[PEN-L:1213] Re: Re: Re: pen-l questions

[Rob Schaap <rws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

G'day Penners,

Just popped in to pick up some books and saw Mike and Jim's notes.  I just
gotta say that, while this list ain't always what I might have expected
when first I put my oar in, it is always a terrific list - fully warranted
by what it is, never mind what it each of us might wish for it.

Three little points that occur to this non-economistic mind is that

(a) Keynes is potent on the wage/employment relation - he says "the effect
of an expectation that wages are going to sag by, say, 2 per cent. in the
coming year will be roughly equivalent to the effect of a rise of 2 per
cent. in the amount of interest payable for the same period." (Keynes, 1936,
265).  That, and the uncertainty that permanently fluctuating wage bills
throw into calculations, are enough to do away with Phillips Curve zealots,
no?

(b) Boeing management strategies re. employment have been far more decisive
than any econometric theory (they hired as if good times were eternally
good times, and have now sacked as if bad times are just as eternal);

(c) The Boeing example also shows that the new priority (ie. impressing
that capricious master, Wall St) rather than the old ones (building good
planes at as good a profit as the bounds of actually producing things allow
these days) is itself a humanly-mediated nightmare.  Wall St apparently
hasn't caught the ball Boeing thought it was throwing.  My theory:  many on
Wall St have peeked into *General Theory* and *Capital* (albeit mebbe under
the covers with a pen-light) and know structural overproduction and
effective demand problems when they see 'em.

Oh, and a fourth (pretty unrelated) point.  I'd been asking why Brazil,
given the unoriginal diagnosis and treatment it has received (ie. leech
therapy) would not go the way of some notable South East Asian
trend-setters.  We're all, in a manner of speaking downwind of the place,
and, for my part, I do detect a vague whiff of Thai.  How does it smell to
you lot?

Sorry to be a bit all over the place.

Gotta go.

Cheers,
Rob.