Since, I probably started this all off, by intimating that some outcomes
might be intentionally caused - in this case poverty - perhaps I might come
in again. It has been enlightening for me, I've learnt an awful lot about
Marx and Foucault and diffrences between how people read both. Some things
trouble me though. Nicholas, how can you claim the following:
>
> There is a tragic lack of knowledge of hard economic issues on this list.
For
>example, minimum wage laws *do* *lower* employment rates. Talk to any
economist (a
>person who has *studied* the issue) and s/he will tell you that when a
government forces
>firms to pay no less than $x/hr. to its employees, there is less money
available to hire
>more people.
Aren't you guilty of buying lock, stock and barrel just one narrative of
this process? So these economists you allude to know the truth of this do
they? Knowledge is always contested, and there are plenty of economists who
dispute exactly your account. Equally,
Another way to think about it is: if the restaurant industry were forced
>to pay no less than $100/hr to servers, how many servers would restaraunts
be able to
>hire, much less keep?
But this misses all those things going on which I thought Foucault brought
to our attention, that is you have focussed on the meta-narrative of the
market and failed to locate it in its socio-cultural setting. Can people
live on less than $100 an hour? If not then who is going to make up the
surplus, you and I through our taxes I suppose, or we could just let the
b******s starve. What about the effects on identity that acrue due to being
out of work, or being low-payed? Equally, of course, in practice, we
subsidise the restraunt owner, so he/she makes more profit. Hence we come to
the following:
>
> What is interesting is that, *most* (but not all) of those same economists
will
>concede that it is probably better to have a wage basement with a little
unemployment
>than it is to have no minimum wage and less unemployment.
Why? that's what I want to know. And they haven't even seriously thought
about any alternatives. The game is played within the rules of the present
game, no one, on this account, seems to be challenging the very rules in
which the game is framed.
--------------------------------------------------------
"What I try to achieve is the history of the relations which
thought maintains with truth; the history of thought insofar as it is the
thought of truth. All those who say truth does not exist for me are
simple minded."
(Foucault)
Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA
--------------------------------------------------------
might be intentionally caused - in this case poverty - perhaps I might come
in again. It has been enlightening for me, I've learnt an awful lot about
Marx and Foucault and diffrences between how people read both. Some things
trouble me though. Nicholas, how can you claim the following:
>
> There is a tragic lack of knowledge of hard economic issues on this list.
For
>example, minimum wage laws *do* *lower* employment rates. Talk to any
economist (a
>person who has *studied* the issue) and s/he will tell you that when a
government forces
>firms to pay no less than $x/hr. to its employees, there is less money
available to hire
>more people.
Aren't you guilty of buying lock, stock and barrel just one narrative of
this process? So these economists you allude to know the truth of this do
they? Knowledge is always contested, and there are plenty of economists who
dispute exactly your account. Equally,
Another way to think about it is: if the restaurant industry were forced
>to pay no less than $100/hr to servers, how many servers would restaraunts
be able to
>hire, much less keep?
But this misses all those things going on which I thought Foucault brought
to our attention, that is you have focussed on the meta-narrative of the
market and failed to locate it in its socio-cultural setting. Can people
live on less than $100 an hour? If not then who is going to make up the
surplus, you and I through our taxes I suppose, or we could just let the
b******s starve. What about the effects on identity that acrue due to being
out of work, or being low-payed? Equally, of course, in practice, we
subsidise the restraunt owner, so he/she makes more profit. Hence we come to
the following:
>
> What is interesting is that, *most* (but not all) of those same economists
will
>concede that it is probably better to have a wage basement with a little
unemployment
>than it is to have no minimum wage and less unemployment.
Why? that's what I want to know. And they haven't even seriously thought
about any alternatives. The game is played within the rules of the present
game, no one, on this account, seems to be challenging the very rules in
which the game is framed.
--------------------------------------------------------
"What I try to achieve is the history of the relations which
thought maintains with truth; the history of thought insofar as it is the
thought of truth. All those who say truth does not exist for me are
simple minded."
(Foucault)
Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA
--------------------------------------------------------