David B. Shemano wrote:
... Play along. I find it ironic somebody just posted another
article about the stupidity of the Laffer Curve (lower rates, more
revenues), while the topic under discussion seems to be a Laffer Curve
analog: less hours, more productivity. If you find my post
From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Kenneth C. Griffin, who received more than $1 billion last year as
chairman of a
hedge fund, the Citadel Investment Group, declared: The money is a
byproduct of a
passionate endeavor. Mr. Griffin, 38, argued that those who focus on
the money --
and there
Eugene Coyle writes:
David,
The problem is that those decisions cannot be made at an individual
level in the US economy.
One reason is that the employer decides for most what the working
hours will be.
A more powerful one is that we cannot make individual
On Jan 21, 2008 9:31 PM, Sandwichman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
As Mark Twain DIDN'T say (but it is nevertheless widely attributed to
him), 't ain't what people don't know that hurts 'em; it's what they
think they know that just ain't so. What I am constantly trying to
call attention to is not
On Jan 22, 2008 9:44 AM, raghu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The idea that robots will someday replace human labor is silly: who is
going to service the bloody robots? It is not even true in general
that robots replace unpleasant, difficult work with pleasant, easy
work. Can anyone point to any
Sandwichman writes:
As for Shemano: David, there are moments at work when there is nowhere
else I would rather be, moments when I can share joyous laughter with
an almost complete stranger. Those moments happen more frequently when
I have enough time outside of work to accomplish the
There are three strands of argument against shorter working time in
mainstream teaching. None of them is viable by itself. And their core
assumptions are inconsistent with each other. But the threesome are
routinely deployed tactically as if they were compatible.
The first, perhaps best argument
On Jan 22, 2008 10:01 AM, Leigh Meyers
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Jan 22, 2008 9:44 AM, raghu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The idea that robots will someday replace human labor is silly: who is
going to service the bloody robots? It is not even true in general
that robots replace unpleasant,
David,
The problem is that those decisions cannot be made at an individual
level in the US economy.
One reason is that the employer decides for most what the working
hours will be.
A more powerful one is that we cannot make individual consumption
decisions, thus are forced
moi:
Lowering hours by having the Korean workforce organize a large number
of strikes is not the same as government policy doing it. The Korean
working class had to fight hard to win such victories. They were not
handed down by the government because the latter was nice, but because
the
The future
's t'here:
http://www.follow-me-now.de/assets/images/Moderne_Zeiten-Am_Fliessband.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/33gtn9
http://tinyurl.com/382bz9
and and and and and and and and and and and .
raghu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Oh no doubt. The modern semiconductor and
David,
You raise what to me is THE key question, namely how much is enough?
It's the Goldilocks question -- not too hot and not too cold but just
right. Theory can't answer that question because it depends on
technology and it depends on subjective judgement. Both of those
elements change over
Gosh, Jim, for someone who has so little faith in the ability of
programs to motivate the masses, you sure want a lot of minute
concrete detail (from your interlocuters) about the hypothetical
programs you have no faith in!! My suggestion is that many of your
question may be excellent ones to both
me:
I study policy proposals as a way of understanding (1) what
currently-influential politicians are advocating and (2) what options
are open to the capitalist class.
Tom Walker, a.k.a. Sandwichman writes
That is funny. My research on the question of shorter working time
arose initially
Sandwichman wrote:
There are three strands of argument against shorter working time in
mainstream teaching. None of them is viable by itself. And their core
assumptions are inconsistent with each other. But the threesome are
routinely deployed tactically as if they were compatible.
The
On 1/22/08, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The fact that this request came from above should tell you either that
(1) the New Democratic Party (in its more social democratic
incarnation, with a more organic connection to the labor movement) was
having an effect or (2) maybe this reform
On 1/22/08, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Alas, actual businesspeople -- especially ones with small businesses
-- actually think in short-term terms and from the point of view of
their own firms and act on both the political and economic levels
based on this thinking. (It's not an
me:
Sure, I'm in favor of fewer hours per week, but I don't think slogans
or programs organize people well. (Some of my old friends were
Trotskyists who believed that a well-crafted slogan or a new
(improved!) version of the transitional program could spark a
prairie fire -- though I
Jim Devine writes:
hey, let's reduce the mandatory time to 6 hours per day (4 days a
week, with mandatory 4 weeks of paid vacation)!
there, I've said it. Why aren't all the people in the media and the
business world listening, and then obeying me? perhaps it's because it
goes against their
me:
hey, let's reduce the mandatory time to 6 hours per day (4 days a
week, with mandatory 4 weeks of paid vacation)!
David B. Shemano wrote:
Why so reactionary? I raise you to 3 hours per day, 2 days a week, and 8
weeks of vacation. Wait, why am I so reactionary? I raise me to no work,
Jim Devine writes:
Why so reactionary? I raise you to 3 hours per day, 2 days a week, and 8
weeks of
vacation. Wait, why am I so reactionary? I raise me to no work, period,
plus 52 weeks
paid vacation. Let the robots do all the work.
There's an example of the small-business
David B. Shemano wrote:
... Play along. I find it ironic somebody just posted another article about
the stupidity of the Laffer Curve (lower rates, more revenues), while the
topic under discussion seems to be a Laffer Curve analog: less hours, more
productivity. If you find my post
On Jan 21, 2008 11:57 AM, David B. Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Why so reactionary? I raise you to 3 hours per day, 2 days a week, and 8
weeks of vacation. Wait, why am I so reactionary? I raise me to no work,
period, plus 52 weeks paid vacation. Let the robots do all the work.
Oh
David's comment about supply side economics made me rummage through my notes.
Here
is John Edwards' employer on taxes. The last line, as they say, is
priceless.
Griffin is an exception, since he is not interested in money, but in creating
wealth
for the community and the sheer joy of working.
These posts by Shemano and Devine seem even more ignoraznt and
superficial than many of my own.
1. Devine calls cutting hours utopian which I read as a synonym for
unattainable. Yet hours have repeatedly been cut in the USA, from 60
or more to fifty, to forty. From the six day week to
Eugene Coyle wrote:
1. Devine [i.e., yours truly] calls cutting hours utopian which I read as
a synonym for
unattainable.
NO! I'm sorry if my prose isn't crystal-clear, but I said that the
democratic determination of how many hours of work people do every
year (or month or week) was utopian.
Jim, Just addressing your remark re Korea, it doesn't look as if you
are current with practice there.
On Jan 21, 2008, at 5:17 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
Lowering hours by having the Korean workforce organize a large number
of strikes is not the same as government policy doing it. The
On 1/21/08, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I study policy proposals as a way of understanding (1) what
currently-influential politicians are advocating and (2) what options
are open to the capitalist class.
That is funny. My research on the question of shorter working time
arose initially
As I write this, the Nikkei index is down 4.4 percent after dropping
3.9 percent Monday. The Hang Seng index is down a total of 10.7
percent for the two days. Dow Jones futures are down 436 points or 3.6
percent, the SP 500 futures are down 4.3 percent. It seems, pardon
the expression, somewhat
On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 22:25 -0800, Sandwichman wrote:
Where, for example, do you get the notion that shorter working time
goes against the profit motives of people in the media and the
business world? Show me the empirical beef. There is none. There's
nothing about reducing the hours of work
http://tinyurl.com/28kbcu
Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
== It was Mao who wrote an essay, A little
spark can start a prairie fire. And it was from studying the Chinese
Revolution that I caught on
-
Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast
Thanks, Gene. Another book by a Cambridge-educated Italian I found
very worthwhile reading both for its historical perspective and it
theoretical contribution is Ugo Pagano's Work and Welfare in Economic
Theory.
On 1/19/08, Eugene Coyle [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Tom,
Some months ago you
What do Keynes, Luigi Pasinetti, John R. Commons, Sydney Chapman and
Samuel Gompers have in common with Karl Marx (and, incidentally,
Charles Wentworth Dilke)?
They all presented rationales for the use of work time reduction as a
vital economic policy tool. Their arguments are virtually forgotten
hey, let's reduce the mandatory time to 6 hours per day (4 days a
week, with mandatory 4 weeks of paid vacation)!
there, I've said it. Why aren't all the people in the media and the
business world listening, and then obeying me? perhaps it's because it
goes against their profit motives? Even if I
The beauty(beast) of work_ing_ing_ing_ _ _ :
http://tinyurl.com/34575r
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
hey, let's reduce the mandatory time to 6 hours per day (4 days a
week, with mandatory 4 weeks of paid vacation)!
there, I've said it. Why aren't all the people in the media and the
it's only when...
Well, you know Jim, a well-articulated strategy could be a useful tool
for focusing the energies of a labor movement so that it may become
well organized. The ten-hour movement in England in the early 19th
century and the campaign for the eight-hour day in the late 19th and
Tom,
Some months ago you mentioned Luigi Pasinetti's book STRUCTURAL
CHANGE AND ECONOMIC GROWTH.
I thank you for that. I've been studying the book ever since.
The introduction (Chapter 1) is the best work I've ever read on the
history of economic thought. And Pasinetti does it in a few
Sandwichman wrote:
Well, you know Jim, a well-articulated strategy could be a useful tool
for focusing the energies of a labor movement so that it may become
well organized. The ten-hour movement in England in the early 19th
century and the campaign for the eight-hour day in the late 19th and
Jim Devine wrote:
Sure, I'm in favor of fewer hours per week, but I don't think slogans
or programs organize people well. (Some of my old friends were
Trotskyists who believed that a well-crafted slogan or a new
(improved!) version of the transitional program could spark a
prairie fire --
By the construction of your sentence, you imply that I am offering
slogans. Nothing of the sort. I offer an analysis in which I point to
major contributions to that analysis, including Pasinetti as mentioned
above by Gene Coyle. Now if you refuse to engage that analysis because
you judge
40 matches
Mail list logo
