[lbo-talk] Contradictions of contemporary working class consciousness

[Barry Brooks]

Unions made a very bad deal to cope with technological unemployment. When the
surviving workers split the increased profits made possible by increased
productivity, those workers who were made redundant were abandoned and left to
hope that the consumer economy would waste even more resources in order to
"create" new unnecessary jobs for them.

At the limit the capitalist drive to cut labor costs will result in a robot
economy in which unions will have as little place as paid human labor. Maybe the
unions should have read more Russell and less Marx. "In praise of idleness"
would have been useful to change the world in a practical way. Trying to making
enough jobs to keep all workers busy has led to planet plunder.

Automation and Robotics News
http://blogs.evergreen.edu/arnews/
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Krugman near the edge.
I can already hear conservatives shouting about the evils of
“redistribution.” But what, exactly, would they propose instead?
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2013/06/paul-krugman-sympathy-for-the-luddites.html
***********************
Le Monde basic income article.
In 1968 Tobin, with Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith and 1,200 other
economists, first called for a basic income...
http://www.exacteditions.com/read/diplomatique/may-2013-35492/1/3/

Barry