At 10:27 28/05/2003 -0700, Harry Pollard wrote:
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It's a problem of distribution. Yet, so inadequate is modern economics, that it cannot provide us with just economic distribution, but must rely on political distribution -- a practice guaranteed to inspire a web of corruption and inevitable injustice.
Any job which is reasonably secure and reasonably well paid is equivalent to a status level in a primate group or a human tribe. As such, it is prized beyond just the money income and will be protected in all sorts of ingenious ways. It is not just politicians who are corrupt; almost everybody in a reasonably good job is engaging in deception.
All because economists were swept through the inadequacies of their basic theory by the need to get to the complicated stuff. There is no time to discuss what should be the simple question -- which you have heard before.
"Why in spite of increase in productive power do wages tend to a minimum which will give but a bare living?"
This is an interesting question and, I think, similar to another question I've constantly asked myself ever since I became interested in economics. It is this:
"Why, despite all manner of innovations of greatly varying efficiency from year to year or decade to decade, does national productivity reach a plateau of about 2.5% at the very most?"
I'm talking here of "leading edge" economies, such as England during most of the 19th century or America during the 20th. I'm excluding "catch-up" economies such as Japan after WWII or South Korea in the 80s or China at the present time when productivity can rise up to 7 or 8% (but which can't be maintained once most of the population have been brought into the system).
My provisional answer (to both questions) is that the "pecking order" in the human race is a great deal more powerful than we have imagined so far (and a totally neglected topic in economics). Any extraordinary increase in productivity is almost immediately negated by a series of devices, the two main ones being: (a) job protectionism ("pull the ladder up, Jack") by various methods which have the effect of creating lesser jobs underneath them and thus diluting the overall productivity within that sector, and (b) the creation of parallel ancillary professions which aid the status of those engaged in the main production sectors but which don't add any extra overall productivity themselves -- they're purely cosmetic, as it were. It seems to me that, however fast the naked underlying productivity is, or could be, (a) and (b) are always able to catch up very quickly indeed.
It can't be denied that rising prosperity "lifts all boats up" (a poor person in a developed country today is rich in objective terms -- food, goods and services -- than rich people were several centuries ago), but the main effect of prosperity is to vastly increase the range of different types of boats (that is, the range of status levels). The bottom status level will always be a "bare living" relative to the rest. We are not identical worker ants; we are primates, highly imbued with the same status yearnings as any other primate species, but with much more sophisticated means of satisfying them.
Keith Hudson
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England
