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That is why I am here. To hold a dialogue in order to learn from others as other learn from me. But such dialog must be honest for an honest debate to take place. Otherwise, you may not appreciate what I have learned. And now that I have returned from work, I can fully research my material and form a deliberated response. And this is what I have learned from you.
First off. You addressed me with three dishonest debating strategies. You have attempted to appeal to authority, you have attempted to make an emotional appeal, and you have attempted to ascribe to me a position I neater expressed nor implied. You needn't apologizing to me, for I saw through your approach, and CALLED you on it. You do need to apologies to the Democratic underground, for many members here look dimly on such strategies.
But such debating strategies are what I have come to expect from Clark supporters. From your perspective, you saw some one post something negative about Clark, and attacked accordingly with little martial of relevance, and even less material from yourself. And it is evident to me that despite your quotations of Krugman, you seem to have little command over what he is trying to say.
First off. It might be helpful to the room to understand exactly what Krugman means by "lumps of labor." From the link you provided.
Economists call it the "lump of labor fallacy." It's the idea that there is a fixed amount of work to be done in the world, so any increase in the amount each worker can produce reduces the number of available jobs. (A famous example: those dire warnings in the 1950's that automation would lead to mass unemployment.) As the derisive name suggests, it's an idea economists view with contempt, yet the fallacy makes a comeback whenever the economy is sluggish.
Sure enough, the lump-of-labor fallacy has resurfaced in the United States — but with a twist. Traditionally, it is a fallacy of the economically naïve left — for example, four years ago France's Socialist government tried to create more jobs by reducing the length of the workweek. But in America today you're more likely to hear lump-of-labor arguments from the right, as an excuse for the Bush administration's policy failures. - Paul Krugman
No you may note that no where have I ever expressed any such idea. Here what I originally said.
Clark focuses on jobs retraining and building new government bureaucracies. These will not help the workers because employment in the US in and of itself has become obsolete because corporations find it easier to play games in the stock market, than to any thing real to contribute to the economy.
Jobs will continue to be shipped out of the county at an ever accelerating pace. No mater how much you sink into jobs training programs. (Spelling errors corrected.)
I was not arguing that there was only X number of jobs. But that corporations were choosing to invest money in the stock market, or to use slave labor, rather than create jobs here in the US. From the corporations perspective, hiring US labor is just too expensive and too risky.
Krugman even noted that the "lumps of labor" was being used to defend this status quo by the corporations. Which he did not get into in this article. But never the less, it is out there. The corporations abuse of "lump labor" is to argue that with the new global market, there is now a surplus of labor. And thus laws of supply and demand push wage prices down. Which is also false.
The truth is that a workers wages becomes the consumer's buying power. And the consumers buying power becomes the demand for goods and services. And it is that demand that drives growth. There for, with an adequately paid labor force, economic activity shall always follow. Cut wages, and you straggle the economy in the long run. It's called labor/consumer stability, or AKA consumer confidence.
The corporations have been cutting labor and labor compensation for 30 years now. And it is THAT cost cutting that has caused or current economic crises. Fail to address this issue, and you will fail to address the problems in the economy.
So some advice to you is if you wish to appeal to authority, to at the vary least understand that which you are appealing too.
It is also interesting to note that you have also misrepresented Krugman's argument. Your words.
Mr. K believes that those preaching against the kind of policy being put forward by Clark are buying into a false notion: The Lumps of Labor.
It is interesting to note that Krugman doesn't even mention Clark in this article, the Lumps of Labor, by which you sight by name. I even had my word processor search for "Clark," and it returned zero matching words found. Would you care to explain exactly how you came to understand that Krugman defends "the kind of policy being put forward by Clark"?
The Problems with Clark's plan.
Oh yes. I am not finished with Clark's jobs plan. This plan is a bad idea, and it will fail. His jobs is to repeal the Bush tax cuts, and sink the revenue into three elements.
1) 40 billion into Homeland security. In an FDR like jobs program.
2) 40 billion into jobs retraining.
3) All remaining funds will go into a tax incentive to be realized with the first year of highring a new employee.
First element.
While 40 billion into a jobs program could be a good thing. But nothing I have read about his plan seems to suggest that he intends to address the true problem related to employment. That of job security. I am not talking about protectionism here, but the right of the worker to see to his own disposition. Currently, he doesn't have that right, and is at the whim of the corporation. He can even lose his job if the CEO wants a pay raise.
The whole point of the union, of which Clark claims to be in support of, is collective bargaining. Colective bargaining serves as a check against the CEO's power to use layoffs to pad his wallet, or cover up his mistakes. It is this lack of a check that is causing many of our labor problems. Unions are losing jobs to slave labor because CEO's want to use slave labor to "save on labor costs." If it was all about costs, than CEOs wouldn't give them selves a pay raise after the lay off or wage reductions now would we.
Second element. Jobs retraining.
From what I have read, he largely dusted off Clintion's jobs retraining program. A good thing you might say, but things have changed.
Clinton argued that with "Free trade" (another pet peeve of mine, but that is for another post) was fundamentally changing the nature of labor in America. Now that the labor force was competing with cheap labor abroad, US labor could no longer expect to hold low tech manufacturing jobs. So retraining the old "low tech" labor force for high tech service sector jobs. Jobs in the textile industry was moving to Mexico, so you retrain the textile worker into electrons & IT (Internet Technologies). In Clintion's day, this was the age of the dot.com boom, and these types of jobs were in demand. It was also argued that these jobs couldn't not be transplanted. They were service sector jobs.
No don't get me wrong. Clintion's jobs program did a lot to boost the economy and to promote employment. But the situation has changed dramatically sense then, exposing fatal flaws into Clintion's argument. Flaws that "economic expert" Clark doesn't seem to be aware of.
First off is the collapse of the dot com bubble. Much of the employment gains in the 90's was a direct result of a bubble economy. Now that this bubble economy has ended, many of these tech jobs have just disappeared as many companies that offered these jobs went belly up. And as Bush himself said, we are currently in a "job less" recovery.
The other problem with Clintions argument is that corporations can and are currently moving service sector jobs overseas. Even their own jobs (The CEO's) are being moved overseas in order to take advantage of Bermuda tax shelters. Joe Hardhat unfortunately, isn't so lucky. Now that he dose have an electronics degrees, and perhaps even acquired a technical job. These are now being exported to India using "proxy" mailing systems. For example, if you happen to have an IFR2398 Spectrum Analyzer that you need to have repaired, and sent it to Wichita Kansas to have it repaired, UPS will instead route that Spectrum Analyzer to a shop in India where tech's there will work on it. Even while you think it is located in Wichita. Of course, this is all duty free, because of free trade.
IT workers are even more vulnerable. A victim of their own success it would seem as the vary systems that they build are now being used to move their jobs to India. The flaw is thinking that any other high tech positions will be safe from the same thing. I have heard some float the idea that bio-tech, nano-tech, and Artificial Intelligence, will be the new job frontiers of the future. It would only seem logical that the "old high tech" jobs such as electronics and IT should be retrained into those fields. But corporations will export those jobs too. Most likely to India.
You may sign up for jobs training for jobs that will not be where when you graduate. A serious problem considering that you racked up some hefty student loans to get this training.
Element three. The "new higher" incentive.
Oh yay. This is as supply side as it comes. It has been argued by another Clark supporter that one reason why we are in a jobless recovery is because new highers are "too risky." The corp has to expend a lot of money in training with low productivity coming back from the employee. Let us forget for a moment that this argument was first echoed by M. White, Bush's former economic zar. And it one of the primary arguments for "labor lagging the recovery."
I have already exposed one problem for this claim, that corps are choosing slave labor in foreign countries. So unless the incentive is worth more than this, nothing will change. But I am sure the corps will have no problem taking Clark's tax-money hand outs. But even setting that aside, this creates a huge loop hole. Why not turn over your work force every year. Each "new higher" would then get you the tax brake. Or maybe Clark's Homeland Security Job Core will police this sort of thing.
But this idea is made in ignorance of the facts. The US job labor force is now more transient than ever before it its history. The average US worker can expect to change jobs once every ten years. Temporary workers are in demand, providing a "just in time" work force. Corporate labor turn over rates happens to be remarkably high, perhaps even "churning" to keep the work force from acquiring benefits or job security.
Joe Hardhat gets into trouble, and Clark wants to come to the CEO's rescue.
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