rrrojer.net

So, “Does the system behave the way we want it to behave?” is ultimately a moral question, one that we are banned from asking. In economics, this is exactly the sort of a question we’re not allowed to ask, because economics is supposed to be a positive science, not a normative science. The difference is clear: positive statements should describe things as they are (“facts only, baby”), whereas a normative statement describes things the way we want them to be.

Let’s take Milton Friedman, who was, of course, the biggest proponent of positive economics. He wrote the famous essay “Economics as a Positive Science.” In that essay, on the first page, you will find the following sentence: “Economics should be a positive science.” Now, please tell me if that is a positive or a normative statement.

Interview with Tomas Sedlacek, author of The Economics of Good and Evil: The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street

HT NakedCapitalism

I am so pleased to write that as of the past month, my short film has become outdated. Ashely/Amber is now a relic of another era.

The American protest movement has found it’s fighting spirit. Throughout the nation, the people are out in the streets. Normal people, by which I mean people who’ve never lived in a nudist cooperative house in the Bay Area, are debating the merits of consensus-based decision making and self-governance. We are openly asking: should we play by the rules, control our image, present a simple & easy message? Or is protest not just a means to an ends, but an assertion of democratic sovereignty, which therefore must accommodate the messiness of many opinions, values, and approaches?

The Occupy Movement has thus far negotiated this dilemma beautifully, adopting as its slogan a simple and appealing statement that asserts the rule of the people. The means is the end. We are the 99% and we want a government that represents us. So we assemble in the streets, and represent ourselves. But beyond the initial catharsis of overthrowing our apathy and helplessness, can we keep this going? I hope so, and I hope my film can contribute in some small way, if only to remind us of how impossible this moment felt half a year ago.

This film is dedicated to the occupiers.

Hopefully the first in a series.

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b&w .pdf

(edited to fix quote)

http://nycga.cc/2011/09/30/declaration-of-the-occupation-of-new-york-city/

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

Compelling & accessible argument for a Jobs Guarantee program from L. Randall Wray & Stephanie Kelton:

The truth is simple and contrary to these views. Business will not hire more workers until it has more sales. Consumers will not spend more until they’ve got more jobs. A private-sector recovery requires 300,000 new jobs every month. But the private sector doesn’t need 300,000 new workers per month to meet prospective sales.

The new jobs can only come from the federal government—the only economic entity that can afford to hire. Obama’s 1 million infrastructure jobs is a nice down payment, but it is only three month’s worth. New workers will create the sales that firms need to justify new hiring. Still, we must think bigger if we are to create 20 million jobs.

…

There is a way to do that: The government could serve as the “employer of last resort” under a job guarantee program modeled on the WPA (the Works Progress Administration, in existence from 1935 to 1943 after being renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939) and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942). The program would offer a job to any American who was ready and willing to work at the federal minimum wage, plus legislated benefits. No time limits. No means testing. No minimum education or skill requirements.

The program would operate like a buffer stock, absorbing and releasing workers during the economy’s natural boom-and-bust cycles. In a boom, employers would recruit workers out of the program; in a slump the safety net would allow those who had lost their jobs to continue to work to preserve good habits, making them easier to re-employ when activity picked up. The program would also take those whose education, training or job experience was initially inadequate to obtain work outside the program, enhancing their employability through on-the-job training. Work records would be maintained for all program participants and would be available for potential employers. Unemployment offices could be converted to employment offices, to match workers with jobs in the program, and to help private and public employers recruit workers.

Funding for the job guarantee program must come from the federal government—and the wage should be periodically adjusted to reflect changes in the cost of living and to allow workers to share in rising national productivity so that real living standards would rise—but the administration and operation of the program should be decentralized to the state and local level. Registered not-for-profit organizations could propose projects for approval by responsible offices designated within each of the states and U.S. territories as well as the District of Columbia. Then the proposals should be submitted to the federal office for final approval and funding. To ensure transparency and accountability, the Labor Department should maintain a website providing details on all projects submitted, all projects approved and all projects started.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/with_300_billion_the_president_can_reduce_unemployment_to_zero_20110908

“We have to make sure that the promises we make in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are promises we can keep, and there are various ways of doing that,” Mr. Romney said. “One is we can raise taxes on people.”

“Corporations!” the protesters shouted, suggesting that Mr. Romney, as president, should raise taxes on large businesses. “Corporations!”

“Corporations are people, my friend,” Mr. Romney responded, as the hecklers shouted back, “No they’re not!”

“Of course they are,” Mr. Romney said, chuckling slightly. “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”

When someone in the front row angrily suggested that “it goes in their pockets,” Mr. Romney, becoming increasingly animated, asked: “Whose pockets? People’s pockets!”

Romney to Hecklers: ‘Corporations Are People’ (NYT)

So not only is this exchange awesome/horrifying in it’s own right, but that handsome man heckling Romney in the above video is my old friend Dan. We went to high school together, he took over the ACLU club after I graduated, and also ran a successful student council presidency campaign on the platform “MAKE SCHOOL LESS F****D UP.”

Go Dan! So happy you’re still fighting the good fight. I’m totally beaming right now & full of CHS pride. Looking forward to the revival of your student council platform on a national scale.

Anyway, Dan’s out in Iowa now working for the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement so if you enjoyed his performance consider a donation.

The full exchange:

[cross-posted at ashley-amber.com]

Ashley/Amber is out on DVD today as part of BACK TO POLITICS, a compilation of 10 short films curated by Berlinale shorts director Maike Mia Höhne.

»Im Alter von 22 Jahren bläst Christoph Schlingensief auf offener Straße und im Schnee seinen Landsleuten die Nationalhymne. Ein klares Eingangsstatement, anhand dessen sich kaum die Frage stellt, ob man sich aufgrund der Hymne von seinem Stuhl erhebt. Prolog & programmatisch für die Auswahl BACK TO POLITICS.
Entlang der Filme lässt sich darüber spekulieren, wie die politische Lage derzeit einzuschätzen ist, wie sie sich zum Besseren verändern lässt. Politisches Handeln weist viele Facetten auf und ist nicht ausschließlich an Tagespolitik geknüpft, sondern tritt in banal anmutenden Entscheidungen zu Tage, die jede und jeder praktisch ständig zu treffen hat. Wie und was ist der Mensch, der entscheidet? In Annäherungen werden prekäre Arbeitsverhältnisse, Ich-AGs und illegale Erwerbsarbeit verhandelt. Die Frage vom Ich im Ganzen bleibt. Zum Ende geht die historische These, wie Sex und Politik zusammengehen, neue Wege. Der Erwartung wird das Leben zugesetzt.«
[Dietmar Schwärzler & Maike Mia Höhne]

It’s quite an honor to be included in this collection. There are some really excellent films including Hugo Lilja’s Aterfödelsen, the dystopian zombie film that screened with us in Berlin.

Order at good!movies & amazon.de

There is burgeoning school of economics called Modern Money Theory (MMT) that I really think warrants consideration. Not only is it theoretically quite intriguing, but if accurate, has tremendous political and social implications. One might even say that (perhaps in contrast to the Obama administration), it is actual cause for hope.

So I’d like to bring MMT to your attention. If you have already encountered, and dismissed, MMT, I’d like to encourage you to give it a second look. If you have already encountered, and dismissed, the entire field of Economics, I’d like to propose MMT as the exception to the rule.

Specifically, I suggest you check out the Modern Money Primer, recently begun by L. Randall Wray, one of the more prominent MMT scholars:

http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/p/modern-money-primer-under-construction.html

This primer is meant to be accessible introduction to someone with no prior understanding of MMT or even Economics. Wray will be adding a chapter every Monday for the next year, and responding to comments every Wednesday. (And for those of you who can’t possibly wait a year, I highly recommend Wray’s textbook Understanding Modern Money)

Okay okay but what is MMT?

Well, Wray and his colleagues will do a much better job than I of explaining, but here’s the gist as I understand it:

• In a fiat economy, public debt = private wealth
• Taxes don’t fund government spending; taxes create demand for fiat currency so that people are willing to sell goods & services to the government in exchange for said currency
• Taxation is a sufficient (though not necessary) means to create demand for fiat currency (& thus prevent against undesirable levels of inflation)

and finally, perhaps most radically:

• By serving as an “Employer of Last Resort”, essentially hiring anyone who is willing but unable to find work in the private sector and paying them a living wage, the government can ensure both full employment and price stability.

If true, this is pretty huge. Calls for “austerity” and the need to “reduce the deficit” become specious; there is an economically-sound mechanism to employ everyone at a living wage; not to mention that the government can suddenly “afford” all kinds of neat social programs, like universal health care, daycare and public transportation.

Crazy talk!
Lunacy!
Socialism!
Zimbabwe! Wiemar Germany!
Nothing you just said made any sense to me!
Rebecca, what the hell makes you, with your film degree, qualified to talk about economics?!

Yes, in many ways MMT runs completely counter to our conventional understanding of money. It sounds insane at first. But I think, if you give Wray a chance, you will see all the above points (except perhaps the last one) thoughtfully addressed.

And unlike most branches of economics, which could be accused of hiding behind intimidating jargon and complicated mathematical models rooted in mythology, the folks at New Economic Perspectives (the group of scholars behind the primer) are actively soliciting comments & critiques from their readers in an effort to make this primer as clear and thorough as possible. So I encourage you to check it out and ask questions and follow along over the next 50 weeks, if that’s your sort of thing.

[[Modern Money Primer]]

PS. If you contacted me nearly a year ago about that economics discussion list I wanted to start, apologies for never actually getting around to making it. I’m gonna try and get that started up soon, for real. Perhaps we can work our way through the Modern Money Primer together. Everyone who requested an invite will get one. If you didn’t and want in, let me know!

Nathan Bootz, a school superintendent in Michigan, writes a public letter to his governor:

Dear Governor Snyder,

In these tough economic times, schools are hurting. And yes, everyone in Michigan is hurting right now financially, but why aren’t we protecting schools? Schools are the one place on Earth that people look to to “fix” what is wrong with society by educating our youth and preparing them to take on the issues that society has created.

One solution I believe we must do is take a look at our corrections system in Michigan. We rank nationally at the top in the number of people we incarcerate. We also spend the most money per prisoner annually than any other state in the union. Now, I like to be at the top of lists, but this is one ranking that I don’t believe Michigan wants to be on top of.

Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.

This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!

Please provide for my students in my school district the same way we provide for a prisoner. It’s the least we can do to prepare our students for the future…by giving our schools the resources necessary to keep our students OUT of prison.

Respectfully submitted,

Nathan Bootz, Superintendent, Ithaca Public Schools

http://gcherald.com/letterseditor/letters-to-the-editor-may-12-2011-issue.shtml