Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Kill or Buy?

by the Sandwichman

Anonymous in the comments suggests folks are not getting what the Sandwichman is trying to say because S. is, shall we say, too circumspect. Sandwichman suspects Anon. has a point. Here's how Anonymous sums up the case:
1. Reduction of working hours is what this crisis is all about. You have a choice, reduce working hours, or eat dog food, and buy ammo - it is up to you.

2. 163,000 people are losing their jobs each and every week. Now you may think this is a statistic, but in very short order you will be taught how palpable and real those numbers are.

3. Dirt cookie anyone..
That pretty much sums up what the Sandwichman is trying to say. And has been trying to say for, oh, about 14 years.

During that time it has also become clear that there are lots of propeller heads out in the blogosphere in full-frontal denial. They'll hang their lame-ass, whiny objections on the slenderest threads of textbook technicalities. Like, "If all of the crane operators in the country cut their hours it would not create hours for anyone else, very few people can competently operate a crane."

Oh yeah? Well, if all the crane operators in the country up and quit their fucking jobs and were replaced by newly-minted ones it wouldn't create 12-fucking-million jobs, either, asshole. We're not talking about college textbook exercises and pretty mathematical formulas, here. We're talking about a totally fucked-up economy that is collapsing. "You have a choice, reduce work hours, or eat dog food, and buy ammo..."

14 comments:

Diane Warth said...

Do you mean people must sustain a dog-eat-dog economy by "sharing", in many cases, limited means to sustain their homes, health, and financial futures, lest they want to fend off armed invaders? What will the crooks be breaking in for - dog food? Geithner's gang has no cause to worry - an impenetrable fortress there?

Work share within a solution that includes universal health care and accessibility to essential needs makes sense; in the context of it being used as yet another life support measure for capitalism it raises alarms.

Sandwichman said...

Diane,

"Do you mean..."

No. No. No. And no. You are conflating your "assumptions" (wrong and shockingly conventional) about the income effects of reduced working time with my arguments for it. It has been the perennial mantra of mainstream economists that shorter working time means "sharing the misery." Not true! That bogus claim is based on static assumptions -- not a dynamic analysis of production, consumption and the hours of work. And it is based on what Lionel Robbins (hardly a left-wing kook) called the naive view that output is proportionate to hours worked.

As Jared Bernstein once wrote, "Economics has been hijacked by the rich and powerful, and it has been forged into a tool that is being used against the rest of us. Far too often, economists justify things many of us know to be wrong while claiming the things we believe are critically important can’t be done."

If you think for a second that I am advocating work-sharing as a "life-support measure for capitalism" then you haven't been paying attention to what I've actually said. My point is that those good things you mention -- "universal health care and accessibility to essential needs" -- are INSEPARABLE from the issue of work time reduction. You CANNOT HAVE THOSE OTHER THINGS without the work time reduction because the work time reduction is a prerequisite.

To understand WHY work time reduction is a prerequisite for those other things you would have to do one of the following: either follow the analysis I have referred to here (repeatedly) from Chapman, Steward, Gunton, Keynes, Pasinetti, Dilke and Marx; or simply divest yourself of the shibboleths of the hijacked economics and figure it out for yourself.

The only "hard" part of the working time theories I mentioned is entirely a matter of demonstrating the fallacy of those mainstream shibboleths. If you don't drink the kool-aid, you can dispense with the antidote.

Sandwichman said...

The seemingly paradoxical Stewardian slogan, "decreasing the hours INCREASES the pay" is only paradoxical if one looks at it from the perspective of 1. an 'iron law' of wages and 2. the inherent efficiency of markets and firms. Those assumptions, however, are at odds with worker's actual experience. It comes down to who are you going to believe, economists or your lying eyes?

So far, it looks like the economists are winning. Do you want to supersize that dog food and ammo?

Jack said...

So I take it that the prerequisite to shortened hours of work is the concept of a revolution at the start of which we "kill all the economists first."

The task ahead seems almost insurmountable. You may be familiar with the many comments I have made here and on AB pointing out the incestuous relationships that exist between capital elites, the media, the so-called scholarly think tanks and, all too sad, even academic circles. The meme goes 'round and around oh oh oh oh, and we're left with the constant chatter of the busy elves who feed at the trough of orthodox economics. An unholier alliance has never existed before, at least not so tightly knit.

The best example of this feedback loop of deception is the several "Institutes" with the name Peterson attached to them. Look over the many supposedly left, right and centrists connected to those stink tanks and wonder what they have in common.

Diane Warth said...

My point is that those good things you mention -- "universal health care and accessibility to essential needs" -- are INSEPARABLE from the issue of work time reduction. You CANNOT HAVE THOSE OTHER THINGS without the work time reduction because the work time reduction is a prerequisite.

I don't believe a system which obfuscates debate on single payer health coverage would deliver it after work share was implemented. Why do you?

Sandwichman said...

I don't believe a system which obfuscates debate on single payer health coverage would deliver it after work share was implemented. Why do you?

Because, Diane, the "system that obfuscates debate on single payer health coverage" cannot prevail in the face of a popular movement armed with consciousness of the relationship between disposable time, wealth and political emancipation.

Herbert Marcuse expressed it as follows in the 1950s:

"automation threatens to render possible the reversal of the relation between free time and working time: the possibility of working time becoming marginal and free time becoming full time. The result would be a radical transvaluation of values, and a mode of existence incompatible with the traditional culture. Advanced industrial society is in permanent mobilization against this possibility."

Or try this, more recent (2007), from Edward Granter:

"Having invested in labour saving technologies, the capitalist, paradoxically, needs workers to operate that technology as intensively and extensively as possible, requiring harder work and longer hours. At the same time, unemployment is kept high, and wages low, whilst consumerism, in ideological terms particularly is cranked up to ever more dizzying levels. There has been a revamped commitment to promoting the work ethic through social policy and welfare reforms.... The apparent paradox, and apparent irrationality of rising productivity alongside the extension of work might lead some to the conclusion that work is today less an economic phenomenon, and more a strategy of political control."

Mind you, I don't expect these conclusions to be 'self-evident' from their mere assertion. There is an argument and an analysis behind them. Should you choose to write off those arguments as utopian, fringe or fantastical, you would have a great deal of company among the elites, the media, the think tanks and the academics, as Jack enumerates them.

However, if were to probe beyond the brush-offs you may be surprised to discover that there are no substantive rebuttals. The arguments about working time, distribution, productivity and political power are disparaged but not refuted. Debate about these issues is "surprisingly lacking". That is, surprising unless one suspects a motive for the elites, the media, the think tanks and the academics to not want to talk about these kinds of things.

Jack said...

"...would deliver it after work share was implemented."

Work share? Is this a new and inappropriate definition of reduced hours of work? Why the assumption that if my hours are less then your hours are a share of my reduced work time? What happens if I work a little faster and finish in the reduced time? Are you then left out of the work time equation? I don't think the intention is to reduce time in so that we can all share the burden, but I may be misunderstanding your meaning of shared work.

Diane Warth said...

Why the assumption that if my hours are less then your hours are a share of my reduced work time?

I'm a few minutes from leaving for a job routinely evaluated and retooled for optimal output and efficiency. A contract is in the mix that must be filled. If you reduce my hours by half and give them to someone else it's not sharing the burden?

Anonymous said...

Let me put this in terms that even someone whose mental capacity has been damaged by passing acquaintance with economics might understand.

Let me paint the worse case scenario of what will happen if hours of work are not reduced.

Hours of work must be reduced or in short order there will be 30 million working families in this country who will be unemployed and lacking any and all means of life.

State and local government will begin to roll over into bankruptcy.

Pensions funds will go belly up.

Hospitals, police, and fire will be dismantled in most of our major cities for lack of revenue.

Forget stimulus plans: we won't be able to spend our way out of this one - even trying to do that will kill the dollar.

Unemployment is rising at an accelerated pace; industrial output has fallen further in less time than the Great Depression; international trade has halted; and private flows of capital have ceased entirely.

The grocery store where you live probably has about five days of supplies on its shelves - and when it runs out you don't know how to farm, and likely don't live anywhere near enough land to do it if you did.

We have long since passed time to be considering niceties like national health care, we are now talking about managing a hard landing for capitalism itself.

Ninety percent of people in this country don't have real jobs - they produce nothing, their activity is superfluous to society in virtually every manner of speaking. Those jobs will begin to evaporate over night in what is likely to be the biggest implosion of economic activity ever witnessed by human civilization.

If we are lucky - LUCKY - it is just possible a serious reduction in hours of work just might slow the process long enough for us to manage that hard landing.

If not, just picture New Orleans after Katrina.

TheTrucker said...

"Forget stimulus plans: we won't be able to spend our way out of this one - even trying to do that will kill the dollar."

A dead dollar is probably the best thing that could happen to this mess. If the Chinese and the Arabs refuse to take dollars then we will have to re-invent the American economy and it will be a work sharing economy or:

"eat dog food, and buy ammo"

I have the strange feeling that we are in store for something in between and that the people with jobs will probably wake up and understand that they are working too much paying for the upkeep of those who have no jobs. The Republican solution has not worked. You cannot solve the problem by telling the unemployed people that they have sinned.

TheTrucker said...

The US dollar is being created and pumped into banks so as to maintain the illusion of a viable economy. Meanwhile, foreigners are buying T-Bills because they have no choice but to support the illusion. If the illusion dies in America then the Chinese and the Japanese are in deep shit. They too have been snookered into the "consumption is king" stupidity in which "lip gloss" is the means to a livelihood.

Work hours reduction is the proper solution to unemployment in this country. Self consuming production in China and Japan are the solution there too. And anyone that refuses to see these things is merely a shill for the financial industry and the rich that has overconsumed "comparative advantage". Trade barriers may be essential to the recognition of these overproduction realities.

Jack said...

"If you reduce my hours by half and give them to someone else it's not sharing the burden?"

First, your reference to the job being a burden is much to the point. If it is a burden you should be happy to have to do it only half as much of the time. Why would half of your job be given to someone else to complete unless the amount of work to be completed is actually a burden to one? An important aspect of work hours reduction is to ameliorate the burdensome character of work.

Second, your example is focused on an individual situation which would be less likely to occur if there were a general reduction in the hours of work. The reduction is beneficial if applied generally. More people become employed, wages tend to rise as fuller employment is approached and the labor "scab" a less likely phenomenon.

Anonymous said...

"An important aspect of work hours reduction is to ameliorate the burdensome character of work."

Another important aspect of work time reduction is the destructive activities that are undertaken to make sure that there is work for everyone. To demonstrate this I call your attention to the uproar in Georgia resulting from the Secretary of Defense's suggestion that we cease to buy F-22s from Lockheed.

Jack said...

Lockheed can build buses rather than fighter planes. Georgia can probably benefit from both the employment generated and the greater utility of the product built. I'd venture to guess, however, that Lockheed makes a killing on the F-22.