[lbo-talk] What's the deal with conservatives, economists, and the minimum wage?

[Bill Bartlett]

Calm down, I said they were hired hands who, like scabs, act in 
accordance with their short-sighted personal interests. I didn't mean 
to say they *were* scabs, the purpose of the analogy was to highlight 
the fact that economists don't cease being working class just because 
they hire themselves out to do the employing class' dirty work, any 
more than you can say that scabs cease being working class.

I apologise for not making myself very clear. Anyhow, I look forward 
to merciless criticism of my intended point.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas

At 12:37 AM -0800 19/1/07, andie nachgeborenen wrote:


>"Hired hands" -- like . . . . employees?  Scabs
>indeed. Whose strike are they breaking? Typical
>Bartlett, self-assured, arrogant, and bone-headedly,
>incurably wrong. NCEs may be vulgar apologists and
>crude or sophisticated ideologists. But in my lexicon
>-- maybe it's different in Tasmania -- a scab is
>someone who crosses a picket line to work when there
>is a strike on. Blacklegs, the Brits said when I was
>living there (also scabs). As far as I am aware, there
>is no strike of academics going on for NCEs to break
>by scabbing. If there were, I'm sure they'd be the
>first to do it. But there isn't, so they're not.
>
>--- Bill Bartlett <billbartlett at aapt.net.au> wrote:
>
>>  At 9:20 AM -0500 18/1/07, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>>  >Yeah, Bill Bartlett has a point that it's the class
>>  interests of
>>  >economists at work. But it's also the idiot reflex
>>  of orthodox
>>  >economics: raise the price, and demand just has to
>>  go down. It does,
>>  >it does! But it doesn't.
>>
>>  I would never had suggested it was the *class*
>>  interests of the
>>  economists at work. Most economists of course are
>>  merely hired hands,
>>  like scabs, who are acting in accord with their
>>  short-sighted
>>  personal interests.
>>
>>  Bill Bartlett
>>  Bracknell Tas
>>  ___________________________________
>>
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>>
>
>
>
>
>____________________________________________________________________________________
>Don't get soaked.  Take a quick peak at the forecast
>with the Yahoo! Search weather shortcut.
>http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#loc_weather
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk