Well I may be poor, but I am somebody. I was about to start rummaging through my 'delete' folder to find quotes to support my statement, but Louis has kindly supplied more in his post.
< Greens never say anything about workers income. This is just a figment of Max's imagination. What Greens say is that there should be limits on consumption that are socially destructive.>
The only purpose of income is consumption, either sooner or later, for oneself or for others. If consumption is too high, so must income be too high. When government makes a policy that some consumption is good and some bad, it necessarily reduces real income, since it is withdrawing or making more costly choices that people are making voluntarily.
>For example, SUV's are ravaging the environment.>
It's not about SUV's. It's about food, clothing, and shelter. Once you get past a short list that applies to a limited class of people, you're talking about the basic living standards of the population at large.
>One of the reasons that so many people are tempted to buy them is that the
price of gasoline is affordable. However, this affordability is a function
of power relations. Cheap gasoline comes from Nigeria because they murder
opponents of Shell Oil.>
Here we are pausing to impute imperialist guilt to today's hod-rodders. Little Deuce Coup, you don't know you have taken the capitalist road . . .
>That's just speaking for Greens. As far as Red-Greens are concerned, the
issue of workers income has to be placed in the context of the needs of the
entire planet's population.>
"The issue." Uh hmm. So now we are entertained with the *question* (sic), are workers incomes (no problems here with terminology) too high? It's only a matter of time before some New Age boss tells his employees, "your wages need to be placed in context."
> It is entirely possible that the income of workers in the industrialized
west are artificially high.>
'Artificial' is an interesting term. Given what follows, it can only mean unjust.
I would argue the contrary: it is quite impossible for workers' incomes to be too high. It is possible for nations to be disadvantaged by unfair or positively unjust trade relations, not to mention actual imperialism.
It is also impossible to be left or Marxist and to regard workers' incomes as too high. Remember, if we are only talking about a very thin strata of the absolutely best-off workers, then there is no issue here either way.
>When a multinational corporation pays Nike workers in Portland fabulous
salaries because they are ripping off Indonesian workers, then justice
demands that Indonesian workers have a decent life and the Portland workers
live lightly more modest lives. Of course, this is all moot because the
capitalist system is based on exploitation... >
If *workers* in Portland, as opposed to elite professionals or executives, are getting "fabulous" salaries in this age of wage stagnation, it's because of their productivity, not exploitation. [I was under the impression that Nike didn't actually make any shoes in the U.S., but that's beside the general point.)
If we doubt the fairness of a world where typical consumption in one nation is many times more than that in many others, I would not disagree in the slightest. But once again, Louis substitutes idealism for politics.
There is no politics, progressive or otherwise, founded on anything resembling the notion that "justice demands that Indonesian workers have a decent life and the Portland workers live slightly more modest lives."
The real political home of this doctrine is neo-liberalism: deficit reduction (now surplus maximization), which drives the privatization of social insurance and regressive consumption taxation, is associated with reduced consumption and increase export of capital in the industrial countries.
By contrast, I would suggest that economic growth in the U.S. creates the basis for rising incomes and a more benevolent posture towards the less-developed nations. Such a posture could take the form of debt relief, export credits, technology transfer, and other sorts of aid. People in the U.S. will be more disposed to give when they feel more secure in their own lives. A doctrine of red-green idealistic austerity is a perfect set-up to drive the working class to fascism.
Cheers,
MBS
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