Commentary on Political Economy

Tuesday 9 August 2011

Rattner On US Wages

This article in the FT by Stephen Rattner http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/353e0148-c1a9-11e0-acb3-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1TjofmEa2 is an excellent illustration of one good analytical point - that low US wages are contributing in large part to the decline of US production and employment - and of one bad point, namely, that US workers need to become "more competitive".

It does not take much of a brain to work out that if the workers of each country in the world competed against one another, they would very quickly compete themselves to starvation!

The analyses that we have presented below (the piece on 'Absolute and Relative Exploitation') explain that the solution is for US workers to force the capitalists in China and other export-dependent countries (Japan, Germany, Korea) to raise the wages and living conditions of their workers and to desist from their "competitive devaluations". This makes Rattner "rrong, rrong, rrong"!

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