Labour and the Culture Wars of Modern Politics

Anyone who attempts to understand and reverse the major defeat suffered by Labour in the December 2019 general election needs first to appreciate why comparisons with the defeats of the 1980s are so unhelpful. In 1983 Labour was all but wiped out across southern England, but held on comfortably across the ‘red wall’. By contrast, in 2019 Labour did well in cities and university towns across the south, and appears to have solved its historic problem with the southern, educated middle class. However, this has been at the expense of alienating working class voters across the country, not just in its former industrial heartlands. But this is not inevitable. A reanalysis of testimony from hundreds of interviews with working people across England from the 1940s onwards allows insights into attitudes and values that are often obscured by survey techniques. Crucially, it points to a broad-based vernacular liberalism at odds with the culture wars model of a terminal crisis for social democracy.     

美元霸权地位与伊拉克战争

战后美元的霸权地位为美国带来了巨大经济政治利益。近来美元霸权面临新的挑战。伊拉克战争没有改变 而且将削弱美元的国际地位,但美元霸权的衰落是一个长期和曲折的过程。     

中国产品出口与美国制造业

本文针对近一个时期以来国外出现的中国大量对美出口产品是“人民币汇率过低”,进而“造成美国制造业下降、工人失业”的说法进行了分析和批驳。文章认为美国制造业下降主要是由美国经济发展的内部因素造成的;是产业结构调整的结果;中美贸易主要是按比较利益原则进行,对各方都是有利的;把美国经济出现的困境归咎于中国是在转移视线,美国应更多地从自身寻找原因,不要扣动保护主义扳机。否则,受伤害的将首先是其自己。