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As I mentioned in my comment on the previous post, there are at least four other reasons for promoting full employment. In my view these require an expansion of the public sector with the government directly hiring people.
1. We need to do a much better job at accomplishing the things that only the private sector can accomplish, or accomplish well, and that we are failing to accomplish now on a massive scale. These include strategic economic investments that require organization and expenditures on a very large scale, and require tending to the conservation and improvement of the public’s wealth.
I don’t understand the attitude of those who think they live in a world in which all the important things are being done, and so any government hiring would consist in menial and unimportant service jobs, and with a bureaucracy whose cost doesn’t justify the benefits. The world I live in seems instead to be a world of chronic and massive underinvestment, in which we are leaving a much worse future to our descendants than has to be the case, all because we are addicted to a blind ideology of small government and near total reliance on the private sector.
We have engaged in this kind of stupidity before, particularly during the Great Depression when we languished through a decade of misery and half measures before the public sector was unleashed during WWII. The war effort then doubled the size of the US economy, and laid the industrial and infrastructural foundation for decades of subsequent prosperity.
2. We need to give people the opportunity to participate in their society and thereby build social solidarity. People who are contributing to any kind of social effort generally feel more integrated into society, have more self-respect, have more friends and acquaintances, have stronger networks of social support and are more socially and politically engaged.
Yes, people work to achieve income. But that doesn’t mean that they all seek to have an income without working for it. Yes, some people are content to live off the labor of others. That might be the way a lot of Wall Street investors think. And it might be the way a few scattered deadbeats here and there think. But most people want to earn the benefits they receive from the work of others.
Many ancient societies were based on a system in which slaves did a lot of the work, and a few privileged souls enjoyed the wealth and leisure that the slave work made available. We have improved that system of social relations somewhat, but we are not all the way there. There is still massive inequity and exploitation in the distribution of wealth and work. A democratic society of equals needs to be based on an equitable bond or reciprocity – a social contract. It needs to value and promote work, provide the opportunity for everyone to earn their share of the fruits of cooperative living, and then distribute those shares fairly.
Is this puritanism? Maybe it’s my New England heritage speaking? I don’t know. But if it is then three cheers for puritanism! The fact is that in America most people have internalized this work ethic. And it’s a good thing too, because it’s one of the internalized norms that prevent us from sliding all the way back into a plutocratic neo-feudalism.
3. We need to eliminate the permanent buyers’ market for labor. We should force businesses to compete more aggressively for workers by offering those workers a better deal than they offer now. This will raise living standards and help restore the disappearing American dream. Full employment will exert strong pressure from below which will improve the distribution of income, build job security, ameliorate the miserable working conditions of low-skilled labor in contemporary America, and counteract the massive agency failures that have lead to management paying themselves ridiculous salaries and bonuses while looting their companies. Don’t tell me private sector companies can’t afford to pay people more. They can if their pampered elite management is forced to take less.
4. We need to achieve our potential. When a lot of our people are not working, we are simply failing to achieve all we can achieve as a society. This should be patently obvious
Essentially agree. We are addressing the wrong issues and therefore misstating the design problem, which makes it difficult to articulate an appropriate design solution.
Contemporary mainstream economics is obsolete in a global (closed) economy in which availability of real resources, clean abundant energy in particular, is the overriding issue.
We need to be fashioning a global economics that recognizes humanity as a species struggling for survival and seeking to progress by adapt to an environment in flux. This design solution must provide a material life-support system for our species that is suitable for this age, not just this budgetary year, or the next quarterly report.
3 comments:
Here's what I just posted on Rodger's blog:
As I mentioned in my comment on the previous post, there are at least four other reasons for promoting full employment. In my view these require an expansion of the public sector with the government directly hiring people.
1. We need to do a much better job at accomplishing the things that only the private sector can accomplish, or accomplish well, and that we are failing to accomplish now on a massive scale. These include strategic economic investments that require organization and expenditures on a very large scale, and require tending to the conservation and improvement of the public’s wealth.
I don’t understand the attitude of those who think they live in a world in which all the important things are being done, and so any government hiring would consist in menial and unimportant service jobs, and with a bureaucracy whose cost doesn’t justify the benefits. The world I live in seems instead to be a world of chronic and massive underinvestment, in which we are leaving a much worse future to our descendants than has to be the case, all because we are addicted to a blind ideology of small government and near total reliance on the private sector.
We have engaged in this kind of stupidity before, particularly during the Great Depression when we languished through a decade of misery and half measures before the public sector was unleashed during WWII. The war effort then doubled the size of the US economy, and laid the industrial and infrastructural foundation for decades of subsequent prosperity.
2. We need to give people the opportunity to participate in their society and thereby build social solidarity. People who are contributing to any kind of social effort generally feel more integrated into society, have more self-respect, have more friends and acquaintances, have stronger networks of social support and are more socially and politically engaged.
Yes, people work to achieve income. But that doesn’t mean that they all seek to have an income without working for it. Yes, some people are content to live off the labor of others. That might be the way a lot of Wall Street investors think. And it might be the way a few scattered deadbeats here and there think. But most people want to earn the benefits they receive from the work of others.
Many ancient societies were based on a system in which slaves did a lot of the work, and a few privileged souls enjoyed the wealth and leisure that the slave work made available. We have improved that system of social relations somewhat, but we are not all the way there. There is still massive inequity and exploitation in the distribution of wealth and work. A democratic society of equals needs to be based on an equitable bond or reciprocity – a social contract. It needs to value and promote work, provide the opportunity for everyone to earn their share of the fruits of cooperative living, and then distribute those shares fairly.
Is this puritanism? Maybe it’s my New England heritage speaking? I don’t know. But if it is then three cheers for puritanism! The fact is that in America most people have internalized this work ethic. And it’s a good thing too, because it’s one of the internalized norms that prevent us from sliding all the way back into a plutocratic neo-feudalism.
...
[continued for previous comment]
3. We need to eliminate the permanent buyers’ market for labor. We should force businesses to compete more aggressively for workers by offering those workers a better deal than they offer now. This will raise living standards and help restore the disappearing American dream. Full employment will exert strong pressure from below which will improve the distribution of income, build job security, ameliorate the miserable working conditions of low-skilled labor in contemporary America, and counteract the massive agency failures that have lead to management paying themselves ridiculous salaries and bonuses while looting their companies. Don’t tell me private sector companies can’t afford to pay people more. They can if their pampered elite management is forced to take less.
4. We need to achieve our potential. When a lot of our people are not working, we are simply failing to achieve all we can achieve as a society. This should be patently obvious
Here's what I posted there"
Essentially agree. We are addressing the wrong issues and therefore misstating the design problem, which makes it difficult to articulate an appropriate design solution.
Contemporary mainstream economics is obsolete in a global (closed) economy in which availability of real resources, clean abundant energy in particular, is the overriding issue.
We need to be fashioning a global economics that recognizes humanity as a species struggling for survival and seeking to progress by adapt to an environment in flux. This design solution must provide a material life-support system for our species that is suitable for this age, not just this budgetary year, or the next quarterly report.
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