[PEN-L:5015] Re: Revolt of the Haves--global race to the bottom
THIS is the question that animates me most, lately: how can leftists respond to the global downward pressure on wages --Mike Parkhurst By fighting to lower the length of the work-week. How about that? Cheers, ajit sinha
[PEN-L:5017] Hello and temporary goodbye
Dear penners; I have been a passive lurker for some weeks now, among other things not keeping my promise to reply to Jim D. in our fincial accumulation discussion. It is just that I have been extremely busy the last month. the local progressive radio station that i am the (so called free-time) editor of, is launching a large campaign to survive, and I have been swamped. And now I am leaving tomorrow Wednesday afternoon for a two week holiday on Crete (wow), and will be back in my office on Friday May 26. After this date I hope to rise from the grave, net-wise. Cheers, Trond - | Trond Andresen ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | | lecturer | | Department of Engineering Cybernetics | | The Norwegian Institute of Technology | | N-7034 Trondheim, NORWAY | | | | phone (work) +47 73 59 43 58 | | fax (work) +47 73 59 43 99 | | private phone +47 73 53 08 23 | | | | http://www.itk.unit.no/ansatte/Andresen,Trond | -
[PEN-L:5018] Re: Devine on Unemployment Rates, then and now!
Jim Devine wrote: (responding to my statement: -- Result: the very basis on which the system was "held together" between 1945 and,say, 1989 is now GONE. The sluggishness of the recovery and the need to maintain unemployment so much higher than in the past and the persistence of the INCREASE in inequality (not just the persistence of inequality) all are part of the long run process. I agreed with almost everything in Mike's post. But we have to face the fact that unemployment is currently lower than in the past (though it's rising), at least in the US. Of course, the validity of my statement depends on which "past" we're comparing the present to. But both official U and U augmented by the number of discouraged workers and involuntary part-timers seem to be lower now than during much of the 1980s and early 1990s. I would argue that the alleged "success" of the 1980s (pre 1988) of the US economy was precisely because for five full years of "recovery" the unemployment rate remained above 6% (and in fact didn't reach 7% till 1987). Then, we had two "good years" of 5.3% unemployment before the recession came in 1990. Faced with the danger of unemployment getting down to 5.3% again (it reached 5.4% in december 1994) --- the FED began to abort the recovery (interesting parallel to a similar tightening of monetary policy in 1984! -- see GReider for details) --- In other words, today it appears that the "system managers" are not willing to chance a couple of years like 1988 and 1989 where unemployment was "allowed" to remain so "dangerously low." I am trying to argue that the 1980s represented a relatively unsuccessful recovery (by capitalists' own standards and recent historical parallels) --- If we use absolute levels of unemployment as the standard, then the post 1991 recovery looks "better" than the post 1982 recovery --- but remember, the unemployment rate of 9.7% in 1982 and only 6.7% in 1991. The unemployment rate FELL steadily (if slowly) from 1983 to 1990 while it actually increased through 1992 (peaking at 7.7% in June) before beginning its slow fall (which didn't reach 5.4% until Dec 1994). Recently, when sketching the Phillips curve for my students, I discovered that at least for the last few years, the "unemployment-inflation trade-off" has improved (meaning less stagflation), using the official unemployment rate. Now I am not trying to praise Clinton or Greenspan or claim that we're having a "soft landing." Au contraire. I think what's happening is that the same amount of (official) unemployment has a larger impact on worker bargaining power than it did in the 1970s. Unemployment insurance benefits are down, as is trade-union strength. Etc. So 5.8% unemployment now looks as bad as (say) 7% fifteen years ago. Has the Sam Bowles/Julie Schor time series of the "cost of losing your job" been updated through the present. That's a useful index, IMHO, for what Jim seems to be concluding... It's my hypothesis that something similar happened during the late 1920s. Now there's a cheering parallel. Agreed -- Mike Meeropol Economics Department Cultures Past and Present Program Western New England College Springfield, Massachusetts "Don't blame us, we voted for George McGovern!" Unrepentent Leftist!! [EMAIL PROTECTED] [if at bitnet node: in%"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" but that's fading fast!]
[PEN-L:5019] HELP -- B-school imperialism threatens to expropriate poor Econ Dept!
Dear Penners: [warning, this isn't really about progressive economics --- it's more about one progressive economist [me] getting shafted!] This is a cry for help from a small (four person) econ dept. at a small private (definitely non-elite) college in Springfield, Ma. I've been here 24 years and our econ department mostly "services" the school of business by teaching required courses to their students --- and provided them with electives at the upper level. We also teach an introductory "foundations" course and Managerial Economics in the MBA program. All that is about to change. Our school of business has been hit with a decrease in enrollment and has decided that they can teach whatever economics their MBA students need. [they have two econ Ph D's in their Finance Department!]. So, they are dropping Managerial Economics from the B-school curriculum because in the words of some p - - , er, person, from the B-school it's "old hat." They also think the students don't "need" a foundations course in econ (two semesters of principles rolled into one for graduate intensity if not substance!) because they get enough econ in the business coureses anyway (fat chance!). The help I could use is --- those of you at schools that have MBA programs, how many still have a required Managerial Economics course in it? (doesn't matter if the B-school has its own econ department, that happens at lots of places -- we're small enough so that's not necessary!). If your MBA program has OTHER economics courses either as electives or as requirements, please tell me what they are. Please respond privately if you have any info that I could use. The meeting of the college-wide "Graduate Council" is Tuesday, May 16 and unfortunately, I and my fellow condemned economists (about 1/5 of the department's teaching load is in the MBA program) have to make as good an argument as we can for overruling the Business School's imperial expropriation then. Thanks in advance, Mike -- Mike Meeropol Economics Department Cultures Past and Present Program Western New England College Springfield, Massachusetts "Don't blame us, we voted for George McGovern!" Unrepentent Leftist!! [EMAIL PROTECTED] [if at bitnet node: in%"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" but that's fading fast!]
[PEN-L:5020] Re: Revolt of the Haves--global race to the bottom
Some interesting discussion has come out of this, but I'm not sure it's got at what I was really asking about. Let me be more specific: In Massachusetts, we've seen Raytheon (one of the state's largest employers) whine for a huge tax abatement the usual ripoff of the public infrastructure, at the very same time they've been engaged in a stock buy-back and paying their C.E.O nearly 2 Mil/ year -- and laying workers off, if I remember correctly. Now, what I'd like to see is the locality that companies like Raytheon live on (more and more like parasites on hapless host organisms) stand up to them and remind them that workers are not just 'inputs' in the production process, and that they have a real obligation not just to their workers, but to the locale they've been a part of. We've seen an astonishing stampede (at least it seems to meI don't have statistics handy) by corporations that are more and more shameless about not paying their share for the public infrastructure that literally makes production possible, while at the same time they viciously slander this same public sector with unbelievable lies. Why do they get away with this? It seems to me that a huge part of the answer lies in the populace's (in some sense legitimate) focus on 'jobs, jobs, jobs' and the (more or less real) threat by corporations like Raytheon to take these jobs elsewhere. Now I think Mr. Cockshott's answer that we need a political movement to counter this political assault is on target, and so is the need for an 'international' analysis and organizing strategy. Howeverit's not clear to me exactly how one operationalizes these fine sentiments. For starters, I think we need to work to show people the social context of production: that for instance, the state makes capitalist profit possible and reliable, and corporations need to be made to take up some of the slack; that there never has been ( never will be) anything like a 'free market'-- capitalists are unsuprisingly terrified of such a thing; I think the most fertile ground for a political push to make capital more accountable is not in noble international organizations, but 'on the ground' in towns that are having their economic hearts and lungs ripped out. Linking these kind of movements together across national borders is critical, but much easier said than done. Anyway, I guess what I want to tell people who counter such a program with: 'they'll just take the plant to Mexico' is: I'd rather see them do that, than continue to fuck us over here, and in the meantime, lets work on raising the costs of that kind of behavior as high as we can. Why don't we organize around legislation that would levy serious confiscatory penalties on mobile capital? Finally, Ajit Sinha suggests: lower the length of the work-week. How about that? I think this is a terrific idea, and I've wondered why there's so little talk about it in the US. Why did the movement for a shorter workweek peter out some 60 years ago? in solidarity, Mike Parkhurst UMass/Amherst
[PEN-L:5021] Re: Revolt of the Haves--global race to the bottom
Mike Parkhurst asks what happened to the US movement for the shorter workweek. Philip Fonere and David Roediger have a book on this cxalled Our Own Time: I recommend it. See also Kim Moody's book on the antimonies of business unionism--I forget the title. --Justin Schwartz
[PEN-L:5023] PEN-L Shorter work week
People interested in recent analysis of redistributing work through reductions in working time, might like to take a look at the Canadian Report of the Federal Government Advisory Group on Working Time and the Distribution of Work, December, 1994. The Advisory Group commissioned Informetrica to examine the impact of reductions in working time on the economy and on job creation in Canada. A 10% reduction in working time, and a 5 % increase in productivity, phased in over 5 years, and then maintained for another five years, produced a 4.1% reduction in unemployment nationally (from 1995 to 1999). Real GDP was unaffected, whilst disposable income dropped 0.7%, according to the model they used. Rupert Downing Victoria, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
[PEN-L:5024] Shorter Work Week
For a video account of the movement for a shorter work week and other ways to rebalance work and leisure (along with material on the double-shift of women in household and market production) see "Running Out of Time" produced by Oregon PBS (Order info: 1-800-440-2651 $28.90 incl. SH). Video addresses the issue of doubling productivity since 1945 but having less leisure time today than in late 60s. As well as covering the history of the 40 then 30 hour work week movements, it looks at the Kellogg case of the 30 hour week between 1930s and 1985 when management abandoned it because of the "global war" over corn flake sales (i.e. a lame excuse)! I use the video in principles of macro and intermed. macro to make the point that we need something better than GDP to measure social progress and to track what Wallace Peterson calls the "Silent Depression" since 1973. It evokes intense debate amongst students and arouses an interest seldom seen in a principles course :). Cheers, Brent ~~~|~| Brent McClintock | "...the Welfare State is a | Economics | delightful creation. As a | Carthage College | place to live it beats anything| Kenosha, Wisconsin 53140 | man has ever known. But as an | USA| idea it leaves something to be | Phone: (414) 551-5852 | desired. All its emphasis is on| Fax: (414) 551-6208 | distribution and consumption...| Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Our ideal is - or should be - | | the Creative State, or the | | Creative Society." | | | | Clarence Ayres| ~~
[PEN-L:5025] Re: profit-rate equalization
May 9, 1995 Dear Peners, I was out of mail service for a while and I missed the discussions on "profit-rate equalization" before May 5th. I would appreciate receiving those postings directly to my e-mail: Thank you. Fikret Ceyhun Dept. of Economics e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Univ. of North Dakota voice: (701)777-3348 w University Station,Box 8369 (701)772-5135 h Grand Forks, ND 58202 fax:(701)777-5099
[PEN-L:5026] Re: Devine on Unemployment Rates, then and now!
Mike Meeropol writes: "Has the Sam Bowles/Julie Schor time series of the "cost of losing your job" been updated through the present. That's a useful index, IMHO, for what Jim seems to be concluding..." I don't know if it's been updated. Does anyone on pen-l who's at UMass- Amherst know? Even if there may be some measurement problems with the C-O-J-L (the most common usually mentioned being excessive aggregation) it's a useful concept. As Mike notes, I was trying to say that even though the U rate has fallen, the C-O-J-L has stayed high. Partly this reflects the extended period of high unemployment that Mike stresses. It also reflects government cut-backs on the "social safety net" (strange isn't it that Ronald Raygun -- or rather his scriptwriters -- coined that phrase?), the rise in the consumer debt load, the shrinkage of union power, etc. in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles, CA 90045-2699 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
[PEN-L:5028] New version: Wealth Poverty, Sustainable Dev.
I have placed the paper whose abstract appears below on an easily accessible gopher at: csf.colorado.edu environment/Authors/Barkin.David as two files (May95 and biblio) I would very much appreciate your comments and feedback on its content and usefulness. David Barkin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana Xochimilco, Mexico City ABSTRACT Wealth, Poverty and Sustainable Development David Barkin, 1995 (29 pp. + 11 pp bibliography) The reorganization of space and resources, engendered by the internationalization of rural production, is threatening the environment and the viability of rural communities. The poor, who are blamed for environmental problems, are frequently forced into depredatory situations by the ruthless way in which the rich and powerful defend their control. This duality characterizes the world system as a whole and is not conducive to sustainable development. Official development practice emphasizes the search for economic efficiency, noting the natural destruction in areas occupied by poor people; it seeks solutions through market-led structural changes, removing people from their rural communities, and supporting large-scale commercial and export agriculture to stimulate growth. In contrast, a successful sustainable development policy must recognize the polarized character of society and generate conditions that allow poor people to strengthen their rural societies by rebuilding and diversifying their productive systems while expanding the environmental stewardship services they have always provided.
