Hi Arthur and Ed, Two more points to add to the interplay -- one concerning Ed's message, one concerning yours:
At 10:26 16/04/02 -0400, you wrote: (EW) <<<< I would suggest that there are three broad sets of interests at play in the modern economy. Business interests, which own the productive capital, represent one set. Workers represent another, and consumers represent a third. There is a continuous game going on among these three. Business works to manipulate consumers into buying its product in amounts well beyond those needed for comforable survival (an expensive gas guzzling SUV instead of a small car). Workers strive to maintain their income by collective bargaining and, increasingly, because collective bargaining no longer works very well, by becoming specialized and thus raising their scarcity value. And consumers? I would guess their function is to carry the whole thing along on the paychecks they earn as workers and the dividends they get as shareholders. The circular flow remains, but it's not like it was 150 years ago. >>>> I'm surprised that government itself wasn't mentioned as a fourth big player. Officialdom has big economic interests of its own in maintaining its size and career structure. (I've mentioned before that, in his memoirs, one government minister complained that his senior officials never did explain to him adequately what a particularly large unit of several thousand civil servants did in his Ministry -- Department of Trade and Industry -- and he suspected that, in fact, they had very little to do except to devise new wheezes off their own bat without ministerial knowledge or approval some of which he only found out about accidentally from the press or from friends.) (AC) <<<< With so much worker money tied up in pension funds which are in the market, workers want firms to do well even while they want more take home money today in their pay. The cable stations broadcast each murmur and groan from the market and workers end up with divided wishes and runaway anxiety. Invest more, invest less. Buy this stock or buy that stock. What do they do about wage demands? If they ask too much today they may not see their pensions tomorrow. More and more the unions seem to be ending up as cheer leaders for casino capitalism. >>>> There's more than anxiety by the workers themselves (at least in England) these days. Trustees of pension funds are becoming increasingly concerned about the way they are being increasingly manipulated by: (a) share analysts, stockbrokers and investment banks which advise them as to the shares they ought to buy; and (b), the way that senior management in large companies are creaming off huge salaries and share options from the ordinary share owners. There's quite a backlash starting now and I'd be surprised if it's not happening in America, Canada, etc, also. (Just to be tedious again, Arthur, both of these problems could be considerably ameliorated by much more transparency of information -- which the public have a right to know in these complex times.) Keith __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
