[lbo-talk] Question: Source of High European/Relatively Low US Unemployment

[Autoplectic]

On Mon, 7 Mar 2005 20:43:35 -0800, Michael Perelman
<michael at ecst.csuchico.edu> wrote:
> Dumenil, G.rard and Dominique L.vy. 2004. Capital Resurgent: Roots of the Neoliberal
> Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
>  36-7: Rapid wage increases in United States did not take a serious toll on the rate
> of profit during the first decades of the Golden Age.  As the rate of technological
> change slowed him down in the late 1960s, profits sagged despite a relatively
> stagnant level of wages.
>  38: In comparing the United States and Europe, one should not give too much credence
> to the idea that the United States is achieved full employment, given the growth of
> temporary jobs.
>  39: "Similar rates of growth and accumulation generate an increase in employment in
> the United States and its (sic) stagnation in Europe, because the rate of
> technological progress has been much more rapid in Europe than in the United States
> ....  to be more precise, the problem is a more rapid substitution of capital for
> labor in Europe."
>  39-40: They estimate the respective capital-labor ratios for Europe (Germany,
> France, and the United Kingdom) and United States.  In 1946, the ratio in the US was
> three times higher than in Europe.  By around 1990, the European ratio surpassed that
> of the United States and continued to grow faster than in the United States.
>  40: They show another round comparing total private employment.  European employment
> has not increased much since 1946.  US employment has been doubled.

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Don't forget the post WWII anti-inflationary interest rate polices by
Germany [Bundesbank] and then the ECB; the place still has lots of
monetarists, no?

See: "Unions, Employers and Central Banks" edited by Torben Iverson,
Jonas Pontusson and David Soskice