Jonathan Cook — Long Read: The neoliberal order is dying. Time to wake up

Analysis from the left mostly about British politics but inclusive of all aspects of neoliberalism as the policy, strategy and tactics of elite power.

Says "long read," but it is not that long. Worth a read even if you are not British since it is also an analysis of elite power as it relates to national politics and neoliberal globalization.

Let's hope Cook is correct in seeing the wave cresting. The question then becomes will the breaking of the wave result in world war as the elite desperately tries to hang on to its waning power and control.

True Publica
Long Read: The neoliberal order is dying. Time to wake up

Jonathan Cook, award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel; author, and public intellectual as a voice of conscience

Frank W. Elwell — Immanuel Wallerstein's World-Systems Theory

25 slide presentation of Immanuel Wallerstein's World-Systems Theory by Frank W. Elwell,  author of Macrosociology: Four Modern Theorists. Wallerstein was a student of C. Wright Mills, Professor of sociology at Columbia University and author of The Power Elite.

Wallerstein's World-Systems Theory is power-based. It deals with flows of people, information, resources, products, and wealth in a world-system that is social(institutional), political (power-based) and economic (distributive). It is a Marxian analysis that sees the ultimate outcome of the world game being socialism after the breakdown of capitalism owing to its internal contradictions.

If you are are not familiar with Wallerstein, this is a good introduction to his thinking.

Immanuel Wallerstein's World-Systems Theory 
Frank W. Elwell, Professor of Sociology at Murray State University,
ht Jan Milch

Sam Pizzigati — The Flacks for Plutocrats Need a New Analogy

A rising tide lifts all boats. A growing economic pie means bigger slices for everybody. Wealth that flows to the top will always trickle down. Cheerleaders for wealth’s concentration have over the years invoked a variety of images to rationalize the ever larger fortunes of our society’s most fortunate. 

These images all rest on a single economic assumption: that letting wealth accumulate in the pockets of a few grows an economy’s capacity for investment and ultimately, as investments create jobs, leaves everybody better off. That assumption has dominated mainstream economics for generations. 

But that’s changing. Even mainline economic institutions are these days challenging the notion that good fortune for the few eventually and automatically translates into better fortune for the many. Now we have a new analysis that essentially shreds what little credibility remains from that once potent rising-tide world view.…

Milanovic and van der Weide have some thoughts of why higher income inequality so stunts income growth for a state’s poorest. They point to the phenomenon they call “social separatism.” 

In a society where the rich are grabbing incomes “significantly greater than the incomes of the middle classes,” the rich have little interest in public services. Their lives revolve around private services, everything from private schools to private country clubs. 

These wealthy, note Milanovic and van der Weide, “prefer not to invest in public goods like education, health, and infrastructure.” But these public investments — for the poor — make all the difference in the world. Paltry investments in public services translate into paltry, or worse, income growth for the poor. 

The political implication? If income inequality speeds the growth of wealthy people’s incomes, Milanovic and van der Weide wonder, how can we expect the wealthy to accept public policy changes that reduce inequality? 

We can’t, of course. Most rich will continue to claim that trickle down works, no matter how empty that claim may be. And the evidence for that emptiness is pouring from much more than academic studies. We now have, for instance, the live-action contrast of Kansas and California. 

In Kansas, an exceedingly rich people-friendly governor and legislature two years ago slashed taxes on the state’s wealthy, most notably by making business profits tax-free. 

In California, meanwhile, voters at about the same time raised tax rates on taxpayers making over $500,000 by 30 percent.

The story since then: California, notes analyst David Cay Johnston, has grown jobs “at 3.4 times the rate of Kansas.” California’s weekly wages have also grown more than weekly wages in Kansas.

"Social separatism" is class and power structure by another name, since "class" and "power" are politically incorrect terms in economics.

Inequality.org
The Flacks for Plutocrats Need a New Analogy

Sam Pizzigati | Editor, Too Much, the Institute for Policy Studies online weekly on excess and inequality

JW Mason — "As If a Man Were Author of Himself"

A commentary on Shakerspeare's Coriolanus.

The Slack Wire
"As If a Man Were Author of Himself"
JW Mason

BillMoyers.com — Morning Reads: Blackwater Threatened US Investigator; Obama to Escalate on Southern Border

James Risen reports for the NYT that before a group of Blackwater (now known as Academi) security contractors slaughtered 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, the State Department launched an investigation into the firm’s activities in Iraq, but the probe hit a dead end when Blackwater’s top manager in Iraq said “‘he could kill’ the government’s chief investigator and ‘no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq.’”

What does the United States have a military for, on which it spends more than the world combined when paramilitary and intelligence (black ops) is thrown in. This is really over the top.

BillMoyers.com
Morning Reads: Blackwater Threatened US Investigator
BillMoyers.com Staff

Chris Dillow — The "middle class", & Marxism

The current situation is precarious for "captialists" v. "workers" in Marxist terms since it is crucial for the haute bourgeoisie that is, the rentiers, capitalists and top managers, to keep the petite bourgeoisie, or small business people, with them rather than the petite bourgeoise allying with the proletariat, that is, those selling their labor as opposed to those selling the product of others' labor.

While this is a somewhat dated point of view today, since conditions have changed considerably since Marx was writing, there are parallels that Chris Dillow brings out and which others are also noticing and calling to attention.

While conditions may have changed since the time of Marx, class structure and power structure persists.

Stumbling and Mumbling
The "middle class", & Marxism
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Gary Engler — Why Capitalism Can’t Fix Our Most Urgent Problems

Real capitalism, not the theoretical version taught in school, is a system of minority rule in which a few people profit at the expense of others.

Real capitalists are always trying to cut their costs and increase their profits, which leads to unemployment, falling wages, rising economic disparity and not paying for the environmental damage they cause.

Private ownership of what are social means of livelihood produces incentives for capitalists to pass along the real costs of industry to communities, workers, future generations and other species.

Private ownership makes growing inequality inevitable. A system can proclaim itself democratic, but if a minority holds most of the economic, and therefore social and political power, that minority will inevitably reward itself, its power will grow and ever-expanding inequality will be the result.

Capitalism is sociopathic. Its ideologues, like the late Margaret Thatcher, reject the social, claiming only individuals exist. Yet capitalism has driven individual producers to the fringes of economies. Most people, ninety per cent in the U.K., depend on wages or salary, working with others in cooperative, coordinated labour — social labour, but directed by wealthy minorities for their own profit.

Capitalism promotes greed. It boasts of this.

Counterpunch
Why Capitalism Can’t Fix Our Most Urgent Problems
Gary Engler

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson — Democracy vs. Inequality

Overall, our results suggest that democracy does represent a real shift in political power away from elites and has first-order consequences for redistribution and government policy. But the impact of democracy on inequality may be more limited than one might have expected.

Though our work does not shed light on why this is so, there are several plausible hypotheses. The limited impact of democracy on inequality might be because recent increases in inequality are “market induced” in the sense of being caused by technological change. But equally, this may be because, as in the Director’s Law, the middle classes use democracy to redistribute to themselves.

But the Director’s s Law is unlikely to explain the inability of the US political system to confront inequality, since the middle classes have largely been losers in the widening inequality trends.

Could it be that US democracy is captured? This seems unlikely when looked at from the viewpoint of our typical models of captured democracies. But perhaps there are other ways of thinking about this problem that might relate the increasingly paralyzing gridlock in US politics to capture-related ideas.

Ya think? Maybe look outside the silo?

Why Nations Fail
Democracy vs. Inequality
Daron Acemoglu, Killian, Professor of Economics at MIT, and James Robinson, David Florence Professor of Government at Harvard University

David Ruccio — Anything but. . . [class]

Better it seems to me to focus our attention on the real sources of inequality in the United States. And that means we have to face the class questions straight on. Anything else is merely a distraction.

Real-World Economics Review Blog
Anything but. . .
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics University of Notre Dame Notre Dame

Rob Urie — Technology and Economic Imperialism

The oft called ‘knowledge’ economy brought into being in the ‘developed’ West in the 1990s is composed of several industries that are broadly related but also quite specific unto themselves– artificial intelligence, telecommunications, finance, information technology and digital commerce- the Internet. More broadly, these can be divided into ‘finance’— Wall Street, insurance and real estate; and ‘technology,’ modes and methods of operational interaction with the world. One branch of these technologies in particular, the algorithmic ‘intelligent’ technology of computing tied together through global telecommunications infrastructure, is widely considered by Western economists to be a second ‘industrial age,’ a group of innovations that revolutionized the way the world ‘works.’ The development and growth of these industries was coincident with the revival of the political economy of neo-liberalism and the return of finance capitalism in its most intrusive and destructive forms. And finance— Wall Street, played a prominent role in inserting these new technologies into global political economy.

Finance and information technology are ‘Cartesian’ capitalism reconstituted in its purest form, the form, function and facilitation of the ‘rational’ interaction of ‘economic man’ with ‘the world’ of capitalist theory. Finance is the ‘fluid’ of capitalism, the Aristotelian ether that unites commerce and suspends it in a body of metaphysical equivalence, the ‘this equals that’ that facilitates the aggregation of claims on ‘the world.’ The ‘intelligence’ of ‘intelligent’ machines is algorithmic, the product of instructions written in mathematical languages to be operationally efficient, the reconstitution of ‘time is money’ into machine action. Not coincidentally, finance and technology are the twin ‘explanations’ offered by capitalist economists for the stupendous fortunes suddenly found in the pockets and bank accounts of a group of actual persons so small it could barely fill an island of modest size. And to be clear, these fortunes are ‘claims’ in the sense they are socially circumscribed rather than ‘possessed,’ aggregations of contracts, representations and rights that depend on social accedence for their ‘value.’

The typical frame of ‘technology’ in Western economics is as method / mode of economic ‘efficiency’ in capitalist production. Opponents of technology are ‘Luddites,’ labor displaced by technology whose blame is ‘misplaced’ because making more from less— economic efficiency, makes ‘the world’ better off. The ‘tradeoff’ offered is that this displaced labor can now buy lower priced goods made possible through ‘technology.’ And if the new found absence of a paycheck hinders those directly displaced from reaping economic benefit then the economic ‘system’ is argued to benefit. Finance, ‘money,’ is the fluid and metric of equivalence here, the object of ‘system’ that renders irrelevant whose pocket it ends up in. The fact of displacement is its own proof, the backward induction that technology found the right target. This theoretical sleight of hand is wholly circular—economic efficiency made possible through technology benefits the economic system, labor displaced by technology is part of this economic system and therefore displaced labor benefits from being displaced....

Counterpoint
Technology and Economic Imperialism
Rob Urie

Marge Baker — First Things First: Until We Fix Our Democracy Problem, It's Hard to Fix Any Problem

In the four years since the Supreme Court’s infamous Citizens United v. FEC ruling, two things have become abundantly clear.

First, we have a major democracy problem. Citizens United paved the way for unlimited corporate spending to distort our elections. Staggering amounts of money have poured into our political system since the Court handed down that decision.

Second, and just as importantly, it’s become clear that until we fix that democracyproblem, it’s hard to fix any problem. In other words, until we fix the funding of our political campaigns, we can’t fix the individual issues that matter most to everyday Americans.

This has proven true across the board. Whether the issue you’re most concerned about is making your community safer, guaranteeing that your family has access to clean water, or ensuring that workers get a fair minimum wage, when wealthy special interests can buy their way into the hearts, minds, and votes of elected officials, progress on these issues will continue to stall.

Clearly, when moneyed interests can spend virtually without limitation to influence our elections, they can set the political agenda.

Truthout | OpEd
First Things First: Until We Fix Our Democracy Problem, It's Hard to Fix Any Problem
Marge Baker, OtherWords

Izabella Kaminska — The tendency towards cartelisation

Cartelization v. voluntary collectivism. Covers a lot of ground implicitly concerning the relationship of capitalism, socialism and communitarianism, the role of value and incentives in motivation, and many other matters that are key to differentiating socio-economic systems based on distribution of power and wealth.

Dizzynomics
The tendency towards cartelisation

Izabella Kaminska

Linette Lopez — The Simplest Explanation For Wall Street Greed We've Ever Read

Wealth = Power

Power is more addictive than wealth, which is why the superwealthy pursue so much more than they need for even the wildest consumption, or can actually use in the future.

Without considering power and the role it plays culturally and institutionally, economics is poking in the dark as a social science. It's ignored the matter of real importance.

Business Insider

The Simplest Explanation For Wall Street Greed We've Ever Read

Linette Lopez

Philip Pilkington — Shadow-boxing with DSGE Models

This is what mainstream economics is turned into. Economists bicker amongst themselves over models that are obvious nonsense. They will use criteria to prove or falsify such models that when turned around on beliefs they hold in common would demolish these too. It is a bizarre show.

It is a group of people vying for the Throne of Macro all the while secretly terrified that anyone will push the scientific criteria they claim to uphold too far and expose the fact that the Emperor is naked. How long can this carnival last? Well, if we look back on the last time such a discourse was firmly entrenched — that is, during the Scholastic era in the Middle Ages — we can be confident that it will last as long as those in power put up with it. But with regards to mainstream economics that day might well be coming to an end.

Fixing the Economists
Shadow-boxing with DSGE Models
Philip Pilkington

Joel Kotkin — Neither Party Dealing With More-Rigid Class Structure

Diminished prospects – what some describe as the “new normal” – now confront a vast proportion of the population, with wages falling not only for noncollege graduates but also for those with four-year degrees. Overall, median incomes for Americans fell 7 percent in the decade following 2000 and are not expected to recover, according to some economic models, until 2021.

This decline has infected the national mood. Today, more middle- and working-class Americans predict that their children will not do better than they have done.Overall, almost one-third of the public, according to Pew, consider themselves “lower” class, as opposed the middle class, up from barely one-quarter who thought so in 2008.

It’s not surprising, then, that the vast majority of Americans believe the president’s economic policy has been a dismal failure, at least for the middle and working classes. Federal Reserve monetary policy, in particular, appeared to favor the interests of the wealthy over those of the middle, yeoman class. “Quantitative easing,” notes one former high-level official, essentially constituted a “too big to fail” windfall for the largest Wall Street firms, and did little for anyone else. Faith in the economy, despite the soaring stock market and increased price of assets, has remained weak. Americans by a 2-1 margin rate the economy negatively.

These realities helped spark both the Tea Party and the Occupy movements and underpin the support for such disparate figures as Sarah Palin and Elizabeth Warren. At the same time, outrage at our current economy has undermined public esteem for almost every institution of power – from government and large corporations to banks and Wall Street – to the lowest point ever recorded.

New Geography

Neither Party Dealing With More-Rigid Class Structure

Joel Kotkin | Executive Editor of NewGeography.com and Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register

Yves Smith — Yes Virginia, Obama and the Democrats Are Mussolini-Style Corporatists, Just Like the Republicans

Doh. Anyone didn't get that? Oh, right, the Obama bots and the Third Way/Clinton fans.

Oh, well, at least it is bipartisan.

Naked Capitalism
Yes Virginia, Obama and the Democrats Are Mussolini-Style Corporatists, Just Like the Republicans
Yves Smith

Lars Schall — Secret information: The currency of power

The transcript of the following interview was exclusively arranged for Asia Times Online. An audio file of the interview is published at the German financial web site "Die Metallwoche" here.

Thomas Drake, born 1957, is a former senior executive at the US National Security Agency who blew the whistle on a multi-billion dollar program fraud and cover up as well as the NSA's secret unlawful surveillance program. The US Department of Justice prosecuted and indicted him under the World War I-era Espionage Act in April, 2010, under 10 felony counts including that he "mishandled documents". The case against him ultimately collapsed. He eventually pled to one misdemeanor count for exceeding authorized use of a computer. He is a former airborne crypto-linguist and electronic warfare mission crew supervisor. From 1991-1998 he worked at Booz Allen Hamilton as a management, strategy and technology consultant and software quality engineer. In 2011, Drake became the recipient of the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Award. He holds a Bachelor's and two Master's degrees as well as numerous graduate certificates.

Worse than you thought or even imagined.

Asia Times Online
Secret information: The currency of power
Lars Schall

See also Washington's Blog, Is the U.S. Government Changing the Amount In People’s Financial Accounts and Manipulating Financial Systems with Its Offensive Cyber Capabilities?

Henry M. Levin — Vouchers — a disaster for schools

No significant improvement in achievement and increased social stratification.

Lars Syll
Vouchers — a disaster for schools

Henry M. Levin | distinguished economist and director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University

Business Insider Here's Who Makes The Money In This Country — And Who Pays The Income Taxes

Charts. Or why the economy remains in the tank for so long with no clear prospects. It's a two-tier, have v. have-not economy typical of underdeveloped countries.

Business Insider
Here's Who Makes The Money In This Country — And Who Pays The Income Taxes

Don Quijones — Rent-A-Cop: The Rise of the Mercenary Police State

Alternate title: The Rise of Neo-Feudalism and Neo-Fascism.

Raging Bull-shit
Rent-A-Cop: The Rise of the Mercenary Police State
Don Quijones