Sado-Monetarism The Role of the Federal Reserve System in Keeping Wages Low https://monthlyreview.org/2012/04/01/sado-monetarism/
by Michael Perelman Neoclassical economists are concerned about the workers’ transactions with capital, but they care little about the workers themselves or their working conditions. Workers merely accept a wage bargain, go to work, and finally collect a wage.
The Federal Reserve serves the needs of the powerful. Its role is to protect capital against the interests of labor. In order to maintain labor discipline, the Federal Reserve Board is entrusted with the task of maintaining a level of unemployment high enough to keep workers fearful of losing their jobs. Workers’ acceptance of mediocre jobs at modest wages paid handsome dividends for business, creating more demand (through debt), while making workers even more fearful of losing their jobs. In addition, workers’ insecurity also meant that they were less likely to quit in search of better employment, allowing employers to avoid the costs of recruiting and retraining replacement workers. Perhaps best of all, employers could enjoy this bounty without having to call upon the Federal Reserve to slow down the economy.
https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_511.pdf The Fed’s Real Reaction Function Monetary Policy, Inflation, Unemployment, Inequality—and Presidential Politics* by James K. Galbraith Olivier Giovannoni Ann J. Russo August 2007 Does monetary policy influence inequality? More specifically, does information contained in the term structure of interest rates extend beyond inflation and unemployment to a measure of inequality in earnings? The answer is that it does.
Agnipath Is A Marketing Trick In Which Job Destruction Is Being Sold As Job Creation https://thewire.in/government/agnipath-scheme-job-destruction-creation-modi-government Even though the larger economic motives and social imperatives behind the Agnipath project have not been understood in its entirety by the larger public, the impact of the scheme which bars candidates above 21 years and renders 75% of recruits jobless after four years without pension benefits has triggered the anger of those who were desperately waiting for the call for recruitment.
The Agnipath shock comes months after the Railway Recruitment Board changed its eligibility qualification, leaving lakhs of aspirants high and dry. With the agricultural and unorganised sectors, which provide employment to the stay-behinds, heavily hit by demonetisation, goods and services tax and later COVID-19 and Modi’s lockdowns, north Indian youth pinned all their hopes on army recruitment. But Agnipath has come as a bolt from the blue.
India is facing a great unemployment crisis and Modi has aggravated the problem with his disastrous economic policies and now his neoliberal recruitment policies.