[Peace-discuss] Commentary submitted to N-G

Mon Dec 13 14:25:50 CST 2010

Even managers and executives of businesses and corporations "work". I think what David was referring to is what has been known as the "proletariat", those at the lowest ends of the wage scale, especially industrial workers, those that expend human energy with their hands rather more than with their minds or at computer terminals. Most in the categories you mention would not consider themselves "workers" in the Marxist sense.  (That may be part of our social problem.) But my original point was that it was somewhat simplistic to say that the increase in efficiency in the post WWII years was to be credited mostly to the "workers" in the more narrow sense. --mkb

On Dec 13, 2010, at 1:48 PM, Jenifer Cartwright wrote:

> Just a side issue related to the discussion:
> Scientists, engineers, researchers, teachers, machinists, grad students, academicians, assembly line folks, cooks, doctors, lawyers, wait staff, innovators, artists, actors, maintenance staff, cinematographers, pro-ball players, social workers, miners etc etc etc all are workers, i e part of labor, rather than management. Yr differentiation should be the hierarchy and systems under which they work, and the protections and benefits they have as workers, not the snobbery attached to their job title. Jmho.
>  --Jenifer 
> 
> --- On Mon, 12/13/10, David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> From: David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Commentary submitted to N-G
> To: "Morton K. Brussel" <brussel at illinois.edu>
> Cc: "Peace Discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Date: Monday, December 13, 2010, 8:55 AM
> 
> I do understand the point of your remarks, Mort. It's a question of how much more the scientists, engineers, etc. should benefit from the profits from productivity increases generated by their work, relative to workers. But it's not clear that the innovators themselves even benefit that much in the context of the marketing of these innovations, relative to the Bill Gates's of the world, etc. It's not clear how much innovators should be entitled to profit when their work is being funded by the public, and those profits couldn't exist without a publicly-supported infrastructure (including education) that operates on so many levels. It's not clear that innovators profiting considerably more than workers is socially just, or good for society in general. In the final analysis, we have an innovative system within which financiers profit the most. Do they deserve it? It seems to me that we should err on the side of social justice and relative equality rather than individual reward. If innovators aren't happy with a decent, well-above average living rather than exorbitant rewards, then let them withhold their genius from mankind and work on Rube Goldberg machines. Mankind will be better off with a little less innovation by people of this sort, and a lot more equality.
>  
> DG
> 
> From: Morton K. Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu>
> To: David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>
> Cc: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Sent: Sun, December 12, 2010 11:10:11 PM
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Commentary submitted to N-G
> 
> Yeah, and that system was better (for the people!) than what succeeded it. But you are grossly missing the point of my original remarks. --mkb
> 
> On Dec 12, 2010, at 7:26 PM, David Green wrote:
> 
>> You mean, the Bell Telephone that was accorded by regulatory authorities to serve as a monopoly on behalf of the government, and ostensibly the people?
>> 
>> From: Morton K. Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu>
>> To: David Johnson <dlj725 at hughes.net>
>> Cc: David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>
>> Sent: Sun, December 12, 2010 6:34:08 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Commentary submitted to N-G
>> 
>> Davids,
>> 
>> Thanks for your remarks, certainly true, but the invention then had to be brought to the marketplace. That's where the entrepreneurs, Bell Telephone, and others (especially in the computing sector) saw its technological evolution. 
>> 
>> --Mort
>> 
>> On Dec 12, 2010, at 4:39 PM, David Johnson wrote:
>> 
>>> " Entrepreneurs had a fairly large contribution here, i.e., the capitalist system."
>>>  
>>> Mort,
>>>  
>>> Three Physists ( Bardeen, Shockley, and Brattain ) who WORKED for Bell Laboratory ( ie. EMPLOYEES aka WORKERS ) invented the transistor in 1947.
>>> The capitalist system had nothing to do with the invention except to enable Bell Labs reap the vast majority of the profits.
>>>  
>>> David J.
>>>  
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: Morton K. Brussel
>>> To: David Green
>>> Cc: Peace Discuss
>>> Sent: Sunday, December 12, 2010 4:02 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Commentary submitted to N-G
>>> 
>>> Valuable observations and facts. I would only quibble with one argument: The gain in productivity (during the years quoted) was probably less due to the work and sweat  of the nonprofessional "workers" than to the    invention of the transistor and its subsequent technology. The question/argument than might become who should get the benefits from the increased productivity. 
>>> 
>>> Of course, without the workers, professional and other, the gains in productivity would not have been realizable…. Take it from there…
>>> 
>>> --mkb
>>> 
>>> On Dec 12, 2010, at 1:07 PM, David Green wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Misguided critics of public schools ignore fundamental economic realities
>>>> 
>>>> David Green
>>>> 
>>>> It is conventional wisdom that good schools are essential to a healthy economy. It is true that schools are responsible for the basic literacy, skills, and educability of those entering the workforce. It does not follow, however, that schools are to blame for the dismal economic outlook for many Americans.
>>>> 
>>>> Misguided perspectives on the relationship between economy and education lead critics to focus on daily activities and outcomes of teachers, parents, and students. These critics avoid the fundamental nature of growing economic inequality and its evolution over the past three decades. Their criticism is not only profoundly misguided, but part of the problem. They are in denial regarding the class-stratified nature of an American economy that has victimized working people and their children in a systematic and structural manner.
>>>> 
>>>> The facts are clear, and their implications easily discerned. These facts address the long-term relationship between worker productivity and wages; the transition from a manufacturing to a service economy; and the sources of recessions and high rates of unemployment. Given the basic existence of universal and functional public schooling, none of these trends has been determined by the relative merits of schools, teachers, students, or parents, whatever their specific achievements. These trends have been completely determined by the corporate, financial, political, and ideological powers that be.
>>>> 
>>>> The Pew Charitable Trusts’  “Economic Mobility Project,” available online, clarifies the evolving relationship between productivity and wages. Since 1945, the American worker has increased productivity by at least 2% per year, consistently throughout. This means that efficiency—output per person-hour in the production and provision of goods and services—has doubled twice during this 65-year period, both before and after the advent of computers and a high-tech-based economy.
>>>> 
>>>> This historical and structural increase in productivity—and hence both national and per capita wealth—has depended on innovation, skill, and effort by scientists, technicians, managers, business owners, and workers. About no sector of the workforce can it be said that its employees, from “top” to “bottom,” have not significantly contributed to these increases by the quality of their minds or the sweat of their brows. Similarly, it is inconceivable that the quality of our schools has been an impediment rather than an asset to these increases, ongoing, which are typical for all countries in the industrialized world.
>>>> 
>>>> From 1945 to the mid-1970s, the median (adjusted for inflation) wage for the American worker increased commensurate with productivity—that is, doubling during that period. Between 1974 and 2004, while productivity increased by 80%, the median wage increased by 20%. From 2000 to 2005, productivity increased by 15%, while the median wage fell 2%; obviously that trend continues to this day, and worsens.
>>>> 
>>>> All of these facts clearly indicate that while the country gets richer, the median, “middle class” worker becomes stagnant or gets poorer; all of the increases in wealth that are generated by the labor of all workers accrue to the benefit of the upper quintile of the population; the largest share going to the upper 1%. Again, none of this, in any critic’s wildest imagination, can be attributed to the failures of schools to educate our children, whatever the debatable extent of such alleged failures.
>>>> 
>>>> This well-documented appropriation of wealth has nothing fundamentally to do with computer technology per se, but with policies promoted by elites during the transition from a manufacturing to a service economy. These policies determined that private-sector unions would be effectively destroyed, and that non-“professional” workers (that is, those not protected by their credentials from foreign competition) would be placed into competition with low-wage foreign (and immigrant) workers. These efforts, most identified with the Reagan era but supported by all administrations since Carter, were well under way before the digital transformation, although they have subsequently been abetted by this phenomenon.
>>>> 
>>>> While American workers have adapted to technological change, their organizational and political capacities to materially benefit from their labor have not adapted to the onslaught of neoliberal, “free market” (referred to locally as “capitalism and limited government”) ideology and practice among those who rule our country for their own benefit—especially those in financial, speculative sectors. This leaves workers vulnerable not only to the chronic appropriation of their wealth, but to the acute misery caused by speculative bubbles generated by financiers that result in the massive disappearance of housing wealth, increased unemployment, Wall Street bailouts and profits, huge federal deficits, and cynical attacks on the social safety net.
>>>> 
>>>> In this light, it is perverse for public school critics to focus on the “accountability” of teachers and the “personal responsibility” of students. Many parents and children are rightly aware of the dire nature of their economic circumstances and future prospects—whatever their efforts and skills—in an economy with high unemployment and the most extreme inequality among the developed nations. In relation to the poorest among us, such criticism borders on cruelty on the part of the comfortable.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
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