...which was a condensed version of my blog post that has received 1415 pageviews so far: "Inequality and Sabotage: Piketty, Veblen and Kalecki"
http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2014/03/inequality-and-sabotage-piketty-veblen.html I also posted it to Pen-l where it was greeted with a resounding silence. On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 7:11 AM, Tom Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > My "readers' pick" comment (73 recommend): > > [Henwood:]"Raising the incomes of the bottom 90 percent of the population > through higher wages and public spending initiatives -- stifled since Reagan > starting putting the squeeze on them -- could change that. But the > stockholding class has resisted that, and they have a lot of political > power." > > And just where do they get that power? As Marx pointed out, every day the > working class goes off to work and generates "surplus value" from their > superfluously-long working day. Yes, "superfluous" was Marx's word for the > exploitive long hours. But don't just take Marx's word for it. Thorstein > Veblen pointed out nearly 100 years ago in "The Engineers and the Price > System" that business enterprises sabotaged production in order to maximize > their profits. Veblen used the word "sabotage." And Michal Kalecki pointed > out 70 years ago in "The Political Aspects of Full Employment" that > financiers and industrialists oppose full-employment government spending > because it undermines the myth of "investor confidence" as the harbinger of > prosperity. > > And now we have Thomas Piketty tell us that "r>g" -- that is the rate of > return on capital is greater than the economic growth rate. But, hey, Marx, > Veblen and Kalecki told us WHY that would happen. Isn't it about time we > looked into what they wrote? > > > On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 5:53 AM, Doug Henwood <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> On Mar 31, 2014, at 6:31 PM, Charlie <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> > It reads like the theory that wages squeezed profits, causing the 1973 >> > recession and subsequent stagflation. Now, after the capitalists have >> > pushed the pendulum hard to the right, the need is to restore workers' >> > consumption. The implication is that capitalism has a sweet spot in the >> > middle, somehow combining adequate exploitation hence healthy profits >> > with reasonably good times for workers. >> > >> > Is this not the implied theory? >> >> I was writing for the NYT, not Workers Vanguard. >> _______________________________________________ >> pen-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >> > > > > -- > Cheers, > > Tom Walker (Sandwichman) > -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman)
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