[PEN-L:2049] Re: Re: unemployment
Ellen T. Frank wrote: I remember reading somewhere that the average unemployment rate in the US in the latter half of the 1800s was probably around 20%. Anyone else seen this figure? Any comparables for England? The earliest numbers in Historical Statistics of the U.S. are for 1890; the NBER website doesn't have anything earlier than 1903. 1890 4.0% 1891 5.4% 1892 3.0% 1893 11.7% 1894 18.4% 1895 13.7% 1896 14.4% 1897 14.5% 1898 12.4% 1899 6.5% Doug On the one hand the U.S. economy was still some 40% or so family and subsistence farmers in 1890, for whom unemployment really isn't a meaningful category, so you probably want number of unemployed divided by number of people in the non-agricultural labor force, but when Stanley Lebergott constructed these estimates he divided his estimated number unemployed by the total labor force. On the other hand when Stanley Lebergott constructed these estimates he assumed that employment outside of manufacturing moved proportionally with employment in manufacturing (which it doesn't) and he assumed that the labor force is not procyclical (which it is). These two decisions of his *probably* cancel each other out, so that 18% is not a bad estimate of unemployed in 1894 as a fraction of the non-agricultural labor force. Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:2040] re: Global Depression
-Original Message- From: Dennis R Redmond [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Yes, but your list from the Economist includes only one First World -country What makes the global collapse so dangerous is that is comes on top of the persistent unemployment in much of the First World. The Euro-11 countries have official unemployment of 10.8% and Japan has seen increases in official unemployment (which underreports real unemployment as many women have been driven from the labor market altogether). The United States has become this bizarre anamoly, partly explained by the labor "flexibility" (meaning creation of unregulated bad jobs) but needing broader explanations as well. Part is obviously the US's role as the center of the current computer revolution related to networking and part may be driven by the hyperprofits of global capitalism inducing "wealth effects" spending here. --Nathan Newman
[PEN-L:2042] Re: Re: Re: Global Depression
According to the CIA's World Fact Book Canada's population as of 1997 is estimated as a bit over 30 million.. Twice 30 million would be 60 million not 40, but your point remains sound enough. Cheers, Ken Hanly Henry C.K. Liu wrote: The item is probably reliable. Coal and coal products such as metallurgical coke, like other commodities, suffer from reduced demand globally and price collapse. The unemployment problem in China is very critical. One estimate has the number of unemployed exceeding 40 million, twice the size of Canada's population. The labor force in China is around 700 million of which agriclutural workers constitute 80%. The unofficial under-employment figure is as high as 40%, as measured by being currently paid lower than highest pay level in the previous three years. By some estimates, it is conceivable the underemployment figure is as high as 70%. The prospect for 1999 for the Chinese economy is dismal, as officially acknowledged last week by the Chinese Finance Minister. Henry C.K. Liu "Eugene P. Coyle" wrote: I heard a brief item on the radio yesterday. China is closing some (many) coal mines and is laying off 400,000 miners. Gene Coyle -Original Message- From: Dennis R Redmond [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Except that we're not in a global depression, at least not yet. Sure, Asia is in the tank, but Japan is undergoing a steep recession, not an Indonesian-style collapse, and the US and the EU are still growing, albeit sluggishly. Global unemployment is at Depression levels and GDP and industrial capacity has fallen in real terms over the last year for a large number of counties. Some examples from this week's ECONOMIST: Fall in GDPFall in industrial capacity Hong Kong -7.1%-10% Malaysia -8.6%-10.4% Argentina 2.9%-6.9% Venezuela -4.8% South Africa -0.3%-6.9% Turkey +1.6%-2.3% Russia -9.9%-9.1% Brazil -0.1%+9.2% China's growth has slowed to below 10% and India is still just chugging along at about 5% - not enough to keep living standards ahead of population growth. You can call this what you will, but there is a fundamental collapse of employment and production capacity around the world. Doug may be correct that the "crisis" for the financial class may have abated, but it has done so over the bodies of the industrial and agrarian class (who are suffering record low commodity prices, another sign of global depression). --Nathan
[PEN-L:2043] Re: re: Global Depression
Tom Walker wrote: Although the anomaly is much less bizarre if you consider the role the U.S. dollar as reserve currency has played in permitting an even more anomalous balance of payments deficit. In its function as "borrower of last resort", the U.S. can appear as a kind of cornucopia in reverse. That is why the introduction of the euro as a second reserves currency is very significant. Henry C.K. Liu
[PEN-L:2048] Re: unemployment
Frances A. Walker wrote in 1890, ". . . gross exaggeration is resorted to in stating the number habitually unemployed, which is sometimes placed as high as one fifth or one quarter of the laboring population. One writer speaks of the unemployed as 'the reserve army of industry.'" It should go without saying that gross exaggeration could as easily be resorted to in understating the number of unemployed. I would be at least as suspicious of the 4% historical statistic cited by NBER as by 20%. It could be George Gunton (Wealth and Work?) who was the source for the 20% figure that Walker criticizes. I remember reading somewhere that the average unemployment rate in the US in the latter half of the 1800s was probably around 20%. Anyone else seen this figure? Any comparables for England? Thanks, Ellen Frank Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: [PEN-L:2045] unemployment
I don't know the numbers, but I found the article by Michael Piore on the history of unemployment (in, I think, JEL, early 90s) very interesting. If he is right, we have to be careful in comparing today's numbers to numbers back then. (But I wonder how Piore would explain the militance of Coxey's Army...) Peter Dorman "Ellen T. Frank" wrote: I remember reading somewhere that the average unemployment rate in the US in the latter half of the 1800s was probably around 20%. Anyone else seen this figure? Any comparables for England? Thanks, Ellen Frank
[PEN-L:2045] unemployment
I remember reading somewhere that the average unemployment rate in the US in the latter half of the 1800s was probably around 20%. Anyone else seen this figure? Any comparables for England? Thanks, Ellen Frank
[PEN-L:2046] Re: unemployment
Ellen T. Frank wrote: I remember reading somewhere that the average unemployment rate in the US in the latter half of the 1800s was probably around 20%. Anyone else seen this figure? Any comparables for England? The earliest numbers in Historical Statistics of the U.S. are for 1890; the NBER website doesn't have anything earlier than 1903. 18904.0% 18915.4% 18923.0% 189311.7% 189418.4% 189513.7% 189614.4% 189714.5% 189812.4% 18996.5% Doug
[PEN-L:2044] Re: re: Global Depression
Henry C.K. Liu wrote, Tom Walker wrote: Although the anomaly is much less bizarre if you consider the role the U.S. dollar as reserve currency has played in permitting an even more anomalous balance of payments deficit. In its function as "borrower of last resort", the U.S. can appear as a kind of cornucopia in reverse. That is why the introduction of the euro as a second reserves currency is very significant. I agree. But I would expect it would take quite some time -- several years -- for the effect to play itself out. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2041] re: Global Depression
Nathan Newman wrote, The United States has become this bizarre anamoly, partly explained by the labor "flexibility" (meaning creation of unregulated bad jobs) but needing broader explanations as well. Part is obviously the US's role as the center of the current computer revolution related to networking and part may be driven by the hyperprofits of global capitalism inducing "wealth effects" spending here. Although the anomaly is much less bizarre if you consider the role the U.S. dollar as reserve currency has played in permitting an even more anomalous balance of payments deficit. In its function as "borrower of last resort", the U.S. can appear as a kind of cornucopia in reverse. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2047] Jackson Pollock
(Second in a series of posts on art and revolution) While Jackson Pollock has the reputation he justly deserves for being an apolitical "art for art's sake" type in his prime, it is important to understand that he did not start out this way. In many respects, his journey from radical politics to inward-looking Abstract Expressionist careerist is emblematic of 20th century American social history. From Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith's mammoth (934 pages!) and informative "Jackson Pollock: an American Saga," we learn that Roy Pollock, Jackson's father, was sympathetic to leftist causes, as well as being an artist himself. Jackson heard his father defend the IWW often, and celebrate the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Roy Pollock's favorite magazine was the Nation, which was a fairly radical publication at the turn of the century as opposed to the Clinton fan club it has become. However, the biggest influence on young Jackson Pollock was Frederick Schwankovsky, his art teacher in Manual Arts high school in Los Angeles. Schwankovsky was a partisan of the Communist Party as well as Madame Blavatsky's Theosophist Society, whose latest avatar was Jiddu Krishna, a.k.a. Krishnamurti. This is not such an odd combination, when you examine the 19th century radical movement whose influence lingered on into the 20th century, especially in Los Angeles, where the Pollock family lived. Why California has been a magnet for such cults is a topic for another post. Suffice it to say at this point that spiritualism of the Blavatsky sort went hand in hand with woman's suffrage, anti-racism, utopian socialism, etc. in the 1870s and 80s. Victoria Woodhull, leader of the first Marxist group in the United States, and who ran for president with Frederic Douglass as her running-mate, was a professional spiritualist. Pollock became a devotee of Krishnamurti around the same time he became a radical leftist. While his radical politics got thrown overboard en route to becoming a famous artist, it is safe to say that the mysticism of his youth only deepened with age, and only finally receded when he became a big time artist. The "New Age" has never made much of a point of challenging the corporate world. It only asked that people not be too grubby in the process, which seemed to be main message of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the sly, orange-clad, Rolls Royce-driving cult leader in Oregon during the 1980s. After Pollock got thrown out of high school for an unruly protest against the football team, he was able to give his radical and spiritualist impulses full vent. (A fellow protestor was close friend Philip Goldstein, who later changed his name to Philip Guston and became a prominent Abstract Expressionist as well.) In 1929 he attended Communist meetings at the Brooklyn Avenue Jewish Community Center in East Los Angeles. It was at these meetings that he probably learned something about the connection between avant-garde art and radical politics, especially as expressed in the work of José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. When he wasn't hanging out at the center, he was running off to spiritualist retreats with Schwankovsky. Pollock moved to NY in 1930 to pursue a career in art and hooked up with Thomas Hart Benton. Benton is the quintessential "regionalist" artist of the 1930s, a school that had an uneasy relationship to the "socialist realism" promoted by the Communist Party. After the Popular Front turn, the uneasiness broke down as the Communist Party became convinced almost overnight on the "progressive" character of the American ruling-class. If FDR was another Abe Lincoln, then surely it made sense to embrace the national traditions that made such exemplary politicians possible. Thomas Hart Benton, the son of a famous abolitionist (and Indian-hating) Senator, was made to order for this cultural turn. While Benton was no Marxist, his paintings did have a populist character that were more in tune with the Progressivist traditions of the turn-of-the-century than the Marxist 1930s. He did pass muster, however. Pollock apprenticed with Benton on a set of murals for the 3rd floor of the New School for Social Research begun in 1930, and where I got my MA in philosophy in 1967. I never paid much attention to the Benton murals or the Orozco mural on the floor above it. I was too busy scheming how to get out of the war in Vietnam. Benton's theme was technology and the transformation of American society. As any good progressive would, Benton emphasized the working-class in the murals, and used Pollock as a model for a steelworker in one panel. Although this essay is really not about aesthetics, you can see Benton's influence on Pollock through the undulating forms of the various workers on girders or in steel furnaces. I couldn't find a website that had this mural, but http://www.emory.edu/CARLOS/gif/paper18A.gif has a work titled "Night Firing" that is representative of the Benton style. The circular
