Jim,
My point in making the original post was not about the prediction
but about who was making it. Alan Blinder is a Princeton economist,
was on the Federal Reserve Board, and is the personification of a
mainstream economist. When he says that trade is going to cost jobs,
that is news. For Nafta it was Ross Perot predicting job loss. Not
the same thing.
Gene
On Mar 29, 2007, at 8:36 AM, Jim Devine wrote:
>But now he is saying loudly that a new industrial revolution
>-- communication technology that allows services to be delivered
>electronically from afar -- will put as many as 40 million American
>jobs at risk of being shipped out of the country in the next
decade or
two.
Gernot Koehler wrote:
That warning is justified. On the other hand, the U.S. economy has
shown a
remarkable capacity over the last hundred years for also creating
new (and
alternative) employment. For example, the U.S. unemployment rate
in 1900 was
around five percent, and in 2001 it was also around 5 percent,
even though
tremendous restructuring and economic growth had taken place in
the hundred
years between the two dates.
this is nothing new. Back when the NAFTA (and similar trade bills)
were passed, people warned of job loss. The trouble with this
prediction is that it misses the point. The _real_ issue is labor
wages (relative to labor productivity). Though the process of
adjustment may take a long time and be very painful for the workers
involved, eventually most laid-off workers get jobs. Absent
counteracting forces (i.e., ceteris paribus), the problem is that they
don't pay very well compared to their previous jobs. (The rate of
surplus-value tends to rise as a result of this process.)
I understand that Marx(ian)(ist) theory can
explain job destruction in connection with the process of the
accumulation
of capital. Is there also any Marx(ian)(ist) theory that explains job
creation? It seems to me, based on my admittedly limited knowledge
of that
vast body of literature, that there is a weakness in Marx(ian)(ist)
literature with respect to the theory of job creation in capitalist
economies, as opposed to theory of job destruction. (Or, which
pieces of
literature did I miss?)
Marx's theory in CAPITAL (volume 1) is mostly about job destruction.
This focuses on a representative industry, i.e., one that represents
the abstract general laws of accumulation. But there are also
processes of job creation in Marx: if aggregate accumulation is fast
enough, that increases aggregate employment (which may or may not
raise real wages enough to reduce the rate of surplus-value).
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let
people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
