Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1997 12:39:43 -0500
From: dhenwood-AT-panix.com (Doug Henwood)
Subject: Re: M-TH: Free association, monopolies and markets


At 11:15 PM 1/25/97, Justin Schwartz wrote:

>As to the "rigidity" of wages, I suppose Chris refers to minimum wage laws
>and the NLRA, which allows workers to unionize and push wages up. If Chris
>has a real critique of the elementary Keynesian principle that you need
>effective demand to keep the economy going, and an argument that higher
>wages are not necessary for this purpose, I'd like to hear it.

But of course there's also the "efficiency wage hypothesis" in bourgeois
economics, which aims to explain why wages aren't more "flexible" (i.e.,
more frequently cut) in response to slack demand. Among the answers:
workers who are paid a bit more than a pure market rate are probably more
productive and require less supervision than those under a tighter squeeze.

Doug

--

Doug Henwood
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