>No. Wage levels in open developing countries have been increasing
>rapidly over the past two generations, and so (with the exception of
>the United States and New Zealand) have wage levels in industrial
>countries...
>
>
>Brad DeLong
Of course wages have been going up. You start with zero when you are a
subsistence farmer living outside the cash economy. When a Colombian
peasant, who grew his own food and traded the surplus for manufactured
goods in a village plaza, gets thrown off his land and takes a job in
factory, he has more money than he ever had but he is poorer than ever.
That is why there is rebellion in Colombia. Peasants want to return to the
days when they could live off the land. Of course, those who end up in a
factory are the fortunate exception. Most Latin American or African
ex-peasants end up in the "informal economy" which means prostitution,
drug-peddling, shoe-shining, hawking chewing gum or fruit, etc. This is the
social layer that formed the base of the Sandinista revolution
coincidentally. In any case, I'd love to see somebody like DeLong go work
in a maquila factory for a year or so, like his fellow Berkeley prof
Michael Burawoy does. Then at least, his interventions on leftwing mailing
lists might come across less as propaganda, and more like lived experience.
Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
