I assume that mainstreamers who blame technology never acknowledge that
R&D is financed by capital and capital's state, and that it's part of the
strategy to cheapen labor? It's just the innocent at the party?
Doug
Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Left Business Observer
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On Wed, 28 Sep 1994, Peter.Dorman wrote:
> As part of my project for the Dept of Labor on labor standards and trade, I
> reviewed the literature on the growth of wage inequality in the US (and some
> of the other OECD countries) and its possible relationship to north-south
> trade. Overall, I must say I found most of the work uncompelling--based on
> implausible theoretical assumptions (labor market equilibrium in all
> countries, automatically balanced trade, etc.). One of the most striking
> aspects of this literature is the tendency to attribute all unexplained
> residuals to technology, without any direct tests of the hypothesis that
> technology accounts for rising inequality. Krugman, for example, in his
> popular writings follows this tack by throwing in a few hunches or anecdotes
> and then saying that everyone (who counts) agrees that new technologies are
> dividing us into an educated, competitive group and an uneducated group of
> inevitable losers. BUT THERE IS LITTLE OR NO EVIDENCE FOR THIS CLAIM. It is
> seized upon because they don't want to believe that trade, deunionization,
> government hostility to labor, the breakdown of corporate adherence to past
> practices in pay and employment, etc. are responsible. Technology is a deus
> ex machina to which we can only adjust.
>
> David Howell has a nice paper debunking the technology-causes-inequality myth.
>
> Peter Dorman
>
