Month: August 2019

Sheer Brexit madness

benfell

As of late last night, there is a new blog post entitled, “Race and class in Pittsburgh.” And this morning, yet another one entitled, “‘Gun rights’ as white supremacism.”

Brexit

In addition to the above, there is a relevant new blog entry entitled, “The hatless mad hatters.” Yes, that makes three of them.

Edward Malnick, “Dominic Cummings tells MPs: you’ve missed your chance to stop no-deal Brexit,” Telegraph, August 3, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/03/dominic-cummings-tells-mps-missed-chance-stop-no-deal-brexit/

benfell

Peer review

There is a new blog post entitled, “Transdisciplinarity and the hazards of peer review.”

Paul D. Thacker and Jon Tennant, “Why we shouldn’t take peer review as the ‘gold standard,’” Washington Post, August 1, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-we-shouldnt-take-peer-review-as-the-gold-standard/2019/08/01/fd90749a-b229-11e9-8949-5f36ff92706e_story.html

Economics

There’s a reason I call Economics the evil stepchild among the social sciences, where Human Science is their ignored, long-suffering mother. With almost exclusively a quantitative emphasis, indeed, economists go the opposite way from human scientists. They don’t care about the story, only about the superficial numbers, that helps to obscure a messy reality that doesn’t conform to their ideology.

Andrew Simms covers some other issues with Economics.[1] It’s worth a read.

Andrew Simms, “Economics is a failing discipline doing great harm – so let’s rethink it,” Guardian, August 3, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/03/economics-global-economy-climate-crisis

  1. [1]Andrew Simms, “Economics is a failing discipline doing great harm – so let’s rethink it,” Guardian, August 3, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/03/economics-global-economy-climate-crisis↩

Keep pedaling that bicycle

benfell

Brexit

There is a new blog post entitled, “Boris Johnson might think he’s playing poker with the European Union, but he’s actually playing ‘chicken’—with a brick wall.”

Nick Hopkins, “UK less able to cope with hard Brexit than it was in spring, say officials,” Guardian, August 1, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/01/uk-less-able-to-cope-with-hard-brexit-than-in-spring-say-officials

Steven Morris, “Lib Dems win Brecon and Radnorshire byelection, cutting Johnson Commons majority to one,” Guardian, August 2, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/02/brecon-radnorshire-byelection-lib-dems-jane-dodds-win-cuts-johnson-commons-majority-to-one

Josh Wilson, “No-deal Brexit odds: Latest predictions on leaving the EU without a deal,” Telegraph, August 2, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/no-deal-brexit-odds-latest-predictions-leaving-eu-without-deal/

Debt

Pretty sure I’ve heard this story before. So first we have the bit about how consumer credit was needed and created to sell excess production in the aftermath of World War I (that’s one, not two, a century ago).[1] But the Wall Street Journal is also noticing how gains following the financial crisis of 2008-2009 have been unevenly distributed. (No shit, Sherlock![2]) And an increase in debt reflects that the middle class is being squeezed by rising costs and stagnant incomes. (Oh, really? Just noticing this now? Really?!???)[3]

Indeed, while economists (including, apparently, John Maynard Keynes) might be surprised by stagnant incomes, the increasing and increasingly concentrated labor market power of a few firms, the rich,—in an earlier article, the Wall Street Journal names “winner-take-all firms like Amazon, Google and Walmart that displaced smaller, more localized competitors”[4]— at the expense of workers is implicit in Max Weber’s explanation of how capitalism (but really any exchange system) inherently widens social inequality.[5]

What’s actually important here is that even on capitalism’s own terms, money, as an abstraction, is at least one step too far—it fails—as we keep having needs that can’t be met not so much due to finite resources but due to the allocation of those finite resources, due to how money facilitates that widening inequality.[6]

AnnaMaria Andriotis, Ken Brown, and Shane Shifflett, “Families Go Deep in Debt to Stay in the Middle Class,” Wall Street Journal, August 1, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/families-go-deep-in-debt-to-stay-in-the-middle-class-11564673734

Donald Trump

Mike DeBonis, David Weigel, and J. M. Rieger, “A majority of House Democrats back impeachment inquiry of Trump, according to an analysis by The Washington Post,” Washington Post, August 2, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-majority-of-house-democrats-backs-impeachment-according-to-an-analysis-by-the-washington-post/2019/08/02/5f28dbbc-b314-11e9-8f6c-7828e68cb15f_story.html

Clare Foran and Ashley Killough, “Majority of House Democrats now say they support starting an impeachment inquiry,” CNN, August 2, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/02/politics/half-house-democrats-impeachment/index.html

  1. [1]Anup Shah, “Creating the Consumer,” Global Issues, May 14, 2003, http://www.globalissues.org/article/236/creating-the-consumer↩
  2. [2]David Benfell, “About my job hunt,” Not Housebroken, n.d., https://disunitedstates.org/about-my-job-hunt/↩
  3. [3]AnnaMaria Andriotis, Ken Brown, and Shane Shifflett, “Families Go Deep in Debt to Stay in the Middle Class,” Wall Street Journal, August 1, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/families-go-deep-in-debt-to-stay-in-the-middle-class-11564673734↩
  4. [4]Paul Kiernan, “Despite Tight Job Market, Labor Force’s Income Is Squeezed,” Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/despite-tight-job-market-labor-forces-income-is-squeezed-11550930400↩
  5. [5]Max Weber, “Class, Status, Party,” in Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings, ed. Charles Lemert, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2010), 119-129.↩
  6. [6]David Benfell, “They must pay,” Not Housebroken, February 21, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/02/21/they-must-pay/↩

Pretending to be progressive: The neoliberal party debates

benfell

My blog has a new look. Over time I’d become increasingly dissatisfied with the old look. So I finally went through the somewhat excruciating process of trying on and configuring different themes until I found one I could tolerate.

There are two new blog posts. The first is entitled, “Injustice for political gain,” and the second is entitled, “My fellow kook.”

Kamala Harris

Emily Cadei and Bryan Anderson, “Fact check: Did Kamala Harris block evidence that would have freed death row inmates?” Sacramento Bee, July 31, 2019, https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article233375207.html

Joe Biden

Ayesha Rascoe, “Booker Says Biden’s Crime Policies ‘Destroyed Communities Like Mine,’” National Public Radio, August 1, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/08/01/747118308/booker-says-bidens-crime-policies-destroyed-communities-like-mine

Marianne Williamson

Jonathan Merritt, “I’ve worked for Marianne Williamson. She is no kook,” Washington Post, July 31, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/07/31/ive-worked-marianne-williamson-she-is-no-kook/