The Job Crunch

...This job-creation strategy has the added advantage of entailing no new public spending...

...Both of these programs were wasteful, since they allowed private-sector contractors—the weapons manufacturers and doctors-great latitude in billing the government...

...Rifkin does argue for giving workers more stake in businesses through profit-sharing schemes, but he devotes very little attention to ways in which broader worker control is an essential component of a humane technology policy...

...Even his mild reform proposals, however, will engender fierce opposition from a business community which is no more interested in full employment and shorter hours than in workplace democracy, productive public spending, and sensible trade policies...

...Still, Jeremy Rifkin has given us cogent reasons for asking why we cannot have a more humane society...

...The rest of the population is becoming simply surplus: unemployed or underemployed, impoverished, discarded...

...Rifkin, to his credit, points the way out of this crisis, but his policy agenda focuses too heavily on technology and devotes too little attention to the social and political forces that foster inequality...

...it may induce a major worldwide recession as well...

...they like having replaceable workers...

...It is not the sole cause of job loss and poverty...

...Automation is the major source of our current problems, Rifkin says, as wave after wave of technological innovation has made old patterns of employment obsolete...

...Following Juliet Schor's pathbreaking book, The Overworked American, Rifkin suggests we outlaw forced overtime and encourage labor to bargain for shorter hours in lieu of higher wages...

...Businesses prefer it this way...

...This is, in part, because "the biggest federal spending programs were the military and medical care," as Robert Pollin recently pointed out in Dollars and Sense...

...Everything is not technology's fault...

...A full-employment economy that does not at the same time empower employees would be a recipe for stagnation and inflation...

...John Buell, a journalist in Southwest Harbor, Maine, is the author of "Democracy by Other Means: The Politics of Work, Leisure, and Environment, " which will be published by the University of Illinois Press in July...

...When workers are both bored and powerless, they will be less likely to work hard, and the fear of being fired will have lost its sting...

...It's not just the technology, but who controls the technology that matters...

...Rifkin is well aware of this dynamic...

...Progressives need to defend deficit spending in this day and age, but we also need to ask: deficit spending for what...

...Today it is much harder to use such techniques...

...We need to make the issue public-sector spending for people—not for a corporate candy store...

...But Rifkin's full-employment agenda will not be attained without a more frontal attack on inequality—and especially on corporate control over the workplace...

...The contemporary work environment offers little opportunity for employees to participate in major product-planning or financial decisions...

...We are told in this competitive economy that we must keep taxes and wages low and give management "flexibility...

...While provisions vary, parents— regardless of income—are paid as much as $2,000 per child up to a certain age...

...The federal government, Rifkin says, might provide a living wage for unemployed workers in return for work in this sector of the economy...

...But, as Pollin says, "not all types of spending will contribute equally to the well-being of people in this country...

...Since Clinton has failed to put in any meaningful worker protection in these treaties, U.S...

...It would create decent jobs for the poorest at the same time that it improved the working conditions and quality of life of many in the service and manufacturing sectors...

...This beggar-thy-worker approach will not only increase social inequity...

...His proposals are creative and important, but more limited than need be...

...But in the long term, this cuts into productivity because employees who are made a part of the decision-making process work harder and improve the way the company operates...

...I doubt, however, that his goals can be achieved without some use of periodic deficits as well—a political taboo he mentions but does not adequately explain or refute...

...Rifkin's agenda will also be hard to implement unless we revisit the international trade treaties, NAFTA and GATT, that Clinton has pushed through...

...While Rifkin pinpoints much of what is wrong with our global economy, his emphasis is a bit one-sided...

...A shrinking core of office and factory workers—often forced to work overtime— produces increasing amounts of what we need...

...And he has laid out a program that will at least point us down the road a stretch...

...The response to previous capitalist crises was public-sector job growth: the government spends for highways and tanks—and allows moderate unionism to give workers in the larger firms a share of the gains new technology produced...

...Ironically, the corporations themselves are being short-sighted...

...Local government might also play a major role here in prioritizing needs and monitoring the effectiveness of the programs...

...Technology displacement and the lack of job opportunities have affected the nation's youth most of all, helping spawn a violent new criminal subculture," he writes...

...multinationals are increasingly exporting jobs to cheap labor havens abroad...

...Just as important as technology is the way in which our largely unregulated system of capitalism has concentrated the control over workplaces and work processes in the hands of a few...

...He argues that chronic and persistent unemployment characterizes all industrial societies...

...Their relentless drive to reduce labor costs and destroy unions may help their balance sheets in the near term, but they've been eroding the purchasing power of their own employees, thus reducing the demand for the goods they churn out...

...The hugely excessive sum spent on these programs was then unavailable for meeting basic needs in areas such as education, preventive health care, public transportation, and environmental protection...

...We can't get to full employment that way...

...Such a strategy would immediately create new jobs by redistributing existing work, and it would stem the future loss of jobs to automation...

...This would only fuel conservative tirades about the horrors of full employment and big government...

...Rifkin would fund his employment program by cuts in military spending and a progressive sales tax...

...He understands that this impoverishment strategy will produce a crisis, and he recognizes that the system's ability to respond is much more limited now than it was in the past...

...The old liberal pump-priming techniques don't work as well as they once did...

...People often mistakenly believe that technology has primarily affected the manufacturing sector, but, as Rifkin points out, automated teller machines and voice-recognition technologies are rapidly eliminating millions of traditional service-sector jobs as well...

...To create even more new jobs, as well as meet needs that markets don't address, Rifkin advocates job creation in what he calls the "third sector"—nonprofit groups like shelters for battered women, day-care centers, food co-ops, and tutoring networks...

...Public spending is out of favor, and many people now distrust unions and the public sector entirely...

...I by John Buell In his powerful new book, Jeremy Rifkin paints a disturbing picture...

...Rifkin alludes to such concerns but seems to shy away from areas of great potential controversy...

...A full-employment, pro-worker agenda could help ease many social problems...

...Another form of third-sector compensation that would fit this model, which Rifkin unfortunately does not address, is the Western European idea of a child allowance...

...It would not eliminate the need for welfare or affirmative action in a society as scarred by race and poverty as ours, but the burden of such programs would decline considerably, since economic insecurity, powerlessness, and long hours are what underlie much of today's resentments...

...The benefits are financed through progressive taxation, but constitute recognition of the social importance of child rearing...

...Deficit spending remains an important tool for stabilizing the economy...

...The consequences are social as well as economic...

...I would have preferred a bolder and broader agenda...