Friday, August 7, 2009

THE LONG-TERM PROBLEM OF FULL EMPLOYMENT

by the Sandwichman

For those who still haven't "gotten the memo", I'm posting it again. I will continue to repost this memo each month around the time of the BLS report. Please see also Dean Baker's proposal of tax credits for paid time off. (How European!)
THE LONG-TERM PROBLEM OF FULL EMPLOYMENT

J.M. Keynes (May 1943):

1. It seems to be agreed today that the maintenance of a satisfactory level of employment depends on keeping total expenditure (consumption plus investment) at the optimum figure, namely that which generates a volume of incomes corresponding to what is earned by all sections of the community when employment is at the desired level.
2. At any given level and distribution of incomes the social habits and opportunities of the community, influenced (as it may be) by the form and weight of taxation and other deliberate policies and propaganda, lead them to spend a certain proportion of these incomes and to save the balance.

3. The problem of maintaining full employment is, therefore, the problem of ensuring that the scale of investment should be equal to the savings which may be expected to emerge under the above various influences when employment, and therefore incomes, are at the desired level. Let us call this the indicated level of savings.

4. After the war there are likely to ensure [sic] three phases-
(i) when the inducement to invest is likely to lead, if unchecked, to a volume of investment greater than the indicated level of savings in the absence of rationing and other controls;
(ii) when the urgently necessary investment is no longer greater than the indicated level of savings in conditions of freedom, but it still capable of being adjusted to the indicated level by deliberately encouraging or expediting less urgent, but nevertheless useful, investment;
(iii) when investment demand is so far saturated that it cannot be brought up to the indicated level of savings without embarking upon wasteful and unnecessary enterprises.

5. It is impossible to predict with any pretence to accuracy what the indicated level of savings after the war is likely to be in the absence of rationing. We have no experience of a community such as ours in the conditions assumed, with incomes and employment steadily at or near the optimum level over a period and with the distribution of incomes such as it is likely to be after the war. It is, however, safe to say that in the earliest years investment urgently necessary will be in excess of the indicated level of savings. To be a little more precise the former (at the present level of prices) is likely to exceed £m1000 in these years and the indicated level of savings to fall short of this.

6. In the first phase, therefore, equilibrium will have to be brought about by limiting on the one hand the volume of investment by suitable controls, and on the other hand the volume of consumption by rationing and the like. Otherwise a tendency to inflation will set in. It will probably be desirable to allow consumption priority over investment except to the extent that the latter is exceptionally urgent, and, therefore, to ease off rationing and other restrictions on consumption before easing off controls and licences for investment. It will be a ticklish business to maintain the two sets of controls at precisely the right tension and will require a sensitive touch and the method of trial and error operating through small changes.

7. Perhaps this first phase might last five years,-but it is anybody's guess. Sooner or later it should be possible to abandon both types of control entirely (apart from controls on foreign lending). We then enter the second phase, which is the main point of emphasis in the paper of the Economic Section. If two-thirds or three-quarters of total investment is carried out or can be influenced by public or semi-public bodies, a long-term programme of a stable character should be capable of reducing the potential range of fluctuation to much narrower limits than formerly, when a smaller volume of investment was under public control and when even this part tended to follow, rather than correct, fluctuations of investment in the strictly private sector of the economy. Moreover the proportion of investment represented by the balance of trade, which is not easily brought under short-term control, may be smaller than before. The main task should be to prevent large fluctuations by a stable long-term programme. If this is successful it should not be too difficult to offset small fluctuations by expediting or retarding some items in this long-term programme.

8. I do not believe that it is useful to try to predict the scale of this long-term programme. It will depend on the social habits and propensities of a community with a distribution of taxed income significantly different from any of which we have experience, on the nature of the tax system and on the practices and conventions of business. But perhaps one can say that it is unlikely to be less than 7 per cent or more than 20 per cent of the net national income, except under new influences, deliberate or accidental, which are not yet in sight.

9. It is still more difficult to predict the length of the second, than of the first, phase. But one might expect it to last another five or ten years and to pass insensibly into the third phase.

10. As the third phase comes into sight; the problem stressed by Sir H. Henderson begins to be pressing. It becomes necessary to encourage wise consumption and discourage saving,-and to absorb some part of the unwanted surplus by increased leisure, more holidays (which are a wonderfully good way of getting rid of money) and shorter hours.

11. Various means will be open to us with the onset of this golden age. The object will be slowly to change social practices and habits so as to reduce the indicated level of saving. Eventually depreciation funds should be almost sufficient to provide all the gross investment that is required.

12. Emphasis should be placed primarily on measures to maintain a steady level of employment and thus to prevent fluctuations. If a large fluctuation is allowed to occur, it will be difficult to find adequate offsetting measures of sufficiently quick action. This can only be done through flexible methods by means of trial and error on the basis of experience, which has still to be gained. If the authorities know quite clearly what they are trying to do and are given sufficient powers, reasonable success in the performance of the task should not be too difficult.

13. I doubt if much is to be hoped from proposals to offset unforeseen short-period fluctuations in investment by stimulating short-period changes in consumption. But I see very great attractions and practical advantage in Mr Meade's proposal for varying social security contributions according to the state of employment.

14. The second and third phases are still academic. Is it necessary at the present time for Ministers to go beyond the first phase in preparing administrative measures? The main problems of the first phase appear to be covered by various memoranda already in course of preparation. insofar as it is useful to look ahead, I agree with Sir H. Henderson that we should be aiming at a steady long-period trend towards a reduction in the scale of net investment and an increase in the scale of consumption (or, alternatively, of leisure) but the saturation of investment is far from being in sight to-day The immediate task is the establishment and the adjustment of a double system of control and of sensitive, flexible means for gradually relaxing these controls in the light of day-by-day experience

I would conclude by two quotations from Sir H. Henderson's paper, which seem to me to embody much wisdom.

"Opponents of Socialism are on strong ground when they argue that the State would be unlikely in practice to run complicated industries more efficiency than they are run at present. Socialists are on strong ground when they argue that reliance on supply and demand, and the forces of market competition, as the mainspring of our economic system, produces most unsatisfactory results. Might we not conceivably find a modus vivendi for the next decade or so in an arrangement under which the State would fill the vacant post of entrepreneur-in-chief, while not interfering with the ownership or management of particular businesses, or rather only doing so on the merits of the case and not at the behests of dogma?

"We are more likely to succeed in maintaining employment if we do not make this our sole, or even our first, aim. Perhaps employment, like happiness, will come most readily when it is not sought for its own sake. The real problem is to use our productive powers to secure the greatest human welfare. Let us start then with the human welfare, and consider what is most needed to increase it. The needs will change from tune to time, they may shift, for example, from capital goods to consumers' goods and to services. Let us think in terms of organising and directing our productive resources, so as to meet these changing needs, and we shall be less likely to waste them."

24 comments:

Shag from Brookline said...

Is the Sandwichman familiar with Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano"? I read this in the mid 1950s and reread it every few years as a reality check. Has the day and age arrived that with technological changes only a few elite workers (MBAs and engineers) are necessary to provide us with the goods and services we need to exist? If so, then perhaps full employment may be reduced to part-time work for most of us. But what will we do with all the time on our hands? There seems to be lacking enough new content to keep us entertained. Between reality shows and reruns, it can get boring, especially now that George Carlin is no longer here to clue us in.

Sandwichman said...

No, I've never read Player Piano, although you've mentioned it before. The day arrived long ago when technological advance made possible a world where people could work only a few hours a week. Benjamin Frankliin cited an estimate of four hours a day that he appears to have agreed with. That was a couple of hundred years ago.

What we have instead of the utopia of leisure or dystopia of too much leisure is a dystopia of work-as-entertainment and looking-for-work-as-entertainment. As Herbert Marcuse wrote, about three years after Vonnegut, "But the closer the real possibility of liberating the individual from the constraints once justified by scarcity and immaturity, the greater the need for maintaining and streamlining these constraints lest the established order of domination dissolve. Civilization has to defend itself against the specter of a world which could be free." In other words, Player Piano isn't science fiction any more. It's history. Oh, and there's plenty of "new content" for the society of the spectacle: terrorism, housing bubbles, ponzi schemes, financial collapses, etc.

Shag from Brookline said...

I have been intrigued over the years with the late Joseph Schumpeter's "creative destructionism of capitalism." My legal career started in 1954 in the Boston area and I was aware of and became immersed in the Route 128 high tech phenomenon. Many high flyers over the years took a dive. I have also noted over my career, mostly in private practice, that many companies had bloated personnel/payrolls that became evident when a recession came about (I think there were about 5 recessions that I recall) and jobs, etc, were cut. There seems to have been a lot of make work. For example, a bomb in a Boston courthouse results in the installation of security in public buildings. This becomes an industry. Trying to change it becomes quite difficult because of vested interests. We have Homeland Security because of 9/11. Surely some security and protection has resulted in benefits. But isn't much of this make work? Does Schumpeter's phrase apply to governments, democracies, etc?

In my earlier comment I mentioned George Carlin. The recent Mark Twain tribute to Carlin included his take on the 10 Commandments, reducing them down to just 2. One of the eliminated Commandments was "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors' good." Carlin struck this Commandment since such coveting is the foundation of our economy. Does this circle back to Schumpeter?

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

The longer term scenario of Keynes (which presumably would have hit in about the late 1960s or in the 1970s, when, of course, we had an outburst of inflation (there was also one briefly after WW II) that led many to denounce "Keynesian economics") resembles what he wrote in his famous essay "On the Economic Possibilities of our Grandchildren" (of which he had none because he had no children). He hankered back to the steady state economy of Mill, which also looks forward to certain ecological economists such as Herman Daly.

Curiously, my grandparents were born about the same time as he was, so if he had had grandchildren, well, they would have been about my age (60). Are we really there to this utopia of plenty that plenty have written of? In the late 60s and early 70s many of us thought so, and then the oil price shocks hit. Oooops! Not so obviousl to me that we are there, and there is still famine in this world. The utopia of plenty, or at least satisficing, would at a minimum require some kind of total international reorganization of distribution and consumption, with those in the US getting a whole lot less than they do now. Do you want to tell them, Sandwichman?

Sandwichman said...

Do you want to tell them, Sandwichman?

Sure. Why not? The question is "less of what?" I've been citing Fred Hirsch's Social Limits to Growth, in which he talks about the growing importance of zero-sum or even negative-sum positional goods in rich societies that divert resources away from material plenty. The argument about positional goods is also very much at the heart of the currently fashionable "economics of happiness". Those in the US could get a whole lot less and still be a whole lot happier as a result. They just have to break with the American version of the old Soviet "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."

How many extra hours would you guess people now work just to underwrite the "opportunity" for them to work those extra hours? Put it this way: say you work 30 hours a week to earn your living expenses and another 10 hours a week to pay the expenses of keeping you working 40 hours a week instead of 30. Would you consider those last 10 hours of work a worthwhile use of your time?

Back of the envelope: every American man, woman and child owes about $30,000 in federal government debt. That's about $70,000 per employed person. Amortized over 40 years at 8% per annum interest, that's $486 a month. Assuming a median wage of $15 an hour, that's about 32 hours a month to pay off past fiscal deficits whose purpose, presumably, was to keep the economy growing and maintain, if not full employment, then non-accelerating inflation employment.

Or, to simplify, about one-quarter of the time you work pays for the privilege of working 33% more than you would otherwise have to. Such a bargain!

Got that? The American "demand-management" version of "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."

Robert D Feinman said...

I like Keynes, but quoting him or any other notable economist is starting to sound like appealing to authority rather than to science.

One doesn't quote Einstein or Newton, one cites their equations.

There is far to much of this appeal to authority going on and it has hampered real advancement in many fields for at least a century. This isn't just restricted to economics, Freudians were as guilty as Marxists.

If Keynes, or his followers, have developed a scientific basis for his hand waving in the past 70 years then where is it? How come we are still seeing arguments as to what policies worked in the 1930's and what was the cause of the economic collapse at this late date?

Idolatry is not a good basis for making public policy.

I've been pushing for an ethical measure for deciding policy. Instead of worrying about stimulus multipliers and other conjectural concepts, just do things that have an effect on alleviating suffering.

So, a policy that extends unemployment insurance, health care and food supplements to those in need has a strong ethical component and doesn't need to be justified by means of some abstruse economic measure.

Similarly putting people to work in government sponsored jobs, puts them to work. This is the aim that is desired isn't it?

When looked at from a humanistic point of view rather than trying to increase GDP what needs to be done is easy to decide.

Could the economists (and those that play one on TV) just step aside and let the moral philosophers, sociologists and social workers manage things for awhile? Thanks...

Sandwichman said...

One doesn't quote Einstein or Newton, one cites their equations.

That's what I've just done here, to show that the standard "Keynesian fiscal stimulus" panacea is incomplete with regard to Keynes's own views.

Anonymous said...

"just do things that have an effect on alleviating suffering"

This is actually the only time when Keynes-style spending has an advantage.

Sandwichman could talk to Obama... who claims success is "more jobs"... my Republican friends have always drawn scoffs from liberal economists by claiming that economic progress would result in fewer jobs, not more.

TheTrucker said...

So if we manage to do a nationalization of health care costs via 4 or more large non profit regulated health insurance companies that offer no breaks whatsoever to employer groups and then we subsidize the premium payments of the poor then we have done something that is ethical and necessary to the economic well being of the citizenry. Looks like a twofer to me. Just think of all the jobs we will have created in government and in these non-profit health insurance entities. All because we hate socialism so bad that we can't stand the thought of rich people not being able to make money from the medical needs of the common people. Sane people would just do a Canadian style system and be done with it. But we are not sane. We still have a very large Republican fascist contingent in the population. Such people want to encourage investment at a time when higher productivity has outstripped demand. This isn't just insanity. It is plain old every day stupidity and greed.

Sandwichman said...

Tell you a secret, Trucker. I'm on your side. But if you keep posting comments that speak to YOUR issue while ignoring the topic I've posted, I'll delete them. Not because I disagree but because you're being conversationally rude. What you have to do is first ENGAGE the material that has been posted, then you can go on to explain why your point is more urgent, if you want to. Otherwise it's spam.

Myrtle Blackwood said...

Thanks for posting Keynes. Very interesting.

TheTrucker said...

I don't know how I can do any more to "speak to" your post about the neoclassical shortchanging of Keynes. Your position is correct and no further comment is productive. The primary thesis in your recent thread of posts appears to be that a shorter work week is in order such that all God's chilluns will will be able to find opportunity to benefit from their contributed labor; a position which you simultaneously seem to antagonize with your discussions on the "lump of labor" stuff. In all, you have done too well.

But, like, duh. There is no discussion of the primary issues among the rational people because your case is a slam dunk. There is no discussion with the irrational people because they are irrational and not subject to reality. So lets move the game forward and get to the "how to"; to the policies.

The time is right and the mood of the country is right to make a major assault on current labor/employee exploitation in the guise of tax exempt health insurance subsidies to employers. And I have commented before that this is a major obstacle to the shortening of hours. Without the nationalization of health insurance (or the movement of it out of the control of the big employers), the employers will not support work sharing among a larger number of employees. As a matter of fact the national chamber of commerce is already on record as being against anything that would take health insurance out of the hands of employers. They (the business people) will lose a major gouging bar if the employees can walk away without losing health insurance benefits and they are well aware of that fact. The "employers" know that they will have to pay more in wages and and other niceties if the health insurance scam is taken away.

I submit that increased per hour wages (return to the contribution of the individuals) is the real objective of political economy. That is what a shorter work week will do. The shorter work week will shift utility away from profits and on to wages. But you have to be pretty sneaky about it and dress it up in glad rags to get it past a public that has been been buying Republican snake oil for 30 years. You won't get a lot of push back from the well informed producers in the society, but you will get it from those who are indoctrinated into profit growth as a religion.

I do not have the credentials nor the education to publish articles on this site, nor do I believe I should be entitled to do so. I am left with tacking comments onto what others write. And sometimes I am a bit too focussed on the "how to" as opposed to the "why". I sincerely believe that taking health insurance out of the hands of employers is the most important policy move that can be taken at present to increase real wages. I believe that it can be quickly followed with strict enforcement of overtime pay to those who work in excess of 40 hours. And only after that can we proceed to enforcement (via overtime compensation) of more than 30 hours. Most of the workers in the United States are not organized into unions where enforcement of hours is an easy thing to do. This is why the unions seem to hurt profits so much. Politicians can't get away with forcing workforce expansion (limiting straight time hours as they did in the 1970's) while simultaneously forcing employers to provide per employee health insurance and retirement benefits. The Republicans and the neoclassical nincompoops will crucify them (and you) regardless of any economic correctness.

Sandwichman said...

Trucker,

I agree with you 100% that taking health insurance out of the hands of employers is absolutely necessary to moving forward on this issue. In the US it is quite arguably the most important issue.

I live in Canada. We have a universal basic health care system. But we're still only marginally ahead of the US on the working time question. So, I repeat, health insurance is a necessary, but not sufficient, part of the solution.

Another necessary (but not sufficient) part of the solution is overcoming extreme prejudices against working time policies from economists and the general public. Economists dislike the working time issue because it can't be accommodated into the kinds of economic models they have invested their educational and career credentials in. Their models CRASH AND BURN if one insists on a realistic treatment of the issue rather than a "pony." Economists would rather have their make-believe pony.

The general public has been fed so much crap about hours, income and the work ethic by economists, politicians and business propagandists that "common sense" now seems to dictate what Lionel Robbins, writing in the late 1920s, thought was a naive view that no one held any longer. That is to say that hours of work and productivity (consequently pay) vary proportionately. Unfortunately, the unions, too, have rolled over and played dead with regard to the analysis of the hours of labor. They once had the better theory. But they gave it up as the price for respectability.

Shag from Brookline said...

Why are comments to posts in February and March 2009 carried forward here, since such comments were not made in response to this post?

Sandwichman said...

Why are comments to posts in February and March 2009 carried forward here...

Because (as I said in the introduction) I'm reposting this each month. The comments from previous months tag along with the post.

Anonymous said...

Folks can mostly miss Sandwichman's point since he is always a gentleman in such matters

I, on the other hand, am a jerk, so let me be clear about this:

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...

Have dog food-Will travel said...

Iron Law of.......?

Jack said...

Sand-man, Excuse the probably jumbled appearance of this prolonged question, but I'm trying to get at a point without being sure of how to get there.

"....or rather only doing so on the merits of the case and not at the behests of dogma?" Henderson via SandwichMan.

Too true, but dogma comes in various brands and is often used to the advantage of one sector("of the communnity")over the other. Both Keynes and Henderson agree that the State needs to participate in balancing the interests and needs of the economy by some form of control over levels of investment vs levels of consumption, what Keynes also calls
"save and spend." Henderson is less specific noting only that,
"Socialists are on strong ground when they argue that reliance on supply and demand, and the forces of market competition, as the mainspring of our economic system, produces most unsatisfactory results." He doesn't suggest how to rectify the unsatisfactory results beyond a State appointed
"entrepreneur-in-chief."

It is interesting that the post is concluded with Henderson's remarks concerniing the wisdom of not focusing on levels on employment directly, but instead, "to use our productive powers to secure the greatest human welfare. Let us start then with the human welfare, and consider what is most needed to increase it."

One thing seems left out of both their comments. Keynes has focused on the importance of, "a volume of incomes corresponding to what is earned by all sections of the community..." He notes, "that the maintenance of a satisfactory level of employment depends on keeping total expenditure (consumption plus investment) at the optimum figure[the volume of income.]" But what I don't see explained is the effect of the distribution of that "volume of income." How does the economy, "..absorb some part of the unwanted surplus by increased leisure, more holidays (which are a wonderfully good way of getting rid of money) and shorter hours,"
if all sections of the population have not a sufficient portion of the volume of income?

Myrtle Blackwood said...

"Perhaps employment, like happiness, will come most readily when it is not sought for its own sakeWise words!

Anonymous said...

""Opponents of Socialism are on strong ground when they argue that the State would be unlikely in practice to run complicated industries more efficiency than they are run at present. Socialists are on strong ground when they argue that reliance on supply and demand, and the forces of market competition, as the mainspring of our economic system, produces most unsatisfactory results..."

Today 'the market' has disappeared for biggest sectors of the world economy, the huge transnational corporations. Intra-corporate transactions are 'non-market'. The private sector has joined with government and created a collectivist enterprise in the exclusive service of the 'in-crowd', the global elite.

Those on the outside have contaminated food, water, soil, air. Loss of forests. Decreased and more insecure opportunities for a living wage combined with an almost total theft of the commons.

Something or someone will have to give.

Anonymous said...

I think an interesting example of what you might call the hamster-wheeling of work - the replacement of leisure with increased working hours that produce little additional output - was the huge rise in housing prices and the accompanying self-congratulation about the "creation of household wealth" that was occurring.

What was actually occurring, it seems to me, was the dedication of a greatly-increased proportion of one's income to debt service on a larger mortgage, with absolutely no improvement in the housing that one received in exchange. In other words, a gross amount of inflation in the cost of housing - not an increase in wealth at all. As a result we should have been horrified at the prospect of ever-more-expensive housing, not cheering it onwards and continuing to approve of inflationary "affordability" measures like interest deductions, longer-term mortgages, lower-down-payment mortgages, ARMs - things that only serve to increase the amount of debt that one can feasibly service, rapidly causing an inflation in prices that means the affordability effect is zero or negative.

And even though existing homeowners may have felt more wealthy, since everyone needs to buy housing in the end, that wealth was really illusionary - it was not available to the owner, and if they sold the house to realize it, they would simply need to pay an inflated price for whatever house replaced it. HELOCs gave an equally illusionary access to that increased home value - but again, all that was really happening was that the amount of debt being serviced increased. Being able to borrow an extra $100,000 does you little good in the long term, since you simply have to repay it eventually anyway, and most consumer spending is not "investment" - that is, it has no expected payoff.

So the end result of the whole deal was that everyone paid considerably more money to the bank in interest on larger loans, some homeowners were made better off (especially pensioners who could downsize), and a lot were made worse off (especially new homeowners & young families who had to enter an inflated market, but also including everyone adjusting to paying a higher proportion of their income on mortgages).

And this process seems entirely typical. Instead of looking for ways to reduce the real cost of housing, such as lower-cost construction technologies, the freeing of development restrictions in cities that prevent cheap, dense housing from being built there, and so on - we saw congratulations thrown around for a rapid increase in the cos of housing, and for "affordability" measures that ultimately amount to no more than direct transfers from the government to the mortgage holders (as prices adjust to compensate for them).

The net effect is more hours of work needed just to pay for the bare essentials of life - especially housing - and no net gain in welfare. This is not an accomplishment. This is a failure.

Well, that's how it seems to me. I am not an economist, just someone who is watching with horror as we congratulate ourselves for making our lives ever more full of ever less productive work in the quest to satisfy the interest payments on ever greater amounts of personal debt.

Myrtle Blackwood said...

"Various means will be open to us with the onset of this golden age."

The 'golden age' didn't happen. And now, because of global warming, resource depletion etc it WON'T happen. Why is this?

We could go back to the reasons for the failure of the New Deal in America.

"..Though the liberals were the mainstay of the New Deal, they were not only numerically weak, they were also weak in determination and consciousness. Soon after the New Deal got under way there was a counter-attack by the Right aimed at the New Deal's most outspoken members; the House Un-American Activities Committee and other Red-hunters succeeded in hounding from the government many of those with the most energy and creative ideas. For the others, moderation was in order, plus a discreet move into lucrative private life. These liberals were bright and aggressive; the system as it stood promised them rich rewards, and they showed little inclination to take personal risks in order to press for more drastic reforms when, for them at least, the promisedland was at hand. The war, by putting other issues to the fore, relieved them of any lingering sense of guilt over their prudence. Thirty years later, it is revealing to note what became of the New Dealers. Nearly all of them took jobs where they served the very interests which were the enemies against which the New Deal fought. Many became higly paid corporate lawyers, using their know-how to help their clients avoid attempts at public regulation. many others served as executives of large corporations. They adopted the life-styles of wealth, power and success. They became hostile to radicalism. If their adventure with the New Deal had been a combination of idealism, glamour and ambition, it was ambition which proved to be the lasting element..."

The Greening of America. Charles A Reich. 1972. Page 53

Reich goes on to mention other obstacles such as the stubborn opposition of those they were trying to regulate, the lack of true understanding and participation by the workers, the dangers and weaknesses of the reform structure itself.

"And the liberals were not aware, either, of the degree of America's problems. They knew much was wrong but they did not feel it .....They did not adequately sense the plight of the black man, the tragedy of the cities, the irrationality of the production of luxuries amid the starvation of public services, the dangers of repression and war. They meant well, but they tried to cure America with half-measures and without personal risk to themselves...
"

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Michael Berney said...

There is a very good article just published in the Sydney Morning Herald which says that Keynes worked no more than four hours a day - after which he preferred long contemplative walks and conversation with friends Work four hours