me: > > I study policy proposals as a way of understanding (1) what > > currently-influential politicians are advocating and (2) what options > > are open to the capitalist class.
Tom Walker, a.k.a. "Sandwichman" writes > That is funny. My research on the question of shorter working time > arose initially from a request for proposals from a provincial > ministry of employment and economic development. ... This was not something I > glommed onto as an "activist" seeking to agitate people, nor was did > it arise as an academic exercise. It came as a request from "her > majesty, the queen", fer crissakes. The fact that this request came from above should tell you either that (1) the New Democratic Party (in its more social democratic incarnation, with a more organic connection to the labor movement) was having an effect or (2) maybe this reform wasn't such a good idea, perhaps representing a plan to undermine labor's power in some way. > > 2. I am sorry, but I was thinking about microeconomics and did not > > make that clear. On the macro level, it's true _by definition_ that > > for a constant real GDP per year and constant output per paid hour of > > labor, cutting paid work-hours per week raises the demand by > > businesses for paid weeks of labor per year.... Tom: > ... I was talking about microeconomics and I most > definitely *wasn't* talking about a constant real GDP per year and > constant output per paid hour of labor!!!! heck, I was trying to agree with you, with your general view that we could reduce paid work hours per week as a way to deal with recessions. Or am I misrepresenting your view? are you calling for increasing work hours per week? or keeping them constant? > My God, Jim, you're waving > the bloody lump-of-labor fallacy shirt at me and you claim to have > never read the textbook slogans and to have only heard about it > indirectly via me? What a hoot! Every time I read the phrase "lump-of-labor fallacy," my eyes glaze over, since I've never seen a clear definition or discussion of this fallacy or non-fallacy. Perhaps this is because my IQ is too low for me to understand Tom's ideas. As I understand it, Tom sees this "fallacy" as a straw-person argument that is knocked down by orthodox economists. (The lump-of-labor idea is not a theory that anyone actually advocates.) Since I was not setting up a straw person in the paragraph above, it's totally and utterly irrelevant to what I was saying. That is, I was not trying to debunk -- or trying to restate -- the views of anyone. Instead, I was pointing to the way that cutting weekly hours (as Tom seems to be advocating -- I can't speak for him) could be beneficial to the working class. I wasn't waving any fallacy at you. In the paragraph above, what I was talking about was _true by definition_. It has nothing to do with any lumps or hooters. > What follows is anecdotal but it comes from a credible source, a > friend who became a vice president of the BC Federation of Labour. > Earlier, my friend worked in a truck factory near Vancouver and once, > during negotiations, the union imposed an overtime ban as a > negotiating tactic. Previously, management had relied routinely on > overtime to meet its production schedule. Well, management was > determined not to cave-in to the overtime ban, so they started looking > carefully at how they coud meet production targets without the > overtime. They found, for example, that a lot of time was wasted > waiting for parts to arrive and if the parts deliveries were better > managed, things went more smoothly. The conclusion to the story is > that management was able to eliminate overtime with no loss in > prodution through the expedient of... wait for it... BETTER > MANAGEMENT! if you had bothered to read the entire missive to which you were responding, you may have noticed that I dropped the constant labor productivity assumption later on. And the example in this anecdote makes sense to me. I have never said anything different. It looks like this thread is done (as far as I'm concerned). When both Tom and Gene misrepresent my opinions, it's time to call it quits. Diminishing marginal returns have become negative. But I'll see if there's anything worth responding to in the thread up to raghu's comment at 10:50 AM. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
