Doug Henwood wrote that his reading of employment-GDP numbers confirmed the
ILO's assertion that "the main problem in countries with high unemployment
is slow growth, not a change in the employment intensity of growth."
Doug's brackets -- whether growth in itself is good or sustainable -- could
be expanded to include the issue of whether higher rates of growth would
themselves necessarily contribute _correspondingly_ to employment growth.
This is the tacit assumption behind the ILO argument. Isn't the ILO
position, then, basically the mirror image of the central banker's dogma
that too fast a rate of growth will set off an inflationary spiral?
The problem is that "extrapolating from trends" is fraught with
difficulties, especially when those trends are used to describe phenomena
that far more complex than the trends. "Growth" -- as Doug's brackets
indicate -- is an enigma. But so is "employment". At the very least,
employment needs to be thought of in terms of a dual labour market -- core
and periphery. And even that is a brutal simplification.
The danger of an ILO type argument is that while disputing the banker's
prescription, it concedes a metaphor of the economy as some sort of
hydraulic pump outside and above the lives of those whose livelihoods
circulate through its valves. It reminds me of the joke about a man
propositioning a woman by asking her if she'd sleep with him for a million
dollars. The "slow growth" argument accepts the proposition and is only
haggling about the price.
Regards,
Tom Walker
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