Diseguaglianza, conflitto sociale e sindacati in America

Lettieri, Antonio (2012): Diseguaglianza, conflitto sociale e sindacati in America. Published in: Moneta e Credito , Vol. Vol 65, No. N° 258 (June 2012): pp. 115-144.

Abstract

A comparison of the 2007-08 crisis with that of 1929 showed its extreme gravity, but it also may have implied that the old harmful mistakes would not be repeated. After four years, the crisis has not been solved and it even threatens to worsen. Neo-conservative Republicans claim that this is proof of the failure of Keynesian policies. Yet, there is something structurally distorted in the institutions and policies of American industrial relations. The fall of the ‘social contract’ is the basic element of the crisis of the American social and economic model. In comparison with the crisis of the Thirties and its aftermath, what initially was supposed to possibly evolve toward a new New Deal of the Twenty-first century has evolved just in its opposite.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• English Title: Inequality, social conflict and unions in America
• Language: Italian
• Keywords: Inequality, Globalisation, Labour, Welfare, Trade Unions
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty > I30 - General; F - International Economics > F1 - Trade > F16 - Trade and Labor Market Interactions; A - General Economics and Teaching > A3 - Collective Works > A32 - Collective Volumes; D - Microeconomics > D6 - Welfare Economics > D63 - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement; A - General Economics and Teaching > A2 - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics > A20 - General; H - Public Economics > H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies > H53 - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C1 - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General > C19 - Other; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J0 - General > J08 - Labor Economics Policies; D - Microeconomics > D3 - Distribution > D31 - Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions; B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B1 - History of Economic Thought through 1925 > B19 - Other; E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E2 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy > E24 - Employment ; Unemployment ; Wages ; Intergenerational Income Distribution ; Aggregate Human Capital ; Aggregate Labor Productivity; F - International Economics > F0 - General > F01 - Global Outlook; B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B2 - History of Economic Thought since 1925 > B29 - Other; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C0 - General > C00 - General; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I0 - General; B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B0 - General > B00 - General; D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D74 - Conflict ; Conflict Resolution ; Alliances ; Revolutions; A - General Economics and Teaching > A1 - General Economics > A13 - Relation of Economics to Social Values; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J3 - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs; B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B4 - Economic Methodology > B49 - Other; B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B5 - Current Heterodox Approaches > B59 - Other; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J5 - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining

References

ALPERT D. (2012), “Consumer Credit Growing at Highest Rate in Past Decade: Unhealthy and Unsustainable?”, EconoMonitor, 22 marzo, disponibile online alla URL http://www.economonitor.com/danalperts2cents/2012/03/22/consumer-credit-growing-at-highest-rate-in-past-decade-unhealthy-and-unsustainable/.

BELKIN D. (2012), “Recall Bid Fails in Wisconsin”, Wall Street Journal, 5 marzo.

BLUESTONE B. e HARRISON B. (1982), The Deindustrialization of America, Basic Books, New York.

CBO – Congressional Budget Office (2011), “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007”, 25 ottobre, disponibile online alla URL http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42729.

D’ANDREA TYSON L. (2011), “Tackling Income Inequality”, New York Times, 18 novembre, disponibile online alla URL http://economix.blogs.nytimes. com/2011 /11/18/tackling-income-inequality/.

EHRENREICH B. (2001), Nickel and Dimed, Metropolitan Books, New York.

EWING J. (2010), “Germany’s Secrets for a Steadier Job Market”, New York Times, 21 aprile, disponibile online alla URL http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010 /04/21/germanys-secrets-for-a-steadier-job-market/.

FREEMAN R. (1994), Working under Different Rules, Russel Sage Foundation, New York.

FRIEDMAN T. (2005), The World is Flat, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York.

GALBRAITH J.K. (1968), Il nuovo Stato industriale, Einaudi, Torino.

GOULD E. (2011), “Health insurance premiums continue to rise far faster than workers’ earnings and overall inflation”, Economic Policy Institute, settembre.

GREENHOUSE S. (2012), “More Lockouts as Companies Battle Unions”, New York Times, 22 gennaio.

HACKER J. (2008), The Great Risk Shift, Oxford University Press, New York.

HACKER J. e PIERSON P. (2010), Winner-Take-All Politics, Simon & Schuster, New York.

IMK – INSTITUT FÜR MAKROÖKONOMIE UND KONJUNKTURFORSCHUNG (2012), “Heading for the wall”, disponibile online alla URL http://www.boeckler.de/ 36260_38593.htm.

KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION AND HEALTH RESEARCH & EDUCATION TRUST (2011), Employer Health Benefits 2011 Annual Survey, disponibile online alla URL http://ehbs.kff.org/pdf/2011/8225.pdf.

KREGEL J. (2011), “Uscire dalla crisi finanziaria statunitense: la politica domina l’economia nella Nuova Economia Politica”, Moneta e Credito, vol. 64, n. 253, pp. 15-30.

KRUGMAN P. (1996), Pop Internationalism, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA).

KUTTNER R. (2010), A Presidency in Peril, Chelsea Green Publishing, Vermont.

LAFER G. (2011), “Will Obama Fix Rigged Union Elections?”, The Nation, 21 settembre.

LEE J. (2011), “Generation Limbo: Waiting It Out”, New York Times, 31 agosto.

LETTIERI A. (2011), “Obama nel labirinto della riforma sanitaria. Una metafora del capitalismo americano”, Insight, disponibile online alla URL http://www.insightweb.it/web/content/obama-nel-labirinto-della-riforma-sanitaria-una-metafora-del-capitalismo-americano.

MEYERSON H. (2012), “A Wisconsin Domino Effect?”, American Prospect, giugno.

MISHEL L. (2011), “Education is not the cure for high unemployment or for income inequality”, Economic Policy Institute, 12 gennaio.

–––––––– (2012), “Obama’s State of the Union speech sends the right signals”, Economic Policy Institute, 24 gennaio.

MITCHELL J. e JACKSON-RANDALL M. (2012), “Student-Loan Debt Tops $1 Trillion”, Wall Street Journal, 22 marzo.

NYT – NEW YORK TIMES (2012), “The Class of 2012”, Editorial, 4 giugno.

NOCERA J. (2012), “Turning Our Backs on Unions”, New York Times, 4 giugno.

OBAMA B. (2012), Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address, 24 gennaio.

OSTERMAN P., KOCHAN T., LOCKE M. e PIORE M. (2001), Working in America, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA).

RAJAN R. (2010), Fault lines, Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ).

RAMPELL C. (2012), “Do College Grads earn Less Now Than 40 Years Ago?”, New York Times, 12 gennaio.

REICH R. (1992), The Work of Nations, Vintage Books, New York.

–––––––– (1997), Locked in the Cabinet, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

–––––––– (2011), Aftershock, The Next Economy & America’s Future, Vintage Books, New York.

–––––––– (2012), “A Diabolical Mix: U.S. Wages and European Austerity”, Financial Times, 30 maggio.

RODRIK D. (1997), Has Globalization gone too far?, Institute for International Economics, Washington.

ROTHKOPF D. (2008), Superclass, Ferrar, Straus & Giroux, New York.

SAEZ E. (2012), “Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States”, disponibile online alla URL http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2010.pdf.

SASSEN S. (1991), The Global City. New York, London, Tokyo Princeton University Press; trad.it. Città Globali, Utet, Torino, 1997.

SPENCE M. (2011), “Globalization and Unemployment”, Foreign Affairs, luglio/agosto.

ZANDI M. (2009), Financial Shock, Financial Times Press, Upper Saddle River (NJ).