Marxist Economics: The Cliff Notes Edition

This week I gave my traditional pair of lectures on Marxist economics to the program Political Economy and Social Movements for which I'm one of the instructors.  Every time I do this I tweak them a bit, but this time I finally prepared PowerPoints.  (Resistance is futile.)

Some readers might be interested in these slides.  Obviously, there's a lot in these talks that I don't put in the notes, but you should get the general idea.  Let me know if you see ways they can be improved.

The first talk covers historical materialism, the second Marxist economics in particular.

Recall and the General Strike

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “emergency situation” in which we live is the rule. -- Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History, 1940

Back in December, I posted Full Employment and the Myth of the General Strike to start the conversational ball rolling about the idea of a general strike. It was the middle post in a three-part series on full employment.

Events move fast in 2017.

In the past two days, op-eds have appeared in the Washington Post and the Guardian taking up the issue of job action -- and the general strike -- as forms of resistance. On Monday, the Guardian published a Comment is Free by Francine Prose, "Forget protest. Trump's actions warrant a general national strike." This morning, "Where’s the best place to resist Trump? At work." by labor lawyers, Moshe Marvit and Leo Gertner, was published as a PostEverything by the Washington Post.

Apparently, a call has gone out for a general strike on February 17, which strikes me (no pun intended) as rather precipitous. But the conversation is rolling.

Another element I would like to throw in is "what are the demands?" That Trump stop doing nasty things? That the GOP house and the GOP senate impeach the one who is going to sign their tax cut bills? I propose recall -- total recall. Not only are the elected officials themselves corrupt, incompetent and unrepresentative but the electoral system that has installed them has been thoroughly corrupted and undemocratic. Throw the bums -- AND THE NAG THEY RODE IN ON -- out.

To give context and American (U.S.) historical resonance to that demand, it is useful to consider Populist and Progressive proposals for "direct democracy," through initiative, referendum and the "imperative mandate" (recall) from over a century ago.

What am I really talking about here? What am I doing? The narrative time dimensions of the revolutionary general strike and of the reformist recall, as conceived by Populists and Progressives, could not be more contrasting. The general strike takes place in what Walter Benjamin referred to as jetztzeit -- "not homogenous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now."

The traditional recall proposal is almost exactly the opposite. It refers to a process that appears almost interminable involving amendment of the constitution, enacting legislation in conformity with said amendment, petitioning, litigation and ultimately a recall election.

What I am doing, what I am talking about here, is the necessity of learning to think simultaneously in both dimensions -- to collapse the duration of the recall into "time filled with the presence of the now" and at the same time to extend now time, jetztzeit, so that it endures, becomes everyday, day-to-day.

Amgen’s Transfer Pricing (Psst – don’t got there)

The White House is boosting about this :

Amgen CEO Robert Bradway told President Trump at today's White House meeting that his company is adding 1,600 jobs in the U.S. this year.

Amgen had $21,662 million in sales in 2015 with $7978 million in profits. Its worldwide taxes were only $1039 million for an effective tax rate of only 13 percent. How did they pull the trick off? Their 10-K filing is a little sparse in information but does admit:

The effective tax rates for the years ended December 31, 2015, 2014 and 2013, are different from the federal statutory rates primarily as a result of indefinitely invested earnings of our foreign operations. We do not provide for U.S. income taxes on undistributed earnings of our foreign operations that are intended to be invested indefinitely outside the United States.

Did the White House discuss this massive base erosion to tax havens with no repatriation of earnings? Of course one has to wonder about their transfer pricing profile. All I could get from their 10-K was:

We perform most of our bulk manufacturing, formulation, fill and finish activities in our Puerto Rico facility and also conduct finish activities in the Netherlands. We also utilize third-party contract manufacturers to supplement the bulk, formulation, fill, and/or packaging of certain Amgen principal products ... We operate distribution centers in the United States—principally in Kentucky and California—and the Netherlands for worldwide distribution of the majority of our commercial and clinical products. We also use third-party distributors to supplement distribution of our products worldwide ... We have major R&D centers in several locations throughout the United States (including Thousand Oaks and San Francisco, California and Cambridge, Massachusetts), Iceland and in the United Kingdom, as well as smaller research centers and development facilities globally.

So we have three basic functions here: (1) production offshore; (2) local distribution; and (3) R&D done in the U.S. Amgen’s profit margin is near 37 percent, which should tell us most of its profits are attributable to its product intangibles, which were developed here. And yet most of the profits are sourced to tax havens. As we spend so much time debating the various aspects of the Destination-Based Cash Flow Tax, multinationals like Amgen are very happy that we are not discussing their transfer pricing.

The "Imperative Mandate" -- Recall: An Annotated Bibliography

Recall of elected officials is both the essence of Populism, the "imperative mandate" and consistent with good business principles.

"You're fired!, the voters' version of "The Apprentice": An analysis of local recall elections in California." Rachel Weinstein, Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, Vol , 15. 2005-2006.

The title of this 2005 article contains the delicious irony of referencing Resident Dump's reality T.V. show, "The Apprentice." As the title indicates, the article analyzes the characteristics of local recall elections in California, looking specifically at such elements as community size, property values, signature requirements, campaign spending, motivations of elected officials, interest groups and the ability of citizens to monitor government activity. There is a brief comment in passing on the notion of national recall elections:

At a national conference on direct legislation organized by the Populist Party in 1896, delegates affirmed their commitment to direct legislation at the municipal, state, and national levels of government, but after a prolonged debate they withdrew a motion to include the recall, which they termed the "imperative mandate" as part of direct legislation. 

"Functions of the Initiative, Referendum, and Recall," Jonathan Bourne, Jr. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social  Sciences (September, 1912).

Jonathan Bourne, Jr. was the Republican U.S. Senator from Oregon when he wrote this article. The Republican Party did not nominate him to run for re-election in 1912 and ran instead under the Popular Government banner, coming in third. The preamble of this article, dealing with the initiative and referendum is a rousing denunciation of the extent to which popular sovereignty has been usurped by political manipulation and the commercialization of politics. Bourne argued that recall was a precautionary measure and that its existence "will prevent the necessity for its use." "Adoption of the recall," he wrote, "is nothing more than the application of good business principles to government affairs."

Every wise employer reserves the right to discharge an employee whenever the service rendered is unsatisfactory. The right of the employer to discharge his employee rests upon exactly the same basis as the right of the employee to quit. The principle is recognized throughout the business world, and it is put in practice by every large and successful corporation. Consider the absurdity of the recognition of the right of a public officer to quit his position at any time and the denial of the right of his employers to discharge him. To assert the right in one instance and deny it in the other is to maintain a one-sided contract, the discrimination being against the whole people and in favor of the individual. If we can trust an individual to deal justly with the people when he considers tendering his resignation, we can also trust the people to deal justly with a public servant when they consider discharging him.

Bourne stopped short of prescribing the recall for national office, stating somewhat ambiguously, "I think no one proposes, at present, to extend the recall to any federal official except those elected by the people of the several states," even though he had preceded that demurral with an explicit reference to the election of the President:

It is generally conceded that the American people have intelligence and honesty enough to be trusted with the power to select their public servants, even to choose a President of the United States. If it be granted that the people have intelligence enough to choose a President of the United States, no man can consistently contend that they have not the intelligence to act wisely upon the question of discharging a state, county, or municipal officer. 

"Presidents, Impeachment, and Political Accountability." MC Havens, DM McNeil - Presidential Studies Quarterly, 1978.

This article contains a brief historical note on recall and discussion of the implications of recall for the U.S. Presidency:

The idea of the recall election found its greatest popularity in the period between 1910 and 1920 when progressive politicians were interested in "cleaning up government."24 At that time, the recall election was viewed as the most effective means available for insuring the accountability of public officials and particularly executives. The first proponents of the argument concentrated their efforts on local and state officials, but by extending the scope of the concept national recall elections might be used to remove a malfeasant or incapacitated President. The thrust of this argument is that this means of removal leaves the ultimate responsibility for the unseating of a President in the hands of his national constituency. This would, of course, mean that many of the people who voted to put the President into office would be required to reverse their position and vote to oust him. Theoretically, this would insure that the President's crime, malfeasance, or incompentency would be of sufficient degree to erode not only his professional political support but his popular and party support as well. Such action could not be taken lightly. Second, it could be argued that the recall would decrease the trauma involved in the impeachment/removal process. Presumably by exercising their own political power through the vote, people would feel an increase in their sense of efficacy rather than a decreasing of their faith in government as the result of the ouster of a President. 

The article follows the above by noting the principle defects of recall, which would include the prolonged time that would be required to effect a recall petition and election and the ability of the incumbent to manipulate national crisis in order to defeat the recall.

"The 2003 California gubernatorial recall." Floyd Feeney, Creighton Law Review,Vol. 41, 2007.

This article deals primarily with the mechanics of the recall of California governor Gray Davis, including the more than twenty lawsuits that were initiated during the recall effort. The article also contains a brief historical note on the recall idea

In the America of the late 1800s, hard pressed farmers and workers, particularly in the Western states, viewed their legislatures as being under the thumb of special interests, especially the railroads. To cure this problem, Populists in the late 1890s and Progressives in the early 1900s advocated more direct control by the people themselves— through the initiative, the citizen-initiated referendum, and the recall. Although there were antecedents going back as far as ancient Rome, this agenda was clearly borrowed in major part from Switzerland, particularly Zurich where the Socialist Karl Buerkli was using the initiative and the citizen-initiated referendum to push reforms aimed at helping workers. Although the recall had existed in canton Schaffhausen, perhaps since the 1820s, even in Switzerland the recall was more novel and less developed than the citizen-initiated referendum and the initiative. The recall idea, however, had early American roots that helped to create a fertile climate. In 1776, Pennsylvania recalled its delegates to the Continental Congress when they refused to sign the Declaration of Independence.  And in 1778, even before they had completed winning their independence, the thirteen American colonies included in the Articles of Confederation a provision specifically authorizing the recall of delegates. Because these home grown procedures relied primarily on local legislative bodies to trigger the recall, however, the Swiss idea of using citizen signatures was an important innovation.

Gaslighting

EconoSpeak has been receiving comments from an anonymous troll who is gaslighting. I will delete those comments on sight. Gaslighting is not about having contrary opinions. Gaslighting is not about "free speech." Gaslighting is abuse and manipulation.

Stephanie Sarkis posted a concise and useful analysis, "Gaslighting: Know It and Identify It to Protect Yourself" at Psychology Today. "Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic used to gain power," Sarkis writes there, "And it works too well." She enumerates and explains eleven gaslighting techniques. Each of these techniques could be illustrated with a video clip or tweet from Resident Dump but for now I will just post the list, abstracted from Sarkis's article:

1. They tell you blatant lies.
2. They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.
3. They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.
4. They wear you down over time.
5. Their actions do not match their words.
6. They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.
7. They know confusion weakens people.
8. They project.
9. They try to align people against you.
10. They tell you or others that you are crazy.
11. They tell you everyone else is a liar.

See also The War on Facts Is a War on Democracy at BillMoyers.com. "But it’s not just absence of facts that’s troubling; it is the apparent effort to derail science and the pursuit of facts themselves."

If The Popular Vote Winner Was In The White House

Yes, she has been a crook and a liar, and if she were in the White House she and her money grubbing husband might be plotting which pieces of White House silverware and furniture they might abscond with when they leave, much as they did back in 2001, oh horror of horrors.

But as it is, if she was there, well, I do not think we would have people crying in airports as we have have had in the last few days.

OTOH, she might be using an unsecured phone, although that would not be any different from what is going on now, although heck, now it is just fine if the Russians hack the White House phones.

Exclusive: Inside the Access Hollywood Locker Room Bus!

On October 7, 2016 the Washington Post published a 2005 recording of Donald J.Trump engaging in lewd conversation with Access Hollywood host, Billy Bush. “When you’re a star, they let you do it.. You can do anything... Grab them by the pussy... You can do anything.”

What Trump described is, of course, sexual assault. Subsequently, though, Trump insisted that he didn't commit the sexual offenses he described, it was all just locker room talk.

Well, that certainly was reassuring.

At best, then, the President of the United States, at the age of 59, had the emotional maturity of the cartoon characters Beavis and Butthead. In his first week in office, Trump has demonstrated that he has not grown up since the days he boasted and snickered about molesting women.

At last Sunday's Women's March, pink, knitted "pussy" hats became the ubiquitous symbol of resistance to the misogynous, racist and deranged administration that has been inaugurated the previous day. This got me to wondering: what did that now, yes, historic conversation look like inside that Access Hollywood locker room bus?

The video below is an exclusive artist's reconstruction of that locker room "banter" escapade:

Emails from the "Voter Fraud" Crypt

Why, oh why is there not an effective opposition party in the U.S. Congress? 

The last time "voter fraud" was as high on the GOP's agenda as it now is on Trump's, it led to the politically-motivated firing of nine U.S. Attorneys, which caused a scandal that resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

During the Congressional investigation into the firings, it was revealed that millions of emails were missing, some of which were germane to the issue at hand. They had been stored on a private RNC email server. 

Here is some relevant detail from a Newsweek story published September 12, 2016:

The supposedly lost emails also prevented Congress from fully investigating, in 2007, the politically motivated firing of nine U.S. attorneys. When the Democrat-led Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed related emails, Bush’s attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez, said many were inaccessible or lost on a nongovernmental private server run by the RNC and called gwb43.com. The White House, meanwhile, officially refused to comply with the congressional subpoena. 

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) called the president’s actions “Nixonian stonewalling” and at one point took to the floor in exasperation and shouted, “They say they have not been preserved. I don’t believe that!” His House counterpart, Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), said Bush’s assertion of executive privilege was unprecedented and displayed “an appalling disregard for the right of the people to know what is going on in their government.” 

In court in May 2008, administration lawyers contended that the White House had lost three months’ worth of email backups from the initial days of the Iraq War. Bush aides thus evaded a court-ordered deadline to describe the contents of digital backup believed to contain emails deleted in 2003 between March—when the U.S. invaded Iraq—and September. They also refused to give the NSA nonprofit any emails relating to the Iraq War, despite the PRA, blaming a system upgrade that had deleted up to 5 million emails. The plaintiffs eventually contended that the Bush administration knew about the problem in 2005 but did nothing to fix it. 

Eventually, the Bush White House admitted it had lost 22 million emails, not 5 million. Then, in December 2009—well into Barack Obama’s administration—the White House said it found 22 million emails, dated between 2003 and 2005, that it claimed had been mislabeled. That cache was given to the National Archives, and it and other plaintiffs agreed, on December 14, 2009, to settle their lawsuit. But the emails have not yet been made available to the public. 

The Senate Judiciary Committee was operating on a different track but having no more luck. In a bipartisan vote in 2008, the committee found White House aides Karl Rove and Joshua Bolten in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas in the investigation of the fired U.S. attorneys. The penalties for contempt are fines and possible jail time, but no punishment was ever handed down because a D.C. federal appeals court stayed the Senate’s ruling in October 2008, while the White House appealed. Rove’s lawyer claimed Rove did not “intentionally delete” any emails but was only conducting “the type of routine deletions people make to keep their inboxes orderly,” according to the Associated Press. 

By then, Obama was weeks away from winning the election, so the Bush administration basically ran out the clock. And neither the Obama administration nor the Senate committee pursued the matter.

Trump’s Errant Mouth and What to Do About it

The motive for Trump’s unending stream of blatant falsehoods is obscure.  It might be mental illness, or maybe it’s a Schelling-style hostage strategy in response to principal-agent issues in his administration.  I don’t know.  What matters most, however, is how the rest of us respond to it.

The losing strategy was artfully employed by Hilary Clinton: paint the Donald as abnormal, a caveman outside the normal bounds of respectable politics.  Even if it works—and as we saw it can fail in the face of competing narratives—it has a limited objective, taking down this one man.  A better approach would be to craft a straightforward and honest narrative that links Trump’s crass dishonesty to his political goals.

I’d go for the most basic version: Trump’s real plan is to enrich the wealthiest people in the country and allow the continued fleecing of the vast majority through deregulation, deunionization and defunding the public watchdog.  If he were open about this he wouldn’t be able to get to first base.  So he has to lie constantly, creating a fictitious parallel universe in which exploitation can be decked out as a crusade for justice.

Repeat this at every opportunity.  The army of the Right wants an America hardly any Americans actually want, so they have to lie.  They can do it with magic asterisks like Paul Ryan or whoppers about millions of hidden fraudulent voters, but the one thing they can’t do is tell the truth.

Why is Donald Trump Covering Up ALIEN ABDUCTIONS?

"We're gonna launch an investigation to find out. And then the next time, and I will say this: Of those votes cast, none of 'em come to me, none of 'em come to me. They would all be for the other side. None of 'em come to me. But when you look at the people that are registered: dead, illegal and in two states, and in some cases maybe three states. We have a lot to look into." -- Donald J. Trump

I regret to inform you that the nincompoop quoted above is President of the United States. When told that his claim of voter fraud had been debunked, the congenital fantasist-in-chief cited a 2012  Pew study. When the interview pointed out that the author of that study, David Becker, said they had found no evidence of fraud, the wack-doodle accused Becker of "groveling." Say what? Here is the transcript:

Muir: You say you’re going to launch an investigation into (voter fraud). 

Trump: Sure. Done. 

Muir: What you have presented so far has been debunked. It’s been called false — 

Trump: No it hasn’t. Take a look at the Pew report. 

Muir: I called the author of the Pew report last night. He told me they found no evidence of voter fraud. 

Trump: Really? Then why did he write the report? 

Muir: He said no evidence of voter fraud. 

Trump: Excuse me. Then why did he write the report? Look at the Pew Report. Then he’s groveling again. You know, I always talk about the reporters that grovel when they wanna write something you wanna hear. But not necessarily millions of people want to hear, or have to hear 

Muir: So you've launched an investigation. 

Trump: We're gonna launch an investigation to find out. And then the next time, and I will say this: Of those votes cast, none of 'em come to me, none of 'em come to me. They would all be for the other side. None of 'em come to me. But when you look at the people that are registered: dead, illegal and in two states, and in some cases maybe three states. We have a lot to look into.

This is not even about lying. It is about mental incompetence at lying. The jackass refutes his own alibi two sentences after presenting it.

The Pew report is not the only research paper on voter fraud out there. There are two others. It only gets worse.

One paper by Richman and Earnest was based on an online survey of citizens. It included a question about citizenship. Nearly 19.000 people completed the survey. A relative handful -- probably fewer than 100 -- non-citizens took the survey. The minuscule number of people who reported both voting and being non-citizens 4 (four!) is extremely likely to be entirely a classification error resulting from less than .1% of the 18,878 citizens checking the wrong box for citizenship status. In short, Richman and Earnest's estimate was based on a very small sample of non-citizens and was probably entirely an error artifact. The methodological flaw was described in detail in two-page 2015 article titled, "The perils of cherry picking low frequency events in large sample surveys."

Let me repeat the substance of the Richman and Earnest finding: 4 people among nearly 20,000 who completed an online survey identified themselves as non-citizens who voted in either 2010 or 2012. The statistical likelihood of that having resulted from a citizenship classification error is virtually 1 out of 1.

There is a third study of voter fraud that is worth mentioning, "Alien abduction and voter impersonation in the 2012 US general election," It employed a technique called "survey list experiment" to try to elicit survey responses regarding sensitive or illegal behaviors that people may ordinarily be reluctant to report on a survey. Instead of admitting specific actions, respondents are only asked to report a number of items from a list. Sensitive items are tested for by having a control group that is given only innocuous items while the experimental group is given the innocuous items plus a sensitive one.

The list experiment found that about 2.5% of their sample reported have voted under a name that wasn't their own. Although a relatively small number, this might seem to be a significant factor in a close election, especially if the impersonations were predominantly on behalf of one party. However, the researchers argued that the result is most likely to be explained by respondent error. Most of the respondents reporting impersonation is accounted for by respondents choosing the maximum number, possibly to complete the survey more quickly. To test whether choosing the maximum number explained their voter impersonation results, the researchers conducted a second experiment, this time including an "impossible event," namely being abducted by an alien.

The second experiment found that more people reported having been abducted by aliens than having voted using a name that wasn't theirs. In fact, nearly the same percentage of respondents (2.4%) reported having been abducted by aliens and being audited by the IRS during the past twelve months as had reported having voted under a false name (2.5%). This was despite the fact that the IRS audit rate for 2013 was a little less than 1%! In short, survey respondent were two and half times as likely to be both abducted by aliens and audited by the IRS in the same year as the general public was to be audited by the IRS. Period.

Donald Trump claims that he is under audit by the IRS. Donald Trump claims that there was massive voter fraud in the 2016 which denied him the popular vote victory. Donald Trump claims that the Pew report is evidence for his accusation of voter fraud. But notably, Donald Trump is SILENT on the vital national security aspect of this whole episode: ALIEN ABDUCTION!

Why is Donald Trump covering up ALIEN ABDUCTIONS?

Paul Ryan’s Two-Faced Comments on Auerbach’s Tax

Page 15 of the tax portion of A Better Way makes this claim:

This Blueprint represents a dramatic reform of the current income tax system. This Blueprint does not include a value-added tax (VAT), a sales tax, or any other tax as an addition to the fundamental reforms of the current income tax system. The reforms reflected in this Blueprint will deliver a 21st century tax code that is built for growth and that puts America first.

A few lines later, it makes this claim:

The focus on business cash flow, which is a move toward a consumption-based approach to taxation, will allow the United States to adopt, for the first time in history, the same destination-based approach to taxation that has long been used by our trading partners. This will end the self-imposed unilateral penalty for exports and subsidy for imports that are fundamental flaws in the current U.S. tax system. The new tax system also will end the U.S. taxation of the worldwide income of American-based global businesses

So is the Destination-Based Cash Flow Tax, an income tax or a consumption tax? And why is Speaker Ryan contradicting himself within the same page? I earlier praised Joel Trachtman for articulating the legalese of whether this proposal would violate WTO rules:

The ability to tax imports and exempt exports –known as border tax adjustments—is permitted under World Trade Organization rules, but only for taxes on a product, such as a sales tax (as opposed to income taxes). Many of the U.S.'s major trading partners tax imports while exempting exports because they have a system of what are called value-added taxes, which act like a sales tax on goods (but are collected in stages along the production chain). Value-added taxes are understood to be taxes on a product and are eligible to be border tax adjusted: they are rebated on exports and applied to imports as the product crosses the border. Relying on corporate income taxes has precluded the U.S. from applying similar border adjustments—a fact the GOP blueprint aims to rectify. But, whether the border tax adjustments in the blueprint are deemed legal from a World Trade Organization perspective will depend on a core interpretation: Is the tax in question an income tax or a tax on a product? While some argue that the business cash flow tax is economically equivalent to a value-added tax, legally it does not seem possible to characterize it as a tax on a product under the World Trade Organization rules. It is a tax on a firm, calculated by reference to firm-based attributes under a new and simplified definition of net income, but a definition of net income nonetheless. Moreover, imports would face 20% tax on their price with no deductions while domestic producers would be able to deduct most expenses — including payroll — from the tax base. This discriminatory treatment could also make the import border adjustment illegal under the international rules.

Reuven Avi-Yonah and Kimberly Clausing have a longer discussion that reaches the same conclusion. These authors also wondered why Speaker Ryan does not simply call this a consumption tax with a labor subsidy. The answer might be simply politics – Speaker Ryan has always wanted to get rid of the corporate profits tax replacing it with a consumption tax. But of course Speaker Ryan does not have the political courage to just say so. No wonder President Trump finds this too confusing. The tax’s main political proponent has never been exactly honest about what his agenda is. I stand by my second post on this topic:

I think the real issue here is that this proposal smooshes together two very different ideas sort of like how shimmer was a floor wax and a dessert topping

.

What are the "Alternative Facts"?

The lies of Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway and Donald J. Trump are not meant to deceive. They are manipulative displays that operate at a pre-linguistic level of communication. Conway's "alternative facts" are best understood as the equivalent of chimpanzee poo-flinging:

In short, what appears to be the main reward for throwing is the simple ability to control or manipulate the behaviour of the targeted individual (ape or human). For example, in our laboratory, chimpanzees will patiently wait for strangers or visitors to approach and then will throw at them. They do not conceal their intentions and they will often stand bipedal and threaten to throw by cocking their arm with the projectile in their hand in preparation for throwing. The passers-by can see this and will often try and negotiate with the chimpanzees to put down the projectile, or they will try to trick the ape by stopping, then dashing rapidly past the ape enclosure. This seems to be the reaction the apes hope to get from the humans and, in operant conditioning terms, is the only ‘reward’ the chimpanzees receive for throwing. 

Neurologically, throwing is complex because it demands coordinated precision in timing the velocity and release window of a projectile in relation to the speed of movement and distance of the target (i.e. prey). Some have suggested that the increased selection for neural synchrony of rapid muscular sequencing routines associated with actions such as throwing are similar to the motor programming demands of language and speech, and therefore engage similar neural systems, notably Broca's area. 

Kellyanne Conway demonstrating how to put extra "spin" on a fecal projectile. 

Cognitively, we believe that the development and acquisition of throwing skills by chimpanzees operates in a manner similar to the emergence of manual gestural communication. As noted previously, the motivation for throwing in chimpanzees is largely to alter the behaviour of other individuals (be it human visitors or conspecifics). For this reason, the apes that have learned to throw have acquired an ability to understand how their behaviour affects the behaviours of others. 

People really need to learn to stop trying to "refute" the "alternative facts" that are being flung. Shit is shit. You cannot refute feces.

The Worst Human Being Ever Elected President Of The USA

That would be Donald John Trump, and I mean this judgment on a pretty traditional moralistic basis.  It may be obvious, but maybe not.  Anyway, I want to get this off my chest before we simply get swamped with all the probably bad policy things he will be doing in the near future.

Before I dump on him, let me note at least one more or less good thing, the same one that Hillary Clinton was able to come up with at the end of the second debate when asked to say something nice about him: he does seem to have been a mostly good father, at least to his oldest three children.  Now I could get off on some of his creepy remarks regarding Ivanka, and I am not sure how moral his two older sons are, although they do not seem to be unhappy or deranged or anything.  Tiffany seems to be somewhat estranged and off, but basically OK as well, I guess, and while some have been huffing and puffing about Barron not paying much attention at the inauguration, well, he is only 10, and I wish him the best. Anyway, not obviously bad as a dad.

I am mostly of the mind that sexual conduct is irrelevant to someone;s ability to  lead a country, and many world leaders have had scandalous sex lives reflecting their huge egos associated with lots of out of control sexual activity.  And we have certainly had some other presidents with records of apparently lots of extramarital sexual activity, notably Harding, JFK, LBJ, and Clinton, with probably some others in there as well, but with their activities unreported.  There were others that had reported affairs, notably FDR and Ike.  But Trump's activities have involved more flagrant contempt for women than any of these, with his nasty remarks, such things as wandering into the dressing rooms of the Teen Universe festival, and more accusations of rape than the others. Clinton has Paula Broderick, but Trump has his first wife, who withdrew the charge she initially made, and then a reputed underage woman whose name remains unrevealed, who was to bring a suit but pulled back.

As it is, noting a very conventional measure, he is the first president to have been divorced twice, both times following his cheating on existing wife with subsequent one.  The only other one to get divorced at all was Reagan, who was in Hollywood and only did it once.  There is, of course, the highly questionable conduct of Jefferson with Sally Hemings.  But I note that it was against the law to marry a slave in those days, although I suppose he could have freed her.  And there was the very odd detail that she was the half sister of his late wife.   As it is, I still know some old and conservative people in Virginia who refuse to accept the evidence that he fathered her children.

Bringing that up does bring up one area where Trump has been better than a whole bunch of our former presidents, including four of our first five: he has not owned any slaves.  But then I would argue that people should be judged by the standards of their times and compared to others of their times.  Certainly in terms of their views regarding policies, most earlier presidents were more sexist and homophobic and racist than Trump, if for nearly all of them less compared to other people of their periods than is Trump now compared to people of this time.

Of course many earlier presidents have done some pretty horrible things as president, and it may come to pass that Trump will not do things as bad as these.  John Adams, the only non-slaveholder among our first five presidents, signed the Alien and Sedition Acts.  Jackson forced Native Indian tribes to move with many dying on the Trail of Tears, a policy much admired by Hitler.  Lincoln suspended habeus corpus.  Wilson approved the Palmer raids.  FDR set up the internship camps for people of Japanese descent.  Truman dropped atomic bombs on Japan.  Nixon broke into competitors' offices and then lied about it. W. Bush invaded Iraq, and more.  For some of these things Trump has supported similar policies, if not too likely to fully follow through on them.  So, he has advocated making it easier to  sue the media for libel.  He has advocated a new Trail of Tears to deport massive numbers of people. He has suggested bringing back and expanding torture, as well as loosening various civil liberties in order to fight terror. But already on some of these he appears to have backed off. And, of course, some of the worst of these things were done in the midst of wars far worse than what we are involved in now, when, well, war is hell.

So where does he really look clearly worse than any of the rest in his personal moral conduct?  Well one of the biggest is his lying and another is his crookedness and financial corruption.  The best defense is an offense, and it is not at all surprising that among the memes he pushed at the GOP convention and regularly supported by his supporters who have  chanted "Lock her up," even at the inauguration when she appeared, was that HRC was a liar and a crook.  Well, she certainly did make some false statements, and she and Bill also had an unpleasant money grubbing aspect that reflected itself in everything from walking off with stuff from the WH when they left it and her abysmally stupid paid speeches to Wall Street banks, although the charges against them regarding their foundation look about as silly as the ones against her about Benghazi and her emails, especially when compared with the corruption and absurdity of his foundation, now being shut down.


But various studies showed Trump to be by far the biggest liar of all of the 23 candidates last year, with only Ted Cruz close to him.  He told so many lies that one could not keep track of them. The minute there was outrage about one, he would be issuing another. He has already put two out since his inauguration, one about the numbers attending and the other that it was the media who falsely claimed that he had differences with the CIA.  He has lied so frequently that the minute one is getting outraged by one lie, he puts out another.  One eventually just says, "Oh, there he goes again," and his supporters, those at least who realize he is lying a lot, simply view it as an acceptable part of his personality showing that he is strong, or something.  He can get away with it, good for him!

Certainly other presidents have lied, often about substantial policy matters, such as LBJ prior to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that was used to justify the escalation of the Vietnam War.  But I cannot think of another president with such a record of just lying all the time repeatedly almost every other day, not a one.  If somebody can name one, please be my guest, and unfortunately it looks like Trump plans to continue doing it big time, which could end up having some really bad consequences.  It is one thing to lie as a candidate, and the number of presidents who broke campaign promises is  huge, but lying repeatedly, especially if he does it to foreign leaders, well, we simply have not see this, not remotely on this scale anyway.

Another is his level of his financial corruption and crookedness.  The simplest case of this is the simply enormous number of contractors he has shafted and not paid, or paid way less than they were legally owed, over the years.  This is fraud and theft, and while he has paid numerous fines for all this, he has not been in jail, and he has somehow managed to turn this into "being a good businessman," despite his numerous bankruptcies.  Oh, he did get nailed on his seriously fraudulent "university," but got off lightly with only paying $25 million, when the losses of those he defrauded on that far exceed that amount.  On top of this we have his refusal to release his tax returns, not illegal, but justified with something phony, that he cannot because he is being audited when that does not prevent one from doing so (Nixon did so)  We have suspicions of him being seriously in hock to a foreign power (Russian oligarchs, who reportedly poured money into his org after his 2009 bankruptcy when US banks refused to lend to him).  And he has not sold off his holdings or even put them in a blind trust, instead putting his sons in charge of his business dealings.  With foreigners openly staying at his hotel in Washington to curry his favor, he looks to be the first and only president to be blatantly in violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.  The presidencies of Grant and Harding were notorious for their corruption, but most of that involved their cronies and appointees, not them personally, and as it is Trump's appointees may well give the people in those administrations a serious run for their money.  This bodes to be by far the most corrupt administration ever, with the stink starting from the top, not bubbling up from the bottom.

Finally there is the matter of his completely unacceptable personal insults of other people.  He has made many, but the two that really stick in my mind are his slam on John McCain for getting captured during the Vietnam War and his very recent blast at John Lewis for being "all talk and no action."  But there have been many others.  Now maybe if previous presidents had had access to twitter, they would have been just as obnoxious and awful as Trump has been, but I doubt it.

Anyway, I could go on, but I would simply challenge anybody, any Trump supporter, anybody, to name another president who was a worse human being on moral grounds than Donald J. Trump.

Oh, I do have one figure to compete with him at the presidential level, but only a candidate and vice president.  That would be Aaron Burr.  He killed a political rival (Alexander Hamilton) and, after Jefferson dumped him as VP, he was arrested for treason in 1807 for plotting to lead a secession of portions of the Louisiana territory, although he was not convicted as he had only plotted it and not done it.  Heck, maybe Trump is even worse as a human being than that bad actor.

Barkley Rosser

Auerbach’s Tax and the Clone Wars

Menzie Chinn introduces a new asset to economist blogging. Joel Trachtman provides an excellent discussion of whether the Destination-Based Cash Flow Tax violates WTO rules concluding that it does. He adds:

If enacted, the plan would likely lead to lengthy litigation at the World Trade Organization. A (likely) ruling that the tax is an income tax, and is applied in a discriminatory manner, would mean that exempting exports would be considered an illegal subsidy and taxes on imports an illegal tariff. This could lead to trade sanctions against the U.S. and open the door to counter sanctions and the start of a trade war.

President Trump strikes me as someone who could care less about WTO rules. And starting a trade war fits his grand design of goverance. As Yoda noted:

Begun the clone war has

President Trump is Lord Palpatine.

Trump Will Make Us Wealthy Again?

I’m not alone in finding Trump’s speech incredibly disappointing. But there was one sentence that just struck me as beyond odd:

We Will Make America Wealthy Again.

Was the nation in the aggregate ever wealthier? I had to wonder and checked here. The $90.196 trillion is aggregate nominal household net wealth for the 3rd quarter of 2016 and cannot be compared to previous periods without two adjustments. Back in the 2nd quarter of 2007 was $67.705 but the GDP price index had risen by 14.87% over this period. So in real terms (2007QII = 1), real aggregate household net wealth had risen by around 16% to $78.52 trillion. And while we had only 301.7 million people back in 2007, population had risen to 324.6 million by the 3rd quarter of last year. So real wealth per capita was $224,412 back in 2007, it was recently $241,898 recently. In other words, real wealth per capita is 7.8% higher than it was in 2007. And yes I realize that the distribution of wealth was very uneven back in 2007 and in many ways got worse since then. But does anyone believe that this Republican Administration and Congress think for a moment that they intend to redistribute either income or wealth to the average Joe?