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Tag Archives: University of Missouri-Kansas City

Letters and Politics Presents White Collar Crime Expert Dr. William K. Black On Current Wells Fargo Fraud Scandal

03 Mon Oct 2016

Posted by ztnh in Free Speech, Political Economy

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banking, cross-selling, Dr. William K. Black, incentive systems, KPFA, Letters and Politics, Messina, Pacifica Radio Network, Philip Maldari, Philip Maldari (SaveKPFA), Senator Bernie Sanders, transcript, UMKC, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Wells Fargo

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—On today’s edition of free speech radio’s Letters and Politics, substitute host Philip Maldari wisely turned to Dr. William K. Black, of the heterodox University of Missouri-Kansas City, to help us unpack some of the technical details of the most recent white collar crimes perpetrated by Wells Fargo bosses. [1]

And Professor Black makes learning about this, sometimes, complex stuff interesting.  You can almost hear how baffled sub host Philip Maldari was during this interview. (Your author was, too, like most listeners, perhaps.) [2]  Many questions are raised when we, laypersons, begin to explore the world of finance and banking.  Sometimes, we must admit when we don’t understand something and ask further questions.  Chances are, others need further explanation, too.  This discussion helps us do so, to help inform our local communities of important information about the pros and cons of various banks and the services, which they sell.  [3]  Listen (and/or download) here. [4]

Messina

***

[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Letters and Politcs]

william_k-_blackwiki

William K. Black (b. 1951)

LETTERS AND POLITICS—[3 OCT 2016]  “This is Pacifica Radio‘s Letters and Politics.  Philip Maldari sitting in for Mitch Jeserich.  On today’s programme, we’re going to talk with William Black, professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, former president of the Fraud Prevention Institute about Wells Fargo Bank and the fraud it perpetrated on its customers.  [theme music]

“But first the news.”

[News Headlines (read by Aileen Alfandary) omitted by scribe]  (c. 6:12)

PHILIP MALDARI:  “I’m Philip Maldari sitting in for Mitch Jeserich, who’s got a two-week vacation.  Many thanks to Mitch for his good works.  And he deserves a vacation.

“We’re gonna be talking about Wells Fargo today.  Wells Fargo is one of the five biggest banks in the United States, possibly the world.  I’ll ask my guest about that.  And it has gained headlines in the past few weeks, as a result of the disclosure that it had perpetrated a fraud on hundreds of thousands of customers by signing them up for accounts, that they had no interest in and no idea that they were getting.

“To try to understand exactly what this fraud is all about and what the repercussions will be, we’re joined by William Black.  William is professor of economics at the University of Missouri.  He’s the former president of the Fraud Prevention Institute.  William Black, welcome to Letters and Politics.”  (c. 7:11)

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  “Thank you.”

PHILIP MALDARI:  “Now, I sort of laid out that they had perpetrated this fraud over several years.  The L.A. Times actually disclosed this story going back, all the way, to 2013.  And, somehow, it was a sleeper.  It only, really, became a huge controversy in the past few months.  Would you explain exactly what they were up to?”  (c. 7:35)

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  “[chuckles]  Well, many things.  But, so, it falls in two major categories.  One, that you’ve discussed and a far larger one.  The one, that you’ve discussed, is the ones that are actual felonies.  So, these are creating two million accounts, about a million and a half, deposit-type accounts and a half million credit card accounts, where the customer had never signed on, had never agreed to create these accounts.  So, these were done secretly.

“What was going on in both of the cases, I’m going to discuss, fraud and non-fraud, was that there were impossible-to-meet sales quotas to cross-sell multiple products.  And these were extremely successful in producing record profits for Wells Fargo Bank, which, if you measure it by stock market capitalisation, is the largest bank in the world, by the way.” [5]

PHILIP MALDARI:  “Really?”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  “Um—”

PHILIP MALDARI:  “So, let me just ask you again.  Why would your stock go up if your cross-selling was successful at giving the appearance that you had many more accounts?”  (c. 8:55)

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  “It wasn’t the appearance.  It was the reality.  So, I haven’t described the second part.  The cross-selling, in addition to the two million frauds, produced tens of millions of successful sales, that should never have occurred.  And, collectively, it produced something like 70—well, actually, more like 420 million, total, types of accounts, which Wells Fargo calls solutions.  [chuckles]”  (c. 9:28)

PHILIP MALDARI:  “Now, wait a second, four hundred and some million accounts, that the customers were unaware of?  Were the cus—”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  “No, no, no, that they were aware of, but you see you’ve just talked about the fraud.  But the far bigger scandal, and the one that emulates the huge scandal in the United Kingdom, is selling people product, that they shouldn’t buy because it’s very bad for them.  And that’s where the big profits were.  And that’s not measured at two million.  That would be measured in the tens of millions.  But no one has investigated that.

“That still hasn’t become a scandal the way it has in the United Kingdom.  So, you say, correctly, that it’s taken three years to get to the point where the two million sales have become a scandal.  We’ll have to wait and see whether a whole business system designed to sell people product, that was bad for them, that they should have never bought, whether that becomes a scandal.”  (c. 10:32)

PHILIP MALDARI:  “So, how, as a customer, would I experience the bad nature of these accounts?  Would I be getting bills in the mail?  What would be happening?”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  “Again, it depends on, which accounts.  For the two million accounts, yes, you would often be getting a bill in the mail.  But, for many of these, the employee set up the notification, so that it would go to the employee, instead of you.  And this means that people, in addition to having to pay fees, in a number of cases, would have had their credit score harmed because you wouldn’t have paid fees, that you didn’t even know existed.

“And, so, that is a particular bad thing about the two million [fraudulent accounts].  You would have known about the other accounts.  You just wouldn’t have known that you were being scalped by someone, who was—the entire paramount business model.  This is not a little thing.  This cross-selling is the defining element of Wells Fargo.  They do it more than twice as much as any other major bank in America.  They are exceptionally successful and profitable because they push bad product on customers routinely.

“And here’s how it works.  This is not a compensation system, in which the little guys get big bonuses for doing bad things [i.e., in which low-level workers are incentivised with bonus pay], the way it was back during the [Global Financial] Crisis for loan brokers and loan officers and such. [6]  This is fear of losing your job.”

PHILIP MALDARI:  ” [delays, or holds his thought] ”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  “In a number of branches, it has come out that four times a day you would be called by your supervisor to explain whether you had met your sales quote for cross-selling in the last two hours of your operation.  And, if you didn’t, you would ultimately be fired.

“Now, these are people, who are making, ballpark, $12 dollars an hour, roughly $35,000 dollars a year in entry.  We know that people, who make $40,000 dollars a year, two-thirds of them, have savings of $400 dollars or less.

“So, you would, not only be fired, you would be unemployed.  You’d be fired for cause.  And it would be exceptionally difficult to go back into the banking industry and get a job.

“So, this was a system of terrorising the largest sales staff of bankers in America.  They have, ballpark, 200,000 employees.”

PHILIP MALDARI:  “And 5,300 of them were fired.  Who were the people, that were fired?”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  ” [unintelligible; Dr. Black started speaking just as Maldari asked the following question.]

PHILIP MALDARI:  “Who were the people, that were fired?”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  “Yeah.  That’s an excellent question.  Now, first, all of these numbers—the two million.  This is not the full extent.  This is they only look back a few years.  And they found this two million.  But this incentive system goes back at least 15 years.”

PHILIP MALDARI:  “But—”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  “And there hasn’t been a real investigation.  It’s critical to understand.  We haven’t—”  (c. 13:56)

PHILIP MALDARI:  “Wells Fargo has only admitted going back to ’07.  Right?  They haven’t agreed to go back 15 years.”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  “Correct.  And, on top of that, they didn’t actually go back.  Worse.  The regulators didn’t go back.  What, instead [happened] is they, the Wells Fargo management was allowed to do the usual, useless thing, which is:  You hire an accounting firm.  And guess what the accounting firms always find.  Yes, there were these terrible problems.  But, of course, nobody in senior management is in the least bit responsible for all of this.

“And, so, the deal, which by the way, they paid less than $100-per-felony fine.”

PHILIP MALDARI:  ” [delays, or holds his thought] ”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  “How many folks would be willing to trade a hundred dollars to get out of a felony prosecution?”

PHILIP MALDARI:  “I believe the fine was something like $185 million. [1]  And, to most people, that sounds like real money.  But, to Wells Fargo, that is just the cost of doing business?”  (c. 15:01)

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  “Well, worse.  As I say, it’s $100 per felony.  Who wouldn’t pay [laughs] a hundred dollars to escape a felony prosecution.  Right?  No accountability, no admissions, no real investigation, and the fake investigation didn’t go very far back.  And, again, they’ve ignored the larger part, which is the sale of product, typically, to people who can’t afford it, a very, very bad product, that they shouldn’t have.  As I—”

PHILIP MALDARI:  “Give me an example of a bad product.  I mean I’ve got a checking account.  And I have a credit card.  So, I don’t really have any other accounts than that.  So, what other accounts would there be?”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  “Well, they would sign you up for an additional credit card when you were already maxed out on your first two.  Is that a kindness?  That’s a catastrophe for the person.  They would sign you up for overdraft protection. [7]  That may sound nice.  But, if you don’t have enough money to pay, it’s simply another fee.

“And they have many other products.  They have, you know, well over 15 products, that they try to sell you in these kinds of things.”  (c. 16:22)

—

[SNIP]

[SNIP]  (c. 56:37)

PHILIP MALDARI:  “One last caller, Phil in San Carlos.  Phil, you’re on the air.”

MESSINA:  “Yes, I am.  How are you guys doing today?  [confirming I was on the air, and attempting to incorporate a little back and forth, instead of just, like, ‘saying your piece’ or whatever and being treated like an insect by the radio thought police]”

PHILIP MALDARI:  “We’re doing fine.”

MESSINA:  “Beautiful.  [proceeding to express myself, after having confirmed I was on the air]  I missed the last 20 minutes or so of the interview.  So, I apologise if you guys, uh, got off topic on an important topic [already and my contribution here is redundant].  But I just want to bring attention to the fact that Professor Bill Black is one of the foremost experts on fraud and criminology.  So, it’s excellent that you guys have this conversation.

“But, as a graduate of UMKC‘s Department of Economics, I hope that you will bring him on again to discuss modern monetary theory, modern money theory—”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  ” [laughs] ”

MESSINA:  “—and the job guarantee programme and, also, the fact that Dr. Kelton, Professor Black’s colleague, was the chief economist, alongside Professor Black, of Bernie Sanders.  And, for some reason, Bernie Sanders didn’t tell the American people about the job guarantee programme—”

PHILIP MALDARI:  “Okay.”

MESSINA:  “—about monetary sovereignty.  I know this is off topic—”

PHILIP MALDARI:  “Sure.”

MESSINA:  “—but I think your audience finds it just as compelling as your preceding conversation.”

PHILIP MALDARI:  “Okay, Phil.  We, we’ve got the message.  William, do you wanna comment on that?”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK:  “Yeah.  So, he’s absolutely right.  This is absolutely critical to the lives of all of your listeners.  And it would be a great future topic.  And I did—this is not a plant—but I did live in San Carlos for 20 years. [laughs]”

PHILIP MALDARI:  “Well,  let me just ask you—one, one question’s just gotta go to Bank of America.  [Maldari dodged the issue…]  [8]

[SNIP] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at LETTERS AND POLITICS.

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

***

[1]  For background on the current Wells Fargo fraud scandal, see:

  • “Wells Fargo CEO to Return $41 Million in Compensation Amid Scandal”, Democracy Now!, 28 SEP 2016.
  • “Sen. Warren Calls for Wells Fargo CEO to Resign & Face Investigation Amid Growing Scandal”, Democracy Now!, 23 SEP 2016.
  • “Elizabeth Warren to Wells Fargo CEO: You Should Be Criminally Investigate”, Democracy Now!, 21 SEP 2016.
  • “Wells Fargo Fined $185 Million for Creating Phony Accounts and Credit Cards”, Democracy Now!, 9 SEP 2016.

[2] Your author was, like substitute host Philip Maldari (a SaveKPFA partisan).  And Maldari is one of the sharpest intellectuals at KPFA, although I disagree with his SaveKPFA politics.  Maldari is usually very sharp on most issues, but this current Wells Fargo fraud requires a little deeper digging, perhaps a series of broadcasts.

The complexity of white collar crime can be daunting, but the more we know about the ins and outs of banks and the pros and cons of the services, which they peddle, the better off families and communities will be, and the more likely they will be to demand better regulation of bankers and financial institutions, while still making sure that individuals and working class families have access to banking and financial resources, which can help them improve their lives.

[3]  Speaking of not understanding something, your author has long wondered why our good friends at KPFA, do not understand the monetary system, or the modern money system (MMT).  Bonnie Faulkner featured MMT and the job guarantee programme on Guns and Butter back in 2012.  But it seems the important information doesn’t cross-pollinate, or cross-inform, the other public affairs broadcasters at KPFA.  So, although Guns and Butter knows about MMT and the benefits to the American working class, other shows like Letters and Politics and UpFront and Philip Maldari’s Sunday Show.  You would think the revolutionary policy proposals from heterodox economists like Dr. William K. Black and Dr. Stephanie Kelton would have been championed by KPFA.  But, instead, we’ve had a virtual whiteout of this crucial understanding of our monetary system.

So, at the very end of this broadcast, your author managed to get on the air to bring up questions around modern money theory, the job guarantee programme, and Bernie Sanders’ occulted chief economists.

Why did Bernie Sanders not allow his experts in law and economics, Dr. William K. Black and Dr. Stephanie Kelton, to tell the American people about key policy proposals, which they have long championed, such as the job guarantee program, which could end involuntary unemployment, as we know it, reduce poverty, crime, and other social ills?

[4]  Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  Letters and Politics, this one-hour broadcast hosted by substitute host Philip Maldari, Monday, 3 OCT 2016, 10:00 PDT.

[5]  To become the largest bank in the world (or one of the largest), Wells Fargo has had to diversify its investments, for example, as with profiting from prisons, profiting from imprisoning.

[6]  For more on compensation system incentives toward fraud, see:

  • “Lender’s Lies about Liar’s Loans and ‘Rigorous Underwriting'” by William K. Black, New Economic Perspectives, 2 FEB 2016.
  • “Hundreds of Wall Street Execs Went to Prison During the Last Fraud-Fueled Bank Crisis” [an interview with William K. Black] by Joshua Holland, Bill Moyers, 17 SEP 2013.
  • “‘Pervasive’ Fraud by Our ‘Most Reputable’ Banks” by William K. Black, Huffington Post, 28 FEB 2013 (updated 30 APR 2013).
  • Prepared Testimony of William K. Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Before a Hearing of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Entitled “Examining Lending Discrimination Practices and Foreclosure Abuses”, 7 MAR 2012.
  • “Lenders Put the Lies in Liar’s Loans and Bear the Principal Moral Culpability” by William K. Black, New Economic Perspectives, 2 OCT 2011.
  • “Lenders Put the Lies in Liar’s Loans, Part 2” by William K. Black, Huffington Post, 10 NOV 2010 (updated 25 MAY 2011).
  • “Lenders Put the Lies in Liar’s Loans” by Wiliam K. Black, Huffington Post, 8 NOV 2010 (updated 25 MAY 2011).

[7]  Anecdotal point of information:  Your author was actually a long-time Wells Fargo customer and, being a working class family man trying to make ends meet, living paycheck to paycheck, constantly had to battle with Wells Fargo about overdraft protection charges.  One attempts to keep track of one’s transactions.  But weekend transactions were posted to one’s account inconsistently, among other inconsistencies, which made it difficult to plan one’s daily cost of living expenditures.  At one point, attempts to opt out of overdraft protection was made impossible.  It was clear Wells Fargo was playing games with its customers, who they could see struggled to get by from paycheck to paycheck.  So, they set up many traps, which gouge Wells Fargo customers.  For example, on at least one occasion, thinking all transactions had posted and a certain balance was available, separate weekend purchases of a bottle of water, some gas, and food, resulted in three separate $35 overdraft charges.  Ultimately, your author had to quit Wells Fargo.

For an excellent documentary film on these types of abusive practices, and their toll on working class families, see:  Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders (2006) directed by James Scurlock.  Maxed Out is a must-see film, which features, among other experts, a then-little-known Elizabeth Warren.

[8]  Essentially, Philip Maldari, as a SaveKPFA partisan, as a Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club type of Democrat, he avoids certain issues, to the left of the Democratic Party.

Since Dr. Black did agree with your author, Messina, and did admit that the job guarantee programme is critical to the lives of free speech radio listeners, why, do we suppose, Philip Maldari didn’t ask Dr. Black anything about it?  Why would Maldari not express even the slightest hint of curiosity in this very important, but under-reported, information?  Is it obfuscation?  Is it intellectual laziness?

(My audio was cut off at the point when Maldari takes over.  But I was still on the line, until the end of the broadcast.  Usually, the producer or the host may get on the line to thank people for calling in or to ask further about anything a caller may have commented on.  The last time I called in to KPFA, Deana(sp?) Martinez got to me after the UpFront broadcast, and took a message from me to delivery to Car Brooks about MMT, the job guarantee programme, Dr. Kelton, and the Bernie Sanders campaign.  But not this time.  This time they just hung up.

(It seems they didn’t want to know about MMT or the job guarantee programme or any of the heterodox policy proposals from the University of Missouri-Kansas City or other heterodox institutions.  They just want to confine intellectuals to strict parameters, which do not upset the two-party system, or the impulse to corral progressives toward the Democratic Party and away from political alternatives.  I have respect for Philip Maldari as a longtime contributor to KPFA.  I have learned a lot from his broadcasts, like others on KPFA.  But I must question his, and his faction’s, resistance to certain controversial topics, issues, and interview subjects.  KPFA seriously needs to support heterodox economists, such as Dr. William K. Black, Dr. Stephanie Kelton, Dr. L.R. Wray, Dr. Michael Hudson, and others from heterodox institutions like the University of Missouri-Kansas City.  It is in keeping with the Pacifica Mission Statement.)

***

[3 OCT 2016]

[Last modified  10:35 PDT  4 OCT 2016]

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The Atlantic: Should Students Learn About Black Lives Matter In School?

23 Sat Jul 2016

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Fascism, Critical Pedagogy, Education, Philosophy of Education, Police State, Racism (phenotype)

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alia Wong, FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), Hayley Glatter, New School for Social Research, Project Censored, Radical Pedagogy, The Atlantic, University of Missouri-Kansas City

the_atlantic_magazine_coverLUMPENPROLETARIAT—If we consider the press critically, of course, we find for-profit broadcast media to be compromised in its journalistic integrity and riddled with censorship and/or underreporting and obfuscation of important news stories. [1]  But, even non-profit, audience-sponsored, broadcast media often suffers from self-censorship of varying degrees. [2]

Similarly, as free speech radio is, first and foremost, an educational institution, our public school classrooms suffer from censorship and self-censorship, which stifles critical thinking.  School textbooks may discuss Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement or the Vietnam War (known in Vietnam as the American War), as issues of the past, as if the same struggles for civil and human rights and opposition to wars of capitalist imperialism are no longer happening.  Dr. James Loewen, as well as Dr. bell hooks and others engaged with critical pedagogy, have also drawn attention to the distortions and misrepresentations of history, and even outright lies found in most American history textbooks.  This uncritical acceptance of substandard textbooks and uncritical pedagogy, of course, does not only affect history and social studies, which usually glosses over the American government’s repression, enslavement, and genocide of ethnic minorities and also fails to address current events of great import and historical significance, such as Black Lives Matter and extrajudicial or illegal killings of unarmed children and adults by police, death in custody cases, police brutality, and disparities in the criminal justice system.

Similar problems are found in the discipline of economics, which is divided between a heterodox approach and a neoclassical approach to economics.  A neoclassical approach is predicated upon unrealistic assumptions about human nature and society, assumptions which are overly mathematised and completely delinked from any meaningful historical context.  Heterodox economics offers more pluralistic and, thus, more coherent analyses.  But this approach is confined to only a minority of heterodox economics departments, such as that of the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the New School for Social Research in New York City. [3]

Our education system continues to be adversely impacted by the historical legacies of American racism, white supremacy, nationalism, and anti-communist, anti-socialist, pro-capitalist ideologies, which stifle truly critical analyses in American schools.

As educator Dr. Henry Giroux argues, we are rendering our students diminished in their capacities for critical thinking because we restrict the critical thinking, which we allow our students to engage in, to only involve prescribed content from textbooks, which usually avoid controversy, contemporary issues, and subtly stay within a particular establishment ideology of uncritical acceptance of capitalist modes of production, free market fundamentalism, American exceptionalism, and suppression of the American government’s enslavement, oppression, genocide, and dispossession of ethnic minorities.

Students, and educators, are not fully liberated to explore and critically engage with the world around them.  Consequently, most educators and the teaching programmes from which they hail, are largely uncritical conveyor belts of the status quo, enabling the persistence of historical social ills and pathologies.  But, some courageous educators are challenging pedagogies of repression and engaging in critical pedagogy.  And, in so doing, they are resisting the deprofessionalisation of educators.

A recent article in the The Atlantic asked the question:  Should students learn about Black Lives Matter in school?

It’s a good question.  The answer should be obvious.  But for some, probably, Orwellian reason, it is not.  And that should give us great concern for its implications for a democratic society, when successive generations of students are kept in the dark about the problems of society and effectively inoculated against any concept of civic engagement.

Messina

***

THE ATLANTIC—[21 JUL 2016]  Should Students Learn About Black Lives Matter In School?  The lengthy timelines of publishing new history textbooks—and the problematic narratives those books often present—push primary resources to the forefront of current-events education.

Hayley Glatter

If the Chicago social-studies teacher Gregory Michie waits for a textbook to teach his students about the Black Lives Matter movement, the first seventh-graders to hear the lesson won’t be born for another seven years.

Despite the historical implications of that movement, bureaucratic timelines all but quash any possibility that students might learn about today’s events from an actual history textbook in the near future.  According to Anthony Pellegrino, an assistant professor of education at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, many school districts receive new books on a seven-year cycle. However, in some states, schools don’t receive new books for 10 to 12 years, and the most current material in those books could be a few years old.  Certainly digital textbooks shorten this timeframe, but physical copies lag far behind: In some districts like Michie’s, students are reading textbooks that don’t even contain the name Barack Obama.

On top of that, the chapters on America’s most recent history often fall short.  Because content on, say, the American Revolution, has been read and edited over the course of multiple book editions, more recent chapters often “feel like just add-ons.” Pellegrino said.  “They’re so afraid to tackle anything current because we don’t have the perspective of history to be able to inform us more.  As such, the sentences, the words, the paragraphs, are just really vapid.”

But Michie, who teaches seventh- and eighth-graders at The Windy City’s William H. Seward Communication Arts Academy, doesn’t let outdated textbooks deter him from addressing timely, sensitive topics in the classroom.  Michie said the social-studies textbooks at Seward are around 20 years old, but even if they were contemporary, he wouldn’t rely on them. The history books “are just horrible,” he said.  “They dodge controversy.  Textbooks are commercials for the countries they’re made in.”  Instead, Michie’s conversations with students are rooted in sources ranging from images to political cartoons as he moves social-justice issues to the forefront with lessons that draw on modern cases like those of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown.

The use of primary-source documents has become a popular tool for teachers seeking to bring current events into the classroom, particularly as schools have adopted the Common Core standards, which encourage students to engage with such resources.  But the immediacy and timeliness of police brutality, activism, and institutionalized racism have led educators to consider the ramifications of sharing these issues with students.  Michie said talking about newsworthy events is critical, but his teaching of sensitive contemporary issues has drawn criticism—someone on Twitter called the lessons indoctrination.  However, he thinks the world outside the classroom is too relevant to ignore inside school walls.  Not discussing current events and issues of race, Michie said, sends a stark message to kids because “our silence as teachers speaks very loudly to our students.”

Public-school teachers should stand up against racism, should stand up against homophobia, should stand up against religious intolerance.

In addition to the relevance of topics like Black Lives Matter, Daisy Martin, a senior research associate in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, said weaving current events into lesson plans provides an opportunity for history teachers to re-engage their students.  “One of the most common words that’s used to describe history in K-12 is ‘boring,’ and kids think of it as, ‘It’s all done, and it’s sort of determined,’” Martin said.  By talking about what is going on now and explaining the connections between past and present, teachers can work to remove that stigma.

However, as Michie demonstrated, teachers who choose to bring current events into the classroom face numerous challenges.  And it’s not just claims of imprinting a teacher’s opinions on the class—Martin said some history teachers struggle to discuss sensitive topics because they may feel like they don’t know enough about the topic, have too much to cover already, or lack the school-wide support needed for such conversations.  Michie, though, is adamant about not shying away from sensitive topics: “Public-school teachers should stand up against racism, should stand up against homophobia, should stand up against religious intolerance.  To me, that’s not [taking] a side.  We have to advocate for, and believe in, and have high hopes for all of our students.”

Not everyone agrees with Michie, and textbook publishers are saddled with the task of appealing to a wide audience around the country.  And yet, certainly today’s political, social, and economic climates will be written about in history books. The events of today have been compared to the tumult of 1968, a year frequently cited as one of the most dynamic in American history—that year, both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, riots burst out during the Chicago-hosted Democratic National Convention, and the Tet Offensive was launched in Vietnam.

Learn more at THE ATLANTIC.

***

THE ATLANTIC—[21 OCT 2015]  History Class and the Fictions About Race In America  High-school textbooks too often gloss over the American government’s oppression of racial minorities.

Alia Wong

Earlier this month, McGraw Hill found itself at the center of some rather embarrassing press after a photo showing a page from one of its high-school world-geography textbooks was disseminated on social media. The page features a seemingly innocuous polychromatic map of the United States, broken up into thousands of counties, as part of a lesson on the country’s immigration patterns: Different colors correspond with various ancestral groups, and the color assigned to each county indicates its largest ethnic representation. The page is scarce on words aside from an introductory summary and three text bubbles explaining specific trends—for example, that Mexico accounts for the largest share of U.S. immigrants today.

The recent blunder has to do with one bubble in particular. Pointing to a patch of purple grids extending throughout the country’s Southeast corridor, the one-sentence caption reads:

The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.

The photo that spread through social media was taken by a black Texas student named Coby Burren, who subsequently texted it to his mom, Roni-Dean Burren. “Was real hard workers, wasn’t we,” he wrote. Roni-Dean quickly took to Facebook, lambasting the blunder: the reference to the Africans as workers rather than slaves. A video she later posted has been viewed nearly 2 million times, and her indignation has renewed conversations around the Black Lives Matter movement while attracting coverage by almost every major news outlet. “It talked about the U.S.A. being a country of immigration, but mentioning the slave trade in terms of immigration was just off,” she told The New York Times. “It’s that nuance of language. This is what erasure looks like.”

McGraw Hill swiftly did its damage control. It announced that it was changing the caption in both the digital and print versions to characterize the migration accurately as a “forced” diaspora of slaves: “We conducted a close review of the content and agree that our language in that caption did not adequately convey that Africans were both forced into migration and to labor against their will as slaves,” the company said in a statement. “We believe we can do better.” Catherine Mathis, the company’s spokeswoman, also emphasized that the textbook accurately referred to the slave trade and its brutality in more than a dozen other instances. And McGraw Hill has offered to provide various additional resources to any school that requests them, including supplemental materials on cultural competency, replacement textbooks, or stickers with a corrected caption to place over the erroneous one. But Texas school districts were already in possession of more than 100,000 copies of the book, while another 40,000, according to Mathis, are in schools in other states across the country.

If nothing else, the incident may serve as yet another example of why social studies—and history in particular—is such a tricky subject to teach, at least via textbooks and multiple-choice tests. Its topics are inherently subjective, impossible to distill into paragraphs jammed with facts and figures alone. As the historian and sociologist Jim Loewen recently told me, in history class students typically “have to memorize what we might call ‘twigs.’ We’re not teaching the forest—we’re not even teaching the trees,” said Loewen, best known for his 1995 book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. “We are teaching twig history.”

Learn more at THE ATLANTIC.

***

[1]  For example, see Project Censored, which publishes an annual book of the most censored news stories, as peer-reviewed evidence of persistent media censorship.  Project Censored also broadcasts a weekly radio show out of free speech radio KPFA and across its national Pacifica Radio Network.  And, in 2013, Doug Hecker and Christopher Oscar directed Project Censored: The Movie, Ending the Reign of Junk Food News.

Also see articles featuring Project Censored at Lumpenproletariat.

CounterSpin is another good media analysis production by the media watchdog group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), which airs on free speech radio stations throughout the nation.

[2]  One valid complaint, which could often be levelled against, for example, free speech radio KPFA is its tendency to shy away from the more controversial topics and issues.  For example, KPFA has been willing to air documentaries about the Black Panther Party history from the 1960s and ’70s, but has deemed it necessary to censor its descendants, which are currently civically engaged, such as J.R. Valrey and his Block Report Radio broadcasts, which used to air during The Morning Mix morning show.  Many people are okay discussing issues of racism, class struggle, and capitalist imperialism, but only if the issues are safely removed decades in the past.  The same goes for the 9/11 Truth Movement, which is not fully supported by all at free speech radio KPFA.  This editorial bifurcation reflects the historic internal struggle of free speech radio KPFA’s competing faction’s ideologies.

The radio programming produced by the less progressive faction at KPFA, which shamelessly calls itself SaveKPFA (appropriating the slogan from 1999 when KPFA listeners and staff successfully resisted attempts to hijack the station), has improved in terms of its willingness to confront police state terrorism, extrajudicial killings by police, death in custody cases, and police brutality and corruption scandals.  But it was not always like this. [2]  The more progressive, or revolutionary, broadcasters, such as JR Valrey with Block Report Radio and Dennis Bernstein‘s Flashpoints, and Davey D‘s Hard Knock Radio, which first featured Block Report Radio, paved the way for radical social justice campaigns, such as Black Lives Matter.

[3]  The history of free speech radio is obscure, but it’s out there.  As a truly concerned listener, among many scores, your author has had many memorable (and insightful) experiences in, and around, KPFA and the Pacifica Radio Network.  Your author’s experience with the behind-the-scenes KPFA dirt began before, and extended after, running for the KPFA Local Station Board (LSB) in 2010, as part of the Voices for Justice LSB slate, including SF Bay Area labour journalist Steve Zeltzer and Kurdish-American Dr. Sureya Sayadi.

One fine afternoon, back when my family and I lived on Liselle Lane in Modesto, California, circa 2012, I had the good fortune of chatting on the phone with Curt Gray, of the original Save KPFA.  He was a kind soul, who empathised with my being mistreated, like others, at KPFA by the elite clique, which had appropriated the Save KPFA name.  (Even SaveKPFA poster-boy Brian Edwards-Tiekert was surprised when I asked him for us to take a picture together during a ballot-count in Berkeley during a 2010 ballot count.  I wanted to believe we were misunderstanding Brian, so I also maintained polite interpersonal relations, although I disagreed with him publicly whilst campaigning for the LSB.)  Curt Gray confirmed my observations, which corroborated his narratives of KPFA/Pacifica history and perceptions about the SaveKPFA faction (formerly known as Concerned Listeners).  Gray described how this faction at KPFA used a system of patronage to bring in lackeys to do their dirty work.

Read Curt Gray’s article, “Stealing Save KPFA“, from 2010:

Stealing Save KPFA, 20 SEP 2010

by Curt Gray in concurrence with Jeffrey Blankfort, Maria Gilardin, Marianne Torres and Sasha Futran

I have learned that a group that had formerly called itself the Concerned Listeners, a faction in the community who are partisan supporters of the status quo controlling clique that runs KPFA and opposes accountability and participation by “outsiders” in the station, is now calling itself Save KPFA. The choice of this name is an ahistoric action that speaks of an arrogant sense of entitlement and a lack of knowledge or interest in how KPFA has developed and changed throughout its history as a ground-breaking community radio station.

The sad irony is that the original Save KPFA advanced ideals and goals that were and are in moral opposition to what this current group seems to be supporting. The original Save KPFA championed democracy, transparency, community participation and accountability for KPFA as a vital and irreplaceable resource of the Northern California progressive community.

The real, original Save KPFA came out of large public meetings held at the Ashkenaz Folk Dance and Music Hall on Berkeley’s San Pablo Avenue. The meetings were called by a group of listeners and unpaid KPFA programmers in response to station management’s unilateral actions to cancel a swath of community volunteer produced programming without notice or discussion. In the winter of early 1993 there were meetings attended by more than 200 people, both listeners and programmers, and all expressed growing concerns about the direction that KPFA was headed and a fear that the community that both supported and depended on KPFA was being pushed aside.

Those early meetings of hundreds of listeners and activists and a scattering of staff led to more than a year of intense organizing and a harsh education on the widening distance between what supporters of KPFA believed Pacifica was and the reality behind the image. It was the first time that many had a chance to tell and share with the larger community their knowledge of what was happening behind the scenes, information that was kept off the air and out of the printed program guide, the Folio. Coming together in these early meetings, gaining knowledge by sharing information, developing a more sophisticated understanding of who and what was shaping changes in the radio station that they had supported and relied on for so long, this was one of the beginnings of a nationwide Free Pacifica movement.

At these town hall style meetings on those rainy winter nights in the darkened nightclub we learned for the first time about Pacifica’s Strategy for National Programming document that over time called for more and more local volunteer produced programming to be replaced by national programming produced by radio professionals. It also called for Pacifica to go after big money grants to fund all this programming, with a stated aim to become “partners and players” with the largest corporate foundations such as the Pew, Ford, Carnegie and Readers Digest Foundations.

There were plans for national morning shows and national overnight call-in talk shows with big name celebrity hosts. We recognized this abandonment of local and volunteer produced programming as a fundamental turning away from what makes community radio what it is supposed to be. We called it what it was, NPR-ization of community radio. These plans were moving forward with little or no knowledge or input from listeners or the average programmer.

For the first time in a long time, a group of listeners were learning how KPFA really worked. We learned that there was a Program Council that consisted of programming department heads that met every week at the station. We learned that there was a local station advisory board that met quietly at the station every month, which should have been a venue for community input, if listeners had been encouraged to attend or even knew it existed.

The local board was self-selected and had the power to seat their members on the Pacifica National Board, the real holder of KPFA’s license, that met only three or four times a year in different parts of the country. Pacifica was and is a network with four other stations that also shares programming with many other affiliate community stations. A lot of the real power to decide the direction of the network seemed to be in the hands of the Pacifica Foundation’s Executive Committee and smaller power cliques within each station. There was no mechanism for any accountability to the people at the grassroots, the volunteer programmers and the subscribers and listeners.

At the core the station supporters in the public meetings at Ashkenaz loved KPFA and were fighting to defend it, especially its most progressive programming. But they started to realize that their interest and concerns were viewed somehow as a threat by an insular insider culture within the station’s management, staff, and local and national boards.

Out of the larger town hall style meetings KPFA’s new listener activists started to coalesce into the form of the organization named Save KPFA with a smaller, dedicated steering committee. Attempts were made to communicate, to share concerns, to work together with the other stakeholder groups – management, paid and unpaid staff, the station and foundation boards – to both protect and improve KPFA.

These attempts were met with a disturbing mix of fear, suspicion, contempt and disdain so frequently that the impression was communicated very clearly that only compliments were allowed and that any mere listener with a critical opinion was viewed as an enemy of the station as a whole. Not for the last time the listener activists had come together to defend programmers’ rights, but programmers did not return that solidarity by supporting the concerns of listeners.

A listener who politely tried to attend a Program Council meeting to suggest ways to use the station’s airwaves to educate listeners about internal station issues, as well as about larger media issues involving the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and the CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting), and was suggesting that perhaps the Program Council might benefit from having listener representatives attend, observe and contribute to station programming decisions was angrily shouted out of the meeting, because “listeners do not belong at Program Council meetings.”

When members of the new listener group Save KPFA started attending local and national board meetings, the members of these boards seemed disturbed to have actual listeners in the audience at their meetings. Any discussion of the issues raised at the listener meetings was mostly suppressed on station call-in shows and the letter section of the printed program guide, the Folio, making it difficult to include the larger listener community in the discussion.

A listener who politely tried to attend a Program Council meeting was angrily shouted out of the meeting, because “listeners do not belong at Program Council meetings.”

Through 1993 KPFA’s new listener activist movement moved from town hall meetings to taking action. The show of listener concerns at the first noisy public meetings at the Ashkenaz dance club resulted in the threatened programming changes being temporarily withdrawn, and KPFA’s verbally abusive and divisive station manager, Pat Scott, was kicked upstairs within Pacifica. She was replaced by her assistant, and within months the iron-fisted Scott would become Pacifica’s next executive director.

As the group recognized that the powers-that-be within Pacifica were not interested in allowing open discussion or debate of the listening community activists’ issues to reach the larger KPFA audience via any free exchange of views on the air or in the program guide, other ideas for getting the word out were tried.

Some Save KPFA activists tabled at progressive events, creating surveys to try to get feedback from KPFA listeners. Some started to set up pirate stations to create an alternative way to get information out. Listener activists tried to call in on KPFA shows and wrote letters to the local press about the issues within the station. And we started a mailing list to disseminate hidden information to interested listeners through newsletters. We invited representatives of KPFA management and the station board to attend and address our meetings.

There was little interest in the station to acknowledged Save KPFA or the community concerns it represented. In fact, a narrative quickly took hold that alternately trivialized the station’s critics as out of touch ’60s leftovers or demonized them as violent and out of control.

Save KPFA decided that if KPFA would not allow dialog on the air or in the pages of the Folio that the listener activists would buy an ad in the program guide to address the whole KPFA community, inside and outside the station. One of the activists was moved enough to donate the cost of the advertisement from his inheritance from his recently deceased mother. We filed a fictitious name application, opened a bank account and got a P.O. box. The Folio editor assured us that our ad would be accepted.

So Save KPFA met and worked on statements to outline our group’s concerns, positions, proposals. The group collaborated on statements that called for elected station boards and on-air discussion of internal station issues and for the station to depend on its listeners for its funding, not foundations. They were determined to keep KPFA a voice for dissent that was not afraid to be critical of the powerful and to keep the station close to the grassroots community of programmers and listeners who had supported it for decades.

Yet, when we submitted the advertisement and the money, suddenly the station refused the ad without explanation. Immediately Save KPFA created a flier featuring the text of our ad and asking why the station was censoring our Free Speech and distributed it that night at a large public event sponsored by the station. Station management then reversed themselves again, saying that they would not allow us to run the advert as we had designed it, but we could publish it as an “Open Letter” if we modified and edited it to fit into the space they allowed us in the Folio.

In our “Open Letter,” Save KPFA called for local station boards to be elected by subscribers and staff and for a regular, listener-run call-in show dedicated to discussing internal KPFA and Pacifica matters. This pressure from Save KPFA caused station management and the local advisory board to very tentatively allow an election among subscribers for a small minority of seats on the advisory board.

Save KPFA called for local station boards to be elected by subscribers and staff and for a regular, listener-run call-in show dedicated to discussing internal KPFA and Pacifica matters.

Even so, the people controlling KPFA and Pacifica acted out their internalized conflict between the hollow on-air rhetoric promoting democratic empowerment for everyone else in the world and the need to protect their effective total internal dominance of the station. First management announces the election in the program guide but no discussion or candidate forums on the air. Then they announce that the election is canceled for lack of candidates, even after a handful of listeners submit candidate statements.

Then they change their minds, but now the voting period was during the on-air fundraiser, and their policy was to not mention the election while pitching for donations on the air. In the last week to send in the ballots, an unenthusiastic recorded message is aired reminding listeners of the advisory board vote.

On one morning a paid staff member is reported to shout at a volunteer programmer in the control room, “Don’t play that when my audience can hear it. We don’t want any of those idiots elected to the board.”

The seeming attempt to stifle the election goes from bad to worse. The actual ballot is the thin newsprint of the back page of the program guide, which the listeners must cut out with scissors. Then they mark their votes, fold and tape the ballot together and send it through the mail. Many of the returned ballots were destroyed, torn to tatters by the post office sorting machinery, arriving in the station mailbox in little plastic body bags supplied by the Postal Service.

KPFA has so little respect for the election that ballots are collected in an open unsealed mail cubby where they spill out onto the floor like so much trash near the front door. When the time comes to count the votes, ballots are found scattered underfoot down the hall, blown by a draft from the street. None of the candidates or any representatives are allowed to watch the count.

It is announced that not enough votes were cast for the election to be valid. The votes are not counted, and where the ballots wind up is a mystery. Mention is made that some voters had written comments on their ballots, but the ballots disappear without being further examined.

In an announcement in the next Folio, the listeners are told that there were not enough votes but that the advisory board might seat some of the candidates on the board anyway. But that was not a true intention and none of the election candidates were every spoken to about sitting on the advisory board, even though they continued to attend the monthly meetings as members of the audience.

In the same period, the station staff had been demanding elections for the staff’s own representatives to have a couple of seats on the station advisory board. The station staff voted and elected Maria Gilardin, an unpaid staff member who was a leader of Save KPFA and one of the few staff critics of Pacifica’s leadership and policies, to be one of the first station staff representatives on the board. But before Maria could take the seat she had been elected to fill, she was banned from all Pacifica properties without any appeal on trumped up charges of inciting violence at a Pacifica National Board meeting in Los Angeles. The KPFA station staff seemed to meekly accept the effective gutting of their vote by the Pacifica board without protest.

These and other events are the legacy of Save KPFA in the year of 1993 at the beginning of the long struggle to democratically reform Pacifica and try to bring some accountability to KPFA and the network. It is the foundation of what became a movement and where many hard facts about the reality of Pacifica were learned.

SAVE KPFA IS PART OF PACIFICA’S HISTORY, AND THAT HISTORY STILL MATTERS NOW. It is a history that is preserved in Mathew Lasar’s book about the Pacifica struggle, “Uneasy Listening,” and on websites and email lists.

In 1995 Pacifica moved ahead with its plans to transform itself into a professional media organization by purging hundreds of volunteer programmers from the Pacifica stations, some of whom had donated their time and work to build the network for decades before being tossed aside as Pacifica tried to become more respectable. In response to the mass purge of programmers, the leadership of Save KPFA started a new organization, Take Back KPFA! TBK! carried on the struggle to reform Pacifica and KPFA for the next few years as similar organizations sprang into being at the other Pacifica stations and a truly national movement evolved.

Take Back KPFA! has its own history and accomplishments, and the struggle to reform KPFA and Pacifica continued to be difficult. Just as Save KPFA from 1993 led to Take Back KPFA! in 1995, when events started to build in 1999 towards Pacifica’s corporate takeover and the KPFA lock-out, members of Take Back KPFA! helped form a new organization with its goal right in its name, the Coalition for a democratic Pacifica. The CdP was and has been a front line organization in bringing about the elections for the KPFA Local Advisory Board and pushing through the new reform bylaws for Pacifica that gave subscribers and staff members of the Pacifica Foundation the power to elect station boards with oversight powers.

This history is too important to be allowed to be forgotten or erased. It is a story of a long exhausting struggle for needed progressive reform in the face of every kind of underhandedness, mean spiritedness, hypocrisy and deceit. The long fight for elections within Pacifica was finally won, but the same internal struggle for control of the stations and what sort of stations they will be continues.

The difference is that now those conflicts are out in the open light of day, because elections necessarily lead to more openness.

And most unfortunately, there are still those in and around KPFA who hate that openness and want to keep “the audience” at arm’s length.

Clearly, not only is this history at risk of being erased, but the democratic reforms themselves are under attack. The same culture within the station that feared listener activism and opposed any accountability or oversight has continued to try to undermine the new democratic structures. The status quo faction works to protect the station’s patronage culture by using their power within the station to recruit and elect slates of candidates who work to keep the democratic structures from functioning as they were meant to.

For the last few years, the anti-reform slate has called itself the KPFA Concerned Listeners. Now, in order to confuse and to hide from its own record of voting to block accountability, it has taken the name Save KPFA.

We, members of the original Save KPFA’s steering committee, strongly object to the use of our name. We have not endorsed this election slate, nor were we asked. We believe that the use of our name dilutes its historic meaning and is likely to confuse some voters, who may believe this slate stands for the same things we did.

We, members of the original Save KPFA’s steering committee, strongly object to the use of our name by the anti-reform slate that had previously called itself the KPFA Concerned Listeners.

We demand that this election slate stop using our name, or at least take steps to let any voters they have contacted know that it is separate group and not endorsed by us. We ask Pacifica also to take reasonable steps to make clear to subscribers that this election slate is a separate entity and not related to us or our positions and certainly not endorsed by us.

Author and journalist Jeffrey Blankfort – jblankfort@earthlink.net – distributed this story with the following note: “For those of you who have a deep and abiding interest in community, listener-sponsored radio and its inherent problems, I strongly recommend this article/letter, ‘Stealing Save KPFA,’ written by Curt Gray, one of the original members of Save KPFA, who has put together a remarkable history of the struggle that began 17 years ago to preserve the country’s first-listener sponsored station, a struggle that is still ongoing.”

BeyondChron misrepresents ‘Save KPFA’ slate on 2010 ballot with 1999 Save KPFA photo

Letter to the Editor by Sasha Futran

Dear BeyondChron Editors Randy Shaw and Paul Hogarth,

This is the photo initially used by BeyondChron to illustrate their story. It has since been replaced by a photo of the KPFA building entrance.

I’m truly disgusted with both of you, almost beyond words. The visual you chose for your article, “KPFA Election Will Decide Progressive Network’s Future,” published Sept. 13, has no connection to the slate you are endorsing and which is now confusing voters by running under another group’s name. Your use of a 1999 photo of that different group is beyond disingenuous.

Not only was the slate you continue to promote not members of Save KPFA in 1999, they stand for the exact opposite of what we wanted for the station. (I was a member of the steering committee of the original Save KPFA.) A slate’s sudden change to use of another group’s name in the current KPFA board election is misleading to voters. You and they aren’t stupid so I would guess you all know that.

Not only was the photo you chose a misrepresentation, your article was also filled with misinformation.

Several of us currently on the board and still involved with KPFA were organizing activists in 1999 as well and a part of the original group. That includes one of candidates running with the Independents for Community Radio, another slate and one with which I am affiliated.

Tracy Rosenberg kept the tent city that slept outside the station organized in the 1999 era of demonstrations. Those demonstrations led to a democratic change at the station and ended management’s lockout of KPFA’s staff.

Do not state or insinuate that either Ms. Rosenberg or the rest of us are against the paid staff. Do not malign us with your misrepresentations that are beyond all but right-wing media tactics. Do not attempt to further baffle voters.

Let’s look at your first paragraph and description of your favorite slate: “On one side is the Save KPFA slate of candidates, who believe the station should be the voice of the entire progressive community, and must expand listenership to help broaden the progressive base.”

Are you sure they can do that with a slate of primarily white males over the age of 60 on a slate put together by a group of Democratic Party activists? Many of their group – both presently on the board and currently running for the board – are also related or work together. I’d be interested in hearing how you think they are representative of the diverse Bay Area and can speak for people not only of their generation, ethnicity or political affinity, but also not members of their family and office staff as well.

Let’s move on to what you insinuate we, Independents for Community Radio, want to do – without checking with us; another mistake that an honest journalist wouldn’t make – “A victory by the Independents will likely usher in massive downsizing at KPFA, eliminating popular programming and replacing the current paid, unionized on-air staff with all volunteers.”

First, let’s remember that I already pointed out that we were the ones involved with ending the lockout of paid staff in 1999. Now on to the present. The group you are so fond of held the board majority for three of the not quite four years I have been on the board. As such, they passed station budgets that had known spending deficits each year in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

They ran through KPFA’s entire cash reserve of a million dollars as a result. They were told by Pacifica to cut spending and instead added paid positions and moved staff around in a way that benefitted people on our board and members of their group or supported them within the station. They ended up with new or better jobs at KPFA. KPFA ended up with more, not fewer, expenditures.

When they were the majority on the board, Concerned Listeners – now calling themselves Save KPFA – ran through KPFA’s entire cash reserve of a million dollars.

Today we are dealing with that legacy. This week the station borrowed money from another Pacifica station to meet the payroll. Will there need to be a different budget or can we continue spending at the same rate? The answer should not be beyond your comprehension. Before I forget, I guess that little detail about borrowing money also does away with your favorite slate’s claim that KPFA is supporting other Pacifica stations.

Will the now unavoidable budget cuts have an effect on paid staff? Of course, since salaries and benefits are the single largest budget item by far. Will that happen if your favorite slate is in the majority? Of course, since salaries and benefits are the single largest budget item by far. Who brought us to this point? Of course, your favorite slate.

We can’t afford this public political board election bickering. Think fox and hen house. We need to move beyond thinking those who have almost killed the station will keep it alive in the future. Every effort will be made to keep as much paid staff as possible by Independents for Community Radio and to remove the foxes.

Your willful disregard for how KPFA got to its present precarious state does not belong in journalism even if it is only on a blog site and pseudo-journalism. It is beyond the pale.

Sasha Futran is a member of the KPFA Local Station Board and Independents for Community Radio. She can be reached at kpfasasha@yahoo.com.

Learn more at SAN FRANCISCO BAY VIEW NATIONAL BLACK NEWSPAPER.

[3]  If memory serves your author, Dr. Frederic S. Lee, a former professor at your author’s alma mater, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, actually coined the term heterodox economics to emphasise the heretical nature of challenging the underlying assumptions of neoclassical economics.

My colleague and personal friend wrote a memorial for our beloved Dr. Fred Lee, In memoriam: Frederic S. Lee (1949-2014), el adiós a un “economista blasfemo”[*].  The title translates from the Spanish to In memoriam: Frederic S. Lee (1949-2014), farewell to a blasphemous economist.  (I’ll have to translate my friend’s poignant and informative memorial for Dr. Lee from the Spanish into the English, for our Spanish language learners.)

***

[Image of The Atlantic magazine cover by Source used via Fair use.]

[12 SEP 2016]

[Last modified  23:18 PDT  14 SEP 2016]

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Sociologist Dr. Erik Olin Wright On A Guaranteed Income For All

05 Tue Apr 2016

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, collective bargaining, Global Labour Movement, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), Sociology

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Against the Grain, basic income guarantee, C.S. Soong, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Dr. Erik Olin Wright, Dr. John Henry, Dr. L. Randall Wray, Dr. Philippe Van Parijs, Dr. Stephanie Kelton, employer of last resort (ELR), federal job guarantee program, Goldfrapp, guaranteed income, heterodox economics, KPFA, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, Modern Money Theory, New Deal, New Economic Perspectives, Pacifica Radio Network, taxation, transcript, UMKC, UMKC heterodox economics, unconditional basic income (UBI), University of Missouri-Kansas City, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Utopia, utopian socialism, Works Progress Administration (WPA)

319px-ErikOlinWright.2013LUMPENPROLETARIAT—One of the more inspiring and important developments in modern economic theory is modern monetary theory, or modern money theory.  Understanding how modern money works today in a post-gold standard world, when sovereign currency issuers, such as the USA, can employ modern money for public purpose, we come to find that such a federal government can never go broke. [1]

Along similar lines, Dr. Erik Olin Wright has joined free speech radio’s Against the Grain to discuss the concept of a basic income guarantee. [2] Listen (or download) here. [3]

Messina

***

[Programme summary from KPFA.org archive page]

AGAINST THE GRAIN—[5 APR 2016]  A number of thinkers and activists on the left have embraced the notion of a basic income paid to all without means testing or a work requirement. Erik Olin Wright argues that a generous basic income would contribute to revitalizing a socialist challenge to capitalism. He also distinguishes the version of UBI that he supports from that pushed by some on the right.

Erik Olin Wright
https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/

Learn more at AGAINST THE GRAIN.

***

[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Against the Grain]

AGAINST THE GRAIN—[5 APR 2016]  “Today on Against the Grain, what if everyone was entitled to, was guaranteed, a basic income, so they didn’t have to work to live?

“I’m C.S. Soong.  Erik Olin Wright, a sociologist and leading radical thinker, makes a case for an unconditional basic income—after these news headlines with Mark Mericle.”  (c. 1:06)

[KPFA News Headlines omitted by scribe]  (c. 5:45)

“From the studios of KPFA in Berkeley, California this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.  My name is C.S. Soong.

“It may sound weird.  It may sound utopian.  But an unconditional basic income is what many people have been advocating for years.  You would not have to work to get this income.  Everyone would be entitled to it.  And, in some scenarios, it’s enough to live on.

“So, what explains the appeal to many on the Left of the basic income?  Why have some conservatives and libertarians embraced the idea?  Would the economy collapse because most people would stop working?  And to what extent would the adoption of an unconditional basic income facilitate or fuel a transition away from capitalism?

“Erik Olin Wright is a leading proponent of a basic income and a prominent radical scholar.  He’s a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  And his books include:  Understanding Class; Alternatives to Capitalism; and Envisioning Real Utopias.

“When Erik Olin Wright joined me in KPFA’s Berkeley studios, I asked him when the notion of a basic income first caught his attention.”  (c. 7:03)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ”  (c. 8:30)

C. S. SOONG:  “So, in titling their paper The Capitalist Road to Communism, were they suggesting, then, that something could be done within the framework of capitalism to move society in a communist direction?”  (c. 8:46)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 10:00)

C. S. SOONG:  “So, what would an unconditional basic income, what would it, basically, entail?”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “Alright.  Well, the first thing to note is that the idea of unconditional basic income comes in a variety of flavours.  And, depending upon which flavour, it means different things.

“For some people, an unconditional basic income is really a bare minimum survival income.  You know?  To use a kind of metaphor, you don’t starve if you have a basic income.

“Most progressives, who embrace the idea, think of it as a more generous idea, that a true unconditional basic income enables you to live at a culturally-acceptable decent standard of living, which would include, therefore, enough income to have recreation, but a kind of no frills version.  So, you can perfectly, comfortably, get by with it.  But, if you really want to live a more extravagant lifestyle, then you have to earn additional income one way or another.

“So, that’s how I like to think of it.  Certainly, for the purposes that I defend an unconditional basic income, it’s above a survival level.” (c. 11:14)

C. S. SOONG:  “And who, in your idea of a basic income, who provides this income and how often?”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “Well, income means it’s a flow.  So, it’s more of a practical than a principled question of whether it’s providing it, so to speak, on a weekly or monthly basis.  Some versions give you an annual lump sum.  I think that’s probably not prudent, just because of people’s incapacity to budget well.

“So, [chuckles] you know, you think of it as a paycheck.  So, paychecks typically come on biweekly or monthly bases.  It would be a flow of income along those lines.  (c. 11:49)

“It’s provided by the state.  And it’s paid for through taxation. [2]  Everybody gets it, everybody.  Bill Gates gets an unconditional basic income.”

C. S. SOONG:  “It doesn’t depend on whether you work or any other criterion.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “Right.  Crucially, it doesn’t depend on how much money, how rich you are.  The unconditionality has, both, a moral component—you don’t have to be a good person to get it—and it has an economic component—it’s not means tested.

“Now, of course, the taxes needed to pay for an unconditional basic income for Bill Gates are gonna go up by many orders of magnitude, more than the basic income he receives.  So, Bill Gates would be a net contributor.  And there’s lots of details about how that works.

“One should think of it in the same way we think of unconditional, or used to think, perhaps, of unconditional basic education.  Everybody gets it.  Some people are net contributors.  That is, their taxes go up in order to pay for public education by more than they receive in public education.  But that’s seen as okay because it’s a public good; and it makes for a better society, if everybody gets a basic education.

“Well, a basic income has a bit of that character.  Everybody benefits from it, even if you’re a net contributor because it creates a different kind of society, a society in which everybody has enough to live a morally decent, or culturally acceptable, standard of living.”  (c. 13:20)

C. S. SOONG:  “So, what impact would an unconditional basic income have on people’s ability and inclination, really, to take a job, to go into the labour market and work for money?”  (c. 13:37)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “Well, let me first clarify one other detail about the design.  And that is who gets it.  So, we said it’s unconditional on means testing or on virtue.  There is still the question of whether, for example, it’s a citizen’s income or a resident’s income.  That is, anybody who lives in a country, anyone under the jurisdiction of a state should get it.  And, if it’s a resident’s income, does it include undocumented workers?

“Now, to some extent these are practical questions, rather than principled questions.  I mean practical in the political sense.  It’s pretty hard to imagine an unconditional basic income ever passing, you know, even in pretty progressive places, that would include illegal residents.  Everybody agrees that tourists shouldn’t get it.  [chuckles]  You know?  [SNIP]

“I think, on principle, it should go to everybody who’s in the economy, in the labour market, in the labour force.  That the question of how you deal with the illegal migrants is a separate question, which needs resolution.  We need ways of dealing with that.  But that the moral principle of an unconditional basic income is precisely that anybody who is on your territory participating in the economic life of your society should unconditionally have their basic needs met.

In the most fundamental sense, I think an unconditional basic income should be for everybody in the world.  I mean I think you should have a goal of a basic income.” (c. 15:18)

C. S. SOONG:  “Mm.  M-hm.  Yeah.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “And it should be globally distributed.  Well, that’s certainly not on as a practical political move.”  (c. 15:25)

C. S. SOONG:  “Erik Olin Wright joins us in studio.  He is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a leading radical thinker.  I’m C.S.  And this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.  And we are talking, today, about unconditional basic income, which Erik has written a lot about and thought a lot about.

“So, yeah, back to this question of jobs and the necessity of having a job.  So, if the basic income, the unconditional basic income gives you, provides you with, kind of, a culturally-acceptable no frills existence, then is the whole idea that people would no longer need to go out onto the labour market?”  (c. 16:11)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “The idea is that you don’t need to go into the labour market to get your basic necessities.  So, in the United States, roughly speaking—and, you know, it varies from place to place because of cost-of-living—but think of an unconditional basic income as being in the $12- to $15-thousand-dollars-a-year range, roughly speaking, which would mean if, um, two adults live together, they have a household income of $30,000.  You’d have to think through the details of children.  You know?  Do you get a partial income?  How do you do it?  Again, those are important details. You can put those to the side.

“So, just take a couple.  $30,000 dollars in most places in the United States, you can live okay.

“But most people probably want more income than $30,000.  So, there’ll be at least some reason why many—I think most people—will want to gain additional earnings.

“With an unconditional basic income, as soon as you earn additional income, you start paying taxes on the additional.  There’s no, the unconditional basic income isn’t taxed.  It’d be, kind of, directly.  If all you live on is the basic income, you don’t pay taxes, income taxes, on that.  But you start paying taxes on any earnings above your basic income.

“The tax rates will be higher.  You have to figure out exactly where the cut point is, where you become a net contributor, rather than a net beneficiary.

“But there’s no disincentive to work.  That is you’re not—the first $10,000 you earn above your basic income is not gonna be taxed at 80%.  You know, it’ll probably have a 15% or 20% income tax rate on the first $10,000 you earn above a basic income.

“So, the first thing to note is there is not a disincentive to work.

“And it’s only people whose life plans are consistent with $15- or $30 thousand, in a couple, whose life plans are consistent with that level of earnings who will say:  That’s all I want.

“Now, there will be people, certainly, for whom that’s true.”  (c. 18:15)

C.S. SOONG:  “But, if they think that way, that is a disincentive to work.  I mean a lot of people are worried that so many people will take themselves out of the labour market that the economy might even collapse.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “So, just to be kind of technically precise, a disincentive means you’re punished if you work.  This would—”

C.S. SOONG:  “Gotcha.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “—mean a lack of an incentive to work for them.  Right?  So, they don’t feel any incentive to work ‘cos they feel no need to work.  But there’s no disincentive to work.

“With means tested anti-poverty programmes there’s an actual disincentive to work because you lose your benefits if you work.”

C.S. SOONG:  “Right.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “Okay.  Well, there’s no disincentive, then, to work.

“Yeah, so a basic income is an unworkable plan if it’s the case that the large majority of people really have as their deepest longings to be couch potatoes.

“So, you know, if the human spirit, contrary to what many of us believe, is really profoundly lazy, in the sense that we don’t care about creativity—we don’t care about making a contribution to our world and leaving our stamp in some way or other, we really just wanna watch soap operas—so, if that is what we are at our essence—you give people $15,000 dollars and everybody stops working—the system collapses.

“Well, I’m being sarcastic.  You know?”

C.S. SOONG:  “Sure.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “This is a caricature.  There will be some people, though, that will absolutely live a life of leisurely indulgence.

“Philippe Van Parijs, one of his earliest and terrific pieces on this is called ‘Should Surfers Be Fed?’  ‘Should Surfers Be Fed?’  And it’s basically raising the standard big objection to basic income that it will mean that people who work hard and generate the income that gets taxed for a basic income will be subsidising beach bums.”  (c. 20:13)

C.S. SOONG:  “But you could, certainly, maybe, with a basic income you could be a beach bum; but you could also be productive in a way, that’s not profitable to you—right?—that doesn’t involve working for money.

“So, for example, you talk about, you’ve written about care-giving labour.  And the fact is that many care-givers are not compensated at all.  Well, this will allow them to do work.  And, you know, this is not couch potato work.  So, they’ll do work.  That kind of work, they won’t have a job for money, for pay.  And, so, how does that work in the context of basic income and to what extent is that a positive thing in your eyes?”  (c. 20:53)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “Of course, it’s an absolutely positive thing.  [SNIP]  And it would lead to an absolute expansion and enrichment of the arts.”  (c. 23:46)

C.S. SOONG:  “What about the situation of paid workers?  [SNIP]  ” (c. 23:47)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  “(c. 26:01)

C.S. SOONG:  “I’m C.S.  This is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.  Erik Olin Wright joins me.  He is Vilas Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  And he’s author of many books, including Understanding Class, Envisioning Real Utopias, and Alternatives to Capitalism: proposals for a democratic economy with Robin Hahnel.

“And I, and Erik, want you to know that many of Erik’s books are available for free online.  We’ve put a link on our web page at KPFA.org.  Just go to KPFA.org/programs and click on Against the Grain; and you’ll find a link to Erik’s website, where you’ll find PDF links to many of his publications.

“So, essentially, what you’re saying is that workers have more power, they have greater leverage in relation to employers under a system with unconditional basic income.  And is that part of the reason?  Well, how big a part of the reason that you support unconditional basic income is this?  That there are unequal power relations in society and that an important goal of movement for social justice ought to be to adjust and transform those power relations.”  (c. 27:22)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  “Yes, certainly.  [SNIP]  ” (c. 29:10)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 30:14)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 32:11)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 33:38)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 37:29)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 38:39)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 43:42)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 51:44)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 53:25)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT:  ”    [SNIP]  ” (c. 56:38)

C. S. SOONG:  ” [SNIP]

[SNIP] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at AGAINST THE GRAIN.

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

*

“Utopia” (2000) by Goldfrapp

***

NEW ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES—[7 JUN 2016]  NEP’s Pavlina Tcherneva speaks with Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal about Basic Income Guarantees.  You can view the segment here. [5]

Learn more at NEW ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES.

***

[1]  The topic of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), or Modern Money Theory, is something, which we’ve been lagging to present on Lumpenproletariat.org.  (Your author has published some articles on MMT at MediaRoots.org some years ago.)

MMT presents many emancipatory implications for the working class, such as the use of modern money for public purpose, or beneficial public spending at the federal level, which is conducive to full employment, such as a job guarantee programme, and more.  Technically speaking, if President Obama (or any administration) understood, or acknowledged, MMT, we could implement a job guarantee (or an income guarantee), which could end involuntary unemployment today.  As heterodox economist Dr. L. Randall Wray, a former UMKC professor of mine, teaches us, it’s not a lack of economic options, which prevents full employment, it’s a lack of political will.

As another of my UMKC professors, heterodox economist Dr. Stephanie Kelton, teaches us:  There are no fiscal constraints.  The only constraints are real resource constraints.  Dr. Kelton is a Chief Economist for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and priorly served as the Chief Economist for the Senate Minority Budget Committee under Bernie Sanders. [4]

In the following video, Dr. Stephanie Kelton discusses MMT, mainly as it applies to the national budget deficits, debunking the myth that budget deficits are necessarily bad for the USA’s economy.  But Dr. Kelton also discussed the job guarantee programme and the basic income guarantee, among other things, which could be addressed by MMT (as emphasised by the transcript excerpt below).

“The Angry Birds Approach to Understanding Deficits in the Modern Economy” by heterodox economist Dr. Stephanie Kelton (University of Missouri-Kansas City), November 2014

[Transcript excerpt by Messina for Lumpenproletariat, Dr. Stephanie Kelton, and Dr. John Henry, who taught Dr. Kelton as well as your author]

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON:  (c. 56:48)  “We could be doing useful things [with an understanding of modern money].  Right?  We’ve got infrastructure, that’s dilapidated, falling down.  The civil engineers tell us we need to spend $3.6 trillion dollars to repair ports, bridges, water treatment facilities, schools, hospitals, national parks.  The whole of our national infrastructure is given a grade of D+ by the American Society of Civil Engineers. And we’re told we ought to spend $3.6 trillion to get it up to snuff.  We could do that.  We have tons of people who are out of work, mechanical skills, construction, and so forth.  We could do that.

“We could enhance retirement schemes, instead of attacking them, undermining them, and trying to weaken them, to cut benefits, and so forth.  We could make it safer, more secure, more generous.  We could do that.

“We could deal with climate change.

“But the question, now, is always:  How are you gonna pay for it?  We’ve answered that question[—by understanding how money works in a modern economy].

“We could help students cope with student debt.  Many people believe there’s a crisis with student debt in this country.  Now, student debt is surpassing credit card debt.  There’s over a trillion dollars of student loan debt out there.  There are lots of politicians who—well, not lots.  There are some politicians who are working to promote legislation to help alleviate student debt burdens.  There’s even a movement to strike the debt.

“There are ways to help young people, who are struggling with student debt, who, as a result of all that student debt, are postponing household formation.  They’re living at home longer, so they don’t get their first apartment.  They don’t marry.  There’s so many starting everything later.  And it’s delaying a lot of spending in the economy.  It’s got a lot of hedge fund managers, quite frankly, and others quite worried about future consumption and how robust the economy’s going to be going forward because of the student debt.  (c. 58:52)

[Addressing Inequality]

“We’re hearing a lot about inequality.  Right?  Since 2009, when the U.S. officially left recession and went into recovery—okay, we’re in recovery mode; output is growing, income is growing—90% of all the income gains over that period of time since 2009, 90% has gone to the top 10%.  Within that category, to the top 1%.  Within that category, to the top point-one percent [i.e., 0.1%].  And within that category, to the top point-zero-one percent [i.e., 0.01%].

“If we continue to distribute income gains in this way, where the income gains are going to those least likely to—”

AUDIENCE:  “—spend it—”

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON:  “—and most likely to—”

AUDIENCE:  “—save—”

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON:  “—and, especially, save in the form of—”

AUDIENCE:  “—[inaudible].”

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON:  “Well, no.  They like real estate and stocks and stuff like that.  Right?  And, so, they buy assets.  And this tends to push asset prices higher, which has a lot of folks, including Janet Yellen, worried that we are, the Fed has been creating bubbles, asset price bubbles.  (c. 1:00:03)

“And the problem with bubbles is, it’s nice to ride a bubble up.  But when the bubble pops, there’s a lot of collateral damage.  Okay?  So you’re hearing a lot.

“We could address income inequality.

“We could institute a federally-funded job guarantee programme modelled on the WPA, the CCC, the National Youth Administration, the New Deal programmes, raise incomes from the bottom up, that address inequality.

“People talk about a basic income guarantee.  You hear a lot about that now.  Just give everybody money.  Right?  No matter how much money you have, we’ll give you money, too.  Everybody gets a check.  It’s Oprah.  You get a check.  And you get a check.  And you get a check.  But Bill Gates gets a check.  Everybody gets a check.”

AUDIENCE:  “[laughter]“

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON:  “The problem with that scheme is that, while it gives more income to those at the bottom, it gives the same amount to everyone else.  So, it’s a ratcheting up of everyone, which does nothing, of course, to deal with inequality.

“But, if you focus on those at the bottom, the unemployed, the least skilled and so forth, and you guarantee employment with benefits and so forth, you’re lifting incomes for those at the bottom and reducing inequality.  So, there are just lots and lots of things, that we could do.

“But if we don’t do them, if we don’t do them and we continue to have government pull back its contribution, the only way that we’re gonna keep this economy going, the only way the game is gonna continue and the pieces are gonna go around the board is if we have bubbles—because bubbles work for a while; the problem is that eventually they pop—debt—we can have the private sector leverage back up.  They did this in the late ’90s, the mid-to-late ’90s and into the 2000s.  We borrowed like crazy.  We took the equity out of our homes.  We borrowed against perceived increases in wealth because stocks were booming and so forth.

“We can drive this thing with private-sector debt for a while.  The trouble is that, too, tends to end badly.

“We can focus on trade with the rest of the world.  Well, we’re just gonna dig ourselves out of this by reversing our trade deficits.  We just need a weaker currency here at home.

“You can try all this sort of stuff.  These are not good solutions.  There’s a better way to do this.  But we’ve gotta get the thinking right.  We gotta get the thinking right.

“And, so, it’s okay to have differences.  It’s okay to have parties, who disagree about the proper role for government, priorities, spending versus taxes.  But we want the disagreements to move in the right direction.  We don’t want them to say:  We need higher taxes and less spending.  We want them to fight over whether to have lower taxes or more spending.  That would be, at least, a debate, that is moving in the right direction.

“So, it’s not that we all have to think exactly the same way.  But, if we get the thinking right, somewhere in the middle, we might end up okay.  (c. 1:03:06)  [SNIP] “

[SNIP] (c. 1:18:37)

Learn more at NEW ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES.

*

“L. Randall Wray: Time for a New Approach for Unemployment” (2013) (University of Missouri-Kansas City)

*

Also see, among others, economist Dr. L. Randall Wray on modern monetary theory:

  • Understanding Modern Money: The Key to Full Employment (26 JUN 2006) by Dr. L. Randall Wray (UMKC)
  • Modern Monetary Theory: A Primer On Macroeconomics for Sovereign Monetary Systems (2012) by Dr. L. Randall Wray (UMKC)
  • Employment Guarantee Schemes: Job Creation and Policy in Developing Countries and Emerging Markets (2013) edited by John J. Murray and Dr. Matthew Forstater (UMKC)
  • The Job Guarantee: Toward True Full Employment (2013) edited by John J. Murray and Dr. Matthew Forstater (UMKC)

Also see related Marxian concepts, relevant to understanding modern money, such as:

  • value-form
  • use value

Also see NewEconomicPerspectives.org.

On the costs of capitalist imperialism

“Part #1: Dr. John Henry is a UMKC professor of economics focusing on the history of economic thought. He is the author of two books and numerous articles. He had taught at California State University-Sacramento, and at Cambridge and Staffordshire, England. John shared the view of the inadequacy of economics to quantify the costs of war.

“On March 19, 2012, the ninth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war the American Friends Service Committee organized the community forum “Legacies of the Iraq War /Lessons for U.S.’s Iran Policy” at UMKC, Kansas City, MO. Panel members commented on the human, economic and political impacts of the Iraq war on Iraq and the U.S. They offered an analysis of U.S.- Iran relations, shared comment on how Iranians view the conflict and how identified lessons the U.S. should take from Iraq to guide U.S.- Iran policy.”

“Part #2”

[2]  Sociologist Dr. Erik Olin Wright, as a utopian visionary, offers welcome alternatives to the current capitalist modes of production hurting the working classes the world over.  Unfortunately, Dr. Wright’s analysis doesn’t reflect an interdisciplinary approach utilising literature in the field of economics, so he errs in his understanding of taxation and public spending.

Apparently, Dr. Wright lacks crucial knowledge of Modern Monetary Theory, or Modern Money Theory, which is relevant to his utopian work because it would correct some of his misguided economic assumptions, such as Dr. Wright’s assertion that a guaranteed income for all would have to be funded through taxation.  As heterodox economist Dr. Stephanie Kelton teaches her students and audiences around the world:

Taxes don’t pay for anything.  All modern money exists as an IOU.  When the government prints a US dollar, it essentially prints an IOU, which—since the USA has gone off the gold standard—entitles its holder to get another US dollar or pay one dollar’s worth of tax liability.  Dollars are no longer backed by gold, so one cannot hand in dollars and convert them to gold.  So, when taxes are paid, those IOUs used to pay those taxes are, effectively, extinguished.  Indeed, when US dollars return to the USA’s system of central banks, they’re shredded.  So, taxes don’t pay for government spending.  What actually pays for government spending is a sovereign currency issuer’s ability, such as that of the USA, to create its own currency out of thin air and use it for socially beneficial purposes.

Outside of Dr. Wright’s lack of knowledge of modern monetary theory, a survey of which would greatly benefit his analyses, he contributes welcome and radical concepts capable of shifting conventional wisdom.

Ultimately, Dr. Erik Olin Wright, essentially, advocates for society adopting the rules of the Monopoly board game, as an ideal for society.  Everyone who passes Go gets an income allowance to allow them to keep playing the game of life within a capitalist mode of production until the wealth concentrates in such few hands that all but one player is driven into destitution.  But Dr. Wright argues that a guaranteed income, within a capitalist mode of production, would only be a part of a longer-term process of building alternative structures to capitalist relations, which could be capable of gradually undermining capitalism.

Dr. Wright seems to follow the logic of a guaranteed income along moral and ethical lines.  Unfortunately, his lack of knowledge of modern monetary theory leads him to fall prey to the conventional understanding of public spending, i.e. the myth that the federal government needs to collect taxes in order to spend the money it creates out of thin air.  Citing MMT, Dr. Wright’s argument would be stronger.  But nobody told Dr. Wright that taxes don’t pay for anything.

[3]  Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  Against the Grain, this episode hosted by C.S. Soong, for Tuesday, 5 APR 2016, 12:00 PDT.

[4]  See media reports, such as:

  • “Bernie Sanders’ connections with two UMKC economists runs deep“, by Mark Davis, Kansas City Star, 29 MAR 2016
  • “MMT and Bernie Sanders” by L. Randall Wray, New Economic Perspectives, 20 NOV 2015
  • “Sanders adviser talks econ policy, politics” by Natalina Lopez, Yale Daily News, 17 NOV 2015  [N.B.:  This campus and its journalism completely obfuscated the most revolutionary aspects of MMT.  In fact, somehow, no mention is made of MMT at all.]
  • “Watch Out, MMT’s About, As Bernie Sanders Hires Stephanie Kelton” by Tim Worstall, Forbes, 12 JAN 2015  [N.B.:  This journalist seems, however, to have never read of any of the literature on modern monetary theory (MMT), for he confuses and distorts the concepts, creating strawmen to attack and make possible his empty critiques of MMT.]

[5]  Link to Bloomberg video clip, “The Argument Against Basic Income”, 7 JUN 2016, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-06-07/the-argument-against-basic-income

***

[Image “EricOlinWright.2013” by Aliona Lyasheva used via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0]

[6 APR 2016]

[Last modified  20:32 PDT  7 JUN 2016]

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