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المفارقة الشعبوية

May 31, 2019 Simon Johnson

واشنطن العاصمة - إن هزيمة الشعبوية تتطلب تقبل حقيقة أساسية: لم تعد السياسات الاقتصادية السيئة تؤدي بالضرورة إلى فقدان الحكومة للسلطة. وفي الواقع، أصبح من الممكن تمامًا، الآن، أن يقوي الشعبويون غير المسؤولين حظوظهم، بالفعل، في إعادة انتخابهم عن طريق تقديم وعود أكثر استحالة وأكثر جموحا- وعن طريق التسبب في المزيد من الأضرار الاقتصادية.

كيف وصلنا إلى هذه النقطة، وما هي الخطوات التي يمكن أن نتخذها للهرب منها في أسرع وقت ممكن؟

لقد جعلت العوامل الاقتصادية الهيكلية القوية في العقود الأخيرة - بما في ذلك التشغيل الآلي، والتجارة، والأزمة المالية - الكثير من الناس يشعرون بالإهمال أو سوء المعاملة من طرف هؤلاء الذين ينتمون إلى اليمين واليسار، والذين سيطروا على السياسة الاقتصادية. وعندما يصل الشعوبيون المناهضون للمؤسسة إلى السلطة، فإنهم ينفذون مجموعة من السياسات التي تخلق عدم اليقين، وتعيق الاستثمار. وتراجع الاستثمار يعني تراجع النمو الاقتصادي، وتضاؤل فرص العمل الجيدة.

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Simon Johnson

Writing for PS since 2007
118 Commentaries

Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the IMF, is a professor at MIT Sloan, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and co-founder of a leading economics blog, The Baseline Scenario. He is the co-author, with Jonathan Gruber, of Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream.

India’s Cult of Modi
Mohd Zakir/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

India’s Cult of Modi

Shashi Tharoor asks why voters re-elected, by a landslide, a prime minister who fulfilled none of his promises.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 22 in all 22 Comments on this article

Brexit Baby Jun 4, 2019

What professional thinkers don't grasp is that populism isn't about the results. It's about the principle. The "how" matters; who is in control matters. The boiler plate policies designed to appease populists by producing results miss the point. On some level, everyone knows the super-wealthy are corrupt and take advantage of their wealth to buttress their relative position at the expense of regular people. Pragmatic arguments about economic measures don't mean anything in the face of injustice.

No political peace is possible while the most salient and undeniable category of the wealthy, billionaires, run free, re-directing politicians to meet spending needs by focusing them on increasing taxes on one-, ten-, hundred-thousandaires. and low millionaires. The victims of billionaire scheming are mostly retirees from the middle class who managed to scrounge enough money over 40 years to live comfortably a little while before they die. Until a wealth tax is installed on billionaires - a significant tax, one that hurts - and people see that it is being enforced, the agitation will only increase.
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Gary Borg Jun 3, 2019

By any measure, we haven't had free trade with China. China has forced the transfer of US technologies -- most of them developed with taxpayer dollars -- to their companies. And we've offshored jobs that could have remained in the US to China. Also, tariffs were a necessary element in building US industry beginning in the 19th century. Read the history.
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Elizabeth Pula Jun 2, 2019

Hitting the message home with a few pics of reality on the streets.

Real news: Typhoid fever in LA.

Thanks to the British, of course you don't see much talk about any policy effects in the US, due to the sanitized versions of no real news, just what passes for some lousy gossip and lousy entertainment:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7095533/Pictures-downtown-LA-capture-problem-faces-trash-tries-rodents.html?ITO=applenews

Well now, lack of policy rears it's ugly head, maybe that's a bit of a new economic indicator as typhoid kind of spreading into the offices of the non-policy makers? Maybe then, they will consider they just might have a problem that affects them and their buddies too, rather than just the deplorables walking about.

Life on the real streets ain't too pretty. So discuss a way on topics like populist paradoxes. It sure hasn't created any real problem solving where it counts on the real streets. Note the new economic indicator: Typhoid Fever for US economic indicators of what really affects the economy.

I'm sure the top dogs will just tele-work from their gated community digs.

and to keep my comment a bit balanced, here's some news for the far-right bible thumpers-https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47675301

The Brits are such good allies. They really know how to tell a story.
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Elizabeth Pula Jun 2, 2019

Step 1. Read this:
To continue my tirade on this little article. Please note the phrase that I am responding to in this article is RE:"requires policies designed to create more good jobs everywhere." That phrase is in the last paragraph, last part of first sentence of the last paragraph. AND, I have read the whole article more than once.

Step 2. Read this: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-27/if-youre-millennial-student-debt-do-not-move-these-cities
P.S. Anymore, I do not like posting links directly from ZH, not that I personally have anything against ZH, but a lot of people do. I do read ZH along with a lot of other publishing platform on the internet, that are free and sometime not free, like PS. I also don't necessarily agree with a lot of the articles that are published on that first site, that I already mentioned 3 times, and I am not referring to by name anymore in this comment, because I do not want to give that specific site any undo notoriety especially.

Step 3. If you have followed this little receipt so far to the letter, you may want to consider the following statement. If recent graduates can't make it in those sort-of non-premiere-destinations in the US, then how in the world can they even expect to make it for even 3 years, in the prime urban centers that have the sky-high rents of over $1000+ USD for anything from a studio, or one bedroom. Even the 200 sq. ft. or so cubicles are projecting that level of "RENTS". Now, of course that article only refers to the recent graduates that have COLLEGE DEBT INDENTURE, which is probably at least 90%. Now, of course I am writing that statement with absolutely no statistics. Really now, this is a comment/opinion blog platform, and I'm even sharing these comments for freedom's sake. Yours and mine. Of course!

Now, on a more serious side, although every word here is very serious. What policy has even been developed, or even considered by the powers-that-be to even offset any of the "preventing the associated downward economic spiral"- seriously by any of them for any of those of the most recent graduating classes of the demographic groups of !8-35 years of age? The Financial Holding Groups are doing just fine off all of that indebting of the latest groups of SEVERELY INDENTURED. I won't add any more words to that last sentence. Although, there are really a lot more that should be used. And, depending how any reader interprets that sentence, maybe it should be "CAN BE" used.

Did you catch the irony there in the last paragraph of this comment?
Have a great day, it's definitely reigning out side!
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Peter Schaeffer Jun 2, 2019

"In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalists actually increased their parliamentary majority in the recent election, despite the government’s failure to fulfill its promises to voters. "

Modi's economic record is actually pretty good. Overall, India is doing better since the BJP replaced Congress as India's dominant political party. How much the BJP can take credit is debatable. It appears that a strong trend towards faster growth in India started before the BJP took power.

Conversely, Congress did not govern well in some respects. The Dabhol power project was a debacle. A low point for the Congress party.
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Peter Schaeffer Jun 2, 2019

As an American, I can speak best for events in the USA. The following is a quote from a newly hired New York Times editorial writer.

"Oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men"

The Democratic candidate for the White House in 2016 actually said

"If we broke up the big banks tomorrow….would that end racism? Would that end sexism?"

Of course, she wasn't shy about accepting 6 figures "speaking" fees from Wall Street and then refusing to release her speeches.

The bottom line on the 2016 election was actually provided by the Washington Post.

"The Daily 202: Rust Belt Dems broke for Trump because they thought Clinton cared more about bathrooms than jobs"

The American elite has waged a conspicuously successful against the American people and used crass identity politics to protect the status quo. Until 2016, it worked.
- Elizabeth Pula Jun 2, 2019
  
  Don't they deserve it? All's fair in politics that they sure play around in, big time. They set the rules, the other "they" are just following. While who is really taking all the money off the streets, while participating in a whole lot of criminal activities?
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Robert Wolff Jun 2, 2019

Nice tutorial, much like what is coming out all over the American Press these days. It is descriptive and comes to the correct conclusion, that liberal democracy is not only on the defensive, but losing politically worldwide.

But it fails, like most similar articles, to predict what replaces liberal democracy in its aftermath.
- Elizabeth Pula Jun 2, 2019
  
  Can't you see it? Dictatorship at a grand scale. From the West Coasts to the East Coasts. That's all there is in real on the street. No, there won't be any populist uprisings, due to international controls on the many by the really few, that get away with doing what ever they want to everybody else in the process. We are watching that scenario dramatically every day on the internet, and in our homes as the new entertainment. However, the youth, those just born and up through 35, will be suffering/enjoying the fruits of that entertainment, depending on their location and level of NON-opportunities left.
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Elizabeth Pula Jun 1, 2019

If anyone is really serious about overcoming any paradox, how about focusing some text content on the following from the Mueller Report, page 160, part 2 / p.372-Adobe version:
"The obstruction-of-justice statute most readily applicable to our investigation is
18.U.S.C. , 1512(c)(2). Section 1512(c) provides:
(c) Whoever corruptly-
(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or
attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding: or
(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. "

Start addressing some real factual, grounded thought rather than spinning more nonsense. The spin is filling up every void in the universe.
- Elizabeth Pula Jun 1, 2019
  
  RE: "Overcoming the populist paradox" is twisting and distorting any interpretation of including any validity whatsoever for any balance to power, by power of the people of the society VS any elite group, or dictator. This phrasing is in fact supporting dictatorship and every move to take away every shred of any power of the citizens within a society. The present "thing" in the position of power in the Executive Branch of the US government is NOT A POPULIST. The present political activities by either political party, and many others worldwide are NOT populist movements. The grouping of people worldwide are being manipulated by strategic, targeted propaganda messages to further erode any reasonable social contract, and reasonable behavior to create only reactive and destructive reactive behavior.
  - Robert Wolff Jun 2, 2019
    
    In any case, "Our Home is our Sanctuary", and any theory antithetical to that promotes the right of government or any other authority to the rape of our privacy.
    
    Both the Chinese Authoritarian State, and its support by the Russian State, that authorizes the rape of national "Territory" as the invasiveness of our private sanctuary, by a foreign State or any other institution claiming the right to invasion of our privacy, or their right to invade our private property for the purpose of eliminating our right to our discretionary behavior within the territorial boundaries of our private property, is an imposition on the American concept of Privacy, as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
    
    That is the American Theory of State, and must be guaranteed by the US Political State.
    - Elizabeth Pula Jun 2, 2019
      
      Well, so far the FTC and the FCC sure hasn't done a d_ _ n thing about it. And really neither has the DOJ, nor the elected leaders of either political party in the US. The big message is the message that was printed on the back of someone's wife a while ago.
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Emanuel Müller May 31, 2019

There is seems to be a widely held view among social scientist, notably economists, that the solutions to much of advanced societies problems will come from natural sciences.
However this is basically susceptible to be merely the expression of a wish to return to homeostasis born from a changing world, in essence the same wish as the populists that want to go back in time to make the world how it once was.
In other words a large proportion of ageing social scientists, that have no clue about natural sciences, rose to prominence during a period of rapid scientific progress that did translate in amazing improvements of material quality of life.
They seem to forget however to conceptualize the possibilities of natural sciences as potentially limited, both in absolute terms and in utilitarian terms.
For example their still can be amazing progress in higher and higher definition screens, we might move from 8K to 16K etc up to infinity, however the very ability of our eyes to spot any difference crashes at some point.
Technology is the world of tools, but the process of tooling shouldn't be viewed as a permanent fixture.
- Elizabeth Pula Jun 2, 2019
  
  GREAT! Absolutely great line-
  
  RE:Technology is the world of tools, but the process of tooling shouldn't be viewed as a permanent fixture.
  
  Unfortunately, right now at least, a lot of people in positions of power don't have a clue what to do with the "TOOL". They need to watch some chimpanzees for a while.
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- Robert Wolff Jun 2, 2019
  
  If technology can be thought of as including everybody in the benefits of advancement of technology and access to it's benefits justifies current political-economic power by financial elites, then we all can be thought of as succored by technology, which we can benefit from insofar as increasing our quality of life (Don't you have an iPhone?).
  
  The real question is, does the Body Politic have the power to determine its own effective future, in contraposition to the "populist paradox", or is it only destined to be subjugated to the future as determined by technological dominance of average people by corporations, IA and subjugation of human behavior, by those who understand it better than a "New Born Human Baby"?
  
  We will never understand the technology that understands US, our motives, and our behavior, better than the computers that model and understand our behavior, our motives, our dreams, hopes and inspirations, that control the Economic Superstructure that controls US.
  - Elizabeth Pula Jun 2, 2019
    
    The "Body Politic" does NOT have any power, and is even losing ACCESS to any economic opportunity to exist on levels of sustenance. The access to levels of economic opportunity are only access to minimal wage incomes, even with computer skills, even with a college degree, even with work experience. There are no entrepreneurial opportunities. The dregs of the start-ups are non-contributory platforms. The new platforms are only service subscription models primarily based on publishing. For what? of what? They are fly-by-night business models that are initial IPO generators for prior Financialization Funder's spinoffs. The stock options of the Contributors "float"are sold to the public in fan-fares, with at-the-most 5 year operational longevity. The new platforms are burn-outs of prior debt.
    
    We are not being succored by technology, and most definitely NOT succored by any of the NON-access to it's benefits that MOST DEFINITELY does NOT justify current political-economic power by financial elites.
    
    The only business model that has been created so far, by the financial elites that have benefited and especially horrendously succored by technology, is THEFT of DATA on everyone else because of limited access to technology based public communication platforms.
    Computer network systems need to be of service to the END-USER. Presently, the computer network systems are ONLY money streams for a few first accessors. Even these first accessors are not the men that developed the systems. These computer network systems cannot be fundamentally owned and controlled by a few people, that really do not, and did not have the personal competency to do the "work" alone and by themselves, as individuals. They are only profiteers and con artists that have established a business model based on theft of individual user's personal date for the thieves, and only the thieves to profit.
    
    You are kidding self, if you think that these people are motivated by any level of succoring anyone, and anything else on the planet.
    
    Gates really tried to buyout his partner, for every share. Jobs couldn't even acknowledge his own daughter and any responsible support to the woman that he impregnated during a long-term relationship. RE: Zuckerberg -from Wikipedia-"Six days after the site launched, three Harvard seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com, while he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product.[31] The three complained to The Harvard Crimson, and the newspaper began an investigation in response." Checkout Bezos, and Amazon, and Murdoch empires...
    
    They are not succoring anyone else. They are "on the take".
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E Aghdasi May 31, 2019

"When you've got a big hammer, everything looks like a nail."

So it is with economists examining the issue of populism and modern challenges to liberal democracy. Even the good ones -- and I consider Simon Johnson one of the great ones -- seem to fall into this trap.

The idea of concentrating research and technology in under-served, rural parts of America sounds sensible to me. But I don't see the evidence that it will help turn the residents of those parts of the country in a less populist direction. (I'm not saying it won't have that effect, I'm just saying it's far from clear... Thought maybe I need to read your book.) The passage of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") in the US should serve as a warning. Millions more got on health insurance as a result -- including in rural areas or those especially hurt by the secular decline in manufacturing -- and yet we still ended up with a President intent on repealing that particular law. In essence, you delivered to voters something that they said they wanted and cared about (healthcare) and it didn't matter.

The point is, the origins of the populist resurgence may have very little to do with economics at all, and may have more to do with (just spitballing here) cultural changes, immigration, the rise of social media, and the liberalization of political speech rules (which allows money to be spent more freely towards manipulating the political narrative). The solution to the problem, thus, might have to be something that has equally little to do with economic outcomes or policy.
- Elizabeth Pula Jun 2, 2019
  
  Simon can write nicely, if he did indeed even write the article personally, on a theoretical level. I'm sure he does not have any need to focus on the following mundane issues that many people are definitely affected by on a real access level.
  
  FRONTIER is finally spinning off the last of the rural hard cable phone systems that was spun off to them by the earlier Corps. AND since the 80's there hasn't been any new plowing or any new towers to serve the rural-underserved for 40 years. Those lines about 46 and now 5G are just very empty word on paper and coming out of certain people's mouths. It is meaningless. Now, communities are definitely hitting the invisible wall of NO MONEY due to NO TAX REVENUE to rebuild anything. In the rural communities, of course its still NOT rebuild but STILL BUILD. It hasn't happened, and sure won't be happening now in the short-term, and probably in the long-term.
  
  Now, even PUC's especially in CA are going to be shutting down power to communities, and the communities are accepting that great scenario, no questions asked. Why? While the Public Utility corporations haven't been putting any MONIES into rebuilding and maintaining their power line systems across the US for how many years now? So, the great solution is shut-down power so no sparks can start a fire that they might be held responsible for creating. Great solution! Expect more of the same solutions.
  
  Now the scam is adding service fees even when there is no retail repackager service agent that is contracted to the main PUC as a sub-supplier. The main contracted PUC still collects that secondary fee from the customer. I know that's reality cuz I'm paying double fees essentially to one PUC, because I do not use a secondary retail servicer.
  
  So essentially, the PU is doubling the KW charge, by collecting a non-outsourced fee. This is what the FTC is now allowing at least in the North-Eastern US.
  
  Criminal. Who cares right? A person is almost better being off-the-grid to begin with, with what will be coming down-line.
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- Elizabeth Pula Jun 2, 2019
  
  The problem is the delusional ignorance of the electorate and the corruption of the elected. The message delivered was not the real message. The fools got played. Check out who really will even be getting the significant payouts to the so-called "family farmers" by the USDA?
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- Robert Wolff Jun 2, 2019
  
  I perceive you are trying to propose a more reasonable system, with less conflict and more agreeable conclusions regarding who should pay, and who should be payed for.
  
  Populism, in Southwest Asia (SWA), North Africa (Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Mali, and other African Nations) supports the economic advancement of the "Middle Class" in those nations, just as it does in America.
  
  If the "Average Economist" cannot succeed in in Africa, it cannot succeed in America, Europe, China or Russia.
  
  Those who want jobs that gain them economic advantage in all of the above, are in a common bund that deserve to rise together, in all nationalistic cultures.
  - Elizabeth Pula Jun 2, 2019
    
    American leadership no long has established any policies that even comes close to allowing any advancement of the so-called middle-class. If Africa is, then, Thank God for your success.
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