The Wealth of a Society

Deborah Mabbett | Discovering Michal Kalecki | Eleanor Konik on Parenting Your Manager | Factoids | Elsewhere

Quote of the Moment

The wealth of a society should be assessed by the wellbeing of its people, and the foundation of wellbeing in a market economy is having enough income to live a decent life.

| Deborah Mabbett, Rediscovering Kalecki

---

---

Discovering Michal Kalecki

In the above quote, Mabbett is summarizing some of the thinking of the post-Keynesian economist Michal Kalecki, who argued that the boom-bust business cycle was in actuality a struggle for power between capitalists — ‘who have’ as Mabbett pointed out ‘disproportionate influence over public policy, in alliance with ‘rentiers’: the holders of financial assets’ and workers, whose primary recourse is the withholding of their labor.

She explains:

Post-Keynesians have invoked Kalecki to argue for the necessity of paying higher wages to stimulate demand, but Kalecki also saw a central role for the government in boosting the incomes of the people with the highest propensity to consume, meaning those who live hand-to-mouth with no savings to speak of. Kalecki’s endorsement of government borrowing to boost consumption deviates from contemporary mainstream thinking, even though the government’s economic support measures in the pandemic showed the value of doing exactly that. Unlike many on the left, he was not beholden to a materialist account of the creation of value through the accumulation of physical capital. The wealth of a society should be assessed by the wellbeing of its people, and the foundation of wellbeing in a market economy is having enough income to live a decent life. In Kaleckian economics, this is the most secure basis for a thriving economy.

Instead of building our economic policies around a certain level of inflation and desired corporate growth rates, perhaps we should push for full employment and enough income for all to live decent lives.

---

---

Eleanor Konik on Parenting Your Manager

The always inquisitive Eleanor Konik (@EleanoreKonik on X) apparently can apply ideas from anywhere to anything. She asks:

In today's edition of "advice from parenting books is useful for grownups with real jobs" ...

I wonder how many managers / company founders ask their direct reports to guess what five things each boss prioritizes?

I would generalize to include ‘and maybe the manager might ask themselves the same question about their direct reports’?

---

Factoids

The rent is too damn high!

As for the US, rent accounts for around one-third of the CPI inflation index, making it one of the biggest drivers of prices. Rents in most major US metropolitan areas have risen some 1.5 times faster than wages in the last four years, according to an analysis by Zillow Group Inc.

| Malcolm Scott

Apropos of Mabbett’s quote at the top: how can people keep pace with this?

…

It pays to be unionized.

Unionized workers in the US saw record pay raises while nonunion workers’ income barely beat inflation over the past 12 months. - Union employees see 6.3% increase in wages over past 12 months.

| Bloomberg

…

Fully remote work in London spiked in 2024

But it’s only 20% of the workforce.

The proportion of white-collar jobs at companies in London that are entirely remote has risen from 18% to 22%, a survey by Hays Plc found. That puts London equal with the east of England as the regions where fully remote working is most common.

Firms in the capital are having to fill specialist roles in the tech and compliance sectors, Hays said, which typically come with a smaller pool of candidates. Some job-seekers are reluctant to live in London, where even outer-borough rent prices have soared by double digits.

“If employers can’t fill a position with their usual hybrid framework – over time they will consider remote contracts,” said Lorraine Twist, a finance director at Hays. “This is obviously attractive for candidates as they can enjoy a London salary without the commute and high property prices.”

| Irina Anghel, London Firms Are Letting More Staff Work Entirely From Home

Elsewhere

I have dropped the laborious technique of creating embedded threads for each section of Work Futures. I will await whatever community features the Substack team roll out, and see where that goes.

…

Work Feelings | Stowe Boyd - Work Futures | Bosses don't care about your feelings, unless they exploit them as emotional labor.

…

Are MBA CEOs better for their employees? | Stowe Boyd - Work Futures | No. But they make their shareholders happy.