tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38390952853217913592024-03-14T04:20:50.383-07:00Ecological HeadstandThe Work Less Institute of Technology: Because Working Less IS a Technology!Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.comBlogger121125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-60444664140735047892021-05-15T11:00:00.002-07:002021-05-15T11:00:59.334-07:00Dilke, Chapman, and Dahlberg Pop-upsSandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-54131506319944976212015-06-17T18:44:00.001-07:002015-06-17T18:44:58.843-07:00For the Abolition of the Wages System!Once more, with feeling:
Instead of the conservative motto: "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!" they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: "Abolition of the wages system!"
With that sentence Karl Marx concluded the second part of his address on the topic of wage-labor, prices and profit to the Central Council of the International Workingmen's Association. To the Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-47071765114352628902015-06-08T23:25:00.000-07:002015-06-08T23:25:47.799-07:00The Incredible Shrinking BlogOver the past few days, the Sandwichman has been downloading Ecological Headstand blog posts and reverting them to draft. About three-quarters of the blog is now unpublished. Most of the remainder of posts are ones that I have cross posted at EconoSpeak.
The downloaded blog posts total around 440 pages and 220,000 words. The idea is to herd that rambling collection of texts into a book. Or two.Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-5605480163039110922015-05-25T07:00:00.000-07:002015-06-05T18:36:07.558-07:00Keynes "hadn't got round to it"
...all the difficulties and rigidities which go into modern Keynesian income analysis have been shunted aside. It is not my contention that these problems don’t exist, nor that they are of no significance in the long run... Robert M. Solow, "A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth," 1956.
...the shunting aside opened up the opportunity for real-business-cycle theorists such as Finn Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-89895157015991471072015-05-20T11:28:00.001-07:002015-06-05T18:36:07.589-07:00Napoleon Solow and the Phantom Mechanism
I would like to say why I think that the Doomsday Models are bad science and therefore bad guides to public policy. ... The basic assumption is that stocks of things like the world’s natural resources and the waste-disposal capacity of the environment are finite, that the world economy tends to consume the stock at an increasing rate (through the mining of minerals and the production of goods), Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-45327933581081471432015-05-19T10:14:00.001-07:002015-06-05T18:36:07.552-07:00Mathiness, Growth and Increasing ReturnsThe following was originally posted on Ecological Headstand in October, 2012 under the title, Endogenous Growth Theory and Ecological Unequal Exchange: linkage, displacement and deflection of 'diminishing returns'. Paul Romer's rant on mathiness has provoked a response from Lars Syll regarding the issue of increasing returns to scale, which I discussed in this post.
What the late Stephen G.Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-51625300484108568042015-04-19T23:42:00.002-07:002015-06-05T18:36:07.555-07:00Viral Gyro Spiral
"We need campaign finance reform. We do not need 'heroes' who take meaningless flights of fancy." -- Marsha Mercer, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Have you ever wondered what politicians do with all that campaign finance money? They don't keep it (or at least not most of it). They spend it. On campaigning. A lot of it on advertising. Which means buying time and space in the media. Including the&Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-71627241338311135212015-04-18T13:11:00.002-07:002015-06-05T18:36:07.574-07:00Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-44488261691415467482015-04-18T12:26:00.001-07:002015-06-05T18:36:07.549-07:00Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-77966226696615941482015-04-15T20:48:00.003-07:002015-06-05T18:36:07.579-07:00Never Mind the Bollocks. Here's the Gyro.Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-14434665958389269822015-04-15T20:05:00.004-07:002015-06-05T18:36:07.527-07:00Hughes on First?
Have to admit, the spectre of mailman flying a gyrocopter onto the lawn of the Capitol building appeals to the Sandwichman's weakness for eccentric idealists.
From the Tampa Bay Times, here is the letter that Doug Hughes was delivering to 535 members of both houses of Congress.
Dear ___________,
Consider the following statement by John Kerry in his farewell speech to the Senate —
"Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-14504179463281209162015-04-14T07:43:00.002-07:002015-06-05T18:36:07.530-07:00#OCCUPYPIKETTYHILLARY
Hillary's campaign logo has come in for quite a bit of criticism.
The logo's designer, Michael Bierut, is a graphic design superstar. Maybe he knows what he is doing? Here's what he wrote a few years back on the Occupy Wall Street "communications arsenal":
Consider, on the other hand, the genius of that simple #occupywallstreet hashtag. Three little words, with a call to action Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-78785930726908968902015-04-08T14:46:00.001-07:002015-06-05T18:36:07.582-07:00Of Bathtubs, Bombshells and BoilerplateThe bathtub in question is the analogy Linda Booth Sweeney and John Sterman use to illustrate a dynamic stock-flow system, such as the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions (a flow) and the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (a stock). Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman stress the importance of the bathtub analogy in their new book, Climate Shock.
What's fascinating Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-69936394067957541632015-03-30T19:11:00.002-07:002015-06-05T18:36:07.570-07:00IS-LMist Fundamentalism and the Quest for Ignorance
"So I don't care whether Hicksian IS-LM is Keynesian in the sense that Keynes himself would have approved of it, and neither should you. What you should ask is whether that approach has proved useful -- and whether the critics have something better to offer." -- Paul Krugman, "Unreal Keynesians"
The issue, of course, is not whether 'the master' would have approved of the IS-LM gadget but Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-35783826727329997382015-03-08T10:15:00.000-07:002015-06-05T18:36:07.541-07:00Fortune and the Four-day WorkweekWhat economists of the 1950s and 60s disparaged with the "lump-of-labor" hand, they typically celebrated with the "inevitable", "productivity gains", "income-leisure choice" hand. Based on past trends, the four-day week could be expected to arrive by 1980 -- presumably without legislative or collective bargaining "coercion." By now, 2015, workers would be enjoying the three-day, 21-hour week or, Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-67681204303624403682015-03-06T08:03:00.000-08:002015-06-05T18:36:07.567-07:00"Unemployment and Shorter Hours" -- Howard G. Foster
The following hypothetical example was developed by Howard G. Foster -- then a teaching assistant at the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell -- and published in the April, 1966 Labor Law Journal. It can best be understood as a direct reply to arguments in the pamphlet, The Shorter Workweek by Marcia L. Greenbaum, published three years earlier by Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-3924268893354182492015-03-04T08:24:00.000-08:002015-06-05T18:36:07.544-07:00Break Their Haughty Frames
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong.
The Hamilton Project bills its "The Future of Work in the Age of the Machine" as a "framing paper." The "frame" (or frame-up) appears on page two of the paper:
The Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-6142343276609320192015-03-02T08:22:00.000-08:002015-06-05T18:36:07.561-07:00Bad Faith Economics: A Cheap Market Will (almost) Always (tend to) Be Full of Customers (except when it isn't)
As a rule, new modes of economy will lead to an increase of consumption according to a principle recognised in many parallel instances. The economy of labour effected by the introduction of new machinery throws labourers out of employment for the moment. But such is the increased demand for the cheapened products, that eventually the sphere of employment is greatly widened. Often&Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-74226610711262697842015-02-26T08:20:00.000-08:002015-06-05T18:36:07.576-07:00Who knew? People oppose austerity -- because the lump of labour fallacy!
ht
"The basic story put forward to justify austerity is that a reduction in debt will generate an economic turnaround, but why have people rejected this narrative? Some economists would say that people have rejected it simply because it is wrong, but the problem is more protracted than this." -- Achim Kemmerling
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-24446375306252733122015-02-24T17:13:00.001-08:002015-06-05T18:36:07.532-07:00Larry Summers Tells It Like It IsFrom the unedited transcript, "Future of Work in the Machine Age" policy forum:
Third, when I was an undergraduate at MIT in the 1960s there as a whole round of concern about this -- will automation displace all the employment? And what I was taught as an undergraduate was that basically the people who thought it would were a bunch of idiot Luddites and that obviously there would Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-3178845005432286382015-02-24T08:18:00.000-08:002015-06-05T18:36:07.535-07:00"Union Arguments for Shorter Hours"In the summer of 1959, Loren Goldner and I hung out together at the City of Berkeley's Camp Cazadero. Loren called me "Stick" because I was skinny and because my last name was Walker. Walking stick > Stick Walker. I'm not sure if that was the year the boys' camp did a talent show skit based on exclamatory action comic book sound-effects words.
Pow! Bam! Gulp! Rat-a-tat-tat! Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-66011660992806470072015-02-22T08:17:00.000-08:002015-06-05T18:36:07.564-07:00Economic Law and Order
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. -- Anatole France
Economists forget, at their peril and ours, that "economic laws" are contingent on "The Law," in Anatole France's sense. When the rich find it convenient to house their servants under bridges, the majestic law that forbids both rich and poorSandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-87138084936612077462015-02-20T08:16:00.002-08:002015-06-05T18:36:07.585-07:00The Black bill, Green and the Blue Eagle: "to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing"The story is told by three of the key actors, Frances Perkins, Leon Keyserling and Rexford Tugwell, of how the Roosevelt administration, in its eagerness to "get rid" of the Black thirty-hour bill and to put something in its replacement to placate labor, incorporated the right to collective bargaining in section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act.
"When we first came to Washington in Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-43167588219994047152015-02-09T23:06:00.001-08:002015-06-05T18:36:07.547-07:00No robotization without representation!
Luddites weren't wrong about losing their jobs, they were just wrong about the economy losing jobs in aggregate. -- Dietrich Vollrath
Dietrich Vollrath wasn't wrong about the Luddites losing their jobs, he was just wrong about them having any opinion whatsoever about "the economy losing jobs in aggregate."
Not only did the Luddites have absolutely nothing to say about such statistical Sandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3839095285321791359.post-56991996289720894192014-12-31T03:18:00.000-08:002015-06-05T18:39:16.716-07:00Pipe Dreams and ParadigmsOn Democracy Now, December 12, 2014, Amy Goodman spoke with Sean Sweeney of the Cornell Global Labor Institute about claims that the Keystone XL pipeline would create 250,000 jobs. The transcript below is from the part of the interview that starts at around time 00:55 on the embedded video.
AMY GOODMAN: ...You have been involved at a high level when it comes to Keystone XL and providingSandwichmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.com0