> I don't see what's so difficult about it. In conditions of full
> employment we have something more than bravado with which to resist
> the shittiness of jobs, because you're not tied to any one in
> particular - it's easier to move around and firms are more desperate
> for your labour, so wages tend to rise faster, so you can spend less
> time working if you like. Full employment conditions make us freer
> from work, in a way that bluster doesn't.
Nonsense. The times of full employment in the last century have been world war and something as bad, society-wide unpaid reproductive labor and unimaginable exploitation in the periphery. It made *some* people freer while the rest paid for it horribly. I can't imagine demanding a return to that.
> For these reasons, I don't think full employment is sustainable for
> capitalism in the long run, which is why an awful lot of macro-policy
> effort goes into cooling things off should the economy threaten to get
> there.
I agree that it's not sustainable, but not for the administrative reasons you name. It's unsustainable because the forces that made it possible aren't willing to allow it to happen again. And thank god for that.