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marmar

(77,080 posts) Sat Mar 17, 2012, 09:05 AM Mar 2012

Joseph Stiglitz on the continuing shambles of the US labour market

from Political Affairs:

Joseph Stiglitz on the continuing shambles of the US labour market

by: Political Affairs
March 15 2012

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz almost always pleases students of economics who like deeper thinkers. I think he makes several very important points:

1. Looking at the large variables in the macro economy -- workforce size and growth, productivity, GDP -- he comes up with a GDP growth rate that must exceed 4% for sustained progress toward "full employment",

2. High Inequality --- the foundation of the problem of "low consumer demand" --- is the key force driving low growth, and the likelihood that it will NOT exceed 4% anytime soon.

3. The historical "long wave" transition from manufacturing to services (similar to the industrialization wave a century or more ago) is not one that markets can manage. Only government, and a scientific government at that, can manage such transformations.

Stiglitz is arguing, in effect, that there is a world historic shift underway. In Marxist terms one might say that the tech-driven transformation of most work from manufacturing to services is fundamentally restructuring relations of production -- i.e. occupations and ways of living associated with the division of labor, including the division of labor and capital, or classes. Since the kind of wave, or cycle, involved is a long one it exerts a sustained force on all public institutions since many of those institutions are tasked and structured exactly to deal with conflicts and mediations arising out of a mode of production. Environmental, health, corporate, labor, discrimination law all arise out of and are framed by these relations. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.politicalaffairs.net/joseph-stiglitz-on-the-continuing-shambles-of-the-us-labour-market/

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Joseph Stiglitz on the continuing shambles of the US labour market (Original Post) marmar Mar 2012 OP

Like most traditional economists, Stiglitz is bound by assumptions. Jackpine Radical Mar 2012 #1

whole hearted agree with everything you said. Joe Shlabotnik Mar 2012 #2

Jackpine Radical

(45,274 posts)

1. Like most traditional economists, Stiglitz is bound by assumptions.

Reply to marmar (Original post)

Sat Mar 17, 2012, 10:36 AM

Mar 2012

For example, he postulates the necessity for growth in order to sustain the economy at a time when we are looking at the hard constraints about to be imposed on us by peak oil, climate change & general environmental degradation. It's just NOT going to be business as usual in the next decade.

I think the solution to the employment problem is to create more jobs by shortening the work week without cutting pay, making up the difference by the simple expedient of paying workers more, while taking steps to stabilize world population. We have a whole new green infrastructure to build. We have enough plastic crap in the world now without trying to create a demand for more of it.

Worldwide, the 99% is going to have to deal with the 1%. We can no longer afford to support the parasites, particularly when those parasites are intent upon pushing lethal policies of environmental destruction and an insane retreat from population control.

We have enough stuff now. We can feed the world now. We can provide conditions that permit decent lives for our fellow humans. But I don't see how we can arrive at those conditions through the ballot box.

Joe Shlabotnik

(5,604 posts)

2. whole hearted agree with everything you said.

Reply to Jackpine Radical (Reply #1)

Sat Mar 17, 2012, 05:30 PM

Mar 2012

Too bad the majority of the 99% are too willfully ignorant to accept this view, and by the time this inescapable reality is recognized, it may well be too late. I wouldn't be surprised that many of the 1% already know this.

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