Book review symposium

摘要

Amid the devastation wrought over the past five years by the current global capitalist crisis, debates accompanying harsh austerity policies have tended to enact few variations of one basic script: 'jobs' are the salvation from collapse, corporate 'job creators' its avengers. Unprecedented pain is thus being visited, in the name of job creation, upon those that, over the past four neoliberal decades, have already suffered the injuries of economic liberalization. Politicians from the right and the left alike have consistently used the imperative of creating jobs to legitimize deepening inequalities, the constant erosion of labour and environmental standards, corporate tax cuts, the dismantling of public services and redistributive policies, the deepening insecurity of lives forced to depend on labour markets that offer little of the rewards and dignity they promise.