Joseph Schumpeter once wrote, "the budget is the skeleton of the state
stripped of all misleading ideologies."
Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1954. "The Economic Crisis of the Tax State."
International Economic Papers, 4; reprinted in Schumpeter, Joseph A.
1991. The Economics and Sociology of Capitalism, ed. Richard Swedberg
(Princeton: Princeton University Press): pp. 99-140.
Yesterday's post dealt with the way that budget choices create pressures
that shape pension funds' choices, something like the way that people in
desperate states make decisions that they would not make under ordinary
circumstances. However, the skeleton ranges across the body of socitey.
For example, ordinary people often must depend their pensions fall
victim to a similar logic. In fact, one of the many objectives of the
privatization of Social Security was to make workers identify with the
objectives of capitalism. Andy Stern of SEIU suggests how that kind of
thinking even infects the supposedly progressive union movement. Here
is the exchange from Business Week:
Q: Has the recession led you to rethink the way you operate your
union? What is the SEIU doing to prepare for a recovery?"
A: "Well, it's made us appreciate that we have to be better
partners with our state governments and employers in terms of
efficiency. It makes us appreciate that our pension funds are tied
to the success of the economy. And it makes us very much want to
come together with other Americans and employers and people in the
nongovernmental part of our country and say we need to create a
21st-century American economic plan so Team USA can compete and
win."
Bartiromo, Maria. 2009. "Union Leader Andy Stern on the Future of Big
Labor." Business Week (28 September).
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_39/b4148000246591.htm
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA
95929
530 898 5321
fax 530 898 5901
http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com
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