Liberal Democracy (was Robert Mundell: Genius unbound)

[Rakesh Bhandari]

>>>Yoshie:
>>> Can capitalism continue to exist if North America, Western Europe, and
>>> Japan were to be totally delinked from the rest of the world?  I doubt
>it.
>>Why not? Europe thrived through the 50's, the 60's, the 70's...when, short
>of
>>oil, it was fairly delinked from it, at least economically. And oil would
>not
>>have been all that hard to replace: more public transportation, more coal,
>gas
>>and nuclear power.
>>Enrique

Really, Enrique?

1. Oil is the only raw material?

2.What about the Singer-Prebish thesis about worsening terms of trade? Why
are you sure this made so little contribution to profitability and
accumulation?

3. And what about the influx of immigrants (often recruited as single
males, displacing reproduction costs to the third world, aka apartheid, not
delinking) whose labor  widened all kinds of bottlenecks and helped to
rebuild Europe after its thirty year bout of fraticide? Turkish miners in
Belgium's Borinage area? Turks in Germany's Cologne plants? Immigrants from
developing countries everywhere in the most highly dangerous and high risk
jobs, and working the most amount of overtime? TO SAY NOTHING OF POLICE
ABUSE about which the mass of the population remained and remains
unconcerned.

And for the last thirty years  Europe and the US have been getting gratis a
whole lot of human capital that had been formed elsewhere (you may see some
evidence of this in your dept).

Europe delinked...Only in the imaginary of Enoch Powell and Joerg Haider.
What a disturbing little conversation to be had with no evidence and
counter evidence but dubious trade/GDP ratios?

Best, Rakesh