Wow it has been a hot minute since the last time I posted, the reason why was the last time I posted was a few days before the last day of classes which meant my research paper for Political Science was due soon and finals were planned the following week. I spent most of my time stressing the hell out. So even though the semester is done when I am posting this (my last final was on the 16th) I will still post the remaining days.

Day 31 was on November 27 and the majority of class was going over case studies with regards to the political economy of wealth. This section, even though I wrote notes, was incredibly boring and I don’t typically share case studies on these posts due to them being dry and may be uninteresting to you all: the case studies covered were the USA (obviously, this one is used in almost every chapter), the UK, Germany, and Japan. It mainly focused on Keynesianism and neoliberalism in each of these countries; the US with Reagan, the UK with Thatcher, what happened with reunification in Germany (it was not detailed so don’t get your hopes up), and keiretsu in Japan.

I’ll go through all these rapid fire:

USA - is free market capitalism and LME; they had a New Deal in the 1960s which was Keynesianism; stagflation in the 70s and then neoliberalism in the 80s; Reagan’s neoliberalism led to massive inequality; the recession in 2008-09 had Keynesian deficit spending and led to a populist rise in 2016; something about Occupy Wall Street (this was not detailed but it was in relation to the 2008 recession).

UK - has free market and LME but also Labour Party welfare?; Thatcher’s neoliberalism privatized previously nationalized areas, had horrible inequality, and the economic growth attached to thee stock market led to a big hit due to financial crises; all that led to the Great Recession which resulted in Brexit.

Germany - has CME and codetermination; the CME has been reformed but kept certain aspects like rather than firing workers they would have their wages cut; reunification led to a 12% rise in unemployment and I guess there was a policy (or suggestion) that the wealthy western Germany should pump wealth into the poor east. Did that happen? If it did then they didn’t do a great job considering the rapid rise in fascists in east Germany. That usually happens when people aren’t doing so well and they radicalize in the wrong direction.

Japan - developmental state CME with no unions; keiretsu after WWII (iron triangle); there is lifetime employment with low unionization (the whole salary man thing); there was a Great Recession and Shinzo Abe was referenced when it was brought up but I can’t remember why. My professor then went on to explain (outside of slide notes) that Japan’s society is very old (as in age, lots of seniors), they overcome this by importing labour from other countries like South Korea. Japan is very unfriendly to immigrants but the recession forced them to be more open.

We then started the next chapter “political Economy of Development.” But this sections did not last long at all due to thee fact that we were reaching the end of the lecture. Politically, development is becoming independent and democratic; economically, development is becoming wealthier via industrialization and urbanizing. Developed countries are those that arrived, and developing countries are those that have not yet arrived, arrived at what? I don’t know but I’m guessing it’s independence, “democracy,” industrialization, and urbanization. The economic assumption of modernization theory is that poor countries should take the same path as the west (so doo imperialism to themselves?) and the west should help poor countries, which would justify foreign aid.

Critics of modernization theory question whether poor countries in a different era could ever follow the same path as the west and growth alone should not be the goal, poverty reduction is. The capability approach by Amartya Sen states that the goal should be enhancing the capabilities of individuals to lead fulfilling lives; health, education, & freedom are crucial both for growth and individual capabilities. The UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) combines measure of health, education and income. Postmodern theorists believe the idea of “development” is used by wealthy countries to control the Global South; other critics of “development” state that the idea depoliticizes social change and continues colonialism in a new form (neocolonialism, right?).

That’s where this lecture ended, the next class was on November 29 and i will post that tomorrow. Again, I am sorry for being so late with these but this last month has kicked my ass. I haven’t posted about my history course and that’s due to the fact that a lot of it was irrelevant for posts here and I decided to focus on Political Science due to time. I will be making a post after I’m done with these “daily lecture recaps” as some shit happened and it would be best for an exclusive post to chronicle what the hell is said because that professor is… strange…

I will also make a post talking about my overall experience and feelings about this semester after I’m done wth class discussion posts.