If the economy would stagnate in a period of mass prosperity I don't see what the problem is lederuvdapac. That's the problem with our economy, it continues to grow in a way that doesn't benefit the populace. More money is being taken from the people and given to stockholders. That's why outsourcing is so popular. It puts well paid Americans out of work and replaces them with low wage foreigners. You talk about a booming economy but in the most recent data that I put forth in it showed that wages grew at a rate below inflation.condensed list
What about health care?Even the stock market does not give an indication of the general population. The S&P 500 is a listing of stock prices, how does that reflect the common man? It doesn't, so if that's doing well, the common man is not. How is the housing market lately? Terrible. People can't give houses away. The economy sucks, the rich people are doing well. It's the return of the Robber Barons.

Please do bring up the examples of Eastern Europe where the billion dollar socialist Marshall Plan insured success over the Soviet Bloc. Please include the countless interventions into South America where we murdered en masse to insure a socialist government did not win a democratic election. Please include the numerous countries in Southeast Asia that we decimated so communism wouldn't take root. I would love to hear you justify how killing millions of people makes our economic policies superior. While you are busy explaining that please include the contradictory argument of "Socialism doesn't work" and "the Domino theory." Include in there the justification for government subsidies, "SOCIALISM" to large corporations when their capitalist business failed. Would there even be an automotive industry if the public didn't give them their welfare check?

I love the fact that you are quoting de Tocqueville. You prove my point rather succinctly. He misrepresents democracy and socialism and so do you.
DemocracySocialism

To understand our system of government you only need to review the comments by the main advocates for the Constitution.
John Jay - minority co-author of the Federalist PapersAlexander Hamilton - majority co-author of the Federalist PapersThe Federalist Papers as you know, were used to persuade the populace to ratify the Constitution in favor of the Articles of Confederation. They knew what they were doing. Grabbing control from England under the guise of freedom. Then they immediately went to taxing the public in the same manner as George III.

Sam Walton used to shut down stores that tried to unionize. That's coercion. Plain and Simple. The guy paid low wages and exploited his employees. He could have paid them more, but he didn't, and now his children are reaping the massive benefits. I'm not suggesting Walton did anything illegal, but it was immoral. To allow 1.8 million people to hover just above the poverty line while 6 people enjoy riches they could not even spend in a lifetime is the grossest example of greed.

Ted,
You really are hilarious, to suggest that second richest man is going to give most of his money to the richest man is quite an argument for capitalism. Bill Gates started a billion dollars charity, so what? He is worth 42 billion dollars. Heck of a guy, here you go society, a drop in the bucket. Gee thanks Bill, could you urinate on us too?

Bill Gates profitted off U.S. tax dollars too. The Internet was created by the DoDARPA. Would PC software have been so successful without the Internet? No. Would Microsoft Exchange Server sell if PC's couldn't communicate over the publicly funded Internet? NO! Rich guys getting rich off of our dollars. The American Way.

And who, pray tell, are the stockholders?



From Wikipedia: "Real income is the income of individuals or nations after adjusting for inflation. It is calculated by subtracting inflation from the nominal income.

If you're so dead set on changing the world, at least take the trouble to understand it a little better, eh?

Logically, your statement makes no sense. If the S&P 500 doesn't "reflect the common man", then how can it possibly tell us anything about the condition of the common man?


Yes. Bill Gates was well on his way to being "filthy bouergiose rich" long before the Internet came along. Again, take the trouble to understand a little better...

Good for him. What part of private property don't you understand? When unions go on strike, they are engaging in "coercion. Plain and simple" as well. Undoubtedly you support unions striking, well, unless they happen to be striking against socialist or communist governments. So its not coercion that you find objectionable, now is it?

Chavez is preparing to nationalize the grocery stores. He will use coercion in the form of the power of the state. Do you object?

I am certain this has been postulated before me,

STOP BUYING THEIR OIL.

Yea, thats gonna hit us hard, but you know, it occurs to me that the National reserve is for JUST that sort of thing. I am CERTAIN that Chavez would not survive 6 months with the US NOT buying his oil. can you say Coup in a Barrel perhaps?

If you want fools to respect you, you do what they FEAR! Don't avoid it! You want the School Yard Bully to leave you alone, then get right in his face, fight him if necessary, and he will NEVER bother you again, you have earned his respect. As complicated as people like to make Geo Politics, it boils down to just that.

God Bless The USA!

You seem to not have the facts sir.

NEW YORK - Warren Buffett’s contribution of about $1.5 billion a year to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be used to seek cures for the world’s worst diseases and improve American education, Bill Gates said Monday.
Last June the investor Warren Buffett took a significant step toward reducing those deaths when he pledged $31 billion to the Gates Foundation, and another $6 billion to other charitable foundations. Buffett’s pledge, set alongside the nearly $30 billion given by Bill and Melinda Gates to their foundation, has made it clear that the first decade of the 21st century is a new “golden age of philanthropy.” O

http://progecon.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/p...the-super-rich/

Wednesday, May 17, 2006
US Philanthropy is huge
Here is a breakdown of philanthropy numbers in the US, with thanks to Mark Grimes via Omidyar.net. Note that the total amount of philanthropy going overseas (which is distributed through the different categories below) is about $20 billion by my estimate, based on work by Susan Raymond and Carol Adelman at the Hudson Institute. ( Note that this does not include an estimated $47 billion in remittances sent by workers in the US to their families and communities aborad, which is another form of private aid - see also Adelman's work).
From the Giving USA 2005 Annual Report
$248.52 billion given, here's the estimated breakdown per recipient organization

http://denniswhittle.blogspot.com/2006/05/...py-is-huge.html



And what has the Communist world give us except 80 million dead and hundreds of millions enslaved over the past 90 years?

The US currently imports 1.4 million barrels of oil per DAY from Venezuala, thats a LOT to stop buying all of a sudden. yes, you could crack into the Strategic Oil reserve, and that reserve would make up the shortfall in barrels per day for about 21 months before it ran out. In those 21 months the economy of Venezuela would be...

...Almost entirely unaffected. faster than you can say 'really bad idea', China (who have been desperately trying to get Venezuela to sell them oil) would be making up the shortfall. My guess would be the interruption would last maybe 3-4 days at most. After that, the US just lost a HUGE source of oil for no reason, and 20 months later the petrolium reserve is depleted, and the US is economically caught with its pants around its ankles.

You are right on the money (or oil) 3 -4 minuets is more like it. This is a WORLD oil market and this tactic would not work. Conversely we could, if Venezuela nationalized any US Corporate assets, do the same for some of theirs in the US – like some of the thousands of CITCO stations, terminals etc. Then if they want to stop shipping us oil – oh well we buy elsewhere.

I think this has dawned on out commi buddy Chavez and he has backed of on some of his rhetoric about taking over the Telco assets.

Good point

I don't find it useful to argue with you, there is little point as we will just continue to go back and forth. I am happy that you believe in the socialist utopia (that exists only in literature) but that is neither here nor there. The only thing I want to bring up is that on numerous occasions I have brought up the correllation between socialism, collectivism, whatever and authoritarianism and to a larger extent, totalitarianism. I understand it is difficult to dispute that because Chavez is currently going through the textbook steps to despotism.

Individualism, constitutionalism, capitalism, and the federal republic of seperation of powers in conjunction work towards bringing about the greatest level of freedom. You can nitpick at one aspect of each concept and you would be right...because no system is perfect. But when the alternative is the Socialism that Hugo Chavez has put on display in Venezuela, there is no question in my mind that the collective spirit will always disregard the rights of the individual in order to achieve the "greater good." Dissenters be damned!

What else can the US do to protect our private companies from uncompensated appropriation by Socialists, and US haters like Chavez?
[/quote]

It's kind of funny you would call these companies "ours". Like Exxon is looking out for the interests of average Americans.

But the answer to your question is simple: we should nationallize all our energy companies, as every civilized nation on the planet has. The idea that we should trust our future to the greed-driven agenda of Exxon and Chevron is amazing. Energy policy should be determined by democratic means, not to maximize the profits of billionaires.

Viva Chavez!

Spoke like a true communist. Nationalize? And then we would get what? Poor service, high prices, no R&D. No the real problem with “oil” in this country is the idiots in congress who allow the environmentalists to prevent us from getting our own oil in Alaska and off of our shores. The oil companies “greed” – please define this . They make about 8% net. Better than supermarkets and far less than drug companies and numerous other industries.

What “civilized nations” have nationalized? I guess you consider Europeans uncivilized

It is determined by democratic means. Why do you think virtually nobody uses coal for home heating anymore in the US? Perhaps because folks voted with their wallets.

Please, feel free to point to all the "civilized countries" that have nationalized energy companies.

Spoken like a true conservative dinosaur. Still depending on oil. America is the greatest country in the world and once free of the influence of the big oil companies, we could be energy independent in a few years. Oil. You got to be kidding. In 10 years no advanced economy will be using oil.

As to Europe, no, I consider they have nationalized their energy policies. We should do the same. Exxon isn't looking out for America.




You aren't aware of the oil companies using thier influence to destroy alternative energy sources.

BWHAHAHAHAHAH. You got to be kidding. Every hear about what happened to the trolley cars in LA?

As to civilized nations, yeah, I think Norway is pretty civilized. It's the world's third largest oil producer and the government controls oil operations. Norwegians aren't stupid enough to leave their fate in the hands of a few greedy men at Exxon. That's why Norway is energy independent and Reagan/Bush America isn't.


http://www.regjeringen.no/en/ministries/oe....html?id=420787

!0 years??? You are a dreamer. Well if this is true we have little to worry about since the oil “assets” in Venezuela will have little value. And, by the way, Venezuela will be in deep trouble without the billions Chavez needs to prop up his communist state. Count in most of OPEC as well.

IMO if Chavez lays a grubby hand on any of out oil company assets we confiscate his assets in the US immediately.

And if you think Norway = “most of the civilized world” then we will never agree on anything sir. Reality is most “oil companies” are private and will stay that way.

Yeah, I heard about that. A friend has a cousin who knows a guy who's brother had developed a method of getting 200mpg with a widget you attach to your carbuerator. The Seven Sisters had him "disappeared" before he got his patent granted, and the patent application just "disappeared" too, but just to cover their bases, the Seven Sisters muscled the automakers into going to fuel injection.

Yup, that was more than 50 years ago.

While I'll grant that Norway is a nicely civilized nation, they're also smaller than the state of Colorado. Did you know that Wyoming, Louisiana, Alaska and Oklahoma are also all "energy independent?" In fact, Wyoming makes Norway look like pikers in the energy indepedence game. So is Canada, which is a fair bit larger than Norway, and by your lights, they're "uncivilized" as well. Not to mention the minor fact that Norway is not the world's third largest oil producer. The United States is #3, followed by Iran, Mexico and Canada, then we finally reach Norway. Yes, my factually challenged comrade, the US produces close to twice as much oil as Norway. Of course, having, oh, 66 times as many people, our net export situation isn't quite as nice as theirs.

So, you have provided one example of a partially nationalized energy industry in an industrialized nation. Gotta give you credit, I didn't think there were any left, although you did notice that Norway has been privatizing, eh? Got any others? After all, of the 10 largest economies in the world, only two have nationalized energy industries, China and Brazil. The great barbarians of Germany, the UK, France, the US, Japan, Canada, Spain and Italy are all market based.

That's what I like about conservatives -- they don't think Americans can do anything. Basically their positioin is no problem can be solved by us, so let's just let Exxon run things.

It's this morbid pessimism which has utterly discredited conservatism and made it so easly for progressives like me.



Ah, knownothingism, the core of conservative "argument." I'm afraid the scholarship showing oil industry influence on destroying alternative energy sources is rather vast and peer reviewed. Apparently you are unaware that the first cars were in fact electrical. So you'll need to take up your fight with historians not me. This might help you prepare.

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/electric-car-timeline.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motor...tcar_conspiracy



Translated: you asked which civilized country nationalized its energy and I pointed out Norway and you can't rebut that, but merely seem to bemoan the fact that Norway is a little country.

By the way, the UK also uses public bodies to manage coal and oil, which are owned by the state.

Is England civilized enough for you.

France nationalized its electrical industryin 1949, and the government owns the nuclear plants.

Is France civilized enough for you.

You can't win for losing on this one.

See, there you go again, positing a non-existent dichotomy. ExxonMobil is owned by "us", as are the rest of the American oil companies.

We really need a ROFLMAO smiley around here.



The arrogance of your ignorance is truly astounding.







or perhaps you'd like to go for what we consider to be true automobiles?








Bemoan it? No, perhaps I should have been clearer. Comparing a small country such as Norway with the United States is questionable. And as I pointed out, Norway's energy industry is no longer nationalized, it is now "mixed." So it doesn't satisfy the question.

Neither the coal nor the oil industry in the UK are owned by the state, perhaps you've heard of British Petroleum? The oil reserves are owned by the state, as are our oil reserves. The government leases the reserves to the oil companies, by my count there are 17 different oil companies operating UK North Sea leases. Of the top 10 countries, the only one that has nationalized petroleum industry is Brazil and China. Even Norway's petroleum industry isn't nationalized, its "mixed" now.

Edited to remove profane expression
So one element of their energy industry is was nationalized. Were you ignorant of the privatization of the Electricité de France in 2004? The French electricity sector is "mixed", as is most of their economy now, no longer nationalized. Nor is electricity the entirety of their engergy sector, is it? Perhaps you should investigate the status of France's oil industry... Part of our electrical industry is "nationalized" as well, or didn't you know that?

Depends entirely upon their mood.

So please, find one "civilized" nation that currently has a fully nationalised oil industry, much less a fully nationalised energy sector. Every "civilized" nation that had fully nationalized either has fully or partially privatized.

The claim that stocks are "owned" democratically by "us" is really too absurd to rebut except to say, only people with enough money own stock in Exxon. And that ain't 80% of Americans, the percentage who don't own stock in any significant amount, if at all.

By the way, how much Exxon stock do you own?



I see you ignored my link that shows there electric cars were being commercial produced until the oil industry squelched them. I don't blame you. Better to cite irrelevant information than take on a PBS documentary on the subject.



So Norway is only partially civilized or only partially nationalized. I think your point is rebutted either way.



BP drills oil under license. It doesn't own it. Norway's "mixed" ownership boils down to government ownership and control. That's why they are so successful in their energy policy.



By mixed you mean the government controls it through percentage ownership. By the way, if it works in France, Norway and UK, why should it be "mixed" here with the US nationalizing a portion of Exxon and controlling it. I like the idea.



Sorry if government ownership and control of energy in Norway, France and UK doesn't satisfy you nothing will. I mean I could mention Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, but you'd claim the aren't American enough and don't count.

How about you name one civilized country BESIDES the US that hasn't nationalized its energy resources in whole or in part. It'll save time

Currently, not a bit, but nothing stops me from buying some. Considering that somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of adult Americans own stocks either directly, through mutual funds, or through their 401ks, I'd say that sounds pretty "democratic" to me. Not all of them own stock in ExxonMobil (try to get the company name right), just like not everybody buys their gas from ExxonMobil.

Exsqueeeze me? You said, and I quote: The info indicating the first electrically powered vehicle is from the PBS documentary you cited. Would you like Tabasco tm with that egg on your face?

As for the oil industry squelching the production of electric cars (not to be confused with snookering the Red Line in LA), well, here's what your cited PBS documentary says about the production of electric cars: Notice how the perfidy of the oil companies isn't mentioned? You are doing a fine job of getting off topic and throwing up red herrings however. After all, conflating electric automobiles with electrified light rail is a dandy roja pesce.

Really? I'll grant that Norway is fully civilized, but being partially nationalized (mind you, their energy industry used to be fully nationalized, why'd they change? ) it fails to serve as a "nationalized" industry in the normal meaning of the term, and certainly fails to satisfy the meaning of the word as its being bandied about here regarding El Tinpot Chavez's nationalisation activities. Remember, context, context, context.

No, the reason they're "so successful", if by success you mean they export more than they import, is because they're sitting on top of far, far more oil than they'll use in the next 250 years! If anything, compare their "energy balance" situation with other countries in the same boat, and you'll find that two factors = success. First, not being a Third World cesspool, and second, private ownership.

Nationalisation means government ownership. Look it up. Control is a different, albeit related aspect. As for Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia, the problem with including them in the discussion isn't that they're "not American", its that they're not advanced economies.

Hasn't in the past, or isn't currently nationalised? Japan. Canada. Australia. New Zealand. All have roughly the same level of gubmint ownership and/or control of their energy sectors as the US. No country in the world has a totally laissez faire energy sector, for two simple reasons. First, the production of energy is often tied to publicly held resources (land/mineral rights and rivers come to mind). Second, the distribution of some forms of energy (electricity and natural gas) involve extensive easements on private and public lands. This is one reason why "utilities" which encounter this situation are highly regulated, the second is that utilities are frequently granted monopolies. You, of course, with your demonstrated extensive knowledge and learning, already knew these things, but I was just sharing them for any lurkers who might not know.

I have read a little on the subject and have not read one expert, government or industry, who shares your view here so what I would like to know is which one of you progressive buddies (Since conservatives IYO are dopes) has said this – POST IT here please.

And IMO when new technology is developed it WILL BE by those private companies you hate so much – with, hopefully a little help from government.

http://www.altenergystocks.com/



Ludicrous. How about anyone with a pension fund, Union or private.

There you go again -- putting your faith in the likes of Exxon and not democratic institutions and the ability of the American people to govern themselves and make their own destiny. All I can say that anybody who trusts Exxon to engage in energy policies that will help America doesn't understand corporate governance and the requirement to put profit above all else. The corporate sociopaths have a duty NOT to do what's good for America, but rather to make profit at all costs. If you want to believe in some mystical "invisible hand" that will result in good energy policy arising out naked greed, despite all the evidence of history, be my guest. I prefer reason to your mystical market fundamentalism.



How about it? The fact is the top 10% income bracket owns 80% or so of equities. Ignore it if you want. Most working people own no stock or such insubstantial amounts that it is meaningless.



So us isn't you.

As to the 50% figure, pure statistical nonsense. Owning a share or two of publicly traded stock doesn't make one an owner in any real sense. 80% of equities are owned by a small percentage of the rich. Most Americans own no stock or an infinitesimal amount. The simply can't afford it in cheap labor conservative America.




More diversion -- electric cars were the first marketable cars and they were squelched by the oil industry. But keep dancing.




Somebody didn't watch the documentary.

"Oil companies
Fearful of losing business to a competing technology, they supported efforts to kill the ZEV mandate. They have also bought patents to prevent modern batteries from being used in US electric cars. "
The documentary goes into detail about how the oil company destroyed the battery industry to prevent an electric car market. Try, try again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_th..._General_Motors



I'm all for partially naitonalizing our oil industry.



No, their successful because having nationalized their energy resources, they are managed for the benefit of the Norwegian people and not to maximize profit for oil companies. That's why Norway is energy secure and we depend on foreign oil and have to get involved in major wars every decade in the mideast.



China's sure getting there, and they aren't doing it by letting oil companies control their resources. Go figure. To claim that Russia doesn't have an advanced economy is beyond comprehension. It is one of the major economies of the world and has been for 50 years. But they've nationalized their energy resources so they can't possibly be advanced, right?



Japan has no energy resources to nationalize. New Zealand is one of those little countries you claim don't count. Canada and Australia is the same populationwise.

Everybody else is nationalize. You seem to be in the minorty.

Sorry Landru, but much as I might agree with your general anti-corporatist sentiments, public management and ownership of coal and oil no longer exists in GB.

The coal industry in Britain used to produce some of the best quality deep-mined anthracite anywhere in the world. But, being deep-mined anthracite, it was expensive compared to Australian open-cast cheapo stuff. In an effort to cut costs, but mainly to establish her neoliberal free-market, anti-union credentials, the Thatcher government picked a fight with the (then still powerful) National Union of Mineworkers. Aside from using the police force as a politically partisan battering ram, the main reason she won was a grave tactical error from Arthur Scargill, the NUM leader at the time, who resfused a one-man-one-vote ballot for strike action (which he would have won hands down). This allowed the mostly right-wing press of the day, as well as the government, to portray him as a motivated more by left-wing class war mentality than by the interests of his members (when in fact he was a left-wing class warrior whose left-wing class warfare was in the interests of his members).

So he lost, and she won. Lots of mines closed. Communities in traditionally hard-working, industrious, self-reliant communities we gutted to hollow shells of welfare dependency, dilapidation and casual employment in call centres and food preparation. The rump of what had been the nationalised British Coal was sold off to private ownership some years ago. There are now more mining museums in the UK than there are working coal mines (2 of these, at the last count, compared to several hundred 25 years ago).

So much for energy independence - the strategy was not secure energy supplies for future needs, but to break a large source of funds for her political opponents. Which, along with other similar Thatcherite efforts, led directly to courting of big business for political funds for the Labour movement ( ) and to Tony Blair.

Another reason to thank Margaret Thatcher at ther graveside, from the bottom of one's bladder.

As for oil, well (no pun intended), even BP was only ever part owned - a minority share, at that - by the government. (Compare to Royal Dutch Shell, which was always in private hands.) One wonders why, given the colossal profits and fat dividends that BP has almost always made, the Thatcher government sold off their stake in BP rather than keeping it to cream off the juicy divvy payments ad infinitum, but then, whoever said that privatisation was a pragmatic choice which was for the ultimate good of the people, rather than a dogmatic insistence that private ownership is always better than public regardless of the facts in any particular case.

BikerDad is correct, most of the government revenue came from licensing of the mineral rights, taxation etc. In the 80s heyday of North Sea Oil, the Thatcher government wisely invested the vast sums of money generated from this source by, er, cutting personal and business taxation. Had we been a Middle Eastern Emirate with reserves likely to last many centuries, this would have been prudent politics. As it is, it just meant the population got used to the idea of lower taxes AND comprehensive public services, so now that the oil, and the money from it, is beginning to run out (we're due to become a net importer of oil again very soon), the public is grumpily resentful of taxation AND demanding world class public services both at the same time.

The only solution anyone could come up with is mortgaging the public sector on vastly expensive Public Finance Initiative contracts which keep borrowing off the books of both government and industry. Typically, this was a Tory idea form the fag end of the Major administration which was jumped on with enthusiasm by New Labour (along with ID cards, imprisonment without trial, and a whole host of anti-libertarian, free-marketeering claptrap that will be the real Blair legacy). Give it a generation or so, and the whole neoliberal consensus will result in a need for slash-and-burn in the public sector, AND massive tax hikes, just to pay off the debts that are being run up by Gordon Brown just now.

And I have my doubts over whether he'll be as good a PM as he has been as a Chancellor, where his really clever and useful moves, like Blair's, were all made in his first six months in office.

The neoliberal PrivateGoodPublicBad dogma, pioneered by Thatcher and followed slavisly under Blair, has been swallowed whole by almost the whole of the Anglo-Saxon world, so much so that it is now a condition of much First World aid to the Third World that infrastructures be opened up to First World businesses. The profitable ones go first, natch, meaning the third world governments lose valuable revenue and need even more first world aid, and if they dare to try and claw back some of it with taxation policy (like, say, oh, I don't know - Hugo Chavez?) they get branded as anti-Western



Define "us" - what proportion of the stockholding of Exxon is owned by foreign and/or institutional investors compared to American individuals? Quite a small one, I daresay.

How should the US government respond if this takes place?

Nationalise Venezuelan assets in the USA. I'm sure the Bush administration could use the revenues to pay off some portion of their revenue defecit.

Should we , in turn Boycott their oil company CITGO in the US?

No, don't boycott it. Nationalise it. Sauce for the goose, etc. Plus, who knows, if America gets the hang of nationlising certain key businesses, they might start doing it with certain key domestic ones.

What else can the US do to protect our private companies from uncompensated appropriation by Socialists, and US haters like Chavez?

You can't do anything except advise companies against operating in such territories, just as your State department will issue advisory notices to American workers, travellers or tourists against visiting certain parts of the world.

Foreign jurisdictions are their own affair. America needs to be careful not to behave unilaterally on this, with the current expedient that the big powerful economy and military are a deterrent to other countries from reciprocating.

In the long run, someone somewhere is eventually going to be bigger and more powerful than the USA. Maybe not Venezuela, but somewhere will. You won't like it if they make it illegal in their country for American business to operate in return for some domestic US legislation that, fairly or otherwise, mitigates against their interests. So don't do it to them now.

What's that hackneyed phrase about the individual advancement?

Ah yes - Be nice to people on he way up, because you never know who'll you'll meet on he way down

America is on top of the pile. For now. you might be able to stay there for some time yet. But, in the future stretching off, the only move you're likely to make next is down. Please start getting used to the idea.

NB This is not a pessimistic concept; it's human nature to learn more from losing than we do from winning - Tiger Woods came back a better golfer after he lost a few rounds. Plus, as a whole generation of kids the world over are demonstrating, it isn't healthy to get your own way all the time.

Nope, not me, which means that I'm not speaking out of pure, naked, evil, capitalist self-interest. Of course, I could be another poor, pitiful victim of false consciousness...

The irony that you think sharing a vote with 150 million other people on how to operate an industry that you don't have a clue about makes one an "owner" instead is mindboggling. Getting back to Chavez for a moment, the average Venezuelan doesn't have squat to say about how Citgo is run. In fact, only one person has that power, and that's Chavez. What do you think "rule by decree" means?

With the rare exceptions of a few hundred people, almost all associated with founding their companies (The Walton Family, The Fords, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Jobs & Wozniak, etc), even "the rich" own infintesimal amounts of stock. Do you have any idea how many shares of stock make up the companies of just the Dow Jones index (that's only 30 publicly traded companies!)

Now, I rarely do this, but having already corrected you once using your sources, I fear I must. The facts have been placed in front of you. You continue to wilfully make statements that contravene the facts from your own source. The only conclusion is that you are either a ????, an ideologue impervious to facts (i.e. a fanatic), or an ????? incapable of comprehending facts. I leave it to others to puzzle out which applies to you, Landru Guide Us.

That was your starting point:
It has been demonstrated that not every civilized nation (a concept you introduced but have not explained) has nationalized, that with the exception of Brazil and China, no nation in the top 10 has even the energy companies in a single sector nationalized, much less all their energy companies. It has further been demonstrated that even Norway, your chosen poster child for nationalization has moved to "mixed" ownership. Not mentioned, but relevant, is that the move away from nationalization is the norm in every country in Europe. You have repeatedly attempted to move the goalpoasts, juked between energy resources and energy companies, tried to muddy the waters with GM's concerted effort to expand bus sales at the expense of electric urban railways, ignored the facts in your own sources. And to top it off, you continue to exhibit a level of ignorance that is astounding.

Juking between energy resources and energy companies again I see. Russia's economy is not advanced. The damage inflicted upon their economy by the wholesale nationalization of the entire economy has not yet been repaired, although it is moving forward. Russian technology places it on a comparable level to the advanced economies, but the structure of the economy leaves them lagging. Nor, for your information, are their energy companies nationalised. On the whole, ownership of their energy sector is fairly similar to ours.

Juking again. Let me repeat your original claim: "we should nationallize all our energy companies." Japan's energy companies are not nationalized. Surely you count them as "civilized?"

Okay, sure, we can toss New Zealand out, it doesn't change the equation one bit.

You do realize that Canada is our largest trading partner? That Canada is a member of the G8? That Australia's economy is at least 5 times the size of your poster child's? That neither one of them has nationalized their energy companies?



fisking complete. I'm done with Landru on this thread.

Help me out here . I can see you favored the nationalized coal industry over “privatized” but can you explain how the “deep-mined anthracite” sold at all as it was much more expensive? Was UK industry required to buy it? Was it subsidized at taxpayer expense?

In general IMO “nationalizing” is bad for the industry and the country. Numerous examples over the past century prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt. Chavez will lead his country to economic disaster if he succeeds in nationalizing their industries.

This strangely makes my case about the failures of privatizating energy resources. Thanks for the update on the depredations of the Thatcherites.

To circle back to Chavez, sounds like he's doing the wise thing and the US and UK are not.



The real irony is you equat one man one vote, with one dollar one vote. The problem with that is, some people have more dollars. Nobody has more votes

See the difference?



The statistics are well known:

In terms of types of financial wealth, the top 1 percent of households have 44.1% of all privately held stock, 58.0% of financial securities, and 57.3% of business equity. The top 10% have 85% to 90% of stock, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

I guess you can deny emperical data is you want based on your market fundamentalism, but you're not convincing anybody.


[ Now, I rarely do this, but having already corrected you once using your sources, I fear I must. The facts have been placed in front of you. You continue to wilfully make statements that contravene the facts from your own source. The only conclusion is that you are either a ????, an ideologue impervious to facts (i.e. a fanatic), or an ????? incapable of comprehending facts. I leave it to others to puzzle out which applies to you, Landru Guide Us.

I do this often: repeat myself to conservative who ignore facts. I gave the cite: the oil industry bought battery pattents and buried them to destroy the electric car industry. Comment on that, and not on me.




Like I say this sounds like an argument for partially nationalizing US energy resources. I'm for it.



Oh please, try to stay in the same universe. The Bosheviks took a feudal nation that had industry and turned it into a super power in 50 years. Nobody likes the way they did it. But they did it. (Just like nobody likes the way we used slaves to build our economy). Russia is a modern economy not a feudal economy as it was just 100 years ago.



Since they have no energy resources to nationalize, it's not surprising they haven't. Is this the best argument you can come up with: Japan didn't nationalize a nonexistent industry.



Canada has a population less than California. And you want to exclude Norway from the discussion. Please.



I hear that alot as I decontruct the arguments of market fundamentalists. And I don't blame them

Quite simply, Ted, because the cheap stuff from Australia at the time was from opencast mines, where the only expensive asset is lots of dynamite to blast it out and a few bulldozers to scoop it up, as opposed to highly specialist equipment and trained men to run it (which was the state of the art in deep mining at the time).

British coal mining may have been highly unionised, but didn't have an especially damning track record on being averse to technical advances. Mining was and is, after all, a rather dangerous profession. For example, the shift from pit ponies to electric and diesel carts in the mid 20th Century was not a cause for unrest; generally the NUM only caused strife over wages and severance terms - they were not as luddite as some unionised sectors (certainly not compared to, say print workers in the face of computerisation of print presses, which caused Rupert Murdoch some problems in London in the 1980s)

As in many industries, then, the labour costs were the biggest overhead, and at the time, deep-mined coal simply could not compete with opencast coal. Indeed, the miners' case involved a demand for public subsidy to compete with foreign coal; where deep-mining elsewhere in the world attracted subsidy, Britain's at the time had been withdrawn - part of the Thatcherite strategy to undermine union power.

There was a domestic agreement that the electricity generators, also at the time in public/state ownership, would buy British coal, but since in the type of furnaces they used at the time performed most efficiently using high-quality anthracite, this was no particular hardship for them. Rather than switching wholesale to foreign coal (which, casting my mind back, meant building new power stations based around fluidised bed furnaces), part of the Tory strategy involved stockpiling massive supplies of British coal inside the power stations, so they could continue to function for many months even if their coal supplies were cut off completely.

Ulitmately - and while it was touch and go at times - the Tories won because they had a strategy. The miners, led by Scargill, were used to an old style, gentlemanly boxing match, where everyone knew the rules and nobody "cheated". They were faced by a government who'd been planning for years to pick a fight, having been humilated by the miners a decade before (and several times before that), and who were prepared to change the law and use the police as a partisan political lever to win their goal. The miners simply did not understand what was at stake. They thought it was about the future of this pit or that pit and the jobs that existed there, when it was about the future of the entire industry and the role of the labour movement in the whole economy.

Finally on this topic, don't get me wrong. I am not an old style Clause IV socialist who believes that the whole of industry should be owned by the workers. However, neither do I believe that untrammelled market capitalism in every sector of the economy is in any way sensible.

Neither, if it comes to it, do I believe you are - wholesale privatisation of the armed forces would be a disaster and we both know it.



That remains to be seen. Venezuelan oil at the moment is pretty easy to get at - you drill deep enough, it comes out of the ground, you pipe it away and sell it on the open market. Easy money. The fields have already been found, the tricky and expensive bit of the oil industry being the exploration, so Chavez doesn't have to take any special risks.

In oil, at least, I don't see that nationalisation would have any immediate negative impact on the Venezuelan economy (except possibly from the application of sanctions by the home countries of the disgruntled former owners).

Other areas of the VZ economy may be different stories, of course.

Julian,

There's another consideration on the coal, beyond the purchase cost differential, and that's the pollution differential. I don't know how it is with the coal beds there, but one of the big negatives here that has seriously damaged the anthracite coal mining here in the States is sulfur content. The soft coal (bituminous) has a much lower sulfur level than the anthracite. As a result, it is more expensive to burn the anthracite, as scrubbing the exhaust is more difficult, even though the energy content of the anthracite is higher.

You're correct that in the short term, nationalization is unlikely to do much direct harm to Venezuela's oil and telecom industry. The long term is another story, especially if Chavez gets too curmudgeonly. Iran's oil industry is near collapse as the accumulated weight of insufficient investment (due in large part to sanctions, but not exclusively) in maintenance and exploration mounts. Nationalization has always been a tricky thing in developed economies, resulting in mediocre results at best in the long term. In the Third World, especially the banana republics, I can't think of a single instance that hasn't been, at best, a dismal failure, if not a full fledged disaster. Unfortunately, as your example of the UK coal industry illustrates, de-nationalization is a tricky thing as well, moreso in developed economies. I realize that seems odd, but I advance the hypothesis that in developed economies, the denationalization usually occurs before things are truly in the chamberpot. In contrast, denationalization in banana republics rarely occurs before the industry, if not the entire country, is firmly mired in the midden.

Sorry I am not one who believes that any society can support for long “demand for public subsidy to compete”. If coal can be had cheaper elsewhere why continues with thousands working at dangerous jobs only to raise the cost of the end product? And if you are willing to do this for coal why not all industries like textiles, electronics, etc.? Doing this lowers everyone standard of living. Thatcher was right IMO.