The Progressive Economic Voices On Obama's Team That Detractors Don't Want You To Know About

[KittyWampus]

Obama told Furman he wanted a diverse group of advisors for Economic Policy. Furman brought aboard these two people who sound pretty darned Progressive to me.

Jared Bernstein:

Jared Bernstein joined the Economic Policy Institute in 1992. His latest book is "Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries)," which follows "All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy." His areas of research include income inequality and mobility, trends in employment and earnings, low-wage labor markets and poverty, international comparisons, and the analysis of federal and state economic policies. He is the co-author of eight editions of the book The State of Working America and has published extensively in popular and academic venues.

James K. Galbraith

James Galbraith "is a progressive American economist who writes frequently for mainstream and liberal publications on economic topics. He is the son of renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith. From 1981 to 1982, Galbraith served on the staff of the Congress of the United States, eventually as Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee. In 1985, he was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution.

He is the Chair of Economists for Peace and Security, formerly known as Economists Against the Arms Race and later Economists Allied for Arms Reduction (ECAAR), an international association of professional economists concerned with peace and security issues. He is also a Senior Scholar with the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and Director of the University of Texas Inequality Project.

Galbraith's books include Balancing Acts: Technology, Finance and the American Future (1989), Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay (1998), and Industrial Change: A Global View, co-edited with Maureen Bemer, (2001)

He also contributes a column to The Texas Observer and writes regularly for The Nation, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and The Progressive. His Op-Ed pieces have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe and other newspapers.

Galbraith argues that modern America has fallen prey to a wealthy, government-controlling "predatory class":

Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature--a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class. The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading force. And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live. <1>

Galbraith is also highly critical of the Bush administration's foreign policy apropos of the Iraq invasion:

[TexasObserver]

1. Obama is not afraid to hear diverse advisors on all types of matters.

[newmajority]

2. You know who I wish Obama would talk to?

Dr. Ravi Batra. If you have heard this guy on Thom Hartmann's show, he's pretty damn good.

[slinkerwink]

3. kicking

[Romulox]

4. Apparently Galbraith is a globalization shill....

From the archived thread with the same title:

Galbraith to Anti-Globalization Activists: Get Over It

The populist objective is to raise American wages, create American jobs, and increase the fairness and security of our economic system. In that sense, I am, and have always been, a populist’s populist. The best way to achieve these things, let me suggest, is to do them -- directly. Nothing in our trading system prevents this. In fact, our privileged financial position ought to make it comparatively easy.

Seen in this light, the Chinese willingness to supply us with cheap goods is a magnificent gift. It means we can truly have full employment without inflation.

Let me put the point even more starkly. It was imports, it was globalization -- and not the Federal Reserve -- that cured America's inflation problem in the early 1980s. That was painful, but the adjustment has been made. The war on inflation, which the Fed continues to pretend to fight, is actually over, and it has been over for several decades.

Why not take advantage, as we did in the late 1990s, when we drove the unemployment rate below four percent for three years, while wages rose? Nothing bad happened. And certainly nothing on the trade front is stopping us from doing it again.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=why_populis...


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6338935&mesg_id=6343381

[KittyWampus]

5. you mean he's not an Isolationist? LOL!

[Romulox]

6. Talk about a rightwing meme: anyone who doesn't support unregulated globalization

Is now an "isolationist" according to the bright stars here on Center/Right Underground. :eyes:

[Runcible Spoon]

11. seriously. I just went through this debate on another thread. frustrating as HELL.

the crux of my observations is that global capitalism/neoliberal economic policy is basically established in the minds of any mainstream politician, regardless of party affiliation, as a given, a by-gone conclusion, a reality with no other alternative. As such, we really shouldn't expect any earth-shattering (or earth-SAVING) policy from anyone in the White House. The only thing that varies is how poisonous the crumbs from the table are.

I think that is one of the saddest things about modern government and life.

[uberllama42]

7. On the contrary, I think what we have here is a wrong-headed left-wing meme

Some label anyone who has a good word or two to say about globalization as a corporate shill. Galbraith is not alone on the left in believing that the postwar economy cannot be pasted back together, that globalization is irreversible. Robert Reich says the same thing: we can compensate the losers, but we can't bring back the very same jobs that went to China.

In fact, unless I misheard, Barack Obama has pointed this sort of thing out on more than one occasion.

[Romulox]

8. The problem for the putative pro-corporatist "left" then is this:

If the decline in the American standard of living is inevitable whether left or right are in office, then what stake do working people have in supporting the "left"?

"In fact, unless I misheard, Barack Obama has pointed this sort of thing out on more than one occasion."

Indeed, which is why he is appointing globalist rightwing economic advisors to the near exclusion of every other view.

[uberllama42]

14. That's a strawman

Galbraith doesn't say that Americans have to suffer a net loss of jobs or lower wages. He says that attempting to block globalization cannot prevent those things and that other measures need to be taken to build a different kind of job market in the United States. That is not the same as declaring that workers have no stake in who controls the government.

[Runcible Spoon]

12. umm because they ARE corporate shills?! why is this so hard for you to digest?

I would like to know just WHO you think benefits from "free" trade policy and wanton disregard for any protection of laborers' rights, not to mention the frail state of localized economies that don't wish to and never intended to compete on a global scale, not to mention national industries which used to produce and now just assemble, if even that. Don't even mention the environmental degradation. .

That shareholders and CEOs reap the vast majority of benefits and profits under this system is established FACT, not opinions. Please don't make me question your ability to grasp this debate by asking me for links; you should already KNOW by now.

[PVnRT]

13. Does supporting fair trade make one a corporate shill?

I await your reasonable and intelligent response.

[Runcible Spoon]

18. i guess that would depend on what "fair" trade means.

I await your reasonable and intelligent disingenuous snark response.

[BlooInBloo]

9. I hope Krugman gets Obama's ear *on economics*....

Despite being an unfortunate Clinton-shill, he's still top-notch on purely economic matters.

[Cha]

15. krugman is being too whiny right now..

Sounding like the Sour Grape Economist.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6346202

[On the Road]

10. Galbraith is Good

Obama is assembling a good team.

[slinkerwink]

16. kicking

[KittyWampus]

17. kick