X-raying the Script: Discourse with Jack Fulcher

[Jack_Fulcher]

Hello all.  I am so sorry I have neglected this forum for so long.  Work is a madhouse in the final two months of the year, and the holidays have kept me distracted.  There is much to respond to, and it is obvious that I cannot cover everything today.

I hope that you have all been well and that you have been enjoying the holidays as well.  Much has happened in the last few months.

First I owe Dave a response to his questions about Capitalism.  He makes several interesting points, and he made me do some research on this.  He suggests that for a capitalist economy to work you need a lot of poverty, but this is not the case.  Microeconomic theory does not even address the distribution of wealth in the society, only how the goods are produced and how the factors of production (i.e., labor and machinery) are rewarded for their use.

Beyond theory, however, he makes the point that capitalist production needs a lot of labor, and I assume that he thinks that the laborers are paid subsistence wages to keep everything working smoothly.  He even provides us with a 9 to one ratio of poor to wealthy people or countries.

I agree that countries like the US are wealthy and that we are a "labor importing" and "capital exporting" country.  We have built a strong infrastructure and use a lot of machinery in our production, and we need laborers to operate the machines and maintain the infrastructure.  That is why we have several hundred thousand immigrants every year, not counting those who come into the country illegally.  In California, most immigrants are from Mexico and Central America, and their presence is most noticeable in agriculture, restaurants, cleaning buildings and homes, and maintaining people's yards.  They work hard and send maybe half their pay back home.  

Does this create poverty?  No.  If anything, it helps to reduce it.  When I was much younger (when the Earth was cooling), the big controversy was all that cheap labor in Japan stealing American jobs.  Well, over the years they kept working hard, saving and building infrastructure, and now they're one of the most highly paid workforces in the world.  We don't lose many jobs to Japan any more, but the Japanese are losing jobs to Taiwan and Indonesia.  Japan is now a labor inporting and capital exporting country, just like the US.

This is just a natural economic process where people in low-wage areas sell their labor to high-wage areas.  This increases the supply of labor in the high-wage areas, pushing the wage lower.  It also decreases the supply of labor in the low-wage area, pushing the wage there higher.  Labor goes to where it is needed most, and is rewarded well.

Is there great poverty in the US?  This is the question that made me do some research at the US Bureau of the Census.  I live in a big city, in a rich state, so I know that there are plenty of people who live in rural or remote areas who don't have what I have.  According to the Census, however, only 18% of families have incomes less than (US)$20,000, which is defined here as the poverty level.  It's been increasing a little over the past couple of years, as we have gone through a small downturn in production and average incomes.  However, even this level of income allows for housing of about 1000 square feet, one car, about $50 per month each for clothing, and enough food to support a diet of 2500 calories per day.  Nobody starves here unless they just don't know about the many government programs that ensure plenty of food.  I don't know when the last case of actual starvation was reported here, and belive me, if it is reported, the newspapers will find out and publish it.  Food is not an issue.  In fact, the big issue here now is too much food - everyone is fat (including yours truly) and that is a health concern.

My point is that true poverty, like we see in some unfortunate countries, is just not a problem here.  Here's an example.  When we have had 7.0 magnitude earthquakes here over the past fifty years, we have lost maybe 100 to 200 people to structures falling on them.  We had a freeway collapse in San Francisco in 1989.  Compare this to what happens in South America or in Iran recently.  Their earthquake was less than 7.0, yet they may have lost 30,000 people.  This is true poverty, in a country that is swimming in oil wealth.  How can this happen?

I agree that Europe has a policy of distributing the wealth a little more equally, and that its health coverage is much more progressive.  I wish that we did more of this.  However, Europe has other economic problems we don't have.  For instance, class mobility is much better in the US.  I came from a real working class family and yet am working in an office at a reasonably high level.  Just try this in France.  The Europeans also have a subsidized military.  If the Americans weren't there, they would have to spend much more on their own defense.  It's nice to have free money.  I think the Europeans have made a Faustian bargain - they get "free" health care and long vacations in return for low growth rates and little or no entreprenurial development.  I know that this last thing is an overstatement, but given their good schools they should be producing more new things for the world.  They seem to want to depend on tourism for their standard of living.

As an aside, they apparently fired some French journalist for writing a book that criticized French newspapers for their coverage of the Iraq war, because they kept saying that the Americans could never win.  Apparently the French are confused about how the war actually went.  The French seemed to depend too much on the Iraquis for their oil, and so tried to prop up Saddam for as long as they could.  I know that we propped Saddam up ourselves in the 1980s, but we were just pissed at the Iranians.  Our State Deparment has been run by idiots for as long as I can remember.

I think that it's amazing that we essentially give millions to small countries and then are accused of exploiting them.  According to Marx, exploitation is taking production value from a worker without returning at least equal value in the form of wages.  Value is not the same as profit.  Value is what the worker is willing to sell his labor for.  If someone works for an an American firm in a factory in, say, Indonesia, for $1 an hour and their next best alternative is working somewhere else for $.75 an hour, it is not exploitation if they take the Nike job.  If the government says that Nike has to pay them $2 an hour, and Nike closes the factory and goes to the Phillipines, is the Indonesian worker better off?  

Good grief, I need to get back to work!  HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!!

Jack

[Anonymous]

Jack
Nice to see you back., You'll understand that I don't agree with much of your analysis. Uninhibited capitalism enriches a few and impoverishes the many. The gap between the rich and the poor is higher in US than in any other developed country and Bush's slashing of taxes will inevitably result in diminished social provision. Already all your states are virtually bankrupt which in a land of such plenty is utterly deplorable. US will run a long way on the good fortune it has as a big wide fertile country with able and industrious people but it presently is using up ONE THIRD OF THE WORLD'S NON-RENEWABLE ENERGY! It also refused to sign the Kyoto treaty to try to address the raping of the world's resources and the potential horrors of climate change and global warming being brought about the reckless pollution of our atmosphere and seas - with US again contributing about one third of this pollution. America under present and recent administrations is nobody's friend and an enemy in many ways to the rest of the world - which considering the huge contributions and sacrifices America made to the defeat of fascism and the defence of freedom in the 20th century is very sad indeed. Believe me, knowing the huge contribution Scots made to the formation of the US I am seriously distressed watching America sliding into fascism.
Here's a question I've been dying to put to you, Jack.
Let's imagine there is suspected to be a cell of Al Qaeda hiding up in Oakbank, California and perhaps Osama Bin Laden in the same vicinity. Would "Shock and Awe" be employed in these communities, would the innocent citizens in these areas be blown to bits by American bombs to flush out the hiding terrorists. And if not, why not? That was the treatment handed out to about 8,000 innocent Afghans. Why were they considered to be of any less worth than American citizens. (I am asking the same sort of questions of the British collusion with US in Afghan and Iraq).

[Waziri]

Hi all

Capitalism can only work if there is nine poor people to every one well-off one, or nine poor countries to every rich and powerful one. It's all very well for the leaders of rich capitalist countries to extoll the virtues of capitalism to those who are the well-off 10%. Their comfort has been achieved by the exploitation of less fortunate others.

You see, that is why I always suggest a review of the whole human history again. The scholars of the 18th century Europe made us believe that the clergies then were merciless and were choosing to their populace everything including wives and the mode of production in the society. That enlightment brought about freedom.

Now as you can see yourself. They have liberated Europe and USA from the tyranny of the clergies only to subject them to some thing worse than that: THE TYRANNY OF THE CAPITAL.

And above all, Mr. Fulcher was not able to dispel the mist by deconstructing our assertion inspite of his reseach and in-depth analysis. The worst thing bout it all, is the fact that he has only succeeded in affirming what we said.

One final thing is the fact that capitalism over the century reduced every index of development to material benefit, as such it robs ppl out of their souls thru' the "monetisation" of every human value.

When Maria the mother of the one time Broadway Star, Freddie Prinze, wrote the account of what made him commit suicide in 1977 she conclude thus:

"Freddie had come to the Hollywood with a dream he believed about to come true. But in Hollywood he stopped being a person and became as he put it - a piece of "merchandise". He was offered a fortune to endorse lunch boxes bearing his trademark quip... Freddie the product had replaced Freddie the person."

She finished by asking a rhetorical question:

.... was all this what killed Freddie?. Was it that the dollar was more important than the human being with feelings and emotions? Was the image more important than the real person? .... If this is the case, then we live in a society suffering from spiritual malnutrition."

Yes, capitalism tries to better the flesh and makes ill the spirit. It is unfortunate. ? ?

[Jack_Fulcher]

Hey Dave, Mr. Waziri, Forumites!  I have a brief respite from work, so will make the most of it.  First, Dave, I will tell you that I agree with you about the consumption of resources by the US.  We consume a lot of stuff, energy and materials, and I would agree that much of it is waste.  I drive to work on our freeways and am surrounded by thousands of new cars, mostly SUVs, and mostly with only one occupant.  We have a train that we could take, and it is almost always packed with travelers during the day, but I can't help but think that most of these auto drivers could also be on that train.  This includes me.  The nature of Americans is that we like our freedom and don't want to depend on a train schedule.

We used to use trains much more than we do now.  In fact, the train system in the US needs large subsidies just to survive, because not many use it for regular transportation.  People just like the freedom of getting into their car and driving there whenever they feel like it.  What is my point?  The people in the US have different attitudes regarding their personal freedom than some others, even in other developed countries.  Many in Europe, Asia, Africa, and apparently many on this board, would gladly give up some of their freedoms in exchange for government assistance in their lives.  This is a philosophical difference that is not trivial.  I, for instance, do not want the government to tell me where to live, where to work, which doctor I can see, what movies I can see, or what books I can read.  Apparently other people, like in China, are not bothered by the fact that their government makes many of these choices for them.

All of this boils down to nothing less than what you think the goal of mankind is.  Mr. Waziri makes a good point that materialism has taken hold of too many people's lives, and that the more spiritual aspects have been losing ground, especially in capitalist economies.  Yet you cannot eat your faith.  For centuries the primary preoccupation of humans has been to get up in the morning and start to work hard all day just to survive.  Finally we have started to develop machines and systems to replace the physical and manual labor once needed just to feed our children.  I believe that this is progress and a good thing.  I do not want mankind to return to a time when most of us were farmers.  In the US less than 1% of the workforce is on farms, yet we produce many times the agricultural products we did when we needed 20% on the farm.  This is because machinery and chemicals now do the labor once done by people and animals.  This is good (even though the children of farmers must leave if they want to get a good job - there's no future for them as farmers).  Farm work is hideous drudgery, no matter how you look at it.  We should develop the machines to replace this sort of work.

The difference between using capitalism to organize production and using a more centralized system, say communism, is that capitalism just makes more stuff for everyone.  Using the market to get the owners of capital to produce stuff for the country works much better than, say, the Soviet system of the mid-1900s.  They had too many decisions made by bureaucrats, such as production levels at factories.  If you needed to produce 1000 tables, they would be small and cheap to meet the quota.  If you instead said that they should produce 10 tons of tables, they would each be big and heavy.  Incentives were not efficient and the people had to stand in long lines to get the most basic goods.  Someone had the great idea of saying that the price of bread shouldn't rise, so it was illegal to sell bread for more than its price in the early 1950s.  Since producers couldn't get a higher price for bread, they didn't produce much, so that the supply of bread had to be rationed by making people stand in long lines.  This lead to large underground markets where prices were allowed to rise to meet the demands of the people.  It is a great romantic notion that people shouldn't have to pay high prices, but when that notion becomes governmental policy, it distorts production and makes everyone poorer.  

So I agree with the objective of everyone being more spiritual and living together in harmony, but I think most people want their material comforts to be addressed, and they want their families to be able to live in comfort and without disease.  This is still a far off goal for many in the world, and the question for them is how are they going to address these problems.  This is where a free market system comes in.  It shouldn't replace your spiritual life, but you cannot use your good intentions to build your roads, schools, markets, and water systems.  You need something that works, and I think that's what a market system provides.

I have to get back to work (a real bad time of year for my job - lots of stuff to write).  I'll try again soon.

Jack

[Jack_Fulcher]

My wife is watching some hideous reality show, so I have a few minutes to continue my response to Dave.

I agree that the gap between rich and poor is great in the US, greater than in Europe.  But this has nothing to do with capitalism, which is just the method we use to produce things.  The distribution of the output is a public policy issue.  One way to redistribute incomes is to use a progressive tax system, where those who make more pay a higher percentage of what they make.  We have a progressive tax in the US, although its rate schedule was much more progressive 20 years ago.  Congress has been changing it and making it less progressive.  Another method is to have a high tax on inheritance.  The most common way to become rich, in any country, it to choose your parents wisely.  If you're born rich, like Donald Trump, it's much easier to stay rich or become richer.  One way to mitigate this is to tax inheritance (starting at some reasonable level).  I remember reading in this forum that Nigeria has no inheritance tax, and the writer was proud of that fact.  I don't think that's anything to be proud of.

European countries have much more progressive tax rates than in the US.  I don't know about their treatment of inheritance.  I'd welcome a better rate structure here, but the political mood doesn't seem to be ready for it.

You suggest that our states are close to bankruptcy.  This is not true.  We've been having a recession the past two years, and many states have been running deficits, but that's one effect of a progressive rate structure.  When there's a boom, we have a surplus (which we ran for most of the 1990s), but when there's a recession we have deficits.  But overall production is still strong.

It's true that we use a lot of resources, but remember that we also produce a lot of goods for the world.  As long as we're productive, using resources is a good thing.  Remember that the world is still awash with natural gas, and there's a lot of unexploited oil resources in Siberia and Alaska.  We're also developing renewable energy and, as oil supplies start to decline, we'll find it economic to switch more and more to renewables.  (Where will Nigeria be then?  Will they live off thier vast oil reserves until they're gone, or will they help develop these other technologies?)

I'm not a big fan of the Kyoto Accords.  The religion of environmentalism in the US has pushed this issue, saying that these accords are necessary due to global warming, but I have yet to see an analysis of precisely what percentage recent warming trends are due to human action.  That is, all people say is "it's getting warmer," which I agree with.  But if greenhouse gasses produced by humans only cause, say, 30% of the warming, and if the Kyoto Accords can change half of this, this means that we would spend billions of dollars to get a change of only 15% of the trend.  I'm just not convinced by the data I've seen that such action would be significantly productive.

As for your question regarding Afghanistan and Oakbank, California, I assume you mean Oakland.  It was the home of the Black Panthers in the 1960s, so it has a very respectable history of being the home to political radicals.  I saw Bobby Seale there a few years ago.

There's a significant difference between Oakland and Afghanistan.  Oakland is in this country, so we have jurisdiction and political control of the city.  The police or FBI can, using a warrant issued by a judge, search the house and find Osama if he's hiding there.  No bombing would be required.  Afghanistan, on the other hand, was being run by the Taliban and it was necessary to use weapons to drive them from power and find Osama (who slipped out the back door into Pakistan, maybe).  We couldn't just send the cops there, because the Taliban supported Osama and supported his attack on New York and Washington.  

I have to say that I have very little sympathy with the Afghanis.  Remember that they let the Taliban run their country, running it into the ground, taking a beautiful Kabul and making it ugly.  Where were the Afghanis when the Taliban was going around the country, destroying works of art that weren't "Islamic?"  Where were other Muslims?  The only people I have sympathy for are the children, but I have sympathy for them in any war.  The Taliban had declared war on the US, and had killed more than 2000 people in those buildings.  People in Afghanistan, as well as in other Islamic countries, fully supported these attacks and gave funding and other support to these terrorists, so I think the war was necessary.  I know this makes me a minority on this board, but you should know that the reality is that similar actions will get a similar response in the future.  The irony is that Americans knew almost nothing about Afghanistan before 2001, and the Taliban could still be in power, pushing people around and breaking statues all over the country, but they had to ruin everything.

Oops, the wife's program is over and it's time to feed the cats.  Hope you have a nice Thursday, everyone.

Jack
 

[Anonymous]

Jack
Your reply deeply depresses and worries me. You probably don't even notice but it shows very clearly the dismissive attitude of America to third world people. The view you hold also seems to seriously lack any moral judgement and suggests that Afghans have no right of presumption of innocence and process of law. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan. Therefore all Afghans are guilty (of what?). America is entitled to blow up as many of them as it wants. Is this what you are saying?
I will lay aside for the moment the fact that America set up and funded the Taliban (to fight for US against the Russians).
I will lay aside the fact that the Taliban is back in power of many parts of Afghanistan again as it is the only force that can fight aganst the warlords who control the rest of it.
The American promises about rebuilding Afghanistan were bull shit. The UN and US Forces cannot leave their compounds over most of the country except in convoys and never after dark. The opium production has resumed and is at record levels. America never had any intention of providing the vast sums of money needed to prevent Afghanistan reverting to anarchy. All it wanted to do was bomb some poor brown people after 9/11. "Shock and Awe" played well on television,though you didn't get the details of the dismembered children, and made the American people (or the less civilised of them) feel much better. The American campaign in Afghanistan was an evil act of disgusting and diabolic vengeance. And that and Guantanamo Bay and hundreds of other acts of barbarism sanctioned or carried out by America in recent years is the biggest threat to world peace today. Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11. It was all Saudis.  Yet up to 8,000 innocent village people who were in no way responsible for the Taliban's rule or able to do anything about the presence of AlQaeda among them were blown to bits in what was supposed to be a search for Osama Bin Laden. Men, women and little children.
You mentioned the Black Panther movement. Did the American authorities blow up whole blocks of flats if they suspected a Black Panther activist was inside somewhere? Did the military blow up villages? Were Black Panthers executed without trial?
Were friends, family,acquaintances of Black Panther shot down. Of course not. Traditional police tactics were used against the Black Panthers. America is after all a civilised country. To Americans only, it seems. I heard a six year old on radio talking more sense. She said,apropos Bin Laden "Just because you want one bad man doesn't mean you're allowed to kill lots of other people to get him".  Unless,of course, they're poor, brown Moslems in a country far away seems to be the American view of things. "As ye sew, so shall ye reap" the Bible says and America will reap a bloody harvest (as it is reaping daily in anarchy in Iraq and Afghanistan) as a result of its wicked folly (as will Britain probably because of its complicity in American wrongdoing). Where is Camelot and the America that was to lead the world?
Happy New Year  

[Jack_Fulcher]

Well, Dave, I think you're right about one thing.  I am dismissive of people who dance in the streets when a building full of civilians is blown up.  Did you watch those films of Kabul on 9/11?  Most Americans, including me, were not so upset when the Cole was attacked in Yemen, because these were soldiers who understood that their jobs were dangerous.  But the office workers in New York did nothing to the Afghanis.  There were many Muslims in the building at the time, in addition to the Jews and Christians there.  Just what were the Afghanis celebrating?  To cheer this sort of terrorism indicates to me that they are just not ready for civilization.
And Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11??  Where have you been hiding?  Osama may have received most of his funding from his family and other Saudis, and most of the people on those planes were Saudis, but Osama was based in Afghanistan, he had his training camps there, he got a lot of support and protection from the Taliban, and the Taliban and other Afghanis refused to give him up after 9/11.  To suggest that it was all just a Saudi operation is absurd.

I also think that you display a serious naivete when you suggest that the Taliban did not have the support of the majority of Afghanis.  Where were the people when they were going around destroying ancient art works?  Where were the people when the Taliban went from house to house, destroying television sets?  These were not unpopular dictators:  They had the support of the majority of Afghanis.  You say yourself that the Taliban is regaining power in the country.  This is because their supporters are everywhere.  Why was it so easy for Osama to hide in the countryside?  Because he is popular with the people and they won't give him up.  Well, remember that it wasn't your country that was attacked, it was mine, and I have no sympathy for those who support the killing of civilians.  I certainly have no sympathy for the Israelis who support the killing of Palestinians, so why should I have sympathy for the Afghanis?  Once again, I do have sympathy for the children, but that is no reason to let Osama and his supporters go.  If Pakistan tries to protect him, I'd be in favor of going into there with the military to get him.

Remember that the US support of the Mujahadeen (sp?) in Afghanistan in the 1980s was controversial here.  One reason was that the Afghanis opposed the Russian requirement that girls be allowed to go to school.  The Russians also required that women be allowed to work, drive, and go around without the Burqa.  This angered the Afghanis, so they wanted the Russians out.  Our support of the Mujahadeen was not fully supported here, for these reasons.  This is another indication that the draconian rule of the Taliban was not imposed on an unwilling people, as you suggest.

And I tire of people saying things like "You supported Sadam, you supported the Mujahadeen, you support the Saudis, therefore you are hypocrites!"  This is childish.  Dave, the UK worked with Stalin in order to get rid of Hitler, even though the British knew that Stalin was a butcher.  The Irish helped the Nazis spy on England because the Irish hated the English, not because they loved the Germans.  We supported Sadam because he was fighting with Iran, who had taken over the US embassy in Teheran in 1979.  All countries have to get in bed with unsavory and despicable leaders from time to time because the alternative looks so much worse.  And I'll be the first to admit that our decisions in this area have often been wrong and done for the wrong reasons.  However, don't be so naive as to suggest that no country has ever had to make distasteful choices in this area, and that your country has been pure as the driven snow.  I know that you admit that Britain has bloody hands, but this is true of France, Nigeria, Denmark, Bolivia, or any country you'd like to mention.  The reality of politics can drive you insane if you let it.

Now to some of your other points.  If we just wanted to blow up brown people, as you say, we have Mexico or South America handy.  We wouldn't have to go halfway around the world.  Don't be silly.

If they have some Taliban fighters out in Guantanimo Bay, I say keep them there.  They took up arms against my country, and you'd do the same if they did the same to you.  I do agree that they deserve more due process than they're getting, but it's hard to convince me that I should spend a lot of money to buy them lawyers.

Opium production is back up?  Are you suggesting that we let the Taliban impose their ruthless dictatorship again just so they can suppress opium production?  If this is the only thing they can do to make a lot of money, I'm inclined to let them do it.  They should learn to produce other crops, and I'd be in favor of spending money to give them farm equipment, but they need to want to do this.  My understanding is that they'd rather grow the high priced opium.

As for the treatment of the Black Panthers, I've already explained that we can use police powers here because we already run this country.  When another country does not give us access to a criminal, and has essentially declared war on us, we need to use the military.  That shouldn't be hard to understand, even to the six year old you quote.

Got to fly.  Have a good weekend all.  Jack

[Anonymous]

Jack
They were cheering because they hate the US. As does too much of the world. Don't you wonder why?
I still don't understand your reasoning. The "government" of Afghanistan (who actually have no real control over much of the country)won't hand over a criminal you are looking for so its all right to bomb thousands of entirely innocent Afghans to bits in looking for him? Sorry Jack. That's barbarism and it has reduced the US to the same level as the terrorists.
Why exactly weren't ground searches mounted for Osama and his associates? It's unfortunate, no doubt, but civilised behaviour  - such as adhering to rule of law - is sometimes awfully inconvenient. Just as well Britain didn't decide to bomb Ireland when the Irish courts refused to extradite IRA suspects to Britain. Are you trying to persuade us that if some European country refused to hand over terrorist suspects to the US the US would go in and bomb them? No chance.
I am encouraged to see that opposition to Bush's state sponsored terrorism and anti civil rights fascism is growing in America. I know that the core of America is built on solid civilised foundations. I don't know if enough Americans know how little they actually know of the truth and how badly they are served by their media.