- in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it. Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear?
- This is one of the secret strengths of right-wing populism. You can see it when tabloids whip up resentment against tube workers for paralysing London during contract disputes: the very fact that tube workers can paralyse London shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people.
- Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the – universally reviled – unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc) – and particularly its financial avatars – but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value.
My bullshit detectors light up when I see weasel words like “extremely limited” and “apparently infinite.” The music industry in the United States is valued at about $15 billion. There are about 1.3 million lawyers in the U.S. Let’s say the average salary of a corporate lawyer is $120,000. I can’t find good information on how many lawyers are “corporate.” Some statistics from a California city suggest that real estate and family law are the biggest areas of practice. Criminal law, accidents and motor vehicle practices are also large. If ten percent of lawyers are “corporate” by Graeber’s unspecified standard, I calculate a total value of about $15 billion, the same as for music. An important difference, I think, is that people buy (or steal) just as much music as they want, and nobody forces them to get more than they enjoy. Lawyers, in contrast, are needed to comply with a growing mountain of laws that apply to most every aspect of modern life. One group claims that compliance with federal regulations costs $1.8 trillion, about as much as is collected in income taxes. This is probably exaggerated, but I think it's absurd to suggest that corporate lawyers have it good because the 1% really like them. Graeber has a habit of "arguing" by posing questions.There’s a lot of questions one could ask here, starting with, what does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law?
The "mystery" is why this anthropologist is making an unsupported claim that globalism equals to, or is the inevitable result of, "capitalism". He then goes on to say: Which is basically what we have these days, at the global level. The American industrial base, for example, was "outsourced" and "offshored" due to geopolitical necessities. The two showcase countries in this context are India and China. The integration of the Chinese Communist regime into the AngloEuropean financial system required the wholesale transfer of technology and production means ("capital") to China. This was the bargain that was reached in the 70s. The goal of seperating India from the Non-Aligned movement also necessitated the quid pro quo of artificially jump starting the Indian software servies sector. So the current state of the economic order is not a natural end-state of "Capitalism" but rather the result of top-down manipulation of national economies in service of the desired goal of a unified global order in control of the ruling elites. Do tell. Is that what happened in the 60s? [& p.s. is the professor aware of state of affairs in prosperous leave it to Beaver 50s or is his forgetfulness necessary to support his bogus narrative?] The unrest of the 60s was due to structural flaws in society (racism), ideologically driven wars (militarism), and a healthy dose of agitation from academia and even national intelligence services (turn-on-tune-in-drop-out-ism). Apparently the London (surprise surprise..) School of Economics is prone to grant professorships to anthropologists who have not read in history, for any reasonably well read student of history would be able to point out that hunger, tyranny, and gross societal imbalances are the factual causes of "mortal danger" to ruling classes. It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is exactly what is not supposed to happen.
Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union [...] the system made up as many jobs as [politically necessary]. But, of course, this is the very sort of problem market competition is supposed to fix.
The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the ‘60s).
Fact-checking doesn't get much easier. Occupation $187,200+ Anesthesiologists $187,200+ Internists, General $187,200+ Obstetricians and Gynecologists $187,200+ Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons $187,200+ Orthodontists $187,200+ Physicians and Surgeons, All Other $187,200+ Psychiatrists $187,200+ Surgeons $184,400 Family and General Practitioners $175,100 Chief Executives $171,000 Dentists, All Other Specialists $170,300 Pediatricians, General $157,100 Nurse Anesthetists $152,700 Dentists, General $132,800 Architectural and Engineering Managers $131,600 Computer and Information Systems Managers $130,000 Petroleum Engineers $128,800 Marketing Managers $126,900 Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates $122,900 Air Traffic Controllers $121,500 Pharmacists $120,200 Natural Sciences Managers $119,700 Prosthodontists $119,300 Podiatrists $118,000 Financial Managersin our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.
Median wages, 2015
Sweden's got 30 hour workweeks. Maybe we should take a clue...