Use the words:

• Whitey
• Neo-Colonialist
• Stooge
• Uncle Tom
• Sell-out

etc. Because if you can’t express yourself rationally, in a civil fashion, without those tics and crutches (especially that last one– by the time you’ve used it three times in a ONE SENTENCE comment, you’ve given up your right to froth at the mouth), please just make like the 90% of readers who lurk, and don’t say anything, at all. I’m not saying that I disagree with and want to censor, I am saying to step up your game if you want to make your point.

Oh, I’m sure she would–Nikki doesn’t let her people get slaughtered (Delhi ’84 by Congress, Mumbai ’09 by LeT) and do nothing about it. Nikki has a spine.

organizing labor unions makes labor more expensive. Expensive labor disincentivizes investment in labor intensive fields.

Think of ‘labor’ as ‘consumers’ and you will understand why I think both intuitively and in the interests of my politics that more expensive labor (i.e. people who shop at stores but now with more discretionary income) in a country that is still the consumer of last resort for goods from china etc. is the best way to restore some modicum of stability in a way that doesn’t lead as directly to wwiiii. You can use government subsidies like taking health care costs off the hands of employers to subsidize the increased costs, and increase taxes for non investmentrelated capital gains income (e.g. speculation in commodity markets) or repeal the massive tax cuts for wealthy people or end the wars to fund it.

but again, the point is that this kind of analysis is, in the discourse that permits nikki haley, not even worth considering as an option. I might be wrong, but I am not stupid.

It’s an example – probably a key one for me – but not one to be considered in isolation. It recognizes that politics, social power, and economics are connected in capitalism (as most people recognize when they talk about the Southern Strategy some do wrt to Obama). The point is that all else equal, if you don’t build social and political power to actually pressure governments to maintain wages and protect workers, real wages are at minimum stagnant and at worst will decline. This has nothing to do with communism – this is a populist capitalist argument based on the following analysis:

aggregate supply has been > than aggregate demand globally for a couple decades at least, which necessitated a solution aggregate demand was propped up by extended credit to the consumers of last resort so that the demand could continue to prop up the wages through low wage low price goods eventually that reliance on credit has reached an end point, which means that there is some form of demand (as before) that has to make up for the missing demand (which could be increased demand in the u.s. or increased demand in europe or increased government spending or speeding up the increase in demand in china or india or elsewhere (that’s the long term solution probably) or other measures).

You can disagree with this analysis, as many economists and political economists do, but don’t demean the argument by attacking it through redbaiting or bothering to think it through. I’m not stupid – just have opinions, which may or may not be correct.

What exactly is worth doing out there right now? We can plug the dam by putting people to work on pharonic infrastructure projects, but eventually we’re going to have to come to terms with the fact that an economy based entirely on producing more and more stuff, whether it makes anyone happy or not, is not a sustainable system over the long term.

The high unemployment is a symptom of a FIRE led economy and politics which is marked by increased investment in other markets. You don’t eliminating employment without investing in something whether through private or public investmnet in manufacturing, retail services, R&D, high tech productivity improving sectors, etc., Instead these sectors and their investors and their political representatives would rather spend money building markets in other places or speculating than they would in reinvesting. Which was covered up for a long time by credit expansion, which is now stopping. What it amounts to is basically class secession by the wealthy and by FIRE sectors in the US (or consolidation or profit taking, dependingon what language you want to put it in).

The reason I believe this is partly due to the politics of how the debt/deficit is still talked about by poltiicians like Obama. The bulk of politicians are at best more focused on cutting long run debt than addressing deindustrialisation and/or unemployment, but in a way that’s so ideological that they can’t understand that leaving the bush taxes in place or adopting a health insurance reform solution that’s not going to work to bend the cost curve is self-defeating. And the reason that happens is that there has been, increasingly, a 30 year class war by the wealthy in the U.S> against the rest (especially the poor, but also by coopting the middle classes) which is now hopefully going to end.

Whichi s where the appeal to identity politics to support technocrats that will support stabilizing policies that will consolidate the gains of the last 20-30 years comes in. It’s Change without change. There’s no emphasis on changing the dynamics by supporting bottom up organising, investing in people, building skills (not only economic) restoring the social safety network when so many people are hurting, and all the other things that labor movements can participate in (and immigration movement and LGBT movements and disabled people’s movements and women’s movements) which are both rooted in interests of the disempowered in one form or another and connected to each other and in some minimal way genuine and accountable tot he people they claim to speak for rather than an industry.

And meanwhile we are talking about Nikki Haley’s ethnicity without acknowledging that she doesn’t even get THIS much – she’s still rooted in the politicso f the 80s and 90s where a state with one of the lowest union density’s in the united states is being told that they need further laws to make it difficult for working people to organise. At least Obama makes no sense – Haley’s politics are still insisting on moving backwards.

So yeah, who cares about her ethnicity or religion? Only insofar as it’s used to cover up what a retrograde politician and human being she seems to be.

The wait continues…..

You. . . you haven’t been reading the comment thread have you?

Please comment.