Broken Promises

Reader Nick M. writes: "I know that you pledged not to blog about Naomi Klein anymore, but I enjoyed hearing Greenspan debate her on Democracy Now. I think he pretty well ate her lunch." I did indeed pledge a temporary adjournment on Klein-related blogging, but I'll break my promise just this once. You can listen to the debate (which heats up towards the end) here. Some excerpts:

Greenspan explains that Russia's early 90s, transitional economy was more complicated than Klein is willing to acknowledge:

Well, remember that you don't get a market economy merely by eliminating central planning. And remember, when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union disintegrated, you didn't have a market economy. What you basically had was a black market economy. And they tried to develop the institutions of the democratic society, and it's not something which they have had back for generations. And as you can see now, there's an increasing authoritarianism. It's a very—it's a society which has very different trends at different levels of that society. And I don't know exactly where they're coming up, but I don't like the direction it's been going in recent years.

Greenspan on immigration:

And I also argue in the book that we ought to be opening up our borders to skilled labor from all sorts of–from all parts of the world, because if we were to do that, we would increase the supply of skilled workers, which our schools have been unable to create, and as a consequence of that, we would lower the average wage of skills and reduce the degree of income inequality in this country. It's a very important issue, and it's a very important issue which I raise in my book. And we have to confront this both at the education level and on the immigration level.

Greenspan on Klein's anti-capitalism:

Well, let me ask you a question, which—you are just taking the capitalist system, to state it very bluntly, and say it's deficient here, it's deficient there, it's deficient every other place. The capitalist system has created more economic wealth in the last seven or eight years around the world.

Transcript and mp3 here.