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41641 GI killers? -- rank: 1000

John M. Legge wrote: >You may be having fun, but you are destroying my day and giving me RSI >deleting 70 messages of no possible interest to anyone who took Doug's >stated aims in setting up this list seriously. I want to read LBO issues: >contemporary, left economics, but the jewels on this list are buried in tons >of mud. I am on the point of unsubbing out of self preservation I understand the volume problems, though there's always the digest option. But people who complain a ...

Document Size:	4963
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri May 15 06:56:47 PDT 1998

41642 investment scams -- rank: 1000

C. Petersen wrote: >Can anyone tell me about some of these guys who have commercials on the >radio selling stock market investment guides and seminars. 'Wade Cook' is >one of them. They try to encourage people to get into futures and >commodities markets, giving 'inside tips' like "We think that the price of >oil will rise due to el nino!". Just the fact that they can afford so much >advertising at prime times seems to indicate that they are very effective >at what ...

Document Size:	5425
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 14 18:26:55 PDT 1998

41643 Ehrlich -- rank: 1000

Louis Proyect wrote: >It is important to understand that in James's peculiar blend of >libertarianism and Marxism, the late Julian Simon and Ron Arnold of the >"Wise Use" movement are not reactionaries. They are both outspoken >defenders of capitalist progress, which is really a contradiction in terms. >James's group has simply taken some of Marx and Engels ideas about the need >to defend a revolutionary bourgeoisie against the feudal aristocracy and >universalized ...

Document Size:	5895
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 14 16:06:48 PDT 1998

41644 Homeownership -- rank: 1000

Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: >But that was not the question. The question was about percent of >homeowners among different age groups (rather than % of owner occupied >dwellings). The latter can actually go up when the homelessness goes up >(e.g. gentrification of the rental units). Info by age is at <http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/hvs/annual97/ann97t15.html>. Doug

Document Size:	4808
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 14 11:53:37 PDT 1998

41645 Huntin' Shootin' Fishin' and Fornicatin', -- rank: 1000

Frances Bolton (PHI) wrote: >There seems to be a strong(ish) antiGreen sentiment on the list. Why is >that? Not from this corner. The anti-Greens are mainly our British car-loving, foxhunting friends in & around LM, a journal once known as Living Marxism. One of my intentions in starting this little forum was to get reds & greens to talk to each other. The browns are noisy, but a small minority. It's useful to have them around, though, just to remind us what the problem is. Doug

Document Size:	5080
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 14 10:09:00 PDT 1998

41646 What did the Anti-War Movement Lead To? -- rank: 1000

Rakesh Bhandari wrote: >Doug might be impressed by Adorno's skepticism of the demand that theory >must have direct political implications, but to compare the juvenille >demand to elicit immediately the political consequence of a theory to >the Gestapo's demand for papers is itself a juvenille debating tactic. I am impressed by that, if only because I'm so bad at answering the What is To Be Done question myself, as I'm impressed by a lot in Adorno. But his line on the antiwar moveme ...

Document Size:	5937
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 14 09:09:20 PDT 1998

41647 Homeownership -- rank: 1000

Yoshie asked how many U.S. households own their cribs outright, as opposed to still paying the mortgage. Unfortunately the Census reports don't have that info, but one interesting clue - the Fed estimates that home mortgages totaled 43.3% of the value of residential real estate in 1997, an all-time high (though it's been fairly flat over the last 4 years) - up from 37.7% in 1990, and around 30% in the early 1980s (and 13.7% in 1945). This reflects not only bigger loans and smaller downpayments, ...

Document Size:	5348
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 14 06:43:28 PDT 1998

41648 Kinking the list -- rank: 1000

Bill Rosenberg wrote: >Seriously though - the Fire Commission which employs all New Zealand >firefighters has announced it is sacking all 1600 of them and telling >them to apply for the several hundred less jobs that remain. I ran into a NZer who works for the UN the other day at a party, and he said he was on the verge of renouncing citizenship, disgusted as he is by the indifference to and/or acceptance of the ravages imposed by successive governments on your poor country. What do the ...

Document Size:	5071
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 14 06:33:13 PDT 1998

41649 Homeownership (was What did the Anti-War Movement Lead To?) -- rank: 1000

Max B. Sawicky wrote: >My guess is that this >is the force behind an apparent age effect, since >such family heads tend to be younger than average. But there's also a steepening of the age-wage curve, no? Or is it just that a two-tier system prevails at the macro level, with younger cohorts at a lower starting level (relative to elders), and economists are being optimistic projecting steep increases for them? Doug

Document Size:	5190
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed May 13 18:31:51 PDT 1998

41650 Homeownership (was What did the Anti-War Movement Lead To?) -- rank: 1000

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: >Hasn't homeownership become more and more difficult for younger people to >attain for the last couple of decades in the US? Any stats? In the U.S., homeownership rates declined in the 1980s, from a peak of 65.8% in the third quarter of 1979, to bottom out at 63.7% in 1990. They've since risen to 65.9% in the first quarter of 98, a hair under the 66.0% record of the third quarter of 1997. But that increase in the average is heavily driven by higher rates among over- ...

Document Size:	5565
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed May 13 17:20:53 PDT 1998

41651 Overlapping lists -- rank: 1000

Louis Proyect wrote: >Actually Doug and I have discussed this problem in the context of the >decline in posting to PEN-L. I think it is going to take a couple of weeks >for these sorts of questions to be resolved. The last thing that Doug or I >are interested in is weakening PEN-L. Also, it is going to take a little >while for the Marxism list and the LBO list to clarify their identities >better. I do think that the amount of crossposting has died down over the >past day or ...

Document Size:	5776
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed May 13 15:37:51 PDT 1998

41652 BJP's Bomb -- rank: 1000

Altaf Bhimji wrote: >generally that is what these polls do, count the "middle classs" thought >that class is of a sizeable number in India (numerically, not neccessarily >in percentage) . It will be intreasting to see what Pakistan's response >will be, my self being originally from there, my guess is that some of the >fanatic religious groups are calling for the test, as may be the army. >However, Nawaz Sharif (the PM) an industrialist, has tended to do things >his ...

Document Size:	6510
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed May 13 15:20:28 PDT 1998

41653 Co-state variables... -- rank: 1000

Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote: > Where are the funky deconstructionists who will >pop out of closets chanting nineteenth century romantic >poems about kinky sex? What do you think this is, a festival organized for the benefit of your own scopophilia? One could start by meditating on the various meanings of "bonds"; I believe it was Nietzsche who called debts titles to cruelty. Or was that Norman O. Brown? Doug

Document Size:	4814
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed May 13 13:49:34 PDT 1998

41654 Co-state variables... -- rank: 1000

Brad De Long wrote: >It is at the very least an open question how much is left of the >Arrow-Debreu apparatus once the scope of these weasel words is recognized. >Does the Arrow-Debreu apparatus cover 50% of what's going on? 30%? 10%? And >what happens as the information technology revolution proceeds--and as >things of value ("commodities") lose the properties of rivalry and >excludibility that underlie all the claims that markets are good allocation >mechanisms? ...

Document Size:	5049
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed May 13 12:25:12 PDT 1998

41655 Co-state variables... -- rank: 1000

Brad De Long wrote: >Market prices in a competitive economy ("exchange values") *are* indicators >of scarcity: they carry information about the money-metric utility of that >particular commodity or resource in its most favorable alternative use. Why does this remind me of the Baltimore Catechism of my youth? So let's talk about oil prices. They skyrocketed twice in the 1970s, collapsed in the 1980s, recovered a bit in the early 1990s, and are now in real terms at or below wher ...

Document Size:	5410
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed May 13 10:16:09 PDT 1998