Jim, I am going to respond to selected points that you make to keep this as short as I can.
Gene On Aug 4, 2012, at 8:51 AM, Jim Devine wrote: > Coyle:>>> Or is it time to introduce a drastic cut in the work week?<<< > > me; >>> good idea, but is there a political movement of sufficient strength to push >>> this program (hopefully without weekly pay-cuts)? did anyone advocate this >>> program as part of the Occupy movement?<< > > Coyle: >> ... I infer from your question that you think that such an advocacy would >> be good. < > > Yes (as I've said before), but with that clause that almost always > seems to be forgotten by hours-cutting advocates, i.e., with no cut in > yearly salaries or wages. [That is, I favor cuts in working hours with > no cuts in yearly salaries or wages after taxes.] With what you have in brackets, I agree. And your admonition to include that is a good one for there are advocates of cutting hours that are recommending that people take pay cuts to achieve that end. That's a mistake, for two reasons. First, there will be very few willing to take pay cuts. Even more important, it evades the confrontation between employers and workers that is at the heart of fixing the income distribution problem in the US. So I’ll try to include what you have in brackets when I advocate cutting working time. You also say: > More generally, any > effort to cut working hours per year should be part of a larger and > more comprehensive vision to ensure that the hours-cut program doesn't > have anti-worker unintended consequences (or such results for other > dominated folks). Do you have any specific unintended consequences in mind? Or is the "unintended consequences just a generic admonishment? > > I also don't think hours cuts are the be-all and end-all of political > sloganeering, since there are other important issues. And sloganeering > itself leaves much to be desired. As I've said before, over and over > (I guess), mere slogans and programs don't mean much at all if there's > no social movement linked to them, however tenuously. Slogans with no > basis in social movements produce results like those of the Sparts and > their transitional program. The most effective slogans have some basis > in (and build on) what people already favor. > > In sum, it's not the slogan or even the broader program that prevents > unintended consequences as much as the movement. That's what keeps the > politicians honest, at least for awhile. > >> But should not economists be talking about this "good idea" so as to bring >> it to the attention of a wide audience? How many economists brought it up >> at Occupy? < > > Who knows? I can only speak of my personal experience. (Has anyone > done a poll??) When I spoke to Occupy Long Beach/Pasadena/LA, I mostly > answered questions (is the dollar to be replaced with the "Amero"?, > should we get these politicians to sign a vow promising to be honest?, > etc.) The main concern was financial, perhaps because of my short > opening presentation about the financial crisis (which of course is > what spawned Occupy in the first place). > >> I should clarify to agree that cutting working time is not an immediate >> solution to the problem of unemployment. But the unemployment the US faces >> is chronic (as well as cyclical) and needs a solution beyond fiscal and >> monetary steps. So even if we have an immediate problem, is it not a good >> idea to move immediately on the chronic problem?< > > Is hours-cutting the panacea, solving all or many of the economic ills > that face us, or is it something that's good in a more specific way, > i.e., counteracting the intensifying work-loads that US workers have > been facing over the decades? (The latter is the emphasis of Julie > Schor's THE OVERWORKED AMERICAN, for example.) As I read Dean Baker's > hours-cutting ideas, they are a form of unemployment insurance > (sharing jobs rather than -- or in addition to -- taxing the employed > to help the unemployed). Yes, hours-cutting is something that's good in several specific ways. Hours cutting will contribute to multiple goals that I hold: 1. Reducing unemployment, 2. Addressing climate change: if worktime were cut to a new standard of a four-day week, that would be a most powerful defense against global warming. One metric stress for measuring the benefits of new technologies, the clean energy (e.g. solar power) or clean consumption (e.g. better light bulbs) is to assert that the measure is the equivalent of taking X number of cars off the road. 20% less commuting takes a lot of cars off the road. 3. Correcting the income distribution is between the 99% and 1%. Legislation cutting hours can't require employers to raise pay but it will refocus workers on the fact that pay isn't set in “the market” but rather in struggle. This has the additional benefit of confounding academic economists who insist that workers get their “just desserts” by being paid the marginal product of their labor. 4. I believe it has the potential of changing the culture, over time. I’ll come back to that. I do agree you with your understanding of Dean Baker's position as a form of unemployment insurance, or an even worse idea, wage sharing. > > The officially-measured unemployment that the US currently faces > (that's above about 3% or 4% of the official labor force) isn't > chronic but is instead due to deficient aggregate demand and so can be > solved, at least in theory, by pumping up demand. Fiscal policy might > be able to deal with that excess unemployment (as with the beginning > of WW2), though it seems unlikely to do be used (due to political > stalemate). Currently monetary policy is stymied partly since it's > almost run out of ammunition and partly due to political opposition > from Wall Street and the banks. (The financial interests are clearly > dominant at the ECB.) The political problem that faces hours-cuts is > even larger, since the opposition isn't simply a matter of capitalists > opposing capitalist programs, as with expansionary fiscal or monetary > policy. Your assertion that the unemployment of 2012 is not chronic is beyond surprising. I am awestruck by that assertion. I concede that many famous economists agree with you. Bizarre. In the same paragraph where you make that remark you say that monetary policy is stymied and that fiscal policy seems unlikely to be used, and then at the same time your overall response implicitly rejects the idea of cutting working time as a macro policy option. Have you accepted Margaret Thatcher's TINA? > > As for it being "a good idea to move immediately on the chronic > problem," the current balance of political power suggests that other > kinds of "solutions" besides hours-cuts will be implemented. The > "liberal" one is to have better training for the unemployed, so that > there's less mismatch between the unemployed and the vacancies > available (and perhaps using computers to provide better information > to employers and the unemployed, though Monster.com does a lot of that > already). The "conservative" one is to abolish minimum wage laws and > labor unions, to force the economic world -- if not the whole world -- > to fit into the mold of the free market utopia. > > There's another problem: it's possible that high unemployment persists > partly or even largely because private demand for products and thus > labor-power is weighed down by structural problems, e.g., excessive > debt and/or industrial capacity that's unused because it doesn't match > the structure and composition of aggregate demand. Given these kinds > of imbalances, increasing aggregate demand spurs inflation even though > many basic resources (not just labor) are unemployed. How is it that > cutting yearly work-hours deals with this problem? In your final paragraph, below, you have the cause-and-effect backwards. The priorities of the entire economy, i.e. the culture, will change in the direction you indicate BECAUSE of cutting hours, rather than the other way round. > > Anyway, to me cutting work-hours (without falling after-tax yearly > pay) seems more of a matter of changing the priorities of the entire > economy (away from commodity production, excessive and non-satisfying > consumption, and ecological destruction) than as a solution to > problems in labor-power markets (except as an alternative form of > unemployment insurance). If we're forced to sum that up as a slogan, > how about the old socialist one, i.e., "production for use, not for > profit"? Of course, this cuts against the grain of capitalist society > and the current balance of political power, so the slogan should be > "don't mourn, organize!" > > that's enough for today. Too much work. > -- > Jim Devine / If you're going to support the lesser of two evils, you > should at least know the nature of that evil. > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
