alanjjohnstone
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America’s best-known economist gives his view on the CEA report, in particular, on the Nordic welfare states.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/opinion/are-the-danes-melancholy-are-the-swedes-sad.html
And a commentary on his article here
Technologically we can have a society based on “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” With automation and robotics and all the scientific knowledge we possess, and despite what many environmentalists try to say, we do have the ample raw materials (or alternatives), to provide for the material needs of all the world’s population…plus more
The only thing lacking is the political will of our fellow-workers, which is something I don’t think Marx anticipated and something our Party founders underestimated, that workers would decline to use their political power to change society and benefit themselves by acting in their own interests.
Why this is so is an ongoing debate.
Another article focussed on the White House statement on Socialism
Tsk, Tsk…would you rather i made out that some of the posts on my personal blog represents the views of the Party and the other members.
I am continually aware that what i post on our official blogs (we have three) has been sanctioned because the bloggers submit themselves to re-appointment each year and are endorsed by the membership for accurately reflecting the opinion of the members.
But one of those days if we do not engage the interest of fellow-members i may well go rogue, and see how long the Party takes to become aware of the fact. 😆
A follow-up article on Bloomberg website
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/maybe-we-should-take-socialism-seriously#gs.QKGuGts
Doesn’t add much to the discussion but the graph of perception of socialism is of interest which appears to say that our target audience should be the under-30s who are more receptive to socialist ideas than the older generations….(or am i accepting identity politics by saying that)
http://news.trust.org/item/20181026140911-ktna5/
The more we look in into food production, the greyer rather black and white the debate becomes.
Canadian researchers compared global agricultural production with the sort of diet backed by nutritionists – and favoured by environmentalists – and said they found a “fundamental mismatch” between what is being produced and what the world’s population would actually need.
“We simply can’t all adopt a healthy diet under the current global agriculture system,” the study’s co-author Evan Fraser said in a statement. “Results show that the global system currently overproduces grains, fats and sugars,” added Fraser, director of Arrell Food Institute at University of Guelph in Ontario. But it is short of fruit and veg, he said.
Harvard University’s “Healthy Eating Plate” guide recommends fruits and vegetables should form half of any diet, whole grains 25 percent and protein, fat and dairy make up the rest.
It broke down food groups into portions and found the world currently produces 12 servings of grains per person instead of the recommended eight; five servings of fruits and vegetables instead of 15; and four servings of sugar instead of none.
Nearly all of agriculture research and development is focused on cereals, explained Lawrence Hadad, executive director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and co-winner of this year’s World Food Prize, founded in 1986 by Nobel laureate Norman Bourlag and dubbed the Nobel for agriculture. “Fruits and vegetable consumption would have to be given a high priority by governments in nutrition and health plans,” he added
If neither diet nor farming practices change, the world would need 12 million more hectares of arable land and some 1.3 billion more hectares of pasture land by 2050 to feed a projected population of 9.8 billion, the study added.
The short story ‘General Immunity Serum’ can be read on our blog
http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2015/02/general-immunity-serum-short-story.html
My point is that we have such a low visitor figure to this forum, that responding with an antagonistic under-tone to a member of the forum is not a welcoming signal to others, Dave.
Perhaps you should turn your barbed wit on those Party members that decline to interact with other members on this forum (or a personal issue, to even bother to visit our blogs.)
When we closed this forum, the first thing i did was to try to encourage participation in our Yahoo lists – to little effect.
When this forum returned to the web, the first thing i did was to try to recover the momentum which we had lost, purposefully resurrecting controversial topics to spur activity – to not much effect
I’m beginning to wonder if members of this Party have been in the bunker for so long that they have no desire to debate or discuss, either with non-members, ex-members or even with other members. The minutia agendas for AGMs and Conferences has only reinforced this attitude of mine
I was disappointed that the effect of your comment could have been to discourage someone from posting in the future.
To use our hostility clause in this context isn’t particularly constructive.
Dave, i think you are over-egging the pudding this time. He is merely helpfully suggesting that to advertise our meetings where we try to invite the general public to, we should think about social media as an effective means. The fact that we already do so, shouldn’t mean we can’t hear it from others facing the same issue of being practically invisible publicity-wise.
I often describe our themed meetings as public meetings on the blog, and i note that some branches have described when they meet, as branch business meetings.
I don’t believe KAZ is implying we (or his own group) hold private meetings where ordinary members of the public are excluded from attending.
I’m very happy that he is someone who is willing to visit our forum, when we have some members of the Party who decline to do so.
They also bring in the confusion of the Nordic “from the cradle to the coffin” welfare state as a form of socialism which they now depict as no longer viable or feasible for those Scandinavian countries.
But we also predicted that when costs to the capitalist class of social services became too much of a burden to them, they would introduce cuts and in the case of the NHS it began within a matter of years with charges on glasses and dentistry and prescription charges being introduced and hasn’t ceased ever since with cut-backs on hospitals and whatnot.
I recall i had some sympathy for those Republican wingnuts that said the NHS possessed death panels…and indeed it does…NICE operates by determining the cost benefits of particular treatments that result either in a quick or slow terminal prognosis.
On the other hand, i am pretty sure such committees may well exist inside socialism but it won’t be pounds and pence determining a specific drug but the high or low percentage of effectiveness of it.
But in regards to this official government statement, i think it does reflect some sort of evolution of political thought within the USA that mild forms of state capitalism have now been targetted for critiques because they are growing in popularity that once again they must be scaremongered by the “socialist” label.
Not so long ago, the Koch brothers had a report focused on socialised healthcare (which inadvertently provided a defence for it) yet happily encouraging government assistance for fossil fuels while other anti-Big Government support the subsidies for farming.
“Not that we would engage in boycotting or any such partisan activity”
I wonder if our investment committee has a policy on where and what to invest the Party’s money?
Has it got an ethical remit?
They have dropped out of the news recently but this article is critical of the White Helmets and their defenders in the media
Peter Ford, the former UK Ambassador to Syria:
“The White Helmets are jihadi auxiliaries… They are not, as claimed by themselves and by their supporters… simple rescuers. They are not volunteers. They are paid professionals of disinformation.”
He proceeded to note the huge size of the organization’s “press department”, saying,
“This gives us an idea what the priority is for this very dubious organization… All their activities are directed at mobilizing Western opinion behind the jihadis with whom they associate. They co-locate their centers with the Al-Qaeda organization known as Al-Nusra and with other militant groups such as Jaish al-Islam. They have in the past been shown associating with and waving the flags of ISIS.”
Localism is presented as an environmentally friendly way of eating. But is it a solution?
https://www.alternet.org/environment/eating-locally-and-season-it-really-better-environment
When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), it might not make such a huge difference, particularly for certain foods. According the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, “Differences in agricultural production and the realities of transportation impacts may favor sourcing from other regions from an environmental impact perspective.”
A 2008 study conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that by buying food locally, the average American could only reduce their greenhouse gas emissions a maximum of 4-5 percent.
In general, the contribution of food transportation relative to the total greenhouse gas emissions of a given food product represents a small percentage of the carbon footprint for many foods. Fresh foods transported by air freight can have significant distribution-related carbon impacts, but on average, distribution of finished foods (from farm or factory to retail stores) contributes less than 4 percent, on average, of the greenhouse gas emissions of foods consumed in the US.
The health benefits of fresh, seasonal produce are accessible only to those who can access and afford them, which is not always the case. One issue is the lack of healthy food options in “food deserts” across the country, most of them in poor neighborhoods, where the only options are unhealthy, processed foods and industrial farm produce coated in pesticides. And produce sold at farmers’ markets can often be more expensive than the pesticide-covered fruits and vegetables that are shipped in from Mexico and Costa Rica, where farming operations can lower their prices simply because of their massive scale.
In a 2014 lecture at Bowdoin College, Matt Booker, an associate professor of history at North Carolina State University, asked the question, “Why did Americans stop eating locally?” Part of the problem, he says, is one of abundance, at least for those who can afford it: There’s simply “too much food, too much of a ‘muchness’ in our food supply.”
It’s important to note that for many people living in developing countries, buying locally and in season simply isn’t a realistic option. In fact, the dependence on staple agricultural imports like wheat, rice and corn could — if export bans were enacted by major producing regions — create a food crisis that, according to a 2016 study, “would put up to 200 million people below the poverty line at risk.” The study’s lead author, Christopher Bren d’Amour, cited one example: “If Thailand, the biggest exporter of rice worldwide, were to halt its exports, 136 million people from Mauritania to Nigeria would be affected.”
While the transportation of food does contribute to emissions, the production of that food is much more environmentally damaging and GHG-intensive.
