Gar Lipow wrote, in response to my crude outline of an overtime tax:
> Presumably layoffs, work which produced more than average injury, death,
>mental illness, and addiction would also be taxed as well.
I agree in spirit, but have reservations in the letter. Presently layoffs
and injuries are taxed (inadequately, of course) respectively through
experience rating of unemployment insurance and workers' compensation.
Experience rating (charging employers for the cost of benefits to laid off
or injured workers) is very incomplete and has been shown to inhibit some
hiring. It's quite possible that an overtime tax, combined with a modified
unemployment insurance program could both remove the undesired side effects
of UI and at the same time achieve some of UI's objectives (tying benefit
levels to contributions, encouraging labour force attachment). Please note
that I'm not necessarily endorsing those objectives of UI, only
acknowledging them.
Minimum wage legislation is a crucial part of the package and so is national
health insurance. Whether one wants to roll the entire social costs of
labour into a single package is a matter of strategy. I would tend to lean
toward going as incrementally as possible: introducing an overhead tax and
national health and tinkering with minimum wages, unemployment insurance,
workers' compensation.
I want to back up and reiterate two points:
1. the objective of this exercise is technical -- to find a way to formally
enter the social costs of labour onto the accountant's ledger. The amount of
welfare created would remain always a matter of social policy.
2. the occasion for the scheme being mooted here is Max Sawicky's question
about how to respond to what are likely to be a continuing saga of IMF
bailouts. The IMF will want to impose "accounting standards", accounting
standards that have been developed by a profession and industry that has a
close commercial relationship to capital in general and finance capital in
particular.
My image of the typical IMF package is that it deliberately seeks to balance
the books through a forced depletion of social capital. Not only does that
have obvious bad consequences for the country being "rescued" but it dumps
cut-priced goods on world markets, forcing other countries to compete
through immiseration of their workers.
It seems to me that labour and the left could best respond to the terms of
the bailouts by pointing out that not only are they morally repulsive, but
they are BAD BOOKKEEPING. Essentially, this goes to the heart of the IMF's
rationale and challenges its claims of (transcendent) professional competence.
Regards,
Tom Walker
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