by the Sandwichman
True or false?:
Nowhere is the Left's influence more obvious than in the media, both here and in the USA. With the exception of a handful of journalists the media is now overwhelmingly anti-conservative. What can we expect when the vast majority of journalists would describe themselves as left-wing. With journalists parroting what amounts to the 'party line', is it any wonder newspapers largely read the same.
Elsewhere, the same self-styled "economics editor" writes,
Economic logic tells us quite forcefully that so long as human wants go unsatisfied and the means of satisfying them are available there will never be a shortage of work.
So how do high levels of persistent unemployment emerge? Because labour has been priced out of work. When labour’s gross wage (wages plus oncosts) exceeds the value of its services then part of the labour supply will be rendered unemployed.
True or false?
Essay question: How does the "economic logic" described in the second citation explain the perceived pervasive influence of the Left in the media?
4 comments:
Hmmmm. What ivory tower type wrote this? Clearly he assumes market imperfections and disequilibrium cannot exist in the "real world". Of course - in his "real world", people don't exist either.
Walker these guys are not even living in the same conceptual universe as I am. They have redefined what anywhere in the world would be recognized as Center-Right into Left.
Somehow a certain influential part of the Economics establishment has allowed itself to take on a world view more akin to a 60's Bircher than anything else. Over the last twenty five years or so these people have simply rewritten 20th century history and politics, or more properly turned it into a cartoon version scarcely recognizable by anyone who knows anything about it. As a one time historian I can only shake my head, but you are not going to reason with these guys, they have dumbed down reality to a level that is impervious to reason.
The secret blogger must be a member of either the profession referred to as journalism or simply a dilettant masquerading as a pundit.
The person is apparently not an American. It would be interesting to know where the "both here" refers to. The two paragraphs are related only in their lack of any validity. The first is a canard fostered by the media itself in order to create the impression of its being fair minded in the presentation and analysis of the news. It is impossible to imagine any substantial number of journalists reporting in the mainstream news outlets, who regards them self as even slightly to the left of center. Left-wing is little more than a buzz word used to disparage the concepts or persons so labeled. Again, it has no demonstrable validity in the context of journalism in the USA.
The second paragraph wins the Economic Prize for Illogical Reasoning. If some how the labor required to produce a particular product was so costly as to put the final cost of the product out of the reach of the consumer, it would only indicate that the product did not have sufficient appeal to that consumer so as to justify its price. The product has a fixed quantity of labor needed for satisfactory production. It's almost a fixed cost, variable only on the basis of the required skill. For example, imagine the labor cost in producing a Lange et Son watch. Its perceived value over rides that cost to the buyer. American auto workers are not unemployed due to cost. The American auto product is perceived to be of low value regardless of labor costs. Porsches are perceived to be worth far more than their actual production costs. The cost of labor has little to do with unemployment. It is the transport of work to other locations that results in unemployment.
No. Price of the commodity 'labor power' is definitely a variable determined by, among other things, mass of un and underemployed, competition within and between these same, changing technical composition of capital as living labor is displaced by dead and as this dead fixed capital stands against the labor which it is the embodiement of...
price of labor power and avg standard of living are dialectically related, neither is fixed nor - other than in some static fashion - can one speak of equilibrium unless in a reactionary attempt to justify the impossibility of actual full employment within capitalism...an attempt to blame the workers and all those which capital finds useless in its quest for further profit and accumulation.
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