even if its in china's interest
--and i'm far from sure
it would prove to be so ---
its probably
not in japan's
and far more signifigantly
its definitely
not in uncle's interest
asean is asean
without the east asain miracles joining in
a common asian market
would be barely important
much like hugo-lulu et al's
latinomart
sure the biz has been good with the celestial kingdom recently
but ....
"beware the han menace "
still plays well 'round there
and a com mart over there
without the PRC and korea
is like ...
well...
the 27 yankees without ruth and gehrig
addendum:
conjure
the hindu -han grapple

neither emerging giant
can close out the other
in the asean bloc
but both will eventually want to
insure equal access
though neither would join the others ...club
result
impasse in south asia
as each powers proxy corporations
work to rip apart
merg moves

-----
"AND these jobs are all among the lowest paid already"

two countering policy moves
could change the landscape

a hyper weak dollar
and
a chock-full employment fed-budget

ogre on road to there ???

the inflation phantom

...
"offices are unbundled. Various service components are outsourced and increasingly offshored. This radically widens the circle of affected workers"

for us yanks
office function automation
and out sourcing
don't mean off shoring
unless the dollar forex makes it so..
right now it still does

...
"Europe needs stable families, especially those with young children "
reactionary romanticism
the fickle fate we call our family
must be removed from the crucial aspects of the
raw person rearing and nurturing game
ie
we must socialize socialization

not public ed past 8th grade
---you oughta be self motivated by then---
but
public care
from - 9 months to + 5 years
"I wonder why nobody talks about the even bigger threat coming down the road - robots"

mechanization plus cheap computers equals robots

what's new here reason???

the office cubicles and the factory floors of amerika
are obviously already
both hefty targets
for labor reduction thru mechanization
and the profit motive will continue to find
more

ironically
the cheapsubstitute over in asia
prolly retards the profitable implementaion
of robotization
their tech progress
maybe be in part
the globes innovation regress

put out of all jobs by robots ???

there is no lump of socially valuable production
that remains fixed over time..right ???

no generalized peak of production

at the margins of any on going
production system
innovations emerge
it takes---err for now anyway ---
people to discover
and cook up these new recipes
(as doc Romo calls em )

PONDERABLE :

just how big --relatively --
might the FUTURE R and D sector get
to be ???

nice line
but why in the transition
do we the regular people
have to allow
our nasty border less boundless
corporate elites
hyper-skew our national income stream ???

the rest of the world catching up
shouldn't have to mean
we gotta
make the income share ever worse
for the domestic jobholding
majority of us

solow still fails to address fact one
in my estimation

the wage structure here in north america
has been and still is deforming

maybe as joe stig suggests else where
-- and solow implies here ---
in a global system
maybe "we americans " can "specialize"
in producing --and owning -- intellectual property

that might pay for our product imports
so long as its combined with
our leading role in various manifestations
of hi fi loss-vegas

maybe like our globe leading farm sec
our once leading factory sec can shrink
its employment level to
a small portion of the job force
but hey shrinking the job force thru tech-prog is one thing
we still produce the biggest earth wide
share of corn and beef
by contrast
we're headed toward not producing at all
the spark plugs and curcuit boards
we once world dominatingly produced in the ike era

its thanks to the cio
households earning their keep
thru factory unskilled production line wages
went from below national average
to above averagein what ??
20 years ???

just losing these jobs to of shoring
means a net loss of wage rate
for our native born
skill less zillions

to answer
we can "specialize" in high skill jobs
ie
take more then our per capita share of the planet's
high skill jobs
may or may not be possible
-- i think its not ---

but who is who dares say we can
--even if we have the native raw talent on hand ---
"produce these high skilled job fillers
"cheaper" then we can import them.....

importing jobsters
is a savagely ironic substitute
for slowing the exportation of production
bruce sneers:

"Solow was hoping for an exhaustive, equilibrium calculation of optimal financial sector size for the U.S.?

As far as I can tell, Solow is just being a pompous, ridiculous fool."

go for it baby

perhaps nautical bob
jaunty wind sailor that he is
grows tired of the new century and its doldrums
and felt
a fiendish need
to savage a ..... press goat

---

solow oughta pick on some one his own brain size

if i were to attack this here
three sheets flying bobkrieg....

i'd start by noticing
bob himself don't give us a go
on what's at stake when we run
a north /south over valued dollar operation
at the fed for two decades
and how in the end
its not the han red bankers
that make this good paying job stripper a go go go
but the hyper profits made on the intersection
of wall street and trans nat ave

by de industrializing america the beautiful
the high and mighty north/south dollar
creates a mid term trans pacific profit slurry
the usual limited liability tower trolls
over here at this end
can make out
like a cyclops among cub scouts

as to his sickening rendition
of the peculiar funds transfer mechanism
we worship as "savings/investment"

why yet another spell bound rapsode
to that homely but holy ghost of privateer capitalism

he'd have served us all better
if he'd demolished that wonderville mirage
and talked about the dangerously hyde like side of hi fi
or about the secret elixir
Senior Win so undauntingly brings to our notice
AS OPPORTUNITY PRESENTS ITSELF

credit creation lies behind
the mushroom cloud
of toxic gambles apon gambles
solow himself draws so clearly for us
without fully imploding its pretenses
to social welfare enhancement
instead he wacks poor kevin
albeit in a lax and half hearted way

hey
bob's had better moments of high polemic
but like most kold war liberals
its the rad left
that really gets him jazzercised
not a free lancing fourth estate hack

...
oh ya

the oil price patch is further evidence
guys like robert S phd
emeritus professor of the neoclassical synthesis
like most polly anna confectionaries
when the goin gets dirty enough ....
" just can't handle the truth"

...
sailor bob:

"The current run-up in (oil)price may contain a little speculative froth "

imagine even to the precise greenstainian wording

...
now you got me goin

the tripe about lowered cost of financing homes
horror show fraud

the lot inflation triggered by this "inovative " mechanism
did nothoing of the kind

imagine a convenient stretch pay credit plan
that raised the price tag as it became more generous
and you got that side of the gimmick clear

okay so you need to do a little "on site " digging
(analysis ?)
not a quick fly over at ten thousand feet
in the famous red white and blue
"neoclassical synthesis " good time blimp

...
hell this left handed put down
by master robert of MIT
is shakier
then floor beams full of termites

no i won't touch the index question
i leave that tedium
to minds more rugged
and less paranoid

hell woudn't it be nice
if all UNCLE's numbers
are just an intricate curtain of lies
like the stats pumped out during
THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD

-----
and yet more !!!!

its the analysis of causal factors behind the deformaion of the wage structure that loops back into
one of the reviews topics...the dollars forex rate
and tha then loopps by analysis into the functions real and pretend of the hi fi sector

one real function of which
is to allow the asians to defy ricardo and olhin
and pin their money to the dollar
and by doing so
continue to batter our industrial sector
along with battering euro zoners too
of course especially when "our" hi fi ers
"attempt " to correct our trade balance
by raising the euros dollar rate
when of course its our exchanges with the asians
and the oilers so hideously pegging their money
that are the "real" source of the problem

over the last 20 years or so
both north america and western europe
have taken turns
absorbing the bigger blow from the south trade
by dancing their currency exchange rates
around each other

this is a north south scam
and must be settled by north south adjustments

now since solow is reviewing a book on our position in the world
surely our dollar policy warrents further analysis
but i bet free trader bob
the cosmopolite fears the truth here
with its yahoo protectionist similitude

after all ask any tenured prof
whether the emerging world's toilers
or our own homer simpson wagiate
oughta gain from trade
the answer would be obvious eh ???

and even if his macro assures him
the whole system if so impelled
could solve this
not as an either or
--- our wages or chinese wages ----
but as a both
he's not about to chance
the "real" results of unleashing the truth
on an ignorant suspicious hoi hord

as the late john k g would say
selling forex policy
ie devaluation
to american plebs and proles
"is like selling whiskey to the iroquois"

nice numbers

"If compensation follows productivity,
we would expect HUGE increases in inequality"

this doesn't follow relative price adjustments matter here too
its safer to look at the relative private cost of "producing" the different skills
and figuring the rest of the comp
follows from various "rent sumps"
lurking here and there and every where
in the " price system"
some rent sumps ...big ones too ...
live long prosperous lives
right there
in the middle of
our job market's "price system" itself
...
"Looks to me like it happened when automation struck"

putting aside the restructuring
of corporate job force demand over time
between different shares of skill vs unskill
i agree automation strikes deep
into our wages it creeps
but tech change
(even plus encroachiing importation comp )
only accounts for sector job force shrink
not for economy wide
median jobholder income drops

something else has to happen
ie
the job market has to under perform

we need to move back toward
the arsenal of democracy system
of the early 40's
where too many jobs start chasing
too few people

...
"How much does trade deficit affect median family income? That is money from GDP that is spent abroad, not going to additional family income"
not at all ...in the short run
that is
if
the gub runs a big enough deficit

simple simon formula

m-x = g-t

...
bakho
don't conflate cycle behaviour
with secular trends
the median has a long run slide
vis a vis
gdp/pop
even if this drop comes during down turns

its the fact the diff increase do to he drop
isn't closed by accelerating income
on the up turns
accounts for the secular decline

the data may always show
a slow down
and a speed up
over the cycle
for both gdp and income

like two speeding cars taking a curve and then entering a straight away

but one car here after a period of staying even
over all is starting to leave the other behind

maybe gdp always beats med-income
on the curves
but med-income no longer closes
the gap on the straight away
lm

"The world will never again see too many jobs chasing too few workers. That model, as many another, is broken."

i conjecture
"that model " has 9 lives

and will return.....suddenly and unbound
maybe before we u and i
depart
this earthly caravan
for heaven hell
or
just a dirt mound

vide robert owen
i like spencer for hire's take :

"corporate management decides a division is not meeting its returns objective and after shopping it around and finding no buyers they sell it to the employees at an inflated price"

universal profit sharing and stock options
like universal stock investing union pension funds
won't socialize corporate amerika
won't even civilize it in fact

corporate exploitation
of hirelings will indeed be sublated
but not by
simple simon alternative models
like owen's co ops of the repub senate's esops
or
any other varient
of
EEEEEssau's ....MESS OF POTTAGE

face it the sublation will emerge
in stages
and
thru political over throws
even if worked out in detail
thru arduous but ultimately "spontaneous"
firm level
self reformations
mark t writes :
"the entrepreneurial function would be absent.... "

"how would new businesses get started"

"Who would accumulate the capital ..."

mark answers this one himself
"Financial innovation could pool funds"

but who would
"... execute the plans needed to get things going?"

which is another way of asking
the recruiting type question

" how does a large group of workers get together
and decide to open a new business "

which is to say
the driving force and nucleus
might remain one or a few folks gathering the original crew around them in the venture
apropos
i think the 90's hi tech venture boom
showed part of the way forward here
asthe 80's bio tech/venture cap boom showed
the emerging new "public "investment paradigm "
on innovation and firm start up
to gather the initial crew
employee payment in stock --pre ipo stock --
allows risk and reward to
both founders and stock paid initial work force

bakho
part socialized part privatized ???

your benign eclectic take
fails to notice the intrinsic mutual antagonism
of these modes of production
the capitalist empowering type society
needs to preserve a set of job market "conditions"
that make the system of production
"safe for exploiters"
bruces are wild :

"the problem is not ownership -- it is governance"

i submit the two are entwined

mode of ownership dictates mode of control
as one morphs so do dah other

how much latitude ???
well less then soviet dreamers wished for ....

"...social organization.. toward ever more "overhead" and less and less "direct labor...we have built up towering, fragile hierarchies layering ..... control over armies of machines"

nice picture of ....pre computer corporations

now we are mechanizing the weberian hierarchies too

"there's no relation between what people do for a living and the cost of any "unit" of production. "

nice
anti clark obervation
no just desserts
marg-rev-proc fantasy need apply

but this js millish update
sounds to me like the jingle bells of folly

"There are great opportunities for reform, particularly in the distribution of income, because the distribution of income has so tenuous a connection to the functioning of the economic system"
how do u brake this law
power follows the money
and stay within "the system"

which does indeed look like this gothamic hodge podge :

"... feeding armies making war with superfluous salesmanship and marketing "

"..and giving tribute to some half-forgotten sunk cost investment,"

"... enshrined in law as a patent or franchise
or, sometimes,
just a brand or a location
on the marketing map of mind "

great stuff looking macro
but at firm level
try sorting the pepper from the fly shit

sarah
open book transparency
plus intra job unit hire fire
is great sky pie
but it amounts to destruction
of the spirit if not the letter of capitalism...exploitation
so like
the abolition of chattle african slavery
won't come about
without a civil war

the words power and control
here
hang by sky hooks
the powerless don't take power
from the powerful

power can only struggle with power
control with control
the cap class
is entrenched and well organized in depth
and cleverly two faced ....
both fiend and human

and we jobblers are .....??????

"I find the German system interesting"

well its crumbling even as i type this comrade

bw:

"among the goods we "consume", a large part of our incomes goes to consumer durables, which, in turn, produce the goods and services we "consume". "

important distinction here
between marketed and non marketed production

but nearly all households
no matter how skilled and mechanized
can't self produce the bulk
of their means of subsistence
and must sell some serious hunk
of their own households total life time
on the job market

they go into business as time sellers

they try to get the biggest buck for their time
and they "invest in marketable skills"
for varius household members
and and and ...
most of us are simple self time sellers
or future self time sellers
or former self time sellers

most days
we buy on many markets but sell on only one ...
gegner

"the 'human anti-exploitation' law. ... outlaws the employer/employee relationship ...
illegal for any human
to profit from the labor of any other "

the chap
re invents the time worn "invisible box ":

money that isn't money but still is money
which leads to
pay that is pay but still isn't pay

geg ends up right in
the middle of his own version of
the invisible box

now of course he can't see it
can't see the new box
so he feels outside any box
any box with..'exploitation"
and he is ...

after all
he abolished it ...in his head
DOC GORGA IS A TREASURE CHEST OF VINTAGE APLOMB

his first point is pure george and makes high sense
his second point runs aground on his metasocial presumptions

the fruits of this credit common should be shared collectively not individually
vide ramsey
for want of a better jargon:
make any real interest payments
into a universal
loan capital tax

the real rate of interest reflects capital scarcity
its a dynamic reality
that in the long run will assymtote toward real zero
till then the proceeds of its "investment"
oughta be
whole nation owned

point three is a train wreck
on the society wide scale
the fruits of labor
and of private capital
are in direct conflict with each other

point for is utterly misbegotten 17th century ...harringtonism

heed tomislav's knuckle drilling of co opted co ops

"Transferring small parts to small % of workforce in that company may or may not work.... But transferring bigger shares to larger mass of of theemployed in a company is 100% disaster."

makes for sober reading
"even politicians pay taxes - and they still don't care stealing from taxes"

i like the analogy

why should a wage geef give a shit about
a company and its long run ????
his/her stake in the company equity wise
is as tiny as his/her share of the total wage bill
the risk of a distant loss gets swamped
when figured against the certain
gains from more cash now
so
why ever look beyond his pay check ???
why worry about the company sinking into bankrupcy ????
why worry about the bosses stealing the borrowed state funds ??
they'll steal em any way and any equity too
so get yours up front

bark
then if oil's a crock
just
what crock
DO
u buy ???

surely not chris's
mini me's zionical hypno politics

"uncle sam u are growing sleepy sleepy...
uncle sam i want u to ...attack iraq "

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/swa08_00_execsum.pdf
the two conventions roll past me like bfi trucks ...
i must hold my nose ...
an all too familiar stink
betrays the freshness of their missions

now exactly which party veep nomed
a candidate
that just gave birth to a mongoloid idiot ????
seems like they both did
and yet... as we're all wont to exclain at least since 84
" where's the beef ?? "

i ask myself
" how long oh lord how long "

how long can the little folks of amerika stifle their outcry
amidst all this imperial wet rot ??

geez guys
what part of 30 years going
fuckin no where don't u understand ???.......

just take a look at this latest
"lame duck " type job class report card

its drawn up by the perrenially indignant
double dome strivers down there at the beltway's
" for the greater goo goo "policy institute

no on second thought don't ..don't read it
don't read it just to discover
what you already know
why bother ???....but for a few twists
any one of us could have written it umpteen times
in the last few decades

headline :

middle american wage class takes slow boat to shistville

okay it has its standing o moments its curtain call lines
as for example right now....
for months our corporate tower trolls
have seen fit to compact more small potato jobs
then they've creating
no we haven't always been in a year long jobs recession
or for that matter
gone thru a full economic cycle
and ended up worse off then before it started..

u gotta go back pre dust bowl to top that stat

ahhh well..... so the buggars aren't marching on washington
or up late nites
burning silk hatters in their pajamas

look at it this way
thirty years of class war takes its toll
at least on the losers
and their confidence in themselves ...eh ???

"i've been goin down so long now junior ...
its startin to feel like
well maybe i ain't exactly.... destiny's child ...."

paul k
does a fairly silly bit on
obama strikes back..
blah blah ....
and
comments pile up like ....oyster shells at
a tide water elks club

meanwhile one post belower

professor larry summers jr
gets nothin but drip drip drip...

hark

the porcine tribune of angelic neoliberalism
usually so over thr brim filled " cold command "
here
pulls what ??
an aleatory mush mouth meandor ???

a hand wringer no less
from el duce de macro !!!!!!

prima facie
evidence
of stymie time up in harvard yard

if so if the policy options feel like a wedgey
then its prolly
deeper shit we all is in
then larry dareth admit... even to self

whither the dream called
marketplace earth ?????

we have entered
a new era

and
larry gets it
the era of
' not to worry world...amerika's got binge '
am over hoss

and to boot
rising nations are looking
only to their own.... national prospects..

and dearest uncle hegemon
but drifts ...headlessly ....

hell citizens
our realistic choices for potus nextus
gabble over who cast the first of the latest
mad cap mud pies

and this even as ...

"The next administration faces ... the most consequential international economic policy choices in a generation "

and yikes
---for larry's
pay pals in the stateless elite---

"at a time when the confidence ...
in free markets..." here at home "... is ..."

wait for it

".. increasingly questioned "

yup
by the likes of who ??

by the likes of
me et u

we much too put apon
hoi ho poloixxxx

there's no time for a foolkrieg
here in the insecured homeland
john v

"because of government influence in authoritarian nations and people's perceptions based on relativity rather than any measurable absolute"

you reel here
like an amateur drunk

nothing in the piece suggests any of this

larry is sly ---if squeamish ---
he hardly draws out
the contradictions in his claims
read symtomatically

i see a mandarin of uncle's empire
here worry worting
about the stability of pax americana
vis a vis
the han-rus menace

and even if he'd like you to swallow
his kool aide
about ...'ultimately
its anti little people's welfare
to oppose run away job fests '

anti globalists here at home
pose a greater challenge then myopia

larry 's rightfully worried
that some asshole innocent
american votin majority
might just start votin for
their own better jobs and wages
not for
the best laid plans
of wall street inc

avoid
i'm a middle of the rogue type thinker
induced
pink elephants johnny
jon

you seem to tilt away from the primus mobilus
corporate wage arbitrage profits

its all about the golden link
forged by the trans nats
between tech transfer -- the source of social progress---
and exports to advanced markets
not the largely adventitious
nation building schemes
of the politbureau

"Wealth creation from international trade comes from the more efficient utilization of natural resources "

that's h/o think
consider also production technique

but nothing in text books accounts for this :

a Han peasant today
by moving from rice paddy to toy plant
increases his/her "value added" per hour
by...maybe 1000%

--- its perhaps needless to add
thats measured using
a currency prolly forexing itself
at one third its "fair "value----

only the wildly complex structure
of our planet's 'real world 'markets
can produce such
globally irrational
pareto inferior
local outcomes

why do they persist ??

cause they turn a dandy profit
for the right folks

anne

think of larry
as a mine-shaft canary
for the corporate cross border hi fi "in crowd "

he just started to croak
on the toxic exhaust
from the international harvester
wall street's been running across vast patches
of our brownishing planet
these last 30 years
"an authoritarian country with such a gigantic population that the U.S. worker cannot possibly compete with.'

not so jon

given the right forex rate
we could trade
with a mutual benefit

"In particular, changes made in CPI methodology during the Clinton Administration understated inflation significantly, and, through a cumulative effect with earlier changes that began in the late-Carter and early Reagan Administrations...."

wait for it you old bastards...

"... reduced current social security payments by roughly..."

keep waitin'

" half ..."

half !!!!!

"....from where they would have been otherwise"

that's right you rubes ...half !!!!!

" .. Social Security checks today
would be about double
had the various changes not been made"

can you live with it ?????

boy oh boy those pointy headed bastards
whoopin and fudgin' it up
along the potomac
really ..by jingo - ed us ...eh ???

similarly
there's the kill the boom feed the bust goons
that periodically
use " really " better then free
credit flows
saves corporate america from itself

social progressive incremental in this rent stream ???

zero

------------------

puting aside the spectral hocus pocus of expectations
i like this narrative fragment

" The key contention of the monetarists was not about the need for money supply targets, as technocrats assumed, but that monetary policy rather than direct intervention in wage or price setting was the right method of tackling inflation."

this was the path wrong taken by us

the answer known to us marxicocals
as
gross tuning
of the reserve army of the unemployed

leads to dismal sub optimal ...secular as well as cyclical performance

lerner noted this in the 1940's

the problem could have been solved with
a mark up market for galbraith's admin price sector

why verboten ??

well the system would sharpen the class struggle folks
the profiteers could neither flee the field of battle by raising prices
or get rescued by a credit crunch induced job market crash leading to a protracted low grade
chronic under employment system backed by sky hook notions
like fragile expectations momentum
or repackaged dismal science
thru the niaru nuts

the great reagan era taming
of the wage struggle
gets blob ed up
together
with off shoring claims

on the trade gap we can lay the de industrialization

but its on the post 70's macro policy trends we can
lay the crime of gross tuning the reserve army
the alibi for this zoo-do macro
wage price spirals
but its hidden agenda its grinch hearted soul
insure proper big corporation profit margins

" Their opponents believed that this could only work by creating a slump in which millions would lose their jobs. The more thoughtful monetarists did not deny that there was a transitional cost in squeezing inflation out of the system."

and a perminent limp along wage structure to boot

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | August 14, 2008 at 05:45 PM

paine says...
i suspect beyond symbolics
the policy rate is about bank lending margins

they astards would like to lower the rate to increase the banks "earnings"
but they've jibbered so much about sending
wrong messages thru that rate drop
out into the market place
where price setting committees of corporate america
will go into mark up overdrive ...

dubiously snared by their own persiflage

hence the "wow are expectations inert or what "
chatter

a way to open the door to another
--if necessary --
rate el dropo ????

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | August 14, 2008 at 05:52 PM

paine says...
anon

"Real interest rates are negative"

as well they damn well oughta be

got a bond portfolio ????

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | August 14, 2008 at 05:54 PM

paine says...
this obscene notion
that rentiers are
not only entitled to a positive real return
but more importantly
growth requires it

is total bunk
profits of enterprise are the part of social
producer surplus we incentize
our agents thru

by a large negative rate of real interest
thru inflation
to make
"entrepreneurs "do it now
that much more attractive
is pure good sense
in a time of slumping productive investment

" I'm not sure this is necessarily a good idea, and it is certainly a bad idea if you take the standard left wing "inequality is bad" viewpoint. The inequality in productivity between people is huge, often much larger than the inequality on wages. One example: I spent a month recently building an OCR system, which replaced some data entry people. My productivity is about 216x that of the data entry guys: a system I built in one month does the work that 18 people do in a year, and 18*12=216. My wages are only about 7x the wage of a data entry guy. This is quite typical for the software industry, I'm not unusual in this regard. We should be clear: the people who are making productivity gains are high skill workers. If wages track productivity better, they will reap the benefits, not low skill workers. "

my comment on your comment
relative productivity except among those doing the same set of tasks .... data entry ....putting soles on shoes
answering phones...at best
to make cross evaluations between those doing different tasks requires market mediation or implicit market mediation
and at both ends
ie
both all inputs as well as all outputs
to evaluate anyone's value added
without this value data most large scale operations
are forced back on cost accounting
a real world process
which is of course a tautology
they're cost not their worth
being whatever we pay em...
in general the value added per hour
by a jobholder in an intra firm co operative production system
is inseper-able from joint value added

consider an assembly line
many tasks but what is the value added by each different task ???

of course all this is irrelevent in your case .....
in one month u replaced the work of 18 data dummy types
whats that labor cost savings worth
to the firm per month (apples to apples here ) ??

the potentially infinite stream
of cost reduction
discounted by the firms investment discount rate
(polly best proxy the earnings to stock price ratio )

that's what you did for the company
that's what they might pay someone to build it on contract for em

might ...if they're idios
...is it really gonna be worth the full discounted capital value of the cost savings ???
maybe
but if the competition ---like the savage competition in the text books exists
say thru the looking glass in wonderland

if the comp has a guy doing or already had he do or soon will
get her to do for heir system pretty much the same thing you did for your's ...then given the market place out there
the whole benefit might end up pissed away in lower prices

but at any rate
your comp as with the key pad monkeys is actually
no more then what it costs your employer to replace you on the job market ..and in wonderland that amounts to what it cost to make one of you
amortized over a career ....
i submit in india your brain is prolly worth about what your data entry dopes make state side

the welfare point of any raw labor minimum wage
is to raise the entire strcture of job holders
above that wage too

the rate of compensation per hour for various skill types
has a certain necessary inequality based on their relative cost of production as implicitly capitalized by those folks aquiring the skills
implicit discount rate and all

among job holders below the top 5% this inequality
though too large and full of culture specific aborations
is none the less not going haywire in north america

you need to meditate on the nature of exploitation of one human by anotherthru the hired producer systemexample of exploitationyour contribution to higher social productivity however evaluatedat least by constructing your labor saving systemunder our system of exploitation is your employers gainhe /they/she owns your work productnot you

okay so an incentive plan
might let you share crop
your innovation but the formula
to evaluate your crops worth
let alone your share of it
is in their hands not yours

what's not to like eh ??

enter one ninja zombie ....with his pay according to value produced fetish
with its implied conclusion
"i ougha get about 216 times the pay
of some fat chick in data entry ...not just 7 times"

his cubical farm unappreciated arrogance
nicely blocks out the basic contradiction
among our job classers

a contradiction lovingly cultivated
by the tower trolls since
reagan bobble headed his way
to the atomic button end of pennsylvania ave

at its core arguments like this one
by our asbergerish gimp here reflect a social vision
one might call after
the enlightenment notions
that inspire it ...rights of hu-mans
the right of merit pay
iethe right to pay according to worth of work
whether by effort or talent achieved
--obviously here its talent
that seems to be the implict self preening focus---

it all fits together so well..eh ?

given the vast and presistent attempt in the media to mis direct
any discussion of our fast and furiously polarizing
household incomes gap
away from property income versus work income shares
--which have gone berzerk these last28 years---
and toward the in fact modestly growing differences
in the rewards to different levels of skill talent effort training etc..

now add to this a further obfuscation and alibi
the academy alleged
"iron law of technical progress"
to wit
our hapless scientifically
tortured
economic numbers
confess to
" a long term innovational tilt "
--a tilt that is itself a tilt -
a tilt away from an earlier long term tilt the otherway ---
toward creating lesser shares of skill free jobs
and toward a higher share of skill more jobs ....

yup innovation itself
--in this latest stage of our progress toward secular eden--
requires ever more skill intensive employments

hence our global path forward also
implies .... magnified differences between various jobblers
the raw unskilled multitude the proles share sinketh
while th scarce hu caps florisheth
at least that is in "the market value "
of their hours of hired out toil .....

you got a problem with that paine ???

yup ....no such iron law exists
in fact i'll conjecture
if the total system cold be agglomerated
we'd discover the net is prolly running the other way
or how else could profits keep are born
i mean its crushing out old expensive skills and replacing them with
cheap no skills that is what cap enterprise is all about

and even if there were such a tilt
it won't govern job compensation
if the cost of skill aquisition itself falls
and falls faster then demand rises



brief analytics:

lets use herr zombie 's anecdote :

because his retelling of his own story
displays not only a lack of empathetics
but an even bigger lack of sound economics

here's the econ con bit...

rule one in a market system
(exposed to even the most imperfect
of competitive winds):

the reward to the inventor of any productivity enhancement
is not necessarily the full surplus value
of her innovation's incremental welfare impact
on her product or process's
ultimate benefactors ....its users

all master zombie's innovation might do
--- in fact in the long run
WILL do ---is lower the RELATIVE product price
commensurate with the total reduced labor costs....

but thats only one take....

that's if the inventor or innovator
actually owns the rights to his innovation

in this present corporation dominated regime
where even innovatve brains like ninja's here
are hired out to the tower trolls
what the market place ..smart or dumb as it may be ultimately
rewards the owning corporation for innovations
----- thru said corporation's various rent traps
and other market bending methods ----
ie
whatever rents the corpration is able to retain
in the form of higher margins
and isn't forced to piss away in lower prices
goes to the corporations owners and top managers
not...not ...not
to the jobbled geeks who imagineered it up
not to hired pus heads
like undead office toon ninja here

what's he worth ..ultimately ???? .....what else
he's worth
only as much as the services of his replacement
--- fresh out of programming school over at torpedo tech
in bangalore --
might cost his corporation to hire directly
or to aquire by out sourcing

"the increasing desire of investors to look beyond their national borders for higher returns and diversification, as well as the increasing asymmetry in cross-border trade flows, necessitating corresponding financing flows....It is very hard to conclude from the available studies that financial openness has a robust positive association with, let alone a causal effect on, the growth of non-industrial countries...."

simple take

1) trans nats want in
whether the emergers want em in
or benefit from em being in
or not

2)trans nats want emergers to build
" national institutions"
that will facilitate trans nat
global reach

free fly zones across borders
for freer capital flows in and ....out

3) the trans nat hyper profits
that follow from hyper extended imbalances
in trade
only makes the prospect ever more trans nat enticing

4) once u get the flow of causations right
trans nats benefits drive
these "progressive " calls
for global emerger "institutiona reform"
and it all makes perfect sense

"open wide south hemi" hi fi
is the limited liability inc
trans nat north hemi investors'
" final solution"
"intellectual capital and training, not money "

wording aside..exactly correct

know how in the sinister blood suckng form
of
private intellectual property

emergers can't expect technical "transfers"
without
corporate trans nat capital
receiving
massive "earnings" participation

...
"the LDCs responded to the crises
by deciding to build reserves"

added feature of same:

the emergers thru bountiful
wall street hi fi engineering
succeeded in some seriously filthy peg tricks

which nicely pinned
the dollar
to a semi perm
north/ south
over valued
capital export friendly
condition

which in turn
put the finishing touches
on the --- pro tem----
post industrial transformation
of the domestic amrican economy

not sure i can agree ....can't a firm seek rents
and maximize profit at the same time??

both these names for possibly different kinds
of producer surplus
look to be filled with internal contradictions
once one watches the broad use of them in public discourse
both demotic and scientific

" the availability of a source of rents to finance the structured incentives of a bureaucracy is a sine-qua-non"
it gets dangerous to call supply regulating revenues ..rents

perhaps
the various forms of producer surplus
require a more detailed parsing
so these habitual snares

of course a vast and mind numbing conflation
serves the purposes of those seeking to creat or preserve
any ultimately anti progressive
antisocial chunk of surplus

-----------------

prof max is a seeking to up earnings
by any means availible
not an optimization

in that demotic sense our beloved trns nats indeed seek highest possible profits
long run if private
short run if publicly traded

top management
more properly and particularly
sees to max
the capitalized value
of the firm's earnings path

as alchian long ago restated
the prof max objective
of corporations
is cap value max

my system guide called it

max the rate of the firm's capital growth

profits i use for the good surplus
rents for bad surplus

the good surplus regulate supply
but more crucially motivates innovations
etc

good surplus
is what the loon george gilder rhapsodized
in the reagan charged high 80-90s...
pre dot bomb
lot plop

...
"residual returns.."

a wording worthy of
a rich guy's hidden ball trick

...
"distinguishing between what the factor actually earns, and the minimum the factor would have to earn, to stay in that particular employment "

or enter another employment

again with the magic trick lingo
use of the monsterously ambiguous word
"factor"
at least when
wicksteed and clark bent poor euler over a cannon
they used factor
for tangible means of production...

since that was unsustainable
and now a factor can be anything

accountants
trap it as good will

i prefer to keep it all geisty
and use the aggregatingly mystic word
capital here

study its complex scheinvert filled or vacated
flows and stocks

human skill heads hands and muscles
plus stuff like assembly lines and turbines
are factors to me
physical means of production
viewable away from their particular institutional setting
even if its ahistorical.... mayhaps unimaginable
without those settings

"If an enterprise is to build a large organization, it has to have that kind of risk-bearing capacity, in order to offer the kind of labor contracts a bureaucracy requires"

nice passage i like this notion
of risk
even if firms of th corporate capital kind
are also about
risk transfering and thus "morally "hazardous

the broad lower reaches
of the corporate hierarchy indeed
have to face no direct substantial income loss
from company red ink ...
risk oughta be
part of the stock holders game
just holding on to your position
-- let lone career path-- at the firm
is quite enough personal risk baring
for the marginal lower to middle biznet bureaucrat

and at the top of the hierarchy ????

well
there's a far greater compensation
then just tranfered risk when you have
the chance to play with other folks chips
lots of other folks chips ....
its called proceed skimming ....

..if you're into...capitalist apologetics
you can call the ass hole innocent stockholders
risk takers...
cause indeed
the full socialization of risk
comes that much closer
with this approximation
ie
when society does its producing
thru " firms "
owned by an impersonal anonymous hord
of risk barers holding maket fungible shares
and ...but and
they be residual rent absorbers too
and windfall catchers
and other gains gotten by shrewdness or luck
at least those
not prior snatched
by insider tower trolls

obviously
the actual process of surplus extraction
is only of concern
to these zillions of partial
risk barers
and consumption forebares
when it adds up to real serious
profit and rent streams
ie earnings
well above risk and interests charges
whether explicit or implicit ...eh ??

...
bruce
now i shall babble :

again my guide ..my virgil in these matters
suggests at least three stages and forms
of organization of social production
that arise in particular forms
during the historic process of subsumption
of social production by private capitals

the first and most basic
is your darling .... co operation
larger scale organization

you very keenly lay out
its requirements and advances and advantages

-would that the libertarians of both right and left
heeded this --

by paradox cooperation leads to
the follow on stage division of labor
viewed and loved
--out of context---
by both smith
and the libertarians
both work it too hard ....

division of labor
in one case smith's
is properly all about
its the proto capitalist form
ie intra firm divisons of tasks among "employees "
unlike in the other the libster
implicit paradigm
with its the older artisanal market mediated
forms of division of L

(which needless to note
exposes the pre capitalist roots
of L-tarians'fantasy vision)

co operation as already in place
under private capital
sets up the necessary
pre-conditions
for an accelerated development
of infra firm d of l

then of course there's the final stage
the final and ultimately
self sublating stage

mechanization automation technification etc
ie the makings of the modern auto plant
DBA the industrial revolution
or the post invention
of continuous invention stage

where the full force of true sunk costs
not just fixed ut fungible assets
require faustian drive to discover over and over
new
alas ultimately vanishing sources
of profit
above and beyond
the crass returns
required to cover
the specific risks of enterprise
and borrowed cap costs

ie

"earning a substantial quasi-rent "

and here is where the red sea parts

the historic mission of private capital
is to push ever onward and upward
the forces of social production
thru pro tem surplus capture
as profits of enterprise

not the rent sink holes and traps
that prevent the surplus to flow away
ultimately to its final and proper destination
the ultimate user/consumer
ie
thru passed thru
ever lower relative output prices

in a phrase
the difference the big difference
is between quasi rent and say ...
ground rent or more controversally IT rent

it is
at this point
where i enterd the hread
making the distinction
in types of surplus
between
rents as socially bad surplus earnings
and profits as socially good surplus earnings
a distinction
contained in confusing amalgam
among the flows of
corporate earnings
marshall's quasi rents do to innovation
among stuff called rents
are the only rents worthy of a better name
ie profits of enterprise
..rewards for progressive acts
of enhancing the social production system

having squared the circle
i leave it here...

...
"Those rent-earning assets are, in effect, its real equity,"

as the source of its bumptuous credit lines
and market value true
but this conflates cash on hand
and other reserves of funds
availible to management
without recourse to markets or bankers ...

...
more on factors and their rents

when they co operate in production
often
its analytically impossible
to parse out each factor type's contribution
to total value added ..eh ??

back on profit max
its a very keen notion
notice the intellectual collapse
of alternative ike era heuristic notions
like corporate guidance
by satisfice and market share sales max

i agree
one can't construct
the optimal/maximal profit stream
of a firm to contrast with its actual stream
but one can observe tower trolls trying
to find higher returning paths ..eh ??
if its not what the agents play the game for
it is the principals' score card
and not one of the tower trolls
would admit to investors
they really aim
for other targets
than
long run maximal earnings

-------------

in the end
doesn't the existing org theory of capitalism
comes down
to

weber vs marx

ie
systemic changes
in a crisis
require a comprehensive " insurance system"

not clear if
even bright lights like shiller here
know his analysis carried out to it's
full set of implications
are short hand
for an end to private equity only
(at risk ) style hi fi capitalism

----

"Glass-Steagall "

yes it grew irrelevent
but throwing it away and letting he free winds blow
was the precisey wrong
move
from a society wide perspective
the G-S system needed to be vastly extended
to all the new free fire zone "hi fi markets
and organizations " not scrap piled

at a barely tolerable minimum
reg down the pri-equity crowd
put heavy equity leg irons on em
btw
this is an analogue
to a corporate induced "national preference"
for universal mandated health
with a fangled inefficient
pub/pri provisioned
set up
over
clean lean and ....a dream
single payer

...
ex worker
i like your take on the donkey team

the problem with the big Fs
the tiny pri sec equity tail
got to waggin'
the giant pub sec debt dog
...
our task
(us dilleantes of the ultra left)
draft up a nest of notions
one might call

competitive socialism

case in point

how to efficiently incentivize
agents of a pub sec provided
universal security insurance
setting up n competiting
independent pub sec security insurance funds
that pay their agents
on long run peformance ...

pretty hollow frame work eh ???

...
"It could be that it is just an end to American ownership"

well thats a start
tthe sooner we the weebles
learn to alienize our capitalist benefactors
the better

but then again
i recall the nasty fool's gold substitution
of an international jewish conspiracy
for rapidly emerging
cross border hi fi capitalism
a hundred years ago

maybe this is a worth while
general heuristic
pri sec capital is groping toward its own sublation

lets remember not ...not ...to throw out
the ugly duckling baby
( "institutional innovations ")
with the pri profit drive
polluted bath water

dunc

i agree f and f
went up and .....off
pretty much as their archetects and helmsmen
intended
or based on feed back
re intended

btw a wind fall profit tax
is not by definition
a new discovery investment killer

here's some streaming think nodes:

if it acts like an inventory profit tax
it might trigger a pumping strike
making prices soar...

oil in the ground un pumped
is not subject to the windfall tax
-- the earnings from it are "unrealized"---
so the tax avoider will leave it there
if the post tax net is higher

but then any repeat thought to be in the offing
would prolly cause
inventory to be run down faster extinguishing the price surge

whoops the thing is starting to fly up its own ass here

new node

a one time levy based on past wind fall earnings
has little predictive value
when planning for any future levy
that is
beyond this lesson

if we energu ats
rig up another temporary price surge/ profit gouge
we'll just get it raked away from us

so not taxing away the wind fall profits now
and maybe more then just the pure wind fall profits
to make it punitive ...may create ...... a moral hazard