Dean Baker, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive

[KoKo]

FDL Book Salon Welcomes
By: William D. Cohan Sunday September 18, 2011 1:59 pm

Welcome Dean Baker, (blog) and Host William D. Cohan, (blog).

The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive

Host, William D. Cohan:

Progressives need a fundamentally new approach to politics. They have been losing not just because conservatives have so much more money and power, but also because they have accepted the conservatives’ framing of political debates. They have accepted a framing where conservatives want market outcomes whereas liberals want the government to intervene to bring about outcomes that they consider fair.

This is not true. Conservatives rely on the government all the time, most importantly in structuring the market in ways that ensure that income flows upwards. The framing that conservatives like the market while liberals like the government puts liberals in the position of seeming to want to tax the winners to help the losers.

This “loser liberalism” is bad policy and horrible politics. Progressives would be better off fighting battles over the structure of markets so that they don’t redistribute income upward. This book describes some of the key areas where progressives can focus their efforts in restructuring market so that more income flows to the bulk of the working population rather than just a small elite.

By releasing The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive under a Creative Commons license and as a free download, Baker walks the walk of one of his key arguments — that copyrights are a form of government intervention in markets that leads to enormous inefficiency, in addition to redistributing income upward. (Hard copies will be available for purchase, at cost, in the near future.) Distributing the book for free not only enables it to reach a wider audience, but Baker hopes to drive home one of the book’s main points via his own example.

More discussion at........
http://firedoglake.com/

[xchrom]

1. Loser Liberalism is right. Excellent. Nt

[Arctic Dave]

2. In the cons frme of mind, the government is a way to take money.

In a progreessive frame of mind it is a system to create fairness. We have two completely views of why government is there. Not really new but it does give someone a frame of mind of what to expect from them. They only look for loopholes to exploit for monetary gain whereas a progressive looks for them to fix. Unfortunately greed seems to be a bigger motivator then goodwill.

[dkf]

3. Wow finally someone is on the same track as I am.

Fix the system that creates the inequality instead of trying to fix the after effect through taxes and payment of government funds.

People that help generate the profits should be beneficiaries of the policy first, not the random person.

Then it is obvious they are entitled instead of an unconnected recipient of government largesse.

[Claudia Jones]

4. how does this differ from the right wing position?

The right wing has been hammering on this theme for decades.

[chill_wind]

5. K & R for Dean Baker and this excellent gesture.

Here's the page at his website for the pdf book download link and several other formats, it looks like (PDF | Kindle (.AZW) | NOOK (.EPUB) | .MOBI):

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/books/the-end-of-loser-liberalism

The pdf download. It's 171 pages:
http://deanbaker.net/images/stories/documents/End-of-Loser-Liberalism.pdf

Thanks for posting this KoKo!

[txlibdem]

6. "Tax the winners to help the losers" - you just fell in your own trap

The rich and corporations who currently benefit from Socialism in America are not "winners." They are a collection of men and women who are most successful at hiding their various crimes "on the way to the top." They are, simply put, psychopaths who show zero empathy, zero remorse, zero pity, only a fierce drive to get more for themselves.

Why worship the criminally insane???

Remember that everyone thought Bernie Maddoff was a genius with the market... now he's behind bars.

[chill_wind]

7. I assure you that he's talking about the conservative framing

and doesn't subscribe to it. Just describing it.

[chill_wind]

8. Interesting nugget from book salon interview:

http://fdlbooksalon.com/2011/09/18/fdl-book-salon-welcomes-dean-baker/


Someone asked:

"Have you ever been consulted by anyone in the current Administration? In Congress?

I find it maddening that the people who have correctly anticipated the consequences of bad policy (you, Stiglitz, Krugman, etc.) are ignored when their predictions prove accurate. Instead, we go back to the same poisoned well…"

He responds:

"I have occasionally talked to some people in the administration. I have generally assumed that it was to humor me (get an invitation to the White House — wow). I sort of doubt that most of what I had to say was taken seriously, although I am impressed to see from the excerpts of the Suskind book that a financial speculation tax was apparently debated at the top levels — nixed by Geithner and Summers."

See his discussion/articles on his website


Facts and Myths About the Financial Speculation Tax pdf_small
December 2010

The Un-Sensible Common Ground
The New York Times, December 1, 2010

Proposed Tax May Help, Not Hurt, Small Investors
The Wall Street Journal, January 19, 2010

Support for a Financial Transactions Tax pdf_small

Economists' Letter in Support of a Financial Transactions Tax pdf_small

Representative DeFazio (OR) introduces FTT legislation

Paul Krugman: Taxing the Speculators

more at the link

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/issues/fsthttp://fdlbooksalon.com/2011/09/18/fdl-book-salon-welcomes-dean-baker//