Jim Devine wrote: At 01:13 PM 01/13/2001 -0600,
<<Unless Say's Law miraculously starts working, increases in (labor)
> productivity don't cause rises in wages. Rather, it's either due to
> increases in the organizational strength of the working class, which allows
> them to be more effective in their struggle (in which case, rising
> productivity growth allows real wage increases without automatically
> squeezing profits) _or_ due to increases in aggregate demand. Forgive me if
> I'm a pessimist about the US labor movement, but in general, I'd say that
> the latter is more apt for recent US history: the rise in consumer and
> corporate debt, financed by increased borrowing from outside the US. Until
> recently, the rate of profit rose steeply (though not enough to attain the
> previous high of the 1960s) due to wages lagging behind labor productivity
> and a greater efficiency of the use of fixed capital, which helped spark
> the boom of consumer demand (through stock-market effects) and corporate
> investment, which was then supplemented by the familiar dynamics of a
> bubble economy.
>
> The slowdown in demand (due to the stock-market's downshifting and perhaps
> as consumers hit their credit-card limits and those of common sense) is
> squeezing profits, along with recent increases in wages. More importantly
> in the short run, falling capacity utilization discourages real investment
> and corporate spending in general. Given the relatively high degree of
> worker insecurity (compared to that of the 1960s, say), employment and
> wages will fall steeply. So the answer is yes.>>>>>
Jim -- I agree with you completely that demand has driven the last expansion,
and has helped increase wages (as small as that increase might be). However, I
still think the productivity due to computerization has also had an effect --
not that Say's law is suddenly working (not unless I've also turned into the
tooth fairy). Here's my reasoning, and it is admittedly a little muddy. For
quite some time, capitalists in the US have been replacing manual labor with
computers (classic replacement of labor with capital). This has had a two way
effect on wages -- the predominant effect has been to downgrade what were craft
jobs by replacing relatively complicated skills with routine work of punching
buttons (so test desk technicians in the phone company were replaced with
clerks pushing buttons on computers). There have been some more highly
skilled/paid jobs created, but they are less dominant than the reverse effect.
As with all changes in labor, there has been a distinctly gendered effect to
all this, with many skilled male jobs being replaced by computers and females
who are now paid less than their 'skilled' and male counterparts were and
deemed less skilled (for a variety of reasons we could debate until the cows
come home). In fact, the majority of new jobs created since the late 60s/early
70s have been in categories which traditionally hire predominantly female
labor. In general, then, one could actually say that female labor has
increased in productivity at a faster rate than male labor, since more females
are hired into computerized jobs than men. At the same time, women's wages
have risen in relation to male wages (and this is true across all races and
ethnicities, though white women's wages have risen more). Now part of the
closing of the gender gap is due to a decrease in male wages, and part to an
increase in female wages. What I think of this whole pattern is twofold: 1) I
think the demand for women in the workplace has risen at a greater rate than
for men, though the overall demand has risen. ( in the same way that the
demand for white men is higher than the demand for black men, but the demand
overall has also benefitted black men). 2) I think part of the reason the
demand has risen for specifically female labor is that females in jobs at which
they are now perceived of as very productive is more cost effective for
businesses. So, because female labor is perceived of as so much more
productive, the demand for their labor has risen faster than the demand for
other types of labor. It is this same reasoning which answers my question of
why welfare reform now -- We were running out of women to put into low wage
work, and we needed to 'free' them from the bonds of welfare.... cheers,
maggie coleman
p.s. are you coming to dc for the inauguration festivities next weekend? if
so, give me a call!!!!!!
