As we know, the national economy needs a substantial increase in employment for many reasons not the least of which is taxable revenue at the municipal, county, state, and federal levels. Fine. Let’s show some leadership on that front and think outside the box if that is required.
Any viable plan for increasing employment should include incentives for businesses to hire full time workers. Here’s my approach.
Let’s lay out a goal and a supporting set of quick actions:
Federal Government goal: Full national employment within three years.
Concurrent Federal Actions:
1. Change Federal labor law to require that hourly overtime paid to workers be set at 2.5 times normal hourly wages and salaries for non-hourly workers.
2. Change Federal labor law to require that temporary workers be paid a 35% hourly wage premium over comparable in-company skill hourly wage or salary.
3. Implement massive Federal small, medium, and large business expansion tax, grant, and loan guarantee initiatives focusing on an order of priority funding for (a) placing new businesses in existing empty storefronts and other empty community facilities, (b) new facility construction, and (c) relocation of offshore production and services to the United States of America.
4. Implement a national Federal program of business incubators located in all communities with populations of 35,000 to 250,000, the purpose of which are to assist in sustaining the development and growth of new businesses. —–
As we know, the national economy needs a substantial increase in employment for many reasons not the least of which is taxable revenue at the municipal, county, state, and federal levels. Fine. Let’s show some leadership on that front and think outside the box if that is required.
Any viable plan for increasing employment should include incentives for businesses to hire full time workers. Here’s my approach.
Let’s lay out a goal and a supporting set of quick actions:
Federal Government goal: Full national employment within three years.
Concurrent Federal Actions:
1. Change Federal labor law to require that hourly overtime paid to workers be set at 2.5 times normal hourly wages and salaries for non-hourly workers.
2. Change Federal labor law to require that temporary workers be paid a 35% hourly wage premium over comparable in-company skill hourly wage or salary.
3. Implement massive Federal small, medium, and large business expansion tax, grant, and loan guarantee initiatives focusing on an order of priority funding for (a) placing new businesses in existing empty storefronts and other empty community facilities, (b) new facility construction, and (c) relocation of offshore production and services to the United States of America.
4. Implement a national Federal program of business incubators located in all communities with populations of 35,000 to 250,000, the purpose of which are to assist in sustaining the development and growth of new businesses. —–
Frankly I’m not sure what to make of MG’s suggestions as listed above. Items one and two have so little likelihood of enactment as to seem cynical suggestions at best. Not that I disagree with them, but given the current composition of the Congress are such suggestions regarding the enactment of such Federal wage regulations, when even a modest increase in the minimum wage is anathema to most of its members, at all realistic?
Regarding item number three, massive Federal funding for the development of private business enterprises? Where does this funding come from? Have we not heard the new Congress clearly enough? Who would back such an effort and what evidence is there that Federal funding of small to large business activities actually works to increase employment?
On page 603 of Marx’s Capital, Volume I (Progress Publishers edition) there appears the following sentence, in italics: “This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.” The emphasis could not have been plainer. Marx had just summed up his critique of Political Economy and the essence of his alternative analysis. This critique and alternative can be summed up even further: once the periodicity of alternative expansion and contractions had been introduced into social production it became self-replicating — “effects, in their turn, became causes…” — Given this cyclical fluctuation of booms and busts, a surplus laboring population becomes “the lever of capitalistic accumulation” as well as being a necessary product of that accumulation. This industrial reserve army provides the “free play” that enables capital to contain its losses during the downturn and to take ready advantage of brisk markets in the recovery.
Unemployment is NOT a regrettable side effect of technical progress or “collateral damage” of market exchange. It is the BASIS of continued capitalist accumulation. This explains why it is necessary for economists to ridicule the “fallacy” that reducing working time can ameliorate unemployment. Without unemployment, capital would cease to be “self-expanding”. In fact, capital is not self expanding but depends precisely upon that free play provided by the reserve industrial army to appropriate ever more of the energies of an expanding population and of natural resources while paying progressively less for them.
Pages 592 to 603 contain a comprehensive and scathing rebuke to the wages-fund doctrine of classical political economy and the emerging but as yet unnamed lump-of-labor fallacy. This intimate relationship between unemployment and accumulation takes on a novel significance in the era of politically-managed business cycles. Initially, job creation was given the rationale given for economic stimulus through government spending and monetary policy. But as job creation has become de-coupled from economic growth strategy that rationale has lost its persuasiveness. The successor to stimulus spending — “austerity” — is now being embraced as a job creation program on the conviction (rooted in a restored, covert wages-fund doctrine) that labor markets are not clearing because wages are too high (and “sticky”). But austerity will not work for the simple reason that the political business cycles of the 21st century are NOT the industrial business cycles of the 19th century. Austerity policy is based not on an analysis but on nostalgia for a dogma.
There is one point on which the austerians and the stimulators appear to agree — the exclusion of a third policy approach that would DIRECTLY absorb the unemployed into existing social production. This third approach is taboo because it places the objective of job creation ahead of that of capital accumulation. It is a fallacy in that it doesn’t preserve the vital “free play” role performed by the unemployed and thus undermines the basis of capital accumulation.
As you say MGs 1 and 2 require the Federal stick of regulation to be wielded. I think he forgets who’s holding it. I wonder how he thinks these laws will be enforced without a massive new bureaucracy to inspect private enterprise time records. Or why he thinks they will be followed without such efforts.
On #2 does that mean that the contracting services also get a 35% bonus? Nice little dividend for Manpower in there you might wanna talk to their lobbyists.
The carrots in 3 and 4 (3c in particular is a real knee slapper, the international implications ought to keep Ms. Clintons staff well occupied) are really not well aligned with the US Chamber’s agenda. They don’t want carrots they want to stop paying taxes. Period.
I should also disclose though that I think #1 in particular is probably the fastest most effective lever to get more bodies into more jobs. Everybody I talk to in tech R&D says the same thing – their employers are ratcheting up the minimum requirements on unpaid overtime to unprecedented levels.
The 50-60 hour week that used to identify you as a key contributor is now considered a tolerable norm. The ambitious and/or paranoid are working through their vacations and giving up their weekends in efforts to meet ever more insane schedules and reorganizations…. “Right we’re planning on removing 10% of the team and shortening the schedule by 3-6 months…. Any questions?”
I’m single and middle aged so it hasn’t cost me so much to adapt. I really feel for the younger guys in my area who have young kids. Someday those kids are going to be teenagers and their parents will wonder who they are.
“Very interesting set of proposals, MG. If implemented, they would optimize employment.”
And if my grandmother had had balls she’d have been my grandfather. The problem with the neo-liberal/conservative/reactionary point of view is that it is rigidly tied to an ideology that is based on a fantasy, having little to do with the real world as it unfolds before us and having every thing to do with the mythology of man as an island unto himself. on occasion those who most rigidly adhere to the party line will produce a contrarian tract that is yet again more fantastic than what their political opposition might posit though only for the cynical purpose of seeming to favor the wider majority over the financial elite that they actually fawn over.
Who here can relate to this comment? “My guess is that if anything, Obama would verbalize his ideology using the same vocabulary that Eurocrats do. He would say he wants a fairer America, a more tolerant America, a less arrogant America, a more engaged America. When you prize away the cliché, what these phrases amount to are higher taxes, less patriotism, a bigger role for state bureaucracies, and a transfer of sovereignty to global institutions. In other words, President Obama wants to make the U.S. more like the EU.“
Preceding the above comment was this: “As he points out, there is a reason why Americans have for decades been richer and more economically productive than their European counterparts – less bureaucracy, lower spending, lower taxes, faster growth, and fewer people out of work. Between 1980 and 1992, excluding the UK, “the EU failed to produce a single net private sector job,” a staggering statistic. In addition, as Dan notes, Western Europe’s share of world GDP fell from 36 percent in 1974 to just 26 percent in 2011, with a projected fall to 15 percent by 2020. In contrast, the US share has remained steady at about 26 percent of world GDP.”
Cautioning us to eschew the European model. But, we seem hell bent on following them into the same abyss. Why?
I don’t like your list – too much government bureaucracy and overhead. We need to go the other way: lower taxes, lower regulation, investment/hiring credits, etc.
i read MG’s suggestions as a first draft on an employment policy. everyone else here seems to have reacted to MG’s initials and just decided it must be bad.
i’d like to read more of Sandwichman… but i’d suggest he leave Marx’s name out of it… bad politics… and write something us workers could understand.
It’s not whether it is a good place to start or not that provoked my interest in the comment. It comes from someone who has consistently voiced a strong free market ideology in the past. The term “cognitive disonance” referes to the conflict created when one experiences two contradictory ideas. How to understand the seeming contradiction of Federal wage legislation espoused by a free market ideologist?? And especially at a time when it is politically inconceivable that free market ideas would be over come for the sake of actually fixing a broken economic system. The contradictions lend an air of cynicism to the recommendations in the initial comment.
Coberly Again I point out that the ideas are not bad as they are described. It is the seeming contradiction between those ideas, the source of those ideas and the totally fantastic concept that the courrent form of the legislature would entertain such ideas. There is too much that isn’t realistic about the suggestion, and given the source it seems fatuous to make such suggestions, in particular MG’s points one and two. Why does the messenger carry the message at this time? I can only think it is a diversion, though from what I’m not sure. It’s like the smile on the face of the Cheshire Cat and any conversation that may ensue with such a creature.
NASA just splashed a billion bucks into the ocean, between launch vehicle and rocket.
GAO sees NASA “acquisitions” much the same as they see the military’s. The conclusion is the same the words a little different, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11364r.pdf
Filled with waste fraud and abuse, founded on not understanding the job.
It is welfare for weak technology.
There is $600B a year from the war industries for uses elsewhere. And the US would out spend China and Russia combined by several times.
CoRev: “Who here can relate to this comment?” followed by a right wing screed from the pen of a Heritage Foundation Thatcherite stooge. Why pollute the air with such crap which, even if there were any validity to the points made, would be suspect given the source of the quoted text?
“My guess is that…..” Can it my boy. Your guess is of little interest to anyone interested in a open minded conversation. Your ideological extremism is well established.
Note that in addition to push hours down you would have to repeal the idea of an exempt employee. Most of the 50+ hour types are exempt employees who are paid a salary. If the company had to pay overtime (even at todays rates) it would stop or the employee would be told to work off the books if they wanted to stay. Or one could say that any time sheets having to be filled out implies a non exempt employee, which would really force change, in that management would have to decide between cost tracking and amount of work done.
as for Obama, i don’t think you have been paying attention. The cliche comes with being a politician, but the man behind the curtain looks more like he works for Wall Street than the Red Brigade.
in general i am on your side re military waste, but i doubt the vehicle was a billion bucks. i think the people who designed and built the vehicle bought bread and beer with the billion bucks, and may have invented something useful along the way.
it’s one thing to watch out for waste fraud and abuse, it’s another to shut down all adventure.
sammy is all in favor of taking the short cut to poverty.
he can only see the nickel on the table, thinking it’s his or ought to be his. and it’s better in his pile than it would be, say, feeding a kid who was about to invent the science of electricity.
or, if i may say from experience, like an abused and starved dog who bites at the hand trying to feed him and set him free. hey, man, that chain is solid gold. keep your pink hands off of it.
Consider the ideas whether viable or not if political winds change with Dems and Repubs. MG’s concepts on trade policy have always required heavy governmental intervention.
Bkrasting says a minor increase in SS witholding is impossible because of prevailing attitudes in Congress, so come up with a different recommendation. Well, good policy can be recommended on its own. If then it is amended due to politics of the moment, it still is good policy on its own.
So now we’re making policy recommendations rather than reviewing, analysing and criticizing those that are actually before the Congress or being considered and developed by members of the legislature? I hadn’t realized that this is a policy blog. If so, what then is the value of discussing points one and two other than as an intellectual masturbation exercise? Yes, raise OT pay requirements to a point that is unacceptable to the private sector and they are likely to hire more workers rather than ustilize OT. The 2.5 factor may not be enough. Additional workers bring with them extra costs in the form of benefits and training. Worse yet for the employees is the possible recognition by managment that having only P/T workers is yet less costly; no benefits and lower hourly wages with no O/T at all. Lots more workers, but at lots lower wages and benefits.
Point two would have to be expanded to cover both temporary workers and P/T workers and a provision to require comparable benefits to both as measured by benefits to F/T permanent workers in the same organization or industry.
But that’s the problem. It is all very fanciful to be discussing such a reasonable approach to employment issues following thirty or forty years of efforts to whittle down workers’ compensation and share of productivity. Why waste the time? Wake me when you hear one of our elected leaders offer up something that sounds even remotely progressive regarding empolyment and worker compensation.
I am a little confused…to criticize policy I thought one needed a notion of what good policy might be. With all the caveats, and none of the sloganeering that is sold as policy. Good policy is not rewarded…good slogans are in the short term. Long term might be 30 years.
Maybe the problem is that good political policy requires statesmanship while political machinations are more likely to result in running down the state. Can we even recollect an elected official that we might identify as a statesman, or woman?
“Yes,” but my analysis of Obama leads me to believe that he doesn’t take orders from Wall Street unless they are teaming up to fullfill Obama’s Ideological agenda, which most on Wall Street understand Obama’s Ideological agenda is not in their best interest……so there is not much of a relationship.
If you have evidence to suggest otherwise….I would definitely like to go thru it.
2.) I Like It! but I would also add that company’s should be allow to have a temporary worker for less than the 35% Premium if they provide specialized training/education for a period up to, lets say, 6 months.
3.) I Like It!, but companies must have a consequence for failure. We can’t have the “revolving door” effect on the public dime. The money handed out has to be followed to ensure that the money is being handed out in good faith….i.e. the buisness plan makes sense.
4.) I Like It! You could offer an incentive or a tax breaks to those local buisness leaders that are willing help develop new buisness plans and those who offer financial advise.
Tang came from the Gemini program. Orbital mechanics came from Newton, ENIAC was in 1944. Sputnik scared everyone because getting a load in orbit is the pre req for ICBM’s. Lot of good that little bit does for grandma.
NASA not much new since 1959.
The part that might have been useful, if you can see it maybe is worth 75 bucks.
The “payload” study effects of solar flares on earth, (CoRev says NASA is full of it!!!!) was $450M, if you take the rocket, not a delta so I don’t know much about it, and the launch services at Vandenberg AFB in Lompoc Ca, up the coast from Santa Barabara, it has 9 zeroes after the 1.
Bush Sr. set the stage for Clinton cutting military spending, raising taxes whne needed and terminating the Navy’s super fighter the A-12, which may have caused the loss in 92.
Bush Sr. rattled the military industrial complex by stopping the Air Force stealth fighter at one wing and told them “no longer going to deploy one for one replacements since the Sovietes went away.
assault on social security medical reform that subsidizes insurance industry stimulus that subsidizes the banks and high end taxpayers dropping global warming initiatives
let us not call what either of us does “analysis.”
Reagan in his Uncle Fuddly way gave Gorbachev the room he needed to end the Cold War (not by spending him into bankruptcy).
Then Truman managed the post war pretty well, and i suppose ike did too.
nixon tried, but the neocons sandbagged him. opening China counts.
Carter camp David
Bush Sr as you point out.
But I can’t see it from the others… not that i was always paying attention.
I don’t like what Clinton did in Yugoslavia but am not in a position to say it wasn’t “better than the alternative.”
Did we do anything in South America or Asia that made things better for the people?
I might have to take back Ike’s credit if he had much to do with what when on in Guatemala or ElSalvador. But then I’d have to take away Reagan’s for the same reason.
A launch solution on some Russian target was done just fine on Eniac.
The commercial world lead the way from transistors on.
The integrated circuit (IC) stuff is interesting.
DoD played with it until mid 80’s the really small, fast stuff was developed after the private folks had 95% of the market for IC, somewhere around 1985.
No one doing DoD work cranks out a new generation of IC, not for 25 years.
Today DoD pays contractors to help figure out what to do as the IC’s go out of manufacture. ARINC out in Coronado Ca.
The game was DoD/NASA in the 50’s.
Nothing since, and if you want to check, IC’s came from R&D budget codes “01” or “02” DARPA, R&D funding going to universities which is less than 5% of R&D funding most going to redo all the things GAO complains about.
I know a little about applying technology and in my time we waited for the commercial stuff.
Lessee, I guess ILSM forgets what it was like before the weather satellites. Surprised by major storms was the norm. I guess ILSM forgets the savings provided by the GPS satellites. I guess ILSM forgets the different communcations worldidwe had before the satellites. How many trillions and lives worldwide have been saved provided by that ole better weather forecasting alone?
I suggest Halberstam’s book on Korea, it gives a lot of background on how the China lobby etc worked in with the anti New Deal and the red scare types to set the stage for perpetual war.
I think Truman should have fired Mac Arthur in July 1950.
Going north of thr 38 parellel played into the hands of the US militarists and Mao.
no doubt. still, the commercial stuff was created “for” the NASA market. i simply don’t see that much innovation coming from private industry, unless you mean credit default swaps.
i’ll try to remember to look up the book. there is a lot i don’t know. i was really surprised to learn that the neo cons arose in response to (against) Nixon’s “détente.”
There is no innovation coming from the military industrial complex. The same old, same old solutions, just new generations.
Here is an example, F-35 may implement a “backbone” in it carrying all its data from various systems feeding to a manager either automated, the pilot or a link to the ground. This is the internet DARPA devised in the late 50’s. And it is 50 years getting to work, if indeed it does.
And each year delay the hardware of this backbone changes, driven by the Wii guys and the backbone gets rewritten……………………….
The idea for applying a “backbone” like a world wide web has been in work for 25 years.
There is better use of resources looking for new solutions than to build a new line of aircraft carriers for Adm Kimmel’s problems.
And the Ford class carrier is thinking of a electromagnetic catapult, which is maglev tech done in Red China, and Germany.
New stuff huge expense to fight WW II a little more efficiently, if they can get it right.
Same for F-35, manned ground vehicles etc, etc, etc.
If I had to pay a subscription to the Air Force for using the GPS signals I would not. What would the bill be to use that cluster of satellites? etc, etc……
You and coberley seem to think the DoD or NASA building it (and customers will come) and then the world will use it is a good strategy for spending the society’s resources. Might make sense but as I stated above the technology part is small potatoes when it gets implemented in the huge waste fraud and abuse system of DoD acqusiitions. And the military industrial complex’ implementations are flawed, late and hugely costly.
The opportunity costs of spending on weather satellites or GPS are still being studied, maybe they were worth the expenditure, if you assert there is a public good and that public good is better delivered by the government.
However, the public good posed by building a Ford class carrier is suspect, there are better things to do with the money.
I have a GPS mapping set in my automobile, it is a nice toy and I love to cause the little voice in there to recalculate the route when I take the scenic one. I get to play with the output of billions and billions of dollars that were taken from hungry kids, and workers who needed new coats.
I suggest you consider, where the world would be if the military had not consumed so much of the economy.
There is a lot of money in war, pays for PAC’s and humbug factories…..neocons.
Rooted in Henry Luce, and the internationalists the US was crashing against Japanese imperial asperations and Luce used Time the late 30’s like some use Fox.
Fellow travellers were anit New Deal, some isolationists, as well. But the hog wash about the US losing China in 1949 was tripe used by Luce and Time to run up the empire thing.
Throw in fear of Stalin, and communism in general, with hate of the New Deal, some thought the New Deal destroyed liberty, and you get a militant conservative coalition.
Where Nixon fit I don’t know, but Ike was not a Luce fan, he and the professional soldiers (there are very few today, who question the pentagon funding machine) knew Chiang was useless and that US could not do for him. Mao for all his faults raised the masses.
The Luce crowd was anti nationalist and every nationalist was a communist, now every nationalist is a terrorist.
Neocons, PNAC etc were predated by Henry Luce and the anti New Deal, the extent that perpetual war and the military industrial complex is a toll for destroying a humane America is debatable.
i defer to your superior knowledge. like i said, i am against military waste. but i still think studying solar flares is worth the money and the knowledge gained may end up being worth more than a few million more Air Jordans on little ghetto feet.
i think you are getting confused here. i was only defending the solar flare study, not the extra carrier battle group.
the “small potatoes” is great… look at the leverage we get. for you GPS is a toy. for me… in my former profession…GPS is a huge money saver. Thing is, in order to support the “small potatoes” we need to find “toys” to sell to the proletariat.
your car only exists to bring down the price of Rolls and Ferrarri to the folks who wouldn’t be able to afford cars if the mass market did not subsidize the infrastructure.
basically agree. i especially love the millionaires who have had their liberty destroyed. the terrible twos.
but in general i think going to the moon is a great idea, and i really don’t see it as costing any kid a calorie.
look at poor counties, or poor cities. you see people hanging out on street corners. they are poor not for lack of resources, but for lack of imagination. the entrepreneurs have not figured out how to put them to work. this is something i suggest the government could do… and get Buff calling me a communist wanting to destroy his freedom and tell everyone what to wear.
Ike, said the thing about taking food away from kids in 1953. I was young when he was president, but I liked Ike.
Seymour Melman did a lot of work explaining where Ike was coming from as an educator and engineer teaching at Columbia University.
Frederic Bastiat wrote about the opportunities lost building forts at Verdun and Sedan, something about society not getting much productive improvement from things that blow up rather than make things.
Even Bastiat and Ike had levels of which the opportunity cost of war is worth it, usually due to survival.
Problem in US is war is so important an option that we buy things that don’t work and are not needed for the just in case someone figures out how to fight the way we want to fight.
i suspect ike was speaking a bit metaphorically, but he was no Keynesian. conservatives tend to see the economy as a static pot of money… a zero sum game. it’s not like that. may be when we run out of oil and global warming hits us. but not now. we can feed the poor and even house them and spend a billion here and there for adventure and new ideas.
what i agree with you about is we can’t spend a Trillion dollars on a Maginot line and still have a Federal Budget that can pay for more important things… including an effective military.
Ike did not believe Chiang Kai-Shek was useless. He even visited Formosa during his Presidency. I know this because my father sat on my grandfather’s shoulders as Ike waved to the crowds in Taipei.
As we know, the national economy needs a substantial increase in employment for many reasons not the least of which is taxable revenue at the municipal, county, state, and federal levels. Fine. Let’s show some leadership on that front and think outside the box if that is required.
Any viable plan for increasing employment should include incentives for businesses to hire full time workers. Here’s my approach.
Let’s lay out a goal and a supporting set of quick actions:
Federal Government goal: Full national employment within three years.
Concurrent Federal Actions:
1. Change Federal labor law to require that hourly overtime paid to workers be set at 2.5 times normal hourly wages and salaries for non-hourly workers.
2. Change Federal labor law to require that temporary workers be paid a 35% hourly wage premium over comparable in-company skill hourly wage or salary.
3. Implement massive Federal small, medium, and large business expansion tax, grant, and loan guarantee initiatives focusing on an order of priority funding for (a) placing new businesses in existing empty storefronts and other empty community facilities, (b) new facility construction, and (c) relocation of offshore production and services to the United States of America.
4. Implement a national Federal program of business incubators located in all communities with populations of 35,000 to 250,000, the purpose of which are to assist in sustaining the development and growth of new businesses.
—–
What is the next economic problem?
As we know, the national economy needs a substantial increase in employment for many reasons not the least of which is taxable revenue at the municipal, county, state, and federal levels. Fine. Let’s show some leadership on that front and think outside the box if that is required.
Any viable plan for increasing employment should include incentives for businesses to hire full time workers. Here’s my approach.
Let’s lay out a goal and a supporting set of quick actions:
Federal Government goal: Full national employment within three years.
Concurrent Federal Actions:
1. Change Federal labor law to require that hourly overtime paid to workers be set at 2.5 times normal hourly wages and salaries for non-hourly workers.
2. Change Federal labor law to require that temporary workers be paid a 35% hourly wage premium over comparable in-company skill hourly wage or salary.
3. Implement massive Federal small, medium, and large business expansion tax, grant, and loan guarantee initiatives focusing on an order of priority funding for (a) placing new businesses in existing empty storefronts and other empty community facilities, (b) new facility construction, and (c) relocation of offshore production and services to the United States of America.
4. Implement a national Federal program of business incubators located in all communities with populations of 35,000 to 250,000, the purpose of which are to assist in sustaining the development and growth of new businesses.
—–
What is the next economic problem?
Frankly I’m not sure what to make of MG’s suggestions as listed above. Items one and two have so little likelihood of enactment as to seem cynical suggestions at best. Not that I disagree with them, but given the current composition of the Congress are such suggestions regarding the enactment of such Federal wage regulations, when even a modest increase in the minimum wage is anathema to most of its members, at all realistic?
Regarding item number three, massive Federal funding for the development of private business enterprises? Where does this funding come from? Have we not heard the new Congress clearly enough? Who would back such an effort and what evidence is there that Federal funding of small to large business activities actually works to increase employment?
What’s a business incubator?
On page 603 of Marx’s Capital, Volume I (Progress Publishers edition) there appears the following sentence, in italics: “This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.” The emphasis could not have been plainer. Marx had just summed up his critique of Political Economy and the essence of his alternative analysis. This critique and alternative can be summed up even further: once the periodicity of alternative expansion and contractions had been introduced into social production it became self-replicating — “effects, in their turn, became causes…” — Given this cyclical fluctuation of booms and busts, a surplus laboring population becomes “the lever of capitalistic accumulation” as well as being a necessary product of that accumulation. This industrial reserve army provides the “free play” that enables capital to contain its losses during the downturn and to take ready advantage of brisk markets in the recovery.
Unemployment is NOT a regrettable side effect of technical progress or “collateral damage” of market exchange. It is the BASIS of continued capitalist accumulation. This explains why it is necessary for economists to ridicule the “fallacy” that reducing working time can ameliorate unemployment. Without unemployment, capital would cease to be “self-expanding”. In fact, capital is not self expanding but depends precisely upon that free play provided by the reserve industrial army to appropriate ever more of the energies of an expanding population and of natural resources while paying progressively less for them.
Pages 592 to 603 contain a comprehensive and scathing rebuke to the wages-fund doctrine of classical political economy and the emerging but as yet unnamed lump-of-labor fallacy. This intimate relationship between unemployment and accumulation takes on a novel significance in the era of politically-managed business cycles. Initially, job creation was given the rationale given for economic stimulus through government spending and monetary policy. But as job creation has become de-coupled from economic growth strategy that rationale has lost its persuasiveness. The successor to stimulus spending — “austerity” — is now being embraced as a job creation program on the conviction (rooted in a restored, covert wages-fund doctrine) that labor markets are not clearing because wages are too high (and “sticky”). But austerity will not work for the simple reason that the political business cycles of the 21st century are NOT the industrial business cycles of the 19th century. Austerity policy is based not on an analysis but on nostalgia for a dogma.
There is one point on which the austerians and the stimulators appear to agree — the exclusion of a third policy approach that would DIRECTLY absorb the unemployed into existing social production. This third approach is taboo because it places the objective of job creation ahead of that of capital accumulation. It is a fallacy in that it doesn’t preserve the vital “free play” role performed by the unemployed and thus undermines the basis of capital accumulation.
http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/2011/03/free-play-this-is-absolute-general-law.html
As you say MGs 1 and 2 require the Federal stick of regulation to be wielded. I think he forgets who’s holding it. I wonder how he thinks these laws will be enforced without a massive new bureaucracy to inspect private enterprise time records. Or why he thinks they will be followed without such efforts.
On #2 does that mean that the contracting services also get a 35% bonus? Nice little dividend for Manpower in there you might wanna talk to their lobbyists.
The carrots in 3 and 4 (3c in particular is a real knee slapper, the international implications ought to keep Ms. Clintons staff well occupied) are really not well aligned with the US Chamber’s agenda. They don’t want carrots they want to stop paying taxes. Period.
I should also disclose though that I think #1 in particular is probably the fastest most effective lever to get more bodies into more jobs. Everybody I talk to in tech R&D says the same thing – their employers are ratcheting up the minimum requirements on unpaid overtime to unprecedented levels.
The 50-60 hour week that used to identify you as a key contributor is now considered a tolerable norm. The ambitious and/or paranoid are working through their vacations and giving up their weekends in efforts to meet ever more insane schedules and reorganizations…. “Right we’re planning on removing 10% of the team and shortening the schedule by 3-6 months…. Any questions?”
I’m single and middle aged so it hasn’t cost me so much to adapt. I really feel for the younger guys in my area who have young kids. Someday those kids are going to be teenagers and their parents will wonder who they are.
Very interesting set of proposals, MG. If implemented, they would optimize employment.
I agree with AS, that option 2 would increase the contracting out community to fufill that legitimate part time openings at a lower cost.
“Very interesting set of proposals, MG. If implemented, they would optimize employment.”
And if my grandmother had had balls she’d have been my grandfather. The problem with the neo-liberal/conservative/reactionary point of view is that it is rigidly tied to an ideology that is based on a fantasy, having little to do with the real world as it unfolds before us and having every thing to do with the mythology of man as an island unto himself. on occasion those who most rigidly adhere to the party line will produce a contrarian tract that is yet again more fantastic than what their political opposition might posit though only for the cynical purpose of seeming to favor the wider majority over the financial elite that they actually fawn over.
it appears that MG got the reactions he was probably expecting.
Jack
whoa there, friend. i think if this hadn’t come from MG you’d think it was a pretty good place to start.
I know I do.
Who here can relate to this comment? “My guess is that if anything, Obama would verbalize his ideology using the same vocabulary that Eurocrats do. He would say he wants a fairer America, a more tolerant America, a less arrogant America, a more engaged America. When you prize away the cliché, what these phrases amount to are higher taxes, less patriotism, a bigger role for state bureaucracies, and a transfer of sovereignty to global institutions. In other words, President Obama wants to make the U.S. more like the EU.“
From here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100078404/america-must-escape-the-doomed-path-of-european-style-decline/
Preceding the above comment was this: “As he points out, there is a reason why Americans have for decades been richer and more economically productive than their European counterparts – less bureaucracy, lower spending, lower taxes, faster growth, and fewer people out of work. Between 1980 and 1992, excluding the UK, “the EU failed to produce a single net private sector job,” a staggering statistic. In addition, as Dan notes, Western Europe’s share of world GDP fell from 36 percent in 1974 to just 26 percent in 2011, with a projected fall to 15 percent by 2020. In contrast, the US share has remained steady at about 26 percent of world GDP.”
Cautioning us to eschew the European model. But, we seem hell bent on following them into the same abyss. Why?
Sorry MG,
I don’t like your list – too much government bureaucracy and overhead. We need to go the other way: lower taxes, lower regulation, investment/hiring credits, etc.
well color me pinko
i read MG’s suggestions as a first draft on an employment policy. everyone else here seems to have reacted to MG’s initials and just decided it must be bad.
i’d like to read more of Sandwichman… but i’d suggest he leave Marx’s name out of it… bad politics… and write something us workers could understand.
It’s not whether it is a good place to start or not that provoked my interest in the comment. It comes from someone who has consistently voiced a strong free market ideology in the past. The term “cognitive disonance” referes to the conflict created when one experiences two contradictory ideas. How to understand the seeming contradiction of Federal wage legislation espoused by a free market ideologist?? And especially at a time when it is politically inconceivable that free market ideas would be over come for the sake of actually fixing a broken economic system. The contradictions lend an air of cynicism to the recommendations in the initial comment.
Coberly
Again I point out that the ideas are not bad as they are described. It is the seeming contradiction between those ideas, the source of those ideas and the totally fantastic concept that the courrent form of the legislature would entertain such ideas. There is too much that isn’t realistic about the suggestion, and given the source it seems fatuous to make such suggestions, in particular MG’s points one and two. Why does the messenger carry the message at this time? I can only think it is a diversion, though from what I’m not sure. It’s like the smile on the face of the Cheshire Cat and any conversation that may ensue with such a creature.
NASA just splashed a billion bucks into the ocean, between launch vehicle and rocket.
GAO sees NASA “acquisitions” much the same as they see the military’s. The conclusion is the same the words a little different, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11364r.pdf
Filled with waste fraud and abuse, founded on not understanding the job.
It is welfare for weak technology.
There is $600B a year from the war industries for uses elsewhere. And the US would out spend China and Russia combined by several times.
sammy,
I admire your consistency.
You mean the US needs to look like Great Britain in 1899.
I rather like what the Germans and the Swedes are up to.
No more empire!
CoRev: “Who here can relate to this comment?” followed by a right wing screed from the pen of a Heritage Foundation Thatcherite stooge. Why pollute the air with such crap which, even if there were any validity to the points made, would be suspect given the source of the quoted text?
“My guess is that…..” Can it my boy. Your guess is of little interest to anyone interested in a open minded conversation. Your ideological extremism is well established.
jack
like i said, if it hadn’t come from MG…
Note that in addition to push hours down you would have to repeal the idea of an exempt employee. Most of the 50+ hour types are exempt employees who are paid a salary. If the company had to pay overtime (even at todays rates) it would stop or the employee would be told to work off the books if they wanted to stay. Or one could say that any time sheets having to be filled out implies a non exempt employee, which would really force change, in that management would have to decide between cost tracking and amount of work done.
MG maybe hard to talk to, but I don’t think he is cynical.
In any case, if you pick up an interesting idea and work with it, there’s no telling how it will grow and what a future legislature might do with it.
CoRev
once more you fall for rigged statistics.
as for Obama, i don’t think you have been paying attention. The cliche comes with being a politician, but the man behind the curtain looks more like he works for Wall Street than the Red Brigade.
speaking of falling for cliches.
ilsm
in general i am on your side re military waste, but i doubt the vehicle was a billion bucks. i think the people who designed and built the vehicle bought bread and beer with the billion bucks, and may have invented something useful along the way.
it’s one thing to watch out for waste fraud and abuse, it’s another to shut down all adventure.
sammy is all in favor of taking the short cut to poverty.
he can only see the nickel on the table, thinking it’s his or ought to be his. and it’s better in his pile than it would be, say, feeding a kid who was about to invent the science of electricity.
or, if i may say from experience, like an abused and starved dog who bites at the hand trying to feed him and set him free. hey, man, that chain is solid gold. keep your pink hands off of it.
Thank you coberly.
Consider the ideas whether viable or not if political winds change with Dems and Repubs. MG’s concepts on trade policy have always required heavy governmental intervention.
Bkrasting says a minor increase in SS witholding is impossible because of prevailing attitudes in Congress, so come up with a different recommendation. Well, good policy can be recommended on its own. If then it is amended due to politics of the moment, it still is good policy on its own.
So now we’re making policy recommendations rather than reviewing, analysing and criticizing those that are actually before the Congress or being considered and developed by members of the legislature? I hadn’t realized that this is a policy blog. If so, what then is the value of discussing points one and two other than as an intellectual masturbation exercise? Yes, raise OT pay requirements to a point that is unacceptable to the private sector and they are likely to hire more workers rather than ustilize OT. The 2.5 factor may not be enough. Additional workers bring with them extra costs in the form of benefits and training. Worse yet for the employees is the possible recognition by managment that having only P/T workers is yet less costly; no benefits and lower hourly wages with no O/T at all. Lots more workers, but at lots lower wages and benefits.
Point two would have to be expanded to cover both temporary workers and P/T workers and a provision to require comparable benefits to both as measured by benefits to F/T permanent workers in the same organization or industry.
But that’s the problem. It is all very fanciful to be discussing such a reasonable approach to employment issues following thirty or forty years of efforts to whittle down workers’ compensation and share of productivity. Why waste the time? Wake me when you hear one of our elected leaders offer up something that sounds even remotely progressive regarding empolyment and worker compensation.
jack
an incubator is a warmbox you put your eggs in to hatch while the chicken attends to other things.
i suspect a business incubator would have something to do with hatching new businesses.
good thinking jack
let us by all means avoid generating any policy proposals of our own.
better we should accept the framing of those who have policy proposals of their own.
that we we don’t have to do any of the hard thinking ourselves.
I am a little confused…to criticize policy I thought one needed a notion of what good policy might be. With all the caveats, and none of the sloganeering that is sold as policy. Good policy is not rewarded…good slogans are in the short term. Long term might be 30 years.
Maybe the problem is that good political policy requires statesmanship while political machinations are more likely to result in running down the state. Can we even recollect an elected official that we might identify as a statesman, or woman?
Coberly,
“the man behind the curtain looks more like he works for Wall Street than the Red Brigade.”
Why does everybody who says this never provide any actual evidence to support the claim?
Do have any evidence to suppoort this analysis, or are your comments politically motivated similar to Jack’s?
yerom
of course my comments are politically motivated. what the hell else would they be?
as for “evidence,” do you read the papers?
Coberly,
“do you read the papers?”
“Yes,” but my analysis of Obama leads me to believe that he doesn’t take orders from Wall Street unless they are teaming up to fullfill Obama’s Ideological agenda, which most on Wall Street understand Obama’s Ideological agenda is not in their best interest……so there is not much of a relationship.
If you have evidence to suggest otherwise….I would definitely like to go thru it.
MG,
1.) I Like It!
2.) I Like It! but I would also add that company’s should be allow to have a temporary worker for less than the 35% Premium if they provide specialized training/education for a period up to, lets say, 6 months.
3.) I Like It!, but companies must have a consequence for failure. We can’t have the “revolving door” effect on the public dime. The money handed out has to be followed to ensure that the money is being handed out in good faith….i.e. the buisness plan makes sense.
4.) I Like It! You could offer an incentive or a tax breaks to those local buisness leaders that are willing help develop new buisness plans and those who offer financial advise.
Tang came from the Gemini program. Orbital mechanics came from Newton, ENIAC was in 1944. Sputnik scared everyone because getting a load in orbit is the pre req for ICBM’s. Lot of good that little bit does for grandma.
NASA not much new since 1959.
The part that might have been useful, if you can see it maybe is worth 75 bucks.
The “payload” study effects of solar flares on earth, (CoRev says NASA is full of it!!!!) was $450M, if you take the rocket, not a delta so I don’t know much about it, and the launch services at Vandenberg AFB in Lompoc Ca, up the coast from Santa Barabara, it has 9 zeroes after the 1.
FDR.
Bush Sr. set the stage for Clinton cutting military spending, raising taxes whne needed and terminating the Navy’s super fighter the A-12, which may have caused the loss in 92.
Bush Sr. rattled the military industrial complex by stopping the Air Force stealth fighter at one wing and told them “no longer going to deploy one for one replacements since the Sovietes went away.
JFK talked a good game then did otherwise.
yerom
assault on social security
medical reform that subsidizes insurance industry
stimulus that subsidizes the banks and high end taxpayers
dropping global warming initiatives
let us not call what either of us does “analysis.”
ilsm
i don’t have time to research the tech spinoffs, but my bet is they amount to more than Tang.
you couldn’t put ENIAC in your pocket.
if it cost a billion to put the package on the launch pad, how much would it cost to put a second one there. and who goes hungry because of it?
hunger in this country is a political problem, not an economic one.
god i hate to say it, but
Reagan in his Uncle Fuddly way gave Gorbachev the room he needed to end the Cold War (not by spending him into bankruptcy).
Then Truman managed the post war pretty well, and i suppose ike did too.
nixon tried, but the neocons sandbagged him. opening China counts.
Carter camp David
Bush Sr as you point out.
But I can’t see it from the others… not that i was always paying attention.
I don’t like what Clinton did in Yugoslavia but am not in a position to say it wasn’t “better than the alternative.”
Did we do anything in South America or Asia that made things better for the people?
I might have to take back Ike’s credit if he had much to do with what when on in Guatemala or ElSalvador. But then I’d have to take away Reagan’s for the same reason.
IS a Puzzlement!
Computerized record keeping can be mandated.
A launch solution on some Russian target was done just fine on Eniac.
The commercial world lead the way from transistors on.
The integrated circuit (IC) stuff is interesting.
DoD played with it until mid 80’s the really small, fast stuff was developed after the private folks had 95% of the market for IC, somewhere around 1985.
No one doing DoD work cranks out a new generation of IC, not for 25 years.
Today DoD pays contractors to help figure out what to do as the IC’s go out of manufacture. ARINC out in Coronado Ca.
The game was DoD/NASA in the 50’s.
Nothing since, and if you want to check, IC’s came from R&D budget codes “01” or “02” DARPA, R&D funding going to universities which is less than 5% of R&D funding most going to redo all the things GAO complains about.
I know a little about applying technology and in my time we waited for the commercial stuff.
I am old.
Lessee, I guess ILSM forgets what it was like before the weather satellites. Surprised by major storms was the norm. I guess ILSM forgets the savings provided by the GPS satellites. I guess ILSM forgets the different communcations worldidwe had before the satellites. How many trillions and lives worldwide have been saved provided by that ole better weather forecasting alone?
Sometimes ignorance has a quailty all its own.
cob,
I suggest Halberstam’s book on Korea, it gives a lot of background on how the China lobby etc worked in with the anti New Deal and the red scare types to set the stage for perpetual war.
I think Truman should have fired Mac Arthur in July 1950.
Going north of thr 38 parellel played into the hands of the US militarists and Mao.
ilsm
no doubt. still, the commercial stuff was created “for” the NASA market. i simply don’t see that much innovation coming from private industry, unless you mean credit default swaps.
ilsm
i’ll try to remember to look up the book. there is a lot i don’t know. i was really surprised to learn that the neo cons arose in response to (against) Nixon’s “détente.”
i’m glad to see that CoRev is in favor of studying solar flares.
personally i can’t think of a better use for a billion bucks.
cob,
There is no innovation coming from the military industrial complex. The same old, same old solutions, just new generations.
Here is an example, F-35 may implement a “backbone” in it carrying all its data from various systems feeding to a manager either automated, the pilot or a link to the ground. This is the internet DARPA devised in the late 50’s. And it is 50 years getting to work, if indeed it does.
And each year delay the hardware of this backbone changes, driven by the Wii guys and the backbone gets rewritten……………………….
The idea for applying a “backbone” like a world wide web has been in work for 25 years.
There is better use of resources looking for new solutions than to build a new line of aircraft carriers for Adm Kimmel’s problems.
And the Ford class carrier is thinking of a electromagnetic catapult, which is maglev tech done in Red China, and Germany.
New stuff huge expense to fight WW II a little more efficiently, if they can get it right.
Same for F-35, manned ground vehicles etc, etc, etc.
Hey CoRev,
You are getting the idea of opportunity cost?
If I had to pay a subscription to the Air Force for using the GPS signals I would not. What would the bill be to use that cluster of satellites? etc, etc……
You and coberley seem to think the DoD or NASA building it (and customers will come) and then the world will use it is a good strategy for spending the society’s resources. Might make sense but as I stated above the technology part is small potatoes when it gets implemented in the huge waste fraud and abuse system of DoD acqusiitions. And the military industrial complex’ implementations are flawed, late and hugely costly.
The opportunity costs of spending on weather satellites or GPS are still being studied, maybe they were worth the expenditure, if you assert there is a public good and that public good is better delivered by the government.
However, the public good posed by building a Ford class carrier is suspect, there are better things to do with the money.
I have a GPS mapping set in my automobile, it is a nice toy and I love to cause the little voice in there to recalculate the route when I take the scenic one. I get to play with the output of billions and billions of dollars that were taken from hungry kids, and workers who needed new coats.
I suggest you consider, where the world would be if the military had not consumed so much of the economy.
Opportunity?
There is a lot of money in war, pays for PAC’s and humbug factories…..neocons.
Rooted in Henry Luce, and the internationalists the US was crashing against Japanese imperial asperations and Luce used Time the late 30’s like some use Fox.
Fellow travellers were anit New Deal, some isolationists, as well. But the hog wash about the US losing China in 1949 was tripe used by Luce and Time to run up the empire thing.
Throw in fear of Stalin, and communism in general, with hate of the New Deal, some thought the New Deal destroyed liberty, and you get a militant conservative coalition.
Where Nixon fit I don’t know, but Ike was not a Luce fan, he and the professional soldiers (there are very few today, who question the pentagon funding machine) knew Chiang was useless and that US could not do for him. Mao for all his faults raised the masses.
The Luce crowd was anti nationalist and every nationalist was a communist, now every nationalist is a terrorist.
Neocons, PNAC etc were predated by Henry Luce and the anti New Deal, the extent that perpetual war and the military industrial complex is a toll for destroying a humane America is debatable.
ilsm
i defer to your superior knowledge. like i said, i am against military waste. but i still think studying solar flares is worth the money and the knowledge gained may end up being worth more than a few million more Air Jordans on little ghetto feet.
ilsm
i think you are getting confused here. i was only defending the solar flare study, not the extra carrier battle group.
the “small potatoes” is great… look at the leverage we get. for you GPS is a toy. for me… in my former profession…GPS is a huge money saver. Thing is, in order to support the “small potatoes” we need to find “toys” to sell to the proletariat.
your car only exists to bring down the price of Rolls and Ferrarri to the folks who wouldn’t be able to afford cars if the mass market did not subsidize the infrastructure.
ilsm
basically agree. i especially love the millionaires who have had their liberty destroyed. the terrible twos.
but in general i think going to the moon is a great idea, and i really don’t see it as costing any kid a calorie.
look at poor counties, or poor cities. you see people hanging out on street corners. they are poor not for lack of resources, but for lack of imagination. the entrepreneurs have not figured out how to put them to work. this is something i suggest the government could do… and get Buff calling me a communist wanting to destroy his freedom and tell everyone what to wear.
cob,
Ike, said the thing about taking food away from kids in 1953. I was young when he was president, but I liked Ike.
Seymour Melman did a lot of work explaining where Ike was coming from as an educator and engineer teaching at Columbia University.
Frederic Bastiat wrote about the opportunities lost building forts at Verdun and Sedan, something about society not getting much productive improvement from things that blow up rather than make things.
Even Bastiat and Ike had levels of which the opportunity cost of war is worth it, usually due to survival.
Problem in US is war is so important an option that we buy things that don’t work and are not needed for the just in case someone figures out how to fight the way we want to fight.
ilsm
i suspect ike was speaking a bit metaphorically, but he was no Keynesian. conservatives tend to see the economy as a static pot of money… a zero sum game. it’s not like that. may be when we run out of oil and global warming hits us. but not now. we can feed the poor and even house them and spend a billion here and there for adventure and new ideas.
what i agree with you about is we can’t spend a Trillion dollars on a Maginot line and still have a Federal Budget that can pay for more important things… including an effective military.
I will let this go…………….
However, maybe DoT can come up with the 50-60 Billion bucks to renovate the GPS constellation.
ilsm:
Ike did not believe Chiang Kai-Shek was useless. He even visited Formosa during his Presidency. I know this because my father sat on my grandfather’s shoulders as Ike waved to the crowds in Taipei.