November 26, 2011
WORK IS THE OPIATE OF THE MASSES:
The Age of the Superfluous Worker (HERBERT J. GANS, 11/24/11, NY Times)AMERICA, like other modern countries, has always had some surplus workers -- people ready to work but jobless for extended periods because the "job creators," private and public, have been unable or unwilling to create sufficient jobs. When the number of surplus workers rose sharply, the country also had ways of reducing it. [...]
When the jobless recovery ends and the economy is restored to good health, today's surplus will be reduced. New technology and the products and services that accompany it will create new jobs. But unless the economy itself changes, eventually many of these innovations may be turned over to machines or the jobs may be sent to lower-wage economies.
In fact, if modern capitalism continues to eliminate as many jobs as it creates -- or more jobs than it creates -- future recoveries will not only add to the amount of surplus labor but will turn a growing proportion of workers into superfluous ones.
What could be done to prevent such a future? America will have to finally get serious about preserving and creating jobs -- and on a larger, and more lasting, scale than Roosevelt's New Deal.
Consider the serial strange assumptions here and let's highlight the two biggest:
(1) The capacity of capitalism to create ever more wealth with ever less labor is a bad thing.
(2) In order to deal with this bad thing we require innovations that will force ever more labor irrespective of the value-added.
A hundred and sixty years ago the Left was fretting about how capitalism must result in man being alienated from labor. Today's Left is fretting about man being alienated from leisure. And they call themselves Progressive?
Posted by oj at November 26, 2011 7:28 AM
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