Em parte (o crescimento irlandês parece que é mesmo o maior da Europa, mas será menor do que as estatísticas milagrosas de 7% ou 8%).
Doing the maths: how real is Ireland's economic growth? (Independent)
The ESRI estimates that the Irish economy grew by 6.7pc in 2015 and is forecasting GDP growth of 4.8pc for this year. GNP, which is generally regarded as a better measurement of the underlying performance of the Irish economy, is also growing strongly, with the ESRI reckoning that it grew by 5.2pc last year and that it will grow by a further 5.3pc this year.
But how real is this economic growth? (...)
Measuring the true level of Irish economic activity has always been a tricky topic for economists. The generally accepted international standard is gross domestic product (GDP). The problem with GDP for Ireland is that it includes the undistributed profits of foreign-owned multinationals. This has the effect of artificially boosting the value of Irish economic output, since those profits belong not to Irish residents, but to the multinationals' overseas shareholders.
It is for this reason that gross national product (GNP), which excludes undistributed multinational profits, is the usually preferred measure of Irish economic output. (...)
Unfortunately, just when it seemed as if it was safe to trust the GNP figures once more, a new cloud has appeared on the horizon.
While re-registration may have had its day, a new but closely related phenomenon has since emerged to take its place: tax inversion.
Tax inversion takes place when a much larger, usually American, company agrees to be taken over by an Irish-registered company.
Under existing international tax law, this allows the enlarged company to be classified as 'Irish' and to qualify for our 12.5pc corporate profits tax rate - rather than Uncle Sam's punitive 35pc rate.
Since 2012, at least 21 major US corporations with a combined value of well over a third of a trillion dollars have gone through the tax inversion process. Many of these tax inversions have involved Irish-registered companies including Medtronic's takeover of Covidien, Perrigo's acquisition of Elan and Actavis' takeover of Allergan.
However, it is the latest tax inversion-driven deal that has focused attention on the emerging problem. In November 2015, Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, announced that it had agreed a $160bn 'merger' with Allergan, which, following the previous Actavis transaction, is an Irish-registered company.
This means that the combined Pfizer/Allergan will be tax-resident in Ireland - and presumably that the $21bn of undistributed profits that Pfizer has on its balance sheet would be added to the Irish GNP figure. (...)
Professor FitzGerald doesn't specifically address the tax inversion issue in his June 2015 paper, but he does identify another potential problem, aircraft leasing, with up to 20pc of the world's civil aviation fleet either owned or managed by Irish-based leasing companies.
So how on Earth is one supposed to make sense of official Irish economic statistics?
In fairness to the CSO, it is not unaware of the problem. It set up a Large Cases Unit in 2009 to liaise with the largest Irish-based companies in an effort to identify potential distortions.
However, even with the best will in the world, the CSO is constrained, as it is obliged to produce its data in accordance with international standards - standards that aren't always appropriate to Irish conditions.
"GDP and GNP are very imperfect measures of how the economy is actually doing. The focus should be on domestic demand; investment, consumption and government spending," says Goodbody Stockbrokers economist Dermot O'Leary.
Using these indicators, Mr O'Leary reckons the Irish economy grew by 4.5pc in 2015 and that it will grow by a further 4pc in 2016.
"We are living in a 4pc-plus economy, rather than in a 7pc economy. If you compare that with the rest of Europe, we still have the best-performing economy," he says. (...)
With GDP and now GNP having been apparently skewed by factors such as non-repatriated profits, companies re-registering and now tax inversions, readers of Irish economic statistics would be well advised to proceed with caution.Também sobre isto - Pfizer as Irish firm would swamp Ireland's national accounts (1 de novembro de 2015)
Sociedade sem Escolas [pdf], de Ivan Ilich:
Devo meu interesse pela educação como uma função pública a Everett Reimer. Antes de nosso primeiro encontro em Porto Rico, em 1958, nunca havia questionado o valor de estender a obrigatoriedade escolar a todo o povo. Juntos, chegamos à conclusão de que a maioria dos homens tem seu direito de aprender cortado pela obrigação de freqüentar a escola.
Hillary and the Extraterrestrials, por Jesse Walker:
Every now and then an interviewer will ask her about sky saucers, and she'll reply with an apparently earnest pledge to open the government's files on the subject, sometimes adding that we can't say for sure whether we're alone in the universe. Now The New York Times has put together a detailed story on her interest in extraterrestrials (...)
It's easy to mock this, but I've decided it's actually one of the few things I like about Hillary Clinton. I've got three reasons:
1. At least she wants to be transparent about something. I'd rather she pardon Snowden, end the Leak Scare, stop the war on whistleblowers, and battle Washington's overclassification epidemic. But a smidge is better than nada.
2. Almost every aspect of Clinton's public persona feels like it was designed by a committee of PR professionals after they spent a year asking focus groups what they'd like to see in a firm-but-caring suburban grandmother. Her interest in something vaguely weird and disreputable is one of the few signs she's not a pod person.
3. If she is a pod person, this is our chance to find out.
The Four Corners Of The GOP (Trump Owns Three Of Them), por David Wasserman (FiveThirtyEight):
Thus far, the two best predictors of GOP voter preferences have been white socioeconomic status and an area’s partisanship. (...)Em suma, a maior base de apoio de Rubio e Kasich terão sido os eleitores de classe alta/média-alta vivendo em zonas metropolitanas/cosmopolitas tipicamente Democratas; provavelmente aqueles Republicanos cujas principais preocupações são os impostos, e não tanto a imigração ou a defesa da civilização cristã.
HighBlue (...)
These liberal, elite urban and academic havens aren’t home to many GOP voters, but they dominate the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and West Coast and punch above their weight in the delegate count. This is the only quadrant where Kasich and Marco Rubio have combined for more votes than Trump. (...)
LowBlue (...)
They’re all traditionally Democratic-leaning areas of low socioeconomic status where Trump has posted his highest percentages in the country. These GOP voters tend to live in the midst of racial minorities, urban Democratic machines or declining industrial bases, and their sense of alienation is rocket fuel for Trump’s nativist and protectionist message. (...)
HighRed (...)
Well-educated Mormons in the West and well-heeled conservatives in suburbs of Milwaukee and Dallas have had little use for Trump. This is Cruz’s best quadrant and Trump’s worst. In fact, it’s the only quadrant where Trump is losing. (...)
LowRed (...)
Deeply red areas with low white socioeconomic status are mostly located in the South and the Sun Belt and include many areas popular with retirees. Cruz hasn’t performed much worse in LowRed than he has in HighRed, but Trump does much better in LowRed than HighRed
Nesta polémica (e similares, como as do cheque-educação), noto frequentemente uma curiosa inversão das posições habituais.
Por um lado, à esquerda ouve-se frequentemente dizer que há total liberdade de educação, que quem quiser pode matricular os filhos num colégio privado, tem é que pagar do seu bolso; mas quem diz isso são por regra as mesmas pessoas que, noutros contextos, são quem mais diz que a dependência económica restringe a liberdade (p.ex., que os contratos de trabalho não são verdadeiramente livres, já que os empregados, como não possuem os "meios de produção", são obrigados a trabalhar para os patrões), e que aqui defende entusiasticamente a conceção "burguesa" da liberdade ("és livre -se tiveres dinheiro, podes fazer o que quiseres").
Há direita e entre os liberais, há a contradição simétrica - na questão da educação, defendem que para alguém ser livre, é preciso que o Estado o subsidie para poder adquirir os bens (neste caso, o serviço) que deseja. Claro que a direita parece ter um mínimo de coerência, dizendo que esses subsídios é receber de volta o dinheiro que pagamos de impostos (ou que não se pode obrigar as pessoas a pagar duas vezes pela educação); mas quem diz isso são os mesmos (ou pelos menos escrevem nos mesmos blogues...) que, quanto, se fala em progressividade fiscal, publicam logo uma carrada de posts dizendo que uma pequena percentagem da população paga o IRS quase todo - é verdade que isso é falacioso, já que o IRS nem é o principal imposto em termos de receita, mas é esse o argumento que eles fazem. Ora, a partir do momento em que se adota a posição de que grande parte da população contribui, comparativamente, pouco para os impostos, isso implicaria logicamente considerar que para grande parte da população os tais subsídios para pôr os filhos nos colégios privados são isso mesmo - subsídios; não são nenhuns impostos "devolvidos". A contradição torna-se ainda mais óbvia quando vão mais longe na argumentação e dizem que são sobretudo os mais pobres que ficam pior, já que enquanto as pessoas de maiores rendimentos, mesmo depois de pagar os imposto, têm dinheiro para pagar um colégio privado, os mais pobres não têm capacidade de fazer o tal duplo pagamento (os impostos e mais a educação privada), sendo assim obrigados a frequentar a escola pública - os mesmos pobres que, recorde-se, são descritos pelos mesmos (nas tais discussões sobre o sistema fiscal) como não pagando impostos quase nenhuns (logo, para eles os tais subsídios não teriam quase nenhuma componente de devolução de impostos).
Quase que aposto que por norma as pessoas que são contra as escolas com contrato de associação são as que são mais a favor do RSI ser pago em dinheiro e não em géneros, e que por outro lado grande parte dos defensores do RSI em géneros são a favor as escolas com contrato de associação.
No Observador, o Luís Aguiar-Conraria interroga-se sobre "[onde] está a direita liberal em Portugal?".
Mas haverá algo de excecional em Portugal a esse respeito? Afinal, se formos ver a maior parte dos países europeus, pelo menos a nível de representação política, quem domina na direita não são os liberais - em quase todos esses países as maiores forças de direita são, ou os conservadores, ou os democratas-cristão (que tanto uns como os outros têm muito das suas raízes na reação clerical-aristocrática contra o liberalismo oitocentista - e ao principio a "democracia-cristã" tinha pouco a ver com "democracia") , ou a extrema-direita, não os liberais, que frequentemente são representados por partidos relativamente pequenos; claro que se pode argumentar que os Liberais-com-L-grande podem ter pouco influência mas os políticos nominalmente conservadores por vezes defendem posições liberais-com-l-pequeno: veja-se o apoio da Merkel ao acolhimento dos refugiados ou a legalização do casamento homossexual no Reino Unido de David Cameron; mas mesmo essas posições foram largamente contra importantes setores e/ou contra a posição habitual dos respetivos partidos.
Da mesma forma, também nos EUA, há tempos o Paul Krugman escrevia um artigo um pouco parecido com o do LA-C, notando "[[t]here ought in principle, you might think, be people who are pro-gay-marriage and civil rights in general, but opposed to government retirement and health care programs — that is, libertarians — but there are actually very few" (o artigo talvez tenha sido é prematuro no parágrafo seguinte, quando refere a "corresponding empty box on the other side, which is maybe even emptier; (...) I remember the good old days when rampaging union workers — who presumably supported pro-labor policies, unemployment benefits, and Medicare — liked to beat up dirty hippies. But it’s hard to find anyone like that in today’s political scene", já que ontem à noite talvez o Partido Republicano tenha consumado uma viragem nesse sentido).
E, já agora, noto que os partidos da direita parlamentar portuguesa são ambos afiliados ao Partido Popular Europeu (originalmente democrata-cristão, em transição para uma organização genericamente de centro-direita), não a nenhuma das organizações internacionais supostamente liberais, logo não se pode exigir que sejam coerentes a defender uma ideologia que eles não reivindicam como a sua (tanto o PSD como o CDS dizem que lá há espaço para liberais, mas não dizem que são liberais).
Claro que uma coisa são os partidos políticos, outra são os intelectuais - efetivamente nos últimos anos tem surgido um movimento (nomeadamente on-line) de pensadores e autores liberais, e alguns deles por vezes defendem posições que talvez não sejam as mais puristas nalgumas questões (mas não sei se a polémica da escolas será o melhor exemplo; de qualquer forma, admito que um radical de esquerda - como eu - não seja a pessoa mais adequada para definir quem é e quem não é verdadeiramente "liberal"). Suponho que o que se passará também seja que se calhar pessoas que no Reino Unido ou nos EUA se considerariam "conservatives" em Portugal se consideram "liberais", já que em Portugal "conservador" (que muitas vezes é usado pejorativamente) ou "tradicionalista" está mais associado ao miguelismo ou ao salazarismo do que ao conservadorismo de tipo anglo-saxónico.
O LA-C escreve que "que a nossa Direita [é] peculiar e que, na verdade, mais do que reduzir o peso do Estado, o que pretend[e] [é] mesmo substituí-lo pela Igreja"; isso faz lembrar um pouco o que o Krugman dizia de que "conservatism is instead about preserving traditional forms of authority: employers over workers, patriarchs over families". Mas, vendo bem, não há nenhuma peculiaridade nisso, nem nenhum segredo oculto que "a direita" ou os "conservadores" estejam a esconder - os textos teóricos do conservadorismo (tanto do continental como do anglo-saxónico) e da democracia-cristã repetem constantemente o tema da defesa do "corpos intermédios" (família, comunidade local, igreja, profissão, etc.) contra simultaneamente o estatismo e o individualismo, e a ideia que o estatismo e o individualismo se reforçam um ao outro, já que ambos enfraquecem os tais corpos intermédios (e que a defesa dos direitos individuais seria a desculpa favorita do Estado centralizado para invadir a autonomia dos pequenos grupos). O livro que Robert Nisbet escreveu com a intenção de apresentar a ideologia conservadora (Conservatism: Dream and Reality, publicado em português como O Conservadorismo) praticamente quase só fala disso do principio ao fim. Ou seja, a posição de reduzir o tamanho do Estado para assim fortalecer a Igreja não é nenhum segredo oculto nem nenhuma exceção portuguesa - é algo que está escarrapachado nos textos dos autores conservadores, por todo o mundo ocidental (ok, eles referem os corpos intermédios em geral, não apenas a Igreja em particular, mas esta costuma vir incluída).
Ainda a respeito da minha ideia de que o "liberalismo" norte-americano talvez possa ser considerado, apesar de tudo, como uma derivação do liberalismo "histórico", há um aspeto (à primeira vista secundário, ou até folclórico) que acho interessante analisar: o cinema norte-americano, frequentemente apresentado pelos conservadores como sendo um bastião "liberal".
E o que é de notar é que o cinema "liberal" até não é particularmente coletivista, ou é mesmo bastante individualista (num certo sentido de "individualismo") - há umas semanas, na revista do Expresso, numa critica a um filme, alguém até referia que o típico filme "liberal" girava à volta do conflito entre um individuo e uma instituição poderosa. E dá-me a ideia que os enredos típicos de filmes com mensagem "liberal" andavam num destes tipos:
Uma passagem de "Porque Falham as Nações?" que me inspira a escrever mais qualquer coisa: no capítulo respeitante à Revolução ("Gloriosa") Inglesa de 1688, depois de falarem de muitas das reformas feitas pelo novo regime (abolição de grande parte das concessões monopolistas, reforma fiscal substituindo uns impostos por outros, etc.) os autores referem a evolução da despesa pública (página 236):
O Estado começou a expandir-se, tendo as despesas atingido 10% do rendimento nacional. Isso apoiou-se numa expansão da base tributária, em particular no que se referia ao imposto de consumo, que incidia sobre a produção de uma longa lista de bens produzidos internamente. Tratava-se de um orçamento de Estado muito elevado para a época...
Ali em baixo, sugeri a ideia de que uma cultura que valorize mais a inteligência que a "inteligência emocional" - ou, noutras palavras, mais o raciocino lógico-abstrato do que a capacidade de relacionamento interpessoal - poderá tender a produzir simultaneamente mais progresso tecnológico e instituições inclusivas. Que raciocínio fiz eu para chegar a essa hipótese (que até prefiro que esteja errada - como bom esquerdista, prefiro explicações baseadas nas instituições e estruturas socais, que têm a implicação de que basta mudar "o sistema" para resolver os problemas do mundo)?
Vamos por partes.
Mas, ainda a respeito disto, a Bloomberg lançou um indíce de países mais "inovadores", o que talvez possa ser também usado para medir o crescimento "inclusivo".
O índice por ordem (os nomes estão em inglês, pelos motivos já explicados) - diga-se que eu não percebo muito bem como a Bloomberg fez esta ordenação (até porque a página onde apresentam isso nem é muito fácil de navegar):
1º Korea, South
2º Japan
3º Germany
4º Finland
5º Israel
6º United States
7º Sweden
8º Singapore
9º France
10º United Kingdom
11º Denmark
12º Canada
13º Australia
14º Russia
15º Norway
16º Switzerland
17º Austria
18º New Zealand
19º Belgium
20º Netherlands
21º Ireland
22º China
23º Spain
24º Italy
25º Poland
26º Slovenia
27º Malaysia
28º Luxembourg
29º Greece
30º Portugal
31º Czech Republic
32º Hungary
33º Ukraine
34º Hong Kong SAR
35º Turkey
36º Iceland
37º Romania
38º Croatia
39º Bulgaria
40º Serbia
41º Latvia
42º Slovak Republic
43º Lithuania
44º Tunisia
45º Malta
46º Thailand
47º Brazil
48º Argentina
49º South Africa
50º Morocco
Agora o passo seguinte seria ir comparar estes resultados com alguma medida da "produtividade total dos fatores" (TFP) para ver se os países mais "inclusivos" (isto é, os tais com democracia, estados "grandes", pouca micro-regulação económica e poucas diferenças de riqueza) teriam um crescimento maior da TFP (a melhor medida de crescimento inclusivo, por oposição ao crescimento extrativo, que seria o derivado do crescimento da quantidade de fatores de produção - trabalho e capital - utilizados) que os "extrativos" (os tais com regimes autoritários, estados "pequenos", muita micro-regulação e grandes diferenças de riqueza).
A minha primeira ideia era não fazer isso, já que não sabia onde encontrar esses dados e, de qualquer maneira, as estimativas da TFP tendem a ser muito duvidosas; entretanto comecei a ler este artigo de Noah Smith e primeiro pensei "olha, afinal até há estatísticas à mão sobre isso - talvez as possa usar"; mas minutos depois desisti da ideia, por duas razõess: por um lado porque esses dados eram só para os países da OCDE;e, por outro, e mais importante, a leitura do post afinal reforçou a minha opinião original sobre a pouca credibilidade das estatísticas da TFP.
Mas se algum leitor souber de alguma estatística de dados da TFP com muitos países e confiar nesses valores, e estiver disposto a fazer a comparação para ver se os países "inclusivos" têm maior, menos ou igual crescimento da produtividade que os "exclusivos"...
Procurando ver se, olhando para dados quantificáveis, se poderia identificar algo como as tais instituições "extrativas" ou "inclusivas", peguei nos índices da Freedom House sobre democracia e liberdades civis [PDF] e nos da Heritage Foundation sobre liberdade económica, e também na estimativa da CIA para o indíce de Gini sobre a repartição do rendimento.
Enquanto muita gente alega que está a ocorrer um golpe no Brasil (em termos da letra de lei - que permite destituir um presidente se ele cometer um certo tipo de crimes - não está; em termos de espírito da lei, talvez esteja, já muitos dos deputados que votaram pelo impeachment fizeram-no abertamente por razões políticas e não judiciais), onde talvez esteja a ocorrer mesmo um golpe é no Haiti - com a particularidade que é um golpe feito quase sem ninguém (incluindo os golpistas) dar por isso.
Haiti's unintended coup (Bloggings by Boz):
To nobody's surprise, Haiti did not hold the second round of its presidential election last weekend as scheduled. Instead, Interim President Jocelerme Privert has now installed a commission that will spend the next 30 days looking at the accuracy of the first round to determine if the two top contenders should remain in the runoff.
That is also Privert's way of announcing that the election will not happen before his interim mandate (already a constitutionally fuzzy issue) expires on 14 May. Does he stay as president? Does the parliament hold yet another election? And how long does the next extra-constitutional interim president get to stay for? What happens if elections don't happen this year? Or in the next two years? When does the OAS finally declare that Haiti is no longer a democracy? (...)
At the same time, the current governing situation has no constitutional basis. Had Haiti's second round election occurred on schedule, Jovenel Moise would likely have won and currently be president. Instead, an interim government not defined by constitutional procedures has taken over, cancelled the rescheduled election and now has no timetable for a new election process. You don't have to be a fan of Moise or Martelly to agree that Moise is being blocked from the presidency through some fairly unconventional means.
The current situation involves an unelected government operating for an indefinite period of time making up the rules as it goes along to block scheduled elections. Even if done with the best of intentions of improving Haiti's election conditions, the current situation is a break with constitutional democracy, an unintended coup.
Parents’ Incomes and Children’s Outcomes: A Quasi-Experiment Using Transfer Payments from Casino Profits [versão aberta em pdf], por Akee, Randall K. Q., William E. Copeland, Gordon Keeler, Adrian Angold and E. Jane Costello:
We examine the role an exogenous increase in household income, due to a government transfer unrelated to household characteristics, plays in children's long-run outcomes. Children in affected households have higher levels of education in their young adulthood and a lower incidence of criminality for minor offenses. Effects differ by initial household poverty status. An additional $4,000 per year for the poorest households increases educational attainment by one year at age 21, and reduces the chances of committing a minor crime by 22 percent for 16 and 17 year olds. Our evidence suggests improved parental quality is a likely mechanism for the change.
On November 13, 1997, a new casino opened its doors just south of North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains. Despite the dismal weather, a long line had formed at the entrance, and as people continued to arrive by the hundreds, the casino boss began begging folks to stay at home.
The widespread interest was hardly surprising. After all, it wasn't just some shifty mafia-run gambling den opening its doors that day. Harrah’s Cherokee was and still is a massive luxury casino owned and operated by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and its opening marked the end of a ten-year-long political tug of war. One tribal leader had predicted that gambling would be the Cherokee's damnation, and North Carolina’s governor had tried to block the project at every turn.
Far from it: The profits — amounting to $150 million in 2004 and growing to nearly $400 million in 2010 — enabled the tribe to build a new school, hospital, and fire station. However, the lion’s share of the takings went directly into the pockets of the 8,000 men, women, and children of the Eastern Band Cherokee tribe. From $500 a year at the outset, their earnings from the casino quickly mounted to $6,000 in 2001, constituting a quarter to a third of the average family income. (...)
The arrival of the casino, Costello realized, presented a unique opportunity to shed new light on this ongoing question since a quarter of the children in her study belonged to the Cherokee tribe, more than half of them living below the poverty line.
Soon after the casino opened, Costello was already noting huge improvements for her subjects. Behavioral problems among children who had been lifted out of poverty went down 40%, putting them in the same range as their peers who had never known privation. Juvenile crime rates among the Cherokee also declined, along with drug and alcohol use, while their school scores improved markedly. At school, the Cherokee kids were now on a par with the study’s non-tribal participants.
Bernie Sanders Calls Out Hillary Clinton for Supporting Soda Taxes, por Scott Shackford (Reason):
Democratic Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney is proposing a soda tax, a regressive three-cents-per-ounce fee on sugary drinks. Given its flat nature, such a tax would obviously impact the poor more that the middle class and certainly the rich. In the nanny state world of progressive health management, this is actually part of the intent of these taxes. It is a not-very-subtle nudge to try to steer the poor away from consumer goods that the municipal government management class has decided is bad for their health. See also: cigarette taxes. (...)Efetivamente, se o objetivo de uma imposto sobre um "vício" é reduzir o consumo desse "vício", só o fará se tiver efeitos sobre o preço (ou seja, se incidir sobre os clientes) - se não fosse isso, que motivo haveria para os consumidores reduzirem o consumo?
Yesterday Sanders blasted Clinton for supporting a tax on the poor. Via the Philadelphia Inquirer:
"Frankly, I am very surprised that Secretary Clinton would support this regressive tax after pledging not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000. This proposal clearly violates her pledge. A tax on soda and juice drinks would disproportionately increase taxes on low-income families in Philadelphia."Kenney's response to Sanders' critique of soda taxes has been very much in the "I am shocked—shocked!—to find gambling in this establishment" vein. This wasn't a tax on poor people, nosireebob! It was a tax on rich corporations. They were supposed to just give us more money and accept lower profit margins! (...)
Does anybody actually buy this nonsense? Again, I bring up cigarette taxes, and sin taxes in general. They are deliberately put into place to try to push citizens away from spending their limited income on things that government functionaries have deemed harmful. The point of soda taxes is for manufacturers to pass along the costs to consumers and consumers to drink less of the sugary drinks and thereby have fewer health problems.
The Donald and the Veg-O-Matic, por Paul Krugman (9 de abril):
But too many anti-Trump critics seem to have settled on one critique that happens not to be right: the claim that a turn to protectionism would cause vast job losses. Sorry, that’s just not a claim justified by either theory or history.
Protectionism reduces world exports, but it also reduces world imports, so that the effect on overall demand is a wash; textbook economic models just don’t say what conventional wisdom is asserting here.
In recent years many economists, including people like Larry Summers and yours truly, have come to the conclusion that growing monopoly power is a big problem for the U.S. economy — and not just because it raises profits at the expense of wages. Verizon-type stories, in which lack of competition reduces the incentive to invest, may contribute to persistent economic weakness.
The argument begins with a seeming paradox about overall corporate behavior. You see, profits are at near-record highs, thanks to a substantial decline in the percentage of G.D.P. going to workers. You might think that these high profits imply high rates of return to investment. But corporations themselves clearly don’t see it that way: their investment in plant, equipment, and technology (as opposed to mergers and acquisitions) hasn’t taken off, even though they can raise money, whether by issuing bonds or by selling stocks, more cheaply than ever before.
How can this paradox be resolved? Well, suppose that those high corporate profits don’t represent returns on investment, but instead mainly reflect growing monopoly power. In that case many corporations would be in the position I just described: able to milk their businesses for cash, but with little reason to spend money on expanding capacity or improving service. The result would be what we see: an economy with high profits but low investment, even in the face of very low interest rates and high stock prices.
And such an economy wouldn’t just be one in which workers don’t share the benefits of rising productivity; it would also tend to have trouble achieving or sustaining full employment. Why? Because when investment is weak despite low interest rates, the Federal Reserve will too often find its efforts to fight recessions coming up short. So lack of competition can contribute to “secular stagnation” — that awkwardly-named but serious condition in which an economy tends to be depressed much or even most of the time, feeling prosperous only when spending is boosted by unsustainable asset or credit bubbles.
A respeito disto, uma coisa que me ocorre é porque é que a criminalização do stalking/perseguição, que ocorreu na mesma altura (e na mesma lei) que a do "piropo", não gerou a mesma polémica - afinal, os mesmo argumentos contra a criminalização do "piropo" (ou de "importunar outra pessoa (...) formulando propostas
de teor sexual"), em termos de liberdade individual, podem também ser feitos contra a criminalização da "perseguição". Antes que alguém diga que os "stalkers" fazem ameaças, tornam-se violentos, etc., recordo que tudo isso (ameaças, agressões, invasão de propriedade, etc.) já era punido por lei, logo o que estamos a punir é mesmo só a parte de andar constantemente atrás de outra pessoa, mesmo sem fazer mais nada que seja criminalmente punível (ameaça-la, agredi-la, injuria-la, entrar pela casa dela adentro, etc.).
A criminalização da "perseguição" até me parece muito mais perigosa, em termos de poder ser "torcida" para justificar limites crescentes à liberdade de expressão (por exemplo, o conceito pode ser construído de forma a criminalisar quem promova protestos continuados contra uma dada pessoa - p.ex., um governante).
Um motivo que me ocorre para a criminalização da "perseguição" ser melhor aceite "pela sociedade" (ou ignorada, mas mesmo essa ignorância é o resultado da medida parecer tão consensual que nenhum jornalista se lembrou de fazer uma primeira página tipo "stalking já é crime") talvez seja por o "piropo" (palavra que acho que ninguém usa além de nas discussões sobre a legalidade do "piropo", mas enfim...) ter a conotação de ser uma coisa feita por homens "normais" (ainda que de um estrato social relativamente baixo), enquanto os "perseguidores" têm mais uma imagem de pessoas "estranhas" (estilo homens solitários obsessivo-compulsivos que têm a casa cheia de fotografias da pessoa que perseguem).
Why Germany doesn’t like negative interest rates, por Tyler Cowen:
The business models of German financial institutions depend critically on the presence of positive nominal interest rates. The International Monetary Fund noted in its latest Financial Stability Report that the pre-tax profits of German and Portuguese banks are most affected by negative rates.
That is from the always superb Wolfgang Münchnau at the FT.
During the 2008 Vice-Presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, in St. Louis, Biden offered a memorable brief on behalf of struggling communities like the one in Pennsylvania where he spent his childhood. (...) “Look, the people in my neighborhood, they get it,” Biden said. “They know they’ve been getting the short end of the stick. So walk with me in my neighborhood, go back to my old neighborhood, in Claymont, an old steel town, or go up to Scranton with me. These people know the middle class has gotten the short end. The wealthy have done very well. Corporate America has been rewarded. It’s time we change it.”
In hindsight, what’s notable about Biden’s statement is not how it presaged the populist concerns of this year’s Presidential election but the fact that he referred to his neighbors—steelworkers, denizens of factory towns—as middle class, not as working class. In fact, the phrase “working class” came up twice during the debate—but it was Palin who said it, not Biden. Things didn’t change much rhetorically in the 2012 election. Obama and Mitt Romney, in the course of three Presidential debates, invoked the “middle class” forty-three times but never mentioned the proletariat.For decades, both American culture and American politics have elided the differences between salaried workers and those who are paid hourly, between college-educated professionals and those whose purchasing power is connected to membership in a labor union. Some ninety per cent of Americans, including most millionaires, routinely identify as middle class. For many years, this glossing over of the distinctions between the classes served a broad set of interests, particularly during the Cold War, when any reference to class carried a whiff of socialist sympathies. Americans considered themselves part of a larger whole, and social animosities were mostly siphoned off in the direction of racial resentment. But, this year, Americans are once again debating class.We are clearly out of practice. The current language of “income inequality” is a low-carb version of the Old Left’s “class exploitation.” The new phrase lacks rhetorical zing; it’s hard to envision workers on a picket line singing rousing anthems about “income inequality.”
Há dias, o Expresso noticiava a aprovação da nova lei francesa sobre a prostituição:
Mais de dois anos depois de ter sido apresentada, a legislação foi aprovada por uma maioria simples dos deputados da câmara baixa do Parlamento francês para combater redes de tráfico. País segue exemplo da Suécia, um dos primeiros do mundo a penalizar não as prostitutas mas os que pagam pelos seus serviços. (...)
A lei foi aprovada na câmara baixa com 64 votos a favor, 12 contra e 11 abstenções. Sublinha o "Le Monde" que esta legislação estava a ser debatida há mais de dois anos por causa de diferenças de opinião entre a câmara baixa e a câmara alta do Parlamento francês. Durante o debate final, cerca de 60 prostitutas manifestaram-se frente ao Parlamento, em Paris, com cartazes onde se lia "Não me libertem, eu tomo conta de mim própria", noticiou a AFP.Para começar é curiosa essa maneira de descrever a lei sueca - poderiam simplesmente dizer que penalizam os clientes, mas em vez disso dizem que penalizam os clientes e não as prostitutas. Imagine que alguém descrevia o hábito asiático de comer cães nos seguintes termos "no extremo-oriente come-se cães e não pessoas"; tecnicamente era verdade, mas não me parece que essa formulação, implicando quase uma alternativa entre comer cães ou pessoas, fizesse grande sentido. Da mesma maneira, dizer-se que na Suécia ou em França pune-se os clientes e não as prostitutas (em vez de simplesmente se dizer que se pune os clientes) parece-me uma forma de criar uma oposição imaginária entre as duas políticas ("És contra a penalização dos clientes? Quer dizer que achas que quem deveria ser punido eram as prostitutas? Monstro!") que não faz qualquer sentido (afinal, em grande parte dos países civilizados, incluindo Portugal, nem uns nem outros são punidos).
Ao longo destes dois anos de discussão, membros do sindicato de trabalhadores do sexo, o Strass, disseram que, a ser aprovada, a legislação iria ter um impacto negativo nas condições de vida de entre 30 e 40 mil prostitutas do país. Os que apoiam a medida dizem que é o melhor instrumento para combater as redes de tráfico humano que operam dentro e fora de França.
Merle Haggard, RIP, por Jesse Walker (Reason):
Haggard's most famous record—or infamous, in some circles—is "Okie from Muskogee," the Silent Majority's great culture-war anthem of 1969. At the time, people took it as a song for hardhats who hated hippies: Spiro Agnew mashed up with the Grand Ol' Opry. Years later, it became common to claim the tune was intended as a joke. When a man who smokes pot starts a song with the words "We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee," you have to wonder whether he was speaking for himself. And Haggard undeniably enjoyed his pot. "Son," he told one interviewer, "Muskogee's just about the only place I don't smoke it."Antes da Internet, só tinha ouvido uma vez essa música, numa viagem de autocarro de Lisboa para Portimão (mas é uma letra que fica no ouvido, mesmo que a reação do ouvinte seja "mas que reacionarice é esta!?").
Haggard himself was always cagey about what he meant by the song, and the answers he gave to interviewers weren't always consistent with one another. But the best way to understand the record, I've long thought, is to take it as a dramatic monologue. "Okie" reports how a conservative character feels about the counterculture, and whether you take his views as inspiring or hilarious is up to you. The fact that it can work either way is a tribute to Haggard's skills.
Tories and Communists, por Chris Dillow:
This might seem odd to those who remember Conservatives’ attacking Communism for its appalling human right record. But those attacks were always hypocritical. Many right-wing cold warriors variously supported Macathyism; Pinochet’s murder of dissidents; the slavery that was the draft and National Service; the brutal repression of homosexuals; and the denial of the most basic rights of self-ownership to women – marital rape was not criminalized in England until 1991. And they were deplorably silent about apartheid’s denial of basic human rights.
What Tories objected to in Communism was not its denial of freedom generally, but rather the denial of a particular form of freedom – the freedom of a few bosses to make money at the expense of others. Because China grants this freedom, Tories have no gripe with its form of Communism.
From this perspective, Conservatism and Communism have much in common. Both support inequalities of power which deny autonomy and self-determination to workers. (...)
The main difference between Communists and Conservatives is not one of principle but of degree: Conservatives applaud centrally planned economies within companies, but Communists think it should be extended to the whole economy.
Durante algumas horas, Donald Trump defendeu que, se o aborto fosse ilegalizado, as mulheres que abortassem deveriam ser punidas; parece que pouco depois alguém lhe explicou que a posição pró-vida é que só os fornecedores de abortos devem ser punidos, não as clientes (uma curiosidade: a direita pró-vida e a esquerda escandinava anti-prostituição convergem em considerar que as mulheres são seres incapazes de tomarem decisões e que devem ser, perante a lei, tratadas como tal).
Um exemplo interessente dessa posição e as suas implicações é o artigo "Trump Attempts To Abort Candidacy", de Rod Dreher, em The American Conservative. Quer o artigo (onde o autor expõe a clássica posição pró-vida de só punir os "técnicos"), quer sobretudo os comentários, em que a maior parte dos leitores (tanto pró-vida como pró-escolha) demonstram que essa posição não faz grande sentido.
Alguns comentários:
- "A nice illustration of the vacuity of the pro-life movement. Of course banning abortion requires punishing at least some women who attempt or get abortions. That’s what it means to outlaw something! But more to the point, that’s what happened when abortion was generally illegal. Some women who sought abortions were prosecuted. Many women who sought abortions were ostracized by their communities and families. Expelled from schools and churches, fired from jobs. (...) Banning something – whether legally, morally, or socially – requires that offenders be punished. Without punishment, there is and can be no ban, no taboo, no norm. We need to face up to the moral accounting honestly, and be certain that the good we hope to do outweighs the harm in terms of lives derailed and families broken by prosecution, imprisonment, ostracization, and the like. If outlawing abortion is worth the costs to women who will in point of fact be prosecuted and shunned from their communities and families, fired from their jobs, expelled from their schools, fine. But to say that there will be no such costs, only benefits, is a lie"
- "I’m glad Trump said what he did regarding women being punished for having an abortion. He exposed the pro-life movement as a movement that doesn’t really think abortion is the deliberate killing of an innocent child or they never would treat the poor little women as victims."
- "Let me get this straight. Pro-life candidates are perfectly fine with robotic abortion factories. Its just the manually operated ones they object to?"
- "From what I’ve read a lot of abortions these days–particularly early in pregnancy–are pharmaceutical and not medical procedures. So there’s no doctor performing a procedure to hold responsible. So who do you go after for violating the law–the medical professional who wrote the prescription? The pharmacist who filled it? The person who smuggled the drug into this country if the drug was banned here? The woman who sought out, sourced, and voluntarily took the drug, understanding full well what the known and recognizable consequences of her actions were–in actuality, seeking out those known and recognizable consequences? (...) Telemedicine is rapidly advancing. It will be possible in the near future to set up “remote” surgical centers where doctors who are miles away–say, in another country–perform the abortion. So how do you handle a surgical center, one where a multitude of operations are performed (scoping knees, colonoscopies, removing cancers, etc) that also had doctors residing in locations where abortion is legal accomplishing the teleoperating? When you can’t swoop in and arrest them, but the individual demanding the illegal procedure, who set up the whole thing, does reside in the jurisdiction where that procedure is illegal to perform?"
Também sobre isto, "Trump's Politically Incorrect Abortion Comments Complicate Republican Narrative", por Elizabeth Nolan Brown, na Reason:
But here's what neither Camosy, Hemingway, Scheidler, or any of the major pro-life voices have addressed: What happens when there is no abortion doctor? No sketchy clinic. No nagging or coercive partner. What happens when a woman decides to terminate her pregnancy and takes matters into her own hands?Na verdade o que eu suspeito é que muitos pró-vida defendem é sobretudo o chamado "papel pedagógico da lei" - a ideia de que ao se proibir algo (mesmo que nunca ou raramente a proibição seja aplicada e os infratores punidos), está-se a enviar um sinal de que esse comportamento não é aceitável, e assim se reduza significativamente o comportamento em questão (não tento por os potenciais infratores fazerem um cálculo intelectual custo-beneficio, e chegarem à conclusão que os custos da punição conjugados com o risco de serem apanhados são mais altos que os benefícios de empreender a ação em causa, mas sobretudo pela relutância intuitiva que grande parte dos seres humanos têm em fazer algo que vá contra as regras "da tribo"). Diga-se que eu acho que a ideia do "papel pedagógico da lei" é algo pouco conciliável com a filosofia de base de uma sociedade democrática (pode ser que algum dia escreva algo sobre isso).
Women have been self-inducing abortions for time immemorial. Herbs. Coat hangers. Mifepristone. It's that last one, used in conjunction with another drug (misoprostol), that's likely to be most common for illegal 21st Century abortions. This two-pill regimen, referred to as "medical abortion" (as opposed to surgical abortion), is currently a common method for legal first-trimester abortions in America. (...)
Trump's original statements on abortion might not have been politically correct from a conventional conservative perspective, but they were the closest to honesty or authenticity we've gotten from a pro-life politician in a long time.
Following every Islamist terror attack on a Western soft target, like the recent one in Brussels, we hear the same refrain from certain corners: “Why won’t Muslims stand up to Islamic extremism?” (...)
But the argument contains a false premise. Plenty of Muslims are standing up to Islamic extremism, both in word and deed. In fact, it is Muslims who are doing all the heavy lifting in this regard, while the chief contribution of the self-righteous Western powers has been to add to their burden.
First of all, Muslims have opposed extremism ideologically. This goes for Muslim leaders, including top clerics and such groups as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the 50-million strong Nahdlatul Ulama (NU).
It also goes for the general Muslim populace. The 2008 book Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think was, according to its publisher Gallup, “…based on six years of research and more than 50,000 interviews representing 1.3 billion Muslims who reside in more than 35 nations that are predominantly Muslim or have sizable Muslim populations. Representing more than 90% of the world’s Muslim community, it makes this poll the largest, most comprehensive study of its kind.” (...)
Muslims are also doing the lion’s share of standing up to extremists militarily. As an anti-statist, I do not endorse any military or act of war. But who else do you think is retaking towns and territory from ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria and Iraq, under Russian air cover, and to the chagrin of the U.S. State Department? What religion do you suppose is practiced by the foot soldiers in the Syrian army of Bashar al-Assad or the Iran-backed militiamen from Iraq and Lebanon? (...)
What makes the accusation particularly galling is that it is the accusers’ own governments that provided many of the bullets and shells that these moderate Muslims are dodging. For years, and especially since the Arab Spring, the U.S. and other Western governments have flooded the insurgencies being led by Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria and Libya with guns, artillery, and money. Furthermore, the West also arms and sponsors Saudi Arabia, while that extremist theocracy also backs Al Qaeda in Syria and Yemen, terror-bombs and starves civilians in Yemen, and finances radical madrassas around the world.
And the West has done all this in order to overthrow secular-Arab nationalist regimes that hate and are hated by Islamic fundamentalist groups.
Why does the United States keep killing #2 in ISIS?, por Tyler Cowen:
As Zack mentions, there may be reasons why the #1 is harder to find and kill, but I would suggest a complementary hypothesis. At many points in time there is more than one #2, just as corporations may have a variety of Executive Vice Presidents.
If you a leader of a terror group, do you really want a well-defined #2 who is a focal alternative and who can move to overthrow you? Or do you prefer seven competing #2s, with somewhat unclear status, whom you can play off against each other, or make compete against each other, and offer various sticks and carrots and promotions of influence against each other?
And let’s say that one of these #2’s is killed. How will the United States report this? “One of seven #2’s has been killed”? Or perhaps the easier to communicate and more important sounding “We have taken out number two.”
Uma esquerda contra Dilma, por Stefan Rotenberg (Center for a Stateless Society).
Quase nenhum dos bancos que opera em Portimão é portimonense (só a caixa agrícola, que só tem um balcão).
Um aparte - se a Grécia não tivesse bancos gregos, mas apenas balcões de bancos internacionais, provavelmente teria dado KO aos credores no Verão passado (já que estes não teriam a única arma que tinham e usaram: cortar o financiamento aos bancos gregos).
The Bernie Sanders voters who would choose Trump over Clinton (The Guardian):
The latest startling phenomenon is the voter who is feeling the Bern, but also has eyes for the Donald.
This week the Guardian sought out Sanders fans who are contemplating switching their allegiance to Trump if Hillary Clinton secures the Democratic nomination.
Almost 700 people replied to the call-out, and some 500 of them said they were thinking the unthinkable: a Sanders-Trump switch.
They explained their unconventional position by expressing a variety of passionately held views on their shared commitment for protecting workers and against new wars, on their zeal for an alternative to the establishment, and on their desire to support anyone but Hillary Clinton. (...)
The demographics
A look at the demography of Trump and Sanders supporters also provides some insights. If you were to get Sanders’ supporters in a room with Trump’s supporters, the two groups would be pretty hard to tell apart.
Repeated polling (including exit polls of individuals who have actually voted in primary elections so far) shows that Sanders’ supporters are overwhelmingly white, and that black voters are unlikely to vote for Sanders.
Both of those facts are also applicable to Donald Trump. (...)
Income is another shared characteristic. Exit polls from New Hampshire where Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton showed that the biggest fissure between voters was income. Among voters with a family income of less than $30,000, Sanders defeated Hillary by 48 percentage points but when the income was above $200,000, Sanders lost by seven percentage points. The Republican primary exit polls in New Hampshire revealed the same trend for Trump; his support was seven percentage points higher among low-income families than those earning $200,000 or more. (...)
But the demographics of Trump and Sanders supporters also differ in several significant ways. Respondents in the CNN/ORC poll were more likely to have a favorable opinion of Trump if they were older (44% of those age 65 and over supported the candidate compared to 25% of those age 18-34) but younger respondents were more likely to support Sanders (51% of those age 65 and over compared to 69% of those age 18-34). While Sanders supporters were likely to say that they lived in urban areas, Trump’s supporters were more likely to say that they lived in rural parts of the country.
Os "números do tráfico de seres humanos são avassaladores", segundo a Ministra da Administração Interna.
O problema nisto é que nem se sabe muito bem o que é "tráfico de seres humanos".
Repito algo que li em tempos e já postei aqui:
'trafficking' is confused with three different things: Any kind of prostitution; any kind of forced labour; illegal immigration using any kind of facilitator (which is likely most of it). Maybe that is why so many people like to campaign about it: they can take the moral indignation from 'forced prostitution' and the large numbers from illegal immigration, and apply it to a campaign on any vaguely related topic that they feel strongly about.
É o título de um artigo do Público; o que me surpreende a mim é o assédio sexual cometido por outras pessoas além dos chefes - é que tenho uma certa dificuldade em perceber o que possa ser "assédio sexual" sem a componente de submissão hierárquica do/a assediado perante o/a assediador/a (que pode usar o seu poder para prejudicar o/a assediado/a se ele/ela não ceder). Usar o conceito de "assédio sexual" para situações em que o/a assediador/a não possa retaliar sobre o/a assediado/a parece-me misturar alhos com bugalhos.
