Max Sawicky wrote,
>Henceforth, the names of Walker and Chossudovsky
>will be forever intertwined, their ethnic
>contrast notwithstanding, though there may be
>some truth to the rumor that Chossudovsky's real
>name was Lodge and he changed it to make it as a
>radical economist. By the same token,
>Walker's original name was Lobachevsky and he
>changed it to make it as a Canadian
>wilderness guide.
Ah, Max, your reckless jest has forced from my lips the sad tale of my
appellation. Until a decade ago, I went by the name "Max Sawicky". Then,
sometime in the mid 1980s, when I could no longer bear being dogged by skip
tracers and the odd shotgun toting dad (and his even odder daughter), I
adopted the handle of Rip van Winkle. To make a long story short, when I
awoke I changed my name again, this time to another Washington Irving
character, and I have remained Tom Walker to this very day.
Max also said,
>Obviously, in light of this thread, very little
>of what I said was self-evident. I merely
>pointed out that the U.S. data of *relatively*
>low unemployment contradicted one of Cho's
>several breathless generalizations, but most of
>my post was a set of questions about the issues
>of financial fragility and market fixing, which
>you and Valis turned into a discussion about who
>had bigger calluses.
Max is right. Chossudovsky's characterization of the unemployment
fundamentals was bombastic rather than substantive. But Max is only half
right. His "evidence" refuting Chossudovsky's breathless generalizations
consisted of the statement "Employment is relatively high now, even taking
non-standard work arrangements into account." Not a breathless
generalization, to be sure. But a generalization equally laden with
ideological baggage (not necessarily Max's).
And as for the question about who has bigger calluses and who turned Max's
post into such a discussion. Let's just go back to Doug Henwood's breathless
snapshot of US employment:
Doug Henwood wrote,
>Relatively high? The US EPR is at a record high, part-time employment has
>actually fallen over the last year, temp employment hasn't grown at all
>over the last six months even as overall employment has risen by about a
>million, and real wages are rising at around 2% a year. Unless of course
>the BLS is making this all up.
Taken at face value, the selected data above portray an image of robust good
times. Not exactly the "plenty of misery 40 blocks south" nor the "sick with
overwork", "plagued by deprivation" or "stagnant and/or declining real
hourly wages" that Doug later cited. Or was there something written between
the lines that I missed? All I did was point out that one doesn't have to
believe the BLS is making up the above data to question it's self-evident
relevance to the big picture. Real wages are rising at around 2% a year? So
what? For how long have they been rising and for how long before that had
they been falling and by how much? Etc. etc. etc. Doug knows those data
better than I do.
You'll have to excuse me, now, chaps. I have to go feed my moral high horse
his oats.
Regards,
Tom Walker
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