At 12:14 14/12/2012, EW wrote:
You are probably right about the financial
sector's growth having slowed for the time being
but it still continues to be a very important
part of the overall economy and, in my opinion, it will become even stronger.
(KH) It's doubtful in my opinion. All the big
high street banks which took up speculating (more
euphemistically termed "proprietorial trading")
in recent years have had their fingers burned so
badly that they're quickly falling back to their
traditional functions. They haven't yet received
more than a fraction of the punishment that's due
to them for their various criminal acts over
recent years. Vengeful governments have already
hit Barclays for $500 million and HSBC
(yesterday) for $1 billion for artificially
setting Libor rates (and thus influencing the
interest rates they charged millions of ordinary
customers and small businesses). And there are
vengeful customers and bank shareholders, too,
who are now mounting class actions.
(EW) Countries have accumulated huge fiscal
debts that they can't eliminate by
taxation. They will have to continue to borrow,
new debt replacing and exceeding old
debt. Individuals and families have also accumulated large debts.
(KH) Only up to a point and only as often as will
be tolerated by potential lenders. But when a
government reaches a taxation barrier it will
have reduce its own spending. Otherwise it will
have to default. Personally, I would hit the rich
with much higher rates of taxation. In the
present circumstances there's no reason why the
rich shouldn't be paying in income tax in the
80s-90s% region just as in the wartime. This
would reduce the money that would be available
for new investment. But as MNCs are already
sitting on piles of profits they don't know what
to do with, no harm would be done.
(EW) Business borrowings will also continue. A
thought that I find disturbing is that the
financial sector may have become the core of the
economy in terms of the power and influence it can exercise.
(KH) The financial sector expanded from about 5%
of the economy in advanced countries before the
mad expansion of credit in the late 1980s (when
it reached about 15%). It'll drop back to that
IMO. At the end of the day money is only the oil
that lubricates the real economy. Like the oil in
a machine, finance is part of an economy but you
don't need an excess of it. The vast bulk of the
extra money that was sloshing about in the
1990-2008 period was being spent on derivatives.
Keith
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[email protected]>Keith Hudson
To:
<mailto:[email protected]>RE-DESIGNING
WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION ; <mailto:[email protected]>Ed Weick
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2012 6:39 AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Driving out the unions
At 17:37 13/12/2012, EW wrote:
Not sure of where we're headed. We see a
growing gap between the income of the rich and
the poor. It's conventional to think of this
in terms of the capitalists screwing labour and
it may be partly that, but we also have to
recognize that some huge economic shifts are
taking place. The financial sector is growing
rapidly and a lot of money is being made by
manipulating securities behind closed doors;
May I suggest that the financial sector stopped
growing in 2008 and is still shedding labour in
their tens of thousands? For example, UBS
decided a month ago to get rid of 10,000 jobs
and finished the process this week with a batch
of 2,000. The Swiss do it quite quaintly.
Individual staff don't know for sure they're
going to be affected until they arrive at their
office one morning and instead of being allowed
to sit down are given a paper bag with their personal possessions in it.
Keith
e financial sector is no longer growing rapidly.
It stopped, point blank, in 2008
some people have become very rich in places
like Silicon Valley by inventing things we now
take for granted and that help some people to
manipulate securities behind closed doors;
ships and planes can carry goods produced
cheaply elsewhere to domestic markets;
assembly lines consist as much or more of
machines than people. Unions were very
important when a lot of people were making
things here and now and the bosses were
clearly identifiable, but given the dynamics
of the present global economy, just who are
the bosses they should be taking on and because of what?
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[email protected]>D & N
To:
<mailto:[email protected]>RE-DESIGNING
WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2012 11:40 AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Driving out the unions
I know it is piddling but... Associations are
"professionals", unions are "societally" lower
and indicate those who work "physical" and
usually mindless jobs over "mental" jobs. I too
belonged to "associations" decades ago. And
they made certain I too was paid more than the
work was worth but that was a "professional"
actor's association and some of the profession
made egregious sums while others struggled
day-to-day. Not really the same as a union.
It is the bottom of the pyramid that is being
eroded. The middle has yet to notice the cracks forming around it.
D.
On 13/12/2012 6:22 AM, Ray Harrell wrote:
Wow! And all of this while they screwed the
indigenous and kept the artists in
poverty. Sounds like a stereotype Keith.
REH
From:
<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]
[ mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2012 4:12 AM
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION; Ed Weick
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Driving out the unions
At 22:21 12/12/2012, EW wrote:
Well, yes. I spent thirty years in the
Canadian public service and was a member of a
professional union which was always there in
the background helping to ensure that I was getting paid more than I was worth.
Well, that's refreshing to hear! If Canada is
like the UK then there'll be a senior civil
service union (to which Ed would certainly
have belonged) above a much larger public
service union (the PCS). In the UK there's an
even more senior group of no more than 150 or
so, consisting of the administrative heads of
the 15 or so departments ("Permanent
Secretaries") plus one or two levels below it,
but no more. This group has been able to give
itself extraordinary perks (that is, it
doesn't ask the government or parliament for
them but quietly goes ahead on its own). This
has included foreign trips, membership of
exclusive London clubs, use of credit cards,
lavish golden handshakes,etc. When these
perks are discovered by the media and public
anger arises they're quickly and quietly
retracted (as though they never existed!). The
latest dodge to be exposed is for a senior
civil servant to retire early (picking up his
inflation-linked pension, of course), set up a
private business and then apply for (and get,
of course!) sub-contract work from his
ex-department -- his own old job, in fact.
Corporation tax being much lower than his
income tax (from his pension and his new
sub-contract earnings) -- not to speak of
other fiddles his firm's accountant can
arrange -- he'll be immensely better off than
previously. All this came to light about a
fortnight ago but has now stopped. (My guess
is that in most cases this would have the
effect of doubling his income for a number of
years before his full retirement age.)
Keith
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[email protected]>Keith Hudson
To:
<mailto:[email protected]>RE-DESIGNING
WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION ; <mailto:[email protected]>Ed Weick
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 12:08 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Driving out the unions
At 14:59 12/12/2012, EW wrote:
Unions used to be a very important part of the
economy. Increasingly, they no longer are.
Industrial unions, yes, but some unions are
still important! At least they are in the UK,
and those that have become closed shops by
acquiring special privileges from the
government and controlling their numbers can
obtain high incomes for their members.
Barristers' Chambers, solicitors' Law Society,
doctors' British Medical Association are
examples of such. Also there are groups which
are self-selecting for the purpose of boosting
their incomes but which don't have formal
membership. One good example of this (which
applies in America, too) is the amorphous
group of senior banking executives which
gladly serve on the remuneration advisory
committees of competitive banks. This has
enabled them to artificially ratchet one
another's salaries upwards to astronomical
levels in recent years and, when, criticized,
can falsely claim "market rates".
Keith
Ed
The Lansing-Beijing connection
By
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/harold-meyerson/2011/02/24/ABvsvmP_page.html>Harold
Meyerson,
Dec 12, 2012 01:35 AM EST
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-unions-still-matter-in-michigan-just-as-in-china/2012/12/11/d77d9948-43c9-11e2-8061-253bccfc7532_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions#license-d77d9948-43c9-11e2-8061-253bccfc7532>The
Washington Post Published: December 11
China has a problem: rising inequality. The
gap between profits and wages is soaring.
Although elements of the government have
sought to boost workers incomes, they have
been thwarted by major companies and banks
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324640104578161493858722884.html>
that dont want to give more profit to the
country and let the government distribute it,
Qi Jingmei, a research fellow for a government
think tank, told the Wall Street Journal.
Of course, if China permitted the
establishment of unions, wages would rise. But
for fundamentally political reasons
independent unions would undermine the
Communist Partys authority unions are out of the question.
Meanwhile, the United States also has a
problem of a rising gap between profits and
wages. The stagnation of wages has become an
accepted fact across the political spectrum;
conservative columnists such as
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-making-economic-advancement-realistic/2012/11/19/ab926fae-3283-11e2-bfd5-e202b6d7b501_story.html>Michael
Gerson and David Brooks have acknowledged that
workers incomes seem to be stuck.
What conservatives havent acknowledged, and
what even most liberal commentators fail to
appreciate, is how central the collapse of
collective bargaining is to American workers
inability to win themselves a raise. Yes,
globalizing and mechanizing jobs has cut into
the livelihoods of millions of U.S. workers,
but that is far from the whole story.
<http://prospect.org/article/if-labor-dies-whats-next>Roughly
100 million of the nations
<http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm>143
million employed workers have
<http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eblinder/papers/07ceps142.pdf>jobs
that cant be shipped abroad, that arent in
competition with steel workers in Sao Paolo or
iPod assemblers in Shenzhen. Sales clerks,
waiters, librarians and carpenters all utilize
technology in their jobs, but not to the point
that theyve become dispensable.
Yet while they cant be dispensed with,
neither can they bargain for a raise. Today
<http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm>fewer
than 7 percent of private-sector workers are
union members. That figure may shrink a little
more with
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/job-creation-debate-illustrates-volley-of-claims-over-right-to-work-as-michigan-decision-nears/2012/12/10/9f780f72-4330-11e2-8c8f-fbebf7ccab4e_story.html>new
right to work laws in Michigan the
propagandistic term for statutes that allow
workers to benefit from union contracts without having to pay union dues.
Defenders of right-to-work laws argue that
they improve a states economy by creating
more jobs. But an
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1027987>exhaustive
study by economist Lonnie K. Stevans of
Hofstra University found that states that have
enacted such laws reported no increase in
business start-ups or rates of employment.
Wages and personal income are lower in those
states than in those without such laws,
Stevans concluded, though proprietors incomes
are higher. In short, right-to-work laws
simply redistribute income from workers to owners.
Why, then, are such laws being enacted? The
gap between U.S. capital income and labor
income
<http://www.businessinsider.com/corporate-profits-just-hit-an-all-time-high-wages-just-hit-an-all-time-low-2012-6>hasnt
been this great since before the New Deal; why
widen it still more? The answer, in Lansing no
less than in Beijing, is political. The
Republicans who took control of the Michigan
statehouse in 2010 understand that Democrats
foot soldiers come disproportionately from
labor. GOP efforts to reduce labors clout
help Republicans politically far more than
they help any Michigan-based businesses or
local governments. (The legislation, which
Gov. Rick Snyder (R) signed into law Tuesday
evening, establishes right-to-work requirements for the public sector, too.)
Those who doubt that the intent of Michigans
laws is more political than economic should
consider the two kinds of unions exempted from
its reach:
<http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20121208/NEWS04/312080019/Right-work-bill-exempts-police-fire-unions>police
and firefighter unions. Their contracts are
among the costliest that local governments
confront: Police and firefighters generally
(and rightly) retire earlier than do other
public employees, with relatively generous
pension benefits. But in Michigan, police and
firefighter unions often endorse Republicans.
Shrinking their treasuries and political power
by subjecting them to right-to-work strictures
would only damage Republicans electoral
prospects (and may well play poorly to voters).
With Snyders signature, Michigan becomes the
second state in the
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/12/11/michigan-would-be-first-blue-right-to-work-state/?hpid=z1>once-heavily
unionized, industrial Midwest to adopt such a
statute; hitherto, such laws had largely been
confined to states in the South, the Plains
and the Mountain West. The United Auto Workers
(UAW) was once the colossus of Michigan
politics, but the unions membership has
shrunk to
<http://www.autoblog.com/2012/04/02/uaw-membership-climbs-1-1-thanks-to-automakers-adding-jobs/>381,000
roughly
<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/uawm-a01.shtml>one-quarter
of its size 35 years ago a casualty of
globalization and the legal and cultural
obstacles the UAW has encountered to organizing new members.
Michigan Republicans have seen a chance to
weaken the UAW and labors power at election
time. Doing so further diminishes the number
of workers who can bargain for a raise. Its
nice that conservatives are finally
acknowledging that workers incomes are
stagnating. But workers dont get raises if
they cant bargain collectively, and all the
hand-wringing about our rising rates of
inequality will be so much empty rhetoric
unless we insist in Lansing and Beijing on
workers right to form powerful unions.
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