RE: [Futurework] Walmart and the American dream

[Harry Pollard]

Ray,   Wanted!   Start at Once!   Top Wages!   Full Benefits.   Hiring!   Harry   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ray Evans Harrell Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 5:17 PM To: Harry Pollard; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Walmart and the American dream How would jobs look for people?   REH     ----- Original Message ----- From: Harry Pollard To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 1:50 PM Subject: RE: [Futurework] Walmart and the American dream Arthur,   You said:   "Design capability is a complicated discussion.  Let's just say that when it is lost it is almost impossible for the country with that loss to buy intelligently in the global marketplace."   Perhaps instead of countries "buying intelligently", people should do the buying. Do they need "design capability"? I'm sure I don't know what you mean by design capability. When Britain was completely free trade, did she have design capability? If she didn't, how did she carry on her enormous trade with the whole world?   Questions, questions, questions. We have been losing jobs for two centuries as we learn to do things with fewer people and less cost. Perhaps most obviously with regard to agriculture. A couple of hundred years ago practically everyone was in agriculture.now, there are perhaps 3%. So we lost more than 90% of our jobs. What happened? All kinds of new production Why should the loss of a few hundred, or even a few thousand specific jobs bother us very much? If you are a member of the "lump of labor" club, the loss may seem troublesome. Otherwise, it can be viewed as market progress toward cheaper goods and an enhanced standard of living.   If you recall the second assumption of classical political economy, you'll know that we are not over keen on work. We want the fruits of our labor, but we aren't eager to exert ourselves getting them.   So what is our "economic policy"? It seems to be to remove people from the production process. Then the rest will have jobs (which are assumed to be scarce, perhaps because most people already have everything and need little). Thus, we keep young people in school until they are 18, then we fill our colleges with high school graduates who probably shouldn't be there. We impose retirement ages and make early-retirement very attractive. A clever trick is to put people at their most productive age into the military, which is hardly productive. We suck the brightest and the best into swollen bureaucracies whose major task seems to be to restrict production rather increase it. And when we have finished this culling, what do we have? We have an unemployment problem. Could it possibly be that we have adopted the wrong approach? We have a country this is practically oozing resources. We have enough space to take the whole population of the world and they wouldn't be crowded. Yet, we cannot answer Henry George' s question: "Why are people looking for jobs. Why aren't jobs looking for people." Is the problem "design incapability"? Harry