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marleen_ueberall

Markets and Governments: A Historical Perspective - The Globalist - 0 views

www.theglobalist.com/ments-a-historical-perspective

markets governments

shared by marleen_ueberall on 28 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • The idea that competitive markets are sufficient to ensure efficient outcomes and stable economies is under heavy intellectual fire
  • The crisis has prompted a fundamental re-think of the relationship between markets and governments
  • but between competing systems of political economy and models of governance.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • Striking the right balance between markets and government is the central issue in policy debates over economic developmen
  • What is the role of governments in promoting economic growth?
  • What can governments do to seize the opportunities of globalization, while minimizing its downsides?
  • we have to recognize that the tension between markets and government is not new. In fact, it has been the central issue in the evolution of political economy over the last 200 years.
  • There have been three distinct phases in this evolution.
  • Phase One: The rise of the market
  • The “rise of the market” began in the late 18th century, shaped by the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The “invisible hand” of the market guided supply and demand toward equilibrium and efficiency.
  • This phase came to an end in the 1930s, when the concept of self-correcting markets collapsed under the weight of the Great Depression.
  • Falling prices, instead of bringing demand and supply into equilibrium,
  • Phase Two: The rise of government
  • markets were inherently unstable. Left on their own, they may not always self-correct
  • Government intervention was necessary to boost aggregate demand during periods of high unemployment.
  • The 1940s also saw the advent of the welfare state.
  • The welfare state was enabled through redistributive taxation and government regulation.
  • Phase Three: The return of the market
  • This phase began with growing disenchantment with government’s ability to deliver and was driven forward mainly by U.S.-based economists
  • The stagflation of the 1970s — persistently high inflation and unemployment — called into question the ability of governments to fine-tune the economy. Meanwhile, the welfare state began to impose an unsustainable fiscal burden,
  • Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman led the charge against “Big Government.” They argued eloquently how an overreaching government dulled the fundamental human instincts that power the capitalist system:
  • In the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reduced taxes, deregulated industries, privatized state-owned enterprises, curbed union power, and scaled back welfare programs. The global economy boomed.
  • Phase Four: Balancing markets and governments
  • The financial crisis has revealed significant imperfections in market mechanisms: information asymmetry, moral hazard, systemic risks and behavioral or nonrational motivators of choice.
  • In a more globalized and complex economy, governments have fewer levers to pull
  • It has also revealed the inherent limitations of governmen
  • Neither market fundamentalism nor central planning has worked.
  • Yet one thing is certain: The choice is not between big government and small government. It is about creating effective government. What matters is what governments do, not how big they are.
sissij

A Map of Corruption in France | Big Think - 0 views

bigthink.com/...a-map-of-corruption-in-france

corruption psychology bias

shared by sissij on 28 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Yet corruption is not a victimless crime. Cutting corners on good governance costs money, endangers lives and erodes the public trust that oils the machinery of state in modern democracies.
  • Conversely, the interior of France is largely corruption-free, some departments even entirely so. Of course, the incidence of corruption varies with the density of population, and perhaps declines disproportionately in the almost-empty interior because there are so few people to be corrupted by.
  • Mapping corruption at country level brings home the pervasiveness of the problem.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • This corruption map of France seems to be a local initiative. Similar maps of other countries would make for equally compelling reading. Except of course the corruption maps of Somalia, South Sudan and North Korea – they would be totally blank.
  • sissij on 28 Feb 17
     
    Corruption in government leads to Pareto inefficiency. I remember in a book about game theory, this is a malicious cycle in hiring government employees. For example, there are four people competing for the same position in government. One is lazy and stupid, One is hardworking but stupid. One is lazy but clever. The last one is hardworking and clever. The first one is obviously the first one to be eliminated. The leader of the government won't hire the last person because he is a potential threats to the leadership of the higher-up. The third one will often mess things up. So the only choice left for them is people who are lazy but clever. These people won't make any contribution to the government, but they occupy the money and regulation. This game theory behind hiring in government indirectly suggest the corruption in government is inevitable.
Javier E

Opinion | If You Want to Understand How Dangerous Elon Musk Is, Look Outside America - ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...twitter-free-speech-india.html

social media india global impact influence government repression tool twitter

shared by Javier E on 15 Nov 22 - No Cached
  • Twitter was an intoxicating window into my fascinating new assignment. Long suppressed groups found their voices and social media-driven revolutions began to unfold. Movements against corruption gained steam and brought real change. Outrage over a horrific gang rape in Delhi built a movement to fight an epidemic of sexual violence.
  • “What we didn’t realize — because we took it for granted for so long — is that most people spoke with a great deal of freedom, and completely unconscious freedom,” said Nilanjana Roy, a writer who was part of my initial group of Twitter friends in India. “You could criticize the government, debate certain religious practices. It seems unreal now.”
  • Soon enough, other kinds of underrepresented voices also started to appear on — and then dominate — the platform. As women, Muslims and people from lower castes spoke out, the inevitable backlash came. Supporters of the conservative opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and their right-wing religious allies felt that they had long been ignored by the mainstream press. Now they had the chance to grab the mic.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Viewed from the United States, these skirmishes over the unaccountable power of tech platforms seem like a central battleground of free speech. But the real threat in much of the world is not the policies of social media companies, but of governments.
  • The real question now is if Musk’s commitment to “free speech” extends beyond conservatives in America and to the billions of people in the Global South who rely on the internet for open communication.
  • ndia’s government had demanded that Twitter block tweets and accounts from a variety of journalists, activists and politicians. The company went to court, arguing that these demands went beyond the law and into censorship. Now Twitter’s potential new owner was casting doubt on whether the company should be defying government demands that muzzle freedom of expression.
  • The winning side will not be decided in Silicon Valley or Beijing, the two poles around which debate over free expression on the internet have largely orbited. It will be the actions of governments in capitals like Abuja, Jakarta, Ankara, Brasília and New Delhi.
  • Across the world, countries are putting in place frameworks that on their face seem designed to combat online abuse and misinformation but are largely used to stifle dissent or enable abuse of the enemies of those in power.
  • other governments are passing laws just to increase their power over speech online and to force companies to be an extension of state surveillance.” For example: requiring companies to house their servers locally rather than abroad, which can make them more vulnerable to government surveillance.
  • while much of the focus has been on countries like China, which overtly restricts access to huge swaths of the internet, the real war over the future of internet freedom is being waged in what she called “swing states,” big, fragile democracies like India.
  • it seems that this is actually what he believes. In April, he tweeted: “By ‘free speech’, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”
  • Musk is either exceptionally naïve or willfully ignorant about the relationship between government power and free speech, especially in fragile democracies.
  • The combination of a rigid commitment to following national laws and a hands-off approach to content moderation is combustible and highly dangerous.
  • Independent journalism is increasingly under threat in India. Much of the mainstream press has been neutered by a mix of intimidation and conflicts of interests created by the sprawling conglomerates and powerful families that control much of Indian media
  • Twitter has historically fought against censorship. Whether that will continue under Musk seems very much a question. The Indian government has reasons to expect friendly treatment: Musk’s company Tesla has been trying to enter the Indian car market for some time, but in May it hit an impasse in negotiations with the government over tariffs and other issues
Javier E

For Trump and G.O.P., the Welfare State Shouldn't Be the Enemy - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ate-shouldnt-be-the-enemy.html

conservatism strategy welfare state regulation reform trump

shared by Javier E on 29 May 17 - No Cached
  • Historically, however, the level of government spending and the level of regulation have been packaged together and treated as a single variable. This has forced a choice between two options: the “liberal” package of big government and heavy regulation or the “conservative” package of small government and light regulation.
  • But this is a false choice. Regulatory policy and fiscal policy are independent dimensions, and they can be rebundled in different packages. Mr. Trump’s gestures toward a big-government, low-regulation package — rooted more in instinct than intellect — proved popular with Republican voters
  • Government spending reliably rises as economies grow. When countries get richer, one of the first things their people do is vote for more generous government social services. This pattern, which economists have labeled Wagner’s Law, has held more or less steady for a century in dozens of developed democratic countries.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Republicans need to recognize finally that secure property rights, openness to global trade and a relatively low regulatory burden are much more important than fiscal policy for innovation, job creation and rising standards of
  • not only are sound safety nets popular, but they also increase the public’s tolerance for the dislocations of a dynamic free-market economy
  • Third, the idea that reducing taxpayer-financed government spending is the key to giving people more freedom and revving up the economy encourages conservative hostility to government as such
  • The Republican legislative agenda is stalled because party members have boxed themselves in with their own bad ideas about what freedom and rising prosperity require. A new pro-growth economic platform that sets aside small-government monomania and focuses instead on protecting citizens’ basic rights to commit “capitalist acts between consenting adults,” as the libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick put it, has both practical and political advantages
  • a generous and effective safety net can be embraced as a tool to promote and sustain a culture of freedom, innovation and risk taking. Politically, repairing and improving the slipshod infrastructure of the safety net would liberate Republicans from the bad faith of attacking the welfare state in one breath, halfheartedly promising not to cut entitlements in the next and then breaking that promise once in power.
Javier E

Scholar Behind Viral 'Oligarchy' Study Tells You What It Means - 0 views

talkingpointsmemo.com/...emocracy-america-tpm-interview

elites democracy oligarchy inequality policy legislation history research political science social science

shared by Javier E on 19 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Let's talk about the study. If you had 30 seconds to sum up the main conclusion of your study for the average person, how would you do so? I'd say that contrary to what decades of political science research might lead you to believe, ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups -- of economic elites and of organized interests.
  • People mean different things by the term oligarchy. One reason why I shy away from it is it brings to mind this image of a very small number of very wealthy people who are pulling strings behind the scenes to determine what government does. And I think it's more complicated than that. It's not only Sheldon Adelson or the Koch brothers or Bill Gates or George Soros who are shaping government policy-making. So that's my concern with what at least many people would understand oligarchy to mean.
  • What "Economic Elite Domination" and "Biased Pluralism" mean is that rather than average citizens of moderate means having an important role in determining policy, ability to shape outcomes is restricted to people at the top of the income distribution and to organized groups that represent primarily -- although not exclusively -- business.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • When did things start to become this way? It's possible that in earlier eras, that we don't have data for, that things were better. But in the time period that we do have data for, there's certainly no such evidence. Over time responsiveness to elites has grown.
  • Talk about some examples of policy preferences that the majority holds that the government is not responsive to. Financial reform -- the deregulatory agenda has been pursued, somewhat more fervently among Republicans but certainly by Democrats as well in recent decades. Higher minimum wage. More support for the unemployed. More support for education spending. We'd see, perhaps ironically, less liberal policies in some domains like religious or moral issues. Affluent people tend to be more socially liberal on things like abortion or gay rights.
  • Given your findings, what do you make of the great sense of persecution that people at the top appear to feel in recent years? Is there a phenomenon you came by that speaks to this, and does that perpetuate the cycle of policy moving in their direction? It's certainly not something our study or data has addressed. But it's part of an effort to defend, in the face of growing inequality, their advantages and wealth.
  • what kind of data do you use to test this theory and how confident are you in the conclusions? What we did was to collect survey questions that asked whether respondents would favor or oppose some particular change in federal government policy. These were questions asked across the decades from 1981 to 2002. And so from each of those questions we know what citizens of average income level prefer and we know what people at the top of the income distribution say they want. For each of the 2,000 possible policy changes we determined whether in fact they've been adopted or not. I had a large number of research assistants who spent years putting that data together.
  • What are the three or four most crucial factors that have made the United States this way? Very good question. I'd say two crucial factors. One central factor is the role of money in our political system, and the overwhelming role that affluent individuals that affluent individuals and organized interests play, in campaign finance and in lobbying. And the second thing is the lack of mass organizations that represent and facilitate the voice of ordinary citizens. Part of that would be the decline of unions in the country which has been quite dramatic over the last 30 or 40 years. And part of it is the lack of a socialist or a worker's party.
  • Your study calls to mind something that Dennis Kucinich, the former congressman, said years ago during the recession. He essentially said the class war is over and the working class lost. Was he right? I mean, for now, it certainly seems like it. The middle class has not done well over the last three and a half decades, and certainly has not done well during the Great Recession. The political system responded to the crisis in a way that led to a pretty nice recovery for economic elites and corporations.
  • sometimes non-rich people favor an agenda that supports the rich. For instance, middle class tea partiers want low taxes on the highest earners, just as Steve Forbes does. Isn't that still democracy at work, albeit in an arguably perverse way? Yes, absolutely. I think people are entitled to preferences that conflict with their immediate interests -- narrowly conceived interests. That may be an example of that. Opposition to the estate tax among low-income individuals is another. But what we see in this study is that's not what this is happening. We don't look at whether preferences expressed by these different groups are consistent or inconsistent with their interests, narrowly conceived. We just look at whether they're responded to by government policy-makers, and we find that in the case of ordinary Americans, they're not.
  • A new political science study that's gone viral finds that majority-rule democracy exists only in theory in the United States -- not so much in practice. The government caters to the affluent few and organized interest groups, the researchers find, while the average citizen's influence on policy is "near zero."
  • TPM spoke to Gilens about the study, its main findings and its lessons.
Javier E

Let's call them all lunatics: Fearful "balanced" "journalists" let wingnuts run wild - ... - 0 views

www.salon.com/...rnalists_let_wingnuts_run_wild

journalism balance ideology objectivity politics bias GOP

shared by Javier E on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • In their 2012 book, “It’s Even Worse Than it Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism,” Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein argued that America’s political dysfunction had two causes: First, the mismatch between our constitutional system, requiring compromise, and our increasingly polarized, parliamentary-style politics.
  • Second, the fact that polarization has been asymmetric, turning the GOP into an insurrectionary anti-government party, even when in power.
  • Despite overwhelming historical data showing asymmetrical polarization in Congress (more recent additions here), their argument did not convince the anecdote-obsessed Beltway pundit class, with its deep belief that “both sides do it,” no matter what “it” may be.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • It’s true there are “extremists on both sides,” but as this Wonk Blog post showed, the percentage of non-centrist Republicans skyrocketed from under 10 percent in the Ford years (less than Democrats) to almost 90 percent today, while the Democratic percentage has stayed basically flat [chart].
  • What’s more, in the last session (2013-2014), the data shows that 147 House Republicans — more than half the caucus — were more ideologically extreme than the most extreme Democrat in the House. There is simply no comparison between the two partie
  • But it’s a fact that “balanced” journalism has to ignore. To admit that the political world isn’t balanced would shake their whole belief system to its core. And yet, the shaking seems to have begun
  • The GOP’s strategic logic is simple and straightforward: If the media is going to split the difference between what Democrats and Republicans say, then if Republicans simply double their demands, suddenly the media, embracing the “sensible center,” will now articulate the old GOP position as the “sensible center,” the “common sense” place to be
  • Their stubborn adherence to a false balance narrative has, ironically, become an integral part of the GOP’s relentless rightward push. By talking about “government dysfunction” instead of “Republican obstruction,” the media actively helps the most extreme anti-government Republicans thwart any efforts at competent governance and it helps promote their “government is horrible” worldview
  • There was once a penalty for becoming too politically extreme: one’s actions would be characterized as unrealistic, destructive, heedless of past experience, etc. Sometimes this was justified, sometimes not (as with the Civil Rights movement). But right or wrong, this media practice inhibited radical movements in either direction.
  • For quite some time now, however, conservative Republicans have realized that by moving right and attacking the media for any criticism, they can turn the media into a tacit ally, forcing them to treat preposterous claims as serious ideas, or even proven facts
  • Norm’s response underscores the reality of asymmetric polarization, which the mainstream media and most good government groups have avoided discussing — at great costs to the country
  • Thus, when they were planning to force a government shutdown, a key part of their strategy was spinning the media with a preposterous argument that it was the Democrats who were shutting down the government, even though, as the New York Times reported, the shutdown plan traced back to a meeting early in President Obama’s second term, led by former Attorney General Edwin R. Meese.
  • What’s more, once the media plays along, it’s a trick that can be used over and over again. One can keep moving farther and farther right indefinitely, pulling the “objective” media along for the ride, every step of the way. (Conservatives even developed an operational model to describe the process, known as the “Overton Window,” explained by a conservative activist here.)
  • The basis for all this is a cultural illusion that the “nonpartisan” media is somehow objective, philosophically in tune with science.
  • historically, this is far from true. Up until the late 19th century, American journalism was quite partisan, serving substantial “niche” audiences, sustained by subscriptions.
  • hen advertising exploded as a revenue source in the early 20th century, a new journalistic model emerged, trying to appeal across parties, while taking care not to anger large advertisers. The broader story is well told by Paul Starr in “The Creation of the Media
  • Jeremy Iggers incorporates this history into his account of how journalism ethics confuses the purposes of journalism in “Good News, Bad News: Journalism Ethics and the Public Interest.”
  • Such is the basis for the media’s claims of “objectivity.” Starr’s history explains the forces leading to why this happened.
  • the blogosphere’s origins were not just Usenet, email lists and the like, they were also the underground press tracing back to IF Stone’s Weekly and George Seldes’ In Fact; the black press, both commercial and movement-based; political journals of the left and right; and so on
  • These underappreciated traditions provide largely untapped examples of how to do quality political journalism outside of the artificial construct in which false balance is rooted. They point the way forward for us, beyond our current state of asymmetrical dysfunction.
peterconnelly

Criticising the government isn't journalistic bias - it goes with the job - New Statesman - 0 views

www.newstatesman.com/...snt-journalistic-bias-goes-job

government bias

shared by peterconnelly on 03 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • Instead, with every passing day, the Boris Johnson government, operating within a moral vacuum, chips away further at Britain’s democratic foundations while much of the media, rather than calling foul, goes along with the game and thus normalises – consciously or not – the gradual erosion of fundamental ethical and constitutional norms in the UK – an erosion that may well end in their outright destruction.
  • Those shouting the loudest were British journalists, such as Tim Shipman of the Sunday Times, who accused me of being biased. He went on to prove my point by declaring: “I don’t know a single British journalist who would tweet something like this.”
  • Secondly – and far more absurdly – many of those who joined in seemed to have fundamentally misunderstood my role as a foreign correspondent: it is literally my job to report on Britain.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Commenting on one country does not prevent me from commenting on another; the two are not mutually exclusive.
  • Also, there’s the accusation of bias. When Shipman says that his reporting is wholly impartial because he only goes on information he gets from government sources and is not subject to any pressure from his editor to weight his copy, I understand that is how he works.
  • This false dichotomy between supposedly objective reporting and analysis is intellectually problematic at best: conflating analysis and bias is, in fact, dangerous – especially in times like these, where, to get anywhere near the truth, journalists in Britain have to hack their way through the thicket of lies and obfuscations emanating from the government itself.
  • by criticising the government as a correspondent for a public-service broadcaster (ARD in Germany), I had somehow failed to maintain the necessary “impartiality”.
  • Now, of course, this kind of approach is easier to apply in a podcast than in traditional media work, but what we can take from it is that when you are dealing with an intrinsically dishonest government, the mere reporting of facts is nowhere near adequate anymore. Most journalists have been trained to see themselves as coming from nowhere, but to cover a populist leader and system, they have to go a step further: positioning themselves clearly and critically outside of the system, and reflect on the methods of the populist rather than simply repeating his lines.
sissij

How Did I Celebrate Becoming American? Protesting Trump - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...become-an-american-is-now.html

new york times bias social media research

shared by sissij on 25 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • But, I would sheepishly explain to my friends, immigration benefits are a privilege rather than a right. When applying for a work visa, or for a green card, or for naturalization, I would have to document every citation and arrest.
  • But a few years ago — long before Britons voted to leave the European Union or Donald J. Trump announced that he was running for president — I started to worry that liberal democracy was under real threat in the United States and around the world.
  • In my studies, I showed that citizens now give less importance to living in a democracy than they once did, and that they are more open to authoritarian alternatives like military rule.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The moment felt no less meaningful to me. For the very first time, I was standing up to the unjust actions of my government.
  • sissij on 25 Mar 17
     
    I found this article very interesting  as this new residence of the United States talks about his belief in the liberal democracy. Nationality means a responsibility and loyalty. I really admire his courage to stand up. The author said how the government now didn't care for the minority and uses "people" as a shield and as a reason to justify all their behaviors. Inclusiveness is an important characteristic of the American government and the author thinks now the government is being exclusive. --Sissi (3/24/2017)
Javier E

Sleight of the 'Invisible Hand' - NYTimes.com - 1 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...sleight-of-the-invisible-hand

Adam Smith analytic philosophy economics politics

shared by Javier E on 22 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • The wealthy, says Smith, spend their days establishing an “economy of greatness,” one founded on “luxury and caprice” and fueled by “the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires.” Any broader benefit that accrues from their striving is not the consequence of foresight or benevolence, but “in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity.” They don’t do good, they are led to it.
  • In other words, the invisible hand did not solve the problem of politics by making politics altogether unnecessary. “We don’t think government can solve all our problems,” President Obama said in his convention address, “But we don’t think that government is the source of all our problems.” Smith would have appreciated this formulation. For him, whether government should get out of the way in any given matter, economic or otherwise, was a question for considered judgment abetted by scientific inquiry.
  • What it did not do, however, was void any proposal outright, much less prove that all government activity was counterproductive. Smith held that the sovereign had a role supporting education, building infrastructure and public institutions, and providing security from foreign and domestic threats — initiatives that should be paid for, in part, by a progressive tax code and duties on luxury goods. He even believed the government had a “duty” to protect citizens from “oppression,” the inevitable tendency of the strong to take advantage of the ignorance and necessity of the weak.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Smith described this state of affairs as “the obvious and simple system of natural liberty,” and he knew that it made for the revolutionary implication of his work. It shifted the way we thought about the relationship between government action and economic growth, making less means more the rebuttable presumption of policy proposals.
  • politics is a practical venture, and Smith distrusted those statesmen who confused their work with an exercise in speculative philosophy. Their proposals should be judged not by the delusive lights of the imagination, but by the metrics of science and experience, what President Obama described in the first presidential debate as “math, common sense and our history.”
  • John Paul Rollert teaches business ethics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and leadership at the Harvard Extension School.  He is the author of a recent paper on President Obama’s “Empathy Standard” for the Yale Law Journal Online.
  • Adam Smith, analytic philosophy, economics, Elections 2012
  • Javier E on 22 Oct 12
     
    "Adam Smith, analytic philosophy, economics"
sissij

Does a Protest's Size Matter? - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...es-a-protests-size-matter.html

new york times social media psychology

shared by sissij on 29 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • The Women’s March on Saturday, which took place in cities and towns all across the United States (and around the world), may well have been the largest protest in American history. There were an estimated 3.5 million participants.
  • After studying protests over the last two decades, I have to deliver some bad news: In the digital age, the size of a protest is no longer a reliable indicator of a movement’s strength.
  • A protest does not have power just because many people get together in one place. Rather, a protest has power insofar as it signals the underlying capacity of the forces it represents.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Protesters are saying, in effect, “If we can pull this off, imagine what else we can do.”
  • The march drew a quarter of a million people, but it represented much more effort, commitment and preparation than would a protest of similar size today.
  • This is one reason that recent large protests have had less effect on policy than many were led to expect.
  • The protesters failed to transform into an electoral force capable of defeating him in the 2004 election.
  • Two enormous protests, two disappointing results. Similar sequences of events have played out in other parts of the world.
  • A large protest today is less like the March on Washington in 1963 and more like Rosa Parks’s refusal to move to the back of the bus. What used to be an endpoint is now an initial spark.
  • But the Tea Party protesters then got to work on a ferociously focused agenda: identifying and supporting primary candidates to challenge Republicans who did not agree with their demands, keeping close tabs on legislation and pressuring politicians who deviated from a Tea Party platform.
  • But there is no magic power to marching in the streets that, on its own, leads to any other kind of result.
  • sissij on 29 Jan 17
     
    This article explains how protest work. I have always been thinking that protests are all about the number of people we can gather. The larger the population, the more powerful the protests are. However, I have never looked deep into the mechanism behind protests. I really like the analogy made in the article. The main purpose of a protest should be showing the potential strength the public have over the issues. If we don't do anything after the gathering, then the protest won't be power enough to influence the policy of the government because the government will know that we are actually not that firm on our position. The analogy I come up with is that our attendance can't reflect how much we learn in school. Attending the school doesn't ensure that we are taking away knowledge from school. Merely attending a protest doesn't mean we can put pressure on the government. --Sissi (1/29/2017)
lucieperloff

Federal Government Preps For A Million Workers To Return To Office : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-to-the-office-ask-the-governm

politics coronavirus government

shared by lucieperloff on 07 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • The nation's largest employer, the federal government, is beginning to plan for bringing many of its workers back into their offices,
  • the safe reentry of employees to the physical workplace" by July 19.
  • "It is not as easy as flipping a switch and just saying everybody back."
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • it is our hope that the federal government will follow the science and reopen facilities to taxpaying Americans."
  • Neal said it's probably going to be a hybrid
  • I think ... you're probably going to see more people working remotely.
  • Many, including TSA and Border Patrol officers, had no choice but to remain on site.
  • managers have already been calling some employees back into the office on a voluntary basis.
  • We're nowhere near herd immunity. And we don't want the vulnerable populations that we serve exposed to packed lobbies where people are going to literally have to wait post-pandemic like they did pre-pandemic for hours just to turn in documents."
  • Neal said there are other concerns for managers, including employee morale.
  • "Lots of people connecting remotely probably presents far more risk of hacking than than a bunch of people connecting on a network in a government building," Neal added.
  • "It's an opportunity to fundamentally reimagine what it means to work for the federal government,
ilanaprincilus06

Federal Government Executes Corey Johnson For 1992 Murders In Virginia : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...corey-johnson-for-1992-murders

government death penalty

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 15 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The federal government Thursday night executed a drug trafficker responsible for seven murders in 1992.
  • He is the 12th person to be executed by the government since July after the Trump administration restarted federal executions following a 17-year hiatus.
  • Dustin Higgins is the last person scheduled to be executed before President-elect Joe Biden, is sworn in.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Biden has indicated he may seek to abolish federal executions.
  • He told the victims' families, "I would have said I was sorry before, but I didn't know how. I hope you will find peace."
  • Donald Salzman, an attorney for Johnson, had argued that executing Johnson would be cruel and unusual punishment due to his COVID-19 infection.
  • His attorneys also said Johnson had an IQ of 69. In a statement following Johnson's death, they said the government executed a person "with an intellectual disability, in stark violation of the Constitution and federal law."
  • "Courts have repeatedly and correctly concluded that Johnson's seven murders were planned to advance his drug trafficking and were not impulsive acts by someone incapable of making calculated judgments, and are therefore eligible for the death penalty."
Javier E

Opinion | Guns, Germs, Bitcoin and the Antisocial Right - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...isinformation-coronavirus.html

individualism alt-right right-wing anti-government ideology guns bitcoin vaccine crisis government state of nature

shared by Javier E on 05 Feb 22 - No Cached
  • What do these examples have in common? As Thomas Hobbes could have told you, human beings can only flourish, can only avoid a state of nature in which lives are “nasty, brutish and short,” if they participate in a “commonwealth” — a society in which government takes on much of the responsibility for making life secure.
  • Thus, we have law enforcement precisely so individuals don’t have to go around armed to protect themselves against other people’s violence.
  • Public health policy, if you think about it, reflects the same principle. Individuals can and should take responsibility for their own health, when they can; but the nature of infectious disease means that there is an essential role for collective action
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • the need for regulation to maintain the reliability of essential aspects of the economy like electricity supply and the monetary system.
  • Which is why I’m calling the modern American right antisocial — because its members reject any policy that relies on social cooperation, and they want us to return instead to Hobbes’s dystopian state of nature
  • why Republicans have become fanatics about cryptocurrency, to the extent that one Senate candidate has defined his position as being “pro-God, pro-family, pro-Bitcoin.” The answer, I’d argue, is that Bitcoin plays into a fantasy of self-sufficient individualism, of protecting your family with your personal AR-15, treating your Covid with an anti-parasite drug or urine and managing your financial affairs with privately created money, untainted by institutions like governments or banks.
  • In the end, none of this will work. Government exists for a reason. But the right’s constant attacks on essential government functions will take a toll, making all of our lives nastier, more brutish and shorter.
Javier E

Australia Banned Assault Weapons. America Can, Too. - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...t-weapons-america-can-too.html

gun control Australia politics history

shared by Javier E on 17 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • I can, however, describe what I, as prime minister of Australia, did to curb gun violence following a horrific massacre 17 years ago in the hope that it will contribute constructively to the debate in the United States.
  • Our challenges were different from America’s. Australia is an even more intensely urban society, with close to 60 percent of our people living in large cities. Our gun lobby isn’t as powerful or well-financed as the National Rifle Association in the United States. Australia, correctly in my view, does not have a Bill of Rights, so our legislatures have more say than America’s over many issues of individual rights, and our courts have less control. Also, we have no constitutional right to bear arms. (After all, the British granted us nationhood peacefully; the United States had to fight for it.)
  • Given our decentralized system of government, I could reduce the number of dangerous firearms only by persuading the states to enact uniform laws totally prohibiting the ownership, possession and sale of all automatic and semiautomatic weapons while the national government banned the importation of such weapons.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • To make this plan work, there had to be a federally financed gun buyback scheme. Ultimately, the cost of the buyback was met by a special one-off tax imposed on all Australians. This required new legislation and was widely accepted across the political spectrum. Almost 700,000 guns were bought back and destroyed — the equivalent of 40 million guns in the United States.
  • The fundamental problem was the ready availability of high-powered weapons, which enabled people to convert their murderous impulses into mass killing.
  • I made clear that my government was willing to hold a nationwide referendum to alter the Australian Constitution and give the federal government constitutional power over guns. Such a referendum would have been expensive and divisive, but it would have passed. And all state governments knew this.
  • today, there is a wide consensus that our 1996 reforms not only reduced the gun-related homicide rate, but also the suicide rate. The Australian Institute of Criminology found that gun-related murders and suicides fell sharply after 1996. The American Journal of Law and Economics found that our gun buyback scheme cut firearm suicides by 74 percent. In the 18 years before the 1996 reforms, Australia suffered 13 gun massacres — each with more than four victims — causing a total of 102 deaths. There has not been a single massacre in that category since 1996. Few Australians would deny that their country is safer today as a consequence of gun control.
Emily Horwitz

U.S. Stockpiles Smallpox Drug in Case of Bioterror Attack - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-case-of-bioterror-attack.html

smallpox bioterrorism fear

shared by Emily Horwitz on 14 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The United States government is buying enough of a new smallpox medicine to treat two million people in the event of a bioterrorism attack, and took delivery of the first shipment of it last week. But the purchase has set off a debate about the lucrative contract, with some experts saying the government is buying too much of the drug at too high a price.
  • Smallpox was eradicated by 1980, and the only known remaining virus is in government laboratories in the United States and Russia
  • Experts say the virus could also be re-engineered into existence in a sophisticated genetics lab.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • the government is paying more than $200 for each course of treatment.
  • But when stockpiling a smallpox drug was first proposed in 2001 after the Sept. 11 and anthrax attacks, it was expected to cost only $5 to $10 per course, said Dr. Donald A. Henderson, who led a government advisory panel on biodefense in the wake of those attacks. Dr. Henderson was a leader in the eradication of smallpox in the 1960s and is now at the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
  • Smallpox has such a long incubation period that the vaccine can prevent disease even if it is given as late as three days after infection. Arestvyr may also prevent infection if given early enough, but that has not been proven.
  • the price being charged for a patented drug was a bargain compared with AIDS antiretrovirals that cost $20,000 a year and cancer drugs that cost more than $100,000 a year.
  • “There are 80 million courses of Tamiflu in the strategic national stockpile,” he said. “Smallpox is just as contagious and has 30 times the mortality. By measures like that, I’d say 2 million is on the low end.”
  • Emily Horwitz on 14 Mar 13
     
    After reading this article, I thought about how much fear and the perceived threat of terrorism can be used quite effectively as manipulative tools. The article seemed to suggest that, because the US is so afraid/wary of a bioterrorism attack involving smallpox, we were willing to pay an excessive amount of money for emergency-use vaccines.
carolinewren

If Evolution Has Implications for Religion, Can We Justify Teaching It in Public School... - 0 views

www.evolutionnews.org/...if_evolution_ha096541.html

evolution religion teaching

shared by carolinewren on 03 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Evolutionary biology is a science, so it can be legally taught in public schools when it's treated as a science and isn't promoted as a support for atheism or materialism.
  • few would deny that Darwinian evolution has larger implications that aren't friendly to theism
  • the conversation focuses strictly on the science, the implications are still there.
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • Do the larger religious (or anti-religious) implications of a scientific theory make it inadmissible for instruction in public schools? They shouldn't.
  • just because we're declaring the teaching of evolution to be constitutional doesn't mean we that it has no connections to religion
  • while it may sound odd to hear that we can (sometimes) declare something constitutional to teach in public schools even though it touches upon religion, there's good legal precedent for such a finding.
  • a government policy establishes religion if its "principal or primary effect" is one that "advances or inhibits" religion.
  • the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion
  • a government policy is unconstitutional if it has a "primary" or "principal" effect that advances (or inhibits) religion. However, in light of this second part, the Supreme Court has also developed a legal doctrine called the "incidental effects" or "secondary effects" doctrine which says that government law or policy may have "secondary" or "incidental" effects that touch upon religion and not violate the Establishment Clause.
  • Secondary effects that touch upon religion are not constitutionally fatal.
  • the Court held in Lynch v. Donnelly that "not every law that confers an indirect, remote, or incidental benefit upon [religion] is, for that reason alone, constitutionally invalid"
  • if government aid "is allocated on the basis of neutral, secular criteria that neither favor nor disfavor religion, and is made available to both religious and secular beneficiaries on a nondiscriminatory basis," then any effects upon religion are merely incidental.
  • evolutionary biology is based upon science, when we teach it as a science, the primary effect is to advance scientific knowledge.
  • a scientific theory like evolution does speak to ultimate questions about origins, which are also addressed by religion
  • it certainly touches upon religious questions. But when we discuss Darwinian evolution strictly on a scientific level, any effects upon religion are "secondary" or "incidental" compared to their primary effect of advancing scientific knowledge.
  • if creation science were a scientific theory, it could have been taught because any its touching upon religion would have been a secondary effect
  • approach was also followed in Crowley v. Smithsonian Institution, where a federal judge rejected arguments that Smithsonian exhibits on evolution established "secular humanism" because the "impact [on religion] is at most incidental to the primary effect of presenting a body of scientific knowledge"
  • Because evolution is based upon science, any effects upon religion would not bar its teaching.
  • [I]f a theory has scientific value and evidence to support it, its primary effect would be to advance knowledge of the natural world, not to advance religion
  • ultimate goal of schools is to educate students. Where a theory has scientific value and supporting evidence, it provides a basis for knowledge. Whether it coincidentally advances religion should not matter.
  • one can legally justify teaching evolution while being sensitive to the fact that it has larger implications that touch upon the religious beliefs of many Americans.
  • best of both worlds. It allows science to be taught in the science classroom while respecting the beliefs of people who have religious objections to evolution.
Javier E

Revolving Door: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke Takes Job With Hedge Fund ... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...390669

fed financial Wall Street conflict of interest corruption

shared by Javier E on 17 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • This is, of course, how systemic problems work—few individual cases are obviously unacceptable, but the whole is horrifying. In this case, it's the "revolving door" of movement between government positions and the financial sector—that is to say, from modestly paying positions in the public sector, overseeing financial firms, to higher-paying jobs in the private sector.
  • Bernanke is going to work for Citadel, a $25 billion hedge fund that is one of the country's largest. While Bernanke is a talented economist, he has also never worked in the industry, so it's fairly clear that what Citadel wants is inside information
  • this is just the latest in a stream of prominent government officials:
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Perhaps what makes Bernanke's case so worrisome is that he has an almost universal reputation for probity. If the revolving-door system is so powerful that it can make even him look suspect, is it beyond redemption?
  • That doesn't even include non-hedge-fund and private-equity moves. Peter Orszag, who led President Obama's Office of Management and Budget, took a job with Citigroup when he left. The Obama administration had been closely involved with Citi in the aftermath of the financial collapse, and the bank received nearly $500 billion in bailouts. Orszag is not allowed to deal with the federal government directly, but as The Times noted, perhaps wryly, "Mr. Orszag’s actual duties are murky at best. He is expected to draw on his deep knowledge of public sector financial issues and his experience overseeing the federal budget to counsel Citi’s clients on various policy actions."
  • This is, of course, how systemic problems work—few individual cases are obviously unacceptable, but the whole is horrifying. In this case, it's the "revolving door" of movement between government positions and the financial sector—that is to say, from modestly paying positions in the public sector, overseeing financial firms, to higher-paying jobs in the private sector.
Duncan H

It's Consumer Spending, Stupid - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-consumer-spending-stupid.html

economics speding

shared by Duncan H on 26 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • using business profits to increase productivity and output — doesn’t actually drive economic growth. Consumer debt and government spending do. Private investment isn’t even necessary to promote growth.
  • Economists will tell you that private business investment causes growth because it pays for the new plant or equipment that creates jobs, improves labor productivity and increases workers’ incomes. As a result, you’ll hear politicians insisting that more incentives for private investors — lower taxes on corporate profits — will lead to faster and better-balanced growth.
  • But history shows that this is wrong.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • President George W. Bush’s tax cuts had similar effects between 2001 and 2007: real growth in the absence of new investment.
  • over the course of the last century, net business investment atrophied while G.D.P. per capita increased spectacularly. And the source of that growth? Increased consumer spending, coupled with and amplified by government outlays.
  • Between 1900 and 2000, real gross domestic product per capita (the output of goods and services per person) grew more than 600 percent. Meanwhile, net business investment declined 70 percent as a share of G.D.P. What’s more, in 1900 almost all investment came from the private sector — from companies, not from government — whereas in 2000, most investment was either from government spending (out of tax revenues) or “residential investment,” which means consumer spending on housing, rather than business expenditure on plants, equipment and labor.
  • According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, retained corporate earnings that remain uninvested are now close to 8 percent of G.D.P., a staggering sum in view of the unemployment crisis we face.
  • So corporate profits do not drive economic growth — they’re just restless sums of surplus capital, ready to flood speculative markets at home and abroad. In the 1920s, they inflated the stock market bubble, and then caused the Great Crash. Since the Reagan revolution, these superfluous profits have fed corporate mergers and takeovers, driven the dot-com craze, financed the “shadow banking” system of hedge funds and securitized investment vehicles, fueled monetary meltdowns in every hemisphere and inflated the housing bubble.
  • we doubt the moral worth of consumer culture. Like the abstemious ant who scolds the feckless grasshopper as winter approaches, we think that saving is the right thing to do. Even as we shop with abandon, we feel that if only we could contain our unruly desires, we’d be committing ourselves to a better future. But we’re wrong.
  • Consumer spending is not only the key to economic recovery in the short term; it’s also necessary for balanced growth in the long term. If our goal is to repair our damaged economy, we should bank on consumer culture — and that entails a redistribution of income away from profits toward wages, enabled by tax policy and enforced by government spending.
Javier E

The Power of Nudges, for Good and Bad - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...f-nudges-for-good-and-bad.html

behavioral economics nudge

shared by Javier E on 10 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Nudges, small design changes that can markedly affect individual behavior, have been catching on. These techniques rely on insights from behavioral science
  • when used ethically, they can be very helpful. But we need to be sure that they aren’t being employed to sway people to make bad decisions that they will later regret.
  • Three principles should guide the use of nudges:■ All nudging should be transparent and never misleading.■ It should be as easy as possible to opt out of the nudge, preferably with as little as one mouse click.■ There should be good reason to believe that the behavior being encouraged will improve the welfare of those being nudged.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • the government teams in Britain and the United States that have focused on nudging have followed these guidelines scrupulously.
  • the private sector is another matter. In this domain, I see much more troubling behavior.
  • Many companies are nudging purely for their own profit and not in customers’ best interests. In a recent column in The New York Times, Robert Shiller called such behavior “phishing.” Mr. Shiller and George Akerlof, both Nobel-winning economists, have written a book on the subject, “Phishing for Phools.”
  • Some argue that phishing — or evil nudging — is more dangerous in government than in the private sector. The argument is that government is a monopoly with coercive power, while we have more choice in the private sector over which newspapers we read and which airlines we fly.
  • I think this distinction is overstated. In a democracy, if a government creates bad policies, it can be voted out of office. Competition in the private sector, however, can easily work to encourage phishing rather than stifle it.
  • One example is the mortgage industry in the early 2000s. Borrowers were encouraged to take out loans that they could not repay when real estate prices fell. Competition did not eliminate this practice, because it was hard for anyone to make money selling the advice “Don’t take that loan.”
Javier E

Movie Review: Inside Job - Barron's - 0 views

www.barrons.com/...111904502004575562621077193024

psychology economics great recession documentary review

shared by Javier E on 09 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • On the outsize role of the GSEs and other federal agencies in high-risk mortgages, figures compiled by former Fannie Mae Chief Credit Officer Edward Pinto show that as of mid-2008, more than 70% were accounted for by the federal government in one way or another, with nearly two-thirds of that held by Fannie and Freddie.
  • As has been documented, for example, in a forthcoming book on the GSEs called Guaranteed to Fail, there was a steady increase in affordable housing mandates imposed on these enterprises by Congress, one of several reasons why they were hardly like other capitalist enterprises, but tools and beneficiaries of government.
  • I asked Ferguson why Inside Job made such brief mention of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and even then without noting that they are government-sponsored enterprises, subject to special protection by the federal government—which their creditors clearly appreciated, given the unusually low interest rates their debt commanded.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Ferguson replied that their role in subprime mortgages was not very significant, and that in any case their behavior was not much different from that of other capitalist enterprises.
  • We get no inkling that Rajan's views on what made the world riskier, as set forth in his book, veer quite radically from those of Inside Job. They include, as he has written, "the political push for easy housing credit in the United States and the lax monetary policy [by the Federal Reserve] in the years 2003-2005."
  • Rajan, author of Fault Lines, a recent book on the debacle, speaks with special authority to fans of Inside Job. Not only is he in the movie—one of the talking heads speaking wisdom about what occurred—he is accurately presented as having anticipated the meltdown in a 2005 paper called "Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?" But the things he is quoted as saying in the film are restricted to serving its themes.
  • Yet it's impossible to understand what happened without grasping the proactive role played by government. "The banking sector did not decide out of the goodness of its heart to extend mortgages to poor people," commented University of Chicago Booth School of Business Finance Professor Raghuram Rajan in a telephone interview last week. "Politicians did that, and they would have taken great umbrage if the regulator stood in the way of more housing credit."
  • THE STORY RECOUNTED in Inside Job is that principles like safety and soundness were flouted by greedy Wall Street capitalists who brought down the economy with the help of certain politicians, political appointees and corrupt academicians. Despite the attempts and desires of some, including Barney Frank, to regulate the mania, the juggernaut prevails to this day, under the presidency of Barack Obama.
  • This version of the story contains some elements of truth.
  • Text Size Regular Medium Large "A MASTERPIECE OF INVESTIGATIVE nonfiction moviemaking," wrote the film critic of the Boston Globe. "Rests its outrage on reason, research and careful argument," opined the New York Times. The "masterpiece" referred to was the recently released Inside Job, a documentary film that focuses on the causes of the 2008 financial crisis.
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