Greetings,
On Fri, 5 Dec 1997, Doug Henwood wrote:
> I asked this question on Post-Keynesian thought a year or so ago, and got
> no satisfactory answers. With the strong U.S. employment report released
> this morning - payroll growth of over 400,000, a drop in the unemployment
> rate to 4.6% (the lowest in 24 years), and real wage growth approaching 2%
> - I'll try it again. Most Keynesians, regardless of whatever modifier you
> want to use, would have predicted several years ago that a policy mix based
> on deficit reduction and sustained high real interest rates would provoke
> stagnation, and not what we've seen over the last 3-4 years. Why have
> things turned out the way they have?
>
> Doug
I think it is necessary to avoid focusing on the appearance of
things and move directly to the essence of matters. In terms of
unemployment, the so-called lowest unemployment rate in the last few
decades conceals numerous realities which have been thoroughly discussed
by many (e.g., Holly Sklar in Chaos or Community? 1995). If one sees only
4.6% unemployment without looking into the sort and kind of jobs being
created, forgets the bias of "official" data, focuses only on unemployment
as opposed to the jobless rate and so on then one will arrive at an
inaccurate impression of things. One will think that things are
actually going well when in fact the opposite is the case.
For example, according to Dembo and Morehouse, the 1993 jobless
rate was nearly 14%. They also conclude that "With each succeeding
recovery period, the *Jobless Rate* has fallen less and less" (The
Underbelly of the U.S. Economy: Joblessness and the Pauperization of Work
in America, 1994).
Besides other things the 4.6% unemployment rate masks the fact
that the productive forces continue to be destroyed by capitalism.
Technological developments are increasingly making the service sector look
more and more like the manufacturing sector.
In our society inequality and poverty continue to increase.
The reverse is not the case. The capitalist tendency for the rich to get
richer and the poor poorer is proceeding unfettered, irrepsective of this
or that unemployment rate. This cannot be otherwise because the economic
system in existence is capitalism, which has its own objective laws of
development.
Shawgi Tell
Graduate School of Education
University at Buffalo
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
