Comments

1
Oregon leads the way. Come on, Washington. No guts, no glory! And it should be easier for us. We haven't even asked them for an income tax yet, let alone raising it.
2
Man, I wish people would get over this fixed stereotype of "WWIII"...

World War III was not a nuclear shooting war, but the Cold War, where the two major nuclear powers fought it out in an arms race and a host of proxy wars around the globe.

World War IV was (and technically, still is) the neoliberal Economic War being waged around the world to extract as much 'value' as possible out of developing countries & civilian populations, using the IMF, World Bank, "trade treaties", and other financial armed forces...

..and World War V is the "Global War on Terror", which is, in part, a special extension of WWIV because the "fear of terrorists" is being used to distract & cow the US populace so that the neoliberal Economic War can be brought back home, and 'value' extracted out of the rest of us.

Remember, "austerity" is another word for "class warfare".
3
@2: "World War IV was (and technically, still is) the neoliberal Economic War being waged around the world to extract as much 'value' as possible out of developing countries & civilian populations, using the IMF, World Bank, "trade treaties", and other financial armed forces."

That must be the reason that the rates of absolute poverty and hunger in China, India and Africa are plummeting like never before seen in history . . .

In 1970, the number in extreme poverty worldwide was 2.2-billion people. In 2000, it was 1.7-billion Today it is 700 million and declining rapidly. At the current rate of decline, extreme poverty will be nearly nonexistent in 2025. Guess we're losing that so-called "economic war."
4
Or put another way: in 1970, 60% of humans on the planet would be classified as living in extreme poverty. In 2000, it was 30%. And in 2015, that number is now 9.6%

Neoliberal economics sure seem to be doing a kickass job at eliminating extreme poverty.
5
It will go over about as well as the annual initiative for self-service gas stations.
6
Mr.Steve, can we see some citations about what "extreme poverty" is and who says now it's been eliminated?
7
Nike, welcome to the great state of Arizona, Texas, etc.

Oregonians, welcome to your Beirut.
8
I think we need to create an awards structure for the use of the word "neoliberal" in Slog posts. After five uses, you get this, after 10 uses, you get that....and so forth. Or maybe if you say it three times in a row, Alexander Rüstow magically appears. Or something.
9
@4, 6 - Are you *sure* there aren't other economic arrangements that might be --even partially-- responsible for "eliminating" extreme poverty? Can you really show that "neoliberal economics" is wholly responsible, and nothing else?

I will point to the 1999 economic crisis in Columbia that was triggered by the IMF and caused massive economic losses (which was specifically a value extraction event); the ongoing economic crisis in Greece triggered by the Eurozone requiring 'austerity' which is causing mass joblessness; the increasing income inequality in the USofA; the rising suicide & heroin addiction rates also; the economic warfare waged on Iran to destroy the value of their currency; and generally the phenomenon known as 'IMF riots' ("The IMF riot is painfully predictable.")

I applaud the decrease in extreme poverty, and yes I am aware of the stats of a slow world wide shift to better opportunities for the majority. But correlation is not causation. The US national & "Bretton Woods" institutional economic model is not universal.

"Neoliberal economics" is very definitely responsible for creating an industrial-commercial environment that makes it veeery difficult to shift focus away from damaging the environment with aggressive resource depletion, casual toxic waste disposal, unmitigated industrial disasters like the ongoing Bhopal toxic pollution disaster ... and a financial-corporate environment that has generated massive "rent-seeking" activity (which neither provides nor produces anything of value, but extracts value from others), and is largely unassailable because "too big to fail". All of which are directly tied to corporate efforts to cut corners for Profit. Because the "neoliberal economy" very specifically requires profit over people, so that there can be 'growth'... a requirement of the very money we have constructed.

So the reduction in extreme poverty has occured despite neoliberal economics, not because of it.
10
@8 - 6! :D
11
Lovely biased piece from the AP, starting with "massive" in the headline. Then they start quoting ALEC's favorite mouthpiece, the Tax Foundation. Ugh.
12
Sensible taxes on corporations are only sensible when corporations can't just cross the street to avoid it. Currently, states in the U.S. can simply race to the bottom to compete, giving corporations the upper hand. Different tax structures (regulations, too) between cities and between states makes sense when the taxed (or regulated) entity isn't super mobile (as examples, sales, property, and personal income taxes all target somewhat non-mobile entities) but when it indeed is super mobile, then the states (or cities) that enact those common-sense taxes (like the Oregon proposal) get clobbered in competition by the states that race to the bottom (half the corporations in the whole United States are incorporated in Delaware due to a) regulations that make it nearly impossible to sue them, and b) super low taxes...Texas' economy is booming in part for similar reasons, to the detriment of states with more common-sense laws). Why did we give Boeing so many billions in tax breaks? Because if we didn't another place would have. That's not fair market; it's not capitalism; it's not a fair playing field (if it were, then smaller companies would qualify for the same breaks). We need to have national regulations and tax structures in place for large corporations because they can otherwise hold local economies hostage. A common-sense tax measure won't pass in Oregon because corporations will just leave to places with regressive taxes (or maybe it will pass, to the detriment of Oregon's economy).
14
@10 - YOU'RE A WINNER!!!
15
@5: Yeah, why does Oregon have compulsory attendant gas service? I didn't know about it, the first time I went to Oregon. The gas station guy looked at me like I was trying to steal his life savings.
16
@3 A drop of 1.5 billion in the number of people in extreme poverty; i.e. the population of China. China has indeed done quite well after turning away from a wholly planned communist economy to....a country with a predominantly government-owned economy and none of the property rights that protect the rich in other countries - no intellectual property allowed, no patents - is that your definition of a neoliberal economy?
17
@12 - A common-sense tax measure won't pass in Oregon because corporations will just leave to places with regressive taxes (or maybe it will pass, to the detriment of Oregon's economy).

One can hope that --as you almost point out-- progressive actions by individual states might snowball into more states taking similar action, and then a national policy on corporate taxes. Someone has to be bold enough to start.

Because clearly, this "play one state against another" bullshit is fundamentally damaging... to... Governor's side incomes, and various State Representatives' and Senators' side incomes as well. (Who really cares about the people's fortunes.)

There's already talk of formulating international corporate tax standards so that those fuckers can't play Nation against Nation either, e.g. so many corp's currently "located" in Ireland's little loophole for their low, low bargain rate tax rate bargains!

Please wait...

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