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Post by agito on Jun 10, 2008 1:45:40 GMT -6
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Post by proletariat on Jun 10, 2008 4:42:29 GMT -6
No he is still top dog, senior economic adviser.
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Post by blueneck on Jun 10, 2008 5:01:19 GMT -6
I wonder if this is part of the deal with Edwards and Hillary - that he has to get rid of his scarier "free" traders and marketeers?
The labor base won't let an overtly free trade agenda move thru again this time like it did under the clintons.
As the saying goes, even a "bad" democrat will always be marginally better for working people than a "good" republican
Absent the reincarnation of TR, 4 more years of republicanism supply side free marketeering will be worse for workers. Hucakbee was the only "populist" in the R bunch, and that is definitely a diferent brand of populism
And the bright side is if Obama sells out labor like the DLC and Clinton did we can kick him out too.
Obama will get 90 percent or better of the Hillary democrats - the ones that bolt only prove the DLC dems are DINOs anyway
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Post by agito on Jun 10, 2008 11:58:16 GMT -6
well- goolsbee may be "senior" - but it looks like knowing who Jason Furman is will give us a better idea of what can be expected from Obama in the coming months
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Post by proletariat on Jun 10, 2008 19:10:25 GMT -6
well- goolsbee may be "senior" - but it looks like knowing who Jason Furman is will give us a better idea of what can be expected from Obama in the coming months www.greenchange.org/article.php?id=2757So there's quite a lot of grumbling in labor circles today about his bringing on Jason Furman as his chief economic policy advisor, because Furman wrote a key, 2005 defense (.pdf) of Wal-Mart from the left, titled, unironically, "Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story." The piece makes two arguments. The first is that Wal-Mart lowers prices, so low-income people (and others) can buy more. The second is that Wal-Mart's low-wage jobs are consistent with the Clintonite philosophy of making work pay, and that the right fix is to have government subsidize the low-wage workers' salaries and help provide them healthcare. He denies that Wal-Mart lowers local wages. His only criticism of Wal-Mart is for, in its lobbying, not supporting those progressive policies. Furman signaled that he was reaching out to the left when his hire became public today.
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Post by proletariat on Jun 10, 2008 19:19:42 GMT -6
What the hell are you talking about Blueneck. Gooslebee is a senior DLC fellow, all of the DLCers under Bill have joined the Obama team. Those Dems that will NOT vote for Obama are FDR not DLC Dems.
Go to the PUMA sites, what they want is the FDR Democratic Party back. I know you have been drinking kool aid with center right, libertarian Huffington for a little too long but please get your frickin facts straight.
Some of us despise Obama not because of the silly cultural issues, but because he is a center right libertarian Freidmanite.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 10, 2008 20:42:17 GMT -6
Furman wrote a paper discussing WalMart, claiming WalMart saves consumers ~$263 billion per year. Not only is this number dubious, Furman also glosses over the loss 4 million manufacturing jobs since 2000. He also ignores the aggregate wage losses from our trade deficit of $700 billion. Using the 20,000-jobs-per-$1-billion-trade-deficit formula from Citizen Trade, that gives a total job loss of -14 million, and an aggregate wage loss of $448 billion/year. (Based on average weekly wages of $604, which gives an average annual income of roughly $32,000/year. And this still doesn't account for the wage suppression caused by a labor demand decline of -14 million jobs. Furman sounds like very bad news when it comes to trade. But adding further to Goolspee's free-trade advocacy, Furman's likely free trade advocacy, is Robert Reich. Reich is another unrepentant free-trader. At least 3 of Obama's top economic advisors are free traders. And regarding Obama's stated position on Trade, from his own campaign website, in his Economic Policy statement (on page 5): - "Barack Obama will fight for a trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs. He will use trade agreements to spread good labor and environmental standards around the world".
He's not going to win over many working class voters with his trade statements and advisors.
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Post by blueneck on Jun 11, 2008 4:23:28 GMT -6
Don't even get me started on all the neo liberal kool aid you are drinking by the gallon , prole
I have never denied that trade is clearly an area of major concern for obama - if you check the record you would see that.
But still on balance, No one here has made the case that McCain will do anything more than the status quo on trade that clearly isn't working. At least Obama wants to talk enviromnment, and labor standards, revisiting Nafta, clkosing loophol;es that encourage outsourcing and offshore shelters, McCain does not.
It is important to understand that trade itself is not the enemey, unfair trade and unfair trader countries are
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Post by proletariat on Jun 11, 2008 4:32:25 GMT -6
ULC,
I have a much greater fear of Obama in the trade realm than Mac. I could see Mac very easily being pushed in the protectionist direction even though it goes against his personal beliefs.
Obama on the other hand, I could see trade intermingled with foreign policy. Trade agreement to the third world which are not necessarily good to American in the economic sense but are rationalized as a liberal outgrowth or charity.
I am confused why the post began as goolsbee gone? He is no such thing. He is the one Furman reports to. We both posted the Wal-Mart link, which frankly seems as bad or worse than the attacks of Blueneck that Hillary was on their board.
I can understand someone saying with the opinion available I will vote for x, over y or z. What I have no patience for is someone arguing that Obama has brought in Furman because he has somehow taken a more progressive stand on trade. Total crap with no basis in truth or reality. It would be great if the kool aid could be left at the door, but that might be asking for too much.
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Post by proletariat on Jun 11, 2008 4:49:17 GMT -6
See Blueneck you are showing your ignorance again. First you demonstrate you have no idea what a DLC Democrat even is. DLC Democrats do not offer universal health care, DLC Democrats do not push for interest rate caps.
As if that is not enough, now you call me a neo liberal. You show about as much coherence as one of the recent clips of Obama. Please enlighten me, how am I a neo liberal, do you know what one is.
You are just showing me the fool. like Obama using rhetoric that has no basis in reality.
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Post by agito on Jun 11, 2008 11:03:51 GMT -6
i asked it as a genuine question since i saw the post about furman
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Post by agito on Jun 12, 2008 4:10:03 GMT -6
yglesias on furmanyglesias quickly covers the fact that labor unions don't like furman's previous writing's on walmart, but quickly transitions into a discussion on the privatization of SS, which apparently some people suggest furman supports
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Post by proletariat on Jun 12, 2008 5:47:33 GMT -6
www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/6/11/has-obama-fired-his-new-economic-adviser-yet.htmlFurman, director of the Hamilton Project, a centrist economic group, thinks there will be plenty of China-bashing rhetoric and talk of trade barriers—like one proposal to slap a 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese goods because of the weak yuan--over the next few years, not to mention a pause in new trade agreements. But in the end, he speculates, Democrats will mostly push for greater social insurance, such as vastly increased unemployment benefits. "Social insurance," he says, "can lead to a more dynamic society by letting people feel more comfortable taking risks." Furman is also skeptical about a major pillar of economic thought in the Democratic Party, that the past three decades have been terrible for workers because of "stagnant wages." He sees it as intellectually dishonest to ignore healthcare and retirement benefits when doing that calculation, as well as the falling price of everything from computers to airline tickets. We should consider tax reform in the classic 1986 mode: lower tax rates and broaden the tax base by limiting special exemptions. Both halves of this classic equation have the potential for helping the economy by eliminating the perverse incentives to invest in tax-favored activities rather than in more economically productive activities.... The centerpiece of [Rangel's] corporate tax reform is a reduction of the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 30.5 percent .... Without adding to the deficit burden, this rate reduction would be fully paid for by a series of measures to broaden the corporate tax base to ensure that different forms of investments are taxed at similar rates.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 12, 2008 13:57:47 GMT -6
ULC, I have a much greater fear of Obama in the trade realm than Mac. I could see Mac very easily being pushed in the protectionist direction even though it goes against his personal beliefs. That's exactly how it looks to me, as well. If he were to nominate or consult with someone like Pat Buchanan or Paul Craig Roberts, they'd straighten him out in a hurry. In addition, McCain must be aware of polling that shows 2/3 of Republican rank-and-file oppose free trade and globalization. Opposition to globalization fits well with an "America-first" theme, which is what McCain is trying to convey. I think McCain could be swayed to limit imports, based on national security issues and protecting Americans (including American jobs) McCain is also less likely to use taxpayers' money to bail out Wall Street Financiers and Housing Speculators. Rationalized is exactly right. His global poverty reduction act hints at such policy — by increasing trade with impoverished countries — which really means encouraging American companies to fire American workers, move their factories overseas, and replace American workers with cheaper 3rd world workers, under the guise of "helping" those 3rd world countries.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 12, 2008 16:12:29 GMT -6
Proletariat:
Great find on the article from usnews.com/blogs. Here's more on Furman, from the previous article: June 11, 2008
by James Pethokoukis " Here is what I can tell you about Furman. (I have spoken with him on several occasions, and several conservative economists I know think highly of him.)
1) Furman is no protectionist. He understands the benefits that open trade brings America, such as low-priced goods at Wal-Mart and the intense competition that leads to innovation. The Hamilton Project, the program he ran at Brookings....(is not about) scrapping NAFTA or the World Trade Organization. Here is what Furman told me back in 2007:
Jason Furman, director of the Hamilton Project, a centrist economic group, thinks....Democrats will mostly push for greater social insurance...."Social insurance," he says, "can lead to a more dynamic society by letting people feel more comfortable taking risks."
Here is something else I wrote about Furman:
In the past, I have differentiated—using an idea stolen from economist Jason Furman at the Hamilton Project-between "pretax Democrats," who want to alter the trade environment such as reopening NAFTA, and "after-tax Democrats," who want to mostly deal with any negative trade effects after they happen, such as through an expanded social insurance program that might include wage insurance for displaced workers.
In other words, Furman would rather see expanded unemployment insurance, wage insurance, and more education for workers rather than trade barriers to protect their jobs. Unions tend to dismiss those sorts of policies, "burial insurance." Most Americans also dismiss those policies as "burial insurance." It's because that's what they are. They temporarily pacify those losing high-paying jobs to outsourcing, offering outsourcing's victims false hope for the future, by deluding them into believing that retraining will bring better jobs in the future.
But it hasn't. This false claim has been disproven over and over again. Most people being retrained are NOT finding "better" jobs. Many aren't finding any jobs at all. And many of those who do find "better" jobs, often lose them to the next wave of outsourcing, since the number of outsource-able jobs continues to rise.
And, as another poster and I have previously suggested, the never-ending turnover of jobs puts more workers at entry-level wages. Even if a worker is terminated at a specific job, then gets re-hired by another firm for an identical job, his pay will be reduced — due to his new "entry-level" status. And this is especially true, if demand for labor in the worker's field has been reduced by outsourcing.
There's no way I'm voting for Obama if he keeps either Furman or Ghoulspee as economic advisors. Even one of them is a deal breaker for me.
We need to step up criticism of BOTH McCain and Obama on their pro-Globalist free trade advocacy. Maybe one of them will take the hint, and start trying to represent 304 million Americans, instead of just a handful of the richest Americans. Americans don't need "re-training." And we don't need just a few "revisions" of Corporate-written Cheap-Labor Trade Agreements.
We need to cancel them — all of them. (We can trade with countries without any trade agreements at all.) And if we can't cancel all trade agreements, then we need a guarantee that our trade balance will be brought down to zero, using ANY means necessary.
Phony proposals to "enforce labor standards" and "collective bargaining rights" are just hot air. They will never work, and those proposing them know it. The Benedict Arnold American Corporations that invest overseas don't want any rules enforced, because it raises their labor costs, and reduces their profits. And they'll do everything possible to ensure that they are not enforced. And since the US government has NO real control over how other countries treat workers, none of these proposals are truly enforceable. American multinationals will make sure of that.
The only rules we can enforce are those inside our own country. We do have control over our own tariffs. And we do have control over what enters this country. And we should exercise this control as much as needed, to bring our trade deficit down to ZERO. Our government owes it to ALL Americans to protect their jobs and economic wellbeing from the self-serving greed of the richest few.
Is this "protectionism"? Absolutely. That's exactly what we need, since "protection" from enemies at home and abroad, is the sworn mission of our elected officials. Their #1 function is providing "protectionism" for "WE, the people."
Our nation cannot survive indefinitely by spending the artificial wealth created by asset inflation, while producing little or no real wealth. American workers cannot make ends meet indefinitely by spending borrowed money, as their real wages decline from reduced labor demand and inflation.
Furman is a scumbag. So is Ghoulspee. They hide behind a phony veil of "liberalism", while serving only the interests of rich Corporations and Benedict Arnold American multinationals. They're wolves in sheeps' clothing. And their sheeps' wool is getting thinner by the hour.
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Post by judes on Jun 12, 2008 18:53:57 GMT -6
Clap, clap, clap ....standing ovation and definitely exaltation to you ULC! I absolutely agree and I share your passion on this topic, I just wish I could put it in words as eloquently as you do.
How can someone even suggest increasing social insurance programs as a substitute for real productive wage earning work!? It seems the same people who vilify "welfare mothers" are the same ones pushing to keep people on government subsistence as opposed to gainful employment.
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Post by blueneck on Jun 14, 2008 5:57:11 GMT -6
Social safety nets are just one piece of the puzzle, as well as another speed bump in the race to the bottom
Our safety nets are woefully inadequate to handle to issues of un- and underemployment, especially that which is related to globalism. We stack up terribly behind most European and many Asian countries in social programs. Besides Obama - Tonelson, Blinder and Reich all agree that the US needs to bolster its safety nets if global trade is to continue to be pursued, Tonelson takes it a step further and suggests that by making corps more responsible for the social costs of offshoring it may be another "speed bump" to make employers think twice about outsourcing if they have to pay for the unemployment, health care and lost community revenues.
I agree that a social safety net should not be viewed as a substitute for gainful employment, however that does not preclude the need for more and better social programs.
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