Who is a true progressive?

My problem with Bernie Sanders and his Berniacs has always been--yes, even from back when he was battling it out with Hillary Clinton--that their positions on many issues are no different from tRump's own awful ideas.  Like bringing manufacturing back to America.  The complaints about offshoring.  Putting tighter limits on immigration.

Yet, Bernie and the Berniacs are considered to be "progressives," while these progressives criticize tRump and his trumpeters!

I worried about this even back in May 2015, when the campaign fever was barely above normal.  In this post, I quoted a bunch of experts, one of whom asked:

Wouldn’t a true progressive support equal opportunity for all people on the planet, rather than just for those of us lucky enough to have been born and raised in rich countries?

That's what I expect from a true progressive.  Yes, I consider myself to be a true progressive, in contrast to, for instance, Bernie Sanders, who has a long track record of anti-immigrant positions.

But, wouldn't a true progressive want to provide opportunities for all people on the planet, and not merely for the luck ones who were accidentally born here in the US?

tRump and his toadies have now used the cover of COVID-19 in order to suspend immigration.

“By pausing immigration, we will help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs as America reopens. So important,” the president said. “It would be wrong and unjust for Americans laid off by the virus to be replaced with new immigrant labor flown in from abroad. We must first take care of the American worker.”

Chances are most Bernie supporters would agree with that, even though logic and evidence point to another direction: "numerous studies have concluded that immigration has an overall positive effect on the American work force and wages for workers".

Again, from that post in May 2015:

Unfortunately, most of the debate in rich countries today, on both the left and the right, centers on how to keep other people out. That may be practical, but it certainly is not morally defensible.

Morally indefensible.  Let them in poor countries eat cakes!

The following is a slightly edited post from May 10, 2015.
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The last few days I came across one too many commentaries about income and wealth inequality. Inequality within the US, and across the world.  Robert Samuelson's column is in the context of an anniversary.

In 1975, the Brookings Institution — perhaps Washington’s best known think tank — published an elegant essay by Arthur Okun, who had been one of the leading economists of the Johnson administration. The essay was called “Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff.” Its premise, as the title suggests, was that government faced a choice in fashioning its economic and social policies. A bias toward more equality might weaken economic growth by dulling the incentives to work, save and invest; on the other hand, leaving matters to the market could worsen inequality by widening income and wealth gaps. We could balance equality and efficiency. Once stated, the logic seems impeccable.

Inequality is now worse than it was forty years ago!

But, that is within the US.

If we, however, looked at the entire seven-billion-plus that we are on this planet, global inequality has reduced.  So much so that the managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives concludes his blog-post with:

the 21st century would be a time of rising equality across the global income distribution.

Data do show that globally inequality is decreasing even as within-country inequality is rising in many countries.  And that is Kenneth Rogoff's point of departure:

Wouldn’t a true progressive support equal opportunity for all people on the planet, rather than just for those of us lucky enough to have been born and raised in rich countries?

He explains:

If current concerns about inequality were cast entirely in political terms, this inward-looking focus would be understandable; after all, citizens of poor countries cannot vote in rich ones. But the rhetoric of the inequality debate in rich countries betrays a moral certitude that conveniently ignores the billions of people elsewhere who are far worse off.

Whenever I ask students in my classes whether we should worry about the increasing inequality in the US, or about the welfare of the economically disadvantaged billions outside the US, after they look at the data, not a student whimpers about the grossness of the inequality in America.  Rogoff reminds us about some of that data:

the middle class in rich countries remains an upper class from a global perspective. Only about 15% of the world’s population lives in developed economies. Yet advanced countries still account for more than 40% of global consumption and resource depletion.

People in America complain because the "ovarian lottery" seems to have lost its value:

global inequality has been reduced significantly over the past three decades, implying that capitalism has succeeded spectacularly. Capitalism has perhaps eroded rents that workers in advanced countries enjoy by virtue of where they were born. But it has done even more to help the world’s true middle-income workers in Asia and emerging markets.

Keep in mind that despite all that economic progress (I won't worry about the non-economic issues for now, because I do that in many other posts) in China and India and Vietnam and wherever, the average American is immensely richer than the average person in many countries around the world.

There is one more way in which all those people in other countries can be given a fair shot at improving their economic conditions:

Allowing freer flows of people across borders would equalize opportunities even faster than trade, but resistance is fierce.

However, when I bring up this point in my classes, students suddenly become a tad defensive.  

Rogoff doesn't mince words:

Unfortunately, most of the debate in rich countries today, on both the left and the right, centers on how to keep other people out. That may be practical, but it certainly is not morally defensible.

And for a good measure, he reminds us about this too:

Europe’s long history of exploitative colonialism makes it hard to guess how Asian and African institutions would have evolved in a parallel universe where Europeans came only to trade, not to conquer.

Add to that America's slave trade.  And there are more to the list.

We lack definitive answers only when we frame the inequality problem a certain way.  It is just that we don't want to work towards those answers.  We choose to avoid them.  We are being cunningly political.

Only Norwegians need apply!

Jamelle Bouie does a wonderful job presenting Mitt Romney for who he is:

Romney’s history on immigration is one reason why we should not treat Trump as an aberration from the Republican Party but the outgrowth—and perhaps the apotheosis—of forces that have driven Republican politics for at least a decade. Romney’s hostility to illegal immigration helped him win the Republican nomination. What’s more, he gave tacit approval to Donald Trump’s birtherism, even welcoming his endorsement in 2012. After he lost, Romney attributed Obama’s re-election to a promise of “gifts” to black people, women, and the “children of illegals.”
Romney holds sincere, conservative views on immigration, but he also helped give rise to the divisive politics that he now criticizes in Trump. Romney indulged the worst impulses of the Republican base, feeding it an appetizer of racial resentment and leaving it hungry for someone who could offer a feast.         

Which is why despite all his anti-trump stand during the primaries, Romney eagerly went to dine some fine frog legs with the very guy who trolled about him choking at the elections!



The scumbag in the Oval Office and his 63 million voters have made clear what they think of immigrants, especially the brown-skinned from shithole countries.  So, we will leave them alone and look at what trump's counterpart on the other side--Bernie Sanders--has said.  That should be interesting, right?

Here, Sanders is railing against immigrants in 2007.  Note that he is not merely against those who came here without documentation. Sanders was angry at the guest workers who come here legally!  Make sure you wait until you hear him rant about the millions who will come here and lower the wages for middle-class Americans!



In 2013, he calmly and forcefully asked whether it is really true that we can't find American workers to do the jobs that immigrant workers are doing.



I tell ya, Sanders was not that different from trump in his populism.  There is a huge difference between the two though--Sanders is a decent human being, whereas trump is the lowliest scumbag in public life.

The US has never honestly figured out how it should deal with immigration--legal and otherwise.  Instead of honest conversations and policy, politicians treat the topic as an opportunity for votes, depending on which way the wind blows.  Perhaps the best evidence for this is from the Republican debate in 1980, between the two candidates in the primaries--Reagan and Bush.




This is not a topic that comes up in most other countries.  After all, how many countries have even been open to immigration?  The US, more than say Canada or Australia, has always been a land of immigrants.  With the exception of Native Americans, we are all--including the damn politicians--immigrants or descendants of immigrants.  Yet, the country can't seem to figure out what to do with immigration?  "Sad!" as the scumbag often notes in his tweets!

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Two old men killed Lady Liberty

I remember how after the events of 9/11, the thoughts, words, and actions everywhere and every time were all related to 9/11.  It seemed like there was nothing else.

It is a similar effect now.  Everywhere I go to read anything, it is all about this current president.  I wish it were not the case.  A government and a president ought to be like how children were often referred to.  Remember that line?  Children should be seen and not heard.

Yes, the 63 million voters are to be blamed for this.  But, there is one group that I will not let off the hook: Bernie Sanders and his loyal followers.

Let me explain.

A few months before the election, the friend and I visited with another couple, who are more than a decade older than us and were Berniacs.  When talking, one of the older friends asked me what I thought about Sanders's criticism of how the US workers were being shafted by the fact that we don't manufacture anything here in America.

Without adopting a faculty tone, and without being snarky like how some of my blog-posts (examples: one, two, three ...) have been on this topic, I gave them my take on the economic geography of manufacturing.

But, these issues were/are less about logic and facts and more about how one "feels."  The Berniacs were often less interested in logic and evidence as much as the trumpeters couldn't care about logic and evidence.

In the process of expressing their "feelings," Sanders and his followers completely destroyed Hillary Clinton's credibility.  Remember those days, from only a few months ago?  It was best summed up by susan sarandon, echoing many, many, Berniacs, referring to Hillary Clinton as being more dangerous than trump:

“But this is what we’re fed. ‘He’s so dangerous. He’s so dangerous,'” Sarandon said, shrugging off Trump’s most controversial rhetoric as too implausible to be considered a serious threat.
“Seriously I am not worried about a wall being built, he is not going to get rid of every Muslim in this country… but seriously, I don’t know what his policy is. I do know what her policies are, I do know who she is taking money from, and I do know that she is no transparent, and I do know that nobody calls her on it”

Yep, that was the typical line from the loony left.

I was way concerned about this because, as many posts in this blog showed, I was intensely worried about the real possibility of Clinton losing in the general elections and the fascist winning.  Defeating the fascist was infinitely more important to me than debating whether Clinton was an honest politician.  Berniacs repeating the line that Clinton was more dangerous to the country than trump was seemed reckless and foolish.

Of course, there were more than a few of us worried about the effect the Berniacs were having.  Like this headline from last June, which says it all: "Did Bernie Sanders Hand Trump the Election?"

And the Berniac defiance grew:

You heard similar language—or at least a similar tone—from Sanders surrogates like actress Rosario Dawson, who told a collection of Bernie supporters and delegates that they should press on with their demands, regardless of what happens. “If Trump wins,” she said, “it’s not our fault.”

"regardless of what happens" ... how terrible!

The sanders campaign was, for all purposes, a mirror image of the trump campaign--filled with populist rhetoric on making America great, and it was all about the man.

Whatever your opinions about Clinton, the most progressive Democratic platform in history was on the ballot with her; any Bernie Sanders supporter worth their salt should’ve been able to see that. If they cared about progressive policy they would have bothered to show up.
This election will leave the party with many newly perceived facts to study, but one seems to be that many young voters and young Sanders supporters, in particular, weren’t actually voting for him because of where he stands on the issues: if they were, the platform would have mattered. They wanted him for reasons the Americans always choose their political candidates: for his aura – a star-power defined in terms of a masculinity that’s become synonymous with political charisma.

Those damn Berniacs. Assholes who gave us this president!

The demagogues and faculty who shit on outsourcing to India!

The title of the post conveys my sentiments, right?  I am ticked off!
I will stop right here before I display my fluency with colorful vocabulary!!!

I will add this much: There were two triggers for this post.  One, I heard a faculty colleague ask another, "do you really want the corporations to outsource everything?"  And then, this meme that was shared on Facebook by a friend:

The following is my op-ed that was published four years ago in The Register-Guard, August 13, 2012, during the previous presidential election cycle:

The sudden populism over outsourcing reminds me of a Chinese saying that I recently came across: “If we don’t change the direction in which we are headed, we will end up where we are going.”

Twelve years ago, when I taught at California State University, Bakersfield, I assigned a class of about 35 students the task of figuring out, through rough calculations, whether Bakersfield could compete against Bangalore, India, when it came to call centers that the local leaders were pursuing as a growth strategy.

At that time, outsourcing hadn’t entered the everyday political and cultural vocabulary, and Bangalore was unknown to most in the United States — after all, Thomas Friedman had yet to publicize these through his best-seller, “The World is Flat.”

Working in teams, the students independently arrived at the same conclusion: Bangalore will beat Bakersfield any day! My hope was that most of the class would have understood through this exercise how their economic futures could become increasingly dependent on developments in other parts of the world.

Well, we have now almost ended up where we were going — economic activities that might have generated many middle income jobs in the past have migrated to other countries that are equally, or more, interested in their development. Therefore, unemployment rates in the United States do not seem to be coming down despite all our attempts. And, yes, “outsourcing” is now a part of our lexicon and for which politicians have suddenly developed a fondness.

Yet we are not talking about outsourcing in a constructive manner. Outsourcing is being used to portray China or India as bad actors, when, in reality, they are far from any real competition to us. The average Indian earns barely 5 percent of the per capita income here in the United States. The average Chinese is in a much better position than the average Indian, but the per capita income there is only a tenth of that in the United States.

India and China are not our competitors, but they are much poorer countries where people are eager to improve their economic conditions.

Outsourcing economic activities to India or China, or any number of other countries, has made possible goods and services at remarkably low prices. From T-shirts to smart phones to customer support, we would have to pay a lot more than we currently do if there were no outsourcing at all.

It is not China’s or India’s problem that we failed to change our own direction over the years when we enjoyed the abundance of goods and services at affordable prices. Obsessed by the Internet bubble, the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the wars that followed, and then the housing bubble, we continued to keep going without even attempting to alter our course, seemingly oblivious to how the economic structures all around the world were rapidly changing.

Should we then be surprised that it has become extremely difficult to generate gainful employment that will keep alive the American Dream for the middle class?

Outsourcing enters our public discourse only when it conveniently fits into political calculations. Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards angled for votes by referring to outsourcing and offshoring when they were on the Democratic ticket for the White House in 2004. Now, both President Obama and Mitt Romney are talking about it, but for all the wrong reasons that don’t seem to reflect in any way the Harvard credentials they both have.

Obama beats up on outsourcing in order to imply that the Chinese and Indians are taking away “our” jobs, which is a highly screwed-up interpretation. And Romney doesn’t seem to recognize that outsourcing and the globalization of the economy have not translated to real economic betterment for the middle class.

Since the Great Recession, I have increased the intensity with which I try to make students understand that any job that can be sent to a different country will be sent, and that any job that can be automated will be automated. Unfortunately, a captive audience does not always mean an attentive audience.

I suppose we seem to be bent on making sure we will end up where we are going.

Whatever it takes to win means ... hyperbole

Back in 2000, it was tiring to listen to Al Gore talk in great detail about each and every policy.  It was clear that the man knew policy, but being intellectually capable and having a firm grip on the details is not what wins elections.  Which is why Bush won, despite his goofy "what, me worry?" approach to everything.

This time around, Hillary Clinton plays that policy detail game to a lot more boring detail than Gore did.  The Republican candidates couldn't care about policies.  And then there is Bernie Sanders.  His stump speeches are great, no doubt.  But, he ain't the candidate that Obama was back in 2008.  Obama could become professorial and lecture about policies too.  Sanders flubs.  And there is one person who is really ticked off: Jeffrey R. Immelt, who is the big boss at General Electric (GE).  Immelt is pissed off at Sanders for his propagandaish GE is “destroying the moral fabric” of America demagoguery:

GE has been in business for 124 years, and we’ve never been a big hit with socialists. We create wealth and jobs, instead of just calling for them in speeches. We take risks, invest, innovate and produce in ways that today sustain 125,000 U.S. jobs. Our engineers innovate every day to build hardware and software solutions that meet real-world challenges. Our employees are proud of our company. I meet second- and third-generation employees whenever I travel across the country. I am one myself. Our suppliers and partners are proud of our company. Our communities are proud of our company. Our pride, history and hard work are real — the moral fabric of America.

Sanders' hyperbole on GE versus Immelt's evidence-based rebuttal.  You think that the "feel the Bern" fans care about evidence?

Immelt continues:

The senator has never bothered to stop by our aviation plant in Rutland, Vt. We’ve been investing heavily (some $100 million in recent years), hiring and turning out some of the world’s finest jet-engine components in Vermont since the 1950s. The plant employs more than 1,000 people who are very good at what they do. It’s a picture of first-rate jobs with high wages, advanced manufacturing in a vital industry — how things look when American workers are competing and winning — and Vermont’s junior senator is always welcome to come by for a tour.

Burn!  (get the pun? hehe)

Sanders refuted this and claimed that he has been there.  The fact-checkers got on to it:

As a factual matter, Sanders clearly has not visited the plant or taken a tour since he became senator nine years ago. Sanders bluntly accused Immelt of “not telling the truth,” saying he had visited the plant “years ago.” But that sidesteps the point that Immelt was making — that the company has invested tens of millions of dollars to modernize the facility and yet Sanders has not bothered to see the improvements. His posture stands in contrast to other members of the Vermont delegation who have been repeat visitors to the facility during Sanders’s Senate tenure.
In bluntly dismissing Immelt’s statement as a lie, Sanders misleadingly led viewers to believe he had an open-and-shut case. But the reality is more complex.

"misleadingly led viewers to believe" is what this election is all about.  It was what the elections in 2000 and 2004 were also about.  Come to think of it, we should be surprised that two eggheads with a fine grasp of details--Bill Clinton and Barack Obama--managed to not only win but even get re-elected!

What pisses me--keep in mind that unlike the frequent commenter/debater here, I am no rah-rah GE fanatic--is that Sanders criticizes that GE is destroying the moral fabric of America and then turns around and gives the most evil corporation a pass in his interview with the NY Daily News:

Daily News: For example, in corporate America, Apple happens to be celebrating, today, its 40th birthday. It's a company that grew from nothing to 115,000 permanent employees. And I'm wondering, is Apple destroying the fabric of America?
Bernie Sanders: No, Apple is not destroying the fabric of America. But I do wish they'd be manufacturing some of their devices, here, in the United States rather than in China. And I do wish that they would not be trying to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

Of course, exactly like what any liberal would!  WTF!

With every passing day, the American presidential campaign is becoming a farce that can compete against the farcical political theatre that I witnessed back in the home state in the old country.  The theatrics were far better there thanks to the explicit roots in the entertainment industry!  Surely America can do better than this!

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Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?

"I used to think that I want to buy only goods made in America" a student said as we were wrapping up the academic term.  "But, now I think that I will be helping people in Bangladesh and Vietnam when I buy stuff they make" she added.



I am confident that any honest and thinking person will understand such a level of global inter-connectedness even if their gut instincts initially led them down a different path.

The gadget that no student would even dream of going without--the smartphone--is almost always one of those "Made in China" goods.  In commenting about Apple's products being manufactured overseas, Steve Jobs made headlines when he flatly stated : "“Those jobs aren’t coming back,”  President Obama had to reconcile with the fact that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

That was four years ago. It is now the campaign season all over again.  A candidate who wants to take over from Obama loudly proclaimed:

We're going to get Apple to build their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries.

The candidate thundered why imposing a 35 percent tax on goods manufactured overseas is good:

Free trade is good. But we have to do it [force them back to the US]. Or we won't have a country left,

You are perhaps thinking that this is so typical of that damn socialist Bernie Sanders.

Except that it was not Sanders who said all that.  It was the capitalist billionaire Donald Trump!

Trump promises to bring Third World jobs back to an advanced economy, and millions of voters—left and right—find this emotionally satisfying and politically reasonable. Many of these people just want to find work, so it's understandable. And when the economy is stagnant, you're not going to allay working-class anxiety by pointing out that capital account surpluses matter more than trade deficits or that productivity, not foreigners, is realigning the workforce—even if it's all true.
People just don't care.

The support for Trump's economic rhetoric reflects a dangerous combination among his supporters: ignorance and apathy--don't know and don't care.  Try telling that to trump and his Trumpeters!

Of course, Sanders has offered his own wise economic policies as well.  Angry that we no longer make stuff here in America, he:

pushed the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. to only sell bobble-heads, T-shirts, snow-globes, and other souvenirs that are made in America.

An honest and thinking person will immediately see that manufacturing all that "stuff" here is not worth it.  But, try telling Sanders that!

Imagine it it became a Trump versus Sanders fight in November :(