Quote: (07-27-2013 06:50 AM)Acute Angle Wrote:
Interesting topic. But I would rather call upon the reserve army of labour theory to account for the insertion of women into the workplace. The sexual political consequences are probably unintended, albeit powerful and far-reaching, side-effects.
That's definitely part of it and it shows the split between the Old and New Left. The old left would have seen the insertion of cheap-waged women (and immigrants) as organised capital triggering the reserve labour theory to drive down wages.
Yet, the New Left, now conveniently into identity politics, bitterly defends the endless increase of people in the labour reserve.
What I think has happened is that taxing the other half of the population was not enough to reduce the national debts. Worse, it caused the fertility rates to decline as well. So relying on the female workforce to share the tax burden only stabilised things for a generation or two after WW2. A new problem arose when the fertility rate begin to not provide the necessary seven tax payers to support a pensioner. So the tax base had to be expanded further by bringing in immigrants.