David B. Shemano wrote: > > In the United States, our historic response to "kato kyoso" was the National > Industry Recovery Act,
The historic response in the USA took place well before the NIRA. The basic framework was set out by the 1912 election and took the form of trustification under the 1911 rule of reason and industry level regulation like the Interstate Commerce Commission (railroad pricing) and 1906 Food and Drug Act. Well before the NIRA, United State Steel had been formed (to forestall another round of cut-throat competition, BTW); industry wide pricing was regulated by the Pittsburgh Plus plan; and all of this survived the anti-trust challenge because it was held to be a reasonable restraint of trade. The error of the NIRA was that it applied to the entire economy rather than to specific industries. Nevertheless, after the Court struck down the Act, the National Labor Relations and the Fair Labor Standards Acts were passed (thereby taking wage differentials out of competition within specific industries), the 1946 Employment Act was passed (thereby creating a mechanism for aggregate demand management); and numerous regulatory agencies like the FCC and FTC. The form of national industrial systems among the major capitalist powers may have differed, but each found their own way to tame excessive competition. > which was probably the least popular Depression era legislation. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Recovery_Act. I assume because of its > unpopularity, the schizoid Roosevelt administration eventually decided that > it was against monopolies and for the enforcement of antitrust legislation, > which was antithetical to the pseudo-fascist NRA ethos. Consequently, there > has been no real intellectual support since from the right of left in the > United States for policy to curb "excessive competition." _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
