Samuelson And Academic Anti-Semitism

Paul Samuelson was probably the last of the major economists to experience serious academic anti-Semitism, having experienced Harvard refusing to hire him in 1940 despite his prominence at the time, as well as probably the last one to personally know Keynes, Schumpeter, and Hayek. This put him in a special position to comment on the discussion of their respective anti-Semitisms as studied by Melvin Reder, "The anti-Semitism of some eminent economists," History of Political Economy, 2000, 32, 833-856. In footnote 2 of his "A few remembrances of Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992)," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Jan. 2009, 69(1), 1-4., Samuelson said the following (noting that Schumpeter was his strongest supporter for being hired at Harvard):

Most of my gifted mentors, born in the nineteenth century, lacked today's 'political (and ethnic) correctness.' There were of course some honorable exceptions among both my Yankee and European teachers. Reder (2000) has provided a useful exploration of such unpleasantries. Central to his expositions were appraisals of the triad John Maynard Keynes, Joseph A. Schumpeter, and Friedrich Hayek on the subject of anti-semitism.

Unexpectedly, I was forced in the end to conclude that Keynes's lifetime profile was the worst of the three. In the record of his letters to wife and other Bloomsbury buddies, Keynes apparently remained in viewpoint much the same as in his Eton essay on the subject as a callow seventeen-year-old. Hayek, I came to realize, seemed to be the one of the three who at least tried to grow beyond his early conditioning. The full record suggests that he did not succeed in fully in cleansing those Augean stables. Still a B grade for effort does trump a C-.

I note a curious irony in that about the same time that Samuelson was not getting hired at Harvard largely due to anti-Semitism (although Schumpeter reportedly alleged that it was due to jealousy of Samuelson's brilliance by his erstwhile peers), Milton Friedman had the same experience at my alma mater, the supposedly progressive University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was not renewed for a position after one year of appointment. No, this was not institutionalist progressives upset about his pro-laissez faire views, which were not particularly public at that time. Rather, the other issues involved besides the evident anti-Semitism on the part of certain supposedly progressive institutionalists was that he was identified as being a mathematically oriented econometrician who thus threatened the institutionalism then dominant in the department. Over two decades later the final victory of policy-oriented econometrics in the department over the old institutionalists would be led by another Jewish econometrician, Arthur Goldberger, who died at 79 on Dec. 11. Just to really tie all this up in a knot, the very worthy and justly eminent Goldberger (whom I knew and admired personally) was a student of Nobelist Lawrence Klein (with many saying he should have shared the Nobel with Klein), who in turn was a student of Samuelson, although it is a famous old wisecrack that "Samuelson never ran a regression in his lifeюЭ

Paul Samuelson RIP

My favorite example of Samuelson's wit is his "algorithm" for solving the Transformation Problem:

1. Write down labor values

2. Erase

3. Write down prices.

And then I think he said, "Voila," if memory serves! (I should confess that when I first read it, I was spitting: at that time I thought, a., that the TP was solvable and, b., that it was very important that it be solved -ah, youth!- and how dare Samuelson ridicule the likes of me).

Of everything he did that I know, I think Samuelson 1958 was the best. A beautiful, simple, funny and earth-shaking paper that changes the way you see the world forever. Anyway, he was a mensch. RIP.

Bernanke's Saving's Glut Hypothesis. Contradiction Number One.

In March 2005 the Governor of the Federal Reserve in the US, Ben Bernanke, gave a talk on the reasons for the emergence of a global savings glut during the period beginning from the mid 1990s.[1]

He made specific note of the increasing value of the US dollar in the period from 1996 to early 2000. He ascribed this change to “The development and adoption of new technologies and rising productivity in the United States together with the country's long-standing advantages such as low political risk, strong property rights, and a good regulatory environment. These factors, he said, made the U.S. economy exceptionally attractive to international investors during that period.

"Consequently, capital flowed rapidly into the United States, helping to fuel large appreciations in stock prices and in the value of the dollar."

However, economist Robert Brenner, draws attention to the G-3 economies' deliberate manipulations of global currency markets in 1995.

"With the so-called Reverse Plaza Accord of spring-summer 1995, the G-3 economies did a complete about face. By way of the Plaza Accord of 1985, the leading capitalist powers had agreed to drive up the mark and the yen to reverse the devastation of a US manufacturing sector ravaged by the high dollar. Ten years later, they did the opposite, agreeing to push down the mark and yen to revive German and Japanese manufacturing sectors that had been driven into crisis by the low dollar." [2]

So the US dollar was set artificially lower (relative to the Yen and the German mark) in 1985 in order to aid the ailing US domestic manufacturers, according to Robert Brenner. US producers were suffering (with low global demand for their products) as a result of an equally artificial high value of the US dollar that prevailed in the years before 1985.

[Some history: Between 1972 and 1981 the global price of oil increased nine-fold; fueling stagflation. In 1979 Paul Volker from the US Federal Reserve increased global interest rates in order to prop up a resultant ailing US dollar. That's also when the US-dominated World Bank moved to a commitment to global trade liberalization and abandoned its support for public enterprises.[3]

In summary, Bernanke's rationale for the strong US dollar from the years 1996 - 2000 doesn't appear to stand up to historical evidence. If the US benefited from such a profitable investment environment then why didn't that result in a boom in US manufacturing and a resolution of that nation's trade deficit in those years? The opposite, in fact, occurred.

[1] Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke at the Sandridge Lecture, Virginia Association of Economics, Richmond, Virginia
Governor Bernanke presented similar remarks with updated data at the Homer Jones Lecture, St. Louis, Missouri, on April 14, 2005.
March 10, 2005

The Global Saving Glut and the U.S. Current Account Deficit
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2005/200503102/

[2] STOCK MARKET KEYNESIANISM ….
WHAT IS GOOD FOR GOLDMAN SACHS IS GOOD FOR AMERICA - THE ORIGINS OF THE CURRENT CRISIS. Robert Brenner, Center for Social Theory and Comparative History, UCLA
18 April 2009
This text appears as the Prologue to the Spanish translation of the author’s Economics of Global Turbulence (Verso, 2006) which was published by Akal in May 2009.

[3]'JECOR' was the name of a program instituted by the American power elite to recyle the petro-dollars from the Middle East after the enormous price hikes in this commodity. Petrodollars were used (amongst other things) to hire American firms to industrialise Saudi Arabia with the overall management and fiscal responsibility delegated to the US Department of Treasury. The commission so set up was “independent to the extreme”. Ultimately, it would spend billions of dollars over a period of more than twenty-five years, with virtually no congressional oversight. Because no US funding was involved, Congress had no authority in the matter, despite Treasury’s role. ”

Source: David Holden and Richard Johns, ‘The House of Saud: The Rise and Rule of the Most Powerful Dynasty in the Arab World (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winton, 1981), p359. As quoted in ‘Confessions of an Economic Hitman’ by John Perkins. Page 84. Published by Ebury Press Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SWIV 2SA. 2005. ISBN 978091909109

Fiscal Stimulus – Spending Increases v. Tax Cuts

Greg Mankiw thinks we should try a different kind of fiscal stimulus than the one passed earlier this year. Of course, the one passed earlier this year was a mix of spending increases and tax cuts (see for example Nate Silver). Some of us argued that including tax cuts lowered the bang for the buck from the stimulus package but Greg disagrees:

Successful stimulus relies almost entirely on cuts in business and income taxes. Failed stimulus relies mostly on increases in government spending.

Greg is citing evidence from periods when the interest rate was positive. Gauti Eggertsson asks What Fiscal Policy Is Effective at Zero Interest Rates? His abstract reads:

Tax cuts can deepen a recession if the short-term nominal interest rate is zero, according to a standard New Keynesian business cycle model. An example of a contractionary tax cut is a reduction in taxes on wages. This tax cut deepens a recession because it increases deflationary pressures. Another example is a cut in capital taxes. This tax cut deepens a recession because it encourages people to save instead of spend at a time when more spending is needed. Fiscal policies aimed directly at stimulating aggregate demand work better. These policies include 1) a temporary increase in government spending; and 2) tax cuts aimed directly at stimulating aggregate demand rather than aggregate supply, such as an investment tax credit or a cut in sales taxes. The results are specific to an environment in which the interest rate is close to zero, as observed in large parts of the world today.

This is immediately followed by table one showing a government spending multiplier equal to 2.27 whereas the labor tax multiplier is negative 0.81. Hat tip to Paul Krugman.

Banking Lending – the President Today and Paul Samuelson Over 60 Years Ago

President Obama expects our banks to expand lending:

President Obama pressed Wall Street bankers at the White House on Monday, urging them to make more loans and modify mortgages to help taxpayers who propped their banks up with federal bailouts. "My main message in today's meeting was very simple: America's banks received extraordinary assistance from American taxpayers to rebuild their industry," Obama said. "Now that they're back on their feet, we expect an extraordinary commitment from them to help rebuild our economy." The president was expected to pressure the nation's top dozen bank chief executives to open up the lending spigots to help the economic recovery.

It is true that the Federal Reserve is doing all it can to increase bank loans and the money supply and the Federal government did institute that TARP “bailout” of our major banks. Yet, banks have chosen to let reserves skyrocket. Paul Krugman notes that the recently departed Paul Samuelson sort of predicted this back in 1948:

Today few economists regard Federal Reserve monetary policy as a panacea for controlling the business cycle. Purely monetary factors are considered to be as much symptoms as causes, albeit symptoms with aggravating effects that should not be completely neglected. By increasing the volume of their government securities and loans and by lowering Member Bank legal reserve requirements, the Reserve Banks can encourage an increase in the supply of money and bank deposits. They can encourage but, without taking drastic action, they cannot compel. For in the middle of a deep depression just when we want Reserve policy to be most effective, the Member Banks are likely to be timid about buying new investments or making loans. If the Reserve authorities buy government bonds in the open market and thereby swell bank reserves, the banks will not put these funds to work but will simply hold reserves.

Samuelson was arguing back then that we might need more vigorous fiscal stimulus in situations like the one we have today. I think our President understands this as well but then there certain members of Congress who do not.

Two Important Iranian Blogs

Socialist Inside Iran Differ on the Green Movement:
http://iranianvoicesintranslation.blogspot.com/2009/12/socialists-inside-iran-differ-on-green.html

Feminist Political Scientist Analyzes Transformations in Iranian Society Today:
http://www.payvand.com/news/09/sep/1120.html

Destruction in Higher Education vs. Destruction of Higher Education

The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword.

On Friday, protesters destroyed property at the home of Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. This action violated the law. At the same time, the law condoned a far deeper destruction of education throughout the state. The governor and the legislature decimated public education, all the way from the primary schools to the state's university system.

For the most part, business applauded the state's stance. Why not? Education will have no choice but to turn to the private sector to run public schools or to take stakes in the universities, as BP has done with the University of California, Berkeley.

Affluent taxpayers, who can afford private education, can rest easy, knowing that increase taxes are not on the horizon. Many ignorant people, whipped up by a false populism, also cheer on the shrinking of the state.

The loss of the Chancellor's planters and windows is regrettable, but they will be easily replaced. In contrast, the educational system may never recover.

The protesters did not constitute a threat. In fact, their actions may not even been productive.

Woody Guthrie once wrote: "Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen.” Alas, we know who holds the fountain pens.

Was The Late Paul A. Samuelson "The Foremost Academic Economist Of The Twentieth Century"?

The New York Times online obituary section has just posted the death of Paul A. Samuelson at his home in Belmont, MA at the age of 94. The first sentence of the obit labels him "the foremost academic economist of the twentieth century." Whether he was or not, the death of this recipient of the second Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel back in 1970 is of one who was unquestionably an enormously influential, whose real influence has somewhat slipped into the background in recent years as attention to many others has surged forward. Often when he has been thought of or mentioned, it has been in criticism by many from many different sides, as he is seen as the father of the postward neoclassical synthesis, promulgated most influentially in his textbook, whose 19th edition (now done by Nordhaus) has just come out with many changes from what it used to be (many not for the better), although the deeper intellectual influence has been his Ph.D. thesis, published in 1947 as _The Foundations of Economic Analysis_, with his publishing career dating all the way back to 1937, on many topics. His influence is so great in so many areas that the key papers by him that lie behind the standard textbook accounts in many areas do not even bother to cite them.

I have been critical of Samuelson myself, and gave him quite a hard time the first time I met him in person 38 years ago. However, starting with that encounter, I must confess that while he may be the ultimate origin of much that is misguided in deeply entrenched conventional economic thought, he himself was generally personally aware of the flaws and limits of many of his own ideas, even as near the end he insisted on reasserting some of them more strongly than ever. However, I would say that the greater sins have been by simplifying followers of his, the "sons of Samuelson," who have been more responsible for codifying and spreading and enforcing the more simplistic versions of what he posited. The man himself was more complicated and self-aware than many gave him credit for , and he is indeed the last of the giant economic thinkers whose professionally active roots go back clearly into the Great Depression.

An Open Letter to the Union of Concerned Scientists Regarding its Criticism of the Cantwell-Collins Bill

Dear UCS,

As one of the economists who signed in support of the UCS campaign for climate change legislation, I have to express my disappointment with your response to the Cantwell bill.


1. It is by far the best bill before Congress. It has two features that any serious environmentalist should enthusiastically support: no offsets and upstream (comprehensive) permitting. This is the right architecture. It is simply shocking to me that the bill would be criticized on exactly these grounds! You appear to endorse offsets as a means to secure an international agreement, as if this discredited approach were the only basis for moving forward globally. Clearly UCS is not paying attention to the current discussion around the validity of offsets.

2. You criticize the 2020 targets in Cantwell, but specific targets are meaningless. No matter what bill is passed, Congress will be revisiting these targets every year or two as new scientific evidence emerges and political winds shift (for better or worse). Any target announced today for more than a decade into the future is purely symbolic. What matters is getting the architecture right, so that, if there is political support for more stringent goals, they can be accomplished expediently.

3. Remarkably, UCS sees fit to attack the Cantwell bill on the other feature it gets right: it auctions all the permits and distributes most of the money back to households. Aside from the other justifications for this approach, it is now clear that this is the only way there can be enough political support for serious GHG mitigation. UCS' advocacy for spending carbon revenues on its own desired projects is politically naive. (a) UCS and its environmental allies will not control the allocation process. If Congress gets to parcel out these funds, you can be sure that most will go into "clean coal", biofuels, etc. (b) Carbon revenues are available to be allocated only if Congress passes a bill with a reasonably tight cap, provisions for auction, and few or no offsets. But this will be achieved only if the electorate is convinced it will not be at the expense of their household budgets. Only revenue recycling can accomplish this.

So why on earth has UCS adopted this position? Can it be because you have decided that Kerry et al. is the horse to ride, and that any other approach is a distraction? If so, you should say this and not trot out implausible and disingenuous arguments.

Again: I am really disappointed in UCS. I can't see myself signing any more of your petitions in the future, and in saying this I know I speak for many other environmentally-aware economists.

Peter Dorman

Where the Stimulus has the Biggest Bang

A world full of distressed corporate sellers is utopia for the huge global private equity companies. In the dying days of the unpopular Howard government the tax rules were changed. Foreigners no longer have to pay capital gains tax in Australia unless the bulk of their dealing is in property.

"At the time, the rationale for the change was that most of our major trading partners have the same rule in place. It was generally agreed by all international parties that it would be best if corporations and individuals paid tax in their home countries rather than in the country where the profits were made." [1]

But the huge profits made by the Texas Pacific Group didn't go back to the US.

"The cash went to a tax haven in the Cayman Islands and then on to a tax-effective structure in Luxembourg via the use of a Dutch company to take advantage of a tax treaty with the Netherlands."

TPG stands out as one of a small group of winners from the global financial crisis. They're hunting the world for as many assets (public utlitilies (water, forests, electricity, finance etc) to grab up at bargain-basement prices as quickly as they possibly can.

SOME RECENT HISTORY:
2009 – December 7th. Former Tasmanian Premier, Robin Gray, has a son who is head of the huge global private equity company TPG. TPG is involved in the creation of shell companies using offshore tax havens. This strategy has allowed TPG to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in tax on just one transaction.

2009 – December 4th. TPG and American Airlines to invest $1.1bn in Japan Airlines. “Debt-laden JAL faces bankruptcy unless it undergoes a major restructuring to cut costs and is seeking a government bail-out as well as any capital from American Airlines or Delta (and other SkyTeam members). Japan Airlines is no stranger to hard times having been bailed out by the Japanese government three times since 2001, and currently seeking more state support. The company is struggling with a $15bn debt load and a pension deficit.”

2009 – November 24th. TPG and Carlyle considering a bid for Chinese autoparts maker Asimco (set up by Wall Street veteran Jack Perkowski 15 years ago).

2009 – November 21st. Australian Tax Office launched a legal action to stop Texas Pacific Group taking billions of dollars out of the economy (from the sale of Myer).

2009 – July 16th. Carlyle, Providence Equity Partners and TPG retender for Springer Science and Business Media

2009 – June 8th. TPG and Carlyle bid for Asciano (it has a duopoly on ports in Australia). Credit Suisse and General Electric are other bidders.

2006 – March. Newbridge (part of Texas Pacific private equity firm) acquired the Australian Myer Department Stores.

2009 – January 16th. Carlyle, TPG, KKR are bidding for AIG’s Aircraft-Leasing Unit and also Los Angeles-based International Lease Finance. (A shortage of buyers for a broad range of corporate debt has crippled the leasing companies’ ability to buy planes, leading to an “incipient crisis in the large civil aircraft market”). The world’s buyout firms are looking for ways to put their estimated $400 billion of committed capital to work after the global credit crisis restricted leveraged lending and reduced LBOs by about 70 percent last year. Forced sales by financial companies may provide some of the best opportunities. “You have a situation where there’s a distressed seller and these are the times when private-equity funds get their best returns.”

It was reported that such a debt-financed takeover binge came to a halt with the eruption of the sub-prime securitisation crisis in September 2007. In March 2008 Carlyle Group was, for instance, was reported to have failed to meet margin calls with four banks. What has changed the fortunes of these takeover merchants since that time?

[1] Day of the locusts as private equity rms bend the rules
November 21, 2009. Ian Verrender
http://www.smh.com.au/business/day-of-the-locusts-as-private-equity-rms-bend-the-rules-20091120-iqtg.html

Free Trade as a Stimulus Proposal – Little Bang

The Washington Post asks - How much bang would he get for the borrowed bucks? – in reference to the President’s latest stimulus proposals. This is an odd place to suggest that freer trade with Colombia and South Korea could represent “truly fresh thinking about job creation”. As Paul Krugman notes:

if you liberalize trade countries will export more. But they will also import more. If you’re worried about C+I+G+X-M, it’s a wash, because X and M rise equally … Even if the proposed trade deals with Korea and Colombia were remotely big enough to bear mentioning in the context of the crisis — which they aren’t — they wouldn’t be job creation measures.

Using this source, one can see that our exports to these two nations during 2008 were only $46 billion, while our imports from these two nations were $61 billion. Let’s say the “equally” part of what Krugman wrote isn’t quite right and that free trade increases our exports by 20 percent (some $9 billion) while imports rise by only $10 billion (some $6 billion). With GDP in excess of $14 trillion, even our generous estimate of this WaPo policy proposal has it adding a mere 0.02 percent to aggregate demand. Not exactly a big bang! Do the folks at the Washington Post know how to look up trade information?

Stirring the VAT

The elites who matter in the formation of economic policy have long favored a national value-added tax (sort of like a sales tax), and from time to time we see puff pieces like this one in today’s the New York Times. The story is always the same: we (the masses) need to consume less and save more, so that the economy can be fertilized with more investment and grow faster over the long run. The urgency of this message is amplified by two more current concerns: changing America’s consumption behavior is seen as key to bringing down the current account deficit, and the mushrooming fiscal deficit requires fresh thinking on the tax front.

It’s all rejectable.

1. The decision to save does not prompt a decision to invest. It might lower interest rates, but interest rates are only weakly related to business investment (unlike investment in housing which does not stoke productivity), and in any case interest rates will be low in the US for years to come. (Yield curves tell us this.) The only circumstance under which savings are a bottleneck for investment arises in an economy that is generating high levels of investment for other reasons. European countries that use a VAT, for instance, typically have industrial policies, whether they admit it or not, which keep investment bubbling. In the US, less consumer spending means depressed employment and output. This is in our probable future no matter what, but why exacerbate it?

2. We are back to the tail and the dog, the horse and the cart, or whatever metaphor strikes your fancy: is the yawning US trade deficit (down but not sustainably in the latest monthly release) the result of spending beyond our means, or have our means been downsized by decades of outsourcing and reliance on imports? Those who have followed this blog know that I think the weight of logic and evidence comes down mainly on the side of explanation #2. Thumbnail version: the first story depends on confusing identity with behavioral relations—to be a net importer is to identically be a net dissaver—and the evidence on potential transmission mechanisms clearly points to the primacy of trade competitiveness, or lack thereof, in recent US history. (There will be a new paper on this topic for the Atlanta meetings.)

3. Big fiscal deficits at a time of deep recession are the medicine, not the disease. If the US economy remains this depressed for years into the future then, yes, the deficits are dangerous—but the cause is the economy, not the fiscal policies taken to stanch the bleeding.

But there is a bigger story here. During the decades in which the Washington Consensus was gospel, we were told that, because markets could do no wrong, the private sector should be free to accumulate as much debt, and in whatever form, as it chose, whereas governments, being irredeemably corrupt and incompetent, must be held to the highest standards of fiscal prudence. Then the roof caved in, and now the private debt has been nationalized. Today we look to the sovereign advantages of government as debtor of last resort to hold off the threat of private insolvency and credit gridlock. Indeed, from a purely arithmetic standpoint, if households and businesses in the US commit to deleveraging, the US external deficit can only be sustained by fiscal deficits of a similar magnitude.

This problem cannot be solved by playing with the tax system.

Can you make head or tail of this China story?

Today, an article published on the Bloomberg website entitled 'China Factory Output Rises 19.2%, More Than Forecast' has left me rather confused about the state of the global economy.

In the opening paragraph it is written that the unexpected rise in 'factor output' signals "a strengthening recovery in the world’s third-biggest economy." However there are some rather odd assertions throughout the rest of this article.

China is experiencing deflation. "Producer prices fell 2.1 percent last month from a year earlier, after dropping 5.8 percent in October." Not to worry, the problem of deflation has been solved by higher food and energy prices: "Food and energy price increases helped to bring deflation to an end, said Sun Mingchun, chief China economist at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Hong Kong."

China suffers from inflation. "Consumer prices rose 0.6 percent." AND "Property prices in 70 cities rose at the fastest pace in 16 months in November and the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index has jumped almost 80 percent this year." AND "The government last month approved increases of as much as 8 percent to gasoline, diesel and jet fuel prices and raised retail power charges for the first time in 16 months."

There is economic growth but it has come from the Chinese Government printing money and from a general increase in debt. "A $586 billion stimulus package, record bank lending and incentives for purchases of cars and home appliances are supporting industrial output.."

There is overcapacity in certain sectors such as steel. But (in another article about Australia's current jobs boom: "BHP Billiton Ltd. [will] take on more workers to increase iron-ore production amid a surge in China’s demand for steel."

There is a global climate change catastrophe playing out in the context of an equally alarming world shortage of energy. However, "Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, the world’s largest maker of luxury cars, said last month that it will build a new factory worth 5 billion yuan to tap an auto market set to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest this year."

Is there a creeping realisation that governments haven't fixed the problems arising from the global financial crisis? Governments have just increased the level of debt on top of the existing unsustainable levels. Finance is being directed into the production of more unsustainable oil guzzlers. Inflation + deflation equals 'stagflation'.

Whew! Global limits to growth can't be wished away by printing money and churning out more cars. Mass production, on the other hand, can't survive without large quantities of goods being produced to provide for the certain and regular demand that is essential to capitalism.

It's capitalism or us, I guess.

Stupid Web Tricks

"Submit a question" says the button at the bottom of the page on the "AFL-CIO Open for Questions with President Richard Trumka" gimmick. Nothing happens. There is no hyper-link associated with the submit-a-question doohickey. If the AFL-CIO job plan is as ineffectual as their web programming... well, we already know the answer to that question.

Somehow, someone managed to ask the question that Richard Trumka should be answering. "Why aren't we asking for a reduction of hours with no cut in pay?, asked UAW member Gene Lantz from Dallas. Trumka won't be answering that question, though, because it won't get enough "votes".

Let's Beat Up the Unemployed!

I have spent the last two weeks shackled to my computer, sifting through five-point, nine-point and utterly pointless "jobs plans" offered by the White House, the AFL-CIO, Change-to-Win, the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability and the Chicago School of Economics. I have digested -- or rather swallowed -- all the lucubrations of the purveyors of job creation policy: those who advise even more deficit spending on infrastructure, aid to states and cities and extended unemployment benefits; those who call for WPA-style direct employment by the government and, of course, those who call for a lower minimum wage and a balanced budget to starve the unemployment out of the system. All these proposals leave me in a dazed state of mind bordering on idiocy.

Nevertheless I began to become dimly aware of an obscure germ of an idea buried deep in my mind, far superior to the whole catalogue of old wives' remedies I had so recently browsed. But it was only the idea of an idea, something infinitely vague. I left my room with a terrible thirst. The passion for bad boilerplate engenders a proportionate need for fresh air and distilled beverages.

As I was about to enter a bar, an unemployed recent university graduate approached me with a resume and looked at me with one of those unforgettable expressions which, if spirit moved matter, would overturn thrones.

At the same time I heard a voice whispering in my ear, a voice I recognized perfectly; it was the voice of my good Angel, or good Demon, who accompanies me everywhere. This is what the voice whispered to me: "A person is the equal of another only if he or she can prove it, and to be worthy of liberty, a person must fight for it."

Immediately, I leaped upon the job-seeker. With a blow of my fist I closed one of his eyes which in an instant grew as big as an orange. I broke one of my fingernails breaking two of his teeth and since, having been born delicate and never having learned how to box, I knew I could not knock out the young fellow quickly, I seized him by the throat and began pounding his head against the wall. I must admit that I had first taken the precaution of looking around me in this deserted suburb and I felt certain that no policeman would disturb me for some time.

Then, having by a vigorous kick in the back, strong enough to break his shoulder blades, felled the youth, I picked up a large branch that happened to be lying on the ground, and beat him with the obstinate energy of a cook tenderizing a beefsteak.

Suddenly -- O miracle! O bliss of the philosoper when he sees the truth of his theory verified! -- I saw that underfed carcass turn over, jump up with a force I should never have expected in a machine so singularly out of order; and with a look of hatred that seemed to me a very good omen, the decrepit vagabond hurled himself at me and proceeded to give me two black eyes, to knock out four of my teeth and, with the same branch I had used, to beat me to a pulp. Thus it was that my energetic treatment had restored his pride and given him new life.

I then, by various signs, finally made him understand that I considered the argument settled, and getting up I said to him with all the satisfaction of a cable TV network pundit, "Sir, you are my equal! I beg you to do me the honor of sharing my purse. And remember, if you are really philanthropic, when any of your colleagues asks you for aid, you must apply the theory which I have just had the painful experience of trying out on you."

He swore that he understood my theory and that he would follow my advice.