The Day After... Italy.

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European politicians are absolutely delusional to think they're getting themselves out of this. I've switched my outlook from Italy is more than likely to default to it will default.

after this from the Wonkish1 rating agency bond yields are expected to soar even high tomorrow.

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all the way down to 6.51.

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privatization is never cheaper.  the private is only interested in the functions that can turn a profit.  sticking the public for the bill on the non-profitable essentials.  privatization is a myth

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but as history has shown us the public sector and public enterprise has never, ever been close to as efficient nor as innovative as the private sector and private enterprise is.

this is totally and demonstrably untrue.

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I'm not going to go through a blow by blow thing with you like Al did, for a variety of reasons.  just a few general points.  first 'efficiency' is a loaded term designed to give basis to all of those liberal economic models that 'prove' unions are the devil, water should be priced out of reach of vast segments of the population, etc.  usually I don't even bother to engage in market logic driven discussion for this reason (and for other reasons) but a few fairly obvious things here can be said, without getting my hands dirty.

the US private pension system is grossly inefficient, however we can reasonably define the term, compared to the public system.  Social Security's administrative costs are about 1% of total money handled.  contrast this with the mass of fiduciaries, investment advisers, lawyers, etc. that have to be paid off in the private system, it's stark.

the elephant in the room is the US health care system.  here 'efficiency' as a loaded term can be stretched so many ways, but one simply look at US health care costs as a share of GDP, which already dwarf that of the other Western liberal democracies, and at the other end look at the outcomes.  millions go without coverage, infant mortality, 37th according to the WHO, etc, etc.  

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It is absurd to suggest that technology comes from the 'private sector'.

the windfall profits go to the private sector while the public absorbs the downside risk, standard practice.

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I never get better at doing anything in life unless I stand to profit from it.

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Second, what does "downside risk" have to do with technology? No instead he was referring to bailouts as if to act like TARP is universal throughout all failures in capitalism instead of a very unique situation that almost never happens(and I didn't even agree with). 99.999% of all businesses that fail are allowed to fail without any absorption of the "downside risk" by the American tax payer.

actually this isn't what I was talking about.  the downside risk of r & d is that you won't get anywhere, or at least not far enough to cover the initial investment.

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Second, what does "downside risk" have to do with technology? No instead he was referring to bailouts as if to act like TARP is universal throughout all failures in capitalism instead of a very unique situation that almost never happens(and I didn't even agree with). 99.999% of all businesses that fail are allowed to fail without any absorption of the "downside risk" by the American tax payer.

actually this isn't what I was talking about.  the downside risk of r & d is that you won't get anywhere, or at least not far enough to cover the initial investment.

Further demonstration that you have no clue what your talking about. Downside risk has absolutely nothing to do with that.

turns out I didn't use the preferred neoliberal term -- should still be elementary to discern what I'm talking about.

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up to 6.72% today.  there's still hope.  I believe one of my overnight nightmares was that the Euro crisis had been sorted out, Greece wasn't going to end up worse than an 'orderly default', Italy would be fine, etc.  this is the second time I'm dreamt about the Euro debt issues, my unconscious must have a dog in this fight.  the other dream of note had me reading the rantings of some neo-fascist protestant on the employment relationship at the home of a girl I used to hang out with in high school, in front of her father.  they were big Christians, she is even married now (for Christ's sake), at age 20.  the car they gave her to drive around came complementary with a bumper sticker: 'The Big Bang Theory: God Said 'Bang' And it Happened!'  poor girl, but, more importantly, poor me.  the scars cut deep.

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do you think class action lawyers are production?

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you again show that you have no idea what socialism is.  you can try to hide behind the (Polnut's definition) disclaimer but you offered this idea of sectoral, proportional definition in the first place.  the British nationalizations of the 40s can be understood as defeats for socialism because they did nothing to expand worker control over production, always understood to be the core of any meaningful definition of socialism before the bourgeois and Leninist propagandists took over in the 1910s and 1920s.  a public sector workplace that remains hierarchical and totalitarian in nature has no more relation to socialism than a sweatshop.

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I'm not an idiot, I'm just not self-circumscribed within the limits of discussion set by elite circles.  granted this will limit my career prospects if I don't give it up; but that's fine, and I have no intention of doing so.  nearly all of your Serious discussion have absolutely no meaning to the majority of the people on the planet, because it isn't intended to care about them.  I don't necessarily care about them either, but I get a high out of it, and I find them on the whole far more interesting.

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I'm not an idiot, I'm just not self-circumscribed within the limits of discussion set by elite circles.  granted this will limit my career prospects if I don't give it up; but that's fine, and I have no intention of doing so.  nearly all of your Serious discussion have absolutely no meaning to the majority of the people on the planet, because it isn't intended to care about them.  I don't necessarily care about them either, but I get a high out of it, and I find them on the whole far more interesting.

LOL, "limits of discussion set by elite circles" again your absolutely clueless. Things like interest rates, growth, efficiency, budgets, etc. aren't topics picked because they are "limits of the elite". They are picked because they are reality! They may not have meaning to most people, but they have huge consequence to most people(and some people here actually care about helping people in reality not in theory).

they're 'picked' because they're the issues that govern the affairs of relations between elite groups.  while they of course have tangential effects on large amounts of people, this is immaterial, as there is no avenue for the people to have an impact on interest rates, the Eurozone crisis, etc.  no avenue except to resist, which is exceedingly dangerous when taken to its limits, and after working 70 hours a week in dead end jobs they're unlikely to have the time or energy to form any opinion at all.

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I'm not an idiot, I'm just not self-circumscribed within the limits of discussion set by elite circles.  granted this will limit my career prospects if I don't give it up; but that's fine, and I have no intention of doing so.  nearly all of your Serious discussion have absolutely no meaning to the majority of the people on the planet, because it isn't intended to care about them.  I don't necessarily care about them either, but I get a high out of it, and I find them on the whole far more interesting.

I trust you don't believe in the above yourself, do you?

what's not to believe?

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I didn't say they don't matter to people, I said 1) they're not designed with the general population in mind, and 2) there is no way for the general population to impact economic policy while remaining within the system, so it may as well not.


I'm obviously not 'sticking it to the man' by posting on a message board, but plan to in the future, by defending terrorists, murderers, etc for a living.  maybe something else, who knows.

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I think what you're picking up on is that the gap between my enjoying making an argument and believing it is true or correct or whatever is very small or even non-existent.  this shouldn't be taken to mean that I don't 'actually believe' what I say.

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sure.  and what one perceives is highly dependent on where one is situated.

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btw I feel great right now.  for the first time since I got on this new medication I've had roughly full nights sleep of natural sleep for two nights in a row.  plus I'm buzzed on some iced coffee.

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I didn't say they don't matter to people, I said 1) they're not designed with the general population in mind, and 2) there is no way for the general population to impact economic policy while remaining within the system, so it may as well not.


I'm obviously not 'sticking it to the man' by posting on a message board, but plan to in the future, by defending terrorists, murderers, etc for a living.  maybe something else, who knows.

They aren't "designed" they are mathematics. What your essentially saying is that you refuse to believe that 2+2=4 is beneficial for society and so wouldn't it be so much more awesome if 2+2=5. The only difference is with an economy this math spans a lot more areas and is more complicated. I mean you apparently have no desire to have a clue as to what is reality in the world and instead just want continue to say that you believe in economic unicorns.

"...'pure' economic theory, that is economic theory which abstracts from a specific social structure, is impossible.  It would be similar to 'pure' anatomy, abstracted from the specific species which is to be examined."  -Ernest Mandel, 1976

the 'objective' economic logic is, of course, a battlefield of its own.

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you're familiar with Ernest Mandel?

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there has actually been a large-scale academic revival of Marxism since the fall of the USSR.

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Marxism in academia never went away (hey, the most respected English language historian pretty much ever - at least within the profession - is a Marxist).

who is this referring to?  Hobsbawm?