Off-shoring, transfer pricing, financialization, and the profitability of U.S. firms

Some time ago, I had a conversation with a colleague about the ways in which the ostensible financialization of large U.S. firms reflected, or was even just an epiphenomena, of the internationalization of production chains. Reading the chapters for Brenner's class today, I was reminded of this, because I think one could make a case that the disagreement between Brenner and, say, Panitch and Gindin comes down to very different views of financialization. Basically, is the outsized share of financial profits in the U.S. economy since the 80s just froth, i.e. paper returns enabled by the expansion of paper purchasing power that by necessity must end in a 1-for-1 deflation sooner or later, or is it an alternative mode of accumulation (albeit no less contradictory than other modes of capitalist accumulation, or if anything more so)? The problem is that as stated, both positions aren't really viable. Brenner's claim, I think, is overly focused on consumer finance, i.e. debt as crutch for consumption, which is certainly important but overlooks the growing importance of financial income for even nonfinancial corporations (or, at most, just assumes that the latter is the flipside of the former, pointing to auto financing and the like). The alternative claim just remains kind of mystical -- "financial profits" do in fact need to come from somewhere, and I've never seen much concrete evidence for Harvey's suggestion that it's "accumulation by dispossession." (Hell, I've never even been quite clear what he means by that.)

If it is the case that much "financialization" is just the accounting manifestation of expansion of overseas subsidiaries and of offshore subcontracting, then it seems to me that an analysis of this could shed a lot of light on this rather state debate. Do Brenner's calculations of the rate of profit properly take into account the total returns U.S. capital earns, taking into account the full production chain? Is U.S. capital in fact earning a healthy global rate of return, or is all of this internationalization of production (and the tax-accounting tricks that accompany it) just a further manifestation of the diminishing-returns scramble to cut costs in the face of over-competition that Brenner diagnosis as the root cause of the crisis that began in the 70s? On the other side, if this is the real source of the profitability of "financial" strategies, is it even valid to call it an "alternative mode of accumulation"?

Counterfactuals about the decline of the U.S. labor movement

Had the "rank and file rebellion" of the late 60s and 70s successfully taken control of a significant number of unions, would the later trajectory of U.S. politics and the labor movement have been different?

At least 4 possibilities, from leadership mattering a lot to not at all:

1. Substantial difference in political balance of 1980s, thus blunting the edge of the capital assault and retrenchment in various ways
2. Neoliberal gains could have been "slowed down," perhaps preserving some greater degree of organizational capacity for labor
3. The institutional weakness of the American labor movement was institutionally "baked in" to the form in which it coalesced by the mid-20th century. In particular, the existence of the South as a non-union region, locked in by Taft-Hartley, fatally weakened the (northern and western) labor movement.
4. The structural conditions of post-crisis world capitalism fundamentally restricted possibilities. Namely, competitive pressures in the context of world industrial over-capacity and the threat of capital mobility sharply limited the leeway for what labor could ever have won.

Some key questions

1. Was there a sufficient recovery of profits and accumulation, by say the late 80s, such that there was some "surplus" labor could have won?
2. If a more tenacious labor movement had raised the cost of the the straightforward labor-squeezing strategy adopted by many U.S. firms, what would have been their response? Would they have invested more in productivity improvements, or would they have just moved south or overseas more quickly?
3. Would the U.S. have needed German-like institutions to achieve a German-like "high road" trajectory of maintaining industrial competitiveness?

"The Negative Effects of Privilege on Educational Attainment: Gender, Race, Class, and the Bachelor's Degree"

William Mangino, Social Science Quarterly (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ssqu.12003/abstract)

Basically, what it seems to boil down to is that:

1. Women born between 1974 and 1983 attend college and, among those who attend college, complete a 4-year degree, at higher rates than men in the same cohort. I think this is a well-known phenomenon, though I don't know if there are good explanations for it.
2. College attendance and completion is highly correlated with parental income, but at very high levels (as in, like $500,000+, though from the presentation of data it's not quite clear) the rate of completion (among individuals who began some kind of post-secondary education) falls from close to 100% to something like 4/5. The thing is, that there are only 72 individuals with parental income of 250k or above (with a mean parental income of 450k), so these effects could be being driven by a very small number of cases. (If we improbably assume 450k is the median as well as the mean, then the difference between 97% and 83% is only 5 trust fund babies deciding to write the Great American Novel instead of finishing college, or something.)
3. Blacks are less likely than whites to attend any post-secondary education, and less likely to complete it, though this latter effect (at least) is attenuated by controlling for parental income. If, in addition to parental income, you control for household composition variables (2 parents, # siblings, parental education levels), the effect switches direction (though isn't statistically significant). If you add controls for living in the NE or in an urban area and for "social capital," the effect gets a bit bigger and becomes significant at 10%. The effect becomes highly significant and substantial (larger than the coefficient for a dummy for Asian ethnicity) if you also add a control for "academic orientation."

So, it seems like (1) isn't news, (2) isn't terribly substantial, and (3) is ambiguous at best. I think it amounts to this: black kids will on average say they don't value academic achievement as much as white kids with otherwise similar demographic variables, but they will perform much better than one would expect based on the value they claim to put on academic achievement. I suppose one could spin that as weighing against the "burden of acting white" argument, but I don't know.

A false premise?

"[The article] puts forward some new arguments to explain 'grassroots resistance' to the deep marketization in many societies and answers the question why capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else."

Written by a Russian economist. In what respect has "deep marketization" failed in Russia?

I'd say this was a hoax meant to make fun of evolutionary psychology, but that doesn't seem to be the case

This: http://news.yahoo.com/why-im-a-creationist-141907217.html

Cut to now. I still read and read and listen and listen. And I have never found a more compelling story of our origins than the ones that involve God. The evolutionary psychologists with their just-so stories for everything (“You use a portable Kindle charger because mothers in the primordial forest gathered ginseng”) have become more contradictory than Leviticus. Did you all see that ev-psych now says it’s women who are naturally not monogamous, in spite of the same folks telling us for decades that women are desperate to secure resources for their kids so they frantically sustain wedlock with a rich silverback who will keep them in cashmere?
Sigh. When a social science, made up entirely of observations and hypotheses, tells us first that men are polygamous and women homebodies, and then that men are monogamous and women gallivanters—and, what’s more builds far-fetched protocols of dating and courtship and marriage and divorce around these notions—maybe it’s time to retire the whole approach.
All the while, the first books of the Bible are still hanging around. I guess I don’t “believe” that the world was created in a few days, but what do I know? Seems as plausible (to me) as theoretical astrophysics, and it’s certainly a livelier tale. As “Life of Pi” author Yann Martel once put it, summarizing his page-turner novel: “1) Life is a story. 2) You can choose your story. 3) A story with God is the better story.”

I mean, what better argument against half-assed evolutionary explanations of social behavior than to say that it encourages belief in creationism!

Also, a little earlier in the piece, there's this perhaps unintentionally cutting observation: "I assume that other people love science and technology, since the fields are often lumped together, but I rarely meet people like that. Technology people are trippy; our minds are blown by the romance of telecom." I mean, the unembarrassed juxtaposition of technology-commodity worship and old-fashioned religious obscurantism!

The case for it being at least kind of a joke would be based on 1) the purely trolling mention of climate change and 2) the fact that it really is hard to believe someone honestly following the reasoning that, more or less, science is confusing so let's default to the old testament.

This is a lie.

"This paper takes as its starting point the fact that Bourdieu’s views on sociology as a science have not been sufficiently and adequately understood and discussed."

"a racially gendered classed capitalist world-system"

American Sociology: History and Racially Gendered Classed Knowledge Reproduction

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore how racially gendered classed power-relations structure history, knowledge and American Sociology's historical memory and disciplinary knowledge production. In order to do so, this paper will 1) utilize Cabral's (1970) theory of history to center humanity as historically developed into a racially gendered classed capitalist world-system, 2) employ intersectionality as a heuristic device to see how knowledge is manipulated to normalize dehumanization as well as to perpetuate exploitation and privilege by denying “Othered' ” knowledges, and lastly 3) sociologically imagine this racially gendered classed process in the “institutional-structure” of American Sociology by exploring the ancestry of the concept of “intersectionality.” In all this paper argues 1) American Sociology under theorizes history, a central aspect of the sociological imagination and production of new sociological knowledge, 2) American Sociology reproduces a dehumanized theory of history per Marx's “historical materialism” and 3) the structure of American Sociology's knowledge is racially gendered classed, as illustrated in the collective memory of the concept of “intersectionality.”


Journals should probably issue rules to the effect that "there should be no more than 1 numbered list of 3 or more items in any abstract." I'm also inclined to think that not much anything good comes from theorizing history.

DEEPLY muddled

This is rare, but I can't even begin to make head or tails of this abstract.

Sagi Cohen, "'The Last Refuge of the Scoundrel': Debating between History and Theory" Journal of Historical Sociology.

When “History” is called to represent silence, its metaphysical position is symptomatically felt. Tracing what Fasolt calls “the historian's revolt”, this paper identifies the political impetus behind it as the symptom dictating Foucault's own silences/silencings (regarding Derrida's intervention in his History of Madness). In naming such a symptom/silence – in taking “Derrida's position” – this paper performs its own violence/decision by, both “justifying,” and betraying, this position; by installing itself in, instead of “above,” this curious “debate”. “The last refuge of the scoundrel” appears then as the reflective exteriority of a political antagonism that's based on a metaphysical difference with regards to the legitimate “seat” of authority (in Fasolt, an antagonism between the historian and the Catholic Church). Finally, this trajectory is installed within a wider – metaphysical and historical – context, where Hegel's famous saying, that the University is the Protestant's Church, might yet echo that distant metaphysical decision – still looming, like a “genealogical specter,” over Academia and its Social Sciences.

NB also this note of acknowledgment: "This version of the text is deeply indebted to both its anonymous reviewers, to whom I would express my necessarily asymmetrical gratitude, for what I can only describe as a pure gift."

Very important issues

The Discreet Charm of Lenin

from Journal of Historical Sociology by Petra Rethmann

Abstract

This article takes two postcards of Lenin as their point of departure to ask about articulations of Soviet history as image and kitsch. I am especially interested in the ways in which the dead body or mummy of Lenin comes to symbolize an imagined social coherence that accrues specific political significance after the demise of the Soviet Union. In looking at Lenin's mummy as a site of memory and key to understanding contemporary Russian political desires, the article offers one analytical interpretation of the continuing preservation of Russia's revolutionary and also Stalinist past. By arguing that the Lenin mummy simultaneously functions as camp and kitsch, and as an embodied time of eternity, I also seek to understand how “grandiose” understandings of Soviet history work in this present.

Sometimes our culture still manages to surprise me for its absurdity

So, this: http://articles.marketwatch.com/2013-04-24/finance/38773627_1_billionaires-u-s-senators-graduate-school

My first reaction was to just be appalled that someone with a job at a major research university was doing something this idiotic:

Billionaires are among the world’s cleverest people, according to new research. In “Investigating America’s Elite,” Jonathan Wai, 33, a research scientist in psychology and member of Duke University’s Talent Identification Program, looked at the correlation between wealth and brains — or at least, brains as measured by education. Some 45% of billionaires rank among the smartest 1% of people in the U.S., the study found. Other groups with high representation in the smartest set: U.S. Senators (41%), federal judges (40%), and Fortune 500 CEOs (39%).

Wai looked at five groups of America’s business and political elite, totaling 2,254 subjects. The majority of Fortune 500 CEOs, federal judges, billionaires, senators and members of the House of Representatives had attended either a selective undergraduate institution or graduate school, Wai’s research found. And if they attended one of the 29 “elite colleges,” they were considered to be among the top 1%. Wai chose the schools based on their average SAT scores and American College Test scores, as tracked by the “U.S. News & World Report.” Average SAT scores of 1400 or greater — a combined score on the math and critical reading sections — put a school in the top 1%, he says.

No seriously, he comes to the conclusion that "America’s elite are largely drawn from the intellectually gifted, with many in the top 1% of ability" (from the abstract) based entirely on the fact that graduates of top colleges and grad programs tend to end up in powerful positions. The problems with that are so extensive I can't even think about it.

But that's not the part that makes this a classic. This article brings in someone to criticize the study - one Steve Siebold. "A former professional tennis player who coaches Fortune 500 executives on mental toughness, Seibold has been interviewing multi-millionaires and billionaires since college, and he says many of the world’s wealthiest people have little or no formal education." Now, he does make a few of the relevant points (about e.g. that college admissions and the SAT are not perfect proxies for "intelligence" to put it mildly). But that's not the bone he primarily wants to pick. Well, let me quote: 

Siebold: This is based on a faulty premise. If I have a lot of money, I can get into one of the country’s elite schools. Family connections are a big part of attending colleges too. George W. Bush got into Yale. I’d love to see him get into Yale without the Bush name. I say that after 29 years interviewing the 1,200 wealthiest people in the world. I was broke and I wanted to be rich. I just wanted to follow the wealthy so I could be one of them. I found that anyone can be rich if they can find a problem and solve it.
Siebold: In terms of what separates the wealthy from the average person, it starts with their beliefs about money. Guys like Trump and other rich people tend to have positive beliefs about money. The average person tends to believe that rich people are narcissists. America wouldn’t exist without rich people.
Siebold: ...I’m more interested in how successful people use their use their emotions to work long hours that no rational human being would work and take chances that no ordinary person would take.

In other words, we get this bogus research pushing one version of the American meritocratic ideology, and they bring in to oppose it some guy pushing the contradictory ideological alternative that "you can make it if you try!"

"Here, cows' bodies, movements and subjectivities are trained and manipulated in accordance with a persistent discourse of agricultural productivism"

Cows' subjectivities? Really?

Re-capturing bovine life: Robot–cow relationships, freedom and control in dairy farming

from ScienceDirect Publication: Journal of Rural Studies

Available online 26 February 2013
Publication year: 2013
Source:Journal of Rural Studies

Robotic milking machines are novel technologies that take over the labour of dairy farming and reduce the need for human–animal interactions. Replacing ‘conventional’ twice-a-day milking managed by people with a system that supposedly allows cows the freedom to be milked automatically whenever they choose, it is claimed that robotic milking has health and welfare benefits for cows, increases productivity, and has lifestyle advantages for dairy farmers. Such claims are certainly contested, but the installation of robotic milkers clearly establishes new forms of relationships between cows, technologies and dairy farmers. This paper draws on in-depth interviews with farmers and observational research on farms to examine relationships between representations of robotic milkers as a technology which gives cows freedom and autonomy, and practices and mechanisms which suggest that bovine life is re-captured and disciplined in important ways through the introduction of this technology. We focus on two issues. First, we explore changes in what it is to ‘be bovine’ in relation to milking robots, drawing on a combination of a discursive framing of cows' behaviour and ‘nature’ by dairy farmers and on-farm observation of cow-technology interaction. Second, we examine how such changes in bovinity might be articulated through conceptions of biopower which focus on knowledge of and intervention in the life of both the individual cow body and the herd. Such knowledge and intervention in the newly created sites of the robotic milking dairy are integral to these remodelled, disciplinary farm systems. Here, cows' bodies, movements and subjectivities are trained and manipulated in accordance with a persistent discourse of agricultural productivism. In discussing these issues, the paper seeks to show how particular representations of cows, the production of embodied bovine behaviours, technological interventions and micro-geographies contribute to a re-capturing and re-enclosure of bovine life which counters the liberatory discourses which are used to promote robotic milking.

Highlights

► The paper examines notions of bovine autonomy in robotic milking systems. ► Concepts of biopower in human–animal–technology relationships are developed. ► Manufacturers' claims and on-farm experiences of robotic milking are compared. ► The paper examines how bovine life is ‘recaptured’ in robotic milking systems.

Watkins and Miller

Things that didn't make it into the memo.

First, in something that Miller later identifies as the "alteration principle," he insists that in principle, any social fact could be changed by the "relevant" individuals, given the will and sufficient information about the situation. Miller seems unhappy this, though I'm not 100% clear on why. His idea seems to be something like a false consciousness argument: that it is possible for individuals to be systematically confused about what they want, and so prevented from acting to change collective practices that damage their interests. In contrast, I actually like this idea a lot as a way to express the essential mutability of social relations. Of course, one needs to be more explicit than (the ideologically tinged) Watkins of what's involved here: the "relevant individuals" are at the least going to have serious collective action problems (think the difference between individualistic and organized strategies by workers) and very likely going to have systematic conflicts of interest (e.g. the "relevant individuals" in anything involving work conditions are going to include employers).

Second, Watkins says this: "The practical or technological or therapeutic importance of social science largely consists in explaining, and thereby perhaps rendering politically manageable, the unintended and unfortunate consequences of the behavior of interacting individuals” (112-3). This strikes me as a remarkably clear statement of the ideal of "reformist liberal" social science. For one thing, it's pitched in terms of "unintended and unfortunate consequences" as opposed to objective conflicts. But even more interesting is the implicit equation of the "practical" consequences of social science with first technology, then therapy, then political manageability. Talk about a grab-bag of ideological metaphors. Politics is not about conflicting claims, but about "management" of problems that are implied to be akin either to "magneto trouble" (to use Keynes' phrase) or individual maladjustment to society.

Weak beer

Question: “Are Schools the Great Equalizer?" ASR 2004

Answer: Yes. “Although the gap does not close in school, it does not widen as fast as it otherwise might.”

Riiiight.

It's the 19th century all over again

Two Views of Social Justice: A Catholic/Georgist Dialogue

from American Journal of Economics and Sociology by KENNETH R. LORD

Abstract

Sixteen scholars have come together in this issue to examine eight social-justice themes from the perspectives of Catholic Social Thought and the philosophy of Henry George. The themes they address are natural law, human nature, the nature of work, the nineteenth-century papal encyclical Rerum novarum, causes of war, immigration, development, and wealth, and neighborhood revitalization. While they sometimes wrangle with each other, their common aspiration is the same as their nineteenth-century predecessors: to find solutions to the human suffering caused by injustice.

WTF academic navel-gazing

This is so wrong.

Social Forces at 90

Arne L. Kalleberg

This volume of Social Forces marks the 90th anniversary since it was founded in 1922 by sociologist Howard W. Odum. He served as editor until 1954; a full list of editors is provided in the front matter of this and every issue of Social Forces. The first article to appear in the journal was by Franklin H. Giddings, on the topic of “The Measurement of Social Forces.”
During the years since its founding, Social Forces has been recognized as a top journal of social research nationally and internationally. It has always sought to highlight the best in sociological inquiry while at the same time exploring the realms shared with social psychology, anthropology, political science, history and economics.

Reflecting on the Past

To celebrate this milestone anniversary, we highlight some of the articles published in the journal during the past five decades that have been especially significant statements on important topics. When deciding which articles to emphasize, I was guided by two main considerations: first, I’ve selected articles that have been especially influential as measured by citation counts and other usage statistics. Second, the articles chosen cover a range of topics that have been well represented in Social Forces through the years.
I asked the authors of these articles to write a short piece in which they reflect on questions such as: What do you know now that you wish you had known when you first wrote the article? How have your views on the topic changed since you wrote the article? How has the article influenced subsequent research on this topic? And, what is your (brief) assessment of the current state of research on this topic? I am grateful to the authors of these articles, all of whom responded enthusiastically to my invitation to write their reflections.
The articles represent a varied mix of the types of high-quality social science research and theorizing that has been published in Social Forces over the years: theoretical statements on subjects such as social movement organizations, delinquency and trust; discussions of measurement issues involved in studying topics such as tie strength in social networks, residential segregation and religion; and empirical analyses of economic stratification, family structure and child well-being and the gender division of household labor. All of these articles [End Page 1] have held up remarkably well over time and still have much to say about the topics that they address.
Reflections on these articles are printed in this issue of Social Forces. In addition, Oxford University Press is producing a virtual online issue that will include the reflections along with links to the original articles. This virtual issue will be made freely available to everyone.

The Varieties of Capitalism

At present, every advanced industrialization economy in the world is capitalist--production and employment are primarily carried out through the private investment decisions of profit-seeking firms and individuals. Yet, the institutional organizations of these economies vary immensely, with significantly divergent consequences for macro-economic outcomes. Broadly, these institutional variations encompass employer-labor relations and the provision of benefits outside the labor market through the welfare state. From the perspective of the analysis of capitalist class interests, restrictions on their relationship with employees and institutions that cushion current or potential employees from the competitive rigor of the labor market should seem to be anathema to capitalists, and yet institutions that do precisely that have survived, despite strains, for several decades in Europe.

Does this mean there are in fact situations in which employers' have a positive interest in institutions that improve the bargaining position for workers if they also increase productivity?

Einstein on the Beach

Robert Wilson, original director of the opera

I went to the revival at BAM some years ago, and I was there for the opening, and then I went back a week later, and walked down the aisle. There was an empty seat, and I sat down, in the empty seat on the aisle, and Arthur Miller was sitting next to me. And after about 20 minutes he turned to me, and he didn't know who I was, and he said, "What do you think about this?" I said, "I don't know, what do you think? And he said, "You know, I don't get it." I said, "You know, I don't get it either."

I am shocked. Shocked.

“You Fold Like a Little Girl:” (Hetero)Gender Framing and Competitive Strategies of Men and Women in No Limit Texas Hold Em Poker Games

from Qualitative Sociology

Abstract  

The formal rules, structure and practice of most sports in contemporary society prohibit men and women from competing on a “level playing field” and diminish women’s ability to launch a legitimate challenge to the masculine superiority embedded in sports competition. This study examines a relatively unique case—No Limit Texas Hold Em poker games in which men and women compete directly against one another under the same rules—to explore how the conditions under which men and women compete enable or impede the development of more gender egalitarian interactions and ideological frameworks. Drawing on ethnographic data, this examination reveals that, even in a more gender-neutral context, men and women learn to use heterogender frames to conceptualize poker. In doing so, they develop competitive strategies and interactions that predominately fit into, rather than subvert, gender hierarchy.

• Content Type Journal Article
• Pages 1-20
• DOI 10.1007/s11133-012-9235-3
• Authors
  • Michelle Wolkomir, Centenary College, Shreveport, LA, USA

• Journal Qualitative Sociology
• Online ISSN 1573-7837
• Print ISSN 0162-0436

Perception != reality

Faced with the appearance of two very partisan candidates, it is understandable that voters are registering their preferences earlier this year. The choices are clear—even if neither candidate is perceived as particularly close to the more centrist views of most American voters.

Aside from the problem that journalistic "centrism" in fact has little to do with the "views of most American voters," the fact is that the presidential contest (like most elections in the U.S.) is actually between a full-throated proponent of elite centrism and a slightly more resolutely right-wing practitioner of the same. The choice is not clear, in the sense that anything more than marginal differences in tax rates and regulatory enthusiasm and foreign policy would be the consequences of one side winning versus the other. 

Yes, just the same

"As usual the markets figured all this out long before I did.  The 2.6% yield on 30 year bonds is basically a forecast of future premature tightening by the Fed.  What I don’t understand is how markets can be so damn smart when they are composed on individuals who are individually quite stupid.  I suppose for the same reason that Albert Einstein’s brain was quite smart, despite being composed of neurons that are individually quite stupid."