by Metatone
Fri Feb 28th, 2014 at 07:08:19 AM EST
Here's how the author sums up their piece - which is well worth reading in full:
Labour markets: A theory of troubles | The Economist
Since this post is long and not exactly bursting with colour, I'll go ahead and share the gist of the story in hopes of enticing you to read on: because we rely on market wages to allocate purchasing power we have resisted technology-driven reductions in employment, and because we have resisted that decline in work we have trapped ourselves in a world of self-limiting productivity growth. Enticed? Good.
front-paged by afew
What I'd add about the piece is that in the details it strips out the pejorative anthromorphisation if the market "we rely on market wages" - "we resisted technology-driven reductions in employment."
In fact, as the detail explains, these are systematic effects created by the market system.
Of course all of this article ignores some of the political choices that got us here, but in ending on a call for large scale government interventions, the piece at least acknowledges that there's nothing self-correcting about the labour/capital/productivity market...
