Work for all is the goal society must have. Brilliant text about the benefits of full employment and its positive side effects. Niklas Blomqvist questions the idea that the market itself can create full employment. For example, Blomqvist points out that attempts to follow this path in the last thirty years have not produced the desired results. He emphasizes that work for everyone should be society's responsibility and not just the individual's burden.
Blomqvist's consequences of unemployment emphasize the suffering and poverty that unemployment brings to both the individual and the social economy. This thinker also cites Per Åsbrink's reasoning about the need for more planned housing to ensure demand in society and full use of productive resources.
No relevant criticism of work for everyone
Blomqvist says that the modern economic theories that oppose full employment have failed. The ideologue predicts stiff resistance from capital but believes that once we reach full employment, the policy will become popular and silence the opposition.
To support full employment, Blomqvist suggests a different view of financial and monetary policy. He points out that both of these policy areas must work together to maintain demand, while managing inflation risks and targeting investments in strategic areas.
We will not need a labor market policy so focused on wage subsidies in a society with work for all. Blomqvist emphasizes the importance of job placement and labor market training to match labor shortages in certain sectors and avoid inflationary pressures.
Additional possibilities
Blomqvist emphasizes how work for everyone can make us richer. But we could use this wealth to introduce a twenty hour work week. Because Parkinson's law says that more gets done the shorter the time we have. For example, lectures I have attended at Sahlgrenska University Hospital have shown that shorter working weeks not only increase employees' mental and somatic health. These lectures said that twenty hour work weeks minimize the risk of burnout. Examples from Toyota's factories, industry in Germany and France show that reduced working hours can be competitive. Humans have a natural ability to focus and maintain high concentration for short periods of time, and a shortened work week can help maximize this concentration. In the Middle Ages, farmers had 12-14 hour working days, but then they also had breaks of several hours at times. A shorter working time is also an environmentally friendly way to manage the economic power work for all would give the unions. More free time would let us have more fun though leisure is also productive for society.
The anthology "Our Time," which includes Blomqvist's text, can be purchased here: https://www.bokus.com/bok/9789189117495/var-tid-20-texter-till-en-fornyad-samhallsanalys/
- The looted folk home by Sven Grassman (often found on www.bokborsen.se )
- Mikael Nyberg tells in The automaticity of capital about the industrial strength, humanity and fantastic ingenuity that arose in Sweden when we had work for everyone through a more regulated mixed economy
- The deficit myth by Stephanie Kelton shows how national debt is not a real debt if the state creates the money. True wealth is our country's resources and productive forces.
- The entrepreneurial state by Mariana Mazzucato shows that the state has always had to drive the social economy for major technological and medical innovations to occur.
- #employment #socialism #mixed economy #planned economy #demand #inflation
Interesting
Mariana Mazzucato emphasizes that the state must be an entrepreneur in its own right, and order both projects and technology – and in case of emergency, manufacture things itself if the private capital does not cooperate. See her books The Entrepreneurial State and Aim for the Stars. Right now, she says, the obvious project is to get off fossil fuels.
That is what the Chinese state has done. And before that, the Japanese one. And before that, the US-American – and for that matter most European ones. However, the latter ceased in the 80s. Here it is probably Alice Amsden who is the best presenter, although her books are only available in English.
The former Brazilian finance minister Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira labels three types of government policies – the liberal (or neoliberal) where capital does what it wants, the state-controlled ("Soviet") and what he calls the developmentalist. The third contains all the successful stories, the Chinese one as I said, and the post-war European one.
We should really try to get there again. But it's not done in a day. Look more at https://gemensam.wordpress.com/2021/12/25/det-behovs-organiserade-klassallianser-for-att-hela-landet-ska-gynnas/
Yes, I know and I have written a lot about Mariana Mazzucato. I thought I hinted about her in the read more list in the post. Good thing you reminded her. You can never remind her too much.
You did, I see now. Apologies for not observing this.
PS. I should also have poofed for Ha-Joon Chang's fantastic 23 Things They Don't Want You to Know About Capitalism, which describes roughly how the successful countries have done it.
Exciting
Yes, and entertaining! He writes almost as much fun as Erik Reinert, another writer in the same spirit (whom I translated about seven years ago): https://premissforlag.se/bocker/global-ekonomi/
But Mazzucato is more spot on in this case.