Coppola Comment

We are used to thinking of workers as free agents who sell their labour in a market place. They bid a price, companies offer a lower price and the market clearing rate is somewhere between the two. Free market economics, pure and simple.  But actually that's not quite right. The financial motivations of workers and companies are entirely different. To a worker, the financial benefit from getting a job is an income stream, which can be ended by either side at any time. But to a company, a worker is a capital asset.  This is not entirely obvious in a free labour market. But in another sort of labour market it is much more obvious. I'm talking about slavery.  Yes, I know slavery raises all sorts of emotional and political hackles. But bear with me. I am only going to look at this financially. From a financial point of view, there are more similarities than differences between the slave/slaver relationship and the worker/company relationship - and the differences are not nece...

We have a crisis of work. The secure, well-paid jobs of the past - many of them in manufacturing - are disappearing. What is replacing them is insecurity and uncertainty. Low-paid, part-time, temporary and seasonal work. The "feast or famine" of self-employment. The so-called "sharing economy", where people rent out their possessions for a pittance. The "gig economy", where people are paid performance by performance - or piece by piece. " Piecework ", we used to call it. Perhaps we should rediscover this name. Piecework has been the lot of most humans throughout history. Secure full-time jobs for wages have existed for less than a hundred years. And they were never available to everyone. In the post-war "golden age" of manufacturing to which many would like to return, most men had secure full-time jobs - but women did not. My father left school at 16 and went to work for an insurance company. He stayed with that company for hi...

At the launch of Nesta's book “ Our Work Here Is Done: Visions of a Robot Economy ”, Carlota Perez described how our current economic troubles are an inevitable and necessary part of the process of technological change. We are at a turning point: if we get it right, there could be a new Golden Age. But for this to happen, there needs to be radical change in current social structures and norms. Do we have the vision and courage to make this happen? Read on here .

My latest at Pieria : "Chris Dillow  observes that  "one function of the welfare state is to ensure that capital gets a big supply of labour, by making eligibity for unemployment benefit conditional upon seeking work." And despite noting that when jobs are scarce, paying some to "lie fallow" so others can work might be a good thing, he concludes that "this is certainly not in the interests of capitalists,  who want a large labour supply  - a desire which is buttressed by the morality of reciprocal altruism and the work ethic."  (emphasis mine).  Basic Income, therefore, is not going to happen because capitalist interests, claiming the moral high ground, will ensure that it never gains political traction. "But what if capitalists DON'T want a large labour supply? What if automation means that what capitalists really want is a very small, highly skilled workforce to control the robots that do all the work? What if paying people enough to li...