sábado, 27 de setembro de 2008

Sim, nós podemos?

É isto que eu gosto no keynesianismo de esquerda: é a melhor tradução, no campo económico, do «sim, nós podemos». Sim, nós podemos resolver a crise. Sim, nós podemos usar o Estado, essa magnífica caixa de ferramentas. Sim, nós podemos combinar o planeamento com mercados reconfigurados para resolver os grandes problemas do nosso tempo. Sim, nós podemos evitar a catástrofe do capitalismo puro. James Kenneth Galbraith sucede ao pai como o melhor intérprete desta tradição. Este artigo de opinião no Wasington Post oferece várias pistas para superar o risco de colapso sistémico financeiro e para recuperar a economia. Nos EUA, claro. Se tiverem mais tempo, leiam este seu artigo académico sobre os contornos da União Europeia daqui a algumas décadas. Uma previsão de padrões de desigualdade e de ineficência. Responsáveis: o fundamentalismo de mercado que está inscrito no actual arranjo do desgraçado governo económico europeu. Se as actuais opções políticas não forem alteradas, eu até dúvido que haja UE em 2042. Na Europa é mais: não, nós não podemos...
às

4 comentários:

  1. CCz29 de setembro de 2008 às 11:01

    Não esquecendo aquele pormaior de achar que mais formação resolve o problema do emprego qualificado. Quem é que à direita ou à esquerda em Portugal tem coragem de dizer que o rei vai nú:
    .
    "Job training is a canonical example of the well-brought-up liberal's (atenção à conotação americana para o termo) urge to make markets work. The policy follows from an argument about the nature of unemployment and low wages, and as with neraly all similar exercices, the argument begins by assuming the existence of a market. In this case, the market is known as the "labor market," and it supposedly matches demand for labor, which comes from businesses, to the supply offered by individuals. If individuals lack the minimal skills that business requires, they cannot compete for jobs. Unemployment must result. The purpose of job training therefore is to move individuals into a position from which they can effectively compete for available employment.
    .
    In this analysis every detail is correct: there are businesses that require labor, and there are individuals who would like jobs but do not qualify for them. It is true that a job-training program can help. Yet the sum of these details falls far short of the claim made for them as a whole. It does not follow that job-training programs reduce unemployment or poverty. It is not even clear that they foster the creation of a single additional job.
    .
    The problem is that poverty and unemployment are not much influenced by the qualities and qualifications of the workforce. They depend, rather, on the state of demand for labor. They depend on whether firms want to hire all the workers who may be available and at the pay rates that firms are willing, or required, to offer, especially to the lowest paid.
    .
    Firms in the happy position of strongly expanding markets and bright profit prospects can almost always find the workers they need, either pulling directly from the pool of the unemployed or poaching qualified workers from other firms (or nations). For such firm, the costs of rudimentary job training for unskilled and semiskilled positions are secondary (como se prova facilmente com o exemplo dos portugueses que emigram para a Alemanha ou Suiça); if workers with appropriate training are not readilly available, they can be trained in-house. Conversely, firms facing stagnant demand and bleak prospects do not add workers simply because trained candidates happen to be available.
    .
    Job traing in most offices is extremely specific to that office: its systems, its bosses, its routines. Generic training programs, the only kind government can provide, cannot duplicate this function.
    ...
    if companies are not hiring, job training is irrelevant.
    ...
    if you really want to reduce unemployment and poverty, it is obvious from recent history that job training has nothing to do with it." (a não ser na cosmética dos número do desemprego, já que quem frequenta a formação não contribui para os números do desemprego).

    ResponderEliminar
  2. CCz29 de setembro de 2008 às 11:04

    À atenção da esquerda bem intencionada:
    .
    "Whereas in The New Industrial State the organization existed principally to master advanced technologies and complex manufacturing processes, in the Predator State the organization exists principally to master the state structure itself.
    None of these enterprises has an interest in diminishing the size of the state, and this is what separates them from principled conservatives. For without the state and its economic interventions, they would not themselves exist and could not enjoy the market power that they have come to wield. Their reason for being, rather, is to make money off the state - so long as they control it. And this requires the marriage of an economic and a political organization, which is what, in every single case, we actually observe."

    ResponderEliminar
  3. CCz29 de setembro de 2008 às 11:05

    E por fim:
    .
    "In a world where the winners are all connected, it is not only the prey (who by and large carry little political weight) who lose out. It is everyone who has not licked the appropriate boots. Predatory regimes are, more or less exactly, like protection rackets: powerful and feared but neither loved nor respected. They cannot reward everyone, and therefore they do not enjoy a broad political base. In addition, they are intrinsically unstable, something that does not trouble the predators but makes life for ordinary business enterprise exceptionally trying.
    ...
    predators suck the capacity from government and deplete it of the ability to govern. In the short run, again, this looks like simple incompetence, but this is an illusion. Predators do not mind being thought incompetent: the accusation helps to obscure their actual agenda."

    ResponderEliminar
  4. NC29 de setembro de 2008 às 16:01

    Este seu post é o resultado da mistura em laboratório de Estalinismo com Obamismo em que o último reveste o primeiro.

    ResponderEliminar