Economic policy is not based on science

Comment at TRNN:

Trump's plan would mean 'a huge increase in the budget deficit primarily to give tax cuts to the richest people in the country,' says economist Dean Baker. 'I don't think most people would think that sounds like a very good idea'
 That climate change is occurring and caused by human activity is at near universal consensus of climate scientists. And it doesn't take a degree in economics to understand that climate change will have devastating effects on economies. One simple equation: climate change = less food = fewer or hungry people = smaller economy. And yet there are economists who argue climate mitigation to too expensive and bad for the economy. According to economists, science is bad economics.  The tax policy DJT is proposing is based on supply-side-economics and the Laffer curve which has essentially no scientific consensus; the Laffer curve doesn't even have units. According to (some) very influential economists, no science is good economics.   So is economics a science or ideology? I once compared science and religion (ideology): While there are some similarities, they are very important and significant differences. Both science and religion arise from the same social need; in the face of complete uncertainty, people want rules of behavior/conduct to avoid catastrophic outcomes. Religions codify collections of old anecdotes into rules of conduct. For example, biblical strictures against adultery/infidelity likely arise from a tragic outcome of a few adulterous incidents. But not all affairs will end in tragedy. This is akin to associating good fortune to a charm because you happened to be wearing it on the day of a good event (promotion, favorite team winning). Religions use anecdotes to predict the future. Scientific conclusions are based on carefully controlled and precisely collected data (if properly controlled, a set of anecdotes is data). Scientific predictions based on data are restricted to well defined circumstances. For example, science predicts two doses of measles vaccine are 97% effective. When sufficiently complete data is available, science is remarkably accurate in its predictions. 

[Climate] Science predicts coming changes in the climate will cause sea levels to rise, increase storm severity, and increase severity of droughts and floods, all of which will negatively impact economies. Most orthodox [neoliberal] economists pooh-pooh the predictive value of [climate] science in favor of data-free economic theories, more ideology than science.

…DJT’s tax plan is nonsense, like almost all economic policy.

Post title: Trump's Tax Cut Plan Alienates His Base

What makes for good journalism...

I just listened to a story on NPR by Ofeibea Quist-Arcton about The Boko Haram 'Brides' and it struck me the stigma these girls face on returning to their families and homes might be shared by the journalists and translators reporting their stories, after all, like all people, journalists are the products of their environments... so...

(1) do foreign reporters bring a useful outsider perspective to reporting?
(2) do local/native reporters bring better insight?
(3) what biases are brought by each group of reporters and (a) how to minimize its effect on reporting and (b) would it help to inform the audience of reporters' biases?
(4) similar issues of editorial bias...

BTW, I am not accusing Ofeibea Quist-Arcton of bias. I know I consume information with my own bias and wondered how bias in journalism can be managed to best serve news consumers.

Information transparency is better resistance

Ever since DJT assumed the position of POTUS, there has been a sustained effort to resist his words and actions from numerous groups on the left and progressive fronts. As an embodiment of concentrated power and wealth, DJT is very worthy of resistance... however, the resistors do not deserve the eventual outcome of resistance. What I mean is that movements need leaders and any position of leadership is imbued. The system we are fighting is one that concentrates power. A resistance that concentrates power to resist concentrated power will eventually fall into the same pattern of concentrated power... and the cycle continues endlessly. 

A much better way to fight the concentration of power is to distribute the power more equally. So resistance then becomes figuring out what makes individuals powerful so the what can be dispersed... and the answer is information. Controlling information is how individuals gain, hold and increase their power. Corporations (major stockholders) are rich and powerful because they control valuable intellectual property. Governments are powerful because they control information about corporations (regulation), foreign entities (spying) and the military (armaments, capabilities, deployment, etc). If valuable information were widely dispersed, no single or few individuals could concentrate power as  happens now. Increasing transparency makes better resistance.

Good Trump thing?

In a way, DJT has done Americans a service by shredding the coded civility that masks establishment political doublespeak. He has also fortified the divisions which the country needs to overcome in order to solve our problems. During a recent CNN Trump supporter panel, distrust of the media lead some to rely on uncorroborated social media for information. This degree of distrust and division destroys the general trust necessary for fundamental social interactions which, in turn, are necessary to build political movements needed to change the system. The cracks have widened into chasms. To cure these wounds, we need to build bridges and trust.

BTW, increasing transparency would automatically do this over time.

Fred Magdoff: What Every Environmentalist Should Know About Capitalism

Youtube video of a talk by Fred Magdoff that covers some of the ground I describe in my series. He seems to think an ecologically friendly economy requires more planning than I do but we do seem to see a number of the same problems with capitalism.

Truthout interview with Magdoff. He's more idealistic than I am.

Racism is an economic tactic of division

On Sat., August 12, 2017, there was a white nationalist march in Charlottesville, VA which resulted in the death of counter-protestor Heather Heyer.

On NPR's Codeswitch podcast:

NPR asked: "what you think white nationalists, like the ones in Charlottesville, expect to accomplish in 2017?" 

Answer: "to create a society where the resources of the society funnel into a whites-only space, but that it is propped up and supported by a vast labor pool without rights."

This again confirms racism is a form of economic division. It's similar to anti-feminism, anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, colonialism, etc. divide and conquer tactic of the economically powerful. Unfortunately, they're a particularly well armed movement with no qualms of using violence.

About time

Comment at TRNN. Economist Dean Baker finally starts talking about the impact of information control of intellectual property on income/wealth inequality:

"...unfortunately we're not having that discussion." 

(1) Not true. I have repeatedly commented on the corrosive effects of information control (including intellectual information) on economies and democracy. But I am *not* a prominent economist with a media presence. For that matter, I am not an economist at all. Everything I know has been picked up on wikipedia and listening to podcasts (Economic Update) so...
(2) Why has it taken *so* long for any professional economist to ask this question? The role of 'perfect information' in 'perfect competition' should be elementary economics. It's so basic and foundational, it should be a matter of debate in every economics class on the planet...
(3) This really suggests the entire field of economics has some serious flaws...
(4) [from another thread] ... economies are designed and determined by ideologues not economists. Capitalism, Keynesian economics, Marxism, Communism... all economic systems are ideologies. By adhering to a particular 'school of economics', economists aren't social scientists; they do not engage in the normal rules of science: test the predictions of a hypothesis and adjust theory(ies) to fit. Instead, economists and their followers are indoctrinated into an economic ideology and stand firm to defend it on any and all grounds with carefully constructed questions and statistics. In the end, each ideology produces a system where a small group of powerful people make the majority of economic policies that affect the lives all everyone in their purview. 

Improving education and campaign finance reform are often mentioned as ways to reform our current political/economic system. Reform of the field of economics from an ideologically driven exercise into a data driven system based science should be added to that list.

Search for <Intellectual Property Rights Protect Massive Profits of Corporations> here if link doesn't gets altered in the future.

Truthout has disabled comments

It's sad but apparently they couldn't moderate quickly enough to maintain civil exchanges.

They are victims too

Comment at DownWithTyranny post about prospect of confronting Nazis with violence:

Even if violence could resolve right wing extremism, it would be violence against our fellow citizens, friends, family and colleagues. The wounds of the American Civil War have not fully healed and now we are actually considering another civil war. Scary times. 

Not to be overly Pollyannish but here's something else to consider: White supremacists are right in the sense that they are victims, just not victims of the people they hold responsible. Like the majority of us, they are victims of an economic system that preys on workers; unlike most, they are also victims of movement recruiters who feed their aggrievement a nasty diet of race blaming. A parallel would be deceitful military recruiters. The leaders of these movements are the real evildoers. 

NPR interviewed A Reformed White Nationalist Speaks Out On Charlottesville.

Transparency for economics, transparency for democracy

From wikipedia:

In economics, perfect information is a feature of perfect competition. With perfect information in a market, all consumers and producers are assumed to have perfect knowledge of price, utility, quality and production methods of products, when theorizing the systems of free markets, and effects of financial policies.

-

In economics and game theory, complete information is a term used to describe an economic situation or game in which knowledge about other market participants or players is available to all participants. The utility functions, payoffs, strategies and "types" of players are thus common knowledge.

Inversely, in a game with incomplete information, players may not possess full information about their opponents. Some players may possess private information that the others should take into account when forming expectations about how a player would behave. A typical example is an auction: each player knows his own utility function (= valuation for the item), but does not know the utility function of the other players. 

***

This implies the defining feature of a free market is perfect information. Voting is also a type of market, as such, perfect information should be the defining feature of fully democratic participation. In real life, there is no such thing as perfect information... but we can strive for much better transparency.

Neo-liberal economics is not a modern phenomena

Abby Martin did a two part Empire files episode on human trafficking of Filipino workers. In part 2, she describes how the historical colonial roots of the modern Filipino labor export economy *and* how American imperialism drove this process. Often, discussions of colonialism focus on political power. Although more often driven by economic imperatives, the financial drivers of imperialism are frequently ignored.

Neo-liberalism, or supply-side-economics 'argues economic growth can be most effectively created by investing in capital and by lowering barriers on the production of goods and services.' In other words, give power of economic decision making to those who own capital... or the rich know best how to make more money. This is the back story to the history of the Philippines as shown in Empire Files: The Roots of the Philippines Trafficking Epidemic. American economic 'leaders' decided the best way to make more money was to steal and colonize other lands so they could exploit their people and natural resources and force those people to buy American goods. Neo-liberalism is just another name for empire building; globalization is another name for colonialism. It's always owners/capitalists/powerful taking from and exploiting workers to enrich themselves. 

Workers are always told they are competing against other workers: POTUS DJT claims immigrant workers are job stealers; Americans compete with workers in low wage countries for manufacturing jobs, etc. What workers need to understand is that this competition was and is created by owners/capitalists/powerful. The two sides of the conflict aren't workers against workers but workers against owners/capitalists/powerful. Meaningful economic reform depends on it.

Both are scary

Eddie Baza Calvo is Governor of Guam. He posted a video of his call with DJT after DJT threatened North Korea with 'fire and fury' to which they said their next missile test would be aimed at Guam which hosts multiple American military bases.

DJT said this to Gov. Calvo: “I can tell you this — tourism, you’re going to go up like 10-fold with the expenditure of no money so I congratulate you.”

... as if he's using the North Korea dispute as a way to generate free media attention to his overpriced vacation resort. This when he's also demanding Mitch McConnell 'get back to work and put Repeal & Replace, Tax Reform & Cuts and a great Infrastructure Bill on my desk for signing.' To DJT, POTUS is a figurehead whose only responsibility is to lounge in front of a television for positive media from Fox News, make a few public appearances/statements/tweets at his leisure and sign anything a Republican legislature can get to his desk. He has no responsibilities to setting or selling policy. Sad!

And if DJT weren't sad enough, Gov. Calvo said, “As an American citizen I have never felt more safe or so confident with you at the helm... With all the criticism that’s going on over there, from a guy that’s being targeted, we need a president like you.”

I hope for the sake of the people of Guam, their Governor was exercising impeccable manners and speaking from his heart.

Price control does not stifle innovation

Comment at C&L:

"on the grounds that it was harmful to innovation" 

This is the most absurd of excuses, just look at all the un-executed patents and other intellectual property that corporations have quashed to limit competition. Price controls do not prevent scientists from developing/designing new drugs; they're excuses for pharma to not transfer new treatments from innovators to markets. The middlemen don't want to sell it because they make less profit. 

If the roadblock is big pharma, would it be possible to establish an alternate route to market drugs? Maybe it's time for real competition to enter the pharmaceutical industry.

North Korean diplomacy has not failed - yet

Comment at Truthout:

To everyone who claims diplomacy has failed... if the goal of diplomacy is to not completely disintegrate the opposing party in a relationship, then diplomacy with NK has worked since the cessation of the Korean War. Although imperfect, a useful metaphor for relationships with foreign countries is that of family relationships which cannot be escaped. Close family members are allies; enemies are contentious ex-spouses/in-laws with whom children are shared. To maintain these relationships, both parties must invest time and effort to communicate. It's much easier with family because there is a higher level of trust; these relationships have a higher tolerance for neglect. The goal of the family relationship is to be up to date with each others lives like keeping up to date on the agenda and goals of allies. To maintain functional relationships with ex-spouses over children (visitation, holidays, privileges, gifts...) for the sake of children may require ongoing negotiation and third party mediators. The ongoing negotiation is the goal of ex-spouse relationship; failure to negotiate can result in abuse and/or crimes of passion. Failure of diplomacy can result in armed conflict and/or nuclear war. It's not fun or flashy but diplomacy *is* the only solution with regards to NK.

Comment at TRNN:

The key statements: "Kim Jong-un is a not a madman... He's very sober, very sane. Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung before him were the same. They have one purpose. Their purpose is to maintain their regime, to continue to be able to drink their Hennessys and their Courvoisier, and to have their women and so forth and so on. That is the sole purpose of the Kim dynasty. It is a very rational purpose, and they're very rational about achieving that purpose." 

DJT is also trying to stay in power. He's actually in a decent position: he is POTUS; his party controls all three branches of government; he has money... but he isn't taking rational action to stay in power. 

Take NK, the goal of diplomacy between international enemies is to have an active ongoing dialog to achieve mutually satisfactory detente. DJT wants a diplomatic 'win', implying the cessation and dismantling of NK's nuclear program. The NK war hawk's see NK as a mortal enemy who threatens our allies. The only way to completely resolve or 'win' the 'NK = enemy' dynamic is either become friends with them *or* take them out of the equation through armed conflict. Become friends with NK is about as rational as expecting DJT to represent the interests of all Americans, which leaves decimating NK through war as the only route to 'wining'. Considering that war in that region of the world could cost millions of lives and destroy economies, war would not be a rational action. The *only* rational action is diplomacy, even if it does no more than delay mutually assured destruction. 

BTW, why are [diplomatic] negotiations with NK viewed as 'winning' or 'losing' when labor/employer and defense/plaintiff negotiations are viewed as 'settlements' or 'contracts'? This is propaganda stirs up support for war and it only benefits the military industrial complex.

Growing wealth inequality

This article shows the ever increasing wealth gap caused by modern capitalism. It appears to validate my metaphor of capitalism to predation based food chain. As just as pure simple predator-prey models are bound to crash, capitalism is prone to boom-and-bust cycles. For a more stable economy, professional economists should study the full array of biological interactions in ecosystems and how they evolve new ecological niches for additional opportunities for interactions. We might do well to model our economies after ecosystems.

Polluting for Profit

Comment at TRNN at post title, Coal Power Plants are the Largest Source of Toxic Water Contamination: 

Like all forms of industrial pollution, toxic byproducts of coal are driven by economic profit. Producers of polluting fertilizers & agricultural chemicals profit from the sales of these materials to farmers who use it to increase their farm profits. Fossil fuel & petroleum industry extract, process & sell their products for profit. Polluted water, air and climate (including climate change) are all byproducts of profit driven polluting industries. Americans need to understand that mitigating pollution and climate change is not anti-economic. It's a economic evolution analogous to the industrial revolution - change or be left behind. This is particularly important in light of the regressive policies of DJT. The U.S. dominated technological innovation in the past but DJT's retraction from already poor investment in science (cutting funding to FDA, EPA, anti-science rhetoric) and education will decimate any hope of American revival. DJT's business specialty is the making and selling of his brand, *not* cutting edge innovation. He's a good hire to put on a spectacle but lousy at the STEM fields which will drive the economy forward. The choice to pollute [ignore pollution] for profit is an economic decision. The choice to *not* pollute for the sake of profit is also an economic decision. We consumers have the power to influence that choice. Demand transparency; be informed consumers.

Capitalism is destroying the economy

Michael Hudson was interviewed at TRNN. He links the incentives of stock market, financialized capitalism to the failure of the American economy to thrive; instead of investing in innovation and workers, owners are feeding off workers through monopoly. It fits into my ideas of how ecosystems are a metaphor/model for economies. Go read/watch/listen. It's very informative. 

My comment:

The key take homes: "Trump's donors were basically the monopolists: the Koch brothers, and the oil and gas industry, and other far-right-wing corporate organizations that are all in favor of monopoly... Both parties have the same donor class and they're trying to get elected by groups in America that they have no intention at all of carrying forth their promises to help their interests." 

Follow the money trail for motive and intent of policy. And know that a major intent of policy and regulation is to hide & control information to make it difficult or illegal to follow the money. 

As I've posted in the past, regulations are tools of power to control information. Secrecy and control of information are enemies of democracy. Without transparency, voters/consumers are choosing between packaging with no clue of what's inside, like choosing between multiple doors in a game show; they could all be hiding the same 'prize'. Increasing transparency through universal whisteblower protection is a good place to start. 

Austerity is Social Murder

Comment at TRNN at segment describing the effect of government austerity on the Grenfell Towers tragedy at social murder:

[the effects of austerity policies] is murder just as if the actions of a single individual... what happened at Grenfell Towers... is social murder. 

Capitalism is designed to transfer the wealth created by workers to owners. Austerity policies are designed to transfer wealth earned by average workers to wealthy lobbyists and their buyers. Both economic systems and government policies are social constructs; deaths caused by rampant capitalism and/or austerity politics is social murder. 

In the U.S., good examples are (1) profit driven, capitalistic gun manufacturing; NRA lobbying; defunding schools & other public services; and lax gun ownership laws/regulations, etc. (2) Profit driven, capitalistic health care delivery mediated by health insurance corporations; profit driven, capitalistic health care products manufacturers (pharma, medical devices, etc); lax (better under ACA) regulation of insurance providers; lack of transparency (especially financial - real cost of drugs, treatment, facilities, etc), etc.

Social constructs are created by people. People are enculturated to their expectations from their government(s), employers, and other institutions. In the U.S., for single-payer health care to take hold, Americans need to ingrain the expectation that health care is a right and not a privilege of wealth. Social constructs created by people are subject to change by people; it's in our hands.

Counting is innate

Apparently, the ability to count and estimate quantities is innate to many animals, including humans. We are born with the ability to enumerate a quantity we see; to use the information our senses tell us to understand our environment. Religion, especially theistic regions, completely screw this connection. Instead of seeing is believing, to religious followers, belief is reality... and analytical thinking is 'Satan' luring the faithful from the straight and narrow.

Here is a real world example of this effect. James “Ooker” Eskridge is mayor of Tangier Island, VA, a "deeply spiritual community" where "Methodism has been and remains a very strong influence." This mayor and a majority of his constituents put their faith in DJT and 'believe' that their island is disappearing because of 'erosion' and not rising water caused by climate warming. These are people living with the daily consequences of a changing climate. They can see and measure these changes in real time. But because they have been trained from infancy to 'believe' what is told to them over what they themselves can see, hear, feel, smell and touch, they are able to actually ignore the information in front of their eyes and 'believe' the words of a self-styled religious-like idol.

As an atheist, pray indeed.

Sixth mass extinction

I've written about how ecosystems are a metaphor/model for economies.

In Part 5 of the series, Figure 6 illustrates that economies rely on functioning ecosystems. In this TRNN interview, Professor Gerardo Ceballos talks about his research suggesting an ongoing mass extinction which threatens the stability of many ecosystems. If only for selfish reasons, the future of humanity requires the preservation of natural environments.