The lead article, written by David Grusky, puts forward a nicely reasoned argument that
Judging by current legislative proposals and Democratic Party rhetoric, there is an emerging case that our main response to inequality should be to increase tax rates for the well off.but that
If we're serious about reducing inequality, we ought not to stop there.I couldn't agree more.
He goes on to ask
[W]hy we reflexively assume that tax-based redistribution is the est way to take on inequality. This assumption only makes sense insofa as the institutions that generate wages and other income are treated as sacrosanct.The set-up is pretty good, no? (And, coincidentally, quite similar to our own conclusions!)
Grusky's argument peaks with this well-aimed blow at one of the shibboleths of the dismal science:
Why do we think our existing labor market institutions are sacred? In the context of liberal economies, we think as much because these institutions are presumed to be based on a thin set of rules that ensure labor contracts are easily formed and terminated and that a worker's compensation therefore equals her contribution to the firm's output. [emphasis mine]Boom. Blow up that assumption and the "greatest good for the greatest number" faith which underlies the economist's defense of the status quo is reduced to dust.
He continues
If our labor market institutions were actually 'thin' in this way, then we could only tinker with them at our own peril. By revising the sacred rules, we would break the link between compensation and contribution, thereby introducing inefficiencies and reducing total output. This heroic assumption underlies the political consensus around deregulation that has emergeid in the last several decades. In an unspoken compact, liberals (i.e. leftists) have agreed to let conservatives run a competitive and 'regulation-free' economy, while conservatives have, in turn agreed that the fruits of economic growth will be used to fund programs that redistribute market income.In this context, Grusky argues, the "ritual complaint of liberals" - "that conservatives aren't holding up their side of this grand deregulative compact" - suggests an "interptetation of OWS [which] reduces it to a business-as-usual movement...to expand the redistributive side of the bargain."
But, he insists, there is much more to OWS's "anti-inequality critique" than this.
Really, this is more than enough material for one article, and - in fact - he should have stopped there.
The rest of the article, in which Mr. Grusky tries to flesh out his ideas for the struggle against "market inequality", is interesting but flawed. He starts with the provocative suggestion that OWS should direct at least some of its ire against the extraction of economic rent. I don't know if he borrowed this idea from the populists - who, it has been suggested, were the OWS of the first "guilded age" - but it certainly deserves some thought, especially because it takes just enough from the Ron Paul libertarian perspective to potentially widen and deepen the sometimes tenous connection between the various tendencies which make up the Occupy movement.
Really, Grusky's idea of focusing on economic rent has merit, but unfortunately, he develops the theme poorly, and most of the respondents (and commenters) in the forum are distracted by his inexpertly chosen examples, to the point that they virtually ignore the main premise. Some of them are marginally interesting, but most are pretty wide of the mark. (The one exception is Mike Konczal, who has some quite suggestive commentary, and even better materal on his blog.) If I have time later, I'll try to do a post which just examines the useful fragments of the theme in Grusky's piece and Rorty's commentary.
Anyway, I guess one shouldn't look a gift horse and whatnot - there was enough good material to justify two good reads through, which is more than you can say for most people! Enough mashed metaphors for ya? :D
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