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INSTALLMENT 1/N:
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Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995
From: Phil Agre <•••@••.•••>
To: •••@••.•••
Subject: editorial by Sid Shniad
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995
From: D Shniad <•••@••.•••>
Subject: My editorial in the TWU Transmitter
WITHOUT STRONG GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION WE FACE A
BLEAK FUTURE
"...The very nature of work, of
institutions, of society, and even of
capitalism itself, are mutating...the
utopia promised by science and
technology has turned into a
nightmare for the 'common man'.
Poverty, unemployment, pollution,
overpopulation, mass migration,
global plagues, etc., have left us
with a world full of frightened
people....The future is
inequality...western societies are
already witnessing the emergence of a
rapidly expanding underclass."
-- From Winners and Losers in the
Information Age, by Ian Angell,
Professor of Information Systems,
London School of Economics
Professor Angell captures the growing sense
that something is radically wrong in our society.
After describing the problem, however, he doesn't
lay out a plan to alleviate the suffering of
society's victims. On the contrary -- this
professor believes there is little that society
can do in the face of these developments. Despite
the list of horrors that he recites, Angell
believes that our most important social decisions
should nonetheless be left in the hands of the
"free market".
It isn't surprising that these views are
popping up everywhere. Universities and the press
have stopped playing their traditional roles as
social critics. Over the past ten or twenty
years, we have witnessed an unprecedented series
of corporate media mergers, combined with vastly
increased corporate funding to cash-strapped
universities. As a result, these institutions --
which traditionally served as more or less
independent sources of information for society --
have effectively come under corporate control.
So it's no wonder that we now hear endless
propaganda from professors, columnists and
announcers, all repeating the view that government
should renounce any attempt to regulate the
private sector; that because of globalization and
free trade, economic activity is no longer
susceptible to social control; and that government
cannot play an active role in influencing economic
outcomes even it wants to.
The message corporate wouldn't be so
outrageous if a de-regulated and privatized
economy yielded positive results. But there is
little doubt that the results have been a social
disaster.
WHO BENEFITS?
It's not surprising that the corporate sector
likes what's happening and defends it at every
opportunity. Globalization, free trade, de-
regulation and privatization is having the desired
effects: profits are rising and wages are
declining.
The Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy
Institute (EPI) recently released a report called
Profits Up, Wages Down by economists Dean Baker
and Lawrence Mishel, showing that profits are
increasing and wages are decreasing across the
American economy.
In the 1990s, income has been redistributed
from labour to owners of capital as profitability,
the economic return to capital, has reached
historically high levels. The increasing wage
inequality that began in the 1980s and persisted
throughout the 1990s has forced middle- and low-
wage earners wages to accept reductions in their
real wages, as earnings failed to keep up with
inflation.
Specifically, Baker and Mishel show that:
-- After-tax profit rates in 1994 were the
highest in 25 years. Profit rates have
increased even further in 1995.
-- In the 1990s, increased profitability has
not resulted in growing investment or
increased productivity.
-- During the "recovery" that began in 1991
and continues today, inflation-adjusted
hourly wages of the vast majority of the
workforce have stagnated. For the bottom
80% of men and the bottom 70% of women,
real hourly wages have declined.
--Education and training doesn't help much.
Men with four years of college as well as
those without college degrees and women
with less than a college degree are also
seeing their real wages decline.
-- The average male worker has seen his or her
hourly wage decline 1% per year over the
1989-94 period, continuing the downward
trend that began in the 1979-89 business
cycle. The wage of the average female
worker also declined over the 1993-95
period, in contrast to the modest 0.5%
annual growth that was experienced over the
entire 1979-93 period.
-- Increased profitability in the 1990s is the
result of cost restructuring. This has
increased the economic return to capital,
but has not led to greater efficiency. If
profit rates in the 1990s had remained at
their 1952-79 average, wages in the U.S. in
1994 would have been $120 billion -- 4.0%
higher for all workers and 6.1% higher for
workers without a college education.
-- Higher after-tax profit rates are due in
part to lower tax rates on capital. If the
tax rate on capital had remained at its
1952-79 average, government revenue would
have been $40 billion higher in 1994 -- an
amount equal to 25% of the 1994 fiscal
deficit in the States.
(continued)
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INSTALLMENT 2/N to follow
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Posted by Richard K. Moore <•••@••.•••>
Wexford, Ireland (USA citizen)
Editor: The Cyberjournal (@CPSR.ORG)
See the CyberLib at:
http://www.internet-eireann.ie/cyberlib
See Cyber-Rights library:
http://jasper.ora.com/andyo/cyber-rights/cyber-rights.html
You are encouraged to forward and cross-post messages and online materials
for non-commercial use, provided they are copied in their entirety, with
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