Traverse Machine

[Mark Kohut]

In Robert Reich's first movie, he had a few charts. One was of
the growth of GDP in America since WW2...
charted with the growth of
median income in Americas since WW2.......
And a chart of union membership in America over that time.

I was in about 1977 that the growth of GDP slowly but noticeably started to
outpace the growth of median income, which flattened over time.

It was at about that time that the fast decline of union membership
started. (If I remember it was leaking away even earlier in the decade.)
Reich pointed out how non-union wage growth also slowed. Union monetary
achievements helped all workers.

I am working with a retired economist--one who was part of the leadership
in founding
the radical economists group of the 60s, early 70s. I am bringing his best
book, The Money Mandarins
back into print with him, revised, updated, but the bulk of the analysis is
the same since real predictive insight can be like that.
He basically predicted all of the adverse effects of globalization on
workers.

When I told him the above examples from Reich's film, he told me this,
still baffled and self-surprised at it.He said that around that time, in
his prime, he poured through scads of data--to see economic
trends, anomalies, truths....this was worldwide but he was working in
Europe, unlike many American economists
so.......

This became unexplainably evident to him.....slowed growth and even a
visible decline in economic value of wages WORLDWIDE (even as many of the
most poor in major countries--China, India, for example---forged forward,
as has steadily happened)
which, according to classical head-in-ass econ theory, will always balance
with new "creatively destructive" growth of
new occupations...


On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 7:36 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> There’s also the fact that many traditional jobs are no longer very
> well paid. The 1980s recession, timed with the beginning of the Reagan
> years, was the beginning of a progressive destruction of unions in an
> industry which had at a time been the centre of the most militant
> labor struggles in the history of the American west. In 1978, a
> forestry worker with no high-school diploma could earn up to 40% more
> than the state’s average wage. Now, fellers can earn as little as $18
> an hour.
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/23/logging-
> industry-work-employment-oregon
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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