[lbo-talk] Geithner clarifies

B. docile_body at yahoo.com
Mon Mar 23 13:53:41 PDT 2009


But a big argument on the right, *right now* -- and I masochistically keep track of Newt Gingrich's Twitter -- is that we can't pass, say, the EFCA, because it is a step towards "European-style socialism." The right is united in this chorus.

So when I see Geithner say his own version of it -- we can't do policy X because we are the USA, dammit, not Sweden -- it makes me think what I said -- that, wow, basically ideology does trump pragmatism. (Not that I would expect anything less; it is simply that right now it especially seems preposterous.)

My ultimate goal would be for the US to have a type of syndicalist economy where the means of production were administered by democratic unions, blah blah, yadda yadda. And, yes, a lot of specific policy proposals are more Keynesian, aka "reformist," than that. So the whole "ARE YOU NAIVE?? WHY SHOULD YOU BE SURPRISED THEY THINK LIKE THIS???" - type stuff -- yeah, man, I get it. But there are also times where even the audacity (of hope in the capitalists to make it all well) seems just really out in left field,given the specific historical and cultural moment we exist in.

Know what I mean? Or does this just sound ridiculous?

-B.

Jordan Hayes wrote:

"He's just saying it because so many other people (including Krugman) have been saying an equally boneheaded and stubbornly ideological thing: Sweden did it, so can we. So it's a little of the 'rubber/glue' ... but neither side makes sense."



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