My own prediction of the depression

In light of the discussion about who predicted the Depression, I thought that I would post the first chapter of The Confiscation of American Prosperity: From Right-Wing Extremism and Economic Ideology to the Next Great Depression

http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/confiscation-of-american-prosperity-chapter-1/

Fawcett: "The Regulation of the Hours of Labour by the State" (abridged) II

by the Sandwichman

In the previous installment, Henry Fawcett chronicled the signal triumph of the 1871 Newcastle Engineers bitter 14-week long strike for a 9-hour day and remarked upon the unprecedented nature of that victory: "The artisans in no previous dispute between Capital and Labour have ever obtained so signal a triumph."

In addressing the productivity argument, though, Fawcett takes another tack, proclaiming: "...the masters would, in every instance, be compelled to yield..."

The following may be considered a correct description of the opinions which are widely held on this subject. It is maintained that in many employments the day's work is a great deal too long, the strain upon the constitution is too severe, and physical strength is so much exhausted that a man is unable to labour hard during the whole time he is at work. It is therefore urged that if the day's labour were shortened, as much or even more work would be done in the shorter as in the longer period; employers would, consequently, be able to pay at least as much for a day's work after its length had been thus shortened.

Many facts can, no doubt, be adduced in support of this opinion. It can be scarcely denied that in some employments the hours of labour are habitually too long. Some very striking examples can be quoted to show that the shortening of the hours of labour confers a most important advantage both upon employers and employed. More work is done in less time, and the greater productiveness which is thus given to labour enables not only the wages of the workmen, but also the profits of the employer, to be increased.

Amongst many remarkable examples of the truth of this statement, it will be sufficient to refer to one case which is mentioned by Mr Macdonnell, in his "Survey of Political Economy." He states, on the authority of M. Chevalier, that a manufacturer employing 4000 hands reduced his spinners' time one half-hour per day, and that this reduction, contrary to all expectation, was accompanied by an increase in production of one-twenty-fourth. An admission that this fact is typical of what would generally take place if the hours of labour were shortened, would undoubtedly afford a powerful inducement and a strong justification to the workmen to extend throughout the country the movement which was commenced at Newcastle.

Such an admission, however, does not, to my mind, supply any argument in favour of a resort being had to State intervention. It has been proved that the workmen can succeed when they have as good a case to urge as they had at Newcastle; and the masters would, in every instance, be compelled to yield, even were it not their interest to do so, when facts can be adduced to warrant the conclusion that the hours of labour prevalent in any particular trade are too long to secure the maximum of industrial efficiency.

Did Heterodox Economists Do Better At "Calling It" Than Mainstream Ones?

In a posting and comments yesterday, Mark Thoma at economists view argued that heterodox economists did not do a better job of "calling" the recent crashes and crises than did mainstream or conventional economists. Of course, part of the issue here involves both who one counts as "calling it," and also how one labels economists. In the comments, a list provided by Steve Keen of 11 who "called it," was invoked, with Thoma, at least, claiming that it did not show any preponderance of the heterodox. The list is as follows:

Dean Baker,US
Wynne Godley, UK
Fred Harrison, UK
Michael Hudson, US
Eric Janszen, US
Stephen Keen, Australia
Jakob Brochner Madsen and Jens Kjaer Sorenson, Denmark
Kurt Richebacher, US
Nouriel Roubini, US
Peter Schiff, US
Robert Shiller, US.

Keen categorizes these as follows in a private communication with me: 5 as Post Keynesian (Baker, Godley, Hudson, Keen, Sorenson), 2 as Austrian (Richebacher, Schiff), 2 as "from neoclassical backgrounds," but "mavericks" (Roubini, Shiller), one sort of a combination of Austrian and Post Keynesian (Janszen), and one unclear (Harrison). This looks about right to me to the extent I know about these people, although I note that Thoma claims that Baker is not "heterodox." I have not asked Dean, and he may not wish to comment, although he was once-upon-a-time a co-blogger on the predecessor to this blog, maxspeak, prior to starting his own punchy blog, Beat the Press. About four of these people I know nothing about.

I also note that there are quite a few others who can make the claim of having "called it" (I like to include myself in that gang, at least to some degree), and I also know that some of those are conventional, more or less, such as Andrew Lo of MIT, although he is now pushing a non-conventional theory about evolutionary financial dynamics. In any case, I think that the heterodox have the edge here, even if it is not clear what constitutes being in that category.

Fawcett: "The Regulation of the Hours of Labour by the State" (abridged) I

by the Sandwichman

The 1958 article by Mark Blaug on "The Classical Economists and the Factory Acts" brought Henry Fawcett's fascinating (and contradictory) 1872 analysis of "The Regulation of the Hours of Labour by the State" to the Sandwichman's attention. Fawcett makes some compelling arguments against state intervention in setting of hours but in the course of doing so appears to strongly uphold collective action by trade unions and the argument that long hours of work are injurious both to productivity and to the well being of the workers.

Nevertheless, Fawcett's apparent enthusiasm for collective self-reliance is marred by a glaring contradiction. In the selection presented below, Fawcett introduces the topic by remarking on the unprecedented nature of the worker's victory in Newcastle. In a latter selection, dealing with productivity, Fawcett claims the (unprecedented) Newcastle victory proves the inevitability of success for workers' struggles to reduce the hours of work. The Sandwichman has amended the paragraphing of these selections and omitted long sections presenting commercial and libertarian objections to state regulation.

"The artisans in no previous dispute between Capital and Labour have ever obtained so signal a triumph."

Early in August, 1871, the engineers of Newcastle formally put forward the demand that a day's work should consist of nine hours. The masters refused to yield. The workmen thereupon carried out their threat to desist from work; and a general strike ensued. Although efforts at conciliation were repeatedly made, the dispute continued to rage fiercely for many weeks. Various persons offered themselves as mediators, in the hope of suggesting some compromise. But compromise after compromise was unceremoniously rejected by the masters.

Many circumstances combined to arouse strong and angry feelings. At the outset a bitter personal enmity had been excited by the workmen being told that the masters would not hold interviews with them, but that they must have their views represented by some legal adviser.

Still more angry passions were aroused when the manufacturers attempted to replace the labour of which they had been deprived, by the importation of foreign workmen. Agents were despatched to Belgium, Germany, and other places to engage at remunerative wages artisans who had been accustomed to engineering work. The English workmen on their side put forth equally strenuous efforts to check this importation of labour. Strong appeals based on international principles were addressed to the continental workmen; they were entreated to be loyal to the cause of labour, and they were told that the employed would be always vanquished unless the labourers of different countries were not only ready to unite, but were also prepared to make some sacrifices for the common cause.

In spite, however, of all these efforts the manufacturers obtained a considerable number of continental workmen. After their arrival, however, not a single moment was lost in bringing every possible kind of pressure to bear upon them to induce them to return. Occasionally the pressure assumed the form of threats of violence to any who might continue to work. Such threats, however, were exceptional; it was generally found that after the exact position of affairs had been explained to these foreign workmen, there was little difficulty in inducing them to return to their own countries if they were provided with the requisite funds. The funds required for this purpose were promptly procured by subscriptions raised among the artisans in every important centre of English industry.

In consequence of these exertions the manufacturers gradually became convinced that it was hopeless for them to expect to keep their works open by substituting foreign for English labour. The alternative therefore which was presented to them was either to suspend business or to grant the demands of those whom they employed.

The adoption of the former course involved many formidable difficulties. It has been often remarked that workmen in the disputes which they have had with their employers have very generally shown themselves to be extremely bad tacticians. They have generally struck work in order to resist a decline in wages consequent upon dull trade. But when trade is dull the victory of the employer is almost insured, for at such a period it costs him little in fact, it is often a positive advantage to him temporarily to suspend his business.

But, whether from accident or design, the Newcastle workmen commenced the Nine Hours' Movement at the very time above all others when they were most likely to obtain success. The engineering trade was in a state of unprecedented activity and prosperity; unusually large profits were being realised, and the order book of every manufacturer was filled with lucrative contracts. Victory therefore was virtually ensured to the employed when they deprived the employer of an adequate supply of labour; for he had the strongest possible inducement not to curtail, much less to suspend his business at a time when it was exceptionally profitable, and when the non-fulfilment of extensive contracts would render him liable to extremely onerous fines. After a struggle which was prolonged for fourteen weeks, the masters were compelled to succumb; and the demands put forward by the workmen were fully conceded to them.

No sooner was the Nine Hours' Movement successful in the engineering trade at Newcastle, than similar demands were immediately put forward by workmen engaged in a great variety of trades in different parts of the country. The battle having been once fairly fought out, employers very generally adopted the wise and prudent conclusion that it was far better not to renew the contest. It has therefore come to pass that in a few weeks, throughout no inconsiderable portion of the industry of the country, the principle has obtained practical recognition that nine hours is to be considered a day's work.

I have thought it important to give this description of the Nine Hours' Movement in order to show that in the course of a few weeks the workmen, entirely relying on their own efforts, and without any resort to State intervention, have secured a valuable concession for themselves, and have introduced a most important social and economic reform. Having thus seen what has been done without resorting to the State, let us proceed to inquire whether the workmen would have secured that which they desired more promptly and more efficiently if, instead of relying on their own efforts and their own powers of organization, they had rested their hopes on State intervention. If the latter course had been adopted, I think there will be little difficulty in showing that the shortening of the hours of labour might be either indefinitely postponed or might be so prematurely and inconsiderately introduced that confusion would be created and more evil than good would result.

If the workmen throughout the country should unite they would at once secure a predominance of power in the legislature. Let it be supposed that having gained this predominance they should at once pass a law applying the Nine Hours' principle to every employment throughout the country. As explained in a previous essay, such legislative interference constitutes a part of the programme of the International; and as there is reason to believe that many who are generally opposed to the doctrines of Socialism would support such a demand, the subject is evidently one of great practical importance at the present time.

Beyond the f-word: Black on Black

by the Sandwichman

Hugo Black was Senator from Alabama from 1927 to 1937 and a Supreme Court Justice from 1937 to 1971. The Black Thirty-Hour Bill was passed by the US Senate, 53-30 on April 6, 1933 (a 1934 version of the bill). According to Hunnicutt, passage of the Black Bill gave the impetus to the Roosevelt administration to develop and implement a recovery program.

The Shorter Work Week and Work Day

By Hugo L. Black

THE desire on the part of the people to adjust the work day and the work week to the needs and demands of the time is in accord with social justice and economic necessity. It is an effort to stimulate human genius to nobler inventive activities; to raise the output of civilization’s vast productive machinery; to supply mankind with more of the comforts Nature has provided for his happiness; to give to labor a fairer return for the expenditure of energy; to provide jobs for all; and to afford opportunities for rest and recreation for all, instead of long hours for some with enforced idleness and misery for others. Those who advocate a shorter work day and work week abhor the 'economy of scarcity' that must inevitably result from long hours and low wages.

Long work hours and low wages, under our complex system of exchange and commerce, do not justify the often asserted, but wholly superficial, excuse that production is thereby increased. Our economic history should now prove to the most hidebound worshiper of inordinate profits and the most subservient student of economic dogmas, that long hours and low wages ultimately lower the level of production, retard the improvement and expansion of the tools and machinery of output, close factories, cause the abandonment of mines, paralyze business, and bring about destitution and human suffering among helpless millions of people.

The so-called boom and prosperity period of the nineteen-twenties was a time when the philosophy of long hours and low 'real' wages was given ample opportunity to bring forth its fruits. Men and women worked ten, fifteen, and even sixteen hours per day. While figures and money payments have been juggled in such manner as to mislead many to believe that wages were high, the cold statistics of that period, gathered by impartial agencies, show that labor received a smaller and smaller proportion of its own products, and that a greater and greater part went to profits and property. The cumulative effects of this unbalancing and unjust distribution of income resulted in decreased ability of the workers to buy. Our economic system produces only to sell. Whatever is the cause of inability of potential customers to buy is likewise the cause of the inability of producers and merchants to sell; of the consequent failure to produce; and of the resulting collapse of employment and business in general.

But, someone says, did not wages go up in the nineteen-twenties? On the contrary, the real wages of industrial workers and wages of farmers (measuring farmers’ wages by farm prices) both descended, in proportion to goods and services produced, and in relation to income flowing to profits and property.

Loss Through Inadequate Incomes

This increase in large incomes and decrease in small incomes by 1929 tells us why savings increased and over-expansion occurred. Theoretically, there was no overexpansion in many industries, because people actually needed the products. Practically, however, there was overexpansion because the output could not be sold. Year by year, the system of distribution of incomes had reduced the chief purchasers in ability to buy, and had increased the proportion of those whose personal wants were already satisfied, and who were therefore unable to buy more, and were compelled to invest.

Since business could not sell at its price, it reduced production, thus intensifying an 'economy of scarcity.' Ten million workers and then fifteen million workers lost all income. Probably fifteen million more worked part-time with reduced income. Production shot down, and the greatest waste in human history began its assault upon American life. It has been estimated that, expressed in dollars, this country has lost since 1929, two hundred to four hundred billion dollars’ worth of production of useful goods and services as a result of idle machinery, plants, lands, equipment, and men. This was not because of shortened hours. It followed long hours and unfair real wages. The loss in actual goods and services is infinitesimal in comparison with the injury to the health and the moral and physical stamina of the millions of harassed and jobless men and women. No money price would be too great to pay in order to remove this blighting disease that threatens our civilization. Already, however, we find a growing group insisting that we accept unemployment as inevitable and get out with the least possible money by adopting the most niggardly and character-destroying dole. They are thus willing to threaten the safety of succeeding generations in order to buy peace at the cheapest price for themselves.

Bargaining Power Needed

More than five years ago I said that this nation must choose between a dole and shorter hours of work; that is still my belief. But, unfortunately for America, the champions of the conditions that make the dole a part of our economic life are apparently gaining ground. Private business in America must support the people either through wages or taxes. It can give jobs or doles.

The only chance for labor to receive enough of the income from our national business system to buy the products of that system is through its own bargaining power or through operation of law. A single laborer in our present complex business system, with its constant oversupply of labor, has no bargaining power. He can work for the price offered, or go hungry. Only about 10 per cent of the workers belong to independent labor unions. Some of this 10 per cent have succeeded in obtaining reasonably fair working conditions and wages. It is a long step, however, to unions with sufficient numerical strength to obtain incomes sufficient to balance purchasing power with production.

A work week and a work day short enough to create an actual scarcity of labor, thereby causing employers once again to bid for labor, would be a wholesome economic tonic for America. Our greatest progress has been made when workers could actually bargain with their employers. Our industry expanded by leaps and bounds when men who were not given a decent wage could go to the unopened farms of the frontier.

It is nothing short of absurd to assert that a thirty-hour week would reduce production in America. As a matter of fact, it would greatly increase production. Every realistic observer of economics and business knows that production responds to effective demand. Desire may be created by skillful advertising, or it may result from an inherent need; but if this desire actually stimulates an increased production, it must be backed up by an ability to buy. The same system that produces and sells must supply the means to buy from such production and sales. If private industry should be compelled today to shorten the hours so as to create labor conditions under which employers would be required to bid for workers, every added dollar paid to labor would return to business. In addition, the effective demand of these workers would speed up production, require more efficient operation, and make useful inventions profitable.

Shorter Week Would Increase Production

To one who is familiar with the oscillations of the so-called 'business cycle' over a period of years, as distinguished from its results during any one particular year, the professed fears of 'reduced production' are laughable. Let us consider briefly the effect on the ten-year period from 1880 to 1940. The first five years of that period are history. Suppose the thirty-hour week, or some other week that would have employed the labor and given it bargaining power, had gone into effect January 1, 1880. (There is no magic in any particular number of weekly hours, so long as the result is obtained.) Certainly there has been no time since 1930 when national production would have been diminished by reason of the adoption of such shorter hours. No one would be so foolish as to predict that the next five years will require such a phenomenal production, if old unregulated hours should continue, as to raise the average for the ten-year period above the thirty-hour level.

In fact, national production would have been greater with a thirty-hour week since 1930, because many jobless with no money would have been transformed into workers and purchasers with money able to buy and stimulate production. Nothing but purchasers with means to buy has ever brought about production under our system, and nothing else ever will.

It is not the fear of laws that makes mills idle. It is not the fear of taxes. It is only the knowledge or belief that the output cannot be sold at a profit. There is no actual shortage of factories, mines, mills, or farms in America today, able to produce what can be sold. There is no shortage of capital. There is no shortage of men and women who want and who need the output of our business system. There is, and there has been for a long time, a shortage of purchasing ability possessed by our greatest customers, namely, the men, women, and children of the United States. Give them jobs. When more is produced, give them their part, exactly as they would get the fruits of their own labor if they were producing under the old handicraft system, where they could see, handle, and control the finished output. Do not subject our American workers to the crushing and destroying competition of ten to fifteen million jobless, eager for work and frequently hungry for food. Shorten the hours fairly and uniformly for all business enterprises that compete with each other, thereby supplying work for the jobless. Do this, and the fantastic, if not fictitious, dream that shortening hours will decrease production will go the way of other dogmas invented from age to age to retard opportunity for the many in order to bestow too much on the few.

Adequate Income Necessary

The farmers, the employees, and the small business and professional groups make up the greater proportion of our population. If farmers and workers secure inadequate incomes to buy the products of farm and factory at fair prices, these products cannot be sold. Unfortunately, our foreign trade has dwindled to the point where it is much less than 10 per cent of our total commerce. The fate of the United States worker and the amount of his income play a most important part in determining the price he can pay for the farmers’ products. It is also true that the price the farmer is able to pay for the goods of the mines and factories is determined by his income from his crops. The disaster that occurs to farmers, factories, mines, railroads, and business in general when the just return of farmers and workers is diverted from them into other channels was seen when business collapsed and folded up following 1929. This diversion from the farmer and the worker has proved that excessive capital in industry eventually helps no one, but injures, and sometimes destroys, both those from whom it was taken and those who took it.

I conclude by saying that no one has proved and no one can prove that a thirty-hour week would reduce production. I insist that it would greatly enhance production in any line of business.

In addition to this, it would put millions of jobless to work, taking them out of the deteriorating atmosphere of the idle and restoring them to the desirable status of self-supporting citizens. From 1920 to 1930 the factory workers’ productivity increased 44 per cent. Since 1930 this productivity has increased another 28 per cent. In March 1935 our factory production reached 91 per cent of the 1923-1925 production, but the factory employment of labor was only 82 per cent and the pay rolls only 71 per cent. This 91 per cent of production occurred with more than eleven million workers still out of work. If production had gone to 100 per cent of normal, we would still have had more than nine million unemployed.

Who can say what labor-saving improvements another generation will develop, and who believes that it is necessary for man to do the work that can now be done with the energy of our wood, our coal, our oil, our running streams, our tides, and perhaps sometime with the energy diffused by the rays of the sun? It has been my observation that most of the eulogies and panegyrics written on the glories of hard physical labor were spoken or written by those who either had never done it themselves or who had ceased to bend their backs or strain their muscles at the very first opportunity.

The Bill and Hold Stimulus

by the Sandwichman

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Consumer spending edged up in July with help from the popular Cash for Clunkers program, but household incomes, the fuel for future spending increases, were flat.

The slight rise in spending reflected a 1.3 percent jump in purchases of durable goods such as cars, a gain propelled by the clunkers program that started at the end of July. Purchases of nondurable goods such as clothing actually fell 0.3 percent last month.

"Bill and hold" is designed to shift sales from future quarters to current ones. It's O.K. when the government does it... Actually, it is perfectly legal for private companies, too. It's just that the consequences can catch up to you.

Some participants in the Cash for Clunkers and First Time Homebuyers Credit programs are people who would have bought cars or house now anyway. Another portion are people who otherwise wouldn't have bought. But how many sales have simply been brought forward to boost current sales at the expense of future sales?

At Sunbeam, "Chainsaw Al" Dunlop sold a lot of electric blankets in the summer of 1997 and outdoor grills in the fall. But in the first quarter of 1998 Sunbeam lost $44.6 million. On June 13, the Sunbeam directors fired Chainsaw Al, "the worst CEO of all time." From Business Week July 6, 1998:

It didn't take long for alarm bells to sound. After the company reported its results in the second quarter of 1997, Shore says he began "getting pangs in my stomach." The numbers showed that Dunlap was building what Shore considered abnormally high inventory levels and accounts receivable. His trade contacts confirmed his suspicions that Sunbeam was giving lucrative terms to dealers to ship products aggressively.

"BILL AND HOLD." "I said to myself: 'Let's play the game a little longer,"' remembers Shore. "No one [had] soured on him yet. Very few picked it up, only the smart shorts at the hedge funds. I thought it would take several more quarters to play out." Shore alerted his clients to the warning signs but continued to recommend the stock because he thought investors would keep bidding it up.

He was right. Sunbeam's shares kept climbing, even though the company's third-quarter results created even greater cause for concern. Shore noted in one of his reports that there were massive increases in sales of electric blankets, usually a fourth-quarter phenomenon. Then, in the fourth quarter of 1997, he was alarmed by enormous increases in sales of grills, at a time when virtually no one buys those products. Still, Shore says, "I didn't think the story was over just yet. The market hadn't caught it."

Although unknown at the time, Dunlap was aggressively trying to push out more and more product. As the company later acknowledged, he began to engage in so-called "bill and hold" deals with retailers in which Sunbeam products were purchased at large discounts and then held at third-party warehouses for delivery later. By booking these sales before the goods were delivered, Dunlap helped boost Sunbeam's revenues by 18% in 1997 alone. In effect, he was shifting sales from future quarters to current ones. The approach was not illegal, but the extraordinary volume made it unusual. Dunlap defended the practice, saying that it was an effort to extend the selling season and better meet surges in demand. Sunbeam's auditors, Arthur Andersen & Co., later insisted it met accounting standards.

GM Fact of the Day

To spend $200 million on manufacturing, we have to get board approval, with top management involved from an early stage. Yet we spend billions on marketing and delegate that to too many people at the lowest levels. It's insanity.

-Bob Lutz, General Motors Vice-Chairman

Stead, Deborah. 2009. "Bob Lutz, GM Salesman." Business Week (3 August): p. 16.

Beyond the f-word: Green on Black

by the Sandwichman

The Black-Connery Thirty-Hour Bill was strongly backed by the American Federation of Labor President, William Green.

"Would a Thirty-Hour Week Increase Employment?"

President Green urges the 30-hour week as a means to absorb the unemployed, and maintain industrial stability.

by William Green, President, American Federation of Labor

OUR problem of unemployment must be solved. No other question of national policy, whether political, social or economic, must be permitted to obscure this major issue until it is definitely disposed of. It can be disposed of not through half measures but only through courageous and decisive action, jointly undertaken and carried to conclusion by government, management and labor.

The 11 million unemployed do not represent the whole of the vast numbers who are affected by unemployment and its consequences. The failure of our industrial system to provide jobs for these 11 million throws on public relief some 18 million persons and the number is growing larger. Support of this army of those denied an opportunity to earn a living, cannot be continued indefinitely. While the moral degradation of the dole is sapping the sources of individual initiative and the enterprise of these millions of Americans, public credit is being drained by the unsupportable load of unproductive expenditures.

Our economic organism cannot function normally as long as such a substantial portion of the body remains totally paralyzed. The disease is too dangerous and too widespread to be treated merely with palliatives and anaesthetics. It must be cured.

The cure proposed by the American Federation of Labor is the adoption of a work-week which will absorb the unemployed, assuring wage-earners the maintenance of their incomes at previous levels. The proposal rests on two fundamental principles: First, that genuine recovery is impossible unless achieved through the normal channels of production; and, second, that industrial stability can be realized only through a broad stabilization of employment and the assurance of purchasing power adequate to initiate and sustain increased production of wealth.

Recovery and reform cannot be separated. Unbalance in our economic system is of such a degree that automatic recovery is impossible. Thirty hours is both a reform and a recovery proposal.

Founded upon these principles, the thirty-hour week program will achieve the following results:

1. Through the shortening of hours to thirty per week, it will bring wage-earners now without work into our normal business organization;
   
   
2. Through maintaining existing earnings, and placing effective purchasing power in the hands of those who have been deprived of incomes through unemployment, it will increase total purchasing power;
   
   
3. By releasing a tremendous volume of pent-up consumers’ demand, it will stimulate industrial production in business activity;
   
   
4. By giving unemployed workers jobs in our normal industries and by providing for wage maintenance, it will give the wage-earners that security which they now lack;
   
   
5. By stimulating normal business activity, it will release the flow of credit in private business from the normal consumer, who constitutes the ultimate source of credit;
   
   
6. It will provide material means for higher standards of living for the American people and make effective new and widespread demand for goods and services.
   

The failure on the part of private industries to achieve a substantial reduction in unemployment brings out the full import of the grave national emergency underlying the present situation. Our proposal is designed to meet this emergency situation.

The opposition to 30 hours follows historical precedent. People who oppose the 30-hour week on the claim that a reduction in hours of work will mean a great decrease in the volume of production, are repeating arguments which were made one hundred years ago against the establishment of the 10-hour day, and fifty years ago against the 8-hour day. These arguments were made and are now made on the assumption of a static society—an assumption which is false, as a glance at history will show. For more than a hundred years there has been a movement in this country for a shorter work week. The fight for the 30-hour week is the present phase of this century-old movement.

There are two ways in which to judge the social import of the thirty-hour week: First, its effect as a remedy for the greatest social evil we have ever known—the unemployment of millions of our population, and the inevitable degeneration of those millions from unemployed to unemployable if unemployment is prolonged. Second, its more positive effect as a means of giving the people of this country the kind of life to which any human being has a right.

Our immediate problem is to provide work. Desperate social illnesses must be met not by mere palliatives, but by correctives comparable to the need. The thirty-hour week will put millions of men and women to work; it will restore the self-respect of those men and women; it will give them confidence in themselves, in their future and in their country; it will fulfill the original purpose of the National Recovery Program.

This does not mean that the 30-hour week is merely a gigantic share-the-work movement. As such, it would lose its fundamental value as a recovery and a reform measure. Wages and hours of work must be fixed at the same time, one in relation to the other. The 30-hour week presupposes that earnings will be maintained at their present weekly, monthly, or yearly level, despite the reduction in hours. The workers must not be asked to continue to bear the burden of unemployment. Nor must the 30-hour bill be looked upon as only a relief measure. It seeks more equitable distribution of income. It is a plan to bring about basic readjustments in our social and economic order.

With the increased leisure which would come with the adoption of the 30-hour week, and with the increased purchasing power which would come from the maintenance of earnings, the workers would have time and money to function as consumers of the products of industry.

The Real Trespassers

Today 23 protesters were arrested outside Parliament House in Hobart Tasmania. They were objecting to fast-track legislation that allows for an assessment and approval of a proposed giant pulp mill to be insulated from any form of legal public objection. The wording of this new 'Pulp Mill Assessment and Approvals Act' (PMAA) is dangerouly ambiguous.

Earlier this year three distressed Tasmanian landowners, concerned about their legal position if the existence and operations of this pulp mill destroyed their businesses, launched a Supreme Court action. They sought to ask the Tasmanian government for the reasons why they granted a permit for the pulp mill to be built in the Tamar Valley. "In July this year Justice Peter Evans dismissed their action, on the grounds that Section 11 of the PMAA prevented those questions from being answered. In response to the decision Tasmanian UTAS law academic, Tom Baxter, said that it removed the rights of any citizen to obtain information about provisions placed on the mill." [1]

This latest judgement follows a consistent pattern of state oppression that has played out here for decades now. Tasmanians are increasingly being treated as 'aliens' at the State Government's 'pleasure'. We can live here as long as we don't express any demands such as a requirement for a safe and habitable environment. Peaceful protest is met with police demands to 'move on' and a refusal to follow such unreasonable demands is met with instant arrest. Or, as Richard Flanagan noted a few years ago "to [merely] question or to comment is to invite the possibility of ostracism and unemployment." [2]

On the other hand, when strong evidence was presented that a Tasmanian Premier had broken the law two years ago "the matter was never investigated" due to the lack of an independent anti-corruption or ethics body in in the state.[3]

Amidst the backdrop, described by Richard Flanagan, of unique temperate rainforests being clearfelled and then burnt with napalm. "Forests of the tallest hardwood trees in the world, eucalyptus regnans being reduced to mud and ash" to be replaced with monocultural tree plantations. Our wildlife poisoned with 1080 lest they graze on plantation seedlings; disent against a giant pulp mill that promises to further sustain this paradigm should be regarded as the highest form of loyalty.

"Ingenuous comrades, there are bad men on the Earth. If you want to be an ecologist, you have to stop being a dummy...if nothing happens even though we're entering an ecological crisis of historic gravity, it's because those who have power in the world want it to be this way."

From Hervé Kempf's 'How the Rich Are Destroying the Planet'



[1] Section 11 Once More
PETER HENNING. 21st August 2009
Subsequent to: Tasmanian political rot: the PMAA revisited
http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/weblog/article/section-11-once-more/

[2] Paradise lost - with napalm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1197159,00.html
By RICHARD FLANAGAN

[3] Pulping the truth
Matthew Denholm | November 20, 2008
Article from: The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24677393-5006788,00.html

Edward M. Kennedy, RIP

The first time I saw him speak was nearly 40 years ago at the University of Wisconsin, where he was heckled by anti-war protestors (he was slow to become a dove and was in the near aftermath of the unfortunate incident in 1969). I remember when he was first appointed to the Senate to take over his older brother's seat at the legally minimum age of 30. Many complained about nepotism and inexperience. Certainly he had many flaws and problems.

However, over the years he overcame them and became the "liberal lion of the Senate," and I am not going to elaborate on his long record, but passing a decent health care reform would be an appropriate act to memorialize his better works. It is funny that I also remember from when he first entered the Senate someone near the family commenting that he was actually the best politician of the family, and that in particular his skills were especially suited to the legislative branch rather than the executive one. As he never made it in the latter, we do not know for sure, but he did indeed become one of the most effective and progressive Senators in history.

Blaug, Fawcett, Hicks... and Chapman

by the Sandwichman

Mark Blaug has been introduced as "perhaps the best known and most widely published historian of economic theory in the profession today."

Blaug's 1958 article, "The Classical Economists and the Factory Acts - A Re-examination" ends with the sage admonition: "There is a simple moral in all this: for some purposes a theory of economic growth is not enough."

But it is the penultimate paragraph of that article (and a footnote) that struck the Sandwichman early this morning:

In a class by itself is Fawcett's contention that pecuniary motives alone bring about the adoption of a work day that optimizes output per man-hour. This argument is open to the objection that it assumes perfect foresight. Contrariwise, Thornton's thesis amounts to a denial of perfect knowledge on the part of the entrepreneur. We should say today that entrepreneurs may have little incentive to reduce hours since the immediate effect, if wages are kept constant, is to increase costs and decrease output; whereas, a simultaneous reduction in wages under these circumstances is bound to affect efficiency adversely. Thus, employers may fail to maximize output per man-hour owing to an excessive emphasis on profit maximization in the short run. Be that as it may, Fawcett's line of reasoning clearly shows where the classical economists' treatment of hours legislation is deficient: they had no theory of the firm. [emphasis added]

The footnote to the bolded sentence above states:

See J. R. Hicks, The Theory of Wages, pp. 104-10. Even on the assumption of perfect foresight, this is a clear case of private costs diverging from social costs. There is no reason why the classical economists could not have considered this possibility; the distinction between private and social costs is implicit in Adam Smith's discussion of public works.

Only a pedantic Sandwichman would know (or perhaps care) that pp. 104-10 of Hicks's The Theory of Wages is actually a faithful précis of Sydney J. Chapman's Theory of the Hours of Labour! The irony contained in all this is that subsequently, in The Theory of Wages, Hicks went on to set aside the conclusions of Chapman's analysis, which he emphatically acknowledged as theoretically sound, on the "practical" grounds that:

...if the working day has previously been fixed at a length which is greater than the 'output optimum' the Union will not usually need to exert any considerable pressure in order to bring about a reduction" [because a} "very moderate degree of rationality on the part of employers will thus lead them to reduce hours to the output optimum as soon as Trade Unionism has to be reckoned with at all seriously (pp. 217-218).

Compare Hicks's (1932) rationale with Fawcett's (1872):

It has been proved that the workmen can succeed when they have as good a case to urge as they had at Newcastle; and the masters would, in every instance, be compelled to yield, even were it not their interest to do so, when facts can be adduced to warrant the conclusion that the hours of labour prevalent in any particular trade are too long to secure the maximum of industrial efficiency.

One Hundred Years Ago Today...

by the Sandwichman

One hundred years ago today, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Sydney J. Chapman presented his theory of the hours of labour as his presidential address to the Section on Economic Science and Statistics of the British Academy for the Advancement of Science.

That analysis came to be considered "the classical statement of the theory of 'hours' in a free market." But, curiously economists have "forgotten" Chapman's conclusions, which rather inconveniently undermine much of their standard assumptions about the determination of hours, wages and employment.

Today, as policy makers wring their hands about whether the next economic upturn will follow the course of a succession of "jobless recoveries," they would do well to pause and consider whether the questions they first forgot, then discounted, and eventually dismissed and trivialized might lead to the "ultimate solution" to the problem of full employment.

Last October, the Sandwichman serialized his chronicle of the strange disappearance of S.J. Chapman's Theory of Labour. I have linked up the segments and provide a comprehensive link page after the jump:

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Conclusion
Bibliography

Joblesse Oblige?

by the Sandwichman

Both the Congressional Budget Office and the White House Office of Management and Budget released economic estimates and projections today showing unemployment averaging around 10% (9.8% OMB, 10.2% CBO) next year and remaining above 8% until at least the end of 2011. Last March, the OMB estimated would average 8.1% in 2009 and decline thereafter.

In short, the unemployment rate is now much worse than anyone expected five months ago, it will get even worse and it will stay worse longer. Where are the proposals to respond to this unacceptable level of unemployment? Where is the political movement to demand a solution?

Should Journals Have To Compete For Papers?

During the course of the discussions in various locations over the matter of proper formatting of papers for journals, the point was made that in some hard science disciplines (not sure which ones) it is acceptable for authors to submit a paper to more than one journal simultaneously. This is a major taboo in economics, with many journals asking specifically if one has submitted the paper elsewhere when one submits. However, it has always struck me as a bit inconsistent that it is OK to submit book proposals to more than one publisher. My thought on how to resolve this was that book proposals involve the author making money, whereas this is almost never the case for journal articles (although in some hard sciences, one has to pay for pages published in a journal).

I am wondering what people think of this. Should economics journals have to compete for the best papers (and the person who noted this in hard sciences said that this happens)? I can see the taboo arising from the interests of editors and referees. There is already a major problem of finding suitable and willing referees who will get reports back in reasonable time (hard sciences referees also tend to get their reports back much more quickly than do economist referees). Would this make it worse? The argument for moving towards the hard science view is that it is more likely to avoid the problem many young professors face of having their paper sit for lengthy periods of time at journals, only to get rejected, and putting them in danger of not having enough publications to get tenure, even if they have written a sufficient number of good papers.

James K. Galbraith On The Current Situation

James K. Galbraith has issued a white paper based on a meeting that occurred in Paris at the Mayer Foundation this past June. It is entitled "Financial and Monetary Issues as the Crisis Unfolds," and is available at either http://www.epsusa.org/projects/crisisworkinggroups/financeandbanking.htm or http://www.levy.org/vtype.aspx?doctype=9. It is about 9,000 words in total, and the report concludes as follows:

In brief conclusion, the group of experts convened in Paris in June warns that the crisis is not over, that policies so far set in motion are not sufficient, and that the goals set by the authorities so far, which amount to a restoration of previous conditions, are neither desirable nor possible. It is time now to begin to take account of the irreversible characteristics of recent events, to chart a course of new construction instead of reconstruction, and to build the domestic and financial monetary institutions and safeguards necessary to make it possible to pursue that course.