As Keynes understood the point of an economy is to distribute time and wealth so as to improve the lot of everyone. For him, the reduction of the working week to 15 hours was an obvious consequence of an economy that is efficient, high-tech and fundamentally for the public good – Corbyn gets that.
Following the World Transformed festival’s success and the series of powerful speeches at conference, Labour is beginning to firmly position itself as the party of the future. Importantly, there are no pretensions of a nostalgic return to a pre-neoliberal, post-war age – but nor will it be business as usual once they are in power. Instead, work, business-ownership and income distribution are being rethought so as to fix a system that no longer functions, and to confront the technological and ecological challenges ahead.
Corbyn’s speech in particular followed directly on from an exciting report produced for John McDonnell and Rebecca Long-Bailey early this year, wherein multiple responses to the advance of automation technologies are considered. Combined, the report and Corbyn’s speech mark a decisive point in British politics.
Labour seem to recognise that the deepening crisis of work – set to be exacerbated by the introduction of new automation techniques – calls for ambitious planning and policy. Rather than wait for the deployment of these technologies by big business, the state must be pro-active and steer these new developments in a progressive direction.
The first thing to note about this new angle is Labour's acceptance of the reality of the situation. It is possible that up to 30 per cent of UK jobs are at high risk of automation in the next couple of decades, with institutions such as the Bank of England and Oxford University joining the chorus of studies that effectively make the same point: employment will not be the same again.
It is unlikely that entire jobs will be destroyed, but rather that many routine work processes will be automated – meaning the general reduction of workloads in various sectors. Accepting that this is a real challenge that must be faced with radical policy markedly distinguishes Labour as a party equipped with realistic, long-term economic thinking.
It is crucial to remember that automation is a cost-saving dynamic that is intrinsic to how capitalism works – if a capable machine or algorithm is cheaper than human labour, it makes business sense to bring it in. In this sense, the “rise of the robots” is not science-fiction – it actually springs from the relentless need to produce profit. Left to itself therefore, the dynamic of automation will not be in the interest of the many but, as Corbyn himself said, will be used to “pile up profits” for a few large businesses.
Herein lies the radicalness – but also the strength – of what Labour proposes: automation is not to be avoided but instead embraced and repurposed for the benefit of all – most obviously through the liberation of our time. Concretely, if automation technologies are publicly managed, in some cases by the state, in others by workers’ cooperatives, the new economy could be a “gateway to a new settlement between work and leisure”.
Corbyn coupled this statement with the desire that such a settlement might become a “springboard for expanded creativity” – pointing towards the cultural benefits of a world with less work. In sum, suggesting a structural re-organisation of free time – i.e. enabling the possibility of working less – alongside the usual promise of better jobs, is to pursue an agenda that is both realistic and emancipatory, pragmatic and enriching.
As John Maynard Keynes understood nearly one hundred years ago, the point of an economy is to distribute time and wealth so as to improve the lot of everyone. For him, the reduction of overall human labour (to around 15 hours a week on average) was an obvious consequence of an economy that is efficient, high-tech and fundamentally for the public good.
With Labour under Corbyn, we are now seeing this attitude back on the mainstream political agenda. Adopting automation will of course necessitate a raft of other policies if it is to fulfil its emancipatory potential, and it is important that Corbyn also mentioned rent caps and the need to reskill the working population in order to confront the coming high-tech economy. Labour’s commitment to lifelong learning from cradle to grave is intended to allow those of all ages to develop the skills necessary, without being saddled with draconian debt-burdens.
Questions remain as to whether it is possible to provide fulfilling, high-skilled work for everyone, and to this end Labour’s gestures towards an extensive basic income scheme that might provide an economic safety net will need fleshing out. It seems rational to ask whether it makes sense to continue job-seekers allowance schemes – which forces people to look for any work available – in a world in which automation is embraced and managed as part of government policy. These are important issues that will surely be addressed as Labour’s strategy unfolds. As of right now however, regarding the future of work, the party has convincingly staked its claim as being at the forefront of economic thinking going into the next election.
I'm not sure if Independent UK is a good source (shame on me), but this is interesting. Granted it's not actually socialism, but this seems like a good idea anyway.
Seeing current events as they are is wrecking me emotionally. So I say 'farewell' to this forum. For anyone who wonders.
The Indy is okay by British newspaper standards; they've definitely got a particular ideological bias but they at least pay lip-service to the concept of journalistic integrity.
And whether you agree with their proposed solutions or not (UBI still has a whole bunch of kinks to work out, and free community college isn't going to help the non-trivial percentage of working-age adults with the incurable learning disability popularly known as Stupidity), it's about bloody time a mainstream political party started thinking about what we're going to do when technological unemployment gets past the point where we can keep on papering over the cracks.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Actually I agree with the idea wholeheartedly. I might have come across as critical due to my pedantry on definitions insofar as political science goes.
Seeing current events as they are is wrecking me emotionally. So I say 'farewell' to this forum. For anyone who wonders.
Companies would prefer to hire 10 x 40 hour workers rather than 27 x 15 hour workers for several reasons;
1) There are significant per-employee fixed costs in terms of hiring, training, payroll, HR.
2) Larger teams are more unweildy / less responsive and waste more time on communication than smaller teams.
3) Say there are 40 candidates on the market who could do the job; due to wildly varying productivity between candidates, it is far more preferable to hire the top 25% than the top 68%. The productivity gain from having only high quality employees is much higher than the producivity gain from employees working less / being more relaxed.
4) Generally speaking, hiring only the top 25% and leaving 75% unhired allows a lower market rate of compensation than hiring 68%. Note that some professions have very high compensation simply because the productivity varience between employees is so high and it makes business sense to bid intensively to get the best. The effect here will be confined to the marginal cases where some employees will accept lower compensation because of increased fear of being unemployed.
We see this now where some companies (particularly in the US) prefer to have 2/3 the number of employees working 60 hour weeks, instead of the number required for everyone to work 40 hour weeks, even though 60 hours a week is enough to cause substantial productivity drop from fatigue & burnout. The reason is that this cost is judged lower than drawbacks 1,2 & 3 above.
Starglider wrote: ↑2017-10-19 07:22am
Companies would prefer to hire 10 x 40 hour workers rather than 27 x 15 hour workers for several reasons;
1) There are significant per-employee fixed costs in terms of hiring, training, payroll, HR.
2) Larger teams are more unweildy / less responsive and waste more time on communication than smaller teams.
3) Say there are 40 candidates on the market who could do the job; due to wildly varying productivity between candidates, it is far more preferable to hire the top 25% than the top 68%. The productivity gain from having only high quality employees is much higher than the producivity gain from employees working less / being more relaxed.
4) Generally speaking, hiring only the top 25% and leaving 75% unhired allows a lower market rate of compensation than hiring 68%. Note that some professions have very high compensation simply because the productivity varience between employees is so high and it makes business sense to bid intensively to get the best. The effect here will be confined to the marginal cases where some employees will accept lower compensation because of increased fear of being unemployed.
We see this now where some companies (particularly in the US) prefer to have 2/3 the number of employees working 60 hour weeks, instead of the number required for everyone to work 40 hour weeks, even though 60 hours a week is enough to cause substantial productivity drop from fatigue & burnout. The reason is that this cost is judged lower than drawbacks 1,2 & 3 above.
Over the past five years, I have concluded that teaching is such an industry...
Starglider wrote: ↑2017-10-19 07:22am
Companies would prefer to hire 10 x 40 hour workers rather than 27 x 15 hour workers for several reasons;
1) There are significant per-employee fixed costs in terms of hiring, training, payroll, HR.
2) Larger teams are more unweildy / less responsive and waste more time on communication than smaller teams.
3) Say there are 40 candidates on the market who could do the job; due to wildly varying productivity between candidates, it is far more preferable to hire the top 25% than the top 68%. The productivity gain from having only high quality employees is much higher than the producivity gain from employees working less / being more relaxed.
4) Generally speaking, hiring only the top 25% and leaving 75% unhired allows a lower market rate of compensation than hiring 68%. Note that some professions have very high compensation simply because the productivity varience between employees is so high and it makes business sense to bid intensively to get the best. The effect here will be confined to the marginal cases where some employees will accept lower compensation because of increased fear of being unemployed.
We see this now where some companies (particularly in the US) prefer to have 2/3 the number of employees working 60 hour weeks, instead of the number required for everyone to work 40 hour weeks, even though 60 hours a week is enough to cause substantial productivity drop from fatigue & burnout. The reason is that this cost is judged lower than drawbacks 1,2 & 3 above.
Over the past five years, I have concluded that teaching is such an industry...
In my own experience, I think most public sector/public service jobs are these. Doubly so if they are taxpayer-funded in any way. My current employers, the County Court, keep telling us that the workload is dropping but they're hiring more staff...eventually, while being proud of the fact they've paid staff 1,200 hours of weekend overtime since June. We're not even a big office! Apparently 240 hours overtime per month is cheaper than just hiring a few extra staff to do the work at normal day rates, though they wouldn't have anywhere to put said staff. Ugh.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
Starglider wrote: ↑2017-10-19 07:22am
Companies would prefer to hire 10 x 40 hour workers rather than 27 x 15 hour workers for several reasons;
1) There are significant per-employee fixed costs in terms of hiring, training, payroll, HR.
2) Larger teams are more unweildy / less responsive and waste more time on communication than smaller teams.
3) Say there are 40 candidates on the market who could do the job; due to wildly varying productivity between candidates, it is far more preferable to hire the top 25% than the top 68%. The productivity gain from having only high quality employees is much higher than the producivity gain from employees working less / being more relaxed.
4) Generally speaking, hiring only the top 25% and leaving 75% unhired allows a lower market rate of compensation than hiring 68%. Note that some professions have very high compensation simply because the productivity varience between employees is so high and it makes business sense to bid intensively to get the best. The effect here will be confined to the marginal cases where some employees will accept lower compensation because of increased fear of being unemployed.
We see this now where some companies (particularly in the US) prefer to have 2/3 the number of employees working 60 hour weeks, instead of the number required for everyone to work 40 hour weeks, even though 60 hours a week is enough to cause substantial productivity drop from fatigue & burnout. The reason is that this cost is judged lower than drawbacks 1,2 & 3 above.
The reverse can apply sometimes as well, particularly if there are some benefits which must be paid if you are employed for more than X hours. It's generally in lower skilled jobs but sometimes it can be cheaper to employ 2 people to work 3 hours a day rather than one for 6.
The problem is that if your society actually has employers giving employee benefits that are critical to the welfare of said employees (as the US does)...
Then if the companies actually follow this incentive and hire more, shorter-term workers, the result is absolutely disastrous for labor. Everyone's stuck with terrible benefits, lots of people have to take two jobs which totally defeats the purpose of the whole exercise, and it all turns into a farce.
And if your society doesn't actually have employers giving major benefits to their employees that incentivise this kind of thing... Well, then there's no incentive for them to hire more people at shorter hours.
And either way, there's the looming spectre of automation. Even if it takes a long while to make the up-front costs back, robots don't form unions, bitch about the company's working conditions and HR practices to the newspapers or lose their shit and deck their line manager.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Every time I think I've seen Peak Guardian, they continue to outdo themselves;
Would Brexit, Donald Trump, or the gathering demands for Catalonia to secede from crisis-ridden Spain have happened without the financial collapse? Almost certainly not.
That is more appropriate for a conspiracy theory blog than a 'newspaper'.
Starglider wrote: ↑2017-10-20 02:56amThat is more appropriate for a conspiracy theory blog than a 'newspaper'.
How so? Mass unemployment and economic hardship does have a tendency to drive people away from moderate and centrist positions towards more radical groups, especially if said radicals are promising simple, easy answers to difficult and complicated problems.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
