"Anyway, I don't remember being impressed by the presentation I heard him give. If I remember correctly, he argued that unions could capture rents from their employers, which isn't an especially new idea."
I think you weren't impressed because you didn't recognize the institutional and segmented labor markets economists he was arguing with. the point i see him making is that, in contrast to the so-called radical labor economists, he thinks that unions can be effective even in highly "competitive" industries as opposed to just the "oligopolistic" sectors. i liked his book a lot, although i hated the lack of positive feedback loops. subsequent new school marxists (I'm thinking especially of jamee moududs book) have taken up Wynne godley's "stock-flow consistent" modeling approach, which i think is a very positive thing. his analysis was aimed to explain wage differentials in a marxian, rather then segmented labor market or human capital theory way. on the way however, he went through many other concepts that i thought were worthwhile. "it's a better job than discussing Jobs. Oh, the tribulations of Job!" is the book of job going to be revised so that it's about steve instead? -- -Nathan Tankus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
