--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote: > >
> >Effectively, the black workers are being made to
> write
> >unemployment insurance for the white workers. This
> is
> >a real benefit to the white workers, which would
> not
> >be available to them under any system (including a
> >non-capitalist system) which was not also racist.
> >They have someone else to bear the brunt of
> >fluctuations in the business cycle.
>
> In my opinion, the USA would have a more generous
> system of
> unemployment insurance but for racism, for racism
> works against
> making a militant demand for universalist social
> programs for the
> working class.
This is an empirical question; whether the increased unemployment benefit hypothesised would be better for white workers than the existing informal program of insurance against losing your job known as "being white". I would tend to think that the persistence of white working class support for racial discrimination in employment is at least prima facie evidence that it is net beneficial, but maybe that's just the revealed-preference economist in me talking.
>So, while white workers suffer less
> than black
> workers, for instance because black workers are more
> subject to the
> business cycle than they are, white workers, too,
> suffer from the
> inadequate unemployment insurance.
Note that no unemployment insurance program in the conventional sense is better than not losing your job.
We can make a simple model:
Assume that there are X black workers and Y white workers in the economy. Assume further that the economy starts with full employment and is about to (with certainty) go into a recession in which only Z<(X+Y) workers will be employed. Assume the wage rate is w.
To keep things simple, we'll assume that reductions in employment come by random selection (I believe that this willl generalise to LIFO, but you start needing mathematical symbols that are tedious in ASCII).
The white workers are asked to choose between two regimes:
1. The rate of unemployment benefit is zero, and white workers have preferential treatment. The reduction in employment from X+Y to Z will be carried out by first firing randomly chosen black workers, then, when all black workers have been fired, randomly chosen white workers.
2. The rate of unemployment benefit is some u>0, and the reduction in employment will be carried out by firing randomly selected employees regardless of colour.
Under regime 1, the white worker's expected income is equal to:
w, with certainty if Z<=X w((Z-X)/Y) if Z>X
Under regime 2, a white worker's expected income is equal to (Z/(X+Y))u + (1-(Z/(X+Y)))w
If Z is known with certainty to be less than X, then white workers will always gain from a racist hiring policy.
If Z is known with certainty to be greater than X, then the rate of unemployment benefit at which white workers gain from a non-racist hiring policy is solvable, in a fraction which would be tedious to reproduce here, but clearly depends on X, Y, Z and w.
If Z is not known with certainty but has a probability distribution, you can still calculate the required level of unemployment benefit which would make white workers no worse off by not supporting a racist hiring policy. Then the task would be to model the improvement in the unemployment benefit which could be gained by racial solidarity, which strikes me as one for the sociologists.
> Further, _white
> workers who work
> in the same occupational categories, industries,
> etc. as black
> workers in the same region_ face downward wage
> pressures from black
> unemployment.
But Heather's work showed very clearly that the pressure from black unemployment wasn't as severe as that of white unemployment. If someone has to be unemployed, ceteris paribus, white workers do better if they're black.
>
> Which is in the real interest of white workers -- a
> generous &
> universal unemployment insurance which decreases the
> "cost of job
> loss" or white supremacy to create a thin cushion
> that does not
> prevent the lowering of all earnings?
It depends. The insurance industry could no doubt tell you.
Also:
>>>Doesn't the act of telling workers that "racism is
in the interest of
white workers" basically create the racist &
anti-working-class
abstraction called "the white working class"?,<<<<<
I don't see any reification of abstractions in "racism is in the interest of white workers" that isn't also in "racism is against the interest of white workers".
regards,
fozzie.
===== "Imagine the Duchess's feelings You could have pierced her with swords To find her youngest son liked Lenin And sold the Daily Worker near the House of Lords" -- Noel Coward
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