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41671 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

41672 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

41673 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

41674 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

41675 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

41676 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

41677 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

41678 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

41679 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

41680 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

41681 Euro sails through -- rank: 1000

Chris Burford wrote: >But the question I want to pose here to Doug and others is what is the >significance for world economics of the succesful launch of the Euro? To be >more specific, what will be different one year after the launch of the >Euro, what five years afterwards? If it "works," a serious rival to the dollar's role as world reserve currency. Also, domestically speaking, an almost certain Americanization of European financial and corporate structures, meaning a g ...

Document Size:	5249
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue May 5 09:04:07 PDT 1998

41682 cultural politics/"real" politics -- rank: 1000

Catherine Driscoll wrote: >Are all hierachies formed by the exactly the same forces? Hmm, no, but not completely different forces either. That's the sort of thing I'm trying to figure out. >That is, in order >to imagine that some dominant hierarhcies within sexual practices were >being questioned would you have to be able to see a comparable process in >'the welfare state'. Not just the welfare state, but the process of appropriation on local, national, and international scales. T ...

Document Size:	5281
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon May 4 19:07:26 PDT 1998

41683 discretion -- rank: 1000

MScoleman wrote: >I must third this emotionmotion. It took me 20 minutes just now to delete the >PAGES of messages unread because I simply don't have time, If this keeps up I >will have to delete myself alltogether as a participant. For those of you with message fatigue, there is a digest option: lbo-talk-digest, also available from majordomo at panix.com. Doug

Document Size:	4759
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon May 4 15:40:24 PDT 1998

41684 discretion -- rank: 1000

Jamie Owen Daniel wrote: >can I second this "motion" (and emotion)? The repetition that has flooded >my account since I subscribed to lbo yesterday is ridiculous, and Mark is >right--McDonaldization has killed many a list that could/should have >stayed more focused. Yes, me three. I don't want to adopt formal posting limits, but can we adopt a Leninist theory of posting - better fewer but better? And no forwards from the LABOR-L, Cde Rodwell. Doug

Document Size:	4848
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon May 4 12:29:57 PDT 1998

41685 Replies: "Better times" cannot sustain stock prices -- rank: 1000

Patrick Bond wrote: >Right, but we're distinguishing, I hope, between a "profit-maximizing >strategy" and an accumulation process, right? The former a bank can >do in the context of control over productive processes during a >vicious round of devaluation; the latter the productive capitalists >do with or without the support of banks. I don't want to claim a >totally distinct set of fractions of capital since we all know about >interpenetration and the Hilferding &q ...

Document Size:	8755
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon May 4 10:29:41 PDT 1998