Hi Michael, I think the jury's still out on this one. In certain national contexts (usually advanced capitalist ones), the economists are probably not eating crow. (Basso's work shows that working-time is increasing in advanced capitalism) At the global scale, (the only proper level to examine this question IMO), the economists don't even know where to begin carving it up. The ILO says 1/3 of the world's workforce is un- or underemployed (about 1 billion, mainly underemployed). And they claim the situation is getting worse.
I think I mentioned before that China experienced full employment by the end of the 1970s. Now, the scale of the 'surplus' population is measured in the hundreds of millions. (and there was *not* much disguised unemployment in China before the reforms) I'm not *blaming* technology for this; 'unemployment' is a social category that presupposes capitalist relations of production, which in the case of China you actually watch being created. The capitalist relations of production is where our critique should be aimed I would think. Policy makers in China have given up trying to create formal employment for the 'surplus population', and are happy to let them fend for themselves in the informal sector. Well, I suppose hawking stuff on the street is still value-creating service employment! (sarcasm) This still seems relevant: "All political economists of any standing admit that the introduction of new machinery has a baneful effect on the workmen in the old handicrafts and manufactures with which this machinery at first competes. Almost all of them bemoan the slavery of the factory operative. And what is the great trump-card that they play? That machinery, after the horrors of the period of introduction and development have subsided, instead of diminishing, in the long run increases the number of the slaves of labour! Yes, Political Economy revels in the hideous theory, hideous to every "philanthropist" who believes in the eternal Nature-ordained necessity for capitalist production, that after a period of growth and transition, even its crowning success, the factory system based on machinery, grinds down more workpeople than on its first introduction it throws on the streets." KM http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S7 Cheers, Jonathan M Perelman wrote: The current explanation that job flight this response to improved technology races to questions for me. Virtually every economics textbook I have seen dismisses the idea that new technology can destroy jobs. The most reputable counterargument came from David Ricardo in the 19th-century. Few economists have done much further. Supposedly, new technology lowers prices, which spurs new demand, which reemploy as the workers. I'm not saying I accept this argument, but I have not seen many economists eating crow. Secondly, I have no idea how you separate new technology from outsourcing. Until very recently, much of the spur to new technology came from the production of informational processing technologies, but much of the manufacturing, which certainly played a role in the reduction of costs, occurred offshore. ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
