Recently the Koch Brothers, who aid and abet Scott Walker, laid off 158 employees at one of their paper mills here in Wisconsin. The lay offs result from the introduction of automated machines which made the workers redundant. The factory was already profitable and there is no sign of a decline in demand for its various paper products. 158 employees represent about 25% of the total work force. Assuming the theory that more productive workers gain income because of their increased productivity, which is a fact of the matter according to the Baumol Effect, we would expect the remaining workers to share in the income of the formerly employed workers, who now have the chance to retrain for some other job that doesn't exist or won't exist in the near future.
For the sake of argument lets say that the 158 workers salaries excluding benefits was 30k. 158 * 30000 = 4,740,000. If I have this right, the total work force would have been 632; 632-158=474; 4,740,000 / 474=10,000 means an increase of 10,000 per remaining worker with all the other labor costs passing back to the company. Otherwise everybody involved, the City of Green Bay, the business, banks, and etc previously patronized by the now unemployed workers, except two of the richest men in the world loses out.
What do you bet the odds are that the remaining workers paychecks went up? I agree: zero. After all the Koch Brothers are currently working to destroy public unions, and they own power plants, no?, -- although I am sure that's all just a coincidence, I'm sure they see their various industrial endeavors as primarily as a means of fulfilling a socially useful function and not at all are they interested in profit maximization. Nope. Beside which private vice = public virtue, all the classical economists say so.
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