On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 12:12 PM, Max Sawicky<[email protected]> wrote:
> What should he do that he hasn't done, as far as stimulus goes? >From a letter to the Editor of the New York Times from Samuel Teitelbaum, January 7, 1933: "Most people with intellectual honesty know by this time that the chief cause of the great depression is technological unemployment; in other words, our collective failure to adjust working time to fit the greatly increased efficiency of our productive system. "Knowing the root of our troubles, the remedy should be simple. Reduce the working time immediately. The bill for the thirty-hour work-week, now before Congress, should become a law at once." >From a comment on a US News and World Report blog from Joseph DeLassus of MO, July 14, 2009: "Not much is said these days about technological unemployment." Meanwhile, back at the Research Papers in Economics database, "Why Economists Dislike a Lump of Labor" ranked #1in abstract views for July 2009. Sandwichman is currently transcribing two published debates on the 1934 thirty-hour bill. One, published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, was between Senator Hugo Black, the sponsor of the bill in the Senate and Harold G. Moulton of the Brookings Institute. The other, published in the Congressional Digest, was between William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor and Neil Carothers, Professor of Economics at Lehigh University. I remain in awe of the ability of "progressive economists" to talk about unemployment and not mention the elephant in the room and to talk about New Deal measures to combat unemployment during the depression and *still* not notice the elephant in the room. The Sandwichman is not under any delusion that a "thirty-hour bill" could make any headway in Congress today. But the conversation has to start sometime and somewhere. Organized labor isn't doing it. The "left" (if there is any such thing) isn't doing it. Academia isn't doing it. -- Sandwichman _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
