Sandwichman wrote: > My question would be how to avoid or mitigate the human suffering and > social/economic isolation of unemployment, not how to get the growth > numbers back in positive territory. There is a big, BIG assumption > made in these discussions that economic stimulus is some sort of > panacea or at the very least an indispensible precondition: rising > tide... lift all boats... yada yada... case closed.
Keynesian-style expansion (rising real GDP) _does_ "lift all boats." But usually the smaller boats don't benefit as much as the yachts, except during exceptional periods such as 1950-70 or so in the United States. We saw the poor benefiting a little from GDP expansion at the end of the 1990s in the US, too. It's important to remember that even though rising real GDP (rising aggregate exchange value, corrected for the effects of inflation) does create jobs for the unemployed, it does not automatically involve rising production of use-values over-all, since non-market use-values (benefits) and costs are ignored in GDP calculation. Also, even when "real incomes" of the poor and working classes rise, the normal rise in _needs_ counteracts the positive effects of rising real incomes on human well-being. > While I can appreciate the political expediency of such an approach in > terms of building a cross-class consensus and coalition, I never hear > any substantive defense of the proposition that "growth is all you > need." I don't think anyone on pen-l believes that economic growth (as measured by real GDP) is "all you need." However, given the current balance of political power (the shrinkage of most labor unions, etc.) in the US, the easiest way to "avoid or mitigate the human suffering and social/economic isolation of unemployment" is via rising GDP (Keynesian-style pump-priming, expansionary monetary policy, etc.) (It's not just a matter of "political expediency" (i.e., a bad thing). Almost everybody outside of the various left fringes has an extremely hard time imagining changing the balance of political power. Though I have no mind for political tactics, I don't see how preaching to people about a "new and better world" without a big dollop of pragmatism (consciousness of the actually-existing balance of political power and of how people actually see the world) is anything but utopian. Utopianism, like political expediency, seems to be a bad thing.) Another way to do it, which goes outside of channels (and is thus a good idea), is "mutual aid." Communities, (former) work-groups, and the like could pool resources to help each other. > At some point in the development of the means of production, it > may even be possible to do better without economic growth than with > it. one thing is to be clear about what's meant by "economic growth." Do we mean the growth of exchange-value (GDP) or the growth of use-value (perhaps as measured by the Genuine Progress Indicator)? Another thing is that it seems that questioning "economic growth" makes a lot of sense in the abstract, in the midst of a recession it might simply convince people that we are insensitive to their immediate needs and disconnected from their lives. > May I ask, how might the preconditions for human emancipation and > improvement differ from the preconditions for restoring economic > expansion? the preconditions for human emancipation involve more than simply changing the balance of power, but actually abolishing a major economic institution (i.e., capitalism) and replacing it with something better. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
