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Title: After the New Economy by Doug Henwood ISBN: 1-56584-770-9 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.4 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Ironies of the Nineties
Comment: Henwood does a superb job of illuminating many of the ironies of the Ninties, whether simply quoting George Gilder (who Henwood notes, rivals Whitman as an exuberant list-maker) or pointing out that the phrase "New Economy" was first used by President Reagan in a speech at Moscow State University.
Too good to be true--but it is.
And Henwood underlines how, from the very beginning, the New Economy rested on a flight from the physical world. He quotes Reagan: "In the new eocnomy human invention increasingly makes natural resources obsolete."
While the Bush admnistration's environmental policy could be read as an attempt to fulfill Reagan's dream, world markets are now telling us that natural resources are far from out of vogue. Copper, gold, silver, oil, wheat--today, this is where wealth resides. Demand for these resources is rising in parts of the world where higher productivity actually means higher standards of living for a significant number of people.
By contrast, Henwood shows how, in the West,the productivity revolution of the Nineties produced more, always more, of things that, in many cases, we don't need and couldn't afford.The miracle? They were doing it with fewer people. Jobs vanish (though Henwood shows, low-wage jobs are growing at nice clip), debt mounts, the dollar declines.
And, he notes, in some cases what we produce may even lower the standard of living: "The contribution of the brokerage industry to productivity was mainly web-based trading; how much it contributes to human welfare is debatable. The more people trade, the worse they do (though it makes their brokers happier.)"
Henwood deconstructs GDP, and productivity numbers emphasizing the "statistical fetishism" surrounding both, asking important questions about the quality rather than just the quantity of what is produced (does it offer a gain for human possibilities or a loss?) and offering perhaps the clearest explanation I have seen of the fuzzy math involved in guesstimating both GDP and productivity growth.
Finally, in just a few pages he offers a fine analysis of how "so much of the last twenty years comes together in the Enron story . . . Lay's assetless trading model was right in line with the celebration of postmateriality. The pension system was right in line with New Era pension thinking. And relying on the stock market to judget he company and pay senior managers was right in line with all of the trendy talk from professors and consultants. And it all went badly wrong." Here, Henwood makes what may be his most important point: "But instead of being read as a judgment on the idiocy of all these fashions, it's being read as a case of personal corruption . . . " Our obsessive focus on crime--and putting the perps in jail--may be emotionally satisfying for some, but it too-neatly dodges the heart of the problem. The real problem was not that individuals corrupted the system--the real problem was that the ideology of the new paradigm was, itself, bankrupt.
Yet that ideology is still driving the U.S. economy. Just take a look at stock market valuations--or, better yet, the President's Economic Report. But first read this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: When the Whip Comes Down
Comment: For years, Doug Henwood's newsletter -- "Left Business Observer" -- has served as a corrective to the triumphalist nonsense that passes for business journalism in the U.S., (and just about everywhere else for that matter). Now, with AFTER THE NEW ECONOMY, Henwood, pithily exposes the flashy mummery behind the bubble economy of the late 90s.
Henwood's particularly good on the years leading up to the boom. He shows how the New Economy was whipped to a high froth with profits expropriated from American in the preceding two decades. Here's Henwood in his own words on the subject: "It's not hard to figure out what caused the fifteen-year profit boom (in the 80s and 90s) -- a reversal of the forces that produced the sixteen-year bust that preceded it. The conventional story is that excessively stimulative and indulgent government policies led to a great inflation, compounded by the oil-price shocks of 1973 and 1979." (Pg. 204)
"There's some truth to the standard story, but it also needs to be translated into political language. The long post-World War II boom had fed the expansion of the welfare state. The sting of unemployment was lessened and workers became progressively less docile. Wildcat strikes were spreading and factory workers were smoking pot on breaks and sabotaging the line. Internationally, the U.S. had lost the Vietnam ware and discovered that is conscript army was an undisciplined horde that was not shy about shooting commanding officers. The Third World was in broad rebellion, demanding global wealth redistribution and a new world economic order, a point that OPEC made forcefully in 1973 and 1979" (Pg. 204).
Henwood notes that it was at this time that the conservative movement, which had been fairly quiescent in the 50s and 60s, gained a new impetus as the ruling class began to feel the pinch and search around for an ideological tool to stem the rising democratic tide. It came to a head when the top 1% which had traditionally controlled about 40% of the wealth in the United States found their share reduced to approximately 20% in the early 70s (Pg. 121). The counterrevolution began in earnest. It was then that the Chicago School boys sharpened their neo-liberal apologia for capitalism, and their retooled 19th century theories were embraced by the denizens of the Business Roundtable, their friends in the Treasury Department and the White House. And so, in Henwood's words "...through benefit cutbacks by employers, outsourcing, speedup, permanent downsizing, cutbacks in regulation, the central-bank-led class war succeeded in more than doubling the profit rate for nonfinancial corporations between 1982 and 1997" (pg. 210).
Henwood is a numbers guy, and he uses them to debunk the capitalism's cheerleaders as well as its undisciplined detractors. Particularly refreshing is his analysis of the wooly-headed maunderings of the weird left who wish the turn the clock back to some imaginary proto-capitalist time where the nation state was the beneficent conduit of citizen's wishes and cultures were seamless, nurturing and healthy. These ideologues, he notes, are more than matched by those idealist economists who posit the existence of a perfect economic machine that someday (once the distortions of governments and people are eliminated) will bring forth a new millenium.
Henwood knows every move of that great unregenerate beast, and shows how it grows more red in tooth and claw with every upper-class tax cut, every gutted education and healthcare program, every downsized and rightsized American worker. Yet, admirably, in the midst of all the darkness, Henwood strikes sparks of furious, wicked laughter.
Rating: 4
Summary: Great Book - Now Let's Take it to the Street!
Comment: Henwood is a writer I admire and have long listened to on the radio -his analysis is always right on target and he has meticulously documented the sources of all the figures in this book, which make it a great starting place for anyone interested in getting a more sound understanding of where our economy is headed in the long-term.
The title is a bit misleading: it is really primarily about long-term trends in economics (he looks as far back as 1600) and how our economy today fits into a much bigger picture. The first chapter is devoted to debunking recent myths about "New Economy" - the dot-com bubble, and its subsequent burst. But the bulk of the book is really a sober, careful, hard look at the depressing truth about capitalism: it's a rotten system, always has been.
I fully agree with the reviewer here who criticized his chapter on "Globalization". He totally missed the mark with regard to the movement, which suggests to me that he isn't very involved in it himself. I'd rather he spent his time interviewing street activists at the protests than picking at obscure, irrelevant pamphlets he recieves in the mail. Then again, some of us are into the street theater, some aren't.
If it weren't for that chapter, I would be pushing this book on more of my activist friends, who undoubtedly have a kindred spirit in Henwood. A bit more of what Michael Moore has been smoking lately (i.e., an interest in real, ordinary folks and how they see the world) would definitely do Henwood some good.
Despite my frustrations, READ THIS BOOK!!!! It is VERY IMPORTANT!
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Title: Contours of Descent: US Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity by Robert Pollin ISBN: 1859846734 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: Incoherent Empire by Michael Mann ISBN: 1859845827 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom by Doug Henwood ISBN: 0860916707 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Sorrows of Empire : Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic [The American Empire Project ] by Chalmers Johnson ISBN: 0805070044 Publisher: Metropolitan Books Pub. Date: 13 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century by Paul Krugman ISBN: 0393058506 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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