There seems to be some progress here. On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 3:46 PM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote:
> Tom writes: > > I can't speak for Jim, but I would > > differentiate fundamentally between "short-time" work or work-sharing in > > response to cyclical ups and downs and a long-term secular decline in the > > optimal hours of labor as a key element of technological progress. It > seems > > to me that Jim assimilates all work time reduction to the former and Gene > > leans strongly in the other direction. > > Since my name is invoked, I must respond. > > To me, the actual, empirical, changes in paid and unpaid work-time per > worker-year is partly a matter of cyclical _and_ secular forces (along > with technical and social forces). I do _not_ "assimilate" > (attribute?) them totally to cyclical changes. > > I stand corrected. > (I don't know where Tom got the impression that I thought otherwise. I > try not to represent his opinions without quoting him and I wish he > would do the same. I do appreciate the fact that he says he can't > speak for me, however.) > > The exception is the big change in paid work-hours in recent memory, > which was almost entirely cyclical, i.e., the big recession (falling > aggregate demand) and its aftermath between 2007 and the present.[*] I > always like to connect theory to the real world, so such recent events > play a big role for me (and, I would guess, the vast majority of > working people in the US).[**] > > Moving to the normative question of "optimal" work time, it depends > who is optimizing. On the class level, the capitalist perspective on > optimal work-hours (getting more of them, especially the unpaid ones) > is quite different from the working-class one (which would involve > cutting work hours, especially the unpaid ones). Tom would agree with > this, I'd guess. Of course, I can't speak for him. > Yes it does indeed depend on who is optimizing but it doesn't ONLY depend on who. It also depends on the institutional arrangements. In the current juncture (the aftermath of a big recession) and on the > individual level, there's been a role-reversal. Everyone's trying to > survive, so that most individual workers would like to have _more_ > rather than fewer paid work hours. Of course, individual capitalists > aren't providing more hours in hiring, since they don't see enough of > that aggregate demand abstraction coming their way and most of them, > especially the smaller ones, are having a hard time getting credit > (either abstract or concrete). > > Here is possibly where I get the impression that Jim thinks otherwise than me on the distinction between cyclical and secular change in hours. The current juncture consists of both the aftermath of a big recession and the "aftermath" of a very long lasting interruption in the secular trend of work time reduction. Depending on how broadly you want to cast the net the non-decline has lasted somewhere from 30 to 60 years -- the low figure disregards the historic changes in the sectoral and demographic composition of the workforce and regards annual hours, the high figure focuses exclusively on the manufacturing work week. I reckon that if you adjust for household participation, demographic and sectoral change etc. you'll end up in between those numbers. So let's just split it down the middle and say 40 years. There are institutional reasons for this break in the trend: for example, the way the FLSA was framed as an overtime law rather than a legal limit (see Marc Linder on this), the tax treatment of employer-paid health plans along with the absence of national health care plan, the decline of unions in the U.S. and the preceding anti-communist purges, the abandonment of shorter work time as a union priority and the embrace of "Keynesian" deficit-fueled economic growth, the increasing use of part-time labor (this is related to the demographic changes), etc. Now here's where theory rears its ugly head. Mainstream economic consensus holds that firms will seek to maximize utility by optimizing hours in terms of output. So if the trend for the last 40 years has been flat, that's obviously the trend that maximize's the firms' utility. But that consensus deviates from the canonical neoclassical theory of hours. The neoclassical theory is not taught. The neoclassical theory is not known by practitioners of the dark neoclassical arts. In fact, though, the hours of labor is exhibit "A" in the neo-classical theory of market failure. Only exhibit "A" has been stuffed away in the neoclassical closet (starting with Pigou) like a family skeleton. What I try to do is take exhibit "A" out of the closet and try to estimate (however crudely) the gap between private and social "national dividend." > (Both the class level and the individual level are important. The > trick is how to help individual workers see their class interests and > create their own organizations to push to achieve them. Mere slogans > and programs don't seem to be very useful here.) > -- > Jim Devine / "In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can > purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness." -- George Bernard Shaw > > [*] BTW, that is not to ignore the secular forces behind the cyclical > fall. > > [**] My empirical references are to the US, unless stated otherwise, > because I can't claim to know enough about other countries. > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Sandwichman
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