Barone on populism

Weisberg's analysis is spot-on, but his tone betrays his loyalties. In his imagination, this new populism is the thing to be confronted in fear and loathing, something to be neutered and deflected, lest it affect Something Really Important. In the end, as with Clinton, this reduces to a certain concern for the little guy, but only after he has taken the shaft on behalf of the great and the good. Instead of an ordinary, ordered life, he is to be offered a world in which, as Clinton once fulsomely expatiated, every worker could expect to hold a dozen or so different jobs over the course of his working years.

Try having a stable, secure family life under those conditions. Not. Going. To. Happen. Ever.

Never, ever, trust anyone who would dare to argue that we do not hold greater obligations towards those nearer to us than to those on the other side of the globe. Never.>

It's a distinction without a difference because it really isn't possible to separate the problematic acts of the wealthy in America from the foreign poor that Weisberg imagines the new populists wanting to keep beaten down. The wealthy in America increasingly sell out their own countrymen, having goods produced and services provided by poor foreigners so that they can save a buck. Unless this is grasped and accepted, we are left with nothing more than Clintonian feeling of the pain of the middle and working classes, coupled with an injunction to 'get over it' and resign yourself to the necessity of retraining every few years in order to run in place. Barely.>

As for the Hayworth loss he was seen as a bit of a rubberstamp and his opponent ran on a somewhat similar immigration position that, while it didn't oppose amnesty, was not open borders. Regarding Graf, he got shafted by the national GOP who were probably cheering for Giffords to win. Tucson, while not Berkeley, is not SLC either; Graf was probably too socially conservative for the district. And, Giffords ran on a similar Bush-style immigration stance.

And, four AZ anti-illegal immigration measures passed by wide margins.

So, adding all that together it doesn't look like their losses indicate as much support for CIR as those who support massive immigration (like Barone) will probably try to pretend.>

Instead of an ordinary, ordered life, he is to be offered a world in which, as Clinton once fulsomely expatiated, every worker could expect to hold a dozen or so different jobs over the course of his working years.

Try having a stable, secure family life under those conditions. Not. Going. To. Happen. Ever. Maximos

I imagine with this fantasy you have the time machine that will enable time to stand still for a lifetime.

Industries are sometimes lucky to survive as viable for a decade these days because the rate of improvement in our lives is getting faster daily.

Industry can't promise lifetime employment not so much because industry is evil but because circumstances doesn't allow it.

The Dallas Morning News is celebrating ten years on line these days. I've been hammering a key board online when I should have been doing other things for almost that long. The difference back then from now isn't just content, but capacity, and congestion. Careers that had potential and promise no longer exist and new ones have appeared. They will be gone also.

Your phrase "ordered and ordinary" is both an insult, your magnaminity isn't appreciated, and ludicrous in reality.

I'm sure the little people would like an ordered and ordinary life. Who is these little people and where do they live?

I don't know if you've been in the real world lately. It's becoming a lot more chaotic if you haven't.

I see this chaos as being the result not only of progress but of human adaptability. We are becoming more acclimated to chaos. In fact we're turning out new members of our species that come out of the box at a dead run that I believe is the result of evolutionary pressures.

Older folks like myself find this chaos frustrating. It's difficult to keep up. But there is some consolation in we don't have to keep up, couldn't if we tried.

Ordinary and ordered won't work except in intentional and unintentional internal aberrations. Because we have to be able to cope with chaos or we go the way of the neanderthal.

Never, ever, trust anyone who would dare to argue that we do not hold greater obligations towards those nearer to us than to those on the other side of the globe. Never.

Unadulterad ignorance and pure b.s.

Our salvation is the abandonment of borders and ethnic idenities. Every now and then I'll go to the sources on my website and see who's visiting and from where. It never fails to amaze me when I see places like the United Emirates or England have people who are interested in some of the things I do.

Right now, immediately after I post this, a priest in a parish in Chile can read and comment on my entry. I have more responsiblity to a New Yorker or Californian than I do to him?

Get Real.>

The wealthy in America increasingly sell out their own countrymen, having goods produced and services provided by poor foreigners so that they can save a buck. Maximos

You can't be from here. You can't have shopped at the number one entity in the United States, second only to the Federal Government.

Walmart started in Arkansas. If any place in the United States defines poor Arkansas says it best. The wealthy in Arkansas qualify for welfare on the coasts.

If you go to a Walmart anywhere in the country between 6 and ten p.m. or after church on a Sunday you will see it isn't the wealthy that are selling out the American worker. It's the American worker.

I'm not a Walmart fan. When you consider Sam's five heirs have a total wealth almost equal to Gates and Buffet combined because Walmart has successfully milked the margins of societal weakness, I'm torn between admiration and disgust, usally more of the latter than the former.

But their success has came about because the poor shop more than the rich. There's more of them and they're more dependable as a customer.

Don't blame the rich for our situation. Blame human nature and the poor.>

Don't blame the rich for our situation. Blame human nature and the poor.

Certainly many of the poor, and increasingly, the middle classes are complicit in the circumstances of their own gradual dispossession. But the wealthy first had to establish the conditions within which many of those folks felt themselves constrained by circumstances. The demands for outsourcing and globalization surely did not emanate from the ranks of the poor.>

I said nothing about lifetime employment, which is as flimsy a straw man as ever appeared in a combox. And the appeal to circumstances is merely a particular form of the fallacious argument from sheer quantity, a cute way of dodging the fact that many particular decisions made many many people in positions of power have had as their indirect object the creation of an economic order in which the pace of 'creative destruction' constantly accelerates, because this increases profitability, albeit at the expense of other legitimate human values. Such as the stability requisite to family life. No process which occurs outside the realms of those things amenable to the investigations of the natural sciences is impersonal. Ever. Maximos

Wow, now that's deep. It doesn't jive with anything I've learned, but it's deep.

It does sound awful utopian and I'm sure it would be nice, but it's not applicable anywhere but in a vacum.

We live in a new world where every moment somewhere someone is creating a shortcut or product that replaces jobs and creates wealth and poverty.

That creative process represents what's best about us because it enables all the feel good things like charity to exist.>

I've been involved in evaluating and interviewing dozens of programmers and engineers for positions in a small, family business, and, to a man, they tell the same story of declining wages under competition from H1-Bs and outsourcing. These, remember, were supposedly the "good jobs" that would replace all of the outmoded blue-collar jobs lost in the 1980s and 90s. At least that was the propaganda back in the day. I suppose it was just that - propaganda. Blue collar folks tell me the same things. Maximos

I see it all the time too. So I guess from your perspective all the capital invested in giving me fiber to the home which allows me more speed than even conceived possible ten years ago is about an evil conspiracy to create poverty?

All of those jobs were advancements over previous ones. If we followed your conception of progress there would be none. One tractor replaces a thousand men doing the same amount of work. Tractors are bad because they rob human beings of the opportunity to do mindless work for minimum economic return to the individual. The farmworker in the field under the sun does have an ordered and ordinary life after all.>

Sounds more than a little idolatrous to me, as in Tower of Babel, immanentize-the-eschaton, the Kingdom-of-God-can-be-built-on-earth idolatry. And, fittingly enough, also a sentiment strikingly ignorant of the historical persistence of ethnic and cultural identities, as well as the conflicts that always attend attempts to compel people to abandon an identity in favour of an abstraction, or attempts to subsume one identity under another. All things considered, just another utopian attempt to transcend history. Reality will always have its vengeance on utopia. Maximos

Now we find it, the circular reasoning that baffles the heck out of me. Good old Bob Jones of racist univeristy fame was an advocate of the Tower of Babel b.s.

What I found interesting is the adherents of this herecy believe that natural borders like mountains, oceans, and rivers, are all part of the same master plan to keep us separate just like languages and cultures do.

If God wanted to damn somthing don't you think He'd start with airplanes and ships instead of cultures?

It's access that's creating a one world and not some devilsh plan by exterior forces preying upon mankind's baser instincts.

Exposure is the great equalizer. It doesn't matter if you're exposed to a black child in Darfur and can't shake your humanity. Or you wake up and realize your son is gay and you know he's not evil even though you've been taught your whole life homosexuality and by extension, homosexuals, are evil.

Americans knowing Muslims as friends and neighbors is the best medicine for our warring attitude in the Middle East.

Access and exposure is good. Embracing that access and exposure is even better.

Your attitude is counterproductive.>

But it did, start with the needs of the poor. There was a demand, poor wanted what they saw on the telly and on the street. Wealth was created by meeting that demand. Meeting that demand required outsourcing and globalization.

Actually, no, this is not how things came to pass. The decisions made to permit more outsourcing and such like occurred, not because there were demands, on the part of the poor, that could only be satisfied by means of shipping the jobs of the poor overseas, but because those with financial and ideological interests in these things occurring lobbied the Congress for changes in the laws.

That's life. It's about change and adapting to it.

No one said that there wouldn't be change. You must be inferring something from my comments, because I certainly never stated that 'change is always negative'. My point has always been that economic change, if it is of the character to bring about the greater flourishing of life, and not mere increases in profitability for a select minority, is not an overriding, transcendent value. That our society does privilege just this type of change over other legitimate social goods demonstrates that, functionally at least, economic change/growth has become an overriding societal value.

That creative process represents what's best about us because it enables all the feel good things like charity to exist.

Wow. I hadn't the slightest notion that charity could not have existed prior to the advent of modern capitalist economies!

If we followed your conception of progress there would be none. One tractor replaces a thousand men doing the same amount of work. Tractors are bad because they rob human beings of the opportunity to do mindless work for minimum economic return to the individual. The farmworker in the field under the sun does have an ordered and ordinary life after all.

Actually, no again. Progress must be balanced against other legitimate social values, such as those analyzed a great length by the Church's tradition of social doctrine. The economic sphere is subordinate to the other spheres of life, inasmuch as it is purely instrumental, while such goods as family life, community, and the sacramental life in the Church are goods in themselves.

So, exactly how does cutting off trade, and inflating the value of low wage jobs in the labor market encourage more employment?

Who said anything about cutting off trade? Border-adjusted taxes and VAT exemptions such as those maintained by some EU nations haven't exactly cut off trade, unless the Old Worlde is now starving unbeknownst to yours truly. And your query concerning the inflation of the value of low wage jobs presupposes that there is some absolute value that can be assigned to those forms of employment, whereas the reality is that their value is contingent upon such factors as the supply and the demand for such labour, factors the conditions of which we influence, and in some instances, positively establish, by means of law and custom. As in, by not permitting a massive influx of unassimilable immigrants who will perform low wage jobs for far less than Americans.

One of the biggest problems of economic populism is that it asks that there be no low wage jobs in America, while at the same time asking that no low wage jobs be shipped over seas, which makes no sense.

Actually, it says nothing of the sort. It says, rather, that we ought not actively impose further hardships upon the poorest among us.

In addition, everyone gets paid a 'livable' wage...

Hmmmm.. I don't recall typing the phrase 'living wage'. Must be red herring. Although the Church, again, has said much about the duty of the employer to provide a decent wage to his hires.

Basically the message is if we all can't be rich then no one can, and we all starve.

Not really. The message is that extremes of wealth and poverty, which are exacerbated by globalization, ill conduce to the stability of society, and the justice of relations therein. Coincidentally, this is the uniform teaching of the Church, classical political philosophy, the republican tradition, and... common sense. The message is that we must establish a balance among the diversity of social values and goods, as opposed to pursuing one, or merely a few, at the expense of others. That may well entail limiting, not halting altogether, the pace of change.

Good old Bob Jones of racist univeristy fame was an advocate of the Tower of Babel b.s.

Now we get right down to brass tacks. Question the fetish for the abolition of identities and you must be.... a RACIST! Actually, the Tower of Babel reference was nothing more than a metaphor for the ineradicability of difference, inclusive of the differences that render nations, plural, eminently rational things, and the impossibility of reconciling all of the differences which divide us short of the eschaton, which we cannot ourselves usher onto this mortal sphere. Each nation, each culture, possess its own special genius, its own gifts to humanity, its own special vocation in the outworking of history, although we will fathom almost nothing of its logic. The elimination of those differences is an existential tragedy. And those differences, pace the old bigot Bob Jones, have nothing to do with notions of superior/inferior, supremacy/subordination, or hatred; rather, they have everything to do with the simple affirmation of what is one's own just because it is one's own, and not out of a perverted psychological need to assert its superiority over the Other. In other words, there is no logical relationship between loving one's own culture and despising another culture. Quite the contrary: loving one's own culture ought to lead one to an appreciation of why others value their own cultures and do not wish to witness their transformation into something alien. It seems to me that this would be of especial relevance given the present unpleasantness in the Middle East. What any of this has to do with racism, hills, rivers, mountains, and so on is quite lost on me, save as rhetorical flummery adorning a cheap slander.>

-maximos

Of course my analysis was the extreme case for brevity, but is what anti-globalization is asking for, even if not intended.

First off, I wouldn't look to Europe as a role model for economic regulation, best example: France.

On the point of immigration: First off on inassimilable, having lived my whole life in southern Texas and California I have never seen this problem.

Second: Assuming that immigrants are the reason for the labor market being suppressed (of which I have seen no evidence for), it is only the areas of extremely low wage jobs. Of which, if were then occupied by strictly Americans then those Americans would be getting the same (only slightly higher) low wages as the recently departed illegal immigrants. False increase in value of these jobs through tariffs, subsidies, minimum wage hikes, or whatever government sponsored brain child only leads to an increase in price in the economy as a whole, therefore raising the cost of living and negating the increase in personal revenue made in these job sectors. Or, an increase in inflation thus lowering the buying power of the dollar, and essentially achieving the same result. And if this cycle compounds then yes we do starve , my hyperbole of choice.

In essence, what things cost and what labor is worth is determined on a global scale no matter where the work is done or who is doing it. The goal is to stay ahead of the curve through innovation and investment, both of which are hindered by government interaction not increased.

But this is just how I figure it.>

"The global market only influences wages within a given nation to the extent that the internal market of that nation for a given form of labor is permitted to come into contact with the global market for that form of labor"

I agree, the only difference is that I believe that the more a nation s market comes into contact with the global market, the more revenue it produces, with increased foreign investment as a result, therefore higher wages.

"Actually, no, it is not. Otherwise the wage of a programmer in the US would be about 9-10K"

You got me, I get sloppy. However, this disparity is due in large part to GDP disparity, not from the evils of globalization. It would be my opinion that globalization is actually responsible for those jobs in the first place, and with increased production and trade they will become worth even more, but not because of increased regulation by their respective countries.

As for the relationship between tariffs, interest rates, imports vs. export economies, wages, and their influence on inflation. I guess that gets pretty complicated, especially for blog threads, however I am interested in your ideas.

By the way, I hope there is no negativity in my tone, I really enjoy these kind of discussions.>

"mythical rising tide lifts all boats. Inequality generates concentration, and concentration begets vast differentials of power, all of which tend to perpetuate and institutionalize themselves."

Perhaps myth, or perhaps not. Certainly depression sinks all boats, would it not be logical that the reciprocal is true, or at least plausible.

"Judicious legislation could ensure that this reservoir of creativity would not be drained by competition with foreign sources who have finally learned to do the same things, only with a third-world wage scale."

Creativity in it of itself cannot be drained; it can only be stifled at least that is my feeling. Would it not also be fare to assert that increased competition is directly proportional to increased creativity? In addition I would suspect that the hoarding of availability to a particular job market would be a greater cause of inequality then the opening of markets. Which of course I still don t quite see how globalization leads to inequality especially amongst nations in which such inequality already existed. I also have doubts as to how long a third world nation would remain such as it begins to move from less advanced markets to the more advanced. In witch case I find it hard to believe that appreciation of wages in such countries would not also increase. I think India will be one of the first to complete this cycle, but only time will tell and I could be wrong.

It is not possible for the value of these jobs, or any jobs at all, to increase when the effective global supply of workers willing to perform them is increasing.

Even if we were isolated from the rest of the world a particular job sector would deflate in value due to the growth in population internally. The off setting force is the creation of new jobs due to new technologies, research and so on which I have to believe we have not yet reached the ceiling of. Of course even if we have reached the limit of ingenuity and progress, foreign competition would not make a difference; our neighbors would then become the foreign competitors of tomorrow. In other words, were screwed. So we are still stuck with the ever present rat race of trying to find new ideas and new revenue, which in my opinion is justly distributed throughout society in a free economy and a just democracy, stimulated by competition, which creates it in the simplest form.>

Creativity in it of itself cannot be drained; it can only be stifled at least that is my feeling.

Creativity can be stifled by various means; one of them is the imposed necessity of competing against people from the third world willing to perform your job for the fifth of your last salary. Plenty of programmers and engineers have bailed because there is just no sense in struggling to advance new ideas when 'low price always' is the governing paradigm. Creativity now occurs in a very narrow upper stratum, and rewards accrue to the members of that stratum; everyone else, however skilled, faces the downward pressure.

In addition I would suspect that the hoarding of availability to a particular job market would be a greater cause of inequality then the opening of markets. Which of course I still don t quite see how globalization leads to inequality especially amongst nations in which such inequality already existed.

Depends. Restriction of entry to any given job market will tend to stabilize, at the least, compensation within that market. This may or may not have anything to do with inequality per se. It may appear to increase inequality as between developed nations and developing nations, but that is a different concern - if it is one at all. The reality is that globalization primarily benefits a very narrow slice of the populace, hence the exponential increase in compensation afforded CEOs, the enormous earnings of some people in the financial services sector, and the like. Globalization decreases aggregate global inequality slightly, and exacerbates domestic inequality substantially, which, naturally, is the only inequality over which we can exercise any appreciable degree of control.

To a certain degree, all of these discussions are really apologetic in nature; they are intended to justify and legitimate present economic practices, not necessarily to arrive at an accurate picture of the nature of things. What would occur, hypothetically, when all the world came to participate in development and economic progress, and there were no longer any nations from which one could obtain virtual slave labour, or which could produce inexpensive consumer articles for resale at discount prices? Many proponents of globalization seem to write as though virtually everyone would enjoy a high standard of living, a decent wage, and so on, thanks to technology and the increase in the pace of innovation and commerce. The reality is that after a period of great economic churn, wage scales would adjust to the new structural features of the technological economy, leaving a distribution of wealth and poverty not at all dissimilar to the one that now prevails. A nation, by implementing a variety of measures designed to buffer its population from some of the pressures now unleashed by globalization, can ensure a rising standard of living for most of its people, as in the America of the postwar period up until the early 1970s. This process cannot, by the nature of the case, occur globally, because there will be nothing to restrain the levelling process; it is, simply, impossible both mathematically and in terms of human capital.>

I know that jobs we would consider lower eschelon work, drawing high school graduates and bachelors holders are highly sought after in the third world, attracting the top candidates in the respective industries.

A job that would pay 10.00 USD to a midwesterner, or 12.00 USD to coaster pays 1.90 USD in India and a little more than that in the Philipines.

The dissonance that causes me is nothing compared to this: the population of those countries is so great that companies can afford to hire graduate degree holders for a pittance, but for WAY more than the average wage in the region.

This is, naturally, fantastic news for the most priviledged and educated caste in India - they can afford to have Western comforts and live the American Dream, further insulating them from the brutal poverty in most of the country.

Here's the question I find most disconcerting:

Why can degreed professionals in India afford a mortgage, car payment, medical insurance and all of those Middle Class trappings doing an entry level job, but degreed American workers can't afford much more than apartment life and Wal-Mart on 5 times the wage?

And exactly who's getting rich off of this?>

Thanks, DWTNS

I hope that I haven't been too rancorous.

GIITTV,

I doubt that there exists a simple explanation for that reality. It would have to take into account differing levels of development, comparative levels of development in particular industries as between nations, the peculiarities of law and regulation - or the lack thereof - in each country, and so on. The only relatively clear element of that situation is the globalization typically imposes hardship upon the lower classes in the developed nations, while providing significant benefits to the educated professional in third-world nations, who are able to avail themselves of a sort of multiplier effect that results from the intersection of their rising wages (which remain meager only by Western standards) with the overall poverty of their nation.>