Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street

Re:Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street by oscilloscope on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @01:01AM (#4941394)

In the period 1947-1970 where wages were increasing, I don't know. Perhaps it had to do with legislation like the G.I. Bill, which increased human capital during that period and could have helped trend wages upward:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gi_bill

America is not a pure capitalist society. We have free public education, for instance. Capitalism also has obviously good effects, such as increased productivity and relatively efficient distribution of goods and services without central control. Profits from these effects can be distributed in the form of wages, if that's what employers choose to do.

In terms of the crisis, again I'm not sure. You'd have to consider not only the losses of the crisis, but the gains of the boom. Who benefited from the boom, and did those gains survive the bust?

19th century Marxist theory doesn't have the answer, but it frames these issues in an important way. Rather than crises and falling wages as abberations from normal steady growth, they are considered part of the capitalist system.

For a more modern perspective in the Marxist tradition, check out Max Weber or Georg Simmel. There are even radical, almost psychadelic strains of Marxism like Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari.

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Re:Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street by steveklabnik on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @01:18AM (#4941422)

> America is not a pure capitalist society. We have free public education, for instance.

Surely Marx would still say that, because the means of production are privately owned, resource allocation is provided through a market, and wage labor is dominiant, that the states would be still absolutely captialist, no? "Free public education" doesn't really matter.

> Capitalism also has obviously good effects,

Certainly, and I think this is something that we should keep repeating to people who don't know Marx.

> There are even radical, almost psychadelic strains of Marxism like Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari.

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Re:Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street by oscilloscope on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @01:27AM (#4941443)

Are the means of production privately owned? It seems to me that one of the most important means of production in the 21st century is computing.

Computational power is cheaply available and open-source software is free (as in freedom). With the internet, anyone can acquire knowledge, distribute a good, or work remotely.

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Re:Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street by steveklabnik on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @01:32AM (#4941453)

Google, for example, has some of the largest computing clusters on the planet. This entire website is dedicated towards creating a vision of computing that is privately owned and used by capitalists to extract surplus value. Not to mention most of the backbones and actual physical wires.

I think there are gray areas, for sure, but the factories, the land, much of the computing, most of the telecommunications infrastructure, etc are all privately owned. The vast, vast majority is.

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Re:Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street by crasshopper on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @02:11AM (#4941534)

America is not a pure capitalist society.

Of course. That's why I used the word "implementation". But I thought you had some kind of Marxist critique in mind that relates to some of the capitalistic aspects of the USA. (Since that is what this article is about.)

19th century Marxist theory doesn't have the answer, but it frames these issues in an important way.

Can you describe how you think it frames the present topic?

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