America's most prominent Marxist economist

[Freemason9]

All economists are Marxist, if they conduct carefully considered analysis of economic theory. Even Smith and Marx agreed on many, many things.

 

[jwoodie]

a. A study of table 7.1 would show that between 1973 and 2004, it doubled. And between 1929 and 2004, real per capita consumption by American workers increased five fold. The fastest growth periods were 1983-1990 and 1992-2004, known as the Reagan boom.

except that Reagan wasn't president in '92-2004.

The common factors associated with these rapid growth periods are 2/3 control of the federal government by the GOP. Full control by either party doesn't seem to work very well.

 

[PoliticalChic]

a. A study of table 7.1 would show that between 1973 and 2004, it doubled. And between 1929 and 2004, real per capita consumption by American workers increased five fold. The fastest growth periods were 1983-1990 and 1992-2004, known as the Reagan boom.

except that Reagan wasn't president in '92-2004.

You're serious...right?

I mean....you really don't understand that the benefits of Reagan's policies extended beyond his years in office???




1. "His policies worked spectacularly! The Reagan recovery started officially in November of 1982 and lasted 92 months without any more than a shallow, short recession, until July 1990, when tax increases of the ’92 budget deal killed it."
Robert Bartley, “The Seven Fat Years,” p. 135, 144.


2. This was a new record for the longest peacetime expansion, the previous being 58 months. During this seven year recovery, the economy grew by nearly one third.
The poverty rate, which had started to rise under Carter, declined every year from 1984 to 1989, dropping by one sixth from its peak.
http://www.presidentreagan.info/poverty.cfm

 

[PoliticalChic]

What happened in the 1970's?

Could it be the beginning of the end of the US Dollar by taking it totally off the gold standard and our Social Programs converting us from the biggest creditor to the biggest debtor on the planet?

I hope you aren't suggesting that you agree with this Liberal "Marxist economist" about the US economy.....and workers no longer increasing their standard of living.


I'm going to post more of what he teaches students...you'll be amazed.


More amazing....how many believe him.

 

[HelenaHandbag]

Would have bet the OP was about Paul Krugman.

You mean there's someone who is even a bigger Marxist?

 

[PoliticalChic]

What happened in the 1970's?

Could it be the beginning of the end of the US Dollar by taking it totally off the gold standard and our Social Programs converting us from the biggest creditor to the biggest debtor on the planet?

or maybe the reason is that the US war dept. has spent too much monies being a world power, which we did not do before WWI.

And you believe that the nation had a choice?

1. With the railroads, the consumer base for manufacturers went from local to national, and the United States became the largest national market on earth. And, at some point, the increased capacity of the manufacturing base outstripped the consumer base. The American economy could produce more than Americans needed, with the result that we saw an industrial recession. Agrarian economies generally saw the opposite: needs were greater than production. The experience of the 1890’s suggested a need for foreign markets and colonies.

2. Unlike sailing navies that move by wind power, the modern navy needs foreign depots and coal stations for fuels. That, and the fact that the major powers were colonizing all over the world, indicated that continued growth in the economy required an imperial foreign policy. That, and the fact that United States fortunes from 1898 on, meant that this nation could go to war without first accounting for costs: we could have both guns and butter.

3. “Brands’ First Law of History: Sooner of later, every nation gets the foreign policy that it can afford.” Early in our history, wars were smaller, somewhat ‘frontier wars:’ the Revolution, 1812, the Mexican War…the Civil War may be considered an exception. Even the Spanish-American began as a Caribbean skirmish, and expanded into across the Pacific.
H.W. Brands, “American Colossus: The Triumph of American Capitalism, 1865-1900.”

 

[PoliticalChic]

So, because employers refused to continue the earlier design....sharing the profits via raises, the dynamics of the traditional American family has been destroyed.

No mother at home to raise Johnny, no father with free time to instill values.....



All of the breakdown can be traced to the greedy business owners and employers.
And the nature of capitalism.

Call it what you may, but the outcome is what we have today

"Call it what you may,...."

Hey....are you abdicating your role in either championing or decrying Dr. 'America's most prominent Marxist economist' Wolff's thesis????


What the dillio???


This is what you're paid for here at USMB!

 

[PoliticalChic]

All economists are Marxist, if they conduct carefully considered analysis of economic theory. Even Smith and Marx agreed on many, many things.

"All economists are Marxist, if they conduct carefully considered analysis of economic theory."


Really?


Watch me blow this dude out of the water.

 

[PoliticalChic]

As a good Marxist, Dr. Wolff lays out the argument that the greedy business owners are the cause of every societal ill.

In the OP we find the following in his web of deceit:
"6. So....to keep up the consumption, to provide for the kids, the American working class went on a borrowing binge no working class in the history of the world every undertook. Starting in the 1970's, the savings rate collapsed. And we invented the 'credit card.'

a. In 1929 the average debt for an American family was 25-30% of annual income. In 2007 the average debt for an American family was 125% of annual income.

b. The Federal Reserve keeps this statistic: what percent of your income is used to pay off your debt...in other words, cannot be used to buy anything. Today (2009) is about 17%. The lenders are no longer interested in lending to these borrowers."





I don't doubt his stats here in terms of saving and borrowing.


But the implication that workers had to give up the former, and were forced into the latter.....
...this is boilerplate Marxism.
The assumption being that human nature is all about materialism, and not about values and attitudes.



Therefore, once one gets past Wolff's fabrication that real wage increases ceased in the 1970's....

....I suggest more attention be paid to June 25, 1962.
That was the Engel decision that prayers in public schools was unconstitutional.


If more attention was paid to what one is, rather than what one owns, many of society's problems would be alleviated.

 

[PoliticalChic]

The basic premise of the Marxist in question is that greedy rich folks have, basically, made American workers their slaves. According to Dr. Wolff, wage increases stopped in the 1970s, and he goes on to explain the following:



"7. In 1970, among industrialized nations, American has the most equal distribution of wealth and income.The gap between rich and poor was smaller in the United States than in other countries.
Today, we are the most unequal.




There are four basic reasons why wages stopped increasing in the 1970's.

a. The first was the computer. As an example, there used to be an army of inventory checkers in the supermarket....now, the computer ticks off one unit every time the cashier runs it by the scanner. The computer meant fewer workers.

b. Next, corporations decided to move production out of the United States. With modern telecommunications, the cheaper factory didn't have to be down the hall.
60% of the goods coming into America from China are produced by subsidiaries of American corporations.

c.and d. And just at a time when there were fewer jobs, massive numbers of women and immigrants were flooding the job market. As a result, employers didn't have to pay higher wages."

 

[PoliticalChic]

So smartest Marxist goes onto explain inequality, and half of the explanation has nothing to do with exploitation by rich folks: the computer, and women and immigrants competing for jobs.

OK...

Now, how about corporations moving manufacturing jobs overseas?
That must be pure evil.....no?

No.

What about the benefits that accrue to the average American from less expensive goods?


1. Most working class folks are smarter than his Liberal audience:
"The diverse group of self-identified liberals are better educated than the country as a whole, less religious, more urban, less married and wealthier. They support abortion and gay rights, are unconcerned about pornography, and rarely own guns."
Edsall, “ Building Red America,” p. 18.

a. The group [Liberals] frequently finds themselves in disagreement with white, working-class voters, as outlined in the Pew survey of 2007, “Trends in Political Values.” One example: two-thirds of working-class Democrats have a favorable view of Wal-Mart, while a majority of professional-class Democrats consider it to be something akin to evil incarnate. Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007 | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press



2.And the following, particularly appropriate to our Marxist economist:

" Older socialists dreamed of a world in which all classes would share in the fruits of the world. Yet when a permutation of this emerges, it is resented if it represents capitalism. An institution beyond the imaginings of socialists of old: Wal-Mart. Within Wal-Mart we see a cornucopia of goods designed to improve human well-being, at prices that make them affordable for all. Millions of jobs are created, and prosperity is spread throughout areas where it was sorely needed. An entity owned by share-holders, people of mostly moderate incomes who have invested their savings, worker-capitalists."
https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2007&month=05


And how did this occur?
Corporations owned by workers moved the manufacturing abroad so as to increase profits and lower costs for the average American.


Notice how 'the most prominent Marxist economist in America' is easily shown to be full of baloney.
Yet this is the 'education' provided in Amherst, Yale, the New School....and almost every other institution of 'higher learning.'

 

[Toro]

I think we should make this thread real fun.
[MENTION=41066]Kimura[/MENTION] [MENTION=21524]oldfart[/MENTION]

 

[HelenaHandbag]

There goes the neighborhood!

 

[edthecynic]

a. A study of table 7.1 would show that between 1973 and 2004, it doubled. And between 1929 and 2004, real per capita consumption by American workers increased five fold. The fastest growth periods were 1983-1990 and 1992-2004, known as the Reagan boom.

except that Reagan wasn't president in '92-2004.

Well, you see, the policies of St Ronnie continue to effect the economy after he left office, but not to be confused with the policies of G W Bush which ended 2 years before he left office.

The rule is, "Anything good that happens is due to the nearest in time Republican president and anything bad that happens is due to the nearest in time Democratic president."

 

[edthecynic]

a. A study of table 7.1 would show that between 1973 and 2004, it doubled. And between 1929 and 2004, real per capita consumption by American workers increased five fold. The fastest growth periods were 1983-1990 and 1992-2004, known as the Reagan boom.

except that Reagan wasn't president in '92-2004.

You're serious...right?

I mean....you really don't understand that the benefits of Reagan's policies extended beyond his years in office???

Just like the "benefits" of the Bush II tax cutting economic policies extended beyond his years in office.
Oh wait!!!

 

[PoliticalChic]

I think we should make this thread real fun.
[MENTION=41066]Kimura[/MENTION] [MENTION=21524]oldfart[/MENTION]

You're too late....it's fun already.

 

[oldfart]

I think we should make this thread real fun.
[MENTION=41066]Kimura[/MENTION] [MENTION=21524]oldfart[/MENTION]

I'm sorry but I have an ethical issue. It is unsporting to engage in intellectual combat with an unarmed opponent.

 

[william the wie]

PC the philip's curve last worked as expected in 1958.

This was also the approximate date that Moore's law first started to become obvious.

And from a biological viewpoint the environment changed radically with the polio vaccine knocking out the last major infectious disease and birth control pills causing a change in selective pressure also about that time.

The big knock on economic models of all stripes is that they ignore changes in the selective pressure on economic actors.

"Plagues and Peoples", "The Columbian Exchange" and Peter Newman's multi-volume history of the Hudson's Bay Company have much more to say about why the US did so well than any economic history or model that I have seen.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I think we should make this thread real fun.
[MENTION=41066]Kimura[/MENTION] [MENTION=21524]oldfart[/MENTION]

I'm sorry but I have an ethical issue. It is unsporting to engage in intellectual combat with an unarmed opponent.

Enough with the excuses.

Come out from under your desk, coward.

 

[PoliticalChic]

PC the philip's curve last worked as expected in 1958.

This was also the approximate date that Moore's law first started to become obvious.

And from a biological viewpoint the environment changed radically with the polio vaccine knocking out the last major infectious disease and birth control pills causing a change in selective pressure also about that time.

The big knock on economic models of all stripes is that they ignore changes in the selective pressure on economic actors.

"Plagues and Peoples", "The Columbian Exchange" and Peter Newman's multi-volume history of the Hudson's Bay Company have much more to say about why the US did so well than any economic history or model that I have seen.

Willie....please relate this post to our "prominent Marxist economist's" thesis.