You Can’t Stay in the EU or Single Market And Be For Labour’s Manifesto

The correct answer is “They can’t stay in in EU, and have Germany run your trade.” And there is a large difference between neoliberal and ultra-neoliberal. On the left: making nationalist demands should not be in the driver’s seat, and on the right: give way to another countries nationalist demands.

Ah, that kinder, gentler neoliberalism that we hear so much about.

To me that unicorn resembles very much the one where free trade is such a great concept but that we need to work on distribution of the gains a little better. I hate to be the one to break it to you but the only reason all of those very rich donors jumped behind the neoliberal project (and put all that funding into their coin operated economist employees and their research) was because they didn’t like the former distribution status quo and wanted to change it to their advantage. A greater slice of the pie for the very rich and powerful is a feature not a bug.

That is neoliberalism’s raison d’&ecirctre.

Will

> Ah, that kinder, gentler neoliberalism that we hear so much about.

Better than Smoot-Hawley that you are preaching.

@Stirling Newberry,

Many threads ago, you said that the Cambodians had a free choice about whether to be bombed or not during the Nixon-Kissinger period. ( I imagine with enough time and brute-force iron-butt research I could find your comment to that effect). I remember asking if you could explain to us what free choice the Cambodians had in being bombed. You never did get back to me on that.

Do you suppose you could get back to me on that?

Sorry but this is really misguided. In the context of southern Europe, anti-EU sentiment is absolutely justified and countries like Greece (and arguably Spain, Italy and possibly others) would almost certainly be better off outside.

In the context of the UK, this is absrud. In practice there is no robust mechanism for EU diktats other than the Euro. The deal the UK was getting — keeping its sovereign currency while keeping access to the single market and freedom of movement — was a good one for the UK overall, and without the bias against working people that was inherent in the EU austerity regime.

UK is absolutely the wrong test-case for the anti-EU movement and it will end up damaging it badly.

This reminds me of Dani Rodrik’s trilemma.

Sometimes simple and bold ideas help us see more clearly a complex reality that requires nuanced approaches. I have an “impossibility theorem” for the global economy that is like that. It says that democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration are mutually incompatible: we can combine any two of the three, but never have all three simultaneously and in full.

http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/06/the-inescapable.html

Basically, if you have deep economic integration within a nation-state context, Rodrik says you end up with something like a gold standard (or in the case of Europe, the Euro). If you have globalization and democracy, you would have world government something we are very far from. Rodrik himself favors national sovereignty and democracy or what he calls a Bretton Woods compromise.

Personally, I think globalization is a deadend because the world is falling apart due to overpopulation, climate change, resource overuse, pollution, and increased political instability. We need to start repatriating our industrial base and supply chains and moving to general self-sustainability. It may seem silly now to worry that your underwear and socks come from China or your clothes from Vietnam or Bangladesh, but it will hit very close to home in a few decades when some of these countries functionally cease to exist or, as with China, will be caught up in their own sustainability issues.

OTB . . . since avoiding World War Three is always worth considering, here is an article about how the Clintonites are working their hardest to make World War Three happen. Maybe the rest of us can figure out how to run the Clintonite War Engine backwards . . .

The first paragraph of the article goes like this . . .

“This is your fault, Clinton Democrats. You created this, and if our species is plunged into a new world war or extinction via nuclear holocaust, it will be your fault. You knuckle-dragging, vagina hat-wearing McCarthyite morons made this happen.”

And it just gets better from there.

Here is the link. https://counterpropa.com/inches-new-world-war-clintonists-blame/

It was the last time you tried to repeal a basic law of economics – so yes we will use it again.

You still have not refuted it…

There’s your problem.

To paraphrase the inimitable Captain Barbossa “These economic laws are more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual laws.” :p

Will

By the time of Smoot-Hawley the economy had gone full emotional. What was needed were confidence-inspiring action of the part of leadership. Instead, they got economists and political leaders squabbling over Smoot-Hawley.

PS: Principles I could swallow. Laws? Not so much.

OK, what’s the Smoot-Hawley principle of economics? If I understand it correctly, it’s the belief that tariffs damage the national economy, and refers to the tariffs passed in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. My understanding is the same that Badtux pointed out above: tariffs in fact had very little to do with causing or intensifying the Depression, so invoking it is irrelevant.

On tariffs generally, neither the U.S. nor virtually any other nation industrialized without the aid of tariffs. On how they work, I’ve been influenced by Ha-Joon Chang’s Bad Samaritans. Nor should the overall “economy” necessarily be the determining factor in making decisions on resource allocation. As Greece is the latest country to demonstrate, not having a certain amount of independence on necessities puts a country at great risk. Ian has written several posts on this. France, for example, is justified in maintaining the ability to feed its own population, regardless of what might be gained from living on cheap imported food. And there’s also the issue of who gains from tariffs. So as Dean Baker keeps pointing out, throwing the working class into competition with workers in third world countries while retaining so-called intellectual property laws and licensing requirements favoring native professionals is very good for the rich, but not so much for the rest of us. Overall, I suspect a country with a generally prosperous population is even economically better off than one with a destitute population ruled over by a small fabulously wealthy class.

The size of a large industrial economy and the number of variables is immense.

Not to mention the impossibility of identifying all those variables and the effects each variable has on every other respective variable unidentified and/or unidentified.

Economics, for that reason, is mostly Guess Work based on Highly Debatable Assumptions.

It’s Creative — I’ll give it that and it serves the purpose of legitimating this Crappy System that’s destroying the Planet. And like Religion, it cements you like glue to the Current System in that it portends that its theories collectively comprise all there is and can be and are therefore immutable & absolute.

If you’re indoctrinated to believe that, and most if not all are, then sure, that’s all there ever will be if you’re the ones who elected yourselves The Creators and The Creative Class.

Donald Trump is a perfect example. He thinks he’s Great, therefore he is and before long that belief will become immutable & absolute law and when it does, you’ll have no choice but to believe it too, or else suffer the consequences.

Very amusing to see those who can’t reconcile themselves to their inability to get perfect results attack someone who understands what a true science looks like.

Stirling: “Again, I can not help if you don’t understand the math. It is your fault if you do not crack the books.”

OK….. Ummm, just for the sake of argument let’s assume that I have a decent enough grasp of math to where that’s not the underlying issue here. :p

Could it possibly be, again just for the sake of argument, that one of us doesn’t really understand the full meaning and context of the term “scientific law”? That maybe one of us has a background where he hasn’t been exposed to the level of rigor that is mandatory for assigning this term?

And understand that I even go back and forth on whether I even qualify as a true scientist or not. A true applied scientist yes. And at times a pure researcher. And even so I have to admit that the level of evidence needed to assign something to the position of “scientific law” is absolutely daunting.

Stirling can you tell me how many times the 1st Law of Thermodynamics has been contradicted in a lab setting? Or the 2nd? Or even the 3rd?

In all of my work in and around the lab I have never seen an instance where any of these laws have been violated. I’ve never even heard of such a case. Ever. As one of my old professors sagely told me, if it had ever been contradicted then it wouldn’t be a law now would it?

I’m not sure that you understand what that term really encompasses in a scientific or engineering field.

Will

Anytime somebody brings up Smoot-Hawley and implies and/or-directly-states it to be a meaningful factor in the ’29 depression you are talking to an/a; 1] idiot, 2] tool, 3] idiotic tool, this is particularly true if the guy is an economist* [which are the guys who didn’t have the chops to get into business school] or an indoctrinated fool of the satanic doctrine*.

As badtux states above and I have shown in a lengthy comment here before, if Smoot-Hawley stopped 100% of trade it would have effected only 7% of the economy, however, by the numbers, Smoot-Hawley only could have effected 25%** of the 7% or 1.75% of GDP. And if there were such a thing as an honest economics profession, the decline of trade would be widely understood to be a decline in demand. Incidentally, the Chinese use high tariffs to steal whole industries, for example, the auto parts industry.

===========================

*Economists, [who receive a Bachelor of Art degree, NOT Science] are as akin to science as astrologist are akin to astronomers. As proof of economists fraudulent practice, for decades economists petitioned the Nobel Committee for a Nobel Prize. These self serving economists were always turned away empty handed. Finally, after being rejected for the umpteenth time, the fraudulent doctrinaires created a “nobel prize” out of thin air to sell their fiendish dogma that has enslaved so much of humanity and despoiled our earth. There is no “Nobel Prize” in economics. Every one who claims to to have “won” a “Nobel Prize” in economics is a fraud.

**Peter Temin an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology notes that “exports were 7 percent of GNP in 1929, they fell by 1.5 percent of 1929 GNP in the next two years, real GNP fell over 15 percent in these same years and the fall was offset by the increase in domestic demand from tariff. He concludes that contrary the popular argument, contractionary effect of the tariff was small. (Temin, P. 1989. Lessons from the Great Depression, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass)[18]”

**Milton Friedman’s Smoot-Hawley Lie:
http://www.magic-city-news.com/Paul_Streitz_67/Milton_Friedman_s_Smoot-Hawley_Lie_printer13239.shtml

Do flaccid scientists write all those books to try and prove how hard they are?

> OK….. Ummm, just for the sake of argument let’s assume that I have a decent enough grasp of math to where that’s not the underlying issue here. :p

OK just for the sake argument – what the proof of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem – in so simple even high student can do it.

I find it interesting that a supposedly reputable economist would come here and a) launch a bunch of personal attacks, and b) do so without ever addressing the actual mathematical argument, which is that in the aftermath of Smoot-Hawley international trade declined far *less* than economic activity in toto, meaning that it’s absolutely mathematically impossible that Smoot-Hawley is responsible for the collapse in economic activity that typified 1930-1932. The only thing you can accurately say about Smoot-Hawley is that it did not end the Great Depression (because, duh). The numbers aren’t there to say that it made the Great Depression worse because trade didn’t collapse the way the rest of the economy did in the next two years, and furthermore, overall demand worldwide collapsed far faster than international trade did.

Anybody who had a shred of integrity would at that point, having seen that simple arithmetic (hey, not even high school Algebra required!), back off from the notion that Smoot-Hawley somehow “caused” the Great Depression or even “worsened” the Great Depression. At best you can say “it didn’t cure the Great Depression”. Yet here we have supposedly reputable people who a) don’t address the numbers, and instead b) attack the people who bring up the numbers.

Odd, how some people become so invested in their religious beliefs that they attack any data that contradicts those beliefs. Whether those people are creationists or neoliberal economists.

Or lefties or righties in general, for that matter.

Modern economics is propaganda, a con. Its purpose is to justify the rich and elites’ looting of everyone else.

Modern economics is like voodoo. I do not need to read to umpteen books of voodoo to understand the concept. Reading umpteen books on voodoo is not going to change it into something else.

I think invoking Gödel is funny because economic theory is so illogical. You see the economy is a subset of our society’s activities, and it can not be understood without reference to that society because that society not only determines what it is but also how ultimately it should be measured, that is in social, not economic terms. But modern economics blurs, fakes, or simply ignores this relationship. It treats the economy as an independent subject of investigation when it is no such thing. Even more, it massively oversimplifies the economy so that it can be modelled but so poorly that the models never conform to reality. Yet the blank arrogance of modern economics is such that when this happens, which is often, the failure is ascribed to reality and not the model.

There are useful ways of measuring the economy in social terms. So I am not saying that economics is inherently false and dishonest, but the varieties peddled during the last 80 to 90 years certainly are. I have said before, but Aristotle 23 centuries ago in his Nicomachean Ethics was much nearer the mark in how he related the polis/society to ethics/morality and from there to the economy, or to put it another way: society, how we are to act in society, and the economy as one group of social activities.

@Stirling

It was the last time you tried to repeal a basic law of economics – so yes we will use it again.

You mean, like Say’s?

I really have little idea what Stirling Newberry is being so high-handed about. “the argument does hold up, because it is total demand that matters” Say what? What argument? Total demand matters to what? And over what domain is the total to be totalled?

I would say Adam Smith came close to a basic economic truth when he identified the division of labor with productivity. It misses a lot, and misconstrued more than a bit, but the idea that we need social cooperation, specialisation and trade is there. Autarky is pretty much a non-starter.

That said, the classical dogma that posits free trade as universal good for every country in every circumstance is rubbish. Ricardo? Rubbish.

Here is the thing about Smoot-Hawley: The Republican Party coalition that had dominated U.S. national politics since the mid-1890’s had been built in large part on the success of protective tariffs. McKinley, elected President in 1896 was strongly identified with a protective tariff. They worked to the advantage of the U.S. and the disadvantage of the preceding dominant economic power, Britain. A protective tariff transferred economic rents from British industry to the U.S. government and American industry, helping to make America’s rapid industrialization financially feasible.

By the 1920’s, the U.S. was the dominant manufacturing power, well ahead of even the advanced European economies in a broad range of emerging industries. The U.S. could not benefit from a protective tariff. It was a cargo cult mentality that pushed Smoot-Hawley in 1930, cargo cult combined with nostalgia for the policy success that had created a political alignment that was at that moment crashing.

Smoot-Hawley would have no practical consequence as a policy, but it would have a huge consequence as a symbol and an object lesson in favor of a policy of expansive trade, led by a dominant and indeed hegemonic economic and financial power. A new political alignment would carry free trade and a managed currency and economy forward from 1930 as the earlier alignment carried protective tariffs and a gold standard from the 1890’s.

Many prominent industrialists opposed Smoot-Hawley at the time, in 1930, recognizing that it made no sense in the circumstances of American industrial dominance.

The first and last lesson in economics is that all depends on particular circumstances and context. There are no universal imperatives, or principles if you conceive of economic laws, so-called, as policy imperatives. Should policy attempt to run a deficit of accumulate a deficit? It depends. Should the minimum wage be increased? It depends.

Charlie, Say’s law is a good example. It keeps showing up in some new incarnation or branding everytime reality debunks it: Say’s law, supply side economics, trickle down economics, Reaganomics, job creators, etc.

Webstir, I have not read a lot of Steve Keen. He does a reasonably good job at what he does, but he does not seem to ask the larger questions about why have one kind of economy instead of another.

Personally, I am glad that we have gotten this far in the discussion without anyone invoking a progressive economic cult like MMT.

After more than forty years it’s obvious that the discussions inside neoliberal think tanks didn’t revolve around proof of concept. They revolved around strategy. Interesting how some people just ‘know’ they’re right, especially when the thing they’re supporting will benefit them first and most. Negative impacts for the majority get rationalized away.

I know a few tech types who thought that way. At least until the H1B replaced them. Suddenly they wanted to ‘make America great again’.

Will, you said:
“It was obvious after about my 2nd or 3rd post that nothing constructive was going to come of it.” Which is why my first reply to the Peter types always comes swinging for the jaw. After the shot he took on Ian’s last post, I don’t think he’ll come sniffing around my comments anytime soon.

@Badtux,

Thank you for being able to point out the deceit involved in citing “Smoot-Hawley” as the cause of anything. I have long suspected that Smoot-Hawley is a bright shiny squirrel object which the Free Trade Hasbarists haul out to divert the argument. So thank you for having the background to demonstrate that fact.

I remember a while ago here when proFESSor Stirling Newberry first stated that the Cambodians had a choice in whether to be bombed or not and they chose to be bombed. I (and someone else too) asked proFESSor Newberry to explain how the Cambodians did that. After he stayed silent, I recounted in briefest form the story that Kurt Vonnegut once wrote about Nobel Prize Winning physicist Irving Langmuir. Vonnegut wrote that Langmuir once said: “If you cannot explain what you are doing to a reasonably bright fourteen year old, you are a charlatan.” And then I asked proFESSor Newberry to treat me like a reasonably bright fourteen year old and exPLAIN to me how the Cambodians chose to be bombed. . . . if he wasn’t a charlatan. Since he has never offered such an explanation, I have come to believe that he is a knowingly self-aware charlatan.

His Free Trade Hasbara blather up above gives me all the proof I need that proFESSor Newberry is a proudly self-aware charlatan. I suspect proFESSor Newberry to be one of the sort of Academic Economystics who have been analyzed and condemned at length over at Naked Capitalism.

By the way, did South Knox Bubba ever resume blogging again somewhere?

Peter

“Trump is the only powerful agent to do anything to resist any aspect of neo-liberalism”

Trump in Cedar Rapids, Iowa June 21, 2017:

So somebody said, ‘Why did you appoint a rich person to be in charge of the economy? I said, ‘Because that’s the kind of thinking we want … because they’re representing the country. They don’t want the money. And I love all people – rich or poor – but in those particular positions, I just don’t want a poor person.

Richard Seymour on the EU and Corbyn

http://www.leninology.co.uk/2017/06/notes-on-eu-and-privatisation.html

@Hugh

I think that Trump plans these non-PC but meaningless sound-bites to create the media feeding frenzies their interpreters usually produce. He didn’t call anyone retard or lazy lay-about he loves everyone but you do have to be choosy when filling high government positions, Duh!

These trolling runs usually come before a major announcement or move so I expect something to happen soon.

@Hugh

You shouldn’t project so much it’s not healthy especially when you demand your interpretation of the reign of Trump is accurate. Because Trump has kept so many of his campaign promises, as far as possible, some people are losing their marbles and screaming that some major change is not happening. The free traders, the Warmers and the criminal alien advocates certainly know that Trump is a change agent.

I had no great expectations for Trump other than his defeating the Red Queen and I’m satisfied with that and much of the change he has accomplished especially with the rolling coup attempt a constant distraction.

@Hugh

Trump’s promised policy changes may not be what you want but denying they are real is a sore loser’s petulant posturing. I listed three major national and international changes that have the snowflakes gnashing teeth and rending garments.

Someone at NC or ZH is positing that Trump’s criminal illegal alien roundup is driving gasoline prices down. They believe that the illegals are not driving because they fear the dragnet and that was enough to drive down demand. If true that means that Trump is giving everyone else a stimulus by keeping that promise.

You seem to be clinging to the group that believes that fake news, lies and denial will drive Trump to behave like the political parasites they adore. Underestimating Trump has left the Clintonites with a dying party stuck in denial as their latest defeat in Georgia shows. Obama is being dragged out of retirement to save the party but it’s probably wise for the snowflakes to find safe spaces for the next few years.

This is fascinating (provided Peter isn’t just here to provide amusement for regulars).

What does Peter even stand for, besides hating the “red queen” and her “snowflakes”?

I was raised conservative. I worked in a business populated with many conservatives.

But I learned the hard way that respect for freedom isn’t nearly enough. Not only can those expert at taking advantage of “freedom” ruin anybody they want, they usually know how to manipulate other ‘freedom lovers’ into ruining anybody who simply wants to be good at what they do.

Does one fight the enablers of these ‘freedom-loving freedom-killers’? Or do they use their freedom to cut the head off the snake?

If none of that makes any sense to you, then you have never worked in a large corporation or paid attention.

You made one side of the argument, I suggested exploring the other side.

Thought door means I opened it, up to you to explore what is inside.

But isn’t Hillary locked up, somewhere?

Unleashing ICE and the military to do as they will has been a rip-roaring success at inspiring terror and rage in immigrant communities and leading to exponentially higher civilian death tolls in the ever-growing number of war-theaters.

Sucking up to the Saudis and Israelis seems to be a success, too, as the guns of August become an ever-greater possibility in Gulf over the Qatar Thing.

Police killings of civilians in this country are running a notch higher this year than last, so that’s got to be counted as a success, no?

As the Russia Thing metastasizes — probably for no good reason except to keep the public distracted and the investigative community employed — the ability of Washington (elite or insurgent) to control the narrative diminishes. Chaos reigns…

Oh yeah, so much winning.

With pleasure cruises starting to do the Northwest Passage (those silly vacationing snowflakes will believe almost anything), Peter better act quick to invest in polar sea rescue services.

@Peter,

Well then, you should be buying land in these places. Or at least investing in funds which invest in land in these places. That way, you or your descendants will be set to make a fortune when the rest of us realize we haven’t a clue, and hadn’t a clue all along, and decide we want to buy back in.

You will then be in a position to name your price on that land you wisely bought as a contrarian investment, in your superior wisdom.

So . . . have you bought land in coastal Florida yet?

Perhaps it is my own unusual mind that leads me to perspectives that differ from most, but when scoring Trump’s performance successes, the three things I think he deserves the most credit for are:

1.He has done more than anybody else to demonstrate and reveal the corrupt miasma that is our corporate-controlled media, an unreservedly great service to the Republic;

2.He has set the out-of-control political correctness dogma back on its ass, where it deserves to be because it has brought so much that is so irrational and freedom-killing into our everyday lives;

3.He is seen to be breaking down the strangle-hold our vicious duopoly parties have had on our country, and nobody else in sight could have or would have done that.

Each one of these is major and necessary in and of itself; to be able to claim credit for all three is a yuuuuuge achievement to any fair-minded observer, IMO.

It doesn’t matter whether we like Trump, or whether he is a nice man, when we are in the process of evaluating the specific results I delineated.

I think those results are clear to the open eye.

@ Peter

Political labels get confusing sometimes, they are crafted for effect rather than clarity, methinks.

But, I fell in love with John Stuart Mill when I read On Liberty 45 years ago. 🙂

What is a “Left-Libertarian/anarchist”?

I remember Chomsky describing himself along those lines, and thinking that oxymoronic. Is he actually against any concentrations of power, because of who it is that an unchecked power game rewards?

In a totalitarian Communist system, a psychopathic bank robber making the right moves can take over everything to then play with as his own personal toy. In a completely free libertarian society a psychopathic bank robber can (eventually) take over everything to then play with as his own personal toy.

Are “Left-Libertarian/anarchist”s trying to check psychopathic power players? Would some new form of political correctness be required for a society to effectively check the psychopathic power player? Would this become an excess? So many questions.

Some good news today as CNN had to remove their latest witch-hunt, smear, very fake news story about Trump and his associates. It didn’t meet their ‘standards’ and they apologized to the Trump associate they libeled.

The real shocker is that this very fake news was exposed by the investigative reporting at Breitbart News while no one else even bothered.

I had hoped that the Intercept would have developed into an honest news broker and produce some unbiased reporting but even Glen Greenwald has been silenced there. Their purpose now seems to be to create a criminal alien protection society and add to the fake news offering like most of the rest of the media.

@Willy,

Trump destroyed the Republicans’ annointed Jeb Bush candidacy. He may have succeeded in driving the Bushes out of politics for a couple of decades at least.

He also defeated the Democrats’ annointed Hillary Clinton candidacy. Since the Clintons are persistent little cockroaches, he can’t drive them out of our politics all by himself, but he has created an opportunity for the rest of us to set poison baits and traps all over everywhere, and perhaps drive the Clintons and all their Clintonites back into the sewage tar pits from which they emerged for perhaps a couple of decades.

@Peter,

The opportunity is still there. You can plant the seeds of a future family fortune.

“but Wikileaks showed that they manipulated that data to fit their projections so no sane person should any longer trust them.”

Are you sure?
http://www.factcheck.org/2017/02/no-data-manipulation-at-noaa/
http://www.snopes.com/2017/02/08/noaa-scientists-climate-change-data/

Eskimos claim to be living the change, watching it happen before their eyes. But I suppose that no sane person should trust the thawing of the Northwest Passage as evidence, either?
https://skepticalscience.com/Inuit-Climate-Change.html

You can provide links to ‘real experts’ like Alex Jones to counter, if you like.

@W

Being a Warmer true believer I doubt you can digest anything that conflicts with that warm feeling of belonging to that cause. That may be why you can’t get past the simplistic rhetoric used to separate the believers from the heretics.

The Wikileaks release was about the corruption and manipulation of research in the UK but the NOAA whistleblower story shows how this corruption has spread. The IPCC finally admitted that there had been little or no GW during the first decade of this century which destroyed the hockey stick theory of constant linear leading to exponential temperature increases. Tom Karl’s K15 NOAA report was rushed through ignoring NOAA’s own rules and procedures to try to make the pause in GW disappear.

John Bates the NOAA whistle blower, who was not the only NOAA climate scientist to question the K15 report was sandbagged when he tried to internally address the glairing problems with this report. Bates’ complete account and explanation for why he said the Tom Karl had his thumb on the scales while generating this report,has been published.

The lame damage control links you rely on follow the usual meme of trying to discredit the whistle blower and divert attention onto the statements of some republicans. You even included an emotional account of a victim of GW to show your heart is in the right place even if your head is elsewhere.

I gather Chomsky also calls himself a “Syndico-Anarchalist” or some such thing.