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496 [lbo-talk] Value of the dollar -- rank: 1000

On Jan 31, 2012, at 8:35 AM, Wojtek S wrote: > Doug: "We need to invest in new industries. " > > [WS:] Agreed, but who would do the investing? The state has to knock heads together to make it happen. Either that, or we'll be underwater. Doug

Document Size:	4754
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jan 31 06:48:29 PST 2012

497 [lbo-talk] Value of the dollar -- rank: 1000

On Jan 30, 2012, at 4:14 PM, brad quoted Dean Baker: > President Obama failed to commit himself to restoring the > competitiveness of dollar as part of his agenda for bringing back > manufacturing jobs. Devaluation is the strategy of the weak. Germany is an export powerhouse, and it doesn't need a cheaper currency. We need to make stuff that people want. > The value of the dollar really has to be front and > central in any effort to restore U.S. competitiveness since it is by > ...

Document Size:	6954
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 30 17:40:14 PST 2012

498 [lbo-talk] Casa Pound -- rank: 1000

On Jan 29, 2012, at 8:24 PM, Carrol Cox wrote: > Socialismorbarbarism wrote: " Also, to the extent that Keynes revealed his > politics, it was a creepy sort of presumed-benevolent technocratic elitism, > so no real contradiction there." > > That whole social milieu (I'm not sure how to label it) in which Keynes > existed, the Bloomsbury group (nor Wollf I believe), Eliot, various others, > were a bit creepy -- not only in their discreet admiration for Hitler & ...

Document Size:	5267
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 30 17:17:51 PST 2012

499 [lbo-talk] Greece says Goodbye to Democracy -- rank: 1000

On Jan 30, 2012, at 8:10 PM, Wojtek S wrote: > Socialists, communists and the unions are the primary > oppressors? They've been playing along with neoliberalism and austerity since the 1980s. Indeed, Milton Friedman pretty much endorsed Clinton in '92 because, as he put it in an interview with Forbes, the liberal/social democratic parties have been much more friendly to his agenda than traditional right parties have been. As I recall, he pointed to Gonzalez in Spain as a prime example. Dou ...

Document Size:	5096
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 30 17:16:16 PST 2012

500 [lbo-talk] From False Ideas to Correct Practice -- rank: 1000

On Jan 30, 2012, at 1:54 PM, Carrol Cox wrote: > So the incorrect analysis No Blood for Oil is after all more correct than > any quibbles with it are. You don't have to agree with the slogan to have opposed the Iraq war, you know. Doug

Document Size:	4866
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 30 11:59:15 PST 2012

501 [lbo-talk] Labor Imperialism -- rank: 1000

On Jan 30, 2012, at 1:21 PM, Billy O'Connor wrote: > Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> writes: > >> Why would AFL-CIO engage in all that on >> behalf of the USG? What is their payback? > > Cashy money. Not just that. It's what's expected of junior partners. It assures that invitations to the White House will be forthcoming. And there's ideological affinity too. I recall a WSJ article from the late 1980s or early 1990s, during some serious labor unrest in S Korea, tha ...

Document Size:	5386
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 30 11:57:09 PST 2012

502 [lbo-talk] Labor Imperialism -- rank: 1000

On Jan 30, 2012, at 12:30 PM, Wojtek S wrote: > Thanks for the link. I think the piece is a bit too hysterical. > Protectionism rather than international labor solidarity - regrettably > yes, but imperialism, racism & covert CIA operation sounds too much > like Chavez-style diatribe. Why would AFL-CIO engage in all that on > behalf of the USG? What is their payback? You're kidding, right? They've been doing this for decades. Doug

Document Size:	4937
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 30 09:54:47 PST 2012

503 [lbo-talk] not theory -- rank: 1000

On Jan 30, 2012, at 11:54 AM, Miles Jackson wrote: > On 1/30/2012 6:55 AM, Doug Henwood wrote: >> >> Or, as the Gang of Four put it in "Why Theory?," "What we think changes how we act." >> >> Doug > > I love that song, but I always want to say: It works the other way around too! Sure does.

Document Size:	4783
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 30 09:00:08 PST 2012

504 [lbo-talk] not theory -- rank: 1000

On Jan 30, 2012, at 2:22 AM, Tahir Wood wrote: > Your point about habitus etc. is quite an interesting one, because much of that behaviour is unconscious or requires little conscious effort. That's precisely where theory comes in and why I call it formative in nature. Or, as the Gang of Four put it in "Why Theory?," "What we think changes how we act." Doug

Document Size:	4755
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 30 06:55:29 PST 2012

505 [lbo-talk] Another great show -- rank: 1000

On Jan 29, 2012, at 5:01 PM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote: > I think the social segregation is part of what they're paying for. And a totally different curriculum - progressive/humanist, and not the rote militarized crap they're forcing on the lower orders. But, as Hoover ghoul Terry Moe put it when I interviewed him, "Everything is better when you're an elite." Doug

Document Size:	4903
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Jan 29 14:06:02 PST 2012

506 [lbo-talk] Another great show -- rank: 1000

On Jan 29, 2012, at 4:48 PM, Chuck Grimes wrote: > Another great Saturday for Doug. thanks! it's up at http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S120128

Document Size:	4668
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Jan 29 14:02:11 PST 2012

507 [lbo-talk] Casa Pound -- rank: 1000

On Jan 29, 2012, at 1:29 AM, Carrol Cox wrote: > But there is a book or several to be written on the various > intellectual sympathizers with fascism &/or Nazism & the strange ways in > which the actual 'things' were reflected, channeled, distorted in their > writing. There's also the case of Keynes, who wrote this in the preface to a 1936 German edition of the General Theory. Modern Keynesians, especially of the lefter variety, squirm when this is cited: http://tmh.floonet.n ...

Document Size:	6924
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Jan 29 09:09:02 PST 2012

508 [lbo-talk] Race to the Top Mark-2 -- rank: 1000

On Jan 28, 2012, at 5:40 PM, Carrol Cox wrote: > I don't have time or energy to develop this now, but isn't it at least > worth considering that the whole collection of campaigns to reform, change, > measure, etc. schools and teachers can only be seen clearly from the > perspective of current class struggles? They considerably predate those.

Document Size:	4879
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Jan 28 17:14:36 PST 2012

509 [lbo-talk] Race to the Top Mark-2 -- rank: 1000

On Jan 28, 2012, at 2:35 PM, Miles Jackson wrote: > I think you're missing the dog whistle here. For the "colleges should be run like a business" types, efficiency is just cost per student. Given that salary and benefits are about 80% of the budget at most colleges, it is pretty obvious what a college must do to "increase efficiencies." --And cutting enrollment won't generate any efficiencies, because that won't lower the cost per student. In fact, if a college cut enr ...

Document Size:	5665
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Jan 28 11:45:18 PST 2012

510 [lbo-talk] Apple -- rank: 1000

interesting comments from some Chinese readers of the NYT piece on Apple here: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/chinese-readers-on-the-ieconomy If not to buy Apple, what s the substitute Samsung? Don t you know that Samsung s products are from its OEM factory in Tianjin? Samsung workers income and benefits are even worse than those at Foxconn. If not to buy iPad (do you think) I will buy Android Pad? Have you ever been to the OEM factories for Lenovo and ASUS? Quanta, Compaq fa ...

Document Size:	5810
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jan 26 20:25:24 PST 2012