Re: [OPE] If anyone watched my video tonight, I would appreciate your comments

Very interesting. Thank you. Could you tell me more about how the
strategy was successful on its own grounds but ultimately hit the limits
predicted by Marx and Kalecki?

On Wed, Aug 04, 2010 at 11:12:14AM +0200, Dave Zachariah wrote:
> >
> >
> On your ideas about raising the minimum wage, I think the Swedish
> 'Rehn-Meidner model' already embodied a more progressive take on this. In
> this strategy, national trade-unions would push for a uniform 'solidarity
> wage' policy across all firms in one sector. Thus low-productivity firms
> would obtain lower profit shares. High-productivity firms, by contrast,
> would earn 'excess profits'. This mechanism would increase the rate of
> technical change in industry while reducing wage differentials. This
> strategy was successful on its own grounds but ultimately hit the limits
> predicted by Marx and Kalecki.
>
> Rudolf Meidner eventually saw the limits of the strategy as being rooted in
> the private ownership of capital and proposed that the so-called 'excess
> profits' that the high-productivity firms earned due to the restraint of
> wage policy should be transfered to collective funds controlled by the
> unions. The proposal was adopted by the national trade-unions, but
> undermined by the Right and the Social-democratic Party in power and finally
> vanished in the international context of neoliberalism.
>

-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
michaelperelman.wordpress.com
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