Links for 01/29/16 | National Catholic Reporter This sounds like Burke, but without even attribution of an interview or a source piece, even I won't pile on to a hit piece like this.
I am glad Abp. Gomez in on board with the Administration on Immigration. I suspect he is overseeing an Amicus brief in this case, which will cause some of the GOP bishops to simmer.
That Chicago is going green and saving money is not really news, but it is worth repeating.
Friday, January 29, 2016
Review: Catholic Economics, Part II | National Catholic Reporter
Review: Catholic Economics, Part II | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: Modern economics in a culturally libertarian space ARE more scientific. Scientific study is not really possible in either egalitarian realms where your intentions are constantly questioned, despotism (unless the despot approves of and can profit from your work) or hierarchism, which sees truth as something to control via dogma, not science - hence the Church's unscientific views on birth control. Whether we culturally like the answer economics gives us is different than challenging its ability to find fact. It can still work with a non-individual actor assumption.
Silby is conflating competition with pure competition. There are types of competition where the powerful have an advantage, like oligopoly/oligopsony. As an analytical principle, however violated by capitalism, competition works. Indeed, welfare economics condemns capitalist restraint of trade from the inside as much as government act (which is usually taken at the behest of some interest).
The Affordable Care Act was not about commodifying health care - it was due to tax advantages possessed by employees of large firms that small firm employees did not get. ACA merely have the small guys the same tax advantages. As I said earlier this week (MSW should read the comments more), the advantages that increase prices come from monopolistic factors like one or two hospitals dominating a region (can you say INOVA or Medstar) and drug patents. Of course, the GOP plan is to force competition onto buyers by taking away all tax advantages but not on sellers who keep their territories and patents.
Sibley's critique of global competition (and free trade) could also have been taken from the introduction to Capital, by Karl Marx, who decries the same thing. The problem is not compeition, its the economic power of capitalism. At least Marx said the word (OK, he coined it). Marx also got labor right, even before the term monopsony was coined. The Church gets it right too, but calling for capitalists to be moral, even Catholic capitalists, is too much to ask. While solidarity helps, ownership of the workplace is what is essential - not in revolutionary terms like Marx advocated - its too hard to work that - but in cooperative terms, like Mondragon and American cooperative farmers (who were organized by "Dad" Allen - my great grandfather - who was a member of the Disciples of Christ - so the Popes do not have a monopoly on proper economic thinkig.
The answer to free and even fair trade is multi-national employee ownership - where employees at the same firm are paid at the same standard of living, so exploitation is no longer an issue.
If Catholic Social Teaching does not have some distrust of government then it should. Not in goverenmetn as a useful authority, but in legislators captured by the financial favors of the capitalists. Its why Citizens United is so important and so impossible to overturn, because capitalism is the problem that simple finance reform won't solve. Finding firms to shift away from capitalism to more cooperative ownership and control and having those firms beat capitalist firm in competition is the answer here - for coopeation will win. That is the way forward.
Silby is conflating competition with pure competition. There are types of competition where the powerful have an advantage, like oligopoly/oligopsony. As an analytical principle, however violated by capitalism, competition works. Indeed, welfare economics condemns capitalist restraint of trade from the inside as much as government act (which is usually taken at the behest of some interest).
The Affordable Care Act was not about commodifying health care - it was due to tax advantages possessed by employees of large firms that small firm employees did not get. ACA merely have the small guys the same tax advantages. As I said earlier this week (MSW should read the comments more), the advantages that increase prices come from monopolistic factors like one or two hospitals dominating a region (can you say INOVA or Medstar) and drug patents. Of course, the GOP plan is to force competition onto buyers by taking away all tax advantages but not on sellers who keep their territories and patents.
Sibley's critique of global competition (and free trade) could also have been taken from the introduction to Capital, by Karl Marx, who decries the same thing. The problem is not compeition, its the economic power of capitalism. At least Marx said the word (OK, he coined it). Marx also got labor right, even before the term monopsony was coined. The Church gets it right too, but calling for capitalists to be moral, even Catholic capitalists, is too much to ask. While solidarity helps, ownership of the workplace is what is essential - not in revolutionary terms like Marx advocated - its too hard to work that - but in cooperative terms, like Mondragon and American cooperative farmers (who were organized by "Dad" Allen - my great grandfather - who was a member of the Disciples of Christ - so the Popes do not have a monopoly on proper economic thinkig.
The answer to free and even fair trade is multi-national employee ownership - where employees at the same firm are paid at the same standard of living, so exploitation is no longer an issue.
If Catholic Social Teaching does not have some distrust of government then it should. Not in goverenmetn as a useful authority, but in legislators captured by the financial favors of the capitalists. Its why Citizens United is so important and so impossible to overturn, because capitalism is the problem that simple finance reform won't solve. Finding firms to shift away from capitalism to more cooperative ownership and control and having those firms beat capitalist firm in competition is the answer here - for coopeation will win. That is the way forward.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Links for 01/28/16 | National Catholic Reporter
Links for 01/28/16 | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: Senator Sanders faith, or lack thereof, is probably not a problem with his fellow Jews. Its certainly not a problem for most Catholic Democrats nor is it a constitutional difficulty. White evangelicals are not voting for him anyway, so the only political problem is with African American Pastors, who are integral to the politics of their members. Of course, Bernie is highly ethical, especially economically. If he can do this without a professed faith, what does that say about the rest of us?
Jerry Jr. is, like his father, an authoritarian - which is the frame of mind of Trump (as a capitalist) and Trump's GOP supporters. That Trump was either lying before or is lying now on abortion is a fact that most of these supporters will likely and deliberately ignore.
Rubio has wandered from Catholicism to Mormonism and back (with one other stop). Whether this is political or an honest reflection of his inner soul is for him to know and the rest of us not to care about - much in the same way that Sanders' atheism is not our concern. What is concerning is using that faith as a basis to further pander on abortion, where as a lawyer he should know better than to question the basis of Roe v. Wade (which rested on the fact that the unborn have no personal rights until Congress says they do - which is constitutionally correct - whether Catholics like it or not). As far as the hyphen, blame Microsoft grammar checker.
Review: Catholic Economics, Part I | National Catholic Reporter
Review: Catholic Economics, Part I | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: While Adam Smith's observations were the start of modern economics, they were not its end. Welfare economics owes much of its content to Pareto and Keynes, who can hardly be called libertarians in the Austrian School of Hayek and von Mises. While much of economics assumes a libertarian/individualist way of life is all that there is, there are others who are either egalitarian (like Marx) or even hierarchical, like the Distributists who believe both that small is beautiful and that the Church will take over civil authority after an inevitable environmental or resource collapse. I look forward to tomorrow's post to see if the Distributists are mentioned.
Of course, in cooperative economics we do get limits on consumption - with most cooperative members consuming mostly what they cooperative produces or trades for (although they may have a cash card to facilitate that trading). While the free market is the most efficient allocation mechanism to make sure supply and demand are roughly approximate, it can be simulated with a well managed egalitarian system - which can have both external and internal price cues - using standard labor hours both internally and externally. Such a currency is possible if the basic wage is standardized - with such items as education and longevity compensated by making the education free and by compensating longevity with stock accumulation - with dividends either reinvested, spent or some combination of the two. Finally for now, it goes without saying that if you internalize stock accumulation and home mortgages to the cooperative, there will be no markets for either mortgage backed securities or shares of stock and therefore no financial economics outside the cooperative. You can find more about this in my online book, Musings from the Christian Left (a non-doctrinal Catholic economics), which is available on blogspot, Facebook and oocities.
Of course, in cooperative economics we do get limits on consumption - with most cooperative members consuming mostly what they cooperative produces or trades for (although they may have a cash card to facilitate that trading). While the free market is the most efficient allocation mechanism to make sure supply and demand are roughly approximate, it can be simulated with a well managed egalitarian system - which can have both external and internal price cues - using standard labor hours both internally and externally. Such a currency is possible if the basic wage is standardized - with such items as education and longevity compensated by making the education free and by compensating longevity with stock accumulation - with dividends either reinvested, spent or some combination of the two. Finally for now, it goes without saying that if you internalize stock accumulation and home mortgages to the cooperative, there will be no markets for either mortgage backed securities or shares of stock and therefore no financial economics outside the cooperative. You can find more about this in my online book, Musings from the Christian Left (a non-doctrinal Catholic economics), which is available on blogspot, Facebook and oocities.
Links for 01/28/16 | National Catholic Reporter
Links for 01/28/16 | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: Senator Sanders faith, or lack thereof, is probably not a problem with his fellow Jews. Its certainly not a problem for most Catholic Democrats nor is it a constitutional difficulty. White evangelicals are not voting for him anyway, so the only political problem is with African American Pastors, who are integral to the politics of their members. Of course, Bernie is highly ethical, especially economically. If he can do this without a professed faith, what does that say about the rest of us?
Jerry Jr. is, like his father, an authoritarian - which is the frame of mind of Trump (as a capitalist) and Trump's GOP supporters. That Trump was either lying before or is lying now on abortion is a fact that most of these supporters will likely and deliberately ignore.
Rubio has wandered from Catholicism to Mormonism and back (with one other stop). Whether this is political or an honest reflection of his inner soul is for him to know and the rest of us not to care about - much in the same way that Sanders' atheism is not our concern. What is concerning is using that faith as a basis to further pander on abortion, where as a lawyer he should know better than to question the basis of Roe v. Wade (which rested on the fact that the unborn have no personal rights until Congress says they do - which is constitutionally correct - whether Catholics like it or not). As far as the hyphen, blame Micrsooft grammar checker.
Jerry Jr. is, like his father, an authoritarian - which is the frame of mind of Trump (as a capitalist) and Trump's GOP supporters. That Trump was either lying before or is lying now on abortion is a fact that most of these supporters will likely and deliberately ignore.
Rubio has wandered from Catholicism to Mormonism and back (with one other stop). Whether this is political or an honest reflection of his inner soul is for him to know and the rest of us not to care about - much in the same way that Sanders' atheism is not our concern. What is concerning is using that faith as a basis to further pander on abortion, where as a lawyer he should know better than to question the basis of Roe v. Wade (which rested on the fact that the unborn have no personal rights until Congress says they do - which is constitutionally correct - whether Catholics like it or not). As far as the hyphen, blame Micrsooft grammar checker.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Links for 01/27/16 | National Catholic Reporter
Links for 01/27/16 | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: Secretary Clinton did not magically shed her 2008 flaws by working her job - she magnified them. She really has no answer to the bold actions put forward by Sanders - its not in her nature to do so.
I suspect that Worship Wars are part of the Evangelical movement growing up. Of course, might grown up Evangelicals just become mainline Protestants - or even Catholics if we finally get an language patriarch (thus ending the objection to Roman overreach)?
Bravo to the 46 Democratic Senators. Hopefully we can fin 14 Republicans to go with them, as well as Speaker Ryan. Lets hope we don't have to wait until January 2017 for justice in this crisis. P.R. should still simply default on its Hedge Fund debts - which will force the GOP to act.
I suspect the President himself would not be scandalized, but the coverage helps him back home - especially if only a token number were covered for the sake of his press corps. Call it Potempkin puritanicalism.
I suspect that Worship Wars are part of the Evangelical movement growing up. Of course, might grown up Evangelicals just become mainline Protestants - or even Catholics if we finally get an language patriarch (thus ending the objection to Roman overreach)?
Bravo to the 46 Democratic Senators. Hopefully we can fin 14 Republicans to go with them, as well as Speaker Ryan. Lets hope we don't have to wait until January 2017 for justice in this crisis. P.R. should still simply default on its Hedge Fund debts - which will force the GOP to act.
I suspect the President himself would not be scandalized, but the coverage helps him back home - especially if only a token number were covered for the sake of his press corps. Call it Potempkin puritanicalism.
Debate Drama in Iowa | National Catholic Reporter
Debate Drama in Iowa | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: Trump does not like Ms. Kelly because she asked a feminist question that he had no answer for, as if he said his remarks were confined to Rosie, all sorts of footage would spring up. He is probably afraid Megan will ask him an abortion question, which she should. Trump is as much of a P.R. fraud as any other GOP candidate, except that he is too much of a blowhard to face the music when its his turn to dance.
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