Author Archives: Chris
Dishonest mistakes
The understanding is supposed to be that the troops serve on whatever mission is ordered, and the government doesn’t order them to risk their lives for a political folly.
– Unknown
On May 11 Paul Waldman had a piece in The American Prospect, Should We Relitigate the Iraq War in the 2016 Campaign? You Bet We Should. In it he offered a list of questions for 2016 presidential candidates. I noted it at the time. Waldman’s questions force the issue of how the candidate would act on what they do know and how they would deal with uncertainty. His questions are forward-looking – and that should be a good thing. Unfortunately, we don’t appear to be ready for it. If we were then statements to the effect of “knowing what we know now…” re Iraq would be immediately called out as bullshit by everyone within earshot. They are not. Today James Fallows summed up concisely why saying “knowing what we know now…” is bullshit:
- The “knowing what we know” question presumes that the Bush Administration and the U.S. public were in the role of impartial jurors, or good-faith strategic decision-makers, who while carefully weighing the evidence were (unfortunately) pushed toward a decision to invade, because the best-available information at the time indicated that there was an imminent WMD threat.
- That view is entirely false.
- The war was going to happen. The WMD claims were the result of the need to find a case for the war, rather than the other way around.
He then gets into the details at length.
What is neoliberalism and why does it pose a threat to democracy?
Wendy Brown interviewed by Tim Shenk, “What is neoliberalism?”:
I treat neoliberalism as a governing rationality through which everything is “economized” and in a very specific way: human beings become market actors and nothing but, every field of activity is seen as a market, and every entity (whether public or private, whether person, business, or state) is governed as a firm. Importantly, this is not simply a matter of extending commodification and monetization everywhere—that’s the old Marxist depiction of capital’s transformation of everyday life. Neoliberalism construes even non-wealth generating spheres—such as learning, dating, or exercising—in market terms, submits them to market metrics, and governs them with market techniques and practices. Above all, it casts people as human capital who must constantly tend to their own present and future value.
Josh Bivens, More Notes on the Gains From Trade and Who Gets Them
From Josh Bivens’ post today on the EPI blog (emphasis mine):
… The overall net benefits of trade are much smaller than commonly advertised, but the regressive redistribution trade causes is considerable.
First, on the gains from trade policy (i.e., how much we should expect national income to rise if we sign trade agreements), [NYT reporter Binyamin] Appelbaum refers to a piece from the Peterson Institute of International Economics claiming that trade liberalization added 7.3 percent of GDP to American incomes by 2005—about $9000-10,000 per American household. This is just not true. It’s a wildly inflated number that should not be in the policy debate (and if you need much smarter and better-credentialed people making the some point—here’s Dani Rodrik). This number is an effort to bully people into going along with today’s trade agreements by making them think the stakes are utterly enormous. In fact, even if it was correct (again, it’s not) this study would be irrelevant to today’s trade policy debates because the sum total of economic gains from all post-1982 trade agreements (this includes NAFTA, the completion of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the formation of the WTO, and the permanent normal trading relations with China) is estimated to be just $9 per household, meaning that 99.9 percent of the gains from trade estimated in the study happened before 1982. So even if trade liberalization really did spur mammoth gains at some point in the (distant) past, the effects were over by the early 1980s.
Weekly Digest – May 17, 2015
Must Read/Watch
- Paul Krugman (NYT), Fraternity of Failure
- Paul Krugman (NYT), Blinkers and Lies
- Bruce Barlett interviewed by Elias Isquith, “Utter insanity and stupidity”: Ex-Reagan adviser unloads on GOP, lobbyists and the myth of the “moderate Republican”
- Katrina Brooker, Why Elizabeth Warren Makes Bankers So Uneasy, and So Quiet [Ed.: Apropos of Bruce Bartlett’s comments, Sen. Warren is an ex-Republican.]
Should Read
- Paul Waldman, Should We Relitigate the Iraq War in the 2016 Campaign? You Bet We Should
- Sarah Gray, Four Myths About the “Freelancer Class”
- Cathy O’Neil, Sharing Insurance Costs With the Sharing Economy
- E.J. Dionne, A Radical Pope
- Jason Furman (NYT), Smart Social Programs
- Salman Rushdie, Keynote address at 2015 Emory University Commencement
Orwell’s 1984 was intended as a warning not an instruction manual
Newspeak:
- Jeb Lund, Republicans’ new climate strategy: just ban the words ‘climate change’
- Tristram Korten, In Florida, officials ban term ‘climate change’
- Evan Lehmann, Wisconsin Agency Bans Talk of Climate Change
Actually, it gets much worse than just banning (or attempting to ban) words. They act to suppress inquiry in general and the collection of potentially inconvenient information in particular. It was bad before the 2014 election.
- The Economist, Ignorance is Freedom
- Tim McDonnell, Taking Research for Granted
- Jeffrey Mervis, Battle between NSF and House science committee escalates: How did it get this bad?
and then it got worse
- Eli Rabett, Turn Out the Lights
- Eric Berger, Is there anyone in Congress that can restore NASA’s Earth science budget cut?
- John Timmer, House Science Committee guts NASA Earth sciences budget
- Elizabeth Kolbert, The G.O.P.’s War on Science Gets Worse
- Mike the Mad Biologist, Wyoming’s War on Microbiology
(Many of the links above are directly or indirectly via Mike the Mad Biologist.)
You wonder why I believe contemporary Republicans are essentially Stalinists? Well there you have it.
PS No, both sides don’t do it. This is a Republican problem.
Thought for the Day: 15 May 2015
Just how goddamn awful does the TPP have to be for Senator Warren to oppose it?
The TPP is a really bad deal – Part 6
Ezra Klein interviews economist Adam Posen in Vox, Why one top economist thinks Obama’s trade deal is worth passing. Reviewing Posen’s six arguments:
Let’s make a deal
Barney Frank was on Radio Boston today discussing the TPP. As usual, he was very sharp. He understands both the significance of the TPP and the value of making deals with the opposition party. His suggestion: Get some legislative concessions from Republicans now in exchange for supporting the TPP because you’re not going to get any concessions from them once the TPP passes. Conditional support for the TPP is leverage. Use it.
You can listen to the interview here:
Reinvent the world
Many of the choices we make as a culture – as a society – disappoint me. We could do much better than we’ve done. That stated, I hold out hope that future generations will make better choices than my generation and our predecessors have and that they will be able to improve upon the world we leave them.
I was running errands today and happened to hear a few minutes of Salman Rushdie’s keynote address at Emory University’s Commencement. His speech captured both my frustrations and my hopes. Hold out for the last minute and a half: