Hear, hear, Amy! I second that idea completely...

Truth

Mr. Capitalist:

As it is May Day--International Workers' Day--just thought I'd comment that Thames' myopic dollar-centrism is yet another symptom of capitalism's inherent drive to convert all human values to market values.

Capitalist rhetoric may proclaim that capitalism alone allows human beings to fully realize their potential--ie. become "millionaires"--but that is merely a feint to distract you from capitalism's real aims: to strictly redefine human beings as producers and consumers, not citizens, to close the public square, turning all property into private property, and to vitiate any and all genuinely democratic processes by which an aware citizenry could rein in the excesses to which capital, by its very nature, is given.

Thames is a stooge of this distorted vision of human society. However, based on my recent verbal fisticuffs with various denizens of this board, I cannot but suspect that he is hardly alone in this at USM.

Liberty! Solidarity! Equality! Happy May Day!

Speaking of economics, we note the passing of John Kenneth Galbraith at age 94. JKG was on my list of Famous People I Have Actually Seen. He was in the living room of my dorm holding a press conference one morning in the late 1960's. I was extremely jazzed but when I told the family, my father (self-taught high school dropout, true son of the oppressed working class) was horrified. He thought Galbraith was the devil's spawn for some reason I don't remember.

My father, blue-collar son of the oppressed working class that he was, had utter contempt for Marxism, the labor movement, Woody Gutherie and Pete Seeger, and anything that reeked of collectivism in any form.

A reminder not to make assumptions about the knowledge, beliefs, and thinking ability of the oppressed working class, by the way.

Q. What do all the following have in common? Apartheid, Jim Crow, Fascism, Naziism, the Holacaust, the Great Depression, child labor, the "enclosures", Atlantic basin chattel slavery, the 14 hour day, wholesale degradation of the natural environment in pursuit of market value, the USA's record of shame in dealing with Native America, Three Mile Island, colonialism.

A. All happened under the aegis of either fully developed or emerging capitalist systems. Some are still happening. Several of them augur that capitalism doesn't do too well with the "liberty thing" either.

Also, LVN, I'm not making assumptions about the "oppressed working class." I come from three generations of industrial workers, union rank and file born and bred. If it weren't for the union, union wages and job protections, I wouldn't have gotten the halfway decent education I managed to get.

One of the things I just don't understand about Southerners of all classes is the knee jerk reaction against labor unions. When I worked in union shops in the Rust Belt, I had excellent dental and health insurance that cost me nothing and had no deductible. I could take college courses for free, and did, and could look forward to real vacations--6-10 weeks a year with modest seniority. Finally I also had, in the event of the periodic slumps endemic to capitalist systems, generous sub-pay benefits that would've enabled me to pay a reasonable mortgage and keep beans on the table for twelve months.

Oh yeah, and there were those "union wages" that make most Southerners livid with a wierd combination of rage and suppressed envy: now about $25 hour, plus benefits or about $50K a year before taxes, certainly a princely sum, I'm sure you'll agree.

Is something wrong with all that? I mean, rather than diss union workers and unions as corrupt and lazy, why aren't you folks angry that similar wages and benefits are not available to your own "oppressed working classes"?

Final word: the labor unions I knew were imperfect and flawed; but what's the alternative? The alternative is the rotten standard of living and quality of life usual to industrial and other blue collar workers in anti-union states like Mississippi.

And again, I find it strange that there's so much anti-union rhetoric on this board. Y'all are in denial. The AAUP is a union. It's hamstrung by the anti-union laws governing state employees--no collective bargaining, no strike--and by the anti-union climate spawned by state anti-union shop laws--misidentified as "Right to Work" laws--as well as by the veil of secrecy kept firmly in place over the history of American workers by educators, media leaders and politicians. AAUP is a rotten union--sort of limpwristed and spineless in comparison to the fighting unions I know from my family history--but it is a union. If AAUP had acted like a real union, both before and during the hurly burly with Thames, things would've been a lot different. A lot.

 

off the plantation wrote:

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One of the things I just don't understand about Southerners of all classes is the knee jerk reaction against labor unions. When I worked in union shops in the Rust Belt, I had excellent dental and health insurance that cost me nothing and had no deductible. I could take college courses for free, and did, and could look forward to real vacations--6-10 weeks a year with modest seniority. Finally I also had, in the event of the periodic slumps endemic to capitalist systems, generous sub-pay benefits that would've enabled me to pay a reasonable mortgage and keep beans on the table for twelve months.
Oh yeah, and there were those "union wages" that make most Southerners livid with a wierd combination of rage and suppressed envy: now about $25 hour, plus benefits or about $50K a year before taxes, certainly a princely sum, I'm sure you'll agree.
Is something wrong with all that?
 

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You were on the working man's dole. You never earned that. Some spineless employer forgot to hold the line. When various businesses go bankrupt people like you move on. All benefits,nothing at risk.

Cossack, I was actually the one who said "oppressed working classes."

Truth, thanks for the correction on JKG.

Cossack wrote:

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oppressed working classes I thought this kind of jingoism dies after the 1960's. You live in the one place in the world that other people envy and try to emigrate to. You cannot point to any socialist country that has the high level of economic growth, that has the level of innovation, or that has the economic freedom of the USA. The most wonderful thing about this country is that you are able to spout this babble without fear. So long as most people in this country reject the ideas you present, we will continue to thrive and prosper.

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First, I agree with darn near everything OtP says.

Second, your description above, Cossack, describes today's China perfectly.  Economic growth is far higher there than here and has been for many years.  Is that good, however?  I don't think so.  It is because we measure everything by the bottom line in this country that our infrastructure is falling apart, our purchasing power is declining, and our CEOs make 700 times more than their average workers.  Folks, we live in the new Gilded Age.

Amy Young wrote:

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Back to topic: What is gained from making faculty millionaires? Increased tuition,fees, surcharge for utilities, parking? Where is it stated in the USM mission that we make faculty - even a single member of faculty - millionaires? We are a state institution and I don't think taxpayers want to makefaculty millionaires. Amy Young

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These are important questions Amy.  I am 99% sure that the answer is that Shelby's loyalty is not to the University of Southern Mississippi, its students, and certainly not its faculty or other employees.  His loyalty is to the local bidness community and boosters.  He wants to be part of their club - he is part of their club - and he wants them to shower him with praise as he generates more potential members for the Hattiesburg Country Club and First Baptist Church.  That's all there is to the man.

Angeline wrote:

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First, I agree with darn near everything OtP says. Second, your description above, Cossack, describes today's China perfectly.  Economic growth is far higher there than here and has been for many years.  Is that good, however?  I don't think so.  It is because we measure everything by the bottom line in this country that our infrastructure is falling apart, our purchasing power is declining, and our CEOs make 700 times more than their average workers.  Folks, we live in the new Gilded Age.

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I suspect that many Chinese are happy to be living in a country that is finally experiencing some economic growth after years of Maoist stagnation, poverty, and suffering.  Of course, today's China is not perfect compared with a utopia, and it is certainly not perfect compared with a truly free state; but it is better than it was under Mao, and it now has the chance to evolve into something more closely resembling the U.S.  (Oh, horrors!)  To the extent that China is still a far-from-admirable society, the credit is due to the wonderful communist party.

Meanwhile, I will ask both Angeline and OtP for the zillionth time: please tell us which actual society that has ever existed you admire the most.  Why is it so hard to get an answer to such a simple question?

Lest we forget wrote:

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... Meanwhile, I will ask both Angeline and OtP for the zillionth time: please tell us which actual society that has ever existed you admire the most.  Why is it so hard to get an answer to such a simple question?

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With all due respect, Lest We Forget, I don't think you will get an answer to your question.  Your question is not appropriate.  It is the type of question that ends discussion and is not useful in the search for truth.  It is like "USA, love it or leave it".  It doesn't lead to acknowledgement or correction of problems.  It is a debate tactic to end discussion. 

We may have the greatest system that ever existed (I don't know how to compare the harm we do to the good we do in the long run), but the system has problems and does evolve.  Can we correct the problems? Are we heading in the right direction?   How long can the system last?  A more primitive culture can last centuries without changing the environment. What about our system?  What will happen when fossil fuel run out? We may see this sooner that expected.

Lest we forget wrote:

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Thanks for responding, Patriot.  I truly am not interested in ending debate or discussion, just in making it more precise and testable.  Angeline and OtP (and others) routinely criticize a society they don't like (ours); they never tell us which society that do like or have liked.  I am not interested in debating the virtues of a utopia that never existed; I am interested in discussing the strengths or weaknesses of a society that has actually existed somewhere and may indeed actually exist at this moment.  But Angeline, OtP, and others are, for some reason, reluctant ever to specify such a society.  If they would specify such a society, we might have a useful discussion of the strengths of that society vs. the strengths of the U.S.  Instead, we are left debating the weaknesses of the U.S. vs. some utopia that has never existed. I certainly don't intend to claim that the U.S. is without its faults and flaws; I simply wish to suggest that western capitalism has more strengths than any other system humans have yet devised.  If you can point to a system that is actually better and that actually exists, please do so.  This is an honest, sincere request, not a debating tactic.

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How about if we work from the assumption that "there is no perfect system."  The whole point then is how do we approach the "perfect" system.  You call this comparing USA to utopia. So what? That is the result of the starting assumption.  This is the method of gradual development used by science to constantly improve theories. 

One the other hand, you seem to make the assumption that "the perfect system exist" then ask the question, "What system in existence (or that did exist) is better than what we now have here in the USA?".  You say, "I am interested in discussing the strengths or weaknesses of a society that has actually existed somewhere and may indeed actually exist at this moment." That ends discussion, as I explained before,  because no system can be identified or fully compared (I explained about the time a primitive culture could exist compared to modern culture.  I talking eons not centuries.)  Or one could answer, "the present one is the best that ever existed, but it has problems that need correction so let's get back to the discussion".

So we are talking apples and oranges, unless we use the same assumptions.

Why is it that all the socialist faculty want raises on the basis of merit? USM is a socialist system where those that rule decide who gets rewarded on the basis of attributes other than merit. You are unhappy with the socialist system you have that is government financed, and where you have no say in how it is run. USM is a microcosm of a socialist regime that allocates on the basis of family and friends. Without the checks and balances of the market that you can access, and many former USM faculty have accessed it, you would be at USM with no escape.

Angeline states,


What faculty members of all right-left persuasions at USM want from the Thames dictatorship is some democracy.

Faculty governance is something that I want to see at a university because I like choices. That is why free markets without government control lead to higher and better outcomes. Free markets give all participants a greater set of choices and reduces the ability of others to make choices for them. Since you like the freedom to make your choices at the university, why do you want a SFT making your economic decisions? Unless, of course, you believe that in a socialist society you will get to be the SFT of decision making and get to determine who gets what when and how much they can have.

Cossack wrote:

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Angeline states, What faculty members of all right-left persuasions at USM want from the Thames dictatorship is some democracy. Faculty governance is something that I want to see at a university because I like choices. That is why free markets without government control lead to higher and better outcomes. Free markets give all participants a greater set of choices and reduces the ability of others to make choices for them. Since you like the freedom to make your choices at the university, why do you want a SFT making your economic decisions? Unless, of course, you believe that in a socialist society you will get to be the SFT of decision making and get to determine who gets what when and how much they can have.

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Wait. Didin't we have a period of minimal government regulation in this country that led to monopolies and oligarchies and all sorts of nasty associated problems (as happened when the old USSR broke up)? I am all in favor of a market driven system combined with some electoral  government system (such a a republic or parlimentary system), but I find it hard to believe that the complete absence of governmental regulation (including a central bank) in a market driven economy is a good thing. Even Alexander Hamilton's actual policies (not rhetoric) were not this radical.