I have yet to finish all my Democratic National Convention posting since I’ve been on near constant travel ever since I left Denver (I’m in Alabama right now in a hotel where some Gustav refugees are also staying). I am however, in touch with an Indian American woman (let’s call her PK) who is in Minneapolis this week. PK is at the RNC as a medic who is treating protesters (and possibly some anarchists) who are at the convention. I asked her if she’d be nice enough to send me a dispatch and she sent the following last night:
Today I spent most of the day at a street clinic, organized by local and national activists concerned about the health of those involved in protests, especially those subject to police brutality. We’re housed in a church, right across from one of the main hospitals in St. Paul (this is where I do some of my medical rotations). We’re close to the capitol building, but a mile from the Xcel Center. This center is here to address the acute needs of those in medical need, but either unable (due to lack of health insurance) or uninterested (due to lack of trust with the medical establishment or record system) to access their medical care at the mainstream health center.Yesterday, many of the medics out on the streets were taken in with the protestors. The general belief is that medics are being targetted for arrest particularly because without the support staff there to help the “rioters”, the protestors will be less likely to attempt further action.
The Poor People’s March for Economic Human Rights took place today. It was notably smaller than yesterdays demonstration, and the arrests and retaliation was smaller, though the police presence is out of proportion to the number of marchers. In clinic, the entire afternoon and evening we kept getting texts that tear gas was used at this-and-that street and we were expecting a deluge of tear gassed individuals to show up, any minute. But we had very few visits, mainly because people are being decontaminated on the streets. At the clinic, we have a larger makeshift decontamination center (basically, the person strips, we hose them down to remove all residues of the gas, clean out their eyes with solution, and have them put on new clothes), and it seemed to attract a lot of unneccessary attention late in the evening because we had all the “fresh clothes” set up on the grass and the Poor People’s March veered towards our street. A collection of police came by and began asking what we’re doing, who is renting the space, and other unnecessaries. They were told to return with a warrant, and the remainder of the evening was high stress, as the main organizers began to prepare us for being taken in, in the case of a raid. My main worry through this whole thing was typically desi– I’m studying for the USMLE and can’t afford to go to jail right now! AND WHAT WILL MY PARENTS THINK??!
I didn’t take many pictures, except for a helicopter shot up in the sky, and my arm sharpie’d up with the numbers of lawyers’ agency we were supposed to call in the case we got arrested– our one call! I was a bit worried about taking photos of things around town— less attention, the better.Anyways, when I left the clinic, there were tons of police all over the streets. More than the number of “civilian” people. It was a nerve-wracking walk, particularly because we had been warned that others leaving the clinic with medic badges had been taken in for no reason earlier today. I didn’t have any trouble, except for some police stare-downs.
I had heard there was some sort of impromptu march led by Rage Against the Machine, and that was where a lot of the direct drama was happening, especially use of tear gas. Did not get to the Xcel Center area today.
There are definitely a lot of parties happening all over town. I had to go pick up some milk and was a little surprised at the number of places decked out with lights and lanes closed on main throughways. This definitely is not the sleepy-town Minneapolis I am used to, but at the same time, I feel like outside of the three mile bubble around St. Paul, you can live business-as-usual if you’d like. I don’t feel excitement tingling the Cities. But maybe that’s because I’m not a “good-ol-boy” and am not around the right crowd to pick up that vibe.
39 · Manju said
They didn’t live under an “evil ideology”; they lived under Russian colonialism and a statist and dictatorial regime that engaged in massive violence. You’re right that I should have acknowledged that explicitly. Your point, though, to the extent that it can be called one, is a distraction from the actual issue that I raised, which is that billions of people have been affected by neoliberalism, and yet you still trot out neoliberal bull$hit from the Reagan/Clinton era.
50 · Fidelis Bozo said
And if your parents jumped off the brooklyn bridge, would you do that too?
48 · MoorNam said
Moornam, generally, people deserve rewards in so far as they are directly responsible for them. So if basketball player A is wealthier than basketball player B because of the way they play and manage their finances, she deserved to be wealthier. But if I do badly solely because I am born to low-income parents, then I don’t deserve that kind of life, since being born poor is not an action that I can be held responsible for.
Can any of you people who are saying free trade is great cite a single historical example of a country that industrialized through reliance on industries in which it had comparative advantage to the exclusion of developing infant industries through protection of some form or another?
get an arraigned marriage.
50 · Fidelis Bozo said
That is certainly the reason why my parents emigrated to the United States, but my parents raised me to pursue a decent living through ethical means–they have never advocated “money at any cost” and they support my efforts to shame war profiteers.
My parents made sacrifices to help their family and their community–helping people arrange lawyers or fill out forms, taking them job interviews, co-signing on their car loans, donating their hard-earned cash to aid students or the dispossessed. They could have been pursuing money instead of doing all that, but they didn’t, and that’s how they raised my sisters and me, so I don’t really see the point or relevance of your question.
There are ethical ways to make a living, and there are unethical ways. My paternal grandfather was considered a fool for never taking bribes in India–he worked for the electrical company way back when they were laying the grid in Punjab. He was constantly being transferred from one undesirable location to the next because his superiors wanted him to grant favors to powerful people which he refused to do. His colleagues’ children rode to school on scooters while my father could not even afford a bicycle. That is the family I come from. We are not willing to sacrifice that legacy for a quick buck, no.
This passes for moral philosophy? What happened to tit-for-tat (an evolutionary stable strategy) or do unto others or even utilitarianism? Let alone, “from each…”
Re: Blinder — When we are talking about families at 95th percentile, income growth or lack thereof is only part of the story. For at least half of those families, performance of assset markets — real estate, stocks and bonds — is at least equally significant. Half of American households own some stocks and home ownership has been in 60-70% range over the last 50 years.
Just to take an example, if we look at 100 year chart of Dow Jones, [link] there are four distinct periods since 1950 – 16 year uptrend (1950-1965), 17 years of churning(1966-1982), 17 year uptrend(1983-1999) and churning since 2000. Broken down by party, we get 15/22 uptrending years (=68%) for the democratic party and 18/36 (=50%) good years for the republicans.
I have no idea if that strengthens Blinder’s argument. How do you assign causation after accounting for geopolitics, control over legislative branch, oil prices, fed blunders, lag between fiscal policy and its impact on GDP and thousand other variables? It seems to be a futile exercise. However, just to make Manju happy, Obama will win and Dow will churn for 8 more years to get that hit rate down to 50% (15/30).
54 · Dr AmNonymous said
you are misreading the argument (and naturally so, because you obviously regard capital flows as demon currents somehow emanating from Friedman’s arse) and substituting some bizarre chicken-egg model. Can you, without going Hobsbawm-lite, cite an example of a single historical variable influencing all others in it’s orbit? There are no true laissez-faire countries but there are economies incorporating quite a lot of protectionist measures and there isn’t an economist worth his/her salt that would propose that any of those measures are leading the charge to lift poor people out of poverty. ( yes China is doing well on this front, but it’s not the officials’ 5-year plans that are responsible. Also, preservation in poverty by way of humanitarian aid regime just doesn’t qualify)
when goods are traded in a global market, how do the producers of said goods benefit (in the long run) from tariffs, subsidies and other statist controls?
Yes! I can! protection of infant industries combined with disciplining measures for firms is far more likely to allow rates of productivity growth and shifts up to high tech capital intensive industry than other economic policies do, all else equal (see: South Korea, mass killings of labor activists and all). However, in the real world, it’s not always possible to match social structure with polity with effective practices, and even when you do it’s horrendously violent, but ideology and especially imperialistically imposed ideology like contemporary neoliberalism doesn’t help matters (especially when idiot policymakers in the developing world actually believe in the idiot policies that are being prescribed to them by idiot policymakers in the rich world).
So if you can show me a country that actually industrialized its way through “free trade” rather than protectionism, I’ll give you a cookie and a half. It has nothing to do with statism either – it’s about going with lower competitive industries (by global price and quality) and making them competitive over time – the only way to do that is through long term conditional subsidization. You can combine markets and government intervention (like Pakistan did to create industry out of scratch or South Korea did) but the key variables are the ones listed above – protection and discpline. markets and state are just constructs – ways of framing sets of policy tools that can be used.
Alternatively, if you can come up with a way that “the market” will fund long term ventures that are highly risky and bear the costs and risks for industrial learning, I’d love to hear it – and I’m sure developing country governments would as well. It’s the only way the free trade model could possibly work for countries that aren’t already industrialized. Markets are good at providing discipline (in the form of competition) that eliminates lower competitive firms – they’re not good at growing entire industries out of scratch like Pakistan and India and South Korea had and have to do.
Essentially, the point I’m making boils down to this: nation-states exist; you can choose to deal wtih this reality if you’re a policymaker, or you can choose to pretend that the magic market fairy will create high tech capital intensive industries in your country rather than making it a grounds for coffee plantations or oil and mineral extraction or small pockets of transnationally competitive BPO, IT, and other industries with the rest of the economy with little to show for itself 😉
In their own ways: Alexander Hamilton knew this. Frederick List knew this. Nehru knew this. Japan knew this. South Korea knew this. China knows this. And India did and still does to some extent, though ever less so since 1991, 11 years after the structural break in GDP.
(caveat – I’m talking economic analysis only – as I said – there’s a tremendous amount of violence attached to all processes of industrialization)
54 · Dr AmNonymous said
To keep it precise and short…Equatorial Guinea.
Crude vs Cocoa…trend from 1965 to 2008
ps: Don’t try to argue the point though, I can disprove it myself…but to answer it straight up, that is technically correct.
59 · Nayagan said
No they wouldn’t unless they were Hoppe-ing mad
LOL. Harbeer’s parents rule. Totally.
As they say back in the pind – “soora so pahchaaniye jo ladey deen ke hait” [I hope I got it right but it means, the warrior is that who fights for the weak].
Dr.Amnomynous – “And if your parents jumped off the brooklyn bridge, would you do that too?”
Since my parents are not named Natalie Coughlin and Michael Phelps, I would most definitely jump in after them, and try to save them from drowning in the Hudson, which flows by their home in upstate New York. Unless, for aesthetic reasons, they chose to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge into the more polluted east river, then all bets are off.
It’s hard not to laugh, every frat boy from school, most of whom are now on Wall Street, used to own a Rage Against the Machine t-shirt. When drunk/contemplative they would wax eloquent about the repression of the Chiapets. It is so wrong to oppress novely bean sprout covered ceramics.
58 · dipanjan said
yes, this is true. but as far as i know, the significant stock ownership is still concentrated among the very wealthy.
So the majority of the households appear to benefit from a Democrat government per Blinder’s argument. But Blinder goes further. He says that a Democrat government produces more economic growth per capita. Assuming that the performance of assets corresponds roughly with economic growth, Blinder would have that a Democrat govt is likely better for the wealthy too. He claims that that gain in wealth obtained by the wealthy in such periods of economic growth is larger than the one obtained through tax cuts (obviously, though risk is not accounted for here. A tax cut is a sure-shot gain that has a greater likelihood of being made permanent. Moreover, the wealthy may still vote Republican because ultimately, they get a more receptive regulatory climate and mindset from the Repubs). I strongly agree with your point of the limited impact of the president on the economy, though Blinder claims that the book he cites seems to have accounted for that fact. How satisfactory the accounting is probably best determined by examining that study more thoroughly 🙂
Harbeer –
“That is certainly the reason why my parents emigrated to the United States, but my parents raised me to pursue a decent living through ethical means–they have never advocated “money at any cost” and they support my efforts to shame war profiteers.”
If alleviating suffering and taking up cudgels on behalf of the downtrodden and he disenfranchised is the goal, then why leave India?
p.s. if my comments come across as disrespectful, in any way, please accept my apologies.
59 · Nayagan said
Nayagan, you are completely spot-on with that observation. Dr. AmNonymous — I agree with you that industrialization (industrialization != free trade, however) has been a violent process in the world so far (imperialism, forcible control of assets in natural resource rich areas, disrespect for property rights of indigenous people). But this is not free trade as I conceive it. Free trade happens when labor and capital are free to move, when basic property, human rights, and multilateral agreements pertinent to economic, labor, and environmental regulation are respected, and those who create externalities pay for their costs [hopelessly idealistic, i know!]. Like communism, free trade has not been achieved. As far as I know, no country can claim to have increased GDP through free trade alone (historically, both capital and labor flows have been restricted, and legal conceptions of citizen rights and individual property rights in human history have been relatively recent).
Jabber – “Any self-respecting person would not associate himself with a group largely contemptuous of his religious beliefs or religious culture.”
In that case, Muslims should not vote for a candidate who considers being labeled a Muslim a smear; who doesn’t have the decency to stand up and say that, Muslims, too, have the right to run for the Presidency of these United States; whose staff forced two teen aged girls to leave the auditorium where said candidate was to speak, only because their heads were covered. No?
As far as I know, no country can claim to have increased GDP through free trade alone
Singapore? Although lots of social control.
67 · Fidelis Bozo said
Your comments don’t come off as disrespectful, they just don’t seem to make much sense. Did you read my answer to your previous question–you know, the one you quoted? The answer to your second question is right in there.
You just don’t get it. I never stated that “alleviating suffering and taking up cudgels on behalf of the downtrodden and disenfranchised [was] the [one and only] goal.” Is it possible to have more than one goal? Is it possible to achieve those goals ethically, without investing in Halliburton? What are you even talking about?
Furthermore, they would never characterize their community service as “alleviating suffering and taking up cudgels on behalf of the downtrodden and disenfranchised.” They recognize that people helped them, too, and that we all benefit when we lend each other hands. They wouldn’t characterize it in those condescending terms–those “downtrodden and disenfranchised” are actual extensions of their own physical bodies–there’s no separation–and they see it as a privilege to be useful to someone else.
Harbeer @ 56 said :
Good for you buddy. Hope you stay true to it. Life has a way of making a mockery of our ideals sometimes.
I completely agree with a lot of your analysis (and yes, I know that free trade is not industrialization…just because I believe in heterodox economics, that doesn’t mean I’m stupid ;). What I disagree with is the idea that in the world that we live in, the ideology and political forces behind free trade are a viable strategy towards a world in which people can move about as they would like. In fact, i think it’s exactly the opposite – that in order for different countries to be able to reach a reasonable level of parity (i.e. for all of them to be highly industrialized) they would need to have the policy autonomy to construct domestically appropriate economic policies – the same way that the “free trade” system that is not actually free trade – as you not – that the U.S. .has promoted is to its benefit, the way that the “free trade” system that the British created during their imperial heyday – was to their benefit. This is the same problem that all idealists face – whether communist or free traders or anything else – how you achieve a world whose structure is vastly different from the one you see in front of you. There is virtually no empirical evidence that completely opening up your borders or in other ways following an externally dictated policy regime in a situation of geopolitical inequality (which is to say, the last 5 centuries at least) allows you to achieve convergence in living standards growth rates etc.
So while your variant of the theoretical argument is granted, ideological communism:Stalin’s collectivization :: ideological free trade:IMF structural adjustment (among other failings). You have to deal with the world where the theory’s being applied if you’re going to make arguments based on it and lay out a path to how the utopia or near-utopia you’re describing can be achieved. For example, I believe in profoudnly transforming the U.S. political economy so I think that one of the major steps needs to be to liberate Americans from slavelike reliance on literalist interpretations of the constitution – so i want to see a progressive movement that is in a position to have a constitutional convention in 20 / 30 years – i also support policy autonomy for poorer countries and generally a leveling of the playing field in all kinds of relationships – i also support promoting interpersonal communication skills to address some of the problems in south asian communities like domestic violence patriarchy etc – none of these things by themselves, but they are paths to broader solutions and the tools themselves yield rewards.
anway, i’m going on and on, but my point is that if the defense is “oh it’s just theory”–well as nice an idea as the theory might be, you have to think through the implications of the theory for conceptual purposes, but you also have to identify how you would go from where we are today to where you want to be – and whether you can live with the consequences. I say the latter becacuse i’m somewhat torn on industrialization and haven’t reached an internal resolution yet other than, for the short term, to support other countries’ decisions about how they want to go.
Rahul, this is your example of successful free-trade led industrialization??? Set aside all the stuff about inequality, about authoritarianism, about myriad things that most decent people don’t like but many people interested in development, including me, recognize as legitimately debatable for economic analyses. There’s no evidence of industrialization here–this is an extraction economy:
There is a long explanation for it…Here is a very very interesting read on the subject
I know it is chaotic, but they tried a lot of different things until they struck oil actually. See EG used to be the nation with the highest per capita in Africa until the 40s (I think). They had the single largest share in the cocoa market of the world, but then after they gained their “liberation” from Spain (!) they ended up screwing up their country good.
There are a lot of different dynamics here, but I believe that if they hadn’t struck oil when they did, they would have satisfied the criterion you specified.
On a totally interesting sidenote, Frederick Forsyth wrote a book called “Dogs of war” about 30 -40 yrs ago, about a Western Industrialist sponsored coup of an African nation where Gold was struck…when they found oil in EG, there was actually a plan for such a coup…several people got indicted including Margaret Thatcher’s son. But I digress…
So yea…thats why I mentioned EG…I still think they have a lot of potential. Very nerdily, I befriended some EquatoGuineans on Facebook and we exchanged notes on their country, so at least the outlook isn’t totally bad.
74 · Dr AmNonymous said
Its actually just the people from one tribe, who aren’t even from the mainland where most of the oil is.
This isn’t the place to go even further down this tangential road, but nearly all developing countries have potential – i.e. natural endowments and whatever positive legacies they’re left with at independence (Atul Kohli has made a case that Japanese colonialism did a lot of the dirty work that allowed South Korean capitalism to take off). The question is the extent to which they are able to create policy space to employ that potential in an effective way (i.e. where my opposition to what passes for “free trade” comes) and whether they actually do so within those confines (i.e. the realm of domestic political economy, which is complicated by a lot of other things like social structure, etc) (i.e. a certain level of policy autonomy is necessary but not sufficient). However, the latter is virtually impossible without meeting the former; hence Bangladesh is likely far more screwed than India is, to get back to South Asia, all else equal. You can see this in the extent to which state policies in various developing countries in reality actually reflect domination by wealthy countries / foreign capital — this is why India and China can engage in subsidization of businesses through a variety of mechanisms, whereas countries like Bangladesh or Pakistan are far more vulnerable to aid, ideological demands like the elimination of corruption (which is ridiculous), and other well-intentioned or malintentioned “recommendations” from countries and institutions wiht more geopolitical power.
The other difficulty with this free trade stuff is exactly in how ideological it is and how different ideas get lumped together. State/private and liberal/protectionist are not the same dichotomy and may not even be the relevant one (imo ideological/pragmatic is the most relevant and subsumes these – the real questions are how you develop forward and backward linkages, how you provide long term funding for industries you’re not competitive at, how you mobilize enough resources, how you preserve policy autonomy to the extent possible for the appropriate policies, etc.). They’re not the same – as Pakistan’s history shows – where it incubated and created an industrial sector under Ayub and even took some steps towards moving up – through a state-directed economy that engaged in trade but had subsidies and other protection in place. But the economic policy didn’t fit the political / social situation in Pakistan, which may be part of the reason for the collapse in the 1960s.
Development is very complicated 🙂 Happy for scholars, terrible for ordinary people.
oh i forgot the most important dichotomy – GDP growth vs. industrialization 🙂
77 · Dr AmNonymous said
Did you read the article in the new issue of Foreign Policy, from the former teacher of Kim Jong Il… Your line reminded me of it. Its pretty interesting
72 · ExPatInLA said
Seems more like you’re making a mockery of my ideals. Cheers!
79 · RahulD said
Nope. What’s it on?
It is by Kim Jong Il’s former Russian teacher, on a perspective of him. Scholars vs Ordinary People
Here it is, not even two weeks since the latest comment on this thread, but two weeks ago is ancient history. The slow process of vindication will take place far outside the attention of those whose knee-jerk response was to unquestioningly accept the “official press conference” version of things.