Labor Market Policy: One Institutionalist's Agenda

摘要

Labor market inequality by class, gender, and race-ethnicity inhibits instrumental efficiency by creating and reinforcing invidious distinctions between groups of workers. Workers trapped in the low end of the labor market are denied opportunities for creativity, dignity, and nonalienation. Society is denied the potential contributions to human development. The economic devaluation of unpaid labor ignores the instrumental contributions of social reproduction and caring labor. My Top Ten labor market policies, though necessarily a selective and partial list, aim to set a different course. They are unified by a cultural value that labor is not a commodity like any other. Instead, following Veblen, labor markets should be structured to foster the "instinct of workmanship," serving as both a means and an end for human development.