A country in the heart of Europe, and a member of European Union is about to reject in a popular referendum the right of the third of its population to preserve its culture and speak in the native language. We are talking about Latvia and its 26.9% minority Russian population:
"Latvians go to the polls Saturday to decide whether Russian should join Latvian as an official language of this Baltic nation, in a referendum that is inflaming ethnic tensions more than two decades after the former Soviet republic regained its independence.
Russian speakers, who make up about a third of Latvia's roughly 2 million people, say they often feel like second-class citizens in a country where many ethnic Latvians still harbor deep resentment over their country's absorption by the Soviet Union during World War II.
"We are not just visitors passing through, or strangers, or occupiers," said Vladimir Linderman, head of one of the groups backing the referendum, For the Native Language. "Our goal is to demonstrate our readiness to fully participate in the public life of Latvia, with equal rights."
The pro-Russian measure is almost certain to fail by a wide margin. But campaigning in the run-up to the referendum has fueled a sharp polarization in politics and divided society, leading to sharp debates and souring relations between Russian speakers and other Latvians.
Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis has urged people to vote "no," saying that "the status of Latvia's core values is not questionable." Politicians further to the right portray the referendum as part of a broader struggle for power by Russians intent on undermining Latvia's freedom."
My comments:
1. Arabic, alongside Hebrew, is the official language of the State of Israel, but complaints that Israel discriminates against its Arab minority seem (at least to me) to generate a lot more attention than similar abuses against Russians in Latvia.
2. The argument of the Latvian prime minister parallels the Israeli government insistence on preserving the "Jewish character" of the State of Israel in case of any possible peace agreement with the Palestinians - the statements for which this government is routinely criticized.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Marxism
As I continue reading Sylvia Nazar's "Grand Pursuit", I would like to share a couple of facts/thoughts that I have taken from the chapter on Karl Marx:
1. Capital is a product of Labor
When analysing behavior of a firm/factory in a market, modern microeconomic texts (here is a good free one) often treat the capital (K) and the labor (L) as two independent variables (meaning by the "capital" the factory equipment, the raw materials etc.) The labor and the capital are thus respectively the contributions of the workers and the factory owners to the production process, for which they are respectively rewarded by salaries and profits.
Marx's view was that the capital itself is a product of labor: for example, the factory equipment and the raw materials were also produced by workers elsewhere. Thus, the profit of the factory owners is a part of the workers salary that the owners unfairly expropriate.
This view encounters problems when trying to account for such things as technological innovation, salaries of skilled CEO's, advertizing, etc. - which also increase the firm's revenue. One way would be to include the engineers, who improved the technology, the CEO's and the advertizing specialists among the workers. This would probably save the Marxian point of view... but destroy the very class argument that the salaries of the engineers, the CEO's, and the marketing specialists are undeserved.
2. Diminishing salary
Labor market, like any market, implies equilibration of price between the labor suppliers (workers) and the labor consumers (firms). The price in this case is called "salary". Lowering salaries is problematic for obvious social reasons. There are at least two mechanisms to inexplicitly lower salary and bring in equilibrium labor supply and labor demand:
i) Not raising the nominal salary in conditions of inflation, which means that the real salary is lowered.
ii) Increasing the productivity of workers, i.e. making them produce more for the same salary. This is not necessarily achieved by forcing the workers to work harder: for example, the factory owner may install a conveyor line that would increase the productivity of the factory without the owner having to hire more workers or having to raise the nominal salaries. Thus, in Marx's view, the technological innovation necessarily leads to effective lowering of the workers salary and their standard of living - the process that must result in a Social Revolution.
1. Capital is a product of Labor
When analysing behavior of a firm/factory in a market, modern microeconomic texts (here is a good free one) often treat the capital (K) and the labor (L) as two independent variables (meaning by the "capital" the factory equipment, the raw materials etc.) The labor and the capital are thus respectively the contributions of the workers and the factory owners to the production process, for which they are respectively rewarded by salaries and profits.
Marx's view was that the capital itself is a product of labor: for example, the factory equipment and the raw materials were also produced by workers elsewhere. Thus, the profit of the factory owners is a part of the workers salary that the owners unfairly expropriate.
This view encounters problems when trying to account for such things as technological innovation, salaries of skilled CEO's, advertizing, etc. - which also increase the firm's revenue. One way would be to include the engineers, who improved the technology, the CEO's and the advertizing specialists among the workers. This would probably save the Marxian point of view... but destroy the very class argument that the salaries of the engineers, the CEO's, and the marketing specialists are undeserved.
2. Diminishing salary
Labor market, like any market, implies equilibration of price between the labor suppliers (workers) and the labor consumers (firms). The price in this case is called "salary". Lowering salaries is problematic for obvious social reasons. There are at least two mechanisms to inexplicitly lower salary and bring in equilibrium labor supply and labor demand:
i) Not raising the nominal salary in conditions of inflation, which means that the real salary is lowered.
ii) Increasing the productivity of workers, i.e. making them produce more for the same salary. This is not necessarily achieved by forcing the workers to work harder: for example, the factory owner may install a conveyor line that would increase the productivity of the factory without the owner having to hire more workers or having to raise the nominal salaries. Thus, in Marx's view, the technological innovation necessarily leads to effective lowering of the workers salary and their standard of living - the process that must result in a Social Revolution.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Shades of gray, Nixon and the Israeli-Egyptian peace
This article is an example of inability to distinguish "shades of gray" (a topic addressed in several of my posts: here and here). The article describes President Sarkozy's re-election problem. Therefore one is struck by the following irrelevant line:
"In 1974, the French (to no avail) urged Americans to overlook Richard Nixon’s Watergate misdeeds and to concentrate instead on foreign policy successes such as the opening to China and Middle East peace talks (even though those talks were really the handiwork of the late, lamented and lamentable Anwar Sadat)."
My comments:
1. This is a popular kind of a cheap attack at Nixon (here is another example). These attacks succeed precisely because of inability to perceive that there are many nuanced views fitting between "liberal" and "conservative", as they described in respectively "conservative" and "liberal media"; or good and bad, as described in Hollywood movies.
Nixon is uniformy reviled by both extremes of the political spectrum. Yet, though he was not a "good guy", there is too much evidence against squarely describing him as a "bad guy" - I wrote here about his achievements, which define modern America more than the contributions of most other presidents.
2. There is also a curious omission in the quote paragraph - the contribution of the Israeli prime minister Menahem Begin. This betrays anti-Israeli bias, completely uncalled for in the article about President Sarkozy. Yet, as the saying goes, "It takes two to tango" - unsurprizingly this was recognized by the Nobel committee, which awarded the two men the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.
In this context, degrading Nixon's contribution also means dismissing the achievements by the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who, for example, was behind the agreements that ended the 1973 Yom Kippour war, initiated by no one else, but Anwar Sadat himself.
3. The two points outlined above are a coherent part of a certain liberal stereotype. I find it therefore somewhat unsual that the article does not mention Jimmy Carter, whom left-wing extremists often credit with everything good that has ever happened in the Middle East (he did though oversee the Camp-David accords that led to the Israeli-Egyptian peace - not a small achievement!)
"In 1974, the French (to no avail) urged Americans to overlook Richard Nixon’s Watergate misdeeds and to concentrate instead on foreign policy successes such as the opening to China and Middle East peace talks (even though those talks were really the handiwork of the late, lamented and lamentable Anwar Sadat)."
My comments:
1. This is a popular kind of a cheap attack at Nixon (here is another example). These attacks succeed precisely because of inability to perceive that there are many nuanced views fitting between "liberal" and "conservative", as they described in respectively "conservative" and "liberal media"; or good and bad, as described in Hollywood movies.
Nixon is uniformy reviled by both extremes of the political spectrum. Yet, though he was not a "good guy", there is too much evidence against squarely describing him as a "bad guy" - I wrote here about his achievements, which define modern America more than the contributions of most other presidents.
2. There is also a curious omission in the quote paragraph - the contribution of the Israeli prime minister Menahem Begin. This betrays anti-Israeli bias, completely uncalled for in the article about President Sarkozy. Yet, as the saying goes, "It takes two to tango" - unsurprizingly this was recognized by the Nobel committee, which awarded the two men the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.
In this context, degrading Nixon's contribution also means dismissing the achievements by the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who, for example, was behind the agreements that ended the 1973 Yom Kippour war, initiated by no one else, but Anwar Sadat himself.
3. The two points outlined above are a coherent part of a certain liberal stereotype. I find it therefore somewhat unsual that the article does not mention Jimmy Carter, whom left-wing extremists often credit with everything good that has ever happened in the Middle East (he did though oversee the Camp-David accords that led to the Israeli-Egyptian peace - not a small achievement!)
Monday, February 13, 2012
Economic Valentines
Economic Valentines: I am generally weary of this holiday, but these are very funny. Pay attention to the one that has to do with the game theory (remember my posts here and here?)
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