[PEN-L:10465] Labor films
I am teaching a course this summer based on movies. I am curious if anyone has any suggestions for movies with a strong message concerning labor issues or unions. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Loren Rice
[PEN-L:6195] RE: Collective Rights Of Youth III
I am really sorry that I have to reply in the manner that I am about to because it is in fact a sad commentary on today's youth. That being said, here goes. I am not sure that the youth of this country honestly want a strong input into anything. I work extensively with student government for example at my university and the most disheartening fact is that they simply accept all that is handed to them by the administrators of the institution. They seem unwilling to stand up for themselves either as individuals or as a group. I believe a lot of this is caused by apathy. Now, if there is any way that any of you can share with me methods to encourage this sort of involvement, I would love to hear it! I believe that it is necessary, first, to get youth caring at least about issues that directly impact their lives before we can expect them to cast off any sort of societal norms that they may find offensive. Just my two cents worth. Dr. Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:5251] Interesting little quote
I found an interesting little quote in my mail today from some publication called "Imprimis"note I did NOT order this trash it was simply sent to me so I could "share" it with my students...which I will not. Well, enough of my talking, here is the quote: It doesn't matter if business owners are men or women, whites, blacks or Hispanics, southerners, northerners, easterners, or westerners, manufacturers or service providers. They all agree that that greatest obstacle to success in America today is big government I found the quote interesting at face value. First of all, I do not believe that "all" business owners in a country would agree on anything! It is unbelievable that anyone would make such an outrageous comment. But, second and more importantly, perhaps there are individuals in the society that benefit from this awful big government and I KNOW that some of them are business owners since that is where their contracts are written! Finally, perhaps the awful big government that is such an obstacle to business owners is doing really foolish things like requiring the companies to dispose of waste in a safe manner or requiring the companies to provide a safe work environment. Ultimately, this awful big government may be doing just what it is suppose to do... provide certain safeties etc for the people...not simply benefit to the fullest extent those who own business! Just my thought for the day from this trash...think I will throw the little thing away now. Loren Rice [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1535] Re: Women in the...
I can very well speak for Loren since I am him! I was not in ANYWAY looking to blame ANYONE. Instead, I was simply looking to have an intellectual discussion on the relationship between capital (the capitalist) and the increased participation of women in the labor force. I never brought up anything to do with Affirmative Action which by the way I do support fully. It had not occurred to me that this sort of discussion would degenerate into such attacks on one another. I am actually sorry at this point that I ever posted the original document. As for those of you who are attacking this on the grounds of being a feminist economist, guess what, so am I. I NEVER intended any of this to go in the direction it has. Like I have said before, all I was interested in was the relationship between capital and the increased participation in the labor force. The agrument that was made was that the capialist were the real winners. I still hold to this position. Unfortunately, no one seems willing to really addresss this point; instead, everyone who posts seems only interested in supporting their sacred territory. Loren Rice
[PEN-L:1508] Re: Women in the workforce and Marxism
I find it very interesting that no one to date has picked up any thread of the argument that the capitalist is the big winner or that investment may actually be redarded by plentiful and cheap labor. This was the main emphasis of my orginaly post. I would really like to hear what the list has to think about these observations. Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1497] Women in the workforce and Marxism
I am only beginning the development of an idea that I would like to hear some of your opinions concerning women in the work force. Before I begin, let me preface this entire post by stating that in NO WAY am I advocating anything that would limit womens' entrance into the labor force; instead, I am simply wishing to look at the implications from a slight different point of view. That said here goes. In the 1970s, specifically about 1974-75, women began entering the labor force in relative mass in the US. This continued well into the 1980s and even now with the only difference is that there seems to be some evidence that now the entrance is continuing at a more constant rate instead of an increasing rate. During the 1980s the economy created many jobs, almost as many as in the glory days of capitalism the 1950s and 1960s. Still there has been a higher level of unemployment associated with the 1980s and 1990s than the 1950s and 1960s. One could argue with relative ease that this is because of the increased labor participation of women. What are the net results of this increased participation of women in the work force? It seems to me that the result has been an increased supply of labor (obviously) and a strong downward pressure on wages. Clearly, wages have not increased significantly even when there have been periods of growth in the economy during these two decades. Also, the increased level of unemployment both in absolute numbers and in percentage could be and perhaps should be viewed as a classic case of an industrial reserver army of the masses. Now, who truly benefit the most from this increased participation of women in the work force? The first and most obvious answer that would come to peoples' minds would be the women themselves. This may be true to some extent, but to the extent that the women entering the labor force were doing so from a "traditional" family the evidence would not be so clear. In economic terms the average family is not much better off in terms of income today than say 20 years ago when adjucted for inflation, this even being a two wage earner family on average now and certainly not the case back in 1975. A second argument can be made that women were the winners because they gain much more than money income from their work. They live a more fulfilled life and are much happier working than they were or would have been not working. One certainly cannot argue with this in any reasonable manner. I guess I have written a lot to ultimately come to the following conclusion. It has been the capitalist that has been the real winner as a result of women entering the labor force. Wages have been held down significantly and the capitalist has a very plentiful labor supply to draw upon at any time. Furthermore, the increase in available labor during this period may have had some significant impact in the downfall of unions in the US. This is one area that I have not yet thought about very much I must admit. Finally, I believe that there is one more less obvious result of the influx of women into the labor force. Specifically, the decreased rates of investment in the US. I believe that the level of investment has fallen not because of higher government expenditures or "high" interest rates, but, rather due to low wages. Capitalists are rational. If wages are high they search diligently to find means to cut down on the amount of labor they employ. But, when wages are lower or stagnant they are much less likely to invest their scarce funds in labor conserving activities. Thus the capitalists have been finding other avenues for their investment funds such as corporate buyouts etc. Well, I am sure that this was a little long but I would very interested to hear what some of you might think about this little hypothesis. I am thinking of working this into a paper. If any of you have any suggestions I certain appreciate hearing them and if there is any literature already out there addressing this sort of thing I would love to hear about that too. Thanks Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:1427] Elimination of States or at least State Taxes: A Proposal
I have been kicking around the idea of eleminating the states as an economic initiative. While I realize that this is not a feasible initiative, I have also considered the possibility of a federal ban on all state taxation. I believe that there would be considerable benefit to this sort of action. One of the major benefits of such an action would be reducing dramatically the amount of corporate welfare or what I prefer to call welfare for the rich. Under the current system each state has an incentive to offer lucrative tax rebates and direct subsidies to get companies to locate in their cities/states. This amounts to large amounts of welfare for the rich. Being a liberal and listening to all of the complaints I hear so often about welfare not being right because people should work for a living rather than being assisted by the government, I wonder how these same people feel about these sorts of "incentives" that companies so often gain when extorting one city against another as their place of location. If the ability to tax was limited to the Federal government, this would reduce local and state government's ability to offer such "incentives" and the Federal government would have to reason to offer them because they should not care where the companies locate as it relates to the revenues of the government. THere may ultimately be some "incentives" offered to encourage firms to locate in areas that need economic stimulus. I would, personally, have much less objection with this because at least then the people who most need help might get it. I would be very interested in debating this concept on this list if others are interested. Please post your replies if you have time. Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:5913] RE: Right or Left
Peter and others, I am finding that these posts are very helpful and an enjoyable means (with one notable exception!) to exchange ideas such as the one that came up today in my team teaching experience. My primary goal is to learn how others view these sorts of issues and I am fulfulling this goal. Thank you all. Please keep posting your ideas! Loren Rice
[PEN-L:5905] Right or Left
I am involved in a team taught course entitled, "Political and Economic Systems and Theories". The course is team taught with a political science professor who is a self declared Libratarian. I am a left wing near socialists. We get along quite well but we often have considerable debate in class. This is exactly what the administration wants in its team taught courses so there is no problem with our disagreements. Now for my question to all of you. The political scientist that I teach with argues that Mao, Lennin and Stalin were all left wing liberals. I disagree completely with this idea. I argue that each of these individuals were totalitarians who were simply power hungry and certainly not leftist or liberal. What do all of you think? All comments, to the list or privately, would be greatly appreciated! Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:5510] RE: Clinton's "balanced budget"
I am very curious to see if *ANYONE* can offer me a reason why we need to balance the budget given the cost associated with balancing it? I have not yet seen a single argument for balancing the budget that was not easily refuted! If there are any conservative lurkers out there on this mailing list, please explain to me and the others why it is that balancing the US Federal Government's budget is so god aweful important. If I am correct that there are no really good reasons for balancing the budget, why cant we get this message across to the masses? If we understand this so well and we are educators, why are we so utterly unsuccessful in educating the general populus about this basic understanding? Please enlighten me. Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:5108] RE: Two queries
Dear Pen-econers I am quite curious as to why the S&L bailout must cost anything? It seems to me that when loans go bad what is really happening is that money is destroyed from the economy; nevertheles s the assets are still in existence. If this is the case why cant the federal government simply monetize these loses completely and never increase the debt or tax burden? If I understand as a macroeconomist that if one prints too much money and injects it into the economy too quickly inflation may result. I say may becauase it seems to me that most inflation in the country in the past 25 years has been more supply side than excess money creation. But even if one accepts the argument completely that too much money will bring about inflation if the money existed prior to the S&Ls going broke why would replacing it cause inflation. Afterall I NEVER heard anyone saying that when the S&Ls went broke it was good because it would hold down inflation. If my logic is flawed please explain the flaw. If not please explain why others are not talking this way. Thank you Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma
[PEN-L:4744] Re: Setting mail digest?
Help a poor fool out please, what is "setting mail digest"? What exactly does this do? Thank you Loren Rice
[PEN-L:4268] RE: library of congress magazine
Dear Cathy I have the Ph.D. and have never heard of this economist either. Further intellectualy history is not such that anyone "locates the precise point where" anyone goes wrong. Sounds like some sort of onesided idea that should not come from the library of congress. Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma
[PEN-L:4168] Const. Amend response
Dear List Members After reading many of your comments on my proposal for a constitutional amendment tying government spending on prisons to government spending on higher education, I believe that it is now time for me to respond to some of the comments. I will attempt to address the major comments in some sort of logical (I hope) order. First, is this concept simply rent seeking behavior on my part? I would argue that while it is true that the adoption of such a proposal, however unlikely, would tend to benefit me and others in the academic field, this does not invalidate the proposal. I believe that if higher education were made more available to many of the disadvantaged groups in the United States the crime rate would in fact fall. I must admit that is only my belief and to this date not backed up by hard evidence. I simply believe that if more younger Americans could see opportunity they would be much less likely to opt for the road of crime. More money spent in the area of higher education, much of which in my opinion should be spent on aid and tutoring, would make this goal of a college degree or more much closer to the grasp of many. Second, should we drop the higher education off of the amendment? I can accept this modification to a large extent. One must always understand the context an author, in this case me, is writing to truly understand the reasons behind the specifics of any proposal. In Oklahoma, where I currently teach, the vo-tech programs are highly funded already. In fact, the new governor has proposed a cut in higher education of 2.5% this year across the board while exempting vo-tech and offering more money to build more centers. All this while the current vo-tech centers are not filled and the university system, at least in some cases, is full. On the same issue, there was the question of attempting to address the strange funding of education that allows the rich communities to have more highly funded and presumable "better" educational opportunities relative to the poorer communities. I support literally any proposal that would eliminate this type of situation. I literally believe that this discrepancy is one of the biggest outrages in America today. More money may help this situation, but I fear more money will simply mean the rich areas get more and the poor areas get marginally more but less than their percentage share. More importantly, the poorer areas most likely would get less than what is really needed and the rich areas would get more than what is really needed. Finally, I offered the proposal as simply being better than the garbage that is coming out of Washington these days. I really do not know if such a policy should ever be adopted. In fact, I believe that it was Dr. Solow from Iowa that stated he did not believe in a constitutional amendment for such purposes. Specifically, he stated, if I recall correctly, that these sorts of amendments should be limited to issues of basic human rights and freedoms. I would tend to agree with Dr. Solow but then I would argue that we certainly do not need a balanced budget amendment! This was sort of my point from the beginning. I do hope that this post is not the last on this issue though. I would like to hear what others have to say about things that we could tie prison funding to that would have the long run effect of lower future crime for the next generations. This question seems to be the key to this issue, in my opinion, not the question of where the money goes. I am simply tired of short sighted ideas of building more prisons and that will solve the problem. It never will! We need to refocus our thoughts on this issue. Perhaps a national child care system is as important as increased funding for higher education. I must admit that this program seems to lack the advantage of paying off for years after the investment compared to expenditures made on education. Nonetheless, I am very sincere when I say that I wish to hear other's opinions. Feel free to mail me directly or through the lists. Thank you Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma
[PEN-L:4150] Re: Const. Amen. Proposal
Dear Alan In response to your question, "Why higher education?" I would argue that higher education is the key to keeping people from needing to be put in prison. It is quite clear to me that we do not currently have a highly educated prison population; in fact, I believe that I have read that as much as 50% of all inmates in state pens have less than a high school education. Therefore, my conclusion is that education in general but more specifically higher education is the key to limited the number of individuals who are imprisoned during their lifetimes. How exactly to spend this money would be open for debate either now or after the amendment were ratified. (It would seem that if it were a Republican proposal afterwards would be just fine but if it were a Democratic proposal we would surely have to outline everything in advance :) Just a side note sorry) But it is my clear belief that increase access to higher ed would lessen the current burden of prison inmates in the long run. Essentially I am asking for both a short run and long run solution to crime and I believe that higher ed offers that based on casual evidence that I believe exists. I am confident that sociological research would support the fact that people with a college degree are much less likely to end up in a state pen. Thank you for your question as it gave me an opportunity to expand on this idea. Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma "The real solution to welfare and crime is jobs and education" -- Jessee Jackson 1994 speaking to William Bennett
[PEN-L:4143] Const. Amen. Proposal
Dear List members: I have a proposal for a constitutional amendment that seems to make more sense than any of the proposed legislation currently before our Federal Government. (This should not come as a shock) Without further ado here it is: CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT: It shall henceforth be required that all state and federal government expenditure on prisons be accompanied by an equal expenditure on higher education. The rationale behind this seemingly simple little amendment is to offer the law makers the "fortitude" and "tools" to take both a long run and short run view towards the problem of crime. Since it seems that the clear means to reduce crime (and welfare for that matter since we are attempting to eliminate most of it) is to education the people and create jobs for them to occupy. I am curious as to what response you will have to this constitutional amendment. Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma
[PEN-L:4028] How to subscribe?
Hi everyone: It's been a while and I dont remember how to subscribe to the list and a friend of mine wants to. Can anyone help out? Loren Rice
[PEN-L:3998] Re: capacity utilization
Dear Doug ' Unfortunately this is simply a hypothesis at this point and therefore is not yet supported by clear statistical evidence. Nonetheless, your point that service sector inflation has grown much more stongly than other sectors offers some tangental evidence that my hypothesis is correct. Since services are not in competition, at least in general, with international firms this higher level of inflation in this sector may be attributed to this fact. In addition, an earlier post claimed that prices were increased when firms felt they could, which would also support my hypothesis. I will try to find some more evidence as time permits to develop this. If anyone has more evidence to share for or against this idea, I would love to hear it! Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma P.S.I have a friend that wishes to join this list but I do not seem to have the correct instructions to give him. Could someone help me out with this?
[PEN-L:3991] Re: capacity utilization
Dear listmembers It seems to me that the Federal Reserve is once again operating under assumptions that may have been valid in years past, in this case decades past, that are no longer valid. If you will remember the Federal Reserve did this in the early 1980s when they should have known that financial deregulation would change people's behavior and yet they still continued to peg M1 which was a meaningless variable once funds started crossing from other aggregates simply to chase high interest rates. Well, now that I have ripped on the Fed's past policy, I have a hypothesis about the wrong headedness of the current Fed actions. It seems as though the Fed has accepted that unemployment below 6 percent is undesirable for the US economy. (If this is truly the case then the Fed has created a permananet industrial reserve army which I believe is much larger than anything Marx would have ever dreamed of in its shere magnitude) The reason, I presume, for the Feds desire to keep unemployment about the 6 percent marker is to keep inflationary pressures out of the economy. I do not know whether in the past inflation has come about because of capacity utilitization or tight labor markets, but there does seem to exist a Phillips Curve relationship between unemployment and inflation, though not a perfectly stable one. It is my contention that whether inflation comes primarily from capacity utilitization or a tight labor market is irrelavant in the face of very real international competition. As long as all nations, or at least all "relevant" nations do not face this situation of high capacity or a tight labor market there will be considerable pressure downward toward stability in prices. This is true because if a US firm raises prices substantially, or in some cases even marginally, they will lose sales to their internation competitors. In addition, in the input market more generally known as the labor market (Neoclassicals mess things up so much with the special little terms) wages are kept from growing at any substantial rate by the threat of international competition for these jobs. As such, I would argue that the US economy can in fact have an unemployment rate as low as 3 to 3.5 percent consistently without any real inflationary pressure. I am curious to see how many of you will respond to my hypotheisis on this subject. If disagree please explain your reasons as I wish to learn. If you agree, why if it is obvious to us is the Fed ignoring it? In fact, the Fed seems to believe that the international sector is a source of inflation rather than a mitigating factor. Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma P.S.Much of this analysis comes indirectly from Paul Davidson's lectures and readings which I was fortunate enough to be able to experience during graduate school.
[PEN-L:3964] Balanced Budget Amendment
I am wondering if there are economist out there that support the balanced budget amendment? If so could you please reply and tell me why? Also if you are against it could you explain why? I think this group may want to address this issue from both a theoretical and practical view. I hope this generates some discussion. Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:3759] RE: China to Establish Direct Commercial Links to Internet
What will this do to the use of internet? Will this very large increase in the number of users overwelm the hardware currently in existence? Recently I spoke with a rep. from Digital who predicted that the use of the internet on a large scale basis as it is now moving towards will destroy the internet within two years. I certainly hope he was wrong but do those of you out there believe that this is possible? Just a second way to look at what appears to be good news. Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma
[PEN-L:3739] Re: Black unemployment rate
Dear List I agree with the posts about rising tides concerning minority status increasing when the economy turns up but I should say that I am working on a paper and the prelimiary evidence for U.S. Industries indicates that women are not included in this group. Women are less effected by the business cycle then men. Has anyone found similar evidence? Also since I am very busy teaching a ton of hours 15 this semester in 5 classes I am wondering if anyone would be interested in working on theis project with me? Let me know. Loren Rice The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
