File spoon-archives/avant-garde.archive/avant-garde_1995/avant-garde_Nov.95, message 35


Date: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 16:32:05 -0600 (CST)
From: Mark Kolmar <mkolmar-AT-ccs.nslsilus.org>
Subject: Re: Blind Rage



On Tue, 14 Nov 1995, Whit Blauvelt wrote:

> We have a very sophisticated government with an effective economic policy
> based on keeping 6% of the workforce unemployed as part of a strategy for
> keeping the wages of another 80% of the workforce steady or dropping.
> 
{snip}

Yes.  By the conventional "wisdom" (not based on the reality of a global
economy), if unemployment becomes too low, this will give the workforce
leverage to force employers to increase wages, and the result would be
inflationary.  These same people don't seem to be concerned about the
incredible growth in the stock market.

> 
> full employment. If we were to change course, encouraging full employment
> and rising wages consistently from the various offices of government (and
> quasi-government, e.g. the Federal Reserve), then welfare and job training
> would not only make sense, but be enormously productive.

Over the long term, we will need to address some fundamental issues about
the direction of our economy.  Now that we have machines to do some of our
work, we still feel like we should be working.  In the past, workers have
felt the benefits of technology in the form of higher wages and shorter
work hours, with increased productivity at the same time.  Productivity
has increased, but work hours are the same or greater and real wages are
falling.  Sooner or later we will need to address the question of what to
do about the increasing number of people who will not have the skills to
do the work which still needs to be done by people.  Sooner or later we 
will also need to realize that a system cannot function in which a worker 
cannot afford to buy the products he helps to manufacture or the services 
he helps provide.



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