This decade will be the worst for pay since the invention of Watt’s steam engine

[Young Master Smeet]

 

https://twitter.com/AaronBastani/status/839795473561047041

[ALB]

Pity the whole graph doesn't show (but it will if you click the link). It seems to be about the growth of money wages in ten year periodsrather than pay levels. I see that it's from the person who writes and speaks about Fully Automated Luxury Communism. After listening to a podcast he did last year for the New Economics Foundation I tried to contact him to see if he would do a talk for us but he didn't reply if someome wants to tweet him to try again. Mind you, I don't think William Morris would have thought much of the idea.and of course socialism/communism does not depend on full automation just on the common ownership of the means of production whether automated or not.

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

Pity the whole graph doesn't show (but it will if you click the link). It seems to be about the growth of money wages in ten year periodsrather than pay levels. I see that it's from the person who writes and speaks about Fully Automated Luxury Communism. After listening to a podcast he did last year for the New Economics Foundation I tried to contact him to see if he would do a talk for us but he didn't reply if someome wants to tweet him to try again. Mind you, I don't think William Morris would have thought much of the idea.and of course socialism/communism does not depend on full automation just on the common ownership of the means of production whether automated or not.

 Yes I agree but I think this kind of meme – "Fully Automated Luxury Communusm" – is very useful indeed as a way of undercutting and negating the kind of objections that are routunely raised against communism/socialism – like the "lazy person" argument  or the "who is going to do the dirty work?" argument.  Well, automation renders such objections irrelevant.  Not only that, it also calls – or rather appears to call – into question the continued viability of capitalism itself.  If there are no more jobs left how are workers going to buy back the products of industry, goes the argument. To be clear , I am not saying I agree with the argument.  I dont think capitalism can, or ever will, automate wage labour out of existence.  But I am looking at the side effects such a line of thinking might have in the minds of the objectors .  It has a kind of "shock and awe" effect, to quote that Gulf War phrase.  It is deeply disturbing and disruptive in its psychological impact on the case against socialism and I have noticed in the past few years a significant and steady increase in the number of articles talking about the job cutting potential of new technology, especially robotics.  A sign of the times perhaps This is why I think socialists should take up this meme and run with it – but not unconditionally,  The approach we could use is to say that while we technically could automate a huge chunk of work in socialism we might chose only to automate some of it, thereby putting a positive spin on the nature of work as creative activity a la William Morris  and co.

[Capitalist Pig]

robbo203 wrote:

ALB wrote:

Pity the whole graph doesn't show (but it will if you click the link). It seems to be about the growth of money wages in ten year periodsrather than pay levels. I see that it's from the person who writes and speaks about Fully Automated Luxury Communism. After listening to a podcast he did last year for the New Economics Foundation I tried to contact him to see if he would do a talk for us but he didn't reply if someome wants to tweet him to try again. Mind you, I don't think William Morris would have thought much of the idea.and of course socialism/communism does not depend on full automation just on the common ownership of the means of production whether automated or not.

 Yes I agree but I think this kind of meme – "Fully Automated Luxury Communusm" – is very useful indeed as a way of undercutting and negating the kind of objections that are routunely raised against communism/socialism – like the "lazy person" argument  or the "who is going to do the dirty work?" argument.  Well, automation renders such objections irrelevant.  Not only that, it also calls – or rather appears to call – into question the continued viability of capitalism itself.  If there are no more jobs left how are workers going to buy back the products of industry, goes the argument. To be clear , I am not saying I agree with the argument.  I dont think capitalism can, or ever will, automate wage labour out of existence.  But I am looking at the side effects such a line of thinking might have in the minds of the objectors .  It has a kind of "shock and awe" effect, to quote that Gulf War phrase.  It is deeply disturbing and disruptive in its psychological impact on the case against socialism and I have noticed in the past few years a significant and steady increase in the number of articles talking about the job cutting potential of new technology, especially robotics.  A sign of the times perhaps This is why I think socialists should take up this meme and run with it – but not unconditionally,  The approach we could use is to say that while we technically could automate a huge chunk of work in socialism we might chose only to automate some of it, thereby putting a positive spin on the nature of work as creative activity a la William Morris  and co.

so what about all the low skilled labourors? will they just go on to program computers instead? the decision to automate everything will leave a great many people idle not to mention the risks full automation brings.

[robbo203]

Capitalist Pig wrote:

 so what about all the low skilled labourors? will they just go on to program computers instead? the decision to automate everything will leave a great many people idle not to mention the risks full automation brings.

 The point I am making is that in socialism we have a choice about what work we wish to automate and the degree to which we want to automate. In capitalism we dont.  Market competition settles the matter for us. Capitalist businesses are obliged by market competition to each increase their own market share  (which necessarily means at the expense of their comercial rivals).  To that end, they try to undercut their rivals pricewise by reducing unit costs through increased labour productivity or mechanisation,  So some technological innovation might be introduced by a particular business which temporarily gives it an edge in the commercial rat race and obliges other businesses to follow suit.  Since only living labour produces surplus value (profit) – not machines – the gradual displacement of workers by machines results in what Marx called the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.  However, he also suggested that there are counteracting tendencies at work.  An example of such a counteracting tendency is that as techological unemployment grows, it tends to push down wage levels.  What that means is that it then becomes more commercially attractive for employers to take  on more workers and this has the effect of slowing down the pace of technological innovation or mechanisation It is the combined of overall effect of all these differnent tendencies, some working in a direction opposite to that of others, that determines the  level of automation in general.  The specific nature of the work itself is also a factor.  The services or tertiary sector of the economy has traditionally been more labour intensive for all sorts of reasons and this is why you have seen have seen the spectacular  growth of the services sector in employment terms compared with manufacturing and the extractive or primary sector.  However that is changing with the spread of computerisation and this is effecting the capacity of the service sector to soak up displaced labour from the manufacturing and extractive industries. Personally  I think the development of technology is making the need for socialism more and more transperent.  It is ironic that you are worrying about the drying up of work in a socialist society. This totally undermines the argument usually made against socialism that people are inherently laxy and wont work unless they are economically forced to  via the wages system  – a bogus argument anyway since even under capitalism most work – about 55% according to UN figures – is actually carried on outside the money economy

[Capitalist Pig]

robbo203 wrote:

Capitalist Pig wrote:

 so what about all the low skilled labourors? will they just go on to program computers instead? the decision to automate everything will leave a great many people idle not to mention the risks full automation brings.

 The point I am making is that in socialism we have a choice about what work we wish to automate and the degree to which we want to automate. In capitalism we dont.  Market competition settles the matter for us. Capitalist businesses are obliged by market competition to each increase their own market share  (which necessarily means at the expense of their comercial rivals).  To that end, they try to undercut their rivals pricewise by reducing unit costs through increased labour productivity or mechanisation,  So some technological innovation might be introduced by a particular business which temporarily gives it an edge in the commercial rat race and obliges other businesses to follow suit.  Since only living labour produces surplus value (profit) – not machines – the gradual displacement of workers by machines results in what Marx called the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.  However, he also suggested that there are counteracting tendencies at work.  An example of such a counteracting tendency is that as techological unemployment grows, it tends to push down wage levels.  What that means is that it then becomes more commercially attractive for employers to take  on more workers and this has the effect of slowing down the pace of technological innovation or mechanisation It is the combined of overall effect of all these differnent tendencies, some working in a direction opposite to that of others, that determines the  level of automation in general.  The specific nature of the work itself is also a factor.  The services or tertiary sector of the economy has traditionally been more labour intensive for all sorts of reasons and this is why you have seen have seen the spectacular  growth of the services sector in employment terms compared with manufacturing and the extractive or primary sector.  However that is changing with the spread of computerisation and this is effecting the capacity of the service sector to soak up displaced labour from the manufacturing and extractive industries. Personally  I think the development of technology is making the need for socialism more and more transperent.  It is ironic that you are worrying about the drying up of work in a socialist society. This totally undermines the argument usually made against socialism that people are inherently laxy and wont work unless they are economically forced to  via the wages system  – a bogus argument anyway since even under capitalism most work – about 55% according to UN figures – is actually carried on outside the money economy

I think their needs to be a balance between automation and human labour

[robbo203]

Capitalist Pig wrote:

 I think their needs to be a balance between automation and human labour

  I totally agree but for that we need a society in which human beings can consciosuly determine what this balance should be according to  their own needs. It is just not possible to do this in a market based system in which blind market forces, over which we have no control, determine the outcome

[alanjjohnstone]

Up against that brick wall again, i see CP. Reason is that socialists have a coherent and integrated world-view and not an ad-hoc atomised interpretation of society 

[Capitalist Pig]

robbo203 wrote:

Capitalist Pig wrote:

 I think their needs to be a balance between automation and human labour

  I totally agree but for that we need a society in which human beings can consciosuly determine what this balance should be according to  their own needs. It is just not possible to do this in a market based system in which blind market forces, over which we have no control, determine the outcome

that is the dream i guess

[Anonymous]

Capitalist Pig wrote:

that is the dream i guess

No, the dream is getting capitalism to run in the interests of the majority. But, hey, dream on, Pig. 

[Capitalist Pig]

mmkay

[Anonymous]

Seems to me like the argument of tying pay to inventions such as the steam engine is an argument for technological determinism.  The idea that technology defines limits and creates incentives or favoratism towards certain forms of government or certain social norms and business norms.  in this case the technology of the steam engine is somehow determining or linked to causally the pay rate.  The assumption is perhaps that there is a modern day equivalent to the steem engine such as the computer and that the timing of pay rate changes is perhaps related to the timing of technology revolutions.  Or so it seems to me. 

[Anonymous]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Up against that brick wall again, i see CP. Reason is that socialists have a coherent and integrated world-view and not an ad-hoc atomised interpretation of society 

Perhaps it's a problem is that socialist have a coherent and isolated world-view and not an ad-hoc flexible and fluid interpretation of society?If what you're trying doesn't work and you're doing everything you think is right.  Then try doing something wrong to see if you assumptions were incorrect. 

[Anonymous]

Capitalist Pig wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Capitalist Pig wrote:

 I think their needs to be a balance between automation and human labour

  I totally agree but for that we need a society in which human beings can consciosuly determine what this balance should be according to  their own needs. It is just not possible to do this in a market based system in which blind market forces, over which we have no control, determine the outcome

that is the dream i guess

what everyone needs is their own economy with their own economic rules and laws that an individual can apply to any exchange or purchase and a computer to keep all the math and help with the accounting and rule interpretation when different people with different personal economies exchange goods or services.  I designed such a system once and promoted it here, but I don't think people understood it.  let me know if you want the link to my design solution.

[Young Master Smeet]

http://socialisteconomicbulletin.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/wages-are-falling.html

Quote:

Real wages are falling once more. In addition, nominal wages have fallen in the last 2 months which is highly unusual. Both of these developments are Brexit effects and the situation is likely to get worse as Brexit unfolds.[…]But investment has been falling. It was lower at the end of 2016 than in mid-2015. Without investment it is extremely difficult to create new highly-paid jobs. The new jobs that are being created tend to be lower paid, and push down average wages, even in nominal terms.

[Author]

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