| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] Unemployment and Waste | | Date: | Sunday, October 1, 2006 01:57:02 (-0600) | | From: | Wallace Klinck <wmklinck @....ca>
|
Thanks--returning a PDF for your convenience
Wally
[MIME component not shown: nemployment and Waste by C H Douglas--The New Age, June 23, 1921.pdf (application/pdf)
]
On 30-Sep-06, at 10:36 AM, MODERATOR wrote:
> *The New Age*
> June 23, 1921
>
> Unemployment and Waste.
>
> While it is necessary to bear in mind that the object
> of industry should not be employment, but rather the
> delivery of goods with a minimum expenditure of energy
> on their production, it is yet true that at the moment
> unemployment does form a practical problem demanding
> alleviating treatment. The word is generally used to
> indicate labour unemployment, but it is practically
> impossible to have any considerable volume of labour
> unemployment without a capital unemployment
> representing many times the production value of the
> idle labour.
>
> To the extent that private capitalism in the old sense
> can be said to exist, this is just as great an evil to
> the capitalist as to the manual worker, although it
> incidence may not be so personal or so immediately
> tragic. It penalises his initiative, depletes his
> reserves, and finally bankrupts him; and the whole of
> the process is eventually an injury distributed over
> the community in general, resulting in a deterioration
> of morale, as well as in the more material evil of a
> rise in prices.
>
> It is particularly important to notice the
> wastefulness of the system. A demand backed by money
> arises in the community for a particular class of
> goods; an enterprising manufacturer puts down a plant
> “at his own expense” as the misleading phrase goes (it
> is impossible for anyone to put down modern plant at
> the expense of other than the general consumer), and
> supplies the goods. This man is a public benefactor;
> he gives the public what it wants, and he gives it
> much quicker than it would be possible to get it by
> any other system, because one man can make a decision
> quicker than a dozen men, to say nothing of a
> Government Department. A Trade slump comes;
> unemployment grows like a snowball, since every man
> thrown out of work is one man less receiving money,
> and therefore one man less in the market to buy goods;
> our manufacturer, though still willing and able to
> make his product, cannot sell it, and if this state of
> affairs continues for any length of time he is ruined.
> His business organisation is probably excellent, but
> it is broken up and his plant dispersed, and when the
> trade revival comes a new plant and a new organisation
> has again to be constructed at the expense of the
> consumer.
>
> Both the employer and the employed are so familiar
> with this cycle that both take steps which they
> imagine will protect them against its effects, but
> which in fact only make confusion worse confounded.
> During times of brisk trade the employer charges the
> highest price he can obtain, or in other words
> delivers the minimum of goods for the maximum of
> money, and embodies his large profits in invisible
> reserves, with the result that the consumer is left
> without any effective demand (demand backed by money)
> as soon as his wages cease. The worker, sensing this,
> does in his sphere precisely the same thing--he uses
> his Trade combinations to obtain the maximum amount of
> money for the minimum amount of production, not
> realising that this money simply goes into the cost of
> the product, which has to be paid by the community of
> which he forms so large a part.
>
> Since, superficially, it seems vital to the interest
> of both of them to keep the process moving as long as
> possible, the manufacturer is driven to sell, by
> advertisement or otherwise, useless or inferior and
> quickly worn-out articles where he can not make a
> handsome profit on durable and well-finished
> production, the life and usefulness of which operate
> in the truest sense towards labour-saving.
>
> It is certain that both employers and employed are
> willing and able to work on terms; it is demonstrable
> without difficulty that the productive capacity of
> Industry, with its labour, plant and organisation,
> greatly exceeds the consuming capacity of the Nation
> unless that consuming capacity is enormously and
> viciously inflated by waste, and especially the
> culminating waste of War; and yet it is patent that
> the needs of the individuals who comprise the
> community (whose collective needs are the only reason
> and justification for the existence of Industry at
> all) are far, and even increasingly far, from being
> met.
>
> There is one possible explanation for this
> anomaly--the financial system, which ought to be an
> effective distributive mechanism for the whole
> possible production of Society, is defective--it does
> not so arrange the prices of articles produced as to
> enable the extant purchasing-power to acquire them.
>
> Now, without, for the moment, discussing the methods
> by which this defect can be remedied, let us imagine
> the remedy to be applied and consider its immediate
> effect on the unemployment problem. There are still
> millions of persons wanting goods; the productive
> system can make these goods; the persons who want them
> can buy them, and those who make them can be paid for
> them. It seems obvious that an enormous stimulation to
> production would be provided--a stimulation which no
> mere propaganda on its desirability has ever succeeded
> in evoking; and that the immediate effect of this
> would be a radical diminution of unemployment.
>
> Consider now the policy actually being pursued at this
> moment by the Government and the financial powers to
> deal with the problem. They can be summarised in one
> sentence--the reduction of costs, and more especially
> labour costs. But labour costs are wages and form by
> far the most important item in the total purchasing
> power inside the country available for the
> distribution of goods. Even supposing that retail
> prices were reduced in exact ratio to wage reductions,
> which is highly improbable or even impossible, how is
> the distribution of goods to people in this country,
> which is the true object of British industry, thereby
> advantaged? As the prices fall (by this method) so the
> amount of money to purchase also falls, and we are as
> badly off as before, with the added complication of
> the discontent evoked by the reduction of wages.
>
> It would seem, then, that although a reduction of
> prices in relation to purchasing power is not only
> vital in connection with the more fundamental problems
> of Industry and Society, but is the only effective
> method of dealing with the immediate problem of
> unemployment, we are not as a Nation pursuing this
> policy, but rather one which, if not diametrically
> opposed to it, is yet wholly inapplicable to the
> situation. Is it impossible to obtain adequate
> recognition of fundamental remedies, and equally
> impossible to rouse the general public to a sense of
> the catastrophe towards which its passivity in the
> matter is hurrying it so swiftly?
>
> Consider, then, the position at the present time.
>
> C. H. D.
>
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