On Sun, 19 Dec 1999, Max Sawicky wrote:
> Max:
> >It's not the unemployment level. It's the quality of job --
Max, note that I myself underlined the possibility that the unemployment effect from trade has been disguised by the growth of low productivity service jobs for the working poor. Plus, I suggested that Joan Robinson would have considered people so employed defacto unemployed, suggesting that in her broad terms the unemployment rate in the US is quite high if EPI data on the explosion of low wage and very low wage employment are to be believed. So I am not on another planet. At any rate, where is your estimate of how much globalisation, however defined, accounts for the growth of low paying jobs as a percentage of total employment? Do you accept Adrian Wood's econometric analysis?
However, have there not been positive effects on profitability and therewith investment, growth and employment levels due to those cheap imports bloating the trade deficit (which the US alone can sustain simply by printing more IOUs)? Doesn't Robt Gordon suggest so much? It seems to me that it is not analytical to separate the negative from the positive effects of globalization or trade deficits, treated as an unmitigated problem for US labor by Hoffa. Is that true? Haven't seen the argument made well at all. It seems to me that we are ever nearer a complete disaster and delegitimation of labor if it follows this anti globalization course. It's time to oust Sweeney, Hoffa and co before it is too late.
Yours, Rakesh