October 23, 2015
WINING THE WAR ON WAGES:
The Rise and Fall of the Job (BETHANY MORETON OCT 22, 2015, Pqacific Standard)
Since 2000, rising American productivity has become de-coupled from job growth: Despite sizzling profits and the ever-receding horizon of a brighter future for all--just on the other side of endless "disruption"--the celebrity industries of Silicon Valley and Wall Street are hollowing out middle-class jobs. [...]Indeed, if there is anything to be celebrated in the current jobless recovery, it is this opportunity at last to assess the job as a social contrivance, not a timeless feature of the physical universe. A dose of historical perspective helps: the job, it turns out, has only recently been considered fit for polite company, let alone transformed into one of the chief desiderata of public life. In contrast to its more venerable cousins "work" and "labor," "job" is the red-headed stepchild in the family of human action: Prior to the 20th century, in English the term connoted fragmented, poorly executed work--odd jobs, piece-work, chance employment.
The universakl desire to redistribute wealth ought not raise the final cost of goods and services.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 23, 2015 1:49 PM
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