> The case for a highly disruptive period of economic growth is made by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, professors at MIT, in “The Second Machine Age”, a book to be published later this month.
The publisher sent me an advance copy of that book. It is basically the same book as their earlier one, Race Against The Machine. I actually liked the first half of first one.
One big addition on their proposed remedies: A guaranteed income and, better, its first cousin, the Negative Income Tax.
And STILL NO MENTION OF SHORTER HOURS in this second book, just like the earlier one.
The fears are transparent. Keep the lid on dissent with some sort of income supplement, the EITC, SSI, plus food stamps -- for the deserving ones, anyway. Put the rest in prison. And whatever you propose, don't start cutting hours, that threatens real change.
You know things are shaky when Larry Summers is the sensible one.
The person(s) who wrote the Economist cover story are clever. They named a lot of the books on my shelf.
Sleeper Wake was written by an Australian politician about 40 years ago. A good book. (Was it Sleepers with an S?)
Player Piano, prescient little novel, by Kurt Vonnegut before he got famous. He worked for GE and saw what was happening. Good book to read and re-read. Fun plus Vonnegut's insights about marriage and humans and the need to work.
Brave New World -- the world after the guarenteed income/negative income tax. Add in legalized marijuana and all will be cool. I have a copy somewhere around here but a couple of days ago borrowed it from the library because I was thinking about the guarenteed income world and wanted to refresh what Aldous Huxley thought. The library's copy has an intro by Christopher Hitchens who asserts that Huxley, teaching at some Brit prep school, had Eric Blair as a student. Later better known as George Orwell.
Gene On Jan 18, 2014, at 12:23 PM, lbo-talk-request at lbo-talk.org wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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> 1. Re: Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism? (Carrol Cox)
> 2. Re: Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism? (JOANNA A.)
> 3. Re: Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism? (Carrol Cox)
> 4. Bill And Emma Keller Wish You Would Just Shut Up About Your
> Cancer Already, Lisa Adams (Gar Lipow)
> 5. NSA data storage (martin schiller)
> 6. Re: NSA data storage (Eubulides)
> 7. Re: Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism? (Charles Brown)
> 8. Why Marxists consider a planned economy in accord with human
> nature (Charles Brown)
> 9. Why (much) shorter hours at no less in pay may become a very
> popular demand (Marv Gandall)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 13:41:45 -0600
> From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism?
> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Message-ID: <006201cf13bc$27926a40$76b73ec0$@ilstu.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> This is insane. Full Employment is not a human need. There is no need for
> full employment.
>
> Carrol
>