On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 9:01 AM, Max B. Sawicky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Bonior is labor's guy, all the way. His most recent pastime was working
> in Change to Win. Reich is close enough too.
On his blog a week ago, Reich advised, with regard to lame-duck
stimulus packages, "For now, focus on the unemployed."
Sandwichman just posted a comment.
Samuel Gompers said,
"The answer to all opponents to the reduction of the hours of
labor could well be given in these words: 'That so long as there is
one man who seeks employment and cannot obtain it, the hours of labor
are too long.'"
Behind that statement is a theory of working time and wages -- Ira
Steward's eight-hour theory. It is a distinctly American theory of
social economy. Dorothy W. Douglas wrote during the Depression that it
was "strangely apposite" to the economic problems of the day. It is
again today "strangely apposite."
Steward's theory finds unexpected (and unaware) support in Sydney J.
Chapman's theory of the "Hours of Labour," which was the established
orthodoxy in neoclassical analysis until it was simply forgotten about
by mathematically-fixated model builders in a hurry. Even Alan
Greenspan knows there's a flaw in his model of how the world works. He
just doesn't know where that flaw is. Hint: look at hours of work and
Chapman's theory, Al. Go back and study Ira Steward's eight-hour
theory.
But, you may object, folks are barely getting by with their current
hours, how are they going to live on even less??!! Mary Steward (Ira's
wife) had the answer: "Whether you work by the piece or work by the
day; decreasing the hours increases the pay."
Man, it all sounds too good to be true. It's counter-intuitive! Like
the theory the earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way
'round?
Yes, indeed the slogans do sound hard to believe. That is until you go
back and read what Steward's theory and Chapman's theory actually had
to say and what economists have conveniently (for their mathematical
model building) forgotten. Then you can begin to realize that our
contemporary economics makes a lot of assumptions that just aren't so
and that aren't even backed up by coherent arguments. A lot of what
passes for untheoretical "common sense" makes those same assumptions
without actually saying so.
For a century economists have ridiculed the 'lump-of-labor' fallacy
made by people who think, along with Gompers, that "so long as there
is one man who seeks employment and cannot obtain it, the hours of
labor are too long." And you know what? Turns out that lump-of-labor
fallacy is a figment of those economists' imagination.
Do you want to fight unemployment? Don't bother with lame-duck
stimulus hocus-pocus. Reduce the hours of work. LOTS. NOW.
--
Sandwichman
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