X-Sender: Galbraith at mail.utexas.edu Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 14:06:11 -0500 To: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> From: "James K. Galbraith" <Galbraith at mail.utexas.edu> Subject: Re: class struggle Mime-Version: 1.0
Well, intimidating labor may be their game, but that isn't fighting inflation and no amount of semantics can turn it into fighting inflation. It does seem clear that full employment is good for workers, and for greater wage equality. Most people would tend to think that a pretty good thing, so I would resist redefinitions that try to put pejorative labels on good things.
However, in point of fact, they probably are not engaged here in anything quite so crass as bashing labor. The game is really about reducing credit access at the low end; bankers do not like making 75K mortgages to secretaries and nurses.
Jamie
At 11:38 AM 6/26/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Jamie -
>
>Hello, hope all is well in the Texas summer.
>
>I just read your Nation edit on the Fed. Yes, the threat of inflation
>is nonexistent when you look at the CPI. But when you look at what
>Greenspan calls the "diminishing pool of potential workers," isn't he
>expressing capital's anxiety about the rising bargaining power of
>labor? The Fieldcrest win for UNITE, and today's NYT story about
>immigrant workers on strike against IBP make this seem more than
>illusory. In other words, don't the Fed and Wall Street have a
>different definition of inflation from you and me?
>
>Doug
>