Re: Higher Earnings That Aren't, continued

[john gulick <jlgulick@xxxxxxx>]

Doug Henwood sez:

>And for
>two, service sector wages are rising, and they're not subject to foreign
>competition. According to one of the regional Fed's (can't remember which -
>NY maybe?), service sector wages are a good leading indicator of inflation.

Not all service jobs are non-exportable -- just those jobs which reproduce
more or less spatially immobile labor-power. (And nowadays quite a few
"middle class" seniors retire in places like Baja where their savings and
pensions
stretch a long ways in U.S. FDI "retirement communities" as long as their
payments are denominated in pesos). Business services e.g. -- insurance
claims are assessed and processed by rural Irish women, etc.

To what do you attribute rising service sector wages ? Netscape and Oracle
yuppies getting rich ? Or renewed class struggle among janitors, health care
workers, and so on ? There has to be some kind of class struggle explanation
in here somewhere -- it can't be a complete supply and demand kind of thing
(or at least so I hope).

Best

John G.