On 2012-01-06, at 12:21 PM, Somebody Somebody wrote:
> Somebody: Marvin, you vastly overstate your case here. If we supposed it was all a matter of Chinese and Eastern Bloc workers joining the global capitalist economy, we would expect to see a convergence of U.S. and European levels of inequality and wages. We would expect European welfare states to increase in equality more rapidly than the U.S. since their comparative wage disadvantage would be even greater than in America. This is not occurring.
1. It's not all a matter of new labour markets. Or even mostly. The shift from an industrial to a service economy and computerization have arguably played as much or more of a role in weakening the power of the old trade union movement.
2. The subject wasn't the relative levels of inequality in the US and Europe. It is whether the European workers, by virtue of a their presumed social compact with their employers and governments, are better insulated from attacks on their rights and benefits than those in the "Anglo-Saxon" countries. Read Woj's post again if you want examples of overstatement. Better yet, wave your GINI coefficients at Greek, Spanish, Irish, and other workers currently bearing the brunt of the austerity drive to show them how much better off they are than their American counterparts and how much they owe to their "European model" of industrial relations.