>I said you can punch holes in it. Seth did not ask for reality but what we are supposed to
>say.
>
>On Fri, May 13, 2005 at 08:03:51PM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>
>>michael perelman wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>*The story that they tell is that many low-wage workers merely lack
>>>the necessary skills for a modern economy. So that the
>>>productivity of these workers declines because their skills are
>>>obsolete. You can punch holes in this story pretty easily, but not
>>>in 10 second sound bites.*
>>>
>>>
>>But Nordhaus & Gordon & Triplett say that a quarter of the
>>productivity acceleration came from retail, the ideal type of the
>>low-wage sector - and that mainly came from Wal-Mart.
>>
The question isn't why some workers are seeing their productivity
falling. The question is - why is (total) labor productivity *rising*
yet (total) wages *aren't* rising? Mismatched skills, according to the
mainstream, causes inequality *among* wage-earners. It doesn't cause
capital to capture a higher share of national income.
Seth