From: raghu > >> A welfare state is in the >> long-term interests of the elites. > > It is? What in god's name do you base this on?
Of course it is. A government health plan for e.g., will hurt the insurance industry, but it will dramatically reduce labor costs for every other employer, produce a healthier and less stressed workforce etc all of which have to be good for productivity and profits. Think of GM - it may have avoided bankruptcy if there was national health-care. The same argument applies generally. Up to a point, what is good for a worker is good for his/her employer. The dumb capitalist works his employees to death, leaves nothing for public infrastructure, education, health etc, and pays just enough to keep workers from starving. A dumb capitalist practices "slash and burn" production. The far-sighted capitalist works his employees moderately to maximize their lifetime productivity, invests on R&D, infrastructure etc to sustain profitability and pays his employees enough to keep consumption levels high (but not enough to start accumulating) and his workforce contented. Financiers are always dumb capitalists, it is in the nature of finance. They are also the most destructive. Nothing good ever comes out of financialization. A far-sighted capitalist is in a sense an oxymoron. A very, very far-sighted capitalist would be essentially indistinguishable from a socialist, because making capitalism sustainable over the long-term requires restraining all its natural tendencies. -raghu. ^^^^^^^^^ CB: Many leftists have analyzed the historically concrete "Welfare State" or social democratic policies or Keynesian policies of the twentieth century as reforms that "saved" capitalism from socialist revolution by placating workers in Western countries in the face of the example of workers' revolution in Russia/SU. If true, this is a sense in which the welfare state , in its actual historical occurrence , was in the long term interest of elites. It preserved the capitalist system for the capitalist elites. In the "long run or term", it has turned out that the Soviet Union and the socialist system in Europe collapsed; and the capitalists have happily set about deconstructing _parts_ of the welfare states. Most capitalists, notoriously, don't give a shit about the long run or the whole capitalist system. They reportedly look only to the next quarter's profit reports _for their company only_. It is interesting how economists , especially big timers like Volecker ,are like the Capitalist or Bourgeois Party, the vanguard or partisans of the capitalist class as a whole and in the long run. They look at the big picture on behalf of the mass of capitalists who are very near sighted. The economists ( and lawyer buddies, like Mr. Justice Lewis Powell) are professional anti-revolutionaries. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
