Maybe I am not being clear:
1. You claimed that there is no "poof" solution to poverty. This is not true, at least domestically. A negative income tax/guaranteed annual income is such a solution. I agree that this would not work internationally to solve global poverty because it could be honesty administered in ex-second and third world kleptocracies.
2. You claim this would not address the structural problems that cause poverty, mainly private ownership of productive assets. I agree. A NIT/GAI is not the best solution. But it would be better than what we have.
3. You claim that a NIT/GAI would not be an effective solution to poverty at all even domestically. You give no reasons to believe this. Just because a solution is not optimal does not mean that it would not work. If poverty is defined in terms of lack of income, a NIT/GAI would provide the missing income.
4. You claim a NIT/GAI is "feel good charity." This is incorrect. Charity, as I explained, is voluntary and not required. However, adequate provision for the less well off is required by justice and should be enforced involuntarily as a matter of right. A GAI/NIT is one way of recognizing that better off may not benefit extravagantly why others are destitute and back basic needs. It would be enforced by law and would not be optional. There are other ways of making the claims of the less well off effective, but the NIT/GAI is certainly one of them.
5. Your Stalinist forced industrialization solution does not strike me as optimal for three reasons. First, it too is a technocratic fix imposed from above. I do not think any solution that is not democratically created and implemented is ultimately wholly legitimate. Second, you cannot import a model that was fairly successful up to a point in promoting the development of agrarian semi-feudal societies into highly industrialized democracies and expect it to be effective. Third, you fail to acknowledge the obvious limits of the Stalinist solution that led to its ultimate demise. In the third world today the newly industrializing states today have adopted more market-driven forms of development along with state-planned investment, even where some of them have retained Stalinist political structures.
6. I am not sure of the relevance to the problem of poverty of your point about the intention or effect of the US left being to bring down the cultural tone of the middle classes.
--- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
> Andie:
>
>
> State sponsored charity is one way of putting it.
> But
> that is misleading. Charity is voluntary and not
> obligatory. Transfer payments funded by taxes are
> neither. Another, better, way of putting it is
> minimal
> economic justice, an acknowledgment that we're all
> in
> the same boat and share fates in such a way that the
> better off among us have no entitlement to flourish
> at
> the cost of utter destitution of our fellow
> citizens.
> The less well off have a right not to be rendered
> destitute that, as a matter of right, does not
> depend
> on mere good will by the better off.
>
>
> [WS:] Call me an old apparatchik, but I think that
> the "classical" Soviet
> approach is far superior to the liberal one based on
> transfer payments. It
> relied heavily on massive investment in industrial
> infrastructure and
> massive investment in human capital. So far, so
> good, but here is the catch
> - it also kept the wages down, it forced masses of
> people into the
> industrial mode of production and modernity (mass
> relocation, often forced,
> mandatory employment, and the destruction of local
> cultures viewed as
> nonconductive to modern industrial life cf. the
> Gypsies), and most of the
> transfer payments were distributed collectively as
> subsidies on services
> like education or health care, subsidies on housing,
> and subsidies on basic
> consumer goods.
>
> It worked and it worked well - as evidenced by the
> fact that x-USSR became a
> global superpower, and backward Eastern European
> countries achieved near
> parity with Western Europe in about a thirty year
> period. However, if these
> solutions were tried today, the populists and
> culturalists would cry bloody
> murder, blaming the poor, "negro removal" and
> dollops of similar crap slung
> by self-styled populists and radicals for the sin of
> forcing people from a
> fringe existence to the economic mainstream.
>
> This is, btw, how I see much of the US left - its
> main concern is not to
> elevate the underclass to the level of the
> upper/middle class, but to bring
> down the level of the upper/middle class to that of
> the lower classes -
> especially in the realm of culture. Again, this is
> my perception, which, I
> am aware, is not very popular on this list. We have
> to agree to disagree on
> this issue.
>
> Another point - the chief reason for African
> underdevelopment is a dismal
> lack of investment in infrastructure and human
> capital. While factors
> responsible for those shortages are complex, the
> chief among them is the
> kleptocracies that run post colonial states (with
> the possible exception of
> Julius Nyerere) and squandered whatever foreign they
> received during the
> cold war on consumption and payola to political
> supporters. Again, this is
> not a character flaw but the extension of tribal
> politics to the state level
> - a structural factor.
>
> However, the net effect of that failure is that
> little infrastructure
> (industrial, transport) and human capital exists
> today in Africa, and that
> is the major impediment for future investments.
> Private investors are,
> after all, after profit and thus prefer countries
> with higher return
> potential and greater security. By contrast, China,
> the Asian Tigers, and
> even India that did massive state-led investments in
> infrastructure and
> human capital during the cold war are doing quite
> well in the global
> capitalism today.
>
> To sum it up, the only effective solution to
> structural poverty, both in the
> US and in Africa - is massive state-led investments
> coupled with strong
> anti-corruption and aggressive cultural
> modernization policies - akin to
> those under state socialism in Eastern Europe and
> China. Everything else is
> a band aid, feel-good charity. Unfortunately, such
> a solution is rejected
> by both, neo-liberals and the populist/culturalist
> left.
>
> Wojtek
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
____________________________________________________________________________________ Food fight? Enjoy some healthy debate in the Yahoo! Answers Food & Drink Q&A. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545367