Debate sobre o Free Trade nos EUA: esclarecendo posicoes -

Eu havia reagido (https://www.facebook.com/paulobooks/posts/1115225561874226), dias atrás, à carta de um leitor, pinçada na internet, questionando a validade do livre comércio do ponto de vista dos trabalhadores, mas não havia ainda lido o artigo original sobre essa questão, que me havia escapado. Agora leio o artigo e posto aqui, junto com minhas observacões feitas antes e depois de ter postado no Facebook.
Vejamos o que diz o artigo, e, depois, eu agrego meus comentários que foram feitos, é preciso dizer, PREVIAMENTE à leitura deste artigo, e baseado apenas num comentário de leitor.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Wonkblog

What Americans really think about free trade

By Max Ehrenfreund 

The Washington Post, March 25 at 11:14 AM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/25/what-americans-really-think-about-free-trade/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_wonk 

Carriers move containers at a depot in Uiwang, South Korea, last March. (SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg News)

 

For decades, the benefits of free trade have been something that both political parties have agreed on. Eliminating tariffs, proponents said, would reduce the cost of goods for U.S. consumers and put more people to work in exporting industries.
Recently, though, some economists have concluded that the costs of free trade have been greater than expected, and both Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump have run successful presidential primary campaigns on protectionist platforms. Many of their supporters are now rejecting more than half a century of bipartisan economic consensus.
Outside of Sanders's and Trump's coalitions, however, there is little evidence of a broad reaction against free trade. Americans are deeply conflicted about the issue, as shown in two recent polls that came to opposite conclusions about public opinion on free trade.

[Fact Checker: Trump's trade rhetoric, stuck in a time warp]

One was a Gallup poll published last month, which found that a majority of Americans — 58 percent — see foreign trade as an economic opportunity. Just 33 percent said foreign trade was an economic threat. The share of respondents who are optimistic about trade has increased since the financial crisis. Perhaps as Americans are seeing the country as more economically secure, they've become less worried about competition from abroad.
Seven years ago, at the beginning of 2009, just 44 percent of those polled said that trade presented an opportunity. Among Democrats — who are more optimistic about the state of the economy under President Obama — the number seeing economic opportunity in trade increased even more sharply, from 43 percent in 2009 to 63 percent today. The figure among Republicans shifted from 45 percent to 50 percent.
That finding — overall optimism about trade, with partisan divisions — contrasted with the conclusion of a poll published Thursday by Bloomberg. "Opposition to free trade is a unifying concept even in a deeply divided electorate," the authors wrote.

[Voters skeptical on free trade drive Sanders, Trump victories in Michigan]

Some of the Bloomberg poll's more striking findings seem to suggest a deep skepticism of international economic exchange. For example, Americans are overwhelmingly resistant to the idea of foreign ownership of factories on U.S. soil. Sixty-eight percent said they'd prefer a domestically owned factory in their communities to a Chinese-owned plant offering twice as many jobs.
Likewise, nearly two-thirds said that there should be more restrictions on imported goods, and 82 percent said they'd be willing to pay "a little more" for domestically produced goods in order to protect domestic workers from foreign competition.
These contrasting results show that Americans see both sides of the debate over trade. They also suggest that politicians can win over voters by focusing on either the costs or the benefits, Frank Newport, the editor in chief at Gallup, said in an interview.

[On free trade, this election is giving business the willies]

"Americans are very much looking for guidance" on complex economic issues, he said. "You can shift people one way or the other. They’re open to argument."
For example, Newport noted, the Bloomberg poll asked about restrictions on imports, but not on exports, which would mean fewer opportunities for U.S. workers. Americans even have different feelings about imports depending on the industry. They are comfortable with the idea of imported electronics but want to protect American agriculture, Gallup has found.
A Pew poll last year revealed even more contradictions. Respondents were more likely to say that free trade had helped their families' finances than that free trade had made them worse off. When asked about the economy in general, though, they were more negative. The poll found that Americans were equally divided on the question of whether free trade improved economic growth, and much less likely to say that trade created opportunities for employment than that it reduced wages and put Americans out of work.
Previously, economists had argued that workers displaced because of competition with manufacturers overseas would quickly find work in other sectors. That hasn't happened, wrote economists David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson in a paper earlier this year. The costs of trade in the labor market have been higher than predicted, and they've been concentrated in particular sectors and regions of the country.
Those consequences for particular groups aren't clearly reflected in the overall polling data. As Newport said, there are some people in both parties who vehemently oppose trade, maybe because they have been affected by globalization themselves. Those are the groups that Trump and Sanders hope will help mobilize their campaigns.
These candidates might be able to win over some voters if they can focus on how competition from imports has negatively affected those workers, Newport said. "Jobs," he added, is "a magic word."
"There are a few words out there that Americans react very strongly to," he said. "They're willing to sanction almost anything to bring in more jobs."

Max Ehrenfreund writes for Wonkblog and compiles Wonkbook, a daily policy newsletter. You can subscribe here. Before joining The Washington Post, Ehrenfreund wrote for the Washington Monthly and The Sacramento Bee.

 

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Meus comentários (PRA) feitos previamente à leitura deste artigo:

(https://www.facebook.com/paulobooks/posts/1115225561874226) 

Livre comércio só interessa às corporações?

Sou um leitor compulsivo, doentio. Leio não apenas as matérias objetivas -- os "reports", como se diz na linguagem do jornalismo americano, que se distinguem das "analysis", quando o jornalista elabora sobre a matéria -- como também os artigos de opinião, que por vezes contém dados ou argumentos que não estão nos dois primeiros. Mas leio também, por incrível que pareça, cartas de leitores e reações virtuais nas colunas de opinião, que são reveladoras do que vai pela cabeça do público em geral, que é um pouco a opinião da média da população (claro, tem muito ativista de causas determinadas, mas eu sei distinguir isso também).

Pois, o que encontro na minha versão eletrônica do Washington Post? Esta diatribe de um leitor contra um artigo anterior que eu não li (mas isso não importa muito, pois importa a tese):

"Free trade is a myth; all we have is managed trade. The question is for whom? In practice, only corporations benefit. Why not workers also?" -- Bruce Bartlett

Concordo inteiramente com o leitor em que não existe Free Trade, apenas Managed Trade, uma espécie de mercantilismo bem comportado, supervisionado de forma muito ineficiente por essa tia gorda (quase 170 membros) e complacente que se chama OMC.

Mas a pergunta dele é absolutamente equivocada: seja free, seja managed, o trade é para consumidores, e para empresas que se abastecem no mercado, ou seja, não é, nunca foi, um jogo de soma zero como sua última afirmação tenta fazer crer.

Não são apenas as corporações que se benficiam do comércio livre. Se esse comércio não fosse livre, esse leitor, Bruce Bartlett, nunca poderia comprar o seu microondas por apenas 80 dólares; se fosse fabricado nos EUA, ou na Europa, não saíria por menos de 180 ou 200 dólares. Não sei se vou convencê-lo, mas as pessoas precisam tomar consciência que, independentemente das formas mais ou menos liberais que regulam o comércio internacional, ele sempre se faz, em última instância, em benefício dos consumidores. No meio, as corporações lucram, o que é óbvio, mas o que pretende esse leitor? Mágica? Ele quer um microondas a 80 dólares feito no seu Arkansas natal? Esqueça...

Addendum: Agrego o que acabo de postar num debate com um amigo de velhas negociações comerciais:

"... eu acho que os grandes problemas, as maiores alienações dos tecnoburocratas como nós (e eu me incluo nessa tropa) é sempre olhar a realidade pela ótica dos nossos materiais privilegiados: relatórios e informações de outros burocratas, documentos de organizações internacionais e livros e artigos de acadêmicos. Isso é uma distorção. O mundo lá fora, o das grandes corporações, das empresas, das pessoas, está se movimentando, e o que quer que façam os governos, estes vão ter em algum momento de se adaptar aos movimentos reais das economias de mercado."

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Depois, sustentei um debate na sequência desta postagem no Facebook, que transcrevo aqui porque ele é instrutivo para todos: 

Marcos Fernandes Não, a todos.....mas que mal faz se sim!? Cadeia de valor diversificada regionalmente...

Like · Reply · Yesterday at 1:34pm

Paulo Roberto de Almeida Sim, qual é o problema das cadeias de valor diversificadas regionalmente? Você pode me indicar qual é, exatamente, o problema? Existe um complô de forças poderosas contra os interesses dos consumidores? Me explique isso direitinho...

Like · Reply · Yesterday at 1:38pm

Write a reply...

Thiago D'Ávila Paulo Roberto de Almeida, só um detalhe: o comentarista da notícia não falava em consumidores. A pergunta dele foi outra: "Why not workers also?" Ele está perguntando sobre workers...

Like · Reply · Yesterday at 2:06pm

Paulo Roberto de Almeida O que são trabalhadores, Thiago D'Ávila, se não consumidores? Vc já se deu conta que seus salários de mercado valem muito mais, compram muito mais graças ao livre comércio? Ou vc acha que sobraria muita coisa se eles tivessem de comprar aqueles enormes televisores made in America?

Like · Reply · Yesterday at 3:19pm · Edited

 Thiago D'Ávila Bem, aí teremos uma infinidade de assuntos interligados. Primeiro, nem todo consumidor é trabalhador (gente rica que não trabalha, criança, idoso aposentado, adulto desempregado, doentes, etc). Trabalhador é uma categoria e consumidor é outra, ainda que em Economia ocorram interligações na análise. Segundo, consumidor beneficiado com baixo preço nem de longe significa trabalhador beneficiado. Se você compra, a preço de banana, uma camisa feita por trabalhador escravo na Ásia, você é um consumidor beneficiado por um trabalhador claramente prejudicado. A pergunta dele é sobre WORKERS. Ele está claramente falando em benefícios trabalhistas.

Like · Reply · Yesterday at 3:24pm · Edited

Paulo Roberto de Almeida Acho que vc ainda não pegou o espírito da coisa Thiago D'Ávila: o trabalhador asiático que você diz ser "prejudicado" (em quê, exatamente?, explique) estaria em muito pior situação se não fosse pelo livre comércio, já pensou nisso? Gente rica que não trabalha, doentes, desempregados, etc, estariam EM MUITO PIOR SITUAÇÃO se não fosse pelo livre comércio. É muito difícil entender isto? Benefícios trabalhistas são uma convenção social, um contrato, uma regra; não tem nada a ver com livre comércio, que é, sempre foi, sempre será infinitamente melhor que todas as situações de mercantilismo, de comércio administrado, de restrições. Acho que qualquer pessoa medianamente aberta aos fenômenos de mercado pode perceber isso, não é?

Like · Reply · Yesterday at 3:59pm

Thiago D'Ávila Paulo Roberto de Almeida, ok. Essas são as ideias nas quais vc acredita. Essas podem ser até as ideias comprováveis empiricamente. Essas podem ser as tão buscadas verdades universais.

O que eu estou apontando, pura e simplesmente, é que o comentarista a quem você critica (ELE) está insinuando que o livre mercado não existe de fato (afirmação com a qual você inclusive concordou acima) e ELE está perguntando em relação a benefícios para trabalhadores, não a consumidores. EU estou dizendo apenas e tão somente que trabalhadores e consumidores são categorias distintas.EU não estou dizendo que livre mercado não possa trazer benefícios a trabalhadores e consumidores.

Isto tudo esclarecido, VOCÊ no fundo concorda com o comentarista a quem crítica, porque assim como ELE, você está dizendo que livre mercado não existe de fato, a situação real (de NÃO livre mercado apenas beneficia algumas empresas). E eu ouso supor que você também concorda com ele de que a atual situação (de NÃO livre mercado) prejudica trabalhadores.

Por fim, EU estou dizendo que sua crítica está errada (porque no fundo você concorda com ele), não a sua ideia.
Esse é o espírito da coisa. smile emoticon

Like · Reply · Yesterday at 4:16pm · Edited

Paulo Roberto de Almeida Meu caro Thiago D'Ávila, desculpe o atraso, mas volto a este debate importante. Acho que você ainda não capturou minha posição, mas independependente da minha posição, você não capturou o espírito da coisa que anda, ou seja, o princípio do livre comércio. Se eu estou concordando com o comentarista de que o livro comércio não existe, isso NÃO QUER DIZER que ele não seja possível, ou que ele é IMPOSSÍVEL. Basta que um país, unilateralmente (como aliás já fez a Inglaterra em 1846, até o início do século XX) decrete o livre comércio para si, para que ele comece a existir na prática. Ou que algum dia ele seja implementado como regra universal (o que ainda está longe), e que restrições, tarifas, normas e outras barreiras sejam a exceção, não a regra. A humanidade estará muito melhor, como estaria se a Declaração Universal dos DIREITOS DO HOMEM fosse implementada na prática, efetivamente (mas ela é NORMA UNIVERSAL, e EXISTE, e os países que se desviam dela são DESVIANTES, não a norma escrita ou não escrita, como é o mercantilismo atual do sistema multilateral de comércio, Gatt-OMC). Não é o livre comércio que prejudica trabalhadores, pois ele apenas desemprega setorialmente ALGUNS trabalhadores, beneficiando TODOS OS DEMAIS, como consumidores e como trabalhadores (e são categorias distintas apenas na teoria, pois na prática são exatamente as mesmas pessoas), pois o NÃO LIVRE COMÉRCIO prejudicará aqueles trabalhadores temporariamente protegidos, pois o setor, o ramo industrial, o país ficará isolado das pressões competitivas do resto mundo e DIMINUIRÁ A RENDA de todos os seus habitantes, não apenas os trabalhadores de um ou outro setor.

Like · Reply · Just now · Edited

 

Podem os EUA (ja nem digo o Brasil) ser uma Dinamarca? Bernie Sanders computou os custos? - Steven Pearlstein (WP)

Os nossos keynesianos de botequim apontam para as maravilhas dos escandinavos para dizer que se pode, sim, ter altas taxas e excelentes serviços coletivos fornecidos pelo Estado. Eu, mesmo quando era um keynesiano moderado, nunca achei que o Brasil pudesse se converter facilmente num país escandinavo, a começar que não tínhamos a moderação demográfica, as tradições democráticas, a ausência de corrupção e, sobretudo, a alta educação (e produtividade) dos escandinavos.
Mas, o candidato Bernie Sander acha que sim, que os EUA poderiam ser uma espécie de Dinamarca. Ele só esqueceu de informar sobre os custos de um United States of Scandinavia, e, mais ainda, quem iria pagar...
Mas a principal razão evidenciada por um especialista consultado para esta matéria de Steven Pearlstein é que os EUA não são um país homogêneo como a Dinamarca. Bem, o que pensar do Brasil então?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Wonkbook: Can Bernie Sanders turn the United States into Denmark?
By Steven Pearlstein
The Washington Post, March 14, 2016

Government-provided health insurance. Free college tuition. A $15 minimum wage. Stronger unions. High gas taxes. Guaranteed parental leave.  It sounds as though Bernie Sanders wants to turn America into Denmark or Sweden.

“And what’s wrong with that?” the Democratic presidential candidate replied when ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked that question.

Indeed, a number of countries with bigger governments, higher taxes and more income equality than the United States are as prosperous, healthy and happy — in some cases, more so. Cross-country studies have found that big government is not a guarantee of a country’s economic success, but neither is it a barrier. Even here at home, the pollsters at Gallup found that most Democrats — and a near majority of all Americans — would be open to voting for a socialist.

According to economists, however, the question is not whether it is theoretically possible for Americans to adopt Scandinavian policies and still be prosperous. The issue is whether Americans would be willing to accept the tradeoffs that go along with such a system — higher taxes and unemployment rates, open trade, slower growth, more income redistribution — and whether Sanders has overestimated the benefits and underestimated the costs of adopting it.

“There’s nothing wrong with it other than that Americans are not Danes,” said Princeton’s Alan Blinder, a top economic adviser to President Bill Clinton.

“The number one reason why these policies are feasible in Denmark is that the country is extremely homogenous,” explained Jacob Kierkegaard, a Dane who is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics in Washington.  “The perception among the electorate is that the government will provide for me and for people who, in a linguistic, cultural and ethnic sense, are just like me.” And because Danes view themselves as 'shareholders' in the state, he said, government is viewed as benign and trustworthy.”
“That situation is not present, nor has ever been present, in the United States,” Kierkegaard said.

Luigi Zingales, an Italian economist now at the University of Chicago, contrasts high-tax, high-trust socialist countries such as Denmark and Sweden with high-tax, low-trust countries where populations are ethnically and culturally diverse, politics are fractious and government is incompetent and corrupt. In terms of social trust, he said, the Americans are somewhere in between.
“The danger for the United States is that it would wind up looking more like Italy and Greece than Denmark and Sweden,” Zingales said.
Attitudes toward globalization is another difference. Free trade is so widely accepted in Scandinavia that it even has strong support from organized labor. “Their unions recognize that for their workers to have a job, companies need to export to grow and be successful,” Kierkegaard said. By contrast, Sanders has made common cause with American unions in proposing to roll back every trade treaty signed since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the 1990s.
The world, in fact, may be better off when different countries adopt different economic systems, argue Daron Acemoglu, Thierry Verdier and James Robinson in a widely noted paper, “Can’t We All Be More Like Scandanavians?”
The United States, with its more “cutthroat” form capitalism, they argue, plays a unique role in the global economy because it generates a disproportionate share of innovative new technologies and business practices that are quickly adopted by other countries. If Americans were to embrace Denmark’s  “cuddly” form of capitalism, they fear, there would be less of that disruptive innovation and both Americans and Danes would be worse off. A robust global economy requires the co-existence of both systems trading with each other.
Although economists are sympathetic to the direction of many of the individual policies that make up Sandernomics, even those who lean liberal worry they go too far.
The best example is the single-payer health plan that would effectively replace today’s private and public insurance programs with comprehensive medical, dental and optical services with no co-payments or deductibles for all Americans.  Every other advanced country does it that way, at significantly lower cost and better health outcomes. Why, Sanders asks, can’t we do the same?

An analysis done for the Sanders campaign by Gerald Friedman, a University of Massachusetts economist, concluded that the single-payer plan would shave $1 trillion off what would otherwise be $6 trillion in national health spending by 2026, a decade after enactment—even after extending coverage to tens of millions of Americans who now are uninsured or underinsured.
The reduction, he calculates would come primarily from eliminating most of the billing and administrative expenses at doctors offices, hospitals, pharmacies and insurance companies—an immediate savings of 12 percent.  Additional savings would come from government bargaining and controls that reduce – and slow the growth of -- prices for drugs and medical services.
The average family, Friedman estimated, would save nearly $6,000 a year, even after paying a new 8.4 payroll tax to the government instead of premiums and co-payments to insurance companies.  At the same time, employers who offer insurance would save more than $9,000 per employee.
But Kenneth Thorpe, a widely respected health economist at Emory University, argues that Friedman overestimated the administrative savings and reduction in drug prices that the government could negotiate on generic drugs and home health care, both fast-growing segments.  And he said that Friedman badly underestimated the additional demand for medical services induced by the total elimination of co-payments and deductibles, creating the health care equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Thorpe is no stranger to single-payer health plans.  His cost analyses lead Sanders’ own state of Vermont to scrap its plans for a statewide single-payer system. Sanders’ plan, he calculated, would require another trillion dollars a year in new taxes on top of the $1.3 billion that Sanders had proposed to fund the system.
Beyond the financial challenges are the political ones. Health economists predict the Sanders plan would reduce incomes for doctors, hospital administrators and drug company shareholders, much as happens in other countries. Warren Gunnels, Sanders’ policy director, acknowledged as much but argued that Canadian and British doctors and nurses still lived “very comfortably.”

Keeping a tighter rein on health spending could also result in fewer tests and procedures if they fail to meet strict cost-benefit guidelines, or longer wait times for non-urgent care, which are also common in other countries.  Gunnels said that kind of rationing will be minimal and, in any case, is preferable to the kind of rationing of health care that  now leaves 60 million Americans uninsured or underinsured.
Economists have also questioned Sanders plan for free tuition at all public colleges and universities.
Ron Ehrenberg, a Cornell University expert on higher education, notes that because of existing federal and state assistance, low- and moderate-income students already pay little or no tuition. Much of the tuition benefit, he predicts, will go to students from middle- and upper-income families.
“I’m not sure this is a wise thing,” Ehrenberg said.  “It won’t affect the ability of lower income students to get higher education.”
Others predict that the plan could strain the capacity of public institutions as large numbers of students shift from private to public colleges.  They also warn that the extra demand probably would ive up the annual cost of the program well beyond the $75 billion Sanders has projected. A recent study by the bipartisan Tax Policy Center found that the financial transaction tax which Sanders relies on to pay for the tuition-free initiative could raise, at most, $50 billion a year. Setting the tax as high as Sanders proposes, they warn, would simply cause investors and speculators to make fewer trades, or drive the trading offshore.
A cornerstone of Sandernomics is a promise to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour — enough to lift any full-time worker out of poverty.  Other proposals — pay equity for women, stricter overtime enforcement and rules making it easier for workers to unionize—are also meant to push up working-class wages.  These regulatory changes would increase average wages by 8 percent within a decade, according to Friedman at UMass.

Liberal economists auxh A Princeton’s Alan Krueger, former chief economist in the Obama White House, have long thought that, in modest doses, such policies can largely pay for themselves because of the reduced turnover and increased worker productivity that result from higher pay.  But even Krueger has been reluctant to push the minimum wage as high as $15, calling it a “risk not worth taking.”
In his speeches, Sanders suggests the higher incomes at the bottom will be paid for in the form of lower incomes for shareholders and executives who have captured all of the benefit of economic growth in recent decades. But even Friedman estimates that about half of the cost of these wage-boosting policies will eventually be passed on to workers, in the form of higher prices for what they buy, smaller pay raises or higher unemployment as firms replace workers with new technology.
Certainly the most aggressive aspect of Sandernomics is the senator’s plan to collect an additional $1.6 trillion a year in taxes—the equivalent of 7 percent of GDP.  Although all households would pay higher taxes, 40 percent of the extra taxes would come from households in the top 1 percent —those with annual incomes above $500,000, according to a Tax Policy Center analysis.  Those households would see their overall federal tax bite rise from 34 percent to 55 percent.
Sanders argues that it is misleading to look at the tax increase he proposes without also considering the money households would not have to spend on health insurance premiums and co-payments as a result of his plan.  A study by the liberal-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice found that 95 percent of American households—those with incomes below $225,000—would have more money to spend on everything other than taxes and health care.
But Sanders makes no apologies for the dramatic tax increase he wants to impose on “the billionaire class,” whose after-tax income would fall 40 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center.
For households with annual incomes above $10 million, the combined income and payroll tax bite on the last dollar of salary income— what economists call the marginal rate—would be 77 percent (after adding in the employer share of payroll taxes, as most economists would do). That compares to 43 percent today. For investment income—typically the bulk of income for wealthy households—the marginal rate would be 64 percent, compared to 24 percent today. None of those numbers includes state and city income taxes, which in some places could add another 10 percentage points to the tax bite.
Even households with incomes as low as $250,000 would face a marginal rate of 62 percent for earned income and 50 percent for investment income, significantly above today’s levels.
For years, mainstream economists have argued that governments could raise top marginal rates on salary income as high as 60 percent, and investment income to 30 percent, without causing high-income households to change their economic behavior. But with combined state and federal marginal rates reaching 70 or even 80 percent, they warn, it is likely that some business executives, hedge fund managers and well-paid professionals—or their spouses—will decide to hang it up and head for the beach.  For sure they will hire armies of lawyers and accountants to help them convert salary income to lower-taxed investment income—and then move investment income offshore, where it is not subject to any U.S. tax.
“You will just never be able to tax [investment income] that highly,” warns Princeton’s Blinder, as European countries discovered years ago.  Today, European tax rates on investment income are now half of what Sanders proposes.
And it’s not just rich people who would be affected by Sanders’S tax increases at the top. “Almost any economist would say that those taxes on investment will have a negative impact on economic growth,” said Len Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center.  “It raises the costs for business of making new investment, so they will invest less.  And it makes investors less inclined to own [stocks].”
Indeed, it would be surprising if Sanders’s plan for steep increase in taxes on investment income, corporate profit and financial transactions did not cause stock prices to fall significantly, reducing household wealth and, with it, consumer spending.
Sanders thinks this is nonsense. By redistributing spendable income to the poor and middle class and increasing government investment for infrastructure and education, he promises that Sandernomics would supercharge economic growth.  According to Friedman’s analysis, it would add 25 million jobs over a decade, increase the income of the average household by more than $20,000 and drive the unemployment rate down to 3.8 percent.
Even Democratic economists, however, are skeptical of such claims.
Christina Romer, another former adviser to President Obama, with her husband, David, released a paper last week concluding that there just weren’t enough unemployed workers and unused capacity left in the economy to make it possible for the economy to grow 5 percent each year for a decade, as Sanders imagines. The more likely result, they said, would be dramatically higher inflation, not growth.
“A realistic examination of the impact of the Sanders policies on the economy’s productive capacity suggest[s] those effects are likely to be small at best, and possibly negative,” wrote the Romers, both professor at the University of California at Berkeley.  The higher inflation would prompt the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, further depressing business investment, they warned.  And by providing free tuition to students and guaranteed health care to everyone, it was unlikely, they concluded, that Sanders would succeed in greatly expanding the workforce.
Some economists, such as Jamie Galbraith of the University of Texas, think the Romers are working from an outdated economic model.
At a time when there is slow economic growth because of a glut of savings and too few opportunities for private investment, shifting money to well-targeted public investments such as infrastructure and education would surely increase growth, Galbraith said.
Moreover, in the newly globalized economy, there is a greatly reduced inflation risk. If wages are pushed high enough, Galbraith says, there are plenty of students, retirees, stay-at home parents, under-employed freelancers and Mexican immigrants who could be lured back into the American workforce.
That, however, is not what generally happens in Denmark and Sweden.  In those countries, higher wages, free tuition and universal health care come in an economic package that generally also includes modest growth, higher unemployment, limited immigration and significantly higher middle-class taxes. The problem with the Sanders program, say its critics, is that it promises all the good parts of the Scandinavian model without any of the bad parts — all dessert, no spinach.
As Denmark’s Kierkegaard sees it, in the modern world, existing social, economic, political and cultural institutions are so complex and interdependent that it’s not possible to bring about radical change in one area without changing everything else.  And even if Sanders did manage to pull off all those changes, he said, the process would generate disruption and uncertainty that would slow the economy for years.
“Revolutions in advanced economies are extraordinarily costly,” he said. “That’s why incremental change is preferred.”

Steven Pearlstein is a business and economics columnist who writes about local, national and international topics.

O Carnaval do Zika campeao: vai se espalhar pelo mundo - WashPost

In Zika-stricken Brazil, a Carnival of flesh and feasting - for the mosquitoes
Nick Miroff  & Dom Phillips
The Washington Post, February 8, 2016

For the next few nights, Tuane Rocha, a tall, radiant samba queen, will be dancing naked in the streets of this city, wearing only body paint.
Mind you, she will take precautions. "First I'm going to put on a layer of repellent," she said. "Then makeup. Then the paint."
Rocha dances fast - really fast. She figures she can keep the mosquitoes at bay if she keeps moving.
Because nothing stops Carnival in this country. Not the government, nor a lousy economy, nor the Zika pandemic.
Millions of Brazilians will be in the streets this coming week for one of the world's biggest bacchanals, a dancing and drinking binge that draws revelers from all over the world. No doubt some of them will go home with Zika and spread it even more. Huge crowds at Carnival celebrations across the Americas will give the virus new opportunities to propagate - by mosquito but also potentially through sexual contact.

The arrival of Carnival points to one of the inherent challenges in fighting the Zika outbreak. The World Health Organization has declared the outbreak a "global emergency." But it doesn't quite feel like one. At least not here, despite the terrifying possibility that it is bringing into the world a wave of babies born with small heads.
Pregnant women and their families are petrified. But unlike Ebola, cholera or AIDS at its advent, the Zika virus doesn't present an immediate, lethal threat to the broader population. As many as 80 percent of those infected have no symptoms. And the best - really the only - way to fight it is for people to do something that they should have been doing anyway: eliminating the mosquito breeding pools in their homes and yards.
The mosquitoes that carry Zika flourish, too, in places that belong to no one. Rio de Janeiro's spectacular urban rain forests and lush mountainsides teem with them. So do the city's vacant lots and roadsides, strewn with garbage where water collects. Carnival, which began Friday, will probably bring even more trash.
Just as authorities here have bristled at calls to cancel theSummer Olympics scheduled for August, there was never any question in Brazilian minds that Carnival would go on despite Zika. Canceling it would be similar to the U.S. government trying to cancel Christmas. It is the country's most sacred holiday, said Brazilian sociologist and columnist Luiz Simas. Its very purpose is to help people forget about their problems.
"People abroad might find this a little strange," he said. "But in the history of Rio, at the most difficult moments, Carnival is even more intense."
"You don't party at Carnival because life is good," Simas said. "You party at Carnival because life is difficult."
In addition to its main parade, a massive, corporate-sponsored procession with thousands of dancers gyrating in elaborate costumes, Carnival also consists of hundreds of neighborhood-level street parties known as "blocos," where the drumming and drinking last long into the hot nights of the Southern Hemisphere's summer. It's hard to think of a better place for mosquitoes and for promiscuity.
Images of Carnival revelry here may contribute to international perceptions that Brazil isn't doing enough to contain the outbreak or sound alarms, for fear of losing much-needed tourism revenue for Carnival and the Olympics.

This week, the country's Health Ministry also fired back at complaints from scientists and researchers in the United States and Europe who say they are unable to properly study Zika because Brazil isn't sharing enough test samples.
Authorities reject claims that they aren't taking the pandemic seriously or should cancel the Summer Games. President Dilma Rousseff has urged Brazilians to mobilize against the virus, and she promised expectant mothers that the government "will do everything, absolutely everything in our power to protect you."
In a speech this past week, Rousseff declared "war" onAedes aegypti, the mosquito that is the primary vector for the virus. She has ordered more than 220,000 soldiers to fan out across the country to hand out leaflets at 3 million homes. About 50,000 will hunt for pools of standing water where the insects breed.

But not until next week. After Carnival.
"People here expect the government to do a lot for them," said Leandro do Nascimiento, a city health worker passing out brochures and condoms ahead of Carnival. "We need them to take responsibility for this, too."
He joined a large group of health and sanitation workers dancing to samba music and passing out condoms and lubricant packets near commuter trains this week. They do the event every year ahead of the festivities to encourage HIV prevention, but this year, they added Zika materials, and a few dressed up in mosquito costumes, wearing plastic wings and rubbery proboscises.
Several residents said these were the first government workers they had seen talking to people about the virus. "We don't know much about Zika. Only what we've heard on television," said Alessandro Tavares, speaking at Rio's Central Station, alongside his wife, Vanessa Dos Santos, who is nine months pregnant. Anti-mosquito brigades that are supposedly fanning out across the city with larvicide have yet to show up in their neighborhood, he said.
"The city and the state government don't even have the money to keep the public hospitals open, but they still want to have the Olympic Games," said Tavares, who, like many Brazilians, expresses little faith in the ability of the country's recession-hobbled government to confront the crisis.
The couple live high up on a hillside in one of the city's favelas, where mosquitoes thrive. They keep their doors and windows closed, slather on bug repellent every day, and Dos Santos has not had Zika symptoms. But they worry about the baby they are expecting.
"It's in God's hands now," Tavares said.

A surge in cases
Brazil is investigating a possible Zika connection to more than 3,000 reported cases of babies born with underdeveloped heads and brains, the condition known as microcephaly.
The highest number of cases have been reported in northern Brazil's Pernambuco state. Now, more cases are appearing in Rio, said Alexandra Araujo, a pediatric neurologist at the federal university hospital here. "I have never seen so many in such a short time," said Araujo, who has been working at the hospital since 1983.
So far, Brazil is the only country in the Americas where authorities have seen a surge of infants born with microcephaly, and Araujo acknowledged that a direct link between Zika and the birth defect has not been proved. But she has seen "too much of a jump" in recent weeks, she said.
There are currently about 3,000 pregnant women in Rio state - which has a population of 16 million - who have reported Zika symptoms, she said. There were 171 newborns diagnosed with microcephaly statewide last month, after 66 in all of 2015.
One of them was Luiz Felipe, born Dec. 28. His mother, Pollyana Rebello, 27, was diagnosed with Zika during her eighth month of pregnancy. For her, it is not a time for Carnival celebrations.
"Only with time will we know if he will improve," Rebello said, cradling the boy in her suburban home on the outskirts of Niteroi, a town near Rio. "It could be that he's able to talk but not walk."
To her, Luiz Felipe is a normal boy, she said. "He just has a little head."
But she said others in the community have stigmatized the family. "People think that microcephaly is a contagious disease, and it's not."
Her cousin Stephani Moura, 24, who is four months pregnant, sat on the couch and fawned over Luiz Felipe. She said that she was trying to protect herself as best she could against mosquitoes."I have the fan on all day, the windows closed, and I put repellent on every two hours," Moura said. "And I wear long pants."
But not that day. In Rio's stifling humidity, she was wearing shorts and a vest. "In this heat, no one can stand it," she said.

Em 2050, cristaos e muculmanos se equiparao, e estes crescerao mais - Ishan Tharoor (WP)

Chart: There will be almost as many Muslims as Christians in the world by 2050

By Ishaan Tharoor  

The Wahington Post, blog World Views, April 2 , 2015

 

A new study released Thursday by the Pew Research Center projected the populations of the world's major religions over the next four decades. It reports, among many other findings, that Islam is the world's fastest growing religion and that the global population of Muslims will nearly match that of the world's Christians by 2050, as the chart below shows.

The project was a major undertaking for Pew and is one of the first such comprehensive demographic analyses of its kind. "We have spent years analyzing thousands of data sets, censuses and populations registers," says lead researcher Conrad Hackett. "It's been a tremendous amount of work."

"The projections are what will occur if the current data are accurate and the trends play out as expected," advises the report. Pew took into account a complex range of factors in making its model for projecting the world's religious populations. These include fertility rates, the size of youth populations, effects of migration and rates of "religious switching" — such as, for example, the tendency of some in various religious communities to eventually become, as the study puts it, "unaffiliated."

For the purposes of this study, Pew did not analyze differing depths of religiosity among certain populations, nor disparities between confessional sects within a particular religion. The broader picture it paints offers some interesting glimpses of a not-so-distant future.
According to the Pew report, growing "unaffiliated" populations in the West and parts of East Asia will be undercut by declining birthrates. "The ten countries with the largest 'unaffiliated' populations are shrinking," says Hackett.
As the chart above shows, Muslims are part of the only religious community that is projected to increase at a rate faster than the world population as a whole. After 2070, Pew predicts, there will likely be more self-identifying Muslims than Christians. India, while still a Muslim-minority country, will likely also be the world's largest Muslim nation by 2050.
Still, this hardly indicates some sort of global Muslim takeover, as many far-right Western nationalists fear. Even the most generous projection for 2050 in Europe, where a number of Islamophobic parties are in ascension, places the continent's Muslim population at just around 10 percent.

Pew's study also shows how the major cradle for world religions -- particularly its two biggest, Islam and Christianity -- will be in sub-Saharan Africa, where a population boom will make it the home of four out of every 10 Christians on the planet.
You can peruse the full report here.

Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior editor at TIME, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.

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Malucos nucleares: iranianos, israelenses, norte-coreanos, paquistaneses, russos, etc...

Que o mundo anda cheio de malucos, isto a gente já sabe. Que alguns ocupem o poder supremo em seus próprios países, isso a gente também já sabe, inclusive por experiência própria, ou acontecendo por aí, nas periferias da vida...
Mas que alguns desses malucos estejam na posse de armas nucleares, e talvez até dispostos a usá-los, isto já é preocupante, e no entanto isso também existe, e as matérias deste dia refletem essa situação maluca em torno de malucos proliferadores, e outros que tentam reverter a situação...
Não bastasse os impasses das negociações do Irã com o P5+1 em torno do seu programa nuclear, e o provável fracasso da fase atual (que deve terminar na última semana de março), vamos ter provavelmente sanções mais fortes contra o Irã a serem aprovadas pelo Congresso americano contra esse país, o que vai melar ainda mais as negociações, provavelmente interrompendo-as por mais alguns meses, talvez até um ano mais.
O primeiro ministro de Israel acaba de se dirigir ao Congresso americano, contra a vontade e até a oposição do executivo, mas pode ter convencido mais alguns a aprovar as sanções.
Em todo caso, temos muitas notícias ruins esta semana, que eu coleciono aqui, para os malucos por informação (como este que aqui escreve) em torno dos malucos da proliferação que existem por ai...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waves as he steps to the podium prior to speaking before a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill, March 3, 2015. (AP)

Iran Already Has Nuclear Weapons Capability
Op-ed by Graham Allison
Foreign Policy

There is no way to erase from the minds of thousands of Iranian scientists and engineers the knowledge and skills to produce weapons-grade uranium. There is no way to eliminate Iran’s indigenous capacity to mine uranium, manufacture centrifuges, or operate them. Thus, there is no conceivable end to this story in which Iran will not retain the capability to build nuclear weapons.
...
If we accept what we cannot deny, the strategic question becomes how to persuade Iran’s supreme leader that while Iran has an irreversible technical capability, it does not have — and will not be allowed to acquire — an exercisable nuclear weapons option.
Read more...

Netanyahu says U.S. is on verge of ‘bad deal’ with Iran over nuclear program
In a rousing speech before Congress punctuated by more than 40 bursts of applause, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assailed the Obama administration’s nuclear negotiations with Iran, asserting bluntly that the United States was on the verge of making “a bad deal.” (The Washington Post, March 3, 2015)

Proliferation News, March 3, 2015

Netanyahu Warns That Nuclear Deal 'Paves Iran's Path' to a Bomb
Katie Zezima | Washington Post
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forcefully argued against a nuclear deal with Iran, telling a joint meeting of Congress that such an agreement would have the opposite effect of what the international community intends, by effectively supplying Iran with the means to produce a nuclear weapon. Any agreement "doesn't block Iran's path to the bomb, it paves Iran's path to the bomb," Netanyahu said. "So why would anyone make this deal?"

Iran Calls Obama's 10-Year Nuclear Demand 'Unacceptable'
Arshad Mohammed | Reuters
Iran on Tuesday rejected as "unacceptable" U.S. President Barack Obama's demand that it freeze sensitive nuclear activities for at least 10 years, but said it would continue talks aimed at securing a deal, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported.

James Acton | Can Iran Sell a Nuclear Deal Domestically?

IAEA: Iran Still Withholding Key Information
Haaretz
The head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said on Monday Iran had still not handed over key information to his staff, and his body's investigation into Tehran's atomic programme could not continue indefinitely.

Iran Looking Into Developing Small Reactors
Tehran Times
"During the recent talks with U.S. negotiators in Geneva, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Washington is also looking into the same strategy," AEOI chief Ali Akbar Salehi said.

Russia 'Ready to Repel Any Nuke Strike, Retaliate'
RT
"If there's a challenge to repel a lightning-fast nuclear strike in any given conditions – it will be done in fixed time, that's dead true," the Strategic Missile Forces Central Command's chief, Major-General Andrey Burbin, told Russian News Service on Saturday.

Andrew Weiss | Putin the Improviser