If the labour market was totally de-regulated and all able-bodied welfare were rolled into income support for low-paid work none of these attacks on the dignity of our fellow human beings would be necessary.

I don’t want to get into an endless pissing contest with you over who’s got the better handle on Centrelink. Quite apart from the two atypical offices (= highly transient, if not actually homeless clientele, who most likely will get the DSP when/if they’re settled) that I’ve earlier mentioned as having once passed through, I’ve been engaged in what you might call a qualitative (look it up, note NOT quantitative) study of one inner-Melbourne Centrelink office, off and on for the last eight years. So I do know what I’m talking about – from a front-of-counter, current perspective, anyway.

Accordingly, I have virtually zero interest in how the now-obsolete* Mature Age Allowance may have historically affected unemployment statistics c.1990-2003. However, I am quite fascinated by your insider observation that:

“going to Centrelink being a humiliating experience is not such a bad thing, [as it gives] all the more incentive for some of the less motivated to go out and find a job�.

No surprise there, that a Centrelink officer actually has the mentality of an Abu Ghraib prison guard. And while you’re probably a lost cause, Paul, here’s some news: sadistic “incentive� practices (which at the extreme end are called torture) DO NOT WORK. That they (sometimes) *appear*, at least to the incentive-isers, to work is due only to sadists’ transference: the need to find a sense of outward legitimacy for one’s private, guilty pleasure.

* Some currently 63 and 64 y.o. men, who got in before 2003, would still be on it, but obviously these will all be on the old-age pension by 2008.

I am not having an economics argument, ffs… I am in the humanities!

I SEZ

Can you expand on this one point so that the taxpayer can see what his money is buying us and what a tragic waste it is to fund education and research by such ill-gotten revenues………………….

I am not having an economics argument, ffs… I am in the humanities!

So sez Glen. And I say: Nothing is really REAL to you people is it?

what law?

are you on drugs? or just ‘on’ dogma? you have just attempted to refute everything I have written by arguing that everything relates to a _law_ of supply and demand, which I have apparently ignored?

[bangs head against wall repeatedly]

you need to look up what ‘economic determinist’ means and then think about who is describing what as a ‘law’. I am not having an economics argument, ffs… I am in the humanities!

My question has been repeatedly (phrased in various ways): WHY DOES THE GOVERNMENT REPRESENT UNEMPLOYMENT IN SUCH A WAY AS TO IMPLY THAT IT IS LOWER THAN IT ACTUALLY IS and THAT IGNORES THE COMPLEXITY OF THE POST-FORDIST LABOUR MARKET AND WORKPLACE?

The ‘official’ unemployment rate serves as a masquerade. It constructs a certain economic reality of the social conditions of late capitalist society. That particular reality is to the advantage of people who do not want to address the social and environmental problems. Why this is to the advantage of people who do not want to address such problems? Firstly because the only measure they will accept of social problems at a societal or structural level is an _economic_ indicator, not social or cultural indicators. Hence, the chief ‘indicator’ that the current neo-liberal regime uses (that began 20 years ago, across differnt governments) are rates of unemployment not rates of meaningful employment or rates of sustainable livelihoods, but rates of unemployment. It represents not how well the government is doing to make sure people lead a good life, but how much surplus labour there (allegedly) is (or isn’t) in the ‘labour market’ ie for the devices of business and investment capital. Even this is nonsense, because excess labour is distributed across groups of people and not embodied ina single labourer, hence the under-representation of casual workers.
What is a social indicator? Mass depression. What is a cultural indicator? Race [ethnicity] riots. The neoliberals are extremely good at administrating capital and extremely poor at social governance.

Asking me to relate this to laws of supply and demand is like asking a pacifist to shoot the warmongers.

Stop right there.

1. I’m not a determinist of any sort. Least of all an economic determinist. But labelling me an economic determinist will not repeal the laws of supply and demand. You still haven’t repealed the laws of supply and demand. And calling people names won’t make the spell no matter how many times you do it. The laws of supply and demand still exist. So we will apply them and see how what you are saying stacks up.

2. There is no school of purely economic determinism. But there is a school of historical determinism. Though why people still take Marx seriously is just one of the mysteries of life. What I’m saying is that this may have been an example of leftist projection.

3. I don’t need to wake up to anything in this discussion. You’ve got to wake up to the fact that no matter what you do the law of supply and demand will still be there no matter how many marxists or hard-leftists you read or hang out with.

4. We see here that you became aware early on that you couldn’t make a good argument on its own merits. So you had to reach into an whole other subject in order to conflate and confuse the issue. We were talking about employment. But you needed to bring in the environment. And you needed to use more then one meaning for the one word “exploit”.

“The logic of capitalist exchange, that is, to maximise the extraction of surplus value….” This statement is based on the “labour theory of value” which is a false theory in economics. A theory that took hold in Calvinist Scotland and which Marx took up along with a great deal of the English-Speaking world.

We still haven’t found a refutation for supply and demand yet. But I’m sure its coming up.

“…means that there is a tendency to exploit those people and things that can not defend themselves, such as those born into structural poverty and the natural environment…”

Notice how you had to bring in another issue since your argument won’t quite take without conflating and confusing. But since you haven’t repealed the law of supply and demand its as good a time to point out that it is just these people you speak of who are most grievously harmed by interventions into the labour market.

“Second problem you are not realising because you have bought the government’s ideology hook, line and sinker is that it is not a ‘job market’ but a ‘labour market’ with employers having the upper hand.”

I did no such thing. But there is a scintilla of truth here. If the size of firms is bigger then it ought to be. That is to say to the extent that our economy is dominated by a rigged market that predjudices against small business (and I think that is true to a degree) then we have a bit of a problem. If we want to make things better for the less fortunate we have to get everything right. And in fact if you read some things I wrote earlier on this thread you will see that I have recognised some of these concerns already.

“Third problem with what you are saying that ties the two points together is that a job, and employment as such, should pay enough in wages to sustain people so they can live a decent life. ”

No no no. It should pay everyone millions so we can all be rich. Here you go off into fantasy. A fantasy made possible only by this failure to always keep in mind supply and demand. You have brought a value judgement into an essentially technical matter.

And so the rest is all irrelevant.

Try again. But this time say nothing that ignores supply and demand. Now I think there IS a problem with the distribution of wealth. As you can see by earlier posts on this thread. But in order to create greater upward mobility, to help those who you are implying you wish to help. Or indeed, in order to get anything done, it does no good to ignore realities, unpleasant or otherwise.

I know how it does it (it is purely discursive, defining ‘unemployment’ and ‘employment’ in certain ways), but I want to know why.

graeme, firstly, you need to wake up to the fact your economic determinism hits a massive wall when it tries to account for a sustainable economy in terms of social and environmental impacts. The logic of capitalist exchange, that is, to maximise the extraction of surplus value, means that there is a tendency to exploit those people and things that can not defend themselves, such as those born into structural poverty and the natural environment.

Second problem you are not realising because you have bought the government’s ideology hook, line and sinker is that it is not a ‘job market’ but a ‘labour market’ with employers having the upper hand. You can thank the Liberal Government for that.

Third problem with what you are saying that ties the two points together is that a job, and employment as such, should pay enough in wages to sustain people so they can live a decent life. A ‘decent life’ is not the bare minimum of survival but a life that is worth living. Any other definition of life is nonsense and you end with societal mental health and substance abuse problems. Calculate how much it cost to live a ‘decent life’ (whatever that is, but certainly more than a ‘living wage’) in various places in Australia, figure out how long it would take to earn this amount on the minimum wage, and then you have the minimum amount of time someone should be working before they are classified as employed. It makes much more sense than the government’s arbitrary figure of 1 hour a week or whatever it is.

Hmmmmm. The humiliation and confidence-beating approach to seeking full employment.

You know its SO crazy it might just work…….. (not).

If you deregulated the labour market and rolled all able-bodied welfare into a bit of income support for low-paid workers all this business would be academic.

An environmentally responsible future lies with homo sapiens quitting the idea of a quarter acre block as the dream and replacing it with the idea of most of us living in massive ’sky houses’ of a spaciousness that would seem unbelievable to us in the crummy interventionist world we find ourselves in.

Damn straight. Height restrictions on buildings and currency debauch is the reason you can’t afford an APARTMENT in New Farm. No doubt about that at all.

But the Liberals are just as bad. In NSW hanging it on Bob Carr’s sardine city. They didn’t like the idea that Bob wanted to allow high-rise development near train stations. Truly bizzare.

Yeah I checked out those lyrics Amanda. I didn’t have that part about the locks memorised. But the reference to the song was to do with an argument about barriers to entry into the labour market. And no endorsement of the gentleman’s chosen lifestyle. It was what we call an ‘example’. The song would not have been written that way in 2006. Because the prospect of going into some town and getting a couple of hours work on the spot and getting cash money on the same day is one liberty that has been done away with.

Try buying a building with a shop floor anywhere near Sydney these days. That’s just one in the many hundreds of obstacles that leftists have thrown in prohibiting people going into business for themselves.

That explains why I can’t afford to buy a house in New Farm! Leftists!

And he “knows every lock that ain’t locked when no one’s around.” Wonder why? Nips in to do the washing up as a surprise I guess.

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/r/randy-travis/114197.html

That is unless you pipped her in the country music trivia quiz at the Tamworth Festival this year, in which case I am happy to be corrected.

There’s a chunk of about 13 words that I’m referring to. I don’t remember the petty theft in the song? You aren’t sending me on a wild goose chase are you Amanda?

Think you might want to listen to those lyrics again, mate. Poverty and petty theft by the itinerant homeless isn’t really what I want the labour market to encourage.

1. End unemployment by deregulation of the labour market.

2. Try and make things easier on the working poor.

There ought not be a Centrelink. Its humiliating even being there. At least they’ve got TV’s now. But it’s a depressing and confidence destroying place anyway. One suspects that if any decent employer saw you there that it be the end of your chances with him.

This is what the interventionists have done to so many of us. Using brute force against employers they have ended or at least harmed price competition in the labour market.

Therefore they have opened up other forms of discrimination. So now you have to show everyone your resume. And references. And any number of other violations of your privacy. And you have to be hyped up at the interview. Like your whole life up until that day has been one long sequence leading only logically to the job that you are going for that very day. Whether that job be wiping old peoples bottoms or batting softballs through the tax department windows. Whether it be amongst the worst or the best of all possible jobs.

And because the interventionists have slaughtered the number of jobs out there the interviewer, who will not take risks, is able to determine what your life will be like for the next few years. If not forever. Which is a soul-destroying position to be placing people in.

Under economic liberty there would be (relatively speaking) a seller’s market for labour. So you would just move about improving your skill set in accordance with your ultimate goals. And then if you were ambitious, once you’d got the skills, you’d leave to get the cash. You’d open your own business. It’s about that simple.

But consider opening your own business in this Keynesian world. For one thing it costs a fortune just to buy some office space. Or some extra living space. From which to lauch your business. Try buying a building with a shop floor anywhere near Sydney these days. That’s just one in the many hundreds of obstacles that leftists have thrown in prohibiting people going into business for themselves.

Try running through the lyrics of the old song “King Of The Road” in your head. See if you can find a clue to how the job market used to be before the interventionists of the pacifist veneer decided to use brute force on employers in furtherance of whatever bait and switch goals they had going at the time.

Perhaps he would like to make a relevant comment in regards to my first post and the introduction Mature Age Allowance affecting the unemployment statistics.