Unhealthy Societies
FYI -- From: Keith Rankin[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Did you see the Tuesday documentary on TV1 last night? It was called "The Great Leveller" and is based on the book _Unhealthy Societies_ by British economic historian Richard Wilkinson. Wilkinson has shown through painstaking research that the predominant determinant of a nation's life expectance is economic inequality. People who are RELATIVELY disadvantaged within their societies have a much increased chance of dying prematurely of especially heart disease; ie relative poverty is actually more of a problem than is absolute poverty. After relative affluence, the second way to live a long life is through socialisation, including shared adversity. Thus people who lived through World War 2 had much higher life expectancies than their parents. [I have been convinced for a long time that people born after 1955 will live shorter lives on average than their parents, and inequality will be the main cause.] Re heart disease, inequality accounted for 60% of deaths, whereas factors relating to diet, smoking and exercise together only accounted for 40% of deaths. The campaign against poverty and inequality is actually much more important than most of us realise. The solution is not to place most of us into subservient jobs. The reasoning is that stress levels are very high in people at the bottom of their pecking orders at work and elsewhere. The reasoning suggests that people facing poverty traps - ie unable to use their own initiative to improve their situation - are more susceptable to premature death than are people who are simply poor and live in communities in which poverty is normal. Interestingly, my own research into the Great Depression in NZ and Australia bears out similar points. In Adelaide in the GD, negative social indicators were highest at the onset of depression and during the recovery. These were the years when the victims stood out from their peers as victims. Crime suicide rates in NZ tell a similar story. Books : Social Sciences PicturePicturePicturePictureUnhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality PictureAuthor:Richard G. Wilkinson (University of Sussex) PictureAvailability: Usually shipped within 10 working days PictureNZ$76.46 PictureNZ$64.99 PicturePicturePicturePaperback - 272 pages 12/09/96 ISBN:0415092353 PictureNotes: * Taylor Francis Books Ltd * Size (216 x 138) mm * Illustrations PicturePictureDescription Among the developed countries it is not the richest societies which have the best health, but those which have the smallest income differences between rich and poor. Inequality and relative poverty have absolute effects: they increase death rates. But why? How can smaller income differences raise average life expectancy? Using examples from the USA, Britain, Japan and Eastern Europe, and bringing together evidence from the social and medical sciences, this text offers an explanation. Healthy, egalitarian societies are more socially cohesive. They have a stronger community life and suffer fewer of the corrosive effects of inequality. As well as inequality weakening the social fabric, damaging health and increasing crime rates, the text aims to show that social cohesion is crucial to the quality of life. The contrast between the material success and social failure of modern societies marks an imbalance which needs attention. The relationship between health and equality suggests that important social needs will go unmet without a larger measure of social and distributive justice. from Amazon.com Unhealthy Societies : The Afflictions of Inequality by Richard Wilkinson PicturePictureShopping with us is 100% safe. Guaranteed. (We'll set one up for you) View my Wish List List Price: $27.99 Our Price: $25.19 You Save: $2.80 (10%) Availability: On Order; usually ships within 1-2 weeks. Picture: HollyHoliday Note: This item may not arrive by December 24. Visit Gift Ideas to find items we can ship today. Paperback (February 1997) Routledge; ISBN: 0415092353 Amazon.com Sales Rank: 48,828 Avg. Customer Review: Picture: 5 out of 5 stars Number of Reviews: 2
Info on welfare to work
Can you help with leads, info etc? -- From: Deborah Tucker[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] My main research work that I'm just starting on, (working under Ian Shirley), both to finish the Masters and possibly for the Ministry of Social Policy, is a comparative study on the interface between benefits and work, looking at North America, the UK, Ireland, Australia, NZ, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada and Finland. It will look at the range of benefit types in each of the countries, how they are operationalised, then how the respective governments are responding in terms of welfare-to-work initiatives. You may know of some useful contacts or websites. Many thanks, Deborah
FW: Eu Full Employment Thematic Network
FYI -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED][SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] The website of the Thematic Network on Full Employment for Europe at www.barkhof.uni-bremen.de/kua/memo/europe/tser/ may be of interest to members of this list. The Network is an international group of European economists, funded by the European Union under its Targeted Socio-Economic Research Programme, whose purpose is to challenge the present neoliberal dominance of employment policy. The website has details of the members and programme of the network, together with many papers available for downloading. David Webster Glasgow City Housing [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Business contributions to the community
I am seeking ideas and information I have been making representations to the City Council (Palmerston North, New Zealand) on the need to update their employment and economic development policies, from the general and meaningless to something more specific, along the lines of employers more likely to stay in town, those that pay good wages, are involved in activities that are sustainable etc. When a new business comes to town one of the few things highlighted is the number of jobs it will create. This seems to be a key measure of desirability, presumably the wages that will be paid, ie increased spending power in the community. But if the jobs are Mc jobs they may be of little value. I remember from a report a friend produced, but neither of us can locate, from a visit to Chicago where a group had researched the vaccuum cleaner effect of a suprermarket - owned elsewhere, it took many millions out of the community. The damage casinos do is getting some close scrutiny. Can you help me with suggestions, references etc on ways to look at the contribution individual businesses make to a community etc Many thanks Ian http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3142/IR/#pag
John Tomlinson's 6th U/E conf paper
FYI The Importance of Trust Paper given at the 6th National Conference on Unemployment, University of Newcastle, 2324 September 1999. John Tomlinson Abstract The major problem facing Australian people without paid employment (or sufficient paid work) is not the absence of work but the absence of a decent income support mechanism. There are many way of providing sufficient paid employment to all who desire it. Identifying ways to surmount the obstacles to full employment are by no means intellectually challenging. Langmore and Quiggan (1994) set out a detailed blueprint to reduce unemployment to 3%. Governments, since 1974, have failed in this important task. The last Labor Government at least presented a coherent plan to train unemployed people and reduce the level of unemployment to 5% by the end of this century (Keating 1994). In this paper I concentrate upon ideological impediments to policies which would ensure both full employment and a decent universal income support system because there are no economic obstacles which would preclude such social advances (Saunders 1995, Rankin 1999). There are underlying reasons successive Australian Governments have rejected both full employment and decent income support. The on going debate about: * inclusion versus exclusion, * the fiscal drain of what the Labor and Liberal Parties call "dependency", * universalism versus targeted benefits (thread bare safety-nets for the "deserving"), * compulsion and punishment, * neglect versus liberation, and * the confused dependency rhetoric and moral jeopardy arguments is sucking this nation into a cesspool of policy busyness rather than a determination to get on with the business of sorting out both income support and the labour market. The interplay of these debates has resulted in the hegemonic economic fundamentalist preoccupation with small government leading in turn to the loss of commercial opportunities and wasted social opportunities. I seek to follow on from the paper I gave at the 5th National Conference on Unemployment ( NZUBI Web site) to further tease out the reason we fail to trust ourselves (and others) and why this leads in turn to our failure to introduce an unconditional basic income. http://www.geocities.com/~ubinz/JT/
re Genuine Progress
FYI You've seen the headlines, "GDP Up 5.4%." Good news, right? Not really. The gross domestic product simply adds up all the money we spend, and calls the results economic growth. Yet for years, economists, policymakers, reporters, and the public have relied on the GDP as a shorthand indicator of progress. In 1995, Redefining Progress created a more accurate measure of progress, called the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). It starts with the same accounting framework as the GDP, but then makes some crucial distinctions: It adds in the economic contributions of household and volunteer work, but subtracts factors such as crime, pollution, and family breakdown. We continue to update the GPI on a yearly basis to document a more truthful picture of economic progress. http://www.rprogress.org/progsum/nip/gpi/gpi_main.html also some excellent papers by Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute who did the GPI for Australia and visited NZ recently Papers by Clive Hamilton (see also the Australia Institute site): New Measures of Sustainability; the Genuine Progress Indicator for Australia, 20 November 1997 Economic Growth and Social Decline, Australian Quarterly May-June 1998 Economic Growth: The Dark Side of the Australian Dream, 24 February 1999 on http://www.geocities.com/~ubinz/IR/IRlinks.html(top half)
re the plight of the middle class
FYI Keith Rankin's Thursday Column Whither the Bourgeoisie? We frequently hear these days about the plight of the middle class, or the middle classes. But who are the middle classes? Are they simply those people (or households?) who earn between the median income and the 90th or 95th percentile? Can we really regard salaried persons as middle class? (After all, salaries started out as stipends of salt paid to soldiers.) Historically, the bourgeoisie were urban capitalists: merchants, financiers, self-employed professionals, manufacturers. The middle classes were entrepreneurs; they worked for profit, not wages. They came to be seen as dour, because - unlike the upper (landed) and lower classes - they (being insecure, with less tangible assets than land) saved like crazy. Because they ploughed their savings back into their enterprises, or into others' enterprises, they were seen by the classical economists as the agents (although not the ultimate beneficiaries) of economic growth. The classes were defined according to the sources of persons' incomes: land rent (upper class), profit (middle class) and wages or peasant farming (lower class). The class system arose because most people received all their income from a single "fund" (eg the "wage fund"). (You could even define whole nations according to this class system. Countries like Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Saudi Arabia, which derived their income mainly from land, were upper class. Western Europe was middle class. The Third World was lower class.) Classical economics predicted that the lower classes would be something of a reserve army of labour (in perpetual oversupply), while the middle class capitalists would make the key investments. The upper classes would sit back and collect the rent, eventually leaving everyone else in penury. As late as the 1950s, this class division seemed to make sense, both for households and for nations. The class system went awry with the emergence of a salaried professional class, and the replacement of proprietorial and partnership businesses with the corporate business sector. "Businessmen" became managers. By the 1970s, the social elite, in fulfilment of Joseph Schumpeter's predictions in 1945 (Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy), were working for wages. (Could any of us imagine Jane Austen's social elite being employees?) So, when we muse over the plight of the middle classes, are we musing about the future of professional employees? Or are we musing about entrepreneurship? Will those in the vanguard of the brave new knowledge economies be employees of corporate organisations? Or will they be electronically connected individuals selling their ideas to the highest bidders? Maybe we should bury the class system as a relic of the fading millennium. The era of the highly paid full-lifetime employee is dying, if not dead. Those 40-somethings who identify with that kind of career path, and who have made financial commitments on the expectation of fulltime careers with ever rising salaries, really do feel a sense of dread. Their perceptions of their standing in society are determined by both the particular professions that they are in, and the size of their salary packages. Although their social status is displayed through conspicuous consumption, their social status means much more to them than does the mere consumption of goods and services. The irony of the present times is that economic circumstances are propelling them from elite working class towards something more closely resembling the nineteenth century middle class, with all the insecurities that that implies. The key difference is that our worried salarymen will not lose all of their security. They will not end up in a debtors' prison if their incomes fall in Dickensian fashion from "20s 6d" to "19/6d" while their expenses remain at "£1". We have already come to live from multiple income streams. It is now normal for families to derive their incomes from a variety of sources; some from wages/salaries, some from profits, some from rents/interest/benefits (and some from crime). The class system ceases to have meaning when we no longer depend on income from a single class fund. The class system vanished: 1.. with the multiple-income household becoming the norm. Many people receiving entrepreneurial income have partners who receive wage income. 2.. with individuals increasingly working through varieties of contracts, many of which are much closer to customer-supplier than employer-employee relationships. An individual with two or more jobs is not unusual. At least one of those "jobs" might involve some creative activity that might yield a substantial profit but more likely will not. 3.. with the creation of the welfare state, and its evolution into a welfare society. Beneficiaries are analogous to the landlords of the ancien regime. Benefits are paid out of a social wage fund that represents a return on all our forms of collective capital: our
New Zealand Employment Summit
The Proceedings of the Employment Summit which was held in Palmerston North, New Zealand, on 30 March are now available on the Web. http://www.geocities.com/~ubinz/IR/1999summit/ProcCover.html#e As Steve Maharey, the local MP, said on the day, the Summit was the place to be for people interested in employment issues at the local level because the forum included the cream of workers in this field in the country. Several groups around the country have been very interested in the Summit, particularly with a view to running one of their own, said Ian Ritchie, one of the organising group. The Proceedings will give a lot of ideas and practical suggestions as to what communities around New Zealand can do. As well as the papers and discussions from the day, a number of other papers have been included which add to the usefulness of the collection and together with the Background Papers published earlier, provide a valuable resource for local, employment rich, economic development. For further information refer to: http://www.geocities.com/~ubinz/IR/1999summit/sum.html
When our working lives end at 45
FYI When our working lives end at 45 DAVID THOMSON looks at trends in age group employment and suggests that people in their later 40s and 50s will soon have to find something else to do. Dialogue, NZ Herald, 5 August 1999 Paid work past about age 45 is vanishing fast. This change of the past 20 years has been huge and relentless, touches all levels of society, spreads right across the developed world and shows few signs of halting, let alone reversing. And if present trends continue, then within a decade a third of all New Zealand men by their later 40s will be "retired" (without significant prospects of getting paid work again) and half of them by their mid-50s. Even fewer women will have substantial paid work - perhaps 40 per cent at their mid-50s. Consider just how deeply we are already into this "post-work world." Until the 1970s, 96 in every 100 men had fulltime paid work through their from their 20s to their early 50s: only then did employment fall off. Using data from the population census, in which fulltime work is 20 or more hours a week, we find that by 1996 the proportion of men in fulltime work was below 80 per cent at every age - 77 per cent for those in their later 40s, 65 per cent in their later 50s and 40 per cent in their early 60s. Only a few per cent more had some part-time work. Moreover, each successive birth cohort now begins paid work (and earning) later in life, reaches its employment peak at a lower and earlier point and sees its work fall off sooner and faster than for any predecessors. For those born in the early 1950s, for instance, full-time employment peaked at 90 per cent in their later 20s and was down to 75 per cent by their early 40s. Among Maori and Pacific Islanders it is all happening sooner and faster still. Where 96 per cent of Maori men had full- time work at age 40 in the 1960s and 1970s, just 65 per cent do so now. Among women the trends are different - yet similar. Through the past half-century, growing fractions in their 20s, 30s and 40s have had paid work. But that historical rise has ended, with a peak at 60 per cent fulltime employment around age 45 and after that employment is now falling steeply. Nearly 60 per cent of the women born in the 1930s had fulltime paid work at age 45, but just 35 per cent of the same group had it at age 55. That fall-off around age 45 is evident for every other cohort too, without exception. The nature and quality of the shrinking work are changing also. More and more of it after age 45 is self-employment, much of it uncertain, insecure and low paying. Twenty years ago 75 per cent of men aged 50 to 54, for example, received wages or salary for 20 or more hours a week and 20 per cent were self-employed. By 1996, just 50 per cent had wages or salary for 20 or more hours and 27 per cent were self-employed. The rest included some part-timers, but most were simply without work. Wages and salaries often now come in smaller amounts and with less security, continuity or "perks" than they did 20 and more years ago. The decline in "work" and its rewards is greater than the simple figures might hint. None of this is peculiar to New Zealand, and it likely points to a permanent, historic shift in modem capitalist economies. International studies suggest the important explanations for the trends are not poor health (today's middle-aged are healthier than ever), mandatory retirement laws (most people finish work long before any compulsory retirement age), state pension age (again, most "retire" long before reaching this), or employment in the public or private sector (both drop older workers equally readily). More unexpected - and unwelcome perhaps - is that overall economic performance matters little either. Booming and stumbling economies alike have for 20 years been shedding their mature employees, as "jobless growth" policy takes hold. Several key forces are at work. First is automation, or the computer revolution, which helps to do away with many routine procedures or lets them move to cheaper places and people. Secondly, the blind drive of global capital for short term "efficiencies," which leads to retaining as few staff as possible and as young, pliant, insecure and cheap as is possible. For many, it leads to an unpleasant, pressured workplace which we want to leave when we can. Thirdly, the disappearance of much manufacturing from developed economies and with it large numbers of better- paying jobs once dominated by the middle-aged. Fourthly comes attitudes, or the (questionable) belief that older workers are more expensive, slower; less enter prising, adaptable or retrainable than younger ones. Fifthly, and easy to overlook, is life- style choice, or a rising "culture of leisure" - the expectation among the middle-aged of an extended period free of work while still physically vigorous. All this is likely to intensify in the next few years, for the middle-aged are the fastest-growing segment of the
Charles Leadbetter
The NS Essay - Towards the knowledge society Markets are too cruel, communities too stifling, third ways too much of a fudge. Charles Leadbeater offers a fourth and better way PictureI will start with myself. I do not work for a company or a university. I am neither a business consultant nor a civil servant. I have no job title nor job description, no office nor expense account and I do not belong to a clearly defined occupational group. When people ask me, "What do you do?", I find it hard to come up with a clear, concise answer. I work from home, sometimes writing books, sometimes reports, often for a think-tank, sometimes for the government or a company. My father had a steady, predictable career, which carried him through to a well-earned, properly funded and enjoyable retirement. In contrast, although I am not yet 40 I have already had several mini-careers, in television and newspapers. Now I am one of Charles Handy's portfolio workers, armed with a laptop, a modem and some contacts. Peter Drucker christened people such as me "knowledge workers". Put it another way: I live on my wits. At times, I do yearn for the security of a large organisation: something solid, dependable, with a recognised brand name. But never for more than a minute. Most large organisations seem pretty soulless, increasingly focused, driven, lean machines, designed to deliver shareholder value. The lights never go out these days in modern companies: no sooner have you found a cosy corner of the organisation in which to settle down than some ambitious manager points the spotlight at you, questioning your contribution to profitability. Employees have to live with the threat of downsizing, reorganisation or merger. They are no more secure than I am. And that is the dilemma that faces most people. To go it alone is risky, demanding and stressful. Yet to rely upon larger organisations and institutions - companies and trade unions - isn't much of an improvement, because they seem either too cumbersome or too callous. Our societies and governments have simply failed to develop the institutions that can respond both to human needs and to the needs of the new economy. We are weighed down by organisations, laws and cultures largely inherited from the industrial 19th century: joint-stock companies, local authorities, trade unions, schools and universities. That century was as revolutionary as it was because technological innovation went hand in hand with institutional innovation. By contrast, we are scientific radicals but institutional conservatives. The Victorians had a grand political and social imagination to match their achievements in science and industry. Our era, thus far, has failed that test. To understand the scale of the renewal we need, we must understand the three forces driving change in the economies of modern societies. The first is finance capitalism, the most obvious and maligned force, which sends a shiver down most people's spines. It is the disruptive power of deregulated, interconnected global financial markets, which swill around the world in pursuit of shareholder value. This is familiar ground: the recent crisis that has plunged millions of Asians into poverty and sent commodity prices plummeting is only the latest in a long line. Since the collapse in 1973 of the Bretton Woods system, which was set up after the second world war to regulate world financial markets, there have been 69 banking crises and 87 currency crises. As Martin Wolf, the chief economic commentator at the Financial Times, put it: "Financial systems are not so much an accident waiting to happen, as one that is constantly happening." But a second force driving the new world economy, though just as pervasive and powerful as financial capitalism, is less well recognised. This is knowledge capitalism: the drive to generate new ideas and turn them speedily into commercial products and services. When you buy products today, you often pay mainly not for the materials used, but for the intelligence embedded in their software and technology. Radios became smaller as transistors replaced vacuum tubes. Thin fibre-optic cable has replaced tons of copper wire. When Henry Ford began mass-manufacturing cars, the miracle was that all those materials - iron, steel, rubber, glass - could be brought together in the same place. The steel in the latest luxury cars in the US costs $1,000; the electronics cost $3,000. The laptop I now use weighs a little less than the old laptop I bought five years ago. The two machines have broadly the same ingredients - plastic, copper, gold, silicon and a variety of other metals. Yet the new machine is ten times more powerful, far faster and more adaptable than the old machine. None of this extra power comes from new materials, but from human intelligence, which has allowed the makers to reorganise the available materials in minutely different ways. And it is this kind of creativity that now fuels economic advance.
Jeremy Rifkin - 1-6-99
Work, Social Capital, and the Rebirth of the Civil Society: A Blueprint for a New Third Sector Politics Rapporteur: Mr Jeremy Rifkin, President of the Foundation on Economic Trends, Washington, DC Picture: bouton_Conference.GIF (1078 bytes)Index The global economy is undergoing a fundamental transformation in the nature of work brought on by the new technologies of the Information and Biotech revolutions. These profound technological and economic changes are going to force every country to rethink their long held assumptions about the nature of politics if they are to adjust to the radical new world being readied for the 21st century. In the new era, the traditional political spectrum of marketplace vs government is likely to be replaced by the notion of a three-legged political stool with the marketplace, government, and civil sectors each acting as a check and balance against the other in a new kind of tripartite politics. The new political paradigm is going to have far reaching consequences, reshaping our very ideas of citizenship in the coming century. The revolutionary changes in technology and work are already laying the groundwork for this historic shift in the exercise of political power. Sophisticated computers, robotics, telecommunications, gene splicing, and other Information Age technologies are fast replacing human beings in virtually every industry. Nowhere is this trend more apparent than in the manufacturing sector. The number of factory workers in the United States declined from 33 percent of the workforce to under 17 percent in the past 30 years, even as American companies continued to increase production and output, maintaining our country's position as the number one manufacturing power in the world. For most of the 1980s it was fashionable to blame the loss of manufacturing on foreign competition and cheap labor markets abroad. In some industries, especially the garment trade and electronics, that has been the case. Recently, however, economists have begun to revise their views in light of new in-depth studies of the manufacturing sector. Economists Paul R. Krugman of MIT and Robert L. Lawrence of Harvard University, suggest, on the basis of extensive data, that "the concern, widely voiced during the 1950s and 1960s, that industrial workers would lose their jobs because of automation, is closer to the truth than the current preoccupation with a presumed loss of manufacturing jobs because of foreign competition." Automated technologies have been reducing the need for human labor in every manufacturing category. Within 10 years, less than 12 percent of the American workforce will be on the factory floor, and by the year 2020, less than 2 percent of the entire global workforce will likely still be engaged in factory work. Over the next quarter century, we will see the virtual elimination of the blue collar, mass assembly line worker from the production process. Until recently, economists and politicians assumed that displaced factory workers would find new job opportunities in the service sector. Now, however, the service sector is also beginning to automate, eliminating vast numbers of white collar workers in the process. In banking, insurance, and the wholesale and retail sectors, companies are deconstructing. They are eliminating layer after layer of management and infrastructure, replacing the traditional corporate pyramid and mass white collar workforces with small, highly skilled professional work teams, using state of the art software and telecommunication technologies. Even those companies that continue to use large numbers of white collar workers have changed the conditions of employment, transferring workers from permanent jobs to "just-in-time" employment, including leased, temporary, and contingent work, in an effort to reduce wage and benefit packages, cut labor costs, and increase profit margins. Acknowledging that both the manufacturing and service sector are quickly reengineering their infrastructures and automating their production processes, many mainstream economists and politicians have turned to the emerging knowledge sector, pinning their hopes on new job opportunities along the information superhighway and in cyberspace. While the "knowledge sector" will create many new jobs, they will likely be too few to absorb the millions of workers displaced by the new technologies. That's because the knowledge sector is, by nature, an elite workforce and not a mass workforce. Engineers, highly skilled technicians, computer programmers, scientists, and professionals will never be needed in "mass" numbers to produce goods and services in the Information Age. Indeed, the shift from mass to elite labor forces is what distinguishes work in the Information Age from that of the Industrial Age. With near workerless factories and virtual companies already looming on the horizon, every nation will
FW: DOWN AMONG THE ECONOMISTS
-- FYI From: stu[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] DOWN AMONG THE ECONOMISTS by Jonathon Rowe Of the organized belief systems in America today, economics is surely among the strangest - and economists themselves are even stranger. How such agile and ambitious minds could drift so far out of touch with daily reality, is a question which merits the attentions of our most astute psychologists. The profession is like a cult of the highly IQd, and I've always wondered about the strange rites and rituals that could enable their beliefs to persist. So last winter, when I heard that the American Economic Association was holding its annual meeting around the corner from my office, I felt a little like an anthropologist who finds an encampment of aborigines in his back yard. Would anyone raise questions about basic premises, as opposed to the arcane mathematics of hypothetical markets and pecuniary gain? Would they talk about the actual experience of ordinary Americans, or only abstractions like "productivity" and "growth?" I never imagined they'd be talking about me. Several months before, the Atlantic Monthly had published an article by myself and two colleagues, Cliff Cobb and Ted Halstead, called "If the economy is up, why is America down?" The article explored the paradox that had befuddled the nation's policy establishment during the 1992 Congressional campaigns. The economy was doing well, by the conventional reckonings - the GDP was up: people were supposed to be happy and fulfilled. But they weren't. In fact they were feeling pretty crummy. Alan Greenspan, America's economic pontiff, expressed the high-level headscratching in a speech to a business audience in San Francisco. Despite the economy's robust performance (again, as economists define it) he said, "there seemingly inexplicably remains an extraordinarily deep-rooted foreboding about the [economic] outlook" among the populace. What was really "inexplicable," we argued in the Atlantic article, was that Greenspan and other economists can't see the obvious. Their reckonings are archaic; and their very language tends to barricade their minds against what is actually happening in the world. Prime evidence is how they measure economic well-being: the gross domestic product or GDP. As have countless others before us, we pointed out that the GDP is a Mad Hatter's accounting system which adds but never subtracts. It lumps together just about everything that happens in the economy (the monetized portion, at least) under the archaic assumption that people become happier and better off whenever money changes hands. If you have been maimed in a multicar wreck, or gone through a grueling and costly divorce, or installed water filters in your home because the water supply is so bad, then please take a bow. You have caused economists to smile, and made your contribution to the GDP. These people can't tell misery from well-being, only more from less. And on top of that, we observed, economists can't even see the informal economies of family and community at all, because no money changes hands. The kitchen table becomes McDonald's, the watchful eyes of neighbors become burglar alarms and police - the more the informal economy breaks down, and a monetized "service sector" takes its place, the more the GDP goes up. Meanwhile, society is literally falling apart. We suggested that the American economy is approaching a turning point, if it hasn't gotten there already. Increasingly the negative, or "illth," side of GDP seems to be outweighing the wealth. The fastest growing portions of the US economy today include such things as crime and prisons, gambling, disease, and entertainment. Is it any wonder, then, that "growth" doesn't always leave people feeling that life is getting better? Yet economists don't even have a language by which they can acknowledge - let alone measure - this fact, which is obvious to just about everyone else. There are economists who realize that the conventional belief system is crumbling. Several purchased bulk copies of the Atlantic article for their classes; one told us it prompted more class discussion than anything else on the reading list. But all were not pleased, especially at the upper levels of the profession, where stature and acclaim are bound up in the orthodoxies we had questioned. Or so I gathered at the AEA session I dropped in on that Saturday morning. The session was called "Covering the Economy," and featured a panel of reporters and the economists they often quote. It got off to a promising start. Louis Uchitelle of the New York Times said that journalists should endeavor to find out how people are actually faring in the economy, as opposed to what economists are saying. More, he wondered why reporters regularly quote Wall Street analysts
FW: Irish Workfare
-- From: B Sandford[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] FYI ICQ: 20816964 Fax: USA(707)215-6524 *** News via ainriail the Irish Anarchist Bulletin list see http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/inter/email_lists.html *** Social Welfare Bill 1999 Hassling people into very low paid jobs The Scheme Workers Alliance organises people on employment schemes to combat cutbacks and win the extension of part-time workers rights. Uisce from 'Workers Solidarity' spoke to Leo Duffy and Seamas Carrehan of the SWA about the upcoming Social Welfare bill. The Government is continuing its campaign against working class people. Workfare was introduced last year by Mary Harney, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade Employment. It forces people into shit low paid jobs by cutting their social welfare completely. The next phase in this assault is the proposed Social Welfare Bill 1999. Contained in it are provisions for increasing welfare benefits for the unemployed, pensioners and other people on welfare. However, the increase would not even buy a packet of cigarettes, the price of which was raised in the last budget. Hidden among these titbits from the Tiger's table is Article 26, a draconian piece of legislation directed at further oppressing the working class. "This Welfare Bill, and particularly the section dealing with vehicle checkpoints, comes at the end of a three year sustained and covert campaign by the state against the most vulnerable people in our society" said Seamas Carrahen. It allows for Social Welfare inspectors to mount checkpoints to (in theory) catch social welfare recipients who are also working in the black economy. Welfare inspectors, when accompanied by a cop can stop a vehicle suspected of "being used in the course of employment or self-employment." Dermot Ahern, Minister for Welfare has assured us "that the powers will continue to be used responsibly. This programme is not aimed at the ordinary citizen going about their business." But as Leo Duffy put it "it reinforces the sense of threat that people in vulnerable positions, on social welfare (will be) hassled under the new welfare arrangement". It will be used where unemployment is endemic and it will infringe on the lives of working class people. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties described it as "another inroad into peoples liberty to come and go in the course of legitimate activity." Even though the powers for social welfare inspectors are only now being legislated for, these multi-agency check- points have been in operation over the past year. When criticised by other TDs who had never heard of these checkpoints 'till they saw the Bill, Dermot Ahern apologised saying "in retrospect it, perhaps, should have been mentioned." Ahern "has done all of this without negotiating with any of the people involved" said Seamas Carrehan, pointing to the lack of consultation between Ahern's Department and trade unions and unemployed groups. A reason that Ahern is legislating for the checkpoints now may be that "by formalising it in legislation it does give it a status where it could be more easily manipulated against vulnerable people" said Leo Duffy. Dermot Ahern, in defence of the checkpoints, said that in February that 10% of vehicles stopped at certain checkpoints revealed fraud cases. What he didn't say was whether these particular cars had been deliberately targeted. Perhaps he is implying that 10% of working class people are criminals. According to Leo Duffy "anybody who is carrying a plastic social welfare card is automatically going to come under suspicion or threat". Seamas Carrahen described the Bill as primarily representing "the interests of business. But the people it represents and the people who are saying that we need cutbacks and we cannot afford the welfare state are actually the people, at this point, who are becoming phenomonally wealthy". He added that the continuing campaign against unemployment by the government is not designed to help the unemployed. It is actually to drive the unemployed into low wage jobs, and again that's a business persons agenda that's being promoted by the government. There has been minimal protest against the new bill. Leo Duffy said that "protests have come from other agencies. They haven't necessarily coalesced in that, but on their own initiative they have sent protests to the Department of Social Welfare". Seamas added "there has been a fragmented response to the bill from isolated quarters. There has been no co-ordinated or adequate attack on it, it has been accepted as a fait accompli". Welfare Inspectors will be coming to a neighbourhood near you, soon! This article is
FW: Book on Full Employ UBI now in PUBLIC DOMAIN.
FYI -- From: Dr Gavin Putland[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Dear Sir/Madam, Please note that my book SIX MONTHS TO FULL EMPLOYMENT, which advocates a universal basic income, is now in the PUBLIC DOMAIN and is available at www.users.bigpond.com/putland . Some more recent ideas, e.g. a retail tax and land value tax to replace the proposed value-added tax for Australia, are contained in my Senate submission MAKE IT A RETAIL SALES TAX, which is also available under the same home page. Enjoy (?), Dr Gavin Putland 43 Azalea Crescent Calamvale, Q 4116 AUSTRALIA Phone + 61 7 3272 5984 Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW http://www.users.bigpond.com/putland
RE: basic income scheme
Have a look at this "A Universal Basic Income (UBI) is an unconditional cash payment to individuals sufficient to meet basic needs." [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.geocities.com/~ubinz/ also I have developed a model "Widgets in S-Basic" that demonstrates that a "Citizen's Dividend" not only can provide a socially beneficial effect but can actually be structured to cause the greatest rate of growth in an economy. The model is available on line at: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1067/widgets.html With explanations and details at: http://www.geocities.com:80/CapitolHill/1067/c04r4a.html and part 2 at: http://www.geocities.com:80/CapitolHill/1067/c04r4p2a.html I'd appreciate any comments. Thank you, J.B. O'Donnell Tax Privilege, Not People ___ Come visit and see a new economic perspective -- http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1067 Comments/arguments welcome. . -- From: Mark Elliot[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, 20 April 1999 2:30 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: basic income scheme A while back on this list there was a discsusion of basic income schemes. Can anyone give a reference (web or hard) to work on this. I am particularly interested in stuff moddelling the tax/national accounts effects, but general stuff would be good too. Thanks Mark - Mark Elliot - CCSR Faculty of Economics University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone number UK: 0161-275-4257 Phone number international 0044-161-275-4257 Fax: 0161-275-4722
Does The Public mean all of us, equally?
Does "The Public" mean all of us, equally? Keith Rankin, 24 January 1999 We have become accustomed to thinking of "the public" as a collective term for all of the people who make up a nation. Furthermore, as members of the public, we all belong equally to that collective entity. Pinning down the various interpretations of publicness is not easy, however. The identity of the public can change over time, and may, implicitly if not explicitly, vary from one member of a society to another. Who is the public that benefits from public policy? Citizens? State? Consumers? Each of these concepts can include all persons who together make a nation. The notion of consumers as the public is particularly problematic. While all of us may be consumers to some extent, clearly some of us (with high incomes) consume much more than others. The implication is that the more we spend, the greater is our stake in "the public". Under this kind of worldview, the main task of government - the agent of public policy - is to protect the economic interests of the affluent. Thus, the term "consumer" is much more exclusive than it sounds when it glibly rolls off the tongues of the Ministers of Commerce, Finance and Consumer Affairs; or from the Opposition spokespersons for Commerce et.al . The "State" and the citizenry are likewise ambiguous concepts. The welfare state can, for example, be presented, inclusively, as our friend (who supports us with social security, education and health care) and servant. Or the State can be an agency of bureaucratic power whose interest is diametrically opposed to ours; an agent who seeks to deny us benefits, to find any excuse to not provide or otherwise fund public services, and to charge us exorbitant taxes on the first dollars we earn. The state can be either an "us" or a "them"; inclusive or exclusive. The public interest is not our interest to a state that sees itself as apart from the people. "Citizenship" can also be either an inclusive or an exclusive concept. It all depends on how we define "citizen". Historically, the citizenry has excluded women, persons without property, slaves, the foreign-born, persons who do not practice a nation's official faith, the incarcerated. In future, the term might exclude persons without officially recognised tertiary qualifications. The status of citizen is capable of acting as a euphemism for an elite to identify their interest as the public interest, leaving those excluded as simply private persons. Indeed we may already be experiencing a process of social change - of social exclusion - that is better thought of as the publicisation of privilege than as the privatisation of the public sphere. Last night I watched a British movie, made in 1994, "The Advocate". (It was screened on TV3 in December.) It is a black comedy about a real-life lawyer in 15th century France who made his reputation defending animals in court. It focussed on the specific case that made his reputation; defending a pig that was charged with murdering a boy in Abbeville in 1452. (The real murderer was the seigneur's son, who, as it proved, was a serial killer.) In the medieval worldview, the concept of "public" was hierarchical. At the top were the nobility - in France, the seigneurial class. The monarch identified with that class. At the same time, there was no distinction in law between people and animals, although some ordinary people were seen as lower than others. In cases of sodomy, both the person and the animal were hanged. Consenting heterosexual sex between a Christian and a Jew could be classed as sodomy, because a Jew was considered in law to be the exact equivalent of a dog. In 15th century Europe, debate became quite contentious when actually figuring out who or what was superior to who or what. Apparently, it took three days of priestly debate to decide that flies were inferior in law to domestic animals. As the century progressed animals came to be seen in law much as children, the intellectually disabled, and the insane are today: as being unable to understand the consequences of their actions. In the opening sequences of the film, a man and a donkey were set to hang for sodomy. The donkey got off with a last-minute reprieve, on account of diminished responsibility. The status gap between public (meaning privileged) and private (meaning unprivileged) was much bigger than that between private persons and animals. Both persons and animals were fully subject to the law, but the law was only for the benefit of the public; ie of the propertied consuming citizenry. In such a hierarchical worldview, a crime only exists when a lower being harms an equal or a superior being. In such a case, the felony is a public matter, and the public is as much the victim as the harmed person. In the reverse case, where the victim is of inferior status, the harm is generally deemed to be a private matter, no different to mistreating an animal. (That attitude encapsulates apartheid
FW: CITIZENS' PUBLIC TRUST TREATY
FYI -- From: Caspar Davis[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Dear Friends, Here is the official release of our CITIZENS' PUBLIC TRUST TREATY. It is being circulated world wide in English, Spanish, and French, for signature. Please circulate it and post it anywhere you have not yet seen it. Caspar Davis THE CALL: We call upon the nations of the world to ensure the rights of present and future generations to genuine peace, social justice and ecological integrity by implementing the principles of this Citizens' Public Trust Treaty. We urge you to support the Treaty by adding your name to the petition, by passing it on, and by sending copies to heads of states and legislators. January 1st, 1999 _ WE, THE CITIZENS OF THE WORLD, DETERMINED * to create a world based on true participatory democracy within a framework of public trust principles; * to accept the inherent limits to the Earth's resources and to promote the peaceful coexistence of all nations, races, and species; * to develop a stable and peaceful international society founded on the rule of law; * to prevent the damaging consequences of unprincipled economic growth; * to ensure that the economy conforms to the limitations of the ecosystem; RECOGNIZING the interdependence of Peace Building, Human Rights, Environmental Protection, and Advocacy for Social Justice; NOTING that through more than 50 years of concerted effort, the member states of the United Nations have created international Public Trust obligations, commitments and expectations: 1. to Promote and fully guarantee respect for human rights including labour rights, the right to adequate food, shelter and health care, and social justice; 2. to Enable socially equitable and environmentally sound development; 3. to Achieve a state of peace, justice and security; 4. to Create a global structure that respects the rule of law; and 5. to Ensure the preservation and protection of the environment, respect the inherent worth of nature beyond human purpose, reduce the ecological footprint and move away from the current model of over-consumptive development; AFFIRMING that the freedom from fear and want can be achieved only if conditions are created whereby everyone is able to enjoy economic, social and cultural rights, as well as civil and political rights (Universal Declaration of Human Rights); AWARE that the rule of law and the good-faith implementation of international legal principles are the foundation for peace, security, and co-operation amongst States (Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the UN [General Assembly Resolution 2625 (XXV)]); RECALLING the obligations of States under the Charter of the United Nations to guarantee respect for human rights as set out in the International Bill of Rights, and to "prevent the scourge of war"; * the expectations created through the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), now accepted as part of customary international law, to guarantee "the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family"; * the obligation undertaken by States in various multilateral treaties on human rights, that there must be no discrimination on the following grounds: - race, tribe, or culture; - colour, ethnicity, national ethnic or social origin, or language; - nationality, place of birth, or nature of residence (refugee or - immigrant, migrant worker); - gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, or - form of family; - disability or age; - religion or conviction, political or other opinion, or - class, economic position, or other status; (1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, among others); * the obligations of States to ensure full employment and enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work (1966 Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights); * the expectation, created by the adoption of the precautionary principle as part of customary international law, that where there is a a threat of serious environmental damage or of harm to human health, the lack of full scientific certainty will not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent that threat; * the expectation, created by the adoption of the principle of intergenerational equity, that the rights of future generations to an ecological heritage will be respected (Convention on the Preservation of Cultural and Natural Heritage, 1972); * that the potential irreversibility of environmental harm gives rise to special responsibility to prevent such harm
Pro-active Money - Flemming Funch
This may be of interest Ian Proactive Money by Flemming Funch, 9 April 95. I was just pondering how the concept of money can make sense at all in an information economy, and I've got some ideas. Before the arrival of agricultural societies money wasn't needed. Hunters and gatherers would simply take what they needed or wanted, fight for it if necessary, and continuously move on to where they could find the resources they were seeking. In "first wave" agricultural societies surpluses would be produced. The land would be worked to produce food stuff and what is produced is either stored up or it is traded. Trading would open the need for money as a means of exchange. Also, it suddenly became important what you HAVE, what you own. If you have land you can grow stuff and sell it. If you have produce you can sell it. Power and affluence is measured by how much you currently own. The "second wave", the industrial revolution, centralized production and brought about the need for a lot of machinery and buildings that needed to be in place BEFORE something valuable was produced. That brought about the need for financing, for somehow having or borrowing money before you could create more. And then the monetary value of what you produced is in part based on the need to recuperate the investments made, and the costs of the resources that had to be acquired to put into the product. As opposed to agricultural production, industrial production requires that you get stuff from elsewhere that you can build your products of and with. Money comes to symbolize what is OWED for the previously used resources that went into what you are paying for. Wealth is based on how much you have produced in the past that you are now being owed for. The "third wave", the information society, changes the equation again, even though the change isn't fully realized yet. Information and knowledge do not have mass or weight. They can potentially be arrived at instantly and they can in principle be replicated any number of times without any use of resources. What becomes important is not what happened before, but what happens AFTER a piece of information is generated or distributed. The value of an idea is in what it allows you to do, not in the amount of trouble it took to arrive at it, nor in its value as a possession of yours. But our economic system is still based on second wave principles. Our currencies are still defined by the amount of debt they represent. Our financial institutions are based on the financing of production that then is owed for and needs to be repaid with interest by the proceeds from trading with the production. Information products fit poorly into this scheme and it creates friction and unnecessary hindrances to their use that they are treated by the old industrial model. For example, the concept of intellectual property is an attempt to treat information as material products. If a factory produces a car, a certain amount of materials go into it and it is in itself a very tangible product. It will always be worth something in that there is a limited number of cars and raw materials and there is a need for both. It is quite workable for the car factory to expect to get back what they've spent on making the car, and then some, in exchange for granting somebody the privilege to take possession of the car. That person would after all be able to trade further with the car, as it has value in itself. A knowledge product, such as a software program, works quite differently. It can be reproduced with no incremental cost and without any resources required by its original manufacturer. Potential users will of course quickly discover that they themselves can manufacture a fresh instance of a software product. A car manufacturer could probably care less if you went home and constructed a copy of his car in your garage, because he knows that he gets paid for the resources and work he puts into the production of his car. A knowledge worker can not have the same assurance and might have impossible difficulties ensuring that he will get his investments in time and resources back, because he has nothing tangible to show for it. Somebody might help him installing some kind of police state methods of monitoring how people use his product so he can be paid, but that is really only stalling the inevitable conclusion. Information providers, such as copyright owners, software producers, or artists running around angrily trying to stop people from using their information without paying for their past work, is a sign of the economics no longer being in tune with the methods of production and distribution. The fact of the matter is that information inherently can be reproduced infinitely and there is no inherent value in simply owning it, or in having worked hard at it. There is only value in using it. If instances of
FW: Rapid job growth in the not for profit sector
From the Economist The non-profit sector - LOVE OR MONEY FOR economists, the non-profit organisation is something of an evolutionary oddity. Without the forces that drive conventional firms-shareholders, stock options and, of course, profits-it has still managed to thrive in the market economy. Indeed, a pioneering international study*, published this week, shows that the non-profit sector now accounts for an average of one in every 20 jobs in the 22 developed and developing countries it examined. In the nine countries for which the change between 1990 and 1995 could be measured, non-profit jobs grew by 23%, compared with 6.2% for the whole economy. In some countries, they grew faster still: by 30% in Britain, according to Jeremy Kendall of the London School of Economics, who carried out the British end of the study. Why this remarkable expansion? Non-profits span a vast range. Some sell goods and services (such as American hospitals) and compete head-on with profit-making firms; others are religious bodies and campaigning groups, supported largely by donations. In between, in Europe, are the Catholic and Protestant non-profits, such as Germany's Caritas, which provide many social services, and are financed by the state, but independent of it. Because the Netherlands has many such bodies, it tops the list for non-profit employment (see chart). To find a definition that fitted all 22 countries meant including institutions such as universities, trade unions and business associations. Graph - Non profit share of total employment 1995 - Source John Hopkins University A clue to the success of non-profits is that their growth seems to have been fastest in countries where government social-welfare spending is high. That suggests they complement government provision, rather than substituting for it. Indeed, public money partly finances many non-profits-such as Britain's housing associations, which rely on a mix of state cash and rents to house the poor. They are, in a sense, an off-balance-sheet arm of government. At their best they are flexible and innovative. However, as non-profits become more important, so do their shortcomings. One is what Mr Kendall delicately terms "accountability lapses": non-profits tend to reflect the interests of many different groups, but those of the consumer often come low on the list. Boards of directors of non-profits are typically much larger than those of firms, but they serve a different function. As Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a management guru at Harvard Business School, puts it, they "are often treated like cheerleaders who have to be given good news so they'll go out and raise funds." Another problem, says Lester Salamon, one of the study's main authors, is finding competent line managers. Moreover, management may be more complex than in a conventional company. Because a firm typically makes money directly from its customers, it has an incentive to provide what they want. In a non-profit, the money may come not from the clients-the homeless, say, or the elderly-but from a mixture of grants, donations and charges. Training for running non-profits is still scarce. Michael O'Neill, of the Institute for Nonprofit Organisation Management at the University of San Francisco, reckons that 10m people and 100m volunteers work for non-profits in America; but no more than 1,000 students a year pass through management courses such as the ones he runs. Across the country, at the Harvard Business School, the social-enterprise programme that James Austin directs aims to ensure that MBAs who go into mainstream business know something of running non-profits. Mr Austin recently surveyed 10,000 HBS graduates and found that about 80% were involved in non-profits in some way; 57% sat on the board of a non-profit. In fact, points out Ms Moss Kanter, the largest non-profits can attract professionals to the top jobs. John Sawhill, a former McKinsey partner, heads America's Nature Conservancy; Frances Hesselbein ran the Girl Scouts of the USA and graced the cover of Business Week. "Among certain groups of people I know," she says, "it now has a certain social cachet to say that you are starting a non-profit organisation." Ditching the profit motive may become the career opportunity of the future. * "The Emerging Sector Revisited" by Lester M Salamon, Helmut K Anheier and Associates. Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies. Copyright 1998 The Economist Newspaper Ltd. All Rights Reserved. http://www.economist.co.uk/editorial/freeforall/current/wb9691.html
from the Beyond Capitalism Seminar in NZ
Localising capitalism Simon Collins reports from the `Beyond Capitalism' conference From City Voice, Wellington NZ FULLTIME jobs for all who want them, at wages sufficient to sustain a family. Or a "post-job economy" where only a few do fulltime paid work but their income is shared with the community. Those were the two broad pictures of our future at a conference grandly titled `Beyond Capitalism', held at St John's Church, Willis St, on Friday (2 Oct). A surprising 150 people attended. Both sides of the argument agreed that our current form of capitalism is unfair, with the super-rich growing richer while those unable to get paid work, or reliant on occasional or casual work, sink into poverty. Auckland economics professor Tim Hazledine argued for fulltime jobs for all. He advocated going "beyond rationalism" - beyond the view that people make economic decisions out of narrow, "rational" self-interest. In his book Taking NZ Seriously, he argues that every New Zealander who wanted a job in the 1950s and 60s had one because there was a shared "sympathy" for one another. Employers felt duty bound to find jobs for people, and the unemployed felt a duty to seek work. Sympathy That sympathy has been lost as the country has opened up to the world. Multinational companies, which now own most of our big corporates, have no sympathy for the unemployed. And joblessness has become so widespread that the unemployed have lost hope of finding work. Hazledine advocates: * Keynesian monetary policy, using interest and exchange rates to promote employment, not just to contain inflation. When there is unemployment, as there is now, the Reserve Bank would push interest and exchange rates down to encourage more borrowing and investment, and to boost local production and jobs by making imports dearer. * "Moderate tariffs" - in a discussion group he suggested 5% - and "perhaps some control of foreign direct investment". Our regulations used to allow foreign takeovers of NZ companies only if the foreigner brought expertise or access to markets; otherwise there was a presumption that foreign owners would have less sympathy for NZ workers. * "Re-legitimise the union movement." Unions are seen as vital to ensuring that wages are sufficient to feed a family, giving couples the choice of having one parent stay home to look after the children. * "Re-regulate the pay and perks of chief executives." Hazledine would outlaw incentive payments because they lead to under-achieving other goals for which no incentives are offered. He would put two `Kiwi Share' directors on every public company board, and require that they help set executive pay. * Abolish welfare. "We have to ask whether beneficiaryism has gone too far," he said. In his book, he advocates abolishing all benefits to put pressure both on employers to provide jobs and on the unemployed to take them. Home In the book, Hazledine digs at Anne Else's book False Economy by suggesting that many mothers would be keen to stay home with the kids if they could afford it. "The unsympathetic reader (which I am not) might wish to subtitle False Economy: `Middle-class mothers moan about their lives'," he wrote. Anne Else hit back on Friday, saying she considered calling her talk, `Middle-aged male academics fantasise about perfect wives'. She said Hazledine was still bound up in the "romance of capitalism" - the idea that men should work hard, even at the cost of their health, to support their families. In fact, she said: "There is no evidence that capitalist production will ever again conjure up enough jobs... to provide anything like what we have come to see as a decent standard of living for all - let alone put back the social pattern of the `family wage-earner'." Women She said women had never been caught up in the capitalist romance, because capitalism ignored most of their work - which was unpaid. "Unpaid work represents one of the few genuine challenges to capitalist logic." Ideally, Anne Else would pay everyone a basic income. People could then find their own useful work to do, without having to worry about paid jobs to feed the family. More immediately, like Hazledine, she would strengthen labour laws to make sure that paid work is at least paid well and with flexible hours, so that it can be fitted in around family responsibilities. Other speakers at the conference tended towards Else's view. Australian Paul Wildman advocated developing local economies using networked community credit unions, operating in parallel with the world economy. He also favoured a basic minimum income. A workshop led by Anne Else came up with a list of local initiatives which exist already: green dollar and `bartercard' schemes, the Women's Loan Fund, the Hokianga Health Trust and the People's Resource Centre which provide free health care to members. But another workshop led by Tim Hazledine advocated "a highway to full employment" with import duties and controls on
Restructurings at Levi's
ICFTU On Line 215/981009/ND Restructurings at Levi's: trade unions want global discussion Brussels, 13 October 1998 (ICFTU on-line): "Levi Strauss is applying a profoundly anti-union strategy. It announces to the world that it is pro-worker, but its real attitude is totally out of sync with the quality image it seeks to put across. It was quick to adopt a code of conduct committing it to minimum employee relations standards, but this has remained a dead letter". Meeting this week in Berlin, the Executive Committee of the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation (ITGLWF), an ICFTU affiliate, denounced the hypocrisies of the world's number one jeans manufacturer which on 29 September last announced its intention to close four European plants (3 in Belgium and one in France) with 1461 workers in all." After the discussion we have just had with the American delegates, we are convinced of the need to broaden the discussion to the world level. A letter was sent this Thursday morning to the Levi's head office in which we invite group CEO Bob Haas to meet us. For Patrick Itschert, the Secretary General of the European trade union federation for the sector, the explanations that Levi's has been putting forward for several months now in order to justify the major restructurings (11 plants closed in the United States, and two other American units facing the same fate) do not hold water. If the brand has lost its appeal among young consumers, the real reason is its desire to maximize profits at all costs. "The Belgian and French sites threatened with closure are profitable. But the group's purported over-capacities are due - as if by accident - to growing activities outside the European Union. Levi's is running its business on a sub-contracting and joint venture basis. In Turkey, for example, it has signed a contract with an exclusive sub-contractor and a plant has been set up. This plant employed 150 workers in August 1997, a number soon to be tripled. My deep conviction is that this is disguised delocation, which has been on the drawing board for a long time". Nor, Patrick Itschert continues, does Levi's respect ILO conventions 87, 98 and 135 on trade union freedom and the freedom of collective bargaining. "In Hungary, management has prevented workers from setting up trade unions. We fought for two years and, finally, given the size of the movement, it had to give way". These practices will hardly surprise American delegates meeting in Berlin this week for the ITGLWF Executive Committee. The federation has therefore decided to step up pressure on central group management to respect its commitments (its code of conduct) and labour standards. As to the fate of the 1461 Belgian and French workers, the Levi's European works' council meeting of 5 October ended with the decision to give workers' representatives two months in which to come up with counter-proposals based on experts' reports. But the unrepresentativeness of this Levi's committee makes the forthcoming discussions very problematic and is stoking trade union wrath: "Management has manoeuvred cleverly" Patrick Itschert says, "putting the trade unionists delegated by European production units representing more than 3,000 workers into a minority against a mass of employee "representatives" who are in fact commercial unit executives sent by Levi's management. For example, the Finnish delegate representing 7 people has as much say as the French delegate speaking for 530 people under threat of redundancy at the "La Bassée" plant. When negotiating the setting up of the council, we asked for proportion representation, but Levi's said no. The directive on European works councils which the European Council of Ministers adopted in 1994 is intended to enable workers from so-called "Community-sized" enterprises to be better informed and consulted about their groups' activities, prospects, structure, economic and financial situation and likely development, in short, everything that could affect workers. This legislation applies to enterprises with at least 1,000 workers in the 18 signatory states, and at least 150 in two or more of these countries. Right now, some 450 European works' councils are already up and running. The directive is due for reassessment by European social partners in a few months' time. These works' councils can have a major impact on industrial relations and contribute to greater transparency in the way multinationals operate. Information and consultation can be no more than stages on the path of negotiation. Everything depends on the goodwill of corporate head offices. As is demonstrated by the negative examples of the recent closure of Renault Vilvoorde and those announced by Levi's today. Contact: ICFTU Press, Tel. 32.2.224.02.12 (Brussels). For further information, please visit our internet site
FW - re Long-Term Unemployment Myths
FYI -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED][SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Subject: Long-Term Unemployment Myths LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYMENT MYTHS A warm welcome for a new paper by Stephen Machin (UCL) and Alan Manning (LSE) `Long-Term Unemployment: Exploding Some Myths', Employment Audit No.8 (Employment Policy Institute), Summer 1998. This independently corroborates many of the points made in my University of Glasgow paper `The L-U Curve: On the non-existence of a long-term claimant unemployment trap' (May 1997), specifically (all quotes from Machin Manning):- * "every time and every place there are high rates of unemployment, there is a high incidence of long-term unemployment"; "long-term unemployment has never been a problem when unemployment itself is low" * it is a myth "that there has been a ratcheting up in the level of long-term unemployment so that, for a given level of unemployment, we now have a higher incidence of LTU" * "while the long-term unemployed do find it more difficult to find work than the short-term unemployed, this has always been true and their relative disadvantage does not seem to have worsened over time" * "any policy that acts to increase the outflow rate from unemployment will act to reduce the incidence of long-term unemployment; and, moreover, there is no reason why such policies should particularly be focussed on those who have been unemployed for long periods" * "The most successful recipe for helping the long-term unemployed back into work is a buoyant labour market. If we were fortunate enough to have unemployment rates fall to the levels we had in the 1960s there is little doubt that we would have a similar incidence of long-term unemployment whether we have the `New Deal' or not" * "as the long-term unemployed are concentrated in the areas where unemployment itself is highest and there are fewest jobs, it is quite likely that it is going to be more difficult to find private-sector jobs for the long-term unemployed in depressed regions (which is the preferred outcome in the `New Deal')" (this point - about areas rather than regions - is also made in Turok Webster, Local Economy Feb.98). Machin and Manning refer to a longer version of their paper: `The causes and consequences of long-term unemployment in Europe', forthcoming in O.Ashenfelter and D.Card (eds) Handbook of Labor Economics, North Holland Press (an update of a US handbook first published in 1986 when Ashenfelter's co-editor, ironically, was none other than Richard Layard, one of the principal advocates of the ideas being criticised here). I hope this additional support will make it easier to obtain the required changes in UK government employment policy. At present almost all the effort and all the additional expenditure is being devoted to what is largely a non-problem, the supposed lack of "employability" of particular segments of the labour force. Meanwhile, spending is being cut on the only type of policy which would make a real difference, namely the promotion of blue collar jobs in areas of high unemployment, through such things as derelict land reclamation in the cities. And the problem is being worsened by macro-policies which undermine the manufacturing sector. On the basis of the shorter Machin-Manning paper (I have not yet seen the longer one), it is worth noting a few apparent differences between their analysis and mine:- * Their analysis is purely in terms of LAPU (the proportion of the unemployed who are long-term). For the reasons given in my paper, I think L (the proportion of the labour force who are long-term unemployed) is a better measure. * They do not allow for the 6-quarter timelag between change in total unemployment and change in LAPU and hence show the type of "cobweb cycle" chart for the UK 1955-96 which the OECD (in Employment Outlook and the 1994 Jobs Study) has incorrectly interpreted as indicating the existence of "ratcheting" of the level of LTU. * They imply that all of the long-term unemployed find it more difficult to obtain jobs and will therefore benefit from New Deal type policies; my analysis is that it is only a subset of the long-term unemployed with genuine employment handicaps who will benefit from the New Deal. The remainder simply have the misfortune to live in areas of high unemployment, or are unlucky for stochastic reasons, and any New Deal
Two 'poems' you may like to use.
Cecil Rajendra's came from Don Borrie's paper to the Anti-privatisation conference - privatisation by NZ local authorities The second is from a Sustainable America workshop - not sourced. Ian Until they Right the Wrong, I shall sing no Celebratory Song So long as car parks take precedence over hospitals. Multi-story hotels over homes for people, Irrelevant factories over fields of our daily sustenance I shall sing no celebratory song no matter how many suns go down This tongue will be of thistle and thorn until they right the wrong! So long as law comes before justice The edifice before service The payment before treatment and appearance before essence I shall sing no celebratory song no matter how many suns go down This tongue will be of thistle and thorn until they right the wrong! So long as the poet is debased and the businessman praised The realist rewarded and the idealist degenerated I shall sing no celebratory song no matter how many suns go down This tongue will be of thistle and thorn until they right the wrong! So long as foreign investors devastate our estate and the voice of capital speaks louder than the pleas of fisher folk I shall sing no celebratory song no matter how many suns go down This tongue will be of thistle and thorn until they right the wrong! So long as blind bulldozers are allowed unchecked to guard our landscape and multi-nationals licensed to run amuck across this land I shall sing no celebratory song no matter how many suns go down This tongue will be of thistle and thorn until they right the wrong! So long as the rivers and streams, our beaches, our air, our oceans, Our trees, our birds, our fish, our butterflies, our bees Are strangled, stifled, polluted, poisoned, crushed, condemned by lopsided development I shall sing no celebratory song no matter how many suns go down This tongue will be of thistle and thorn until they right the wrong! Cecil Rajendra UNITED FOR A FAIR ECONOMY Because CEOs make more in a day than many of us make in a year and Sweatshops are here again and We're being downsized and out-sourced and off-loaded and Where corporations get most of the welfare and We're working longer hours with fewer benefits and We don't have time for our children and The American dream is slipping away and Inequality hurts all of us, even the wealthy, and A woman gets 72 cents on a man's $1 and More black men have been to prison than to college and The rich get tax breaks while our teachers get pay cuts and The top one percent has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent and We're still waiting for the "trickle down" and The problem is not politicians, but the corporations that buy them and Two million of us have seen our wealth double, while 200 million of us become more insecure and People make the system and people can change it and Labour's on the move again and What we do is more important than what we own and The minimum wage should be a living wage and Every child should have their chance and Because when we all come together, there is nothing we can't do, we are UNITED FOR A FAIR ECONOMY
Employment Statement by NZ Catholic Bishops
FYI Ian -- From: Louise May[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Subject: RE: Employment Statement Some Concerns About Employment A Statement from the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference In 1991 when the Employment Contracts Legislation was being promoted, we stated that: As Bishops of New Zealand we must speak against this proposed legislation, as its underlying ideology is contrary to the social doctrines of the Church. The underlying ideology of the new individual legislation is unacceptable, we argued: because it emphasises free choice without balancing this concept with concern for the common good ... and because it emphasises the rights of the individual without their accompanying duty to act in solidarity, and without giving any corresponding rights to the group. One of the concerns expressed in our 1991 statement was that not only does the legislation appear to emphasise the concept of free choice at the expense of the common good, it actually fails to give workers a genuine freedom of choice. A solitary worker facing negotiations with an employer is often not free to choose anything other than between unemployment and that which is offered. This concern has become a reality in the changing working environment under the Employment Contracts Act. A market survey in October 1992 showed that 37% of employees said they did not feel free to choose the type of employment contract covering them. Deteriorating work conditions since 1991 reflect this lack of ability of workers in setting the standards and conditions under which they are employed. In 1996 it was found that over 43 % of workers had either lower or unchanged ordinary time wages since 1991. Around the same percentage of employers had cut overtime rates and reduced allowances and other penal rates. This is despite economic expansion in this period and high levels of profit growth for business. The introduction of the Employment Contracts Act, along with other related employment reforms since 1991, have clearly led to the overall deterioration of worker conditions by tipping the balance of power in the employment relationship even further to the employers' advantage. Worker Representation One of our fears which has come to pass is that the legislation has resulted in a weakening of organisations whose purpose is to protect the rights of workers. Statistics reveal a dramatic loss in union membership since the implementation of the new employment legislation. There has been an overall decline in union membership, which reckoned across all unions, is calculated to be 44% between the years 1991 and 1996. It also concerns us that the Employment Contracts Act legislation results in lessening accessibility of unions to workers and the workers' rights to be represented by a collective bargaining agent in employer-employee negotiations. Catholic Social Teaching is very clear on the matter of worker representation. It tells us that workers have the right to be represented by unions, as they can "not only protect the just rights of the workers but - as an indispensable element in modern, industrialised societies - are to be a mouthpiece for the struggle for social justice". This implies that the employer must be bound to recognise and accept the workers' representative, something which the Employment Contracts Act does not guarantee. Such undermining of the rights of workers in relation to negotiations is in direct contravention to Catholic Social Teaching. Equal Pay As predicted in our original statement, the burden has fallen especially on women. The pay gap between men and women gradually reduced between 1986 and 1991, but since the repealing of the Employment Equity Act, and the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act, the pay gap has stabilised, with women presently earning between 80.5% to 81.5% of men's pay. It is obvious that the marketplace alone is not able to deliver pay equity for women. Hours of Work One of the results of the legislation of 1991 is that many low-paid workers have to work (sometimes at an additional job) at night or at the weekend while workers in more highly paid jobs are often expected to work almost limitless hours. As a consequence many workers are denied the opportunity to spend adequate time with their families through "over-employment", that is, by working more than 50 hours a week. In 1995 it was found that over 130,000 people were then routinely working more than 60 hours per week, and more than 50,000 of these people were working over 70 hours per week. The average weekly hours worked has increased each year from 1991 when the Employment Contracts Act took effect. The number of paid hours on overtime has actually decreased alongside the rise in hours worked. The lack of worker protection under the new legislation, and the
FW: Call for papers - LEEDS
-- From: C.J. FORDE[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Reply To: C.J. FORDE Sent: Thursday, 2 July 1998 05:21 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Call for papers LEEDS UNIVERSITY BUSINESS SCHOOL THIRD ANNUAL POST-GRADUATE CONFERENCE 13TH NOVEMBER 1998 CALL FOR PAPERS The Third Annual Post-Graduate Conference at the Leeds University Business School will take place on Friday 13th November 1998 at Bodington Hall, Otley Road, Leeds. This conference is organised by post-graduates, for post-graduates and aims to provide a unique opportunity to present and discuss their research. We are eager to develop a genuine plurality of debate between areas and approaches within economics and related social sciences. Papers are invited from any area or perspective in economics. We especially welcome papers on the following: The Economics of Work and Employment Methodological and Philosophical Issues in Economics Money and Uncertainty Industrial Change in a Global Economy Please send abstracts of up to 1000 words to Gary Slater, address below. The deadline for submissions is Friday 4th September, and full papers will be required by 30th October. If you are able to display a poster for this call for papers please download the attached copy in Word 6.0. For more information please consult the Conference Web Page at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cipp/pgc.htm or contact : Gary Slater ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Post-Graduate Conference Leeds University Business School 11 Blenheim Terrace Leeds University Leeds LS2 9JT Phone: (+44)113-233-6858 Fax: (+44)113-233-2640
Query re Mondragon
Does anyone know of a recent film or video about Mondragon? "The Mondragon Experiment" is too old and too British to be effective for my students. Ric McIntyre Economics and Labor Research University of Rhode Island Kingston RI 02881 I don't know of a recent video or film but I gather the culture has changed a little over the years. I enclose a report by Greg Pirie From: Greg Pirie[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Mondragon: When I attended the CICOPA (a sub-set of the ICA specifically orientated to artisanal workers' coops) conference in June 1994 in Vittoria, Spain, we visited the HQ of the Mondragon Cooperative Group (MCG). During the course of a promotional video on how the MCG was geared up to successfully exploit the integration of the European markets into a borderless single market, etc, etc, the ownership/operation of factories in Thailand and Brazil by the MCG was mentioned, almost as a throwaway line just to demonstrate diversification, dynamism, etc. When, at a subsequent panel discussion session, a couple of us asked about these, we were told they were not separate worker cooperatives, as are all other components of the MCG, but direct subsidiaries of Mondragon coops, employing local labour under local conditions. We specifically asked about worker participation in ownership and application of the MCG norms about wage relativities and were told (in our words) that this was a standard European investment in lesser developed economies. Our conclusion was, therefore, that Mondragon coops were taking advantage of the lower costs of doing business in these countries in order to gain a competitive advantage in the European market. When we questioned the inconsistency we saw between this behaviour and the espoused values on which the MCG is based, we received agreement from one of the MCG pioneers on the panel, who effectively expressed his disagreement with the action. That was about it. The two of us who had got a bit excited about the issue never had an opportunity to confront any of the MCG's leadership -- it was a big affair covering a host of matters. It does, however, touch on the challenges for any coop system about dealing with the two questions of size and interfacing with the rest of the world. Within the mature Credit Union systems, there's stiff debate about getting "too" big. Do you lose the essential characteristics of being a coop when you have member/owners in excess of 20,000 (or any other "too big" number)? What are the essential characteristics anyway, and are they vulnerable to issues of size? Visiting one of the original Mondragon coops caused me to wonder about the reality of worker/owner participation. The answers to various questions suggested it was limited to broad issues and only at annual assemblies. Day to day, the management-worker relationship was pretty standard. Jocelyn once had a book about some participative research into management-worker relationships in coops that suggested it was essentially no different from the capital-labour model. Equally, Credit Unions have to put the money they have in savings from members but not out on loan somewhere. That means in the orthodox banking system or equivalent. Thus raising the question as to the use of those funds now 'outside' the Credit Union system.
