From: agarton@peg.pegasus.oz.au
Newsgroups: aus.politics
Date: 28 Aug 92 23:26 EST
Subject: Re: How Fightback Delivers Hi Unemploy
Nf-ID: #R:peg:996200257:peg:996200266:000:7179
Nf-From: peg.pegasus.oz.au!agarton    Aug 28 23:26:00 1992



>Might also free up funds for R&D leading to technology that would
>lower production costs even further.

Like I said (later in the same paragraph you quoted from) :

>>It's tempting to argue that
>>the buffer provided by cheap wages might lead to more employer
>>investment in the technology race, but tariffs don't seem to
have
>>delivered that.

Also, remember, "lower production costs even further" probably
means putting people out of work.

You hop around from idea to idea as if it's difficult for you to
keep in mind and piece together more than one or two at a time (a
quality common to many economists by the way).

>This pressure brought about by an inflexible high-cost wage
system
>also results in lay-offs and firms going broke.

Oh, you're worried by that? I thought the Hewson free market
vision, while being sold as a means of making the players
stronger, was really
 about promoting 'strength' by killing off the weak - be they
firms or employees. Come to think of it that was Labor's
de-regulation vision as well. The difference seems to be you
either prop up employers with cheap wages while killing them off
with zero-tariffs (Libs) or you prop them up with tariffs (raising
a bit of revenue while you're at it) and perhaps kill them off if
they can't turn out a decent wage to their employees (Labor?).

>The development of new
>technology is quite expensive and is not really catalysed by
having an
>overpaid workforce.

Overpaid! Not enough pain! Slack! Purge! Purge!

No its not catalysed by that - you dont overpay your workforce in
order to push your employers into creating efficiency elsewhere
(ie in their hardware). But you maintain a livable income *because
this has an intrinsic value within itself*. If it doesn't then
what's the point of production, economics, any of it? The trouble
with 'Hewsonism' is that you've only got to listen to the guy when
he gets a bit hot under the collar to realise that its
"competiton" that has the intrinsic value, its the wonderful
*system* he envisions that is where value lies - and other
considerations must be sacrificed to that. In Hewsonian terms it
is a victory to achieve better sets of figures at the expense of
comfort, aesthetics, health or anything else that can't have
figures attached to it.

Yes it is "quite expensive" to develop new technology. But most of
the people we're talking about don't develop it; they simply buy
it because its going to return more than they spend. A lot of this
stuff, particularly electronics actually appears as fallout from
(public funded) military R&D.

>This change of focus to the service industries is tantamount to
>throwing in the towel as regards trying to keep up with the
latest
>technologies. The move away from manufacturing was due to us
lacking
>the competetive edge, for whatever reason.

You sure it didn't have something to do with automation in the
factories?  t is just as important.

>What's good for General Motors...

Yes? What comes next? Or didn't you really want to say it?

What's good for General Motors is good for everybody? Good for a
certain strata of Americans? Good for....   ?

This is an antiquated notion, largely to do with the tech. vs.
labour factors I've been discussing here. You may find it useful
to acquaint yourself with the term "post-fordism".

How about: What's good for General Motors...

*is bad for the planet

*is not even good for its employees by your logic

*is to incinerate tens of thousands of Iraqis

*is to set up in a town with a perfectly good public
transportation system, buy it out, rip it up - then plaster the
place with freeways, gas stations, tyre shops and traffic jams.

In l945, a front company financed by a secret bus-tyre-petrol
cartel (Firestone, Standard Oil of Californa, Phillips Petroleum,
Mack Manufacturing, and several of their subsidiaries)  bought out
LA's red trolley cars, the very efficient, profit-making and
minimally polluting Pacific Electric System. The new company,
National City lines, quickly bought 237 GM buses and integrated
the trolley network with bus lines.  Soon after, the company began
tearing up the trolley tracks. By 1955, the last trolley car had
been phased out and the last kilometre of track had been
destroyed. The cartel had successfully used the same tactic in 44
other cities.

Its hard to breathe and its kind of hard to get around - but boy
it turned in a great set of numbers!

After the collusion was uncovered, the Federal Govt. brought a
conspiracy suit against GM, Firestone, Standard Ol and the others.
The companies were found guilty and the corporations were ordered
to pay the maximum fine- US $5,000. By this time GM had sold $42
mil worth of buses and equipment to National City Lines alone, and
hundreds of millions more to bus companies around the country.
(Australia meanwhile had followed suit, influenced by America's
shift to buses and counselled by Bitish advisers. The tracks were
pulled and the last tram ran in NSW in 6l.)

>some people might see higher wages as a very
>large disincentive to staying home, and take up more jobs

Well its all speculation isn't it... you speculate on a gluttony
motivation driving up demand for jobs, I speculate on hardship and
insecurity (ie: rank fear) and suggest they're probably a stronger
motivation, which is what Hewson is banking on. The difference is
I think its bad while he thinks it's good.

Perhaps you could argue that wages can be forced down to a
threshold where they're not even worth going out and getting but I
think you might have a full blown social revolution on your hands
if the rule of misery ever held such sway as that.

>But it's only through competition that the new technologies are
>devised and implemented.

Eh? Oh you mean like the "competition" that took place during WWar
II and W(Cold)War III? Most of those technologies are sitting idle
and have little relevance to employment - unless they were used to
vapourise all those useless unemployed people. But I guess we'll
save that idea till after the election....

Well alright, they're adopted for cost advantage which is
sometimes related to competition. And to come round again to my
original premise, cutting wages provides and alternative cost
advantage, makes it a bit easier to not bother catching up. You
speculate the extra goes into R&D (R&D!) I say it just makes them
lazy. It's the same kind of 'incentivation' Hewson wants to apply
to workers. He wants to take the cattle prodder off the
technocrats and stick it up the workers. Now even if the workers
were really insignificant amoebae whose quality of experience held
no value whatsoever in our economic thinking - even then there's
not much to be gained because productivity is delivered more and
more by technology and by ideas and labour costs have less and
less to do with it.

>The presentation seemed to say 'some evils are more
>evil than others', without really an acknowledgement of faults
>on both sides.

An evil that has no faults.... did I really say that? That is
amazing...

Anyway, this is not dinner conversation. This is polemic. Don't
you know there's a war going on?

D.N.

**************

posted courtesy of agarton.

Newsgroups: aus.politics