Finance houses knowingly sold unsecured debt. Pension funds were used by front companies to raise capital which then then disappeared leaving pensioners destitute. It was a criminal exercise. Finance capitalism is semi-criminal.
Socialism has never been unopposed. When I say never unopposed, I mean it has been opposed to the hilt and with every extreme of violence. It has only ever been a project at all because capitalism throughout its history becomes unbearable. Now it is becoming biologically unsustainable.
Dr. Loury, I'm wondering if you missed an opportunity to argue against wage freezes later in the debate when the topic of housing came up.
When your opponent described the lawyer shortage, my first thought was 'why has supply not kept up with demand?' I imagine the wages of these lawyers are set by some government body rather than the market. That body is not increasing those wages rapidly enough to attract more lawyers into the area, leading to shortages...
Correct me if I'm wrong. Loved the show as always!
A socialist society would ultimately rest on the consensus of working people not the ideological demands of a capitalist class. It is outrageous to say to hungry children “there is no such thing as a free lunch”. No worker in his heart of hearts thinks this is just or reasonable or inevitable.
I understand Wolff’s point about the marginalisation of socialist ideas. I can barely find any curiosity about them in these comments. And frankly Loury held to his free market assumptions as though they were da fide truths. Free market capitalism is an American religion, and Chicago school economics its dogmatic pseudo-science. Americans are like Midwich Cuckoos, utterly terrifying.
The ideal society is one that provides for the human development of all without creating unbearable resentment among particular individuals. Private property and private dividends should continue as a kind of allowance the majority of workers pay capitalists but the demands of capital should never be allowed to destabilise the social rights of the people. It is usually this that is the sticking point since the capitalist class regards itself as a ruling class and socialism as a kind of retirement, immediate or long term, of its rule.
For an interesting take on Socialism vs Capitalism in African countries, check out the interview of Jordan Peterson with Magatte Wade, and African woman entreprenuer.
That was a GREAT debate and discussion. I really appreciate this. The great LaJuan is truly a prize.
I don't know much about economics, but I'm curious if Marxism ceased being taught in economy classes as competition with Capitalism because Marxism has historically proven to be bad economics. In other words, in the medical field they may teach what was once thought to be good medicine but they don't treat it as an alternative to what we know today works better.
I'm interested in the thoughts of other people on the substack.
Not an economist either, but my understanding is that Marxism's fatal flaw is that it rely's on the Labor Theory of Value. In other words, Price and Labor input have a strong positive correlation. However, this has since been replaced with the Marginal Theory, that is the price of something is equal to the marginal cost.
If Labor Theory was correct, I could work really really hard on my mudpies and they should be worth the amount of labor I put in. But this is obviously not how we decide on prices. Marxism is flawed and Wolff is flawed because he values labor equally across any organization. The janitor and the CEO are not paid the same because the value they create is not the same.
Marxism left for history and sociology departments because the mainstream economists want mathematical proof and Marxism doesn't hold up. While historians and sociologists, at worst, seek ideology, so that is where Marx lives.
Production is collective. The value of any element of production, including wage goods, is determined by how much labour is embodied in it. If a human activity is not an element of production, the productive process as a whole, if it is not produced for a market, and if it is useless ( although use values and exchange values are different, in capitalism they are inextricably conflated) it is outside the productive process. But if it is within the productive process its value is determined by the labour time that goes into its production. A corollary of this is the labour already spent, dead labour, in the production of means of production is merely transmitted to means of production and is therefore not a source of new values; only living labour is. So as the ensemble of values grows, the ratio of transmitted values to new values rises and hence the rate of profit falls. Wage and salary differentials have no bearing on this. On the contrary this is a kind of nursery injunction offered in justification of capitalism’s palpable unfairness.
There is no room for imperialism as Loury admits. But capitalism is absolutely inseparable from imperialism if only because most of the world are not devotees of free market theology.
The flow of capital in search of misery never stops. Socialist societies defend themselves by setting limits to it. Milton Friedman is the dean of removing these limits by armed force.
A question worth asking is what sets the capitalist across the globe in search of cheaper and cheaper labour and why is this cheaper and cheaper labour always forthcoming no matter to what heights profits routinely rise, and why would workers somehow take comfort from this? I mean if cheap labour floods into the US, US capital floods out to cheaper labour right across the globe. I mean how does enormous and exponentially growing wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands result in cheaper and cheaper masses of labour? There would almost seem to be an inverse relation between the wealth of the few and the wealth of the many....or am I stating the obvious? It is marvellous that Loury can travel across the globe in a day, less terrific that your kid can’t afford to go to school.
I guess I'll plead ignorance. What you stated makes very little sense and is clouded with obscure language. Maybe I'm too stupid, but I get the feeling there is little sense in what you say.
I don't know what it means to be outside the productive process or living labor vs dead labor. I do know that if nobody is willing to buy something for more than it costs, the producer will not be able to sustain production and labor is just another cost. It's not special.
If you sell things for more than they cost in a competitive market the price equalises more or less at cost. This paradox is resolved by not paying the worker the full value of his labour and in fact by bidding down the price of labour. The surplus that results since it is not invested in the human development of workers is transmitted to the product in a new round of production and results in a new equalisation at cost and a new level of redundancy of labour, resolved by a new bidding down of wages.
The purpose of automation in capitalism is merely to enslave the worker. In socialism to liberate him from drudgery and expand the possibilities of leisure.
If this were not the case leisure would increase with ease of production because dead labour would represent a kind of social savings not a facilitator of and impediment to the rate of profit. ..capitalism, as Marx pointed out, is contradictory.
Glenn - Thanks for your thoughtful exchange with Mr. Wolff. One thing I found hard to understand was Mr. Wolff's repeated assertion that "elite" universities conspired to suppress Marxist studies. Perhaps NYU is not elite enough for Mr. Wolff, who seemed to need to repeat his association with several institutions as some sort of validation, but I took a class with Prof Ollman in the early 80s as part of a Masters program in International Politics. He was "out" as anyone could be about his sincerely held belief in Marxist / social policy preferences. He never persuaded me, but it was a good class and he was sincere in his conviction and certainly not afraid to teach his subject.
I think Wolf would regard the fact that universities tolerate Marxist academics as a form of Marcusian ‘repressive tolerance’. Marxists are never allowed to dominate any field in the way pluralists, libertarians or even Straussians do from time to time. If the sixties seemed to be an exception it was because in an era of realpolitik a proper understanding of Marxism was essential to a proper understanding of reality. Hoover and Coolidge ( and their now forgotten leading economists) were utter fantasists and so of course are the great champions of the market in our day. This loss of contact with reality is already having its consequences.
I paused at time 4:00 to comment on “winner take all.” I am pro-capitalist and view “competition” as Glenn does, (minus the PhD in economics). Self-interest and competition are powerful motivators for benevolence. I know this from experience.
Human society is in the widest sense about self-interest but so what? The self-interest of the baker ( as Adam Smith observed) is equally capable of forming combinations to raise the price of bread and extort the consumer.
I’d say that Austrian economics suffers from some of the same reasons for a lack of interest -- it doesn’t produce numbers in response to questions. It doesn’t matter it the numbers are basically made up and never checked retrospectively. Modern economics thrives because it can supply a credentialed expert to provide a number supporting virtually any political proposition.
Late 80’s at Berkeley, all the social sciences undergrad courses were *highly* aware of Marxism. The professors were a mix. Some were literal marxists in the political sense, more were Marxist-influenced (especially in methodology), and all were Marxist-aware, in the sense that they at least alluded to a Marxist (either politically or methodologically) analysis of what they were teaching. It was very stimulating for a then-libertarian.
My guess is that Wolff's views about the vocational unpopularity of Marxist economists arose from Paul Sweezy's personal history. Glenn's view about Marxism and contemporary "Marxist" economists is probably accurate. The influence of Marx, Gramsci, Fanon, and the whole phalanx of socialists has grown out of campus Left from the late 60's -- New Left Review; SDS; Mother Jones; Telos; Radical America; and, Studies on the Left.
While Wolff claims his educational experience transpired in a 'liberal' desert, unpopulated from Marxists, I experienced the exact opposite at a Big 8 and a B10 school which I attended for 9 years. Almost every historian under whom I studied embraced Marxist constructs, actively or passively. The ideological and methodological influences arose from work of EP Thompson, WA Williams, Harvey Goldberg, H.Marcuse, Eric Hobsbawm, Robert Heilbroner, Jesse Lemish, Eric Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, Gabriel Kolko and Eugene Genovese. None were formal “economists,” but their influences are felt today through CRT.
Now, related to the discussion between Glenn and Wolff, I think Glenn should have made his case more forcefully by referring to Jordan Peterson’s explication of “Socialist Terror” as applied by Stalin. Wolff and other leftists always discount the number of humans who Mao, Stalin, and Castro murdered as they experimented with bastardized forms of socialist organization.
I would have challenged Wolff’s fuzzy defense of socialist misallocation of resources. How can anyone assume there is an inherent, ineluctable desire for a socialist to use scare resources and capital in a conscientious manner? With no personal stake in the outcome for any decision, socialist managers do not endure consequential penalties for errors or corruption. The case of Lysenko is tragically constructive.
By contrast, at least, capitalists do suffer directly from their poor decisions. Examples abound. My favorite How many pension fund managers will bail and save YOUR retirement fund’s capital if a recession looms? How many of the managers will even experience a decline in their personal income for losing billions of fund assets? Socialist accountability? No more jokes. Your retirement account has no value for virtue signaling.
WOW, you can sure name drop. Looked in vain for an argument except of course the usual banalities about Stalin. The point about pension fund managers seemed to argue the opposite case to yours.
Hedge funds wildly speculated on the price of assets. The public and homeowners were left holding the baby. It was a conspiracy to defraud small investors. A real conspiracy! People should have gone to jail.
Loury remarks that this was cleverly handled by the fed ( or words to that effect). But I wonder why you did not like my other posts. Did they have greater plausible deniability for you?
And to clarify, most of what was criminal in the GFC was borrowers lying on their mortgage applications and brokers encouraging it. Wall Street for the most part didn't seem to do anything criminal, they were just reckless and overconfident. The real injustice were the bailouts of the major banks. The bankers got to have their cake and eat it too.
The fact is pension funds became outright instruments of theft with the connivance of the capitalist state and its federal reserve. The monopoly power of capital had no corrective at all. It was purely predatory on people who had minuscule capitals or none at all. The holocaust is a bizarre interpolation and frankly a bit obscene. The identification of socialism with Stalin IS banal. I mean it is so commonplace I am supposed to be swayed to a point of view simply by its utterance.
Wolff's view that we in the US have not had an open, real conversation about capitalism is not accurate. Examples--> all the articles/books from Monthly Review Press: Baron and Sweezy's "Monopoly Capital," or Harry Magdoff's, "The Age of Imperialism." Or, consider William A. William's, “The Great Evasion: An Essay on the Contemporary Relevance of Karl Marx and on the Wisdom of Admitting the Heretic into the Dialogue about America's Future” (1964-Quadrangle Books).
Wolff claims the viability of any system of social organization is measured by how the “needs” for food, clothing and shelter are met. Given the thousands folks who are homeless or who live in tents, Wolff criticizes capitalism for failing to meet their basic “needs.” Unsaid by necessity, Wolff ignores the fundamental and necessary role of “price” in capitalism. By so doing, Wolff denies the fundamentals of the economics discipline: Scarcity forces every society to make choices about both production and distribution.
To meet the “needs” of shelter, for example, how many housing units should be built in any one location? How large should they be? What materials should be used? And, perhaps, most important -- will pay for the construction? Who will decide what answers are appropriate to answer these questions?
How will the public planners (or the local ‘soviet’) decide? What if there are errors or cost over-runs? Who will pay for bureaucratic failures? Who will pay for recurring maintenance and cleaning? And, who will establish the rules of habitation – drug use, parties, pets, public inspection/accountability, etc.? Who will manage compliance? How will public officers “enforce” socialist behavioral patterns and what shall be done with those who violate behavioral or cultural standards? Surely, few would condone rampant drug abuse, though many explain that is why people reject public shelters in favor of the privacy that sidewalk tents provide.
Under the hallmark of Socialist Equity, what limits, if any, should be placed on the cost of public housing or transportation? Why would any workers’ collective ever vote to limit each person’s transportation choice from these alternatives: Porsche, Ford F-150, Suburban, Ferrari, Corvette, Prius, Tesla, or Lamborghini? Or, why would any worker choose to have the collective build him/her a 2 bdrm/2 bath house when they could check the box on their housing voucher to build a 4 bdrm/3 bath alternative? How do socialist utopians make decisions without considering cost and price?
IMO, if Wolff is exemplary of other Marxist economists they really have nothing to offer beyond utopian non-sense.
Town planners charged by governments answerable to the electorate. I really don’t see the problem. None of it will get done if you leave it in private hands ( after all the business of business is profit not town planning or any kind of planning) . I suppose it is complicated by the extreme corruption of the US electoral system. But otherwise workers are sensible people capable when genuinely enfranchised of judging between alternatives.
I mean there are entire university departments devoted to the study of successful and unsuccessful public housing across the globe. It’s simply a matter of intellectual honesty and reason unless some pecuniary or empire -building bureaucratic motive intrudes, but the one is just as bad as the other and a well designed representative system can deal with both. There is no evidence that confining decisions about the provision of people’s vital needs to boardrooms is improving anyone’s lives except major shareholders’. Americans are being cheated of their democratic decision making.
Finance houses knowingly sold unsecured debt. Pension funds were used by front companies to raise capital which then then disappeared leaving pensioners destitute. It was a criminal exercise. Finance capitalism is semi-criminal.
Vulgar pride evinced herein of a blinkered intelligentsia, cosseted in their blood soaked echo chamber
Socialism has never been unopposed. When I say never unopposed, I mean it has been opposed to the hilt and with every extreme of violence. It has only ever been a project at all because capitalism throughout its history becomes unbearable. Now it is becoming biologically unsustainable.
Dr. Loury, I'm wondering if you missed an opportunity to argue against wage freezes later in the debate when the topic of housing came up.
When your opponent described the lawyer shortage, my first thought was 'why has supply not kept up with demand?' I imagine the wages of these lawyers are set by some government body rather than the market. That body is not increasing those wages rapidly enough to attract more lawyers into the area, leading to shortages...
Correct me if I'm wrong. Loved the show as always!
There is no incentive for lawyers to defend the propertyless , and no socialist consensus to change it. It is a winner takes all system.
A socialist society would ultimately rest on the consensus of working people not the ideological demands of a capitalist class. It is outrageous to say to hungry children “there is no such thing as a free lunch”. No worker in his heart of hearts thinks this is just or reasonable or inevitable.
I understand Wolff’s point about the marginalisation of socialist ideas. I can barely find any curiosity about them in these comments. And frankly Loury held to his free market assumptions as though they were da fide truths. Free market capitalism is an American religion, and Chicago school economics its dogmatic pseudo-science. Americans are like Midwich Cuckoos, utterly terrifying.
The Civil List in Britain performs this function for the aristocracy.
The above is a reply to Steve P, hope he gets it.
The ideal society is one that provides for the human development of all without creating unbearable resentment among particular individuals. Private property and private dividends should continue as a kind of allowance the majority of workers pay capitalists but the demands of capital should never be allowed to destabilise the social rights of the people. It is usually this that is the sticking point since the capitalist class regards itself as a ruling class and socialism as a kind of retirement, immediate or long term, of its rule.
For an interesting take on Socialism vs Capitalism in African countries, check out the interview of Jordan Peterson with Magatte Wade, and African woman entreprenuer.
For an interesting take on colonialism see Franz Fanon.
A great interview with an African woman entrepreneur:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o74rQmLRqtA
That was a GREAT debate and discussion. I really appreciate this. The great LaJuan is truly a prize.
I don't know much about economics, but I'm curious if Marxism ceased being taught in economy classes as competition with Capitalism because Marxism has historically proven to be bad economics. In other words, in the medical field they may teach what was once thought to be good medicine but they don't treat it as an alternative to what we know today works better.
I'm interested in the thoughts of other people on the substack.
Thank you all!
Marxism is inseparable from economics, “classical “ economics is inseparable from Dickensianism.
You can see the questions forming in Lajuan’s mind.
Historically there could not be a worse economics than laissez faire capitalism.
Not an economist either, but my understanding is that Marxism's fatal flaw is that it rely's on the Labor Theory of Value. In other words, Price and Labor input have a strong positive correlation. However, this has since been replaced with the Marginal Theory, that is the price of something is equal to the marginal cost.
If Labor Theory was correct, I could work really really hard on my mudpies and they should be worth the amount of labor I put in. But this is obviously not how we decide on prices. Marxism is flawed and Wolff is flawed because he values labor equally across any organization. The janitor and the CEO are not paid the same because the value they create is not the same.
Marxism left for history and sociology departments because the mainstream economists want mathematical proof and Marxism doesn't hold up. While historians and sociologists, at worst, seek ideology, so that is where Marx lives.
Production is collective. The value of any element of production, including wage goods, is determined by how much labour is embodied in it. If a human activity is not an element of production, the productive process as a whole, if it is not produced for a market, and if it is useless ( although use values and exchange values are different, in capitalism they are inextricably conflated) it is outside the productive process. But if it is within the productive process its value is determined by the labour time that goes into its production. A corollary of this is the labour already spent, dead labour, in the production of means of production is merely transmitted to means of production and is therefore not a source of new values; only living labour is. So as the ensemble of values grows, the ratio of transmitted values to new values rises and hence the rate of profit falls. Wage and salary differentials have no bearing on this. On the contrary this is a kind of nursery injunction offered in justification of capitalism’s palpable unfairness.
With Wolff I take great pleasure in seeing this object lesson in economics work itself out on the steps of Congress.
The spectacle of US electoral politics is black humour but a great laugh.
There is no room for imperialism as Loury admits. But capitalism is absolutely inseparable from imperialism if only because most of the world are not devotees of free market theology.
The flow of capital in search of misery never stops. Socialist societies defend themselves by setting limits to it. Milton Friedman is the dean of removing these limits by armed force.
There is enormous room for humane redistribution right across the planet.
A question worth asking is what sets the capitalist across the globe in search of cheaper and cheaper labour and why is this cheaper and cheaper labour always forthcoming no matter to what heights profits routinely rise, and why would workers somehow take comfort from this? I mean if cheap labour floods into the US, US capital floods out to cheaper labour right across the globe. I mean how does enormous and exponentially growing wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands result in cheaper and cheaper masses of labour? There would almost seem to be an inverse relation between the wealth of the few and the wealth of the many....or am I stating the obvious? It is marvellous that Loury can travel across the globe in a day, less terrific that your kid can’t afford to go to school.
I guess I'll plead ignorance. What you stated makes very little sense and is clouded with obscure language. Maybe I'm too stupid, but I get the feeling there is little sense in what you say.
I don't know what it means to be outside the productive process or living labor vs dead labor. I do know that if nobody is willing to buy something for more than it costs, the producer will not be able to sustain production and labor is just another cost. It's not special.
If you sell things for more than they cost in a competitive market the price equalises more or less at cost. This paradox is resolved by not paying the worker the full value of his labour and in fact by bidding down the price of labour. The surplus that results since it is not invested in the human development of workers is transmitted to the product in a new round of production and results in a new equalisation at cost and a new level of redundancy of labour, resolved by a new bidding down of wages.
The purpose of automation in capitalism is merely to enslave the worker. In socialism to liberate him from drudgery and expand the possibilities of leisure.
If this were not the case leisure would increase with ease of production because dead labour would represent a kind of social savings not a facilitator of and impediment to the rate of profit. ..capitalism, as Marx pointed out, is contradictory.
I’m not trying to sell you anything. If you’re too ‘ignorant’ to engage, you’re too ignorant to engage.
Only the US state is breaking down. In the face of evidence to the contrary you insist US style capitalism works.
Glenn - Thanks for your thoughtful exchange with Mr. Wolff. One thing I found hard to understand was Mr. Wolff's repeated assertion that "elite" universities conspired to suppress Marxist studies. Perhaps NYU is not elite enough for Mr. Wolff, who seemed to need to repeat his association with several institutions as some sort of validation, but I took a class with Prof Ollman in the early 80s as part of a Masters program in International Politics. He was "out" as anyone could be about his sincerely held belief in Marxist / social policy preferences. He never persuaded me, but it was a good class and he was sincere in his conviction and certainly not afraid to teach his subject.
I think it is actually Dr. Wolff.
Or perhaps Big, Bad lol.
I think Wolf would regard the fact that universities tolerate Marxist academics as a form of Marcusian ‘repressive tolerance’. Marxists are never allowed to dominate any field in the way pluralists, libertarians or even Straussians do from time to time. If the sixties seemed to be an exception it was because in an era of realpolitik a proper understanding of Marxism was essential to a proper understanding of reality. Hoover and Coolidge ( and their now forgotten leading economists) were utter fantasists and so of course are the great champions of the market in our day. This loss of contact with reality is already having its consequences.
I paused at time 4:00 to comment on “winner take all.” I am pro-capitalist and view “competition” as Glenn does, (minus the PhD in economics). Self-interest and competition are powerful motivators for benevolence. I know this from experience.
No they’re not, they’re powerful motivators for sucking up and self-deception.
How so?
Well, surely that’s obvious. I’d be more interested in how they foster benevolence.
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
Capitalism motivates us to serve one another. It's result is benevolence, it's motivation self interest.
Human society is in the widest sense about self-interest but so what? The self-interest of the baker ( as Adam Smith observed) is equally capable of forming combinations to raise the price of bread and extort the consumer.
Yes, but competition is the curb on exploitation. Why is food so cheap at the grocery store? They would raise prices if they could, but they can't.
I’d say that Austrian economics suffers from some of the same reasons for a lack of interest -- it doesn’t produce numbers in response to questions. It doesn’t matter it the numbers are basically made up and never checked retrospectively. Modern economics thrives because it can supply a credentialed expert to provide a number supporting virtually any political proposition.
Another intelligent remark.
Late 80’s at Berkeley, all the social sciences undergrad courses were *highly* aware of Marxism. The professors were a mix. Some were literal marxists in the political sense, more were Marxist-influenced (especially in methodology), and all were Marxist-aware, in the sense that they at least alluded to a Marxist (either politically or methodologically) analysis of what they were teaching. It was very stimulating for a then-libertarian.
Some intelligent remarks appear in the rusty conservative pan.
My guess is that Wolff's views about the vocational unpopularity of Marxist economists arose from Paul Sweezy's personal history. Glenn's view about Marxism and contemporary "Marxist" economists is probably accurate. The influence of Marx, Gramsci, Fanon, and the whole phalanx of socialists has grown out of campus Left from the late 60's -- New Left Review; SDS; Mother Jones; Telos; Radical America; and, Studies on the Left.
While Wolff claims his educational experience transpired in a 'liberal' desert, unpopulated from Marxists, I experienced the exact opposite at a Big 8 and a B10 school which I attended for 9 years. Almost every historian under whom I studied embraced Marxist constructs, actively or passively. The ideological and methodological influences arose from work of EP Thompson, WA Williams, Harvey Goldberg, H.Marcuse, Eric Hobsbawm, Robert Heilbroner, Jesse Lemish, Eric Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, Gabriel Kolko and Eugene Genovese. None were formal “economists,” but their influences are felt today through CRT.
Now, related to the discussion between Glenn and Wolff, I think Glenn should have made his case more forcefully by referring to Jordan Peterson’s explication of “Socialist Terror” as applied by Stalin. Wolff and other leftists always discount the number of humans who Mao, Stalin, and Castro murdered as they experimented with bastardized forms of socialist organization.
I would have challenged Wolff’s fuzzy defense of socialist misallocation of resources. How can anyone assume there is an inherent, ineluctable desire for a socialist to use scare resources and capital in a conscientious manner? With no personal stake in the outcome for any decision, socialist managers do not endure consequential penalties for errors or corruption. The case of Lysenko is tragically constructive.
By contrast, at least, capitalists do suffer directly from their poor decisions. Examples abound. My favorite How many pension fund managers will bail and save YOUR retirement fund’s capital if a recession looms? How many of the managers will even experience a decline in their personal income for losing billions of fund assets? Socialist accountability? No more jokes. Your retirement account has no value for virtue signaling.
(part 2, later)
WOW, you can sure name drop. Looked in vain for an argument except of course the usual banalities about Stalin. The point about pension fund managers seemed to argue the opposite case to yours.
a. Perhaps a refresher course in economics might help you.
b. "Banalities about Stalin" ? And your assessment of The Holocaust---banal as well?
Hedge funds wildly speculated on the price of assets. The public and homeowners were left holding the baby. It was a conspiracy to defraud small investors. A real conspiracy! People should have gone to jail.
You know as well as I do the criminals responsible for the GFC were bailed out at the expense of small investors and home owners.
This is actually your one reasonable point in all your posts on this article.
Loury remarks that this was cleverly handled by the fed ( or words to that effect). But I wonder why you did not like my other posts. Did they have greater plausible deniability for you?
And to clarify, most of what was criminal in the GFC was borrowers lying on their mortgage applications and brokers encouraging it. Wall Street for the most part didn't seem to do anything criminal, they were just reckless and overconfident. The real injustice were the bailouts of the major banks. The bankers got to have their cake and eat it too.
A lot of your other posts seemed to just glibly dismiss the other person's argument rather than engage with what they were actually saying.
The fact is pension funds became outright instruments of theft with the connivance of the capitalist state and its federal reserve. The monopoly power of capital had no corrective at all. It was purely predatory on people who had minuscule capitals or none at all. The holocaust is a bizarre interpolation and frankly a bit obscene. The identification of socialism with Stalin IS banal. I mean it is so commonplace I am supposed to be swayed to a point of view simply by its utterance.
DF -> "The fact is pension funds became outright instruments of theft with the connivance of the capitalist state and its federal reserve."
TA ->What factual evidence do you use to support that silly statement?
How are public pension funds "instruments of theft," as workers contribute to their pension funds?
DF -> "The monopoly power of capital had no corrective at all. It was purely predatory on people who had minuscule capitals or none at all"
TA -> What monopoly power are you talking about? Pension funds own thousands of diversified assets.
How are pension funds "purely predatory" ? Who were the victims and how, precisely, were they 'victimized' ?
I am done with your non-sense. Your effort to become a left-wing troll is not compelling.
Wolff's view that we in the US have not had an open, real conversation about capitalism is not accurate. Examples--> all the articles/books from Monthly Review Press: Baron and Sweezy's "Monopoly Capital," or Harry Magdoff's, "The Age of Imperialism." Or, consider William A. William's, “The Great Evasion: An Essay on the Contemporary Relevance of Karl Marx and on the Wisdom of Admitting the Heretic into the Dialogue about America's Future” (1964-Quadrangle Books).
Wolff claims the viability of any system of social organization is measured by how the “needs” for food, clothing and shelter are met. Given the thousands folks who are homeless or who live in tents, Wolff criticizes capitalism for failing to meet their basic “needs.” Unsaid by necessity, Wolff ignores the fundamental and necessary role of “price” in capitalism. By so doing, Wolff denies the fundamentals of the economics discipline: Scarcity forces every society to make choices about both production and distribution.
To meet the “needs” of shelter, for example, how many housing units should be built in any one location? How large should they be? What materials should be used? And, perhaps, most important -- will pay for the construction? Who will decide what answers are appropriate to answer these questions?
How will the public planners (or the local ‘soviet’) decide? What if there are errors or cost over-runs? Who will pay for bureaucratic failures? Who will pay for recurring maintenance and cleaning? And, who will establish the rules of habitation – drug use, parties, pets, public inspection/accountability, etc.? Who will manage compliance? How will public officers “enforce” socialist behavioral patterns and what shall be done with those who violate behavioral or cultural standards? Surely, few would condone rampant drug abuse, though many explain that is why people reject public shelters in favor of the privacy that sidewalk tents provide.
Under the hallmark of Socialist Equity, what limits, if any, should be placed on the cost of public housing or transportation? Why would any workers’ collective ever vote to limit each person’s transportation choice from these alternatives: Porsche, Ford F-150, Suburban, Ferrari, Corvette, Prius, Tesla, or Lamborghini? Or, why would any worker choose to have the collective build him/her a 2 bdrm/2 bath house when they could check the box on their housing voucher to build a 4 bdrm/3 bath alternative? How do socialist utopians make decisions without considering cost and price?
IMO, if Wolff is exemplary of other Marxist economists they really have nothing to offer beyond utopian non-sense.
Town planners charged by governments answerable to the electorate. I really don’t see the problem. None of it will get done if you leave it in private hands ( after all the business of business is profit not town planning or any kind of planning) . I suppose it is complicated by the extreme corruption of the US electoral system. But otherwise workers are sensible people capable when genuinely enfranchised of judging between alternatives.
I mean there are entire university departments devoted to the study of successful and unsuccessful public housing across the globe. It’s simply a matter of intellectual honesty and reason unless some pecuniary or empire -building bureaucratic motive intrudes, but the one is just as bad as the other and a well designed representative system can deal with both. There is no evidence that confining decisions about the provision of people’s vital needs to boardrooms is improving anyone’s lives except major shareholders’. Americans are being cheated of their democratic decision making.