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1081 [lbo-talk] US immiseration -- rank: 1000

Doug, 2007: "More women working ...also means that the number of paid work hours in the society has risen dramatically, with little assistance for child or elder care (two things that are on my male mind right now, too). Household incomes are flat, average hourly earnings are down, yet productivity is massively up. There's something seriously wrong with that." Doug, 1997 'It's unfortunate that such material progress for women ... has come amidst a general stagnation of incomes, and a ...

Document Size:	5188
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 7 08:20:58 PST 2007

1082 [lbo-talk] US immiseration -- rank: 1000

How much worse off you are in the US: 1975 life expectancy 71.4 (65 if you are black) Unemployment rate 9 per cent Youth literacy 80 % (1980) Human Development Index 0.875 2007 life expectancy 77.9 (72.7 if you are black) infant mortality 'has been declining steadily for more than four decades' Joyce Martin CDC Unemployment rate 4.6 per cent Youth (18-24) literacy 87 % Human development index 0.948

Document Size:	4880
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 7 01:34:32 PST 2007

1083 [lbo-talk] US immiseration -- rank: 1000

"James, I quoted you the BLS's figures for aggregate hours worked in the private sector ...They show a rise nearly twice the rate of the overall growth in the pop.. ...Why do you have such a hard time believing this? Doug" Doug, it is not that I have a hard time believing this, it is just that I am not used to the idea that immigration and more women in work is a bad thing. Aggregate hours worked in industry don't tell us much about hours individual people work. You seem to accept here ...

Document Size:	6593
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Mar 6 15:51:07 PST 2007

1084 [lbo-talk] US immiseration -- rank: 1000

This is what the ILO says http://laborsta.ilo.org/cgi-bin/brokerv8.exe#291 Non agricultural weekly hours US 1976 36.1 2006 33.9 http://laborsta.ilo.org/cgi-bin/brokerv8.exe#291 Non agricultural earnings per hour dollars 1976 4.86 1986 8.76 1996 12.03 2006 16.76 "Real earnings are expressed in constant dollars and are calculated from the earnings averages for the current month using a deflator derived from the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). The refe ...

Document Size:	5154
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Mar 6 14:44:33 PST 2007

1085 [lbo-talk] US immiseration -- rank: 1000

I am surprised at lbo-talk's sudden conversion to the view that US workers are hard up. It used to be commonplace to hear the complaint on LBO that people in the US consumed too much, like Chris Kromm, here >1) Every conscientious environmentalist I know argues that the chief >culprit >is the U.S. (sometimes this is extended to the major industrialized >countries in general). So no, the progressive wing of the environmental >movement does not "tell" the rest of the world ...

Document Size:	8269
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Mar 6 12:10:09 PST 2007

1086 [lbo-talk] US immiseration -- rank: 1000

"You're ignoring that many more are graduating with unmanageable debt. Why assume more grads means more can afford to pay?" Well, I am not sure what unmanageable means in this context. Presumably the colleges would not put on courses if they did not get paid. And presumably the banks would not make the loans if they did not recoup some money. So, yes, I assume that the degrees are paid for, by the students or their parents. Doug, you amaze me. I had no idea that consumption rates in t ...

Document Size:	5947
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Mar 6 10:48:08 PST 2007

1087 [lbo-talk] US consumption -- rank: 1000

Doug, fsometimes you surprise me. It is hardly a revelation that productivity increases in services are less easy to come by than in goods. But how can you honestly say that cheaper goods do not increase the basket of consumer goods people can buy. You say Cox and Alm's research is shoddy (which would appear to be a euphemism for Texan if I read you right). But you do not say it is wrong. If it is wrong, perhaps you could explain why. Perhaps you could show that there have been no productivity i ...

Document Size:	5928
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Mar 6 08:38:38 PST 2007

1088 [lbo-talk] US consumption -- rank: 1000

Andie "You persist in the fallacy that averages tell you the significant things without looking at distribution. Products may be cheaper, but if real wages have fallen so that it requires two people to earn enough to buy these cheaper products, that is not an improvement. The benefits accrue at the top. Doug gave the figures that matter,w why do you ignore them?" I don't ignore the figures Doug gave. He showed that median household income rose by 15 per cent between 1973 and 2005. He a ...

Document Size:	6462
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Mar 6 07:12:01 PST 2007

1089 [lbo-talk] US consumption - correction, sorry! -- rank: 1000

W.D. Kiernan, rightly smelling a fault: "That's not even keeping up with population growth" My mistake, I was reading the wrong column completely. Percentage of the population aged 18-24 attending college rises, pretty evenly, from 25 per cent to 38.9 per cent, between 1967 and 2005. Column F in this excel table http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/school/TableA-5a.xls

Document Size:	5098
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Mar 6 06:24:23 PST 2007

1090 [lbo-talk] US consumption (was barbaric?) -- rank: 1000

Andie Nachborgen writes: "it's just untrue to say we are better off, lots better off, than we were a generation ago, or that the secular tendencies are to make us better and better off. They are in fact in many ways the reverse." But the secular tendency is there, it is the tendency to reduce costs. This was shown by Cox and Alm, who estimated how long you would have to work to earn enough to buy some basic consumer goods: Year 1920 1930 ...

Document Size:	8199
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Mar 6 02:38:42 PST 2007

1091 [lbo-talk] barbaric? -- rank: 1000

I seemed to have irritated a few people when I said that people were not so badly off in the US. (See below) It is funny how fashions change. I recall that when I was posting on the 'Marxism-Thaxis' list I used to get told off for saying the opposite - that US workers were exploited. see: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1998-August/011125.html Then the fashion was for everyone to bemoan the excessive living standards of the US population. Then everyone used to say that the US ...

Document Size:	7151
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Mar 5 13:47:46 PST 2007

1092 [lbo-talk] barbaric? -- rank: 1000

Quoth Doug: ""Terrorized" is too strong a word, but American society is filled with anxiety and fear - fear of homelessness and failure, fear of the terrorists, fear of all those Mexicans crossing the border. Maybe you've been away too long, but it's one of our foundational principles of social organization." I was going to say, "poor you!" but then I remembered that you live in the wealthiest society on earth. And the last time that I visited, I seem to remember th ...

Document Size:	5566
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Mar 5 12:02:09 PST 2007

1093 [lbo-talk] the term barbarism in Marx and Engels -- rank: 1000

Use of the term 'barbarism' in the works of Marx and Engels. In general, we find that Marx and Engels both use the word barbarism in the way that was typical of their day, in the contrast historical and geographical between the civilised and barbarian world. Occasionally, they describe features of the capitalist world as barbaric (though never the society as a whole, because that would make a nonsense of their conceptual framework). The force of that condemnation, of course, is that the danger i ...

Document Size:	7152
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Mar 5 10:38:52 PST 2007

1094 [lbo-talk] barbarism (was Marxism and Religion) -- rank: 1000

John Thornton asks "Had the English Civil War or the American Revolution resulted in a socialist social/economic arrangement then you must imagine we would not have pencils, electricity, antibiotics, or shoe laces?" To which I reply that it is an academic question, since neither the English Civil War nor the American revolution did (or indeed could have) resulted in a socialist economic arrangement. The pencils, electricy supply, antibiotics and shoe laces that do exist, exist because ...

Document Size:	5596
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Mar 5 08:47:07 PST 2007

1095 [lbo-talk] Needs and Desires (was barabarism, was Marxism and Religion) -- rank: 1000

Charles asks: "Where's Jim H. with needs and desires ?" I find the distinction usually made between worthy "need" and unworthy "desire" (or "want") to be pretty ropey. Usually, whoever is making the distinction assumes that they have a special insight into what people "really" need as opposed to the "artificial" desires that capitalism has persuaded them they want, i.e. that their desires are in the realm of false consciousness, while t ...

Document Size:	7672
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Mar 4 13:06:15 PST 2007