[lbo-talk] employment

[Brad DeLong]

>I don't mean distributed just in the income distribution sense. I 
>mean in the qualitative sense that income is an imperfect proxy for. 
>How does Moore's law affect the life of a female-headed urban 
>family? A truckdriver-nurse-four kid family? How are Wal-Mart's 
>productivity gains distributed? Certainly not to its workers or 
>suppliers (or even to its managers - the company makes them double 
>up in Motel Six's). To its working class customers via low prices? I 
>suppose, but the cheapened reproduction of the working class is a 
>capitalist's dream, not a working class dream; a high proportion 
>(can't remember exactly) of WMT's customers don't even have checking 
>accounts. Socially, the WMT customer base isn't thriving...

But higher levels of material welfare are every socialist's 
dream--except for those in the "the worse, the better" crowd. 
WalMart's profits are limited by Costco and Target breathing down its 
neck.

There used to be a line of argument that poor people didn't deserve 
to shop at supermarkets--that the "community building" functions of 
the local corner grocery store were *much* more important than the 
actual prices of groceries...

Brad DeLong