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You are making extremely strong claims with fairly weak evidence. The memo is a call to action for businesses to _catch up_ to the large lobbying influence crea

You are making extremely strong claims with fairly weak evidence. The memo is a call to action for businesses to _catch up_ to the large lobbying influence created and wielded by unions in the 60s. As someone who moved to America to flee a totally barren economy run by labor unions, I am glad the business groups were able to rise to the challenge here. I simply don’t read the same vast conspiracy in the memo that you imply. In the early 70s, left-affiliated groups like SDS and Weathermen were probably producing internal organizing notes that read as equally self interested and myopic. Another weakness in your grand theory is that across housing, cars, single incomes, and retirement, many of the affordability concerns have just as much to do with non-corporate organizing as corporate organizing. Since when did the Fortune 500 coordinate to jack up tuition? Which S&P companies run local planning boards? Low income households in other countries can afford decent housing stock and higher education. Corporations aren’t the reason our low income residents can’t. As a quick point, this isn’t a mere matter of a shrunken state either, since our government spending as a % of GDP has steadily risen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_Uni...

elygre 6y ago
Out of curiosity, which “barren economy run by labor unions” do you speak of?
- shuckles 6y ago
  I would rather not say because it'll spur an entire subthread arguing over whether the root cause was unions, state corruption, foreign intervention, or any other host of plausible (or not) theories. I will concede that other people may explain that country's economic failures differently than I do. However, my view is not a fringe one, and since I have left, decreasing worker power has been correlated with a period of relative growth for the middle class.
  - ido 6y ago
    I've made the jump in the other direction: from an almost-US-style hyper-capitalist country to relatively social democratic countries (first Austria then Germany) & my life here is astonishingly better than in my country of origin (level of economic development is similar, in fact I'd probably be earning more in the country I was born in while paying lower taxes). So whose anecdotal evidence do we take, yours or mine?
    - samatman 6y ago
      Considering that your anecdotes are about four different countries, rather than two, your last paragraph is needlessly antagonistic.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - shuckles 6y ago
      I was not making a universal claim, so your experience does not contradict my point.
      - ido 6y ago
        What is your point (asking earnestly)?
        shuckles 6y ago
        My point is that the fates of the working class cannot simply be explained by the US Chamber of Commerce deciding to lobby for themselves in 1970 or the economic organization that might represent. For one, many ailments of low and middle income families can be explained by citizen lobbies: healthcare employs a lot of people, neighborhood groups are famously exclusionary.
        TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
        You are making a strong claim with fairly weak evidence.
  - okbuddy 6y ago
    What a classic. "You wouldn't know her, she lives in Canada." Fuckin hacker news libertarians never fail to deliver.
- arethuza 6y ago
  That is pretty much how the 1970s are portrayed in the UK media - any vaguely left wing policy is usually derided with accusations that whoever is proposing it want to return to the 1970s. Of course, like all good propaganda there is an element of truth to it but I believe the political situation of the time was a lot more nuanced that current portrayals would have you believe - Dominic Sandbrook's books are rather good. e.g. Right wing accounts of the UK industrial failure usually omit the effect of absolutely awful senior management in the lot of industries. Of course, left wing account similarly fail to mention the appalling behaviour by some unionised workers.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    The astounding thing about the stock rightwing 1970s unions-caused-inflation narrative is that it completely ignores the role of oil price shocks. Without renewables, oil was an absolutely bedrock commodity, directly influencing the prices of energy and raw materials. At their peak, oil prices increased by 400%. But apparently we're supposed to believe that greedy unions were entirely to blame, and oil prices and shortages had no effect on inflation whatsoever. Because cost-push isn't a thing, or something.
roenxi 6y ago
> I simply don’t read the same vast conspiracy in the memo that you imply. Even if it was a conspiracy it isn't obvious it is a conspiracy against the common good. The American economic system has been a powerful force for good in the world - America is a hugely popular migration destination because of their superior economics and the alternatives at the time of the letter were places like the Soviet Union, Maoist China or Europe re-emerging from the rubble of their failures to maintain order and prosperity. They weren't talking about "Communists" who were advocating for "like, life sucks for the poor, man" or modern "fascists" who want less immigration. The communists had just finished killing millions of people and their signature accomplishment were some of the greatest mass famines in history. Everyone knew someone who died fighting actual militant fascists. A rational person would have been very interested in protecting the American economic system as one of the few shining lights of progress in 1971.
- shuckles 6y ago
  Your second paragraph makes an important point: when reading texts from the 70s it's important to remember that they're using "Communists" and "Leftists" to describe groups who, in the public imagination at the time, were extremely destructive and pervasive. Big cities had hundreds of bombings, weird leftist cult leaders would commit unequivocal crimes and get sympathetic, top-tier legal representation. These were not the relatively subdued Tumblr leftists or Scandinavian socialists of today, even after accounting for COINTELPRO distortions of the historical record. A particularly striking example is the case of Lincoln Hospital in NYC which was taken over by a leftist group named the Young Lords that received a million bucks a year from the famously bankrupt city government to run a putative methadone clinic and Marxist education intensive. The details are a bit of an aside, but long story short the clinic had poor outcomes for patients, doctors dying of heroin overdoses, staff absentee rates in the 70%s, and about 4x more in spending per patient than city run hospitals. Yet it still kept getting funding renewed until 1978 through a variety of lobbying schemes. Some contemporary publications write of this medical failure fondly: https://filtermag.org/how-the-young-lords-took-lincoln-hospital-and-left-a-health-activism-legacy/ https://filtermag.org/how-the-young-lords-took-lincoln-hospi....
  - 6y ago
CPLX 6y ago
> Since when did the Fortune 500 coordinate to jack up tuition? Which S&P companies run local planning boards? Since those large corporations funneled money and influence into parties and institutions that work tirelessly to cut government budgets and make the PR argument that government can never be employed to solve problems. You’re saying this sarcastically but there is in fact a direct link between corporate power and politics at all levels.
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  Figure 1 on pdf page 10 of [1] [1] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
- shuckles 6y ago
  If you think political takeover is so easy, then certainly the entire structure of the republic should be blamed. Why do we blame corporate lobbying and not the electoral college or bicameral legislature? At the minimum, it seems much more important to fix the latter than the former.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Those political systems are blamed.
    - shuckles 6y ago
      Not up til this point in the thread.
      - Apocryphon 6y ago
        So? People do blame those problems outside of this discussion. Calls to abolish the electoral college began in 2000 and have only snowballed since 2016. Does every thread have to encapsulate each facet of society at large?
relaxing 6y ago
The increase in college tuition has been driven by the colleges’ boards of directors, comprised of corporate leaders who forced a move away from faculty governance by installing corporate management in university administration. Which demands C-level salaries. In addition, you’ll find many of the board members come from the local construction companies, who then win the contracts for demolishing and constructing new university buildings. In principal, this is all driven by the competition for consumers, I mean students, who are hyper-focused on college ranking prestige in the name of future employment with, well...
claudeganon 6y ago
Your entire argument is based on a series of false equivalencies and misdirections. The SDS and the Weathermen had almost no mainstream political influence relative to the business lobby, so obviously they can’t be compared in this way. Public college administration increasingly became corporatized and managed by the same business interests. Elite universities always have been. Local planning boards are captured by the wealthy in their communities. The economic trouble was driven by the oil shock, not high rates of unionization. Many countries in Europe have high rates of unionization and are not in anyway “barren.”
specialist 6y ago
The book Lobbying America details the history of Business Roundtable and replacing The New Deal with Reaganism. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17942038-lobbying-america https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17942038-lobbying-americ... Sure, course corrections are always needed, but there's no denying the oversteer of the neoliberal policies since. We've learned a lot since the 70s and it's probably productive to update our mental models and worldview.

elygre 6y ago

Out of curiosity, which “barren economy run by labor unions” do you speak of?

shuckles 6y ago
I would rather not say because it'll spur an entire subthread arguing over whether the root cause was unions, state corruption, foreign intervention, or any other host of plausible (or not) theories. I will concede that other people may explain that country's economic failures differently than I do. However, my view is not a fringe one, and since I have left, decreasing worker power has been correlated with a period of relative growth for the middle class.
- ido 6y ago
  I've made the jump in the other direction: from an almost-US-style hyper-capitalist country to relatively social democratic countries (first Austria then Germany) & my life here is astonishingly better than in my country of origin (level of economic development is similar, in fact I'd probably be earning more in the country I was born in while paying lower taxes). So whose anecdotal evidence do we take, yours or mine?
  - samatman 6y ago
    Considering that your anecdotes are about four different countries, rather than two, your last paragraph is needlessly antagonistic.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - shuckles 6y ago
    I was not making a universal claim, so your experience does not contradict my point.
    - ido 6y ago
      What is your point (asking earnestly)?
      - shuckles 6y ago
        My point is that the fates of the working class cannot simply be explained by the US Chamber of Commerce deciding to lobby for themselves in 1970 or the economic organization that might represent. For one, many ailments of low and middle income families can be explained by citizen lobbies: healthcare employs a lot of people, neighborhood groups are famously exclusionary.
        TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
        You are making a strong claim with fairly weak evidence.
- okbuddy 6y ago
  What a classic. "You wouldn't know her, she lives in Canada." Fuckin hacker news libertarians never fail to deliver.
arethuza 6y ago
That is pretty much how the 1970s are portrayed in the UK media - any vaguely left wing policy is usually derided with accusations that whoever is proposing it want to return to the 1970s. Of course, like all good propaganda there is an element of truth to it but I believe the political situation of the time was a lot more nuanced that current portrayals would have you believe - Dominic Sandbrook's books are rather good. e.g. Right wing accounts of the UK industrial failure usually omit the effect of absolutely awful senior management in the lot of industries. Of course, left wing account similarly fail to mention the appalling behaviour by some unionised workers.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  The astounding thing about the stock rightwing 1970s unions-caused-inflation narrative is that it completely ignores the role of oil price shocks. Without renewables, oil was an absolutely bedrock commodity, directly influencing the prices of energy and raw materials. At their peak, oil prices increased by 400%. But apparently we're supposed to believe that greedy unions were entirely to blame, and oil prices and shortages had no effect on inflation whatsoever. Because cost-push isn't a thing, or something.

roenxi 6y ago

> I simply don’t read the same vast conspiracy in the memo that you imply. Even if it was a conspiracy it isn't obvious it is a conspiracy against the common good. The American economic system has been a powerful force for good in the world - America is a hugely popular migration destination because of their superior economics and the alternatives at the time of the letter were places like the Soviet Union, Maoist China or Europe re-emerging from the rubble of their failures to maintain order and prosperity. They weren't talking about "Communists" who were advocating for "like, life sucks for the poor, man" or modern "fascists" who want less immigration. The communists had just finished killing millions of people and their signature accomplishment were some of the greatest mass famines in history. Everyone knew someone who died fighting actual militant fascists. A rational person would have been very interested in protecting the American economic system as one of the few shining lights of progress in 1971.

shuckles 6y ago
Your second paragraph makes an important point: when reading texts from the 70s it's important to remember that they're using "Communists" and "Leftists" to describe groups who, in the public imagination at the time, were extremely destructive and pervasive. Big cities had hundreds of bombings, weird leftist cult leaders would commit unequivocal crimes and get sympathetic, top-tier legal representation. These were not the relatively subdued Tumblr leftists or Scandinavian socialists of today, even after accounting for COINTELPRO distortions of the historical record. A particularly striking example is the case of Lincoln Hospital in NYC which was taken over by a leftist group named the Young Lords that received a million bucks a year from the famously bankrupt city government to run a putative methadone clinic and Marxist education intensive. The details are a bit of an aside, but long story short the clinic had poor outcomes for patients, doctors dying of heroin overdoses, staff absentee rates in the 70%s, and about 4x more in spending per patient than city run hospitals. Yet it still kept getting funding renewed until 1978 through a variety of lobbying schemes. Some contemporary publications write of this medical failure fondly: https://filtermag.org/how-the-young-lords-took-lincoln-hospital-and-left-a-health-activism-legacy/ https://filtermag.org/how-the-young-lords-took-lincoln-hospi....
- 6y ago

CPLX 6y ago

> Since when did the Fortune 500 coordinate to jack up tuition? Which S&P companies run local planning boards? Since those large corporations funneled money and influence into parties and institutions that work tirelessly to cut government budgets and make the PR argument that government can never be employed to solve problems. You’re saying this sarcastically but there is in fact a direct link between corporate power and politics at all levels.

rmrfstar 6y ago
Figure 1 on pdf page 10 of [1] [1] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
shuckles 6y ago
If you think political takeover is so easy, then certainly the entire structure of the republic should be blamed. Why do we blame corporate lobbying and not the electoral college or bicameral legislature? At the minimum, it seems much more important to fix the latter than the former.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Those political systems are blamed.
  - shuckles 6y ago
    Not up til this point in the thread.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      So? People do blame those problems outside of this discussion. Calls to abolish the electoral college began in 2000 and have only snowballed since 2016. Does every thread have to encapsulate each facet of society at large?

relaxing 6y ago

The increase in college tuition has been driven by the colleges’ boards of directors, comprised of corporate leaders who forced a move away from faculty governance by installing corporate management in university administration. Which demands C-level salaries. In addition, you’ll find many of the board members come from the local construction companies, who then win the contracts for demolishing and constructing new university buildings. In principal, this is all driven by the competition for consumers, I mean students, who are hyper-focused on college ranking prestige in the name of future employment with, well...

claudeganon 6y ago

Your entire argument is based on a series of false equivalencies and misdirections. The SDS and the Weathermen had almost no mainstream political influence relative to the business lobby, so obviously they can’t be compared in this way. Public college administration increasingly became corporatized and managed by the same business interests. Elite universities always have been. Local planning boards are captured by the wealthy in their communities. The economic trouble was driven by the oil shock, not high rates of unionization. Many countries in Europe have high rates of unionization and are not in anyway “barren.”

specialist 6y ago

The book Lobbying America details the history of Business Roundtable and replacing The New Deal with Reaganism. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17942038-lobbying-america https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17942038-lobbying-americ... Sure, course corrections are always needed, but there's no denying the oversteer of the neoliberal policies since. We've learned a lot since the 70s and it's probably productive to update our mental models and worldview.