Kindly Excuss Me Folks: US Politics Question

[Roger Hicks]

Roger, I'm sure you're aware that capitalism is not a political system, whilst communism is. Our own Alexander Hamilton was quite in favor of a strong central government, with rule directed from the top and the states abrogated to supporting positions. He was still a capitalist.

As I know you have visited China, you know as well as I do that they've been experiencing 7% growth in their GDP year-on-year for well over a decade now, with only a slight hiccup during the recent global economic meltdown. They are tied to the USA in a way that they may now find alarming, but their economic engine is indeed a capitalist model, regardless of their central control of the social parameters of their system.

Dear Bill,

I can't quite see how you can fail to read them in the same way Marx did, as rival political theories. Sure, a capitalist can be more or less statist, centralist, paternalist, etc., but what of it? A communist can discard those bits of communism that stand in the way of his personal wealth, usually for bad motives, just as a capitalist can discard those bits of capitalism that augment his personal wealth, often for good motives.

Seven percent growth in GDP, year on year, is not that hard from a very low base, especially if you disregard all concepts of sustainability and equality and loot the countries around you for raw materials, via the pretence that they aren't 'really' neighbouring countries, but an inalienable part of China. Also, there are other measures of human happiness. India is doing pretty well economically in terms of growth of GDP, but it doesn't have the mealy-mouthed, exceptionalist, sef-satisfied attitude China does.

I find the linkage between the USA and China more alarming when I consider that a centralized one-party state can revalue its currency, withdraw all investment, and cause the collapse of any of its debtor states. In other words, I regard the USA as being at greater risk than China from this linkage, quite apart from the fact that China is a morally repugnant state. Bringing down the USA would, however, probably bring down the current Chinese Empire, which is why the Chinese probably won't do it. I just don't like the idea that they have, in effect, already won a war with the United States.

Tashi delek,

R.

 

[bmattock]

If I may step in here. Not everybody considers America as an entity any different from the rest of the world.

Some non Americans can feel for those who suffer from the lack of American health care just as we feel for those suffering and starving in Africa, Asia or any place else.

Human compassion doesn't stop at political borders.

Human compassion is quite understandable, as is curiosity, such as the point of the O/P's queries. One wonders at what point it becomes a demand that one live one's life in accordance with the political beliefs of another.

If you haven't noticed before, it tends to get the bristles up in some Americans when it is suggested that we ought to be more like Europeans. I haven't suggested that France or Italy be more like the USA, because it's none of my business. Many of us in the US have exactly zero interest in being anything like Europe.

I recently had a discussion with a European friend of mine who said in exasperation, "Don't you people ever shut up about your precious Constitution and your precious Bill of Rights? Don't you ever stop talking about ''my civil liberties this'' and ''my freedom that?''"

I took his point, but in reply, I had to say "No, we never shut up about them. They mean a lot to us. They don't to you, and we get that. Why can't you get that we're never going to shut up about them?"

We're different. Most of us in the US are OK with that, and a lot of us take some level of perverse pleasure from it. We don't want to be like the rest of the world. Our government may have done some rather shocking and horrifying things in ill-suited attempts to make others more like us, but most of us citizens just want to do what we think is important and be left alone, with our 'rights' and our 'constitution' and so on, which we never shut up about.

 

[bmattock]

I can't quite see how you can fail to read them in the same way Marx did, as rival political theories. Sure, a capitalist can be more or less statist, centralist, paternalist, etc., but what of it? A communist can discard those bits of communism that stand in the way of his personal wealth, usually for bad motives, just as a capitalist can discard those bits of capitalism that augment his personal wealth, often for good motives.

Well, you've just said it. No system is pure, most are diluted mixes. Capitalism would appear to work best with a free-market economy that many once supposed thrived only under democracies, but China has shown that is not necessarily the case, whilst the rest of the otherwise 'pure' democracies have moved steadily if slowly towards a socialism-based state.

Seven percent growth in GDP, year on year, is not that hard from a very low base, especially if you disregard all concepts of sustainability and equality and loot the countries around you for raw materials, via the pretence that they aren't 'really' neighbouring countries, but an inalienable part of China. Also, there are other measures of human happiness. India is doing pretty well economically in terms of growth of GDP, but it doesn't have the mealy-mouthed, exceptionalist, sef-satisfied attitude China does.

I didn't draw a line under it and say how wonderful it was, I just pointed out that it is there.

I find the linkage between the USA and China more alarming when I consider that a centralized one-party state can revalue its currency, withdraw all investment, and cause the collapse of any of its debtor states. In other words, I regard the USA as being at greater risk than China from this linkage, quite apart from the fact that China is a morally repugnant state. Bringing down the USA would, however, probably bring down the current Chinese Empire, which is why the Chinese probably won't do it. I just don't like the idea that they have, in effect, already won a war with the United States.

Quoted for truth.

We are more alike than you think. I have been beating that drum for over a decade. China will never go to war with the USA; one does not generally bomb what one owns outright.

I started teaching myself Chinese (Mandarin) several years ago.

One advantage of subjugation of this sort is that our value to the Chinese is not as possessions but as customers. It is important to them that we remain economically capable of buying their crap and want to do so. For this reason, they will continue to allow us to believe we are free and prop up our economy when we sag. Who is the puppet when the puppetmaster has no choice about what strings to pull?

 

[Roger Hicks]

I have stated on many occasions that in my opinion, the USA and the rest of the world are fundamentally different.

Dear Bill,

As I do not believe that people are fundamentally different -- 'all sentient beings desire happiness and the causes of happiness, and to avoid suffering and the causes of suffering' -- I find it hard to see why the USA should be as different as you think it is. Or even that it is as different as you think, except (quite marginally) as the result of a series of mostly morally neutral historical accidents, some of which have had desirable outcomes, and some of which have not.

What do you believe are those differences between American people and the rest of the world, that are so important they need to be preserved at all costs? Fundamental human differences, that is, rather than questions of upbringing and belief?

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Well, you've just said it. No system is pure, most are diluted mixes. Capitalism would appear to work best with a free-market economy that many once supposed thrived only under democracies, but China has shown that is not necessarily the case, whilst the rest of the otherwise 'pure' democracies have moved steadily if slowly towards a socialism-based state.

Dear Bill,

Or of course fascism...

And of course, what's 'impure' about a socialist democracy, as compared with a capitalist democracy? Democracy is economically neutral. After all, it was invented by a slave-holding society with a tiny electoral franchise (white free males) where the principal form of wealth (and easily the most respectable) was land.

Great line about the puppets/puppetmasters, by the way. I'll borrow that one!

Cheers,

R.

 

[bmattock]

As I do not believe that people are fundamentally different -- 'all sentient beings desire happiness and the causes of happiness, and to avoid suffering and the causes of suffering' -- I find it hard to see why the USA should be as different as you think it is. Or even that it is as different as you think, except (quite marginally) as the result of a series of mostly morally neutral historical accidents, some of which have had desirable outcomes, and some of which have not.

I cannot argue with that, you're right.

What do you believe are those differences between American people and the rest of the world, that are so important they need to be preserved at all costs? Fundamental human differences, that is, rather than questions of upbringing and belief?

I think you hit it again. It is precisely those "questions of upbringing and belief" that make us different. It is what I really meant in my statement about a 'fundamental' difference. I did not mean to imply that we have a different number of chromosomes or that we do not love our children or want to be free of disease, injury, pain, and have food to eat, etc. We're all alike in that, I imagine.

But it is our history, as well as our upbringing and belief, that has inculcated a way of thinking that many (not all) in the USA value as a 'thing apart' from that of all other nations. In extreme cases, it brings on nationalism of a quite dangerous sort. But in general, it is not unlike that concept (often mocked) of 'rugged individualism' that many of us believe marks us a nation of individuals first, an individual nation second. We believe in the needs of society, but not as secondary to the needs of the individual. We function as a collective, but we are no drones (or perhaps that is individual conceit on our part; nevertheless, we cling to it).

I was raised in the cornfields of central Illinois. I was given a shotgun as a Christmas present at the age of 10. I kept it in my bedroom closet along with the shells for it. I used to go hunting with my father before school during rabbit and pheasant season; quite often he would drop me off for school and I'd hang my game bag and my shotgun in the cloakroom with my coat and mittens. No one freaked out, we all did it. No one was shot, the world didn't end. We even had a rifle range in the basement of the school - basic marksmanship was considered a part of public curriculum (admittedly, it was disused by the time I was in grade school in the mid 1960's).

I say this only as an example of the type of 'mentality' that we Americans, at least those of us of a certain age, raised in the heartland, experienced. I'm not that old, I'm only 48. This was my culture. To suggest that guns are evil and must be banned, that health care is universal and must be mandated, that we cannot take care of ourselves and must be protected - these things are alien to those of my generation raised as I was. I would suggest that there is no analogue in the UK or Europe to my upbringing; I'm sure it is as shocking as it is alien to those who never experienced such things.

If I say "we're different from you in a fundamental way," this is actually to what I am referring.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Dear Bill,

Your arguments, in a reductio ad absurdum, are in favour of no change, ever. We would still be living in caves and eating raw meat.

But societies evolve. Sometimes (with any luck, overall) in good directions, sometimes (with any luck temporarily) in bad.

The current UK hysteria against guns, knives and paedophilia is a good example of bad evolution. I'm a little over a decade older than you (the middle day of the middle month of the middle year of the century). We had a range at school (still do, as far as I know); we normally had a round or two of .303 or .22 in our pockets, for no better reason than that teenage boys do that sort of thing; we all carried knives; and no-one was shot or stabbed.

We were also homophobic and racist. Now, to this day I can't quite see the attraction of homosexuality, but as long as people don't shove it down my throat (as it were) or frighten the horses, what they do in their own bedrooms is something I'd rather not think about or worry about. Likewise, though I thought nothing of using the same nicknames as others did -- 'Coon' Williams, 'Cadbury' (after a well known brand of English so-called chocolate) instead of 'Stanbury' (his actual surname) -- I wouldn't do it today. But I still want the same rights to carry a pocket knife or to own a gun as before.

I believe (and ultimately it is only belief, having lived under several health systems including military) that a refusal to allow government into health care is akin to not allowing government into the defence of the realm. I am also more than willing to believe that the current proposals fall woefully short of what is needed -- in which case, the American people need to rise up, shake their legislators warmly by the throat, and insist on proper, nationalized health care.

To do otherwise is to side, in effect, with those in whose interest it is to side with the status quo, purely because it lines their own pockets. Side, rather, with the left: throw your weight behind them, as there may be a chance they will succeed in a worthwhile health reform. Stand on the sidelines, cave in, fail to vote tactically (a fine old Marxist trick, no less effectual for that), and you will get the government and the health care system you deserve. Refuse to acknowledge that although a democracy is far from perfect -- it is merely the least worst form of government yet devised -- and you will get what you deserve: oligarchy, kleptocracy and the like (I will not name names).

It comes down yet again to one of my favourite quotes. "My country right or wrong. When right, to be kept right. When wrong, to be put right as soon as possible."

My own country, Cornwall, is tiny; its language, effectively dead. We are almost certainly better off as a satellite of England. But that does not mean we have to accept everything the English say; and make no mistake, the English dominate Great Britain. The smaller the nation, the more important it is that they remind the rest of the world of the false assumptions, the inaccuracies, the arrogance of great nations. Often, small nations are rightly ignored. But if and when they (we) have a cogent point, the great nations ignore them (us) at their peril.

You said we were more alike than I thought. No. I have long known we are alike. Otherwise I should long ago have hit the ignore button But I think also that the United States is more like its oldest ally than the phrase 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' might suggest; and again, they ignore the advice of an old friend (and sometimes gadfly) at their peril

Cheers,

R.

 

[Olsen]

US foreign policy will increasingly be that of a credit seeking debtor. Right now, president Obama is in Singapore, one of the richest states in the world with some 42,4 billion dollars borrowed away to the US Federal government. Most likely, Singapore has more than 60 billion borrowed away to USA when individual states are included (excluding any loans to private institutions). No wonder Obama smiles and shakes hand with the CEO of Temasek Holdings and wife of Singapore's prime minister, Ho Ching at the ASAN meeting, this weekend.

- Or that these rocket installations in Polen was peeled down. It is not wise to have hostile rockets pointed at a creditor, Russia - if you have to borrow more money. Russia has a US Treasury Securities position of 'only' 118 billion US $....

Whlle the Norwegian National Pension fund, that is supposed to cover the pensions of future generations of 4,7 million Norwegians, have US treasury Securities of 28,9 billion dollars - but increasing fast, we are told. Norway's Pension fund's total investments in USA mounts to more than 200 billion dollars to both public and private US institutions.

If the Obama administration shall make ends meet in the few coming years the above figures must double since the Chinese seems to have reached their upper limit with the 800 plus billion dollar position.

 

[bmattock]

Your arguments, in a reductio ad absurdum, are in favour of no change, ever. We would still be living in caves and eating raw meat.

But societies evolve. Sometimes (with any luck, overall) in good directions, sometimes (with any luck temporarily) in bad.

Actually I'm not under any delusions about the necessity or inevitability of change. My statements were more an explanation of why I feel the US and other countries are 'fundamentally' different, based on history and culture. I realize that things change.

You said we were more alike than I thought. No. I have long known we are alike. Otherwise I should long ago have hit the ignore button But I think also that the United States is more like its oldest ally than the phrase 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' might suggest; and again, they ignore the advice of an old friend (and sometimes gadfly) at their peril

I too would prefer a nationalized health system over a patch upon the series of patches we currently have. The problem, as I've stated, is that at the moment, quite a few otherwise intelligent people seem to believe that what is currently before Congress is the former, rather than the latter. Whilst they agitate for the 'change' they imagine the current proposals contain, they lose the chance to have what it is they claim to actually desire.

When pointed out to them that what they seem to be 'for' at the moment is nothing like a single-payer or nationalized health system, the response I typically get is "Well, it's better than what we have now," or "Well, we have to do something!" It isn't better than what we have now, and no, doing something for the sake of doing something is idiotic.

I would prefer to grab a few proponents of the current patches and shake THEM by the throat. They're the ones preventing any meaningful change, not the politicians, who will remain bought and paid for until voters start removing them from office.

 

[Olsen]

/
I would prefer to grab a few proponents of the current patches and shake THEM by the throat. They're the ones preventing any meaningful change, not the politicians, who will remain bought and paid for until voters start removing them from office.

Hear, hear!

 

[Olsen]

Ruben,

What happened to you, the thread starter here? While we 'wage a war of opinions' you seem to have found shelter in your private West Jerusalem bunker.

Israel started out as a idealistic communist state, the only communist state ever, to my opinion, under David Ben-Gurion, then turned social democrat under Golda Meir and finally turned fascist under Menachem Begin/Benjamin Netanyahu etc.

Israel is not the only state in the world who have started out as a idealistic paradise and ended up as a bankrupt fascist hell. It seems to happen to all countries, sooner or later.

I guess you started out with a health care system for all, under David Ben-Gurion. What kind of health care system do Israel have today?

 

[Spoks]

It's an excellent BBC World Service scoop tonight on how many times the US presidents, since Nixon, have visited China. Every one of them, except for Ford and Carter. They did not really need to. USA was a creditor nation back then. US presidents visits to China are parallel to the growth of USA's debt to China. While all the presidents from Reagan to Clinton visited China once each, George W. Bush visited China four times! The most important issue at the China - USA summit in Peking, must be the astronomical heap of US Treasury Securities totalling 800 billion US dollars that Hu Jintao has in his drawer. What shall he do with them? Decorate his kitchen wa..? Hum, it should be enough to decorate all the walls in his palace...

 

[ruben]

Ruben,

What happened to you, the thread starter here? While we 'wage a war of opinions' you seem to have found shelter in your private West Jerusalem bunker.

Israel started out as a idealistic communist state, the only communist state ever, to my opinion, under David Ben-Gurion, then turned social democrat under Golda Meir and finally turned fascist under Menachem Begin/Benjamin Netanyahu etc.

Israel is not the only state in the world who have started out as a idealistic paradise and ended up as a bankrupt fascist hell. It seems to happen to all countries, sooner or later.

I guess you started out with a health care system for all, under David Ben-Gurion. What kind of health care system do Israel have today?

I think the thread evolved in such a mutual respectfully way that it would have been a pity for it that I intervine. Besides I am ignorant of many facts, very much relevant to step in. Among them the exactly nature of the Chinese regime is not clear enough to me. Soon I will be reading a book by Hannah Arendt and will be better able to equate Fascism and Staliinism than I am now.

My good friend Bill, (bmattock) has strongly surprised me by his elaborated arguments and factual backing. Although I am sure some sort of all-mankind tribal instinct would better fit the spirit of his good will and exemplary respectfull way of argumentation.

Unfortunately, Olsen, I cannot share your views by far and large about Israel's beginings, nor the sort of pessimist sound about the fate of all countries ..."sooner or later". I am a stubborn optimist.

As for the Health security in Israel, excluding the Palestinians at the Occupayed Territories, who are at the mercy of the UN mostly, Israelis must be, by law, members of any of the three Health associations, paying according to their salaries, and in case of unemployment their Health associacion will get paid by the Social Security Service, who is in charge of unemployment.

Of course the succesive governments have been reducing their support for the Health associations, and for health in general, creating a big vacuum, deteriorating more and more.

Legal labour inmigrants get their health fee taken from their legal salary. Ilegal African workers, escaping famine war and misery in Africa, are barely helped by civil rights associations.

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[Roger Hicks]

I think the thread evolved in such a mutual respectfully way that it would have been a pity for it that I intervine. Besides I am ignorant of many facts, very much relevant to step in. Among them the exactly nature of the Chinese regime is not clear enough to me. Soon I will be reading a book by Hannah Arendt and will be better able to equate Fascism and Staliinism than I am now.

My good friend Bill, (bmattock) has strongly surprised me by his elaborated arguments and factual backing. Although I am sure some sort of all-mankind tribal instinct would better fit the spirit of his good will and exemplary respectfull way of argumentation.

Unfortunately, Olsen, I cannot share your views by far and large about Israel's beginings, nor the sort of pessimist sound about the fate of all countries ..."sooner or later". I am a stubborn optimist.

As for the Health security in Israel, excluding the Palestinians at the Occupayed Territories, who are at the mercy of the UN mostly, Israelis must be, by law, members of any of the three Health associations, paying according to their salaries, and in case of unemployment their Health associacion will get paid by the Social Security Service, who is in charge of unemployment.

Of course the succesive governments have been reducing their support for the Health associations, and for health in general, creating a big vacuum, deteriorating more and more.

Legal labour inmigrants get their health fee taken from their legal salary. Ilegal African workers, escaping famine war and misery in Africa, are barely helped by civil rights associations.

Cheers,
Ruben

Dear Ruben,

Nice to see you back.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Olsen]

Ruben,

I am not a pesimist. Just a realist.

It was Gen. Peron who started it all. He showed the world how it could be done. By bankrupting the Argentinian wellfare state. Today it is a fascist hell. Then Israel went down the drain. How large is the public debt of Israel when writing this? Then just every nation followes suit. Sweden has had four years with a conservative government. The bublic debt has increased 200 billion SEK and a further 120 billion SEK of public property has been sold to 'friends of the conservative party' for a song. Elections are coming up and it is expected that the social democrats to move into office. It will take a generation or two to repear the damage. Then you have Iceland, Greece, Spain, Ireland, UK (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, etc. etc) ... Soon we will have Germany, Finland and USA in the red....

 

[Philly]

Soon we will have Germany, Finland and USA in the red....

Are we not already there?

I read the US national debt was greater than that of all the third world countries combined.

 

[russelljtdyer]

I only want to make a small comment based on the original post of this thread, which referenced comments from a woman from New Jersey. Despite the popularity of that mafia television series, The Sopranos, people from New Jersey are not indicative of the U.S. perspective. I'm sorry they're not: they're just like everyone else from the U.S.

-Russell

 

[Olsen]

Are we not already there?

I read the US national debt was greater than that of all the third world countries combined.

Sure, but still USA serves (US tax payers pay a huge annual sum interest - some 30% of the total tax bill) their debt. If it grows larger - say, to 120% of GDP like Greece, then it will be very difficult to just pay the interest, which will amount to 10 - 12% of GDP. The eternal question is: And 'who's gonna pay'? The rich? The poor (they are already paying) or the ordinary man & woman? Reckon with that it is the latter that have to pick up the tab.

 

[ruben]

Perhaps there is something really good in the wish that the US be spared to be different despite globalization. Perhaps there is also something good if the US stops importing Chinese "crap". Perhaps there is even a good result if the "aliens" of the Planet (what a pitty Franz Fanon isn't alive to use this term !) stop trying to smuggle into the US borders in order 'to eat the American baguet', so to speak.

Because there is a universal consensus in that the world economic depression started with the subprime stuff inside the US and exploded within a US bank, Lehman Bros. Then, why should the world pay for the American feast ?

So the question I have been asking myself for a long time is how the world could be spared from its economic relations with the US economy, which is going from bad to worse and perhaps we have not seen yet the depht of what there is in store there.

Given that the US is the largest world economy, my wish may sound practically absurd. But given that the US has become a bankrupt economy, who eats far more than it produces, perhaps there is some historical need in that the rest of the world find its way to spare itself from the US economic futures.

Unlike the Chinese, the US doesn't produce 'crap' - in a general view that excludes the arms industry, some gaseose drinks, and a lot of cars - non of which is based on green fuels and therefore I include them within the crap cathegory. Finally we should not forget those lethal financial "toxic assets" that have infiltrated the world over and no one dares to deny their source is in the US.

And there is another US stuff which I do not know how to evaluate it from a global viewpoint: the US dollar. What I know from my narrow local experience is that the US dollars I have since some six years have been loosing and loosing value, without hope. Had I have access to the Chinese Yuen, it seems I and the world would have been in a more convenient shape.

If someone here thinks that the economic relationship and interdependence of the world economy withUS economy is a good asset for the world, I would ask him, or her, to explain it very slow.

Not that I am anti-American. I would like to continue enjoy Holywood films, (BTW have you noticed that more and more of them show the Fujifilm logo, instead of Kodak ?). I would like to welcome Presidens Obama and the distinguished madam Hillary Rodham no cookies Clinton. I would love to continue chatting and accessing US websites. But no higher economic ties.

For sure this True New Economic Order would provoke a major economic crisis within a world used to look at the US as its major partner. But this crisis would be a childhood one after which the world would become more adult. The current and recent economic crisis, has been a very bad desease of a very old man.

In such a new world, no inmigrants should be accepted to the US. But at the same time no economic partnership should be allowed between mighty US firms and world local weaker and corrupt providers of raw resources and materials.

In such a new world, the US would retain its right to its own identity and will stop trying to shape the governmental identities of other countries. (In such an event the whole Viet Nam war had been spared, for the well being of both the Americans and the Vietnamese. Or the Iraq adventure which Mr Bush himself reckognized the trigger for it was an Intelligence mistake - nuclear development).

In such a new world, all developed countries would be forced to develope new markets instead of the US, and therefore to develope the economies of actual poor countries, and here I can see some hope for the African continent.

Just imagine what such a world would do to war mongers like Bin Laden - he will be left without the great devil banner to wave to his fellows. Or to Israel, which finally will be forced to come to his senses once deprived from US backing, and finally will sign a peace agreement - the only way to spare Israel from itself.

And then too, Americans themselves will be free to have their barbeque without federal remorse about what Americans should do with American money.

Americans should have the right to be different. And the rest of the world too.

Furthermore, since a big majority of American citizens have showed in black and white that America is ready for a Black President, a fact nowadays and a racist question just a year ago, I think the Americans are mature enough to be different within themselves too.

Thus I would not be afraid, had I been in their place, and in view of the different versions of history, federalism and unity shown along this thread - to let the Southern States form their so much dreamed Confederation, by peacefull means this time. They also have their right to be different from those intellectuals from Washington, and on the other hand such a split would bring an hystorical opportunity to the abolitionists of the North, to start investing real money in Black equality.

It is precisely in this aspect of life that the Israel experience is innovative. If you have an ethnical group whose socio economic position is to be dramatically raised within society, this requires very dramatic money investment. By these parameters, Obama is quite a little puddle which the most outrageous conservatives would do best in supporting, as he is the only man in town offering the cheapest fare, within a single "America".

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[radi(c)al_cam]

Hmmm … time to revive this thread, I guess?