Newman!:
>" . . . Isn't it possible that it was precisely the support for low-end
wage
>growth, both through EITC transfers, affirmative action, support for
>low-wage
>unionization struggles, etc., that has contributed to sustaining this
>economic boom? . . .
-No. EITC is $30b annual, not all of which derives -from Clinton's '93 increase. Affirmative action and -'support for low-wage unionization struggles' hardly -registers on the radar screen. If you could quantify -these, I doubt they would be of any important size.
Wow, progressive struggles are irrelevant. An amazing writeoff of billions of dollars of organizing by unions, civil rights and womens organizations.
And while I can't quantify it - and thus for economists it doesn't exist - I actually think unionizing has mattered tremendously in a lot of sectors. Not just in raising wages directly for those workers who are unionized but by the fact that the threat of new unionizing has pushed wages up by companies trying to keep the unions out. A chunk of the collapse of wages in the 1970s and 1980s were the fall in union wages but probably as significant was the collapse in the threat of unions coming into non-union companies, who then felt free to hire temps, cut pay and any number of other attacks on workers share of the wage-profit split.
Many leftists criticize the Sweeney regime for not delivering enough new members, but what they miss is that aside from traditional union-busting, a coordinated response of business has been to pay off workers to keep unions out. Almost any organizer will tell you that over the last few years, any firm you try to organize suddenly sees new pay hikes and benefits and promises to make things better if the workers just vote agains the union. Even more companies have acted preemptively to keep benefits at the union level or better to keep the unions out.
These effects are hard to measure quantitatively, but they are very real.
>Now is the time for a Campaign of Bitter
>Recrimination against the Fed and all its
>camp-followers for trying to take away jobs
>from those who gained them in the move from
>the "natural" unemployment rate of 5.5% to
>the current rate.
On this point, we agree.
-- Nathan Newman