Search LBO-Talk Archives

40951 info -- rank: 1000

Brad De Long wrote: >Well, I was thinking of the "new economy" intellectuals as the articulate >ones. > >And I may have to eat my words: if you notice *both* Krugman's quote (and >Bhagwati's use of me as a straw man to beat up on) are taken *from*the*web*. > >If not for the web, Bhagwati would not have been able to rip two sentences >from a Los Angeles Times op-ed out of context for his purposes; and Paul >Krugman wouldn't have found the passage so handy. Doe ...

Document Size:	5860
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri May 8 08:12:59 PDT 1998

40952 rules of engagement? -- rank: 1000

Thomas Kruse wrote: >strident tones >outbursts [vs.] >hugs and kisses (besos y abrazos). > >xxoo- Those aren't mutually exclusive, are they? The Italians seem to run a very pleasant country along those lines - coffee-fueled argument followed by wine-fueled reconciliation, va bene's all around. Besos y abrazos xxoo Doug

Document Size:	4770
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri May 8 07:42:28 PDT 1998

40953 rural idiocy -- rank: 1000

Patrick Bond wrote: >In all the chatter about cars, not a word about the capitalist urban >and suburban planning forms that have reduced them from luxury to >necessity. What do we do with this landscape after the revolution? What revolution? That's not just my instinctive pessimism at work; you can't have anything like revolution without consciousness and set of social institutions different from what we have now. And how can those develop with the kind of dispersion and fragmentation f ...

Document Size:	4960
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri May 8 07:13:47 PDT 1998

40954 Tentacles of the Eurostate -- rank: 1000

Dennis R Redmond wrote: >(1) Globally, the EU owns the world-system, and can (and will) do anything >it damn well pleases. Except that the EU barely exists as a political entity - they can barely choose the head of their central bank (and, by the way, the lucky Dutchman who will, Wim Duisenberg, thinks the Fed's practice of publishing highly sanitized minutes of their policy meetings is too open!). The U.S. can do what it damn well pleases right now too. What other country could run $200 b ...

Document Size:	5455
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri May 8 07:01:42 PDT 1998

40955 Euro sails through -- rank: 1000

Rob Schaap wrote: >Doug writes: > >> A real major glitch that a lot of people are beginning >>to be aware of is that the EU will probably not be able to >>deal with both introducing the euro into its computers and >>also take care of the millennium bug. This conflucnce >>could well trigger the next global crash. > >Didn't you recently say something about computer networks not being ready >for a five-digit DJI? If that was not in jest, we're in f ...

Document Size:	5420
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri May 8 06:38:23 PDT 1998

40956 info -- rank: 1000

Brad de Long, you still here? Paul Krugman quotes you in the current Foreign Affairs saying: "So what, then, *is* new about our post-industrial economy? What is new is that for the first time since the invention of printing, information processing and distribution has become one of the leading sectors.... Our leading sectors are changing the conditions of life of those who use information to direct enterprises - managers - and they are also changing the conditions of life of those who use i ...

Document Size:	6378
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 7 15:25:51 PDT 1998

40957 cars and choice -- rank: 1000

Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote: >This will be my only post to here today as Doug has >told me to shut up (although, Doug, I see a lot of people >who posted more yesterday than I did who are posting >today like rabbits multiplying. Perhaps you are annoyed >with my having poked at your views of what constitutes >"cash"?). Whiner. Please try to keep the posting volume to no more than 2-3 a day, OK? Not all of us have ravenous appetities for digitalized polemic. Doug

Document Size:	4966
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 7 13:32:56 PDT 1998

40958 Cars -- rank: 1000

Jim heartfield wrote: >I'm guessing that the new Chrysler-Daimler deal will lead to the >eventual downsizing of the motor industry. By the way, employment in the U.S. category "motor vehicles & equipment" is up over 20% since 1989. >A green victory, or a capitalist one? Greg Tarpinian of the Labor Research Association was on CNBC a little while ago showing his roots. He said that this deal will also create a large multinational unionized workforce, just as Marx called it 1 ...

Document Size:	4935
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 7 13:30:28 PDT 1998

40959 Euro sails through -- rank: 1000

Rakesh Bhandari wrote: >But this begs the question. True, due to tax advantages and even w/o >inflation, a leveraged buy back (or whatever it's called) may increase >the rate of return on equity. But leveraging is not risk-less, and we are >left with the question of why real investment is not more profitable than >leveraging. There's usually no leverage in what I'm talking about. Yes firms sometimes borrow to buy back their own stock, but I'm talking about the use of surplus cash ...

Document Size:	9114
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed May 6 14:31:43 PDT 1998

40960 Cars and Factory Work (was Cars and Victorians) -- rank: 1000

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: >I would also like to call attention to the fact that driving car is very >much like factory work in one sense: it forces drivers to pay _constant >low-grade attention_ to their machines and surroundings so as not to cause >accidents. This need to pay constant low-grade attention is very mentally >stressful and yet does not require meaningful intellectual engagement. The >same need is imposed upon workers inside factories, so they have to put up >with ...

Document Size:	7155
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed May 6 12:00:48 PDT 1998

40961 rural idiocy -- rank: 1000

William S. Lear wrote: >Doug, aren't you attributing a bit more (I guess) "agency" to these >apparently "smug fathead suburbanites"? In addition, aren't you >therefore implicitly crediting the capitalist system with giving them >the very options that they must have in order for you to claim that >they are (freely) choosing these things? > >It's not that the fatheads don't annoy me too. It's just that I have >friends who are fatheads; I myself am prob ...

Document Size:	5349
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed May 6 11:50:25 PDT 1998

40962 rural idiocy -- rank: 1000

Jim heartfield wrote: >Well, thanks for coming clean. > >The number of people living in suburbs in the US has exceeded that >living in cities since 1970 (US Department of Commerce, Social and >Economic Statistics Administration, Bureau of the Census, Statistical >Abstract of the United States, 1974, p 17). > >By my reckoning that means a considerable section of the US working >class lives in so-called 'suburbs'. People in Britain are pretty snotty >about the suburba ...

Document Size:	5602
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed May 6 08:50:20 PDT 1998

40963 Euro sails through -- rank: 1000

Rakesh Bhandari wrote: >Doug, please explain to me how and why shareholders hold back investments. They demand very high minimum rates of return ("hurdle rates") on corporate investments. It's the major reason why firms are distributing cash to shareholders through buybacks and takeovers rather than re-investing them in the underlying business. >Even an Alfred Chandler warns that managers have been forced to spurn the >long term and underinvest in research and development. But ...

Document Size:	9781
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue May 5 11:40:35 PDT 1998

40964 rural idiocy -- rank: 1000

Jim heartfield wrote: >Come on guys! Look honestly into your own consciences and come clean: >its not the cars that irritate you, its those pushy plebs in them. What pisses me off most about the vehicular culture is smug fathead suburbanites in their sport utility vehicles. Are they "pushy plebs" in you book? Doug

Document Size:	4617
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue May 5 10:52:07 PDT 1998

40965 cars -- rank: 1000

Sorry to quote myself, but apropos cars, two short pieces from LBOs past. Doug ---- from LBO #65 Autoparasites. According to American ideology, cars are for self-reliant individualists, while mass transit requires deep public subsidies. Mass transit does indeed require subsidies, but cars do too. In a study published by Komanoff Energy Associates, Cora Roelofs and Charles Komanoff did the math for New York State. They found that while motorists pay $4.5 billion in taxes, tolls, fees, and fines t ...

Document Size:	10008
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue May 5 09:36:10 PDT 1998