Any comments?
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>Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 09:11:04 +0000 (GMT)
>From: D S Byrne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Concealed unemployment in US?
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>Both the OECD and various postmodernist European leftists (their politics
>are respectable left - I'm thinking of Claus Offe etc) argue that advanced
>industrial economies have a permanent surplus population which is no
>longer required even as a reserve army of labour. The origins of this
>account lie in a parallel drawn between productivity gains in agriculture
>since the late 1700s and recent productivity gains in manufacturing
>productivity. When challenged by the reality of 'the great American jobs
>machine' and the existence of virtual full employment in the US, albeit
>with a base of low pay, they argue that this is concealed unemployment and
>represents no more than workfare. I think this is wrong and that what we
>are seeing is a process of the internalization of combined and uneven
>development, what Goran Therborn has called 'the Brazilianization of
>advanced capitalism'. A key empirical demonstration of this latter
>argument depends on the rates of profit obtained from low wage sectors. My
>understanding is that rates of profit in low paying sectors in the US
>economy are very high - I know this is true for Health although of course
>this is a sector with internal divisions (although - am I right here -
>only Physicians have high pay within it). Any info and / or views on this
>matter ? Note that European economies generally have much higher rates of
>formal unemployment than the US, although, with the exception of the UK
>which seems to have the worst of both systems, this is associated with
>good job protection and high rates of wage substitution benefits for those
>with citizenship status.
>
>David Byrne
>Dept of Sociology and Social Policy
>University of Durham
>Elvet Riverside
>New Elvet
>Durham DH1 3JT
>
>0191-374-2319
>0191-0374-4743 fax
>
>
