@speechless

UKIP's support from what I've read, comes significantly from smaller country towns with jobs like manufacturing which are disappearing largely due to continued global trade and outsourcing trends. UKIP's popularity comes from being able to scapegoat these global trends on immigration. I was more arguing from the point of view that countering Farage's demagoguery is best done by explaining why it is incorrect rather than necessary pointing to alternative solutions, although that should certainly be part of it. But citing taxing finance as your one and only solution is demagoguery in itself.

I'm not too familiar with the level of tax avoidance and cronyism in UK politics, at least relative to other rich countries. Would a higher personal or corporate tax rate, particularly in finance help? Maybe. As it is, the UK is a finance hub for Europe disproportionate to its economic size and contributes some 16% of GDP and significantly to the trade balance (boosting the pound to improve international buying power).

Finance is very globalized and business could shift very easily to Hong Kong or New York if taxes were raised to a sufficient extent. I would be not be surprised if a higher tax take could be generated from higher tax levels though, however a political overreaction to tax and regulate finance could be just as damaging as focussing on immigration in the greater scale of things.

>> ^criticalthud:

ummm, from a propaganda standpoint, there are some corollaries for sure.
But, let's look at some geopolitics.
(1) In a world of diminishing resources, Iran is sitting on some of the largest oil reserves.
(2) Israel, on the other hand, is sitting on a piece of worthless desert called the holy land and depends on foreign oil imports and American Aid. That American aid is also highly dependent on the US continuing to essentially control the oil trade. Oil is traded in dollars, and it is that massive circulation that helps keep the American dollar afloat (each dollar is HIGHLY leveraged (ie: debt)).
(3) So who wants what? Religious crazies aside, from a geo-political standpoint Israel has very little to offer Iran, but control or influence over Iran's oil reserves has quite a bit to offer Israel.
Now...why would Iran want to have a nuclear energy program when it has vast oil reserves?
-- just like Venezuela, who is limiting the amount they produce, if they can use less of their oil now, in a world of diminishing energy resources, it means that in the future they wield more and more geo-political power. And energy is wealth. The more they control their own resources, the more they can control price points of resources, which is a large part of how the world powers have become world powers.


(1) True, but nevertheless it is only ~11% of the world's proven oil reserves:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil_reserves

(2) Going from point 1, Iran hardly holds a control on the monopoly of oil. Furthermore all developed countries have an interest in ensuring steady supply to oil. If for example Iran were to close the Strait of Hormuz, they would attract opprobrium from far more than just Israel and the US.

Oil trade in US dollars is surely a big part of the contributor to the strong US dollar, but the currency is used as a global trade and reserve currencies for its pre-eminence as a global economy not as a result of oil.

Also, even if the US dollar value were to collapse (which is hardly something likely in the next decade), I would bet that aid to Israel would be one of the last things to go because of the religious ties, the power of AIPAC in the US as a lobbying group and the history between the two countries.

(3) I think there's little denying that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, and I agree that geopolitics and influence in the region is surely a reason they are seeking it. But considered simply from the standpoint of Iran's autocratic leaders that it's simply a deterrence to outside intervention from the US.

Right now it seems implausible especially under Obama that the US itself would launch an attack on Iran, but when GWB invaded Iraq and the US economy was in much better shape that was hardly a fantasy. Iran's leaders have a genuine reason to fear this and while in the short term they risk a pre-emptive attack from Israel, in the long term they benefit immeasurably from the kind of deterrence that NK now has. Keep in mind that Iran's nuclear program is hardly the machinations of right wing ideologues like Ahmadinejad. Mousavi, the de facto leader of the green movement supports nuclear development and was instrumental in the inception of the program as previous prime minister.

So I really think it's that and not a long term play for energy independence. Oil is going to be with us for many decades to come and if this wiki is correct, Iran has a 100 years of supply available. With the economy the way it is and our current dependence on dirty fuels, we're hardly going to jump on the green train any time soon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves

^ Or, possibly Rockefeller was thinking something like this^*, i.e. that a world that's tied together with global trade is likely to be more peaceful.

What scares the bejeebus out of libertarians is that it also means they're likely to want other things that come with real-world markets, like a common regulatory environment, central banks, some sort of international court and law enforcement, etc.

* Not that I endorse Bullshit's smears against liberal peace activism, or general unjustified sense of moral superiority, but the central point he's making here is valid.

I don't trust the federal government directly to regulate monetary policy. While I'm sure that policy makers and politicans would have learnt from past mistakes, history shows that until an independant federal reserve system came into effect, inflation was regular, in double digits and vastly uncontrollable in most developed countries. Do a search for it, there are graphs of inflation levels against time for various countries that clearly demonstrate this.

That's not to say that low interest rates have not contributed to ballooning out the money supply, but I would argue this is an error of judgement rather a systematic error of policy. If anything though it is the fact that investment banks, specifically those not subject to scrupulous levels of prudential supervion and have been allowed to leverage as high as 50-1 that has expanded the money supply. Had sufficient regulations and supervision been in place, other industries besides the financial sector might have collapsed and rightly so for their near-sighted gambling, but the financial sector itself would have remained in tact and not taken such a massive toll on credit availability across the world.

In addition to that it's not that I don't have qualms about the potential, and seemingly inevtiable relinquishing of US debt by China as faith in their ability to pay back their loans plummets, acting as a self-fulfilling prophecy and depreciating the US currency massively. I'm quite certain though this at least won't happen in the near future, or while China and much of the rest of the world is dependant on the US as the consumption engine of the global trade network to keep its industries and economy afloat.


>> ^Flood:
I'm sure there are some that don't agree that the Fed should be closed. So I'm curious, what reasons can you come up with for why it shouldn't be closed?

We used to have a good, stable, strong global currency a few years ago.

It was called the US dollar.

Now, it's crumbling, and people are wanting to dump their reserves in favor of another one.

Which one should they pick? The Euro is the most likely choice, but from what I read the EU is expecting the value of the Euro to drop now too.

Now is a good time to talk about whether or not we should establish a global currency, since a lot of countries want to change the makeup of the currency reserves they have.

I take it Glenn and deedub are opposed. Personally, I don't have any particular aversion to the idea, though I'd go through any proposed plans to ditch the dollar with a fine-toothed comb, as would every economist in the world.

Personally, I don't see how global free trade doesn't lead inevitably to global trade regulation, global courts, global banks, and eventually a global legislature and executive.

I think much is made about the use of the phrase "new world order", as if the three words are capitalized, and refer to a specific, secret plan that all nations' leaders are working towards.

To that I say hogwash.

Big businesses have big sway in this free-market world though. If they all agree it's a good idea, nothing you or I say will stop it.

I move that the news media start being "fair and balanced" by letting us hear "both sides of the debate" every time they talk about topics that include:

Space Exploration
Global trade routes
Seasons
Time Zones
The Horizon
Sunrise/Sunset
Tides
Eclipses

Yeah, that's fair enough I can agree with that. I don't mind getting into arguments at all so that's fine

I would suspect that racism or at least discrimination comes from two facets of human instinct. The need to find a scapegoat, or a way to offload any emotional baggage or problems onto others, failing to resolve them rationally; distrust of the uncertain as you pointed out; and the unwillingness to empathise or relate to someone who exists outside the immediate community or abides to different cultural norms and values.

The first one is certain to be reduced as developed and developing countries experience increasing living standards, economic prosperity and stability and the intra-dependence of global trade networks virtually eliminates the likelihood of a multilateral conflict. You're certainly still going to see scenarios like Rwanda in lesser developed countries, and you're still going to see governments categorically shift blame to minorities but on the whole I don't think you'll ever see it on the scale it has been prior in history.

In regards to the second and third, whereas intra-national sourcing of resources by corporations has created financial and economic interdependence, it is cheaper transportation and telecommunication developments that will help achieve a bridge of culture in the future. I doubt it has really dawned on the average consumer, just how global the production cycles of your typical set of groceries are. Actually on that note:

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/5594/1195961793594xp0.jpg

Particularly as communication continues to improve and the ubiquity of it through the world expands, we'll see individual cultures more or less merge into one, to the point where any stark differences will become relatively narrow and any animosity or ethnocentricity will be greatly diminished. Or at least in theory That's why I'm quite sad to see, China the seemingly likely next superpower of the world, continuing to clutch to restriction freedom, access to information and communication, as well as propagandising a policy of 'us against them' nationalism.

With regards to the Chinese economy stealing American manual labor jobs it's totally a fallacious lie. The Chinese didn't just invade and steal manufacturing plants, but rather American businesses seeking to lower their costs and increase their profits moved their operations to where there is hardly minimum wage, no health insurance, no unionization and hundreds of thousands willing to work 14 to 16 hours per day.

The businesses gained, the goods stayed expensive, with all the sweatshop labour the cost reductions are not passed on to the consumer, rather there is a larger profit margin to be made. For exmaple a t-shirt made in Bangladesh would cost 20 cents, but it is infalted to 10 to 15 US Dollars in the North American market.

Notice how all criticism towards losing manufacturing jobs always runs from illegal aliens to blaming China in general, but never falls on the businesses themselves.

China did a wonderful job of moving from a state centralized economy, to creating free commericial zones that allowed it to experiment with capitalism. Their entire motto of development has been import the first product, manufacture the second in China, export the third to the rest of the world. But even now its learning that mass production needs to be high quality and inspected thoroughly, given the Toy recall fiascos.

But one must realize that it is really a global economy now, the Chinese development is still reliant on a multitude of trade partners to make products develop, one part from Japan, another from Singapore and so on. The interconnection of global trade only benefits us all because having a war is dangerous as all economies become dependent on one another.

With regards to America. The country has been too obsessed with profit, as was the government in its legislation, it hasn't tried to create new jobs so much so as increase the profits of companies themselves, thinking that it would trickle down in employment. The US needs to overcome its recession, end the war and fix its debt before implementing FDR stlye reforms to create jobs for the people again.

"If anyone here is in marketing and advertising, kill yourself. I'm just trying to plant seeds."
http://www.videosift.com/video/Bill-Hicks-on-Marketing-and-Advertising

Passing through the sweatshop stage has been important to the development of a number of countries in east Asia. It's only a minute sliver of the global trade in labor, so I'm not sure why people single it out. If your country is losing jobs in manual labor, that's generally a good sign.
http://www.videosift.com/video/China-Blue-PBS-doc-on-life-in-Chinas-clothing-factories
http://www.videosift.com/video/Slave-Labour-from-the-East-for-the-West
China may seem decades behind in human rights now, but it's a near guarantee that they will catch up as their economy grows.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'imf, africa, globalization, trade policy, third world' to 'imf, africa, globalization, trade policy, third world, good magazine' - edited by calvados