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SouthernDragon in his Lakeside Diner this Monday Morning gave a link at the bottom of his diary to this program from WBAI on NYC. I want to make it a bit more visible because this one has an interview with Economics Professor William K. Tabb which I found to be very enlightening concerning the change in the economy since the late 1960s and early 1970s to now.
Most importantly how it went from a manufacturing base one to an investment based one. Where in the past the financial sector was only 2% or the economy and now it is 40%. That is a huge change.
You can listen here or down load here.
One particular point that is made about half way through is how the economy is made up of 40% financials and that people who used to get average income working in that area, are now payed huge amounts. And one point he does not make but I think should have been made is how the investor class – those who did not play the market much in the past – has grown as well. Those and the people who now rely on their 401k and other investments for retirement and what not. These are the people as well as the the 1% that Washington is trying to protect at all costs.
These are the people who get fried when the system crashes. Think about that.
15 Comments
These are mostly compradors.
You are entitled to your opinion but I believe you are wrong in completely dismissing them off hand.
I also believe you will have a very, very long wait for your revolution.
What the hell are you talking about, “completely dismissing them off hand”. Labeling them compradors is not a dismissal, comrade. It is an accusation.
And why would wait for my revolution?
Don’t be a fool.
Then why do you have a history of using the word “comprador” as an insult?
Here are three examples from just the past month:
http://my.firedoglake.com/tambershall/2012/03/31/no-please-keep-fighting-amongst-yourselves-just-like-the-1-want/#comment-1412
http://my.firedoglake.com/tambershall/2012/03/31/no-please-keep-fighting-amongst-yourselves-just-like-the-1-want/#comment-1395
http://my.firedoglake.com/tambershall/2012/03/31/no-please-keep-fighting-amongst-yourselves-just-like-the-1-want/#comment-1387
As MFI and I agreed earlier today, the people who effect change are the ones most able to work with others in a disciplined manner — and who can do so for long stretches of time where the disappointments far outnumber the triumphs.
Your links don’t support your claim. Now why would that be?
Good luck “working with” compradors.
On a similar note, in one of his lessons on Capital, Volume One (it’s somewhere between Chapter Ten and Chapter Fifteen), David Harvey, elaborating on Marx’ discussion of how improved technology costs workers their jobs, stated that 60% of all job loss in recent decades in the US was due not to outsourcing but to technological improvements, improvements upon which capitalists depend for the fleeting moments when they can cash in big-time with huge profit margins by having the best and most efficient technologies.
Really? Or are you hoping nobody looks at them?
Like this one:
Or this one:
And here is a model of clarity from you, during your exchange with Gerhart late last month:
So in all of these comments of yours, you’re stating that compradors are good and admirable things to be?
Hey, you had to abandon two of the last set. Having second thoughts?
That last one I am amused to see again. Can you make your competently point, PW?
I particularly enjoyed Harvey’s habit of using modern examples in lieu of Marx’s antiquated industrial climate.
Financialization, outsourcing, and those technological replacements all reveal the cynicism in the Capitalist faith.
Yes…he makes his points within today’s context very well. easy to follow and listen to.
Yup. He spends a bit of the first lesson on Chapter 15 talking about how we haven’t learned from history because we’re turning to above-ground foodstuffs (in this case, corn ethanol) to run our society — which has the added adverse effect of driving up food prices. (One of the few things on which large-scale commercial livestock producers agree with treehuggers is that corn shouldn’t be going into gas tanks. Of course, they have different reasons for this.)
Tabb is enjoying his euphemisms. Financialization is a technology of extraction behind which compradors imagine their immorality is masked.