending when the economy really badly needs a cash and a preponderance with "market-based" solutions and a refusal to take seemingly more drastic but proven approaches like explicit price controls and public ownership** which are simpler, clearer, and have worked in the past. More importantly, liberals have been happy to obscure the role of the government in the economy and to buy into the myth that private innovation is the principal cause of economic growth in a way that has made it very difficult to 1) raise taxes and 2) engage in the kind of public spending that doesn't immediately stuff the pockets of the politically powerful like health care. One result is that, since Reagan, Republicans have gotten to direct far more spending than they would have if Democrats didn't have their heads buried deep within their nethermosts. Another is that wealthy American businesspeople have been able to obscure the extent to which their considerable fortunes are dependent on favorable treatment by the federal government as opposed to market-ordained outcomes.
This sort of rhetorical fecklessness, which is so suspiciously convenient for the class of people that can spend enough money to influence policy that I wonder if it isn't actually deliberate, is more or less what I have come to think of as neoliberalism. Alternatively, I would describe it as the view of the world one might take if one read nothing but The Economist for their news; it's terrifying that so many American liberals don't seriously challenge what is written there.
An interesting and tangential point that I'm only bringing up because people are talking about antitrust law is that Galbraith is surprisingly unconcerned about big business, arguing that it is easier for the government to be sure that large corporations are run in the public interest than that collections of smaller ones are. Furthermore, large corporations have an easier time of guaranteeing long-term employment, good and equitable wages, working amicably with unions. They are also less likely to engage in practices like wage-theft and discrimination than small businesses are (and are easier for the government to punish when they do). Because their symbiotic relationship with the government is clearer and the citizenry's participation is broader, it is easier to make the case to the public that they should be sensibly regulated when necessary. Lastly, because of their scale, they can afford to take a longer view and invest in riskier, more long-term and more humanistic projects (c.f. Bell Labs in the mid 20th century). Galbraith is somewhere between coldly indifferent and outright hostile towards the concerns of small businesses, which he argues are too fickle to be trusted with anything important. On these points, I'm inclined to agree with him, and I have come to have rather more sympathy for some Democrats' tendency to be rather more simpatico with certain big businesses than many populists might like. I really, really do wish that they would do a better job of articulating the merits of these relationships, but you go to the polls with the politicians you have, and it's getting closer to time to go to the polls.
*As evidence, Galbraith points out that both the Reagan and Bush administrations and any economist that has a serious hand in policy crafting has been totally happy to cast caution to the wind with respect to deficits when the economy demanded it. However, they have chosen to run deficits to stimulate the economy largely through military spending and tax cuts for the wealthy -- a "reactionary Keynesianism" that Galbraith says his father (John Kenneth Galbraith) predicted would become politically dominant after Kennedy chose to cut taxes in 1964 at the suggestion of Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow rather than engage in public spending. One might argue that the Republicans have become much more hostile towards government spending since 2008; I've got some beach front property in South Texas to sell to anyone who thinks this is due to an actual commitment to small government.
**This is very controversial, I'm sure, but that move away from more traditionally Keynesian policy was a mistake -- and a suspiciously convenient one for the capital-owning class -- is a big part of Galbraith's thesis as I understand it. It's also undeniable that price controls did happen in the 20th century and we are still here to talk about them, but that's about as far as this layman understands it.
it is easier for the government to be sure that large corporations are run in the public interest than that collections of smaller ones are.
An interesting argument, and quite possibly correct, with the caveat that dominance of a given industry by large corporations also makes regulatory capture much easier and more likely.
One comparable situation that comes to mind is environmental regulation as applied to diesel engines, specifically as it relates to differences between the regulatory regimes in the US and Europe. (I've been wanting to bring this up for a while, and this provides me some sort of a hook though it's not directly related to the economic regulation Galbraith is presumably talking about.) This got a lot of attention with the Volkswagen scandal, but it's also something I've encountered in other contexts through my work.
Basically, the US has much stronger regulations about diesel emissions than Europe does, which is why the Volkswagen cheating was oriented toward American emissions testing regimes rather than European ones. I strongly suspect that this is because diesel-powered personal vehicles are much less popular in the US than in Europe. Diesel engines in the US are primarily used by a relatively small number of vehicle fleets such as trucking companies, bus and rail transit systems, and school districts (for buses). The relatively small number of players means that negotiations over proposed regulations can go somewhat more smoothly than if they involved many millions of individual drivers, as is the case in Europe. Thus, the EPA is able to negotiate stronger regulations than European regulators.
I don't have any evidence that this is how things have actually gone, but the fact that US diesel regulations are much stricter is obvious, as is the difference in the number and nature of diesel users, so it seems like an obvious conclusion to at least tentatively make.
large corporations have an easier time of guaranteeing long-term employment, good and equitable wages, working amicably with unions
Cite, please. This is so completely opposite to my perception that I'm wondering if I woke up in bizarro world. What large corporation does this, as opposed to relying on short term labor, outsourcing, union busting, and using monopoly power to provide poor customer service at predatory pricing levels?
What large corporation does this, as opposed to relying on short term labor, outsourcing, union busting, and using monopoly power to provide poor customer service at predatory pricing levels?
Any corporation in an industry that is both highly competitive and heavily unionized. There are fewer of these than there used to be, but still a fair number. To tie in with my comment above, automobile manufacturing is a prime example of an industry like this.
98:
I'm skeptical of this in practice in the current day, too. Galbraith is arguing that large corporations have a theoretical relative advantage over small firms when it comes to doing this, which is what I agree with. A large firm does have the resources to do this while small firms more often don't. This being true is also contingent on a state that doesn't facilitate large scale predation. Galbraith would likely argue that the Keynesians were moving us in this direction until the 1970s happened and the Friedmanites took over.
97
I do wonder if Galbraith is going to confront this later on in the book. It seems to me (though I'm much less informed about the 70s and 80s than I would like to be) that this regulatory capture is essentially what happened when corporate America took over the political class and ushered in the Reagan era.
I guess one way to put the dichotomy is by asking where are you likely to have better working conditions: a car manufacturer, or a car dealer?
101: Yeah, that regulatory capture seems like the wrench in the whole thing (though as stated above I think there may still be something to it).
I can't remember if I linked it before, but setting up a privatization ratchet effect is the kind of thing I think of as neoliberalism.
98. Volkswagen. Or did you mean only American corporations?
The team that figures out how to cheat on emissions tests have very nice jobs.
Going back to "What have we learned?": the virtues of horizontal mobility between jobs and careers. Big companies/government can provide lifetime employment, and that is better than precarious employment, but clearly isn't ideal, at least for some people.
So big corporations can go either direction, depending on competition (see anti-trust) and general need to establish goodwill. So Ford vs. Walmart, say, though it seems that Ford is moving in Walmart's direction. What's the evidence that an equally broad range doesn't exist among smaller businesses?
Depends on your definition of "smaller businesses", doesn't it? A company that employs, say, 1,000 people has a different place in the ecosystem than one which employs 20, and an owner manager who might have one person (her husband?) working for her is different again. Different pressures, different expectations, different rules...
they can afford to take a longer view and invest in riskier, more long-term and more humanistic projects (c.f. Bell Labs in the mid 20th century)
Used be true, but isn't happening anymore, since virtually all of those projects (Bell Labs, Dupont Central Research) are gone for good.
If you're going to rely on theoretical advantages of very large corporations, you also have to figure out how to realize those advantages, since something about the environment of the last 30 years is causing them to disappear.
Ask NickS, he's setting it.
Heh, I doubt that the test will carry any more weight than the orange post title did.
Also, I've always had the impression that large employers pay more and have better benefits, on average than small employers (I say this as somebody who has only worked for minuscule-sized companies). But those averages probably don't include contract workers employed by large companies (e.g., contract janitorial staff presumably have worse pay and benefits than employees).
104 filled me with a terrible rage. God I fucking hate libertarians.
111: Small business owners are the backbone of the Republican party.
