Sunday, February 20, 2011
Front end or back end?E.D.Kain brings up a good topic for debate: Does a revived labor movement require protectionist policies, increasing tariffs, etc.? If not, what policies do need to change in order to strengthen labor? Obviously something is out of balance between big business and the working class. Question #2: Does a revived labor movement require harsher immigration policies?
Actually, I don’t think protectionism or closed-border policies are necessary in order to revive the labor movement. These seem like old ideas that applied to a very different economic situation and set of assumptions. Nor do I think the historical antipathy between labor and management needs to persist, as cooperative labor/management scenarios have been achieved elsewhere. But I could be wrong. Both cultural and political impediments may exist in the US that do not exist in places like Sweden.
The alternative to labor gains seems to be more redistribution through taxes, increased spending on entitlements and public services and so forth. Soak the super-rich, as it were. All this talk of cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and so forth seem wrong-headed. Do we want a retirement crisis on our hands? Do we want full-fledged class warfare?
So increased spending on the back-end vis-a-vis taxation or increased distribution on the front-end vis-a-vis more collective bargaining, higher wages, etc. The third option is an increasingly wide inequality gap and eventually some sort of breakdown of the social order as the middle class shrinks past the point of viability. And again – while consumer goods have gotten cheaper, consumer necessities – from housing to healthcare to retirement – have gotten more expensive and our futures have become less certain – maybe not less certain than a century ago, but certainly less certain than post-WWII, post-New Deal America. That’s the real problem here, and no amount of savings on a 42” plasma screen TV are going to change that. The causes are manifold, true, but that doesn’t mean we would be wise to keep slashing taxes and hoping that the market will take care of everything. Regarding a "back end" solution, we have this observation by Mike Konczal ( via): (emp add) Without a strong middle and working class you don’t have natural constituencies ready to fight and defend the implementation and maintenance of a safety net and public goods. The welfare state is one part, complimenting full employment, of empowering people and balancing power in a financial capitalist society.
This is collapsing in real-time. One working definition of an approach to liberalism is “It’s best to just maximize growth rates, pre-tax distribution be damned, and then fund wicked-good social insurance with huge revenues from an optimal tax scheme” (Karl Smith, Wilkinson). I’d ask where are all these increasingly wickedly-well funded programs? We just had to bribe the top 3% with massive tax cuts for the next two years in order to keep unemployment insurance extensions in place for another year. That would seem to support a "front end" approach of making labor more valuable domestically, with protectionist measures as a possible approach.
posted by Quiddity at 2/20/2011 08:16:00 PM
17 comments
Economic Growth is a functionally dead concept. See: Peak Oil, Climate Change, exponential math.
Any labor revival based upon economic growth rather than a more fair distribution of current resources AND increases in energy efficiency is riding a dead horse.
Start with 30 hour workweeks and increased access to valid certification of educational achievement. Knowing stuff means crap if you have to purchase a degree.
We've written checks that are current political system isn't going to be able to cash -- Medicare, perhaps even Social Security's $2.6T worth of treasuries.
It's just going to come down to the public's choice -- vote Republican to get more of the BS or vote Dem to get less.
Obama tried to make the case for letting Clinton tax rates come back on the upper middle class & above -- but was shot down by the system.
GDP is $150,000 per household, arguably we are collectively productive enough to pay our own bills.
Those with more ability are just going to have to start supporting those with more need.
Hey, that would make a good slogan!
"Do we want full-fledged class warfare?" or maintain the one-sided class warfare that we are currently experiencing. Where the rich just keep decimating the middle and lower classes.
TAX THE RICH.
Troy, BTW:"Those with more ability are just going to have to start supporting those with more need.
Hey, that would make a good slogan!" Mao thought so too, "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs."
That was Karl Marx, not Mao.
> Economic Growth is a functionally dead concept.
> See: Peak Oil, Climate Change, exponential math.
Yep. That was all you heard about in the 1970s. We were almost out of oil. Pollution was going to kill the planet. Mass starvation was inevitable because of exponential population growth. Yet somehow we've muddled by.
Economic growth comes when you start making it easier to produce goods and services. Mostly that means loosening manufacturing regulations, increasing energy production and creating a taxation regime that encourages small business growth.
> a more fair distribution of current resources AND
> increases in energy efficiency
This is the real dead end. When you try to increase energy efficiency, people respond by doing more with the same energy. When gas gets cheap, people drive more. You can't substitute energy efficiency for energy production. It doesn't work.
And once you start talking about "a fair distribution of current resources", you are limiting yourself to a zero-sum game. I don't want that. I want our resources to exponentiate. That means getting more energy out of the ground, manufacturing more and more goods to drive down their cost.
Apparently the biggest limitation we are facing is peak imagination.
> Start with 30 hour workweeks
We need to be producing more material wealth, not less. Material wealth is the stuff that people want. Cars, houses, food, appliances, etc. You produce wealth by working longer and harder, not shorter.
> and increased access to valid certification of
> educational achievement.
> Knowing stuff means crap if you have to purchase a degree.
Right now higher education is at the peak of a huge, huge bubble. The current batch of college students is just starting to realize that they are going to spend half their life in poverty paying off their student loans for their BA in Sociology. It's hardly their fault. Getting a college degree -- at any price -- has become a religion in this day and age. Can't get anywhere without it, right?
You're right. We need a way for people to demonstrate their education and literacy without putting them into a lifetime of debt, and we don't have that yet.
Rockie_It's only called "class warfare" when the poor fight back. And yes, I want it.
jms_ The problem cornucopians have is that they always fail geology. There is only one planet handy, most of it is covered with salt water, desert, ice or mountains, we live in the tiny bit of useful stuff left. You failed biology also; extinction is forever.
You failed culinary arts; North Atlantic Cod and Pacific Salmon went from being cheap in my childhood to prohibitively expensive due to overfishing.
Thankfully you have economics on your side; too bad economics is crap and wishful thinking since it's models can't beat a chimp with a dart and a newspaper. Enjoy.
jms blithered ignorantly, When gas gets cheap, people drive more. You can't substitute energy efficiency for energy production. It doesn't work.
Yes, people drive more, but it does work, because of the relevant elasticity.
Do you get some kind of near-sexual pleasure in embarassing yourself like this in public?
Oh this is rich. Democrats bet the farm on the completely discredited and failed Keynesian depression economics and all of the Marxist economics they learned in smarty school, all because of the sweet, sweet stimulus. and it all went to hell.
This doesn't prove that Keynesian economics is a failure. It proves that:
economics is crap and wishful thinking since it's models can't beat a chimp with a dart and a newspaper.
That's right, since Keynesian economics and Marxist economics are crap and wishful thinking, and because those are the only economic theories in existance that means that all economics is crap and wishful thinking. Yep. They tried the only existing theories and the only existing theories failed. No reason to even consider any other competing economic theories, if there even are any. There aren't, are they? If there were, super-smart liberals from the very best schools like Harvard and Yale would have thought them up.
Hilarious. Yuk Yuk Yuk, or as the Austrians say, Hayek, Hayek, Hayek.
jms blithered ignorantly, When gas gets cheap, people drive more. You can't substitute energy efficiency for energy production. It doesn't work.
Yes, people drive more, but it does work, because of the relevant elasticity.
Huh? Aren't you saying the same thing? Because automobile travel is elastic, when cars are more fuel efficient, people drive more instead of using less fuel.
Huh? Aren't you saying the same thing? Because automobile travel is elastic, when cars are more fuel efficient, people drive more instead of using less fuel.-JMS
Which is, of course, why Bill Gates spends all of his time driving; because the fuel cost for him is effectively free. Right? No, the utility of driving does not always increase as the fuel cost drops.
In fact it's quite the opposite. When fuel prices rose in 2008 driving miles decreased and when they dropped in 2009-'10 those driving miles did not recover.
Also, Austrian economists are particularly full of shit as they tend to resort to handwaving, mystery math and unprovable assumptions pulled from their asses earlier in any given debate than other economists do.
Well, at least you show equal respect for Austrian economists.
As far as the "cornucopian" (I like that word!) critique, it was the work of Norman Borlaug that saved the world from starvation in the 1970s, and it is the ongoing work of genetic engineering of plants that is going to continue producing more and more food on less and less land, provided that we end the fools delusions of biofuels and the scare fantasy of "global warming". Truth is, carbon dioxide is at historically low levels and we are going to need that extra carbon dioxide in the air in future years to produce the new biomass needed to produce the food to feed the world. Fortunately we are starting to see some breakthroughs in oil recovery techniques that will simultaneously provide the energy we need, provide the warm climate needed to grow the world's food, and provide the precious, much needed carbon dioxide that all those super genetically engineered plants will require to make new food grains the size of footballs.
Ok. I admit I'm trolling with that last part.
JMS_Damnation dude. You filled up my right-wing-idiot-bingo card with this one thread. Now there's nothing to do but watch House reruns on the tube.
Seriously though, is there any anti-science bullshit you won't believe?
A little correction. The roundup ready mustard has gotten out and is now a weed in every other crop. So much for genetic engineering.
The spread of Roundup-Ready mustard is a thought I relish. I suppose it has put us in a pickle.
jms wrote,
Huh? Aren't you saying the same thing? Because automobile travel is elastic, when cars are more fuel efficient, people drive more instead of using less fuel.
Yes. The point of the elasticity is how much more they drive. Your phrasing implied that they drive so much more that the energy savings is completely cancelled out. You're wrong. IIRC the relevant number shows that while indeed you don't save 100%, you do save 90%.
"Yes." ==> "No."
One of the factors that needs to be considered is that because so many mortgages are now underwater and their owners cannot sell their houses and move, more and more people are going to be driving further and further to get to work, because many people they have to take work wherever they find it, and they cannot move closer to their jobs.
Fuel efficiency is a small part of the energy equation. The problem is that Barack Obama seems to see it as standing alone. As if the obvious way to cut fuel consumption is to force people to buy more fuel efficient cars, thus allowing the government to shut down energy exploration. Thus his answer to the fuel crisis is higher MPGs and proper tire inflation.
Pangolin -- Here is an article to back me up ... although you might not accept the source because it's that notorious right wing paper The Economist
Oh wait ... you don't believe in economics. Never mind.
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