Edward Luce

You are currently browsing articles tagged Edward Luce.

“If He Crashes, Which He Eventually Must, They Will Find Another Champion”

July 22, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

There’s nothing the hideous hotelier Donald Trump has said or done that’s outside the modern Republican Party playbook. He just refuses to use soft, coded language to sell his extremism, which has been the hallmark of the GOP since the rise of Newt Gingrich. So when he disgustingly labels President Obama (“Kenyan”) or Mexicans (“rapists”) or John McCain (“captured“), he’s just boiled down the mindset of conservatives to its essence. And if you think the McCain remarks were somehow out of character for Republicans, see how John Kerry or Tammy Duckworth feel about that. 

The positive response to Trump among many registered Republicans is really no surprise. The more radical band, from Christian conservatives to the Tea Party, is weary of being used by the Karl Roves of the world to consolidate power. They’re angry and they want someone who’ll speak to that anger. The racist Birther buffoon may fall from the penthouse, but his followers–both a torch-carrying mob and the Frankenstein monster the party has created–will still be there. They can’t be controlled, and that’s the logical outcome for the GOP, which has spent decades cultivating anger over threatened privilege.

From Edward Luce in the Financial Times:

Any moment now, the most buffoonish, prejudiced, egomaniacal candidate in recent Republican history will implode. All that will be left to remind us of our brief spell of folly will be those neon signs flashing “Trump” on skyscrapers and casinos around the country. At that point, thank goodness, we can resume politics as usual.

Alas, the cognoscenti are kidding themselves. US politics will not pick up where it left off. Even if Mr Trump becomes the first recorded human to be lifted skywards in rapture — the “end of days” scenario to which some of his fans subscribe — he will leave a visible mark on the Republican party.

In a field of 16 candidates, when one polls a quarter of the vote it is the equivalent of a landslide. Mr Trump’s detractors, who form arguably one of the largest bipartisan coalitions in memory, comfort themselves that he is simply on an ego trip that will turn sour. That may be true. But they are missing the point. The legions of Republicans flocking to Mr Trump’s banner are not going anywhere. If he crashes, which he eventually must, they will find another champion.•

Tags: ,

“To Most Students Of U.S. Politics, The Phrase American Socialism Is An Oxymoron”

May 31, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Libertarianism is supposed to be having a moment in America, but Edward Luce of the Financial Times argues that it’s Socialism that really is. I’ll certainly disagree with the columnist’s depiction of Martin O’Malley as a “left winger” (he’s a pragmatist in the Clinton mold), but it is worth thinking back on the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that moment, it seemed capitalism had ultimately triumphed. What if capitalism leads to robotics so profound that technological unemployment brings about the end of capitalism? Or at least a radical redefining of it? Not impossible.

Luce’s opening:

Leftwing politicians are in electoral retreat across most of the western world. The one exception is the United States. At 15 per cent in the Democratic polls, Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, is riding higher than any US socialist since Eugene Debs ran for the White House a century ago.

The fact that Mr Sanders has very little chance of unseating Hillary Clinton is beside the point. His popularity is dragging her leftward. If he flames out, other left-wingers, such as Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland who entered the race at the weekend, are ready to pick up the baton. Elizabeth Warren, the populist Massachusetts senator, will continue to prod Mrs Clinton from outside the field. The more Mrs Clinton adopts their language, the harder it will be for her to reclaim the centre ground next year. Yet she is only following the crowd. A surprisingly large chunk of Democrats are happy to break the US taboo against socialism.

To most students of US politics, the phrase American socialism is an oxymoron — like clean coal or the Bolivian navy. A century ago, Werner Sombart, a German scholar, asked “Why is there no socialism in America?” It was a question that confounded Marxists. As the most advanced capitalistic society, the US was most ripe for a proletarian revolution, according to their teleology.

Yet the US refused to live up to its role.•

Tags:

“Today, It Mostly Hovers Above Its Hinterlands”

May 28, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Of all the poems I read as child, Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago” is the one that stays with me most: “Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads.” No place of a complicated nature could ask for a better defense.

Today, Chicago, like most global cities, is more complicated still, a home to stunning wealth inequality, a place of thriving and one of falling, and one connected more to ideas than geography. It’s not just crowded with markets but a market itself.

At the Financial Times, Edward Luce writes of its “two-city tale.” The opening:

They call Chicago the city of big shoulders. Much like Dubai’s emergence from virtually nowhere in the last 20 years to become a global city, Chicago pulled itself up from its bootstraps in the mid-19th century to turn into America’s industrial hub.

Unlike its peers — Detroit, Cleveland and Baltimore — it survived the obliteration of America’s industrial heartlands in the past 40 years by learning to “pour new wine into old bottles,” in the words of Richard Longworth, a leading chronicler of today’s Chicago. Where once it thrived on slaughtered hogs, smelted iron and freight trains, now it hosts corporate headquarters, boasts new economy start-ups and links to other global hubs via O’Hare airport. Today’s Chicago prefers to benchmark itself against Shanghai, São Paulo, Paris — and, yes, Dubai. But is it paying too little heed to what is under its nose?

The fate of a city’s hinterland is one that haunts every great metropolis. For London, it is the rest of the UK which sometimes feels like a different country. For Dubai, it is the Wahhabi heartlands of the Arabian peninsula. For Chicago it is the US Midwest.

In the past, Chicago acted as the locomotive of its hinterlands — in Mr Longworth’s words — buying the Midwest’s farm produce and other raw commodities and then converting them into products. The city was linked umbilically to its surrounding geography and vice versa. Today, it mostly hovers above its hinterlands. But in some ways it is also parasitic on them. Much like the giant sucking sound of London hoovering up the UK’s talent, Chicago takes the best and the brightest from the small towns of America and plugs them into the global economy. Chicago’s success is no longer symbiotic with its rural neighbours. In some ways it comes at their expense.•

Tags:

“We Are Not Purely Economic Animals”

May 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I don’t know that Edward Luce of the Financial Times says anything new in slapping down Thomas Friedman’s 1990s “Golden Arches Doctrine,” which declared that nations on the same supply chain of Happy Meals wouldn’t engage in war, a theory clearly debunked by now, but he says it exceedingly well. The world may be flat as a patty, but it still can burn. An excerpt:

Even when societies turn middle class, conflict is endemic to our species. The return of great power rivalry in the 21st century reminds us that we are not purely economic animals. Were that the case, we would long ago have lowered transaction costs by abolishing nation states and currencies.

The fact that diverse cultures share bad habits and use the same technology should not be over-interpreted. China’s politburo has been dressing in business suits for years. Jihadi fighters wear jeans and surf on their iPhones (doubtless some have a weakness for chicken McNuggets). They still revile the global hegemon. The presence of hundreds of McDonald’s outlets in Russia did not stop Vladimir Putin last year from annexing Crimea, which also had McDonald’s outlets. The chain has since withdrawn from the peninsula but not from the rest of Ukraine. Nor is McDonald’s presence likely to prevent a fifth war between India and Pakistan. Meanwhile China’s global integration does not seem to have checked its sense of nationalism.

Geopolitics is clearly back.•

Tags: ,

“For The First Time Since 2009, U.S. Voters Cite Terrorism As America’s Top Priority”

January 19, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

It’s not just Americans who are in favor of doing rash and violent things that are against our interests merely because they feel patriotic. Look at contemporary Russia. Putin’s aggression, which has contributed mightily to the state’s wrecked economy, was met with approval by the majority of Russians. Briefly elated with a bacchanal of pride, they’re now sick with a long hangover, paying for letting their emotions dictate strategy, just as we did with Iraq.

I’m unconvinced that the U.S. has learned any lesson from that invasion, which occurred under false pretenses, cost us the lives 4,500 soldiers and more than a trillion dollars, a good amount of it bilked by war contractors. You hear rumblings now from Americans, and in our culture, that we need to not just hear how great the country is, but to have it demonstrated in some loud, scary way. That’s, of course, what our enemies want.

We defeat Putin and terrorists and any external threat by not behaving like them or letting them drive us into the rashness they deploy. But can we control ourselves? Terrorism is not nearly our biggest challenge. We are. From Edward Luce at the Financial Times:

For the first time since 2009, US voters cite terrorism as America’s top priority (76 per cent), according to a Pew poll last week. Given the tenacity of the gains of Isis in Syria and Iraq — it has held its ground in spite of US air strikes — and al-Qaeda’s strong advances in Yemen and beyond, it is hard to imagine this will change in 2015. Though it never vanished, terrorism is centre stage again.

The immediate US impact is among Republican White House hopefuls. Only one contender, Rand Paul — the artist formerly known as isolationist, also a senator from Kentucky — diverges from his party’s muscular line on national security. The more crowded the Republican field, the more Mr Paul stands out.

In one sense, this is a real selling point. There are plenty of millennial libertarians out there. But it also makes Mr Paul an increasingly juicy target. He is adjusting rapidly. In the past year he has gone from being an isolationist to a “non-interventionist” and is now a foreign policy “realist”. At this rate he will be a neoconservative before Independence Day.•

 

Tags:

“Mrs. Clinton Will Begin The General Election With A Head Start”

December 31, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

If the overall American economy continues to brighten over the next two years, particularly employment and wage growth, a couple of very different potential candidates for the Presidency almost surely have no chance: Mitt Romney and Elizabeth Warren. The former’s greatest claim, valid or not, is that he’s a money man who can turn things around; the latter is seen as a populist who can dismantle and reorganize a failed system. Should another recession occur, however, particularly a second Great Recession, protest candidates of all sorts are back on the table.

In “FT Predictions: The World in 2015,” Edward Luce answers the most obvious question about the next U.S. national election:

“Will a serious rival emerge to Hillary Clinton in 2015?

No. We will not know the name of the Republican nominee until 2016. Even then, he — there are no female hopefuls among the 20 or so names doing the rounds — will be so bruised that Mrs Clinton will begin the general election with a head start.

In the Democratic field, she will be challenged by one or two second-tier candidates, such as James Webb, the former Virginia senator, and Martin O’Malley, the outgoing governor of Maryland. But Mrs Clinton will keep her grip on the primaries. Her only real threat, Elizabeth Warren, the populist senator from Massachusetts, will decline to run in spite of strong urging from the liberal left. When it comes to it, Ms Warren will not want to stand in the path of the election of America’s first female president.”

 

Tags: , , , , ,

“Americans Have A Higher Chance Of Marrying Kim Kardashian Than Dying Of Ebola”

October 28, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Zero Americans have died so far on U.S. soil from the Ebola virus, but the media, politicians and the public have all acted like wackjobs about the non-epidemic. Sure, we should be providing as much aid as possible to Liberia and other effected states, but we shouldn’t live in fear in America, something we seem to have done almost constantly since 9/11, which has led only to bad policy. Those concerned about Ebola or some other potential plague taking hold stateside should push for the Affordable Care Act to be truly universal and demand that congress allow President Obama to name a Surgeon General, something Republicans have refused to do as a way of hampering Obamacare. From Edward Luce in the Financial Times:

“Based on the death rate so far, Americans have a higher chance of marrying Kim Kardashian than dying of Ebola – or so the tweet goes. But the uneven tug of war between the federal government, which is sticking to scientific talking points, and politicians on the stump, who are falling one by one to an epidemic of panic, is no joke. More than 45 per cent of Americans believe that either they, or close friends and relatives, will contract Ebola, according to the Kaiser family foundation. More than three-quarters support imposing a US travel ban on flights to and from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Though led by Republicans, the panic is becoming bipartisan. In the past few days, three US states – New York, Illinois and New Jersey – have imposed a 21-day quarantine on anyone who has had contact with an Ebola patient. Two have Democratic governors, both of whom are facing re-election next week. In the midterm congressional elections, Democratic candidates are scrambling to repudiate President Barack Obama’s opposition to a travel ban. Among these are Kay Hagan, the embattled Democratic senator from North Carolina, and Jeanne Shaheen, who faces a tough fight in New Hampshire.”

Tags:

“Mr Obama Will Leave The U.S. At Least As Segregated As He Found It”

October 12, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

In the Financial Times, Edward Luce wonders about the deepening of divisions in American among African-Americans and whites during the two terms of our first black President. The Great Recession, I think, is largely to blame. Those most vulnerable got most hosed by that debacle. It was actually a great investment opportunity for others who had the available funds to buy cheap. Without Obama’s maneuverings to save large banks and industries, imperfect though they were, the cratering would have been far deeper. Meanwhile, the Affordable Care Act has been a great boon to lower-income Americans of all races. I would think in the longer term, having our appellate courts stocked with moderates and progressives will eventually be a help to those who have less. From Luce:

“Mr Obama shot to prominence in 2004 when he said there was no black or white America, just the United States of America. Yet as the continuing backlash to the police shooting of an unarmed young black man in Ferguson has reminded us, Mr Obama will leave the US at least as segregated as he found it. How could that be? The fair answer is that he is not to blame. The poor suffered the brunt of the Great Recession and blacks are far likelier to be poor. By any yardstick – the share of those with subprime mortgages, for example, or those working in casualised jobs – African-Americans were more directly in the line of fire.

Without Mr Obama’s efforts, African-American suffering would have been even greater. He has fought Congress to preserve food stamps and long-term unemployment insurance – both of which help blacks disproportionately. The number of Americans without health insurance has fallen by 8m since the Affordable Care Act came into effect. Likewise, no president has done as much as Mr Obama – to depressingly little effect – to try to correct the racial bias in US federal sentencing. Bill Clinton was once termed ‘America’s first black president.’ But it was under Mr Clinton that incarceration rates rose to their towering levels.”

 

Tags: ,

“Since Emanuel Took Office, However, Things Have Polarized”

February 16, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Chicago, the major American metropolis with the most stubborn racial divides, has seen its tale of two cities be told with even greater emphasis since Rahm Emanuel became Mayor. From Edward Luce’s insightful Financial Times article about the former Obama chief of staff:

“Crudely measured, Chicago is roughly a third white, a third black and a third Hispanic. Most Chicagoans seem to accept it that way. ‘We are the most segregated city in America,’ goes the joke. ‘Ain’t it great?’ Since Emanuel took office, however, things have polarised. Most white Chicagoans support him – as do a majority of Hispanics, according to the polls. Most African-Americans no longer do. The corporate world within Chicago’s elevated rail ‘loop’ has rarely had it so good. The same goes for pockets inside its largely Hispanic West Side. But Chicago’s South Side, where a young Obama cut his teeth as a community organiser, continues to fester. A rash of school closures last year did little to help. ‘Black families who can leave Chicago are still leaving,’ says Cobb. They call it ‘degentrification.’

Emanuel’s often testy relations with Chicago’s black neighbourhoods could be pivotal to his re-election next year. The gulf between the two Chicagos is at least as big as that between the ‘two New Yorks’, which Bill de Blasio, the new mayor of the Big Apple, has promised to bridge. De Blasio comes from the Democratic party’s liberal (‘Sandinista’) wing and promised to make New York’s Upper East Side pay more to make life better for its underclasses. Emanuel is closer to Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio’s predecessor, who drew on his philanthropic networks to revitalise New York’s economic heart. Both are enthusiasts for non-union charter schools. De Blasio, on the other hand, is a champion of the unions.

Emanuel’s Chicago versus de Blasio’s New York may be the closest America has to an experiment in how to make its cities both liveable and competitive in the 21st century. ‘Look, we face international forces that are far bigger than us,’ Emanuel told me in an interview in Mexico City, which he was visiting to inaugurate a city-to-city partnership (almost a quarter of Chicagoans were born in Mexico). I had asked him whether he and de Blasio were rivals. ‘We both have a great amount of concentrated wealth and great poverty,’ he replied. ‘My challenge is to make it a still-great city for the middle-class families that are the bedrock of Chicago.’

Emanuel’s impact so far depends on whom you ask.”
__________________

“It’s supposed to be fun”:

Tags: , , ,

“Mr Obama’s Standard Approach Is To Touch Down, Give A Great Speech, Proclaim Lofty Goals, Then Move On”

June 30, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

The opening of Edward Luce’s Financial Times critique of what he believes is President Obama’s non-engagement with the African continent and its growing economies:

“History does not repeat itself but it sometimes rhymes. The fact that Barack Obama’s first real presidential trip to Africa coincides with the could never have been scripted. It is an eerily moving moment. America’s first black president enters the stage just as South Africa’s first black president is taking a bow. No one should doubt Mr Obama when he describes the great freedom fighter as his ‘personal hero.’

And yet Africans could be forgiven for wondering how long Mr Obama’s renewed interest in Africa will last. Having spent a total of 20 hours on the continent in his first term – on a 2009 stopover in Ghana – Mr Obama’s six-day tour is meant to underline a new phase in US-Africa relations. The age of foreign aid is passing, say US officials. Seven out of 10 of the world’s fastest growing economies are in Africa. Yet it is China – and increasingly Turkey, India and Brazil – that is reaping the new investment opportunities. Now is Mr Obama’s chance to put that to rights.

Mr Obama’s style of doing business, and particularly his diplomacy, does not lend much confidence that his interest will be sustained. With the exception of China, where his engagement has been intensive, Mr Obama’s standard approach is to touch down, give a great speech, proclaim lofty goals, then move on.“

Tags: ,

“Sandel Retorts That They Know The Price Of Everything And The Value Of Nothing”

April 8, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Edward Luce’s new Financial Times profile of Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, a passage about the marketization of morality:

“I ask him about his latest book, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, in which he argues that the US and other countries are turning from market economies into market societies, as Lionel Jospin, the former French prime minister, once put it. Sandel argues that we live in a time of deepening ‘market faith’ in which fewer and fewer exceptions are permitted to the prevailing culture of transaction. The book has infuriated some economists, whom he sees as practitioners of a ‘spurious science.’

He has been at loggerheads with the profession for many years. In 1997, he enraged economists when he attacked the Kyoto protocol on global warming as having removed ‘moral stigma’ from bad activity by turning the right to pollute into a tradeable permit. Economists said he misunderstood why markets work. Sandel retorts that they know the price of everything and the value of nothing. To judge by his sellout lecture tours, he has clearly tapped into a larger disquiet about the commodification of life.

Which countries are the least receptive to his concerns about market fundamentalism? ‘China and the US – no question,’ he replies instantly. ‘In other parts of east Asia, in Europe and in the UK and in India and Brazil, it goes without arguing that there are moral limits to markets and the question is where to locate them. In the US and China, there are strong voices who will challenge the whole idea of there being any limits.’”

 _________________________

“What’s you answer, smartypants?” asks TV’s best talk-show host.

Tags: , ,

“The Continued Faith In Casinos, And Other Forms Of Gaming, Epitomizes A Certain Bankruptcy”

April 1, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

I don’t believe in the prohibition of gambling or pretty much anything consenting adults want to do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize casinos for what they are: predatory pits where the deck is stacked, an attraction that draws people in and spits them out, places without clocks that steal your time. From Edward Luce’s excellent Financial Times essay about the serious economic and political challenges currently facing America, a segment about the false hope of glitzy gambling parlors in former manufacturing centers:

“From Florida to California, and numerous Native American reservations in between, the impact of gambling varies, according to a welter of studies. Some show that the effect on the people around the casinos is a net negative. It can also be bad for tax revenues. One study estimated that for every dollar a gaming house invests in an area, three are subtracted by the costs of dealing with its social effects. Casinos may be a way of replacing some of the manufacturing jobs lost to China, Brazil and elsewhere. But they are also a magnet for racketeers, pimps, drugs and those living on the margins.

In a world where the economic centre of gravity is shifting from west to east, the continued faith in casinos, and other forms of gaming, epitomises a certain bankruptcy of thinking among America’s policy makers. On the charts they show up as service jobs, which economists instinctively treat as superior to jobs that involve making things. Much like the shift from farming to manufacturing a century ago, America is now climbing up the value-added chain to the more cerebral world of service industries. Brain power is America’s future.

It doesn’t always appear too cerebral in practice. Too large a share of the new service jobs are dead-end and enforced part-time positions that enable the employer to wriggle out of providing healthcare insurance. In the past decade, the number of Americans insured by their employers has fallen from two-thirds to barely half. Only the senior managerial slots offer any real security and they are mostly taken by outsiders. Much the same could be said of the armies of food preparers, domestic carers and data-entry workers who account for so many of the new service jobs America is creating.

‘We are on track to becoming a country where the top tier remains wealthy beyond imagination, and the remainder, in one way or another, are working in jobs that help make the lives of the elites more comfortable,’ says Harvard’s Lawrence Katz, one of America’s foremost labour economists. ‘They will be taking care of them in old age, fixing their home WiFi, or their air-conditioning, teaching or helping with their kids and serving them their food. It is not a very elegant prospect.'” (Thanks Browser.)

Tags: ,

Newer entries »