Ikus Friday Lay Day – ruminations on MMT and the JG1.
Idatzitakoak:
(a) DTMz2
(b) Lan bermeaz edo job guarantee(JG) delakoaz3
Segida:
(c) Michal Kalecki-k enplegu osoaz eta JG-ri egindako zenbait kritika
Gogoratzekoa:
(1) JG-ri aurpegiratutakoak4
Segi dezagun Kalecki-rekin eta JG-ri egindako kritikekin:
(2) Aipaturiko Kalecki-ren artikulua ederra zen5
(3) Industria liderrak eta enplegu osoa6
(4) Litekeen erantzuna7
(5) Kalecki-ren defentsan esan daitekeena8
(6) Aipaturiko kritikak eta JG9
(7) Afera kaleratze-mehatxuaren eta enplegu mailaren arteko erlazioa da10
(8) JG-k enplegu oso laxoa sortzen du11
(9) JG-ko langileek sektore pribatuko enplegatzaileei mehatxu bat inplikatzen diote12
(10) JG eta ILO13
(11) Kalecki-ren iritziz, kontra egonkortasun politikak ez luke enpresa kezkatuko14
(12) Kalecki iluna zen oposizio kapitalistarekiko15
(13) Inbertsio ratioa eta langabezia ratioa16
(14) JG beharrezkoa da ekonomia isolatzeko inbertsio oszilazioetatik17
(15) Desarautzea eta sistema globalizatua18
(16) JG eta bete beharreko mugak19
(17) Kapital industriala20
(18) Kapital naturala21: bete beharreko muga
4 Ingelesez: “While orthodox economists typically attack the JG policy for fiscal reasons, economists on the Left are also critical.
They constantly cite Kalecki’s 1943 article – Political Aspects of Full Employment – to argue that the JG policy is politically naïve.”
5 Ikus Political Aspects of Full Employment. Mitchell-en hitzez: “That brilliant article by Kalecki laid out the blueprint for socialist opposition to Keynesian-style employment policy. The criticisms are also relevant to the JG. (…)
Kalecki said:
… the assumption that a Government will maintain full employment in a capitalist economy if it knows how to do it is fallacious. In this connection the misgivings of big business about maintenance of full employment by Government spending are of paramount importance.“
6 Ingelesez: “Kalecki (…) lists three reasons why the industrial leaders would be opposed to full employment “achieved by Government spending.”
The first asserts that the private sector opposes government employment per se.
The second asserts that the private sector does not like public sector infrastructure development or any subsidy of consumption.
The third asserts that the private sector merely dislikes “the social and political changes resulting from the maintenance of full employment”.”
7 Ingelesez: “One is tempted to respond to these assertions by referring to the long period of growth and full employment from the end of WWII up until the first oil shock.
Most economies experienced strong employment growth, full employment and price stability, and strong private sector investment over that period under the guidance of interventionist government fiscal and monetary policy.
This period of relative stability was only broken by a massive supply shock, which then led to ill advised policy changes that provoked the beginning of the malaise we are still facing some 40 years after they occurred.”
8 Ingelesez: “In Kalecki’s defense it might be argued that it took 30 odd years of the Welfare State to generate the inflationary biases that were observed in the 1970s.
Kalecki explains how the dislike by business leaders of government spending:
… grows even more acute when they come to consider the objects on which the money would be spent: public investment and subsidising mass consumption.
If public spending overlaps with private spending then:
… the profitability of private investment might be impaired and the positive effect of public investment upon employment offset by the negative effect of the decline in private investment. “
9 Ingelesez: “This criticism is inapplicable to the JG because the JG jobs would most likely be located in the areas that have been neglected or harmed by capitalist growth. The chance of overlap and substitution is minimal.
Of course, government industry policy may deliberately target an overlap to drive inefficient private capital out.
Kalecki acknowledges that the “pressure of the masses” in democratic systems may thwart the capitalists and allow the government to engage in job creation.
His principle objection then seems to be that:
… the maintenance of full employment would cause social and political changes which would give a new impetus to the opposition of the business leaders. “
10 Ingelesez: “The issue at stake is the relationship between the threat of dismissal and the level of employment.
Kalecki says:
Indeed, under a regime of permanent full employment, ‘the sack’ would cease to play its role as a disciplinary measure. The social position of the boss would be undermined and the self assurance and class consciousness of the working class would grow.
Kalecki is really considering a fully employed private sector that is prone to inflation rather than a mixed private-JG economy.”
11 Ingelesez: “The JG creates loose full employment rather than tight full employment because the Job Guarantee wage is fixed (growing with national productivity).
The issue comes down to whether the JG pool is a greater or lesser threat to those in employment than the unemployed when wage bargaining is underway.
This is particularly relevant when we consider the significance of the long-term unemployed in total unemployment. It can be argued that the long-term unemployed exert very little downward pressure on wages growth because they are not a credible substitute.”
12 Ingelesez: “The JG workers, however, do comprise a credible threat to the current private sector employees for reasons noted above. The JG pool provides business with a fixed-price stock of skilled labour to recruit from.
In an inflationary episode, business is more likely to resist wage demands from its existing workforce because it can achieve cost control.
In this way, longer term planning with cost control is achievable. So in this sense, the inflation restraint exerted via the employment buffer is likely to be more effective than using a NAIRU strategy.”
13 Ingelesez: “The International Labour Organisation (1996/97) said “… prolonged mass unemployment transforms a proportion of the unemployed into a permanently excluded class.” The ILO argues that these people “cease to exert any pressure on wage negotiations and real wages.”
The result is that “the competitive functioning of the labour market is eroded and the influence of unemployment on real wages is reduced.””
14 Ingelesez: “Kalecki says that counter-stabilisation policy would not worry business as long as the “businessman remains the medium through which the intervention is conducted.”
Such intervention should target private investment and should not “involve the Government either in … (public) investment or … subsiding consumption.”
He said that if attempts are made to:
… maintain the high level of employment reached in the subsequent boom a strong opposition of ‘business leaders’ is likely to be encountered … lasting full employment is not at all to their liking. The workers would ‘get out of hand’ and the ‘captains of industry’ would be anxious to teach them a lesson.””
15 Ingelesez: “He was very vague about the form that capitalist opposition would take. Kalecki implies that the reaction would work via business and rentier interests pressuring the government to cut its budget deficit. Presumably, corporate investors could threaten to withdraw investment.”
16 Ingelesez: “It is clear that the investment ratio moves as a mirror image to the unemployment rate, which reinforces the demand deficiency explanation for the swings in unemployment. In Australia, the rapid rise in the unemployment rate in the early 1970s followed a significant decline in the investment ratio. The mirrored relationship between the two resumed albeit the unemployment rate never returned to its 1960s levels.”
17 Ingelesez: “Far from being a reason to avoid active government intervention, the JG is needed to insulate the economy from these investment swings, whether they are motivated by political factors or technical profit-oriented factors.”
18 Ingelesez: “Another factor bearing on the way we might view Kalecki’s analysis is the move to increasingly deregulated and globalised systems.
Many countries have dismantled their welfare states and enacted harsh labour legislation. Trade union membership has declined substantially in many countries as the traditional manufacturing sector has declined and the service sector has grown. Trade unions have traditionally found it hard to organise or cover the service sector due to its heavy reliance on casual work and gender bias towards women. It is now much harder for trade unions to impose costs on the employer. Far from being a threat to employers, the JG policy becomes essential for restoring some security for workers.”
19 Ingelesez: “Finally, looking to the future, those who criticise the JG from a Kaleckian viewpoint have to address the issue of binding constraints.
Kalecki comes from a traditional Marxian framework where industrial capital and labour face each other in conflict. The goals of capital are antithetical to those of labour. In this environment, the relative bargaining power of the two sides determines the distribution of income and the rate of accumulation.”
20 Ingelesez: “Industrial capital protects its powerful position by balancing the high profits that come from strong growth with the need to keep labour weak through unemployment. However, the swings in bargaining power that have marked this conflict over many years have no natural limits.”
21 Kapital naturala: ikus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_capital. Honela bukatzen du Mitchell-ek: “But the concept of natural capital, ignored by Kalecki and other Marxians, may now become the binding constraint on the functionality and longevity of the system. It doesn’t really matter what the state of distributional conflict is if the biosystem fails to support the continued levels of production. The research agenda for Marxians has to embrace this additional factor – natural capital.”
